TTE Advent Calendar Day Sixteen – December 16th

TTE Advent Calendar Day Sixteen – December 16th

Thank you for reading our sixteenth installment of our advent series, please check out our advent page for more articles in this series.

Today we look at the prophecy that the messiah would be the Son of God. We read this prophecy in the 2nd Psalm verse seven.

Begotten not created

Psalm 2:7 (ESV) I will tell of the decree: The LORD said to me, “You are my Son; today I have begotten you.

I love this prophecy it tells me two things about the coming messiah:

1) He is the Son of God
2) He is begotten

Here is where we lose our Muslim friends who claim that Allah is the same God as the God of the Bible. In Islamic literature we read that “Allah has no Son”. So with Jesus being the Son of God, they worship a different God. I know folks like Tony Blair and his faith foundation may disagree with me, however both holy books (the Bible and Qur’an) say it is not so.

This is not to say that people who were born into the Islamic culture cannot go to heaven. They can! In the same way as anyone who is still in their sin can go to heaven, by trusting in Jesus Christ and following him as your Savior. You will no longer be a Muslim but a Christian.

I also find it awesome that the word used is “begotten” as we stated in a previous article, he was both born of a woman and born of a virgin. (Notice how prophecy comes together?) He was born in exactly the same way that we were, God could have created him as a man, much like he did Adam, but God decided to have Jesus be born as a child. This passage is also quoted in the book of Hebrews…

Hebrews 1:5 (ESV) For to which of the angels did God ever say, “You are my Son, today I have begotten you”? Or again, “I will be to him a father, and he shall be to me a son”?

The writer to the Hebrews quotes two well-known pieces of scripture (to the Hebrew audience at least)  and ties them to messianic prophecy. He quotes Psalm 2:7 and 2 Samuel 7:14, here is the latter for full context:

2 Samuel 7:14 (ESV) I will be his father, and he shall be my son. If he commit iniquity, I will chasten him with the rod of men, and with the stripes of the children of men:

This takes away the heresy that was perpetrated through both the secular world and to a lesser extent the church that jesus was an angel and not actually the Son of God. These verses categorically refute this.

Bible versus opinion

I like it when the bible explains way better than I ever could. I would much rather quote the bible to explain a theological position far better than I ever could. I may stumble, have bad grammar or just not explain it well. The Bible on the other hand would explain, give prophecy and draw a line between scriptures to show God’s perfect will.

Truth be told, my opinion is flawed, like any man and subject to bias. The way that I look at these articles is that if I cannot back up the claims or theological ideas that I put forward with scripture and elementary theological reasoning, then what I write is bunkum.

My Son – Who I am well pleased

Matthew 3:16 (ESV) And when Jesus was baptized, immediately he went up from the water, and behold, the heavens were opened to him, and he saw the Spirit of God descending like a dove and coming to rest on him; 17 and behold, a voice from heaven said, “This is my beloved Son, with whom I am well pleased.”

There is nothing finer than a proud parent. When my daughter does well I am so proud. I also love to extend words of love to her as well as warm embraces. It is important to me that she knows that despite her faults I love her unconditionally.

But when she makes me proud, an example of this would be when she sings out, makes a craft that she has invested time or is proud of or even does well at something, my heart swells to an almost exploding rate and I am so proud. God is in that situation with Jesus. Here is the Son of God, humbling himself and allowing himself to be baptized by a man to be an example to the ones who will follow him.

I recently had a birthday and my daughter made me a cake (with adult supervision) and you should have seen her face as she brought that to me. She was so happy to be giving something to Daddy on his birthday. She was glowing to see daddy’s response.

Again (if we really needed it at this point) is further confirmation that Jesus is Gods own son. The firstborn and the apple of God’s eye, equal in deity with God but also humanity incarnate.

Deity versus humanity

This is the most common problematic issue with looking at the life of Jesus. We have to treat all situations acknowledging that whilst he is fully human, he is also fully God. Angels worship and serve Jesus, which gives us his place in heaven. (Hebrews 1:6; Deuteronomy 32:43)

We can’t promote the humanity in place of the deity (and vice versa) He is fully God and fully man. He is God because we see in these scriptures that Father and Son share the same being, because he is both he is the only one who could atone for the sins of the world. Unlike the Jehovah’s Witness and Latter Day Saint (Mormon) churches believe, Jesus is confirmed as being both God and man.

Jesus is unique, there is no-one else that came down and knew from the beginning that he was there to die for our sins. He gave everything, never sinned, lived a perfect life, was blameless and man tried to send him to his death because of their own sinful hearts.

But death could not hold him; three days later he rose again, strengthened his followers by appearing to them before ascending into heaven to sit at the Fathers right hand. He will come again to judge the world, but it is your choice whether you are found guilty or not.

Jesus went through all this so we can go to heaven, although that decision is ours, we have to choose to follow Jesus. My hope is that these articles help and please contact me if you need to discuss further.

God bless you one and all, I thank you for reading this article. Please share, comment or like below as the LORD leads you too.
TGBTG
TTE