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Le Center SDA Church

Norman McNulty

Waiting For the Wrong Messiah

Father in heaven, we thank you so much for bringing us here this Sabbath day, and I just pray that you would pour out your Spirit in a special way, and be with me and give me the words to speak, and may we have an understanding of who we are looking for and waiting for is my prayer in Jesus' name, Amen.

The title for our message this morning is Waiting for the Wrong Messiah.

Seventh-day Adventists by our given name are looking for the coming of Jesus in the clouds of heaven.

Just as Jesus came the first time, the first advent to the Jews.

We believe that Jesus will come back in the clouds of heaven and every eye will see him.

As the lightning shineth from the east even into the west, so shall also the coming of the Son of Man be.

We're not looking for a second chance if we've been left behind or a third chance in the new millennium.

We know that this earth right now, The life that we live right now is the 1 and only probation, and that a day is coming when probation will close, and sometime after that Jesus will come in the clouds of heaven.

As Seventh-day Adventists we understand that very clearly from scripture, But could it be possible yet that somehow, despite all of that knowledge, we are somehow waiting for the wrong Messiah?

Let's open up to our scripture reading from the Gospel of John Chapter 1, and we will look at these verses again.

And we read, He was in the world, and the world was made by him, and the world knew him not.

He came unto his own, and his own received him not.

But as many as received him, to them gave he power to become the sons of God, even to them that believe on his name, which were born not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God.

And the Word was made flesh, and dwelt among us.

And we beheld His glory, the glory of the only begotten of the Father, full of grace and truth." Jesus came into the world that He made, and they didn't know Him.

You know, 2, 000 years ago, you would not have met a Jew who did not look forward to the coming of the Messiah.

The Jews longed for the coming of the Messiah who would bring glory to their long downtrodden nation.

And you know the Jews are still looking for that fulfillment.

Let me quote to you from a recent Jewish statement that I found from Wikipedia.

This is what they say, The world is in desperate need of messianic redemption.

To the extent that we are aware of the problems of society is the extent we will yearn for redemption.

As the Talmud says, 1 of the first questions asked of a Jew on Judgment Day is, did you yearn for the arrival of the Messiah?

How can we hasten the coming of the Messiah?

The best way is to love all humanity generously, to keep the mitzvah of the Torah as best we can, and to encourage others to do so as well.

Despite the gloom, the world does seem headed toward redemption.

1 apparent sign is that the Jewish people have returned to the land of Israel and made it bloom again.

Additionally, a major movement is afoot of young Jews returning to Torah tradition.

The Messiah can come any day and it all depends on our actions.

God is ready when we are for His King David says, redemption will come today if you hearken to His voice.

You know there's a few statements of truth in there.

Did you yearn for the arrival of the Messiah?

And how can we hasten the coming of the Messiah?

And yet despite all of that, the Jews missed the coming of the true Messiah when He came.

And here they are, 2, 000 years later, still thinking that somehow the Messiah is coming, and that they just need to yearn for His arrival and hasten His coming as if somehow He has not yet come.

And yet scripture says, He came unto his own, and his own received him not.

How is it that you could wait for the coming of the Messiah for more than a thousand years, and when He came not recognize Him?

That the Jews had been waiting for more than a thousand years for the Messiah to come, and when he came they knew him not.

Let me read to you some statements from Desire of Ages.

It's from the chapter in Desire of Ages entitled God's Chosen People.

In Desire of Ages, page 27, starting in paragraph 1, we read, For more than a thousand years the Jewish people had awaited the Savior's coming.

Upon this event they had rested their brightest hopes.

In song and prophecy, in simple rite and household prayer, they had enshrined his name, and yet at his coming they knew him not.

The Beloved of heaven was to them as a root out of a dry ground.

He had no form nor comeliness, and they saw in him no beauty that they should desire him.

He came unto his own, and his own received him not." And Isaiah 53 is quoted there as well as John chapter 1.

Jesus to the Jews was like a root out of a dry ground.

Like you see a root out of a dry ground, it's something that you cast aside and throw away.

Maybe you throw it on a pile of wood to be burned, but it's not something that you would see as being of value or of having use.

That's how the Jew saw Jesus, who was the true Messiah.

He didn't have any outwardly good looks, and so they didn't want him.

They somehow had missed the prophecy of Isaiah chapter 53.

And when they saw the type of life that Jesus came to offer them, and of the redemption that He came to offer them, that was not the messianic redemption that they were looking for.

Continuing on in the next paragraph she says, Yet God had chosen Israel.

He had called them to preserve among men the knowledge of His law and of the symbols and prophecies that pointed to the Savior.

He desired them to be as wells of salvation to the world.

What Abraham was in the land of his sojourn, what Joseph was in Egypt, and Daniel on the courts of Babylon, the Hebrew people were to be among the nations.

God's chosen people were to reveal God to men.

They weren't supposed to hide under a bushel.

They were supposed to reveal Christ the way Abraham did, the way Joseph did, the way Daniel did.

They were to preserve among men the knowledge of his law and of the symbols and of the prophecies that pointed to the Savior.

And when I read that I can't help but think of Seventh-day Adventists today who are supposed to be preserving a knowledge of God's law and of an understanding of the prophecies that point to the second advent.

We are supposed to be preserving the knowledge of God as well.

We are supposed to be revealing God to men.

Page 28 of Desire of Ages, Notice this, but the Israelites fixed their hopes upon worldly greatness.

They were supposed to be revealing God to men, yet their hopes were fixed on worldly greatness, not on heavenly things.

So, yes, they believed in the Messiah, but the Messiah that they were looking for would bring them treasures on earth.

The Israelites fixed their hopes upon worldly greatness.

From the time of their entrance to the land of Canaan they departed from the commandments of God and followed the ways of the heathen." That's unbelievable.

God led them to the Promised Land, yet from the time that they entered Canaan they departed from God's law and they followed the ways of the heathen.

It was in vain that God sent them warning by his prophets.

In vain they suffered the chastisement of heathen oppression.

Every reformation was followed by deeper apostasy." So here they are, God's chosen people.

They enter into Canaan and instead of following God and his law they depart from the commandments of God and they followed the ways of the worldly heathen nations around them.

And when there would be revival and reformation, after the revival and reformation would go away, deeper apostasy followed.

Continuing in the next paragraph, Had Israel been true to God, he could have accomplished his purpose through their honor and exaltation.

If they had walked in the ways of obedience he would have made them high above all nations, which he hath made in praise, and in name, and in honor." Which is what they were looking for in the first place.

Now, on Page 29, a few paragraphs down, Ellen White says, While the Jews desired the advent of the Messiah, they had no true conception of his mission.

So they wanted the Messiah to come, but they didn't understand the mission behind the Messiah.

Now, if you want the Messiah to come but you don't understand the mission of the Messiah, aren't you setting yourself up for failure, to reject him?

They did not seek redemption from sin but deliverance from the Romans." Now notice, when Jesus came they were in bondage to the Roman nation and they wanted deliverance from the bondage that they were under, But the reason why they were in bondage to the Romans was because of their continual apostasy of departing from God's law and of following His ways, and of listening to the messages of the prophets.

And so rather than studying scripture and walking in the way of the Lord, they did their own way because of their life of sin, and God allowed them to come into bondage so that they might seek God and turn to Him again.

And they simply looked for a Messiah to deliver them from the result of their sin, rather from sin itself.

They looked for the Messiah to come as a conqueror, to break the oppressor's power and exalt Israel to universal dominion.

Thus the way was prepared for them to reject the Savior." So they wanted to continue the way they lived their lives.

They just wanted deliverance from the oppression, but it was their sin that had led to the oppression, It had led to their bondage, and they wanted deliverance from their bondage, and they wanted the Messiah to deliver them from their bondage, but they didn't want deliverance from the cause of their bondage.

They wanted to keep living like the nations around them, but they wanted to be the greatest nation of all the nations.

They wanted to outdo the world, but yet they're God's people.

Now is there something wrong with God's people trying to outdo the world in worldly ways and heathen customs.

That's what the Jewish nation was looking for.

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Waiting For the Wrong Messiah

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