#STRask - How Do You Justify Calling Jesus the Messiah?

Episode Date: December 18, 2025

Questions about how one can justify calling Jesus the Messiah when he didn’t fulfill the Hebrew messianic prophecies, and whether the reason for the virgin birth was just to set Jesus apart as unique or there was a deeper meaning.   How do you justify calling Jesus the Messiah when he didn’t fulfill the Hebrew prophecies the Messiah was required to complete? Is the reason for the virgin birth just to set Jesus apart as unique, or is there a deeper meaning?

Welcome to hashtag St.R. Ask. We are actually getting closer to Christmas. Gray, we only have a couple episodes left before then. So we're going to do a couple episodes on Jesus. How does that sound? All right. Sounds appropriate. Yeah, it does. All right. So this first question comes from Jesse. How do you justify calling Yeshua Jesus the Messiah when he didn't fulfill the Hebrew prophecies that the Messiah was required to complete? Please, no vague, he'll do it later, or that's spiritual, not literal explanations. If a prophecy wasn't fulfilled, doesn't that matter? Well, it's curious the way the question is put because it asks the question. and then it says, but you can't answer this way, okay? But maybe the way that is being, in a sense, dismissed is an appropriate way to answer. Okay, let's say I'm trying to think of an example where I'm trying to think of an example where something is supposed to be fulfilled, but the nature of the thing is that it takes

it takes a period of time for it to be fulfilled, and we don't find that to be a problem. Okay, so Moses talks to God. God says, go to Pharaoh. I'll let my people go, blah, blah, blah, that whole deal. And I can't remember the exact words, but essentially God is communicating to Pharaoh, I'm sorry, to Moses, that he is going to, the people are going to be released. Okay. Well, the people being released takes a while. It's a process. And there are a lot of things that happen on the way to the release. But I don't know that it would be fair to say, well, God didn't tell the truth because, look, lots of miracles happened, but they're not released yet, only halfway through the account. They're not released yet. All right. Some of these prophetic things. elements are things that happen at different times. Okay. So the Messiah is to be born in

Bethlehem and die on a cross. Okay, we'll take those as givens. And dying the cross would be Isaiah 53 and Psalm 22. So die as a substitute is the point. And Daniel Line also, the Messiah will be cut off. Okay? Well, you got the birth of Jesus and the death of Jesus. Would it be inappropriate to say that, well, wait a minute, we can't claim that Jesus is the Messiah in light of all his birth and his genealogy and all that's going on because he hasn't been crucified yet. Well, yeah, we haven't got there yet. There's a series of things that unfold that are all part of this larger prophetic picture. And this is the exact same thing that we face now. It's interesting that when Jesus was at Copernum there early in his ministry, Luke 4, Matthew 4, right in there, I get the passages

mixed up. But Jesus opens this scroll of Isaiah in a very dramatic moment, and some movies have done a good job of this and others not so good. But I would like to have been there. That's one of those times you kind of wish you were there, where Jesus opens the scroll and he reads through the, apparently the assigned reading for the day, the Spirit of the Lord has come upon me to preach the good news and to heal the brokenhearted, et cetera, however that goes, and then he stops. And it says all the eyes are fixed on him.

Now, what I think what people don't realize is that Jesus didn't finish the account. The full reading was much longer. He stopped there. and that's why everybody looked at him, and then he says, today, this passage has been fulfilled in your hearing. But what about the next verses? This wasn't a time for those verses that entailed destruction to be fulfilled. That would come later. And so Jesus read the portion that applies to him in that moment, says, today this has been fulfilled, and then doesn't address the rest. And it says, then it said, people were amazed, and they were all speaking well of him.

Now, if you see some of this movies that characterize that particular moment, when Jesus says this prophecy has been fulfilled in your hearing, everybody goes berserk in the film. But that's not what happened. They go berserk later on in the chapter when he mentions Gentiles, the the widow and name of the, was it name of the leper, etc. Then when he, it says when he said these things, then they got, they went berserk. So I think that passage is an indication to us that Jesus understood that things were not all going to be fulfilled at once, that they were going to be fulfilled in a sequence, which shouldn't be surprising. If you have, God predicting the defeat of an army by the Hebrews, the defeat takes some time to accomplish the route.

So they attack, there are casualties, there's a back and forth, and ultimately a victory, which had been predicted, but the victory is accomplished over the period of the battle. and in the same way, the passages that talk about Jesus as the Messiah are things that are fulfilled at different times in different ways. I want to look at this passage, and it doesn't look like it's in Matthew 4. No, it's in Luke, Matthew Mark Luke, Luke comes later. And you'll see the passage that I'm talking about. Luke chapter 4 Sorry, I should have had this

Full of the Holy Spirit, okay Return from the Jordan 40 days tempted It is written Luke 4, 21 21, okay, you're ahead of me Amos, give yourself a raise And he began to say to them today

Oh, let me read the passage Okay, and the passage comes from, and maybe you can look this up, Amy. Let's see, 18, Isaiah 61, 1 and following. The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, Jesus reads, Because he anointed me to preach the gospel to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim release to the captives and recovery of sight to the blind, to set free those who are oppressed to proclaim the favorable year of the Lord. full stop. He closed the book, the scroll, gave it back to the attendant and sat down, and the eyes

of all in the synagogue were fixed on him. By the way, keep this in mind. You know, you have a reading for the text in your congregation, right? Person reads the text, sits down. We don't all look at him, waiting for something. There was a reason that they were fixed on Jesus, and that was because he did not continue the whole passage. And the passage continues. Can you read the next couple of lines, Amy? Where did you end with the... I ended with to set free those who are oppressed.

To proclaim the favorable year of the Lord and the day of vengeance of our God. To comfort all who mourn, to grant those who mourn in Zion, giving them a garland instead of ashes, the oil of gladness instead of mourning, the mantle of praise instead of a spirit of fainting. So they will be called Oaks of righteousness, the planting of the Lord that he may be glorified. Okay, that's good. That covers it. Notice how he's moved into a whole different thing. God brings vengeance and then rescue for his people. But that is not what Jesus had in mind at that time.

He couldn't say this whole passage has been fulfilled in your hearing. This comes in stages. And even though our dear, is it Jesse? Yes, Jesse, yes, yes, has said, you can't do that. Well, it does seem to be justified by the text. This is being fulfilled in succession, in steps, I guess, is the best way to put it. And I just don't see why that is in the slightest way, an illicit way of answering the challenge. God promised a lot of things to Abraham that didn't happen in his life.

Those took a long time to fulfill. I mean, most of the promises, there's a through line. from the very beginning of the Bible to the end. So I agree, Greg, I think that, and I think that's a great idea there. And it's also important to point out that there were a lot of things that were fulfilled already. So you already have a situation where he's matching not just specific prophecies, but also just in the typology, in the shadow of the whole system, the sacrificial system, and what it was pointing towards, and how you can see Christ in all the ways that God was creating

this nation and all the ways that he was prefigured, like with Isaac and, of course, sacrificial system and all of the things. You mentioned Isaiah 53 and Daniel 9, and there's all these other prophecies that it would be quite odd if Jesus matches all those other things, and just because he hasn't brought everything to an end, that means he's not the Messiah. Why couldn't God have a reason to do this in stages and have a time where he's bringing the other nations in, which is also actually promised in the Old Testament? How would – there has to be a time when God is bringing the other nations in before it can end.

But it makes sense for Jesus to come before that happens. So there are all sorts of things that have to happen there. Even Jesus says, I'm going away and I have to, to prepare. a place for you, the supper room discourse in John, and when I leave, I will send another comforter who will be with you and teach you, et cetera, and enable them, the disciples there, to do all kinds of things at a greater magnitude that Jesus was able to do just as an individual. So even Jesus throughout is explaining the order of events. So I'm going to Jerusalem, and and I'm going to die, and then the chief priest and scribes will persecute me, then they will kill

me, and then I will rise again. And this is Cessori of Philippi. I just read this in Matthew. How, you know, Peter says, no, don't even talk that way, you know. So, but notice the progression that Jesus offers these series of events, and then he rises, and then he says, okay, now I'm risen from the dead. And now there's more to be done, and the Holy Spirit's going to be given, which is a fulfillment of the new covenant that was prophesied Jeremiah and Ezekiel. There's a temporal nature to the unfolding of all of this.

I remember a long time ago was at KBRT, my flagship station doing commercial radio. Same kind of show, though, when somebody called in challenging me on the fulfillment of the details. there in Jeremiah 31 because it's clear that everybody doesn't know God the way Jeremiah described it. And I really got caught by surprise and find myself kind of stumped in the moment how to answer. And I had to actually go to break and then come back with something substantive, but it amounts. It was the same kind of challenge. And the answer actually is quite simple. Many prophecies are fulfilled over a period of time, step by step by step by step. An ultimate telos or end or goal or purpose is in view that's prophesied, but to get there,

there's a series of steps that God has chosen to take. What's wrong with that? This is a long-term prophecy in Jeremiah 31. A new system was being set up, but then it would have its long-term, consequence as the Holy Spirit is working in the lives of people, and the law is written on their heart. Maybe some people don't like that, but that certainly strikes me as an entirely legitimate way of cashing out those passages. Here's a question from Corey. What do you think is the reason for the virgin birth? Is it just

to set Jesus apart as unique, or is there a deeper meaning? Well, that's a good question that I have not given much thought. ought to. Some have suggested, and by the way, this is going to be speculative, so I can't add any authority to this kind of speculation. Some have speculated that the sin nature is passed down through the man and his contribution, and not through the woman, to the soul-making of the individual. By the way, this presumes a certain understanding of how in-souled human beings come to be. One understanding holds that the mother and father create the body and God creates the soul and then brings the soul in union with the body. Okay, that's called creationism with regards to

the soul. That's not my view. My view is that the human beings reproduce after their own kind, they are body and soul, and so they reproduce a whole human being, body and soul from the moment of conception. And on that view, let me go back to this. Oh, this one right here. Okay. Oh, yeah. Given that point of view, virgin birth here, given that point of view, given that point of view,

that raises the possibility, at least, that the contribution to the soul by the father is the one that in a sense contributes to the fallen nature, and the contribution by the mother is not. And so Jesus, not born of a male, but of a female, would not have a fallen nature. I mean, I heard that when I was very early on, a Christian somebody from Dallas Seminary had been trained there. I don't know if that's their view or not. As I think about it now, it doesn't make a lot of sense to me. How you even divide up, how are portions of the soul or facets of the soul passed down through sperm and not through egg or something like that. It's, well, I don't know why the virgin birth is necessary, myself.

Some have suggested that. That's not persuasive to me. Sometimes, and I actually just wrote this last night for a solid ground, every view has imponderables. And we shouldn't be surprised that our view has imponderables. That we can't answer the question, why? And maybe you have an insight on this, so it would be great. But I'm just saying in general, as a general principle, that we may not be able to answer the question, why about something, like, why did Jesus have to be born a virgin, doesn't in any way mitigate against the fact that he was born of a virgin or the truthfulness of God's word? There's a lot of stuff like, man, I got question marks all over my Bible and all over the margins.

I'd always do have been pencil because I hopefully sometime in the future I might erase them when I get more incited to the issue. But there are a lot of imponderable. So I'm not concerned about that. It's fair to ask the question. I don't know that there is a definitive answer to that. I think at the very least we can say that there's a pattern of God giving births that are somewhat miraculous. For example, Sarah's baron, and then she gives birth to Isaac. It's just a way of God making clear that this is my doing.

The same thing happens with Samuel and with Elizabeth. Samuel's mother. Samuel's mother, yes. And with John the Baptist and his mother. So God is just he's singling them out as being from him and part of this. specific plan. So this case, it's so far beyond anything that is natural, that there's no question he is from God. So at the very least, we can say that, I think. Yeah, that's a good one. I had not made this connection with the other miraculous kinds of births, though, strictly

speaking there, can they comport with the process of nature, but these women, each of them, were so old that you would not expect them to get pregnant, especially Sarah was in her 90s. And there was a long delay from the initial promise to when that promise was fulfilled. So this was, and this is a point I make in the Bible fast forward. This was the child of promise. The first step of the history of the nation of Israel was the call of Abraham. But the second step was the miraculous birth of Isaac, and that's kind of in a certain sense understandable because Abraham is not going to live to see this progressive fulfillment, what we were talking about earlier, but it's a way of God showing him the supernatural down payment on the promise that will not be fulfilled in his lifetime.

He's showing him this is the man, this is the one, rather, not Jacob, Abraham, Isaac, no, Esau. Not Esau, but rather Isaac. And he's the one of the miracle. All right. So that's a good point. I hadn't thought about that. And those are key points, too, because think about it with Abraham and then with Samuel, who was the beginning of the series of prophets. And then with John the Baptist, which was the announcing the coming of Christ and then with Christ. And there were other people who maybe they weren't that miraculous, but they were also. saved, like Moses was rescued. And I'm trying to think of other key people. Who else has this happened with? I can't think of anyone else just off the top of my head. But at these key moments, there were people who were barren. And then God gave them a child. And then they moved to the next section of this whole series in God's plan of redemption. Yeah. So there are these, there are these unusually timed, miraculous intervention births that happen all along the story.

I think that's a good observation. Well, that is it for today. Thank you so much for listening. We really appreciate you. We'd love to hear from you if you want to send us your question on X with the hashtag SDR ask or just go to our website at STR.org. This is Amy Hall and Greg Coker for Stand to Reason. Thank you.