chapter 6, that the angels are singing back and forth to one another. One will sing, the other responds. One will sing, the other responds. That last song, Praise Ye the Lord, Praise We the Lord, is like that. And most of my kids didn't know that song. And what's interesting is if we sing it a couple times, they'll have it memorized because it repeats itself so much. It's pretty neat that it does it that way. And that's actually something that's going on in heaven if you watch Isaiah chapter six pretty closely. We're gonna wait for the New England staircase to filter out down there. Let the door slam shut. Quietly. Let's take a moment for silent prayer and commit our time and the word this morning to the Lord. Our Father, we thank you for your kindness, your goodness to us, your constant and unchanging grace that comes to us through the Lord Jesus Christ, our Savior. Thank you for the privilege of knowing you through him, of knowing him through your word, of walking by your spirit in a manner worthy of our calling, and thank you for the calling. God, we want to be pleasing to you, and we want you to train us to think your thoughts after you as we consider the scriptures this morning and what they say from the Old Testament through the New Testament about our Messiah. Help us know him and anticipate him in everything we say and do. We ask it in Jesus' name, amen. Our discussion last week took us to Revelation from Genesis three through Revelation chapter five. And we had an image of the Lord Jesus that I don't think we hear very much about. I don't think people know very much about. But he is identified in Revelation five as the lion. The lion of the tribe of Judah. My favorite of all God's lower creatures, I mean lower than humans, has to be the African lion. It's always been how it was ever since I was a little kid. Might be because I read the Chronicles of Narnia when I was young. But they're majestic and they're beautiful. And the lion is a figure used of Satan in 1 Peter 5, but he's also used of the Lord Jesus in Revelation chapter 5, and it turns out Genesis chapter 49. And the consideration of Jesus Christ as the regal victor, the dominating king, is our focus this morning as we consider the prophecies of the Messiah through the scriptures. When you think of Jesus as the lion, it's a prophecy of what is yet to come. A prophecy of what is yet to come. And we find this prophecy, this idea of the Messiah as ruler, as king, really throughout the scriptures. I believe it is in God's, I mean I'm sure of it, it's in God's thinking when he says, when he says, let us make man in our image and let them rule over the beasts of the field, over the works of God. The idea of dominion has forever been, in God's original blueprint design, what he meant for mankind. And the God-man, Jesus Christ, born of the Virgin, is going to rule over all the works which he and his deity has created. And this is the mystery of the coming kingdom of the Lord Jesus Christ, the kingdom of God and the kingdom of heaven. When you talk about messianic prophecy, Inevitably, you get into the conversation of interpretation with others. For example, the way Jews, the Jewish people read the Old Testament scriptures, and they don't think of it as the Old Testament, they think of it as the Bible. 39 books, the Tanakh, as they call it, that's the Hebrew abbreviation for what we call the Old Testament. When you come to the conversation and you say, what do the Jews think about the Messiah? Well, that's a very interesting conversation. And the reason I reference it now is because of my intention. I have no intention of proving to you this morning that Jesus Christ is the Messiah of Israel. If you don't already believe that, I don't think there's anything I could do with the evidence of the Old Testament and the New Testament to prove it to you. If you think that I could, no, I want you to lay out the case. I'd be glad to do that, but I don't think that's the nature of the association we have here. There's a strong case to be made. Obviously, I have built my whole life on it, or I should say I've staked my whole life on it. I've committed my whole life to it. What I'm saying is though, you already believe Jesus is the Messiah of Israel. You think he's the promised one that God promised us in Genesis 3 when he said the seed of the woman would crush the serpent's head. So our goal is not to convince this morning that the Old Testament gives rise to the New Testament. I would want you to be very careful about changing Old Testament meanings based on New Testament statements. That's been a major problem in church history in the interpretation of the scripture since at least the fourth century. We have messed this up as the body of Christ and those that should know better by listening to what God has said through the prophets have disregarded the prophets, have stopped listening to Moses and said Moses did not mean what he wrote when he said they get the land forever. We must never do this. Our theology arises out of the Old Testament giving rise to the New Testament and it is a one solid message with no changing of meaning. Jewish interpretation of the king is mixed. Did you know that there was a time when probably most rabbis were messianic? I don't mean they believed in Jesus of Nazareth as the Messiah. I mean they believed there was a coming Messiah. Do you know that that's probably not the majority position of Bible-believing or Old Testament-believing Jews today? I haven't polled them, but if you get into a conversation about, well, you know, Jesus is the Messiah, a lot of theologians in Judaism will say, the Messiah? That's not even what the Old Testament's talking about. If you go, for example, with an Orthodox Jewish interpretation of Isaiah 53, They'll say, that's not about the Messiah, that's about the nation. The one who would suffer for our sins is, I guess they would say us, the Jews. And when I read Isaiah 53, and by the way, the Bible presents it as just a slam dunk. The Ethiopian eunuch in Acts 8 is just reading, and Philip says, you know what you're reading? You understand it? No, how can I understand it unless you square me away? Tell me what it means. Jesus is the sufferer who pays for our sins in Isaiah 53, and he says, where's the water? There's water, let me be baptized. I believe that. I believe your message of Jesus is my Savior. And so the point is, there's a mixed view out there of how to read the scriptures. And that's always been the problem is, well, how do we know our interpretation is correct? Well, because only if, because and only if our interpretation is God's, if we're listening to what God says and letting him say it his way. And so the biggest thing I can say to you today in terms of looking at the scriptures as they bear witness to the coming of Christ, this first advent and his second. When you look at what's coming in the Lamb, what has come already in the Lamb, what's coming with the Lion and His rule, you have to accept there is mystery. There is mystery surrounding every aspect of prophecy in the Scriptures. It's God's glory and His design to shroud His revelation in mystery. And so it's like looking at the stars at night. We want to see perfect daylight. and there not be anything we don't understand, but actually the scriptures look more like a starry night where you see pinpricks in the dark of clear light, clear revelation. That's God's way of dealing with us and it's a beautiful thing, but we have to accept that there are some questions you can ask the Bible, it doesn't really answer. And when we think we know, well, we've lost the desire to read. We don't know, we need to know. And so today I'm excited to bring to you a message about the rulership of Jesus Christ as prophesied in Genesis. If you're going to have the seed of the woman, that's a mysterious statement in Genesis 3. Very mysterious. The seed of the woman. If the seed of the woman is going to be crushed or bruised on his heel, and yet he's going to crush the serpent's head, well, That makes us wonder what's going on. And as you trace the seed through the book of Genesis, you see that there's a set of promises that are going to be developed through this one seed, this one bloodline, this one family. And in Genesis 12, by you, Abraham, all the nations of the earth are gonna be blessed. And we say, well, that's mysterious. How is Abraham gonna bless all the nations? And we can list many ways that we've been blessed by the Jews, by Israel. But the main way is they gave us Jesus Christ, Jesus of Nazareth, born of the tribe of Judah, who is our Passover, who died for our sins on the cross. As we mentioned first hour, the substitutionary atonement of Christ is the ultimate in Abraham blessing the nations. It's the ultimate because Jesus died for the sins of the world. So when we start with the seed of the woman and the mystery and we start to see it take on more complexity and detail and clarity through God's revelation of scripture, we start reading the scriptures as God intended us to. We don't put more in Genesis than there is. We say there is a format for what God is going to fill in over time through the centuries. When you get to Revelation chapter 5, and the vision that John has of one like a lamb who is slain, who has the right and the authority to take up the seven-sealed scroll to bring the judgment of God upon the earth dwellers, the nations, that's going to kick off in Revelation 6 and then the tribulation. When you see this vision of the Lord Jesus that John has, not as a man, but as a lamb who's slain, who is also identified as the Lion of the tribe of Judah. We say there are many things that are starting to fit together in the mysterious flow of Revelation with many questions that we've had. And today, there are many prophecies of the Scriptures, Old Testament and New Testament, which are still unfulfilled. We're still waiting for God to do what He said He would do. but we have many prophecies of scripture that have been fulfilled they were predictive in their statements and now they have come to come about and we say if God has done it this way then we anticipate him to do it the same way when he fulfills those things that are not complete and that topic listen that topic is eschatology The question of what has God promised to do, what has He revealed to us that He will do, and what are we expecting Him to do because He said so, is the whole of Christian eschatology or the study of the end. The study of end time days, of the last things that become so interesting and are so divisive when you come to the various interpretations and considerations. Are you pre-millennial or post-millennial? Will we have a perfect kingdom of Christ before he comes back? Or would Jesus actually need to come and set up his kingdom like the scriptures say? That's a little, you know where I'm at on that one. When Jesus comes in the clouds to catch the church up, is that before the tribulation or during the tribulation or after the tribulation? Like the tribulation for the earth dwellers, not the body of Christ, that is God's judgment on all the nations for their rebellion against him. Is that something the church is supposed to go through or is he gonna actually catch us up to judge us in our judgment while he's judging the earth dwellers? I think you know where I stand on that one. The church is not part of the wrath of God on the nations as we see that's coming in the tribulation. Well, this is all based on what the scriptures tell us about what's coming in the future. Today, for Christmas, we're looking at Jesus Christ in prophecy as the Lion of the tribe of Judah. Our text is Genesis chapter 49. If you would turn there please this morning. Genesis chapter 49 And Israel is speaking, Jacob is blessing his sons or prophesying about them. Some of the statements are blessing and some of them aren't so blessing, so much of a blessing. They're just harsh. He's really harsh on Simeon and Levi. He could be harsh with Judah, his son, but he's not. And you know, the context of this story is Joseph has been able to save his family. He's delivered them from famine in the land to plenty in Egypt. And he did that in a miraculous turn of events where his brother sold him to slavery and God kept making him advance and be promoted. God put his hand on Joseph and made him successful. And many years later, the family is there in Egypt trying to find grain because Joseph has been wise and arranged Pharaoh's granaries so that there would be grain during the famine. And the brothers can feed their families because of Joseph, now the Egyptian prime minister. And so Joseph has saved the family and they've been brought into Egypt in this deliverance. And you know the story, you brothers that sold me to slavery, you meant it for evil, but God meant it for good. because I was able to save your lives. And nobody would have anticipated that this is how it would work, but that's how God did it. And so that's the context for Jacob finally has peace, he has wholeness, his family has been restored, they are in fellowship, they're brought together, and they're in the aftermath of the revelation of Joseph and the establishment of his family with him in Egypt. And it's really much better for them than it will be later in Egypt when the Pharaoh who knew not Joseph. So you have these prophecies and we're going to look in verse 8 through 12 of Genesis 49 because we're focusing on Jesus Christ as prophesied in the Old Testament, the prophecies of Messiah. And I've said the King is coming because of, in part, Genesis 49, verses 8 through 12. The New American Standard says, Judah, your brothers shall praise you. Your hand shall be on the neck of your enemies. Your father's sons shall bow down to you. Judah is a lion's whelp or cub. From the prey, my son, you've gone up. He couches, he lies down as a lion, and as a lion, who dares to rouse him up? The scepter shall not depart from Judah, nor the ruler's staff from between his feet, until Shiloh comes, and to him shall be the obedience of the peoples. He ties his foal to the vine, and his donkey's colt to the choice vine. He washes his garments in wine, and his robes in the blood of grapes. His eyes are dull from wine, and his teeth white from milk." That's the prophecy that Jacob has for his son. I want to contend there are three panels to this statement of the success, prosperity, and blessing of the tribe of Judah. Three panels, and these will point to Jesus Christ, where in Revelation 5, He is directly stated to be the Lion of the tribe of Judah. So you have to read this in its context, let it speak, and then when John the Apostle, in his vision, interprets this image of the Lion of Judah, you see, okay, this is why the scepter will not depart from Judah. You can't have a king come from Simeon. You can't have a king of Israel come from Levi, I mean, for over time. Now, who was the first king of Israel? That's right, the Lord. But then when they got a human king, who was the Saul, and he was of the tribe of? Benjamin. But the prophecy here says the scepter of rulership will not depart from Judah. So how do you square that? How is it possible that the first king was from Benjamin, but that the scepter won't depart from Judah? You know what I say about that? I say, well, look at the details of the statements. It doesn't say the scepter will begin in Judah and then won't leave Judah. It says that it won't leave Judah, which means it has to enter into Judah at some point. You see what I mean? It's very detailed. So Benjamin gets the scepter. And so what would you do if you were a Genesis reader and you see King Saul of Benjamin? And then you see his awesome son, Jonathan, coming up behind him. General Jonathan, who seems like he would be a shoo-in as the second king in a Saul-like dynasty. But you know Genesis 49 says the scepter, the rulership, will not depart from Judah. What would you say? You would say, I would say, I hope I would say, this Saul deal is a temporary arrangement. Wouldn't you think? there's gonna be a switch in tribes. At some point, the Saul dynasty's gonna end, and somehow Judah is going to become the tribe that rules, and when Judah is in the slot, the scepter will not depart. You see, that's, now are you with me? Have I lost you? This is not hard math, but it's detail. It's detail. Jesus is Lord and he rules and we love him, let's vote that way. That's really not what the Bible teaches us to do. It teaches us that Jesus is Lord, he rules, we submit, pay attention. Look what he said. Look at the detail. So the scepter won't depart from Judah predicts the fall of the Saulide dynasty. Saul's family will not hold a long-term dynasty. And so what do we find after Moses writes Genesis? What do we find a few hundred years later? 500 years later. What happens? Saul is told by the prophet Samuel, done. You cannot be king. God has rejected you from being king. He's rejected your house from being king. Samuel goes into mourning. God says, why are you crying? Go get your horn of oil and we're gonna go anoint the next king. Now notice the way the story develops. I mean, did you notice in your Hebrew scrolls that there's no footnote in Genesis 49 that says, look forward to 1 Samuel 16 and the anointing of David? It says nothing like that. David is the son that you don't count among your sons. He's the seventh and you don't count him because you've got the other guys and they're the oldest. And so David is faithful and David is attractive and David has a lot going for him. He loves to sing. But you're not gonna count him among the sons. And if you see the story of how God designates David and how God elevates David in 1 Samuel 17 through the Goliath incident. And the whole country loves David and wants David to be their champion. and sees him as their hero. Saul is slain as thousands, but David is tens of thousands. When you see how God develops the story, don't you get a little bit of goosebumps about this? The scepter will not depart from Judah. Hundreds of years ago predicted prophecy, and then when Saul's dynasty goes down, and then the whole country eventually, it took time, but adopts David and becomes the Judah line. The Judah tribe will now rule over Israel. And we see Jesus Christ And the genealogy is born of David legally and physically. Legally Joseph, physically Mary. That, that is the way the scriptures hang together. Did we get that from a casual reading? I mean, when you read through Genesis 49, if you're like me, you're like, well, we got six down, six to go. Get us a good coffee. Get back at it, read some more. I mean, I'm just saying when we're casual with the Bible, we're not necessarily paying attention to the details. And all the details aren't gonna have the same weight on understanding things and it's hard, that's why we spend time here. But the prophecy of the scepter not departing is very exciting when you consider what would happen in history 400, 500 years later after Moses wrote these things that Jacob had actually said 800 years, 900 years before. It's one message, there's one consistent presentation. And if you have the wisdom to say, God, you have your way, not me. God, you say it your way, I won't say it my way. If we have the love of God to say, I will humble myself under the mighty hand of God and he can tell me how it is. If we'll do that, we'll let the details line us up and see, yes, Genesis 49 is directly pointing to Jesus of Nazareth. directly pointed to Jesus of Nazareth. And God's gracious. Maybe I didn't get it. Maybe when Jesus came and he was slain as our Passover, I didn't understand him to be the lion who would rule. It's okay, because he tells me. The apostle of Jesus, John, in Revelation 5 tells me he's the lion. So if I, it's like you look up your math answers in the back of the book, you know, the odd numbers or you give you the answers to check your work. The way you make, you make at least a 50 in your algebra homework, right? You look in the back and it says the serpent of old, that's Satan and the devil. The dragon Rev 12 is also the serpent in Genesis three. Did you get it? I mean, and you're like, Oh, No, I thought that was just talking about snakes. I better read Genesis 3 again, not to reinterpret a way that Moses doesn't mean it, but to understand what Moses is saying back there. Same thing, if I didn't catch that Jesus is the Lion of Genesis 49, Then I go back and look and see, wait a second, the whole point of Matthew, behold the king. The king is on earth. Repent for the kingdom is in your grasp. And the offer of the kingdom to Israel, which was rejected. And I think you know the aftermath in the story. What about the kingdom? What about the kingdom? The tribe of Judah is supposed to rule. The scepter won't depart from Judah. Judah isn't ruling right now. Friends, we are not in the kingdom right now. I mean, in history, it is not expressing itself. God is not expressing his kingdom rule as prophesied through the scriptures. And I think it gets really sloppy when we say, but I'm a believer, so I belong to Jesus, so I'm in the kingdom. No, you belong to the kingdom that is still coming. It is future. And to say, I am administrating kingdom dominion now, I believe is a grave error. It's a grave error, which ultimately results tragically because Satan is at work and it results in anti-Semitism. Because the kingdom is in our heart and so the land wasn't really what God meant. And so these people that are rebellious and disobedient to God in the land, that's not anything to do with the kingdom. No, those are the people who will be the beginning of the kingdom. And there will be a time. In our future, I mean, the future from our day right now, when the people in the land who are of the descent of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob will turn to him whom they've pierced, and they will believe in Jesus as their Savior, and he will come and restore the kingdom. It's coming, and you are part of it. It's part of your destiny. And I think we talk about that quite a bit here. But let's go and look in some detail at Genesis 49. Judah's character is the first panel in verses eight and nine. Judah's character, Judah's rulership, and Judah's prosperity. These are the three panels. The first will be Judah's character in verses eight and nine. And just going slow, Judah, your brothers shall praise you. Your hands shall be on the neck of your enemies. Now, do you know, do you know why we call the people of Israel the Jews? Do you know where that comes from, the word Jews? The word Jew comes from Yehuda, which is the Hebrew pronunciation of Jews. Excuse me for just one second. Can I have that please? Thank you. Now, did you bite the bottom of that? Excuse me, I'm sorry about that. Did you do that? So this is unthinkable, right? And I've told you many times that we don't do this. I want everyone here to know that I do correct him, but I usually don't do it in front of you because of how you feel, probably some of you right now, that it's kind of uncomfortable. But we do correct our children, and we do correct them strongly and consistently, and I do want you all to understand that. It's very important to me and my family and Merry Christmas to you that you'd know that. You weren't thinking about it, were you? Right, but that's not okay, is it? Because everybody is now affected. Do not get any more bottles of water in this church, do you hear me? All right. Now, if you think that that's the end of our conversation about that, that's where you don't really get to know. But you're horrified, aren't you? I know how you feel. I'm horrified, too. Your hands shall be on the neck of your enemies. See, now we just switch back to the Bible. Just get right back at it. That's how we do it. Your hands shall be on the neck of your enemies. Your father's sons shall bow down to you." Now notice that there's a sandwich of the prophecy here, and I'm just going to take it as it is, just how he says it. How does he say it? Judah, your brothers shall praise you. And the second piece of that is, your father's sons shall bow down to you. We call Jews Jews because of the word Yehuda, which is the way you pronounce Judah in Hebrew. So the people of Simeon and Gad and Reuben and Levi are all being called Judah today. Isn't that interesting that that's their identification? And again, watch the development of the Old Testament. Even though Solomon goes into idolatry and loses 10 of the 12 tribes, and so Judah is now alone with what's left of the remnants of Benjamin. It's really just Judah and Benjamin. When you see the Southern Kingdom and the Northern Kingdom divide, some of you are like, what are you talking about? It's called the Old Testament history. You should read it. It's the stories. They're really great. When you see the great division of the kingdom into the northern kingdom and the southern kingdom after Solomon, and then Rehoboam and Jeroboam, and what happens after David's first son to rule, you see that God preserves Judah, and he says it for the sake of David. And we think, well, history says that you're gonna have this little thing that's left, and this big thing, the main center of gravity, and so they're gonna be the ones that are prominent, the Northern Kingdom, and the Southern Kingdom is gonna eventually fade and become a vassal or something, and it turns out the Northern Kingdom goes out first under the Assyrian discipline from God, and then the Southern Kingdom is destroyed by the Babylonian captivity, And there is, I think, no explanation for the persistence of the two kingdoms over those hundreds of years, except that God is being faithful to his promises, his promise to Judah. And so Judah is preserved. And now, even now, the sons of Israel are called Jews, Judah. Your brothers will praise you. Your hands will be on the neck of your enemies. Your father's sons shall bow down to you. And this is actually what we see hundreds of years later when David becomes the king of all the tribes. He's first in Judah. They kind of have a division with the country. And then over time, I think it's seven or 14 years, David eventually will be established as the king of the whole, all of the 12 tribes. And they do, they bow down to him, as it were, as to their king. And so David is a fulfillment. And this is hard too, because you wanna say, well, is this talking about Jesus? And all of Israel is going to bow down to Jesus? Or is it talking about David? Or is it Solomon? And a lot of the messianic prophecies work that way. When you have 2 Samuel chapter 7, the promise of the Davidic kingdom, that I'll have your dynasty rule forever, on your throne forever. When God says that, What are we to conclude? Well, Solomon is the first installation of that. Well, when they get deported, now there's no more David's throne. What are we supposed to say? Well, he said forever, so we're expecting a what? A restoration. There's no one on David's throne now. There's no throne. There's no ruler in Israel. Not a king. The Gentiles are still running roughshod over these people in their land. Still. So we're still holding out for God to do what He said. There's going to be a king on that throne forever. Well, you know, it hasn't happened yet. It's been thousands of years, so I guess we're not going to see that. Well, 2,000 years isn't anything in the eternity of God. When He says forever, I'm going to hold out for restoration of the Davidic kingdom. And so this is how you read the Scriptures, and I'm tying, I think we're seeing how the Scriptures tie our view of Jesus in His first and second comings to His plan for His people and for us. In verse 9, Judah is a lion's cub. The aria is a beautiful word. It means lion. I believe it's onomatopoetic. In German, they say loa. We say lion. A lion does not sound at all like a lion, like lion, but it sounds like that. When you go to the zoo and you get the lion to growl, it takes a few minutes, but you can get them to growl at you and roar and stuff. We went to the Southwick Zoo where they've got a pretty good lion enclosure that's pretty close and good being I think that the the lion can't get to you but you feel like you can and they got a male and a female in there and they're close enough where they can hear you can hear them and you can interact and I don't want to say, take any credit for the lion roaring, but we did stay around long enough and probably bug him enough where he did get up on his little perch, like his little Simba perch, and surveying his vast domain yard that he's in there, and he started holding forth, and he sounded like the German. He said, it's not like the MGM lion, that growl sound. They can do that, but they've really amplified that in the back of his throat. The big sound you hear is that deep kind of bellowing sound. I think Arya is that way. I think that they hear him out there in the plains and they hear him going, and they named him based on what he sounded like. A lot of animals historically are named that way, and I think that's interesting. That's the Hebrew, but that's what he calls him. He calls him the cub of a lion. Now if you're a father and you tell your son, you are a lion's cub, what did you just say about you? Roar! It's interesting. Now is he referring to the youth of Judah and his potential? Or is he referring to himself? I think it's the potential. But Judah is a lion's cub. From the prey, my son, you have gone up. Now this, I believe, means, I think what he means when he says, you've gone up from the prey, that you have been trained and developed and you have had a kill. And you have defeated your kill. You have done what you needed to do with it, which is to nourish himself. And then you have moved on. You've gone up from the prey. So the cub has now become the full lion, able to hunt. I think that's what he's doing here when he says, you've gone up. But that starts an idea that the lion goes where he wants. It's like an old joke you tell the kids. When an elephant comes over for a visit, where does he sit? Anywhere he wants. When a lion is in the room, where does he go? anywhere he wants. He just walks around. Imagine a lion came into church, a physical actual lion visited church, you know, and just patted down the aisle. You would feel like this room was a lot smaller than we feel like it is. You know, now if we actually had a lion come, you would smell a smell that you'd say, that is reminiscent of cat, but it's about 500 times cat. And actually a lion as a pet isn't a great idea. I've looked into it and for a lot of reasons, but some of them are nitrogenous. But anyway, the lion comes in the room and he goes over here and sits up in the pew and says, oh, these are really uncomfortable. But he goes over there. And what do the people over here do? One of two or three things, and we'll mention most of those, but one is they freeze and they just pray that the lion doesn't eat them. Some people get up and go over there, and this side of the room becomes very popular. The lion starts to feel lonely, starts walking over there, like, what's going on over here? And then all the people in the church start to kind of Migrate back over here, like we feel like we're going on this side today. And it would be very uncomfortable because the lion can kill you without much trouble and you don't want that to happen to you. So the lion just gets up and goes wherever he wants. And I think this is what he's referencing when he calls Judah a lion. Judah, you are going to dominate and you get to go and have freedom of action where you want to move. He says that he couches, he lies down as a lion, Arya, not a cub now, but as a lion. So when the lion wants to lie down, you know what we let him do? We let him lie down. Unless we have something that's 30 caliber with a lot of juice behind it, we just let the lion, you go lie down, I'll go get in the truck. You know, just make sure that the lion doesn't kill me. He lies down, he's not worried about it. He's secure and he's safe. And this is how a king needs to be. The most vulnerable person in the world is the king. Ask the President of the United States right now how vulnerable he is. Watch the news just for a little bit, then go confess your sins and then spend some time in the Word. What a vulnerable position is anyone, like a king or a president, when they have rule? Because you're going to make decisions and people are going to like them. Some won't, some will. And so the whole question of popularity really becomes a question of national security at some level. And so we have a phenomenal system in this country that kind of insulates us from things, but we've had disasters, many disasters, in our history on this. We're not immune to it. And so when the king is secure, that's a blessing from God. When he is able to just not expect his general, his commanding general, to stab him in the back, literally, and then take his crown. In world history, that's a real dominance. That's a real power. That's a real security. And I don't mean a sinful dominance or an oppression of others. I mean just we've got good security and we can go forth. We kind of have trouble imagining what this is like in our country to actually have security and not be worried about someone killing you because we have a pretty good freedom and security the way God has blessed our nation. But if you watch again the history of Israel, the kings would be killed toward the end, toward the Babylonian captivity, and they're in the end of of kings toward the end of Chronicles, you start to see this king will be killed in his sleep or by his captain of his guard and then that guy will be the king and he'll be there for three months until there's another coup and they kill him. And it's really insecure. It's total insecurity. But not for Judah. You are going to have perfect security. And notice the regal idea. R-E-G-A-L. Not R-I-E-G-E-L. The regal idea of the king who is just comfortable to lie down when he needs to, to get up when he needs to, and have that freedom. That's the way to think of Jesus. He's not cowering somewhere. He's not weak and helpless. He's regal and capable of having security. Like a lion is who dares rouse him up. The New America Standard took a little liberty there. Who dares, just says who causes him to get up. But that means dares. It means who has the temerity, who has the gumption to go tell the lion, hey, get up, we're going to go. The lion says, I'll get up, but you're going to be down and you're not going to get back up. See, the lion has He's not really shook by much. Like a lioness. Now this is the word you would use, the noun for a lioness, and so you have a poetic parallel. And it's not to say Jesus has a feminine side or anything like that. It's to say if you've studied lions, the one that you really don't want to mess with is the female. And that's not anything to do with human man-woman interactions at all. I'm just saying the lionesses are the soldiers. They're the ones that actually get all the meat. The males produce necessary genetic material to make more lions. And it's very strange. And they do fight, and they do do the dominance thing, especially with other males, so they can run their genetic project with all their females and the pride. But if you study lion politics and lion sociology, it's not the way humans are. The females, they're the men-at-arms. They are ninjas. They're the ones that do all the hunting and When I see humans work this way, I have a description of it, but it's not fit for Sunday morning, and we're not animals. But the point here is the power and the dominance on the battlefield, if you will, the lioness, is not a feminine human reference. It's a reference to power and danger for those that might come rouse the lioness. Now, I saw this in action. I've told you about it recently, the South Lake Zoo thing. I spent, of three hours at the zoo, I think I spent Two of them at the lion enclosure probably. Seems like it was great. I love lions. In the millennium, I'm going to get to play with them. They will not be eating me. They'll eat straw like the oxen. Poor straw gets eaten by the lion, but I'll be able to pet the lions. The male came to speak to the female in an inopportune moment, and she was not happy about that. And she turned into a very vicious, vicious thing. And I was frightened for my own safety. And she wasn't even mad at me. But the male, he probably outweighed her by at least 100 pounds, it looked like. But so there's a viciousness here that these people knew about. They had actually dealt with lions a lot, and so that's the image here in terms of the lioness as someone that you don't want to mess with. I wish I had a video for you of that lion coming to mess and rouse up that lioness. She said, no, no one's going to rouse me. And he said, you're right. OK. OK. There was news recently, a female lion in a zoo killed a male that had been the sire of several litters of cubs. Many years of successful breeding of this pair. And again, he tried to rouse her up or something and she did what lions do. The way lions kill is they cut off your airway. They clamp down, almost like we think of dog fight, a pit bull dog fight. They clamp down on the airway, and if they don't break the neck, they just choke or crush the throat where you can't breathe and die of suffocation. There's no way to go. Now, we've got Judah's character as the lion who's comfortable and free. and dominant and dangerous. All these things are in the picture of Judah. You don't want to mess with the Lord Jesus Christ. You don't want to fall into the hands of the living God or the warning passages of Hebrews. And if you watch especially the prophecy of the coming wrath of God on the nations, the wrath of the Lamb, The one that we've pierced, the one that died for us, the lamb is one slain, is the dominant lion who will crush the nations with a rod of iron. And C.S. Lewis captured this probably too many times in his books, in the Chronicles of Narnia, because what did he say about Aslan? The little kids always say, oh, we gotta deal with a lion? What do they ask? They said, is the lion safe? And they say, well, no, he's not safe, he's not a tame lion, he's good. He's good. We have infinite righteousness, infinite love, but also infinite omnipotence. And when righteousness acts in justice against sin, it's wrath. And so that's one reason we want to emphasize the lion. In verse 10, you have the scepter, the prophecy of the scepter. He says, the scepter, the mateh, sorry, the shevet, the scepter, which would be what the king holds as a symbol of his kingly authority, of his rule, will not depart from Judah. We've already talked about that some. And the staff of rulership, one translation said the mace. You have to understand that that's another word for scepter, that would be a kingly staff. But better to translate this, the staff, meaning a rulership like a shepherd, from between his feet. So he will always have the authority and you will always have this image in your mind that he has the authority, Judah. Judah. Again, this is a direct prophecy of the Messiah. Because see, you have to have an eternal rulership. When you look in prophecies of Jesus and his coming rule, look for eternal rulership. See, there's no other explanation unless you just mean, you say, well, this is prophetic language. It's big language. It doesn't really go forever. It just means, you know, for the time we're kind of dealing with. There's no term limit here. It will not depart. And so we push the detail and say, is this what you mean, Lord? Do you mean it never will depart? You follow through the rest of the scriptures and it is indeed what we mean. My favorite book of Messianic prophecy has to be the book of Isaiah. Isaiah writes 700 B.C. Moses writes 1450 or so B.C. This was stated by Jacob in Jacob's life more like 18 something B.C. or 2000 B.C. I mean it's a long time before. Not really good at public math today, you have to be patient with me, but about 400 years of Egyptian sojourn. So, a thousand years later, more than a thousand years later, Isaiah prophesies something that would go directly with this prophecy. What does Isaiah say in chapter 9? Isaiah 9, if you want to turn there, I think we'll spend some time here next week. Handel, I love Handel's Messiah, but I think his best orchestration, the best music is Isaiah 9, 6, for unto us is born. I love the melody of that. My kid, we love to listen to it in the car all year round. Listen to, unto us a child is born. But in verse six of Isaiah 9, for unto us a child will be born, a son will be given to us, a child and a son. Notice the Hebrew parallelism. I think that you can push those details. The baby in the manger is the Son of God, the human who is also God the Son. And the government will rest on his shoulders. See, this is a lion prophecy of rule, not cross, but rule. His name will be called Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Eternal Father, Prince of Peace, not God the Father, but one who is eternal in that position of authority. And then listen to the description of what his people will expect. It's a Genesis 49 10 prophecy. There will be no end to the increase of his government. We wanna think of it's a set thing when he sets it up and then it continues on. But when he says no end of the increase of his government, that might lead us to ask some questions. How does the government of Messiah never stop expanding? On the throne of David and over his kingdom to establish and uphold it with justice and righteousness from then on and forevermore. The zeal of Yahweh of the armies, the Lord of hosts will accomplish this. See this is one of those things where if I can't convince you that Jesus is the Messiah, Jesus of Nazareth is the Son of God who's the Messiah of Israel promised throughout the Old Testament Scriptures. If you can't see that there's a child who's a son who is described, not the nation figured as the son, but one person is going to sit on a throne that only has one seat. That's the picture that we have here, and this is exactly what Genesis 49 is talking about. The staff of rulership will never leave from between the feet of Judah until he comes to whom it belongs. Now this is where it gets controversial. If you've got a King James Bible or a New American Standard Bible, they agree together against me on my translation. Shiloh is a physical place. It is a feminine proper noun. to call Jesus Shiloh as his name is probably a mistake, and we have lots of manuscript evidence that suggests that there's something going on here. There's probably a mistranscribed letter where we've misunderstood and called it Shiloh. There's three ways to take this verse. One is that, as I do, until he comes to whom it belongs, or until the one to whom the tribute and we would supply is due. Or till Shiloh comes, or till he comes to Shiloh. I do not believe this is probably about Shiloh, the place in Israel. I think this is better translated, until he comes to whom it belongs. Until what? unto the obedience of the nations. The tribute that comes to the one, the one. I think the Shiloh thing is good because it puts a flag up and says, look here, there's something going on here. And everyone reads this and kind of, well, what's till Shiloh comes? Who's Shiloh? Shiloh is a feminine name, again. So, but if you look closer, the point of the verse is there's one. There's one who's coming. And so I think the Shiloh thing has kind of masked but also popularized the notion we need to look at this one verse. This is the place where we have in 49, not just Judah, but one from Judah, one until him. and unto him the obedience of the nations." Again, I would love to parallel with you Isaiah chapter 2 where the nations come to stream and all the Gentiles come in and worship at the feet of Yahweh at Mount Zion. How is that possible unless Yahweh is somehow co-located with David when David comes back, David's greater son? This is the God-man in prophecy. So the Old Testament is presenting this and I just wanted to kind of dramatize it for you a little bit And then verses 11 and 12, you have a prosperous kingdom. Our sensitivities in America in the 21st century. We focus in on the wine and say, no, no, no, bad. It's wine, it's bad. Jesus said, I'm not gonna drink this fruit of the vine with you until I drink it new with you in the kingdom. And I think if you watch the way wine is used throughout the Old Testament, the way it's used in biblical times, it's very different from how we think about it, where the men didn't do their work and they got drunk and they drank the family's food, money, and then the women had to go march, and all the story of American temperance. Okay, this is not an advocacy for alcohol. This is a reference to prosperity, and I want to show you why I think that. Alan Ross thinks that too, and he's somebody with real authority. You could read his commentary, but he ties his foal to the vine as your first clue. Grapevines are not something you use as structure to tie animals to. They're not a parking spot. They have to be very carefully tended and treated very, very delicately by the ventener so that we get good grapes. If you're trying to grow grapes, it's hard to do. But the point is that there will be so much so much bounteous foliage that you could just tie your horse to a grapevine because there's so much of it. That's the idea. You're using something that's very expensive to do something that you don't really think of as expensive. It's gold paint on your parking space lines. That's the idea. We're so rich that we're hooking, hitching our foals to grapevines. The donkey's colt to the choice vine, so the very expensive, like the best. See, if you're a grape grower and you've got all these vines, you've got one that really performs. The best one you can think of in the coming kingdom of the one to whom this is due, that the rulership belongs. In this coming kingdom, it's so rich that the richest possible grapevine is just a parking spot. The choice vine, that's the interpretation. This is a hard verse, but I think that's what he's saying. He washes his garments in wine. This is not a hit on Judah. It's not Jesus is going to be a wine bibber. It's saying that we, what do you use to wash your clothes? Water, not necessarily in Preston. unless you do something, I'm teasing, led you to, you gotta mess with the water. But water's cheap, wine is expensive. We're using wine to do laundry in the image. He's washing his garments with wine. It's not saying we're coloring them wine colored, it's saying, there's wealth, there's abundance. It's land flowing with milk and honey. Doesn't mean there's a tidal wave of milk here and a tidal wave of honey there and it's a sticky situation in the land. It means we're prosperous and bounteous. He washes his garments in wine and his robes in the blood of grapes. Now notice the beautiful Hebrew back and forth kind of parallelism. It's the same thing twice in this synonymous parallelism. His eyes are dull from wine. His eyes, if you look at him, he's a man who, that translation might need a little bit of work, but the idea is not that he's drunk, it's that he has had the privilege of prosperity, and we see also his teeth are white from milk. Do they know about calcium in milk and the benefits, the health benefits of a high calcium or a high enough calcium diet and so forth for your teeth? The point is that you can see the benefits of prosperity on him. And so this panel, this verse is challenging. Prophecy is mysterious. But the picture, as it clarifies through the Old Testament, is the coming kingdom is glorious and prosperous and beautiful. And the things that we're trying to fight and deal with today are not going to be a problem when Jesus rules. When Jesus comes back, he sets up a kingdom where the curse has been removed. And when we sing joy to the world, as far as the curse is found, is a reference to the removal of the curse of sin and the curse God has placed earth under because of sin. in this coming millennial and then on into the new heavens and new earth kingdom. I just want to give you one more insight from Isaiah on this idea of the prosperity of the coming kingdom, the beautiful coming glory that is to follow. Isaiah 2 is the one that's so clear. When the mountain of the house of the Lord is established and all the nations stream to worship and learn from Yahweh, come let us go to the mountain of the Lord and the house of the God of Jacob that he may teach us. The outcome is that he judges between the nations and renders the decisions for the people and they'll hammer their swords into plowshares and their spears into pruning hooks. This establishment of the kingdom of the Lion of the tribe of Judah, of Jesus Christ, takes away war. When people say no more war, We do the chicken foot symbol, which means nuclear disarmament historically. You know, the little peace sign thing with the broken upside down cross deal. It means, that sign is from the idea of nuclear disarmament and we don't want any more war. Well, great, join the club. Nobody wants war. But we keep having it. It keeps being a problem. Jesus Christ and his personal presence on the earth is what will stop it. It will not stop until he stops it. I'm absolutely convinced of that. Come house of Jacob, let us walk in the light of the Lord is the exhortation when you don't have this problem anymore. The removal of the curse of nature in Isaiah chapter 9 and Isaiah chapter 11, but we don't want to take time with that today. So this is the presentation of the Lord Jesus Christ in prophetic form in the mystery in the Old Testament. What do I do with that, Pastor? How do I order my life with this information? Well, the most important way you can do that is identify your future. Figure out what your destiny holds because you are going to be with Jesus Christ forever. When Jesus comes and gets you, so will we ever be with the Lord is how 1 Thessalonians 4.17 ends. So shall we ever be with the Lord. This is your future. It's Jesus' future in glory and rule, but it becomes your future because you are in Christ, which then takes us to the most important doctrine for living your daily life of the Scriptures. It is identification with Jesus Christ. For me to live is Christ. To die is gain. It is no longer I am living, but Christ is living in me. The life I live, I live by faith in Jesus Christ who loved me and gave himself for me in Galatians 2. This is the most important application. This isn't just about him and oh, that's great for him. This is your destiny too. But only because, as it were, we're on his coattails. Only because you're in Christ. So when you study messianic prophecy, don't say this is about me. Say this is about Christ and I'm in Christ. And then you have not just worship of Him who's glorified and exalted in rules and righteousness, but the added benefit to know you're being groomed and trained to serve under Him in this coming, inevitably coming administration. With our heads bowed and our eyes closed. The closing moments this morning are committed to the benefit of anyone who may not know Jesus as your Savior. We bow our head and close our eyes because we want you to have freedom and security. We want you to know that it's not about our judgment of you, but there is a judgment that binds on all of us, that Jesus Christ has the authority to judge between the living and the dead. And the need of all mankind is life, eternal life, that only Jesus Christ offers. And so we're here to testify to you today that Jesus died for our sins according to the Scriptures, and that He rose on the third day according to the Scriptures. And that is the most well-established fact, in my opinion, of the ancient world of the first century anyway. that Jesus of Nazareth has risen and been seen by hundreds of eyewitnesses. The resurrection of Christ is a demonstration of the truth of the words that I'm saying, that God loves you, He sent Himself, He sent His Son for you, Jesus Himself, God the Son, came on your behalf, and He did so to pay for your sins on the cross. And what you need to do about that is believe on Him. Right now where you sit in your heart, if you're listening online, you can say, I believe in the Lord Jesus Christ. as my Savior, and when you trust in Him, that is the moment of the new birth, of the indwelling of the Holy Spirit, of a new life that God has called you to walk before Him. Father, we thank you for this eternal life that we walk before you. We ask that you'd strengthen us to do so, help us to move forward in a way that honors you moment by moment. We pray it in Jesus' name, amen.