In Isaiah 7, Isaiah is sent to King Ahaz to tell him of a future time when the LORD would send Immanuel. This is the first time we read a promise of the Messiah’s coming. Immanuel means “God with us,” so we can infer or say directly this is a promise of the Messiah. Remember this is a prophet of the old covenant, but he is prophesying the coming of the one who would initiate the new covenant. This was a desperate time for Israel, with more trouble on the horizon. But the distant future would be a time of healing and blessing.
Isaiah 8 promises the Assyrians will come and destroy the northern kingdom of Israel, and will come against the southern kingdom. He calls on the people to trust in the LORD, in Immanuel, and not in their own power or other alliances.
As we turn to Isaiah 9:1-7, we have a powerful and poetic description of the coming of the LORD’s anointed one, or Messiah. His names are multiple and include Wonderful, Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, and Prince of Peace. This future time would be not only for Israel, but for the Gentiles as well. The remainder of the chapter returns to a condemnation of Israel and Jacob for rejecting the LORD in their times of trouble, and a prediction of their desolation comes again.
As we return to Mark 8, we come once again to the pivot point of this book. We are midway through the book, by chapters, but we are also at the point where Jesus sets His face toward Jerusalem, and to His intended crucifixion and resurrection. The chapter begins with Jesus feeding 4,000 men (along with women and children.) After this the Pharisees demand a sign from Him. That seems absurd, doesn’t it? What is the ability to feed so many people with a small amount of food, if not a sign. Jesus tells them He will give them only the sign of Jonah, which is a reference to His being in the tomb three days. After this, as Jesus and the disciples travel by boat, He warns them to beware of the “leaven” of the Pharisees. The disciples don’t get it (as was often the case), thinking Jesus was referring to their forgetting to bring bread. Jesus reminded them of His ability to provide bread! When they landed, Jesus healed a blind man. What follows is the turning point of the book of Mark, and of Jesus’ ministry: He asked them who the crowds said He was? He didn’t want to know the answer to that question, but it prepared the disciples for His real question: Who do you say I am? (That is always the question. What we do with Jesus determines everything in our lives.) Peter responded with the correct answer: The Christ or Messiah, but then immediately showed he didn’t understand what it meant for Jesus to be the Messiah. When Jesus told them it mean dying and rising again, Peter rebuked Jesus. Peter’s version of the Messiah was a conquering King, not a suffering servant. Jesus then rebuked Peter and let the whole crowd know following Him meant denying ourselves, taking up our crosses and following Him. Jesus’ new movement that would usher in a new covenant and a new command–to love one another as Jesus first loved us, would transform the world. But when Jesus first rolled it out to the disciples they had no clue what He was saying. Even though we live on the resurrection side of Easter, we can also miss the reality that Jesus did not come to make His followers the movers and shakers of the political and economic world, but rather to shake the world to its core by providing us salvation from sin and death, and empowering us to live transformed lives with Him at the center!