Jews who don’t believe in Jesus will say He obviously isn’t the Messiah: “just look at the news – we don’t have world peace, and we don’t have the Messiah reigning from Jerusalem.”
It is certainly true that the Old Testament promises that the Messiah will come in glory, reign from Jerusalem over the world, and His kingdom will be one of peace (e.g., Malachi 3:1-3; Isaiah 9:7; 11:1-10; Daniel 7:13-14). But that isn’t all that the prophets said.
The prophets also present a portrait of the Messiah as a humble figure, who is rejected and betrayed (Zechariah 9:9; 11:12-13). He will be judicially condemned, brutally disfigured, and publicly executed (Psalm 22; Isaiah 52:13-53:12).
We learn how He would die – Psalm 22 gives a graphic description of crucifixion hundreds of years before crucifixion had been invented.
We learn when He would die – Daniel 9:24-26 gives the timeline, telling us when “Messiah shall be cut off”, and it tells us that Jerusalem and the temple will be destroyed sometime after. The crucifixion of Jesus was right on schedule.
We learn why He would die – Isaiah 53 tells us He would die as a sacrifice for our sins.
There is an ancient Jewish tradition that tries to harmonise these various prophecies by presenting two Messiahs. “If the people of Israel will be righteous, the Messiah will come in the clouds of Heaven. If they will not be righteous, he will come as a poor man riding upon an ass” (Sanhedrin 98a). But the prophecies tell us this suffering Messiah is the glorious conquering Messiah. There aren’t two Messiahs – there are two comings of the same Messiah – He came the first time to suffer (Isaiah 52:14), and He’ll come the second time to reign (v.15).
Psalm 110:1 is the most quoted Old Testament verse in the New Testament (e.g., Acts 2:32-35). The apostles saw that it indicates that there will be a period in which the Messiah, having been raised from the dead, is exalted to God’s right hand, but His enemies have not yet been dealt with:
The Lord said to my Lord, “Sit at My right hand, till I make Your enemies Your footstool.”
So, Jesus fulfilled all the prophecies relating to Messiah’s first coming – He did exactly what the prophets said Messiah would do, exactly when and where the prophets said He would do it. This marks Him out as the One who will come again and set up that glorious kingdom.
