Pastor Loren Regier

Imagine if you were part of the team of inspired writers tasked with explaining the greatest event in the history of the world. That event, of course, was the coming of Jesus Christ. Wouldn’t you want to know as much about it as you possibly could? Though every Bible prophet was given some of the crucial details, none of them was given a great amount of specific details concerning the physical expression of what the coming Lord would look like. Would the promised Messiah have black hair or brown? Would He have blue eyes, brown eyes, or hazel eyes? What would be some of the final identifiers needed for all the Jewish people to know beyond any shadow of doubt that this Coming One was the Anointed One, the Messiah? The literary name for this lack of directness is “foreshadowing;” a literary device that uses types and signs to point to a coming reality. We read of lambs slain, of lights and offerings, blood sacrifices for sin, incense, oblations, and the mercy seat. All point to a coming fulfillment.

The Jewish historian Alfred Edersheim once said that when you add up all the Old Testament predictions concerning the coming of the Christ, you have a total of 456 references as to the specific details of His coming. Among these interwoven descriptions, you have the time and place of His birth, details about His father and mother, His family background, and stunning details about His suffering, death, and resurrection. These are indeed “infallible proofs,” yet no prophet was given direct information about the physical attributes that might set Him apart as unique from all the rest of humanity except for this phrase found in Isaiah 53:2. “He hath no form or comeliness, and when we see him there is no beauty that we should desire Him.” Intentionally, Jesus chose a human form that was not exceptional or unusual; He did not want to draw attention to His person, but to His work. If anything, He chose to be inconspicuous. Though He was certainly God incarnate, the divine Lord hid Himself in a very ordinary human body. No cape, no booming voice, no physical abnormalities or birthmarks that might indicate to the world that this one is the One. Curious, isn’t it…the way God hid God? He even came at a time where there were no cameras to capture His likeness, or videos that could record His miracles and messages by the sea. No sculptor captured His likeness, and even today all pictures of Christ are purely conjecture. What is preserved is the scriptural account that is precisely what God wanted us to know about His Son. It is about the magnitude of His grace.

Peter states in his passage concerning suffering, (1 Peter 1:10-12), that these truths about the coming Christ and His church made the prophets thirst for even more information about this great plan of
providence. Peter uses an interesting comment about the angels in I Peter 1:12, “of which things the angels desire to look into.” The central theme of history is the spectacle of redemption and the grandest moment of all revelations was the cross. Remember, though only John and a few women disciples gathered at the cross, Peter says that all of heaven’s hosts were “craning to see” the wonder of the Lamb slain for mankind! Oh, what amazing love that a sinless Christ should die for sinners! Four thousand years of shadows burst into glorious light at the cross. It was the world’s greatest “Ah ha!” moment. Peter says in I Peter 1:20, that the Lamb of God was manifest in these last times, (get this, please) for you! Isaac Watts saw the Light in his day, and wrote this beloved hymn.

Alas! and did my Savior bleed, and did my Sov’reign die?
Would He devote that sacred head for such a worm as I?

Was it for crimes that I had done He groaned upon the tree?
Amazing pity, grace unknown – and love beyond degree!

Well might the sun in darkness hide and shut his glories in,
When Christ, the mighty Maker died, for man the creature’s sin.

Thus might I hide my blushing face while His dear cross appears,
Dissolve my heart in thankfulness, and melt my eyes to tears.

But drops of grief can ne’er repay the debt of love I owe:
Here, Lord, I give myself away, ’tis all that I can do.