Jesus the Messiah

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At the close of the Old Testament, most of the Israelites were still in exile. They were separated from the things that gave them their identity. They had been removed from the Promised Land and pulled away from the temple, which was subsequently destroyed. These were major problems for Israel. How could they be the people of God if they could not worship in the temple and offer sacrifices to atone for their sin?

Malachi 4:5-6 ESV
"Behold, I will send you Elijah the prophet before the great and awesome day of the LORD comes. [6] And he will turn the hearts of fathers to their children and the hearts of children to their fathers, lest I come and strike the land with a decree of utter destruction."

Various groups of Jews formed based on the way in which they expected the kingdom to be restored.

• The Pharisees
  • believed that radical obedience to the Law would cause the Messiah to come and remove the Gentiles from power.
• The Sadducees
  • forged an alliance with the Romans so they could gain status and control the temple.
• The Zealots
  • hoped for a revolutionary Messiah who would come as a warrior and defeat the pagans.
• The Essenes
  • believed that the situation in Jerusalem had become so corrupted by both Romans and faithless Israelites that they retreated into the desert so they could please God in isolation.

Luke 1:16-17 ESV
And he will turn many of the children of Israel to the Lord their God, [17] and he will go before him in the spirit and power of Elijah, to turn the hearts of the fathers to the children, and the disobedient to the wisdom of the just, to make ready for the Lord a people prepared."

This prophet who came “in the spirit and power of Elijah” was John the Baptist. His role was to point the way to Jesus. And in effect, this is what the entire New Testament does

Word Study: Christ

https://biblehub.com/greek/5547.htm

Christos: the Anointed One, Messiah, Christ
Original Word: Χριστός, οῦ, ὁ
Part of Speech: Noun, Masculine
Transliteration: Christos
Phonetic Spelling: (khris-tos’)
Definition: the Anointed One, Messiah, Christ
Usage: Anointed One; the Messiah, the Christ.

Luke 4:16-21 ESV
And he came to Nazareth, where he had been brought up. And as was his custom, he went to the synagogue on the Sabbath day, and he stood up to read. 

[17] And the scroll of the prophet Isaiah was given to him. He unrolled the scroll and found the place where it was written, 

[18] "The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to proclaim good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim liberty to the captives and recovering of sight to the blind, to set at liberty those who are oppressed, [19] to proclaim the year of the Lord's favor." 

[20] And he rolled up the scroll and gave it back to the attendant and sat down. And the eyes of all in the synagogue were fixed on him. 

[21] And he began to say to them, "Today this Scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing."

“Messiah comes from the Hebrew word mashiach and means “anointed one” or “chosen one.” The Greek equivalent is the word Christos or, in English, Christ. The name “Jesus Christ” is the same as “Jesus the Messiah.” In biblical times, anointing someone with oil was a sign that God was consecrating or setting apart that person for a particular role. Thus, an “anointed one” was someone with a special, God-ordained purpose.”

-source: https://www.gotquestions.org/what-does-Messiah-mean.html

The New Testament shows that Jesus was fully human. Matthew and Luke do this by recording Jesus’s genealogy—Matthew traces Jesus’s family tree back to David and Abraham, while Luke traces it all the way back to the first man, Adam.

The New Testament writers emphasize that Jesus of Nazareth was fully God. While Matthew and Luke recount Jesus’s earthly genealogy, John’s gospel explains that Jesus did not begin His existence at His human birth. He was eternal. He has always existed. John tells us that He existed with God in the beginning (before creation) and that He was God (John 1:1–3).

The Old Testament is filled with references to Jesus, though many of them are subtle.

Many Jews expected God’s kingdom to be established at some point, and Jesus claimed that the time was now.

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He didn’t come just to establish a vague sense of peace in the world, but to reestablish the rule of God over His creation.

Of course, the ultimate proof of the power of the cross is the resurrection. Many had claimed to be the Messiah, but only Jesus rose from the dead to prove it.

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The resurrection is crucial to our faith and to the fulfillment of God’s saving purposes. Without it, we have no hope.