From the Work
Two thousand years of pulpits have spoken about Yahusha (Jesus), and most of those pulpits have been speaking about a figure the prophets would not recognize. The Yahusha (Jesus) of the inherited Christian sermon is often a kind of universal, untribed, post-Jewish savior who came to abolish the Father’s law, found a new religion, and replace the covenant the prophets carried. The pulpit calls that figure Christ and means a different person than the one Mary bore.
The Messiah (Christ) the prophets named is more specific than the pulpit’s portrait. He is of the tribe of Yahudah (Judah). He is the son of David. He kept Torah perfectly. He bore the curse on the tree to open the way home for the lost sheep he was sent to. He rose. He ascended. He intercedes. He is returning bodily to reign on the earth as king over the restored covenant people.
This essay walks the Messiah (Christ) the scripture actually names.
When the angel announced his birth to Mary, the angel did not announce a generic savior. He shall be great, and shall be called the Son of the Highest: and Yahuah (God) shall give unto him the throne of his father David: and he shall reign over the house of Jacob for ever; and of his kingdom there shall be no end (Luke 1:32–33). Specific tribe. Specific lineage. Specific throne. Specific kingdom.
The genealogies of Matthew 1 and Luke 3 trace him with the same specificity. Through David. Through Jesse. Through Boaz and Ruth. Through Judah, son of Jacob. Back through Abraham. Back through Adam. Paternal lineage, traced by name, no detail forgotten. He is the seed of David — the seed Yahuah (God) swore of the fruit of his loins, according to the flesh, he would raise up Messiah (Christ) to sit on his throne (Acts 2:30).
Revelation seals the picture. Behold, the Lion of the tribe of Yahudah (Judah), the Root of David, hath prevailed (Revelation 5:5). Lion. Tribe of Yahudah (Judah). Root of David. The covenant lineage carried in his body.
The pulpit that preached Yahusha (Jesus) without his tribe was preaching half a Messiah. The Messiah scripture names is a Yahudi (Jew) of the tribe of Yahudah (Judah), born under Torah, born to gather the lost sheep of the house of Yashar’el (Israel), born to keep the oath the Father swore.
The miracle of his conception is what scripture says. The Ruach HaKodesh (Holy Spirit) shall come upon thee, and the power of the Highest shall overshadow thee: therefore also that holy thing which shall be born of thee shall be called the Son of Yahuah (God) (Luke 1:35). The Father is his Father, by the Spirit. Mary is his mother, in the flesh. The genealogy through Joseph carries the legal lineage of the throne; the conception by the Spirit carries the deity that the Formed always carried.
This is the entry of the Formed into creation. The Word who had been with the Father from before the world was, the Word who spoke creation into being, the Word who walked through the older covenant — entered the womb of a young woman in Yahudah (Judah). And the Word was made flesh, and dwelt among us (John 1:14). The flesh is real. The deity is real. Both at once. From the same eternal structure.
He took on flesh because his flesh was the price. Forasmuch then as the children are partakers of flesh and blood, he also himself likewise took part of the same; that through death he might destroy him that had the power of death, that is, the devil; and deliver them who through fear of death were all their lifetime subject to bondage (Hebrews 2:14–15). The flesh was for the death. The death was for the deliverance. The deliverance was for his sheep.
The Yahusha (Jesus) of the inherited Christian sermon is often portrayed as the one who came to abolish the Father’s law. The Yahusha (Jesus) of the gospels is the opposite. Think not that I am come to destroy the law, or the prophets: I am not come to destroy, but to fulfil. For verily I say unto you, Till heaven and earth pass, one jot or one tittle shall in no wise pass from the law, till all be fulfilled (Matthew 5:17–18). The line is not subtle. He said it himself. To destroy the law is what he did not come to do.
He kept the Sabbath as the day his Father had hallowed in the beginning. And he came to Nazareth, where he had been brought up: and, as his custom was, he went into the synagogue on the sabbath day (Luke 4:16). His custom was to keep the Sabbath. The healings he performed on the Sabbath were not breaches of the day; they were defenses of it against the Pharisees’ fence-traditions that had buried the day under rules Yahuah (God) never gave. The sabbath was made for man, and not man for the sabbath (Mark 2:27). The day is for the relief of his creation. He defended what the Father had given, against the additions men had piled on top.
He kept the appointed feasts of Leviticus 23. He went up to Jerusalem for Passover (John 2:13; John 11:55; Luke 22). He kept the Feast of Tabernacles (John 7). He observed the Day of Atonement. The gospels record his life inside the calendar Yahuah (God) had given to his people, not outside it.
He honored the dietary commandments. Have ye not read in the law, how that on the sabbath days the priests in the temple profane the sabbath, and are blameless? (Matthew 12:5). His arguments are always Torah-rooted. He never declares the food laws abolished — the Mark 7 passage is about ritual hand-washing, not about the food categories of Leviticus 11, and the passage’s parenthetical purging all meats (Mark 7:19) is later editorial commentary about digestion, not about the food laws. Read the actual passage carefully. He defends Torah against tradition; he never sets Torah down.
His earthly walk is the irrefutable answer to every system that has called Torah-observance bondage. The Lamb without blemish was the one who bound up the Father’s law in his own life and lived it without compromise. If the Torah were bondage, the Lamb walked his whole life in bondage. If the Torah were abolished at his coming, his own walk contradicts his own teaching. Scripture refuses both readings. The Lamb kept his Father’s law and called it good.
When John saw him coming, John named him in one line. Behold the Lamb of Elohim (God), which taketh away the sin of the world (John 1:29). The Lamb. The Passover Lamb who brought the people out of Egypt. The lamb of the daily sacrifice. The Lamb whose blood, struck on the doorposts, kept the destroying angel away from the firstborn of his people.
He was crucified at Passover. The timing was not coincidence. He was the antitype of the lamb the Father had given the older covenant to point toward him. Messiah (Christ) our passover is sacrificed for us (1 Corinthians 5:7). The shadows of the older covenant landed on his body, and what the priests of old had foreshadowed, he finished in his flesh.
He bore the curse on the tree. Messiah (Christ) hath redeemed us from the curse of the law, being made a curse for us: for it is written, Cursed is every one that hangeth on a tree (Galatians 3:13). The curse named there is the Deuteronomy 28 exile-judgment — the wages of covenant-breaking that fell on the scattered seed when they walked contrary to the Father. The Torah itself is not the curse. The wages of breaking it is. He bore the wages on the tree, opening a way home through the curse for the lost sheep who could not have paid for it themselves.
He died. He was buried. He rose the third day according to the scriptures (1 Corinthians 15:3–4). The resurrection is the Father’s seal that the price was accepted, the curse was borne, the door home was open, and the Shepherd was alive to keep gathering the sheep he had named. He is not here: for he is risen, as he said (Matthew 28:6).
He ascended bodily to the right hand of the Father. And while they looked stedfastly toward heaven as he went up, behold, two men stood by them in white apparel; Which also said, Ye men of Galilee, why stand ye gazing up into heaven? this same Yahusha (Jesus), which is taken up from you into heaven, shall so come in like manner as ye have seen him go into heaven (Acts 1:10–11). This same Yahusha (Jesus). Same body. Same person. In like manner. He will return the same way he left. Visibly. Bodily. To the same earth.
He did not depart and leave the saved on their own. He intercedes for them at the Father’s right hand, in real time, with full sympathy for what they face. We have not an high priest which cannot be touched with the feeling of our infirmities; but was in all points tempted like as we are, yet without sin (Hebrews 4:15). He faced the temptations we face. He broke none of his Father’s commands. And he carries the memory of the testing into the intercession he is now doing on behalf of his sheep.
Wherefore he is able also to save them to the uttermost that come unto Yahuah (God) by him, seeing he ever liveth to make intercession for them (Hebrews 7:25). Ever liveth. The intercession is continuous. The Lamb stands before the Father, marked with the wounds of the cross, asking on behalf of the sheep he gathered out of the lands where they were scattered. The Father has not stopped the work. The Son has not stopped the work. The Spirit has not stopped the work. The triune work — Formless, Formed, and breath proceeding from the Formless — is in motion, on the schedule the Father set before the world was.
The Yahusha (Jesus) of the inherited Christian sermon is often a savior who saves people from the earth, taking them to a heaven elsewhere. The Yahusha (Jesus) of the prophets returns to the earth, with his saints, to reign as king on the throne of David, in the land Yahuah (God) gave to the patriarchs, over the restored covenant people gathered out of every nation where they had been scattered.
The bodily return. Visible. Specific. KING OF KINGS, AND LORD OF LORDS. The Father is putting all things under his feet, on the earth, in the appointed reign. And the seventh angel sounded; and there were great voices in heaven, saying, The kingdoms of this world are become the kingdoms of our Lord, and of his Messiah (Christ); and he shall reign for ever and ever (Revelation 11:15). The kingdoms become his kingdoms. On the earth. Under his throne. The covenant the Father swore to the fathers will be kept by the Son the Father sent.
And I saw thrones, and they sat upon them, and judgment was given unto them… and they reigned with Messiah (Christ) a thousand years (Revelation 20:4). The refined remnant reigns with him. On the earth. The Torah goes forth from Tsion (Zion). The appointed feasts are kept. The land is restored. The kingdom of priests serves the nations the harvest left alive.
This is the Messiah (Christ) the prophets named. The reign is not in some heaven elsewhere; the reign is here, in the land of the patriarchs, over the restored covenant people, with the nations coming up from year to year to keep the Feast of Tabernacles (Zechariah 14:16). The Father’s promise is being kept all the way through.
The line that lands the picture, said as plainly as it can be said, has to be repeated wherever the Messiah (Christ) is named. He is the Formed in flesh. He is fully Elohim (God) — not a created being, not a high creature elevated to divine status, not a great prophet promoted by the Father. He is the Word who was with Elohim (God) and who was Elohim (God) (John 1:1). And he submits, eternally, to the Formless source from whom he was drawn — humbling himself, and becoming obedient unto death, even the death of the cross (Philippians 2:8). The exaltation that follows is the Father’s own — wherefore Elohim (God) also hath highly exalted him, and given him a name which is above every name (Philippians 2:9). The submission and the deity are not in tension. The Formed has always submitted to the Formless. He does so now in glory, and the relationship is what scripture has shown all along.
This is who he is. Of the tribe of Yahudah (Judah). Son of David. Conceived of the Ruach HaKodesh (Holy Spirit). Born of Mary. Kept Torah perfectly. Lamb whose blood opened the door home. Risen. Ascended. Interceding. Returning to reign on the earth. Fully Elohim (God) — and he has a Father.
If you have been raised on the inherited Christian portrait, the Messiah (Christ) we are describing may sound unfamiliar. He is not a different Messiah. He is the Messiah scripture names, restored to the lineage and the obedience and the reign the prophets carried. The pulpit’s portrait removed his tribe, removed his Torah-keeping, and removed his bodily reign on the earth. We are putting all three back.
The Messiah (Christ) you came to know inside the inherited Christian room is real. The Father has been calling out his sheep through that room too, despite the system over it, because he calleth his own sheep by name, and leadeth them out (John 10:3). The voice you heard was his voice. The portrait you were given was incomplete; the person was real. The framework restores the portrait. The voice you have already been hearing is the voice still calling.
He gave his life. He rose. He intercedes. He is returning. The Lamb is the King. The King is the Shepherd. The Shepherd is calling.
Walk the road with him.
A deeper dive — if the work has fed you
