Be ready for our Messiah - Powerful anointing oils from Israel.
In the Old Testament, a person who was set apart for one of three specific ministries was anointed with oil. The biblical Hebrew word for anointed is Moshiach, or Messiah.
We see the first of these ministries in Exodus when God commanded Moses to anoint Aaron and his sons as priests in the Tabernacle. They, and their sons, were consecrated in perpetuity as priest before God. They were anointed with the specially prepared anointing oil as God instructed.
Is anyone among you sick? Then he must call for the elders of the church and they are to pray over him, anointing him with oil in the name of the Lord; ( James 5:14)
Secondly, kings in the Old Testament were also set apart by anointing. For instance, we read of the prophet Samuel anointing David as King over God’s people. In the beginning, a king was a special servant of God and his anointing showed that.
The third group who were set apart by anointing were the prophets. Elijah was a great prophet of God in the Old Testament. Before God took him up to Heaven in a fiery chariot, God instructed him to go and anoint Elisha as prophet in his place.
Each of these groups were anointed to fulfill a special role in the service of God. They were God’s anointed ones, the ones He instructed His people to follow in the secular and spiritual realms.
Jesus is our Messiah because He is our prophet. Jesus said in the New Testament that the Spirit of the Lord was upon Him and that He had been anointed to preach the gospel. Jesus as preacher fulfilled the role of prophet. He proclaimed the gospel, and then sent out His disciples to continue that mission.
Jesus is our Messiah because He is our priest. The book of Hebrews says that He entered into the holy place once for all time with His own blood to sprinkle on the altar. He is our mediator with God, the one who forgives our sins.
Jesus is our Messiah because He is our coming king. The book of Revelation shows us that Jesus will rule over all the kings of the earth and that the kingdoms of the world will become the kingdom of our Lord and his Christ, His Messiah.
We anoint ourselves and others with oil to remember our Messiah, our Anointed One and to look forward to the day when He returns to reign. He is our prophet, our priest and our king!
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