John The Baptist's Doubts and Jesus' Response

Matthew 11:1 When Jesus had finished giving instructions to His twelve disciples, He departed from there to teach and preach in their cities. 2 Now when John, while imprisoned, heard of the works of Christ, he sent word by his disciples 3 and said to Him, "Are You the Expected One, or shall we look for someone else?" 4 Jesus answered and said to them, "Go and report to John what you hear and see: 5 the BLIND RECEIVE SIGHT and the lame walk, the lepers are cleansed and the deaf hear, the dead are raised up, and the POOR HAVE THE GOSPEL PREACHED TO THEM. 6 "And blessed is he who does not take offense at Me."

Here is a familiar passage from Matthew's Gospel in which Jesus reveals how he read his Bible and how he understood himself in light of that Bible.  When John seems confused about Jesus' identity as the promised Messiah, or Christ, Jesus quotes from Isaiah as evidence for his Messiahship.  Isn't that amazing?! Jesus is calling for a way to identify him as the promised Messiah that is very different from the way many Christians today identify him.  I'm afraid that, for most Christians, their confidence in Jesus as the Messiah rests in their confidence in the New Testament's witness as it shines light back onto the Old Testament.  In other words, they believe the NT.  It says he's the Messiah, so it must be true.  However, Jesus begins with the Old Testament and allows it to shine light on his life and ministry in order that his followers could see clearly that He is the one to whom the Hebrew Scriptures point.  In light of how most Christians read their Bibles, Jesus should have told John's disciples something like this, "Go tell John that we're working on this new book called The New Testament that will make all this really clear for John.  This new Scripture will ascend higher in authority than the Hebrew Scriptures and will be used to make what was not clear in the OT clear enough for you to know I'm the Messiah."  Surprisingly, this is not what Jesus does.   Also Jesus could have simply answered, "Yes. I am the Christ."

Why didn't Jesus just say, "Go tell John that I am indeed the Messiah." Instead he essentially said, "If you want to know who I am, compare what you know of the Messiah from your Bible, John, to what you know about my ministry."  This is what we should do today.  As we read our NT we should examine the life of Jesus and see if it fits the portrait of the Messiah given in the OT.  Is this how you read your Bible?  It's how Jesus told John to read his.  Jesus is concerned that His followers' faith in his Messiahship rest in their faith in the Hebrew Scriptures/Old Testament's portrait of the future-coming King.  Did you hear that?  Jesus wants your faith in him, i.e. that he is the promised Messiah, to be informed by and dependent on your trusting of the OT Scriptures.  How different this is for many Christians today who rarely read the OT, admittedly prefer the NT, and understand the OT in light of the NT when they do venture to read the OT.  I wonder what Jesus would think of that?  I think he would prefer that we understand the NT in light of a careful, lifelong reading and rereading of the OT.  That's how Jesus, the focused subject matter of the NT, understood himself, i.e. by interpreting his own identity in light of what he knew from his Hebrew Scriptures concerning what Messiah would be like and what he would do.  Let's do the same as we imitate his hermeneutic.  We'll find our confidence in him as the long hoped-for Messiah and our confidence in the OT Scriptures to grow as we do so.