05 | The Christ: Throne Established
The Bible tells us the one big story of how the Creator is rescuing his creation through the Christ. This story begins with God’s plan to have human beings ruling over his creation on his behalf, but then it quickly takes a turn for the worst when human beings rebel and make a decision that they are going to determine what is good and what is bad for themselves. It was a defiant decision that fractured humanity’s relationship with their Creator, and one that began to ruin his good world. However, God loves his creation so much that he initiated a rescue plan that would re-establish his rule over this world that had gone wild, and restore his blessing to all of his creation. This is a plan that he promised to fulfill through the family of one particular man from Babylon named Abraham.
God had previously promised in Genesis 3 that one day a new human would be born who would overcome the evil that had invaded his good world, and that this new human would be the one who would retake the throne over God’s creation. God builds on this promise in Genesis 12, when he promises Abraham that through his family, order and goodness and blessing would be restored to all the families of the earth. And even though we haven’t mentioned it yet in our study, when we get to the end of Genesis, we read about this great-grandson of Abraham named Judah who receives this incredible promise that one day a great king is going to come from his lineage who will rule over all the nations and who will bring order and goodness and God’s blessing to the rest of the world (Genesis 49:8-12).
The evil that had invaded God’s good world was corrupting his creation and holding it captive. Humanity needed a king who would conquer this evil and rescue the creation. This is the kind of king that is described in this promise given to Abraham’s great-grandson, Judah, and it leaves God’s people wondering who this king might be and when this king might come. But it is not until many years later that we are finally introduced to the first king from the family tree of Judah. It is a king whose story starts out with so much potential that many begin to wonder if this is in fact the promised king that we have been waiting for all this time.
It would benefit many of us to realize that if we are going to truly understand the story of the Christ then we need to make sure we have a clear understanding concerning the story of an ancient king in Israel. If we are going to gain a better understanding of the man named Jesus then we need a better understanding of the man named David. These two are also intimately connected.
David is the second man in the story of ancient Israel who is chosen as their king, and he was the first king to arise from the lineage of Jacob’s son, Judah. Israel’s first official king, King Saul, was from the lineage of Jacob’s son, Benjamin.
Unlike his predecessor, King Saul, who displeased God and who had disrespected God’s priests, David was a humble leader who did things that were pleasing to God and who worked together with the priests to honor God and to help his people become the community and the kingdom that God desired for them to be. David was a fitting example of the kind of king that was described in the promise to Abraham’s great-grandson many years before. He proved himself to be a human-king who wanted to obey God. And so, because of his desire to honor God as the true King over Israel, God makes a promise to bless his lineage and to establish a royal dynasty through him that would last forever. This promise to establish the throne of David is revealed in 2 Samuel 7 where we read:
“I have been with you wherever you went and have cut off all your enemies from before you. And I will make for you a great name, like the name of the great ones of the earth… Moreover, Yahweh declares to you that Yahweh will make you a house. When your days are fulfilled and you lie down with your fathers, I will raise up your offspring after you, who shall come from your body, and I will establish his kingdom. He shall build a house for my name, and I will establish the throne of his kingdom forever. I will be to him a father, and he shall be to me a son… And your house and your kingdom shall be made sure forever before me. Your throne shall be established forever’” (2 Samuel 7:9-16).
God’s promise was to raise up a descendant of David who would be like a son to God and who would build God’s temple and who would rule over God’s eternal kingdom. This is emphasized in the repeated use of the words kingdom, throne, establish and forever. It is a promise that builds on God’s previous promises to Adam, Abraham and Moses because this eternal kingdom and its King will be the community of people who truly obey the Torah and who show the rest of the world what God is like. This eternal kingdom and its King is how God plans to rescue and restore his blessing to all the nations on earth.
So, God’s plan was to raise up a king from the family of David who would finally conquer evil and who would rule over the entire world forever.
And so to explain what we mean by this and why it is important for us today, we are going to look at the story of David and how that story helps us understand the story of Jesus and how all of this ought to shape our story as Christians today.
The Story of David
The story of David begins with his unexpected and somewhat obscure anointing as the king. God tells the prophet Samuel that he has rejected Saul from being king over Israel and that he has chosen a new king from the tribe of Judah who is the son of a man named Jesse living in Bethlehem. So Samuel heads to the city of Bethlehem, and after meeting and dismissing several of Jesse’s older sons, he is eventually introduced to the youngest son, David. We are told that David was a good shepherd and described as a man whose heart was set on obeying God (1 Samuel:13:14). God tells Samuel to anoint David as the new king, and it is immediately afterwards that we are told that the Spirit of God departed from Saul and rushed upon David from that day forward (1 Samuel 16:13).
It is in this unexpected anointing that God’s people are intended to learn a lesson — God sees and does things differently than we often see and do things (1 Samuel 16:7). As the American theologian, John Sailhamer, puts it:
“[God’s] choice of David is part of a continuing lesson that God works with human weakness to demonstrate his strength.”
So God selects this small shepherd from Bethlehem to be his specially appointed king over his people, but to add to the unexpectedness and the obscurity of it all, he does this subtly and secretly in the presence of David’s family rather than publicly in the presence of the entire nation of Israel. This creates a unique situation where David is now walking around as the true king of Israel, but no one in Israel knows that or recognizes it yet. (That is an important point that will make more sense later.) And all of this is taking place right under the nose of Saul.
The story of David’s life as the unknown king continues forward over many chapters that tell the story of his unordinary rise to power. Over and over again, we see David’s reluctance to take the throne with force or to elevate himself to his rightful position as king. Throughout this period of his life, he provides an example of what the ideal king of God’s people should be like. He stays humble and patient and even merciful as he waits for God to exalt him as the king in the presence of all his people. And he keeps pursuing peace with Saul despite growing jealousy, hatred and opposition.
The most popular episode in David’s rise to power was undoubtedly his great victory over the giant, Goliath. And while there are many important insights that we can learn in this particular story, one of the most important things that we learn in David’s battle with Goliath is David’s own view and understanding of God’s greater role and rule over his own people. He stands before Goliath and boldly declares:
“Today, the Lord will deliver you into my hand, and I will strike you down so that all the earth may know that there is a God in Israel who saves not with sword and spear but will simply give you into our hand” (1 Samuel 17:46-47).
David understood that God was the supreme authority and the true King of Israel, and that salvation comes from the right-hand of God and not from the hands (or the swords) of men.
Throughout his rise to power, David was a leader that clearly demonstrated total trust and dependency on God, and this led him to experience God’s favor and fellowship in his personal life and in the midst of all his military campaigns. It was evident that God was with David (1 Samuel 18:12, 14 & 28), and as he continued to win favor among the people and as his popularity among the crowds began to grow, Saul became increasingly uncomfortable and jealous. Saul began to plot and to plan how to get rid of David. This forced David to spend more time in the surrounding regions where he had to choose each move that he made very carefully.
As Saul’s hatred and opposition towards David heats up, we might begin to wonder if David is ever going to do something to fight back and to finally take his rightful throne with force. He even has a few opportunities where he can easily kill Saul, and yet he chooses not to do it.
There is one particular story where David and his band of brothers approach the place where Saul and his army are sleeping. It is in this story that we again see David’s humility and his willingness to wait on God to give him the throne rather than taking it for himself.
In 1 Samuel 26, we read:
Then Abishai said to David, “God has given your enemy into your hand this day. Now please let me pin him to the earth with one stroke of the spear, and I will not strike him twice.” But David said to Abishai, “Do not destroy him, for who can put out his hand against the Lord’s anointed and be guiltless? As the Lord lives, the Lord will strike him, or his day will come to die, or he will go down into battle and perish. The Lord forbid that I should put out my hand against the Lord’s anointed. But take now the spear that is at his head and the jar of water, and let us go” (1 Samuel 26:8-11).
Over and over again, we see David portrayed as the humble servant of God who refuses to assert himself and who waits for God to exalt him as king. As the story continues to play out, we see Saul’s family self-destruct and grow weaker and weaker as David’s family grows stronger and stronger until eventually David is finally exalted as the true king over all of God’s people. As king, he immediately begins to unify God’s people, and he establishes Jerusalem as Israel’s capital and the location where God ought to have a permanent dwelling place (or temple).
As we look at David’s rise to power, it is easy to see why his story receives so much attention and admiration among the people of Israel throughout history and even still today. In many ways, David was the ideal example of the kind of king that was described in the promise to Abraham’s great-grandson, Judah, many years before. David proved himself to be a human-king who truly wanted to obey God and to rule over God’s people on his behalf.
Shortly after officially becoming king, David expresses his desire to honor God by building him a house. However, God declines this offer and promises to build David a house instead. David wanted to give God a permanent dwelling place, but God decided to give David a permanent dynasty instead. And it is at this point in David’s life that God makes a covenant with David that becomes one of the most important promises in the entire biblical story.
In 2 Samuel 7 (as we read above), God promises that one day he will raise up a descendant of David who will be like a son to God and who will build God’s temple and who will rule over a kingdom that will never end (2 Samuel 7:12-14). For many of us today, we begin to easily connect this part of the promise to the person and work of Jesus as the Christ. But then, when we read the next few lines of this promise that connection gets a little complicated and somewhat confusing.
God continues with his promise to David saying,
“When your offspring commits iniquity, I will discipline him with the rod of men, with the stripes of the sons of men, but my steadfast love will not depart from him, as I took it from Saul, whom I put away from before you. And your house and your kingdom shall be made sure forever before me. Your throne shall be established forever’” (2 Samuel 7:14-16).
In the midst of his promise to one day send a new king who will build him a temple and rule over God’s kingdom forever and ever, God mentions the sins of the king and the necessity of his own steadfast love to overcome those sins.
How do we make sense of all of this?
Are we supposed to see David’s son, Solomon, as the fulfillment of this promise or some other king from the line of David that comes in the distant future? The short answer is… Yes.
You see, sometimes we want to force prophetic promises to make exact predictions and fulfillments, but biblical prophecies cannot be forced so easily into that kind of categorical box. There are some elements to this promise that allow us to see Solomon as its immediate fulfillment, and yet the Bible straight up tells us towards the end of Solomon’s life that God’s promise to David was not fulfilled in Solomon. We are told that the promise goes beyond Solomon to another descendent of David that will come in the future (1 Kings 11:11-13). And so, God’s prophetic promise is originally given to David in a way that is meant to prepare us for all the descendants of David who will end up failing while also keeping us on the lookout for a future king who will finally fulfill all this.
So God promises David that he will raise up a king from his family who will finally conquer evil and who will rule over the world forever, but from here, the story of David begins to go downhill. David’s story does not end near as well as it started. His life as king quickly becomes littered with pride, controversy, sex scandals and even the murder of one of his most loyal men. As great as he seems, David is unable to conquer evil, and his descendants would not do any better.
As we read throughout the rest of Israel’s history, we see king after king fail miserably at ruling over God’s people in a relationship of trusting obedience towards God. None of them even come close to conquering evil, and God’s people never fully become the community and the kingdom that God desired for them to be. In fact, each of these kings ends up being corrupted by evil themselves, and so instead of being a nation that extends God’s blessing to the rest of the world, Israel becomes a self-destructive nation that is finally conquered by the evil empire of Babylon.
The Old Testament story comes to an end, and this promise of a new king from the family of David is left unfulfilled and uncertain. Israel is not a nation extending God’s blessing, but instead they are a nation exiled in Babylon.
They have failed to be the kingdom that shows the rest of the world what God is like, and now they are ruled by a foreign king in a different kingdom with no hope of a potential king among themselves to even fulfill God’s promise.
And so how does all this help us better understand the story of Jesus?
The Story of Jesus
In the midst of Israel’s exile in Babylon, several of their prophets continued to talk about a time when God would one day raise up a new king from the family of David who would rescue God’s people, conquer evil and establish God’s rule over the world forever (Isaiah 9 & 11, Jeremiah 23 & 30, Ezekiel 21 & 34, Amos 9, Micah 5, Zechariah 3 & 9). To give a few of the more well-known examples, the prophet Jeremiah writes:
“Behold, the days are coming, declares the Lord, when I will raise up for David a righteous Branch, and he shall reign as king and deal wisely, and shall execute justice and righteousness in the land. In his days all of God’s people will be saved and will dwell securely. And his name will be: ‘The Lord is our righteousness’” (Jeremiah 23:5-6).
The prophet Ezekiel refers to the promised future king as David when he writes:
“I will set up over [my people] one shepherd, my servant David, and he shall feed them: he shall feed them and be their shepherd. And I, the Lord, will be their God, and my servant David shall be prince among them. I am the Lord; I have spoken” (Ezekiel 34:22-24).
And the prophet Isaiah takes all of this a step further when writes:
“For to us a child is born, to us a son is given; and the government shall be upon his shoulder, and his name shall be called Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace. Of the increase of his government and of peace there will be no end, on the throne of David and over his kingdom, to establish it and to uphold it with justice and righteousness from this time forth and forevermore” (Isaiah 9:6-7).
This hopeful anticipation of a new king like David — but even better — is expressed over and over again throughout the prophets of the Old Testament. Jeremiah stressed that this king will fulfill the righteousness that God’s people were intended to experience and possess. Ezekiel declared that this king will be a Good Shepherd who rules over God’s people on his behalf, and who leads his people into being the community that God desires for them to be. And Isaiah pointed out that the assurance of God’s promise rests ultimately in the fact that this new king will be none other than Yahweh himself who comes and establishes his throne.
The Old Testament ends with this incredible hope of a coming new king from the family of David who will fulfill all of God’s promises that he has given to his people. And then when we get to the New Testament, we are immediately introduced to a young couple from the family line of David who have a baby in the city of Bethlehem and are told that this baby is the Son of God who has come to rescue God’s people and to establish God’s eternal rule over the whole world!
Luke records the message given to Mary about her child when he writes:
And the angel said to her, “Do not be afraid, Mary, for you have found favor with God. And behold, you will conceive in your womb and bear a son, and you shall call his name Jesus. He will be great and will be called the Son of the Most High. And the Lord God will give to him the throne of his father David, and he will reign over the house of Israel forever, and of his kingdom there will be no end” (Luke 1:30-33).
The New Testament introduces Jesus as the new king from the family of David who will finally conquer evil and who will rule over the entire world forever. His entrance into this world immediately invokes worship from other nations (wise men), but it also provokes opposition from the reigning “king” in Israel (Herod). It is clear from the start that there is going to be conflict between this new king and the kings of this world, but, like King David, this is a humble king who will also have an unexpected beginning and an unordinary rise to power.
This is why we have said previously that if we are going to truly understand the story of who Jesus is and what it means for him to be the Christ then we need a better understanding of God’s promise to the ancient king named David. The New Testament authors clearly saw this connection and highlighted it over and over again in their writings.
Jesus is the anointed King who subtly enters into this world as a baby born in the city of Bethlehem. He is announced as the promised Savior and King from David’s family, but it is an announcement that is only made in the presence of some nearby shepherds and not publicly to all the people in Israel (Luke 2:8-20). This creates the unique situation where, like David, Jesus is now walking around as the true king of this world, but no one knows that or recognizes it yet. And at this point in history, all of this is taking place right under the nose of Caesar.
The story of Jesus’ life as the unknown king continues forward as we read the story of his unordinary rise to power. Over and over again, we see Jesus as the humble leader whose heart was set on obeying God and honoring God and helping his people truly become the community that God desired for them to be. In his famous Sermon on the Mount, Jesus said that he had come to fulfill the Torah and the Prophets. This is not only meant to portray Jesus as a new Moses whose teaching fulfills the commands of the Torah, but it is also meant to portray Jesus as the new King whose life fulfills the demands of the Torah and makes him the only King in human history who has ever been able to instruct his people to truly follow his lead and to imitate his life.
Jesus was a leader that clearly demonstrated total trust and dependency on God as he refused to take his throne with force or to elevate himself to his rightful position as King. Over and over again, he told his followers that his time had not yet come (John 2:4, 7:6, 7:30) and to stay silent about his identity as the Christ (Mark 1:34, Matthew 8:4, 16:20). Throughout his life, he demonstrated (like David but better) what the ideal king of God’s people should be like. He patiently waited for God to exalt him as the King in the presence of all the people, and he pursued peace with those around him despite growing jealousy, hatred and opposition towards him.
In one particular story in the New Testament, Jesus and his disciples are walking through some grain fields on the Sabbath and they begin to pluck some heads of grain and to eat them because they were so hungry. When some of the religious leaders in Israel saw this, they accused Jesus of disobeying God and dishonoring the Sabbath. This leads Jesus to respond to their accusations by sharing a story from David’s life where he had entered the temple and eaten the bread that was supposed to only be eaten by the priests.
Now why does Jesus choose this story from the life of David?
Well, in the midst of this confrontation with the religious leaders in Israel, Jesus intentionally picks this story from the unique period of David’s life that we discussed earlier where he was walking around as the anointed king, but no one in Israel knew that or recognized it yet. By choosing this particular story, Jesus was comparing himself to David as the anointed but unrecognized King. He was also comparing the religious leaders to Saul as those who do not recognize what God is doing and who are ignorantly persecuting God’s anointed King.
In this particular confrontation, Jesus goes on to compare himself to the priests who had a special authority to work on the Sabbath because of their unique role as God’s representatives, and he also later compared himself to the temple because he knew that he was now the place where heaven and earth met and where God’s presence could be found.
As you can imagine, this only angered the religious leaders even more. So as Jesus gained favor among the people and as his popularity grew among the crowds, the religious leaders got increasingly uncomfortable and jealous. Like Saul did to David, they began to plot and to plan how to get rid of Jesus.
Jesus then spends more time out in the surrounding areas and every move that he made seemed to be a calculated move until the time finally came for him to head into Jerusalem and to take his place as King. As he sets his focus on Jerusalem, he knows that the religious leaders and the Roman government will come together in an effort to try and kill him there. However, that is exactly what Jesus was going to let them do.
You see, Jesus knew that the only way to conquer the evil that had invaded God’s good world was to let that evil kill him in an incredible act of forgiveness and sacrificial love that would appease God’s judgement and atone for all of our sin.
In the midst of his trial and crucifixion, Jesus is given a robe and a crown made of thorns and the title, King of the Jews. And what seemed like the end of his life was in fact going to be the beginning of his reign. Jesus’ execution on the Roman cross was actually his paradoxical exaltation as the promised King. His path to power was certainly unordinary, but then again, this is no ordinary King.
God’s plan was to raise up a king from the family of David who would finally conquer evil and who would rule over the entire world forever. Jesus came to fulfill that plan by giving his life as a sacrifice for human sin, by defeating death itself and by being resurrected to the right hand of God as the King over the entire creation. As great as King David seemed to be, he had only foreshadowed what King Jesus eventually fulfilled.
This is what Jesus was alluding to at his trial when he said, “From this moment on, you will see the Son of Man sitting at the right hand of God” (Matthew 26:64). This is what Peter proclaimed in his sermon at Pentecost when he said, “Let all the house of Israel therefore know for certain that God has made this Jesus whom you crucified both Lord and Christ” (Acts 2:36). This is what John writes in the Revelation where the heavenly beings declare, “The kingdom of the world has become the kingdom of our Lord and of his Christ, and he shall reign forever and ever” (Revelation 11:15). And this is how Paul describes us as Christians when he writes that, “Jesus has delivered us from the domain of darkness and has transferred us to the kingdom of his beloved Son, in whom we have redemption, the forgiveness of sins” (Colossians 1:13-14).
So if this is a significant aspect of what it means to be a Christian, then let’s look at what it means for Christians to belong to God’s kingdom and to live under Jesus as our King today?
Our Story as Christians
The implications of Jesus being the reigning King over the entire world and we as Christians being under his rule and belonging to his eternal kingdom are way more than we could possibly cover in this study. However, we can hit some highlights of what this means for us today.
First, it means that we need to make sure that we see Jesus as he saw himself. There have been so many people throughout history who have wanted to simply label Jesus as a great teacher that we should listen to or a great example that we should follow or a great leader of a religious movement. There are even some of us within the church who sometimes only view Jesus as the one who can make my life better or the super-human who came to save us so we can leave this world and go to heaven when we die. But the story of the Bible says that he is so much more!
Jesus was a great teacher and example and leader and our savior who gives us eternal life with him in heaven, but he is also the reigning King over the entire world right now. He was the Lamb of God, but he is also the Lion of Judah. He is the King over all kings, and he is sitting on his throne as we speak advancing his reign and his rule over more and more of the creation as more and more people submit to his rule and live according to his new way of life. This is how Jesus saw himself and what he was accomplishing. He is the current King over creation.
Next, it means that we need to make sure that we understand what it truly means to be a Christian (in the biblical sense) or a disciple of Jesus or a follower of Jesus. To be a disciple of Jesus is not a situation where you are attracted to Jesus or church or Christianity because they offer certain things that you really like even though there are a few things that you don’t like or agree with. There are many people who really like most of what Jesus said and did, but they cringe and move away from the things that they do not like. However, we need to come face to face with the reality that this is not how being a Christian or a disciple of Jesus works. To be a disciple of Jesus means to take on a mindset that is so attracted to Jesus because of who he is and the way that he lived and what he did that you swear your supreme allegiance to him over your own personal preferences and opinions.
This means that to be a Christian or a disciple of Jesus then we must make a decision to live in a relationship of trusting obedience towards him. We must remain humble and trust what he is doing instead of forcefully elevating ourselves or our own wisdom. There might be things that Jesus says that we like, and there might be some things that he says that we do not like. But at the end of the day, we must accept the reality that he is the King and trust that he is helping us to become the kind of humans that we were intended to be. And so, to be a Christian or a disciple of Jesus means that we must be like our King and demonstrate total trust and dependency on God’s wisdom and timing over our own.
And lastly, it means that we are to be ambassadors of the King who go announce the good news that Jesus has conquered evil, defeated death, saved us from the penalty of sin and is now reigning as the current King over the entire world. All authority has now been given to him, and so we should go and tell this to others and teach them how to trust and obey him as the King. This also means that we must also live together as a community of love that shows the rest of the world what our King is like so that more and more people will turn to Jesus and swear their allegiance to him as King too.
Jesus is the Son of David who has conquered evil on the cross and whose throne has been established at the right hand of God. The expansion of his rule and reign is how God plans to rescue and restore his blessing to all the nations on earth.
And so, we as Christians today are a community under the authority of King Jesus who are called to trust him as he trusted the Father and to help others see the life-altering reality that Jesus is the current and everlasting King over all of creation.
