We’re given to us in Genesis 3:15, all the way to the birth of John the Baptist. And today we’re going to see the Messiah is the King in the line of David, as well as the Messiah is the Prophet like Moses. The shadows of the Old find the reality in the light of Christ. We look to the reading of God’s word. If you please join me in prayer. Father of all mercies, you have given to us your glorious word. And your word guides our steps. It gives discernment to those who seek you. And so we ask this day that you would grant, we would find, Lord, new understandings, an increasing light this day. You are our divine instructor and our gracious Lord. Be forever near to us. Teach us to love your sacred word and to view our savior here, for it’s in his name that we do pray. Amen. Starting first, this was 2 Samuel 7. This is the promise that was given King David, When your days are fulfilled and you lie down with your father’s, 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 ‘For ever. ‘ I will be to him a father, and he shall be to me a son. When he commits iniquity, I will discipline him with the rod of men, with the stripes of the sons of men. By 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. The word of the Lord. We are presented with some TBS types programs, Discovery channel, those sorts of things that try to set us straight on what really happened at the first Christmas. They will parade a bunch of learned scholars who will help us to sift through the myths and the fables of early Christianity. With great assurance, they will say, ‘A course we now know. ‘ Then they proceed to dismantle anything that hints at the miraculous or in any way that shows prophetic announcements ahead of time. Christmas is reduced to goodwill for all peoples. Fond gatherings of friends and family to celebrate the universal goodness of humanity.
A warm nostalgia to take the chill off a cold night. By a illuminating these historical details, they attempt to lift our faith up out of the dirt of particularities and place us safely in the pious generalities of the heavens, far above these pesky details that can be doubted or can trouble us. The problem is that we actually live down here in the dirt of life. A sanitized and abstract faith is hard-pressed to sustain anyone in its trenches. What’s ultimately done is the removal of God from his own story. There continues to be no room at the end for him. Several thousand years of human history that the Lord brings together is dismissed with a simple shrug and a, of course we now know, the arrogance of rebellious humanity in scrubbing the creator from the files of his own history. That is ultimately undone by the Son of God, his careful entrance woven into the very heart of that history. And this is good news for us who live in real time and real space. Because the Lord has fulfilled his promises through his Son, our savior, we can trust in him in the moments of our faith when they’re tested in the unknown parts of life.
Last week, we looked at how the Lord covenant, his promise grew and developed over time. Through that somewhat cryptic announcement of the good news of Genesis 3:15, there would be a coming serpent crusher. Then from there, we’re given the man Abraham. From this man, a family, from this family, a clan, from this clan, a nation. God’s plan of redemption is woven into human history in this particular history of Israel. When When Jesus enters into the scene, it is through this carefully laid out history that spans thousands of years that only God could have done. We are so used to hearing that story. We can often just skip over it without giving it much thought. For unto us a child is born in the city of David. Yeah, Bethlehem. We all know it’s Bethlehem. We’ve heard that one. Well, let’s slow down and look at these details again. When Jesus entered the scene, the groundwork was already well in place. A people languishing under oppression were waiting for the coming king, for the coming prophet. We’re looking first then at the king. Way back in the time of the judges, Israel’s life was a mess. They were in a death spiral of sin and rebellion.
And every chastisment from the Lord brought a temporary change of heart, but nothing would hold. God would deliver them. They’d be, Thank you, God, and then they’d go and blow it again, and something worse would happen. Finally, they called out for a king. We need a king. Yeah, a king. That’s going to fix our problem. They not the king that they wanted, King Saul. He was not the king that they needed. God made the king a covenant representative. As so the king, so the people. And eventually, he raised up David to be their king. And what’s amazing about that is that fulfills the promise of Jacob hundreds of years earlier. In Genesis 49, he’s blessing his sons, and he makes this statement, The scepter shall not depart from Judah, nor the ruler staff from between his feet. Now, centuries later, David, from the The tribe of Judah, is made king, fulfilling that promise long ago. And this is what the Lord promised to David. Prophet was sent in. He gave him this incredible covenantal promise, When your days are fulfilled and you lie down with your fathers, when you die, I will raise up your offspring after you who shall come from your body, and I will establish his kingdom.
2 Samuel 7. He will build a house for my name, and I will establish the throne of his kingdom forever. Now, me and you’re going, Well, that sounds like Solomon because he’s going to build the temple, but that forever part seems not quite there. I will be a father to him, and he will be a son to me. If he sins, commit to iniquity, I will discipline him with the rod of men, with the stripes of the son of men. We see that with the rest of the kings, even the good ones were disciplined because they failed. But the Lord’s promise goes on, My steadfast love will not depart from him. As I took it from Saul, whom I put away from before you, and your house, your kingdom, shall be made sure forever before me. Your throne shall be established forever. Now, none of the kings fulfilled this forever part of this covenant promise. That was left hanging out there. Who would do this? How would this be fulfilled? And this once and future king became the focal point that the prophets looked forward to. Familiar passage to us. Isaiah 9, of the increase of his government and the peace, there will be no end.
On the throne of David and over his kingdom to establish it, behold it with justice, with righteousness, from this time forth and forevermore. From the throne of David, this future king. Isaiah 11. There shall come forth from the stump of Jesse. ‘ Speaking of Jesse, this is another way of speaking of David, his father. In the day the root of Jesse will stand as a banner for the peoples, the nations will rally to him, and his resting place will be glorious. Then Jeremiah 23, Behold, the days are coming, declares the Lord, when I will raise up David a righteous branch. He shall reign as king and deal wisely, and execute justice and righteousness in the land. Jeremiah 30, But they shall serve the Lord their God, ‘ and David their King, ‘ whom I will raise up for them. Now, multiple other verses and places in both Isaiah and Jeremiah are referring to the lineage of David going forward as king. A particular fulfillment. Ezequiel 34, I will set over them one shepherd, my servant David, and the Lord, I will be their God. My servant David, shall be Prince among them. Then several other places, Ezequiel refers to the coming of this Davidic king.
The Prophet Hosea, verse 3, Afterwhere the children of Israel shall return and seek the Lord their God and David their king. Amos 9, In that day, I will raise up the booth of David that has fallen. Zechariah 12, And the Lord will give salvation to the tents of Judah first to glory to the house of David. And in several other places, Zechariah speaks specifically of the coming of this Davidic king. And finally, Micah 5, But you, O Bethlehem, who are too little to be among the clans of Judah, from you shall come forth for me, one who’s be a ruler in Israel. By the time of the first century, every Jewish person was anticipating a ruler to come in the line of David who would set everything right. When Jesus asked in Matthew 22, What do you think about the Christ? Whose son is he? They gave him the right answer. They said, The son of David. It’s the right answer. It’s the same way when we have a Sunday school class, you don’t know the answer. You always say, Jesus. Well, their Sunday school class, they said, Son of David. That was the right answer.
When Jesus was performing all these amazing miracles, Matthew 12, all the people were amazed and said, Can this be the Son of David? They all knew the Christ, the Messiah, would come from David’s lineage. Matthew begins his gospel, the Book of the Genealogy of Jesus Christ, the Son of David. Everyone recognized what they saw Jesus doing was directly in line to what they had been anticipating, to what the prophets had told them was coming. Matthew 9, as Jesus passed by, two blind men followed him. What did they cry out? Have mercy on us, son of David. And not only these Jewish people, Matthew 15, a Canaanite woman from the region daughters oppressed by demons. What does she say? Have mercy on me, O Lord, son of David. In Matthew 21, the triumphful entry, the crowds are going before him. What are they shouting as he’s coming in? To the son of David. ‘Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord. ‘ The apostle Paul, he’s standing in the synagogue, Antioch of Cida, and he takes the people through a quick history of Israel. Then he quotes from Psalm 89. In Acts 13, he says, from Psalm 89, I found in David the son of Jesse, a man after my own heart who will do all my will.
Then Paul goes on to connect the dots and he says, Of this man’s offspring, God has brought to Israel a savior, Jesus as promised. There was no doubt the Messiah was to come from David’s line and he would set Israel free. But That wasn’t the only piece that was anticipated. There was also an expectation in the first century as well of the coming prophet. Now, we primarily think of Jesus as the savior in the line of David. In the first century, they primarily thought of Jesus as the prophet. Matthew 21, the crowd said, someone asked this, This is the prophet Jesus from Nazareth, the Galilee. When Jesus asked his disciples, Who do people say that I am? Mark 8 or Matthew 16. Some say John the Baptist, others say Elijah, others Jeremiah or one of the prophets. Sometimes Jesus is referred to as the Prophet. What does that mean? Moses is mentioned more than any other figure in the New Testament, some 80 times. He was God’s messenger and servant par excellence. When Israel was about to enter the promised land, Moses is standing up before them, and he tells them what we see here in Deuteronomy 18.
The Lord your God will raise up for you a prophet like me from among you, from your brothers. It is to him you shall listen. ‘ And then verse 18, the words of the Lord, I will raise up for them a prophet like you from among their brothers, and I’ll put my words in his mouth, and he shall speak to them all that I have commanded him. The prophet after Moses. Now, who’s next in line? It was Joshua. Joshua is a great guy, but he never filled these shoes like Moses did. And it came through the writings of the rabbis around the first century, particularly, that they saw Deuteronomy 18 as a prophecy that would be fulfilled with the Messiah in some way. Some even wrote the Messiah being a king and a priest and a prophet. Many spoke of a second Moses who was to come. They thought the Messiah, his life would be parallel to the life of Moses. The Messiah, like Moses, would lead them in the wilderness. He would feed them manna from heaven. They even tied the prophetic announcement of Zechariah 9 about the one coming on the cult of a donkey.
They tie that to Moses in Exodus 4:20, where Moses put his wife and his sons on a donkey to take them back to Egypt, and they thought those two were parallel. Moses was considered by many as a type of the Christ who would be the prophet. We see this idea in the New Testament. John 1, the religious leaders, they’re asking John the Baptist, What then? Are you Elijah? And John said, I’m not. And they said, Are you the prophet? Direct reference to Deuteronomy 18. The prophet. They asked him, Then why are you baptizing if you are neither the Christ nor Elijah nor the prophet? And in John 7, when they had heard these words, some of the people said, This really is the prophet. Another said, this is the Christ. Referencing back to Deuteronomy 18. John 16, when the people saw the sign that Jesus had done, they said, this indeed is the prophet who is to come into the world And Jesus perceived that they were about to take him by force to make him king. He withdrawn to the mountains. But this is not just the idea circulating at the time. Jesus refers to this, too.
In John 5, he tells them, If you believe Moses, you would believe me, for he wrote of me. Now, it could speak of Moses speaking of many of the aspects of Jesus’s life and ministry, but also likely a reference to Deuteronomy 18, the one who was to come after. This is what Peter understood. In Acts 3, he’s preaching. He said, Moses said, The Lord God will raise up for you a prophet like me from your brothers. You shall listen to him and whatever he tells you. Peter is saying that’s talking about Jesus. In the same way, Stephen, when he’s being just before he’s martyred in Acts 7, he brings this same verse up. This Moses, whom they rejected, saying, Who made you a ruler of the Judge. ‘ This man God set as both ruler and redeemer. This is the Moses who said to the Israelites, ‘God will raise up for you a prophet like me from your brothers. And Stephen’s saying, That’s Jesus. Moses was sent to deliver Israel from Egypt, and he did so with a great display of God’s power and might. There is no other time in the Bible where such an accumulation of miracles and events were seen as we see in the life of Moses, except for when Jesus came to deliver God’s people once more.
Miracles abounded. Now, we can understand how many were confused about the details. They weren’t all sure how this is going to work. A prophet like Moses or Elijah, a king like David, a coming Messiah. Was this one person? Was it going to be a couple of them? What exactly was this deliverance going to look like? You see this. People are not really… He’s the Christ, he’s the prophet. We’re not really sure what all this means. They were wondering, how is God going to make Israel a great nation again? Surely he’s going to destroy the Romans and Israel is going to finally be that world’s superpower. Surely the Gentiles are going to grovel and serve us Jews and our enemies are going to get what’s coming to them. But who exactly is this anointed one anyways? All of these prophetic streams came together in the person and work of Jesus. Through thousands of years of history, the Lord wove the threads into one person’s coming. The history matters because the Lord has kept his promises. The history matters because God is the God of history, and you and I live in that history. But what no one anticipated was that this Davidic mosaic redeemer would come to do what no one else in history could do.
He would once for all conquer sin and death by being the covenant representative, the King who would represent his people to the Father, the Prophet who would reveal to us the word of God, the priest who would offer himself as an atoning sacrifice. This son of David would also be the eternal son of God. Jesus brings both the transcendence and the immense of God together. And yet someone will say, Well, yeah, so what? What does any of this matter? This is this religious stuff. You’ve heard it well. Religion is man’s way of trying to get to God. Jesus is God getting to man. This is something we’re doing. It’s something God is accomplishing according to the promises that he’s laid out for thousands of years. And he does this not through through fabulous fables and fantastic foibles, but in a perfectly orchestrated rescue, each piece falling precisely into the next over centuries. A striking feature of Christianity is this attention to real history, to real life grittiness. Christianity is found in the messiness of real history. The God who brought all of this so carefully together in the fullness of time, he also has your life under control in this time as well.
The King you need is Jesus. He must subdue and rule your heart. The Prophet you need is Jesus who must reveal to you the word of God. The priest you need is Jesus who must atone for your sins and purify you. This savior came as a child. As you and I came as a child, he lived through the mess of life. There’s no part of his life that doesn’t correspond to your life. And because of that, no part of your life is beyond his transformation. What he assumed, he redeemed. That has always been the message of Christianity. Jesus assumed the fullness of our humanity Jesus came in real time, in real space, according to all that was announced ahead of time, at that precise moment, to fulfill everything the Lord was setting up. That he could be all in all, everything that is needed for our redemption. That is good news. That is great news. We live in the dirt. There’s constantly things around us that are happening, and we do not need a savior that just ephemeral in the heavens as far away and untouched by this. He was tempted in every way we were, yet without sin.
He can have compassion on us as he has gone in every way that we have gone. He knows what it means to be human. He knows what it means to submit himself to the Father, even to the point of death. A perfect life lives for an imperfect people. There’s no part of the dirt of our lives that are beyond his transforming power. There’s nothing that he cannot transform and that he cannot purify. There’s nothing he’s afraid of. He’s willing to get his hands dirty in your life. That’s what he came for, to rule and to reign, to proclaim, to speak forth the words of life and truth In the beginning was the word, and the word became flesh and dwelt among us. That is the glorious proclamation of Christmas, of Christianity. Scrub all you want and try to remove God from the details of history, and you cannot efface the Majesty of Jesus. We’re here because of it. And there’s nothing in your life that the Lord cannot redeem. There’s nothing beyond his grass, beyond his reach, no struggle of yours that he cannot overcome. That’s why we’re here. We’re celebrating what he has done in his first coming as we long for and wait his second.
The promise that is yet to be fulfilled rests on stacks and stacks and stacks of fulfilled promises that have already taken place. We can look back and go, God, you have done all of this through thousands of years of history. Surely what is ahead of us is yet in true to come because you have declared it to be so. Then there’s a call for our faithfulness in the midst of this. That because of what Christ has done, that we would be faithful to the calling in which he has put on us in our particular moment in history, our particular lives. That he has now given the full weight of significance and glory because it is his spirit dwelling in us. There’s nothing insignificant about where you are at because the living God is there in the midst of that. And has been, will continue to be. Fulfilling his words from Genesis 3:15, the one who will crush the head of the serpent, to where we are told every knee will bow, every tongue confess that Jesus is Lord. And we’re in between that. Trusting those good and glorious promises because of a good and glorious savior.
Pray with me. Father God, as we come before you, we confess we struggle. We struggle in the dirt. We struggle with the grittiness. And you’re there. And Father, we declare that you are the promise keeper. We thank you, Father, for keeping your words to us, for sending your son, our redeemer, the son of David, the prophet like Moses, the priest of Aaron. Father, here we are. We ask, Lord God, that you would continue to use us in the purposes of your kingdom. Father, that you would continue to sanctify us. Lord, that your righteousness that you’ve given to us by faith alone would continue to transform us. That your son, our savior, would receive the glory and the reward of his suffering. And this we would pray and ask in his mighty name. Amen. Please stand.
Discaimer: This sermon text was generated by an automated transcription service.