As we approach Christmas, we’ve been looking at
the Old Testament prophecies of the coming of the Savior, and how those
prophecies came true in the story of Jesus. Today we look at the
statement that Jesus would be a descendant of David. The way this often
shows up in the Bible is that Jesus is from “the house of David” or from “the
line of David”.
This prophecy appears in the second book of Samuel, but it
was actually made by the prophet Nathan. Nathan lived in the tenth
century B. C., so this prophecy came about a thousand years before Jesus was
born.
This was at the time that David was the king of Israel.
King David asked Nathan whether he should build a great temple for God.
At first Nathan gave him the go-ahead, but then the word of God came to
Nathan. God, speaking through Nathan, tells David, I did not ask you to
build anything for me and I don’t want you to. Instead, I’m going to do
something for you. I’m going to make your name as great as anyone on
earth. And, God says, “Your house and your kingdom will endure forever
before me; your throne will be established forever.”
And just like we said last week, this prophecy was
remembered. It was carefully written down and copied. It was passed
on from one generation to the next. Even in the time of Joseph and Mary,
when Jesus was born, people remembered it. They knew that, when the Savior
came, he would have to be from the line of David. After all, the Savior
would be the king forever, and David’s family would be the kings forever, so
the Savior had to come from David’s family.
When the angel is speaking to Mary, the angel reiterates
that promise. The angel tells Mary, “the Lord God will give him the
throne of his father David, and he will reign over the house of Jacob forever;
his kingdom will never end”.
That’s why, at the start of the gospel of Matthew and in
Chapter Three of the gospel of Luke, you get these long lists on genealogies.
Those genealogies establish that Jesus was, in fact, descended from
David, at least as far as his earthly parents were concerned. In fact,
they both go back even farther than David. Matthew traces Jesus’
ancestors all the way back to Abraham. Luke traces Jesus’ ancestors even
farther back, going all the way back to Adam.
That’d be pretty cool, right? To be able to trace
your ancestry all the way back to Adam? Let’s see ancestry.com do that!
But you know, we look at all this today, and we say, well,
so what, really? I mean, it might be interesting to see that Jesus really
was descended from David, and that the Old Testament prophecy came true.
We can maybe see why that was a big deal to the people back then.
But what difference does it make to us now? This was a long time
ago. Why does it matter to us today if Jesus was descended from David or
Saul or Ahaz or Ish-Kabibble?
It matters, I think, simply because it was a promise from
God. And we need to be able to trust God’s promises. That’s one of
the bases of our faith, after all: that God’s word is true and that God’s
word can be trusted. As the old song says, we need to stand on the promises
of God. If God’s promises cannot be trusted, if God can break God’s word,
then how do we trust anything we know about God? How do we trust that God
is good and that God is love and that God is merciful? How do we trust
that Jesus really did come to save us from our sins? After all, if God’s
promises cannot be trusted, if God cannot be trusted, then how do we believe
any of the stuff we’ve heard about God?
It might not matter to us whether
Jesus was descended from David. But it does matter to us whether God can
be trusted. It does matter to us that God’s word is true. After
all, what was the last thing the angel said to Mary? The thing that
convinced her to go along with being the mother of the divine son of God?
The angel said, “For no word from God will ever fail.”
That convinced Mary. Does
it convince us? Do we really believe that we can trust God with
everything, including our lives? Do we really believe that no word from
God will ever fail? And if we say we do, how many of us really live our
lives that way?
You know, if you continue with
the story of Luke after what we read today, you read a lot of things that Mary
did and that Mary said. You read about Mary going to visit her relative
Elizabeth. You read a beautiful poem, a song really, from Mary about the
greatness and glory and holiness of God. You read about the trip to
Bethlehem and the birth of Jesus. You read about Mary and Joseph taking
Jesus to be circumcised. You read all this stuff, but you know what you
don’t read? You don’t read anything about Mary being worried about
anything. You don’t read anything about her being fearful of what might
happen.
That’s pretty remarkable.
Especially when you think about the situation Mary was in. A single
woman, pregnant, with no way to explain her pregnancy other than a miracle of
God. Having to make a long trip to Bethlehem, either on foot or, possibly
riding a donkey, when she was about to give birth. Having to give birth
to her child in a stable, a barn. And yet, Mary never seems to have
worried about any of it. She had the promise of God, given to her and
everyone else by the prophet Nathan, and reiterated by the angel. And
that was all she needed. She believed that if God had said this was the
way things were supposed to go, then they would go that way, and it would be
all right. She believed what the angel had said, that no word of God will
ever fail. And so, Mary trusted God with everything. Even her life.
Would you like to have that
kind of faith? I think we all would. It would be wonderful, would
it not? To be able to face anything and not have any worries, not have
any fears. To be in a really difficult situation, maybe through no fault of
your own, and just trust that it’s all going to work out. To be able to
turn everything over to God. Even our life. And to have complete
and total trust that God will take care of things, that they will go the way
they’re supposed to go, and that things will be all right.
We’d all like to have that kind
of faith. And we can. We can trust God with our lives. After
all, as we said last week, Mary was nobody special. She was an ordinary
person when God called her. A person like you and me. And she was
able to have that kind of faith. So if Mary could do it, we can do it,
too. So why don’t we?
Let’s think about it. If
someone asked us whether we agree with the statement “No word from God will
ever fail”, most of us would probably say that we do. And yet, with all
the promises God has made to us--promises to be just and righteous and
compassionate, promises to love us and forgive our sins, promises to take us to
heaven if we believe in Jesus Christ--and numerous other promises as well--we
still have trouble living our lives as if we believe that. We live our
lives thinking that we have to take care of things ourselves, rather than
trusting God to take care of things for us. We claim to believe in those
promises, and we claim to believe that no word of God will ever fail, but too
often, we don’t live our lives that way.
And please, don’t think I’m
pointing fingers here. Too often I don’t live my life that way, either.
But how do we get there? How do we get to where we don’t just say
we believe in the promises of God, but actually live our lives in a way that
shows we really believe those promises?
I think the way we do it is to
get as close to God as we possibly can. After all, would you trust
someone you did not feel close to? Would you have faith in the promises
of someone you did not spend much time with and did not feel like you knew very
well? We only trust people we feel close to, and the closer we feel to
someone the more we trust them and the more faith we have in them.
So we need to get as close to
God as we can. We need to read God’s word, so we can see what God’s
promises actually are and can see all the times in the past when God has kept
those promises. And we need to pray to God. And when we pray, we
need to not just give God our list of requests. I mean, it’s okay to do
that. God says we can make requests of God. But that should not be
all we do. We need to spend some time opening ourselves up to God.
We need to open our hearts and our souls to God, so God’s Spirit can come
in. We need to give God the chance to speak to us. We need to give
God the chance to let us know what God wants us to do.
If we get close to God, we can
know what God wants us to do. And if we know God’s promises, and if we
see all the times God has kept God’s promises, then we can know, as the angel
said, that no word from God will ever fail. We can not just believe it in
our heads, but we can know it in our hearts. And then, we can live our
lives as if we truly believe it. We can ahead and do what God wants us to
do. And we can trust that, when we do, things will go the way they are
supposed to go. And then, we can trust God with everything. Even
our lives.
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