A Family with a Promise

Advent Midweek II, 2011, Matthew 1:6b-11

          Brooke Hayward, daughter of actress Margret Sullivan and theatrical producer Leland Hayward grew up in a family of privilege, prominence and promise.  She writes in her book Haywire, she “grew up surrounded by…a thanksgiving of riches bestowed on us at birth: grace and joy and a fair share of beauty; privilege and power.”  However, everything went haywire, her mother and sister committed suicide, her father married five times, her brother was mentally ill and she, at age 23 was divorced with 2 kids.  A family of great promise, became a family which ended up with nothing-not even each other.

          We have such a family before us in the family of David, ancestors of our Lord Jesus Christ.  What great promise this family had, privileged to be picked by God himself for the prominent position of kings of God’s people with the promise that the Savior of the nations would issue from the descendants of David.  What failure to cling in trust to the promise, they demonstrated.  In the end they lost the nation they ruled and would have lost even the promise had not God remained true.

          We turn now to the natural branches of Jesus family tree to learn just what it was which caused them to be broken off.   David was, “the father of Solomon by the wife of Uriah.”  Seems, something is rotten in Jesus’ family tree.  We recall David’s evening palace rooftop stroll in which he spied Bathsheba, wife of Uriah, bathing in the courtyard.  He sent for her.  They had an affair.  She became pregnant.  There followed the sordid affair of murdering her husband to cover up the whole thing.

          God did not abandon David.  He sent the prophet Nathan to confront him with a heart wrenching story of a rich farmer who when a visitor came, took the one ewe lamb, a family pet, from a poor man, butchered it and served it to his visitor.  An irate David declared, “That man ought to die.”  Nathan said, “You’re the man.”

          David had plenty of wives through whom the promise could have continued, but God chose Solomon, David and Bathsheba’s second son.  It was through Solomon that God would build his temple in Jerusalem and the temple of Jesus body.

When David proposed the project, God appeared to him in a dream and said, “Did I ask you to build me a house?”  Rather God promised David that he would build him a house, a family, a lineage who would rule in God’s stead forever.  In 1 Chronicles 17 we read, “I will be his father, and he shall be my son; I will not take my steadfast love from him,…but I will confirm him in my house and in my kingdom forever and his throne shall be established forever.”

          However, when the whole family went haywire it could only be fulfilled by the promised Messiah.  Thus it was that an angel appeared to a pious man who upon discovering that his betrothed was pregnant, decided to divorce her quietly.  The angel addressed this man as Joseph, son of David, with the news that the son Mary would bear was by the Holy Spirit and would be Jesus the One who would save his people from sin.  “He will be great,” the angel announced to Mary, “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 Jacob forever; and of his kingdom there will be no end.”  So when Caesar demanded a census, Joseph went up to the city of David, Bethlehem, because he was of the house and lineage of David.”  There, the Son of David was born by the Virgin Mary.  And angels sang to shepherds of that birth, “I bring you good news of a great joy which will come to all the people; for to you is born this day in the city of David, a Savior, who is Christ the Lord.”

          But here was also the ultimate temple promised to David.  It was built of far grander stuff than stone and gold.  God chose as his dwelling place the bodily temple of His son who is “full of grace and truth.”  From this temple, Jesus, Son of God and son of David, God acted militantly to defeat death, hell, and the devils.

          If David was a militant man, Solomon, his son was a man of peace.  His name contains the Hebrew word for peace, “Shalom.”  He had a second name, Jedidiah, meaning, “Beloved of the Lord.”  In the long view Solomon’s names were fulfilled in Jesus of whom angels sang, “Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace, good will toward men.”  At his baptism and transfiguration God declared himself pleased with his “beloved son.”  Jesus, son of David, through the line of Bathsheba and Solomon gives the peace which passes all understanding as a blessing for the whole world.  Through Jesus, God’s beloved son, we have all become beloved children of God.

          This gracious promise of God’s son stands in contrast to many of the descendants of David’s family.  When Rehoboam ascended the throne following the death of Solomon, he rebuffed the advice of his older counselors and laid heavier burdens upon the people.  As a result civil war divided the nation of God’s people into two countries.  His son Abijam also ‘walked in the sins which his father did before him.  Asa and Jehoshaphat tried to keep Judah close to God’s covenant, but neither could get rid of the foreign gods.  Jehoran did evil in the sight of the Lord.  Asariah and Jotham did right.  Azariah came down with leprosy late in his reign.  Ahaz offered his own son as a burned offering to foreign gods.  Hezekiah sought to rule with justice but he could not live up to the hopes of the prophet Isaiah.  Mannasseh had a disastrous reign of 40 years rebuilding idols and sacrificing his son, practicing magic and consulting fortunetellers.  Amon was assassinated in his own house by his own servants.   Josiah tried to reform the people and restore their religion, but it was not to be.  Jehoichin was defeated by Babylon and led into deportation and Judah was finished as a nation, Israel having disappeared more than a hundred years previously.

          What a family tree Jesus had.  There no other way that salvation could be brought into the world; except by God’s faithfulness to his promise.   We the family of David today, lives by the same promise.  Our hope is not built on David, or on ourselves, but on the Son of David and God, who came that we all might be saved from our lack of trust in God and his promise.  His royal cradle was a manger.  His throne was a cross.  His crown made of thorns.  His kingdom not of this world.  For him we wait to return and take to that kingdom where there is no sorrowing or sighing, but only life in place of dying.                         

       

Comments

[elliptical reviews]

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[Ronald Jansen]

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