All Hail the Heir of David!

When Christians talk about the birth of Jesus one of the things that is often underappreciated is his Davidic lineage. In both nativity stories what makes Jesus birth significant is that he is the true heir of David. Matthew and Luke are careful to emphasise his royal ancestry and that his birthplace was the ancestral home of the family of David. In those and other ways, both writers were indicating that the circumstances of Jesus’ birth fulfilled the scriptural prophecies about who the long awaited Messiah was going to be.

The Palm Sunday the World Changed

There have been many major turning points throughout human history that have changed the course of nations and even the entire the world. When these events start to unfold they may not seem all that significant. Sometimes within that situation people do recognise something important is happening but they can hardly imagine that it is the beginning of an even greater change because of which their world will never be the same again. Christ’s “triumphal entry” into Jerusalem is one of those events which people at the time knew was momentous but no one could fathom how momentous it actually was. Even today 2000 years later where Christ has had an incomparable impact on world history and billions of Christians all over the world mark the event on Palm Sunday, it is not fully appreciated how important it was. As believers, Christ’s final entry into Jerusalem was the beginning of the defining turning point of the history of the world.

The National Son of God

I have known for a few years now that Jesus is portrayed in the New Testament as the embodiment of Israel.

Son of David, Son of Abraham (Pt. III)

The book of the genealogy of Jesus Christ, the son of David, the son of Abraham.

Matthew 1:1 ESV

There is much to unpack in this opening line but first of all we see here an explicit messianic connection between Abraham and David. We have already established in the previous post how there is strong scriptural precedent for including Abraham in messianic discourse. Therefore Matthew and other New Testament writers are not just making it up but they are interpreting the Hebrew Scriptures in the light of the story of Jesus.

Son of David, Son of Abraham (Pt. II)

In the previous part I did not really address the Davidic covenant (2 Samuel 7) because I was trying to demonstrate the significance of the Abrahamic covenant in messianic discourse. I think the reason why most Jewish people after the exile became convinced that God would send a future Messiah was because of the Davidic covenant.

Son of David, Son of Abraham

While working on The Christ Story, I found I could not effectively tell the biblical story of how Jesus is the Messiah without talking about both David and Abraham. While David is a staple of messianic discourse, being the archetypal divinely anointed king, Abraham does not usually feature prominently, even though he is the father of Jewish people. So it was somewhat unexpected when I realised in my study that Abraham was crucial to the Bible’s messianic theology. I learned the reason why Abraham mattered so much was because of the reason why messianic expectations developed in the first place: exile.

Psalm 72 – A Messianic Psalm?

Reading Acts

The header does not explicitly refer to a historic event in the life of David or Solomon, although it seems clear that the Psalm refers to the Davidic Covenant.  But the language of the Psalm is grand and universal – the King will rule the whole world and the prosperity of the King rivals the Garden of Eden.  Since the details go beyond Solomon (or any other king of Israel or Judah), it is assumed by many Jewish and Christian writers that this Psalm is Messianic, referring to a future restoration of Israel when the land will be expanded and peace and prosperity will finally come to Israel.

As one of the  ten “royal” psalms (2, 18, 20, 21, 45, 72, 101, 110, 132, and 144:1-11), this psalm is usually interpreted as messianic.  It is not surprising to find that early Christians saw this psalm as referring to the coming…

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