NAMES AND TITLES OF CHRIST
SON OF DAVID
SUPER BOWL SUNDAY
DR. JIM DIXON
MARK 10:46-52
JANUARY 25, 1998
David was a shepherd boy, anointed by the Prophet Samuel, called by God to be King of Israel. He was a skilled musician, a poet, a gifted leader and administrator. He was a man of courage. He slew Goliath with a slingshot and a stone, but he was not a perfect man. David was a man with flaws and, of course, he committed adultery with Bathsheba. He murdered Bathsheba’s husband, Uriah. He conducted a census of the people of Israel for the purpose of taxation and forced labor bringing plague upon the land. Not a perfect man but he was the greatest King of Israel. It was David was united the kingdom of the Jews. It was David who conquered the city of Jerusalem and made it his capital. It was David who envisioned the Temple of God and it was David who ushered in the golden age of Israel.
In the Bible, Jesus Christ is called the “Son of David.” There was a saying amongst the Jewish people that the Messiah would be Great David’s Greater Son. This morning we take a look at this messianic title, the “Son of David.” I have two teachings and the first teachings concerns race and genealogy.
When we look at Matthew’s gospel, the first verse, the Bible says, “This is the record of the genealogy of Jesus Christ, the Son of David. His blood is traced through the line of David. Then we look at Luke’s gospel, in the third chapter. We’re told that there were 14 generations from Abraham to David, 14 generations from David to the exile, 14 generations from the exile to Christ. We’re told that Jesus Christ came from the line of David and indeed is the “Son of David.” When we look at this title, we see that by blood, by race, by derivation, Jesus Christ is Jewish, and He is of the tribe of Judah.
Outside of the Judeo-Christian world, there are those who have actually accused the God of Israel of being racist because He selected the Jews as the chosen people. He called forth the Messiah from the bloodline of the Jews. There are those who have said, “Well, this means that God is racist, and He has played favorites choosing the Jewish people.” But this is to completely misunderstand the mind of God and indeed the purpose of our Lord Jesus Christ as the Son of David.
God chose the Jews for four reasons. First of all, God chose the Jews to pen the sacred writings, to pen the holy scriptures. Indeed, virtually all of the books in the Old and New Testament were written, were penned by Jews. Secondly, God chose the Jews to preserve those sacred writings and indeed the scriptures have been preserved through the Jews through their scribal office. This is confirmed through all of the records found in the Dead Sea Scrolls, the accuracy of the scribal tradition. For the third purpose, God chose the Jews that they might provide a family through which the Messiah might become incarnate in this world and thus we have Jesus, the Son of David. God’s fourth purpose in choosing the Jews was that they might become a light to the whole world and testify, proclaim that there is one true God and invite the world to know that God.
Now, it is true that the Jewish people have many times neglected that fourth responsibility, but it does not change the fact that God chose the Jews for this purpose. They were blessed to be a blessing that through them, the Bible tells us, all the nations of the world might be blessed. You see, God loves all people. God loves all races, red, yellow, black or white, Jew or Gentile, God loves all people equally and God chose the Jews for the purpose of blessing all of mankind.
In the Bible, in the Old Testament, we really see three images of the Messiah. We see the suffering servant image of the Messiah as in Isaiah 53 and this describes the Messiah’s relationship to sin and sinners and leads us to the cross of Christ. We also, in the Old Testament, see the heavenly Son of Man as an image of the Messiah. This is found in the book of Daniel, and this describes the Messiah’s relationship with all of humanity. But, you see, there’s this third image of the Messiah in the Old Testament, the image of the Son of David and this particular image of the Messiah describes the Messiah’s relationship to the people of Israel, to the Jews.
This morning, as we examine this title, the “Son of David,” we’re going to be focusing on Israel and we’re going to be focusing on the Jews. Before we leave the subject of genealogy and race, I just want to give a brief warning regarding racism and anti-Semitism. Now, earlier in this century, Karl Bonhoeffer was a prestigious psychiatrist and neurologist in the city of Berlin. He wanted his son Dietrich Bonhoeffer er to grow up to be a scientist or perhaps a lawyer. It did not happen. Dietrich Bonhoeffer, as many of you know, fell in love with Jesus Christ. By the will of Christ, Dietrich Bonhoeffer became a great theologian.
This was during the time of the Nazi movement in Europe and the Nazi movement in Germany. Incredibly, many leaders in the German Lutheran church had actually embraced the Nazi party and embraced Adolph Hitler and had publicly called national socialism the positive outworking of Christianity itself. An incredible statement. For this, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, who hated racism in any form, condemned the leaders of the German Lutheran church and called them to repent.
It was November 9, 1938, when the Nazis began their public overt persecution of the Jewish people in the city of Berlin. They came into the Jewish communities. They shattered the windows of their homes. They drove Jewish men, women and children from their houses. They burned their synagogues. They tortured them without mercy, and they incarcerated them capriciously. Dietrich Bonhoeffer was out of the city that day, November 9, 1938, and when he heard what had happened he rushed back to Berlin. Publicly and openly, he condemned the Nazis, and he condemned Adolph Hitler, and he charged them with the sin of racism. Dietrich Bonhoeffer knew that his time was short. He knew he could not openly condemn the Nazis without consequence.
And so it was that he was arrested, and he was incarcerated in Tegel Prison outside of the city of Berlin. He was placed in a little cell, 6 feet wide and 9 feet long. It was a barren little cell and there was nothing there but a cot and a shelf and a bucket and a stool. For 18 months, Dietrich Bonhoeffer did not leave that little cell. He wrote poems. He wrote letters to loved ones including Maria Von Wedemeyer who was his fiancée and who Dietrich Bonhoeffer loved very much but would never have the chance to marry.
I think many of you know that those letters are sealed today at Harvard University and cannot be opened until the year 2002. Dietrich Bonhoeffer ultimately found himself in the concentration camp at Flossenburg. It was there on April 8, 1945, as Dietrich Bonhoeffer was leading a Bible study in that concentration camp that the Gestapo came in and they seized him to kill him. Dietrich Bonhoeffer said, “This is not the end of my life. For me, life is just beginning.” That next morning at 5:00 AM, Dietrich Bonhoeffer knelt naked and prayed and as many have written, he ascended the gallows to God.
There were others like Dietrich Bonhoeffer. There were others who stood against racism, who stood against prejudice in that tragic time of the Nazi movement in Germany when so many Jews were butchered and killed but there were far too few, far too few. The truth is the tragic truth is throughout Christian history there have been many Christians who have not stood against prejudice. There have been many Christians who have been perpetrators of prejudice. I hope you understand the word of God. I hope you understand the warnings of scripture with regard to prejudice. The Bible warns us of anti-Semitism. In fact, the Bible says that God will bless those who bless Israel and those who curse Israel God will curse. As God warns us with regard to anti-Semitism, so God warns us with regard to all racism. The Bible says, “In Christ there is neither Jew nor Greek, neither slave nor free. All are one in Christ Jesus.” The Bible says, “Let there be no partiality as you hold the faith of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Lord of glory.” No partiality. No prejudice. No racism. God loves all people.
When Jesus Christ came into the Jewish world incarnate, the Son of David, He warned the Jews of prejudice because many of the Jewish people had been prejudiced against the Samaritans who they viewed as half¬ blooded, subhuman because they considered their blood to be impure. Jesus warned them regarding that racism and Jesus warns all of us with regard to racism.
We come to our second and primary teaching this morning and it relates to the full meaning of this title, the “Son of David.” It is a title of royalty. David was royalty and the Son of David is the greater royalty. When we say that Jesus Christ is the Son of David, we are saying that he is the King of the Jews, and we are saying that He will restore Israel to glory. This is a very important concept for us even as gentiles and most of us in this room are gentiles. Unless we understand what God is doing with Israel, we cannot understand eschatology, we cannot understand the whole subject of the last things or the last times, the last days. We cannot understand the signs of the times and the consummation of the age. We cannot understand God’s plan for us as gentiles unless we understand also God’s plan for the Jews. And so, we take a look at what it means to say that Jesus is the Son of David, what it means to say that He is the King of the Jews and will restore glory to Israel.
I think most of you know that the wise men in Matthew 2:2 called Jesus the King of the Jews. And, of course, Pontiffs Pilot called Jesus the King of the Jews, asked Jesus if He was the King of the Jews. The crowd mockingly called Jesus the King of the Jews and on the cross, a plaque was inscribed, “The King of the Jews,” written in Hebrew, written in Latin and written in Greek. Indeed, this is in harmony with the statements of the Old Testament concerning the Son of David. He would be the King of the Jews and as the King of the Jews, he would usher in a new era, a golden age for Israel.
This past week Barb and I went to California to Santa Cruz to visit Bob and Allison Belts. I know most of you know Bob and Allison. Bob and I served at this church from the beginning and Bob is a man greatly gifted of God and a very good friend. I think only those of you who have very recently come to the church do not know Bob. Barb and I went out there to spend the week with Bob and with Allison and their kids and to just enjoy some fellowship together and also to take in a conference that was just ten minutes from their house.
I want you to know Bob loves it where he is. He is pasturing a church called High Street Community Church. He’s doing an awesome job and I know Bob and Allison feel greatly blessed. Barb and I intended to spend the entire week there and then just come back for Sunday here, but we had to leave early because I came down with sciatica. Now, sciatica is an inflammation of the sciatic nerve. I think many of you have had it and it is not a very comfortable thing. It can be extremely painful and when the sciatic nerve is pinched for whatever reason, that nerve which runs from the small of the back down the back of your legs is extremely painful. It’s painful to stand, painful to walk. It’s painful to sit. It’s painful to lie down. When my wife Barb had sciatica, she had it for a year and a half, and I’m hoping and praying that I do not have it that long, but I can tell you this. I can tell you that I did not have things like sciatica when I was 20 years old. I didn’t get sciatica when I was 30 or when I was 40, and I think it is safe to say, my best days physically are behind me. I’m 52 years old and things just aren’t quite the same as they used to be.
I can remember when I used to jog six miles a day six days a week and I used to run those six miles in 36 minutes, 6 minutes per mile. I look back on that now and I find it hard to believe. When I do jog now, and of course I can’t jog with sciatica, but when I do jog, I kind of lumber along at about a 9-minute per mile pace. Things aren’t like they used to be. My best days are behind me, and yet in Christ, even physically, my best days are ahead of me because my commonwealth is in heaven and I await a Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ who will change my lowly body to be like His glorious body by the power which enables Him to subject all things unto Himself. This is the Christian hope. In Christ, all of us who belong to Christ, our best days are ahead of us, and He will restore us to glory in every sense of the word. And what’s true of us as individual Christians is true of Israel. In Christ, Israel’s best days are ahead of her.
You all know that David was the great King of Israel who ushered in the golden age of Israel. We have said before, he united the kingdom. He established the capital at Jerusalem. He envisioned the temple. He ushered in the golden age but after the death of David, everything declined. Everything declined for the Jews. Solomon, David’s son, came to the throne. He offered a kind of schizophrenic reign. The first half of his reign was noble. The last half, the second half, debauched. He corrupted his wisdom and he fell into idolatry and greed. Then his son, Rehoboam, ascended the throne and he was the last king of the united kingdom established by David.
Rehoboam rejected the wisdom of his council of elders who counseled him to deal gently with the Jewish people. Rehoboam said to the Jewish people, “My father placed a heavy yoke upon you. I will add to that yoke. My father chastised you with whips. I will chastise you with scorpions.” The harsh treatment of the Jews by Rehoboam split the kingdom and the kingdom of the Jews split between north and south. The northern kingdom called Israel took Jeroboam as king and then the southern kingdom called Judah kept Rehoboam. This was the beginning of the divided kingdom. The year was 922.
I think most of you know, in 722, the northern kingdom was conquered by the Assyrians, by Sargon II and Shalmaneser and the Jews of the northern kingdom went into exile. And then in the year 587, the southern kingdom was conquered by the Babylonians and Nebuchadnezzar the Great, and the Jews of the southern kingdom, the Jews of Judah, were sent into exile.
In 538 with the edict of Cyrus, the Jews were allowed to return to Jerusalem but not with sovereignty. They were allowed to return to Jerusalem, but they had no independence. They were not self-governed. They were a vassal state. They were oppressed by the Meads and the Persians and then later by the Greeks and Alexander the Great and then later by the Seleucids and Antiochus Epiphanes and then still later by the Romans. It was the Romans who in 70 AD leveled the city of Jerusalem as Titus and his Roman legions swept over that city. Even the temple was laid bare and not one stone was left lying on the other. Titus had instructed his soldiers to preserve the religious buildings but the fires that consumed the city melted the gold on top of the temple and as the gold flowed down through the stone blocks, the Roman soldiers with their lust for gold began to disassemble the blocks, seeking to get to the gold, and thus the prophecy of Christ was fulfilled that “not one stone would be left lying on the other.”
And so, it was in that 70 AD the dispersion began. You see, in 70 AD, Israel just ceased to exist, and the dispersion of the Jews began. For 1900 years, the Jews were a dispersed people, scattered amongst the nations. In the first two centuries, the Jewish people went to Babylon seeking refuge there in Jewish communities because the Jews were not welcomed in the Roman Empire. In the 4th century, Constantine the Great banished all Jews from the Roman Empire. If any Jew was found, their ears were actually cut off. He wanted to eradicate all Jews from the Roman world.
In the 5th and 6th centuries, Jews were allowed to live within the boundaries of the Roman Empire, but they could not hold office. Their freedom was restricted, and they were often sold into slavery. Of course, in the year 622, Mohammed founded the religion of Islam. Mohammed was rejected by the Jews and every single Jew in Arabia was murdered. From that time to this day, the Islamic people stand against the Jews as indeed they stand against Christians. During the. of the Crusades and from 1096 to 1291, the Christian Europe sought to free the Holy Land from the Muslims, but it was a misguided effort and the kingdom of Christ, as we saw last week, cannot be enforced militarily, cannot be enhanced with the sword. The truth is that the Crusaders were not trying to free the Holy Land from the Muslims for the sake of the Jews. The truth is the Crusaders hated the Jews as much as they hated the Muslims. One of the great slogans, one of the tragic slogans of the. of the Crusades, was the slogan, “Kill a Jew and save your soul!” Tragically throughout history, inexplicably, this is how many people have viewed the Jews.
In the year 1350, I think many of you know that the black plague just swept across Europe, killing one-fourth of the people. Again, inexplicably through some kind of twisted logic, the Jews were blamed. The Jews were blamed for the black plague and as a consequence, half of the Jews of Europe were murdered. Then, in the year 1411, the Roman Catholic church instituted the Inquisition. In the Inquisition, Jews were rounded up. Jews were interrogated. Jews were tortured. In the Inquisition, the Christian world sought to force Jews to embrace Christ. What a tragedy. You cannot force someone to embrace Christ and apart from love, the gospel is twisted.
In 1469, the Spanish Inquisition began with the blessing of the Roman Catholic church and with the marriage of Ferdinand of Aragon and Isabella of Castille. With their marriage, and they hated the Jews, they began to drive the Jews from Spain where the Jews had been for a thousand years. They began to drive the Jews from Spain. They drove 800,000 Jews into the sea and the last Jew left Spain on August 2, 1492. Coincidentally it was the very next day, August 3, 1492, when Christopher Columbus set sail for the new world. I’m sure that many times throughout history, the Jews have longed for a new world because in this world they have not been well treated.
The persecution of the Jews has, continued to more recent times. It was 1881 when Alexander III, the Czar of Russia, instituted his policy of the Jews where he decreed that one-third of the Jews in Russia would be murdered, executed; one-third of the Jews in Russia would be deported, and one-third of the Jews in Russia would be conscripted into the Russian Orthodox Church. Unthinkable. And, of course, the persecution of the Jews reached its zenith in the Nazi era during the tragic Nazi holocaust when 6 million Jews were gassed and incinerated in Nazi ovens.
And yet, you see, the Jewish people, by the will of Christ—the Jewish people, by the hand of God, remain. They have not faded from the earth. Incredibly, they have still remained. They have still kept their identity. The Jewish people have not lost hope. They still long for the Son of David. They still are waiting for the Messiah who will establish the former glory because, you see, the Jewish people know the Old Testament prophecies. They know that there are 25 distinct prophecies in the Old Testament that promise the restoration of Israel, the regathering of the Jews from the nation to their homeland permanently, never to leave Israel again. They know that those prophecies are an Old Testament promise that Israel will become the flower of the earth and great amongst the nations. They know that it is prophesied that in the last days the nations of the world will polarize themselves with regard to this reconstituted and reborn state of Israel and that will lead to Armageddon.
But they also know that the millennium is coming, and the Jews and Israel will be restored to glory. Indeed, we know through New Testament passages and from old that in the last days before Christ comes, the Jewish people will turn to Christ en masse. We don’t know what’s going to remove the scales of blindness, but we do know something is going to happen and the Jews are going to tum to Jesus Christ en masse.
Incredibly, there are those people in the Christian world today who believe that God is done with Israel and that all the promises to Israel are somehow fulfilled through the new Israel, the church, but there is no way you can read scripture fairly and come to that conclusion. You look at the prophetic passages, the passages that are found in Isaiah and Jeremiah and Ezekiel and Hosea and Amos, the passages that are found in Micah and Zephaniah, Zachariah. These passages clearly describe the gathering of the Jews from the nations of the world to be reborn as a nation and blessed. And indeed, this is already happening.
I think most of you know in 1897 the Zionist movement began with Dr. Theodore Herzl. I think most of you know that in World War I, it was the British General Allenby working with Lawrence of Arabia. They conquered the Islamic world, and they freed Palestine and Syria. Then the British government began to allow… For the first time in 1900 years, the Jews were allowed to return, to return to Palestine. Then, incredibly and miraculously by all accounts, on May 4, 1948, Israel was born again and became a nation. During the 6-day War of 1967, the Jews repossessed the city of Jerusalem. I promise you this is not coincidence. The Spirit of Christ is behind all of this because Christ is the Son of David and the promises to Israel will be fulfilled.
I promise you that these are signs of the times. Jesus said, “When you see a fig tree bringing forth leaf, you know that summer is drawing near. Even so, when you see these things happening, you’ll know My coming is drawing near.” Jesus Christ is coming again soon. He’s coming again soon. The Bible says, in Isaiah, chapter 11, “There shall come forth a shoot from the stump of Jesse.” Jesse was the father of David. “There shall come forth a shoot from the stump of Jesse and a branch shall grow out of his roots and the Spirit of the Lord shall rest upon Him, the spirit of wisdom and understanding, the spirit of counsel and might, the spirit of knowledge in the fear of the Lord and His delight shall be in the fear of the Lord. He will not judge by what His eyes see. He will not decide by what His ears hear but with righteousness He will judge the poor. He will decide with equity for the meek of the earth. He will smite the earth with the rod of His mouth and with the breath of His lips. He will slay the wicked. Righteousness will be the girdle of His waist, faithfulness the girdle of his loins. In that day, the wolf will dwell with the lamb. The leopard and the kid will lie down together, the calf, the lion, the fatling together. A little child shall lead them. The cow and the bear shall feed, and their young shall lie down together. The lion shall eat straw like the ox. A suckling child shall place his hand in the hole of an asp and the weaned child shall place his hand in the adder’s den and they will not hurt or destroy. All My holy mountain for the earth shall be full of the knowledge of the Lord as the oceans cover the sea. In that day, the root of Jesse, the Son of David, will stand as a banner to the nations and all the nations of the world shall seek Him.”
Even that famous passage in Isaiah 9 you hear every Christmas, “Unto us a child is born. Unto us a Son is given. The government shall be upon his shoulders, and he shall be called Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace.” Let’s close with a word of prayer.