The Great Promise Keeper
BY ALAN B. CHRISTENSEN
There is a story about a boy and a girl who developed a friendship by being pen pals. After some time, they decided to meet in person. So, they arranged that on a certain day the boy was to travel to the girl's home town and stand on a specific corner of Main Street at a given time.Genesis 3:15 To avoid any possible mistake arising from a coincidence, the two decided that the girl was to come into town at that hour on a buggy with one black wheel, one white wheel, one red wheel, and one yellow wheel.
I draw this story to your attention because we are creatures who work with probabilities. The higher the probability factor, we believe, the safer the venture. Therefore, the answer to the question whether Jesus is the promised Messiah of the Old Testament is bound up in the fact that the details of His identity have been multiplied to such a degree that no other rational conclusion can be reached. Out from the masses of humanity, the line of His identity narrowed with the passing of time until it converged upon a Jewish maiden in a Bethlehem cow shed.
The purpose of our study is to trace from Scripture the ancestry of the promised Redeemer and to establish the fact that Jesus is the legal heir to the throne of David and the properly fitted Savior of all those who trust in Him.
There can be no doubt that we are saved by the child that the virgin Mary bore. Through her, our Savior came into this world with the words, "A body has thou prepared for me" (Heb. 10:5). Jesus was given by God a human body through Mary to make atonement for our sins. It's enlightening to look at the way God described this Redeemer centuries before He was born in order that He be recognized.
Everlasting past. Christianity has sometimes been criticized for being a rather new religion, because Christ was born only 2000 years ago, whereas the teachings of the Buddha and Hinduism supposedly go back five or six centuries before Christ. The fact is, Christianity in no way confines Jesus to the First Century A.D. The Scripture clearly teaches that Jesus existed long before the baby was born in Bethlehem. He is from everlasting past.
It is no strain that Buddha made an appearance on earth before Jesus did. Jesus is the one who poured breath into the Buddha's lungs and sustained Guatama's body by His word. Buddha came into being only when he was being formed in his mother's womb. But Jesus has always existed. He is the great I AM.
As we come to trace the line of Jesus' human heritage, let us keep in mind that He is the underlying theme of the Old Testament. True, most of us pay only casual attention to the types and references relating to Him there. But that in no way alters the fact that Jesus Christ is the unifying factor in the unfolding drama of the Biblical message. The whole span of Scriptural revelation is Christ centered, and the reason God has given us the Bible is that Jesus might be introduced to us and that we might form a personal relationship with Him in response.
Divine imperative. There are several occasions when Jesus openly declared Himself to be the central figure of the Old Testament story. At the very outset of His ministry, immediately following His baptism and encounter with Satan, Jesus entered the synagogue in Nazareth, opened the roll of the prophet Isaiah, and cried to the bewilderment of those present, "This day is this Scripture fulfilled in your ears" (Luke 4:21). After He had risen from the dead, He explained at the end of His ministry that He was the object of the writings of Moses (Luke 24:44). It is not optional, therefore, for Christians who take the words of Christ seriously to view the Old Testament as being Christ-centered; it is a divine imperative.
Now, let us consider the unveiling of the Messiah's identity as it progresses in the Old Testament. We will consider the line as it begins in the Pentateuch and continues through the prophecy of Nathan, Isaiah, and Micah. There is also one prophecy in Jeremiah having to do with the curse of Coniah.
I. In the Garden (Gen. 3:15)
The first indication in the Bible of Messianic hope is found in Genesis 3:15. Soon after sin has come into the creation, God says to the serpent, "I will put enmity between thee and the woman, and between thy seed and her seed. It will bruise thy head and thou shalt bruise his heel."The serpent there is Satan, of course, and God has established a perpetual hostility between the natural man, which follows the authority of Satan, and the promised seed of a woman that would be the Mighty Deliverer. The Redeemer will appear out of the human race, and will so bruise
the serpent's head as to give it a fatal blow.That the seed of the woman would bruise the head of the serpent was already a hint that the Redeemer would be born of a virgin, because the normal way would be to describe it as the seed of the man. As one moves through the Old Testament, the reference is made to the seed of Abraham, the seed of Isaac, and the seed of Jacob. But here, it is the seed of the woman. While we mustn't read something into the text that is not intended, we can feel safe in saying that hidden in this verse is a reference to the virgin birth of Christ.
At any rate, three important principles emerged from this passage at the very dawn of history. (1) Evil in the world results from man's historic disobedience to God. (2) Man is redeemable or salvageable. And (3) There will be final victory over sin through a Deliverer that will be the seed of a woman.
II. The call of Abraham (Gen. 12:1-3; 22:15-18)
We have seen that somewhere in the human race a man from God, who will redeem sinners on earth, is to be born. With the number of people multiplying, how can we tell where he is going to come from?Moreover, in the wake of the Tower of Babel, the descendants of Noah have been growing into nations differing in language, customs and worship. This proliferation of nations requires that God deals with mankind on a national level. Against this background, God decided to create a new nation that would be His messenger to the idolatrous nations of the world.
He called upon a man Abram to leave his home in Mesopotamia and to settle in Canaan, which would in time be the land of the people who would descend from him. In so doing, God narrows the line through which the Redeemer would come (Galatians 3:16).
III. The Shiloh Prophecy (Gen. 49:10)
Abraham complicates that line, however, by having several sons. There was Ishmael from Hagar and Isaac from Sarah. He also had about six sons from Keturah. Which one of these boys will continue the line of the Messiah? Again, the way is made clear by God who declares: "In Isaac shall thy seed be called." (Gen. 21:12)Isaac goes on to have a pair of twins, Esau and Jacob. Through which one will the Deliverer come? Romans 9:13 reveals that even before the twins were born, God had decided, "Jacob have I loved, but Esau have I hated."
With the passing of time, Jacob really confuses the line by having as many as a dozen sons. Again, God narrows the line by causing Jacob to gather his sons before him just before his death and to tell them what would happen in the "latter days". Describing Judah as "a lion's whelp", the aged patriarch says in Genesis 49:10: "The sceptre shall not depart from Judah, nor a lawgiver from between his feet, until Shiloh come; and unto him shall the gathering of the people be."
In Revelation 5:5 Jesus is spoken of as "the Lion of the tribe of Judah". The words "scepter" symbolizes royal power and sovereignty; and "Shiloh" in Hebrew means "the author of tranquillity". We thus see that the Redeemer will come out of the tribe of Judah.
IV. The Promise to David (II Sam. 7: 12,13)
In Genesis 38, there is an account of Judah sleeping with a woman who he thinks is a harlot. In actuality, she is his widowed daughter-in-law, who wants an offspring for her deceased husband. They have a child as a result, who is named Pharez. But God has decreed back in Deuteronomy 23:2 that "a bastard shall not enter into the congregation of the Lord; even unto his tenth generation." We thus know that the Redeemer will not come from the tribe of Judah for at least ten generations.Time goes by. Israel cries for a human king. In the tribe of Judah, a man by the name of Jesse was the ninth generation from the illegitimate Pharez. God goes to the tribe of Benjamin and appoints Saul, son of Kish, to be the king. After David is born of Jesse, however, God anoints him king while he is still a boy, and later tells him through the prophet Nathan that the Messiah will come from his line.
In II Samuel 7:12-14, Nathan says, "When thy days be fulfilled, and thou shalt sleep with thy fathers, I will set up thy seed after thee, which shall proceed out of thy bowels, and I will establish his kingdom. He shall build an house for my name, and I will stablish the throne of his kingdom for ever."
The term "for ever" underscores that God is talking about a spiritual kingdom, the eternal kingdom that the Deliverer would come to establish.
Several hundred years later, God says through the prophet Isaiah that "Behold, a virgin shall conceive, and bear a son, and shall call his name Immanuel" (Isa. 7:14). Furthermore, the prophet Micah prophesies that such a thing will happen out of Bethlehem in Judah (5:2-4). Finally, the angel Gabriel comes and tells Mary that she will be the one to give the Messiah His human body. As the genealogy set forth in Luke 3 shows, Mary is a descendant of Nathan, a son of David.
V. Joseph and the Coniah curse (Jeremiah 22:30)
While Mary is an offspring of David, she is nevertheless not of the royal line. Solomon was the son of David that succeeds the king. And after Solomon, the kingship goes to his son Rehoboam. All went well until Jeconiah, or Coniah, sits on David's throne. He is so wicked that God puts a curse upon him, saying in Jeremiah 22:30: "Write ye this man childless, a man that shall not prosper in his days: for no man of his seed shall prosper, sitting upon the throne of David, and ruling any more in Judah."Seemingly, that curse makes it impossible for God to fulfill His promise to David.
Now, the genealogy presented in Matthew 1 shows that Joseph, the husband of Mary, comes from this royal line. But because of the Coniah curse, no son of his bloodline is eligible for the throne. Nevertheless, the wisdom of God shines through. He causes Mary to be espoused to Joseph. That marriage makes Jesus the legal heir of Joseph, and by extension a legal son of David.
These references reveal how God, in His determination to bring into this world the Messiah He promised back in the Garden of Eden, singled out from the whole world a man (Abraham), then a grandson of that man (Jacob), then a nation from that grandson (Israel), then a tribe from that nation (Judah), then a house from that tribe (David's), and finally a virgin from that house (Mary) to bring forth our Lord Jesus Christ, all of which testify that God is the great Promise Keeper.
What is this all about? It is about a God who is trustworthy, a God who loves His people, a God who is merciful, a God who knows the end from the beginning. It is about a God who gave His only begotten Son so that whosoever believes in Him shall not perish, but have everlasting life. o
Rev. Alan B. Christensen is Resident Pastor of The Billy Graham Training Center at The Cove, Asheville, NC, 28815.