The Mystery of the Childless King
Psalm 132, 2 Samuel 7:4,8-16, Romans 16:25-27, Luke 1:26-38
Do you like murder mysteries? Do you like detective stories? I know that I do. And, evidently, so do a great many other people. Mysteries – whether they are about murders, or bank robberies, or political conspiracies – are exceedingly popular.
In today’s lectionary we have the beginning and the climax of the greatest mystery ever conceived. but, it is not a murder mystery. Compared with all the fictional mysteries you can find in the literature of dozens of nations, this mystery differs from them all in two respects. The mystery itself does not involve a murder, or any other crime. It involves a birth. And, secondly, this mystery is proclaimed by all its publishers as historical fact, not a literary fiction.
We see the beginnings of this mystery in the Old Testament lesson for today. The background to the reading we heard a short while ago is the establishment David as King over God’s people in Jerusalem. In gratitude for God’s blessing, David purposes in his heart to build a house for the Lord. He sees that he himself dwells in a palace, while the Ark of the Lord dwells in a tent. So, David wants to build a great temple in which the Ark of the Lord may rest.
However, God intervenes and sends David a message by His prophet Nathan. “… the LORD tells you that He will make you a house,” the Lord says to David. “When your days are fulfilled and you rest with your fathers, I will set up your seed after you, who will come from your body, and I will establish his kingdom. He shall build a house for My name, and I will establish the throne of his kingdom forever. … My mercy shall not depart from him, as I took it from Saul, whom I removed from before you. 16 And your house and your kingdom shall be established forever before you. Your throne shall be established forever.”
This portion of Scripture is what Bible teachers and theologians call the Davidic Covenant. It is a unilateral promise from God that David’s throne will be established forever. Moreover, God promises that he will not abolish his promise to David and his descendants, as He did with wicked King Saul. Three times, God uses the word “forever” as regards David’s throne, David’s house, and David’s kingdom.
The psalm appointed for today is typical of many psalms found in the Old Testament Psalter, Psalms which are sometimes referred to as Davidic Psalms, not because David composed them, but because they refer to this promise God gave to King David. Psalm 132 is one of the Psalms of Ascent, a psalm that was sung by pilgrims who were going up to one of the three annual feasts in Jerusalem. In this psalm, there is a prayer, based on God’s promise to King David, and it begins in verse 10:
For Your servant David’s sake,
Do not turn away the face of Your anointed.
11 The LORD has sworn in truth to David;
He will not turn from it:
“I will set upon your throne the fruit of your body.
12 If your sons will keep My covenant
And My testimony which I shall teach them,
Their sons also shall sit upon your throne forevermore.”
So, as the pilgrims are journeying toward Jerusalem for the feasts, this song contains a prayer for the current Davidic heir who sits on the throne in Jerusalem. “For your servant David’s sake, do not turn your face away from your anointed.” And, the next two verses remind God of his promise to King David that his sons shall sit upon his throne forevermore.
By the time that this psalm makes it into the canon of the Old Testament Psalter, I’m pretty sure that Israel’s faithful were beginning to sense a problem. For when you look over the history of the Kings of Israel that came after David you notice something distressing. They don’t do very well as far as keeping God’s covenant, or learning God’s testimonies and statues. Indeed, with each passing generation, they seem to grow less and less righteous, more and more wicked, increasingly foolish, and finally rebellious.
The low point of the Jewish Kings comes in the days of Jeremiah the Prophet, when God sends a message to Jeconiah that reads like this: [Jer. 22:29-30]
29 O earth, earth, earth,
Hear the word of the LORD!
30 Thus says the LORD:
’Write this man down as childless,
A man who shall not prosper in his days;
For none of his descendants shall prosper,
Sitting on the throne of David,
And ruling anymore in Judah.’”
Here, then, we have a puzzle, the makings of a profound mystery. God has made a promise to David, that his throne would be established forever. And some 400 years later, the same God who promised an eternal throne to David, says to the last Davidic King to rule in Jerusalem that he would be childless. This does not mean, of course, that he would sire no sons. Rather, it would mean that none of his sons would ever inherit his throne. His throne would the same as if he had never sired sons, as the prophecy explains in Jeremiah 22:30. "Childless" means this: “a man who shall not prosper in his days, for none of his descendants – you see, he shall have descendants – none of his descendants shall prosper sitting on the throne of David, and ruling any more in Judah.”
How, then, can God’s promise to David be kept? The promise of God to David comes down through the Kings of Judah. But, one of these kings – Jeconiah – is judged by God with none of his descendants ever being able to sit on David’s throne.
The answer to the mystery is found in the gospel for today, when the angel Gabriel appears to a virgin named Mary, and announces that she will bear a son while remaining a virgin. If you consult the genealogy found in Matthew’s gospel, it traces the line of royal descent from David, through Jeconiah, down to Joseph. Joseph is the heir to the Davidic promise, except that neither he nor his ancestors back to Jeconiah can inherit the David promise so long as they are biological descendants of Jeconiah, the King whom God declared “childless” as far as the David promises were concerned.
Luke’s gospel, however, traces Mary’s genealogy back through Nathan, the brother of King Solomon. Mary – and the son she bears – is a descendant of King David, someone from David’s body, so as to fulfill one of the features of the original promise God made to King David, that someone from his body would rule forever. From the marriage of Joseph – who can confer the right to rule – and Mary, who confers biological lineage to David apart from the cursed King Jeconiah, we Jesus, the biological son of David through his mother Mary, and also heir to David’s throne through his father Joseph. Jesus inherits his father Joseph’s entitlement to the throne of his father King David, precisely because Joseph is NOT the biological father of Jesus.
There is in the gospel lesson as well, another mystery revealed, though it will take the remainder of the gospel accounts to show how this is so. God promises to King David that his throne will abide forever, there are only two ways this can happen. There is, first of all, the way that everyone expected – that the line of Kings from David would have no end, that David’s descendants would continue to sire heirs to the throne forever, a never-ending line of Kings.
That expectation, of course, was dashed by Jeremiah’s announcement that God would consider King Jeconiah childless and that NONE of his progeny would ever sit on the throne of David.
As we see, the virgin birth unravels this riddle. But, the result is not a resumption of a line of kings that goes on forever. Because there is another way for God’s promise to David to be fulfilled, apart from a never-ending line of Kings. And, that is the way that no one expected, a way that no one foresaw. Instead of a never-ending line of Kings, God’s promise to King David is fulfilled when one of those Kings is a never-ending person.
This is the meaning of Gabriel’s words to Mary when he said this: [vv 30-33]
“Do not be afraid, Mary, for you have found favor with God. And behold, you will conceive in your womb and bring forth a Son, and shall call His name JESUS. He will be great, and will be called the Son of the Highest; and the Lord God will give 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.”
There is no need for a never-ending line of Kings once we have a never-ending person on the throne of David. And so the angel Gabriel says concerning Jesus, “He will reign over the house of Jacob forever, and of His kingdom there will be no end.”
Most fans of mystery novels or films have pretty much the same criteria for judging whether a mystery story is successful and satisfying. A truly successful and satisfying mystery story presents us a puzzle that is truly puzzling, a problem that looks impossibly impenetrable, some kind of snarl that seems immune from anyone unraveling it. And, then as the story unfolds, we find not only that the puzzle is solved, that the problem is penetrated and that the snarl is unraveled, but all of this happens in a way that the reader is not expecting. The Old Testament closes with what we might call The Mystery of the Eternal Throne of the Childless King. And what we find in the events of the first Advent is a solution to the mystery that meets all the criteria for the solution to a good mystery.
But, the solution to this mystery is not found in the pages of the New Testament gospels in order to entertain us. That they entertain us is good and well; it is never wrong to experience the wonder and joy of seeing how God sets up and solves a great mystery. But, there is another dimension to the mystery of Jesus birth by the Virgin Mary 2000 years ago, and this is a dimension never found in any fictitious mystery story. These fictional mysteries may surprise us, they may entertain us, but that’s just about their limit. The mystery which God solved in the birth of Jesus transforms us.
The lesson from the New Testament appointed for today is Paul’s doxology found at the end of his letter to the Romans. In that letter, Paul has laid out in all its sweeping grandeur God’s plan to redeem his fallen and cursed creation through the life, death, and resurrection of his only-begotten Son Jesus Christ. And at the end of this exposition of the gospel, the Apostle Paul concludes with these words:
25 Now to Him who is able to establish you according to my gospel and the preaching of Jesus Christ, according to the revelation of the mystery kept secret since the world began 26 but now made manifest, and by the prophetic Scriptures made known to all nations, according to the commandment of the everlasting God, for obedience to the faith— 27 to God, alone wise, be glory through Jesus Christ forever. Amen.
As we read these words, it is easy to miss the single most important assertion Paul makes here. By piling on phrase after phrase of praise to God, Paul dazzles us with the wonder of what God has done in Jesus Christ. He specifically mentions that the gospel and preaching of Jesus Christ is according to the revelation of a mystery that was kept secret from the beginning of the world; secret, that is, until the incarnation, ministry, death, and resurrection of Jesus of Nazareth. In all this, Paul says, we rightly give glory to God, who alone is wise, through his Son Jesus Christ.
But, in all these glorious proclamations of praise, did you forget how Paul begins this doxology? Listen again: “Now to Him who is able to establish you …”
That is what we must always remember when we think of the majesty, the sheer wonder of the mystery which God revealed in the incarnation of His Son in Jesus Christ. The God who did all these things, the God who alone is wise, the God who kept his purposes secret from everyone from the beginning of the world until his Son was born to a young virgin 2000 years ago – it is this same God who is able to establish you and me.
In Colossians 1:25ff, Paul wrote, “ … I became a minister according to the stewardship from God which was given to me for you, to fulfill the word of God, the mystery which has been hidden from ages and from generations, but now has been revealed to His saints. To them God willed to make known what are the riches of the glory of this mystery among the Gentiles: which is Christ in you, the hope of glory. Him we preach, warning every man and teaching every man in all wisdom, that we may present every man perfect in Christ Jesus.
On this last Sunday in Advent, a season in which we prepare ourselves to meet the Lord, we must never forget that the marvelous wisdom by which God worked out our redemption in Jesus Christ is also at work within each of us who have fastened our hope on that same Jesus Christ. May we never forget what Paul tells us about ourselves and the God whom we trust: that not only during this season of advent, but always, we are to work out your own salvation with fear and trembling; because it is God who works in us, both to will and to do for His good pleasure.
And, so we pray with confidence in the one who is able to establish us, that in the last day, when he shall come again in his glorious majesty to judge both the quick and the dead, we may rise to the life immortal, through him who lives and reigns with God the Father and the Holy Ghost, now and forever.
In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost. Amen.
