Son Of David Series

Message

Matthew 1:1

Name Above All Names - Son of David

We are going to continue our sermon series on the names of Jesus. We started this series only last week and we are looking at the names of Jesus as they appear in the New Testament from Jesus being the Word who was there “in the beginning” up to the time when Jesus goes into Egypt.

There are 10 names all together that we are going to look at as we make our way through this advent … and into the new year. By doing this we get a sense of who Jesus is, and the names of Jesus, and how important each one of these names is for our understanding of Jesus’ personality character mission and focus.

Today the name that we are focusing on today comes out of Matthew 1:1 where Jesus is called the Son of David. Let’s read the context so we have a broader understanding of this name. What Matthew wants us to understand here is the heritage of Jesus and the names in the lineage of Jesus.

Some of the names we know - by seeing them as we go back in the Old Testament

So of them we don’t know so well … especially after verse 12.

The importance is not knowing every single name but the names that stand out.

Here the name of David stands out.

Thing about David is that a lot of us have a good understanding of who David is.

So I am not going to necessarily tell you things that you do not know.

But let us have a look at various aspects of David’s life.

We start with the reality that David is a Shepherd. He's just a boy ... he might be 14 or 15 … certainly not much older than that. When we first introduced to David in the Old Testament it's at the time when king Saul is ruling the land. Saul is a tall man, but he is not a good King. God has already said “Nope Saul is not going to be my man. I want someone else to be King.” In this situation Samuel comes along to Jesse's family and Samuel tells Jesse. “One of your sons is going to be the new King.” So Jesse brings out all of these different sons from the oldest and then the second oldest. It is none of them … and it turns out it's going to be the youngest. Jesse is so convinced that it's not going to be David that David is still out in the field watching the sheep. So they go and get him and Samuel anoints him while Saul is still alive. This anointing causes a few issues but I will go to that another time.

What we do know about David is he's a good fighter. Every time you talk about, “what did David do well?” the answer is that “David killed Goliath” Actually David was much more than a Goliath giant killer. He was a great Warrior and he surrounded himself at one stage with 30 Mighty Men. And these 30 Mighty Men performed incredible deeds of success for the Israelites. So much so that people were saying of David how great he is comparative to Saul.

We also know that David was a good song-writer. At one stage Saul gets him to sing a song … and David sings that song and Saul throws a spear at him. At that point I don't know if that means that David's a bad singer or what that is … but that happens. We also know a lot of the Psalms are written by David - not all of them. There's 150 Psalms and 75 have definitely been identified as being written by David. The rest were written by other people or are anonymous. So take note that David didn't write all the Psalms.

We also know that he like to dance. There's a story about David who dances when the Ark of the Covenant is brought home. And he dances so crazily his wife says, “you were an embarrassment.” Men who dance understand this - that you can embarrass your wife very quickly and they will let you know about this. This tradition all started really in the Old Testament from that time so us embarrassing dancing men are just continuing that heritage. David loved to dance and the Psalms talk a lot about dancing before the Lord as well.

This is what we know about David. But I think the most well-known aspect of David’s life is the fact that he become the king of Israel after Saul. And the important thing to remember is even though he was anointed to the be the King, David did not do anything against Saul. David let the process unfold and when Saul died - and it wasn't at the hands of David - when Saul died at the hands of someone else then David became king.