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So, we read last week the first two verses of Romans one, where Paul said:
Romans 1:1 Paul, a servant of Jesus Christ, called to be an apostle, separated unto the gospel of God,
2 (Which he had promised afore by his prophets in the holy scriptures,)
Romans 1.3-4
October 18th 2020
Let’s continue on (verse 3)
3 Concerning his Son Jesus Christ our Lord, which was made of the seed of David according to the flesh;
4 And declared to be the Son of God with power, according to the spirit of holiness, by the resurrection from the dead:
So back to verses 2-3
Paul made clear that he was “called to be an apostle and separated unto the Gospel of God which God had promised before by his prophets (of Old) in the Holy Scriptures”
(verse 3) “CONCERNING His Son Jesus Christ our Lord, which was made of the seed of David, according to the flesh.”
In the first two verses Paul speaks of the Gospel of God, the Good News of God, which God had promised (would come) in the Old Testament through His prophets in the Holy Scriptures – concerning His Son Jesus Christ our Lord which was made of the seed of David according to the flesh.
What Paul says in summary is the Old Testament prophets declared that “the in and through the seed of David,” the Gospel of God would come.
Though a descendent of David, namely His Son Jesus Christ.
This is a direct appeal to the contents of the Old Testament which foretell of the promised Messiah, whom the Jews knew from prophesy, had to spring from the line of King David.
In 2nd Samuel 7, God promises to raise up David’s descendant Solomon as king, and with that promise he says at verse 13 that Solomon would build the Temple (or a “house”).
However, that term house, according to verse 16, ALSO means the line of Davidic descendants, with verse 16 saying there, “Your house and your kingdom shall be made sure forever before me.”
This suggests a clear promise that the Davidic kingship and Kingdom would always remain objects of God’s steadfast love.
The prophets of ancient Israel looked for a day when this promise would be fulfilled in an ultimate descendant of David — the Messiah – who would rule over the nation.
In a great messianic passage, Isaiah 11:1 tells us that “there shall come forth a shoot from the stump of Jesse, and a branch from his roots shall bear fruit.”
We know that Jesse was the father of David.
Jeremiah plainly writes: “Behold, the days are coming, declares the Lord, when I will raise up for David a righteous Branch, and he shall reign as king and deal wisely, and shall execute justice and righteousness in the land. In his days Judah will be saved, and Israel will dwell securely. And this is the name by which he will be called: ‘The Lord is our righteousness’” (Jeremiah 23:5–6).
Then the New Testament presents Jesus as the fulfillment of these prophecies in verses like Matthew 1:1 which sys
The book of the genealogy of Jesus Christ, the son of David, the son of Abraham. (Matthew 1:1)
And Luke 1:32-33
He will be great and will be called the Son of the Most High. And the Lord God will give to 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.
So important was a direct line to David for the Jews that both of these Gospel writers include actual genealogies to prove a direct line.
However, these two genealogies in Matthew and Luke, differ from each another – and for good reason.
Matthew begins with Abraham and ends with Jesus. Luke begins with Jesus “being the son of Joseph” and then works backward beyond Abraham all the way to Adam.
Matthew traces the line through Solomon, David’s son (which is the royal line), while Luke traces it through Nathan, a different son (which is a non-royal line).
It is also possible that Matthew traces Jesus’ descent through Joseph, and Luke through Mary, who is assumed then to also be of Davidic descent.
However, if this is not the case, and if both gospel writers run through Joseph, the differences in them can be attributed to certain laws of inheritance which, in the case of those who die childless, and another family member is the inheritor, this results in that person’s name being included in the genealogy – which would be the method of handling the custom of levirate marriage, where the brother of a man who died childless raises up descendants for his dead brother with his widow causing another name to enter the genealogy too.
But notice the early followers of Jesus never seem to question his lineage to David when it came to Yeshua – Pharisees included – and so where the genealogies provided us in the Gospels are conflicting upon first appearance, those around him in his day, who had access to the genealogical records never questioned this about him.
So, we have events like what Mark 10:47 reports that when the blind beggar was sitting near the road and heard of Jesus passing, he cried:
“Jesus, Son of David, have mercy on me!”
And in Acts 15:15-16 at the first apostolic counsel, the Apostle James cited Amos 4:11, in reference to the ascended Lord and said:
“After this I will return, and I will rebuild the tent of David that has fallen; I will rebuild its ruins, and I will restore it.”
Which again alludes the house or line of David (in the phrase “tent of David”) while the phrase to rebuild the house of David implies the coming of the promised Messiah.
All through the New Testament Yeshua is consistently depicted as a descendant of King David. This was super important to them and helps explain a lot in terms of their reaction to his presence.
See, King David was a man of war. So much so God would not let him build the temple so much blood was on his hands.
But to the Jews he was the man. Therefore, for the Messiah to come from his line and to restore His kingdom the natural assumption was that Messiah would be like King David and be warlike.
For this reason many Jews – including Jesus own apostles – were constantly looking for when he would establish the Kingdom (of David) back on earth, and engage in an insurrection, and start killing Romans who had put them in bondage.
They never really understood the Kingdom he was establishing, all the way up to the point where Peter cuts the ear off Malchus – complete misunderstanding. The wanted a physical kingdom, asked when it would arrive, and what they would be doing in it as leaders.
This lead to a great deal of frustration and disappointment on their parts relative to the suffering Christ.
Of course, God, ever the mystic, provides a number of parallels between the life of King David and that of Jesus Christ.
First, we meet two kings.
1. One is David, the second King of Israel.
2. The other is Jesus Christ, the King of Kings and Lord of Lords.
Then there are some fantastic similarities between them:
David was a man “after God’s own heart” Christ was the ultimate expression of the same.
Of David is said that there was “No other king like him.” Same with Christ in the most ultimate sense.
David was triumphal, Jesus had his Triumphal entry.
And David had troubles, as did our Lord.
In both David and Yeshua we can see them as Kings Arriving, Crowned, Tormented and Conquering.
WE SEE THE ARRIVING KING in David who was annointed King but could not be appointed until Saul died.
During those years Saul hunted David and tried to kill him but David patiently waited for his time to assume the throne.
In Christ, he too was annointed at birth as King but had to bide his time to assume the throne.
In that time Herod too tried to hunt him down and kill him. But he did not assume the throne until his time had come.
In both David and in Jesus we see parallels of Crowned Kings.
After many years of waiting and wondering, of learning, there was a great rejoicing when David was crowned King over all of Israel.
With Jesus the crowds tried several times to make Him their King. In John 6:15 we read, however, “Therefore when Jesus perceived that they were about to
come and take Him by force to make Him king, He departed again to the
mountain by Himself alone.
With David we have the fulfillment of a earthly King, material king over a material kingdom. In Christ we have a man who was born to be a King, but over an invisible Kingdom – but only at the right place and at the right time.
It is interesting that Jesus clarified to Pilate that He was in fact a King, but that His Kingdom was not of this world.
And then in the closing hours of his mortal life, those around him, in mockery, made him one with the Roman soldiers dressing him up as a King in purple and crowing his head in Judean thorns.
Of course at his resurrection EVERYTHING from that point forward began to unfold relative to Him being a King over His Kingdom with Him truly being King of all Kings, and Lord of All Lords, and with Peter pointing out in Acts that while David still remained in the grave, King Jesus has risen, taking his place at the right hand of God his Father on high.
In both of their lives we find Tormented Kings
The life of David was frought with problems emminating from his own family and his own people – the very constituents of his Kingdom.
His problems began with his own brothers when he showed courage to fight Goliath and continued on including his adultery with Bathsheba (which by the way was the union that produced the line through which Christ came), and his killing of her husband.
From there his troubles with his own family expanded including Ammon’s immorality, Absalom’s murder of Ammon, and then later Absalom’s rebellion against David himself. David faced Sheba’s revolt against him, and the people turned on him and followed Absalom at one point too where he was forced to flee Jerusalem for His own safety. (Jesus did the same). In a proverbial sense, David was, on numerous occasions, rejected by his own people who would not receive him.
Of course, Jesus endured literal crucifixion by the Roman authorities but John 1:11 tells us why: “He came to His own, and His own received Him not.”
Even His own disciples forsook him in His time of need with Judas betraying Him (which could have been a fulfillment of Absalom betraying David) and Peter denied Him three times. Of course the leadership forsook him, and this all lead to him literally being crucified by his own.
Interestingly, it was in and through his crucifixion that we find him for the first time in writing, labeled a King – by Pilate who posted the sign that read:
“Jesus of Nazareth, King of the Jews.”
And in both David and Jesus we discover conquering Kings.
The reason David was so popular was because he enjoyed numerous victories as King of Israel.
1. In the first ten chapters of 2 Samuel some eleven great military victories are
recorded.
2. His empire was growing, the nation was both prosperous and powerful.
3. And the numerous rejections of him and rebellions could not keep him off of His throne for long.
It is in the Book of Revelation that we come to see Yeshua as the conquering King. But before that he experienced victories for us all along the way.
His victory over temptation in the wilderness.
His victory over disobedience to His Father through the things he suffered.
His victory over Satan in the Garden.
His victory over sin on the cross.
And His victory over death and sheol in his resurrection.
As stated, the Book of Revelation pictures Jesus as a conquering King who conquered all the aforementioned things except the will of every human being – which too, will happen in time, making him far higher, far better that King David, and the ultimate King of Kings and Lord of Lords.
Both David and Jesus were descendants of Abraham and of the tribe of Judah.
Both were born in Bethlehem.
Both had good parents and other siblings.
Both were assigned duties as shepherds.
Both experienced confrontation in the wilderness (David and Lion and bear and Jesus Satan)
Both were to become a King.
Both died in Jerusalem.
Both loved God.
Both loved their people.
Both were rejected by their own people.
Both were betrayed by someone close to them. (Ahithophel & Judas)
Both were misrepresented by others. (Absalom & The Sanhedrin)
Both were “a man after God’s own heart,”
Both reigned in spite of rejection and rebellion from others.
Both were disappointed by the actions of those close to them. (Joab & Judas and Peter)
Both wept on the Mount of Olives over the tragedies taking place in
Jerusalem.
Both defeated their enemies.
And both went to the grave.
But only one rose up out of it, proving a significant difference between the two kings and the Kingdoms over which they reign.
So, Paul has said that according to the prophets of Old who spoke
3 Concerning his Son Jesus Christ our Lord, which was made of the seed of David according to the flesh;
And in this we have depicted the make up of Yeshua the Christ – he was “God’s Son, which was MADE of the seed of David “ACCORDING to the Flesh.”
His lineage was from King David and he, the Son of God, was MADE of that seed according to the flesh.
God is not made. God is uncreated. So what was made (of the seed of David, according to the flesh) was not God.
It was flesh. It was according to the flesh. It was human, from the tribe of Judah, in the line of King David. When was He made? At his conception when the Holy Spirit overshadowed Mary and she conceived.
Unlike the rest of us, who were created by the material sperm and material egg coming together, Yeshua was created when the material egg of Mary was inseminated by the Holy Spirit of God.
This made him the literal, actual, and only child (or Son) of the Living God. At this moment God, who is never really called a Father in the Old Testament, became, “God the Father.”
Of course he has always been the father of all creation, who created all things by His words, but we enter into a completely new realm at the conception of Yeshua – because the true and living God actually became the Father of a human Son – whose name was to be called, Yeshua.
His flesh was subject to all things that our flesh is subject to – every pain, every joy, every temptation, death, sin – and yet by and through the presence of the living God in him, even in his very DNA – he was able to overcome his own will, temptations, and sin, on our behalf – and redeem the world once and for all from the payment due for its evil.
This was God in him reconciling the world to Himself. Listen to the scripture as Paul writes in
2nd Corinthians 5:18 And all things are of God, who hath reconciled us to himself by Jesus Christ, and hath given to us the ministry of reconciliation; to wit, that God was in Christ, reconciling the world unto himself, not imputing their trespasses unto them; and hath committed unto us the word of reconciliation.
On this basis, we look to God the Father for what he has done, THROUGH HIS ONLY BEGOTTEN SON, Jesus Christ – and to them we give honor, reverence, worship and adoration.
At this point Paul gives us a tremendous insight. And so, after saying in verse three:
3 Concerning his Son Jesus Christ our Lord, which was made of the seed of David according to the flesh; (Paul adds something really important. Ready)
4 And declared to be the Son of God with power, according to the spirit of holiness, by the resurrection from the dead.
Let me restate verse four with some clarifying words to add understanding:
4 And (God) declared (Yeshua) to be the Son of God with power, according to the spirit of holiness, by the resurrection from the dead.”
The passage speaks volumes, folks. And while it is frankly understood in a different number of ways I see its meaning pretty straight forward.
And perhaps the best way to read it is to consider it backward:
“That by the resurrection from the dead, according to the Spirit of Holiness, God declared Yeshua to be “the Son of God with power.”
So let’s ask, did God not recognize Jesus Christ as His Son with power from the onset? I don’t think so.
I think he recognized his Son as beloved, as he states at his baptism and on the mount of Transfiguration. Why would that be?
The Son was tempted in all things, and therefore he was not sanctified wholly in the sense of having overcome his flesh, and was subject to temptation in his life.
James plainly tells us that God cannot be tempted – Jesus pre-resurrection was. And therefore, “his power” according to the Spirit of Holiness, was at least mitigated and limited, as was his knowledge of things, as were his victories.
The title, “Son of God with power” was therefore declared only after Jesus of Nazareth was resurrected from the grave.
This is confirmed both here in this passage where Paul says:
4 And (God) declared (Yeshua) to be the Son of God with power, according to the spirit of holiness, by the resurrection from the dead.”
But it is also affirmed in Acts chapter 13 but there we learn even more as Paul says beginning at verse 30 says of Jesus:
Act 13:30 But God raised him from the dead:
31 And he was seen many days of them which came up with him from Galilee to Jerusalem, who are his witnesses unto the people.
32 And we declare unto you glad tidings, how that the promise which was made unto the fathers,
33 God hath fulfilled the same unto us their children, in that he (God) hath raised up Jesus again; as it is also written in the second psalm, “Thou art my Son, this day have I begotten thee.”
In this passage in Romans Paul says that Jesus was declared as a son with power by the resurrection.
In the Acts passage Paul associates God’s raising Jesus from the dead as the day where God views him as “being begotten of God.”
We naturally tend to see Jesus as the Begotten Son of God relative to His birth. I don’t think so.
Jesus of Nazareth, it seems, was only going to be received as God’s only “begotten Son with power” once he had passed through his life, learned obedience by the things he suffered, faced temptation, overcame sin, suffered death and then, post resurrection from the grave, God specifically and for the first time in his life, calls him, “begotten of God with power.”
For this reason, Paul here says in Romans 1:4
“That by the resurrection from the dead, according to the Spirit of Holiness, God declared Yeshua to be “the Son of God with power.”
That is a distinguishing trait of Jesus post resurrection – he had power – meaning power over all things, and could and would therefore be designated at that time as “the Son of God with power.”
Prior to this Jesus was God’s beloved Son. After this he was his begotten Son, His Son with Power and authority over all that His father had.
Pretty amazing. Paul here adds that it was according to the spirit of holiness that God declared him the Son of God with Power.
It’s important to know that this does not refer to the Holy Spirit directly but that having overcome sin and death, it was the spirit of total holiness within the Son IN HIS RESURRECTED BODY that he could and would therefore be deemed begotten of God and with power.
Whose holiness? Jesus holiness.
Prior to his resurrection, Jesus was called the holy one of God. As a child of Mary he was called the Holy Child, and was every step of the way he was found holy in the choices he made and the actions he took.
But it wasn’t until he overcame sin and death, that his fleshly incarnation at the resurrection would be deemed holy in every sense of the world, that the spirit of true, complete and never ending holiness abided in him as a resurrected being.
In other words, the God portion of His makeup had a total victory over his flesh.
And he was wholly deified forever more.
Prior to that his flesh, subject to temptation, subject to pain and death, was sanctified but still corrupt, capable of sin, though he did not sin, and capable of dying but death did not keep him.
So again, after his resurrection, and in a state of Godliness, Yeshua, according to the Spirit of eternal holiness, again, by His resurrection, was declared, God’s begotten Son.
Again, it is my opinion that when we see God after this life we will see the totality of Him fully expressed and present in the resurrected body of Yeshua the Christ.
But that explanation is for another time. Suffice it to say, that we are seeing the process by which God reconciled the World to Himself – and it was all by, through and in Jesus Christ his beloved Son, and then declared his only begotten.
The fact of the matter remains plain folks that what God did in and through His Son is a type and picture of what he desires to do, in part at least and not to the same extent, in all who choose to receive his Son by faith.
Jesus was of a lineage and origin and conception and life that none of us will ever experience here – as God with us.
But in him, frankly through him, we find the model of how God can and will work in his children as a means to bring us to glory.
It was God in the Man of Nazareth, from his inception, that brought him forward through his mortal life perfectly.
In and through the Spirit of Christ in us, God continues then, to bring each of us through to a similar place, a place and time where he will declare us to be Sons and Daughters, and it will be only at our resurrection that this will be official.
Until that time, we, like David, like Jesus, sojourn through a veil of tears, having ourselves called but not yet crowned, kings and queens, but not yet on a throne, rejected by our own, escaping from our hometowns, all the while looking to God and His will, instead of our own.
Ultimately, we too will find ourselves being crucified, but daily, dying to our flesh, our will, our carnal ways, with the ultimate expectation to be seen as holy, and declared, upon our resurrection, Sons and Daughters of God – with power.
Prior to this, we are considered sons and daughters – but the place of power has yet to be bestowed.
The expression “sons of God, or son of God,” which is not gender specific, is used throughout scriptures with various significations.
We know, according to Luke 3:38 that is is applied to Adam, as being immediately created by God, without an earthly father. He was not begotten of God, but as his first creation and lacking a father, is called a son.
It is applied to saints or Christians, as being adopted into his family and in the capacity of being his children on earth the name is given as we are suppose to bear his character about with us while we walk the earth.
It is given to strong men who resemble God (in strength) in Genesis 6:2, and Kings, like in Psalm 82:6, are sometimes called his sons, as resembling him in dominion and power.
The name sons of God is also given to angels, because they resemble God and because he is their Creator and Father, (Job 1:6; 2:1; Daniel 3:25) but the title The Son of God is only given to Christ Jesus.
Interestingly, we recall how John describes those who come to faith in his Gospel chapter 1:12-13 and saying, relative to Jesus:
John 1:11 He came unto his own, and his own received him not.
12 But as many as received him, to them gave he power to become the sons of God, even to them that believe on his name:
13 Who were born, not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God.
Our ministry is to reach any and all with the truth of the Gospel of Jesus Christ. The Good News as it were.
We look to the LDS, to others, and we share Him, Yeshua, as the answer, the truth, the life to all things in this world.
But at the end of the line, I am personally not too much interested in speaking or catering to unbelievers, or to marginal believers, or people to receive him by faith but never allow the power God promised to give all so that they can become his sons and daughters.
I look to the audience mentioned in Revelation 1 and 6 that says:
He has made us kings and priests unto God and his Father; to him be glory and dominion for ever and ever. Amen.
Unlike King David, a man of war and blood, our path follows the ultimate King, priest, and Lord of Lords, who reigned in faith and allegiance to His Father’s will and love.
Like him, our Kingdom is not of this world. Like Him we set our face on a heaven above, and like him we follow a different path, a selfless path, a holy path looking for our day of resurrection where God will declare us sons and daughters with power.
And let’s stop here.
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