Advent is a time of anticipation, in which we allow the Old Testament to point us to the coming of the Messiah. We allow the Prophets to orient us to holy waiting; yet where Israel could only guess how God was going to rescue the world from sin and death, as Christians we know what Emmanuel (“God With Us”) looks like, sounds like.

In this series of posts we will sit with some of the archetypes of the Old Testament in order to reveal what the arrival of King Jesus meant then, and what it means today. Our third meditation will be on the story of David, the original Shepherd King.

You can listen to the sermon version of this message by clicking here.

Read Matthew 1:1-17

The lineage of Jesus is a powerful reading for the Advent/Christmas season, yet tragically one that is so often overlooked. What merely seems a random list of names to us, some familiar and some anonymous, to the first readers of Matthew’s Gospel would have contained multitudes. Each generation bears within it the map of God’s covenant promise first made to Abraham and reinforced in Isaac and Jacob; then refined in the inauguration of King David as the way God intends to rescue the whole world. Of particular note, and a scandal for Matthew’s primarily Jewish audience, is the inclusion of several women that break up the rhythm of the patriarchal procession of names. It is noteworthy that most of these women were, in fact, gentiles; even here Matthew is preparing us to see how God has been incorporating all peoples in God’s family form the start. This challenged the “purity mindset” of many Jews of the time looking for their promised messiah. Additionally, the one anecdote Matthew wants us to remember about the treasured King David was his betrayal and murder of Uriah the Hittite in order to take his wife, Bathsheba, as his own. These cheeky inclusions begin to upturn our assumptions about the kinds of people God chooses for redemption. Many are second-born, scandalous, or anonymous.

Perhaps most profoundly, Matthew stresses in his genealogy that there are in total three sets of fourteen names. Most Jews at the time would quickly make the association that three sets of fourteen also breaks down into six sets of seven - seven being a divine number that represents wholeness, completeness, perfection. The summary of this astounding passage could be thus:

What God promised in Abraham, and refined in David, was brought to completion in Jesus.

Remember that God warned Israel in the days of Moses to avoid taking an earthly king “like all the other nations". Moses goes to great length to predict what will happen - power-hungry militaristic arms dealing, extreme taxation, and pharaonic oppression that hearkens back to their days in Egypt. When the Israelites demand a king at the end of the age of Judges the prophet Samuel is enraged, yet God relents to the people and gives them what they want.

The first appointee is someone who looked the part of a modern king - Saul was strong and handsome, easily winning the favor of the people. Initially his reign is benevolent, yet his grip on power corrupts him over time. Meanwhile, Samuel is sent to the house of Jesse of Bethlehem to appoint a better king. As God strangely passes over the first seven of Jesse’s sons, he settles on the runt of the litter - “the Lord does not look at the things people look at. People look at the outward appearance, but the Lord looks at the heart” (1 Samuel 16:7). Although David is anointed in private as the true king of Israel, he must wait 15 years to ascend to the throne. Those tumultuous years see him wandering the countryside, avoiding the wrath of Saul as his personal fame increases in the wake of the defeat of Goliath and the Philistine hordes. Eventually, Saul descends into madness and David is able to take hold of the promised throne. In Jewish tradition he is considered the greatest king of his dynasty, yet as we have already seen Matthew intimate, he has flaws. From David the successive royal line ranges from mediocre to atrocious. Even the descriptions of his son Solomon’s reign echo the warnings of Deuteronomy to show how quickly corruption takes hold, even to the point at which Solomon (ironically the son-in-law of the newest Pharaoh) enslaves his own people for the building of the temple (1 Kings 5:13). In a way, the Israelite are back to where they started.

Read Ezekiel 34:1-16, 23-24

The Anointed Shepherd King of Bethlehem is the only one who can rule the world as God intends. Even though David was fallible, he set an archetypal pattern in mind for the Israelites of what God was to be in perfection - God wants a king who is also a shepherd. These two images hold in creative tension a model for not only what God values in leaders, but Who God is in completion. It is a tension of authority and humility, of privilege and lowliness.

At the tail end of the Davidic dynasty and the encroaching exile to Babylon, the prophet Ezekiel leans into this tension to indict the “bad shepherds” of Israel for their treatment of God’s flock, and offers a vision of how God will redeem this dire situation. What is most striking in this prophetic account is how it holds togethers God’s promise that “I myself will do this” and “David my prince” will be the one to rule. One can easily imagine the gears turning for readers of Ezekiel’s book - how is God going to accomplish this? Is it the direct rule of YHWH, or a human emissary? Of course, we know see the brilliance of God’s revelation in Jesus as both these claims met in one Divine Person.

In Jesus’ day, just like ours, the political and religious elite were “bad shepherds”, power-hungry and exploitative. They extort the flock, taking what they can - when God cherishes our gifts and blesses them. They intend to keep us subservient by keeping us weak, sick, and broken - when God desires to heal and empower us to wholeness. They lose interest in us when we are lost - when God relentlessly pursues us, leaving behind the ninety-nine, in order to bring us safely home. They abandon us to the “wild beasts” of the age - when God courageously protects us from the fangs of the Evil One. These “bad shepherds” preserve themselves and their privilege at all costs - but God sacrifice Himself for our sake.

Read John 10:11-18

We can now appreciate the allusions Jesus makes in this famous passage with some historical precedent. He sees himself as the fulfillment of the Ezekiel prophecy, both as God incarnate and the perfect embodiment of who David was in partiality. David the shepherd saw God as the ultimate shepherd (Psalm 23). David the king, in his best moments, saw God and he-who-sits-at-God’s-right-hand as the true king (Psalm 110). The questions becomes for you and I this Advent season - Will you trust Jesus as the Good Shepherd, the perfect David, or keep trusting the bad shepherds? This season is an opportunity for you to attune to the voice of the Good Shepherd, calling you to him by name.

Reflect:

  • What are the wolves in my life right now that would seek to scatter me?

  • Who are the hired hands that abandon me and leave me exposed?

  • What is Jesus saying to me in this Advent season? Do I know and trust his voice?