Paul’s Gospel Message to Jews Revealed in the Davidic Covenant
Acts 13:13-39

 

We are in Acts, chapter 13, where we are studying Paul’s message to the synagogue in Pisidian, Antioch. It was in that context we see Paul for the first time truly proclaim the gospel. He is proclaiming the gospel to this synagogue and he approaches the gospel in a way which is quite different from the way we will see him approaching it later on in the next chapter as he addresses a Gentile congregation. He knows that the Gentiles have no frame of reference in terms of who Jesus is, in terms of who God is.They don’t really understand what sin is and they don’t understand the foundational doctrines of the Old Testament. But a Jewish audience in the first century would understand that because of their background in the Torah. He is coming to present the case that Jesus Christ has solved the problem of sin as predicted in the Old Testament and has come to give righteousness to His people that they might be justified. This is a theme that runs all the way through the Scriptures in the Old Testament.

 

It’s very instructive to be able to trace this theme related to tsaddiyq righteousness in the Old Testament.  We saw in our previous lessons in this chapter that Paul begins by saying, “We declare to you glad tidings..”  We could translate that “We proclaim to you the good news” or “we proclaim to you the gospel.” Gospel means good news.  It’s from the Greek word euaggelizo [e)uaggelizw] which is where we get our word evangelism.  He is doing evangelism here.  If we want to learn how to do evangelism here, this is one of the ways we do this is to look at the content of these messages. There are two words which are used in the New Testament for preaching, or proclaiming the gospel.  One is euaggelizo [e)uaggelizw] which simply means to announce good news.  If you break it down etymologically the eu at the beginning is a prefix where the u is usually pronounced like a v. It indicates something good. If you stick it at the beginning of a word, you’re saying you’re doing something positive, something good. We see it in an English word, someone gives a good statement called a eulogy which is a good message about the person. It’s the same kind of thing. angelos [a)ggeloj] is the word for messenger, anggelizo  [a)ggelizw] is the verb for making an announcement. When we add the eu for a prefix, it’s announcing good things. It’s announcing the gospel. So he’s declaring this gospel as something that had been announced previously and related to the promise made to the fathers. That’s a reference referring to the patriarchs of Judaism. 

 

The Bible always relates it to the patriarchs because the emphasis from Adam on in the Scripture is on the male as the head of the home and the seed terminology emphasized from the very beginning of Genesis 3:15 that the seed was to go through a male line. It’s not a matter of prejudice. God’s not putting down women. Women who feel slighted by that indicates they have a poor understanding of the themes of Scripture and why this is there.  It is tracing that lineage down to the Messiah who would be a man. Acts 13:33, Paul says “that God has fulfilled this promise to our children in that He raised up Jesus..” Even in English you can pick up that he’s talking about raising up Jesus. It’s talking about the resurrection and included in it is all the way to the Ascension where Christ is raised and the fact that He is the uniquely begotten one of the Father. He’s the Son of God, indicating He has full deity, identical to the Father. He’s raised up, and Paul’s going to use this raising up terminology in relation to what is said about David being raised up, making that connection there, showing that Jesus is the fulfillment of the Davidic covenant. 

 

Last time I looked at Psalm 110. I want to go back to that briefly because of the question Diesel asked at the end. I hadn’t really caught some of the significance of that and because it’s in that passage, I thought I would go back and just take a swipe at it before we go on. Psalm 110 is a Messianic psalm, closely connected in its message to Psalm 2. In both of these psalms there’s the representation of the Messiah who is in a place where He is waiting to be given the Kingdom. This is the picture we have here.  It’s filled out in Daniel, chapter 7, where the Messiah is referred to as the Son of Man. He is waiting for the Ancient Days [God, the Father] to give Him the kingdom. When the Ancient of Days gives the Messiah, the Son of Man, the Kingdom, that’s when He comes and defeats the armies of man. It’s something that is predicted of a future time when there will be this massive military conflict between the Son of Man, the Messiah, who will come to the earth and defeat the armies of man.

 

There’s a post-millennial heresy that developed out of the charismatic movement back in the 40’s and it’s the idea that the church will bring in the Kingdom. This developed in the healing movements, coming out of the 1940’s and 1950’s, where they were interpreting these army and battle metaphors as this battle between the church and the pagans in the world today and so, through allegorization, they were taking various passages, such as the army in Joel.  Sometimes it is referred to as Joel’s army and then they would just, what I call Rorschach exegesis. You know the Rorschach test is made up of ink blots and you’re asked what it looks like. Whatever comes to your mind, that’s what you say. Something looks familiar here and sounds like something over there so they combine them. And that’s a lot of the kind of thing they had going on. That’s one of the verses they would go to in supporting their view here in Psalm 110. The idea of this battle that’s coming forth, “The Lord will stretch forth Your strong scepter from Zion, saying, Rule in the midst of Your enemies.” So that’s the call, they believe to volunteer for this militant army of Joel. 

 

This is not what the text is talking about. It’s talking about the fact that when you put it together contextually with other passages that talk about the same situation that the Lord, one Divine Person, says to “My Lord”, the only other Lord that would be superior to David would be another divine person, “Sit at my right hand until I make your enemies a footstool for your feet.” So the position of the second Lord is one of passivity, not militancy during the time preceding His being given the Kingdom.  The Kingdom comes only when it’s given to Him and not in this gradual process that comes along in post-millennialism. 

 

Now, to show you why understanding these things is relevant to our lives, you remember there was a lot of to-do about two years ago in August. A Day of Prayer was declared in Texas. Rick Perry made a big deal about that.  He was influenced by some people with the American Family Association and some other groups that were heading up the organization for this. All of those people were coming out of post-millennial, dominion theology. They were into all of this Lord’s army, and “naming and claiming” all of this stuff for the Lord and it’s just the nastiest, gnarliest pit of bad theology you can imagine. But governors usually need to keep their opinions of theology to themselves. They don’t know enough and when they come under influence of what they think are just good Christians they don’t realize the theological agendas and nuances that are going on and that did create some problems that were going on that were reported in the press and other things of that nature. It makes it sound like he wanted to do some things like imposing Christianity on people. 

 

That’s what this fringe element wants to do. There’s a lot more that goes along with this. One of the major players in this was a guy by the name of C. Peter Wagner.  eter Wagner was considered one of the foremost spokesmen for this kind of group.  He used to be the head of the missions department at Fuller Theological Seminary, back in the 60’s and 70’s and he is considered the father of the church growth movement. One of his great disciples is Rick Warren, who is in southern California and who has the purpose driven church.  It’s not the Christ-driven or the Holy Spirit-driven church, but the purpose driven church. There’s a book written by the brother of Chuck Smith, Paul Smith, on the new evangelical spirituality that traces a lot of this stuff.  Sometimes it’s just amazing. You don’t know what’s going on.  It’s not conspiracy driven stuff.  It’s just showing there are influences. 

 

Fuller Seminary really went off the rails in the 60’s because they rejected the inspiration of Scripture. They started getting into more and more of this kind of thing. There was Peter Wagner and another guy, John Wimber. He came out of a Quaker background and became part of the Calvary Chapel movement. Initially he wasn’t sure about tongues but they were having a church service one night and they had this guy who had formerly been involved with Calvary chapel.  He was one of the three men who sort of influenced and started the whole Jesus movement out of Haight-Asbury and Berkley back in the late 60’s by the name of Lonnie Frisbee. Lonnie Frisbee was a weird character. He eventually got arrested for propositioning a male undercover police officer in a city park and died of AIDS about ten years ago. That part of his life was pretty much hidden in the late 70’s. He came out and just called the Holy Spirit down upon this unsuspecting congregation of John Wimber and everyone fell on the ground. That’s the report they had. I don’t know that all of that is true; it’s probably exaggerated because I heard, when I was doing a lot of research for my doctorate on this group in the 80’s, that it was out of that whole power evangelism, John Wimber signs and wonders, third wave of the Holy Spirit, that movement with the rise of the five offices of the church, new institutions of apostles and prophets, that all of this came about. It’s just a spider web of horrible theology and doctrines.

 

So Diesel knew a little bit about that and he asked that question so now I’ve addressed that. It has nothing to do with the context. It’s talking about the Lord when He comes with His saints in Revelation 19, who are the raptured, resurrected, rewarded church age believers who come with Him at the end of the Tribulation to defeat the Antichrist as the False Prophet and the armies of the kings of the earth. That’s the picture you get and the thing we looked at was just the various mistranslations in Psalm 110:3 that throws off the Messianic interpretation. I pointed that out last time that you have these two words here in Hebrew. You have only consonants in the original Hebrew text as written by David. He only wrote consonants. That’s all they had. The vowels were not inserted. Vowels did not develop within the alphabet of the Jews until after the destruction of the second temple.  So if you’re reading Hebrew it was unpointed. The vowels are called points so the vowel points indicate how these words to be pronounced and a group of scribes were responsible for overseeing the preservation and the transmission of the Hebrews Scriptures. They were called the Masseruts. Now they developed some ways to write the vowels in words in order to preserve pronunciation of the words so that if the speaking of it was lost the words would be preserved by these vowel points.  But just like in English when I use the example of the word ‘hear’ and the word ’here’, if you just write those words as consonants they’re the same, ‘hr’. But here and hear have completely different meaning.

 

So the Massarets in Messianic proclamations manipulated the text not by changing the consonants but by changing the vowels. ((CHART)) The word on the right, yalduteyka to the vowels on the word to the left yelidtika, changes the meaning. The word on the right is not in the Masoretic text in the Hebrew Scriptures but that is obviously the word that is translated into the Septuagint. The Septuagint was translated before Christ so it represents in its Greek translation a Hebrew original that is different in places from the Masoretic text that we use simply because of some of these types of changes.

 

I pointed out last time that Psalm 110:3 “in the beauties of holiness from the womb of the dawn you have the dew of your youth” would be translated to indicate that Christ “from the time of your begottenness you have the dew of the beginning.”  It indicates the begotten One is eternal.  So that word on the right is tied over to the birth of the begottenness of the Son in Psalm 2:7.  Now that connection is what I was pointing out last time. 

 

Paul doesn’t quote Psalm 110 in Acts 13 but that’s an important thing to understand that this idea of begotten from yalad which means to give birth, to be begotten.  In Israel today and you see a bunch of kids and an individual young boy he’s a yalad. If it’s a young girl, she’s a yalada. If you see a bunch of kids they’re yaladim So “yad” as a verb means to give birth and how you structure that is a noun and indicates whether it’s a male child, a female child or just a bunch of children. But it has that idea of begottenness which is different from being created or being made which is the terminology refined in the Nicene Creed that Jesus was the second person of the Trinity and was begotten but not made, emphasizing his eternality. As the Son of God He shares the same divine essence as God so that reviews us a little bit where we were last time. 

 

In Acts 13 Paul is weaving together these Old Testament passages and prophecies and showing how the Old Testament predicted someone greater than David who would be resurrected and raised up and would be the future ruler of the Kingdom. So this is how he’s tying this together.  He talks about the Messiah as the Lord in Psalm 110:1 who is the begotten One who will be raised and is waiting to be given the Kingdom. Psalm 2 focuses on the conflict between God’s anointed in Psalm 2:2 and the kings of the earth. Now he’s going to shift this to talk about the Davidic covenant in Acts 13:34. He’s established the Messiah as the begotten one, the eternal one, having eternal deity and then in verse 34, he says, “As for the fact that He raised Him up from the dead, no longer to return to decay [corruption]..” Now that’s an important word because the idea of corruption there indicates the normal process of decay in the physical body after death as it returns to dust.  So “he was raised from the dead no more to return to corruption,” and then he quotes from Isaiah 55:3 and he will connect that to Psalm 16:10, “Incline your ear and come to Me, Listen, that you may live; and I will make an everlasting covenant with you, according to the faithful mercies shown to David.” These are really some good verses to understand and see how they connect to understand the Messianic credentials of Jesus. 

 

Isaiah 55 is focusing upon a message of judgment on unbelieving Israel but that’s the also the opportunity for redemption, for salvation.  God constantly offers redemption and forgiveness to His people. As long as they’re alive, and as long as you’re alive, there’s always the opportunity for things to change.  So in Isaiah 55:1 it says, “Ho, everyone who thirsts, come to the waters and you who have no money, [see, you have nothing to bring to God or to salvation. We cannot be good enough because we are corrupt inherently] come buy and eat ..” If we don’t have any money, how can we buy? Because it’s given freely. The food, the water, God is the one who freely supplies to us. “Yes, come, buy wine and milk without money and without cost.” That’s what grace is. Grace does not assign a cost to salvation. It’s given as a free gift.

 

Does that mean it’s free?  No, a purchase price had to be paid. That purchase price was the death of the Messiah. It was when the Messiah died that He paid that price, that penalty for sin. But because it was paid by someone else, it is free to us. Isaiah goes on to say, “Why do you spend money for what is not bread?” In other words, why are you spending in your effort?  Why are you going out and performing good deeds and righteous deeds and all of this ritual to get something that doesn’t provide nourishment for you? Because it’s false; it’s emptiness. It might make you feel good but it might give you the trappings of life but it doesn’t give you life. It’s not real bread. “Why do spend money for what is not bread and your wages for what does not satisfy? 

 

“Listen carefully to Me, and eat what is good, and delight yourself in abundance. Incline your ear and come to me. Listen, that you may live.” Now that’s the invitation. Listen to God and you will have life; your soul will live and then he says that if you come to God and you turn back to him (Deuteronomy 30: 1-2 where Israel needs to turn back to God and turn from their idolatry], “Then I will make an everlasting covenant with you (Hebrew word for covenant here), an unconditional, unending, permanent covenant] according to the faithful mercies shown to David.” Now there’s an interesting facet to this in the Hebrew because he uses the word chesed to indicate it’s the faithfulness of God and the grace of God and this emphasizes the certainty of fulfilling the everlasting covenant that God made with David. 

 

So let’s just review this part of it briefly. The Davidic covenant is covered in 2 Samuel 7: 11-14 which emphasizes David’s immediate human descendant, Solomon, in this passage. Psalm 89 is a meditation upon the Davidic covenant and God’s faithfulness to David and then 1 Chronicles 17: 10-14 gives us a different perspective on the same event when God gives the covenant to David.  It’s the same event as 2 Samuel 7 but it’s slightly different. The emphasis in 2 Samuel is on the human descent through Solomon. 1 Chronicles 17 emphasizes the one who will ultimately fulfill the covenant, the deity or divine side of the one who fulfills that covenant. We look at this covenant in these passages and we see there are two people involved in making this covenant. There’s God on the one hand and David on the other hand. David stands as a representative of all of his descendants and God is entering into this as a one-sided or unilateral covenant. God is binding Himself just as He did with Abraham, just as He did with Israel in the land covenant, and in the new covenant, the Davidic covenant, He’s binding Himself, not David. No conditions are being placed on David. The control is all upon God.  It’s unilateral and God is granting this to David.

 

Now this is elaborating on the seed promise that was made to Abraham in the Abrahamic covenant. There were three parts to that: land, seed, and blessing. The land related to the real estate for Israel, the seed related to the number of descendants of Israel, ultimately the focus on the Messiah, and then the blessing is that they were to be a world-wide blessing. Now the sad part today is that this world-wide blessing aspect for Israel is often spoken up under the phrase meaning social justice.  This has become sort of the prime directive, you might say, for all Jews. It’s nothing more than social activism and social justice, words that are basically code words for socialism and communism. It’s been twisted that way. The way to be a blessing to the world is to take from the rich and give to the poor, do good deeds, and things of that nature. So this blessing has been taken completely out of context in modern Judaism as a mandate for social justice. This answers the question some people say, “Why is that in the light of the fact we have a Muslim sympathizer in the White House, someone who is anti-Israel but is forced by the exigencies of his political situation to at least act pro-Israel.  The answer is that they have sold their souls to social justice and socialism and because of that they can’t see reality. They want somebody who is going to make these social equities to come into place from the top down rather than from the bottom up and it has become another form of idolatry. 

 

I spent some time the other day with a good friend of mine who is a Jewish lawyer here in town who was just wailing about this and why they never seem to understand anything.  He had read a book I had recommended for him.  It’s out of print and it’s called A Match Made in Heaven written by Zev Chafets who was originally from Detroit, made aliyah to Israel back during the ’67 war and had involvements with the press and other things in Menachem Begin’s government back In the early 80’s and most recently is known as writing the authorized biography of Rush Limbaugh, An Army of One. 

 

Chafets is a humorous, amusing, light-hearted writer. He’s great. His book, A Match Made in Heaven is designed to show why Israel needs the support of American evangelicals. It’s very insightful for evangelicals to read this book and for Jews, too. You find out a lot of things you didn’t know. One of the things I appreciated is the chapter called “Israelis are Republicans, Jews are Democrats.” Chafets says Israelis are Republicans because they live under a constant existential threat and are forced to face reality.  It doesn’t mean they’re all conservatives. It doesn’t mean there aren’t liberals there. I’ve met several who want to give all the territories of Samaria and Judah back to people who‘ve never had a right to it to begin with, because of their guilt. Anyway, that’s part of all this. That’s an insightful book and my friend was talking about how great it was and how much he learned.  He said that one of the points Chafets made is that Jews are so committed to social justice that forty percent of the Jewish population in America would rather vote for a president, even if they knew his election would lead to the destruction of the modern state of Israel as long as it preserved the right to abortion.  They are saying it would be better to preserve that right on their idolatrous altar than to preserve the modern state of Israel. A lot of people are just blown away by that but you have to understand that the Jewish community are mostly agnostic or atheists and they have no interest whatsoever in their Biblical heritage or an understanding of it as they’ve been influenced by this works righteousness idea. 

 

So we’re back to the Davidic covenant. The Davidic covenant recognizes that man can’t do it. God is going to provide an eternal descendent that will do it. This is seen in the fact there’s a promise of an eternal house or dynasty to David, there’s a promise of an eternal kingdom to David, and the promise of an eternal throne to David.  And only someone who has an attitude of eternality can fulfill those aspects of the covenant. A normal human being can’t do it. So there’s a strong implication here that the one who fulfills this in the line of David here is not only going to be of the lineage of David but is going to also have to be divine and possess eternality as one of their attributes. The lowest common denominator here is the original of this verse, “I will make an everlasting covenant with you, the sure mercies of David.”  So what is being said here is that when Israel, when the Jewish people have inclined their ear and come to God and turned away from the idolatry of socialism, turned away from the idolatry of atheism and agnosticism and materialism and all of the other isms, when they have turned back to God [Deuteronomy 30:1-3] then God will restore them to the land. This is a restoration passage and God says it will be at that time that “I will make an everlasting covenant with you.” It’s been made with David but this is when it’s activated. 

 

Then we have other passages that relate to this such as Jeremiah 23: 5-6, passages that refer to Jesse, David’s father. They refer to the ‘stump of Jesse” which is the house of David that has been shot down and all that is left is a stump.  Out of the stump comes a branch and that branch is the Messiah as used to represent that.  So Jeremiah 23: 5-6 talks about this, “Behold the days are coming, declares the Lord that I will raise up for David a righteous Branch.” Watch that word “righteous”. This is a major thing. In Judaism, there’s an emphasis on righteousness tsaddiyq and we have to understand how the Bible presents righteousness. 

 

As we go through this, do you remember those songs and cartoons when you were a kid and you followed the bouncing ball?  Well, righteousness is the bouncing ball and you have to trace this through the Old Testament.  God is going to raise to David a righteous branch. The focus attribute of the branch who is a descendent of David is this perfect righteousness.  He is a king who will reign and prosper and He is a king who will execute judgment and righteousness.” Grammatically these are seen as two sides of the same coin and only because He is righteous will His judgment or His rule be righteous. So His rule will be characterized by righteousness. In verse 6, “In His days Judah will be saved and Israel will dwell securely.”  Now that hasn’t happened.  At the time of Jeremiah in the 590’s the northern kingdom of Israel doesn’t dwell safely. It doesn’t dwell at all. It was destroyed 130 years earlier by the Assyrians so there’s no northern kingdom of Israel at all at the time Jeremiah is writing this. Judah at this time is under the heel of the Babylonians. They’re already been militarily defeated in 605 and they were defeated again in 595 and the first temple is going to be destroyed and they’re going to be completely defeated by Nebuchadnezzar. 

 

This is a prediction that although everything is falling apart right now, the economy is collapsing, militarily we’re being defeated, everything is in a state of chaos, there’s a future hope.  The future hope is in this future branch of righteousness.  In his day Judah will be saved and Israel will dwell safely.  So once again if Judah is to be saved and Israel is to dwell safely there has to be a restoration to the land.  That hasn’t happened yet.  I think it is happening now, the restoration has been going on for the last one hundred years but it’s just the beginning of this restoration.  There are now as many Jews living in Israel as living outside for the first time since 586.  You have more Jews living in Israel than outside the land.  At the time of the first century you just had a small percentage living in the land.  You still had major Jewish populations in Alexandria, Egypt, in Turkey, all through Asia Minor and Babylon.  It wasn’t just Judea. 

 

The name by which the Messiah will be known, this branch, is the Lord, our righteousness. Again, it is the righteousness of this descendent of David whose righteousness becomes our righteousness. Now we’re going to go ten chapters later in Jeremiah. I’m just going to hit just a couple of high points from Jeremiah 33:14 down through Jeremiah 33:22.  When I go through these I encourage you to make notes. Daisy chain in the upper margin over Jeremiah 23: 5-6. Make a note, “look at Jeremiah 33 and following.”  In Jeremiah 33:14 we have another prediction about the branch, “Behold days are coming, declares the Lord..”  So this is written just before the destruction of Jerusalem in 586 so this is in the future. “…the days  are coming, declares the Lord, when I will fulfill the good word which I have spoken concerning the house of Israel and the house of Judah.” So it’s the fulfillment of all these prophecies and promises that God had made to the fathers, to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob and to others down through the centuries. He says, “In those days and at that time I will cause a righteous Branch of David to spring forth, and He shall execute justice and righteousness in the earth.  In those days Judah will be saved, Jerusalem will dwell in safety, and this is the name by which she will be called, the Lord is our righteousness. For thus says the Lord, David shall never lack a man to sit on the throne of the house of Israel.” So there will be a restoration of the Davidic monarchy. “And the Levitical priests shall never lack a man before Me to offer burnt offerings, to burn grain offerings and to prepare sacrifices continually.” So again there’s an indication there will be a restoration of the temple in order for sacrifices and there has to be a restoration of the priesthood for these sacrifices. 

 

These are not sacrifices related to salvation. Those were fulfilled at the cross and they’re not repeated. These are sacrifices related to praise, sacrifices related to thanksgiving, sacrifices related to ritual cleansing which will be necessary for entering into the Millennial temple. Verse 19, “The word of the Lord came to Jeremiah, saying, ‘Thus says the Lord, “If you can break my covenant for the day and my covenant for the night, so that day and night will not be at their appointed time in their season, then My covenant may also be broken with David My servant so that he will not have a son to reign on his throne, with the Levitical priests, My ministers.’” In other words he’s saying, if you can get night and day to stop then this covenant is broken but you can’t get night and day to stop so this covenant will never be broken. It is permanent, everlasting covenant. 

 

Verse 22, “As the host of heaven cannot be counted and the sand of the sea cannot be measured, so I will multiply the descendants of David, My servant, and the Levites who minister to Me.” I’ll just stop there. This emphasizes the fact that there will a branch from the descendants of David who will rule.  Now let’s skip over to Ezekiel. Ezekiel is writing in Babylon roughly at the same time as Jeremiah. Ezekiel was taken captive in the second group of deportees in the 590’s and taken to Babylon.  He is ministering to the Jews in Babylon. In Ezekiel 37: 24 and following he says, “My servant David will be king over them, and they will all have one shepherd and they will walk in My ordinances and keep My statutes and observe them. Then they will live on the land that I gave to Jacob, My servant, in which your fathers lived, and they will live on it, they, and their sons and their sons’ sons, forever; and David My servant will be their prince forever. I will make a covenant of peace with them; it will be an everlasting covenant with them. And I will place them and multiply them, and will set My sanctuary in the midst forever.” It’s everlasting. The covenant of peace is another term for the new covenant. The new covenant is tied to the fulfillment of the covenant with David. 

 

So we have these two covenants, the fulfillment of which takes place only when the Messiah comes and establishes His kingdom in the future. In Ezekiel 21:27 there is a lament of the fallen Jerusalem. “A ruin, a ruin, a ruin [or overthrown], I will make it. This also will be no more until He comes whose right it is, and I will give it to Him.” This is a reference to the Messiah. Ezekiel 34:23 says, “Then I will set over them one shepherd, My servant David, and he will feed them; he will feed them himself and be their shepherd.” Now when it comes to the language here there are some who think this is referring to the Messiah as the descendent of David and just referring to him as David. There’s another view that David in his resurrection with the Old Testament saints will be given the rulership over Israel in the Millennial kingdom while Messiah rules over the whole earth. I think that is the more accurate view, that Jesus as the Messiah rules over the whole earth, David reigns over Israel and Jerusalem. 

 

We go from there to Hosea 3: 4-5, “For the sons of Israel will remain for many days without king or prince, without sacrifice or sacred pillar and without ephod or household idols.” This is a reference to today when they are under divine discipline.  Verse 5, “Afterward the sons of Israel will return and seek the Lord their God and David their king..”  So there’s an initial return in apostasy when they return in unbelief. Then there will be the time known as the time of Daniel’s seventieth week, sometimes known as the tribulation, or the time of Jacob’s wrath and this ends when the Messiah comes back and rescues Israel from being destroyed by the Antichrist so that is when they turn to God, just before the end of that period, prior to destruction. “And they will come trembling to the Lord and to His goodness in the last days.”

 

Another passage, Jeremiah 30: 8-9, “For it shall come about on that day [usually refers to the Day of the Lord which is a reference to the end times, last days period], declares the Lord that I will break his yoke from off their neck and strangers will no longer make them their slaves. But they shall serve the Lord their God and David their king, whom I will raise up for them.”  Another passage, Psalm 132:12 and 17, “If your sons will keep My covenant and My testimony which I will teach them, their sons also shall sit upon your throne forever [referring to the Davidic covenant] there I will make the horn of David to spring forth; I have prepared a lamp for Mine anointed.”

 

Mashiach in the Hebrew is the word for anointed which is CHRISTOS [xristoj] in the Greek. Then Psalm 89 which is a long psalm also references his seed. “His sMashiacheed shall endure forever and His throne is the sun before me. It shall be established forever like the moon is a faithful witness in the sky.” So that takes us through David and the fact that the sure mercies of David are going to be visited upon Israel. Now what’s interesting in the Greek is that you have a word that’s used in reference to the sure mercies, it’s really the holy mercies, it’s HOSIOS [o(sioj], like HAGIOS [a(gioj] which is the word normally translated holy but it has the same idea. It’s more of a personal holiness.

 

It’s hosios [o(sioj] and this is used by Paul to segue into the next psalm he’s going to quote, Psalm 16:10, “For you will not abandon my soul to Sheol, nor will you allow Your Holy One to undergo decay.” It says in another psalm “You will not allow your hosios one in the Septuagint. Now that raises up the whole issue of Psalm 16:10 which we’ve never studied before. We need to do this. It’s a fascinating little study on 16:10 because it says, “For you will not leave my soul in Sheol.” This is David talking. David says, “You’re not going to abandon me.” That what the word leave means. It’s a very strong word and it means you’re not going to desert me or abandon my soul in Sheol. Now David has the confidence that God’s not going to abandon him in Sheol. But the language here is hyperbolic. It’s extreme. It’s exaggeration. While it is true about David, he’s not going to be abandoned, the hyperbolic language is only fulfilled in the person of Jesus Christ and his resurrection. There is an immediate sense or application to David but the real application that Paul is able to make because of divinely inspired application is that he applies this then to Jesus who will not undergo bodily corruption. 

 

The Hebrew word for corruption is the word translated ‘pit’. It means decay so using the word pit involves everything that goes on in physical decay and corruption.  So Paul then, under the inspiration of scripture and the Holy Spirit, takes this and applies it to the resurrection of Christ. This is what he shows in verse 36 and following, “For David, after he had served the purpose of God in his own generation, fell asleep, and was laid among his fathers and underwent decay.” He was buried in the grave and his body deteriorated and decayed into dust. But that’s not so for Jesus. We’ll come back and work through this last part next time.