The Line of David

By now in the Old Testament story, we know that Messiah, God’s appointed heir to bring about Israel’s eternal salvation – and through Israel the world—would come from the tribe of Judah. In today’s devotional, the fulfillment of that promise is narrowed further for us to the royal line of David, Israel’s second and greatest king. 

In David’s last days, it was his wish to honor God by building a temple for Him in Jerusalem. Instead, God told David that his offspring would build a house for His Name and that He would build a house for David through that same offspring – by that, meaning a royal family and one whose reign would endure forever.

Solomon did build the Temple in Jerusalem for God, but he also later died, and the Kingdom was divided and ruled by many wicked kings until the fall of the last Davidic ruler of Judah, Zedekiah, and the invasion of Jerusalem by Babylon. The Temple Solomon built was destroyed in 586 BC and desecrated by Greeks in 168 BC. Although it was being rebuilt and embellished in the time of the Idumean King Herod, its imminent destruction was prophesied by Jesus much to the consternation of the Jewish religious leaders.

Yet God’s promise to David in 2 Samuel 7 remained true! For God did build a house for His own Name through the offspring of David, Jesus Christ. That house is larger than any earthly temple. Paul refers to the churches made up of Jews and Gentiles as the Temple in which God’s own Spirit dwells: “Don't you know that you yourselves are God's temple and that God's Spirit dwells in your midst?” (1 Corinthians 3:16).

God also built an everlasting house for David. All who believe in Jesus Christ from every nation, tribe, or language, are members of a kingdom, a royal house: “you also, like living stones, are being built into a spiritual house… a chosen people, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, God’s special possession” (1 Peter 2:5a, 9). We are co-heirs with Jesus and ingrafted as descendants of David through faith. This is a house that can never be destroyed and is greater than anything Solomon built. It is not a physical structure, but a people made spiritually alive by the grace of God and His indwelling presence both now and forever, which not even death can end!

From the days of Jesus until now, God’s house, the Temple dwelling of His Spirit and His royal family, has grown to billions worldwide. The gates of hell have neither prevented nor prevailed against it, as Christ promised: “I will build my church” (Matthew 16:18). Are you feeling insignificant, or does your life seem too ordinary to matter? If you are in Christ, be encouraged that you are a member of a distinguished royal family made up of an innumerable host of people stretching backward in time and reaching all around the world. You are a precious stone in the Temple of God’s dwelling and an heir of an everlasting heavenly Kingdom that is without end.