Devotion - December 24, 2014 Daily devotion from 2 Samuel 7:8a, 11b-14a, 16. See series: Devotions Devotion - December 24, 2014 “‘Now then, tell my servant David, ‘This is what the LORD Almighty says:…‘the LORD declares to you that the LORD himself will establish a house for you: When your days are over and you rest with your fathers, I will raise up your offspring to succeed you, who will come from your own body, and I will establish his kingdom. He is the one who will build a house for my Name, and I will establish the throne of his kingdom forever. I will be his father, and he will be my son…Your house and your kingdom will endure forever before me; your throne will be established forever.’” 2 Samuel 7:8a, 11b-14a, 16 The baby we see in the manger of Bethlehem tonight is a king. While the humble circumstances surrounding his birth would seem to indicate otherwise, Jesus’ birth was, indeed, the birth of a king. “I will raise up your offspring to succeed you,” the Lord promised King David about a thousand years before Jesus’ birth, “[He] will come from your own body, and I will establish his kingdom.” Jesus was the ultimate fulfillment of this prophecy—born in the line of King David! But what kind of king was Jesus? King David lived in a huge palace; he had servants to serve him and an army to defend him; he governed a prosperous nation, its borders stretching far and wide. Would Jesus’ reign live up to the reign of his ancestor David? To the untrained eye, the life of Jesus looked like nothing more than a disappointing journey of unmet expectations: “Born a king, yet he had no palace. Born a king, yet he had neither servants nor an army. Born a king, yet he had no earthly kingdom of which to speak.” But the Scriptures train our eyes to look for something different from King Jesus. They train our eyes to look for a King who could accomplish the one thing we truly needed—not deliverance from earthly problems or physical enemies, but deliverance from sin and deliverance from the punishment of death and hell that our sins deserved. This is the King that Jesus was born to be because this is the King we truly need. And so, this is the King Jesus was. Born to live as our substitute, he kept God’s law perfectly in every place where we have failed. Born to die as our substitute, he suffered the punishment that our sins deserved through his death on the cross. Born to conquer our spiritual enemies of sin and death and hell, he rose victorious from the grave. Through his saving work, Jesus established a kingdom that has far surpassed the earthly kingdom of his ancestor David. Jesus has established a kingdom of peace between us and our God; a kingdom that will last, not just for this life, but, as the Lord himself promised David, a kingdom that “will endure forever.” Tonight we celebrate the birth of Jesus. Receive him this Christmas Eve as your Savior and your King! Prayer: Lord Jesus, you are our eternal King, and you alone have won for us peace with God. Through the power of your Word, keep this truth in our hearts both now and forever. Amen. Todays Devotion is brought to you by WELS and WhatAboutJesus Creative Commons License This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License. All Scripture quotations, unless otherwise indicated, are taken from the Holy Bible, New International Version®, NIV®. Copyright ©1973, 1978, 1984 by Biblica, Inc.™ Used by permission of Zondervan. All rights reserved worldwide.
Posted on: Wed, 24 Dec 2014 11:56:18 +0000
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