The King
This is lesson 4 in a module we’re working through called Through His People, where we’re looking at five key figures through the Bible story, doing a biblical theology of each. We’ve looked at the Originals, the Patriarch, the Mediator, and this evening we’re looking at the King. Now, if we’re going to single out the king of God’s people (apart from Jesus—we’ll get there), who do we think of? The man after God’s own heart: David. So that’s where we’re going to begin.
The choosing of the king
We pick up in 1 Samuel 8:
1 When Samuel became old, he made his sons judges over Israel. ... 3 Yet his sons did not walk in his ways but turned aside after gain. They took bribes and perverted justice.
4 Then all the elders of Israel gathered together and came to Samuel at Ramah 5 and said to him, “Behold, you are old and your sons do not walk in your ways. Now appoint for us a king to judge us like all the nations.” 6 But the thing displeased Samuel when they said, “Give us a king to judge us.” And Samuel prayed to the Lord. 7 And the Lord said to Samuel, “Obey the voice of the people in all that they say to you, for they have not rejected you, but they have rejected me from being king over them. 8 According to all the deeds that they have done, from the day I brought them up out of Egypt even to this day, forsaking me and serving other gods, so they are also doing to you. 9 Now then, obey their voice; only you shall solemnly warn them and show them the ways of the king who shall reign over them” (vv. 1–9).
Israel that they want a king. This is frowned upon by God somewhat—not actually because he has a problem with them having a king; it’s because they want a king instead of God. They’ve rejected God as their king. But he says, “Fine. Have a king. You go ahead and see what happens.” He tells Samuel to “warn them and show them the ways of the king who shall reign over them” (v. 9), which he does, but we’ll come back to that later.
So the Israelites want a king, and in the very next chapter we’re introduced to a man named Saul. And what do we learn about Saul? He’s handsome and tall—and remember, the way characters are introduced in the Hebrew Bible is usually a hint about what details in the story we should be paying attention to.
Saul is anointed by Samuel (10:9–27), and made king over Israel. And Saul gets off to a really good start. But it isn’t long before he shows where his heart is at: he isn’t absolutely committed to God, nor particularly attentive to what God wants. So Samuel says to Saul:
13 “You have not kept the command the Lord your God gave you; if you had, he would have established your kingdom over Israel for all time. 14 But now your kingdom will not endure; the Lord has sought out a man after his own heart and appointed him ruler of his people, because you have not kept the Lord’s command” (13:13–14).
What did the narrator want us to know about Saul? That he was handsome and tall. We’re about to be introduced to Saul’s successor, David—what does the narrator want us to know about him? 1 Samuel 16:7: “The Lord said to Samuel, ‘Do not consider his appearance or his height, for I have rejected him. The Lord does not look at the things people look at. People look at the outward appearance, but the Lord looks at the heart.’ ” Because of his heart, David is chosen over all his brothers, who outwardly look more impressive than him.
It takes quite some time for David to finally reach the throne after he’s anointed in ch. 16, and when he does, his reign is far from perfect—we need only think of the whole deal with Bathsheba and Uriah to see that. But even so, it’s to David that a promise is made in 2 Samuel 7.
The conversation in 2 Samuel 7 revolves around houses—the Hebrew word here is בַּיִת, but the word בַּיִת can actually be translated a few ways. David realises that he’s living in a “בַּיִת of cedar”—his house; his palace—while God lives “in a tent” (v. 2), so he resolves to do something about it: he’s going to be build God a בַּיִת—a temple. But God says no: he’s never asked for a בַּיִת, and nor does he need one (vv. 5–7). No, instead God is going to make David a בַּיִת—a dynasty:
11 The Lord declares to you that the Lord himself will establish a house for you: 12 When your days are over and you rest with your ancestors, I will raise up your offspring to succeed you, your own flesh and blood, and I will establish his kingdom. 13 He is the one who will build a house for my Name, and I will establish the throne of his kingdom forever. 14 I will be his father, and he will be my son. When he does wrong, I will punish him with a rod wielded by men, with floggings inflicted by human hands. 15 But my love will never be taken away from him, as I took it away from Saul, whom I removed from before you. 16 Your house and your kingdom will endure forever before me; your throne will be established forever” (vv. 11–16).
The question is, which of David’s descendants will that be?
The rise and fall of the king
Solomon
Solomon is David’s successor, and, as we pointed out in week 1, he gets off to what looks like a really great start. In 1 Kings 3 God appeared to Solomon in a dream, and said, “As for whatever you want me to give you” (v. 5). Seems like a pretty sweet deal—what’s Solomon going to ask for? In thinking about it, he realises that he’s been put in charge of a kingdom of God’s chosen people, “a great people, too numerous to count or number” (v. 8). So he asks for a “discerning heart to govern [God’s] people and to distinguish between right and wrong” (v. 9)—or between “good and evil”, which maybe calls to mind a particular tree back in Genesis 2–3.
11 So God said to him, “Since you have asked for this and not for long life or wealth for yourself, nor have asked for the death of your enemies but for discernment in administering justice, 12 I will do what you have asked. I will give you a wise and discerning heart, so that there will never have been anyone like you, nor will there ever be. 13 Moreover, I will give you what you have not asked for—both wealth and honor—so that in your lifetime you will have no equal among kings” (vv. 11–13).
And that’s exactly what happens. Solomon wakes up, and the second half of the chapter is given to him making a wise judgment so that “when Israel heard the verdict the king had given, they held the king in awe, because they saw that he had wisdom from God to administer justice” (v. 28). Ch. 4 talks about his staff team, his daily provisions—and let me tell you, the guy was rolling in it—and the chapter ends off with another appraisal of his wisdom: “God gave Solomon wisdom and very great insight, and a breadth of understanding as measureless as the sand on the seashore” (4:29). He builds the temple, and if you’ve listened to our lesson on the temple from our first module, you’ll see a bit of how fancy it all was. In ch. 10 the Queen of Sheba comes to visit Solomon, and her verdict is that, “Man, this guy is killing it” (see vv. 6–7). On all counts, it seems, Solomon’s kingdom was impeccable.
Well maybe not on all counts. The kingdom he built was incredible—by human standards. The question is, how did it shape up according to God’s standards?
In Deuteronomy 17 we have a picture of what God expected the king to be like—what he was supposed to do and not do:
14 When you enter the land the Lord your God is giving you and have taken possession of it and settled in it, and you say, “Let us set a king over us like all the nations around us,” 15 be sure to appoint over you a king the Lord your God chooses. He must be from among your fellow Israelites. Do not place a foreigner over you, one who is not an Israelite. 16 The king, moreover, must not acquire great numbers of horses for himself or make the people return to Egypt to get more of them, for the Lord has told you, “You are not to go back that way again.” 17 He must not take many wives, or his heart will be led astray. He must not accumulate large amounts of silver and gold (vv. 14–17).
Flip back over to 1 Kings, and what do we see?
26 Solomon accumulated chariots and horses; he had fourteen hundred chariots and twelve thousand horses, which he kept in the chariot cities and also with him in Jerusalem. 27 The king made silver as common in Jerusalem as stones, and cedar as plentiful as sycamore-fig trees in the foothills. 28 Solomon’s horses were imported from Egypt and from Kue—the royal merchants purchased them from Kue at the current price. 29 They imported a chariot from Egypt for six hundred shekels of silver, and a horse for a hundred and fifty (10:26–29).
And in the next chapter, as we noticed in week 1 of this module, we hear about Solomon’s many wives.
Solomon goes ahead and does exactly what Deuteronomy 17 said the king mustn’t do. What the king is supposed to do—so come back to Deuteronomy 17—is this:
18 When he takes the throne of his kingdom, he is to write for himself on a scroll a copy of this law, taken from that of the Levitical priests. 19 It is to be with him, and he is to read it all the days of his life so that he may learn to revere the Lord his God and follow carefully all the words of this law and these decrees 20 and not consider himself better than his fellow Israelites and turn from the law to the right or to the left. Then he and his descendants will reign a long time over his kingdom in Israel (vv. 18–20).
God appears to Solomon three times through the course of 1 Kings 1–11, and every time the main thing he wants to talk to him about is keeping his laws (3:10–14; 6:11–13; 11:9–12). And the third time, he’s hot with anger because Solomon’s done exactly the reverse. This isn’t a king seeped in Torah; this is a king who’s using his wisdom to set up a kingdom that serves his own interests.
Should this come as a surprise to us? The way Solomon’s story is usually read is that he starts strong, but when he marries too many foreign women, his reign takes a nosedive. But when we pay attention to the details, I don’t think that’s the picture 1 Kings gives us.
In week 1 we noticed a whole lot of parallels between Solomon and the creation account. There are some genuine positives to Solomon’s reign. But from the start, there are also warning signs. Notice the way he’s introduced in 3:3: “Solomon showed his love for the Lord by walking according to the instructions given him by his father David, except that he offered sacrifices and burned incense on the high places.” The abundance of horses we saw in ch. 10 were already mentioned in ch. 4. It’s a little bit suspect that he marries Pharaoh’s daughter, and when she’s mentioned again in ch. 9 it’s more than a little ironic that she’s mentioned in the same breath as forced labor, store cities, and chariots (9:16–24). When Samuel warned the people of Israel how their king was going to treat them, he warned them that the king would work them hard (1 Sam. 8:16–17). Neither Saul nor David did that—but Solomon did (1 Kgs. 4:7, 22–23, 27–28; 5:13–18), and “the forced labor issue will be the one that precipitates the civil war between Judah and Israel, leading to the rift in the kingdom.”
As we saw in Samuel, what all this comes down to is a heart-issue. Solomon asked God for a discerning heart (3:9); God gives him a wise and understanding heart. Back in 1 Samuel 16:7 we learned that while humans may look at outward appearances, God looks at the heart. And, as one scholar explains that “[i]n ch. 11 the reader finds out that the heart of Solomon was precisely the main problem.”
As a result the kingdom is torn in two: Israel in the north, Judah in the south.
Ahaz and Hezekiah
While all that was going on, another storm was brewing. Assyria in the north were gaining power. It was one thing to have the military strength to conquer another place; it was another thing altogether to know how to keep it under your control once you’d done so. Assyria, it seems, were the first to work out how to do that: with Tiglath-piliser’s accession to the throne, his “campaigns differed from those of his predecessors in that they were not tribute-gathering expeditions, but permanent conquests.” In the time leading up, there was a lull where Assryia’s leadership wasn’t terribly organised; but now they were ready, and they were moving south.
The lull meant that the nations who would have been under pressure had a chance to rebuild. So when Assyria was regaining power, Israel and Syria decided they weren’t having it. It was time for a revolution. And they wanted Judah to join.
Ahaz, the king of Judah, had a choice: he could join Israel and Syria in the revolution; or he could join Assyria—perhaps, as one scholar suggests, “if Judah joined Assyria soon enough, not merely when she had to, Assyria might leave Judah alone as a faithful ally.”
But what if there was a third option? That’s what Isaiah comes with in Isaiah 7: “the Lord said to Isaiah, ‘Go out, you and your son Shear-Jashub, to meet Ahaz at the end of the aqueduct of the Upper Pool, on the road to the Launderer’s Field. Say to him, “Be careful, keep calm and don’t be afraid. Do not lose heart because of these two smoldering stubs of firewood” ’ ” (vv. 3–4)—talking about the kings of Israel and Syria who were plotting against him. “The hearts of Ahaz and his people were shaken, as the trees of the forest are shaken by the wind” (v. 2), but Isaiah says to him, they’re nothing but burnt out logs. These guys are nothing to worry about. Trust in Yahweh—v. 9: “If you don’t stand firm in faith, you will not stand at all.”
But Ahaz had already made up his mind. He wasn’t interested in listening to God—he already had his own plans: he wanted to make an alliance with Assyria. But it won’t be as peachy as he imagines it’ll be. For his faithlessness, Isaiah warns, Assyria will rush in, like a river that’s burst its banks and reach right up to Judah’s neck (8:6–8).
It’s a puzzling thing. Look how Ahaz and his crew are introduced in 7:2: “the house of David.” And wasn’t it to David that the promise was made, that his house would be established? Now it seems what Isaiah was told in ch. 6 is going to happen:
Cities [will] lie ruined and without inhabitant, the houses left deserted and the fields ruined and ravaged, the Lord will send everyone far away and the land is utterly forsaken. And though a tenth will remain in the land, it will again be laid waste (vv. 11–13a).
But there is hope: “But as the terebinth and oak leave stumps when they are cut down, so the holy seed will be the stump in the land” (v. 13b). Even in the midst of faithlessness and chaos, a messiah is promised: “to us a child is born, to us a son is given, and the government will be on his shoulders. And he will be called Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace” (9:6). And again in ch. 11, with a return to the tree imagery:
A shoot will come up from the stump of Jesse; from his roots a Branch will bear fruit. The Spirit of the Lord will rest on him—the Spirit of wisdom and of understanding, the Spirit of counsel and of might, the Spirit of the knowledge and fear of the Lord—and he will delight in the fear of the Lord (vv. 1–3a).
A Davidic king is promised who will establish God’s righteousness and justice, whose judgment is shaped by the fear of the Lord. The Spirit of the Lord will rest on him, like it did on David in 1 Samuel 16:13–14 when Samuel anointed him. But who is this promised Davidic king going to be?
We know it wasn’t Ahaz. Ahaz did call on Assyria for aid, who came to their rescue, wiping Israel out. Judah, at least for now, was left alone. But not without a cost. In calling on Assyrian aid, “Ahaz had signed away his liberty (II Kings 16:7f.) and made Judah a vassal state of the Assyrian empire.” That meant, among other things, that they had to pay tributes to Assyria—which, a generation later, Ahaz’ son Hezekiah decided not to. And the new king in charge, Sennacherib, wasn’t pleased. His focus turned to Jerusalem, and in 701 BC he laid siege to it.
Again, rebellions against Assyria were being planned, and again, Judah was being invited to join. This time it looked like an attractive option. Yamani, king of Ashdod, made an alliance with Egypt, so taking Yamani up on his offer meant having Egypt on their side. What will Hezekiah do?
Although it isn’t explicitly said, I think we’re meant to hear ringing in our ears the warning to Ahaz: if you don’t stand firm in faith, you will not stand at all. Isaiah’s advice to Hezekiah was the same as it was to Ahaz: don’t trust in human strength, trust in Yahweh. “Woe to those who go down to Egypt for help, who rely on horses, who trust in the multitude of their chariots and in the great strength of their horsemen, but do not look to the Holy One of Israel, or seek help from the Lord” (Isa. 31:1). And again, in the midst of it all, a king is promised: “See, a king will reign in righteousness, and rulers will rule with justice” (32:1).
Will that king be Hezekiah? Well, probably not. Hezekiah does stand firm in faith, and God delivers Jerusalem from the Assyrian army (Isa. 36–37). But in ch. 39 the story reaches an anticlimactic end which paves the way for exile. Some envoys arrive from Babylon, and he freely shows them around, showing them all of Judah’s treasures. And when Assyria was defeated and Babylon became the next superpower, they came to get them.
The question of the messiah is sort of left hanging as the last few kings of Judah’s reign seal their fate. As one scholar sums it up: “Ultimately, responsibility for Israel’s exile in 586 BCE rested on the shoulders of kings who abused the people and led the nation in apostasy (2 Kgs 24:3–4).”
The archetypal king
The sad tale of the kingship isn’t a new one. We saw already in our first lesson that the story of the kingship as part of the story of Israel follows the same shape as another story: the introduction to the whole of the OT, Genesis 1–3. Adam is portrayed as the Bible’s first king—in fact, one scholar argues that that is the main thing the opening chapters of Genesis are about.
The creation account
We said already in week 1 that the creation and commissioning of humans already has royal overtones, as God’s image bearers called to exercise dominion over his creation. This is picked up in Psalm 8, which is no doubt reflecting on the creation account. It says that humans, though small and limited (v. 4), are placed “a little lower than the heavenly beings, and crowned with glory and honor” (v. 5). They’re given dominion, and all the other creatures are placed “under their feet” (v. 6).
In Genesis 2, Adam is placed in the garden. It’s worth noticing, though, that the garden and Eden weren’t one and the same place. Eden was the name of the region, and the garden was a specific part of Eden. And there, we’re told, God rested Adam in the Garden of Eden. In other words, Adam works in Eden, but finds rest in the garden—which, when read in its ANE context comes with implicit royal connotations: “placement in a paradisiacal garden overlooking ones [sic.] larger domain is a standard trope of kingship.”
We’ve said before that the garden is portrayed as a sort of temple and that the humans thus play a sort of priestly role in “working and keeping it” (Gen. 2:15). But while “[p]riests did indeed serve in garden temples, … it was emblematic of priestly kings to live in palaces adjacent to the temple sharing the same garden”—which we’ve seen is exactly what’s going on with the humans’ dwelling in the garden and work in the more general region of Eden. Adam, then, isn’t only portrayed as a priest; he’s portrayed as a priestly king.
Adam and Eve, then, should be taken as royalty—that’s a key part of what being made in God’s image means. This is then picked up later in the book of Daniel.
The Son of Man
Come back , then, to where we left off in the story: the Israelites are in exile in Babylon—that’s where the book of Daniel is set, and there, in ch. 7, Daniel has a vision: “the four winds of heaven were stirring up the great sea. And four great beasts came up out of the sea, different from one another” (Dan. 7:2–3). He’s told later that these four beasts represent four kingdoms that will come, the fourth being the most fearsome, wreaking havoc for God’s people (vv. 17–27). But God will sit down on his throne and bring judgment upon them (vv. 11–12). And following that, Daniel looked, and:
there before me was one like a son of man, coming with the clouds of heaven. He approached the Ancient of Days and was led into his presence. He was given authority, glory, and sovereign power; all nations and peoples of every language worshiped him. His is a dominion that will not pass away, and his kingdom is one that will never be destroyed (vv. 13–14).
At a number of points Daniel’s vision calls to mind the creation account in Genesis 1. The four winds, and the emergence of creation from the sea make us think of the תֹהוּ וָבֹהוּ in Genesis 1:2, but what emerges is a sort of perverted creation with the chaos monsters that emerge. All this climaxes with the rule of the “one like a son of man” in vv. 13–14, who rules over the chaos which God brought to order, like the humans who ruled over God’s ordered creation in the opening chapters of Genesis.
The question is, who is this “one like a son of man”? In vv. 13–14 it seems to be an individual. But then in the interpretation of Daniel’s vision, the son of man seems to be plural, referring to the saints as a collective. So is the son of man one or many?
The answer, I think, is “yes.” The second half of the chapter certainly does seem to imply that the son of man represents the holy people of God (plural). But there are a few clues that I think also point us to an individual.
The first is the way this son of man is portrayed. He’s said to come riding the clouds. God is the only other person in the Hebrew Bible to be seen riding the clouds—so much so that “the rabbis sometimes called God the ‘cloud rider.’ ” In other words, we have somebody said to be doing Yahweh things, a sort of divine figure.
The second is that there seems to be a consistent move from singular to plural between the vision and its interpretation: kings in the first half, kingdoms in the second; a son of man in the first half, the holy people of God in the second. We could add to this that the idea of a king representing a nation isn’t such a foreign idea to the Hebrew Bible—we’ve seen as much in the book of Kings, where the fate of the nation is decided by the faithfulness of the king. And I think this is confirmed when we take a closer look at v. 27: “the kingdom and the dominion and the greatness of the kingdoms under the whole heaven shall be given to the people of the saints of the Most High”—plural—and in the very next part of the sentence: “his kingdom”—singular—“shall be an everlasting kingdom, and all dominions shall serve and obey him.”
What we have, then, is a human doing Yahweh things, given dominion, and this framed in creation language. I think what we have here is an escalation of the creation account: God is going to restore his people, and he’s going to do through this enigmatic son of man figure. But it remains to be seen how or when.
The question is sort of answered two chapters later. Daniel remembers that in Jeremiah God said that “the desolation of Jerusalem would last seventy years” (Dan. 9:2)—and seventy years was almost up. So Daniel appeals to God to do what he promised (vv. 4–19). But God responded, “No, not seventy years; seventy weeks of years.” Then his anointed king would come. Then Jerusalem would be rebuilt. Then, presumably, what we find in the prophets about a restored temple where God dwells once more with his people like in the glory days of the OT.
Some time later, the exiles returned and rebuilt the temple, but it turned out to be a fat disappointment. But the Jews didn’t give up hope. God would keep his promises. God would vindicate his people and establish his kingdom. God might be delaying, but surely not for no reason. The time was coming. Many were reading Daniel 9 and crunching the numbers—which brings us to the first century AD, when some other things were going down.
The arrival of the promised king
Mark’s gospel opens with these words:
1 The beginning of the good news about Jesus the Messiah, the Son of God, 2 as it is written in Isaiah the prophet: “I will send my messenger ahead of you, who will prepare your way”— 3 “a voice of one calling in the wilderness, ‘Prepare the way for the Lord, make straight paths for him’ ” (Mar. 1:1–3).
It’s the “good news” about Jesus—not like, “It’s good news it won’t rain tomorrow” or “It’s good news load shedding was suspended.” “Good news” in this sense—the Greek εὐαγγέλιον, the word for “gospel”—is a royal announcement. It’s talking about “the good news a herald would bring.” That’s what the verses quoted from Malachi and Isaiah are about. It’s picking up where we left off earlier in Isaiah, words spoken to God’s people in exile promising restoration and the coming of his kingdom:
Comfort, comfort my people, says your God. 2 Speak tenderly to Jerusalem, and proclaim to her that her hard service has been completed, that her sin has been paid for, that she has received from the Lord’s hand double for all her sins. 3 A voice of one calling: “In the wilderness prepare the way for the Lord; make straight in the desert a highway for our God. 4 Every valley shall be raised up, every mountain and hill made low; the rough ground shall become level, the rugged places a plain. 5 And the glory of the Lord will be revealed, and all people will see it together. For the mouth of the Lord has spoken” (Isa. 40:1–5).
And we’re introduced to the messenger in the very next verses: John the baptist, whose character profile matches that of Elijah. Pick up in v. 9:
9 At that time Jesus came from Nazareth in Galilee and was baptized by John in the Jordan. 10 Just as Jesus was coming up out of the water, he saw the heavens being torn open and the Spirit descending on him like a dove. 11 And a voice came from heaven: “You are my Son, whom I love; with you I am well pleased.” (Mar. 1:9–11).
Here is the king we’ve been waiting for. This is the messiah that’s been promised all along. The Spirit descends on him, like Isaiah said in ch. 11, which also called to mind David’s anointing in 1 Samuel 16. The Father says to him, “You are my Son, whom I love”, calling to mind 2 Samuel 7, where God says of the king of his dynasty, “I will be his father and he will be my son” and that “my love will never be taken away from him” (2 Sam. 7:14–15). It’s probably also calling to mind Psalm 2—“ ‘I have installed my king on Zion, my holy mountain.’ I will proclaim the Lord’s decree; he said to me: ‘You are my son, today I have become your father’ ” (vv. 6–7). The idea of divine sonship in the ANE had to do with kingship: the king was seen, in some sense, as the son of the gods. What this means, then, is that Jesus being called God’s son isn’t just about him literally being God’s son—though that’s true as well—but a royal announcement. It seems a lot like Jesus’ baptism is more like Jesus’ anointing.
And if there was any doubt that this is about the coming of God’s kingdom, Jesus announces for himself, bringing us full circle: “ ‘The time has come,’ he said. ‘The kingdom of God has come near. Repent and believe the good news!’ ” (Mar. 1:15).
Mark links us back to this scene at the end of his gospel when he talks about Jesus’ crucifixion. Just as the heavens being torn open in 1:9, in ch. 15 we read that “With a loud cry, Jesus breathed his last. The curtain of the temple was torn in two from top to bottom.” And, just as God proclaimed Jesus to be his Son at his baptism, “when the centurion, who stood there in front of Jesus, saw how he died, he said, ‘Surely this man was the Son of God!’ ” (15:37–39). The same royal connotations permeating Jesus’ anointing should be read onto his crucifixion. In ch. 1 Jesus is anointed; on the cross in ch. 15 he is, in some sense, enthroned.
We also see Jesus as God’s messiah in the way he spoke about himself throughout his ministry. Jesus’ often refers to himself as the Son of Man, calling to mind the vision in Daniel 7. This is picked up in Mark 10:45 (//Matt. 20:28) where Jesus identifies himself with the son of man, but in a very interesting way: in Daniel 7, the son of man “came to the ancient of Days” and was given dominion “that all the nations should serve him”; in Mark 10, the son of man “came not to be served,” but rather to do the serving himself. Greg Beale explains, “Jesus begins to carry out the prophecy by first exercising authority to redeem and thus serves his people by suffering for them to secure their redemption; they subsequently will serve him.” Again, Jesus’ crucifixion is couched in royal language.
In his trial, Jesus is interrogated by the high priest:
“I charge you under oath by the living God: Tell us if you are the Messiah, the Son of God.”
“You have said so,” Jesus replied. “But I say to all of you: From now on you will see the Son of Man sitting at the right hand of the Mighty One and coming on the clouds of heaven” (Matt. 26:63b–64)
The son of man, enthroned, riding the clouds. This is Daniel 7—and the high priest knows it: “Then the high priest tore his clothes and said, “He has spoken blasphemy! Why do we need any more witnesses? Look, now you have heard the blasphemy” (v. 65).
There’s one more example of the Son of Man prophecy I want us to look at. Once Jesus had died and risen, he appeared to the disciples. Acts 1:6: “[The disciples] gathered around [Jesus] and asked him, “Lord, are you at this time going to restore the kingdom to Israel?’ ”—that’s the question that frames what happens next.
7 [Jesus] said to them: “It is not for you to know the times or dates the Father has set by his own authority. 8 But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit comes on you; and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth.” 9 After he said this, he was taken up before their very eyes, and a cloud hid him from their sight (Acts 1:7–9).
Remember what we said about Daniel earlier: the son of man figure is a single representative for the group of people later in the chapter, the holy people of God, to whom the kingdom will be handed. This language of the kingdom of God brought together with Jesus making like the cloud rider, I think we can be pretty sure of what Luke is doing here.
I think that’s where we fit in: we’re the holy people of God, with Jesus, the individual son of man as our representative. N. T. Wright explains it this way:
This, then, is the clue that enables us to understand the whole New Testament vision of the church. It grows directly out of the vision of God’s holy ones “receiving the kingdom” in Daniel 7. But it does so insofar as, and only insofar as, the category of the “holy ones” is first shrunk right down to the one man, Jesus himself, and opened up thereafter to his followers.
Through Christ we have received God’s Spirit, which we noticed earlier was poured out on the kings in the OT. Of course, it wasn’t only the kings who received God’s Spirit, but the language Paul uses in Romans 8 where he talks about it leads us to see how royalty is in view at least in part. We saw in week 1 how Romans 8 brings creation language together with glory language, which we said had to do with being made in God’s image, and the way humanity ought to reflect God. We’ve also said that the way humanity ought to reflect God—what it means to be made in God’s image—is for humanity to have dominion. In other words, the restoration of creation, and the restoration of humanity to fully reflect God’s image is a restoration to kingship. And that’s confirmed, secondly, by the language of being made “co-heirs with Christ” (Rom. 8:17).
Conclusion
Much more could be said, of course, but hopefully we can pick some of that up in the Q&R. Don’t forget to get your questions in by Friday so that we can have the video ready to go up next week Monday, same time, same place. If you’re watching this on YouTube, you can find a link in the description below to the lesson page on our website where you can ask a question, or find out more about Faith Seeking Understanding. But while you’re here, why not hit that subscribe button—that way you’ll be kept in the loop when new lessons come out on our channel. Thanks for joining us, see you next time.