Chapter 12--The Promised King Arrives on the Scene!
Break Time is over and it is time to get back to finding out more about the king God promised Adam and Eve. If you remember, people had been waiting for a couple thousand years for this king to come. Eve thought it might be Cain, but of course it wasn’t. Everybody kept waiting for this promise to be fulfilled and finally God called Abraham to be the father of a great nation. Abraham had Isaac who had Jacob who had 12 sons that became the 12 tribes of Israel.
When we left off in chapter 10, Judah had been taken captive in Babylon. Seventy years later Cyrus, the king of Persia, let the people go back to Jerusalem if they wanted. Many returned, but they never had another king who was a descendant of David. It was beginning to look like there would never be another king who would fulfill the prophecies. And then 400 years passed without any word from God. Four hundred years is a very long time—about ten generations. Our country isn’t even 400 years old! Instead of the promised king, Israel was taken over by pagan kings—the Medes and Persians, the Greeks, and finally the Romans. The Romans let the high priests rule over the Jews, but only under Roman authority. So you can imagine that a lot of the people had completely forgotten about God and even if they remembered, they did not think he would keep his promises.
Then God told Mary that she was going to have a baby and this baby would be the One!!! This was going to be the baby that God promised to Adam and Eve and he would be a descendant of King David. In due time, Jesus was born in Bethlehem. Now you would think that after thousands of years of waiting for this promised child, that everyone would be ecstatic. You would think that all of Jerusalem and Israel would turn out to celebrate the birth of this king. But Matthew tells us that when word got about this child’s birth, not only was King Herod troubled, but all Jerusalem with him. Everybody was upset!
The regular people did not accept Jesus because his mom and dad were not married when they had him. We are told in the Psalms that when Jesus was a little boy, other children teased him. They probably did not invite him to their birthday parties. They made fun of him and didn’t accept him in their circle of friends. Can you imagine how awful that would be? Then when he grew up, the chief priests tried to kill him because they knew that if he became king, they would lose their positions of power.
Jesus did not look like a king or dress like a king. But when he began his ministry, the Kingdom of God appeared once more on earth. Jesus was the King who got it all right. He was better than David and better than Solomon and Jehoshaphat and Hezekiah and Josiah. He was the true hero. He was the one who would finally restore Eden and he was full of truth and grace.
Evidence of God's Grace to Me:
Evidence of God's Grace to Me:
