A few years ago I wrote this post while I was trudging through an inductive study of Isaiah. Full disclosure, I took a break from Isaiah and I’m still not finished. For the last several months, I’ve been working through the David study by Beth Moore.

There is something funny about timing because I always find myself in the midst of something compelling right around Christmas. I find myself wanting to write my thoughts out in an effort to document what God is teaching and to hopefully absorb it more fully by regurgitating it on this blog that no one reads. D knows this well about me because after I finish a lesson that is particularly interesting to me, I spend the next twenty minutes re-explaining it to him in my true overly-detailed fashion. God bless my patient man.

The life of David has been fascinating to me. There are many stories about his life that I remembered from my Sunday school days, but so much of the adult content was lost on me or rather edited to the PG version since, hello, we were kids. Let me be clear now that I’ve taken this in through adult eyes…David did not lead a PG life. If ever you feel like your life is in shambles and you need to be reminded that God has been setting shambled lives straight since the beginning of time, David is your guy. He is flawed, beloved, hated, strong, silent, worshipful, and deeply passionate.

In the last week of the study, David has grown old and it says “he could not keep warm when they put covers over him.” For the majority of his life David has been a fierce leader, but now he has grown old and is preparing for his successor. His oldest living son Adonijah has been conjuring up ways to assume the throne, but ultimately David takes an oath that his other son Solomon will be king. He calls upon Zadok the priest, Nathan the prophet, and Benaiah the warrior and gives them instructions to take Solomon by mule to the Gihon Spring. He asks them to annoint Solomon with oil, blow the trumpet, and seat him on his throne.

"Then they sounded the trumpet and all the people shouted, ‘Long live King Solomon!’ And all the people went up after him, playing flutes and rejoicing greatly, so that the ground shook with the sound." - 1 Kings 1:39b-40

As is usually the case, the significance of this story is in the details. Beth’s commentary notes that the Gihon Spring was directly east of the City of David and that ancient Hebrew people anticipated God’s glory would come from the east. Even more, the word “Gihon" in Hebrew means "bursting forth.” So Solomon came bursting forth from the east riding on a mule while the peopled shouted and danced as he took his place as their king. Parallels, anyone?

What I love most about all of this is that Solomon wasn’t the obvious choice. He wasn’t the oldest. He was the son of Bathesheba, the woman David had an affair with and then had her husband killed. David had several other sons that appeared to handsome, well-trained, and generally more natural choices for king. But in a beautiful display of unpredictability, God chose Solomon as David’s successor. Beth articulates it perfectly when she says “Solomon represented God’s divine mercy. He was the embodiment of second chances.”

The Christmas connection for me today is that Christ made his dwelling among us a the ultimate display of God’s unpredictability. He came as a baby. It certainly wasn’t the grand entrance Israel had anticipated. His life was the absolute embodiment of God’s divine mercy, paving the way for us to be reconciled to God through grace. I love that God uses the life of David to foreshadow the life of Christ. I also love that the timing of this study fell in the midst of the Christmas season for me. The older I get and the more I study scripture, I’m blown away by the siginificance of things I’ve known for many years. I see that celebrating Jesus’s birth means celebrating God’s consistent plan since the life of David and even earlier. I see it as celebrating the sovereignty of our God who has been spelling out grace for us since the moment we fell.

Now I don’t have any eloquent way to wrap up my thoughts on the subject. Wrapping up thoughts is always the hardest part for me so I think I’ll defer to one of my favorite Christmas songs. I love the lyrics and spent many years singing them without really stopping to absorb them. I hope you’ll revel in their signficance with me this season.

Yea, Lord, we greet thee,

Born this happy morning;

Jesus to thee be all glory given!

Word of the Father now in flesh appearing!

O come let us adore Him,

Christ the Lord.