Yeshua as King: From Genesis to the Gospels
WHY IS THE KINGSHIP OF YESHUA (JESUS) SO IMPORTANT?
Somewhere along the way of my faith, I lost sight of Yeshua’s Kingship. He had become my friend, my Savior, and the One I turned to in my darkest hour, but the fact that He was my King had slipped to the back of my mind.
It was the fall of 2003, about three months into my marriage, and the stories found in most of the Bible had become like lullabies to me. My newlywed husband and I had hit the inevitable “Wow, we’re actually married and have to deal with each other” phase, and I had felt the Holy Spirit weighing on my heart to go to Yeshua (Jesus) about it. In the stillness of our rented townhome, I sat on the top of the stairs with my Bible while my husband wrote quietly for one of his final Bible college classes below in our office. I could hear the click-clacking of his keyboard below and feel the anxiousness in my chest from our previous argument about allocating shared finances as we moved into this new season of married life.
When I felt Yeshua tell me to grab my Bible, I assumed He’d want me to turn to the epistles (where we clearly find God’s goodness) or the Gospels, where His incarnate story begins. But instead, He told me to turn to the first three chapters of Genesis. “Really read them, Meg,” he said to me. “Slowly.”
So, I did. I quickly whipped out my highlighters and pens and marked my Bible up as I had never done before. I was no longer worried about whether the lines were straight or the highlighter evenly marked the page; instead, I focused on how the words came alive.
YESHUA’S KINGSHIP DEMONSTRATED
I noticed how different the creation narratives from Genesis 1 and 2 were and that the woman wasn’t actually “cursed” but was given a possible promise of salvation that would come from her womb.
Immediately, notice the majesty of the God who comes down to look for His humanity. He seeks them out. And then, with wisdom, He questions them—with authority, dignity, and royalty.
After adam (the human) throws the woman (isha) under the bus (3:13), the LORD God (YHWH/Adonai elohim) says to the woman,
“What is this you have done?”
And the woman said, “The serpent beguiled me, and I ate.”
Even though Eve throws the serpent under the bus, God immediately addresses the serpent.
And the LORD God said to the serpent, “Because you have done this,
Cursed be you
Of all cattle and all beasts of the field.
On your belly shall you go
And dust shall you eat all the days of your life.
Enmity will I set between you and the woman
Between your see and hers.
He will bite your head
And you will boot him with the heel.”
To the woman, He said,
“I will terribly sharpen your birth pangs,
In pain shall you bear children.
And for your man shall be your longing,
And he shall rule over you.”[1]
UNDERNEATH THE TRANSLATION
As I sat on the stairs, I read on, and Eve’s response to the birth of her firstborn son, found in Genesis 4, struck me. Per usual, I usually skimmed over it, but today, something struck me about her response. It reads,
“And the human knew Eve, his woman, and she conceived and bore Cain, and she said, “I have got me a man with the LORD.” (Robert Alter’s translation: Genesis 4:1b)
This entire passage of Scripture has a play on words and underlying meanings in Hebrew that we miss in our English translations. Her naming speech, “I have got me a man with the LORD,” puns on the verb qanah, which means to “get,” “to make,” or “to acquire,” which sounds similar to Cain’s name itself in Hebrew, “qayin.” Alter writes, “She is imagining herself as a kind of partner of God in the man-making process.”[2] Many Biblical scholars also believe that Eve thought she may have produced the Savior whom they were hoping would help them get access to the Garden once again. Looking at the narrative through this lens changes the perspective as to why Cain was so adamant and angry when God rejected his sacrifice. He thought he was going to be the way back in!
Even though we know that Cain was not the answer to humanity’s problem, we can see hints of a King coming, woven throughout the Old Testament into the New (dual prophecies in 2 Samuel of a Messiah coming from the line of David, Isaiah’s servant songs pointing to Christ, and Zech. 9:9 prophesying that a King will come to Zion riding on a donkey, just to name a few).
YESHUA IS KING
Twenty years later, after writing the first Return to the Garden series (Genesis 1-3), I heard the Spirit tell me to write the subsequent Biblical study on Matthew 1-4. “Yikes,” I thought as I remembered the grueling genealogy in the first chapter. But THAT CHAPTER GOT ME. Almost in synchrony with that staircase experience, twenty years ago, I found myself highlighting the monotony of names found there and diving deep into Biblical research, so much so that the first chapter of Matthew turned into two weeks of content!
What I learned was astounding. Matthew began his Gospel (Matthew 1:1) with a “Genesis of Yeshua the Messiah.” Wait, what? Tim Mackie says the word here (that we have translated as generations or genealogy) is a Greek word for “ancestry as a point of origin.” In other words, it’s the Greek word for “genesis.[3]” The whole point of Matthew using this word is that by highlighting the past, he was shining a light on the present. Matthew is the kind of storyteller who gives you all the information and wants you to “settle down and sit” in his genealogy. He wants you to have to confront yourself with the evidence, or as Tim Mackie says, “He wants to constantly put the ball in your court, so you have to reckon with this Man.”[4] By Matthew calling Yeshua “the son of Abraham,” He’s connecting Him to the people of Israel, and by calling Yeshua “the Son of David,” Matthew is pointing to Him coming from the royal line of David, establishing Him as the rightful heir to David’s Kingdom. Matthew’s hints of Yeshua’s Kingship are over the top in his Gospel.
YESTERDAY, TODAY, & TOMORROW
Over twenty-one years ago, when I found myself sitting on top of our stairs, wanting to be in the right regarding my marriage, I came face-to-face with King Yeshua instead. In those moments, I realized that I must give Him my allegiance and my all. It was no longer about what Megan wanted or how I could best my new husband, but it was all about what He wanted for my life. My perspective began to change, and I began to lay down my aspirations of being a Christian art therapist and look at what He desired- a life of service to Him. Looking back, that little girl who sang “Make Me a Servant” for special music in church services got precisely what she was singing about.
Peeling off that layer of my desire hurt. And for years, I fought against it, trying to find a way to squeeze in my desires. And year after year, God repositioned me, shut doors in my face, and forced moves in location to keep me within His will. Here’s what’s funny: through these years, I was actively praying for God’s will to be prioritized in my life, but I kept actively working against what I knew deep in my heart He was asking me to do. So, God let me fail. He let me hit walls over and over when it came to grad school. He allowed me to make choices that would kick me in the rear end. Four years later, my brother, David, sat me down and asked me some of the wisest questions I’d ever been asked when I’d just learned that I’d have to leave the third master’s program in three years before I even started.
He asked, “What one thing would devastate you if it were taken away? Would it be counseling?”
“No,” I responded. “It would be writing.”
“Huh,” David said, “Then, why aren’t you writing?”
My brother made a good point. The King had been trying to show me the way, and I kept trying to control the narrative. But, when I placed Yeshua’s Kingship at the forefront of everything I did, things became SO CLEAR. What I didn’t even realize at this moment in time was that Yeshua’s Kingship is essential to the Gospel message. When looking through the Gospels, you could say that Jesus never calls himself the King. But it’s hidden underneath our translations. He does, in fact, call Himself the “Son of Man.” And that name is a hyperlink to the book of Daniel.
In Daniel 7:13-14, it reads
“I was watching in the night visions.
Behold, One like a Son of Man,
coming with the clouds of heaven.
He approached the Ancient of Days,
and was brought into His presence.
14 Dominion, glory and sovereignty were given to Him
that all peoples, nations, and languages should serve Him.
His dominion is an everlasting dominion that will never pass away,
and His kingdom is one that will not be destroyed. (TLV)
So, today, ask yourself:
What one thing would devastate you if it were taken away?
How does this one thing change what the King wants from your life? How does it bring shalom?
What are some ways this season that you can celebrate Yeshua’s Kingship differently?
Choose to talk to your friends and family about King Yeshua today. See what sparks in conversation when you do.
[1] Robert Alter, The Hebrew Bible: A Translation with Commentary: The Five Books of Moses. (New York: Norton, 2019), 16-17.
[2] Alter, 19.
[3] William Arndt et al., A Greek-English Lexicon of the New Testament and Other Early Christian Literature (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2000), 192.
[4] Tim Mackie, “Yahweh Saves [Matthew]” The Bible Project. Archives. YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S1TLU9fG5mY&themeRefresh=1
