# He Will Rule Forever - Bishop Barron's Daily Sermon

An episode of [Daily Sermons With Bishop Robert Barron](https://invisiblenetwork.ai/podcast/6783446284), 4 Aug 2026, 13 min.

Audio: https://dts.podtrac.com/redirect.mp3/api.spreaker.com/download/episode/72733595/he_will_rule_forever_bishop_barron_s_sunday_sermon.mp3



## Transcript

[0:00] Speaker 1: Beast pe with you. Friends. We come to the fourth
[0:02] Speaker 1: and final Sunday of Advent following this year, on the
[0:05] Speaker 1: very day before Christmas, and the Church invites us to
[0:09] Speaker 1: think a lot today about David. Now, as I've said,
[0:13] Speaker 1: many times, do you you can't understand Jesus apart from
[0:17] Speaker 1: the Old Testament. When you try, you get a distortion.
[0:20] Speaker 1: The Church recognized that very early on. It was back
[0:23] Speaker 1: in the second century. It fought against a man named
[0:26] Speaker 1: Marcian who said, let's get rid of the Old Testament.
[0:28] Speaker 1: We have this new revelation. The Church said no to that.
[0:32] Speaker 1: When you abstract Jesus from the Old Testament, you get
[0:35] Speaker 1: Jesus as teacher of timeless truths, ethical exemplar and all that.
[0:41] Speaker 1: But when you ground him in the Old Testament, then
[0:45] Speaker 1: you get this very rich picture of Jesus. Look how
[0:49] Speaker 1: often in the New Testament the reference to David is made.
[0:54] Speaker 1: Beginning of Matthew's Gospel, the genealogy divide into three sets
[0:59] Speaker 1: of fourteen generations. In Hebrew, every number relates to a letter,
[1:05] Speaker 1: every letter to a number. Fourteen was the number that
[1:09] Speaker 1: corresponds to dat Weed or to David. What's Matthew saying
[1:14] Speaker 1: through this long genealogy, David, David, David, the definitive David
[1:21] Speaker 1: has come. How often Jesus is referred to as the Mashiach,
[1:26] Speaker 1: the Messiah, Paul calls Knight all the time, Christaus and
[1:29] Speaker 1: his Greek the Anointed one. Well, that was just a
[1:32] Speaker 1: way of saying David. Now we see why in our
[1:37] Speaker 1: first reading for today, which is taken from one of
[1:40] Speaker 1: the most important and influential texts in the Old Testament.
[1:43] Speaker 1: It's Second Samuel, chapter seven. Get out of your bibles
[1:48] Speaker 1: at some point today and look up Second Samuel, one
[1:50] Speaker 1: of the most adventurous books of the Bible, by the way,
[1:53] Speaker 1: go to chapter seven and you find this marvelous prophecy.
[1:58] Speaker 1: Remember David and said, I'm going to build a house
[2:00] Speaker 1: for the Lord. I'm living in a palace of Cedar,
[2:03] Speaker 1: and the Lord is in a tent of skins, and
[2:06] Speaker 1: I'm going to build him a great house. And Nathan
[2:10] Speaker 1: the prophet comes back and says, no, no, that's not
[2:12] Speaker 1: what God wants. David's son will eventually build that great temple.
[2:18] Speaker 1: But God makes David a promise that kind of turns
[2:20] Speaker 1: David's idea on his head. He said, you want to
[2:23] Speaker 1: build me a house. But I'm going to build you
[2:25] Speaker 1: a house, and he means the house of David. He
[2:30] Speaker 1: means this great line of kings that will come from David.
[2:34] Speaker 1: And he says the extraordinary thing that someone who springs
[2:37] Speaker 1: from your loins, you know, will reign forever. Extraordinary prophecy,
[2:44] Speaker 1: and it haunted Israel. Listen, even after the Babylonian captivity,
[2:48] Speaker 1: when the line of David was severed, when the Dividic
[2:52] Speaker 1: kings ended. Still somehow they knew and they believed in
[2:58] Speaker 1: this prophecy that a son of David would reign forever.
[3:03] Speaker 1: This is why. Look in the prophet Micah, not one
[3:06] Speaker 1: of the better known prophets, but a very important one,
[3:09] Speaker 1: because he says, this, you, Bethlehem ephre Tha, too small
[3:15] Speaker 1: to be among the clans of Judah. From you shall
[3:17] Speaker 1: come forth for me the one who is to be
[3:19] Speaker 1: ruler in Israel. But why is Michah drawing attention to
[3:22] Speaker 1: Bethlehem ephre Tha, this little town, because it was David's city.
[3:28] Speaker 1: And see, Micah believes in this second Samuel Severn prophecy,
[3:31] Speaker 1: from you will come one who will rule forever. And
[3:35] Speaker 1: then listen when he says, indicating that we're not talking
[3:38] Speaker 1: just about some earthly, worldly, a human figure. This is
[3:42] Speaker 1: Micah again. He, this new King, shall stand firm and
[3:47] Speaker 1: shepherd his flock by the strength of the Lord. For
[3:50] Speaker 1: now his greatness shall reach to the ends of the earth,
[3:54] Speaker 1: and he shall be peace. I mean, you see, we're
[3:57] Speaker 1: not talking about just some king of Judeae, some worldly, earthly,
[4:02] Speaker 1: merely human king. No. No, this mystical figure, this new David.
[4:10] Speaker 1: David was a king, yes, but he was also a priest.
[4:14] Speaker 1: Remember that evocative scene when David goes to get the
[4:17] Speaker 1: Ark of the Covenant, which had been taken from Israel
[4:20] Speaker 1: by the Philistines. He goes to get it, and then
[4:23] Speaker 1: he leads it back into his holy city of Jerusalem.
[4:26] Speaker 1: He puts on the ephot which was a vestment or
[4:30] Speaker 1: garment of a priest, and then he does a kind
[4:34] Speaker 1: of liturgical dance in the presence of the Ark of
[4:38] Speaker 1: the Covenant and leads the people into the city and
[4:40] Speaker 1: places the ark there. He's king, but he's also a priest.
[4:47] Speaker 1: David David David. The first Christians, having experienced Jesus, having
[5:00] Speaker 1: seen his death and his resurrection, understood him to be
[5:05] Speaker 1: the fulfillment of this Nathan prophecy understood him to be
[5:10] Speaker 1: the definitive David who would come this king and this priest. Now,
[5:18] Speaker 1: with all that in mind, everybody, were men to read
[5:22] Speaker 1: from our magnificent Gospel for this fourth Sunday of Advent.
[5:26] Speaker 1: It's Luke's version of the Annunciation. Now listen to these
[5:31] Speaker 1: perhaps overly familiar words. See we've heard them so often
[5:35] Speaker 1: that we don't aver to their Old Testament reference. But
[5:39] Speaker 1: see people first hearing these words, they wouldn't have missed it.
[5:44] Speaker 1: So the angel Gabriel comes from God to a town
[5:48] Speaker 1: of Galilee called Nazareth, to a virgin betrothed to a
[5:52] Speaker 1: man named Joseph of the house of david Ah. There
[5:56] Speaker 1: it is the connection to David. And the virgin's name
[6:01] Speaker 1: was Mary. Coming to her, he said, Hail, full of grace,
[6:05] Speaker 1: the Lord is with you. And then you know she's
[6:09] Speaker 1: troubled and wonders what it means, and so on, and
[6:12] Speaker 1: the angel says, don't be afraid. I mean you found
[6:14] Speaker 1: favor with God. And then listen to this. Behold, you
[6:19] Speaker 1: will conceive in your woman bear a son, and you
[6:22] Speaker 1: shall call him Jesus. He will be great and will
[6:26] Speaker 1: be the son of the Most High. Now listen, and
[6:30] Speaker 1: the Lord God will give him the throne of David
[6:35] Speaker 1: his father, and he will rule over the House of
[6:38] Speaker 1: Jacob forever and of his kingdom. There will be no
[6:41] Speaker 1: end again. Mind you, By this time, so we're talking
[6:45] Speaker 1: about the first century a d. By this time, the
[6:48] Speaker 1: Davidic line had been gone for over five hundred years.
[6:52] Speaker 1: The Davidic line of kings had ended. And yet yet
[6:57] Speaker 1: there were Israelites, there were Jews, who still believe Nathan's prophecy,
[7:01] Speaker 1: and they would have heard, they would have understood in
[7:04] Speaker 1: this angelic message, this impossible truth that Nathan's prophecy remains
[7:12] Speaker 1: in place, that from the house of David indeed will
[7:16] Speaker 1: come not just another earthly ruler. But listen again, he
[7:22] Speaker 1: will rule over the House of Jacob forever and of
[7:25] Speaker 1: his kingdom. There will be no end. This is Jesus, everybody,
[7:32] Speaker 1: This is Jesus who. Yes is the fulfillment of the Torah.
[7:36] Speaker 1: Yes is the fulfillment of the Temple. Yes is the
[7:39] Speaker 1: fulfillment of all the longings of the prophets and patriarchs
[7:43] Speaker 1: of Israel. And perhaps above all is the new and
[7:47] Speaker 1: definitive David, the King, the King who has come. How important.
[7:53] Speaker 1: Now go from the beginning of the gospel all the
[7:55] Speaker 1: way to the end, and what do we find but
[7:58] Speaker 1: reigning anomalously strangely from the cross which is erected there
[8:04] Speaker 1: by the Romans in the city of David. And they
[8:08] Speaker 1: put over the cross Jesus Nazarenus Rex jude Orum, Jesus
[8:13] Speaker 1: of Nazareth, king of the Jews. Well, that's exactly what
[8:16] Speaker 1: was prophesied by Nathan, and that this King of the
[8:19] Speaker 1: Jews would be indeed the king of all the world.
[8:24] Speaker 1: That's how the gospel comes to its climax. Is Jesus
[8:27] Speaker 1: there reigning, crowned with thorns, the sign of his kingship
[8:34] Speaker 1: over his head, reigning from the cross. Okay, that's some
[8:40] Speaker 1: of the kingly themes going on here. Remember I mentioned though,
[8:44] Speaker 1: that that David is not just king, he's also a priest.
[8:48] Speaker 1: And there's a really interesting link here. Now if we
[8:51] Speaker 1: look just beyond this gospel. So after the Annunciation, we
[8:54] Speaker 1: hear that Mary goes in haste to visit her cousin Elizabeth,
[8:59] Speaker 1: who is of pregnant. Where she live Elizabeth, we hear
[9:05] Speaker 1: in the hill country of Judah, go right back to
[9:08] Speaker 1: that story from the Old Testament. Where was the Ark
[9:11] Speaker 1: of the Covenant when David went to find it? It
[9:15] Speaker 1: was in the hill country of Judah. And David went
[9:19] Speaker 1: to search it out and bring it to Jerusalem. Who's Mary,
[9:25] Speaker 1: But the true arc of the Covenant, the Ark of
[9:30] Speaker 1: the Covenant bore the remnants of the of the tablets
[9:33] Speaker 1: upon which the Ten Commandments were written. Right, it was
[9:37] Speaker 1: the richest sign of the presence of God among his people. Mary,
[9:42] Speaker 1: who carries in her very body the presence of the
[9:46] Speaker 1: Son of God is the Ark of the Covenant in
[9:49] Speaker 1: the full sense. And so of course she goes to
[9:52] Speaker 1: the hill country of Judah. And then, of course, how beautiful,
[9:57] Speaker 1: how beautiful this is, Elizabeth says to her. The moment
[10:04] Speaker 1: you're greeting sounded in my ears, the child in my
[10:09] Speaker 1: womb leapt for joy. So the infant John the Baptist,
[10:15] Speaker 1: in his mother's womb leaps for joy at the presence
[10:19] Speaker 1: of the Lord. Who is he? At that point, the
[10:23] Speaker 1: infant unborn John the Baptist is David. Remember David dancing
[10:31] Speaker 1: with reckless abandon in the presence of the Ark of
[10:34] Speaker 1: the Covenant. Now the infant John the Baptist in the
[10:40] Speaker 1: presence of the true arc of the Covenant, Mary does
[10:44] Speaker 1: his own version of David's dance. You see what Saint
[10:51] Speaker 1: Luke is telling us here, and the Church is asking
[10:53] Speaker 1: us to see it. David, David, David, the new and
[10:59] Speaker 1: definitive King has come. He reigns from that cross, and
[11:04] Speaker 1: the definitive priest has come. What do priests do? But
[11:08] Speaker 1: they reconcile us to God. They make sacrifice that deals
[11:11] Speaker 1: with the sin of the world. Jesus reigns as king
[11:15] Speaker 1: from the cross. He also performs on that cross a sacrifice,
[11:21] Speaker 1: making of the cross an altar. Can I suggest everyone
[11:27] Speaker 1: that all of this would be swimming around in the
[11:30] Speaker 1: minds of a biblically formed person in the first century
[11:35] Speaker 1: as they experience these things, as they read these texts,
[11:40] Speaker 1: they knew that the God of Israel has done his
[11:44] Speaker 1: great work. He's accomplished his great purpose. The prophecy of
[11:51] Speaker 1: Nathan has come true. The king and the priest, the
[11:55] Speaker 1: definitive David, have come. He reigns as king, he has
[11:59] Speaker 1: performed the sacrifice that reconciles us to God. And now,
[12:03] Speaker 1: can I suggest to everyone listening, we should have all
[12:07] Speaker 1: of this in our minds and hearts as we stand
[12:10] Speaker 1: now on the very verge of Christmas, which celebrates the
[12:14] Speaker 1: birth of the New and definitive. David and God bless you.

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