Chapter 8
The House of Jesse
Have you ever wondered why the house of Jesse, David’s father, was prophesied to be the line through which the kings of Israel would come, and yet Saul was chosen as the first king?
Isaiah 11:1-12
And there shall come forth a rod out of the stem of Jesse, and a Branch shall grow out of his roots:
And the spirit of the LORD shall rest upon him, the spirit of wisdom and understanding, the spirit of counsel and might, the spirit of knowledge and of the fear of the LORD;
And shall make him of quick understanding in the fear of the LORD: and he shall not judge after the sight of his eyes, neither reprove after the hearing of his ears:
But with righteousness shall he judge the poor, and reprove with equity for the meek of the earth: and he shall smite the earth with the rod of his mouth, and with the breath of his lips shall he slay the wicked.
And righteousness shall be the girdle of his loins, and faithfulness the girdle of his reins.
The wolf also shall dwell with the lamb, and the leopard shall lie down with the kid; and the calf and the young lion and the fatling together; and a little child shall lead them.
And the cow and the bear shall feed; their young ones shall lie down together: and the lion shall eat straw like the ox.
And the sucking child shall play on the hole of the asp, and the weaned child shall put his hand on the cockatrice’ den.
They shall not hurt nor destroy in all my holy mountain: for the earth shall be full of the knowledge of the LORD, as the waters cover the sea.
And in that day there shall be a root of Jesse, which shall stand for an ensign of the people; to it shall the Gentiles seek: and his rest shall be glorious.
And it shall come to pass in that day, that the Lord shall set his hand again the second time to recover the remnant of his people, which shall be left, from Assyria, and from Egypt, and from Pathros, and from Cush, and from Elam, and from Shinar, and from Hamath, and from the islands of the sea.
And he shall set up an ensign for the nations, and shall assemble the outcasts of Israel, and gather together the dispersed of Judah from the four corners of the earth.
What an awesome prophetic word! Isaiah the prophet was given these words by revelation to describe the purpose and ministry of the woman’s seed of Genesis 3:15, Jesus Christ! The throne of David, through the bloodline of his father, Jesse, would reign in Israel. Notice in verse 11 that through this line, the Lord would recover the remnant of His people from all the nations of the earth.
In Amos 3:7 we learn that God will do nothing but that He first reveals His secrets to His servants the prophets.23 Isaiah spoke what God told him. Thus God revealed further details of His plan which was first stated in Genesis 3:15. The devil paid close attention, and hence heavily invested his spiritual powers against the house of Jesse. How did he do this?
Satan’s effort to counter God’s plan for the house of Jesse involved Saul. This was his second effort to thwart God’s plan for the house of Jesse. His first effort had been through the bastard curse on Judah and Tamar. Remember the bastard curse was effective for ten generations? Jesse was the tenth generation from Judah!
Matthew 1:1-6
The book of the generation of Jesus Christ, the son of David, the son of Abraham.
Abraham begat Isaac; and Isaac begat Jacob; and Jacob begat Judas and his brethren;
And Judas begat Phares and Zara of Thamar; and Phares begat Esrom; and Esrom begat Aram;
And Aram begat Aminadab; and Aminadab begat Naasson; and Naasson begat Salmon;
And Salmon begat Booz of Rachab; and Booz begat Obed of Ruth; and Obed begat Jesse;
And Jesse begat David the king; and David the king begat Solomon of her that had been the wife of Urias;
Knowing the throne would pass through Jesse’s offspring, satan aroused Israel to desire a king before the forerunner (David) of the root of Jesse (Jesus Christ), could be installed as king. A king at this time was not God’s plan.
Up until this time, Israel was ruled by God through judges. Samuel the prophet was such a judge. As Samuel got older and his sons became corrupt, the elders of Israel determined that they should have a king, just like all the other nations. Satan capitalized on their fear, and despite the word of the Lord to the contrary, the people chose to disobey God and establish a king. God gave them Saul, who was not of the house of Jesse. Thus satan tried to pre-empt God’s plan. The timing was not yet ready for Jesse’s son, David, to rule.
If the King Saul had succeeded in passing down the throne, then Saul’s lineage would have compromised God’s plan. Satan first pre-empted God with Saul. When that didn’t work he tried to take down Israel with the Philistine champion, Goliath. Even that didn’t work, so he tried to use Saul to murder David. When that failed, he used the bastard curse to corrupt David’s bloodline.
God proves those whom He calls. David was a shepherd. David proved his heart as a worthy shepherd during this time by even risking his life to kill a lion and a bear to defend his sheep. What a shepherd! Jesse could not be the one who could come into the congregation of the Lord. He was the tenth generation. But His son could. When King Saul disobeyed God by failing to kill King Agag, God sent the prophet Samuel to anoint David, the eleventh generation from when the bastard curse came on the family through Judah and Tamar.
God began to raise up David. He was anointed by God, and he was free of the bastard curse upon his bloodline. David could come into the congregation of the Lord! As a shepherd, and because he could have intimacy with the Lord, the Lord took him to school out in the fields.
The next attempt to destroy David was with Goliath against all of Israel. Every thing satan had in his arsenal was focused on gaining this much needed victory through Goliath. But by this time, David was ready. “Who is this Philistine that can defy the armies of the living God (of Israel)?”24 No one in all the kingdom could answer this challenge except one man — one who was anointed with God’s authority, which derives from intimacy with God, who was already proven in his faith.
David was that man. God had already anointed him king. In God’s eyes he was already functioning as king over Israel. Remember from the chapter on “What is a Curse?” that words transmit spiritual power, and bring curses or blessings? The blessing from God that was spoken over David by Samuel resulted in sparing God’s people from losing a vicious war, and going into devastating captivity. David had the power of a king, even though it was as yet unrecognized and he didn’t have the benefits of living as a king.
Can you imagine what was going on in satan’s camp? Suddenly satan and his kingdom were appalled and nearly terrorized. David was God’s recognized king. He was the real king. In a meeting of satan with his princes, after much arguing and blaming, they would have gotten down to the business of finding a way of either killing off David’s bloodline, or so corrupting it that it would be stopped. A substitute king hadn’t worked; murder hadn’t worked, and war hadn’t worked. God spared David each time.
It was time to try the bastard curse again. After all, the bastard curse gave him 400 years to steal, kill, and destroy. Surely in ten generations they could succeed. If satan and his devils could not stop David, they knew the promise of Genesis 3:15 would crush them. But if they could accomplish this, then satan could gain God’s throne as he had desired at his fall. Then they were sure they could win. The realization of the danger that satan and his kingdom were in would have run terror through their hearts and minds. They couldn’t panic. In the midst of their division, they had to find a way to pull together and focus. Now the plot thickens.
Satan used murder spirits, and even with every effort they made, David’s life was still spared. 25 David even became a fugitive in the wilderness and God brought an army to him to support him! Many princes and their armies in the devil’s kingdom did their best to stop David, even to the point of tempting him to murder Saul while Saul was going to the bathroom in a cave. After all, David’s flesh would have tried to say, “Saul tried to kill me, he sits on my throne, and he leads God’s people into evil.” Many more such thoughts were cast into David’s mind. But David enjoyed being in the congregation of the Lord, in fellowship with God. God gave him the idea to just cut a chunk off his underwear, and wave it before him from across the valley. David had the choice to destroy Saul, God’s anointed. But David knew it would be sin to destroy what God had anointed.26
In taking a piece of his underwear, David spoke very strongly against Saul’s sinful ways. In merely speaking against Saul, notice that David did not touch God’s anointed. Instead, he spoke loudly against what was ungodly in Saul’s behavior. This should be happening today. Many people think that to speak out against the sin of anointed ministers is “touching the Lord’s anointed.”
Nothing could be further from the truth. Each of the three uses of this term in the Bible refer to restraining from causing physical harm, not one’s manner of speaking publicly about sin among church leaders. God often requires shepherds and prophets to speak against sin, wherever it is found in order to guard the flock. Look at how He worked with Nathan to confront David himself!27 Look at how the Apostle Paul confronted Peter for his vacillating doctrines regarding Judean and Christian association and the circumcision traditions.28 Paul was fighting for the health and welfare of the church and was obligated by the Lord to speak out against Peter’s error in this instance. So let’s not condone error in today’s church leadership by silence because of a mis-applied phrase.29
Saul saw that David had God’s anointing and that David’s heart was merciful. “Maybe Saul will repent,” was David’s heart, and this is the heart that the Lord has towards ministers who exceed their boundaries today. But if a doctrine arises which keeps believers from speaking out truth, fearing they are “touching the Lord’s anointed,” the failure to reach erring leaders will have devastating impact on the church. For Saul, change did not happen. He died a miserable failure. But David was spared. It sure makes interesting reading for us today.
The devil didn’t stop plotting. Years later, after David was king for many years, he again found himself at war. This time it was against the Ammonites, the same lineage mentioned earlier, from Lot’s bastard sons. David, instead of leading his troops in battle as was customary for kings, tarried in Jerusalem at his palace (2 Samuel 11:1).
Satan was working on multiple fronts. Just the year before, David successfully defeated the Syrians, but not the Ammonites. Something happened in David’s heart that affected his willingness to return to the battlefront. Was it weariness? Was it lack of focus? Or could it have been pride over his previous year’s accomplishments? We may never know, but the Bible says that pride goes before a fall. Had David gone to battle, he would not have fallen into the lust which followed.
2 Samuel 11:1-4
And it came to pass, after the year was expired, at the time when kings go forth to battle, that David sent Joab, and his servants with him, and all Israel; and they destroyed the children of Ammon, and besieged Rabbah. But David tarried still at Jerusalem.
And it came to pass in an eveningtide, that David arose from off his bed, and walked upon the roof of the king’s house: and from the roof he saw a woman washing herself; and the woman was very beautiful to look upon.
And David sent and enquired after the woman. And one said, Is not this Bathsheba, the daughter of Eliam, the wife of Uriah the Hittite?
And David sent messengers, and took her; and she came in unto him, and he lay with her; for she was purified from her uncleanness: and she returned unto her house.
In the midst of David’s failure to go to battle, David took an evening walk on his rooftop. Having gotten up from his bed, he spied Bathsheba and sinned. How? In Matthew 5:28 it declares that whoever looks on a woman to lust has
already committed adultery with her in his heart. 30
At this point, David’s closeness with the Father was very weakened. His flesh obviously told him, “You’re the king, you can do anything you want to do.” David inquired about the woman, and he received word of who she was. David continued to be led by his flesh, not his spirit. He sent messengers to take her. She came in and she laid with him, and returned to her own house. The trap was set. David took the bait. Now the door slammed shut. In verse five, David discovered that Bathsheba was carrying his child.31
David mis-used his authority as king again when he tried to cover up his adulterous act. He sent his general, Joab, to bring Bethsheba’s husband, Uriah, home from the front lines of battle. To explain bringing Uriah home, David asked him to report on the progress of the battle, hoping he would lay with his wife. However, Uriah was a man of such integrity, that he refused to receive a benefit which his own troops could not have. What a man of honor! David must have been surprised at Uriah, and told him to wait two more days before returning to the front.32
David surely assumed he would spend time with his wife. David even held a feast in order to get Uriah drunk. Even then, Uriah refused to sleep in the comfort of his own bed with his wife. So David sent a letter, carried by Uriah himself, back to Joab. The letter contained a death curse. As a result, Uriah was killed,33 and David’s response was a cover-up.34
The sins are mounting! But satan’s target was to cause the bastard curse to fall on David’s house, and thus alienate him and his descendents from the congregation of the Lord. Satan successfully pulled it off, and he sure must have been glad. Bathsheba birthed David’s bastard son.35
It is interesting that Uriah spent the time in the city, yet there is no record of Bethsheba ever coming to visit him. But when she heard that her husband was dead, she did her customary mourning thing. As soon as this was over, David took her in to become his wife. One also might ask why she was even bathing within sight of the palace in the first place, or why she did not protest David’s invitation, and then immediately married David after the obligatory mourning time had passed? We can only speculate, but certainly satan was working on many levels in people’s lives.
Verse 27 declares that what David did displeased the Lord. Enter Nathan, a man of God with the courage to confront even a king. David cursed himself unknowingly upon hearing Nathan’s story.36 And the appropriate punishment for murder and adultery was death. David repented, and though God forgave and told him he would not die, yet he still had to deal with the severe consequences.
2 Samuel 12:10-18
Now therefore the sword shall never depart from thine house; because thou hast despised me, and hast taken the wife of Uriah the Hittite to be thy wife.
Thus saith the LORD, Behold, I will raise up evil against thee out of thine own house, and I will take thy wives before thine eyes, and give them unto thy neighbour, and he shall lie with thy wives in the sight of this sun.
For thou didst it secretly: but I will do this thing before all Israel, and before the sun.
And David said unto Nathan, I have sinned against the LORD. And Nathan said unto David, The LORD also hath put away thy sin; thou shalt not die.
Howbeit, because by this deed thou hast given great occasion to the enemies of the LORD to blaspheme, the child also that is born unto thee shall surely die.
And Nathan departed unto his house. And the LORD struck the child that Uriah’s wife bare unto David, and it was very sick.
David therefore besought God for the child; and David fasted, and went in, and lay all night upon the earth.
And the elders of his house arose, and went to him, to raise him up from the earth: but he would not, neither did he eat bread with them.
And it came to pass on the seventh day, that the child died. And the servants of David feared to tell him that the child was dead: for they said, Behold, while the child was yet alive, we spake unto him, and he would not hearken unto our voice: how will he then vex himself, if we tell him that the child is dead?
With all that has happened in these verses, God did not allow the bastard child to live. David repented, and his repentance spared his life. But satan’s legal authority to work against David and his bloodline was re-established.
David and Bethsheba constituted generation number one of the bastard curse. When the child died, some people would say that the death took care of the curse, which was the required punishment under the law for both the child and the parents. But in this case, the parents continued to live. God extended His mercy to David. But even with God’s mercy, the consequences still remained as a curse in David and Bethsheba’s bloodline.
A legitimate child is born from a marriage of a man and a woman. Their love produces offspring that are blessed. An illegitimate child is not from love, but from lust outside of marriage. In this case, satan used this advantage to leverage David into more sin. Adultery was accompanied by ordering the murder of Uriah, which produced additional generational curses in his family, all of which came into being in association with the bastard curse.
The results in David’s children included: incest, murder, rebellion, and attempts to take over the throne. David’s firstborn son Ammon raped his half-sister Tamar. Tamar was left destitute for the rest of her life with soul ties to this half brother. Absalom went against his father David’s wishes not to kill Ammon. After killing Ammon, Absalom rose up and decided to be king. He took David’s wives, in fulfillment of Nathan’s prophecy in 2 Samuel 12:11. Absalom even determined to kill his father. All of this cost Absalom his life. Another son, Adonijah tried to usurp David’s throne when he was old. He conspired with Joab and the high priest Abiathar. Adonijah was murdered subsequently by Solomon, whose problems are also well known.37
Notice that these problems arose in just the second generation alone. With the bastard curse, evil gets worse and worse with each generation. The evil that followed in David’s generations included personal rebellion, sickness, suicide, murder, mental illness, and much more. Almost every king, with only a few exceptions, became more evil with each reign. Those who did follow God were never able to fully rid the land of idolatry and sin as God desired.
At this point, satan had gathered so much authority in the kings of Israel through the bastard curse and other generational curses, that it looked like he had won. Yet for all this, satan did not know that in Jesus Christ, God had His own seed. In all of satan’s deception, he was the most deceived of all.
23Amos 3:7
Surely the Lord GOD will do nothing, but he revealeth his secret unto his servants the prophets.
24I Samuel 17:26
And David spake to the men that stood by him, saying, What shall be done to the man that killeth this Philistine, and taketh away the reproach from Israel? for who is this uncircumcised Philistine, that he should defy the armies of the living God?
25I Samuel 18:10-11
And it came to pass on the morrow, that the evil spirit from God came upon Saul, and he prophesied in the midst of the house: and David played with his hand, as at other times: and there was a javelin in Saul’s hand.
And Saul cast the javelin; for he said, I will smite David even to the wall with it. And David avoided out of his presence twice.
See also I Samuel 19:9-10 and 20:33.
26I Samuel 24 and 26; II Samuel 1:1-16
272 Samuel 12:1-18
28Galatians 2:11-14
But when Peter was come to Antioch, I withstood him to the face, because he was to be blamed.
For before that certain came from James, he did eat with the Gentiles: but when they were come, he withdrew and separated himself, fearing them which were of the circumcision.
And the other Jews dissembled likewise with him; insomuch that Barnabas also was carried away with their dissimulation.
But when I saw that they walked not uprightly according to the truth of the gospel, I said unto Peter before them all, If thou, being a Jew, livest after the manner of Gentiles, and not as do the Jews, why compellest thou the Gentiles to live as do the Jews?
29We must always be governed by love and by the Word of the Lord. It is His church, not ours. Love does cover a multitude of sins, and sometimes the covering is to be done with silence, other times open rebuke is required, and always in love. In this case with Peter, the Lord stirred the Apostle Paul’s heart to walk in great love even as he publicly rebuked Peter. The Lord had this incident recorded in the Scriptures as part of our instruction in righteousness. Paul was clearly not “touching the Lord’s anointed” in doing so, as modern popular religious thinking would say today.
30Matthew 5:27-28
Ye have heard that it was said by them of old time, Thou shalt not commit adultery:
But I say unto you, That whosoever looketh on a woman to lust after her hath committed adultery with her already in his heart.
31II Samuel 11:5
And the woman conceived, and sent and told David, and said, I am with child.
32II Samuel 11:6-12
33II Samuel 11:13-24
34II Samuel 11:25
35II Samuel 11:26-27
And when the wife of Uriah heard that Uriah her husband was dead, she mourned for her husband.
And when the mourning was past, David sent and fetched her to his house, and she became his wife, and bare him a son. But the thing that David had done displeased the LORD.
36II Samuel 12:1-15
37 I Kings 11
Chapter 9 – How The Bastard Curse Affects The Church Today
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