Luke 1:30-33 ESV
And the angel said to her, “Do not be afraid, Mary, for you have found favor with God. [31] And behold, you will conceive in your womb and bear a son, and you shall call his name Jesus. [32] He will be great and will be called the Son of the Most High. And the Lord God will give to him the throne of his father David, [33] and he will reign over the house of Jacob forever, and of his kingdom there will be no end.” Luke 1:30-33 ESV
And the angel said to her, “Do not be afraid, Mary, for you have found favor with God. [31] And behold, you will conceive in your womb and bear a son, and you shall call his name Jesus. [32] He will be great and will be called the Son of the Most High. And the Lord God will give to him the throne of his father David, [33] and he will reign over the house of Jacob forever, and of his kingdom there will be no end.”
The angel Gabriel tells Mary that her Son will reign over the house of Jacob forever, and his kingdom will have no end. In the Old Testament, God is often referred to as the “God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.” I’ve always wondered about that and how God so readily identifies himself with Jacob because even though Jacob was the father of the 12 nations of Israel, Jacob was kind of a mess. The name “Jacob” means “supplanter, manipulator,” and until his encounter with God in Genesis 32, that is how he lived his life. As a matter of fact, in Genesis 32, after the socket of his thigh was dislocated by the angel, his name was changed by God to Israel, which means “Prince of God.” Yet, so often throughout the Scriptures, God continues to reference him as Jacob, and the Lord was certainly not ashamed to be identified with that name. 2 Corinthians 4 says, “We have this treasure (Jesus) in earthen vessels so that the surpassing greatness of the power may be of God and not ourselves.” I believe that at least one of the reasons the Lord identifies himself so readily with Jacob, and why it says He will reign over the house of Jacob forever, is that he wants us to know that he can do something with fragile clay pots, which we all and apart from Christ all we can do is make a mess of things trying to manipulate our way through life. As new creations, we find our identity in Jesus, and we live from him, but we who are in union with him are utterly needy and completely dependent on him to manifest his glory through our earthen vessels. God is not ashamed of the fact that we are fragile in every way because he knows that only his presence in us completes us. He wants us never to forget that, and he wants us never to forget that he is not ashamed to identify with us and clothe himself with the rags of our needy humanity. It is his life in us that makes us Kings and Queens in Narnia. It is his life in us that Completes us, and it is his life in us that sets us apart as the vessels through which he manifests his glory on the earth. The kingdom that he reigns over and will reign over forever is a kingdom of Jacobs, who, apart from Christ, can do nothing, but who in Christ can do all things who strengthens us. His deity clothed in our dust becomes our new identity.