The One To Whom The Scepter Belongs

The One to Whom the Scepter Belongs

When Jacob was near the end of his life, he summoned each of his twelve sons to his bedside, where he painted in broad strokes the future history of a nation yet to come into existence. In his blessing, he described how each son and his descendants would be a part of God’s redemptive nation. And while God would work in and through all the tribes, the tribe of Judah would be preeminent in his saving purposes.

Judah, my son, is a young lion

that has finished eating its prey.

Like a lion he crouches and lies down;

like a lioness—who dares to rouse him?

The scepter will not depart from Judah,

nor the ruler’s staff from his descendants,

until the coming of the one to whom it belongs,

the one whom all nations will honor. (Genesis 49:9-10)

God chose Judah’s descendants as the tribe through whom the Messiah would come. The psalmist wrote, “[The Lord] rejected Joseph’s descendants; he did not choose the tribe of Ephraim. He chose instead the tribe of Judah, and Mount Zion, which he loved” (Psalm 78:67-68). Matthew noted what we might think would have disqualified Judah from such an honor. In listing Judah’s place in the ancestry of Jesus (1:2-3), Matthew included a reminder of the sin Judah committed with Tamar by naming her as the mother of Judah’s son.

It has always been God’s way to choose to use the weak, the foolish, the imperfect—even the shamefully sinful but ultimately repentant—in his redemptive plan. It is his glory to do so, and it will be into eternity. We see this pattern in Revelation 5:5, where John described the resurrected and ascended Jesus as “the Lion of the tribe of Judah.” This Lion is perfect and sinless, but he is still marked by weakness. John’s Lion is also “a Lamb that looked as if it had been slaughtered” (Revelation 5:6). This Lion-Lamb alone is worthy to sit on the throne. He is the One to whom the scepter belongs, the One worthy of blessing and honor and glory and power forever and ever.

Lion of the tribe of Judah, I see in you that there is hope for one like me who has failed and been forgiven. Your roar overcomes the evil that would damn me forever, and now I may worship you around your throne forever.