Jesus, Our King

Our Father, we thank you for the privilege of being able to sing your praise, and we pray now that as we open our Bibles, that you will be, by your Spirit, our teacher, and that in learning we may live to the praise of your glory. For Christ’s sake. Amen.

I invite you to take your Bibles and turn initially to the Old Testament, to the prophecy of Zechariah and chapter 9. As you’re turning there, I say for the guidance of some who have just joined us this morning that we are today in our third and final study in a little trilogy where we have been viewing the person of Jesus Christ in his threefold office. And we’ve been learning that this paradigm, which theologians have given to us down through the years, is simply a way of looking at how Christ as the Anointed of God fulfills these offices that are so clearly seen throughout the Old Testament of Prophet, Priest, and King. And we saw that we needed a Prophet to come and oust our ignorance, that we were in need of a Priest to deal with our alienation, and this morning we recognize that we need a King to subdue our rebellious submission to sin and to darkness.

Our plan of attack will be the same as in our two previous studies: a moment or two, flying at thirty thousand feet over the text of Scripture, identifying the way in which this picture of kingship unfolds, then acknowledging its centrality in Christ, and then a couple of points by way of application.

Zechariah chapter 9 is not our first reference to the coming of a King; we’ll come to that in just a moment. But you actually find… And you needn’t turn to all of these; it gets tedious. But I’ll give you the references in case you wish to note them. We find at the end of the first book of the Bible, in Genesis chapter 49, that, in the word of Moses,

The scepter will not depart from Judah,
 nor the ruler’s staff from between his feet,
until he comes to whom it belongs,
 and the obedience of the nations is his.[1]

So, right at the very beginning of the Old Testament, we have this notion that is pointing forward to the kingship and the messiahship fused in an individual.

We need a King to subdue our rebellious submission to sin and to darkness.

Now, I asked you to turn to Zechariah 9; I must ask your apologies. I want you to turn also to 2 Samuel chapter 7—2 Samuel chapter 7 and to verse 12, where we have the promise of God to David of a kingship. And in 2 Samuel 7:12, God speaks to David, and he says,

When your days are over and you rest with your fathers, I will raise up your offspring to succeed you, who will come from your own body, and I will establish his kingdom. He is the one who will build a house for my Name, and I will establish the throne of his kingdom forever. I will be his father, and he [shall] be my son. When he does wrong, I will punish him with the rod of men, with floggings inflicted by men.

Now, we’ll just to stop there. And what we have in this word of prophecy is ultimately the prophecy of an eternal, universal King who will come from the line of David. That’s the significance in verse 13 of “build[ing] a house for my Name” and “establish[ing] the throne of his kingdom forever.” But if you are awake at all, as I assume you are, and you’re perceptive, you’re going to say, “Well, how can this possibly be fulfilled in Jesus when he goes on to say, ‘When he does wrong, I will punish him’? Because clearly Christ was sinless.”

Well, as I think I’ve mentioned to you before, if you go hill walking, and perhaps in Scotland if you go hill walking, you can walk through the hills in such a way that you think that the summit that you see before you is the end of your journey, only to discover that when you walk to the summit, there is at least another summit in front of you. There’s “summit else” in front of you, and then something else in front of that, and there are multiple levels before you finally reach the end of your journey.

Now, when you read Old Testament prophecy, you find the same thing to be true. And you can see these various hills of fulfillment here in verse 13: “I will establish the throne of his kingdom forever.” He’s talking about that ultimately. “I will be his father, and he will be my son.” That’s what is quoted in Hebrews. But when he says, “When he does wrong, I’ll punish him,” who’s he referring to? Well, he’s referring to Solomon, of course, and to one of the initial fulfillments of the prophetic word. I mention that just in passing, so that the next time you’re in a home Bible study group and you get yourself potentially tied up in knots, you can say, “Oh, well, that’s that hill walking business, I think, is the answer to that.” And it will be.

Isaiah, in chapter 32, speaks of “a king” who “will reign in righteousness,”[2] and then here Zechariah in chapter 9:

Rejoice greatly, O Daughter of Zion!
 Shout, Daughter of Jerusalem!
See, your king comes to you,
 righteous and having salvation,
gentle, and riding on a donkey,
 on a colt, the foal of a donkey.[3]

And immediately our minds go to Palm Sunday, and rightly so. And we go into the Gospels, and we discover that as Jesus approached Jerusalem, as he came to Bethpage, he gave instructions to his disciples to go and to get this donkey. And then the Gospel writers: “This took place to fulfill what the prophet had said,”[4] and then he quotes from Zechariah chapter 9.

So, what we have at the end of Jesus’ earthly pilgrimage points to his kingship, and what we have at the very commencement of his life does the same thing. And in Luke chapter 1, when Gabriel comes to make announcement of the arrival of Jesus, part of his word is as follows: “The Lord God will give him the throne of his father David, and … his kingdom will never end.”[5]

Now, when Jesus then steps on to the stage of his preaching and teaching and miracle-doing ministry, he exercises a certain amount of diffidence when it comes to this issue of kingship. Some of you may recall that in John chapter 6, after the dramatic miracle of the feeding, some of the people wanted “to come and make him [a] king by force.”[6] And he refused such a notion, and he scurried out through the crowd.

But later on, as the move towards Jerusalem neared its completion, he was prepared to identify himself in this kingly frame, so that, for example, some of us can recall when we studied in Luke chapter 11 that individuals came to him and said, “You know, the only way that you’re able to do all of these miraculous things is by the power of Beelzebub.”[7] “You have satanic powers,” in other words. “You’re operating according to demonic influences.” And Jesus on that occasion said, “If I drive out demons by the finger of God, then the kingdom of God has come to you”[8]—not “is coming to you” but “has come to you.” The King is present on the streets of Jerusalem, and when he exercises his prerogative, as he may, then it is an expression of his kingly rule.

And ultimately, you find it in the dialogue that ensues between he and the Roman governor Pilate: Pilate quizzing him and trying to find out just exactly what’s going on—“Why are you here? Why are these people saying things about you?”—and not making a great deal of headway with his questioning. And then, finally, a straightforward and categorical question needing a categorical question: “Are you the king of the Jews?”[9] Pilate said. And Jesus said, “Yes, it is as you say.”[10]

But what a poignancy about this King! A King who rides into Jerusalem not in the triumph of a great stallion but on the foal of a donkey. A King who wears a crown that is manufactured for him by his enemies, not manufactured by the princes of the state—not regal, not triumphant, but a crown of thorns that is crushed into his brow. And not for him the grandeur of the refined robes of royalty but instead the stripping, and the clothing with the scarlet robe, and the imitation staff in the form of a reed, and the spittle on his face, and the venom in his enemies’ response as they hail him: “Here he is, the great king. He saved others, but apparently, he can’t save himself. What kind of king do you call this?”[11]

Now, we’ve said as we’ve been going through that in the Old Testament Jesus is predicted, in the Gospels Jesus is revealed, and in the Acts of the Apostles Jesus is preached. So it’s no surprise to us when we go into the Acts of the Apostles—and we can dip in at a number of points. For example, when Paul and Silas are captured for their preaching, the great concern, Luke tells us, was that they were apparently defying Caesar’s decrees. And the quote from Acts 17:7 is this: “They are … defying Caesar’s decrees, [and they’re] saying … there is another king, one called Jesus.” And that didn’t play well in the first century. It certainly didn’t play well with the political and Roman jurisdiction of the time. Caesar wanted people to greet each other in the streets saying, “Caesar is lord.” And here the Christians, in a countercultural fashion, were greeting one another, and they were saying, “Jesus is Lord.” And when their proponents went to proclaim this Christ, they proclaimed him as the King.

And by the time Paul is writing his magnificent chapter on the resurrection in 1 Corinthians 15, he says in a summary statement, “He must reign until he has put all [of] his enemies under his feet.”[12] So he is in the Old Testament a coming King. He is in the Gospels a King who has arrived. He is in the Acts a King who is proclaimed. And then, when you go into the Epistles, into the Letters, then he is a King who is explained. And we understand the nature of his kingly rule. Paul is doing that: “He must reign,” he says, “until he finally wraps the whole thing up.”

Now, let me pause and say just one thing. We said in studying him as Prophet that the reason that we needed a Prophet was because of the darkness and the ignorance that is inherently inside of us. The reason that we needed a Priest was because we are estranged and alienated from God, and Christ has come to bridge that chasm. And now we’re recognizing that the reason that we need a King is because we are actually, says the Bible, under the rule of tyrants.

Now, this could become the whole sermon, and it mustn’t. So let me just give you three places to which you can go, if you choose, for your homework. Romans chapter 8 and around verses 7 and 8, Paul says of the person who remains in their unbelief, they are “controlled by the sinful nature,” and they “cannot please God.” “They cannot please God.” When he writes to Timothy in 2 Timothy 2:26, he speaks of those who are captives of the devil. And the writer to the Hebrews, in Hebrews 2:15, when he speaks of the liberating power of Jesus, he says that Jesus the King has come to liberate those who all their lives have been enslaved by the “fear of death.”

And so here we are this morning, a representative crowd from Cleveland, Ohio, and tempted to believe that what is true of us is what we perceive superficially to be true of us. And of course, much of our assessment of ourselves is accurate: we have to go back to work, we’re going to school, we have a measure of health and strength, and so on. But we’re tempted also to think that we are the captains of our own destiny and the masters of our own fate, and we can take care of things fairly well. Therefore, it’s a quite staggering thing to lay ourselves open to the penetrating gaze of the Bible, which says, “Good morning, sir. Good morning, madam. Good morning, teenager. Good morning, university student. There’s something I need to remind you of this morning, and it is this: Number one, you are controlled by your sinful nature, and therefore, you cannot please God. Number two, you’re actually captive. Oh, you may think you’re free, but you’re a captive. And number three, if you’re honest, you’re probably scared to death of death. And that’s the bad news, but the good news is Jesus Christ is King. He is the one who liberates us from these tyrannies.”

In rising from the dead, Jesus is declaring that he has defeated the age-long enemies of sin and death and the power of darkness.

And his kingship expresses itself in multiple ways. Bruce Milne, in his most helpful book, which I depend upon greatly and quote from frequently and commend to you always—you can get it in the bookstore (Know the Truth, by a good Scottish theologian, Bruce Milne)—he points out at this point in his writing that this kingship of Jesus is seen clearly, first of all, in the resurrection.[13] In the resurrection. Because in rising from the dead, Jesus is declaring that he has defeated the age-long enemies of sin and death and the power of darkness and that when God raised his Son from the dead, he was essentially saying, “Atta boy!” He was saying, “Amen!” He was saying, “You see, Jesus said that he would deal with sin, he would deal with death, and he would deal with the terrors of the grave. And he has done that by walking right into the darkness and coming right out through it.” And he declares himself King in his resurrection.

He declares himself King in his ascension. We sing at Eastertime or at Ascension time,

The head that once was crowned with thorns
Is crowned with glory now;
[And] a royal diadem adorns
The mighty victor’s brow.[14]

And his kingship is revealed in his ascending to the right hand of God. “Angels, authorities … powers” are “in submission to him.”[15] He is crowned with glory and with honor. He has been exalted—as we noted in our opening call to worship from Philippians 2—he has been “exalted … to the highest place.”[16]

So, his kingship is seen in his resurrection, it’s seen in his ascension, and it is about to be seen in his return. Christ’s future reign in glory is the perspective, then, from which everything else must be viewed. I came across a wonderful, helpful quote—at least, it was to me; I hope it is to you—a sort of summation quote when you get to this notion of the fact that the story’s not over yet. We saw that in the hymn “This Is My Father’s World”: “The battle is not done.”[17] “Well,” you say, “I thought it was done. I thought there was a cross, and I thought victory was ensured.” Well, victory was ensured—it’s checkmate—but clearly, there’s a lot of skirmishes going on, and many of them extremely severe. And they will continue to be severe until finally Christ the King returns in glory to reign. Says this individual,

Christ’s kingly office provides us with a wealth of comfort and assurance. For while the nations rage against one another; while the earth groans beneath our feet; while there is sickness, disease, and economic hardship … even now our Lord is ruling and reigning, until he makes his enemies his footstool …. And so while unbelievers may look around at these world conditions and see the apparent chaos as an excuse to scoff, saying, “Where is this ‘coming’ he promised?” … the believer can take heart, for the signs of the end are exactly that. The tumult we see around us is, in fact, proof that Christ is reigning and that he is directing all of history toward a great and final consummation, when he will come with great glory with his angels, as the great conquering king.[18]

Okay?

Now two points of application, and we’re through.

Point number one: in all of this, surely we must see that this aspect of the work of Christ should determine the way in which we view the world. The way in which we view the world. One of the ways in which the New Testament would help us to understand the transformation that takes place when someone believes in Christ is that we are transferred from the kingdom of darkness into the kingdom of light. We are transformed from the tyranny of the Evil One into the kingdom of the Son, whom he loves.[19] And as a result of that, our perspective is changed. We now view the world in a way that we didn’t. We now view Christ in a way that we didn’t. We now view men and women in a way that we didn’t. And indeed, it is one of the ways to determine whether there is actually, if you like, a volume 2 in our spiritual journey. Volume 1: ignorant, in need of a prophet. Volume 1: alienated and in need of a priest. Volume 1: bumptious, tyrannical, and in need of a King upon the throne. Volume 2: into my ignorance Christ has come to speak. Volume 2: into my estrangement Christ has come to heal and to restore. Volume 2: into my rebellion Christ has come to rule and to reign.

So one of the distinguishing features of faith is actually in the way we stand back and look at things. And the Christian affirms that “the Lord God omnipotent reign[s].”[20] It doesn’t always seem so, but it is so. So in other words, when everything seems to militate against that notion, we daily have to make the choice “Shall I, then, be bowed under the weight of what appears to be so oppressive? Or shall I deal with that very real sense of fear, discouragement, sense of grave concern over my children or my job or my health or whatever it may be? Will I allow all of that to bury me under its weight, or shall I bring to bear upon it—not making me some inane grinning person—but shall I bring to bear upon it the truth that Jesus Christ is King, even over all these circumstances?”

One of the most graphic illustrations of it is actually back in the Old Testament, six hundred years before Christ, in Isaiah. And this is the only other portion to which I invite you to turn, and we’ll turn to it just briefly but purposefully. It’s Isaiah chapter 44. And the prophet Isaiah is saying to the people, “You know, this idolatry business is not a good idea.” “Now,” you say, “well, idolatry, we understand that happened in other countries, other nations, other points in history. There’s no idolatry now, is there?” Well, every day, in a thousand ways, I am tempted to make myself the center of the universe. That’s my first problem with idolatry: me—and then the idol of materialism and the idol of sex and the idol of significance, and so many that are characterized and baptized into orthodoxy within the framework of contemporary culture.

Isaiah 44:6: “This is what the Lord says.” Who’s speaking?

 Israel’s King and Redeemer, the Lord Almighty:
I am the first and I am the last;
 [and] apart from me there is no God.

What a staggering claim into our postmodern thinking! “Who then is like me?” (“Why don’t you stand up and say?”)

 Declare [it,] lay out before me,
what has happened since I established my ancient people,
 and what is yet to come—
 … let him foretell what will come.

Verse 9:

All who make idols are nothing,
 and the things they treasure are worthless.
Those who would speak up for them are blind;
 they[’re] ignorant, to their own shame.

And then he says,

[The person that] shapes a god and casts an idol,
 which can profit him nothing?
He and his kind will be put to shame;
 craftsmen are nothing but men.
Let them all come together and take their stand;
 they will be brought down to terror and [to] infamy.

And then he goes down the line, and he points out—he’s having fun with this; he illustrates it with metaphor and simile—and he says, “You know, look at man as he works with his chisels and his compasses, and he forms these things and puts in them in shrines and so on, goes out in the forest, gets a block of wood.”[21] And he says, “But, look,” in verse 15:

It[’s] man’s fuel for burning;
 some of it he takes and warms himself,
 he kindles a fire … bakes bread.
But he also fashions a god and worships it;
 he makes an idol and bows down to it.
Half of the wood he burns in the fire;
 over it he prepares his meal,
 he roasts his meat … eats his fill.
… Warms himself and says,
 “Ah! I[’m] warm; I see the fire.”
[And] from the rest he makes a god, his idol;
 he bows down to it and worships.
He prays to it and [he] says,
 “Save me; you[’re] my god.”
They know nothing, they understand nothing;
 their eyes are plastered over so they cannot see,
 and their minds [are] closed so [that] they cannot understand.

Now, look at this wonderful line here, verse 19: “No one stops to think.” “No one stops to think.” The twentieth century left us a legacy, if you like, ugly twins: mindlessness and meaninglessness. We just got a kickback of existentialism: “Well, how does it feel to you? What does this mean to you?”—which sidesteps any notions of truth. But when you come to the Bible, it confronts us all the time.

No one stops to think,
 no one has the knowledge or understanding to say,
“[Wait a minute, half of this I used for a fire];
 I … baked bread over its coals,
 I roasted [the] meat and I ate [it].
Shall I make a detestable thing from what is left?
 Shall I bow down to a block of wood?”
He feeds on ashes, a deluded heart misleads him;
 he cannot save himself, or say,
 “Is[n’t] this thing in my right hand a lie?”

Now, it is in contrast to that that the Bible affirms that Jesus is the source, the sustainer, and the goal of all created reality. This is a staggering claim, but this is biblical Christianity: Jesus is the source and the sustainer and the goal of all created reality. We read from Colossians chapter 1: “For by him all things were created: things in heaven and [under the] earth,”[22] and so on. When this dawned on Abraham Kuyper, in the establishing of the Free University of Amsterdam, Kuyper, who was the prime minister of the Netherlands, he declares on one occasion, “There is not one inch in the entire area of human life about which Jesus does not cry, ‘This is mine!’”[23] And that is true at the macro level; it’s true at the micro level.

This is a staggering claim, but this is biblical Christianity: Jesus is the source and the sustainer and the goal of all created reality.

Some time ago now, I was in Chagrin Falls, and there was a fellow out there; he had a box that he had made—it was more than a box, but it looked like a gigantic box—and he had fashioned it so that he could look at the stars. I think we were together; I can’t remember. And I stood with someone else, and he said that this was a great moment for seeing something, and he offered me the chance to look. And I remember I felt such a fool, because I got down, and I looked, and for the life of me, I couldn’t see anything that was of striking significance at all. But I didn’t want to disappoint him, and he said, “Can you see it?” And I said, “Yes.” And I didn’t know if he meant, “Can you see the moon?” or I didn’t know. But he was very into it.

And essentially, we were looking at the Milky Way. I would have been better off eating a Milky Way, because of my ignorance. But the fact of the matter is, we were looking at the Milky Way. They tell me… “They.” I love “they,” don’t you? “They.” They tell me that there are some two hundred billion stars in the Milky Way, so no wonder I couldn’t see what it was, right? How am I going to figure out which is which? Two hundred billion stars in the Milky Way! Well, the Milky Way is a galaxy. They estimate that there may be over one hundred billion galaxies. And again, Isaiah the prophet says,

Lift [up] your eyes and look to the heavens:
 Who created all these?
He who brings out the starry host …
 and calls … each [of them] by name.[24]

He also made the micro world. I have only vague recollections of these things from science at school. I deserted it at the age of fifteen—a great day in my life. But we were in the room, and we had those balls made of polystyrene, with the rods joining them all. And there was something dramatically important about this that I could never fully understand. It had to do with electrons and the nucleus, and the teacher was trying to get me to grapple with the atomic structure of the universe. And you know me. You can just look at me, and you know, “He doesn’t understand that.” He told me that if you had a nucleus that was the size of a football—that is, a soccer ball—if you had a nucleus the size of soccer ball, then the electrons would be spinning around at five miles away. So I said, “Okay, fine.”

Jesus Christ is the source and the sustainer and the goal of every created thing. It’s a staggering thought, isn’t it? So, is he just like Gaia, Vishnu, Krishna, Muhammad, Buddha? No, at least in this one respect: he made them all, “and in him all things hold together.”[25] He is actually the explanation to the astrophysicists’ attempt to explain why everything is cohesive. I mean, I know it sounds bizarre to them. They reject it as a futile fantasy. But the fact is, at least as an explanation, they call it “nuclear glue,” or “We don’t really know why everything doesn’t just blow apart.” And this is not a scientific explanation, but it is a wonderful statement: in him all these things find their cohesion.

Finally, “Jesus is King,” it should change the way in which we view the world, and then it should change the way in which we should live in the world. The way in which we should live in the world. That’s why we began singing “This Is My Father’s World,” so that right from the beginning we would understand, we would affirm our conviction that we’re not just molecules held in suspension but that we were intricately formed in our mother’s womb.[26] And this is the Father’s world, and when our ears are tuned to listen, the “nature sings, and round me [springs all] the music of the spheres.”[27] Therefore, the way in which I live in the world is changed because Jesus is King. The way in which I view the ecosystems, the reason that we would deal with litter in the way that we do, the reason that we may be concerned with global warming as we might, the reason that we would be concerned with all of the ecosystems are because of the fact that Jesus is King.

Our respect for humanity is because Jesus is King. We recognize that in the early days, hospitals emerged out of Christian conviction, because the Christians said, you know, “We are intricately formed by a creator God, and therefore, what he has made is worthy of our care and our compassion and our concern. Therefore, we will deal with children in their infancy, and we will not dispense with elderly people, even though the value and quality of their life is drifting into oblivion.” Why? Because Jesus is King.

And the way that we treat animals is because Jesus is King. This came home to me Thursday night. I was standing shaking hands with a group of people, and a lady came, and she had a dog. And the dog was there, and it not only had a lead, but it had tags on it, and it had a big black face and large paws. And I thought it looked like a nice dog. And so I said hello to the lady, and I said hello to her dog. And I said, “What kind of dog is this?”

She said, “It’s a mastiff, a bullmastiff.”

“Oh,” I said, “don’t those things get really big?”

She said, “Oh yeah! Two hundred pounds.” She said, “This dog is being trained as a mobility dog.”

I said, “A mobility dog? The only one of these I’ve ever seen just knocked tables and cars over and things, just ran all through the streets. What are you talking about?”

She said, “No, properly trained, this dog will become the key to the mobility of an invalided person.” And then I looked down at this little thing, then I got down beside him again. I sat down. I looked. I took his face. I said, “My, my! You know, your whole existence, dog, pup—you’re going to be growing up to two hundred pounds so that somebody’ll be able to go and answer the telephone just leaning on your back.” You say, “But are you going soft in your head or something?” No, it just struck me, you know, how wonderful that we would even have creatures that could be trained to do that.

But let me finish. If Jesus is King, and he is the Servant King; and he disliked the oppressive, bombastic gentile kings and rulers; and he established the fact that he was among the people as one who serves;[28] then surely he establishes for us the grandeur of lowliness, the ministry of Monday, the privilege of servitude—that this kingship of Christ is not some autocratic, arm’s-length kingship, but this is the King who serves. This is the one who takes the towel and the basin and washes the feet of the disciples, who will not care for one another.

Such a King is approachable. Such a King is reliable, so that the things that hold us in tyranny today—issues, habits, patterns of life that seem to have had their grip upon us and from which we cannot extricate ourselves—I say to you today: if you will bow before the kingship of Christ, he is able to rule and reign over these issues. And he is a trustworthy King. Therefore, my tragedies—and yes, there are tragedies and disappointments and fears and hurts and losses—and our loved ones may all be brought before him.

This kingship of Christ is not some autocratic, arm’s-length kingship, but this is the King who serves.

But ultimately, because Jesus is King, it’s going to change the way we view the end of it all: the ultimate vision in Revelation 7 of a company that no man could number. They were bowing down before the Lamb on the throne and declaring, “Salvation belongs to the Lord,” And they came from every nation and tribe and language and so on.[29] And John looks forward into the expectation of the grand denouement of his kingship.

And it is this picture which has fired missionary zeal throughout the world. This is what took David Livingstone into the heart of Africa. This is what took Mary Slessor into Calabar. This is what took Jim Elliot into Ecuador. This is what took George Whitefield all around the New England states and into Philadelphia and beyond. What was it? It was the notion that Christ is King, and he is calling men and women into his kingly rule. And I do not begin to understand his kingship unless I have a genuine desire to let others know that he is King.

Oh, it’s almost a complete generation since Chariots of Fire won, what, seven Academy Awards? And the first part of the story of Eric Liddell’s life became common knowledge, at least at that time: Edinburgh University, rugby, athletics, a man of faith wrestling with the implications of his convictions, running to success in the 1924 Olympics in Paris, a four-hundred-meters gold. He told the Edinburgh Evening Post that his success was due to the fact that he ran the first two hundred as hard as he could, and with God’s help, he ran the second two hundred even faster.

The second part of his life is in process at the moment in Hollywood. I hope that it finally reaches us. I wonder if it will. It begins at Edinburgh Waverley Station—Edinburgh Waverley Station, there with a little group of people that are his immediate family, an extended group that have come from the realms of his influence, and then a whole host of people that have come simply because their triumphant Olympic athlete of all things is leaving his nation and is going to China to teach in a missionary school. What a waste of talent! What a strange thing to do! And he rolls the window down, and he puts his head out to the gathered crowd, and he shouts, “Christ for the world, for the world needs Christ!” And then he led the gathered throng in the singing:

Jesus shall reign where’er the sun
Doth his successive journeys run,
[And] his kingdom stretch from shore to shore,
Till moons shall wax and wane no more.[30]

And within a relatively short time, he dies as a beloved teacher in China.

What a strange story—unless Christ is King.

And if he’s King, then it’s going to change the way I view the world. It’s going to change the way in which I live in the world. And yes, it’ll change the way in which we leave the world. And if we have not figured out our departure plan, then the chances are that we have no meaningful plan for living now.

Oh, I commend to you Jesus Christ, our Prophet, Priest, and King.

Father, out of an abundance of words, we long that there would be that which sticks in our minds and lodges in our hearts and touches to change. We bow before the greatness of Christ,

Jesus, my Shepherd, Savior, Friend,
My Prophet, Priest, and King,
My Lord, my Life, my Way, my End,
[Will you] accept the praise I bring[?][31]

[1] Genesis 49:10 (NIV 1984).

[2] Isaiah 32:1 (NIV 1984).

[3] Zechariah 9:9 (NIV 1984).

[4] Matthew 21:4 (paraphrased).

[5] Luke 1:32–33 (NIV 1984).

[6] John 6:15 (NIV 1984).

[7] Luke 11:15 (paraphrased).

[8] Luke 11:20 (NIV 1984).

[9] John 18:33 (NIV 1984).

[10] John 18:37 (paraphrased).

[11] Luke 23:35 (paraphrased).

[12] 1 Corinthians 15:25 (NIV 1984).

[13] Bruce Milne, Know the Truth: A Handbook of Christian Belief (Leicester, England: Inter-Varsity, 1982), 134.

[14] Thomas Kelly, “The Head That Once Was Crowned with Thorns” (1820).

[15] 1 Peter 3:22 (NIV 1984).

[16] Philippians 2:9 (NIV 1984).

[17] Maltbie Davenport Babcock, “This Is My Father’s World” (1901).

[18] Kim Riddlebarger, “The Triple Cure,” Modern Reformation 4, no. 6 (November/December 1995), https://www.modernreformation.org/resources/articles/the-triple-cure.

[19] See Colossians 1:13.

[20] Revelation 19:6 (KJV).

[21] Isaiah 44:13–14 (paraphrased).

[22] Colossians 1:16 (NIV 1984).

[23] Abraham Kuyper, “Sphere Sovereignty,” in Abraham Kuyper: A Centennial Reader, ed. James D. Bratt (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1998), 488.Paraphrased.

[24] Isaiah 40:26 (NIV 1984).

[25] Colossians 1:17 (NIV 1984).

[26] See Psalm 139:13.

[27] Babcock, “This Is My Father’s World.”

[28] See Luke 22:27.

[29] Revelation 7:9 (paraphrased).

[30] Isaac Watts, “Jesus Shall Reign” (1719).

[31] John Newton, “How Sweet the Name of Jesus Sounds” (1779).