The King
"Rejoice greatly, O daughter of Zion! Shout aloud, O daughter of Jerusalem!
Behold, your king is coming to you; righteous and having salvation is he,
humble and mounted on a donkey, on a colt, the foal of a donkey." (Zechariah 9:9)
Jesus answered [Pilate], “My kingdom is not of this world. If my kingdom were of this world, my servants would have been fighting, that I might not be delivered over to the Jews. But my kingdom is not from the world.” (John 18:36)
April 14, 2025
Dear friends,
We joyfully celebrated Palm Sunday yesterday in our home church. It was a wonderful time of worship, and the message challenged us to go beyond mere sentimentality regarding the holy week and to truly submit ourselves to the Lord, who is unsurpassed in humility, greatness, and compassion. (See the link below for the sermon.) This week I am thinking about this and being thankful for our Lord Jesus being the one true and eternal King. He said, "Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me, for I am gentle and lowly in heart, and you will find rest for your souls." (Matthew 11:29)
Over a century ago, the historian Lord Acton wrote, “Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely. Great men are almost always bad men.” With greater power comes greater temptations -- to indulge love of money, misuse of authority, sexual license, and the intoxication of controlling others. These in turn lead to deception, manipulation, compromise, and finally, violence. Secular history generally seems to bear this out.
This rings true even in the history of the nation of Israel. Many of its rulers were corrupted by idolatry and were compromised in their pursuit of righteousness. In the Bible, even the good kings receive mixed reviews. The greatest, King David, for all the good he brought, nevertheless ruined his family through sexual immorality and murder, and brought a devastating plague upon the people by his reckless census. No earthly king gets a pass, and I would add, this would include the powerbrokers of our own nation.
The only way you can have a ruler with great power is to have an absolutely good ruler who is himself incorruptible. Jesus, God's Son, is the one great King (Ps. 2; Isa. 9:1-7). He rules now from heaven, unseen by us, over the affairs of men. But the day is coming, perhaps soon, when he shall physically return and reign forever in glory over all the earth. He came to Jerusalem, humble and without worldly pomp, seated upon a donkey, a beast of burden. At his trial before Pilate, Jesus tells him, "My kingdom is not of this world." Christ's kingdom has a different source and nature than the kingdoms of this world.
In the Bible world rulers are often portrayed as beasts (see Daniel and Revelation). They come up through the ranks, promoting themselves, grabbing power, using deception and compromise, using and abusing people, gathering money and influence, and finally achieving dominance, whether by favoritism, stealth, or violence. Not so Jesus! He comes from above, from heaven (John 3:31). He was sent by God, was anointed by God, is vindicated by God, and is alone perfect and pure and able to rule justly and absolutely (Dan. 7:13, 14). He is the Servant King, and though not of this world, he will one day visibly rule the world. So, we "seek first his kingdom and his righteousness..." (Matt. 6:33) This is not a fairy tale for the pious, it's the truth and the future of this planet.
Meanwhile, we seek to be good citizens of our nation. We seek to be informed, we pray, we vote, and when it's needed, we speak out on issues. Those now in power deserve our respect and lawful submission (Rom 13:1-7). If we are commanded to do what is morally wrong in the sight of God -- or conversely, not to do what is morally right -- we have an obligation to obey God rather than men (Acts 4:19; 5:29).
It's all too easy, however, to become eager partisans (either for or against whomever), and thereby confuse our nation's welfare with the Kingdom of God. We vilify whoever does not agree with us. We become preoccupied with matters that will soon pass. We let current issues rob us of the zeal that we should have to promote the gospel of Christ's kingdom.
We must not confuse any kingdom here with the Kingdom that is coming. J. C. Ryle once wrote, "No history ought to receive so much of our attention as the past and present history of the church of Christ. The rise and fall of earthly empires are events of comparatively small importance in the sight of God." As I read the book of Revelation, I see that heaven's media (if we can call it that) is focused upon God's praying-and-suffering people, and the judgment which is coming upon this world.
There is only one King for us, now and forever. And in the end, there will be only one King for all of earth and heaven. Power corrupts all men, but our sinless king is incorruptible. He rides into Jerusalem on a lowly beast of burden. He speaks truth. He serves. He is compassionate. He lays down his life for us. And he rises on the third day, the first fruits of the new creation.
This is not mere religious sentimentality, it is history. This is a good time to remember whose kingdom we are serving. We must ask ourselves, is our attention and energy being channeled first and foremost into proclaiming Christ and his salvation?
READING AND LISTENING.
-- I'm studying Romans and was struck by this statement in Lewis Johnson's commentary: "Since the great truth of justification by faith alone is at the heart of Paul's letter to the Roman church, the epistle may come as something of a surprise to modern ecclesiastics. We might have expected the apostle to address believers at Rome, a city crammed with social problems, with a social manifesto or, at the least, a recitation of the primary truths of Christianity in their application to the social problems of the imperial city. Rome was a city of slaves, but Paul did not preach against slavery. It was a city of lust and vice, but he did not aim his mightiest guns at these evils. It was a city of gross economic injustice, but he did not thrust the sword of the Spirit into the vitals of that plague. It was a city that had been erected on and that had fed on and prospered by the violence and rapacity of war, but the apostle did not expatiate on its immorality. Apparently, if we are to judge the matter from a strictly biblical standpoint, Paul did not think that social reform in Rome was 'an evangelical imperative.' The proclamation of the gospel of Jesus Christ solved the crucial and urgent need for the society as a whole and for people in particular. It is still the imperative of the Christian church, and the Christian church will advance only to the extent that its gospel advances." (S. Lewis Johnson, Discovering Romans)
-- "The role of the prophet is not to say whatever comes to his fancy but to declare the revelation of God." (Alistair Begg)
-- "The history of the Nicene Creed teaches us that new statements (and modified statements) are often necessary to combat new errors." (Kevin DeYoung) Six lessons we learn from the Nicene Creed.
-- Hear Jim Krouscas on "The King's Entry".
-- I'm enjoying the campfire version of these two songs together.
FINAL QUOTE, a poem, "Palm Sunday" by Malcolm Guite:
"Now to the gate of my Jerusalem,
The seething holy city of my heart,
The Saviour comes. But will I welcome him?
Oh crowds of easy feelings make a start;
They raise their hands, get caught up in the singing,
And think the battle won. Too soon they’ll find
The challenge, the reversal he is bringing
Changes their tune. I know what lies behind
The surface flourish that so quickly fades;
Self-interest, and fearful guardedness,
The hardness of the heart, its barricades,
And at the core, the dreadful emptiness
Of a perverted temple. Jesus come
Break my resistance and make me your home."
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That's it for this week!
Sandy
Afterwords is an occasional newsletter on topics of interest to me (Sandy Young) since my retirement from full-time pastoral ministry. Unless otherwise indicated, all Scripture quotations are from The ESV Bible (The Holy Bible, English Standard Version), copyright 2001 by Crossway, a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers. Used by permission. All rights reserved.