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Twenty-Seventh Sunday after Pentecost
St. Stephen's Anglican Church
The Rev. Jeffrey O. Cerar, November 24, 2013


King Above All Kings


Text: Colossians 1:9-20

Today is the last Sunday after Pentecost, the last Sunday of the Church calendar, and the day we celebrate "Christ the King." We democratic Americans do not have a love affair with kings. King George III saw to that in colonial days as the DNA of this republic was being written. We love the legends of good King Arthur and Camelot, where it is always springtime, and everything is peaceful, and the people are happy. But they are only legends. Kings have too much power, they end up abusing it. The Hebrew people discovered that. In Book of First Samuel, you can read in Chapter 8 about the time the Hebrew people asked God for a king. They looked around them at the way all other nations were organized and ruled, and they said, "We want a king." The problem was, they already had a king. God was their King, and He ruled them directly. He was the perfect King, who did all the things earthly kings were supposed to do for their people but did not. During the time of their wilderness wandering, when God was their only King.

God was not at all pleased that His people asked for a king. But they wanted a human king like everyone else, and God let them have what they asked for. But He told them, through the prophet Samuel, what they could expect under an earthly king. (See I Samuel 8:10-18) And almost every one of their kings fell prey to the temptations of the office, disappointing them, oppressing them and leading them to disobey God's commandments. As the Bible introduces us to one king after another, it says, "He did evil in the eyes of the Lord, following the detestable practices of the nations God had driven out before the Israelites." (See, e.g. 2 Kings 21ff) In fact, over the almost 500 years of the period of the kings, only two are described without reservation as good kings.

As a result, life among God's people was not much like the good life God had offered to them. And because of their blatant disobedience, God often withdrew His providing, protecting, hand. Unprotected, they fell easily to their enemies. And so, they came to look forward to a Messiah who would one day come to rule them with a gracious hand and free them from oppression. Their prophecies spoke of this king who would sit upon the throne of David and rule forever. Jesus, the Son of God is the one who fulfilled all those prophecies. He is the King above all kings, not just of the Hebrew people, but of all the nations. And a time is coming when at the sound of His name, every knee will bow and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father. (Philippians 2:9-11)

Today I want to look at Jesus as both the King of kings and the Son of the Creator of the world. I'm going to consider four pairs of seemingly opposite attributes or character traits that we see in God. As those opposites are viewed together, we can see how Jesus is the perfect King, whose rule blesses His people, and who is everything people have always hoped for in their kings.

First, God is all-powerful, and yet He is humble. The Bible is full of passages where we read about the awesome, absolute power of God. We have only to look up into the sky or at the majestic Rocky mountains, or watch the sun rise over the Chesapeake Bay, to recognize what God's creative power has done. Amos spoke about Him this way:

He who made the Pleiades and Orion,    
    who turns midnight into dawn    
    and darkens day into night,
who calls for the waters of the sea    
    and pours them out over the face of the land—   
    the Lord is his name.

The psalmist said,

"When I consider your heavens, the work of your fingers, the moon and the stars, which you have set in place, what is mankind that you are mindful of them...? [Amos 8:3-4]

And the apostles recognized that Jesus was God, and that all this power was His. Our reading from Colossians today says this about Jesus,

16 For in him all things were created: things in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or powers or rulers or authorities; all things have been created through him and for him. 17 He is before all things, and in him all things hold together. [Colossians 1:16-18]

"In Him all things hold together." If Jesus wanted to put an end to the world, it would be as easy as snapping His fingers. He created all things, and they exist only as long as He allows them to exist. We call this the sovereignty of God. "Sovereign" means king. In His sovereignty, God can do anything He decides to do. Nothing can thwart His purposes. There is no other power like that.

And yet, this God is humble. Humility is a quality that seems not to fit such an awesome God. But it does. This God of absolute power chose to come down in humble form to save His people. Philippians tells us,

6   ...being in very nature God, [He] did not consider equality with God something to be used to his own advantage;
7 rather, he made himself nothing by taking the very nature of a servant, being made in human likeness.
8 And being found in appearance as a man, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to death—even death on a cross! [Philippians 2:6-8]

Our scriptures give us dozens of pictures of His humility:

And what is the symbol of the Savior that runs throughout the Bible? A lamb.

"Behold the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world." (John 1:29)"

Salvation belongs to our God who sits upon the throne, and to the Lamb." (Revelation 7:10)

The hardest thing for a king to do is to be humble. But for this king, humility was His very nature. And astoundingly, it takes a humble God of all power to love His creation so much that He would come among us to save us.

Second, God provides for His people, but He also disciplines them. We call God "Jehovah Jireh." That is Hebrew for "God provides."

God has endless storehouses of blessings, and He showers them upon His people. But there were many times when God punished His chosen people.

What happened? The Bible tells us that these times were God's discipline, for the were worshipping false gods; they were ignoring His law; they were mistreating the poor and celebrating injustice. There is no mystery about how we can reconcile these two sides of God. The Letter to the Hebrews tells us, "God disciplines the one He loves." (Hebrews 12:6) It goes on to say,

...God disciplines us for our good, in order that we may share in his holiness. No discipline seems pleasant at the time, but painful. Later on, however, it produces a harvest of righteousness and peace for those who have been trained by it. (Hebrews 12:10-11)

An earthly king, or maybe an earthly parent, might give his children everything they needed and wanted, and no responsibility to go along with it. We are seeing what that does to a society. Or at the other extreme, a king might be all discipline and no provision. We have seen despots in many places in the world in our time, and throughout history. All they do is take and take from their people, and when the people rebel, the king rewards them with dungeons, torture and firing squads. But God is not a despot. And He does not coddle His people. He is the perfect provider, and He also disciplines His people for their own good.

Third, God is just, but He is also merciful. In a just society, there are laws that all the people know and understand. They tell you what you are supposed to do, and what will happen if you don't. That is what God has done. He gave His commandments to His people in very plain language. And these were not arbitrary laws. They were guidelines for the way God made human beings to function. God's laws are a recipe for what makes a society work. When we keep His laws, things go well, and our society is well grounded and harmonious. When we break His laws, things go out of whack. God is just, for He doesn't punish for anything He didn't tell His people in advance.

Now you may object that God has given us commandments that, because of our sin, people cannot perfectly keep. How is that just? The Apostle Paul grappled with that in the Book of Romans. In chapter 7, he concludes that God gave us the law so that we could see our sinful nature, and our need for a savior. For God's plan from the beginning was to redeem the world through the Savior. And that is where God's mercy comes in. He could justly have simply destroyed the world, for, as scripture tells us, there is no single person who is without sin. Not a one. But God, being merciful, loved the world so much that He sent His only Son into the world so that whoever believes in Him would not perish but have everlasting life. Justice calls for our destruction. Mercy calls for our rescue. And that is what Christ has done for us. He satisfied the demands of justice by paying the penalty we should have paid on the hard wood of the cross. And He embodied the mercy of God by making a way that everyone who repents and puts their trust in Him will be freely forgiven, given a new life, and promised to be with Him forever.

Fourth, God is love, but He also judges. We have just seen the greatest outpouring of His love. He loves the whole world. He loves everyone in it from every tribe and language and people and nation. He makes His salvation available to everyone, and sends His disciples out as the agents of His love. Jesus said that He was the embodiment of the prophecy which said,

18 "The Spirit of the Lord is on me, because he has anointed me to proclaim good news to the poor.He has sent me to proclaim freedom for the prisoners and recovery of sight for the blind,to set the oppressed free,19 to proclaim the year of the Lord's favor." Isaiah 61:1-2

God is love. (I John 4:16) And Jesus is the best expression of His love. How does that relate to God's judgment? Let me ask you this. Think of the people who have betrayed and abused you and slandered you in your life. You may well have forgiven them. I hope you have, so that you are not losing sleep over them, and are not suffering from bitterness. But should they get free pass? Why not? Because it wouldn't be right. And that is what God's judgment is about. He created a perfect world that has been corrupted by sin. He has made a way for everyone who is willing to accept His free gift of salvation. But what about those who scorn His gift? They are still in their sins. They still bring misery on the world. They still hurt and maim and kill God's people. There has to come a day when their time is up. And that is because God loves the world. He loves it so much that He is going to eliminate everything in it that blemishes it or corrupts it. He is going to wipe away the tears of all those who turn to Him. And all will be perfect once again.

As we come to the end of the Church year, our eyes are upon that perfection the King has promised us.

Who sits on the throne that reigns over your life? Whom do you serve? There is nothing and no one who can rule like the King of kings and Lord of lords—

And when we try to be our own king, to rule ourselves, what seems like freedom quickly descends into chaos. There is only one King whose rule over us can take us to that Heavenly City, that New Jerusalem.

"The Spirit and the bride say, 'Come!' And let him who hears say, 'Come!' Whoever is thirsty, let him come; and whoever wishes, let him take the free gift of the water of life." (Revelation 22:17)

© The Rev. Jeffrey O. Cerar, 2013

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