Weekly Bulletin

The LORD is king forever and ever!   The godless nations will vanish from the land.     Psalm 10:16 (NLT)

 

“I am the LORD, your Holy One, Israel’s Creator, your King.”     Isaiah 43:15

 

On his robe and on his thigh [the returning Christ] has a name written, King of kings and Lord of lords.     Revelation 19:16

 

For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also….. No one can serve two masters…. You cannot serve both God and worldly riches….. So do not worry, saying, ‘What shall we eat?’ or ‘What shall we drink?’ or ‘What shall we wear?’  For the pagans run after all these things, and your heavenly Father knows that you need them.  But seek first his kingdom and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well.      Matthew 6:21,24,31-33

 

 

The past year or so in the US has seen several political demonstrations around the nation called “no kings” events.  Those gatherings have drawn several million people to marches and other activities to express displeasure over what they see as “executive overreach” in the country’s governance.  Surveys done during that year by Johns Hopkins University and other polling organizations show that a large majority of Americans feel democracy – government of the people, by the people, for the people – is under threat.  After watching those events in the US, groups in Europe who are concerned about the same trend in their own countries have held similar “no kings” events, with similar turnouts.  As one who has at least a sense of American and global history and an awareness of current events, I find it difficult to disagree with the basic sentiments of this “new” sociopolitical movement.  I’m fairly sure that living in an autocracy would not be the first choice for most of us.  As a follower of Jesus Christ, however, I can’t help wishing that more “no kings” enthusiasts could find the humility to admit that there are “kings” in all our lives which are not the political ones running governments. 

 

King of kings, and Lord of lords       Revelation 19:16 says that when Jesus returns at the end of earthly human time, he will have written on his robe and on his thigh the name “King of kings and Lord of lords.”  In earthly monarchies, kings have been understood to be the sovereign head of state who holds ultimate authority and power over the realm and its policies.  Lords are the king’s officials who carry out and implement the king’s policies.  In the past, many earthly kings were assumed to be descended from God and/or divinely appointed by God.  That enabled them to rule by fear and coercive power, threatening the wrath of God upon noncompliant citizens who dared to challenge their authority.
             John’s Gospel and his epistles tell us that Jesus came to earth as the eternal King and Lord to correct that wrong understanding.  Jesus’ message was that the God of Creation is the only eternal King over all lesser earthly ones, and his singular policy is one of redeeming love, not fear and coercion.  God is the sovereign head of state, the source of ultimate authority and power.  In Jesus, he came to earth as the Lord of lords to implement the King’s covenant of redeeming love through the grace and Truth of his lived example and his Spirit’s power.  Matthew 6:33 says that he has a both temporal and eternal kingdom into which he invites all who genuinely honor and receive him, but it must be sought with all our hearts, as our greatest priority over all others. 

 

You Just Had to Bring Up Priorities, Didn’t You          Let’s go to the videotape, as they used to say.  Since I brought up the “no kings” demonstrations, I’ll start there.  As I stated previously, I certainly cannot disagree with the basic sentiments of the movement.  I know and love some of the people who have joined those gatherings, and I am confident of their spiritual motivations for participating, and of their love for the Lord and for the victims of injustice.  With all my heart, I want their advocacy to succeed.  The thing that makes me sad when I see the pictures of those events is just the probability that the percentage of all those people in those crowds who share the spiritual motivations of my friends is pretty small.  When I see the pictures, I can’t help wondering, if Jesus came to town with his message of Truth applicable to our current social dilemmas, whether anywhere near that many folks would invest the time, money, and energy to go hear him and act with him for the “rightness” of his kingdom.  I genuinely hope they would, but I’m not convinced.
             NBA Champions       Just a few days ago, the New York Knicks were crowned the “kings” of the National Basketball Association for the 2025-2026 season, and New York City held a tickertape parade to honor the team.  Once again, my lifetime hobbies and diversions are called into question.  I played a lot of basketball during my school years, and I enjoyed it all and learned and grew from the experiences.  Even so, I can still hear my dad saying, “It’s only a game.”  When I see the passionate crowds at those NBA games and at that parade, and consider the investment of time, money, and energy they made for tickets, for air travel between Texas and New York, and for all the other activities that went into that “kingship” which will last for just a few months, I can’t help wondering how that fits into Jesus’ instruction to “seek first his kingdom and his righteousness.”  I pray the Lord will find a way to use it for his glory.
             World Cup Soccer       An even bigger example of this point is the World Cup soccer tournament being played in Mexico, the US, and Canada by teams from 48 nations.  The tournament does have the positive goal of fostering good relations and friendships among the world’s nations, some of which don’t get along very well.  Still, large numbers of passionate fans have accompanied their teams and are paying significant amounts of money for airfares, lodging, and all the other necessities for being at the games for more than a month.  And all that is happening while people suffer from war and Ebola in Africa, war rages in the Middle East and Ukraine, and Venezuela reels from a double earthquake.  When the tournament is all over, one team will be crowned “king” of world soccer for the next four years, and then they’ll do it all over again in Morocco, Spain, and Portugal.  Once again, I find myself praying that global spiritual priorities could somehow start taking precedence over personal and local ones.

 

Not All “Kings” Live in Palaces or sit on thrones.  A lot of them live in human minds and hearts where we decide how we’re going to live.  If Christ is not our invited king there, a lot of lesser worldly influences are glad to move in and take over.  In I Samuel 8 (during the time of the Judges), the Israelite leaders demanded that Samuel appoint them a king so they could be like the surrounding nations.  They said they wanted a king, but their real desire was to fit in and be like the world, and it cost them dearly.  The three previous illustrations (demonstrations, sports) show how earthly sociopolitical preferences and entertainments subtly can become our first priority and displace obedient discipleship.  One of the strongest of these “kings” is wealth and its many manifestations.  Others are selfish ambition, popular acclaim, pleasure, and social power.  There are many others as well.  And if “kings” are understood to be the source of authority and power in our lives, then a lot of us in this self-focused era selfishly think of ourselves as “kings,” doing whatever we want so long as it’s legal, affordable, and others are doing it too.  Unfortunately, those qualifications don’t automatically make something the leading of Christ’s Spirit.  We always must listen and be led to live by eternal values and priorities, not temporary earthly ones.

 

Who/What Gets Our Passion?      Watching uninhibited sports fans these past few weeks, I have been reminded of the account in II Samuel 6 of King David’s accompaniment of the Ark of the Covenant back to Jerusalem after it had been captured by enemies and displaced for many years.  As the entourage approached the city, David threw off his heavy robe and danced mightily before the Lord while others shouted and blew trumpets.  There was no mention of face paint or letters painted across his chest, but when he got home, his wife Michal harshly criticized him for embarrassing her by his enthusiasm.  David responded that he was celebrating before the Lord, not her, and he was not ashamed of his gratitude to God for a new chance for Israel’s spiritual renewal. 
             An even earlier example is that of Moses’ sister Miriam, who led a group of Hebrew women in passionate dancing and singing after God had miraculously enabled the Israelites to safely cross the Red Sea on dry ground, rescuing them from recapture or worse by the pursuing Egyptian army (Exodus 15:20,21). 
             In Mark 2, we are told of people cramming into a house at Capernaum to hear Jesus’ message.  There were so many people that no one else could squeeze in.  As Jesus taught the crowd, a group of men carried a friend to the house seeking healing for his paralysis.  Unable to get through the crowd, they climbed to the roof, lifted up their friend on his mat, somehow opened a hole in the roof, and lowered their friend into the room where Jesus was.  The Lord lauded their faith, then told the paralyzed man that his sins were forgiven.  Almost instantly, religious authorities in the crowd mentally accused Jesus of blasphemy for doing something only God could do.  Jesus read their minds and assured them by healing the man’s paralysis that he had God’s full power.  The healed man gratefully walked home.
              Later in his public ministry, Jesus in Luke 17 healed a group of ten lepers, one of whom was a Samaritan.  Jesus instructed them to go show themselves to the priests who had the final say on such cases.  After being pronounced clean, the nine Hebrews hurried off to resume their lives, but the Samaritan returned to find Jesus, threw himself at Jesus’ feet, and thanked him and praised God in a loud voice.   
             Soon after being filled with the Spirit at Pentecost, Peter and John encountered a man at the temple gate who was crippled since birth (Acts 3:1-10).  When he asked them for money, Peter told him they had none, but he would gladly share with him what he did have – and he helped the man to his feet to begin walking for the first time in his life.  After realizing he’d been healed, the man went into the temple court “walking and jumping and praising God.” 

 

One King     For those of us who follow Christ, our slogan should be “one King,” not “no kings,” because we know there is one eternal King we must seek and welcome if we are live abundantly in his kingdom.  At the same time, we must resist the many lesser worldly “kings” which try to supplant him.  I often wish that Jesus’ followers took seriously Jesus’ words to the teachers at Capernaum, that his cleansing forgiveness of sins and his gift of transformed spiritual life is every bit as miraculous as the healing of physical paralysis.  And I often wish that Christians who’ve experienced that miracle expressed their gratitude for it as passionately as soccer fans cheer for a goal.  Maybe if we thanked the Lord more unabashedly, more passionately, and more often, our neighbors who don’t yet know him might want to begin “seeking first” his kingdom and that transformed life.  Let’s be Friends who do that.

 

  

 

1)  What other “lesser kings” that compete for Christ’s place in our hearts could you add to Ron’s list above?

2)  What makes it impossible to serve two masters, as Jesus stressed in Matthew 6:24?

3)  Why must our witness for Christ include authentic passion, not just information, in order to be effective?

4)  How can we guard against subtle efforts by “worldly kings” to entice us into thinking we can serve two masters?