Christ the King, Part One

In many liturgical churches, this Sunday is known as the ‘Solemnity of Christ the King.’  It will be my privilege to share a message around that theme tomorrow at the 55+ community I visit each week. Because of its length, I divide it here into three parts. Here is the first:

The Solemnity of Christ the King:

Why Came the King

Part One

“I beheld therefore in the vision of the night, and lo, one like the son of man came with the clouds of heaven, and he came even to the Ancient of days: and they presented him before him. And he gave him power, and glory, and a kingdom: and all peoples, tribes and tongues shall serve him: his power is an everlasting power that shall not be taken away: and his kingdom that shall not be destroyed.” Daniel 7:13-14

“[A]nd from Jesus Christ, the faithful witness, the firstborn from the dead, and the ruler over the kings of the earth. To Him who loved us and washed us from our sins in His own blood, and has made us kings and priests to His God and Father, to Him be glory and dominion forever and ever. Amen. Behold, He is coming with clouds, and every eye will see Him, even they who pierced Him. And all the tribes of the earth will mourn because of Him. Even so, Amen. “I am the Alpha and the Omega, the Beginning and the End,” says the Lord, “who is and who was and who is to come, the Almighty.” Revelation 1:5-8 

“Then Pilate entered the Praetorium again, called Jesus, and said to Him, “Are You the King of the Jews?” Jesus answered him, “Are you speaking for yourself about this, or did others tell you this concerning Me?” Pilate answered, “Am I a Jew? Your own nation and the chief priests have delivered You to me. What have You done?” Jesus answered, “My kingdom is not of this world. If My kingdom were of this world, My servants would fight, so that I should not be delivered to the Jews; but now My kingdom is not from here.” Pilate therefore said to Him, “Are You a king then?” Jesus answered, “You say rightly that I am a king. For this cause I was born, and for this cause I have come into the world, that I should bear witness to the truth. Everyone who is of the truth hears My voice.” John 18:33-37

The first of three points I want to share with anyone who cares to read this post – the first point is this: Scripture declares it from one end of the Book to the other that Jesus is King.

That’s just the way it is.

It’s like saying the earth revolves around the sun once every 365 days. And the calendar doesn’t stop dropping its pages every month just because we don’t like getting older. That’s just the way it is.

The earth inexorably pulls us toward itself. It’s called gravity. Don’t go jumping off a building, because the Law of Gravity will not suspend itself for you or me, even if we don’t like that law. That’s just the way it is.

And Jesus is King. He is more than king. He is the King of kings. He is absolute and final ruler of time, space, and eternity. And there is coming a time, more certain than gravity or the turning of the earth around the sun – there is coming a time when every knee will bow and every tongue will confess that yes, Jesus is Lord and King.

That’s just the way it is.

Speaking of Jesus’ Kingship, Bob Dylan, certainly not a lettered theologian, says it as simply yet as profoundly as I’ve ever heard it. Here are some of the lyrics to his song, “Gotta Serve Somebody.” 

“You may be an ambassador to England or France
You may like to gamble, you might like to dance
You may be the heavyweight champion of the world
You may be a socialite with a long string of pearls.”

“But you're gonna have to serve somebody, yes indeed
You're gonna have to serve somebody,
It may be the devil or it may be the Lord
But you're gonna have to serve somebody.”

“You may be a state trooper, you might be an young turk
You may be the head of some big TV network
You may be rich or poor, you may be blind or lame
You may be living in another country under another name.”

“But you're gonna have to serve somebody, yes
You're gonna have to serve somebody,
Well, it may be the devil or it may be the Lord
But you're gonna have to serve somebody.”

“You may be a preacher with your spiritual pride
You may be a city councilman taking bribes on the side
You may be working in a barbershop, you may know how to cut hair
You may be somebody's mistress, may be somebody's heir.”

“But you're gonna have to serve somebody, yes
You're gonna have to serve somebody,
Well, it may be the devil or it may be the Lord
But you're gonna have to serve somebody.”

“Might like to wear cotton, might like to wear silk
Might like to drink whiskey, might like to drink milk
You might like to eat caviar, you might like to eat bread
You may be sleeping on the floor, sleeping in a king-sized bed.”

“But you're gonna have to serve somebody, yes indeed
You're gonna have to serve somebody,
It may be the devil or it may be the Lord
But you're gonna have to serve somebody.”

So, the first point of this three-part essay: Jesus is King. But the more important question, the one that will determine our eternal destiny, is this: What will we do about it?

Getting It

A week or so ago I stopped by my friend Dave’s house. When he brought me into the living room, I noticed an open bible on the kitchen island. He’d been reading one of the gospels and had highlighted a few verses in yellow.  I love to see a well-marked up Bible, and I told him so. 

Several days later, he and I had lunch at a local sandwich place. After a while our conversation turned to spiritual things. When I shared with him what the Lord had said to me that morning during my quiet time with the Scriptures, Dave told me he doesn’t have that kind of ‘connection’ with God. He said he’s never heard God talk to him. 

I looked at him a moment and then asked: “Don’t you mark up your Bible with highlighter?  He said, “Sure.” 

“Why do you mark it up?” 

He said because certain texts speak to him as he reads them. 

I smiled and asked, “So who do you think is actually ‘speaking’ to you as you read? Is the source of the insight you get from reading the Bible from your own thoughts – or are they of the Holy Spirit speaking to you through His word?” 

I watched the proverbial lightbulb click into the ‘on’ position. 

He got it. God does talk to him. He just didn’t recognize it. 

I suspect from now on, he will.

Search and Rescue

O Lord, You have searched me and known me. You know my sitting down and my rising up; You understand my thought afar off . . .  (Psalm 139:1)

David opens his psalm with a truth most people – even those in church pews – just don’t get. David knew without a shred of doubt that his loving God was focused on him. 

And because the Scriptures transcend time and culture, it is completely accurate to say God lovingly focuses on you. That truth of God’s focus on each individual is demonstrated throughout the Bible. The parables of the lost sheep, the lost coin, and the lost son in Luke 15 are only a few of the hundreds of examples. Let’s look at the lost sheep in verses 4-7:  

“What man of you, having a hundred sheep, if he loses one of them, does not leave the ninety-nine in the wilderness, and go after the one which is lost until he finds it? And when he has found it, he lays it on his shoulders, rejoicing. And when he comes home, he calls together his friends and neighbors, saying to them, ‘Rejoice with me, for I have found my sheep which was lost!’ I say to you that likewise there will be more joy in heaven over one sinner who repents than over ninety-nine just persons who need no repentance.”

It is the Shepherd’s joy to search for and rescue the lost sheep. “I am the good shepherd,” Jesus tells us. “The good shepherd lays down His life for the sheep. He who is a hired hand, and not a shepherd, who is not the owner of the sheep, sees the wolf coming, and leaves the sheep and flees, and the wolf snatches them and scatters them. He flees because he is a hired hand and is not concerned about the sheep. I am the good shepherd, and I know My own and My own know Me, even as the Father knows Me and I know the Father; and I lay down My life for the sheep. (John 10:11-15)

Are you SURE the Good Shepherd is interested enough in you to search for you? Or do you think He’s given you up for lost? 

Those are important questions because your answer tells you a lot about your relationship with Jesus. If you are not sure Jesus is still – right now – interested in you, if you think He has given you up for lost – then you do not know the Jesus of the Bible very well. 

Look back at that parable of the lost sheep. “What man of you, having a hundred sheep, if he loses one of them, does not leave the ninety-nine in the wilderness, and go after the one which is lost until he finds it?

Whoever you are, whatever you’ve done, and no matter how often you’ve done it – the Good Shepherd is searching for you. He is interested in you because He loves you. 

He really, really loves you. 

And if you’ve read this far, it’s because something inside of you is stirring you to believe that.

The stirring you feel is the Holy Spirit’s gentle voice. And you can believe Him when He says to you: “I’ve found you. Come on home.”

When Someone You Love Forsakes You, Part Five

This is part five of a five part essay. You can find parts one through four at www.inhimalone.com 
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God gives us out His own experiences with His creation several examples of how we can cope when someone we love forsakes us.  He shows us how to cry, how to love from afar, and how to pray. Here is one more thing we can do: We should prepare our heart ahead of time for reconciliation. 

Now let’s be realistic – reconciliation might never happen. We all know of families who have never reconciled. God has gifted humanity with free will. He will never force us to do what we choose not to do. Free will is His precious gift, and He gave it to us, knowing all the while even He Himself would suffer heartache when those He loves exercise that gift to turn away from Him. 

But, if it should happen, and the one you have loved from afar, the one for whom you have prayed perhaps for decades, wants to reconcile – receive them with open arms. Don’t ever hold their earlier decision against them: 

“Love is patient, love is kind and is not jealous; love does not . . . .take into account a wrong suffered . . . [Love] bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. Love never fails. (1 Corinthians 13:4-8)

Think back again to the Prodigal Son story. When the younger son returned home, the father ran toward him, embraced him, and threw a party to celebrate. “For this son of mine,” the father rejoiced to his servants, “this son of mine was dead, and has come to life again; He was lost and has been found." 

Life’s disappointments, its sorrows, its unanswerable questions cut deeply into the human heart. And as I said at the beginning of this essay, perhaps especially grievous is the wound caused when someone you love forsakes you.

God knows from His personal experience your grief. He grieves with you. But perhaps more to the point, God has also given us His example how to cope with our hurting heart.

Cry. Love. Pray. Be ready to reconcile. In doing these things, we will be following the godly path He has given us in His word. 

It was the psalmist who said – and may the Holy Spirit sweeten those words to our wounded souls: “Weeping may last for the night, but a shout of joy comes in the morning.”  (Psalm 30:5).

When Someone You Love Forsakes You, part 4

(This is part four of a multi-part article that looks at how you can cope when someone you love forsakes you. I will post each part separately to my blog at  www.inhimalone.com ). 

As we’ve seen, when someone we love forsakes us, God gives us examples from His own experiences how to cope with our grief. In parts one through three we’ve seen it’s good to weep when someone we love forsakes us. We can continue to love them, even if we must love them from afar. And we can also pray. 

Don’t ever stop praying for the person who has hurt you. How often do we find in the gospels that Jesus went apart from His disciples to pray alone? And don’t you think His lost sheep were often the focus of His prayers? Don’t you think He prayed also for their families? 

The Lord Jesus knew better than anyone else how we are all locked in a deadly and desperate spiritual battle. Since the Garden of Eden, Satan has sought to destroy the family unit because he also knows a house divided cannot stand. It is Satan who has blinded your loved one’s spiritual eyes, dulled their spiritual ears and hardened their spiritual hearts – all for the ultimate destruction of their souls.  

Pray! Only weapons of spiritual warfare are effective in this kind of battle for their soul – and for your soul. 

But what can you do for a person who has forsaken you and has already died?

Pray. 

Pray that God had mercy on them before they died – and hold on to your confidence that God did, in His mercy, give them one last chance to repent – even as they lay on their death bed, or before they took their last breath in an accident.  

As I prepared this message, I again thought of the Good Thief who died on the cross next to Jesus. It’s unlikely that any of that man’s relatives – including his parents – were on Golgotha’s hill, watching him die. They’d have feared to be associated with him, or the Romans might take them into custody and later crucify them as well. 

But while it is unlikely that any of his family heard his conversation with Jesus and the other criminal crucified with them, you and I know of the conversation. Luke records it here: 

One of the criminals who were hanged there was hurling abuse at Him, saying, “Are You not the Christ? Save Yourself and us!” But the other answered, and rebuking him said, “Do you not even fear God, since you are under the same sentence of condemnation? And we indeed are suffering justly, for we are receiving what we deserve for our deeds; but this man has done nothing wrong.” And he was saying, “Jesus, remember me when You come in Your kingdom!” And He said to him, “Truly I say to you, today you shall be with Me in Paradise.” (Luke 23:39-43) 

Never lose heart. God’s mercy extends to everyone, regardless of their crime or how often they rejected Him. God’s mercy extends to every man and woman to their last breath. That’s why you can pray that God had mercy on the one who died without reconciling with you. You can pray that God offered him or her that one last chance to seek forgiveness from the Lord of love. Here is what the Scripture tells us of His mercy: 

“The Lord is not slow about His promise, as some count slowness, but is patient toward you, not wishing for any to perish but for all to come to repentance.”  (2 Peter 3:9). And from Ezekiel 8:32: (Speaking to a faithless Israel, God said): “For I have no pleasure in the death of anyone who dies,” declares the Lord God. Therefore, repent and live.” 

So, pray. Pray that God will have mercy on the one who still lives apart from you. And pray that God had mercy on the one who has already died, that He gave him or her that one last chance for forgiveness and eternal life. 

God gives us several examples from His own dealings with His creation of how we can cope when someone we love forsakes us.  He shows us how to cry, how to love from a distance, and how to pray. But there is at least one more thing we can do. We’ll look at that next time in part five.

When Someone You Love Forsakes You Part 3

(This is part three of a multi-part article that looks at how you can cope when someone you love forsakes you. I will post each part separately to my blog at  www.inhimalone.com ). 

It is good to weep when someone we love forsakes us. What else can we do to cope with our loss? Continue to love them, even if we must love them from afar, because God loves from afar those who have forsaken Him. 

Here is what He tells Israel through the prophet Jeremiah (31:3): “The Lord appeared to him [to Israel] from far away. I have loved you with an everlasting love; therefore, I have continued my faithfulness to you. (NRSV). 

Did you catch that? The forsaken lover – God, in this context – broken by Israel’s abandonment, continued to love them, even from a distance. That’s part of the message of the Prodigal Son. 

The Lord Jesus doesn’t give us much detail about the father’s anguish over his son’s demand. But I think we can extrapolate from what we already know about life and family relationships – as well as the details we do find in this story – how the father grieved over his son’s decision. 

The young man was fed up living on the farm. He was chomping at the proverbial bit to get away from his father’s rules. The young man rejected the life he’d been living and determined to be free – or what he thought was freedom – to do what he wanted in the way he wanted for as long as he wanted. 

So, the father, knowing he could do nothing to change the boy’s mind, gave him his share of the inheritance – and then watched him go. 

Did the father ever stop loving him? Of course not. He always loved his son – although now he had to love him from a distance. I like to imagine the father worked his farm every day with one eye on the horizon, hoping to see his son walking the dirt road back home. 

Loving from afar is also exemplified in the relationship the Lord Jesus had with – of all people – Judas. You’ll find the story in John 13:1-4 –  “Now before the Feast of the Passover, Jesus knowing that His hour had come that He would depart out of this world to the Father, having loved His own who were in the world, He loved them to the end. During supper, the devil having already put into the heart of Judas Iscariot, the son of Simon, to betray Him, Jesus, knowing that the Father had given all things into His hands, and that He had come forth from God and was going back to God, got up from supper, and laid aside His garments; and taking a towel, He girded Himself.” 

You know the rest of the story. The Lord then washed His disciples’ feet, including Judas’ feet – even though He knew what Judas was about to do. And Matthew tells us, when Judas led the soldiers to the Garden of Gethsemane, “Immediately Judas went to Jesus and said, “Hail, Rabbi!” and kissed Him. And Jesus said to him, “Friend, do what you have come for.” Then they came and laid hands on Jesus and seized Him.” (Matthew 26:49-51). 

Think of it for a moment. Jesus washed Judas’ feet and called him, “Friend” – even though the man betrayed Him for a couple of dollars. Despite it all, as John tells us in those first few verses of this 13^th chapter: “Jesus loved [Judas] even to the end.” 

So, there is another example of how God handles rejection – and who we who follow His steps -- can also deal with rejection. It’s good to weep. It's important to love, even if we have to do so from a distance. 

What else can we do when we’re forsaken?  What other examples does God give us as we follow in His steps? We will look at that in part four.

When Someone You Love Forsakes You part 2

So, what can you do when someone you love forsakes you? As you might expect, Scripture provides us guidance because God Himself suffers rejection all the time from those He loves. This essay – part two of a multi-part article – highlights God’s response to rejection. And by following His example, we’ll be better able to cope when our loved one forsakes us. 

First: God teaches us it’s okay to cry. It is good to cry. Jesus cried over His beloved sheep in Jerusalem who’d rejected Him: Luke 19:41-44 “When He approached Jerusalem, He saw the city and wept over it, saying, “If you had known in this day, even you, the things which make for peace! But now they have been hidden from your eyes. For the days will come upon you when your enemies will throw up a barricade against you, and surround you and hem you in on every side, and they will level you to the ground and your children within you, and they will not leave in you one stone upon another, because you did not recognize the time of your visitation.” 

Besides the eternal consequences of forsaking Him, the Lord also knew what would happen to those who’d turned Him away. Within a few short decades the Roman army would ravage and rape its way across Jerusalem. 

Yes, it is okay to weep, not only for your own loss, but because you know their rejection of you will likely come back around and hurt them later in their life. St. Paul talks about that spiritual law in his letter to the church at Galatia: Galatians 5:15 “But if you bite and devour one another, take care that you are not consumed by one another.” 

“Sin,” it’s been presciently observed, “Sin will take you where you do not want to go, keep you longer than you want to stay, and cost more than you want to pay.” 

Yes, it is good to weep, BUT never forget this: You don’t weep alone. Jesus catches every tear in His bottle. As the psalmist David wrote of God in Psalm 56:8 “You keep track of all my sorrows. You have collected all my tears in your bottle. You have recorded each one in your book.”  

When David refers to tear bottles, he draws our attention to a common practice in both ancient and modern Middle Eastern and Egyptian societies. Mourners catch their tears in small vials and place them at gravesides or some other place of personal significance to illustrate their love for the one who is gone. When David said of God, “You keep track of all my sorrows. You have collected all my tears in your bottle. You have recorded each one in your book”, David reminds himself, and he reminds us in 2018 America, that God very much knows of our pain. He very much empathizes with our sorrows. 

So, weeping for our loss is the first example of guidance we find in Scripture that can help us cope with our grief. But what else can we do? 

Continue to love them – even if we must love them from afar, just as God loves from afar when His beloved reject Him. 

That will be the subject of part three of this essay.

Upside Down

I listened to an old Billy Graham message the other day on XM radio. He said something I don’t know if I’ve ever given much thought to. The 120 men and women in that upper room – men and women probably not much older than their early twenties, maybe some in their late teens – those 120 didn’t have the wonderful benefits of phones, email, the Internet, cars, television, planes, radio, or any of the hundreds of other modern technological advantages we enjoy. Yet despite what they DIDN'T have, those young people turned their world upside down and inside out for Jesus. Their words spread like a tsunami across a mostly pagan Roman Empire that was in many cases hateful of Christ and of His followers. If you think about it, the Roman Empire was not too much different than our own 21st century culture. Upside down and inside out. How did they do that without even a sliver of the technology we consider an absolute necessity for evangelism? They met Jesus. Those 120 souls had a life-altering, up close and very personal encounter with the Risen Savior. And that encounter exploded into an ‘over the top’ ongoing commitment to the Savior. It impelled them across the continent with Christ’s message of salvation, forgiveness of sins, and the promise of eternal life through the blood of Golgotha’s cross.  

Oh! How I pray nearly every day for that kind of self-commitment of my own life, to wait for Him, to long for Him as a thirsty deer pants for the stream -- and then share His water with a very thirsty world. 

Don’t you?

When Someone You Love Forsakes You Part 1

“My soul weeps because of grief; Strengthen me according to Your word.” (Psalm 119:27) 

Life’s disappointments, its griefs, its unanswerable questions often cut deep into the human heart, don’t they? There’s not an adult on this planet who has not learned from personal experience just how deeply any number of losses can tear at our souls. But perhaps the deepest cut, the most grievous of them all is when a loved one turns his or her back on you, who rejects you, who forsakes you.  

And what adds further sting to the bleeding is knowing it doesn’t matter what you do or say, nothing will change the person’s mind. 

But I hope you will hear this – at times such as these, when the soul uncontrollably weeps, it is the testimonies of millions of Christians throughout the ages that demonstrate again and again that there is no balm, no comfort, like the balm and comfort we can receive from God’s word.

That’s why I draw our attention in this essay, and in the next two or three essays, I want to draw attention to what God’s word tells us about being able to cope when someone we love forsakes us. 

First, two words of caution here: 

1) When someone we love forsakes us – whether a spouse, or parent, or child – that rejection is most often a ‘way over the top’ response to some offense, real or perceived. The person who walks away from a loved one often was only looking for an excuse to do so.

2) It’s easy for those who have been abandoned by someone they love to blame themselves for the abandonment. Satan is good at twisting our thoughts into accepting the blame for the sins of another. Don’t let him saddle you with that lie. 

In dealing with our heartache, it is good that we remember, God knows from personal experience all about rejection. He is no stranger to an ‘over the top’ response to something – perceived or real – that He has done, or not done. Whatever it was, it gave those He loves an excuse to turn and walk away. 

That’s an important point to remember – that God personally knows all about rejection. It’s important because in our remembering, two things will occur in our heart: 1) We can find comfort in knowing God grieves with us. And 2) We can learn from God’s example how to deal with rejection. 

I’m reminded of God’s broken heart as I read through the Old Testament prophets. In particular, there is Ezekiel 6:9 – (God speaks to Israel) “Then those of you who escape will remember Me among the nations to which they will be carried captive, how I have been hurt by their adulterous hearts which turned away from Me, and by their eyes which played the harlot after their idols . . . .” 

And then there is the sorrowful episode in 1 Samuel 8. Not very long after God led His Chosen to the Promised Land, they began clamoring for a king to rule them, so they could be ‘just like the other nations.’ 

We pick up the story in 1 Samuel 8:7 “The Lord said to Samuel, “Listen to the voice of the people in regard to all that they say to you, for they have not rejected you, but they have rejected Me from being king over them. Like all the deeds which they have done since the day that I brought them up from Egypt even to this day—in that they have forsaken Me and served other gods. . . ."

Yes. Our heavenly Father understands rejection. And also yes, God-in-the-Flesh, whom we know as Jesus the Messiah, also knows from firsthand experience the pain of rejection. It was not an accident that Isaiah called Him: “. . . Despised and forsaken of men, a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief; And like one from whom men hide their face.  He was despised, and we did not esteem [value] Him. (Isaiah 53) 

God understands your grief. Now we can learn how to handle our own grief by following His example when He is forsaken by those He loves. 

His examples will be the subject of part two of my essay.

He is Searching

“O Lord, You have searched me and known me. You know when I sit down and when I rise up; You understand my thought from afar. You scrutinize my path and my lying down, and are intimately acquainted with all my ways. Even before there is a word on my tongue, behold, O Lord, You know it all. (Psalm 139:1-4) 

I reread this section the other day and stopped at these first few verses. 

Who searches anything without first being interested to do so? That is why this text encourages me – and can encourage everyone who reads it. Why? Because God is interested enough in you to search you -- and to search FOR you. 

Do you remember Jesus’ parable of the Lost Sheep in Luke 15:4-7?  

“What man among you, if he has a hundred sheep and has lost one of them, does not leave the ninety-nine in the open pasture and go after the one which is lost until he finds it? When he has found it, he lays it on his shoulders, rejoicing. And when he comes home, he calls together his friends and his neighbors, saying to them, ‘Rejoice with me, for I have found my sheep which was lost!’ I tell you that in the same way, there will be more joy in heaven over one sinner who repents than over ninety-nine righteous persons who need no repentance.” 

The Good Shepherd is searching for you. And for me. He searches because He loves each one of His sheep.

Each. One. 

He loves us, even knowing when and where we lie down, when and where we rise up. He loves us even knowing our thoughts, our sins, our doubts, our confusions, and our failures. 

He loves us. He searches us. He searches FOR us because He really, really cares for us. He really, really wants to bring us home to His fold. 

Please. Be confident today – and all your tomorrows – in that unalterable, unchangeable promise of God.