Jesus the Risen King

[0:00] All right, well, we are back in 2 Timothy this morning as we take time to open up God's Word together. So if you have your Bible with you, you can open it up to 2 Timothy.

[0:12] And without getting into all the details, my preaching schedule for this book is all mixed up. But it's because Charles and Fred have been gracious to preach in my place a couple of Sundays so that I could focus on the annual conference with the BGC in Calgary and on sorting stuff out with purchasing a home.

[0:32] So we're just going to keep working our way through. We're going to be in chapter 2, verse 8 to 10 this morning. And as much as I would have liked to finish this book by the end of June, we'll just save the last chapter for this fall when I return from sabbatical.

[0:47] If there's one thing that I've learned in my years of being a Christian, it's that rushing through the Word of God doesn't really help us very much. So with that being said, let's pick Paul's words up here in 2 Timothy 2, verse 8.

[1:07] Paul writes, Remember Jesus Christ, raised from the dead, descended from David. This is my gospel, for which I am suffering, even to the point of being chained like a criminal.

[1:20] But God's Word is not chained. Therefore, I endure everything for the sake of the elect, that they too may obtain the salvation that is in Christ Jesus with eternal glory.

[1:37] There's only one imperative in these few verses. One command. What is it? Remember. Remember.

[1:50] Remember Jesus Christ. Why does the Apostle Paul even need to say this to Timothy? The guy who has traveled all over the Mediterranean world with him, countless miles, preaching about Jesus, planting churches.

[2:03] Why does Paul even need to say this to Timothy? He's being treated like a criminal.

[2:15] Because it's all too easy to forget. Remember Jesus Christ. Now, I don't think Timothy's in danger of forgetting Jesus completely or outright.

[2:27] But as we heard in verses 14 to 18, it's all too easy to forget that Jesus is to be our main focus and our main message and our main relationship.

[2:38] It's all too easy to get off track, to get distracted, to get sidetracked into other ideas and teachings. As Paul warned about in verses 14 to 18.

[2:51] And so Paul doesn't hesitate, even to this spiritual leader, Timothy, there in Ephesus, to simply say to him, remember Jesus Christ. Paul's not saying this because Timothy has troubles remembering things, but because Jesus is everything.

[3:12] He's the most important person and reality. And if we deviate from him, if we get sidetracked into something or someone else, we're missing it badly.

[3:25] So remember Jesus Christ. And Paul has really just two things to say about Jesus in this reminder. Two things that he wants Timothy not to forget, not to lose sight of.

[3:38] First thing, he was raised from the dead. Remember Jesus Christ, raised from the dead. And second thing, remember Jesus Christ, descended from David, that he is the Messiah, descended from David.

[3:55] But this is it, he says. This is my gospel. The word gospel means good news. This is my good news, says Paul.

[4:07] It's Jesus Christ, raised from the dead, descended from David. Such a short statement of the gospel here. And yet Paul says, this is my message.

[4:19] This news is why I'm suffering as I am. Even to the point of being chained like a criminal. Do you hear Paul's point here?

[4:33] He's saying, my life is on the line for this, for Jesus, the risen Christ. Nothing matters more. As we'll hear even more from Paul.

[4:48] He's saying, I would gladly die for this truth, this news about Jesus. And let's remember, Paul, he's in chains, like a criminal, but he hasn't done anything wrong.

[5:05] He's suffering, and it's because of his commitment to Jesus. And to proclaiming the good news about Jesus. Paul knows that Jesus is worth dying for.

[5:21] And as we can see here, he takes his faith in Jesus so seriously. Do you? Let's consider these two things about Jesus that God wants to remind us of here.

[5:37] First, he calls Jesus Christ. And says he is descended from David. What's the significance of this? The word Christ comes from the Greek word Christos.

[5:52] And it's the Greek equivalent of the Hebrew word Messiah. Which means anointed one. Contrary to popular notion, Christ is not Jesus' last name.

[6:05] It's actually a title. And Paul makes it very clear that this is what he means when he spells it out. Referring to Jesus. Remember Jesus.

[6:15] Christ descended from David. Descended from David. Who is David? About a thousand years before Jesus came, David was the king of Israel.

[6:30] When David was just a young man, God sent the prophet Samuel to anoint him, to pour oil on his head. And that anointing signified that David was God's choice.

[6:43] It wasn't any man or people that chose David to be the king of Israel. It was God himself. Nobody even suspected that David would be chosen for king.

[6:54] He was the shepherd boy in the family of Jesse, the least of Jesse's sons. And yet we read in 1 Samuel 16 about how God specifically chose David and put his spirit upon him.

[7:06] And it's a wonderful account of what God did there in the books of 1 and 2 Samuel. David was opposed fiercely by his father-in-law, Saul, who had the throne at the time.

[7:18] And Saul tried numerous times to murder David, but nothing could stand against God's choice and God's plan. And we read about how God intervened in all kinds of ways to protect David and to end the rule of Saul and to establish David as king over all his people in Israel.

[7:40] God described King David as a man after his own heart. It was David who wrote many of the psalms that we have in the Old Testament, the prayers and poems and songs of worship we find there.

[7:53] And God made a special covenant with David a set of solemn promises. And we read about this in 1 Chronicles 17. And I'm just going to read a portion of Scripture from there.

[8:06] I'm going to take us back into the Old Testament a little bit. And as I read this, I want to encourage you to think about David and how these words apply to David. But also, I want to encourage you to think about how this relates to Jesus, the descendant of David.

[8:23] Reading from 1 Chronicles, chapter 17. After David was settled in his palace, he said to Nathan the prophet, here I am living in a house of cedar while the ark of the covenant of the Lord is under a tent.

[8:43] Nathan replied to David, whatever you have in mind, do it, for God is with you. But that night, the word of God came to Nathan, saying, go and tell my servant David, this is what the Lord says, you are not the one to build me a house to dwell in.

[9:05] I have not dwelt in a house from the day I brought Israel up out of Egypt to this day. I have moved from one tent site to another, from one dwelling place to another, wherever I have moved with all the Israelites.

[9:20] Did I ever say to any of their leaders whom I commanded to shepherd my people, why have you not built me a house of cedar? Now then, tell my servant David, this is what the Lord Almighty says, I took you from the pasture, from tending the flock, and appointed you ruler over my people Israel.

[9:43] I have been with you wherever you have gone, and I have cut off all your enemies from before you. Now I will make your name like the names of the greatest men on earth, and I will provide a place for my people Israel and will plant them so that they can have a home of their own and no longer be disturbed.

[10:08] Wicked people will not oppress them anymore as they did at the beginning and have done ever since the time I appointed leaders over my people Israel. I will also subdue all your enemies.

[10:22] I declare to you that the Lord will build a house for you. When your days are over and you go to be with your ancestors, I will raise up your offspring to succeed you.

[10:37] And I will establish his kingdom. He is the one who will build a house for me, and I will establish his throne forever.

[10:50] forever. I will be his father and he will be my son. I will never take my love away from him as I took it away from your predecessor.

[11:01] I will set him over my house and my kingdom forever. His throne will be established forever. forever. So what did God promise to David all those years ago?

[11:17] Thousand years before Christ came, he promised to raise up the offspring of David to succeed him as king. He promised to establish the kingdom of one of David's sons.

[11:28] He promised to establish the throne of one of his sons forever. And he said that he would be the father of this son of David and that this son of David would be his son.

[11:39] These are the promises God made to king David about a thousand years before Jesus was born. And there's a near and a soon fulfillment to these promises and there is a far and distant future fulfillment to these promises.

[11:57] Yes, God was in these promises referring to David's immediate family. One of your own sons was fulfilled in Solomon. King Solomon.

[12:08] He was the one who built a house for the Lord, the great temple. And so, there was this near and soon fulfillment. But there is also without a doubt a far and distant future fulfillment to these promises.

[12:25] Three times, God used the word forever to refer to this kingdom. The throne that would go on forever.

[12:36] I will establish his throne forever. I will set him over my house and my kingdom forever. His throne will be established forever. How can the throne of Solomon be established forever if Solomon does not live forever but eventually dies?

[12:56] So, even the way that these promises are phrased, there's something more being promised than just one son of David's immediate family to sit on the throne. what's being promised is an enduring kingdom, an everlasting dynasty.

[13:15] So, how would God keep this promise? Well, prior to the coming of Jesus, I mean, we might have expected that God would keep this promise just by ensuring that in every generation there is a descendant of David on the throne of Israel.

[13:28] and for many centuries after David, King David, there was. But as we read the Old Testament history and God's words through the prophets, we begin to see glimpses of how God intended to keep this promise that he made to David in a different way.

[13:48] It starts to become obvious when God deliberately reduces the once great kingdom of David and Solomon by ten tribes and then allows the northern kingdom to be conquered and many of its inhabitants to be led away into exile and then even allows the southern kingdom to be conquered, even Jerusalem to be conquered and its inhabitants led away into captivity and its king removed.

[14:18] And if you read through the prophets, it's quite surprising. Hundreds of years before any of this happened, God was warning the people, he was telling them, I'm going to bring disaster if you keep on this wicked course that you're on, if you do not repent and humble yourselves.

[14:36] And God even spells out in many of these passages in the prophets explicitly what that disaster would be. He takes all the credit for dismantling what remains of the kingdom of Israel and yet at the same time we hear in the prophets him promising to restore it someday and make it the greatest kingdom that this world has ever seen.

[15:03] And so this is why a thousand years after David's kingdom, the Jewish people of Israel had this expectation and anticipation of a coming Messiah, a great king of God's choosing, whom God would use to establish the kingdom again and this time permanently, this time forever.

[15:25] We see this anticipation and expectation all over the gospel accounts in the New Testament. We see it in John chapter 4 verse 25 with the woman at the well.

[15:37] I know that Messiah is coming, she said. He will explain everything to us. We see it when she reports back to the town, her encounter with Jesus.

[15:49] Could this be the Messiah? We see it a little later on in the gospel of John. The people are wondering, they're asking the question, have the authorities really concluded that he's the Messiah?

[16:04] When the Messiah comes, will he perform more signs than this man? Some were saying he is the Messiah. Others were saying, well, how can he come from Galilee?

[16:16] They were talking about where he was to come from. Does not the scripture say that the Messiah will come from David's descendants and from Bethlehem, the town where David lived? Even Jesus' opponents, Jesus said, they were expecting the Messiah.

[16:34] They were looking at this promise. He said, why do the teachers of the law say that the Messiah is the son of David? This was what the high priest asked Jesus.

[16:45] Are you the Messiah, the son of the blessed one? looking back on that promise made long ago? Even at Jesus' trial, this was at the center.

[17:01] He opposes payment of taxes to Caesar, the religious leader said, and claims to be Messiah. And what's the significance of that? A king. And even as Jesus hung on the cross, the people jeered and mocked.

[17:20] He saved others, let him save himself if he's God's Messiah, the chosen one. So there was all this anticipation and expectation that a Messiah was coming, a king of God's choosing, the great king, the one who would rule over this kingdom forever.

[17:36] not only do we see the anticipation though, we see all over the gospel accounts that Jesus was and is that Messiah, the king of God's choosing.

[17:50] We see it in the genealogies given in the gospels tracing Jesus' ancestry back to David. We see it confirmed in the census order that moved Mary and Joseph forcing them to go back to Bethlehem to the town of David to register further proving that Jesus was descended from David.

[18:10] We see it at the birth announcements of Christ that were made by the angels. The Lord God will give this child the throne of his father David and he will reign over Jacob's descendants forever.

[18:25] His kingdom will never end. We see it declared by the demons that Jesus drove out of people. Jesus rebuked the demons and wouldn't allow them to speak because they knew he was the Messiah.

[18:42] This was the message that Jesus declared right from the start. The time has come. The kingdom of God has come near. Repent and believe the good news.

[18:54] And we see it declared on the lips of the apostles and disciples who saw the miracles that Jesus was doing and believed. We have found the Messiah that is the Christ.

[19:07] And so this issue of whether Jesus was the Messiah, whether he was God's chosen king for Israel is at the very center of all of it. It was at the very center of what happened during the Passion Week.

[19:19] Remember how Jesus rode into Jerusalem on a donkey in fulfillment of that messianic prophecy in Zechariah to shouts of blessed is the king of Israel?

[19:30] and that he was claiming to be the Messiah was the accusation being made by the religious leaders after his arrest. It was the question Pilate asked, are you the king of the Jews?

[19:45] It was the thing written on the sign over his head on the cross. This is Jesus, the king of the Jews, to which the religious leaders took issue.

[19:56] No, write that he only claimed to be the king of the Jews. This was even symbolized in the crown of thorns that was put on his head and the purple robe that they gave him to wear as they mocked him.

[20:10] And that Jesus was the Messiah, the Christ, the son of David, was confirmed three days after he died when God raised him back to life from the dead.

[20:24] It was confirmed again 40 days later when God took him up to heaven right before the eyes of his followers to sit on heaven's throne. This theme of Jesus as Christ, as Messiah, as king, is one of the central themes of the entire Bible.

[20:43] You can trace it right from Genesis all the way through to Revelation. God was hinting at it. He was foretelling it. He was making promises about it. He made a covenant about it for generations, adding more and more details as to what this is going to add up to and look like.

[21:02] And then in the New Testament we read of how he began fulfilling it, that the first coming of Jesus 2,000 years ago in the first century and this forever kingdom will reach its ultimate climax when Jesus the king returns to rule and reign right here on earth someday in the future.

[21:30] It may seem like Paul is not saying a whole lot about Jesus here when he says remember Jesus Christ descended from David but actually he's saying so much about Jesus.

[21:44] He's saying yes, he is the king of God's choosing not just for Israel but for the whole world forever he is that king of kings the forever ruler of earth's last kingdom the kingdom of God who would have thought that God's plan was to keep this millennia's old promise made to David not by an unbroken succession of kings but by one flesh and blood descendant of David who was God himself born into our world to live to die to be raised to life and as both God and man to live forever and so to reign forever when he comes back sometimes in the church we neglect this part of the gospel you know the atonement part the part about

[22:46] Jesus dying on the cross for forgiveness of our sins it makes sense to us we're comfortable with that Jesus is our savior it makes sense but Jesus as Christ Jesus is king as our messiah of a kingdom that is still coming this can be difficult to relate to in our modern times and in our different culture but this too is no less the good news of Jesus than the part about our forgiveness remember Jesus Christ raised from the dead descended from David this is my gospel we're not called to follow an idea or just some historical person we're called to believe and follow and pledge allegiance to the greatest king that this world has ever seen who is coming back soon to rule and to reign we're called to follow the man who right now is seated on heaven's throne at the right hand of the father waiting until that day when he will ride down as king and take up his seat on his earthly throne and show this world what real righteous leadership and government looks like what did the prophet

[24:05] Isaiah say nearly 2,500 years ago Isaiah 9 verse 6 and 7 for to us a child is born to us a son is given and the government will be on his shoulders and he will be called wonderful counselor mighty God everlasting father prince of peace of the greatness of his government and peace there will be no end he will reign on David's throne and over his kingdom establishing and upholding it with justice and righteousness from that time on and forever the zeal of the Lord almighty will accomplish this Jesus is a king worth living for and as we hear now in the words of

[25:07] Paul Jesus is a king worth dying for let's look for just a moment at this second thing that Paul says about Jesus here he says remember Jesus Christ raised from the dead raised from the dead why didn't Paul say remember Jesus Christ crucified on the cross in fact to the Corinthians Paul summed up the good news with that very language he said the message we preach is Christ crucified but here in Paul's summary of the gospel to Timothy there's no mention of the cross whatsoever it's Jesus Christ raised from the dead why does Paul choose to so emphasize this particular gospel truth that Jesus rose from the dead in this letter and I think it has everything to do with Paul's situation right now he's at the end he's on death row he is soon to die and so what's the remedy to that it's the resurrection of

[26:18] Jesus from the dead it's Jesus promise to give eternal life in the same manner to all who believe in his name the resurrection of Jesus has become exceedingly precious to Paul because it is the guarantee that Jesus who promised this everlasting life this resurrection to his followers can actually deliver it and without the resurrection of Jesus I mean what kind of kingdom would this be the promise of the forever kingdom and all its goodness and all of its blessings rests on the shoulders of the forever king who defeated death and rose to life and will ever live to reign over this kingdom of God and so these are the two precious realities of the gospel that Paul wants to remind Timothy of near the end of his life Jesus conquered death he is the long awaited king of

[27:23] God's choosing to fulfill all the good promises God has made this is why I'm suffering as I am even to the point of being chained like a criminal but God's word is not chained he says they may be able to tie me down and restrain me but they can't restrain the gospel message about Jesus our Lord it's going to spread and it cannot be stopped verse 10 therefore I endure everything for the sake of the elect that they too may obtain the salvation that is in Christ Jesus with eternal glory why is Paul willing to suffer like he is and even die because through his preaching the gospel the people that God has chosen will obtain salvation with eternal glory just like with

[28:24] Jesus himself a willingness to be condemned in the courts of man and die will bring about the eternal salvation and glory of those who believe it's like Paul's life is following the same pattern as Jesus by refusing to be silent by continuing to preach this message of Jesus the Christ the people whom God has chosen will be saved forever and though Paul suffers now and dies soon after writing this letter those who hear the gospel and believe it will be saved forever they'll come to enjoy life and glory with all the others whom God has chosen for himself it's just like he's doing a bit of a calculation here like my temporary suffering my momentary death because of my preaching the gospel of Jesus will result in eternal salvation and glorious life for those who hear and believe those whom

[29:30] God has chosen and that's a pretty good trade people have us that we don't know exactly who the chosen are only

[31:11] God knows that but do we know that God intends to use us to bring those he's chosen to salvation and eternal life sometimes as we think of these kinds of conversations with people I think we get stuck wondering what might I lose if I speak up?

[31:33] If I speak about Jesus, if I take the risk and talk to them about spiritual things, what might I lose? But I pray that God would use these words to help us think differently.

[31:47] Not what might we lose, but what might they gain if I take up the name of Jesus, if I speak up, if I take a risk, if I tell them this hope that I have.

[31:59] And isn't that worth whatever scorn or insult or ridicule or mistreatment may come my way? Of course, not everyone we share with will believe, but some will.

[32:14] And that's a difference of eternity for that person. And so let us not get distracted or sidetracked as we've been talking about this morning. Let's not get caught up, so caught up in the things of this world.

[32:27] Remember Jesus, the risen King, may this be our gospel for which we live and if it comes to it, for which we suffer and die.

[32:40] Enduring whatever comes our way for the sake of God's chosen people that they too may obtain the salvation that we have found with eternal glory.

[32:53] Let's pray. Amen. Amen. Amen. Amen. Amen. Amen. Amen. Amen. Amen. Amen. Amen.

[33:25] Amen. we so look forward to that day when he will return. Oh, I pray that we would live in accordance with the reality that he is right now the King of Kings who will come on that day.

[33:42] Do that work in us, we pray, for his honor and his name. Amen.