Living Hope: Hope in the King

[0:00] I don't know what you think of when you hear the word king. Probably King Charles, he's been in the news lately, on his visit to Italy and the fact that he's had a wedding anniversary.

[0:15] ! If you play chess, then the king has the most important piece on the board, which every other piece has to capture or protect. It's not the strongest piece, that's the Queen, as lots of people would say, but it's the most important.

[0:36] When we come to the Bible, most of us would be able to name Saul, David and Solomon as kings, but I wonder if you could name any other king in the Bible.

[0:49] There's lots of them, especially when the Israel split in two become Israel and Judah. So the kings of both kingdoms. Anyone know any other kings?

[1:00] Jehoshaphat, Ahab. Yes, Jehoshaphat, Omri, there's loads of them. If you read Kings and Chronicles, you'll find there's a whole list of kings, some who were good and some who weren't good.

[1:17] The ones who were good followed or tried to follow what the Lord taught them. The ones who were bad didn't. So, but Israel had actually gone along for a long time without a need for a king.

[1:31] They'd had the patriarchs, Abraham, Isaac, Jacob. They had Moses, they had Joshua. They had the judges, perhaps the best known, Deborah, Gideon and Samson.

[1:43] And finally they had Samuel, a prophet and leader. When God chose Israel to be his people, he said to them, you will be for me a kingdom of priests.

[2:00] So if there's a kingdom, there has to be a king. And for Israel, the king was the Lord, was Yahweh, God. So Israel to start with was a theocratic big word, state.

[2:14] And it's a state ruled by God and governed by laws given by God. And Gideon, one of the judges knew this was the case. So when he defeated the enemies of Israel, the Midianites and the Amalekites, the people of Israel said, oh, you're a good leader.

[2:33] Could you rule over us? They asked him. He said, I will not rule over you, nor will my son rule over you. The Lord will rule over you.

[2:44] And he knew that the Lord should be king in Israel. And this is underlined by lots of references in the Old Testament, but especially in the Psalms.

[2:58] But God is my king from long ago. The Lord reigns. The Lord reigns. The Lord reigns. The Lord reigns. You read that throughout the Psalms. For the Psalmist, the Lord is the king.

[3:11] And these verses point towards God's ultimate victory and his rule over all the earth. So God will be ruler of the whole earth, but will be king over Israel in a special way.

[3:25] However, at the time of Samuel, Israel was being challenged by the Philistines and other nations. And they sent to be here to be anyone, no judge, no hero, no leader, to rescue them from these attacks from their enemies.

[3:40] And judges, it says, in those days, Israel had no king. Everyone did as they saw fit. So they thought they needed a king.

[3:54] Now, God, who is sovereign and all-knowing, knew that at some stage Israel would be looking to find a king. So, early on in Deuteronomy, he says, If you ask him for a king, be sure to appoint over you a king the Lord your God chooses.

[4:14] Any king who was to reign in Israel was a king to reign on behalf of God, not on behalf of themselves. That didn't seem to stop the Israelites at the time.

[4:27] So all the elders of Israel gathered together and came to Samuel and said, You are old. That's a good start. And your sons do not follow your ways. Now, appoint a king to lead us such as all the other nations have.

[4:41] Now, Samuel didn't at first want to do that because he knew that God ought to be king. So he prayed to God for guidance. And God made it clear, Look, they haven't rejected you, Samuel.

[4:54] They have rejected me as their king. And he went on to say, There are numbers of things that will happen if you appoint a king in Israel. Your sons will be taken. They will plow the king's ground and reap his harvest.

[5:08] He will take your daughters to be perfumers and cooks and bakers. He will take the best of your fields and vineyards and olive groves and give them to his attendants. He will make.

[5:20] He will take a tenth of your flocks and you will become his slaves. So become the. If you appoint a king, these things will happen. But despite all that. And what king would do.

[5:32] Samuel was ready to choose a king. And Saul was anointed as the first king of Israel. And he did initially a good job. He defeated the enemies.

[5:43] But then he turned away from God. So in appointing a king, the Jews became not a people who were set apart, but a nation like other nations.

[5:56] A nation that had a king. They were rejecting, in effect, God as their king. Now we know there was King David and King Solomon and other kings.

[6:07] But David was the next king after Saul. And God made a covenant with David. The Lord declares to you that the Lord himself will establish a house for you.

[6:19] Your house and your kingdom will endure forever before me. Your throne will be established forever. And one of the last words that David said before he died was, If my house were not right with God, surely he would not have made with me an everlasting covenant.

[6:38] David had been told when he was appointed king by God, I will raise up your offspring to succeed you.

[6:49] Pointing to Solomon. That's the one who would succeed him. But also pointing to the future when a king would come in the line of David, who we know as Jesus.

[7:00] So the Israelites, at the time when Jesus was born, were looking forward to an ideal Davidic king. A shoot will come up from the stump of Jesse, Isaiah said.

[7:14] Someone born of the line of David. And Isaiah said of this king, In love a throne will be established, in faithfulness a man will sit on it. One from the house of David.

[7:26] One who is judging seeks justice and speeds the cause of righteousness. He will not judge by what he sees with his eyes, or decide by what he hears with his ears. But with righteousness he will judge the needy.

[7:37] With justice he will give decisions for the poor of the earth. So this king will be a king of righteousness and a king of justice. So when Jesus was born, the Jews lived with this great hope that the kingdom of God would come.

[7:55] That the ideal Davidic king would come. And for the Jews this meant that Israel's God would become king and rule the world. And in becoming king, the ills and evil of the world would be put right.

[8:08] This would include the defeat of Israel's enemies, at that time the Romans. But it didn't have for the Jews a meaning of a kingdom that came after death. It was a kingdom that was here, that was a reality now.

[8:22] So it was into this scene of the Jews hoping for a king to come, who would release them from the Romans.

[8:35] It's into this scene that Jesus was born. And from the genealogy in Matthew, we know that Jesus was the Lion of David. A shoot from the stump of Jesse.

[8:46] And in Jesus, the covenant God made with David, that his house would endure forever, came to fruition. Jesus was to be the ultimate and final king.

[8:57] Now if you read the New Testament, it's interesting to note that Jesus never explicitly referred to himself as king. The newness he comes to this is when Pilate asked him, are you the king of the Jews?

[9:13] And Jesus answered, you have said so. And when in John's Gospel, he goes into this a bit more. And Jesus replied to Pilate, my kingdom is not of this world.

[9:34] If I were, my servants would fight to prevent my arrest by the Jewish leaders. But now my kingdom is from another place. So Jesus acknowledged that he had a kingdom.

[9:46] He acknowledged, in effect, that he was a king, because it was a kingdom. But it was not as Pilate would see it. It was not as the Jews of that day would see it. It was a different sort of kingdom.

[9:59] And he said, you say that I am a king. In fact, the reason I was born and came into the world is to testify to the truth.

[10:10] Everyone on the side of truth listens to me. So he was going to be a kingdom of truth and righteousness. Now, in the Gospels, Jesus preached about the kingdom of heaven, or sometimes the kingdom of God, and told many parables about the kingdom of God, in which he set out what that kingdom would be like.

[10:35] And he never, again, explicitly said that he's the king of this kingdom. But clearly, it's indicated that he was this king who was coming. However, people did recognize Jesus as king.

[10:53] And the first people to do that in the New Testament were, in fact, foreigners, the Magi. They asked Herod, Is the one who's been born king of the Jews?

[11:12] We saw his star when it rose and have come to worship him. So the Magi recognized Jesus as king of the Jews. And the first chapter, near the end, verse 49, which David's friend would have read.

[11:29] When Nathanael met Jesus, he said, Rabbi, you are the son of God. You are the king of Israel. And Nathanael recognized this man, this prophet, this teacher, as the king of Israel.

[11:42] Now today, as we said, it's Palm Sunday. And remember Jesus riding in Jerusalem on a donkey. The crowd cried, Blessed is the king who comes in the name of the Lord. And this riding a donkey was to fulfill Zechariah's prophecy.

[11:57] Say to daughter Zion, see your king comes to you, gentle and riding on a donkey, and on a colt, the foal of a donkey. And many other places in the New Testament where it's clear that Jesus is seen as king.

[12:11] And specifically in Revelation where it's clear that Jesus is on the throne. But again, the first time we see Jesus on the throne, standing at the center of the throne, it was like a lamb looking as if it had been slain.

[12:32] It wasn't a person in robes and with a scepter and with a crown and rolling over everybody. It was like a lamb who'd been slain.

[12:43] And it's because that Jesus was slain and rose again that he could become king of kings and lord of lords. And when Jesus taught, he was taught in the context of Judaism.

[13:00] But he redefined what the kingdom of God was. There was no reference in his teaching to the liberation of Israel. Indeed, the message of Jesus was the redemption of the whole world.

[13:11] It wasn't just for one small country in the Middle East. He came to save the whole world. And the work of the kingdom is to do with holiness.

[13:25] And he spoke about holiness without reference specifically to the law. Paul, in his letter to the Romans, says, For the kingdom of God is not a matter of eating and drinking, but of righteousness, peace and joy in the Holy Spirit.

[13:42] The kingdom Jesus preached was one that is with us now because Jesus died and rose again and is now seated on the throne in heaven. And Jesus is king of kings and lord of lords.

[13:55] But clearly, we look around us, our prayers today, the world isn't right. There's still evil and wrongdoing, which will not be completely defeated until Jesus returns in glory.

[14:08] So the kingdom is here now in our hearts, in this church, in this world. But its fulfillment will be when Jesus returns in his glory.

[14:22] And that is our hope. That is our living hope. Paul told the Romans, Not only so, but we ourselves who have the first roots of the Spirit, grown inwardly as we wait eagerly for our adoption to sonship, the redemption of our bodies.

[14:40] For in this hope we were saved. But hope that is seen is no hope at all. Who hopes what they already have? But if we hope for what we do not yet have, we wait for it patiently. Hope is only hope.

[14:53] We cannot see it. And I can see Liz there. I don't hope to see Liz there because she's there. But we can hope that Liverpool might win the championship.

[15:08] It's more than hope. Yes. So... Slightly. But it's still hope, and perhaps still a couple of games time.

[15:22] So hope is only hope if we don't know it's going to happen. Or we know it's going to happen, but we haven't seen it happen yet. And our hope, our real and living hope, is based on what Jesus has done for us.

[15:39] Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. In His great mercy, He has given us new birth and a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus. The resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead.

[15:53] And into an inheritance that can never perish, spoil or fade. This inheritance is kept in heaven for you. Our hope is a living hope because Jesus Christ died for us.

[16:06] He dealt with our sin. He rose again. He lives in heaven. And He's keeping our inheritance there. So that is our hope.

[16:19] And our hope is in the return of our Lord Jesus Christ. We haven't seen it yet. Many people over the years have predicted when it's going to come. None of them have been right so far. So I'm not going to join that prediction.

[16:32] But He will return. And my hope, and it's a real hope, it's a hope that will happen, is that Jesus Christ will return in glory.

[16:43] When the Son of Man comes in His glory and all the angels with Him, He will sit on His glorious throne. That's the end of Matthew. They knew that Jesus Christ was coming again. And this hope is summed up in that passage that David read.

[16:57] Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth. For the first heaven and the first earth had passed away. And there was no longer any sea. I saw the holy city, the new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride, beautifully dressed for her husband.

[17:12] And I heard a loud voice from the throne saying, Look, God's well in place is now among the people. And He will dwell with them. They will be His people and God Himself will be with them and be their God.

[17:24] He will wipe every tear from their eyes. There will be no more death or mourning or crying or pain. For the old order of things has passed away. He who was seated on the throne said, I'm making everything new.

[17:35] Then He said, Write this down. For these words are trustworthy and true. He said to me, It is done. I am the Alpha and the Omega, the beginning and the end. To the thirsty I will give water without cost from the spring of the water of life.

[17:50] Those who are victorious will inherit all this and I will be their God and they will be my children. Now, as David said, this is where most people end that particular passage.

[18:01] Because that's all good news. But the cowardly, the unbelieving, the vile, the murderers, the sexually immoral, those who practice magic arts, and the idolaters and all liars, they will be consigned to the fiery lake of burning sulfur.

[18:18] We have to remember that though we have a living hope because we have Jesus Christ living in us, others don't unless Jesus Christ lives in them.

[18:29] And as Helen prayed for the people in her family who don't know Jesus, that should be our prayer. That the people who don't know Jesus, they should open their hearts.

[18:40] So this last bit of Revelation, verse 21, verse 8, doesn't come to pass for them. So there is going to be a coming king who is already here.

[18:54] And our living hope is because Jesus rose from the dead and is alive. And we have a living hope because Jesus lives in us by the Holy Spirit.

[19:06] And we have a living hope because Jesus is returning as king. And he will be king of all the earth. And we will live under his just and righteous reign.

[19:19] Come, Lord Jesus, come. Amen.