King Jesus-Part 8

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18-08 King Jesus-Part 8

 

King Jesus-Part 8

Admiring God’s Dynastic Plans

Pastor Mike Fabarez

 

Well Shakespeare’s Juliet once famously asked, “What’s in a name?” What’s in a name? And if you’ve been tracking some of the celebrities here of late, naming their children, I can tell you what’s in a name is weirdness, is what’s in a name. Now, I don’t keep track of this but I did run across a website that showed all of these celebrities here in Southern California naming their children. Names like Java, and Dream. And here’s one, like we’re in the 60s, Rainbow. “Rainbow Fabarez.” I don’t know, I don’t think I’d ever land on that. One of the celebrities name their child Coco, which was my grandmother’s dog’s name, Coco. One celebrity named their kid after a computer, his name is Apple. I found… here’s one, Birdie. I found one Cricket, that’s kind of insulting I would think. “Cricket Fabarez.” I don’t know, I’m thinking that this is really strange and I know this about the Hollywood folks, that they, as we look at their weird names, they probably look at us and think that our corporate name is weird.

 

I mean if they thought about it and, maybe you haven’t given it much thought, but if you think about the name that you call yourself, if you do call yourself one, if you say, “I am a Christian,” that’s kind of a weird name. Think about that. Christian. I know most of you know, of course, it has to do with an association with Christ. If you’re a Christian, you say you are associated with the Christ. Now, that doesn’t help us much because, though we’re familiar with that word and we hear it all the time, what does Christ mean? Well, Christ is not a word that’s been translated into English, it’s just been transliterated from the Greek New Testament, and in the Greek New Testament you find the word “Christos” and it translates into English, simply transliterates into English, “Christ.” And then we add it to the appendage of what we say we are connected with, we are a Christ-ian.

 

Well, if you go in the Old Testament and look for the translation from the Hebrew Old Testament to the Greek New Testament, the word that christos translates is the word “mashiach.” Mashiach transliterated is the word “messiah.” Now again these are familiar words but they’re weird words because if you were trying to define the word christos or define the word mashiach or messiah, you’d come to an old English word, the word “anointed,” which you only seem to hear in church settings and that’s a weird word too, isn’t it? Anointed.

 

If you were to look up in an old dictionary what the word anointed means, here’s the definition you’d find. It’s the same word you’d find in a Hebrew lexicon looking up mashiach or a Greek lexicon looking up the word christos. And that is “to pour,” “to paint,” “to smear.” Now that’s really weird. Right?

 

“I am a Christian.” What does that mean? That means I’m associated with the one, I find my allegiance with, I’m connected to, I’m loyal to the one who’s been painted, who’s been poured upon, smear upon. Well, what are you talking about? Well, if you know your Bible you know in the Old Testament they used to smear oil on people in three very important roles in the Old Testament.

 

If you were one who was called out by God to be a priest, the very sacred duty there, working in the tabernacle or later in the temple and you were there representing to God the people of Israel you, if you were going to start your career as a priest, would start with a ceremony where they poured or painted, if you will, they smeared oil on your head. Now that oil was a special oil, the Old Testament says, that was made fragrant with a very special set of ingredients that no one else could use. It may have smelled really good, which of course the Bible says it did, but you couldn’t take those ingredients and use it for yourself and put a little dab behind your ear for date night or anything like that. It was very special and it smelled good and it was poured on the heads of the priest as they initiated their ministry to the people of God.

 

There was also another group, the prophets used that oil to pass down kind of the mantle, so to speak, not to have a double entendre here about Elijah and Elisha, but clearly you see that connection to the fact that they’re special and set apart in the way that they designated that special role in Israel as a prophet, was they were anointed, they had this oil poured on their head.

 

And probably the most familiar story you know about pouring oil on the head goes back to Samuel when he went out with his flask to find the new king of Israel. I say new because he wasn’t the first. The first, God let them choose. Now he picked him, but it was exactly what the people wanted. His name was Saul, he was head and shoulders above everyone else, he was handsome, he seemed to be courageous, at least as he presented himself to the people he seemed courageous, and the people loved him. The problem was his heart was all messed up before God and he was a disaster and God said, “Well, you’ve picked your king. Let me now pick the next one. I’m going to send you to Jessie’s house,” God said to Samuel, “and he is going to present all these sons to you and you’re going to take that flask of oil and you’re to anoint the one, you’re to pour this oil on the head of the one that I tell you.” Now all these good, strong, strapping brothers came before them and God said no on all of them. He had to ask Jesse, “Hey Jesse, do you have any other children?” Jesse said, “Yeah, I got the guy who I didn’t even invite to the interview. I got a small, runty, little brother named David.” And Samuel says, “Go get him.” And Jesse brings him in and Samuel takes that flask of oil, because God says, “You know, I don’t look at people the way you look at people. People look at the outward appearance, I’m looking at the heart, here is a man after my own heart. I want you to anoint or pour the oil on his head.” And so here’s Samuel pouring from his flask, oil on the head of this young shepherd boy. And God says, “Okay, now in my book, he’s the king.”

 

Prophet, priest, king all start their careers with the oil poured upon their head, designated as special. And when you get that oil poured on your head, you are now the anointed one, to use old English, or you are the messiah, to use the Hebrew, or you are the Christ, to use the New Testament. And you say, “Well I thought there was only one Christ, only one messiah.” No, there are lots of messiahs and lots of christs, but you and I associate ourselves with the ultimate Messiah and Christ.

 

Now, we don’t even find in the Gospels that we have any kind of ceremony of oil being poured on his head, but we understand the role of prophet, priest and king, all find their ultimate fulfillment in the one who we worship this morning and his name is Jesus.

 

His last name, by the way, is not Christ. It’s describing that he is the anointed one in God’s book, he’s the one that God says, he is designated by the symbol of the Old Testament of oil poured on the head, just like that, Jesus is set apart to be the ultimate prophet, priest and king.

 

That’s what Christ means and it means a whole lot more than most people think. It is a strange word if anybody gave it any thought. But I hope you bear that name proudly because it’s such a rich definition that we find in Scripture to understand who the Christ is. Now that’s important because if you ask other people who Jesus is, they won’t say the Christ, at least not with full definition and meaning in their hearts. They say a lot of things like, “Well, he’s a good guy. He’s a good teacher, good moral leader, taught ethics and kind of helped people get out of trouble, kind of connected people with God and their spiritual side.” Now when they say he’s a good person, you need to understand most people in America today think he is a person, a person just like you and me, who is full of frailties and weaknesses. How about this survey, recent survey? 56% of all Americans say Jesus was a sinner. Now they’re not saying that in some sinister way, they’re just saying, “Yeah, of course he’s a sinner, yeah, of course. We all sin. Of course he was a sinner. Now he was a good guy, probably sinned less than me,” most Americans would say, “But yeah, that’s who he is.” Of course there are people, all the way back to the second century, who said, “Well I know he’s credited with doing a lot of fancy stuff.” And like a lot of people who try to “demythologize” the Bible, you got people even like Jefferson in our history saying, “Well, all that stuff he did, it can’t all be real.” And all the way back to the second century you had heretics saying, “You know, Jesus must have been just kind of some kind of showman.” To use an anachronism, he was kind of a “parlor trick” kind of guy and he learned ways to deceive people in these tricks and he did these miraculous things, but they were miraculous with a small ‘m’ and so he was basically a magician. I mean you might want to hire him for your kid’s birthday party or whatever, but really he had a bigger purpose and that was to turn people’s hearts to their spiritual side and kind of live a better life. But he was kind of a sleight of hand guy.

 

Or you can open up the books today and see what they’re teaching down the street about Jesus and they’ll tell you, “Well Jesus, you know, all he is is an angel, he’s a big and important angel, he’s Michael the Archangel,” the Jehovah’s Witnesses will tell you, “and that’s who he is.” Even the Adventists will tell you, “Well, he may be God but he was manifesting himself in the Old Testament as Michael the Archangel.” This is a pretty common belief, an angel. And of course, the fastest growing religion will tell us who Jesus is. Right? Islam will say, “Well, we know who Jesus is. Jesus is a prophet. Now, he’s not THE prophet. He just kind of set up human history for the ultimate prophet who would come, Muhammad, and they were all about, you know, telling us about Allah. But he’s just a prophet. And he’s not even as great as the last prophet, Muhammad, but he’s a pretty good guy, pretty good prophet, he taught us a lot of things, a mouthpiece of God but…” That’s who Jesus is.”

 

Well, if we’re going to call ourselves Christians and we’re going to understand what the word christ means, we can go to a passage right here in Chapter 20 of Luke verses 41 through 44, and we can say let’s get real clear about what we mean by christ. I love this text because Christ himself is breaking into a discussion to say, “Listen, I want you to think about what you mean when you use the word christ, and today I want to say when we use the word Christian we associate ourselves with this Christ, you better know what Jesus is trying to communicate about who he is.

 

So take your Bibles, if you haven’t already, and turn to Luke Chapter 20 verses 41 through 44 and let’s understand what the Bible has to say about who Jesus is. Now remember the context, he had just come down the Mount of Olives after they got this donkey, this young foal of a donkey, this colt to ride in on, they’re waving palm branches, having a little parade as he comes in, people laying down their clothes in the street and he comes in with everyone saying Hosanna. The Pharisees, the priests, the leaders of the temple, they don’t like any of this, they’re telling Jesus to have his disciples shut up, why are they doing this? This is blasphemous, this is not right. He gets to the Temple Mount, and to pour salt in their wounds, he starts tipping over tables. Remember that? Cleansing the temple it’s called. It’s a weird way to put it. But the bottom line is, he’s taking their little Walmart thing they’ve got going on there, the kind of the yard sale that’s happening, and he says, you’re not going to turn this Temple Mount into a place of commerce. This is a place of prayer and worship of God. And he shows that he’s in charge of the Temple Mount. From the time he was 12 he called it my Father’s house. He took special claim to the Temple Mount and I told the scribes and the Pharisees and the Sadducees and the chief priests and the elders of Israel, they did not like that. They said, “How do you march into our Temple Mount trying to act like you’re the boss?” And yet he presents himself as King in full fulfillment of Zachariah, riding in on a donkey, presents himself as King, he shows his authority by tipping over tables. Then he starts to teach the people and it says some of the people sat in the front rows hanging on every word that he spoke. And yet there were these layers of leaders in the background, standing there, listening to what he said and they wanted to discredit him. They so badly wanted to discredit him. So they started asking him questions. Remember all the questions we’ve been studying in this series? What about this? What about that? What about the resurrection? What about taxes? He’s dealt with all of those. Look at verse 40 now, he says, “They no longer dared to ask him any question.” Now that sets up our passage today. Can you imagine, it kind of gets quiet now after all this interruption with Jesus being asked all this stuff to try and make him look bad.

 

And we’re days away from him being betrayed and crucified, know that. This is the week of his crucifixion. And in light of the crucifixion, with that on the near horizon, Jesus says, “Are you done asking me questions? I’ve got a question for you.” Here it comes. Verse 41. Follow along. We’ll read these four verses. “But he said to them, ‘How can they say that the Christ is David’s son? For David himself says in the Book of Psalms, “The Lord said to my Lord, ‘Sit at my right hand until I make your enemies your footstool.'” David thus calls him Lord, so how is he his son?”

 

Now you are going to have to read that twice, right, just to even figure out what the world he’s saying. Let’s read it again. He says, “How can they say…” Who’s that? Whoever’s, you know, talking about the coming of the Messiah, the Christ. “How can they say that Christ, the ultimate king, the ultimate, prophet, the ultimate priest. How can they say he is David’s son?” How can they say that? “For David himself says in the Book of Psalms,” and I’m sure your Bible puts it in the margin somewhere, that’s Psalm 110 verse 1. It says, for “The Lord said to my Lord: ‘Sit at my right hand, until I make your enemies your footstool.'” Well that’s a weird statement about THE Lord saying to MY Lord, “Why don’t you have a seat. You’ve got enemies. I need to put them under your feet.” So we’ve got this weird scenario going on here, and Jesus’ whole point, verse 44, is “Thus David calls him Lord, how is he then his son?” The ultimate, expected King, the one who would lead, the one that I’m claiming to be as I ride in fulfilling Scripture and as I tip over tables and everyone’s here listening to me talk about the kingdom, and that I am the King. You think he’s less than David, look at this weird passage about “the Lord said to my Lord” and all of that. How is it that he’s the son of David if the word Lord is being used by David about this future king?

 

Now before we try to untangle some of that, let’s just take the first verse, verse 41, and see if we can at least understand what the presumption is at the beginning of this question. He says, “How can they say the Christ is David’s son?” Now understand this, the Christ, from the Old Testament perspective, is the ultimate King. And now you might want a jot this down, you should know it, Second Samuel Chapter 7 was the promise that there would be an ultimate king and he’d be associated with David, not just by philosophy or political theory or foreign policy, but because he is born of the lineage of David. Very important, Second Samuel 7, the Davidic covenant. David’s promise, the promise God makes to David, the Davidic covenant. There would be a king, he would come and he would be of the line, the lineage of David. He’d be the ultimate king, the Christ was always expected to be a son of David. Now he’s going to ask that, how can they say he’s the son of David? Is that because Jesus is denying that the Christ will be the son of David? And if he’s the Christ, though he’s talking about himself in the third person, is he saying that he’s not the son of David? And the answer is: no, he’s not saying that because that’s clearly how the whole Gospel is started. It started with an announcement to Mary that she would have a son and he would be born of the lineage of David, because Mary was of the lineage of David, and he would sit…, let me quote the passage for you. This is Luke 1:31. “You’re going to call his name Jesus, he’s going to be great, and the Lord will give him the throne of his father, David.” So, we know that’s the point. His ancestor is David. He’s going to sit on the throne of his father, David, verse 33, and this son, Jesus, the Christ, this Jesus you’re going to have, “Will reign over the house of Jacob forever,” not just Jacob, but over the kingdom it says “and of his kingdom there will be no end.” There’s no borders to it. It’s universal, it’s worldwide.

 

Now that’s a big promise and that’s how the whole declaration of Jesus’ birth started, a fulfillment of what the Bible had said in Second Samuel Chapter 7 of the Davidic covenant. What do we learn about that? That we have a birth of a human being with blood in his veins that coursed and genetic material that traced itself all the way back to David. Well, here’s what we learn. Just like David was a human king, we got a human king in the person of the Christ. So we know that, there’s no denial of that here. Jesus is going to say in a second, we got something far greater. But let’s just deal with the humanity side of this. Jesus was born a little tiny baby and every discussion of Jesus’ life was described as though he’s like any other baby. He’s raised by this mason or this carpenter, as he’s traditionally called, and he has eyelashes and he has eyeballs, he has hair, he has ears, ear lobes, tongue, taste buds, he’s got elbows, fingernails. He’s got everything every other human has. As a matter of fact, it says in Luke 2:52, he grew up and he grew “in stature and in wisdom.” So he grew up biologically, physically, he looked like every other human being on the streets of Bethlehem or in Galilee or in Jerusalem. A normal human being, at least that’s what he seemed to be, and I would say it’s more than seemed to be, that’s what he was. So the whole point was to provide a king for the people, a king who would be of the people, a king who was born of the lineage of David.

 

Now as a little side note here, maybe it would be helpful for you to know why you have the distinguishing genealogy in Matthew 1 than you do to Luke 3. Let’s sort that out. Let me take you back to Matthew. Matthew’s writing a book as a Jewish apostle to the Jewish people quoting as much Old Testament as he can possibly squeeze in in this gospel, and he’s talking to them about the birth of Christ. And in his genealogy in Matthew Chapter 1 he tries to make the connection, which you have to make if you have any claim to being the ultimate Christ, the ultimate anointed one, the ultimate king. And that is, you better show me that you’re related to David. So, here Matthew gives the genealogy. And the tie is from David, very important, to Jesus. But the way that he does that is he talks about Joseph’s connection to David because the Jewish people would be very much concerned about the parental authority, the parental and Jewish legal status of the leader, who is the patriarch of the home, who is the leader, so the paternal connection to David is critical, and in Matthew we have that and here’s how it goes. He goes from David to his son Solomon who built the temple. Now the mother of Solomon was who? Bathsheba. Bathsheba has Solomon, Solomon becomes the next king, the third king of Israel, the second king in the line or the regency of David and through Solomon, we come all the way down to Joseph, and then it says Joseph here is the one who raises Jesus and the whole point is whenever they ask, “Who is this kid, who is this person, who is this person who’s trying to do all these things and claim all this authority,” they would say, “Well, he’s the son of Joseph.” Well, he’s not the son of Joseph the way that we would think he’s the son of Joseph, because the whole point of Matthew and of Luke was, be very, very clear about this, he was not born in the normal way. He was born of a virgin. All the way back to the prophet Isaiah saying, he’s not going to be born like everyone else. Now, if that’s new to you, you need to go back to that sermon two years ago at Christmas. Matter of fact, I jotted down the number on the back of the worksheet that I have because I ran out of space, so you’re going to have to jot it down if you weren’t here. #16-38 was the message two Christmases ago and we talked about, here’s the subtitle, “The Meaning of the Virgin Birth.” We got to figure out what that means, all the way down to 23 and 23 chromosomes, we better figure out what we’re dealing with here with the virgin birth. So we deal with that for an hour in this message and if you’ve never really thought through the virgin birth, you got to start there. Message #16-38, and you can find all of those on the Focal Point website (https://focalpointministries.org) that may be worth putting in your headphones when you work out this week to try and think through what in the world is going on with the virgin birth.

 

So you’re going to say, well if Jesus is supposed to be connected to David he’s certainly not really connected to David through Joseph. Well if you’re a Jewish person you want to make sure that dad, that father, is connected to David because really, he’s responsible as the patriarch of the family and so Matthew makes that connection. But I want to know are you really genetically the offspring of David? Are you really the son of David?

 

Well that’s where Luke comes in. The whole focus of Luke for two chapters is clearly Mary. Mary is playing a very important role, not just bringing Jesus into the world, but raising Jesus and the connection genetically is very important. And it says in Luke Chapter 3 that we traced the connection between David the king and the promise of the Old Testament to not Joseph but to Mary, through her father Heli. He’s the father of Mary. Mary’s line is described there. Why in the world would that be important? Let me add this little curveball. Because at the end of the Judean dynasty in the Old Testament, it’s not the end of it, it’s going to continue on. But we see it go from David to Solomon all the way down to the end and, if you think, who’s the last king of the southern kingdom, you’d say, well, Zedekiah. Well Zedekiah, not much of a king if you read the story, but if you look at the second to last king, his name Jehoiachin, his nickname like Michael and Mike or Matt and Matthew, it’s the word Jeconiah. That name, we see it in Scripture, clearly referring to the second to last king of Israel. And it says there in the curse that’s given, and this is Jeremiah Chapter 22 verse 30, that when Jeconiah or Jehoiachin has a child he will not reign. And not only will he not reign, not just saying that Zedekiah is going to have his eyes gouged out and won’t be a successful king, his line will never have a man to reign on the throne of Israel.

 

So therefore, you’ve got what’s often called the blood curse given from God to Jehoiachin that his offspring, genetically, the bloodline will not continue to the king. Then you’re going to ask the question will the how in the world are we going to have a king that fulfills Second Samuel Chapter 7 and the Davidic covenant? That’s why it’s so important to ask the question. The blood coursing through Jesus’s arms and his body, it really comes, not through Solomon but through Nathan, one of Solomon’s three older brothers. And Nathan, as he’s born, that Nathan, the brother that’s listed there in Scripture, is the one that Heli traces his lineage back to the father of Mary, and Mary then has this baby and 23, at least, of the chromosomes of Mary are given to Jesus. And Jesus now, he grows up, to be more specific and accurate with these 22 characteristics of chromosomes coming through Mary, and Mary then can look in the eyes of her baby and see a resemblance of her. Not only that, to know that the blood coursing through her son’s body is that, not through Jehoiachin or Jeconiah, but ultimately back to David through Nathan and not through Solomon. That was an interesting little step-around of what God had said in his anger at the end of the Judean dynasty that we would still be able to fulfill the Second Samuel Chapter 7 promise to David about the offspring.

 

“Now all that’s very interesting I suppose, Pastor Mike,” or maybe it wasn’t, you checked out, but wake back up now and turn to Psalm 110, the psalm that he’s about to quote. I guess the question would be why is it important for me to know that he’s a human being? Well, here’s the question. To be able to say that Jesus is human, which is what I’m trying to say, but it’s not just the container that he lives in, the biological unit called his body. But everything about him in terms of what he is in terms of being a human being, having the image of God in the sense that you have the image of God, bearing the image of God as a human being, not just in your biological being, but having an intellect, emotion and will that reflects all the characteristics of humanity. Jesus fulfilled that being born of Mary. Now that is important to us because he would not only be the king, which would be nice for the king to be like one of us, but for what happens next in Psalm 110, which is not in our passage, but as long as we brought up Psalm 110 and Jesus brought it up, let’s read the rest of it. Verse 1. We’ll get back to this. “The Lord said to my Lord, sit at my right hand until I make your enemies your footstool.” That’s what Jesus quotes. “The Lord sends forth from Zion,” that kind of heavenly headquarters of Jerusalem, that kind of reflection of the great Jerusalem. He’s going to send forth the mighty scepter of the Messiah. “Rule in the midst of your enemies.” That’s an interesting phrase and it’s echoed in verse 43, we’ll get back to that, of our passage. “Your people will offer themselves freely on the day of your power, in holy garments from the womb of the morning, the dew of your youth will be yours.” That’s very poetic and we could take time to unravel all that, but this is a song, it’s poetry, it has great implications, but it’s not in view right now, so let’s keep moving. Verse 4.

 

“The Lord has sworn and will not change his mind. You are a king forever.” Oh, is that what it said? No. “You are a regent.” No. “You are a prophet.” No. “You are a priest forever.” So the Lord said to this other one, the second person pronoun, which is the Lord up in verse 1, “the Lord said to my Lord.” Well, this Lord of the universe is saying to this Lord, the Messiah, “you are a priest forever after the order of…” Oh, here’s this weird word “Melchizedek.” Hmmm. “The Lord is at your right hand,” speaking of this Messiah, “he will shatter kings on the day of his wrath.” Now listen, you got this weird statement about now the messianic promise of a king. Now all of a sudden, we shift gears and we talk about a priest and it’s a priest it says, “in the order of Melchizedek, the order of.

 

See, when you talked about the priesthood in Israel you talked about the priesthood being connected to Levi from the descendancy of Aaron. Now think this through, you had twelve tribes of Israel. The one tribe from which all the priests came, starting in the 15th century B.C., was from Levi. Moses and Aaron were from Levi and Aaron, his brother, would be the first priest in this whole setup that God wanted to make through Moses in Israel and everyone who was going to be a priest and serve in the tabernacle had to be from the line of Levi, because they all had to be descendants of Aaron. And so if you’re going to be a priest you better be from Levi. Now if you’re going to be a king, we know all the way back to Genesis when Jacob gave his promises in his prophecies regarding the leadership of the people of God, it said the scepter would never depart from between the feet of Judah. So we knew Judah would provide the kings and later we find, 500 years later, the line of Levi would provide all the priests. So if you have someone ultimately who comes on the scene and says, “I am the Christ, I’m not only the great prophet speaking for God, I’m not only the great King leading my people, I’m now also the priest representing the people to God. Someone’s going to throw a quick flag on the play and say, “How in the world can you be a priest because if you’re a king, you’re from Judah, which, of course, the line of David is and Jesus was. But you can’t say that you’re a priest, because priests come from the tribe of Levi. Melchizedek.

 

Jot this down if you haven’t already. You’re a good Sunday School grad if you knew the passage, but I know many of you do, Genesis 14. We won’t take time to turn there, but in Genesis 14 God tells us a story about Abraham coming back from a battle and you remember the whole thing with Lot and all that, he wins this battle, he rescues his family, he comes back with all this plunder, and here he meets this king, Melchizedek.

 

A combination of words. “Melek” is the Hebrew word for “king.” “Zedek” is the Hebrew word for “righteousness.” He’s the king of righteousness, coming from a place called Salem, which I do think, we’re about 90% certain that was the pre-Jerusalem name before it was that Jebusite city that we know of when David captured it, that was Jerusalem. So ancient Jerusalem, Salem, was led by a king “Melik-Zedek.” He was the king of righteousness.

 

And he comes from Salem, a word that’s related to the word you know “shalom,” peace. It’s an interesting…, it’s just laden with double entendre. But as he comes, this is now 500 years before you have Moses setting up the priesthood through Levi, here you have a priest who comes out, who’s not only a priest, he’s a king, which is unthinkable in later Israeli history, but you have him there with Abraham and Abraham doesn’t go, “Who do you think you are?” He gives him a tribute, a tenth of everything of the spoils of war, he submits himself in worship to the great priest Melchizedek, a king and a priest. Well you didn’t have the merging of those two roles in Israel. It was clarified and distinct with a wall of separation once you got to the 15th century B.C. in the days of Moses. But, about 2,000 B.C. when Abraham met this king, we had a king and he seemed to be legit because we have a leader of Israel submitting to him and giving worship to him and showing that he’s going to worship God through him and he wants Melchizedek to represent him before the one and true holy God. One reference, Genesis 14, that’s it, we get the story, we move on.

 

David writes now in about 1,000, rough and dirty, B.C. It’s been a thousand years since Melchizedek and Abraham and, if you don’t believe in the God-breathed nature of Scripture, this should help you. There is no reason in the world for David to write this. There’s no way he could possibly, in any human way, anticipate the fulfillment of this, but he sits here, under the guidance of the Holy Spirit, and writes this, “The Lord has sworn, he will not change his mind, ‘You are a priest.'” Who is? This great king, the coming Messiah. You’re not only a king, “You’re a priest forever after the order of Melchizedek.” How can you claim a priesthood, because you’re not of Levi? Because there was a legitimate priest who preceded that. His name was Melchizedek. And just like Melchizedek, who was a legitimate priest, Jesus will be a legitimate priest able to represent the people to God.

 

That was mind boggling. We don’t even have a mention of this until David a 1,000 years after and then, a 1,000 years after that, Jesus comes on the scene, claims to be the great high priest and the writer of Hebrews, under the direction of the God-breathed Spirit of God to get the words of Scripture on paper, now starts to write in Hebrews Chapter 5, Chapter 6, Chapter 7 about Melchizedek and Jesus being the fulfillment of that. Because every Jew who the writer of Hebrews is writing to is going how in the world can Jesus be the priest? Now again, all this back to the question, why do you have to be a human being to be my priest? Because I need you to represent me to God.

 

And here’s the plan in God’s book. Mike Fabarez is a sinner. He’s done sinful things. And in that sinful life of his, he’s got to somehow have human righteousness accounted and attributed to him, imputed to his account, and he needs all of his sin attributed and imputed to something that will stand in as a vicarious atonement or a sacrifice for his sin. God’s justice has to be settled. And therefore we need a human representation to stand before the Father and say Mike Fabarez, all the human righteousness he needs, here it is in me and all of Mike’s sinfulness that makes him abhorrent to you, all of that, I’ve taken and become the Lamb of God. And in my priestly function I have died and suffered so that your righteousness will be absolutely satisfied in your just act of punishing me. Human sin in Mike Fabarez’s life is humanly punished in Christ and human righteousness, that I don’t have enough of to ever stand before the presence of God, has been fulfilled in every obedient act of Christ, and now it’s been imputed to me. Therefore Mike Fabarez can be 100% righteous and 100% forgiven because Jesus is the MAN who stands in my place. That’s an amazing concept. And that’s what I need.

 

I cannot have an angel stand in for me. I need a human being to stand in for me. I need to be, let’s throw some theological words, I need someone who is of the same co-essence as me. I need someone who is co-equal with me in my humanity. So God becomes a man, Philippians 2, puts on humanity. And not only puts on a shell of humanity because he’s born in a biological container but he becomes human in the sense that he takes on every attribute of humanity except for our sinfulness and lives before God, as he said in John, always doing his will, without any sin, where even Pilot can say, “I find no fault in him.”

 

A perfect life of righteousness, a human being. Jesus is 100% human. I didn’t give you the point, did I? Number one, “Appreciate Christ’s Humanity.” And with that let’s move on to point number two. Appreciate Christ humanity.

 

Well that’s great. It’s important. There’s a lot to that, we’re just scratching the surface. If you want more on that, on the back I think I put Bruce Ware’s book, friend of Compass Bible Church, he’s preached in our pulpit, but what a great book. “The Man Christ Jesus, theological reflections on the humanity of Christ.” That would be a good book to start reading on a rainy day, and to get a little bit more about what all the implications of that are.

 

But really that’s not the thrust of this passage. Everyone’s assuming that the Christ is going to be the Son of David but the Christ is more than that. You still have Psalm 110 open? Go back to that if you would and if you glance at the text as it’s printed on your worksheet, which I guarantee you is the same that you have in the ESV, the English Standard Version of your Bible. In Luke 20 verse 42, here’s what it reads, “For David himself says in the Book of Psalms, ‘The Lord said to my Lord, “Sit at my right hand.”‘” Look at that phrase right there. Verse 44, “David thus calls him Lord.” Now you see the word Lord repeated three times. “The Lord,” once, “said to my Lord,” twice. “Thus David calls him Lord.” So I’ve got Lord, Lord and David calls him Lord. So I’ve got to figure all this out. Now you’ve got to go to Psalm 110 verse 1 to figure it out. And again, I apologize that we’re not sitting here preaching in Hebrew or in Greek. Those are the languages of the Old Testament and the New Testament. Because we’re dealing with a translation, we have some weird proclivities in the translation that unfortunately make this a little harder. And I’m not here trying to decode something with a serial decoder ring, I’m just trying to tell you there’s no intended mystery that’s intentional on this. This is something that, unfortunately, as we sit 2,000 years removed from the New Testament and about 3,000 years removed from this text, we unfortunately in English have some weird things that have happened in the Hebrew translation of the Bible where, out of great reverence for the sacred name of God that appears about 7,000 times in the Old Testament, the Jewish people did not want to translate that because they thought it was too sacred. They wouldn’t even write it in certain periods of biblical history. And therefore, when English translations came along and they would look at Old Testament Hebrew texts, they would often translate the divine name, the personal name of God, the four consonants, it’s called the tetragrammaton, they would take those four consonants and sometimes in the manuscripts they would just put dashes or dots. They would do something just so that they would not have to say it, it was too sacred to say. Well, in our English text you didn’t have it translated into the kind of word or transliterated that you would see in a Hebrew text, if you were to have it in the Hebrew text, you unfortunately have it hide behind the word Lord.

 

Problem is there’s another word for Lord and it’s a different Hebrew word. The normal word for Lord is the word “Adonai.” Adonai translates “Lord.” But then you have this word, thousands of times in the Old Testament, that is the personal name of the Godhead. It’s God’s name and his name is “Yahweh,” that’s his personal name. The Godhead is depicted in the Old Testament as Yahweh, that is his name, Yahweh. Now it’s been conflated with the wrong vowel pointings and called Jehovah sometimes, but it’s not Jehovah and I get into that another time, I’ve taught on that, it’s the word Yahweh. It’s the best we know, at least, because it was rarely translated and sometimes not even written, but Yahweh.

 

So I got Yahweh, how am I going to know when I hit the word Adonai in Hebrew or the word Yahweh? Well the only way we’re going to know is by looking at Psalm 110 in your Bible, any modern translation is going to do this, you’re going to find that the word is spelled the same but the capitalization of the first one is in caps “O-R-D” and the other ones in small case “o-r-d” and that distinction is a key right there. Any introduction to any translation of the modern Bible is going to tell you, what we’re doing here is showing you that whenever you see capital “L” followed by small capital letters, I mean they’re a little bit shorter, but they’re still capital “O” capital “R” capital “D” then you know that what you’re dealing with in the Hebrew text is the word Yahweh, when it’s written and not with dashes. Yahweh. Clearly, that’s what we’re translating. Yahweh is the personal name of God. When you get the word adonai, you have the word with small “o” small “r” small “d”.

 

Therefore, let’s get this straight. We’ve got three parties here, David in the Psalms says, “The Lord,” the ultimate boss of the whole universe, the triune Godhead, “says to my Adonai,” my boss. Now wait a minute, I thought you were the boss, you’re the king. Well yeah, but the king has a king. He’s the King of kings. Now you got the boss boss, the ultimate boss, the ultimate leader of the universe, and apparently David is saying, as he speaks about God, he says, “The Lord” prophetically, he knows this because he’s under the inspiration of the Spirit. He’s guided by the Spirit, God is breathing out his words through him, “the Lord,” Yahweh, “says to my king,” my boss, “sit down until I make your enemies a footstool under your feet.” So can you see Jesus says, verse 44, that David calls the Messiah, his boss, his Lord?

 

What’s the point? You would think that anyone would say David is the great one, the prototype of the future kings, everyone wants to live up to David. Well here you’ve got a promise about a coming King and he is said to be greater than David, just like Jesus is going around saying things all the time. Someone greater than Solomon is here, someone greater than Jonah is here, something greater than the temple is here. And when it comes to David, he’s saying in this passage, someone greater than David is here. Because if I’m the Christ, which I have been claiming to do all week on the Temple Mount and not only that, for the last three years of my ministry, I’m telling you I am the King and that means I’m not just a knock off the old block of the Davidic line, I am greater than David.

 

Now let’s take it even further. To be called adonai is to really connect himself, as Jesus had been doing throughout his whole ministry, with God. Think this through now. The whole reason he’s going to be crucified in a couple of days in this week of history is because he claimed to be God. When they confronted him about it, he uses that phrase from Daniel 7, the Son of Man, and he says this, Matthew 26:64, “You’re going to see the Son of Man seated at the right hand of Power coming with the clouds of heaven.” You’re going to see the Son of Man, Daniel 7, the great one to whom all the people should give their allegiance, coming in his glory with all the angels with him, seated on the clouds of heaven.

 

“And then when the high priest heard this,” verse 65, “he tore his robes,” which they were never supposed to do. Everyone else can get all freaked out and tear their robes, but the priests weren’t supposed to do that but he did. He was so overwhelmed by that and he says this, the high priest said that “he has uttered blasphemy. What further witnesses do we need. You’ve now heard this blasphemy. What is your judgment?” he says to those standing around and they said. “He deserves death.” That’s not new. They’ve been picking up stones to try and stone him, as the Bible says, because he’s making himself out to be equal with God all the time. You’d better appreciate his humanity. He stands in as your representative before God as your priest. But not only that, he is of your humanity to be your king, but secondarily, you better “Affirm His Deity.” Number two, you better affirm that, let’s just confess it. Realize Christ is not just a human being, he’s not an angel, he’s not Michael the Archangel, he is God. “I thought you said he was man?” Yeah, he is. I said this: he is of co-essence with you. That’s why the Bible can say he is your older brother. He is co-equal with you and your humanity. But then the Bible says, you know what, he’s also co-equal with God. He’s of co-essence with the Godhead. He is God in essence. And he’s been proving that throughout his ministry. Think about how he demands worship.

 

One thing you don’t do if you’re a Jewish person, ever in your life, think that you can worship anything or anyone other than God. That’s how the whole ten commandments started. Right? No other gods. This is it. Worship one God. This is it. The “shama” of Deuteronomy 6, there is one God. That’s it. One God, worship one God. You don’t worship anything, anyone but God. In John 5 Jesus comes on the scene and says, you know the Father, he gives life. The Son gives life to whomever he wishes. I’m quoting now John Chapter 5 verse 21 and 22. “The Father, he judges no one.” As a matter of fact, “He’s given or entrusted all judgment to the Son.” The Son because he is of us, he co-essence and co-equal with us and our humanity, is now going to be the one to rightfully, sympathetically be able to judge all peoples, and separate the people like a shepherd would separate the sheep from the goats. Well he’s also co-equal with the Father, so much so that he gives life at will, next verse, “so that all may honor the Son, just as they honor the Father.” Now you tell a New Testament first century Jewish person you’re to honor this person, this Rabbi with fingernails and eyelashes and a head of hair on his head, you honor him as “kathos,” “just as,” the Greek word “kathos” means “an equal” in the same way the Jew would honor the Father. Next sentence in verse 23, “Whoever does not honor the Son…” If you’re not willing to honor me, “You do not honor the Father who sent me.”

 

I don’t care what the Wheaton College professor says, I don’t care what the mythologists say. Islam, because they try to define Allah as the all-powerful, omnipotent, benevolent, merciful God. We are not worshipping the same God. Why? Any more than we’re worshiping the same God as the Jewish people of today are worshipping. “Well, it’s the same God, it’s the Old Testament God.” The Bible says this: You cannot worship the real God unless you worship Christ and if you don’t worship and honor Christ the same way you’d worship the Father, then you’re not worshipping the Father.

 

And that’s a problem in our society today. Everyone wants to put their arm around each other, grab a Coca-Cola and say, “Let’s just all get along here. Can’t we say we’re worshipping the same God as the Jews and Islam, the three big religions? Can’t we all just get along and say it’s ultimately about the same God?” You may be defining the same God but you are not worshiping the same God. And God won’t receive worship from anyone who won’t give worship to the Son. That’s the whole point. That’s the reason Jesus died. If you want another reason, Jesus was crucified because of his claims for deity, that’s it. He asked them in John 10, “Why are you stoning me for any good work? Tell me the good work you’re stoning me for.” They replied, “We’re not stoning you for any good work, we’re stoning you because of your blasphemy, because you, being a man, make yourself equal with God.” They got it absolutely right.

 

He gives life. He raises the dead. He says he has life in him and he can lay his life down and he can pick it back up. Think about that in John 10, “I can lay my life down and I’ve got authority to bring it back up.” Let’s see anyone else do that who’s a human being. But he is a human being, 100% human. But now he has divine authority.

 

In the next chapter he proves it, he goes to the funeral of his friend. He waits until he’s dead as a doornail and he doesn’t comes until his body is rotting in a grave and he says, “Lazarus come forth,” after he says, “I am the resurrection, I am the life.” Not I can just give life. “I am the life.”

 

He controls nature, Psalm 107 says, “God calms the seas.” Luke 8, we studied it, Jesus stands up and quiets the seas with his word, he creates things out of nothing with the word of his power. Every creative act of Christ is a sign of his divinity as he expresses with his own word and authority to do what he pleases with his words.

 

“In him the fullness of deity dwells in bodily form.” The Bible couldn’t be clearer. “I thought you said he was man?” He is man, he’s a 100% man. He is co-equal, co-essence with you as a human being and he’s also co-equal and co-essence with the Father. He has full humanity. Well how does that work?

 

It’s called something we call the “hypostatic union.” hypo, “Hupo,” “under,” preposition, “stasis” is the Greek word “to stand” under this person, which really what it came to be and the use of it, at least in theology, shifted as we went from Greek to Latin, but the idea was you have one person and in that one person you have without co-mingling, without confusion, you have a 100% divinity and 100% humanity. Now we struggled with this in the first century, the second century, the third century, the fourth century, even into the fifth century because everyone was saying, “Simplify that for me,” and every time you simplified it, everybody got off track. Whether it was that Docetism of the second century or Gnosticism at the end of the first century, Apollinarianism when people just said, “Well, God just kind of put himself in the container of the human body, or Nestorianism that said there are two natures that kind of come in here and they’re separate so you’ve got two persons. The Bible says there’s ONE person existing in two natures, this nature of divinity and humanity, co-equal with the Father, co-equal to humanity. And they’re not confused, they’re not co-mingled, which you had in some of the fifth century heresies.

 

If you read Dan Brown or Bart Ehrman or whoever you want to read about this developing divinity of Christ, don’t you believe it for a second, don’t believe that. The New Testament presents all the data and whether it was Ignatius or Irenaeus or whether we get to the Council of Ephesus, with the Council of Nicaea, the Council of Chalcedon, all of these councils were just trying to take the biblical data with the ping-pong pendulum of people saying, “Well he’s not fully God” and then “Well, OK, he’s fully God and he’s not fully man,” or “Oh, he’s fully man but he’s not fully God.” That happened for five centuries until Chalcedon and at Chalcedon they said, “Listen, here it is.” It’s the longest, clearest statement of the divinity and humanity of Christ. And that, you have to understand, we’re not making this up. It wasn’t that at Nicaea, as Dan Brown says in all of his novels, that we came up with the divine Christ. Don’t believe that tripe, they’ll teach it at Saddleback College or UCI. It is not history, it’s bad history. It’s not the truth.

 

And I tell you the story of St. Nicholas, if you will, Pastor Nick of Myra, punching Arius in the face because he said, “Well we do have divinity but it’s a similar divinity to the Father, it’s not the same divinity as the Father.” Remember that I threatened one time, wouldn’t it be great to have Christmas cards with, you know, Nicholas punching Arius in the face, and it’s been painted in church history, and so I got a few of those at Christmas because you’re good with Photoshop or whatever. Thank you for those.

 

Why all the anger about Christ? Because you cannot take the Christ of the Bible and mess up this picture in the Scripture of full humanity to represent us and full deity. Why is that important? Because I can’t have Jesus as a human going to the cross as a perfect person and expecting somehow that life is going to be attributable to me. How is that? Because there’s no way as a human being you going have the infinite worth you need to not only save yourself but to save me and everyone else. Divine, infinite worth, stands as the eternal mediator between God and man. There’s so much more we could say about church history, about the importance of keeping the full divinity and full deity of Christ in view. But to put it simply in six words “Appreciate Christ’s Humanity” and “Affirm Christ’s Deity.”

 

And then let me leave you with this. Verse 43. All of that going on about David calling the coming Messiah his Adonai, his Lord. It says in verse 43, “sit down until I make your enemies your footstool.” That’s a Hebraic idiom about your enemies are going to be under you. You’re going to win. You going to be the victor. Now think this through if you would. You have a priest sitting down, a king sitting down. It’s one thing to have a king sit down but you don’t have a high priest sitting down because you don’t have any chairs in the tabernacle or temple because they constantly, as the book of Hebrews says, minister, not only sacrificing for our sins, as some vicarious intermediary, but for their own sins because they’re sinful. No, you have Jesus doing it, once for all, sacrifice for our sins, seated at the right hand of God and God says, “You just sit down. I’m going to get all your enemies subjected to you.”

 

So Jesus goes back at the Ascension and God says I’m going to send my Spirit. Now we’ve got a warrior on earth working among the hearts and lives of people sent out to convict the world of sin, righteousness and judgment. And what’s he doing? He’s trying to turn rebel hearts into submissive hearts and I hope you’re here today, the reason you call yourself as a Christian, because your heart now, by the work of God, has been subjected to Christ. That’s a victory. That’s a point in favor of the Messiah of Christ. But there’s a lot of rebels that won’t bow the knee.

 

That’s why it will end one day with a war. It will end, if we had time, we don’t have time, we could look at Psalm 110 after the Melchizedekian reference, we got a reference in verse 6 to the judgment and to a war and to nations warring and to God putting his enemies under his feet. And you have then, ending a great verse, about him drinking at the brook. It’s poetic. But him being the victor, drinking in the streams of the foreign land where the insurrectionist used to live and now Jesus is the King of Kings and Lord of Lords, not just of his own submitted kings like David, but the king of all people and every knee bows and every tongue confesses, that’s the picture of the coming Messiah. You ought to anticipate it.

 

Number three, “Anticipate Christ’s Kingdom.” Nine words today. “Appreciate Christ’s Humanity”, “Affirm Christ’s Deity” and “Anticipate Christ’s Kingdom.” You’re supposed to be praying for that every day. Are you?

 

“Our Father who is in heaven hallowed be thy name.” There’s a statement of worship. The first thing on the list, “Your kingdom come.” We want you to rule. Your job right now is to see if you can turn rebels into subjects. You and I are evangelists. Let me quote for you from Acts Chapter 3. In Acts Chapter 3, there’s a picture of what we’re all about, telling people about the prophetic word being fulfilled in Christ and they’re called to repentance and that’s usually where we end. Listen, here’s Peter, “What God foretold by the mouth of all the prophets, that this Christ would suffer, he’s fulfilled it.” So Christ has died. “Repent therefore, and turn back, that your sins may be blotted out.” Now that’s where we put a period and we tell people repent and you can be saved. And instead, Peter puts a comma there. I think maybe we should add this to our gospel presentations.

 

Do that, so that the times, verse 20, Acts 3, “So that the times of refreshing may come from the presence of the Lord, and that he may send the Christ appointed for you, Jesus, whom heaven must receive until the time for the restoring of all things about which God spoke by the mouth of his holy prophets long ago.” That was a mouthful. Did you catch that?

 

“I want you to repent, neighbor. I want you to repent, co-worker. I want you to know that Scripture has been fulfilled, Christ has died, he rose again, and now you need to repent. God will blot out your sins.” You know, all of that ought to be done in this great anticipation that the times of refreshing may come and God can say to the Son who’s seated, “Stand up and go back and get your Church.” “That he may send the Christ appointed for you, Jesus, whom heaven must receive until the time for the restoring of all things.” That’s a nice way of saying all his enemies are under his feet and the last enemy to be destroyed, First Corinthians Chapter 15, is death itself. At the moment of his return when he sends himself, his Son, back to receive us, the dead in Christ will rise and death itself will be subject under his feet. What a great picture. Christ does that with the word of his power when God the Father says it’s time to go back and the Spirit’s work in evangelizing people on this planet is done. Do you anticipate that? Do you evangelize with that kind of expectation?

 

I suppose, like lots of kids, my daughter grew up hearing about her ancestors, of those that we knew about at least. Learning about her grandparents and her great grandparents. Probably three years ago, I think it was, she was 12 or 13-years-old, we were going across the country and we were going to stop at the college that her great grandfather taught at. He’s a professor and a scholar, an academic, an author.

 

And we’d told her about him before and I suppose like a lot of young kids, you know, tweens, whatever, would say, “Oh that’s interesting, that’s great. Neat.” Well, the closer we got to the college the more we told stories about it and we tried to get her interested and from the back seat she said, “Oh, that’s cool.”

 

But then we got to the campus. It was summertime so there wasn’t a lot of students there but we started to walk through the campus and, of course, there were workers and a few students and administrators and people running around doing research. And we got onto the campus and we started to point out things like, “See that building right there? Do you recognize that last name on the building?” And there her eyes got big, “Whoa!” And then we walked into certain buildings and we saw on the wall these huge painted pictures of her great grandfather. Now she never met her great grandfather because he’s was dead before she was born, but she recognized in the eyes of that great grandfather, that painting, her grandfather who is alive and she looked at this, my wife’s father, her grandfather, and said, “Whoa! That’s him isn’t it?” I said, “Yeah, that’s him.” And we walked down another corridor and we see a picture of him and his wife and her eyes kept getting bigger and bigger and bigger.

 

“Man, this guy was a really big deal.” Then we went to the library. In the library they have this museum, this section of the library, where they have these artifacts, and behind this glass, we got the librarian to let us in, there’s a museum and it’s got artifacts and in that corner of the library, there is his desk and his books in his personal library and all the things and trinkets on it. And they had this kind of, you know, almost like a shrine to her great grandfather.

 

And we did a lot of that without a lot of escorts but we went into the administration building and started to meet some of the old timers who worked at that university for years. And we walked in and introduced ourselves and we started telling them who we were and how we were connected to this great professor that everyone knew, at least in history and some of them knew personally, and of course names of this professor on the buildings that everyone uses every day.

 

The old ladies, especially those who used to work with him, looked at my daughter and were so pleased to meet the great granddaughter of the great professor. And they’d look at Steph and they’d say, “Hey, Stephanie, you must be the great professor’s granddaughter.” And the more the people talk, the more her shoulders arched back and she looked proud. “Yeah, I am,” you know. They were given her shirts and cups and mugs and she just was like, “Ah yeah, that’s him, that’s my great grandfather.” My daughter had no idea what a big deal he was until she got to see it with her own eyes.

 

I hope that you can start to appreciate the greatness of the Christ who you bear his name, before you have to walk into the kingdom and you’re going to be floored, by the authority and the power and the glory of Christ as he comes in power and sits on his glorious throne. And you this week have a chance when you tell your co-worker in the lunch room I’m a Christian, unfortunately many of us get sweaty palms and we’re almost embarrassed to say it. Can you bear that name with some pride? You’re associated with Christ. Yeah, he is your elder brother, he’s your savior, he’s your king, he’s the prophet, he’s your priest, your great high priest. Can you pray in Christ to the Father knowing that he is the King of Kings and Lord of Lords and one day he’ll come back? And as I often quote, the kingdoms of the world become the kingdom of our Lord, Yahweh, the Father and of his Christ, Adonai, the King. And the King, Christ the Messiah, will reign forever and ever. Can you wear that badge with pride? Stop being ashamed of Christ. Yeah, it’s a weird name, Christian. But you’re associate with the most powerful, most glorious, most important figure in all of the universe. Let’s be proud of that this week.

 

Let’s pray. God, help us to remember how important it was that Jesus would want to clarify before he went to hang on a cross, that not only was he the son of David, a human being, sharing our nature as human, but he was much, much more than that. Adonai, Lord. That he’d be the one who would be revered by the greatest king of the Old Testament. That David looked to him and called him Lord. And more than that, as they hung him on a cross mocking him for his claims, everyone understood it. He made himself as a man equal with God, and God we know that just wasn’t a hollow claim, that was the truth. May WE this week think about our own connection with Christ, understand what it means to be associated with Christ as we say he is our King, he’s our Lord, we are saved by his sacrifice on a cross. Give us, please God, more boldness about that, and may we anticipate the kingdom by sharing with our neighbors and our co-workers and our family members the importance of submitting to Christ, knowing that once the last person comes to that place of repentance and has their sins blotted out, in that moment, when the last one is over, crosses that line, that the times of refreshing will come when the Father says to the Son, “Go. Get up. Go get your Church.”

 

God, I pray that we would anticipate that, we’d evangelize with more hope, we’d stand up for Jesus in this enemy-ladened society that we live in. Jesus reigns in our hearts, we understand that, but one day he’ll reign in this world. Let us not be afraid to be associated with him this week. Thank you for this reminder from this Old Testament psalm and his very penetrating question from Christ this morning.

 

In Jesus name. Amen.