[Sunday School] Practical Parenting 8

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Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:01

Heavenly Father, thank you for this morning and thank you for this class. Thank you for these people. Thank you for the church. Thank you for our great Redeemer, our prophet, our priest, our king. Help us this morning as we reflect on what it means for Christ to be king. Lord, give us a deeper sense of his majesty, of his royalty, what it looks like for him to subdue us to himself, to rule and defend us, to restrain and conquer all his and our enemies. Pray these things in Jesus' name. Amen. Alright, these past several weeks we have been considering the threefold office of Jesus. Jesus our prophet, Jesus our priest, Jesus our king. The prophet who reveals to us by his word and spirit the will of God for our salvation as our priest. He once offers himself up a sacrifice to satisfy divine justice and reconcile us to God and to make continual intercession for us. And third, today, he is our king. So question 26, how does Christ execute the office of the king? Christ executes the office of a king in subduing us to himself, in ruling and defending us, and in restraining and conquering all his and our enemies. So what we're going to do this morning is basically what we've done for the past couple weeks. We're kind of look at a biblical theology of the office of a king. Then we'll consider those three clauses: how he subdues us, how he rules and defends us, how he restrains and conquers all his and our enemies. So the office of king, like everything else, it starts in the garden. We've talked about how the image is, the image of God is an image of God's royalty. In the ancient world, it was said that only the king was created in the image of God. But in Genesis, we see that human beings, male and female, all of us, we're created in the image of God. And part of our function as the image of God is to represent the rule and reign of God wherever we are, wherever we go. Abraham. In him, we see something like a king. Genesis 14, where this coalition of world superpowers basically is going and conquering and pillaging, and they capture Abraham's nephew Lot and his family. What does Abraham do? He puts together his own coalition, and with God's help, he goes and he routes those kings and he rescues his nephew. So we we see something like a king as early as that. As we go through the history, we start to see the office of a king become something more formal. In Genesis 49, when Jacob, or when Israel is blessing his sons, he says to Judah, Judah is a lion's cup. From the prey, my son, you have gone up. He stooped down, he crouched as a lion and as a lioness, who dares rouse him. The scepter shall not depart from Judah, nor the ruler's staff from between his feet, until tribute comes to him, and to him shall be the obedience of the peoples. Binding his full to the vine, and his donkey's colt to the choice vine. He has washed his garments in wine, and his vesture in the blood of grapes, his eyes are darker than wine, and his teeth whiter than milk. The scepter shall not depart from Judah. This is a promise of a king. This is a prophetic word spoken over Judah to say, From your line will come a line of kings, and that line of kings will rule over the nation of Israel. In Deuteronomy 17, we see regulations for the office of a king. Specifically in verses 14 through 20, God talks about uh what uh just read it. When you come into the land that the Lord your God has given you, and you possess it and dwell in it, and they then say, I will set a king over me, like all the nations that are around me, you may indeed set a king over you, whom the Lord your God will choose. One from among your brothers you shall set as king over you. You may not put a foreigner over you, who is not your brother. Only he must not acquire many horses for himself, or cause the people to return to Egypt in order to acquire many horses, since the Lord has said to you, You shall never return that way again. And he shall not acquire many wives for himself, lest his heart turn away, nor shall he acquire for himself excessive silver and gold. And when he sits on the throne of his kingdom, he shall write for himself in a book a copy of this law, approved by the Levitical priests, and it shall be with him, and he shall read in it all the days of his life, that he may learn to fear the Lord his God by keeping all the words of this law and these statutes and doing them, that his heart may not be lifted up above his brothers, and that he may not turn aside from the commandments, either to the right hand or to the left, so that he may continue long in his kingdom, he and his children in Israel. So Israel was meant to have a king. The promise was spoken over Jacob, the law provided for it in what I just read in Deuteronomy 17. And things were pretty rough in Israel, so long as they didn't have a king. You remember the book of Judges, what's the line that gets repeated a couple times? In those days there was no king in Israel, and everyone did what was right in their own eyes. So in the judges themselves, you have these kingly figures who rule in a sense, and they start off good, but it's this one long downward spiral until the end of Judges. Everything is just a hot mess. And that's where that line comes up. There's no king in Israel. Everybody's doing what's right in their own eyes. And so they're right to long for a king. God promised them a king. But what happens in 1 Samuel? They long for the wrong kind of king. 1 Samuel 8, 4 through 7. All the elders of Israel gathered together and came to Samuel at Ramah and said to him, Behold, you are old, and your sons do not walk in your ways. Now appoint for us a king to judge us, like all the nations. But the thing displeased Samuel when they said, Give us a king to judge us. And Samuel prayed through the Lord. And the Lord said to Samuel, Obey the voice of the people, and all that they say to you, for they have not rejected you, but they have rejected me from being king over them. So the problem wasn't that the people wanted a king. The problem was that the people wanted a king like all the other nations. The problem was that they didn't want God to be their king and to rule over them by way of a righteous king. And so what did they get? They get a king like all the other nations. Saul from the tribe of Benjamin, who's said to be a head and shoulders above everyone else in Israel. Well, kings, you know, what do you look for in a king if you're one of the nations? You look for the biggest, strongest, most imposing God. And that's what Saul was a head and shoulders above the rest. I mean, he didn't really want the job. He hid among the baggages and the and whatnot instead of being anointed the way he was supposed to. But so they give him a king like all the other kings. Now what's Saul's story? Anyone want to summarize Saul's story for us, how his uh his reign goes for him?

SPEAKER_01 7:52

He disobeyed God.

SPEAKER_00 7:53

He disobeyed God.

SPEAKER_01 7:54

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 7:55

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 7:56

He he not only not only was not a good king, he tried to usurp the role of a priest and offering sacrifices when Samuel delayed his coming, and that was all such a weird character. Yeah. Because you think he doesn't have very much, very good self-esteem, but then he had a terrible twisted self-esteem.

SPEAKER_00 8:24

He quite literally failed to wait on the Lord. If it's meant to be, it's up to me. That was Saul's way of ruling things. And he he was. He was horribly insecure, which explains his behavior after God takes the kingdom from him and gives it to David. Saul was just a piece of work. And so, 1 Samuel 13, 13 through 4, Samuel said to Saul, You have done foolishly. You have not kept the command of the Lord your God with which he commanded you. For then the Lord would have established your kingdom over Israel forever. But now your kingdom shall not continue. The Lord has sought out a man after his own heart, and the Lord has commanded him to be prince over his people, because you have not kept what the Lord commanded you. And so God takes the kingdom away from Saul, and he engages a process of giving it to someone else. We know that process involves Samuel going to anoint a son of Jesse. And when Samuel goes, he goes kind of with the same expectation that all the other people of Israel had with respect to a king. It's like, okay, let's go have a look at Jesse's boys. Oh, here's the oldest, he's the biggest, he's the strongest. Surely, this is the one that God has in mind. 1 Samuel 6, 6 through 7. But the Lord said to Samuel, Do not look on his appearance or on the height of his stature, because I have rejected. For the Lord sees not as man sees. Man looks on the outward appearance, but the Lord looks on the heart. So Samuel runs through Jesse's sons, and he lands on the smallest, the youngest, the runtiest, the ruddiest. In 1 Samuel 16, 13, it says, Then Samuel took the horn of oil and anointed him in the midst of his brothers. And the spirit of the Lord rushed upon David from that day forward, and Samuel rose up and went to Ramoth. And so David becomes the anointed king of Israel. There's quite a story about all he has to go through in order to rise to the throne, but eventually he does rise to the throne. And God ushers in a golden age, or at least the precursor to a golden age. Really, we see the golden age under Solomon. But in David, you know, the kingdom is consolidated, the kingdom is grown, the kingdom is strengthened in all kinds of ways. And it gets to the point where before or near the end of David's life, he wants to build a temple. He wants to build a house for God. And God sends Nathan to tell him, Hey, I didn't ask you to do that. But guess what? I'm going to build a house out of you. Second Samuel 7, 12 through 14, when your days are fulfilled, and you lie down with your fathers, I will raise up your offspring after you, who shall come from your body, and I will establish his kingdom. He shall build a house for my name, and I will establish the throne of his kingdom forever. I will be to him a father, and he shall be to me a son. When he commits iniquity, I will discipline him with the rod of men, with the stripes of men. And it goes on to talk about how God makes this promise to this son, this future king from the line of David. And Psalm two actually reflects on the enthronement of that king, on the enthronement of that son of David. Why do the nations rage and the peoples plot in vain? The kings of the earth set themselves, and the rulers take counsel together against the Lord and his anointed, saying, Let us burst their bonds apart and cast away their corns for their cords from us. He who sits in the heavens laughs. The Lord holds them in the derision. Then he will speak to them in his wrath and terrify them in his fury, saying, As for me I have set my king on Zion, my holy hill. I will tell of the decree, the Lord said to me, You are my son. Today I have begotten you. Ask of me, and I will make the nations your heritage, and the ends of the earth your possession. You shall break them with a rod of iron and dash them in pieces like a potter's vessel. Now therefore, O kings, be wise, be warned, O rulers of the earth. Serve the Lord with fear, and rejoice with trembling. Kiss the sun lest he be angry and you perish in the way, for his wrath is quickly kindled. Blessed are all who take refuge in him. So that is a psalm, really looking at the enthronement of the sun. In historical context, probably Solomon. But we know where it lands. You have Solomon, he failed. You have Rehoboam, he split the kingdom, and so on and so forth. You have king after king after king, and sometimes they're pretty good, but even the ones who are pretty good, they only last so long. And they're not perfect. Hezekiah, he's prideful. Josiah, maybe a little too big for his britches, even though he was the good king. Uh a little too intemperate, a little too hasty, gets himself killed. So king after king after king, you're waiting for the one to whom this psalm truly refers. You're waiting for the one that 2 Samuel 7 promise, that king, this king who would rule in such righteousness that he could truly, truly be said to be the Son of God, that wouldn't need to be disciplined with the rod of iron or the stripes of God. You know, this king whose throne would indeed last forever. Then what do you get in Matthew 1:1? The book of the genealogy of Jesus Christ, the son of David, the son of Abraham. Romans 1, where Paul is talking about how he's the son of David with respect to the flesh, but he was declared to be the son of God in power by the Spirit of resurrection from the dead. So Hebrews 1, 3 through 4, after making purification for sins, he sat down at the right hand of the Majesty on high, having become as much superior to the angels as the name he has inherited is more excellent than theirs. Acts 2, all over the place. Hebrews 10, talking about in the ascension, you have enthronement. Jesus takes his seat at the right hand of the Father. So you have Jesus as the culmination of this story about royalty in Israel, but not just in Israel, but the provision of a king who rules and reigns over the entire world. And that's what happened in the ascension. So now I want to ask a really obvious question based on what I just said. Is Jesus the king right now? Yeah. Is he ruling and reigning right now?

SPEAKER_01 15:12

In the midst of his enemies.

SPEAKER_00 15:14

In the midst of his enemies. Have any of you been raised to believe otherwise? Maybe not. We have no dispensationalists here or recovering dispensationalists. Because, according to dispensationalism, and I've talked about it before, I'll talk about it again. I don't want to paint with too broad a brush because it's got a lot of different shades and flavors and all of that. But according to at least classic dispensationalism, Jesus is actually not reigning right now. God has dealt with his people at different times and in different ways. There was a time of law under Moses. The present is a time of grace. And Christ is not yet king because the Jews refused him as king. And the kingdom is delayed while God does basically executes plan B through the church. So what we look forward to in the future is God as Jesus kind of coming halfway down, whisking the church off of the scene, and then coming the rest of the way down, instituting a millennial kingdom. And that's where we'll see the reign of Christ. And then Jesus will rule from that point forward with different details here and there. In the words of John MacArthur, we're losing count here. Yeah. I just can't. Yeah, yeah, and that's why. I mean, that's yeah, it's your view of eschatology can really impact your view of the relationship of Christ to culture. And if you have a view where Christ is not king, not yet, uh, it's really easy to take on a very pessimistic view of your role and the church's role in culture today. And hence you get things like what John MacArthur said. We lose down here. We should not expect to see any sort of discipling of the nations as nations or any sort of transformation of the culture due to the gospel witness. That's one take, right? What if denominations would be considered like dispensationals? Baptists. You could say Baptists, for large part, a lot of Baptists, not Reformed Baptists. General evangelicalism, non-denominationalism in a lot of places. You see non-denomination like, oh, they're Baptists. Yeah, yeah, it's it's kind of a mixed bag. I mean, dispensationalism is one of the most popular sort of influences on modern American evangelicalism, primarily through books like The Late Great Planet Earth or The Left Behind series. Yeah. Ask your average evangelical about the rapture, and they're going to have some views about the rapture that are probably going to involve Jesus coming, whisking the church off the scene, us meeting him in the air, right, and going to hang out for a while, and then there being a tribulation, there being in a millennial kingdom, that kind of thing. Right? So that's that's just straight up dispensationalism.

SPEAKER_01 18:31

And there's pre-trib, mid-trib, post-trib. I mean, I just yeah, I've been exposed to that, but I've always been a covenant person that that um the church, as Paul says in Romans, is rafted in the church and Israel have become a one house, one household of God.

SPEAKER_02 18:56

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 18:56

And uh so the dispensation was that I've heard of all kinds of strange ideas about Israel, the political people of Israel. Yeah. And um God has a plan for all people. And I mean, maybe there's something special for Israel, but I that's way beyond my pay grade, so I don't trouble myself about that.

SPEAKER_00 19:20

Yeah, the one of the core, core beliefs of dispensationalism is that there are not there is not one people of God, there are two peoples of God. And that plan A is Israel, plan B is the church. Now that's that's a more classical view of dispensationalism, that uh there are lots of different kinds of dispensationalists. A progressive dispensationalist might not put it quite that way, but that still very much lies at the heart of it, where there's not one people of God, there's there's two peoples of God. And we can go all day talking about dispensationalism and critiquing it, but the thing that the specific point of critique that I want to make for the purpose of like this class is that Jesus is not waiting to take his throne at some point in the future. Christ is king. Not Christ will be king, Christ is king. And he's ruling and reigning right now. He's seated at the right hand of the Father right now. So he's ruling the world, and he's ruling particularly in the church. And so that's important for us to think about because when we talk about Christ as our king, we are not envisioning some future reality. I mean, there's future elements to it, right? His rule will be consummated. Uh we pray that his kingdom would come in the Lord's prayer and his will would be done on earth as it is in heaven. So there's a way in which the kingdom is advancing right now, but we don't yet have it and see it in all its fullness. So that future element is there, but he is still the king. He's still on his throne. He's enthroned in the midst of his enemies, right? So, when we ask, how does Christ subdue us to himself? Uh we're not asking about like how he will in the end. We're actually asking about right now. How has Christ the King uh come into our reality and subdued us to himself? How would you answer that question?

SPEAKER_01 21:23

First, make every thought captive to Christ. Every thought captive to Christ is where I would start. I forget uh Galatians or Philippians or first Corinthians.

unknown 21:38

Second Corinthians.

SPEAKER_01 21:40

That's a subduing of a great enemy that is in me. Yeah, because my natural self is very self-oriented, yeah, and that that self-orientation has to be broken because of this anti-God, anti-Christ state of mind, and replaced with the where Jesus Christ is my the center of my universe, yeah. And then I am subsidiary, I'm subject to that.

SPEAKER_00 22:09

Yeah. So that that rebellion, that self-centeredness, that uh that willfulness, how is that broken? How how indeed does he subdue us to himself? At the point of a sword while looking down the barrel of a gun?

SPEAKER_02 22:33

I can only speak for myself, it's more like this like.