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November 25, 2007
Christ the King Sunday
Jeremiah 23:2-6
Pastor Joel Zank

The King of Kings

(Jeremiah 23:2-6)  Therefore this is what the LORD, the God of Israel, says to the shepherds who tend my people: "Because you have scattered my flock and driven them away and have not bestowed care on them, I will bestow punishment on you for the evil you have done," declares the LORD. {3} "I myself will gather the remnant of my flock out of all the countries where I have driven them and will bring them back to their pasture, where they will be fruitful and increase in number. {4} I will place shepherds over them who will tend them, and they will no longer be afraid or terrified, nor will any be missing," declares the LORD. {5} "The days are coming," declares the LORD, "when I will raise up to David a righteous Branch, a King who will reign wisely and do what is just and right in the land. {6} In his days Judah will be saved and Israel will live in safety. This is the name by which he will be called: The LORD Our Righteousness.

In the name of Christ the King, dear fellow redeemed,

You know what a democracy is–a government that is run by the people who live under it. Do you know what a theocracy is? I’ll give you a hint - the “theo” in “theocracy” is the same as that which is in the word “theology”–the study of God. Theocracy, then, is a government run by God himself. There has been only one theocracy in all of history–Old Testament Israel. Can you imagine having God as your King? There is no enemy he can’t defeat, no problem he can’t prevent. It would be wonderful to have such a King, wouldn’t it? You would think so, but the people of Israel didn’t feel that way. In spite of the fact that God had brought them safely out of Egypt and conquered Canaan for them, there came a time, about 1000 years before the birth of Jesus, when the people of Israel said to the Prophet Samuel, "...appoint a king to lead us, such as all the other nations have....We want a king over us. {20} Then we will be like all the other nations, with a king to lead us and to go out before us and fight our battles” (1 Samuel 8:5,19-20). As God’s spokesman, Samuel took the people’s request rather personally. But God told his prophet, “It is not you they have rejected, but they have rejected me as their king” (1 Samuel 8:7).

To make a rather long story short, God gave the people what they asked for. He did so, not in a vindictive way, but in a spirit of love, being sure to let the people know that while, by their own choice, they would no longer have a theocracy, God was not abdicating his throne. He would rule over all the kings of Israel, and, for that matter, all the kings of this world, always for the good of his church. To this end he would live and reign as the eternal King of kings! Today we’ll take a closer look at this truth, noting from our text that the Lord Jesus Christ, who is the King of kings, is just, he is right and he is wise.

First: the King of kings is just. That’s a truth we all choose to overlook at times. We want to focus on God’s love, with good reason, of course. But if such a focus renders us blind to God’s perfect sense of justice, we will not escape the deadly trap of sin. Our enemy, Satan wants nothing more than to lull us into a false sense of security. He wants us to imagine that a God who calls himself “Love,” as our God does, never could and never would punish sinners. You here that thought echoed in the world around us. I’ve had people tell me that they want nothing to do with a God who would send people to hell.

I’m afraid my own rebel heart takes a similar stand more often then I would care to admit. It happens when I’m doing something wrong and don’t really want to stop. Instead of confessing my sin, I often find it more convenient to stamp my feet and shout at God, telling him that if he wants to object to something I’m thinking or doing, then I don’t really want him around anymore. Maybe you’ve done something similar when one of his commandments has pricked your conscience. Isn’t that the height of sinful pride on our part, imagining that somehow our objections will change God’s mind, or at the very least, exempt us from his judgments?

It seems we don’t seem want God as our King any more than Israel did! Instead, my sinful nature and yours wants to make God one of our peers. For it that’s the case, then we can choose to dismiss his laws as mere opinions, carrying no more weight or value than those we might read on the editorial page of the Post Crescent. But God is not our peer. In spite of all our sinful protests, he is and will remain King Supreme – a truth that his Old Testament people and their leaders had to learn in a very painful way.

God addresses the opening words of our text to the “shepherds” of his people. We tend to use that word to refer to pastors and teachers who shepherd the flock of God in his church. But here, the word refers to Judah’s kings. Remember, Israel was not only an earthly nation, like the United States, it was at the same time God’s Old Testament church, and as such, God demanded that the kings whom he appointed to lead his people be spiritual men. With this in mind, you might recall that God replaced Israel’s first king, Saul, with a young man by the name of David, making it clear that  unlike his predecessor, David was man after “God’s own heart.”  God wanted each successor to Israel’s throne to be that same kind of man, so God chose David’s family to be a dynasty of kings, telling David, “When your days are over and you go to be with your fathers, I will raise up your offspring to succeed you, one of your own sons, and I will establish his kingdom” (1 Chronicles 17:11).

Sadly, David’s family tree did not always produce good spiritual fruit. In fact, by the time of Jeremiah, a man who lived about 600 years before the birth of Jesus, the kings of Judah had become absolutely godless, as did the people they served. All of them together were selfish creatures who devoted their lives to the pursuit of luxury and comfort. They cheated and took advantage of each other every chance they got. And through all of it, they imagined themselves immune to God’s justice, because they were, after all, his chosen people.

But here’s the thing about God: He’s the King of kings, and as such, he’s indebted to no one so he shows no favoritism, ever. Ask the chosen nation of Judah. Ask her kings. It was to these very men, chosen by his own hand, that God said, “Because you have scattered my flock and driven them away and have not bestowed care on them, I will bestow punishment on you for the evil you have done” (Jeremiah 23:2). Friends, that’s exactly what God did. In fact, Jeremiah lived to see the day his prophetic words came true. For in the prophet’s lifetime, God raised up the nearby nation of Babylon to invade and conquer his rebellious people. Over the course of a few years, Judah was no more. The people were taken off into exile, the temple of God was destroyed, and the proud family tree of David was left a dying stump. What more proof do we need? The King of kings is just. He must and he will punish sin and sinners–even us. We’ve not earned a pass from God when it comes to sin.  If we choose to ignore God’s commandments, if we live to satisfy the cravings of our sinful nature, whether it be listening to and spreading gossip, or the sin of adultery, or the love of money, or misusing alcohol, or abusing others, you name it and our just King will deal with it.

And when he does, no one will be able to accuse him of hypocrisy, for not only is the King of kings just, he is also right in all he says and does. That’s a thought so foreign to us and our earthly leaders. There is scandal everywhere. “Do as I say, not as I do” is a fitting theme for our lives. But not so the King of kings. He demands, “Be holy because I, the LORD your God, am holy” (Leviticus 19:2).  To be holy is to have thoughts, words, and actions that are nothing but right all of the time. In fact, this is where our word “right-eous” comes from. To be righteous is to be perfectly right inwardly and outwardly. This describes the King of kings and this is what he expects of us. Anything but righteousness on the part of his people incurs his wrath and deserves his punishment. And so it would seem that the righteousness of our King will be the end of us. It has to be, for we are sinful through and through from the time our mother’s conceived us. Before we even saw the light of day we were unholy, unrighteous inside and out.

Viewed from this perspective, the words of verse 5 in our text could well be seen as a threat. "The days are coming," declares the LORD, "when I will raise up to David a righteous Branch, a King who will reign wisely and do what is just and right in the land.”  “The days are coming” is one of those phrases in Scripture that signals God’s intention to intervene in human history. God’s putting us on notice that he’s about to do something. In this case, he’s going to cause a living Branch to sprout from the dead stump of David’s family tree. Gone are the wicked kings of Judah. Here comes a righteous King. But why is he coming? What is he going to do? Has the time come for judgment? Is the sinner’s punishment at hand? Yes it is, but not in the way we would expect or deserve. For this King of kings comes as the friend of sinners to do what is right in our place! The King of kings is Jesus our Savior, born to the house and line of David. Remember what the people of Israel ask God to do for them? ”Give us... a king to lead us and to go out before us and fight our battles” they said. And God answered their prayer. He sent the King of kings to battle sin for us on two separate fronts. First this King of ours took on sin by living above it, by never committing it. He lived the righteous life God demands of us. Better yet, he lived his righteous life for us, as our Substitute, and so in this way broke the strangle-hold sin had on us. With our King’s righteousness credited to us, sin could no longer be charged to us. But still there was the matter of sin’s wage and hell’s desire to collect on it. God’s perfect justice demands the sinner’s eternal death. The righteousness our King had secured for us, was by itself, not enough to cancel this awful debt of ours. So the King of kings launched his second offensive against our enemy. This time the strategy was completely different. Now he embraced the sin he had always avoided. Not his own sin, of course, but ours, the world’s sin–all the abuses and misuses, all the lust and greed all the selfishness and rebellion – he claimed and confessed it all as his own. And with this burden of our sins weighing him down, he climbed up Calvary’s hill, so that from there, he could storm the gates of hell nailed to a cross. On a cross in total darkness, God’s love and justice met. For there the King of kings, sent by God’s love, suffered God’s wrath until God’s justice was satisfied on behalf of all sinners. And we know it was! For this King of ours made one more journey. He went before us to the grave and out the other side. He lives and because he does he is the LORD, Our Righteousness. That’s what we call him for he has won for us all the holiness, all the perfection, all the righteousness we need to live in heaven forever!

But will we make it that far? Will the faith God has given us, the faith that embraces Christ and his salvation, last that long? Or will this world with it’s sin and trouble get the better of us before our King returns? Friend, how could that happen? Our risen and ascended King is not on vacation! No, he’s busy running a Theocracy. For our Lord Jesus reigns in heaven above, and from that vantage point he rules the whole earth for us. And here’s a comforting truth – he knows what he’s doing. The King of kings is wise! He knows how to keep us his people. He knows when and how to discipline us in love. He knows how to rescue us from temptation and lead us to repentance. And best of all, he is forever forgiving our sins, releasing us from guilt, and filling us with his Holy Spirit. Our King will not forsake us. Instead we can count on him to send shepherds to care for us and fellow Christians to share both our burdens and our joys. We are the sheep of his pasture; he’s talking about us when he promises in verse 4 of our text: “...they will no longer be afraid or terrified, nor will any be missing...” (Jeremiah 23:4).