Divine King (Part 1 of 2)

Take an informal survey. Ask the people around you if they think Jesus was a good teacher, a priest, a prophet.

You'll get all kinds of answers. Today on Truth for Life, Alistair Begg invites us to study a passage in the Bible that clearly identifies Jesus as the divine king. John chapter 12 verse 12. The next day the great crowd that had come for the feast heard that Jesus was on his way to Jerusalem. They took palm branches and went out to meet him, shouting, Hosanna, blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord. Blessed is the king of Israel. Jesus found a young donkey and sat upon it as it is written, Do not be afraid, O daughter of Zion.

See, your king is coming, seated on a donkey's colt. At first his disciples did not understand all this. Only after Jesus was glorified did they realize that these things had been written about him and that they had done these things to him. Now the crowd that was with him, when he called Lazarus from the tomb and raised him from the dead, continued to spread the word. Many people, because they had heard that he had given this miraculous sign, went out to meet him. So the Pharisees said to one another, See, this is getting us nowhere.

Look how the whole world has gone after him. Amen. I think it's in Luke to the Rock, a little book on understanding the Old Testament by Alec Mattia, that he suggests that we view the Bible, if we're trying to get a handle on it, as if it were in some ways a detective story, where you have all these various themes and plots interwoven through the unfolding story of the book, until finally, somewhere near the end, all the pieces come together. Or, he says, you may want to think of it as a book with the answers at the back, or perhaps as a two-act play. And if you come only for the first act and leave at halftime, then you're going to have to check about how it finished, and if you come only for the second half, then you're going to annoy people who were there for the first half, because you'll spend all the time saying, Who is that character, and why is he saying what he's saying?

I think those things are helpful. They run concurrently with what many of us learned in Sunday school—namely, that if we take our eyes off Jesus, we will quickly lose our way around the Bible. And in the Old Testament, Jesus is predicted, in the Gospels, Jesus is revealed, in the Acts he is preached, in the Epistles he is explained, and in the book of Revelation he is expected. And what we've been discovering is that there are a number, if you like, of melodic lines—to mix our metaphors and similes—there are a number of melodic lines which run all the way through the Scriptures. And particularly in relationship to Jesus, these three interwoven aspects—which we may think of in those terms, or perhaps in mathematical terms, as a Venn diagram—and one circle is Jesus as prophet, one circle is Jesus as priest, one circle is Jesus as king, and where each of these circles intersect, we have the office of Christ in what Calvin referred to as the munis triplex, the threefold dimension of the ministry of Jesus. Let's bear in mind that this was an annual occurrence, at least in its most basic dimensions, that it was customary for the people of God to make their aliyah, their ascent, up to Jerusalem on this occasion, for this festival. And indeed, it would be strange had Jesus, as a youngster and as a young man, not on many occasions himself, have made this very journey. And of course, we have, beginning after the longest psalm in the Bible, beginning with Psalm 120, we have a whole series of psalms which are called Psalms of Ascent. And some are more familiar than others, but perhaps classically, 121, I lift my eyes to the hills, where does my help come from? They lift their eyes up to the temple, and they say in Psalm 127, Unless the Lord builds the house, they labor in vain that build it.

They look at the surrounding topography of Jerusalem, and they say, As the mountains are round about Jerusalem, so the Lord is round about his people from this day forth, and even forevermore. And families would have prepared for this event, and boys and girls would have gone to bed, all excited about what was going to happen on the next day. And it is not difficult for me, with the relatively fertile imagination that I have that often gets me in trouble, to imagine a boy ready to advance with his family the following morning, and telling his dad when he comes into his bedroom to kiss him goodnight, he tells his dad, I have all my branches ready. I'm all ready.

I've got them under the bed, dad. And as soon as you waken me up in the morning, I'm ready. We're ready to go.

We're going to go out there, and we're going to give it a jolly good hosanna. And his father said to him, That's exactly right. And he said, Dad, sing me that psalm before I go to sleep. Sing me off to sleep.

Which one do you want? Well, do that one about, I rejoiced with those who said to me, Our feet are standing in your gates, O Jerusalem. Let's have that one before we go to bed. It'll set our hearts to right for the morning. It will bless us as we sleep, and it will awaken us to a new day. I rejoiced when they said to me, Let us go to the house of the Lord. Or, in the paraphrase in Scotland, How pleased and blessed was I to hear the people cry, Come, let us seek our God today. And yes, with a cheerful zeal we'll haste to Zion's hill, And there are vows and homage pay.

Now, this is the context in which this scene unfolds, recorded for us here in John's gospel. The crowds that were gathering were gathering to celebrate God's intervention in the past, and they were gathering in anticipation of the day when all that they had lost would be recovered and all that they longed for would be revealed. We remember they had a great anticipation, even through four hundred years of silence in the intertestamental period, with generations coming and generations going, rising and descending, parents, grandparents, little ones, generations, house moves, holidays, everything, and constantly saying to one another, God has promised in his Word he will send us a prophet. He has promised in his Word he will send us the great priest.

He has promised in his Word he will send us a conquering king. And in light of what had just happened in chapter 11, as it's recorded, tensions were now running high. And John tells us that many of the people that were present and excitedly present on this occasion had been keyed up even more as a result of the dramatic events that had happened at the tomb of Lazarus.

It's just fantastic stuff. He had called out to Lazarus, and Lazarus had come out. And of course, the Pharisees were absolutely perturbed about this, and prophetically and ironically, there in verse 19 they said, This is absolutely hopeless.

This is getting us nowhere at all. Look how the whole world has gone after him. And you know, the whole world has gone after him. The sense of God's Spirit in the northern hemisphere may not be just what it has been in the past, but in the southern hemisphere it is significant. And in sub-Saharan Africa, in much of the chaos and bloodshed and anarchy, the moving of God is remarkable to report. And when we take ourselves down into Indonesia and to other parts of the world, when we go down into South America, we discover that God is at work, and here we are all these years later, and the great concern of the Pharisees remains the concern of all who are opposed to the name and the work of Jesus. Look, this seems to be absolutely unstoppable. There's hardly a place in the world—there's hardly a day in the world—when Jesus Christ's name is not magnified and praised. Now, when these people came out, they didn't emerge from nowhere.

They were not advancing a new concept that had dawned upon them. But in actual fact, if you were to scroll down, as it were, if you were to rewind the video, you would trace the genesis of all that was taking place here in this scene all the way back to Genesis. And let me just illustrate it for you. For example, let's just rewind quickly to the beginning of Luke's gospel. And the angel comes and announces the arrival of Jesus and makes it clear that the Lord will give him the throne of his father David.

What a strange and dramatic thing to say about the birth of a child. No wonder Mary treasured up all these things and pondered them in her heart. The Lord, Yahweh, will give him the throne of his father David.

Only thrones are there for kings. That's Luke chapter 1. Go through the intertestamental period to Zechariah 9. And in Zechariah 9, the prophet comes and says, Rejoice greatly, O daughter of Zion, see your king comes to you, riding on a donkey on the fall of a donkey.

And the people must have read that and listened to that and said, I wonder what that means. And part of that was built in to what was happening to the boy when he put his branches under the bed and anticipated the coming morning, because his parents had told him, There is a day that the prophets have said will dawn when the king will come riding on a donkey. Isaiah 32. See, a king will reign in righteousness. 2 Samuel chapter 7, God promises to David that an eternal and universal king will come from his line. And all the way back in Genesis 49 and in the blessings of Jacob, and in verse 10, we read, The scepter will not depart from Judah, nor the ruler's staff from between his feet, until he comes to whom it belongs, and the obedience of the nations is his. And people read this and wondered about it and prayed concerning it and longed for the arrival of the king.

Now, all of this and more besides is wrapped up in this unfolding drama, as Jesus rides into Jerusalem. Not on account of fatigue. Interestingly—and you must check yourselves, I've done my best on this—but I have found nowhere else in the entire New Testament that gives us a record of Jesus riding. There is no record of him taking a taxi, if you like, during his earthly pilgrimage. This is the only occasion when he rides. Why does he ride? He's making a point. He's making a significant point.

He knows what he's doing. It's not just something arbitrary when he says to his boys, Now I want you to go in here, and you will find a place, and you just tell them that the Lord needs this donkey, and they'll give it to you. And these big, silly disciples, you know, were going through all of this, and John is honest enough to tell us that the disciples didn't get this at all. It was only after Jesus was glorified that they began to put the pieces in the jigsaw puzzle together.

And he rides in. And eventually, confronted by the establishment political, religious, authoritative, Pilate says to him, Are you the king of the Jews? Are you a king then? And Jesus said, Yes, it is as you say.

But then that didn't make any sense. Certainly not to the Roman authorities. What kind of king rides on a donkey? What kind of king wears a crown made of thorns? What kind of king wears a borrowed robe?

What kind of king falls foul of such cruel and brutal mockery? You see why it's so important to put these various melodic lines together if we're going to say, as it were, a chorus in understanding of the person and work of Jesus Christ. He is both Suffering Servant and Great High Priest, and the prophet who ousts our ignorance, and the king who comes to reign. Now, with all of that essentially by way of introduction—and I don't want that to discourage you—let me simply make a few observations about the implications of the kingship of Jesus.

Thomas Watson, in his Body of Divinity, which I already recommended to you, writes as follows. He says, Christ's kingly reign is seen in part in subduing us to himself, in ruling and defending us, and in restraining and conquering all his and our enemies. So that if he comes as a prophet to oust our ignorance, if he comes as a priest to deal with our alienation, then he comes also as a king to subdue every dimension of rebellion—not least of all, the rebellious nature of our own reaction to him. So let us think, first of all, about his kingship in terms of salvation.

And we have tried to build a picture of Jesus in relationship to this, of Christ, as he deals with sin, as he deals with Satan, as he deals with death, and as he deals with our guilt. And Jesus comes, as it were, onto the battlefield in much the same way that David came out of the ranks of Israel, confronting all of the encroachments of evil that were embodied in Goliath. And you remember there was nobody there that was ready to step forward. And eventually, David steps forward. He steps forward alone, but he steps forward as a representative. He steps forward on behalf of the people. He vanquishes Goliath. The victory is a victory that is shared.

They share in his triumph. And now Jesus is stepping, as it were, into the very epicenter of the battle lines. He steps in, he steps, if you like, off his donkey and into the fray. And now, out from the battle lines, comes great David's greater Son. And he comes now to resist all of the encroachments of evil, everything that is going to be thrown against him in the onslaught of Calvary.

And he comes to deal with it as a king. And we ought to be very clear that the cross is the epicenter of Christ's reign. The cross is the epicenter of Christ's reign.

It is there that he declares, It is finished. It is there that he triumphs over all these things that are ranged against him and against those for whom he dies. And that is why it is so important for us to turn not only to Jesus but to turn routinely to the cross of Jesus. And it is a reminder to all of us who preach to make sure that we are cross-oriented and cross-centered in our preaching. As surely as we may divert from the record of the triumphal entry apart from a Sunday or two a year, it is possible for congregations to go through fifty Sundays without ever hearing their minister or their pastor or their vicar, bringing them to the very centrality of the cross of Christ and all that it embodies, both for the unbeliever as well as for the Christian. And we need to think in those terms when we think about his kingship. And that's why in the resurrection you have, really, the Father's amen in relationship to what Jesus has done. His kingly reign is central to the work of redemption. Secondly, an observation regarding the kingship of Christ in relationship to the cosmos—to the cosmos.

That might seem a little far-fetched. But you don't learn this at university in secular history. But these are the facts. It is impossible to understand world history without an understanding of biblical history. Because the pivotal event of all of human history is in the cross of Christ. And that is why all of our views of history, all of our views of the world, have to be formed by and framed by the biblical record. And when we unfold the story of Jesus and come to the matter of his kingship, we have to recognize that this has a bearing on the entire cosmos. What does the kingship of Christ have to say about these things? Well, first of all, it says the earth is not, in its present form, going to remain as is.

Because the King is going to transform it. So our concern for it as Christians is a legitimate concern. Just as our concern for animals is a legitimate concern. That's why we don't like it when people take nice beagle dogs and make them smoke cigarettes. Because God gave us nice dogs to enjoy and not to have them smoke cigarettes.

I can support that as a Christian, and as a friend of beagles, and labradors and others besides. But I'm trying to point out to you that the kingly reign of Jesus impacts all of these discussions, but changes the view that we have of them and saves us from becoming completely consumed by things as if this was all there is. Because it isn't all there is. We are waiting for a day when there is a new heaven and a new earth in which dwelleth righteousness. That doesn't mean that I don't care about all of the beauty that I saw in—where is the place—Brenskom and Honiton, and all the places I adventured around this afternoon by myself on the narrowest roads I've been in for a very long time. But I looked over there, and I said, God, you are so magnificent in putting such a fantastic place together. Why couldn't I live in a place like this, Lord?

Look how fantastic this is! And then I reminded myself, Well, one day I'll get to live in heaven. There will be a new earth, and I'm going to live on a new earth, and if he can make this coastline as nice as this in this fallen world, then goodness gracious, it's going to be fantastic when we get together in that context.

So don't misunderstand me when I say what I'm saying. But interestingly, in America, they're now advancing Earth Day. Earth Day. Pretty soon you won't be able to do anything or say anything about Easter Day, but you can do just whatever you please concerning Earth Day. And it is routine, on the weather forecast, for the person's face to open up with the line, Well, good evening, and let's see what Mother Nature has for us this evening.

That is a routine introduction in America. It is the very threshold of an almost all-consuming pantheism. And against that notion, the Scriptures exalt Jesus Christ as Lord and King, sovereign over all of the cosmos. Abraham Kuyper, who was the prime minister of Holland in A Better Day—can you imagine what Kuyper would think of the Netherlands today and their moral position?

Anyway, Kuyper, on one occasion, says, There is not one inch of the entire universe concerning which Jesus Christ does not say, This is mine. This is mine. This is my Father's world. This is my Father's world. This belongs to me.

I made this. I am the King over this. You're listening to the weekend edition of Truth for Life. We're midway through a message from Alistair Begg titled, Divine King. One of the core components of our mission at Truth for Life is to teach the Bible with clarity and relevance so that believers will be established. This process of cultivating followers of Jesus Christ is something we take very seriously because the Bible commands us to make disciples and be disciples.

For this reason, we're highly recommending a classic book written by the late John Stott. It's called, The Disciple. And in this book, John Stott helps us realize God is still actively speaking to his followers today, and he's doing that through the Bible. This book helps you understand how to hear God's voice and, more importantly, how to follow the guidance he gives you. Whether you're thinking about changing vocations or relocating to another community, the biblical principles you find in this book will help you keep your emotions aligned with clear thinking. To learn more about the book, The Disciple, and how to request a copy, go to truthforlife.org slash store. When Jesus rode into Jerusalem, he did so as a king. I'm Bob Lapine, hoping you can join us next weekend as Alistair helps us understand what Jesus' triumphal entry revealed about his divine role as king then and now. The Bible teaching of Alistair Begg is furnished by Truth for Life, where the Learning is for Living.