Music.
From the farthest star in the outer reaches of our galaxy down to the tiniest atom under a microscope, our universe is a vast, elaborate kingdom. And ruling over all of creation is a good and powerful king. Over the last several weekends, we've examined the person of Christ and today on Truth for Life, Alistair Begg reveals the majesty and authority of Jesus as the divine king.
Music. Let me simply make a few observations about the implications of the kingship of Jesus. 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 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. Secondly, an observation regarding the kingship of Christ in relationship to the cosmos. 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. That doesn't mean that I don't care about all of the beauty that I saw in—where is the place, Brent's Comb, 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, 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 my Father's world. This belongs to me.
I made this. I am the King over this. Now, you should know that I know very little about science. I know very little about a lot of things, but I know a tremendous amount of very little about science. I know that we have a solar system, right?
We can agree on that, right? And I know that we're in a galaxy, and the galaxy's called the Milky Way. I also know from reading books that there are apparently two hundred billion stars in the Milky Way.
I've also discovered that the physicists estimate that there are a hundred billion galaxies. Now, why do I mention this? To whom will you compare me? Or who is my equal? Says the Holy One.
Lift your eyes and look to the heavens. Who created all these? He who brings out the starry host one by one and calls them each by name, Because of his great power and mighty strength, Not one of them is missing. What do scientists call it? Nuclear glue?
Their attempt to explain the inexplicable? Why our solar system doesn't just fracture and blow apart? Why anything holds together at all? And we turn to Colossians chapter 1 and verse 17, and we read that the Creator of the world holds everything together. That the reason for interplanetary connections is because Christ is King of the cosmos.
And as a result of that, without him, nothing has been made that has been made. And in him was life, and that life was the light of men. Well, it takes us into the realm of the imponderable, doesn't it? And into the realm of the mysterious. Certainly into the realm of faith.
But don't let anybody tell you that scientists are the ones who deal in terms of that which is simply rational and deductive. And they also deal in the realm of faith as well. Each of us starts with presuppositions. The presupposition of the Christian begins in Genesis 1-1, in the beginning, God. The presupposition of the scientist, who is secular and atheistic, begins in the beginning.
Right? The kingship of Jesus in relationship to salvation, the kingship of Jesus in relationship to the cosmos, the kingship of Jesus in relationship to the future. The future. The Christian's view of time is that God created time. He is the Creator of time.
He is the controller of time. All the days of my life were written in his book before one of them came to be. Therefore, I can put my head on the pillow at night and rest content that since he is a sovereign God and cares for his children with immense care, I may rest in his sovereign purposes. And whatever the future brings, I don't need to be unduly alarmed.
I don't need to be going around wringing my hands all the time and talking about the good old days. I just need to remind myself that Jesus Christ is King. For since death came through a man, the resurrection of the dead also comes through a man. For as in Adam all die, so in Christ all will be made alive. For each in his own turn, Christ the firstfruits, then when he comes, those who belong to him.
Now listen. This is 1 Corinthians 15, 24. Then the end will come. When he hands over the kingdom to God the Father, after he has destroyed all dominion, authority, and power, for he must reign until he has put all his enemies under his feet.
And the last enemy to be destroyed is death. Now, if you're a Christian, this is Christian doctrine. If you're a Christian, the kingship of Jesus has this to say concerning the future. It's fantastic.
It's really encouraging. And Christ's future reign throughout all of eternity is the perspective from which all of present history needs to be viewed. And it is that which then allows us to develop a view of the world which is distinct from our friends' and our neighbors' secular view of the world. We understand the concerns of ecology because God has given to us this earth to care for and to tend and not to abuse and not to destroy. And therefore, we pay attention to those things.
We understand, however, that he's planning another version, which is going to be even better. And so our view of the world—at least this is the way I remember it, so I can talk to people at the bus stop—my view of the world that I get from the Bible in four words is the good, the bad, the new, the perfect. If you keep that framework in your mind, you'll be able to talk to all kinds of people. They'll just sit down with you at the bus stop, and they'll say, Oh, can you believe what a horrible mess we're in? Goodness gracious, I've never seen anything like this at all. It's as if everything is collapsing. Now, where do you want to go from there? Well, in whatever way you want to do it, but you can say, Yeah, it's surprising, especially when you think about how it started.
And someone will say, Yeah, I can tell you how it started with those jolly politicians and stuff. No, no, no, no, that's not what I'm talking about. Well, what are you talking about? Well, I'm talking about when God made the whole thing. He made it really good.
Everything was bang on, it was perfect, it was super. There was none of this junk then. What? Like in Genesis, a person said, Yeah. You believe that? Yeah. Man, I didn't know anybody believed that anymore.
You believe that? Parenthetically, isn't it fascinating when Paul takes on the intelligentsia in Athens? Do you remember where he starts? The God who made the world and everything in it does not dwell in temples made by hands. He starts with the doctrine of creation.
It's fantastic! And the person says, Well, if you made it all good, why are we in the mess we're in? I'm glad you asked. Because things are bad, aren't they? By hokey, they're bad.
Yes, they're bad. Why? Because we're turned in upon ourselves. We're selfish folks. We're greedy folks. We're all greedy. We're all selfish. Well, is there any way out of this?
Glad you mentioned it! Jesus is King, and he'll come and reign in your life and make you absolutely brand new and give you a fresh start. Did he give you one? Yes. Well, I've been your next-door neighbor for a few years, and I'm not sure it's working entirely, you know. Well, that's because it's not all finished yet. We're in the new, but we're not in the perfect. But the reign of Christ is unalterable and unassailable and unequivocal. The Bible tells us so. The Lord, God, omnipotent reigns. It doesn't always seem so, but it is so.
Nothing is out of control, and nothing is going to get out of control. I love that hymn, We Seldom Sing It. It comes to mind now, you know, The day thou gave us, Lord, is ended, And the darkness falls at thy behest. And so unto thee our mourning hymns ascended, Your praise will sanctify our rest. And then it goes on through the story and comes to that great conclusion, So be it, Lord, your throne shall never.
Like earth's proud empires pass away, Your kingdom stands and grows forever, Till all your creatures own your sway. Loved ones, that is biblical faith. That is biblical Christianity. So if the kingship of Jesus impacts the nature of salvation, if the kingship of Jesus impacts the reality of the cosmos, if the kingship of Jesus impacts all the issues of the future, surely the kingship of Jesus has something to say to our tiny lives before we go to bed on a night like this.
Because it is an opportunity for us to realize again that God is sovereignly in charge of what's going on. We live underneath the authority of the lordship of Jesus. That when Paul says in Philippians 2 that one day at the name of Jesus every knee will bow and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, that is not an expression of devotion.
That is a statement of fact. The word that is used there is the word which, in the Septuagint, the Greek translation of the Old Testament, is used about 6,000 times to translate the divine name Yahweh. And when they translated it into Greek, they had to decide how they were going to translate it, and they translated it using this word. And Paul, as a converted monotheistic Jew, knew exactly what he was saying when he said it. One day at the name of Jesus every knee will bow and every tongue will confess that Jesus Christ is God, that Jesus Christ is Lord and King over all the earth. Buddha will bow. Muhammad will bow. Krishna will bow. Lenin will bow. All will bow.
Christ will bow before the Father and kneel before him and say, Father, here are the children that you have given me. I asked you to give me the desire of the nations. I asked you to give me the nations as my inheritance, Father. And here I am, and I bow before you, and they with me. Now, if you believe that, you see, it is transformative. You cannot simply be brought down by all the nonsense and the skullduggery of our day. You cannot simply be dragged down into the mire of all of this.
You must lift your eyes and look up. Jesus as King is a wonderful King—not a pompous King, not the kings of the Gentiles. Remember, he says to his disciples—because, you remember, after he'd done his miracles, they came, and they wanted to make him a king, and he slipped off under the darkness. And you read that, and you said, Well, I thought he was supposed to be the king, so why is he not becoming the king?
Timing, folks, timing. And also because he knew that what they anticipated and what he had come to do was vastly different. The kings of the Gentiles, he said, lorded over the people. But I am among you as one who serves. A king who serves. A king who stoops. A king who dies. An approachable king. So I can come to him with all my fears, all my hurts, all my losses, and all my failures.
Cause there's not a friend like the lowly Jesus. No. Not one.
Not one. We were taught to sing a song. The poetry's poor, but it's well-intended. Did you ever sing this? Come leave your house in Grumble Street and move to Sunshine Square, for that's the place where Jesus lives, and all is happy there. And, you know, sometimes I think we've got to really look at one another and say, Hey, hey, hey, come on.
Would you like to move house, honey? That's my wife talking to me. On one occasion, Luther came down for his breakfast, and his wife was dressed in mourning.
She's dressed head to toe in black. He sat down at the far end of the table, and he looked at her, and he said, Who died? His wife said, I believe God died. Come now, said Luther, God cannot die, said his wife.
Then why have you been acting as you have been acting for the last two or three weeks? Come on now, Luther. Leave your house in Grumble Street. And the other one was, Cheer up, you saints of God. There's actually nothing to worry about. Nothing really to make you feel afraid. Nothing to make you doubt. Remember, Jesus never fails.
So why not trust him and shout, You'll be sorry you worried at all tomorrow morning? And when Eric Little left for China, he was it in terms of a little boy's dream. When Little died, all the boys in Scotland got the day off school.
When Little left from the Waverley station, the crowd that gathered was not made up simply of the folks from his church or interested members of his extended family, but many of the people that gathered in that Waverley station platform area were just folks off the street, folks who knew him as an Olympic gold medalist, who knew him as a rugby player for Scotland, who knew him as a sterling athlete. And history records that when he got into his compartment and put his cases up on the rack, he got back out of the compartment. Remember those old days with the sliding door into the compartment, and then the corridor that went along when trains were trains and travel was fun? And if you put your head out the window, you got steward in your eyes. And you remember those big leather belts that held the windows with the brass bits where you let the window down and your mother told you, Keep your fingers out of there!
And because if you let it go, man, it just walloped right down. And he said, he let the window down, and the crowd hushed to see what he would say. And he thanked people for coming, and he told them where he was going. And then, quite unexpectedly, he shouted out, apparently, at the top of his voice, Christ for the world, for the world needs Christ. And then, extemporaneously, he led them in the singing of the hymn, Jesus shall reign where'er the sun, doth his successive journeys run, his kingdom stretch from shore to shore, till moon shall wax and wane no more.
Little went to China with that message, little died in China declaring that message. And we stand on the shoulders, in this great nation, on the shoulders of men who died under the kingship of Christ. Don't be afraid, Master Ridley. Today we shall light a candle such as will never be extinguished. Nobody will ever say that unless they are absolutely convinced that they have been called into the service of one whose kingdom will never end.
One day, loved ones, the earth will be filled with the glory of God as the waters cover the sea. And may each of us recognize and live in light of the undeniable royal reign of Jesus. You're listening to the weekend edition of Truth for Life and the message from Alistair Begg titled Divine King.
Alistair will conclude today's message with prayer in just a minute. Here at Truth for Life, it's our deepest passion to introduce listeners to this God-man, the one who transforms lives and sets us free. Whether you're a new believer or you've been walking with Jesus for a long time, I want to recommend that you request a brand new resource from Truth for Life. It's Alistair's teaching through the entire Gospel of Mark. This is a comprehensive, verse-by-verse study through all 16 chapters of Mark's Gospel.
There are 87 messages in the set and they're all contained on a single USB drive. By listening to this series, you'll be guided on a wonderful journey of growth, walking with Jesus through his life, death, burial, and resurrection. This is the perfect way for you to strengthen your relationship with Jesus into 2021.
To learn how you can get a USB of Alistair's teaching on the Gospel of Mark, go to truthforlife.org slash store. And now, Alistair leads us in prayer. Father, we thank you that your Word is such a clarifying book.
It recalibrates us because we listen to the news, we read the papers, we read history, we think, we look at the future, we realize where we were, where we are, and we're almost tempted sometimes to believe as if the whole thing is spinning hopelessly out of control. And that's why we need to be Bible students. That's why we need to be those who are not only reading our Bibles but putting them into action in practice. And so I pray that out of myriad words now, that just this central, undeniable reality of the kingly reign of Christ may help us as we pray for our loved ones, as we pray for our politicians and for our nation, as we pray for the work of mission throughout the world, and as we pray for our own tiny lives, aware of our own finitude, aware of the fact that we're frail as the flowers of summer, the wind blows, we're gone, and its place will remember us no more. But one day we will see you face to face. And so help us then to get ready as best we can, for we pray in Jesus' name. Amen. Next weekend, Alistair will return to Revelation chapter 5 to show us a glorious depiction of Jesus as the Lamb on the throne. Be sure to join us. I'm Bob Lapine. The Bible teaching of Alistair Begg is furnished by Truth for Life, where the Learning is for Living.
Whisper: medium.en / 2024-01-27 20:44:51 / 2024-01-27 20:53:21 / 9