He Will Reign Forever (Part 2 of 2)

Music Music It's natural for any of us to look at a newborn baby and think to ourselves, What will this child grow up to be? And yet long before Jesus was born, the prophet Isaiah told us what we could expect. And today on Truth for Life, Alistair Begg reminds us that Jesus was born to be king of all creation and to rule over your life as well. We continue in Isaiah chapter 9.

Music In the days of Caesar Augustus, a decree went out into all the earth that all the world should be taxed, and each one came to his own city or whatever it was. And I always, even as a small boy, I thought, you know, this is not something that happened away in a corner. This is not some speculative philosophical notion. This Christian thing has roots. This Christian thing is verifiable in relationship to secular history itself, because Caesar Augustus has got nothing to do with the unfolding drama of redemption. He doesn't lie there, as it were, in the lineage of David. But he's a marker, and Quirinius is a marker. And so the Luke, who sets out to carefully investigate, to talk to the eyewitnesses, to write down the story, he earths it in history. This was the first census that took place when Quirinius was governor of Syria, and everyone went to his own town to register. Mary probably said, you know, Joseph, I don't know why you can't just do a census here in Nazareth.

What are you on about? No, no, Mary, we have to go up to Bethlehem. Well, why do we have to go to Bethlehem? For goodness sake, I'm going to have a baby. I mean, this is no time for going to Bethlehem.

Couldn't you fill it out here and just send it up there? No, we must go to Bethlehem. Well, that doesn't mean anything to anybody who hasn't been reading the Old Testament, does it? So that's interesting.

I wonder what that's about. Bethlehem. But anyone who reads the Old Testament goes, Bethlehem, da-ding! Bethlehem, that's where Ruth was, wasn't it? That's where she was in the fields of barley.

Take a walk among the fields of barley. That was Ruth. And that's when Boaz fancied her. And that's right around where he married her. And that's when they became the great-grandfather of David. That was where David looked after the sheep. The same fields where the shepherds are now found.

Now you read. So Joseph also went up from the town of Nazareth in Galilee to Judea to Bethlehem, the town of David, because he belonged to the house and the line of David. Da-da-dum, da-da-dum, da-da-dum, da-da-dum, da-da-dum, da-da-dum, da-da-dum, da-da-dum. See, here then is the fulfillment, which gives rise to my favorite Christmas carol—not that you care, but it is—once in royal David's city stood a lowly cattle shed, where a mother laid her baby in a manger for his bed. And Mary was that mother mild, and Jesus Christ her little child.

And then it advances—do you remember where it finishes? And our eyes at last shall see him through his own redeeming love, for that child so meek and gentle is the Lord in heaven above. Expectation.

Fulfillment. By the time of Jesus' birth, many of the people had given up on the vision of the prophets. They were looking for a Messiah who would overthrow the Romans, establish them, rebuild the temple, put them to rights.

A few were left that really understood what was going on. Simeon, for one, Joseph of Arimathea, they were waiting for the consolation of Israel. Simeon was able to take the baby in his arms, you will remember, and say, My eyes have seen your salvation, which you have prepared in the sight of all people, a light for revelation to the Gentiles and for glory to your people Israel. And Jesus steps out on the stage of human history in Matthew's Gospel. Luke does the same—incidentally, my Bible is open—at Luke 3, and again, notice the history with which Luke 3 begins. In the fifteenth year of the reign of Tiberius Caesar, when Pontius Pilate was governor of Judea and Herod was the tetrarch of Galilee and so on, Luke again is saying to his readers, You need to understand that this Christ came to a place, a real place, and at a time at a real time, and in a moment in history, he came and revealed God to us in all his fullness.

This is not insignificant. This is absolutely foundational. And Jesus steps onto the stage of history, and Matthew records that he goes around the towns and villages of Judea, and he does what we would expect him to do. He proclaims the good news of the kingdom. Essentially, he says, I am the king, and I am putting together a kingdom. And that's why he does his miracles—not as magic tricks, but as an indication of the fact that the king has come, as little indications of his kingly rule, of his royal reign. Only God the Creator had control of the wind and the waves, and Jesus stilled them on Galilee. Only God the Creator had the power to give life and to raise the dead, and Jesus stood outside the tomb of Lazarus his friend and called him forth.

Why? Because he's the king. But if you're thinking, you perhaps track down this line, and understandably, which says, if this then is the case and that Jesus is the king and he has a kingdom, would you mind telling me what in the world is going on? Because it seems to me that we don't see any of this healing for the sickness. We don't see any of this real liberation of the tyranny—little insights, little glimpses—but nothing that would be regarded as full and final.

That's exactly right. And let me give you one verse which is not a proof text, but it is indicative of a whole succession of Bible verses that reinforce the distinction—and if you take notes, this is all you need to write down, and that is, Already … not yet. And when you read concerning the fulfillment of the kingdom promises in Jesus, they are fulfilled absolutely, completely, and finally in the person of Christ. There is no successor to the Messiah. There is no other king who comes to reign upon the throne.

He is it. But his kingdom, which he has begun, he has not yet brought to completion. And Hebrews chapter 2 and verse 8b and then verse 9 is as helpful in this regard to me, at least, as any. And this is what the writer to the Hebrews says, after he's introduced us to Jesus in all of his grandeur and his glory. He says in verse 8, in putting everything under him, God left nothing that is not subject to him.

All right? So he didn't leave any loose ends. But, says the writer, at present we do not see everything subject to him, but we see Jesus. And that's the truth, isn't it? Death is the last enemy to be destroyed. Unless Christ returns, they will announce my death. I will be no more. People will carry me out.

You'll find me somewhere. Who knows? Death is the last enemy to be destroyed. But it has already been dealt with at the cross.

Satan is a defeated foe. Christ, in his atoning death, has played the one move on the chessboard of redemption history that declares checkmate. If you're a chess player—and I'm a hopeless chess player—if you're a chess player, you know that even when checkmate is declared, it may still be possible to play out some moves on the board, but they cannot alter the outcome. They cannot reverse the checkmate.

It is secured, it is sealed, it is done. That is what has happened in the death of Jesus and in his resurrection. He has dealt with all of that. We do not as yet see everything subject to him.

True. But we see Jesus. And in seeing Jesus, we see the one who will come a second time not to deal with sin but to establish his supremacy and his authority.

Our time has gone. Two points of application. First, a personal point of application.

And it is this. The promise of Jesus as a king has an inherent challenge in it. And the inherent challenge in it is this—that since Jesus comes as a priest, he comes to deal with our ignorance of the things of God. So he comes to speak to us from God. He comes as a priest because we cannot make ourselves acceptable to God, so he comes as the very sacrificial offering himself. And he comes as king to rein and to subdue all the tyrannical forces that are operative inside of us. You can read again for homework and follow up in Colossians chapter 1.

We've alluded to it already. We by nature belong to the dominion of darkness, but we are transformed and relayed into the kingdom of the Son that he loves, the kingdom of light. In other words, Jesus makes raids into enemy territory, he secures people for himself, he brings them out of darkness and puts them into his light, and they in turn are supposed to shine as lights in the darkness. That's how people are supposed to see at least a glimmer of the kingly rule of Christ. That's how people are supposed to know that Christianity has something to say to our world. But the challenge in it is significant, isn't it?

Because it is the challenge of a king who comes to rein. It's fascinating, isn't it? All the things that have been done with Jesus in two thousand years. He has a wonderful stained glass picture in many churches.

But a stained glass window holds no threat to anybody. It's just something to look at. He's a nativity scene that gets packed up and put in a box, and people can ignore it for the next twelve months.

Maybe it'll come back, maybe it won't. He's introduced to us as a sort of itinerant, rambling preacher who said some good things and did magic tricks. And it might be nice to consider him. That's a very absorbable Christ. That's a very ignorable Christ. But that's not the Christ that we're introduced to.

The Christ we're introduced to is the Jesus with the four names. He is a wonderful counselor. He has a plan from all eternity. He is mighty God. He is able to execute his plan. He is Father forever, never letting us go. And he is the Prince of Peace, a peace that is eternal, and a reign that will reign forever. I can't stop here, but I am fascinated by the opposition to Jesus after all this time.

Isn't it ironic that the opposition to Jesus is so forcible, so vehement, from the lips often of people who say that he doesn't exist or that he's in irrelevancy or that he's two-thousand-year-old history or that he was a rambling prophet or a stained-glass window or a nativity scene? Okay! So what are you so concerned about? Why are you concerned about him in your school? Why are you concerned about him in your city? What do you have to fear from a rambling dreamer?

What do you have to fear from a stained-glass window? What do you have to fear from a historical nonentity? But why are people opposed to him? Because they know he is actually the reigning king.

They know he's the reigning king. And the devil and all of his hordes seek to erode in the minds of everyone the notion of his transcendent deity. Well, there is a challenge there, but there is also a comfort. And the comfort is this—that at the cross he has borne our griefs and carried our sorrows. And since he has taken such lengths to deal with our most fundamental problem and predicament, he is the one to whom we may go and trust with everything. We may trust him in our tragedies and in our disappointments, with our hurts, with our fears, with our losses, with our failures, with our loved ones.

He is absolutely, 100 percent reliable. He is the king forever. And incidentally, this is not some private little party with yourself. This is not Jesus will come and live in your heart, and then you can go and live in a wardrobe. This is not something that is sort of an esoteric experience totally unrelated from life. It is a significant tragedy that evangelicalism for fifty years has done a pretty good job—we have—of suggesting that it is. That all that really happens is that you have Jesus, and he lives in your heart, and then you pretty well try and be nice and go to the prayer meeting or whatever it is and sing songs that most people don't enjoy. And that's it, and then you finally die and go to heaven. People say, It's got to be more than that.

Of course it's more than that. The whole creation groans in travail, waiting for the redemption of the sons of God. The kingly rule of Christ speaks not only personally to our lives but cosmically to our lives. It speaks to the issue of the ecosystems of our world. Of course we care about those things, because there's going to be a new heaven and a new earth.

This is what we have right now. Therefore, don't mess it up. It is because he is king that we care about life, that we care about the issues of life, that we care about how animals are treated, that we care about the discoveries of science, that we care about literature and art and poetry and good songs and music and melody lines. And when you cease to believe in a creator God who fashioned man in his own image, eventually the dust of death will settle on your tongue. Darwin was a professing Christian. Darwin was a Cambridge student. Darwin was going to submit to holy orders in the Anglican church until he found himself in the middle of Romans 1, and he exchanged the truth of God for a lie, and he began to worship the creature rather than the creator.

And if you read Darwin, you will know that he was an honest man, which led him to his evolutionary hypothesis. But he was equally honest enough to say that as he approached the middle part of his life, he was niggled by the fact of design in the universe. He felt there were loopholes in his system. By the age of thirty, he no longer believed in a soul. He no longer believed in eternity.

By the time he was forty, he said he had no interest in art, he had no interest in music, he had no interest in history. And when they asked him, Do you have doubts? he said, Of course I have doubts. I believe that the human mind has emerged from the mind of a monkey.

And who would trust the mind of a monkey? Well, we thank him for his honesty. But, my friends, there is a significant difference between a view of the world which is the product of time plus matter plus chance, and a view of the world in which the sovereign Lord of creation becomes the child in the manger, becomes the man of the proclamation and of the miracles, and ascends to heaven and takes his rightful place. As staggering as it is to contemporary thought, the declaration of the Bible is this—that Jesus Christ, the reigning King, is the source and the sustainer and the goal of all created reality. And when Abram Cowper, who was the prime minister of Holland, got ahold of that truth, he writes in his journal on one morning, There is not one inch in the entire area of human life about which Jesus does not cry of it, mine.

Mine. And we sing it, don't we? This is my Father's world, and to my listening ears all nature sings, and round me springs the music of the spheres. And it all ends in the Hallelujah chorus. If you have the Messiah, I suggest this afternoon at some point, go to the track that takes us right here.

And he will reign for ever and ever. And if you've been doubting it, just let it wash over you. If you're unsure about it, ask God to make you sure of it, so that you might bring your life and your dreams and your hopes and your disappointments and all that represents the you that is you out from underneath your own tin-pot little kingdom and under the rule of his reign. And for those of you who are gardeners, read Revelation 22. For all the thistles that you find in Genesis 1 through 3 are gone by the time you get to Revelation 22. How that works for the national emblem of Scotland, I do not know, but they will be gone by Revelation 22.

And for those of you who say, Well, what am I going to do? On streets of gold and everything else, and alabaster this and alabaster that, listen, there's going to be a new heaven and a new earth. You'll have a nice garden. You'll have a nice garden. No chemlon.

No weed removal at all. Just absolutely the best you could ever conceive. Why? Because Jesus is King. Hallelujah! For the Lord God Almighty reigns. The kingdom of the world has become the kingdom of my Lord and of his Christ, and he will reign forever. And there is a higher throne before which every sovereign on every throne and every high court judge will bow. And the invitation of the gospel is to bow now, and welcome him as Lord and Savior and King. Or bow then, and acknowledge that he executes his judgment justly, because you heard and you said, No, I will not have this King to reign over me.

These loved ones are considerations worthy of your own follow-up. Jesus is the King. The question is, will we submit to him?

Will we bow the knee? You've been listening to a message from Alistair Begg titled, He Will Reign Forever. This is Truth for Life, and Alistair will be back in just a minute. But first I want to say thank you to a very important group of people, people we refer to as Truth Partners. These are listeners like you who faithfully give each month to help cover the cost of producing and distributing these daily messages. And they do this so that people like you and me everywhere can have access to Alistair's Bible teaching free of charge.

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Sign up to become a monthly Truth Partner before the end of the year or give a one-time donation at truthforlife.org slash donate. Now here is Alistair with the closing prayer. God our Father, we thank you that we have the Bible. We thank you that it is clear, sometimes we make it unclear. And so we pray that the clarity of it, that which is helpful and true and useful may be etched into our lives and it may change our view of the world and the way we live in the world and the way we treat others in our world. And when they ask, we'll tell them that there is a higher throne beyond all the thrones the world has known and that we've come to know his majesty and he took our old dirty rags of rebellion and gave us a wonderful new set of clothes, clothes we didn't deserve.

When we walk around in them, since we know how dreadful we are as sinners, it just humbles us and reminds us to look away to Christ and to tell others that he is a wonderful Savior and a gracious King. Send us out Lord, we pray under your rule and reign for Jesus sake we ask it. Amen. I'm Bob Lapine on behalf of all of us here at Truth for Life. Enjoy this Christmas Eve. We hope you are able to spend the weekend celebrating the birth of Jesus with family and friends as well as worshipping him in your local church and Alistair wants to say a word as well. Thank you Bob and on behalf of all of us here at Truth for Life, we wish you a very blessed and joyous Christmas. Indeed and a reminder that our offices are closed today so our team can spend this important day with their families.

We'll be back in the office on Monday. Of course Alistair will continue our series then. I hope you'll join us as we learn what the zeal of God means for the ones he loves. The Bible teaching of Alistair Begg is furnished by Truth for Life where the Learning is for Living.