Advent Day 15 :: King of Kings

“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. 13He shall build a house for my name, and I will establish the throne of his kingdom forever. 14I 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 the sons of men, 15but my steadfast love will not depart from him, as I took it from Saul, whom I put away from before you. 16And your house and your kingdom shall be made sure forever before me. Your throne shall be established forever.’” (2 Samuel 7:12-16)

I am thankful that today’s devotional on Jesus as King got postponed an extra day. I was going to write on Jesus as King yesterday but I wasn’t quite sure how to tackle this one. I am sure we are all kind of familiar with the idea of Jesus as King. We have at least heard about Jesus being King of kings and Lord of lords (Revelation 17:14). We sing about Jesus being King of our hearts and about Jesus’ kingdom.

I was going to view Jesus as King from the books of 1 & 2 Kings. It would seem logical to do so just by the name of the books. It would also fall in line with how we have been traveling through the Old Testament looking for the different ways God has introduced us to Jesus as the Redeemer of all creation and mankind. We see in the book of Kings the wisest of all kings - Solomon. There is much to say about the similarities between Solomon and Jesus but more importantly is the idea of God’s people and their need for someone to lead them.

From the beginning we see that Israel was to have a King and there were requirements for the kings of Israel (Deuteronomy 17:14-15). We see in our passage for today that King David was promised a descendant who would reign forever. If we scan ahead in the Scriptures we see in Luke 1:30-33 that an angel proclaims to Mary that she was going to give birth to that promised descendant and that there was no end to his Kingdom. The heir, the promised descendant was Jesus Christ.

As with any King and their kingdom there are specifics to their reign that characterized them throughout all of history. Jesus speaks of His Kingdom as one that was not of this world and that He was born for the cause of His Kingdom (John 18:36-37). His rule over His Kingdom was one of righteousness and justice (Hebrews 1:8). Despite His death we know that Jesus is to be the King of the Ages (Revelation 15:3).

We have seen the importance of Jesus as our Prophet (the mouthpiece of God) and as Priest (the intercessor of man), there is surely a great importance of Jesus Christ as our King. We have to realize that Christ rules and reigns over everything. There is nothing that is not under His feet. That means that everything that we face in this broken will falls under the reign of Christ. That means that at some point it will all be made new again. So often, we experience some level of defeat in our battle against the world, the flesh, and the devil. But the good news of the coming of the Messiah tells us that these defeats are only temporary. Christ came as a man, perfect and sinless, to die for the sins of the world, that all things would be made new again and death to be defeated through his death, burial and resurrection. From His resurrection we see that He has been lifted up to the right hand of God the Father and has been given the name above all names (Acts 2:33; Philippians 2:5–11). He is the omnipotent ruler of His people, and He cannot fail to bring us the final victory. Our hope as believers is never lost, for we serve the One who “must reign until he has put all his enemies under his feet” (1 Corinthians 15:25), and He will not fail to execute justice and promote righteous living.

Jesus sits on His throne over all rulers. His subjects must bow to Him - those in His Kingdom and those opposed to His Kingdom. As those who have claimed Christ as Savior, as our Lord and King, we have been commissioned to preach the gospel of His Kingdom (Matthew 24:14) not our own. We are to live as though we are a part of His Kingdom, not of our own. We are to bring to light the reality of Christ’s reign so that others may come and willingly bow the knee to Jesus who is sovereign over all. That our hope and salvation may become the hope and salvation for others.

Our hope in Jesus as King is in knowing that He will sustain us and set all things right in the end.

Further Reading: Psalm 2

Photo by Angel Luciano on Unsplash