"The King of Kings"

Sermon by Pastor David Layman

July 15, 2007

I Samuel 8:6-20

I Timothy 6:6-19

If you think that the Bible is a book that tells the stories of virtuous people that we should be more like, reading through the Bible will free you from that illusion! It's been remarked that all scripture has been inspired, but it offers not very inspiring reflections on human nature!

Saul was Israel's first king: tall and good looking. But Saul failed to follow the directions of God's prophet Samuel, became moody and insecure, and tried to kill young David, whom God anointed as Saul's successor. Surprise of surprises, once Saul got his kingly power, he didn't want to give it up! David was considered the greatest king of all Israel. But it's a sad commentary on Israel's kings, if the greatest king the nation knew committed adultery with Bathsheba, had Uriah her husband killed in battle, tried to cover it up, and then proceeded to make a terrible father. Richard Nixon's Watergate involvement doesn't look so bad when contrasted with the way King David abused his power. And most would agree, Nixon was a better father! The National Inquirer would have had a field day with King David! King David and his family could have given the paparazzi more to talk about than Paris Hilton and Brittney Spears put together! The good side of David was that he acknowledged his sin and repented of it. Would that all our national leaders and celebrities were able to acknowledge that they have sinned and fallen short of God's desires!

Solomon, like many earthly leaders, had a promising beginning. Solomon prayed to God for wisdom, and then built a beautiful temple to the Lord in Jerusalem. Solomon's reign was exceedingly prosperous, and Jesus spoke of "Solomon in all his glory". Solomon was a commercial genius, and Palestine was strategically located at the crossroads of the Middle East. If Indiana is the "crossroads of the nation", Palestine could have put on their camels' license plates "crossroads of the ancient world." While Solomon built an impressive temple to God, Solomon spent far more time and money building an impressive palace for himself. Solomon taxed the people heavily, and began to conscript freeborn Israelites for his building projects and his army. Solomon accumulated 700 wives and 300 concubines, which most people would agree was 999 too many! Many of his wives were political alliances, but Solomon made matters worse by building pagan shrines for his foreign wives, and worshipping at them himself. The 12 tribes of Israel were split apart following Solomon's unwise rule, with Israel in the north, and Judah with its capital of Jerusalem in the south. King Jeroboam in the north even set up a golden calf, which revealed religious syncretism--mixing the true faith of the Bible with the surrounding pagan religions. Later on, King Manasseh worshiped the star-gods of the Assyrians, built pagan altars in the temple area, performed a human sacrifice of his own son, supported fortune telling, and shed much innocent blood. The accounts of Israel and Judah's kings is NOT an inspiring story!

Today, we're reading lots about the plethora of men, and one woman, running for president. The press normally goes about raising interest in one candidate after another, and then later lowering the boom by revealing flaws, flubs and flip-flops of the various candidates. In Old Testament times, there weren't as many reporters running around. But there was every bit as much bad news about those human beings who held power! As we look over the broad sweep of Israel's and Judah's history, there were far more kings like American President Warren G. Harding than there were like Abraham Lincoln. In fact, even the worst of the American presidents were better than most of the Biblical kings!

The Bible does not tell a story of evolutionary progress, of how the early kings of Judah and Israel were bad, but as time went on, they went from bad to mediocre to pretty good. The Bible instead portrays the people's desire for a strong human ruler as a rejection of the kingship of God! In I Samuel 8, the Lord says to Samuel that the people are not rejecting the prophet Samuel by asking for a king. God says "They have rejected me from being king over them. Just as they have done to me, from the day I brought them up out of Egypt to this day, forsaking me and serving other gods." (I Sam. 8:7-8).

The American system of government has survived as well as it has, I believe, because it has been established upon a Biblical understanding of human nature as sinful. Power tends to corrupt, the Scriptures teach. So the least harmful form of government is achieved by a series of checks and balances that limit how much power an individual or a group may achieve. An elected president serving a limited time in office is far better than an anointed king, especially when a king is anointed primarily because he's the son of a previous ruler! The Bible's description of kings relates that even though there are occasional good kings, the children of good kings tend to mess up just as much as any other king. Even the great prophets of the Bible often had sons that did not live up to the virtue of their fathers! We can be thankful that George Washington refused to be made king! We can also be thankful Washington kneeled in the snows of Valley Forge in prayer to God, acknowledging the authority of One greater than him!

The Biblical story recounts how first the unified kingdom of Israel split into Israel in the north, and the kingdom of Judah in the south. Then the northern kingdom fell to Assyria in 722 BC, and the southern kingdom to Babylonia in 587 BC. Through exile and a long time of political subjugation to Babylonia, Persia, Greece and then Rome, God's people suffered.

Then, we read in Matthew of wise men asking King Herod where is the child who is born to be king of the Jews (Matthew 2:2). When as an adult Jesus calls Nathanael to follow him, Nathanael is so impressed with Jesus he declares "Rabbi, you are the Son of God! You are the king of Israel!" (John 1:49) Following the feeding of the 5,000, the people were so enthusiastic about Jesus' power, that a "draft Jesus for king" move started. But as we read in John 6:15, "When Jesus realized that they were about to come and take him by force to make him king, he withdrew again to the mountain by himself." Jesus did not want to be the kind of king that many were looking for. The Apostle Paul, when writing Timothy (I Timothy 1:17), referred to Jesus as "the king of the ages, immortal, invisible, the only God." Later, in the same letter, Paul referred to Jesus as "King of kings and Lord of Lords." (I Timothy 6:15)

Every king has a kingdom! Jesus said to Pilate that his kingdom was not of this world. But Jesus frequently spoke of the "kingdom of heaven", or the "kingdom of God". To be a king is to rule, and a kingdom is the place where one's rule exists. Before Israel had kings, they understood that God was to be their true ruler. And the Old Testament kings from Saul onward were seen to be those who ruled under the authority and purposes of God, the true King of all. Kings in the ancient world had limited dominions, and often sought to expand the boundaries of their rule. The great prophets of the Old Testament came to see that God's rule was universal and unrestricted. Why would Jesus want to accept the title of King of the Jews, when in reality, God had made him ruler not over just one people, but all peoples! And the kingdom which Jesus came proclaiming is both present reality and future hope. For one day, scripture teaches, Jesus' kingdom shall have no end.

Justin Wroe Nixon was visiting Moscow in the days before the rise and fall of the Iron Curtain. He was walking back to his hotel one evening along the Moscow River. The sun was sinking. Its direct rays no longer reached the valley, nor the walls of the Kremlin, nor the palace that had housed the czars, nor the flag of the Soviet Union that flew above it. But the setting sun's rays shined on the cross of the Church of the Assumption, the old church where czars were once crowned. He wrote "As the sun sank below the horizon, its light lingered at the last on that cross as if to suggest there was something in it that would be the last thing to die out in human life long after the czars had been forgotten, long after the communists had gone on and the wisdom of Karl Marx had been gathered into the larger wisdom of the race--something in the cross would still beacon to the human spirit, for it speaks not merely of time, but of eternity; not merely of power, but of love; not merely of man, but of God."

Christ's kingdom shall have no end!

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