Then Pilate said to him, “So you are a king?”
Jesus answered, “You say that I am a king. For this purpose I was born and for this purpose I have come into the world to bear witness to the truth. Everyone who is of the truth listens to my voice.” – John 18:37
We want a King to fix what is wrong. The economy demands hard work, which is difficult to find and pays little. We demand a different leader. Forget that tyrant in charge now. What does the present King or Emperor or President or Chairman or Pharaoh care about us? What does God have to do with us? After all, our nation is devastated by the greedy and oppressed by the strong.
Oh… does this sound a bit too much like our 21st century life and not like the same old politics of Jerusalem, Rome and the Nations for centuries long past?
In truth, the Jews then and Christians now easily miss the point. We miss the significance of Jesus because He is not the King we expected.
In fact, the Jews only begged for a King to be in charge so that they could escape direct obedience to the LORD. (Are we so different?) Moses had warned them, as Jesus has cautioned us to be prepared for His return to a new Jerusalem – as He has prophesied perfectly of the new heavens and the new earth.
14 “When you come to the land that the Lord your God is giving you, and you possess it and dwell in it and then say, ‘I will set a king over me, like all the nations that are around me,’ 15 you may indeed set a king over you whom the Lord your God will choose.
Years Later in the Promised Land
1 Samuel 8:5b ” Now appoint for us a king to judge us like all the nations.”
… 7 And the LORD said to Samuel, “Obey the voice of the people in all that they say to you, for they have not rejected you, but they have rejected me from being king over them.”
Saul was a popular King until things went wrong. David was even more respected as King, for David was a man after God’s own heart. Solomon became one of the most powerful kings on earth, yet Israel separated into two weaker kingdoms as his sons abandoned the LORD. The LORD even set kings of enemies of Judah and enemies of Israel against his own disobedient fallen kingdom and chosen people.
It is the LORD who rejects those who reject Him. It is the LORD who rejects those who refuse the sacrifice of the Son, Christ Jesus. Let the reader understand the surpassing love of God and the final judgment of every man’s sin.
Hosea was a prophet who lived and prophesied just before the destruction of Israel in 722 BC. He preached to the northern kingdom. https://bible.org/seriespage/1-hosea
NASB (UPDATED) TEXT:13:9-11
9It is your destruction, O Israel,
That you are against Me, against your help.
10Where now is your king
That he may save you in all your cities,
And your judges of whom you requested, “Give me a king and princes”?
11I gave you a king in My anger
And took him away in My wrath.
The LORD punished by the hand of God’s enemies.
Rome we know. Babylon and Persia and Egypt… Israel was no more.
Judea, Syria, Palestine all provinces of conquering generals, pompous emperors and corrupt caesars. Ungodly men leading enemy countries by the might that would make right, the conquest that brings glory only to a mere mortal.
They use religion as tolerance of diversity and intolerance of righteousness and truth. The fallen fall into the snare of the conquering culture, offering the bribe of peace and the negotiation of principle.
Into Rome, into Washington, into Moscow, into Beijing, into Mumbai, into Lagos… into Jerusalem a man comes.
Armies have destroyed and conquered before him. Kings and rulers have been killed and taken away in chains before. It is time to negotiate under the terms of our captors. We are not free to live in peace… to have hope for food and families and homes of our own. We serve no King. We serve noone… yet we cry out for a new King to our liking.
Will this man overthrow Rome? Will he use His evident power to defeat the enemies of our own lusts for sin?
Into Jerusalem rides a King who will act when He will.
He came once as the Son of Man to be sacrificed on a Cross for our sins. He was raised from the dead, in body and soul! He IS and will be.
The Revelation of Jesus Christ to John:
1:7 Behold, he is coming with the clouds, and every eye will see him, even those who pierced him, and all tribes of the earth will wail on account of him. Even so. Amen.
Revelation 5:
6 And between the throne and the four living creatures and among the elders I saw a Lamb standing, as though it had been slain, with seven horns and with seven eyes, which are the seven spirits of God sent out into all the earth. 7 And he went and took the scroll from the right hand of him who was seated on the throne…
3 And they sing the song of Moses, the servant of God, and the song of the Lamb, saying,
“Great and amazing are your deeds,
O Lord God the Almighty!
Just and true are your ways,
O King of the nations!4 Who will not fear, O Lord,
and glorify your name?
For you alone are holy.
All nations will come
and worship you,
for your righteous acts have been revealed.”
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Is Jesus the King you expect?
Therefore I ask you, as we celebrate a weeklong festival of Passover about to be celebrated by the crowds entering Jerusalem… a conquered Jerusalem without a godly king some two millennia ago:
Do you expect Jesus to return as our King?
By your life and witness, is Jesus your King?
For He IS and will return unexpected.
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