Vestavia Hills Methodist Church
Is He Your King? (Cont.)
So today is Christ the King Sunday in the life of the church from a liturgical standpoint. So churches all across the world are celebrating this church, sort of holiday, if you want to call it that, or really this sort of time of observance. And it's interesting because we are a week away from starting Advent, it is here as crazy as that seems. It feels like just yesterday was Easter and now we're back here again to Advent starting next week. And so our passage today, even though we're about to move into a season where we're talking about sort of the expectation, the anticipation, the birth of Jesus Christ, the passage we're looking at today comes from really towards the end of that story. So in context, what we just read, this is after all the things that have gone on in Jesus' history, all the moments where he's done, all these incredible things, healings, he's fed 4,000, fed 5,000, done all these amazing things. And all throughout that entire process, there has been this group of religious leaders from the Jewish faith that have been pretty much out for nothing but to get rid of the sky because this is a problem. And there's a problem for him because he was doing all of these things that might lead to him having so much power that would disrupt the very fabric of who they were and would question their authority. He was doing things like, "Oh my gosh, it doesn't matter that a blind person can see or a lame person can walk, but he did it on the Sabbath." He's doing all this stuff, he's gathering followers, there's 5,000 plus people that are just there to watch him preach. And so from the very beginning of the gospel, this is a problem. And we kind of see in this passage the crescendo of that effort because what they wanted more than anything else was not just for him to be thrown in prison for a short period of time. They needed him gone, like gone gone from the face of the planet. And the only way to do that was to get him brought up on charges by the Romans. And so the Romans did not care at all about the miracle feedings, about the healings, didn't care about any of that. But the one charge that they would care about, which is the one thing that the Jewish leaders are bringing up the pilot, is, "Hey, this guy says he's a king. And if he says he's a king, then he's a problem for you because anyone that says that they're a king would perhaps have people who were following him. And those people that were following him, probably if he is an actual earthly king would have the desire for him to reign supreme on the throne that sees her currently in here it. And so this would be a problem for the Romans. And that's why you see this back and forth between Pilate and Jesus where Pilate says, "Hey, are you really this guy? Are you really the king of the Jews?" And he has this sort of word played back and forth with him. Where he says, "Is that your own idea to people that you have spoken to?" They say that, basically saying, "I know that the only reason why you think this is because these Jewish leaders, these Jewish authorities have said this about me." And then going further and saying, "So is this really who you are?" And said, "Well, you say that. But my kingdom is not here on this earth. My kingdom is not here on this earth, basically telling Pilate, "Hey, I'm not a problem for you." Because he says, he even goes for it and says, "If my kingdom was here on this earth, if I was the king that you fear me to be, then all of my servants right now will be riding out there trying to get me freed." But they're not. And so that's why Pilate goes out later and says, "Hey, I find absolutely no fault in this guy. The charge that you are making against him does not hold water. He's not, he doesn't qualify for the threshold of us executing him under this statute that says, "Hey, if anybody is leading up rising, this is a problem." But in the grand irony of all ironies, what happens right after this is that Pilate goes out of the crowds because he sees that they're all up in a frenzy, so he's got to give him something. So he says, "Hey, it is passive. So if I will release somebody to you, do you want me to release this guy, the person you call the king of the Jews, or do you want me to release this guy who literally started an uprising, who's probably responsible for killing people and all this other stuff?" And they say, "Oh yeah, give us that guy." So the person who was accused by the Jewish leaders of, "Hey, if this person is going to start an uprising, gets the Romans, they don't want him. They want the guy released who actually probably did start an uprising." There's insane irony in this story. But this isn't the first time that this irony of who Jesus is has played out from the very beginning of all of these things. We've seen this. This is a different type of guy. When he says that his kingdom is not on this earth, he's not making that up. And from the very beginning of this story, when we meet Jesus all the way back at the beginning of the Gospels, there's something truly different than what the expectation is. You know, one of the main reasons why I believe Christianity to be true is not just because of all the different times in my life, where there's been absolutely no explanation as to how something occurred except to, "Okay, well, there's something else out there because none of this makes any sense." And it's not simply all sort of the personal testimonies that have occurred over the course of thousands of years that have brought us to this point to where we're reading these texts together. And all the different people in the book of Acts that died for this, who saw Jesus resurrected face-to-face, is like, "Yeah, this is worth us going out, leaving everything behind, leaving our careers, our families to go walk out into this world, tell people about it, even though we full well know that we are going to die for it." One of the main reasons is because if you were telling the story about a king, this is not how you'd write it. This is not how you write it. All kingly stories that you read, there's some sort of cataclysmic event and they're born into royalty. They're born in this sort of, with all this fanfare and all this excitement, well, not this king, not this one. You know, we sort of make it into this like beautiful little, oh my gosh, look at little baby in the statues that we put in our houses, and it makes it just look like the greatest thing ever. And y'all, the angels and Mary and Joseph, they're all sitting there like this, depending on how old your collection is, I don't know why the tilted head became like a thing. It's like anytime you'd go take pictures in a church directory at school, the Olin Mills person would make you tilt your head like that. I never understood why that was a normal thing. But you see all these statues and it looks like just the greatest place ever. It's like, oh Lord, let us all be born in the same place that Jesus was. And I know if you're, if you're like me and you know, had your wife gave birth to a child and you spent the night at the hospital and we as men have to sleep on that insanely uncomfortable thing, futon type apparatus over there, no one talks about how hard we got it. You know, I'm just kidding. I'm just kidding. I made this joke in front of my wife at 830, so it's okay. I know it's not the same thing, trust me, there's no one who has gained more respect for what mothers go through carrying a child for nine months, giving birth and pretty much carrying the brunt of raising them. I've never been more thankful for my wife than I have in the last six months. Please hear me say that. But the point I'm trying to make is, you know, we can birth in these hospitals with doctors all around us, with people just making sure that we have everything that we need for this child to be born in a way that leads to health and happiness. I know these statues paint, I don't know why I'm pointing here like they're here, but just imagine that this whole major scene is here. I don't know if we're going to have one here or not, but if we are, it's going to be right here, just something like an idiot next time. It paints this picture like it's this incredible, and it was, but the reality is that, like, and we always act like Bethlehem is sort of like the view of the Paris of Israel, and it's not. It's this tiny little town, borderline outpost where hardly anybody lived, and the only reason why they're there is because Joseph has to take Mary there because there's a census that's sent out by Caesar, and while they're there in the worst possible circumstance, that's when it's time for her to give birth. So you're in this tiny little town, and it's time to give birth, and there's no, like, hospital, no anything like that. There's no end to staying. There's no, like, place to go in for you to get the attention that you possibly need. The only place that they have for this to take place is somebody's barn, basically. So our king was born in a stable surrounded by farm animals, which I have cats in my house and that's horrible enough, but this is like goats and all these other, like, horrid creatures that smell awful, poop everywhere, and there's nothing you can do about it because it's not like you can train them to go outside or anything like that. So our king is sitting in basically a feeding trough, which is historically what we think it actually was, toward these, this, like, cement feeding trough thing that you'd feed the animals with. That's what we think that baby Jesus is being laid in surrounded by animals, and that's how our king entered the world and it's no name town. You wouldn't tell the story like that, and the first thing that he's got to do is get up and flee and go to Egypt. That's not what you would tell either. In that king upon returning and starting his ministry, you would expect that king to be someone that's coming in with sword and with vigor, getting followers based on force, and with the sole purpose of overthrowing the Roman authorities to reestablish the kingdom of God here on this earth is what was, you know, what they thought was being promised in the Old Testament. That's not what he did. He came in humbly and fed the hungry, clothed the naked, restored sight to those who were blind, restored the ability to walk to those who couldn't, gave life back to those whose society had rejected, and then right before this story we just read, when he's making his triumphal entry into Jerusalem, our king didn't come in on a white stallion adorned with the flowing robes of victory. Came in on a donkey, a donkey surrounded by like 12 dudes who were not exactly the mightiest of warriors, their fishermen, their tax collectors, just normal dudes, and that's how he comes into Jerusalem, this isn't how you would tell this story. And so when he's standing there in front of Pilate, and Pilate's quizzing him on whether or not he's a king, and he basically admits in his many ways, yes, I am a king, but not in the way that you see it, not in the way that you see it, not in the way that you think, my kingdom is not here on this earth. We sang on these songs today, and we sing a lot of songs with their hymns or anything about, you know, talking about how Jesus is king, Jesus is king, Jesus is king, and Jesus is king. And he establishes that here. Pilate asks me, and he basically says yes, and sort of in the word play that he does. But he's not what people expected. It's not what people expected then, and perhaps, even for us, bringing the story as if it was for the first time, perhaps not the type of king that we would expect either, but here's who he is. He's not a king that entered in to reestablish political authority over something. He's a king that came in to reestablish the kingdom of God on earth. He's a king that came into Jerusalem not to save people from authority, but to save people from their own sins, to save people from death, and to do that by taking all those things upon himself. This is what our king looks like. This is who our king is. And the question, like, I've been battling all week, and sort of, you know, preparation for this is because when we think about kings, right, we think about leaders, or let's pretend that, well, no, it's not pretend that we're Americans. We don't like to pretend that we had kings. That's the whole purpose of us being where we are, is because we didn't like kings. But let's pretend that we were in a time and in a place. Let's pretend we were Romans back in the day, back here. You lived every day as a Roman under the authority and the establishment of the emperor, of Caesar. Everything you did was for the glory of Caesar. You went to work for the glory of Caesar. You did this for the glory of Caesar. Now all that was because you were scared about what might happen. If you did anything against Caesar, you pay taxes. Why? Because of Caesar. This is how you live under a king. You live with complete nutter, fidelity, and worship towards that king, doing everything in your power every single day to bring glory and honor to that king. And our king is different. Our king doesn't beckon us to go fight wars on his behalf, doesn't beckon us to do all these type things. Our king beckons us to come to him and lay all our burdens upon him. But the question that I've had to ask myself this week is I've read this passage and thought about this concept on Christ the King Sunday, is we celebrate the fact that Jesus Christ is the king of all of these things, of heaven and earth, the one that saves us from our sins. And I've had to ask a very uncomfortable question, that is, is he really mine? Is he really my king? Is he really my king? What I mean by that is like, does my life really reflect that reality? Not simply in my worship on Sunday mornings, but in how I carry myself in everyday life. And this isn't the first person to struggle with this. You see this kind of play out throughout scripture of Jesus having interactions with people and really testing their hearts to see where they truly truly are. And one passage, I don't know why, but this is the one that came to my mind when I was sort of thinking about this. And it's a famous one and if you have a Bible, you can turn with me to Mark's Gospel. This is in other gospels too, but I prefer Mark because it's short and I'm big into short books of the Bible, just full transparency. I've read the whole thing just so you can feel good about it, but I go back to the short ones all the time because I can get through them. And I love Mark just from how it's written, how it flows and Mark's not long with words. If a sentence can take place in three words, that's all he uses and that's my kind of writer. So I love Mark. But this is a story that's in other gospels and this is a really, really difficult one. And I don't know if we preach sermons on it because to be totally honest with you, I can't remember the sermon I preached last week. But this is a really famous passage, but this passage really gets at the heart of the question we're asking about like is Jesus really, really, really your king. And when I read this, I had to ask myself that question too. So in Mark chapter 10, we're starting verse 17 and we're going to read through this because it's this interaction that Jesus has with this person who is following him, who's following his listening to the teachings and clearly from what we read is doing most of the things right says is Jesus started on his way, a man ran up to him, fell on his knees before him. Good teacher, he asked, what must I do to inherit eternal life? Why do you call me good? Jesus answered, no one is good except God alone. You know the commandments. You shall not murder. You shall not commit adultery. You shall not steal. You shall not give false testimony. You shall not defraud and you should honor your father and your mother. It's a pretty good list. I can raise my hand and say I have murdered zero people. If you can't do that, now's not the time to confess it. That make it very awkward for all of us. But he gives this list and said, okay, well, let me ask you this. Are you keeping the commandments? Are you not have you not murdered anybody? You're not committing adultery? You're not stolen? Have you not given false testimony? Have you not defrauded? Have you been honoring your father and mother basically giving this list of tangible things that we can do or not do on this earth to kind of keep the commandments of God? I think I said, teacher, all of these things I've been doing since I was a boy. Since I was a boy, I've killed nobody. I've defrauded nobody. I've slayed it against nobody. If I honored my parents ever since I was a boy, he's probably really, really excited. It's like, oh my gosh, I've been given the litmus test and I have passed with flying colors because everything I'm doing on this earth, tangibly, I'm doing it right. And unfortunately for him and unfortunately for us, Jesus goes beyond that and ask a really intense question to him. He says, Jesus looked at him and loved him, basically looked at him and had compassion on him. He said, one thing you lack, he said, go sell everything you have and give to the poor and you will have treasure in heaven, then come and follow me and it says, this, the man's face fell. He went away sad because he had great wealth. Now I want to be just fully transparent. This is not about to turn into a sermon about like how evil money is. So don't worry about it. I'm not going to step one of your toes today. But this is a sermon about a guy whose biggest problem isn't the fact that he has money. The biggest problem this guy has is that what Jesus proves right here is that Jesus isn't his king but his money is. This is where his heart truly is because he's done all these other things. He's not killing anybody. He's not doing all this. Okay. Well, if you really want to be perfect, if you really want to do all these things, go get rid of the thing that means the most to you. That Jesus knows means the most to you. Get rid of it. Give it to the poor and follow me. And it says he walks away sad because he had so much stuff because at the end of the day what Jesus proved is that in spite of the fact that he had done X, Y, and Z correct that really where his heart truly lied was with his stuff. His stuff was his king. And I have to just be fully transparent. This week is I feel like so many times in my sermons, I just get up here and talk about how terrible I am and I pray that, you know, you don't think too poorly of me, but we just keep getting these passages that keep making me think that my gosh, there's so many things I have to work on. And this is one of them because I was studying this and I read that passage, I realized how many things in my life, if I'm being fully transparent, fully honest, are actually the kings of my life in so many different ways ahead of Jesus. And that's a huge problem that I have that I need to do something about. And sometimes it is money because I live every single day just stressed out with deep anxieties about the financial situation of my house. You got a mortgage, you got property taxes, you got all that stuff, you got a six month old who's only going to get more expensive from here. Right now it's, you know, food's basically free and we got, you know, day school payments. Well food's not going to be free for long. And we got to pay for him to go to college, how are we going to do that? And I have the greatest wife on earth who's already talking about child number two, which if you want to talk about something that makes you want to go run headlong into Montgomery highway and just say, just take me now Lord, it's that. And it's all based off this stress and this obsession I have with making enough money to provide all these things. And it's not just money, it's all this other stuff where my heart truly lies, our heart truly lies, Saturdays in the fall. I love. I do absolutely nothing but watch football, nothing. I don't move. I just watch football and my son watches it with me because I don't think there's a need to see cartoons if you can watch football and train them young to like the things that you like. That's the key to this, this would have learned. But I like, I wish I could tell you that my obsession with the teams I pull for is just limited to like this three or sometimes four and a half hour event on Saturdays. But it's not because I, yeah, I watch and get emotionally invested way more in the football game on Saturday than probably I do in anything faith related throughout the whole week. That's one thing, but also leading up to the game on Saturday, I got to be listening to the podcast, checking the message boards, checking Twitter and all that other stuff from about Tuesday on into Saturday to make sure I fully understand what's going on with the game, what recruits are showing up, what our chances are to get those recruits. And all these other things, listen to the coaches, post game press conference, pre game press conference, listening to this, listening to that, making sure that my whole life is prepared for this football game. Can you imagine if me, your pastor spent all that time actually, I don't know doing things that mattered? You imagine that? Can you imagine how much different my life would be and how much less stress and anxiety I might have in my life if Jesus was actually the king of all of those things and I spent less time worried about that stuff and more time worried about the things that actually matter and giving all those things to him? You imagine how different my life would be? Well, yours would be too because I know, again, maybe I'm the only imperfect vessel in this room. I pray that's true. Maybe I'm the only one who deals with these things. Maybe I'm the only one that has stresses and anxieties over the things of this world. Maybe it's just me, but I doubt it. Why, especially like, is we move into this Advent season as we participate in this whole season where we are supposed to be preparing our hearts for the coming of our king, for when God became incarnate on this earth. The moment when God was like, I see all of these people who have pretty much done nothing but reject me and run far, far away from me and yet that God still looked at us with compassion's like, yeah, and this is how I'm going to save them. This is how I'm going to save them. As we prepare for that moment, perhaps we all need to be asking the same question that I have to ask in my own life, is this Jesus truly my king in all things and in all ways? And what I know because I've experienced it before, I know that there's so many things in my life that cause me stress and anxiety and pain and suffering that if I would just give them to my king because what most kings want is your money and your military service. That's kind of like the thing. What our king wants is our hearts. Our king wants our everything. Our king wants us to put all of our stresses, all of our anxieties upon him because he can handle them. Our king wants us to put our salvation in his hands, putting our sin upon his shoulders so that he might wipe us clean. Our king wants not for us to stay where we are, but our king wants us to grow closer to him every single day in this intimate relationship that none of us can ever imagine. And our king is the one who went to prepare a place for me and for you sinful people so that we might live for eternity in heaven, seeing our king face to face, worshiping him forever. And I don't know, but at least for me, that is a king worth giving everything to, but I know that I need to do a better job of that in my life, and maybe you do as well. So I don't know what that looks like for you. I don't know what has your heart wrapped up in so many things. I don't know what things that you need to give to your king today, but as we sing this last song of praise, as we sing this last song where we are proclaiming who Jesus is, I don't know what that is, whether it's in your seats or when you leave, just like, just pray for that. You can come up to the rails here, you can come up to the rails. It's always good to check and make sure the rails there are already messed up by thinking there'd be a major scene here for some reason. I don't know what that is, but this is what I know. I know that God doesn't want you to carry whatever that thing is around anymore. God doesn't just want 10% of your heart, 15% of your heart, God wants all of it, and the reason why we can feel comfortable giving all those things to the Lord is because He is worthy of it. It's worthy of it for what He's done for me and for you. Let's pray.