Christ the King Sunday 2023
Good confession (chorus)
Call to worship:
pastor kevin mcguire
1 Tim 6.11-16
song:
Crown him w/ many crowns
Historical reading:
pastor andrew loginow
Christ community Church statement of faith art 7
song:
Lord have mercy
Confession & pardon:
pastor michael champoux
Doxology
song:
Jesus is better
Sermon:
dr. alex loginow
Christ the King 2023
Introduction
December 16th of this year marks the 250th anniversary of the Boston Tea Party. The Boston Tea Party was the first major act of rebellion by the American colonies leading to the American Revolutionary War and independence from Great Britain. In the 1760’s the British crown was in debt so Parliament imposed a series of taxes on the American colonists. The Stamp Act of 1765 and the Townshend Acts of 1767 led to the Boston Massacre in 1770. After that Britain repealed many of the taxes but the tea tax remained because American colonists drank 1.2 million pounds of tea a year.
At this point the colonists protested the English tea and began smuggling Dutch tea into the colonies. This nearly plummeted the crown into bankruptcy, which led to the passing of the Tea Act by parliament. The Tea Act did yield cheaper tea prices but still taxed the colonial ports when the tea arrived. So the colonists continued to protest taxation without representation and on December 16, 1773 the Sons of Liberty boarded 3 docked ships full of tea from China – the Dartmouth, the Beaver, and the Eleanor – and dumped 342 chest of tea into Boston Harbor. It took more than 3 hours for the 100 colonists to dump the more than 90,000 lbs. of tea into the harbor. The tea in Boston Harbor that day would be worth about $1,000,000 in today’s money.
On December 16th the Untied States of America celebrates the 250th anniversary of our rebellion against the King of England but today on Christ the King Sunday we must acknowledge our rebellion against the King of all Kings; the King of creation. Today is Christ the King Sunday – the last Sunday on the church calendar. A new liturgical calendar year begins next Sunday with the start of Advent and will end next year on Christ the King Sunday. Christ the King Sunday is kind of like the New Year’s Eve of the church calendar; we end each liturgical year with the celebration of the Kingship of the Lord Jesus Christ.
This past week in our church Scripture reading plan we read through the book of Judges. And the book of Judges ends with the refrain we just read together – In those days there was no king in Israel. Everyone did what was right in his own eyes. Judges is a microcosm of the history of humanity’s rebellion against God and our need for a king. So on this Christ the King Sunday 2023 we’re going to look at (1) the reason we need a King; (2) who the rightful King is; and (3) the right response to our King.
The Reason We Need A King
The first thing we need to acknowledge is the reason we need a King. When God created the world he created Adam in his image to be God’s priest-king on earth. Adam was given dominion over the garden and commanded to take dominion of the entire world – And God blessed them. And God said to them, “Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth and subdue it, and have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over every living thing that moves on the earth.” (Gen 1.28). Theologians have referred to this royal priestly work of Adam as his federal headship; Adam was the federal head of humanity. He was the first man and he was to be God’s priest-king, ruling over humanity for God and interceding between humanity and God.
But Genesis 3 tells us that Adam rebelled against creator God and fell in sin. Because Adam sinned now all humans are born with a sin nature that causes us to sin. We confessed so earlier in the confession and pardon – “we confess that we have sinned against God in thought, word, and deed, by what we have done and by what we have left undone; we have not loved God with our whole heart, we have not loved our neighbor as ourselves.” Pastor Mike read from 1st John 1.8, which says if we say we have no sin we deceive ourselves and the truth is not in us. Romans 3.10 says that none is righteous. Romans 3.23 says that all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God. Ephesians 2.1 says that we were dead in our trespasses and sins.
The problem for humanity after Adam’s fall is not only that we are all guilty sinners but that our priest-king, our federal head, was also a guilty sinner. But in Genesis 3.15 God gave Adam a promise that there would be another priest-king who would come and lift us up from Adam’s fall. There would be a new federal head of humanity. The seed of the woman would crush the head of the serpent.
And the biblical narrative and redemptive history reveal why the first gospel promise of Genesis 3.15 is so good and so needed because we are so bad. From Cain and Abel to the flood to the tower of babel to the dysfunction of the patriarchs to the enslavement in Egypt to the golden calf idolatry and the complaining in the wilderness through the conquest of the Promised Land the saga of sin reaches a climax in Israel by the end of the book of Judges. The book of Judges ends with the story of a man who takes his concubine to a village of the tribe of Benjamin. The men of Benjamin want to sexually abuse the man but he gives them his concubine instead and they sexually abuse her until she dies. Then the man who avoided the mob takes his dead concubine back to his home, chops up her body, and sends pieces of her to all of the tribes of Israel. And all who saw it said, “Such a thing has never happened or been seen from the day that the people of Israel came up out of the land of Egypt until this day” (Jud 19.30).
And then, of course, the book of Judges ends with the refrain we read at the beginning of the sermon – In those days there was no king in Israel. Everyone did what was right in his own eyes. The Holy Spirit reminds us here that the core of the problem of humanity’s sin is that we do not have a righteous king to rule over us and intercede on our behalf. The book of Samuel immediately follows the book of Judges and this is where Israel gets a king to hopefully solve this problem but more importantly, theologically this is where we see the shadow of the fulfillment of the Genesis 3.15 promise. Saul becomes Israel’s first king (ironically he’s from the tribe of Benjamin) but as we know Saul rebelled against yhwh and didn’t believe God’s promises and Saul was rejected (1st Sam 15).
Then David is anointed king and David is a shadow of the true and final king. David is called a man after God’s own heart (1st Sam 13.14) and David ruled for what, even to this day, would be considered the golden age of Israel’s kingdom. But David sinned in an egregious and devastating manner. David destroyed his family and Solomon also lived a life of avarice and sexual sin. So clearly David and Solomon were not the fulfillment of the Genesis 3.15 promise. After Solomon the kingdom of Israel devolves into idolatry, child sacrifice and sexual immorality until God exiled them from the land and Israel has not had a king on the throne in Jerusalem since.
The Rightful King
As the Old Testament comes to a close Israel and the rest of humanity are still waiting for the priest-king of Genesis 3.15 to arrive; we were still awaiting the new federal head of humanity. But as we turn to the pages of the New Testament we turn from the pages of promise to fulfillment. Matthew’s Gospel begins with a genealogy that takes us from Abraham through King David to the Lord Jesus Christ. The opening words of the New Testament are: The book of the genealogy of Jesus Christ, the son of David, the son of Abraham (Matt 1.1).
The New Testament could not be more explicit that The Lord Jesus is the fulfillment of the Genesis 3.15 promise. Jesus is the last Adam; the true and final federal head of humanity. Jesus is the true and final king; he is the fulfillment of the Davidic covenant, the son of David. Last week Pastor Bobby preached on the preeminence of Jesus Christ from Colossians 1. Philippians 2 says that God has highly exalted [Jesus] and bestowed on him the name that is above every name, so that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father (Phil 2.9-11).
Jesus is God’s rightful king because he is the Son of God, the eternal 2nd person of the Holy Trinity who was conceived by the Holy Spirit and born of the virgin Mary. Because Jesus was conceived by the Holy Spirit and born of a virgin he did not inherit the sin nature from Adam. Jesus is truly human but he has no sin nature. And so Jesus of Nazareth never sinned in thought, word, or deed. Jesus never sinned by what he did or by what he left undone. Jesus always loved God with his whole heart and Jesus always loved his neighbor as himself.
Because Jesus never sinned, he never broke God’s Law, he never broke 1 of the 10 commandments in thought, word, or deed, he never rebelled against God, Jesus earned righteous standing before God in the place of the elect. And when Jesus died on the cross as the spotless lamb he paid the penalty for the sins of the elect. God told Adam the day Adam ate of the fruit of the tree he would surely die (Gen 2.17). Romans 6.23 says the wages of sin is death. Jesus had to die to pay the penalty for sinners.
But death only has power to hold us because we’re guilty but Jesus wasn’t guilty so death couldn’t hold him. So on the 3rd day the Lord Jesus Christ resurrected from the dead as the new federal head of humanity. Jesus is the 1st born of the dead. Jesus is the true and final priest-king, which was made evident by his ascension to the right hand of God the Father almighty. Jesus has been in session ruling and reigning as the king of the church and all of creation for over 2,000 years now and one day he will return to raise the dead, judge the world, and make all things new.
The Right Response To Our King
Because Jesus became king through his life, death, burial, and resurrection, and because Christ ascended to the right hand of God the Father almighty, and because King Jesus has been ruling and reigning for 2,000 years, and because Jesus will return to judge the living and the dead, there is only one reasonable response. There’s an old Christian hymn called, “Trust and Obey” – “Trust and obey for there’s no other way to happy in Jesus but to trust and obey.” The only reasonable response to the good news of Jesus Christ is to trust and obey. We must trust King Jesus and we must obey King Jesus.
The first and most important way that we trust Christ is through repentance and faith; you must repent and believe the gospel. To repent means to confess your sin and turn from your sin. Repentance means to agree with what the Bible says about God’s holiness and your sin and then to turn away from your sin and toward the refuge of Christ. If you do repent it is proof that God has given you the gift of faith. How do you know if you have genuine faith?
The Reformed tradition has long defined faith in terms of 3 facets – knowledge, assent, and trust. Faith begins with the knowledge that God is holy, that you are a sinner, and that Jesus lived without sin, died in your place, was buried, and rose again on the third day for you and for your salvation. But knowledge alone cannot save you; there are many atheists who know what Scripture teaches about the gospel. You must also assent to the validity of these truth claims. You must actually believe that God is holy, that you are a sinner who deserves hell and that the life, death, burial, and resurrection of the Lord Jesus Christ is your only hope in life and death.
But even assent with knowledge falls short of saving faith because the key element of faith is trust. You must transfer your trust to Christ alone. You must place the full weight of your trust on the promises of God fulfilled in Jesus Christ. You must rest in the hope that everything the Bible says about Jesus is true. You must approach Christ as a deer approaches a stream – with acknowledgement of the reality that you have nothing to offer him other than the fact that without him you are dead.
And then after you believe you must continue to exercise that trust for the rest of your life. Jesus is king and we must live as such. Because Jesus is king we can trust that he works everything for good for those called according to his purpose (Rom 8.28) even when we can’t see it. Because Christ reigns we can cast all of our anxieties on him because he cares for us (1st Pet 5.7). Because Jesus is sovereign we can look at how he feeds the birds and clothes the flowers and we can pray, “Give us this day our daily bread,” with full confidence that he rejoices to provide for his children. Because Christ sovereignly rules we can rest in the promise that he will walk with us through the valley of the shadow of death (Ps 23).
Because Jesus is king we must trust and we must also obey. The sovereign kingship of the Lord Jesus Christ demands our obedience. Christ has spoken fully and finally through his Word, the Holy Scriptures and we must obey him. We must obey the Bible even when the world, the flesh, and the devil entice us to do otherwise. We must obey even when we’re told we’re on the “wrong side of history.” We must obey even if it costs us our reputation, our relationships, our finances.
The fact that Jesus is the king of the world means that what we’re doing isn’t merely a cultural religious tradition or an arbitrary worldview. The fact that Jesus is king means that there is one man in the history of the world who is right. He did what God required and God anointed him king. He is in charge and one day he will return and people who don’t trust him will go to hell. The fact that Jesus is king means there are eternal consequences to whether or not you trust the gospel of King Jesus.
Conclusion
The city of Boston has been celebrating the 250th anniversary of the Boston Tea Party all year. The festivities will continue into December with reenactments, feasts, and probably a lot of tea to celebrate America’s rebellion against our former king. In a way we do the same thing every year with Christ the King Sunday. In fact, we do the same thing every single Sunday.
We’re not celebrating our rebellion against the King of kings but we are acknowledging our rebellion and celebrating the good news that the King saves us anyway. King Jesus saves us through his life, death, and resurrection and we celebrate that with a feast that reenacts this good news. The bread – his body broken for us; the wine – his blood shed for us. We paused, as Americans to give thanks this past Thursday, but as Christians we give thanks every week; that’s what Eucharist means – to give thanks. And so on this Christ the King 2023 we take the Eucharist and we raise a glass for the skull-crushing priest-king sitting at the right hand of God. Happy Christ the King Sunday!