Bill Klem was the father of baseball umpires: colorful, judicious, and dignified. He was passionate about the game, which he officiated for 37 years, including 18 world series. He was the first umpire to use arm signals while working behind home plate and became known as “the Old Arbitrator”, because of his keen eye for calling balls and strikes.
On one such occasion, as he crouched and readied behind the plate, the pitcher threw the ball, the batter didn't swing, and, for just an instant, Bill said nothing. The batter turned and snorted, “Okay, so what was it, a ball or a strike?” To which Bill responded, “Sonny, it ain't nothing 'till I call it.” (David Sturt, Great Work, McGraw Hill, 2013, page 139; www.Preaching Today.com)
Bill Klem had absolute authority on the ballfield, an authority most players accepted, because of his integrity and skill.
Jesus, our Lord, has absolute authority over all of creation, but many don’t want to accept it, even though His integrity and skill far exceeds that of any man.
On the first Palm Sunday nearly 2,000 years ago, Jesus presented Himself as Israel’s King. On that day, the crowds shouted, “Hosanna to the Son of David! Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord!” (Matthew 21:9). But just a few days later, that same crowd was shouting, “Crucify Him! Crucify Him!” (Matthew 27:22-23).
They didn’t want Him as their King like many people today, perhaps even some of you. You’re not too sure about letting Jesus have absolute authority in your life, because you’re not too sure about what He would do with your life if you let Him take charge. You’re not too sure about what kind of King He would be.
Well, there is a psalm which describes what kind of King Jesus will be when He comes again to rule from King David’s throne. The psalm is actually a prayer that Solomon wrote for his son who was to succeed him on the throne.
Solomon was asking God to make his boy a great king, but if you remember your Biblical history, you know that Solomon’s son was a great disappointment. Through his own folly and pride, he ended up dividing the nation, and Israel began its downward spiral towards captivity and destruction.
In the meantime, Israel prayed this prayer for each succeeding king, on the day of his coronation. Even so, each king fell short of their expectations. Each king was a disappointment to some degree or another, because there is only One King who can meet every expectation of this psalm. And that’s our Lord and Savior, Jesus, the Messiah!
If you have your Bibles, I invite you to turn with me to that psalm: Psalm 72, Psalm 72, where we see the kind of King Jesus will be.
Psalm 72:1-4 Give the king your justice, O God, and your righteousness to the royal son! May he judge your people with righteousness, and your poor with justice! Let the mountains bear prosperity for the people, and the hills, in righteousness! May he defend the cause of the poor of the people, give deliverance to the children of the needy, and crush the oppressor! (ESV)
It is very clear, when Jesus reigns…
HE IS A RIGHTEOUS KING.
He is a just and fair ruler, who will make everything right. The right people will be rewarded, and the wrong people will be punished.
Jesus will crush the oppressor, vs.4 says. He will destroy evil men and tyrants, who seem to get away with murder all the time.
Now, our liberal and postmodern world hates the idea of such judgment, but N. T. Wright reminds us that “throughout the Bible God's coming judgment is a good thing, something to be celebrated, longed for, yearned over. It causes people to shout for joy and the trees of the field to clap their hands. In a world of systematic injustice, bullying, violence, arrogance, and oppression, the thought that there might come a day when the wicked are firmly put in their place and the poor and weak are given their due is the best news there can be. Faced with a world in rebellion, a world full of exploitation and wickedness, a good God must be a God of judgment.” (N. T. Wright, Surprised by Hope, HarperOne, 2008, p. 137; www.PreachingToday.com)
And Jesus will execute that judgment fairly when He comes to reign and rule on this earth.
Jesus will crush the oppressor, and He will cause the righteous to flourish. Under Jesus’ reign, good people will prosper and do well.
Psalm 72:5-7 May they fear you while the sun endures, and as long as the moon, throughout all generations! May he be like rain that falls on the mown grass, like showers that water the earth! In his days may the righteous flourish, and peace abound, till the moon be no more! (ESV)
Recently, we’ve enjoyed the spring rains after a time of real drought. This is a beautiful time of year watching the brown earth turn into a luscious green. You see, the grass flourishes in the rain, and that’s exactly what the righteous will do under Christ’s reign.
There is so much injustice today. The wicked are rewarded and the righteous are penalized. But when Jesus comes to reign, the tables will be turned. The wicked will be punished and the righteous will prosper. Jesus is unlike any king or judge we have today.
Just a few years ago (2010), three researchers from the United States and Israel decided to test the legal adage that justice equals “what the judge ate for breakfast.” The research team tracked the rulings of eight judges in over 1,100 parole-board hearings over 10 months. The results overwhelmingly led them to the following conclusion: the chances of a prisoner being granted parole depended on the time of day that the judge heard the case. To put it bluntly, the judges' ability to make decisions was about as reliable as a kindergartner who needs a snack break. These were not inexperienced judges either. Each of them had an average 22 years of experience.
Prisoners' odds for getting their parole granted started out high in the morning right after breakfast. About 65 percent of the prisoners were granted a parole. Then for the next few hours, the chances of getting a favorable parole hearing started to plummet. This was followed by a cycle of peaks and valleys that repeated itself throughout the day. Prisoners' chances of parole leapt back up to 65 percent at two distinct times: right after the judges' mid-morning snack and again after lunch. (Meredith Melnick, “When Justice Is Served so Is Lunch,” Time, 4-14-11; www.PreachingToday.com)
That’s the way it is with human judges and rulers. Try as they might, they’re not always completely fair and just. Not Jesus! He is a righteous King, who crushes the oppressor and causes the righteous to flourish. More than that…
JESUS IS A REIGNING KING.
He has absolute control. Everything and everyone will be under His rule.
Psalm 72:8-11 May he have dominion from sea to sea, and from the River to the ends of the earth! May desert tribes bow down before him, and his enemies lick the dust! May the kings of Tarshish and of the coastlands render him tribute; may the kings of Sheba and Seba bring gifts! May all kings fall down before him, all nations serve him! (ESV)
When Jesus reigns, He will take charge over everyone. He will control kings and rulers with power. And He will control those who are a power unto themselves – the desert tribes that answer to no one (vs.9).
I think of the primitive tribes all over the world of which nobody has ever heard. They reside in countries, which have a government, but that government does not in any way control the lives of the people in those hidden tribes. Those tribes have their own law. They have their own customs, and no government tells them what they can and cannot do.
Not so, when Jesus comes again. He will reign even over the hidden peoples of the earth, the people that no other government could ever touch.
He will be a true king over all the earth, even over His enemies. Everyone will submit to Him. Every knee will bow and every tongue will confess that Jesus is Lord, to the glory of God, the Father. Jesus will be treated with the respect He deserves, not like people treated Him in the First Century or like people treat Him today.
In the 1840’s a court case based in Chicago captured the attention of the entire nation. It centered on the patenting of farm equipment invented by Cyrus McCormick and was called “The Reaper Case.” So much was at stake that high powered legal stars from the East Coast were hired to take on the case. However, the judge was from Illinois, so the Ivy League trained lawyers decided to add a local lawyer to their legal team. After working their networks, they found an obscure, small-town lawyer to join their high-powered team.
When the small-town lawyer showed up, the high-powered, sophisticated Ivy League lawyers were stunned. He was poorly dressed and disheveled. He spoke with a strong small town accent and used folksy vernacular phrases. In their minds, he was a country bumpkin, so one of the team's leading lawyers, a man named Edwin Stanton, told his colleagues in the small-town lawyer's presence, “Let's do away with this ape.”
Then they tried to dump him. They would have meals without him. They would tell him the wrong times for the court hearings, so that when he arrived the court case would have already started.
Stanton won the case. He went on to become one of the leading lights in the American legal profession and politics. As a matter of fact, he became the Secretary of War during the Civil War, ending up working for the one he called “ape.” It was Abraham Lincoln, whose incredible significance was not known until the very last years of his life. (Stewart Ruch III, Sermon "When Small Is Great," www.PreachingToday.com)
That’s the way it will be when Jesus comes again to rule and reign on this earth. Those who despised Him will bow down before Him. Jesus will rule over the whole earth! He is a righteous King. He is a reigning King. And third…
JESUS IS A RESCUING KING.
He delivers the needy. He saves those who cry for help.
Psalm 72:12-14 For he delivers the needy when he calls, the poor and him who has no helper. He has pity on the weak and the needy, and saves the lives of the needy. From oppression and violence he redeems their life, and precious is their blood in his sight. (ESV)
Unlike many tyrants, Jesus cares about the needs of His people. He feels their pain and rescues them from it.
J. Wallace Hamilton (a famous preacher in the mid 1900’s) used to tell about a mother cat, with a baby kitten in her mouth, trying unsuccessfully to get across a busy New York City intersection. She would meander timidly out into the traffic and then dart back to the curb when nearly hit by a passing car. A traffic policeman in the center of the intersection, seeing her plight, thrust up his hands to stop traffic in both directions. The anxious cat scampered across to the other side and disappeared down an alley.
Hamilton pointed out that the cat had no idea that the authority of the New York City Police Department had been called upon to enable her to get safely across the street. Then he added, “I wonder how many times the mighty hand of God goes up to get us safely to where he wants us to be and we're not even aware of it.” (Bob Russell, “Does God Notice a Sore Tooth?” The Southeast Outlook, 4-30-15; www.PreachingToday.com)
That’s a beautiful picture of the kind of King Jesus is! He uses His authority not to bully the weak, but to save them. He cares for the needy. He pities the vulnerable, and He rescues those who cannot save themselves.
In Jeffrey Eugenides's novel The Marriage Plot, Mitchell, one of the characters, moves to India as a young man to volunteer. After a couple of weeks, he is faced with a man who has massively defecated in his own bed. In the midst of the chaos, Mitchell suddenly cannot stand it. Despite knowing he will forever regret this, he turns away from the wretch he should be taking care of, runs out of the building, scoops up his belongings and escapes by train.
Even those with the best of intentions find that there are limits to their care. There are things they cannot stand. There are depths into which they cannot plunge.
But not for Jesus. When He came to rescue us, He came down from heaven. More than that, He entered into the saddest and lowest of all human conditions. He experienced grief, betrayal, and torture. Then he died in the worst way possible: his unimaginable physical pain was accompanied by the mental anguish of being forsaken by His Heavenly Father. My friends, there is no darkness into which a person can descend that Jesus has not already descended. (Victor Lee Austin, "The God Who Took My Wife Away," The Wall Street Journal, 9-15-16; www.PreachingToday.com)
This last week, one of my online students wrote me, saying, “I work with victims of different types of violence such as sexual assault (children, adolescents, and adult victims), child abuse, and domestic violence.” Then she asked the question, “Why does God let bad things happen to good people, especially to children?”
I had asked the students to identify a very real issue they were dealing with at work or in their personal lives. I then assign them a passage of Scripture to study and apply to their lives over the course of the six-week class. Well, this is the issue one of my students, a nurse, identified.
What do you say to such a problem? Well, the only answer is the cross. If there was ever an example of unjust cruelty and abuse, it is the cross of Christ.
And that is God's answer to the problem of evil. God is not aloof to unjust pain. He is not uncaring or unable to deal with it. On the contrary, He Himself became a man so He could enter our pain to deliver us from it. Out of all the religions in the world, only the Bible reveals a God who personally suffered like His creatures (and even more so).
However, the cross is not the end of the story! Three days later, Jesus rose from the grave, having conquered sin, death and pain. As such, His resurrection points to the glorious future of all who put their trust in Him.
Jesus entered our pain to save us from it. He took on our sin and suffered in our place. Then He rose again, and now He offers eternal life to all, an eternity free from all pain.
All you need to do is trust Him with your life. Don’t be afraid to submit to Jesus as Lord of your life. Don’t be afraid to let Him be YOUR King, because He is a righteous King; He is a reigning King; He is a rescuing King. And finally…
JESUS IS A RICH KING.
He is a wealthy monarch. In other words, He not only cares for His people, He has the resources to care for them, as well.
Psalm 72:15-16 Long may he live; may gold of Sheba be given to him! May prayer be made for him continually, and blessings invoked for him all the day! May there be abundance of grain in the land; on the tops of the mountains may it wave; may its fruit be like Lebanon; and may people blossom in the cities like the grass of the field! (ESV)
Now wait a minute. Grain doesn’t grow on the top of mountains. In fact, nothing does. But under Jesus rule, even in the most barren places on earth, there will be an abundance of grain.
Psalm 72:17 May his name endure forever, his fame continue as long as the sun! May people be blessed in him, all nations call him blessed! (ESV)
Jesus’ name, His reputation, will earn Him the respect of the world. Jesus is a rich king – rich in wealth, rich in food, and rich in fame. And as such, He is well able to care for his own.
In a recent issue of Christianity Today (January 2013), a Muslim man describes his commitment to follow Isa al Masih, Jesus the Messiah. Surprisingly, a rather “ordinary” miracle caused this man to open his heart to Jesus. Here's how he described the miracle:
“One night the only food my wife and I had was a small portion of macaroni. My wife prepared it very nicely. Then one of her friends knocked on the door. I told myself, The macaroni is not sufficient for even the two of us, so how will it be enough for three of us? But because we have no other custom, we opened the door, and she came in to eat with us.
“While we were eating, the macaroni started to multiply; it became full in the bowl. I suspected that something was wrong with my eyes, so I started rubbing them. I thought maybe my wife hid some macaroni under the small table, so I checked, but there was nothing. My wife and I looked at each other, but because the guest was there we said nothing.
“Afterward I lay down on the bed, and as I slept, Isa came to me and asked me, ‘Do you know who multiplied the macaroni?’ I said, ‘I don't know.’ He said, ‘I am Isa al Masih [Jesus, the Messiah]. If you follow me, not only the macaroni but your life will be multiplied.’” (Gene Daniels, "Worshipping Jesus in the Mosque," Christianity Today, January-February 2013; www.PreachingToday.com)
Jesus, the King, wants to do the same for you. He not only promises to supply all your needs according to His riches in glory (Philippians 4:19); He wants to multiply your life, as well.
Please, don’t hesitate to follow Him. Don’t hesitate to submit to Him as YOUR Lord. For Jesus is a great King! He is a righteous King. He is a reigning King. He is a rescuing King, and He is a rich King. Let Him by YOUR King today?
