" Then the entire council took Jesus over to Pilate, the governor. They began at once accusing him" This fellow has been leading our people. to ruin by telling them not to pay taxes to the Roman government and claiming he is our Messiah-a King.
"And he said to Jesus, Remember me, Jesus when you come as King! Jesus said to him, ' I tell you this: today you will be in Paradise with me.'
There are many pictures in the New Testament. These portrayals show the many sides of Jesus personality and ministry.
We tend to pick the ones that most meet our personal needs.
When we feel lost, we look to Jesus as our Savior.
When we feel guilty, we look to Jesus, the lamb of God that takes away the sins of the world
the suffering servant of Isaiah.
When we are seeking truth, we look to Jesus, the word of God in the flesh, the logos of God.
When we're feeling most acutely the gap between our humanity and God's majestic divinity,
we look to Jesus the "Son of God," as the bridge over troubled waters.
When we are feeling righteous on behalf of the oppressed, we look to Jesus as the angry prophet
who cleaned out the "Temple."
But what if you don't particularly feel lost, not particularly guilt-ridden, not obsessed with truth, not to far from God, and not too radical either? What do you find in Jesus if your just an average American who loves to be a winner, who comes away from the Sunday afternoon all aglow because his footballers have bested their opponents, or just want to feel good about yourself and life.
For you competitive, aggressive, take-charge kind of person there is another image of Jesus. I said there was an image of Christ for the winners of life as well as those lost. This one is depicted on the wall above the altar, the crowned figure of Jesus, Christ the King! For those of you who want to follow a big winner. Remember that triumphant Chorus from Handel's Messiah.
It really says it all: Hallelujah! For the Lord God omnipotent reigns.
The kingdom of this world is become the kingdom of our Lord.
George Frederick Handel has really captured the kingship of Christ in all its exciting grandeur and triumph. Let us focus on what it means to call Jesus Christ the King, which is similar to calling him Messiah-the anointed one.
First of all the Messiah's victory is foretold in the Bible, Jeremiah writes:
behold the days are coming, says the Lord, when I will raise up for David a righteous branch, and he shall reign as king and deal wisely, shall execute justice and righteousness in the land. In his days Judah will be saved, and Israel will dwell securely. (Jeremiah 23:5).
Those wise men from the east who came looking for the infant Jesus may have read of these words of Jeremiah and those of Isaiah 9;
For us a child is born,
To us a Son was given;
And the government shall be upon his shoulder,
And his name shall be called
"Wonderful counselor, Mighty God.
Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace."
Of the increase of his government and of peace
There shall be no peace.
upon the throne of David and over his kingdom
To establish it and uphold it.
With justice and righteousness from this time forth
and for evermore.
the Zeal of the lord of hosts will do this (V v.6-7).
They may have known these prophecies because they came to Jerusalem and Bethlehem, asking for this baby that was born King of the Jews! How that title was to haunt Jesus throughout his ministry! He played down the idea. He showed extreme reserve even in using the title "Messiah in relation to himself. He even considered some aspects of this political and military kingship to be demonic and satanic. To avoid the political image of king and Messiah, Jesus referred to himself as the 'son of man.' And yet they still wanted to make him king. When he was teaching, the people often came after him to make him a king. In John 6:15 we read; " Perceiving that they were about to come and take him by force to make him a king, Jesus withdrew again to the hills by himself."
King of the Jews! That title followed him into trials before Pilate, Herod, and the Sanhedrin.
When the Roman soldiers made Jesus the brunt of their sick humor, it was as a powerless king with thorns for a crown. And when Jesus went to the cross, here it was again... King of the
Jews. He never could shake off that old political bagged.
But what Jesus denied about himself as a political king and military messiah, he asserted a different kind of kingship, in a different kind of kingdom, in a different kind of way. He acted out the fulfillment of prophecy, especially that of Isaiah's suffering servant. When he rode into Jerusalem at the beginning of the Passover festivities , he was acting out the prophecy of Zechariah, in fact Matthews Gospel is aimed at showing how Jesus fulfilled the Old testament prophecy about the Messiah.
Jesus became a victorious king not in political and military takeover, but when he rose from the dead, and in so doing he defeated that most fearsome of human enemies, death itself with its horrid threat to our existence, sin, death,devil were defeated by Christ our victorious king in that later was called Easter.
Jesus may have won the victory and established the kingdom of God, but if you look around the world of ours its hard to see who it was that really won. It almost looks like Jesus lost, like all those skeptics of the resurrection have been claiming all along.
But there always was something in Jesus teachings that sounded incomplete and yet to be realized, So it is. A period of the it-is- finished of Jesus victory, but a sense but not quite yet. We live in the in between Jesus promises, in the presence of the high priests. " But I tell you hereafter that you will see the Son of man seated at the right hand of power, and coming in the clouds of heaven (Matt. 26:64).
So it is with Christ the king, that to be a Christian means many things to us... He is a savior to the losers, a forgiver to the guilty, the truth to the searcher, " the bridge over troubled waters to to the lonely;
a radical word of justice for the oppressed and.
as we come to know Jesus as our savior, forgiver, truth, bridge, and word, so we come to know him as " "OUR KING!"
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