The King And The Covenant
Sermon
Daring To Hope
Sermons For Pentecost (Last Third)
This is the last Sunday in the church year, and as typically happens at year's end, our attention is drawn in two directions. We look back today at where we have come to arrive at Christ the King Sunday, but we also look ahead into the future - in this case, the ultimate future of a world in God's hands. Over the last eight weeks our first lesson texts have told us stories of hope. We've looked at Job and his journey from hopelessness to confidence in God's wisdom, at Ruth and Naomi and how God delivered them from poverty and despair, at Hannah, who received hope in the form of a son after years of a childless marriage. We've also read from the prophet Isaiah, who brought encouragement to the people of Isaiah when they were oppressed.
Today's first lesson is a reading from the story of King David. In a way David's story naturally follows and sums up the other stories. It displays the same belief that God takes care of his people and provides for their salvation. Besides that, David was the great-grandson of Ruth and Boaz, and Hannah's son Samuel was the prophet who crowned him king.
Yet this text is different from the other texts in this series. In this story, David doesn't receive hope through God's words and actions as Job, Ruth and Hannah did; nor does David announce hopeful news to the Israelites about better times to come, as Isaiah did. In today's lesson David himself is the sign of hope. The life of David became a powerful symbol of hope for the nation of Israel, and the house of David - the line of kings that descended from him - was an enduring sign of God's covenant with his people.
It might seem odd that the Old Testament put such stock in the king of Israel. In our day we're suspicious of the power and character of rulers. We all know the saying, "Power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely." When we think of an absolute ruler we're likely to think of such recent examples as Ceausescu, Qaddafi, Saddam Hussein or Castro. In nations like Britain, the monarchy remains tolerable because the power of the king or queen is limited. In our country, it has become fashionable during the last couple of political decades to think of government as the scourge of the people rather than as a force for salvation.
The Israelites felt ambivalence about the monarchy, too. Many of them had resisted the movement to crown a king, and the first king - Saul - had been a mixed blessing at best. But David was different. He was devout. He kept the worship of God at the center of the people's national identity. He was wise and just. Most important, he made Israel a mighty nation, just as God had promised it would be. David took a bunch of semi-settled tribes and united them, and then finished their conquest of the Promised Land.
Surely, it seemed to the Israelites, David was sent by God to fulfill his promise. The reign of such a king, our text says, was "like the light of morning, like the sun rising on a cloudless morning, gleaming from the rain on the grassy land." It showed that God directed world events. It also showed that God kept his word, and that God valued honesty and justice. Those two implications of David's rule - that God guided history according to his own will, and that God was just and faithful - filled the people with confidence.
It's hard not to envy those folks, isn't it? Wouldn't it be refreshing to be governed by someone who saw his or her office as an extension of God's mercy and justice, who always represented the interests of the people who most needed representation, who did the right thing without regard to personal consequences, whose every act gave us hope? Instead, office holders and office seekers in our nation seem more likely to view political office as an extension of their personal ambition, to represent the interests of the people who can do them the most good, to do what they think will make them popular, without regard to the long-term good of the community. Our politicians try to win our support by making us afraid of what will happen if we don't support them, rather than by offering us an honest hope for a better society. It's hard to imagine any of our leaders being compared to the sun rising on a cloudless morning after a refreshing rain on the grassy land, except in their own campaign speeches.
Come to think of it, King David wasn't perfect either. He suffered some famous lapses in both his political and his moral judgment. But his reign created a vision for his people, an idea of what was possible, an image of an ideal king who would rule in perfect justice and godliness. And it served as an important symbol and rallying point for the people of Israel. From David's day onward, the Israelites' hope for the fulfillment of God's promises to them centered around the figure of the king who would preserve and perfect the heritage of David.
That's what today's text refers to when it says God has made an everlasting covenant with the house of David. As long as a descendant of David sat on the throne of Israel, the people had proof that God kept his promise not only to the king, but to all his people. The king was the sign of the covenant.
The flaw in that symbolism was that the monarchy didn't last forever. The kingdom split and eventually fell, and the dynasty of David disappeared. Yet, the vision of the ideal king who would fulfill God's promises never faded, and the people began to hope all the more fervently for the day when that king would come to them. If God truly kept his covenant there would still be another king from David's line, who would be perfect in justice and godliness, and whose reign would last forever.
The Messiah, they called him, the Christ, the anointed one. The longer they waited the more they came to realize that he would be a different sort of king, a king whose throne was in heaven and who would defeat not only Israel's Canaanite enemies but all the forces of evil.
The good news for us today, of course, is that the king has come. God's anointed one has been crowned, and has become the proof and sign of God's covenant with his people. The new king was a descendant of David and was born in David's hometown, Bethlehem. Astrologers saw his royal sign in the stars, crowds of people hailed him as the son of David, Simon Peter announced him as the Christ, Mark wrote the story of his life, calling it "the beginning of the gospel of Jesus Christ, the Son of God."
Jesus Christ is the ideal king who carries on God's covenant with his people. When the monarchy of Israel disappeared from history, God's promise didn't disappear with it. It was transformed, enlarged, renewed, extended to the whole world. In our second lesson today in Hebrews 12 we're told that just as David conquered Mount Zion and made Jerusalem his capital, Jesus brings us to the Mount Zion of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem; and just as David was the sign of God's covenant with Israel, Jesus brings a new covenant.
Jesus, talking about resurrection, used the image of a seed, which is put in the ground and dies only to sprout up as a wonderful new living thing. What is true for individuals because of Jesus' resurrection is true for the whole universe because of Jesus' rule as king: The earthly dynasty of David has been restored as the heavenly kingdom of Christ.
And the reign of our king confirms for us what David's rule meant to the people of Israel. First, it assures us that God is in control of events in history. Nothing can stop God from accomplishing what he sets out to accomplish - not the failings of any earthly kings, not the fall of Israel, not even the death of his new anointed one on a cross. God gave Job and Ruth the same assurance: that no matter what frustrations worldly events might throw in the way, we can depend on God to bring our lives - and world history - to a destination of his own choosing.
But the heavenly triumph of Christ our king adds something to that assurance. For Job, Ruth, Hannah and David the only hope for redemption lay in this life. Suffering and need that were not relieved in the present age were simply unrelieved. Isaiah announced that there was a better world to come in which all grief would be transformed into joy, and Jesus brought that world into being.
The other thing David's dynasty guaranteed to the Israelites was God's justice. In an ideal nation with an ideal king, good would always overcome evil, the strong would help the weak, the innocent wouldn't suffer, everyone would be provided for. Job questioned God's justice but never stopped believing in it; David's rise to power and Israel's victory over its enemies seemed to reconfirm God's justice, but didn't last. Now, though, we can be certain that God is a just God, and the king who rules in God's name is a just king. God's enemies can't defeat God or us; the people of God will enjoy the fruits of their faithfulness. In Jesus absolute power is made absolutely incorruptible.
The closing chapters of Revelation - the final words of hope in the Bible - tell of Christ's triumph, describing him as King of kings and Lord of lords, and as the Lamb that sits on the throne with God. (Revelation 7:17; 19:16; 22:1) We may take hope from God's promises to us, we may trust that God knows what he is doing, we may believe that our lives will work out the way God wants them to, we may rejoice that God hears our prayers, we may look forward to joining God's heavenly banquet. But our final hope - our greatest hope, the guarantee of all our other hopes - is that Jesus Christ, in whose name we are baptized, is the King of kings. That hope is invincible; that hope alone will save us.
Today's first lesson is a reading from the story of King David. In a way David's story naturally follows and sums up the other stories. It displays the same belief that God takes care of his people and provides for their salvation. Besides that, David was the great-grandson of Ruth and Boaz, and Hannah's son Samuel was the prophet who crowned him king.
Yet this text is different from the other texts in this series. In this story, David doesn't receive hope through God's words and actions as Job, Ruth and Hannah did; nor does David announce hopeful news to the Israelites about better times to come, as Isaiah did. In today's lesson David himself is the sign of hope. The life of David became a powerful symbol of hope for the nation of Israel, and the house of David - the line of kings that descended from him - was an enduring sign of God's covenant with his people.
It might seem odd that the Old Testament put such stock in the king of Israel. In our day we're suspicious of the power and character of rulers. We all know the saying, "Power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely." When we think of an absolute ruler we're likely to think of such recent examples as Ceausescu, Qaddafi, Saddam Hussein or Castro. In nations like Britain, the monarchy remains tolerable because the power of the king or queen is limited. In our country, it has become fashionable during the last couple of political decades to think of government as the scourge of the people rather than as a force for salvation.
The Israelites felt ambivalence about the monarchy, too. Many of them had resisted the movement to crown a king, and the first king - Saul - had been a mixed blessing at best. But David was different. He was devout. He kept the worship of God at the center of the people's national identity. He was wise and just. Most important, he made Israel a mighty nation, just as God had promised it would be. David took a bunch of semi-settled tribes and united them, and then finished their conquest of the Promised Land.
Surely, it seemed to the Israelites, David was sent by God to fulfill his promise. The reign of such a king, our text says, was "like the light of morning, like the sun rising on a cloudless morning, gleaming from the rain on the grassy land." It showed that God directed world events. It also showed that God kept his word, and that God valued honesty and justice. Those two implications of David's rule - that God guided history according to his own will, and that God was just and faithful - filled the people with confidence.
It's hard not to envy those folks, isn't it? Wouldn't it be refreshing to be governed by someone who saw his or her office as an extension of God's mercy and justice, who always represented the interests of the people who most needed representation, who did the right thing without regard to personal consequences, whose every act gave us hope? Instead, office holders and office seekers in our nation seem more likely to view political office as an extension of their personal ambition, to represent the interests of the people who can do them the most good, to do what they think will make them popular, without regard to the long-term good of the community. Our politicians try to win our support by making us afraid of what will happen if we don't support them, rather than by offering us an honest hope for a better society. It's hard to imagine any of our leaders being compared to the sun rising on a cloudless morning after a refreshing rain on the grassy land, except in their own campaign speeches.
Come to think of it, King David wasn't perfect either. He suffered some famous lapses in both his political and his moral judgment. But his reign created a vision for his people, an idea of what was possible, an image of an ideal king who would rule in perfect justice and godliness. And it served as an important symbol and rallying point for the people of Israel. From David's day onward, the Israelites' hope for the fulfillment of God's promises to them centered around the figure of the king who would preserve and perfect the heritage of David.
That's what today's text refers to when it says God has made an everlasting covenant with the house of David. As long as a descendant of David sat on the throne of Israel, the people had proof that God kept his promise not only to the king, but to all his people. The king was the sign of the covenant.
The flaw in that symbolism was that the monarchy didn't last forever. The kingdom split and eventually fell, and the dynasty of David disappeared. Yet, the vision of the ideal king who would fulfill God's promises never faded, and the people began to hope all the more fervently for the day when that king would come to them. If God truly kept his covenant there would still be another king from David's line, who would be perfect in justice and godliness, and whose reign would last forever.
The Messiah, they called him, the Christ, the anointed one. The longer they waited the more they came to realize that he would be a different sort of king, a king whose throne was in heaven and who would defeat not only Israel's Canaanite enemies but all the forces of evil.
The good news for us today, of course, is that the king has come. God's anointed one has been crowned, and has become the proof and sign of God's covenant with his people. The new king was a descendant of David and was born in David's hometown, Bethlehem. Astrologers saw his royal sign in the stars, crowds of people hailed him as the son of David, Simon Peter announced him as the Christ, Mark wrote the story of his life, calling it "the beginning of the gospel of Jesus Christ, the Son of God."
Jesus Christ is the ideal king who carries on God's covenant with his people. When the monarchy of Israel disappeared from history, God's promise didn't disappear with it. It was transformed, enlarged, renewed, extended to the whole world. In our second lesson today in Hebrews 12 we're told that just as David conquered Mount Zion and made Jerusalem his capital, Jesus brings us to the Mount Zion of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem; and just as David was the sign of God's covenant with Israel, Jesus brings a new covenant.
Jesus, talking about resurrection, used the image of a seed, which is put in the ground and dies only to sprout up as a wonderful new living thing. What is true for individuals because of Jesus' resurrection is true for the whole universe because of Jesus' rule as king: The earthly dynasty of David has been restored as the heavenly kingdom of Christ.
And the reign of our king confirms for us what David's rule meant to the people of Israel. First, it assures us that God is in control of events in history. Nothing can stop God from accomplishing what he sets out to accomplish - not the failings of any earthly kings, not the fall of Israel, not even the death of his new anointed one on a cross. God gave Job and Ruth the same assurance: that no matter what frustrations worldly events might throw in the way, we can depend on God to bring our lives - and world history - to a destination of his own choosing.
But the heavenly triumph of Christ our king adds something to that assurance. For Job, Ruth, Hannah and David the only hope for redemption lay in this life. Suffering and need that were not relieved in the present age were simply unrelieved. Isaiah announced that there was a better world to come in which all grief would be transformed into joy, and Jesus brought that world into being.
The other thing David's dynasty guaranteed to the Israelites was God's justice. In an ideal nation with an ideal king, good would always overcome evil, the strong would help the weak, the innocent wouldn't suffer, everyone would be provided for. Job questioned God's justice but never stopped believing in it; David's rise to power and Israel's victory over its enemies seemed to reconfirm God's justice, but didn't last. Now, though, we can be certain that God is a just God, and the king who rules in God's name is a just king. God's enemies can't defeat God or us; the people of God will enjoy the fruits of their faithfulness. In Jesus absolute power is made absolutely incorruptible.
The closing chapters of Revelation - the final words of hope in the Bible - tell of Christ's triumph, describing him as King of kings and Lord of lords, and as the Lamb that sits on the throne with God. (Revelation 7:17; 19:16; 22:1) We may take hope from God's promises to us, we may trust that God knows what he is doing, we may believe that our lives will work out the way God wants them to, we may rejoice that God hears our prayers, we may look forward to joining God's heavenly banquet. But our final hope - our greatest hope, the guarantee of all our other hopes - is that Jesus Christ, in whose name we are baptized, is the King of kings. That hope is invincible; that hope alone will save us.
