The Very Present King

We often hear people say things like: “It isn’t fair,” or “Why did this happen to me?” These are pretty normal human emotions, yet all the same, they are also thinly veiled complaints against the Lord. Underneath it all, the thought peeks out: What difference does it make for me to serve the Lord if bad stuff is going to happen to me anyway?

TV sales-preachers take advantage of this human weakness. They tell you that you aren’t thinking right, that you just don’t have enough faith. If you’d just think positively, then good stuff will come your way they promise. I guess Jesus and the apostles were pretty negative thinkers. The Christians martyred in the first century of the church must have just had a gloomy outlook on life. And the 20th century has produced double the number of Christian martyrs than the previous 19 centuries combined. They were all just expecting the worst; they probably had a defeatist attitude anyway.

We live in a world that has been experiencing the side-effects of sin ever since Adam and Eve disobeyed the Lord and his commandment to not eat of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. Think as positively as you can and sin is still going to mess with your life—so much so that you may be tempted to say, What’s the use?

Think the way Joyce and Joel want you to think and you may still get laid off from work. You will still get old. You will probably have some health threatening illness or malady. Someone you love will die. And finally, you will too. So, what’s the use? Isn’t life futile; shouldn’t I just give in to despair?

Malachi’s grumblers were saying the same thing. “It is futile to serve God” (Malachi 3:14 NIV84). If we are honest, we might have felt the same way from time to time. When we think there should be some quid pro quo from God coming our way, and we do not get it the way we expected and when we wanted it, we can get discouraged, disillusioned, and maybe even give up.

But hear this: the Father hears those who continue to believe in him—even when life isn’t treating them the way they had hoped and prayed. The Lord listens to every word, cares about every pain, and saves those who fear, love, and trust him even when your best life now seems further out of reach than when you first believed in such nonsense as the power of positive thinking.

In today’s Psalm, the Lord is depicted as both shepherd and king. We are the sheep of his hand and the people of his pasture—his possession. We are cared for by this Shepherd King. That does not mean we will not suffer in life but it means that when a wolf attacks, his rod and his staff will comfort us. It means that when we are cut by sharp rocks in the green pasture that he will anoint us with oil. It means that when the evening of life comes, he will bring us into his fold and watch over us, and turn us out into the morning of eternity.

God has always cared for his flock, his kingdom. Our proper response is to come into his presence—into the sheep fold—with joy and thanksgiving and worship.

Is the creator of all things, he who holds all things together by the power of his word (Hebrews 1:3), not able to keep you? God is absolutely able, and has done it; he has already delivered you from the dark realm of death, and resettled you to his eternal kingdom of light and life. He has reconciled you to himself, having brought you near “by the blood” (Ephesians 2:13).

Now, in explaining of this verse, I apologize ahead of time. I am about to get word-nerdy and talk about things many of us will recall from our school years as times when our eyes glazed over. I hope this foray into English grammar will be brief enough that your eyes don’t glaze over and that you will benefit from this dive into the dative case of the biblical Greek.

The Greek en in that verse (“by the blood,” Ephesians 2:13) is translated as “by,” “through,” or “in,” and is to be read in a special way because it is in the dative case, and in this case (excuse the pun), the dative of means. I’m pretty sure I learned about this from Professor Lenski if you want to read about it in his commentary on Ephesians. There, en is used with the dative haimati (blood), which is the instrument of God’s great accomplishment. Because it is the dative of means, we are to understand en or “by” as movement beyond or above the earth. We have been transferred into the eternal kingdom by means of the blood of Christ. Through the shed blood of the Savior, God does indeed hold all things together, to the extent that even sinners are moved into and kept in his kingdom.

This means that all the time we’ve been waiting with our positive thoughts and misguided theology that get us nothing and nowhere, God has actually been doing something that accomplishes something better than a best life now and gets us to the best place possible in all of what God holds together by the power of his word.

What has he done? What has he accomplished? King Jesus has suffered for our sins, spilling his precious blood so that we may be delivered and transferred into the eternal kingdom of heaven. Why? Because lifeblood is the means of God’s forgiveness and salvation. There is only one way to get into the kingdom. It isn’t a smile. Not positive thinking. Blood. The blood a man. The blood of God. The blood of God in human flesh. The blood of the King.

But is this what we really want? If even God’s Son suffered and died, doesn’t this leave open the possibility or even the probability that life might have downs with its ups, illness as well as health, bad times mixed in with the good times, and finally even death? Who wants that?

I do.

You should too. This is life. As the old funeral liturgy proclaims, and the church has been singing for over a thousand years: Media vita in morte sumus. “In the midst of life we are in death.” To not experience all those bad things mixed in with the good things of life is to not have life at all. To wish it all away with a smile and a positive thought is a pipe dream. Worse, it is to believe you have no King, no Lord, no God.

When we put our hopes in a pleasant life, an American dream unburdened by the suffering that is so manifest, then have we not placed our hopes—indeed, our fear, love, and trust—in a different god than he who is the Lord of lords and the King of kings?

When we finally admit it, that life is not fair, that it is filled with problems no matter the happy face we put on it, then the tendency, when trouble comes, is to hide or, as Jesus has people saying to the mountains and the hills, to “fall on us” and “cover us.” When we can’t wish away our troubles, we hide from them.

But the response of the Christian should be much different. When trouble comes, as it always does, the faithful say the same words, but they do not say them to rocks and hills. They say them to Jesus. “Cover us!” Cover us, O blessed Rock (1 Corinthians 10:4), with the robe of your righteousness, with the garments of salvation (Isaiah 61:10). Then “we will not fear though the earth gives way, though the mountains be moved into the heart of the sea” (Psalm 46:2).

As we approach Advent and the days continue to shorten into shadows and we are reminded of the cold, darkness of the life that surrounds us, we are exhorted to be the people who wait for the dawn. For when the light of morning comes, we will discover that a King is in our midst. The particularly astute will say that he has always been among us. People of faith do not forget his presence, even in dark times. The King may seem to be yet far distant, but we are to continue in the faith—a faith that knows he will return and that he is already peculiarly present. For ours is not only a waiting hope but an existing hope. He is already our refuge and strength and very present help. Those who have faith in Christ, our already-King, a very present King, will be remembered by the returning King as faithful subjects of his kingdom. Indeed, they will be his sheep, his citizens and subjects, his very own family—even as they already are.