The King Sermon
Notes
Transcript
Introduction: The King Sermon
Introduction: The King Sermon
χριστῷ Κυρίου
Once upon a time, there was a young man in Israel named Saul. The Bible gives rare detail about his physical stature:
Handsome young man from a wealthy family
No one was more handsome in all the land. He was a head taller than every body.
This hunt would be the very first King of Israel.
He was the best Israel could offer… The cream of the crop: All the external boxes were checked.
And than along comes this shepherd boy named David…
As Saul ages, he represents what many kings after him will do: Turn away from God. While Saul ages into this evil person, David rises to fame in Israel with shouts of “Saul has slain his thousands but David has slain tens of thousands
But no matter how bad Saul was, no matter how many times Saul tried to hunt David down and kill him out of jealousy, David refused to fight back.
Why? Because Saul was the Lord’s anointed… That’s what David would call Saul. He wouldn’t call him King Saul, he would call him the Lord’s anoined, over and over and over again.
Actually, what he literally calls Saul is Yhwh’s messiach!
“The Lord’s Messiah” When the Old Testament was translated into the common language of Greek, they translated David saying “The Lord’s Christ.”
Saul was the best Israel could produce, but even with the title of ‘The Lord’s Christ’, he became one of the most tragic people in the Bible...
David, also as the Lord’s anoined, took Saul’s place as King, and we begin this morning by focusing on how David knew his place...
So we begin this morning by focusing on the KING WHO KNEW HIS PLACE...
The King who Knew his Place
King David, knew his place…
It is super important that out of all the people Peter could have brought up in this first sermon, he brings up David. King David: The revered, powerful, warrior king. He defeated the tens of thousands.
Unlike Saul, he had this rags to riches story:
Shepherd boy
Youngest out of other more qualified brothers.
He rises to fame: Slaying the Giant. Showing mercy to Saul.
He continually expanded Israel’s borders.
David was the Man! No other King could hold a scepter up against King David.
To remember David is to remember the glory days of Israel’s history. Power among the nations. Respectability. Dignity.
But David knew his place...
He knew he wasn’t all that and a box of chocolates...
Israel remembers him as their Greatest King, but what does Peter call him in verse 30?
David the Prophet:
David knew his place!
He knew he was an awful father.
He murdered his most faithful leader to get to his wife.
Despite David’s messed up life, perhaps even because of it, Peter claims KING David was a prophet, one who pointed beyond himself to Jesus:
30 Being therefore a prophet, and knowing that God had sworn with an oath to him that he would set one of his descendants on his throne, 31 he foresaw and spoke about the resurrection
Psalm 16 and Psalm 110:
Psalm 16:
When David wrote: “ 27 For you will not abandon my soul to Hades, or let your Holy One see corruption,” he wasn’t talking about himself! He was talking about Jesus! Because David knew his place. He knew he didn’t belong on the Christ Pedestal forever.
Psalm 110:
“ ‘The Lord said to my Lord, “Sit at my right hand”
Peter claims that again, David isn’t talking about himself: He was prophesying about his descendent!
David knew his place, and Peter knows this. He was a King, sure, but his life was still just a breathe. His personal reign was just a blink of history.
“And his place actually is just down the road, “ Peter says. His tomb is just down the road on the south side of Jerusalem!
It’s like Peter is saying: It’s time we crash down the pedestal below David. Stop lifting up what was… temporary and obsolete.
David was the best we’ve produced and all that’s left of him is a shell of a body.
David knew who he was, he knew his place, so while he was pointing beyond himself, history kept pointing back at him as the best they’ve ever produced...
While David is pushing up daisies, Israel revers him with rose colored glasses
Makes me think… Who would we consider humanity’s best!
Let’s consider a few:
If your name was Martin Luther, whether that be in the 16th C or 20th Century, you’re up there!
Non-violent protestor Mahatma Ghandi,
Poverty activities Mother Teresa
WWII hero Dietrick Bonhoeffer,
Eisenhower, JFK, Princess Diana, The Queen...
Or what about in pop culture over the last several decades:
The Beatles? Elvis Presley, Michael Jackson, Michael Jorden, Derek Jeter, Wayne Gretzky? Anyboday? Wayne?
Each one of them fall short of the glory of God...
Without the anointing of the Spirit, without being Little Christs right—Christians—their legacy falls short.
Even in just the past few days, a whole slew of allegations are coming out against a mammoth Christian leader who recently passed away. If any of these allegations are true, a man who had huge Christian influence, it seems, used his influence in really sinful ways.
One of my favourite songs is When Peace Like a River. The story of that song is famous. The author lost his girls out in a shipwreck and wrote that beautiful song in response that tragedy.
Turns out he becomes a rather tragic figure. He moved to Jerusalem to start a bazaar Christian cult. I found this out because I wanted to share with you in a sermon about his legacy after he wrote that song…
We’d rather turn a blind eye to the rest of the story because it reveals what every person on planet earth knows: We are broken—even the best we can produce—are broken.
This part of the sermon can just go on and on and on....
Why? Because our best still falls infinitely short of the glory of God...
Like Prophet David, they were the best we could produce and yet, they are all pushing up daisies while we stare at them with rose colored glasses...
All of us, even the best, follow death and all his friends as Coldplay writes...
And so Peter puts King David in his place, and says, David was a prophet, see, pointed beyond himself to focus on the King to come who won’t defeat a Goliath or more Philistines…
No, he prophecied about a King who will defeat death and all his friend!!
It’s to him we now turn...
The New King who Knew His Place
Like David, Jesus knew his place.
He wasn’t abandoned to Hades (NIV=Realm of the dead)
Didn’t experience decay when he died.
Raised up and exulted
24 God raised him up, loosing the pangs of death, because it was not possible for him to be held by it...
Peter literally brings up the issue of pregnancy in verse 24…
G. Bertram says this about v.24: “The abyss can no more hold the Redeemer than a pregnant woman can hold the child in her body.”
Death couldn’t hold Jesus, because death and all his friends, they are no match for Jesus! He is the King, and born from Mary, but conceived by the Holy Spirit.
Jesus was human, but wasn’t merely human, he was the King of kings. The best produced God himself! The only one who could defeat the enemy forever and ever!
Jesus was the Best God produced, which means he had infinite power over our brokenness and the power of death over us!
He is the Best Israel produced, and though they crucified him, Peter offers to them the way of the KING: Forgiveness...
Verse 36 Peter pleads with his audience:
36 Let all the house of Israel therefore know for certain that God has made him both Lord and Christ, this Jesus whom you crucified.”
Notice, Peter doesn’t say Lord and Savior, Peter says Lord and Christ to make sure they know that this Jesus is the Christ, translated as Messiah, the one of whom they’ve been waiting, the one David prophesied about, the one they need for salvation and forgiveness! They needed to know that Jesus is the Christ who reigns as the KING, because that’s what Christs are: They are Kings, anointed to RULE!
And so we’re going to conclude with how the audience responded to Peter:
What happens to the crowd? They are cut to the heart!
They ask what they must do? And Peter says repent and be baptized, in the name of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of your sins, and you too, will be anointed by the Spirit…
Why repent? Because they killed the Christ, and even though they committed the most heinous act of treason in human history, they didn’t just kill the best, they killed God’s best!
And yet, Peter suggests that God will forgive them
Why get baptized? Well, it’s a symbol of being anointed!
Most provocative statement Peter makes in this sermon.
See, baptism was a thing in the first century, and people who got baptized were outsiders, foreigners, Gentiles who were brought into the Israelite religion.
So to suggest that these Jews need to be baptized would have been like, “WHY? I’M ALREADY IN?”
But the Holy Spirit anointing makes for a new race, a new humanity.
One where the BEST is defined as the last, least, meek, humble, mild, the grieving, the poor, the poor in Spirit, the hungry and those who hunger for what’s right… The merciful, pure in heart...
Those who don’t slay the tens of thousands, but who pray for those who persecute you and who are asked to rejoice and be glad when others revile you.
And so when I reflect on the 3,000 converts who came to faith, I think about how desperate our world is right now to hear Peter’s witness about Jesus:
The best we produce will disappoint us… The best we produce will not last. The best we produce will never be good enough. The best we produce is filled broken promises, moral messiness, regretful histories…
And while our culture is looking in all the wrong places to find new Christs, while tribes mobilize themselves around their own versions of Kings, we have the only solution to this thirst for purpose and meaning, for this deep longing we all have to follow someone who will fill us with purpose.
There is a Christ Competition happening every single day, and perhaps you feel tugged within that competition.
But there is only one CHRIST, folks! One Lord. One Christ. Make him your center. Follow this Christ and His Kingdom.
Peter spoke into his context with a power message of purpose and 3,000 repented and were baptized.
Will you be that witness in 2020? Don’t reach for 3,000. Just reach one. Witness to one… About your Lord and your Christ.