Your King is Coming

Good morning, invite to open Bibles to Zechariah 9.

Hope you had a nice Thanksgiving, however it looked for you and your family and loved ones.

This morning, we begin our advent series that is called, “The Coming King.”

We spent a bit of time last week discussing the need for observing and celebrating Advent, but it boiled down to the need for slowing down, quieting ourselves, and readying ourselves to celebrate the incarnation of Jesus at Christmastime.

Over the past year or so, we have been working our way through Mark’s gospel, and one of the things that has stuck out to me is that it seemed like nobody had a great understanding of who the Messiah would be or how the Messiah would act.

To be fair, they understood some, but not all. They understood 2 Samuel 7 as a prophetic text that promised a coming ruler and a coming Kingdom that would last forever.

However, as we have frequently seen, they so often failed to understand the nature of such a king, believing that He would be a national hero, a mighty warrior who would free Israel from all foreign oppression.

Obviously, Jesus is not what they had in mind.

Because the disciples, the scribes, the crowds, and the religious leaders got it so wrong, I thought it would be interesting to see what the OT promised of this coming Messiah.

What is it that we should expect of Jesus when we contemplate His coming to dwell among humanity?

Our goal over the next four weeks is to see what was promised of the Messiah and how Jesus would fulfill such prophetic words, and we begin with Zechariah’s prophecy.

Read Zechariah 9:9- Rejoice greatly, O daughter of Zion! Shout aloud, O daughter of Jerusalem! Behold, your king is coming to you; righteous and having salvation is he, humble and mounted on a donkey, on a colt, the foal of a donkey.

Pray.

We begin our series, called “The King is Coming” by focusing on the promise of the Messiah as a King.

This is clearly promised here in Zechariah’s text, but elsewhere as well.

Micah 5:2- But you, O Bethlehem Ephrathah, who are too little to be among the clans of Judah, from you shall come forth for me one who is to be ruler in Israel, whose coming forth is from of old, from ancient days.

Isaiah 16:5- ...then a throne will be established in steadfast love, and on it will sit in faithfulness in the tent of David one who judges and seeks justice and is swift to do righteousness.”

2 Samuel 7:12-13- When your days are fulfilled and you lie down with your fathers, I will raise up your offspring after you, who shall come from your body, and I will establish his kingdom. He shall build a house for my name, and I will establish the throne of his kingdom forever.

Thus, it is not surprising that everyone expected a king. And they were correct in that expectation.

But we must stop for a moment and ask the ever-important questions- What will this king be like? How will this king rule? What can we expect from such an eternal ruler? How should we respond to such a King?

And it is these questions that we will seek to answer from Zechariah’s text.

For the rest of our time together, I’d like to break Zechariah 9:9 into three separate parts and see what the prophecy communicates that we should expect to find in the person of Jesus.

1. The King is coming to dwell among His people.

When reading our text, the following from the middle of v. 9 stuck out to me.

“Behold, your king is coming to you.”

While our text identifies the Messiah to be a King, Zechariah’s prophecy goes further in identifying the King with the people who were to receive Him.

The prophecy could have simply stated that a King would arrive.

But to communicate the King in such a way would have lost all identification with the people of Israel.

Imagine you are a child who is lost in a great sea of people. Someone finds you, crouches down and says something to you.

What would you rather have him say? A dad is coming? Or your dad is coming?

One might encourage some hope, the other encourages complete hope.

Our desire is not only for a King who has power and strength, but for such a King to be identified with His people. We would desire for Him to come to us.

Thus, He is called, “Your King” and He is coming “to you.”

Such words ought to have been so encouraging for the people of Israel, and for us as those who have been adopted into the family of Christ.

Now, for just a moment, contemplate the difference between a king and your king.

Throughout all of human history, we have found kings and queens (or any other leaders for that matter) to be least effective when they can in no way identify with the people over whom they rule.

I’ve appreciated one senator from Nebraska named Ben Sasse as he has put forward the notion of term limits in congress. Here is what he said about career politicians: “What we have right now is a whole bunch of people who get elected and decide it's a one-way ticket. People are from where they're from, they run for office, and then once they get to Washington they buy a permanent home. They eventually stop visiting the home they came from, and they start to have a calculus that staying in Washington forever is a key part of defining their identity and their service.”

Is this not something that people from every end of the political spectrum can identify with? Whether liberal or conservative, everyone has the sneaking suspicion that our government leaders, who are not even kings and queens, have forgotten how to identify with the constituents.

Now consider a king with ultimate authority. No checks and balances, no one able to question their judgments or decisions.

In fact, this is what God warned Israel of when they had asked for a King during Samuel’s days.

In 1 Samuel 8, Samuel, speaking on behalf of God, describes the kings that Israel would have.

They would enslave sons and daughters, they would take the very best of the fields, regardless of who they belonged to. They would tax everything that the people possessed. They would enslave the people of Israel.

And what was promised by God is exactly what was received by Israel. The people did indeed received kings that would do all of those things.

So it was not enough to promise a king, but instead to promise your King that is coming to you.

In fact, take it a step further. Zechariah promises that the King will be humble, or lowly in nature.

This same Hebrew word is used 76 times in the OT and 54 of those times is translated as poor, describing a person who has absolutely nothing to his name.

While the donkey can be described as an animal of peace, it is also a lowly animal. It is not chariot or war horse.

So what is being communicated in the promise of the King riding on a donkey instead of any other animal?

It is that the King will be lowly in nature, humble, poor, having nothing, with no majestic acclaim.

Those who see the King riding a donkey, or those who witnessed Jesus’ entering of Jerusalem, are to be informed that this will not be a worldly kingdom defined by wealth and fame, but instead are meant to have their eyes shifted to heaven, to see a spiritual Kingdom being ushered in.

Jesus was not wealthy according to wordly standards, but was infinitely wealthy by spiritual standards.

And so the King is coming, not to be identified as other, but to be among His people, to serve them from within, to be aware of their needs because of His very lived experience.

This is the beauty of the given words of the prophet- your king is coming to you.

So consider what it is that we are celebrating this coming Christmas.

It is the coming to us of our King.

A King who would show His devotion to His people by identifying with His people.

He would be one of us, and He would rule from among us.

And this is worth celebrating.

But what else can we expect from this coming King?

2. The King will be righteous.

Here we find one of the greatest possible encouragements to the people of Israel, and to us as well, thousands of years later.

The King would be a righteous King.

Again, the Hebrew word translated here as righteous is translated elsewhere as just, or innocent, or pure.

For just a moment, consider the very best of Israel’s kings, King David.

As much as David was a man after God’s own heart, who sought after the character of God, we still find major character flaws in him.

To focus entirely on the negative, this is the king who lusted after a married woman, slept with her, impregnated her, and then had her husband killed.

If this was the only negative story that we had about King David, it would still be a brutal lapse in judgement, purity, and righteousness.

In these moments, David was not at all reflecting the character of God, but instead flaunting his own abuse of power. And this from the very best of Israel’s kings.

The other kings of Israel and Judah were far worse, let alone the kings of other nations that had taken the Israelites into captivity.

And it is into such experience with their past kings that Zechariah promises a coming King who will be righteous, who will rule from a place of rightly understood justice.

Why are we able to put any faith into such a King? Because of the promise here of His righteousness, His moral perfection, His Godly character.

It is because of the righteousness of Jesus that we are able to put every bit of trust in Him, knowing first that He is all-powerful, but also that His power will be used for the bettering of His people.

But let’s take this one step further.

If the promised King is indeed righteous, then we will see that righteousness is His to be given out.

Throughout the OT, we find that as the king goes, so goes the people.

When the king is an idolater, so the people are idolaters. When the king worships God (as rarely as such a king is found), the people worship God.

So the promise of a righteous King is incredible news to an unrighteous people.

If we have come to grips with our own sinfulness, our own failures, our own unrighteousness before a wholly righteous God, then hope will be immediately given when we hear that the King who is promised is completely righteous, pure, innocent and just.

And this is what we know to be true of Jesus, the promised King.

Not only did He fulfill such prophecy by being righteous, but it was through Him that God made a path by which people could be made righteous.

Think of it this way- If Jesus is indeed your King, meaning that you not only recognize who He is but have given Him your full allegiance, then you are righteous in the sight of God due to the sacrifice of your King.

Consider how Paul wrote it in 2 Corinthians 5:21- For our sake he made him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.

Because of the righteousness of Jesus, the righteous King, we as citizens of His Kingdom are able to share in His righteousness, and this is great news.

Our righteousness does not depend on our own efforts, mustering up as much as possible to show to the Father. Instead, we possess before the Father the very pure righteousness of Christ. As Jesus is seen as right before the Father, so are we.

Again, here is the good news that we celebrate at Christmas. The child that was promised, the child that was born, was this righteous King, who made righteousness available to those who were hopeless in their unrighteousness.

Zechariah’s prophecy continues by giving us one more glimpse into the nature of this coming King.

3. The King will possess salvation.

This promise, when applied to Jesus, can be confusing.

The Hebrew word that has been translated as “having salvation” in the ESV is passive, meaning that the King is the one who has been acted upon, instead of being the One who is doing the acting.

Thus, the ESV writes that the King has salvation.

Other translations don’t help much- The NIV translates the word as victorious.

Taken literally, it would be translated as “righteous and saved”

And here is the trouble- the prophecy states that the coming King would be saved, which is a word we would typically not use for Jesus.

So let’s figure out what is meant by such a phrase.

If the King is saved, then this would mean that He is in possession of salvation.

And again, this is good news for us, as only the one who is in possession of salvation is able to freely give salvation.

What Zechariah is communicating on behalf of God is that the King would be in a position of giving salvation, in the same way that He would be in a position of giving righteousness.

John Calvin is helpful here- “A just and saved king comes to his chosen: and we know that Christ had no need of salvation himself. As then he was sent by the Father to gather a chosen people, so he is said to be saved because he was endued with power to preserve or save them.”

Jesus, because He is in possession of salvation, has the ability and the power to give salvation.

Let’s look at it a different way. If we believe that salvation can be expressed as a newness of life, what we would call life eternal, then it is easily stated that Jesus can give life because He is in possession of such life.

John states it this way in the prologue of his gospel account- John 1:1-4- In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God. All things were made through him, and without him was not any thing made that was made. In him was life, and the life was the light of men.

In Jesus is life. And this life is what is needed for all of humanity.

And Jesus is capable of giving this life. Again, in John’s gospel, we find these wonderful words: John 10:9-11- I am the door. If anyone enters by me, he will be saved and will go in and out and find pasture. The thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy. I came that they may have life and have it abundantly. I am the good shepherd. The good shepherd lays down his life for the sheep.

Notice here the tying together of salvation and life: First Jesus states that people will be saved and go in and out and find pasture. And then He states that He came that they may have life and have it abundantly.

Salvation is described as this fullness of life. And such life can only be offered from the One who is in full possession of it in the first place.

Paul states this clearly in 2 Corinthians 4:11- For we who live are always being given over to death for Jesus’ sake, so that the life of Jesus also may be manifested in our mortal flesh.

Any spiritual life that we can possibly possess comes only from the source of that life- and we find the source to be Jesus Himself.

But again, let’s go one step deeper.

Not only is Jesus able to give this salvation, or eternal life, because of His possession of it, but Scripture makes clear that Jesus gives this life because He is the one who has procured salvation for His followers through His death and resurrection.

Notice how Paul addresses this in the book of Acts 20:28- Pay careful attention to yourselves and to all the flock, in which the Holy Spirit has made you overseers, to care for the church of God, which he obtained with his own blood.

In speaking to the elders of the Ephesian church, Paul says that the church of God, meaning believers of Jesus Christ, have been obtained by the blood of Jesus, meaning His death and ultimately His resurrection.

Again, remember Jesus’ words in John 10- that He lays down His life for His sheep. He gives up his physical life in order that His sheep might have eternal life.

Jesus possesses this life which He is able to give, but He also has done what is necessary for such life and salvation to be given.

This is the sort of King, or Messiah, that is described in Zechariah’s prophecy. He is the King who would dwell among His people. He is righteous and is thus able to give, or impute, His righteousness. And He is in possession of life eternal, and is thus able to give it to all who would received eternal life.

So the question becomes, how will we respond to such a King? Or maybe, how does what we have learned together apply to how we will both observe and celebrate Advent and Christmas this year? And it is here that we we conclude our time together in Zechariah’s text.

Zechariah writes that those who are of God’s Kingdom ought to rejoice greatly, and shout aloud.

Our attitude as we consider these truths, a King, coming to us in humility, in righteousness, possessing salvation, is meant to be one of celebration.

Even in our observing Advent, a time of waiting, a time of focus, we look forward with anticipation, knowing that this promised King has indeed come. We know that in just under a month, we will have much reason to celebrate together.

And let’s begin our planning now. Please consider this: of all the things to celebrate: family, food, presents, Santa, decorations, snowmen, etc., shouldn’t we get our focus right?

We are meant to celebrate first and foremost our coming King, the one who has been born, lived in right relationship with the Father, was crucified for our sin, and defeated death through His resurrection.

In fact, everything else that we might celebrate this Christmas should be used to bring more attention to the birth of our King.

We center our families on the birth of Jesus through reading the birth narrative and discussion, we give gifts with the constant reminder of the greatest gift of the incarnation of Jesus that was given to us, we eat and drink together remembering the fellowship of the Church and the body and blood of Jesus that we take together, and we decorate our houses considering the beauty of the birth of Jesus.

He is our coming King, and He is worthy of our celebrating. How will we celebrate Him this Christmas season?