Your King Is Coming

Like last Sunday, the message today is fairly straightforward: Your king is here. It’s a straightforward statement, but few truths in your life are attacked more viciously or more frequently than this one is.

That simple statement is certainly attacked by everything you experience from day to day. Even in a world like we know today that is, arguably, more well ordered and structured than just about any time in history, most days are controlled chaos.

If your King is here, you have to wonder what He’s thinking, what exactly He’s accomplishing. Is He really this indifferent to what’s going on? Is He not actually in control? Does He not care about all the suffering, let alone the outright evil at work in the world?

But perhaps the greatest challenge to the idea of His Lordship in your life comes from you and your resistance to His authority in your life. You know what He commands and what He forbids. But you are, at best, a stubborn subject of your Lord. You know very well what He commands. Why don’t you do it? You know very well what He forbids. Why do you insist on doing it?

He commands you to love Him with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength. And you profess your love for God, but it’s telling how often He takes second place— or third, or fourth, or worse— behind the things of this world. You claim to love Him, and yet gathering weekly to hear His word is less important than sports, than hunting, than camping, than even a little more sleep. Spending time in God’s word and prayer on a daily basis isn’t even on your radar.

He commands you to love your neighbor as yourself. And you claim to love Him, but, in reality, you love those you like; those who have been good to you in the past or you’re confident will be good to you in the future. But those you don’t like? Those who have fallen below your expectations? Strangers? Suddenly there isn’t time. Your doors are closed to them. And loving your enemies? That idea was drowned a long time ago in a flood of arguments on social media. You claim to love God, but do I need to remind you of the Apostle John’s words? “20 If anyone says, “I love God,” and hates his brother, he is a liar; for he who does not love his brother whom he has seen cannot love God whom he has not seen” (1 John 4:20).

He commands you to forgive those who sin against you. But, when you do, it’s grudgingly, at best. You forgive only those whom you feel deserve it, only those who you judge to be worthy of forgiving. That’s not how forgiveness works. If God forgave the way that you forgive, you would literally be damned.

And we haven’t even gotten to all the ways that you try to excuse and justify your coveting, your greed, your lust, your wrath, and all the rest. You know what He forbids. Why do you insist on doing it?

All it took for the owner of the donkey that day to give it for Jesus’ use was simply being told “The Lord has need of it.” You have been told that the Lord has need of a portion of the physical blessings that He has given to you in order to support the preaching of His word, in order to help those around who who are in need. But, again and again, even that has proved too great a sacrifice. You’ve decided it that you need it more; that your appetites, your comfort are more important.

Let me say it again: Your King is here. In fact, let’s put a finer point on it: Repent! Your King is here.

Don’t let the humble demeanor fool you. He is, in fact, fully and truly God. It is not hyperbole— Jesus is not exaggerating— when He says that, if the crowd was silent, the rocks would cry out. In all of creation, only human beings refuse to acknowledge Him as the One through whom all things were made; the one who still rules over all that is seen and unseen.

His divine power, majesty, and authority are there, even though they are hidden. Arguably, it was hidden especially at the beginning of His life and at its end. At the beginning of His life, His divinity was literally concealed within Mary’s womb. But it was still there. As we sang a few moments ago:

Here a maid was found with child,

Yet remained a virgin mild.

In her womb this truth was shown:

God was there upon His throne. (“Savior of the Nations, Come,” Lutheran Service Book #332, stz. 3.)

At the end of His life, His divinity was hidden beneath His suffering and His death, but make no mistake: Then and now, His lordship was cloaked in His humanity. But that does not change who He is.

And He is anything but an indifferent Lord. Even before His perfect creation was corrupted by our sin, He planned for its redemption. Even before we brought death into this creation, He planned to suffer and to die in order to make all things new.

Not only does He care about the suffering and the evil out there, He cares about the evil within you. You are more stubborn than a donkey when it comes to His authority over you. But your King, your Lord, humbled Himself and became an obedient servant— obedient even to the point of death (Philippians 2:5-11). His rightful place is there on the throne, not only ruling over all that is seen and unsee, but receiving the rightful praise of all creation— from the angels, archangels, and all the host of heave, all the way down to the most ordinary rock— and yet He was willing to lay all of that aside to become your brother. More than that, your King became your servant. He faithfully served His Father by serving you, by redeeming you from this dead and dying world at the price of

His holy, precious blood and His innocent suffering and death so that you may be His own and live under Him in His Kingdom and serve Him in everlasting righteousness, innocence, and blessedness, just as He is risen from the dead, lives and reigns to all eternity. This is most certainly true. (Luther’s Explanation of the 2nd Article of the Apostles’ Creed, Luther’s Small Catechism.)

And His humility and suffering have not reduced His Lordship, His divinity, in the least. In fact, it’s just the opposite. (Philippians 2:9-11) There on the cross He began His reign over His kingdom. But, even more, on account of His obedient suffering and death, “9 Therefore God has highly exalted him and bestowed on him the name that is above every name, 10 so that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, 11 and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.”

Your King is here. Repent and believe that He is your King.

As we are reminded in the baptismal liturgy,

“The Word of God also teaches that we are all conceived and born sinful and are under the power of the devil until Christ claims us as His own. We would be lost forever unless delivered from sin, death, and everlasting condemnation. [And so] the Father of all mercy and grace has sent His Son Jesus Christ, who atoned for the sin of the whole world, that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have eternal life.” (“Holy Baptism.” Lutheran Service Book, Concordia Publishing House, St. Louis. p. 268.)

The King of Heaven stepped down from His throne and took on the form of a servant so that He could place upon your head a crown of gold. His rule in your life is still hidden beneath suffering and weakness and hardship and even failure. But He suffered the full weight of God’s wrath over your sin so that the suffering that rains down on you each day is transformed by the vine of faith into the fruit of endurance, which produces character, which brings forth hope that will never put you to shame because God’s love in Jesus Christ has been poured into your hearts through the Holy Spirit who has been given to you (Romans 5:3-5). Through these simple means of water, of bread and wine, of the words of absolution that I speak to you, He gathers you into and keeps you in His Kingdom of Grace.

And so you pray, “Come quickly, Lord Jesus,” knowing that when Christ ascended and was exalted, He did it in order to lead the way for you into His Kingdom of Glory. “4 But God, being rich in mercy, because of the great love with which he loved us, 5 even when [you] were dead in our trespasses, made [you] alive together with Christ—by grace you have been saved— 6 and raised [you] up with him and seated [you] with him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus, 7 so that in the coming ages he might show the immeasurable riches of his grace in kindness toward [you] in Christ Jesus” (Ephesians 2:4-7).

Until that day, you are given the unique privilege of declaring His praises. The rocks can cry out— and they will, if necessary— but they do not have nearly as much cause for praise and thanksgiving as you do. The King of Glory didn’t become a rock. He became human; He became like you. He didn’t suffer and die for them. He suffered and died for you. All of creation declares His glory, but none in the same way that you, His people are capable of.

In fact, you not only join in declaring His praises, you rightly join in the same shouts of praise that the crowds shouted as Jesus rode into Jerusalem that day.

Holy, holy, holy Lord God of Sabaoth;

heav’n and earth are full of Thy glory.

Hosanna, hosanna, hosanna in the highest.

Blessed is He, blessed is He, blessed is He that cometh in the name of the Lord.

Hosanna, hosanna, hosanna in the highest. (Sanctus; Lutheran Service Book; Divine Service, Setting 3; p. 195.).

How dare we use those words that the crowds addressed to Jesus, Himself, that day? You sing those words for the same reason that they did: Because He is coming to you, as well. Think about it. When do we sing those words? You sing them during the communion liturgy. You sing them right before the words of institution, as the bread and wine are consecrated for use in the Sacrament of the Altar. You sing those words right before Jesus comes to you— not riding on a donkey— but in, with, and under bread and wine.

A few years ago I offended a number of you quite seriously. I had no clue that I would offend you by what I did. I did not bring the statue of Jesus back to its place on Easter Sunday. I’m told that its absence really bothered some of you. I apologize for that. It was not my intent in the least. May I take you back there for a moment to clarify why I did it? It’s highly unlikely that you would remember, but that table was not left empty. The statue was not there, but the communion vessels were put there on the table instead of on the side of the altar. The point was that, if you want to see Jesus, that is where you look. And Holy Communion is not a symbol of Jesus’ presence; it is not just a reminder of Jesus’ presence. Jesus is actually present in the sacrament in, with, and under bread and wine.

Let me be frank: if our celebration of Easter is ruined by a statue of Jesus not being there and, at the same time, you don’t really care if we celebrate the Lord’s Supper or not on that day, then there is something seriously wrong. You and I have gone off the road. You care that deeply about a symbol of Jesus’ presence, but the actual presence of Jesus just gets a shrug? Or, worse, it is annoying to you because it takes too long? Is that really okay to you? Is that really what you mean to say by your actions? I do not think that it is. And my goal is not to take the statue away from you. My goal is to make the Lord’s Supper even more precious to you than the statue.

This, by the way, is why the church, traditionally, has always made Holy Communion a priority on those most important celebrations of the year like Easter and Christmas and Reformation Day and All Saints’ Day and Ascension Day and Pentecost and Trinity Sunday. Their reasoning for having it on Christmas Day, for example, was that it would not make sense to celebrate our Lord’s birth— His coming to this earth and not actually care if Jesus is present with you or not. Because the statues and the paintings of Jesus are wonderful, but they are not the same as Jesus actually being here for you.

That is what Advent is all about. It is a reminder that Christ is coming. And it is a reminder of the ways in which Christ comes to you right here: in His Word that is read and preached; in the baptismal font where you were joined to Christ; here on this altar where He comes to you in, with, and under bread and wine. It is a reminder that you have just as much reason to sing “Hosanna!” as they did. In fact, you have more. You have more reason than they did because He is coming to you with the forgiveness of sins, eternal life, and salvation.

Your King is here. “38 Blessed is the King who comes in the name of the Lord! Peace in heaven and glory in the highest!”

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