A Kingdom Not of This World

Texts:  2 Samuel 23:1-7; Romans 1:1-6; John 18:33-37

WHAT KIND OF KING DO we want?

As good Americans, of course we will reply we don't want a king.  That's why we fought a revolution.

All right, then, what kind of president do we want?  What kind of leader do we want at our head to guide us and guard us and make decisions in our behalf?

Well, taking it from history and recent events, typically we want rulers with the common touch.  We want someone who can sympathize with our needs, aspirations, and desires-- and help fulfill them.  Someone who can identify with us as his fellow human beings. He should be down here and present with us.  We want his kingdom to be a kingdom of this world.

At the same time, we want our leader to be a little better than we are, just like us but more so.  Accomplished and superior enough so we can look up to him, but not so high that he's totally detached.  We want him to symbolize our own aspirations for power and greatness, because we want to think of ourselves as great.

We want our leader to be accountable to us.  Even the most powerful of emperors could be taken down by a vote of his nobles, or by a palace coup.  We want him to bear in mind that with all his power and riches and fame, he's only our ruler as long as we allow him to be.  We want him to reign over a kingdom of this world and answer to us, because we're very much of this world.  That's the kind of king we want.

So how does Jesus Christ fit into this?  Today is Christ the King Sunday, the day when the Church has traditionally celebrated our Lord's exalted status as king of heaven and earth. Is He the kind of king we traditionally want?

In some ways, yes.  In 2 Samuel 23 we have a valedictory psalm of David, his official last words.  In it, among other things, he celebrates that God has made with his house and family an everlasting covenant.  This refers to the fact that the Lord God promised that there would never fail to be a descendant of David sitting on the throne of Israel. And who was David?  He was the despised shepherd boy whom God had raised up to shepherd His people Israel.  And who is Jesus?  As St. Paul reminds us in Romans chapter 1, Jesus is the descendant or son of David.  Jesus has humble family origins.  We can identify with Him.

And also in Romans 1, the apostle speaks of Jesus' human nature. Jesus as He walked this earth and proclaimed His coming kingdom was a human being just like we are.  He was subject to the physical laws of this earth.  He needed food and sleep.  The rain wet Him and the dust of the road dirtied His feet.  Jesus shares our humanity.  Very good, He's like us.

In His ministry we see how Jesus definitely had the common touch.  He gently and tenderly dealt with those who were sick and hungry and hurting.  Mothers eagerly brought their children to Him to be blessed.  He stood up for the poor and oppressed and defended them against the powerful.  His heart was with the people and their needs, and His actions were, too.

In all these ways and more, Jesus seemed to be the kind of king people traditionally want.  A king of a kingdom of this world, taking care of our worldly needs and desires.  Think of what St. John tells us about the crowd after Jesus fed the 5,000, how they wanted to take Jesus and make Him king by force.  They knew a good candidate when they saw Him!

But even in His time, people knew that if Jesus was a king, He wasn't the ordinary kind.  He was also fulfilling the expectations for the great king who would be the special Anointed One, the Messiah of Israel.  Through Him God would work in a unique way.  It was only to be expected that Jesus should identify with the people by performing signs and wonders and miracles for their sake.  At least, they figured it was all for their sake. What else?  The crowds were filled with admiration at how the powers of nature took a back seat to this Man whenever He spoke a word.  They were thrilled at the authority with which He taught.  And they delighted in how He overturned the pretensions of the religious leaders who opposed Him.  Jesus was that ruler who could be looked up to and admired.  As David sang long ago in his farewell psalm, Jesus the Son of David was One through whom the Spirit of the Lord spoke.  He ruled over men in righteousness, and in His day He was like the light of the morning sunrise to those who labored under oppression of every kind.

So far, Jesus was and is the kind of king we humans naturally want.  But there's a problem.  Jesus refused to be bound by our desires and expectations.  Yes, He fulfills our need for a king who is like us and from among us, One who sympathizes with our weaknesses because He has known them Himself.  But Jesus came to be a far greater king than that, and His kingdom is not a kingdom of this world.

We see this starkly in our reading from John 18.  Here we have Jesus standing His trial before Pilate, the Roman governor.   "Are you the king of the Jews?" Pilate asks Him.  Is he asking a serious question?  Of course not.  The idea that this beaten and battered Man before him could be the king of anything is absurd.  Something else must be going on.  So Pilate asks, "What it is you have done?"  And Jesus replies, "My kingdom is not of this world."  And just in those words we have the basis of the religious authorities' charges against Him.  He refused to be the king of a mere earthly kingdom; He asserted ultimate divine power.  His kingdom is not of this world, and as such He and it were an offense not only to the Jewish leaders, He is an offense to what we are in our natural sinful state.

For now Jesus is really claiming to have control and authority even over the terrible situation He finds Himself in.  Pilate has pointed out that the Jewish people and chief priests have handed Him over to him.  Jesus replies that the very fact that His servants didn't fight to prevent His arrest is proof that His kingdom is from another place, and doesn't follow the rules of kingdoms here.  Maybe Jesus was including the disciples among His "servants" in this verse, but much more likely He's referring to the holy angels.  As He reminded Peter in Matthew 26:52-53, when the apostle drew his sword to try to protect Jesus from arrest, "Do you think I cannot call on my Father, and he will at once put at my disposal more than twelve legions of angels?" But He did not put in the call, because like a good king and general He was working out His plan to bring in His kingdom which is not of this world.  If an ordinary man made this kind of divine claim we'd laugh at him.  And it's true, people laugh at Jesus and His royal talk, too. But they're forgetting the innumerable displays of power over nature, sickness, Satan, and sin He displayed throughout His ministry.  They're ignoring all the times the authorities tried to seize Him and He miraculously eluded their grasp.  No, the very fact that Jesus allowed Himself to be arrested showed that He was in charge of a plan that went beyond simply bringing in a new earthly kingdom.

Pilate, in his worldly cynicism, responds, "You are a king, then!"  Like, "Sure, right, tell me a new one."  Jesus, however, takes the governor's bare words and confirms the truth of them.  "You are right in saying I am a king."  I'm a substitute teacher, and sometimes a kid will say something to be funny or sarcastic that is more true than they know.  You have to latch onto that and confirm it to snap them out of their silliness and bring them face to face with true knowledge.  Yes, Pilate, it's true.  I, Jesus of Nazareth, am a king.  As king my first duty is to testify to the truth.  Those who are on the side of truth listen to me and are my natural subjects.

Our gospel passage leaves out Pilate's flippant reply, "What is truth?"  But it's worth answering.  According to the Scriptures, truth first and foremost is God Himself, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.  Truth is all God says and all God does.  Truth is His word communicated to us in Holy Scripture.  And truth supremely is the testimony that, as John records in chapter 3, that "Light has come into the world, but men loved darkness instead of light because their deeds were evil," but "whoever by the truth comes into the light, so that it may be seen plainly that what he has done has been done through God."  And how do we come into the light?  As Peter writes in his first epistle, it is God Himself (and God alone) who has called us out of darkness into his marvellous light. We need to be ruled by something or someone outside of this world for us to be part of Christ's kingdom, and His divine power reaches in and conquers our souls for our own good.

Pilate made a flippant reply about truth because he was the mighty Roman governor dealing with a prisoner who was totally at his mercy.  But when we in our sin make belittling comments about Jesus and His truth, we show our discomfort that with the fact that Jesus' kingdom is not of this world.  His kingdom of Truth shows up all our dishonesty and lies.  Jesus the King of Truth convicts us of our sins and calls us to repent and believe in Him, who is the Truth.  As heavenly King He has the ultimate right to judge, for He answers to no earthly constitution and is accountable to no earthly court.

This is not like the kings and kingdoms of this world!  And see how Jesus the King ascends to His throne-- through the cross!  The servants of an earthly king would fight to protect His person and His realm.  But Jesus the Son of God goes forward to fight and die alone to win for Himself a kingdom that is not of this world.  As Jesus says in John 12, "But I, when I am lifted up from the earth, will draw all men to myself."  Some He will draw for salvation, some for condemnation, but by His death Jesus won the right to be the eternal ruler and King.

In our natural sinful way of thinking, Jesus is not the kind of king we want.  He claims to be in control of the forces of history-- and in control over us.  He claims to personify Truth-- and His truth judges not only our sin, but also our goodness, and finds it wanting.  Jesus claims that His kingdom is not of this world-- and refuses to let us co-opt Him and it for our own earthly purposes.  In short, He asserts that in all His humanity, in all His status as the Son of David, in all His sympathy with us and our needs,.He is more than that and beyond all that.  He was, as Paul says in Romans, "through the Spirit of holiness . . . declared with power to be the Son of God by his resurrection from the dead."  But the glorious and comforting thing is that on His cross Jesus won the victory over sin and death, and that included our sin and our death.  Jesus our King has removed the blindness from our eyes and the stubbornness from our hearts, so that we can recognise Him and long for Him as our true and only King, whose kingdom is not of this world.

What does this mean for our every day lives?  For one thing, it would keep us from confusing our own government or any other earthly system with the kingdom of Christ.  Bad earthly rulership does not tear God's kingdom down, neither does good human government cause God's kingdom to come.  All is in the Father's control, and His kingdom will prevail when every human administration has passed away.

And since we are not merely subjects, but also children and heirs of Christ's kingdom, we know that whatever happens to us in this world we belong to  a heavenly commonwealth that will never be destroyed.  This world is a wonderful place to travel through, but it's even better to know that one day we're going home.

And because Jesus' kingdom is not of this world, we know that He will definitely succeed in His ultimate purpose, to call us with all His saints to the perfect obedience that comes by faith.  We have been called to belong to Jesus Christ, and King Jesus will not fail to transform you into His image, no matter how guilty and sinful you feel you are.  He is the King whose kingdom is not of this world, and He can and will do it.
So let us depend on Him for all things and honor Him in all we think and do and say.  He is your Lord and King-- mighty, powerful, high and lifted up-- but also humble, gracious, and able to sympathize with your every sorrow and need.  Give Him praise and glory, for Jesus Christ is just the King we truly want and truly need.  Amen.

Who Is This?

Texts: Deuteronomy 18:15-19; Zechariah 3:1-2, 6-9; 2 Samuel 7:11b-16; Matthew 21:1-16

    ALL WEEK PILGRIMS HAD been surging into Jerusalem.  The Passover was near, and hour by hour more and more people approached the gates to the city.

    But today, five days before the Feast, something was happening on the road from the Mount of Olives that was out of the ordinary even for this holiday time.  Down from the Mount rolled a stream of pilgrims shouting, "Hosanna to the Son of David!"   "Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord!"  And "Hosanna in the highest!"

    All this clamour seemed to be addressed to a Man riding in the midst of the crowd, seated on a young donkey with its mother close by.  The exultant pilgrims were cutting branches off the palm trees and spreading them  and their own cloaks on the road in front of Him.  Closer and closer to the city the loud and excited procession approached, until the Man and His supporters swept in through the city gate and into the Temple courts.  Still they cried out, "Hosanna!  Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord!"  And the Man rode on, tall and regal on the cloak-draped beast, the very image of a King taking possession of what was His own.

    On Jerusalem and her citizens the impression was nothing short of seismic.  From one end of the city to the other the news spread, and their hearts were shaken to the depths.  "Who is this who has come?" they asked.  "Who is this?"

    From the Man's crowd of supporters the reply came, "This is Jesus, the prophet from Nazareth in Galilee."

    Who is this?  Who is this Jesus?  People are still asking the question today.  Every year about this time unbelievers with little scholarship and less reverence claim to answer that question with their latest ideas.  They say, "He was an ordinary man buried in his family tomb."  Or, "He was a co-conspirator with Judas trying to gain political control."  Or, "Jesus was the husband of Mary Magdalene."  You've heard all the sensationalist theories, and I hope you know they're only good for making the authors money off of people fool enough to believe their lies. 

    But the question is still remains: Who is this?  Who is the One who rode into Jerusalem that Sunday afternoon so many centuries ago? 

    We don't need to come up with new theories: the Scripture itself answers question.  Not just with a few facts about a Rabbi who once walked the hills of Galilee and Judea; no, the Word of God shows us the living Jesus and reveals who He is for us today and will be forever.

    Who is this, riding into Jerusalem?  The Galilean crowds say to the people of the city, "This is Jesus, the prophet from Nazareth in Galilee." 

    Could they have meant that Jesus was the prophet from Nazareth, so no one would confuse Him with some other prophets of God that were around?

    No.  Absolutely not.  Everyone knew that John the Baptist was the first prophet God had sent the Jews since the death of the prophet Malachi over four hundred years before.  From then until John, no person had spoken in the name of the Lord, at least not with God's approval.  But for the previous three years Jesus of Nazareth had been proving by His words and miracles that He had every right to speak in the name of the Lord.  He was the only prophet worthy of the name in Israel. Jesus, moreover, had shown Himself to be greater than any prophet who had come before.  His words were more authoritative than those of Moses.  His miracles were more wonderful and divine than those of Elijah and Elisha.  He was not simply a prophet, He was the Prophet.

    As we read from the Book of Deuteronomy, fourteen centuries before Jesus walked this earth the Lord God put His words into the mouth of His servant Moses.  Moses said, "The LORD your God will raise up for you a prophet like me from among your own brothers. You must listen to him."

    What does it mean to say "a prophet like Moses"?  Hear what the Lord Himself said about Moses, as it is written in Numbers 12, verses 6-8a:

    When a prophet of the LORD is among you,
          I reveal myself to him in visions,
         I speak to him in dreams.
    But this is not true of my servant Moses;
          he is faithful in all my house.
    With him I speak face to face,
         clearly and not in riddles;
           he sees the form of the LORD.

The promised "prophet like Moses" would speak with the Lord face to face.  He would hear and know the word of the Lord directly, and not through dreams and visions.  He would be "faithful in all God's house," and would declare the message of God fearlessly, without worrying what people might say or do to him.  The great Prophet to come would be one of the children of Israel. And the Lord commanded that the people must listen to him.

    Jesus was and is the Prophet like Moses whom the Jews had been awaiting for so long.  The cheering Galileans who marched beside Jesus as He rode into Jerusalem that day knew He was.  And by the grace of the Holy Spirit, our ears are opened to receive Him as the Prophet, too.

    The Apostle John writes, "In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God."  The Greek for "the Word was with God" can be translated "the Word was before the face of," or "face to face with God."  From all eternity, Christ the Lord beheld the form and face of the Father directly, without needing any go-between.  As a Man on this earth that relationship and direct communication between Himself and the Father continued unbroken until the agony of the Cross.  John reports that Jesus said, "My teaching is not my own.  It comes from him who sent me.  If anyone chooses to do God's will, he will find out if my teaching comes from God or not."  Jesus received the word of God directly and He proclaimed it faithfully.  Just as with Moses, and even more than Moses, Jesus' word was and is the will of God for His chosen people.  The Lord said through Moses in the desert,

    I will raise up for them a prophet like you from among their brothers; I will put my words in his mouth, and he will tell them everything I command him. If anyone does not listen to my words that the prophet speaks in my name, I myself will call him to account.

Who is this,  riding into Jerusalem?  It is Jesus Christ, God's final and greatest Prophet. And to Jesus all mankind must listen, and Him all mankind must obey.

    Who is this, who enters the Temple area in such righteous zeal?  This Jesus acts as if He had the right to drive out those buying and selling there.  Wasn't it the priests of Israel, and especially the high priest, whose duty it was to make sure that the temple of God remained a house of prayer for all nations?  For the Temple was where the people met with God.  It was the place where the sacrifices were offered to make atonement for sin.  As Solomon prayed at the first Temple's dedication, "May your eyes, [O Lord], be open toward this temple day and night, this place of which you said you would put your name there. . . . Hear the supplications of your servant and of your people Israel when they pray towards this place. Hear from heaven, your dwelling place, and when you hear, forgive."  The high priest was charged with keeping himself and the Temple holy and pure.  And only he might carry the blood of the sacrifice into the Holy of Holies on the Day of Atonement, to turn away God's wrath so the people might live. 

    But as we read in the book of the prophet Zechariah, the high priests of Israel were sinful men themselves.  Joshua was high priest in Jerusalem after the people returned from exile in Babylon, and humanly-speaking, he was a pretty good man.  But even he is covered with such sin, his robes are so dirty before the Lord, that Satan in strict justice has every right to accuse him.  But the Lord rebukes Satan, and says that Joshua is a burning stick snatched from the fire.  The Lord then addresses Joshua and says,

     "Listen, O high priest Joshua and your associates seated before you, who are men symbolic of things to come: I am going to bring my servant, the Branch.  . . . and I will remove the sin of this land in a single day."

This Joshua and his fellow priests are men symbolic of things to come, in the day when God would send the righteous Branch of Jesse spoken of by the prophets Isaiah and Jeremiah, through whom God would remove His people's sin in a single day.   Joshua and the other priests were emblems of the great and perfect High Priest to come.  The robes of this High Priest would be pure and His sacrifice for sin would be perfectly acceptable to God.  The name Joshua itself means "Jehovah saves," and it's the Hebrew version of the Greek name "Jesus."  The writer of the book of Hebrews says that Jesus is our High Priest forever.  Jesus is the One who is "holy, blameless, pure, set apart from sinners, exalted above the heavens."  He is the One who sacrificed for our sins once for all when He offered Himself.  He is the One who serves in the sanctuary of heaven, in the true tabernacle set up by the Lord, not by man.  He is the One who has the right to cleanse the Temple, the right to encourage the praises of the children shouting "Hosanna to the Son of David!"-- even though the impure and faithless chief priests of His day wanted Him to keep them quiet. 

    Who is this, striding into the Temple and overturning the tables of the moneychangers?  It is Jesus, our great High Priest, who took the blood of His own body into the Holy of Holies of heaven, and made full atonement for all our sins.

    And who is this, whom the crowds on the road and the children in the Temple hail as the Son of David?

    As we read in our selection from 2 Samuel, God promised King David that

    I will raise up your offspring to succeed you, who will come from your own body, and I will establish his kingdom. He is the one who will build a house for my Name, and I will establish the throne of his kingdom forever. I will be his father, and he will be my son.

In the ordinary course of this world, God fulfilled this promise first of all in David's son Solomon.  He was born of David, his kingdom was established, and he built the house for God's name.  And God kept on keeping this promise in David's grandson and great-grandson and great-great-grandsons.  When it was necessary, God punished them "with the rod of men, with floggings inflicted by men," but David's line was never destroyed.  Even in the days of the Exile, the Davidic line continued, and ever since, the Jews had looked forward to the coming of the ultimate King of Israel, "great David's greater Son."  For in him God would keep His promise to David, in which He said, "Your house and your kingdom will endure forever before me; your throne will be established forever." 

    And now, on this first Palm Sunday afternoon, men, women, and little children are crying out to Jesus, "Hosanna to the Son of David"  "Hosanna!" they cry.  "Save us!"  And Jesus accepts their praise.  Before His conception, the angel told His mother Mary that her Son would sit forever on the throne of His father David.  All through His ministry,  Jesus announced the coming of the kingdom of God and in His commands and parables He made it clear that He Himself was the ruler of that kingdom.  Jesus before Pilate declared that He was a king, and not just a king of any single nation in this world; He was king of a kingdom that transcends this world, a kingdom that will endure before God forever.

    Who is this, riding into Jerusalem like a king ready to take His throne?  It is Jesus, the Son of David, the One to whom every knee shall bow and every tongue confess that He is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.

    Who is this Jesus?  He is our King, enthroned on the Cross where He won the victory over Satan, sin, and death.  Under His gracious rulership we bow in humble joy and receive health, bounty, nurture, and peace that nothing on earth can give.  He is our High Priest, and the Cross was the bloody altar where He offered Himself up as the Lamb of God to take away the sins of the world.  In His broken body and shed blood alone we find redemption and are cleansed to stand in the presence of God.   He is our Prophet, the Prophet, and from the Cross His blood speaks the divine word of judgment against sin and the gracious word of hope for ransomed sinners.   From His mouth and His alone we receive the true meaning of the Scriptures and are called to eternal life.

    Jesus is your Prophet, Priest, and King, and He is mine.  So come to His Supper, all you who are baptised into His name.  At His Table He comes to you humbly, no longer on a donkey, but in these elements of bread and wine; on these He has promised to set His seal. Lift up your hearts to heaven and receive Him by faith, with thanksgiving. 

    Hosanna to you, Christ Jesus, our Prophet, Priest, and King.  Blessed are You who come in the name of the Lord.  Hosanna to the Son of David.  Amen.

The House That God Built

Texts: 2 Samuel 7:1-17; Matthew 7:13-29

I DON’T KNOW IF YOU’VE HEARD this before, but archaeologists have very likely found King David’s palace in Jerusalem. The discovery was actually made in 2005 by Dr. Eilat Mazar, the lead archaeologist on the dig. Since then, Dr. Mazar has taken a lot of heat for saying colossal stone structure was built by King David. Because believe it or not, there are even a lot of Jewish archaeologists who don’t believe David ever existed, or if he did, he was just some hill-country chieftain who would never have lived in a palace as massive and imposing as the structure Dr. Mazar has uncovered.

And what she uncovered is massive and imposing. It could only belong to a great king, the architectural evidence dates it to the time the Bible says David reigned, and what’s more, in the ruins were found a copper scroll, high-quality pottery, and some beautiful ivory spoons also datable to the 11th century BC. Dr. Mazar was asked why this important structure wasn’t found before. Her answer was that previous archaeologists weren’t looking in the right place. She believes that the Bible-- the Old Testament, at least, being Jewish and not a Christian-- is historical. So going by clues in God’s Word, she found the palace just where everyone should have been looking all along.

It’s a wonderful thing that King David’s palace in Jerusalem has been found. It’s wonderful any time archaeology confirms the historical nature of Scripture. Archaeology, when it’s been done by real scholars and not by sensationalist journalists, always does confirm Bible history, whether the archaeologists in charge believe in the Bible or not.

On the other hand, it doesn’t matter if Dr. Mazar is right or if she turns out to be wrong about this particular ruin being King David’s palace. Don’t get me wrong. I’m not saying it doesn’t matter if all Bible history is just fables and our faith is based only on stories that people have made up in their heads. Just the opposite. Our God, the Creator of the world and everything in it, is a God who makes Himself known in human history. The Bible is the story of His interaction with real people in real places and real times. We should expect to find evidence of those people and places when an archaeologist in the Middle East takes up his pick and spade.

Nevertheless, as marvellous as this archaeological discovery is, our faith can never be based on the house King David built for himself. No, it must be based on the house the Lord God Almighty built for him-- and for us.

Our reading from 2 Samuel finds David when "he was settled in his palace and the Lord had given him rest from all his enemies around him." It grieved him that there he was living in a palace of cedar-- which is to say, a palace with its walls decorated with cedar panelling-- and the Ark of the Lord’s Covenant was still housed in a tent. If you go back to chapter 6, that tent wasn’t even the Tabernacle; it was, as we read in verse 17 of that chapter, "the tent that David had pitched for it." That didn’t seem right, and David began to think of building a proper house or temple to house the Presence of God.

Humanly-speaking, it was a good and noble idea. Nathan the prophet has no reason to assume differently; after all the Lord clearly was with David and would prosper him in this venture as well. But the Lord God had something else in mind. He gave Nathan a message for David, saying that it wasn’t for David to build Him a house; rather, He would build one for David. Not a physical palace of stone and cedar that would one day be destroyed by the Babylonians and buried for millennia. The Lord would build for David a house in the sense of life, greatness, and peace for him during his days on earth, of security for the people of Israel, and beyond all that, the Lord would build him the house of a family, a dynasty, a bloodline that after he was gone would be established forever in the sight of the Lord.

None of these things could David really achieve or guarantee for himself. Even the mightiest of warrior kings is at the mercy of external political and military forces. And the promise of an everlasting "house" for David could only be fulfilled after he died. It all depended upon the Lord his God. The Lord said He would build David a deathless house, and all David could do was to say Thank you and receive the promise God had made.

In our reading from St. Matthew, on the other hand, Jesus tells us that we must build the house of our own lives in the right way on the right foundation and that if we don’t, it won’t last forever, it will certainly be destroyed. How ironic! We think of the Old Testament as containing the message of the Law. That it’s all and only about what God’s people (including us) must do to please Him or else face His judgement. And the New Testament proclaims the Gospel, the good news of what God has done for us, which we receive by faith. But with our two readings, Law and Grace seem totally switched around!

We shouldn’t be confused or surprised, for the Old and New Testaments of God’s Word together make up the one story of Himself and how He saves us and restores us to Himself. Law and Gospel, judgement and grace run through the entirety of Scripture and God and His power is sovereign throughout. The Lord’s word to David is the promise of the Gospel. Out of His free grace He foretells the coming of the Son of David who would build the house for the Lord’s name and whose throne would be established forever. And Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount (where our Matthew verses today come from) is in effect the final and most perfect declaration of the Law, which shows us how much we need God working in the promised Son of David to build the house of eternal life for us.

I once heard a sermon on the Sermon on the Mount where the preacher said it wasn’t written for Christians, but for Jews. This bothered me a great deal at the time, because it seemed she was saying that we as Christians didn’t have to listen to it. But in a way she was right. In the Sermon on the Mount Jesus takes the Law of God to its ultimate level. Mere outward legalism will not do. It isn’t enough for God, He says, for us to just follow the rules. Our hearts and minds and spirits have to be totally obedient as well. Nor will mere profession of sound doctrine help us. We must do the will of our Father in heaven-- and His will is perfect holiness. We must hear Jesus’ words and act upon them perfectly, or the fall of our house will be great. But making our way into the kingdom of heaven by our own perfect obedience is the Old Covenant way. It didn’t work for the Jews, why should we gentiles want to try it for ourselves?

Matthew records that when Jesus was done preaching that day the crowds marvelled at how He taught. Jesus spoke as if He were the ultimate authority on God’s law. He didn’t cite other rabbis and previous cases the way the scribes very rightly and humbly did. But another valid response to this sermon would be, "Who then can be saved?"

A lot of people read the Sermon on the Mount and think "Yeah, I’m a nice person, I can do all that." If we think that way, we’re out of our blooming minds. How can we in our blindness and willfulness find the narrow gate Jesus speaks of in verse 13? How can we really discern between false and true prophets? By the fruit of their lives, Jesus says, but people are led astray by silver-tongued, miracle-working orators every day, and if they’re glib and impressive enough, no one cares how they treat their wives or if they kick the dog, or even if their ideas destroy millions of human lives.

In verse 23, the NIV translation says that when the kingdom of heaven comes, Jesus the Judge will say to the false prophets, "Away from me, you evildoers!" But the Greek literally calls them, "workers of lawlessness." In other words, no matter how holy or spiritually powerful someone might seem to be, he is a false prophet if he proclaims or practices anything against the revealed Law of God.

And here in verses 24 to 27, Jesus says we are to build the house of our lives upon these words of His. What words? His words confirming (as it says in 5:18) every jot and tittle of the Law and the Prophets.

Well, I don’t know about you, but that scares me silly. I want to build my life as a holy house for the Lord to live in, but I can hardly pitch a tent. And you’re in just the same situation. What hope is there for you or me or any of poor fallen humanity?

Our hope is in the King of the Lord’s kingdom, Jesus Christ, great David’s greater Son. The Lord says to David in 2 Samuel, "I will raise up your offspring to succeed you . . . and I will establish his kingdom. He is the one who will build a house for my Name, and I will establish the throne of his kingdom forever." In the short run, this word pointed to David’s son King Solomon, who built the first Temple in Jerusalem. But it looks beyond Solomon to Jesus Christ, who is Himself the house of the Lord. In Him we meet with God, in Him the sacrifice for us was lifted up on the cross, in Him we find acceptance and forgiveness and holiness. Jesus is the King who will sit on the throne of God’s eternal kingdom, judging the nations and declaring His faithful ones not guilty before Him. Jesus is the one who, as it says in verse 14, is the true Son of God the Father; not by adoption, or by any human custom of calling kings sons of the gods, but truly and from all eternity, in His very substance and in everything He is.

The Lord told David that when the royal son promised to him does wrong, he will be punished by the rod of men, with floggings inflicted by men. We know that Solomon did go astray and God punished him for it through his enemies. Our Lord Jesus the Son of David never did any wrong, but God His Father laid on Him the wrongdoing of us all. He permitted Jesus to be punished and flogged by the hands of men, that we might escape the eternal punishment we deserved for breaking God’s holy Law. The love of the God the Father will never be taken away from Jesus Christ the Son of David, and so God’s love will never be taken away from us who trust in Him. We will live and prosper and please Him in the house He builds for us in His kingdom forever.
It is a good and noble thing to be like David and want to do things in this life to honor God.

Whether in great projects or in our everyday relationships, our striving to obey God’s Law is a way for us to build a house for His Name on this earth. But with the wrong foundation, that effort will fail and we will be left only with ruin. At best, we’ll end up glorifying only ourselves.

But God builds a house for us, which is Christ and His word alone. He is the eternal mansion house God builds for us to live in and the only solid Rock and sure foundation our lives can have. In gratitude and love we now make that house visible to the world, by our conduct, our obedience, and our trust.

It’s good news that the house of King David has been found in Jerusalem. It is even better news that King Jesus, Son of David and Son of God, died for your sins and rose again and has become a royal house where you can dwell for all eternity.

Accept the house that God has built for us, the house of His servant David, Jesus Christ our King. In Him we have rest, in Him we dwell in safety, in Him we perfectly keep the Law of God, in Him we are made great and forever endure.
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Photo is of a capital from structure identified as the palace of King David.