Hello, friends! Welcome to Christ the King Sunday, a day which reminds us that in the coming Advent season, we look for both a baby and a king. Click the video below and let us acknowledge and worship King Jesus…
There is perhaps no better hymn for this day than Crown Him with Many Crowns:
For a contemporary song, it is appropriate today and every day to Sing to the King:
Now to Him who is able to keep you from stumbling, And to present you faultless Before the presence of His glory with exceeding joy, To God our Savior, Who alone is wise, Be glory and majesty, Dominion and power, Both now and forever. Amen.
Stained glass window at the Annunciation Melkite Church in Roslindale, Massachusetts
Christ the King Sunday is intended to help us see the cosmic reality that Jesus reigns over all creation as the only rightful Sovereign of the universe. This Sunday always comes just before Advent so that we remember to anticipate both a baby and a king.
Christ as Lord of all exposes three problems humanity faces:
Building our own petty kingdoms and setting ourselves up as masters over our own small worlds. People who have been hurt (all of us) often attempt to seize power for themselves in order to avoid ever being hurt again, or in the belief that wielding power could have prevented others from being hurt. The classic villains of movies and literature are ones who seek to destroy the earth so that they rebuild it in their own idea of how the world should operate. It is protection of self and loved ones from pain. The irony is that much hurt is inflicted to alleviate such pain.
Bowing to other kings besides King Jesus. When we are distressed, we might rely on alternative authorities to address our hard circumstances. We might expect other people to give us only what Jesus can. Instead of repentance and faith in Christ, we may run to the politicians or pastors we have set up in his place to cope with whatever is going on in our lives.
Lacking awareness of the power we possess as subjects of King Jesus. Christians possess authority in Jesus Christ. As believers in Jesus, we reign with him and can exercise authority over every dominion that exists, especially the dominion of darkness.
The Apostle Paul’s letter to the Ephesian believers provides God’s design for the church. It is a plan for believers in Jesus to know their spiritual blessings and exercise the power they have as Christians united to Christ. God wants us to understand this power and authority, and to actively use it. We will know King Jesus better by availing ourselves of his authority given to us as believers. (Ephesians 1:15-23)
We have a clear understanding from Ephesians of how to pray: To know Jesus better. There is probably no higher prayer. Paul prayed that believers in Jesus would know the hope to which we have been called and the incomparably great power accessible to us.
The word for “power” in the New Testament (Greek dunamis, pronounced “doon-a-miss”) is where we get our English word “dynamite.” When I was a kid, we had a neighbor who had a fondness for playing with dynamite, especially when he drank too much. Even though he lived a mile down the road, when he blew up a tree stump or anything else on his property, it would shake our house and feel like the windows were going to break. One stick of dynamite is nothing compared to God’s power, an incredible might without equal.
This divine power is for us who believe in Jesus the King. It is the same power used to raise Jesus from the dead and which exalted Christ as Lord of the universe. The rule and reign of Jesus is far above any other existing authority – including powers and authorities of the dark domain.
When it comes to dealing with the powers of darkness, we have the authority of Jesus Christ. We have a vital and inseparable union with Jesus Christ, because of his resurrection and exaltation. Jesus redeemed us and we belong to him. We are adopted children of God. Since all earthly and spiritual powers are subject to Christ, they are also subject to us. The imagery of Jesus as Head, and believers in Jesus as the Body of Christ means we have an inseparable union together. Since we are united with Christ, we share his authority over all spiritual powers.
It is one thing to know this information; it is quite another thing to use it. God wants us to experience Christ’s power through exercising our authority as believers. We are to pray in a way which links faith and knowledge together in a confident use of spiritual authority. We have unimaginable rights as blood-bought children of God.
The 118 feet high Christ the King statue in Świebodzin, Poland
Tackling the forces of darkness needs to be a communal activity; going it alone is dangerous. So, let us pray the following prayer together, united in Christ and with one another in spiritual bond a million times stronger than superglue. This is a prayer that boldly exercises authority in Jesus Christ. So, let us come confidently before the throne of God’s grace.
God Almighty, we bow in worship and praise before You. We thank you that the Lord Jesus Christ is King over all creation, and that he is the rightful Sovereign of the universe. We thank you that because of this truth, we have power together with Jesus. Since Jesus is King, we surrender ourselves completely in every area of our lives to You. Since Christ’s authority extends over every dominion, including the dominion of darkness, we now take a stand against all the work of Satan that would hinder us now in prayer. We address ourselves only to the True and Living God and refuse any involvement of Satan in our prayers.
Therefore, Satan, we command you, in the Name of the Lord Jesus Christ, to leave our presence with all your demons. We bring the blood of Jesus Christ between us.
Sovereign God, we recognize You are worthy to receive all glory, honor, and praise. We renew our allegiance to You and ask that the Holy Spirit will enable us to pray. We are thankful, Lord God, that You have loved us from eternity past and that You sent the Lord Jesus Christ into the world to die as our substitute. We are thankful that Christ has completely forgiven us; You have adopted us into Your family; You have given us eternal life; You have offered Yourself to us to be our daily help and strength.
Glorious God open our eyes so that we will see how great You are and how complete Your provision is for today. We are thankful the victory Jesus Christ won for us on the cross and in His resurrection has been given to us and that we are seated with the Lord Jesus in heaven. We take our place with Him and recognize by faith that all wicked spirits and Satan himself are under our feet. We declare that Satan and his demons are subject to us in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ.
We are thankful for the spiritual armor You have provided. We put on the belt of truth, the breastplate of righteousness, the sandals of peace and the helmet of salvation. We lift the shield of faith against all the fiery arrows of the enemy; and we take in our hands the sword of the Spirit, the Word of God. We choose to use Your Word against all the forces of evil in our lives. We live and pray in complete dependence upon You, Holy Spirit.
We are grateful the Lord Jesus Christ disarmed all power and authorities, triumphing over them by the cross. We claim all victory for our lives today. We reject all the insinuations, accusations, and temptations of Satan. We affirm that the Word of God is true, and we choose to live today in the light of God’s Word. Almighty God, we choose to live in obedience to You and in fellowship with You. Open our eyes and show us the areas of our lives that do not please You. Cleanse us from anything that would give Satan a foothold against us. We stand into all that it means to be Your adopted children and we welcome all the ministry of the Holy Spirit in our lives today.
By faith and in complete dependence upon You we now put off the old sinful person and stand into all the victory of the crucifixion where the Lord Jesus Christ provided cleansing from the sinful nature. We put on the new person and stand into all the victory of the resurrection and the provision Christ has made for us to live above sin.
Today we put off the old sinful nature with its selfishness and put on the new nature with its love. We put off the old nature with its fear and put on the new nature with its courage. We put off the old nature with its deceitful lusts and put on the new nature with its righteousness, purity, and honesty.
In every way we stand into the victory of Jesus Christ’s ascension and glorification, in which everything was made subject to Him. We claim our place in Christ as victorious with Him over all the enemies of our souls. Holy Spirit, we pray that you would fill us with the righteousness of Christ. Break down every idol and cast out every enemy of our souls.
We are thankful, mighty God, that You have blessed us with every spiritual blessing in Christ. We are grateful You have given us new life into a living hope by the resurrection of Jesus from the dead. We are thankful You have made provision for us so that today we can live filled in the Holy Spirit with love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, gentleness, and self-control. We recognize and affirm that this is Your will for us and so we reject and resist all the attempts of Satan and his demons to rob us of God’s will.
We are thankful, Blessed Holy Trinity, that our spiritual weapons have divine power to demolish demonic strongholds, arguments, and every pretention that sets itself up against the knowledge of God. We take captive every thought to make it obedient to Christ. Therefore, we tear down the strongholds of Satan and smash the plans of Satan that have been formed against us. We affirm You have not given us a spirit of fear but a spirit of power, love, and self-discipline. We choose to make right decisions of faith.
Powerful God, show us the ways Satan is hindering, tempting, lying, and distorting the truth in our lives. Help us to be aggressive in prayer and faith. Help us to think rightly, and actively practice Your Word. Help us to give You Your rightful place in our lives. We now cover ourselves with the blood of the Lord Jesus Christ and pray that You, Holy Spirit, would bring all the work of Christ’s crucifixion, resurrection, ascension, and all Your work of Pentecost into our lives today. We deliberately surrender ourselves to King Jesus. We refuse to be discouraged because You are the God of all hope. You have proven Your power by resurrecting Jesus from the dead, so we claim this victory over all satanic forces in our lives, our families, our neighborhoods, our workplaces, and our faith communities. We pray in the Name and through the blood of the Lord Jesus Christ with thanksgiving. Amen.
En la Cena ecológica del Reino (At the Ecological Kingdom Dinner) by Spanish artist Cerezo Barredo
While Jesus was still talking to the crowd, his mother and brothers stood outside, wanting to speak to him. Someone told him, “Your mother and brothers are standing outside, wanting to speak to you.”
He replied to him, “Who is my mother, and who are my brothers?” Pointing to his disciples, he said, “Here are my mother and my brothers. For whoever does the will of my Father in heaven is my brother and sister and mother.” (NIV)
Jesus obviously did not get the memo that blood is thicker than water. When his own blood family were waiting outside for him, Jesus used the occasion to speak of what makes up a true follower of God. Christ boldly asserted that his true family is made up of people who do God’s will. By saying this, Jesus brought the point home that the kingdom of God turns on obedience.
Rather than solely confessing belief, or appealing to a family heritage of faith, Jesus said that a genuine believer in God is one who listens to God’s words and then promptly obeys them. Therefore, a Christian is defined by allegiance to Jesus, and not by having a certain bloodline.
Identity determines activity. For example, if I identify myself primarily as a worker at my job, my activity will show it – I will spend long hours at my labor, and will do whatever it takes to please my boss and gain promotions. If I identify myself primarily as an athlete, I will spend long hours honing my skills, and do whatever it takes to please the coach and to win. If my identity is mostly wrapped around being a husband and father, I will focus most of my attention on my family and seek to please my spouse and children in all things.
If my identity is first and foremost as a Christian, I will always seek to please Jesus. I will then view my job as an opportunity to express the ethics of God’s kingdom, as a calling from God, and as a means for God to transform me for his glory. I will view athletics as means to glorify God, and not as an end in and of itself but as a special gift for God to teach me about the importance of community and working together.
If my identity is clearly in Christ, I will view my kids as belonging to God and I will steward the trust of children given me by doing whatever it takes to teach and train them in the way of Jesus. I will thank God for my family and not confuse them with being God by idolizing them.
In today’s Gospel lesson, Jesus was inside a house, with his family on the outside. So, why were the family members of Jesus not inside the house sitting at his feet, taking the posture of a disciple? The disciple Matthew wanted to communicate more than physical distance between Jesus and his physical family – being “outside” was meant to convey the posture of Christ’s family as spiritually distant, skeptical of him, and indecisive about who he was and what he was up to. In fact, the disciple Mark made this spiritual and emotional distance clear:
Jesus entered a house. A crowd gathered again so that it was impossible for him and his followers even to eat. When his family heard what was happening, they came to take control of him. They were saying, “He’s out of his mind!” (Mark 3:20-21, CEB)
Christ’s earthly family were not looking for Jesus to give them warm-fuzzies and have a family group hug. They were there to tell him: “Cut it out, Jesus, because you’re acting like a nut-cake and embarrassing us all!” The kid brothers of Jesus (James and Jude) would go on to become powerful Christian preachers and each pen a New Testament letter, but that does not happen till after Jesus’ resurrection.
Ethiopian Orthodox Church depiction of Christ and his disciples
Jesus was saying that identifying only with a biological family leads to only pleasing that family. However, identifying with Jesus leads to a radical form of following God that seeks to please him instead of submitting to family practices, mores, and beliefs which are inconsistent with the kingdom of God.
For the follower of Christ, the church is the family of God, and we are to act consistent with being in such a family. We are to go hard after God’s will, serve one another, and adopt outsiders into our family. The church is a family, not a restaurant. When we go to a restaurant, we either like the food and the service, or not. If the experience was unpleasant, we might complain to the waitress and may or may not come back. Try doing that with your mother and see where it gets you! As a biological family, we are committed to each other. There is no complaining about mom because of dad’s wrath. Instead, we are expected to clear our plates and put them in the dishwasher, to sweep the floor and clean the table, and to work together for the benefit of the entire family. In the same way, following Jesus means being committed to his family, the church.
Priority is to be given in doing God’s will, regardless of blood, because obedience to Christ identifies us as being in the family of God. Our actions and the way we live points to what we honestly believe and where our commitments truly lie.
The first step of God’s desire for us is quality focused time in sitting at Christ’s feet and listening to him because this is at the heart of all Christian discipleship. We cannot do God’s will until we have clearly heard it; and we cannot hear God’s will unless we take the time to be at the feet of Jesus.
Both listening and doing are necessary. Listening without engaging the world is a failure of mission; and doing without first listening leads to misguided acts and eventual burn-out. Allow Jesus to call the shots and let him instruct us so that we can act wisely and obediently.
Jesus did not devalue blood relatives as irrelevant. Rather, Christ emphasized that our primary allegiance is to him, and not to our biological family. The kingdom of God seeks to restore and redeem all things, including family. Both church and family are important. The relationships within each are to be nurtured.
The family of Jesus, the church, is important because Christ suffered and died for her. So, we are to be committed to the church, love the church, and serve the church because we are family. If we have a good grasp of this, we will make decisions based in what we believe God’s will is, instead of whether a relative will get upset, or not.
Our biological families are important. Jesus never pitted one against the other, because he wants to see families redeemed and work together as the family of God. Every Christian family can do this:
Appoint a time to read Scripture together and listen to Jesus and discuss it.
Show hospitality so that we can eat and drink our way into the kingdom of God.
We need to persistently pray for spiritually lost family members, and those whom we are estranged from. Most families have at least a few toxic persons in their orbit. Here is how we might pray for them:
That God will arrange divine appointments between them and other believers who love Jesus.
That God will draw them to the mercy of Christ.
That God will hinder the devil’s schemes against them.
That they will understand and respond to the good news of God’s grace.
Jesus said, “Who then is the faithful and wise servant, whom the master has put in charge of the servants in his household to give them their food at the proper time? It will be good for that servant whose master finds him doing so when he returns. Truly I tell you, he will put him in charge of all his possessions. But suppose that servant is wicked and says to himself, ‘My master is staying away a long time,’ and he then begins to beat his fellow servants and to eat and drink with drunkards. The master of that servant will come on a day when he does not expect him and at an hour he is not aware of. He will cut him to pieces and assign him a place with the hypocrites, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.” (NIV)
Satan once called on some demons of hell and wanted to send one of them to earth to ruin some souls. One demon came forward and said, “I will go.” The devil said, “If I send you, what will you tell the humans?” He said, “I will tell those humans that there is no heaven.” Satan said, “They will not believe you, for there is a bit of heaven in every human heart. In the end everyone knows that right and good must have the victory. You may not go.”
Then another demon came forward, darker and fouler than the first. The Accuser said, “If I send you, what will you tell humanity?” He said, “I will tell them there is no hell.” Satan looked at him and said, “Oh, no; they will not believe you, for in every human heart there’s a thing called a conscience, an inner voice which testifies to the truth that good will be triumphant and evil defeated. You may not go.”
Then one last demon came forward, this one from the darkest place of all. The devil said to him, “And if I send you, what will you say to women and men to aid in the destruction of their souls?” The demon said, “I will tell them there is no hurry.” Satan said, “Go!”
Most people’s crime in not gross sin but in plain indifference, without much thought to a future judgment day. Jesus said that such persons will not know what hit them because the Day of the Lord is coming, and it may be soon. Therefore, the question for Christians is not “When will Christ return?” because no one knows the answer. Rather, the question for us is:
Are you ready for Christ’s return?
Today’s Gospel lesson is part of what is known as the Olivet Discourse, Christ’s final sermon before he faced the cross. Jesus was looking for his disciples to keep watch, to stay alert, to be ready, like a watchman on a tower scanning the landscape for an invading army. We are to remain vigilant and remember Jesus is coming again. We are to live each moment considering the promise of Christ’s coming, not knowing the day when it will happen.
Keeping watch, being ready, and staying alert means being witnesses to a world going about their merry way unaware that there is a doomsday. We are to be active, like Noah building the ark, anticipating the great flood of coming judgment. We are not to waste time creating prophecy charts and trying to connect current events to the Lord’s return. Instead, we are to prepare for the coming judgment through living godly, upright lives. (2 Peter 2:4-9)
We keep watch by being faithful stewards in God’s household.
We are to avoid being like the unfaithful teenager who, when given the responsibility of watching over the house while his parents are gone for the weekend, has a big party and trashes the house. The parents will come home at a time the teenager does not expect, and then there will certainly be weeping and gnashing of teeth!
The faithful and wise steward is busy doing the master’s business – the mundane work of taking care of the master’s house. Preparing for Christ’s return leads to down-to-earth acts of love and care, without passively or nervously sitting around and waiting. The unfaithful servant in Christ’s story is careless, cruel, and carouses because he pays no attention to the fact that the master could return at any moment.
When Christ returns, none of us knows who will be taken and who will be left – because people might look like the same on the outside, doing the same work side by side, but can be very different persons on the inside.
As believers wait for their Lord’s return, they may become impatient and get caught up in petty day to day problems, losing sight of what is tremendously important. One day, a man named Denis Waitley, was trying to catch a flight but was running late. So, he ran through the airport terminal. He got to the gate the split second the gate agent closed the door. Denis explained his situation, that he had a speaking engagement to get to, but the agent did not budge.
Denis’s frustration turned into fuming. He stormed out of the boarding area and back to the ticket counter to register a complaint and reschedule his flight. The anger intensified as he waited for more than twenty minutes in a line that barely moved. Just before he got to the counter an announcement over the intercom changed his life. The flight he missed, flight 191 from Chicago to Los Angeles, crashed on takeoff and killed every person on board the plane.
Denis Waitley never registered his complaint. In fact, he never returned his invalidated ticket. He took it home and pinned it on a bulletin board in his office to remind him whenever he got frustrated or upset that life is more than day to day impatience, worry, and complaints. It is about serving a lost world destined to slide away from God apart from the grace that can turn judgment into blessing.
We are to keep watch for the Lord’s return because it could be today.
In the meantime, we are to be faithful by serving a world in tremendous need of getting on the ark and being saved from the coming judgment. Perhaps the best way to overcome our own chronic unhappiness and struggles is to serve the world and be the servant God wants us to be.
God Almighty, you are our hope in this life and the life to come, as we wait for Christ’s return, help us to work for the good, as if each day is our last; and let our hope for a new day shape how we live now. We look forward to the time when all will be made right. Even so, come Lord Jesus. Amen.
Rev. Tim Ehrhardt 