Jesus Christ King of Kings Lord of Lords

Introduction

Well, good evening church. Pleasure to see all of you out here tonight. We’re going to be getting into our theme for this month, Jesus the King. And I want to get you prepared for that.

I want to just let you know there’s lots of Bible tonight. Every bit of it I’ve got on the screen so that we can move through our time together. In fact, there are 20 different passages. And so, as you can imagine, turning to and fro and trying to stay with that would just take a lot.

So, I didn’t want to put that on you. It’s all on the screen for us. But that said, there’s a lot. So, just be prepared for that.

But the theme here, Jesus, King of King, Lord of Lords, that’s from the scriptures, the term that he’s given in one of the cases that we’ll see in just a bit. But before I kind of get into that, I want to just kind of put it out there in a way that I think fits well with all of where we we find ourselves today with the topic of tonight, the fact of Jesus as king. We have a term called an idiom. And an idiom is one of those expressions that we use where we we coin a phrase and maybe some people don’t understand it and then maybe later in life you get it.

I remember being young and my grandpa would always call my grandma a night owl and I never understood that as young. I thought maybe she made a noise that had her sound like an owl or that she looked like an owl until I realized what a night owl was. And so that’s kind of the idea like there’s an expression that’s used in many ways that often times there’s this disconnect because it’s almost idiomatic. It’s an expression and then there’s this this this disconnect because of it.

And I think that’s unfortunate, but it’s also understandable. There’s a lot of different ways the scriptures say things that are just taken in ways that we don’t connect too well until we get saturated maybe in a Bible study or in something that has us be a bit more in tune to the etmology of a word, let’s say. And then from there, we kind of connect some dots. We understand more.

Our growth takes a leap. And then from there we get more. So there’s there’s that. So with that in mind, there’s even other things that we struggle maybe just to see because of our circumstances.

For example, God God is our father. And some people have difficulty resonating with that if they had a difficult father or they didn’t have a father. and maybe just someone who was kind of a father figure, but it was an uncle or some other relative that really didn’t give them the same thing that more of a direct father might give in some cases. So, there’s a lot of things that bring challenges to the imagery that scripture brings to mind.

And so, we use figures of speech all the time. And sometimes the unfamiliarity of it kind of has us think there’s not much for me to be able to take from this. And so we don’t get involved much with the idea. So just the idea of Jesus is Lord.

We sang the song a minute ago. But who do you call Lord in life? And above that, what about when it’s Lord, all four letters are capitalized. And the scripture presents it like that.

what do you do when it when that happens? You see what I mean? So, there’s a lot of different ways that we find ourselves maybe disconnected from what the scriptures are trying to help us understand and we don’t appreciate the meaning. And I’m not so sure we take it serious whenever we see it on bumper stickers that Jesus is my king because we don’t have kings ruling over us today in a way that maybe it would have been understood millennium ago.

And so we start to see this and here’s a verse to kind of kick us into a direction. Acts 2⁠:⁠36 when Peter says to the Jews, “Let all the house of Israel know for certain that God has made him,” he’s talking about Jesus, “both Lord and Christ.” What does that mean? If you’re not one of those that are really kind of in deep with the Old Testament scriptures and who the Christ is and the anticipation of the Messiah, it almost creates this sense of, well, this doesn’t really apply to me. And that’s one of the things I want to hopefully close the gap on tonight because biblically speaking, the kingship of Jesus is this grand idea.

It’s huge. And so with that, it’s difficult for us to fully appreciate that here in America, we’re so accustomed to democracy that it’s hard to imagine living under a king who possesses supreme authority over you and me. Now, absolute monarchies still exist. They are in a few places.

In fact, I used AI. Everyone hates AI until they need it. So, I used AI and looked into it. Six different countries have kings that are basically the ones who rule over the people with the iron fist or can press on an individual and have the the right to do so.

Only six countries, four of them are in the Middle East. So, they’ve got kings, but most of us have never lived under one, more or less even experience what it means to be subject to one. Perhaps the closest we’re familiar with is England’s government. Since recent they now have Charles III.

Before him it was Queen Elizabeth. But even in that case the king’s authority is limited. You’ve got Parliament who makes laws and then the prime minister leads the government. So the king serves primarily as this ceremonial figurehead, a standin in many ways to just present a lot of government’s decisions.

So whenever the Bible declares that Jesus is king, you start to see now it’s kind of easy to see him as this distant figure like I don’t relate to that much. They did then, but not so much me now today. And he’s someone that we recognize when the scriptures teach it. He’s sitting on a throne wearing a crown.

There’s obviously an impressive title that he possesses, but it has little direct influence over how I actually live. And you see that’s a challenge, isn’t it? And that’s the kind of thing that kings, the kind of king that Peter’s talking about here, that Jesus is in Acts 2⁠:⁠36, one that is overall. He is a real king, a reigning king, a ruling king, and his authority reaches into every part of our lives.

And I want us to see that tonight. So, I guess the question then would be, what does it mean for Jesus to be my king? What do I need to know about that? What does that mean for the decisions that I make or the way that I live my life or even the desires that I have in my heart if he is to rule and reign in my heart?

Even the way that I approach things such as the church, all of this matters because if Jesus really is my king, I have to ask myself whether I’m actually living as someone who belongs to his kingdom or not. So I want to just consider three things here and I’m just going to be straightforward. The first thing is going to take a matter of minutes. The second thing is going to take the bulk of our time.

So have endurance for that point. And then the third one will be a little shorter and we’ll get out of it in in in no time. But just have that in mind. It’s not balanced all three points.

1. Jesus Is a King with All Authority

So if you’re kind of totaling up, uh spare yourself the the headache there. So let’s get into this now. Let’s talk about this first big idea is that Jesus is a king with all authority. Matthew chap 28 is a place where Jesus makes known that he is king.

And here’s where we read that Jesus came and said to the disciples here that all authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Go therefore and make disciples of all the nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Teaching them to observe all that I have commanded. You start to see a lot of buzzwords.

commanded authority over heaven and earth. It’s been given to me. So, I am someone who possesses what no one else has. In a democracy, such as what we’ve got here.

The people govern as they want. The people have a choice. You and I decide who goes into office to hopefully lead the way that we would wish for our nation to be led. We have a constitution, but a constitutional amendment can be done by the next generation or the next period of electes that come in.

So, it’s important that you see Jesus is this real king with all authority and he’s reing reigning and ruling that he’s not just some figurehead. And Matthew 28 shows that his kingdom is not a democracy. He has all of authority, every bit of it. Paul talks about Jesus as king here in 1 Timothy chapter 6⁠:⁠14 and 15.

He says, “He is he who is the blessed and only sovereign, the King of Kings and Lord of Lords, who alone has immortality, who dwells in unapproachable light, whom no one has ever seen or can see. To him be honor and eternal dominion.” That’s forever and ever, as always was, and always will be. He’s got that position and it’s never going to change. We might just say that Jesus is our monarch.

This is the government term for a kingdom that is ruled by one and no one else. The idea of monarch, mono, that’s one. So he is the sole ruler. He makes all the laws.

Everyone obeys him. only he can make changes to his laws because he’s sovereign. He’s a monarch. So let’s move on.

2. Jesus Is a Ruling King

Now I told you the first one would be short. So that just tells you who Jesus is. He’s a king with all authority. And now let’s talk about the kind of ruling that he has, how this works, what this looks like.

And I hope this pans out well for us. So let’s see this as Jesus is a ruling king. Now here’s the problem. People believe he’s not ruling yet.

We have many in the religious community of other traditions that teach and even authorize from the scriptures and ways that they put it together that he’s going to return someday, set up his kingdom here on earth, and he’s going to reign with the saints for a thousand years. And there’s that idea. So, he’s not in people’s mind for some reigning and ruling yet. But Mark chapter 9 verse one, it is Jesus who actually makes a promise to his disciples that I want to point out to kind of kick the bucket in the other direction on what many believe here.

So he said to the disciples, truly I say to you, there are some standing here who will not taste death until they see the kingdom of God after it has come with power. So there are some who are standing there in front of Jesus in that day that are getting the promise that the kingdom is going to be coming during their time. Now either there are some really old disciples walking around or apostles walking around which we know is not the case or that Jesus isn’t telling the truth here. We know that’s not the case.

Let me layer in another one here. Colossians 1⁠:⁠13. He has delivered to us from the domain of darkness or delivered us from the domain of darkness and transferred us to the kingdom of his beloved son. So there sounds like now a a firm foundation established with his kingdom that’s in place and there are citizens being brought into it.

He’s reigning right now and the church is his kingdom. That’s what we’re learning. But the problem is that many have is that Jesus is not physically present here on earth. And that doesn’t jive well with some.

There’s no palace to see. There’s no throne to physically see him on. There’s no scepter in his hand that you can reach out and touch. So there’s a disconnect.

How can he be a ruling king over a kingdom if he’s not even here? So the term king then becomes a church term and it starts to mean little and we’re like well we don’t get it. It’s kind of abstract and then there becomes this sense of it’s not important. Well, let’s press the brakes on that and do something with that first because I want to try and bring his kingship to our minds with something that we see in the Old Testament and it’s under the kingship of another during the time of Esther.

This is King Ahazerus when he is ruling. And in Esther chapter 3, I want you to notice how King Ahazerus, since he is the monarch of his day, he has dominion over all the land of which any other would have. He has he’s reigning and ruling in a powerful way. And I want you to notice how he gets business done, how he runs his kingdom.

Read this with me. Then the king scribes were summoned on the 13th day of the first month. So just pay attention to how things are being ran. And an edict according to all that Hmon commanded was written to the king satraps and to the governors over all the provinces and to the officials of all the peoples to every province in its own script and every people in its own language.

It was written in the name of a king Ahazerus and sealed with the king’s signate ring. Letters were then sent by carriers to all the king’s provinces with instructions to destroy, to kill, and to annihilate all Jews, [snorts] young and old, women and children, in one day, the 13th day of the 12th month, which is the month of Adar, and to plunder their goods. A copy of the document was to be issued as a decree in every province by proclamation to all the peoples to be ready for that day. The couriers went out hurriedly by order of the king and the decree was issued in Susa the citadel.

You see all of this development from a king through all of his people who would manage the the the the business of this getting done for this one day on the calendar that all the Jews would be exterminated. You see the movement going forward in some very unique ways. There’s a lot of different tiers at play. There’s governors, there’s sat traps, there are those who are declaring the edict and proclaiming it to individual cities.

We’re talking thousands of square miles that need to get covered because the king is over all of this land. So notice how he runs the empire. The king cannot be everywhere at once. So what does he do?

Well, he issues the edict. The edict is written down and then it’s carried by messengers into every part of the empire so that everyone will do what the king says specifically on a certain day and he was quite specific on that day. So let’s draw some parallels. A real king with a palace and everything is what we just read about.

So let’s connect this with King Jesus and his kingdom. Let’s go to the New Testament and start to look at how the church, his kingdom is ran. This is just a way to connect the dots and to just show something hopefully that will help. Ephesians 4⁠:⁠8, therefore it says that whenever he ascended on high, he led a host of captives and he gave gifts to men.

So whenever Jesus ascended, he defeated a lot of those enemies. A lot of those enemies were then underneath his feet. He had rule. He had dominion.

But he also then distributed gifts so that individuals can do something whenever he was no longer physically there to do it himself. And so we keep reading in the same chapter a couple verses later about these gifts. We see that he gave the apostles. He gave the prophets, the evangelists, all these are gifts, the shepherds and the teachers to equip the saints for the work of the ministry for building up the body of Christ.

If you know your Bibles and I ask you this pop quiz question, if we’re going to use the term body of Christ, what is another way we can say those very same that same idea? Kingdom of God. body of Christ, church, kingdom of God, it’s all the same. So there we have it.

He’s disposing or he’s giving gifts for his kingdom to be ran and to be ruled by those that he would distribute the gifts to. So all of these jobs issued for his kingdom, people designated for different roles just as King Ahazerus did. catching that? So, we know how Ahazerus ran things.

His will was declared. The scribes wrote it down. The messengers then delivered it through all of the empire. Governors and sat traps, which are just officials.

They are the ones who ensured that the will of the king was enacted. It was their job to do so. This worked in Persia. Again, it was a massive landscape and they got it done.

And this is exactly how it works in Jesus’s kingdom. Again, verse 11, he gave apostles and prophets, these are like the scribes of a hazardous day that he used charged them with writing down the decrees of the king. You start to notice some other dots here. Let’s connect them.

like John 14⁠:⁠26 and the scripture speaks to this how the apostles will remember what to do whenever Jesus leaves. It’s like how do they know what to write down? Well, here you go. The helper, the Holy Spirit, Jesus says, whom the father will send in my name because he’s talking about whenever he leaves, he’s not with them anymore.

The Holy Spirit’s going to get sent in my name and he’ll teach you all things and bring to your remembrance all that I said to you. So, how are you going to be able to recall what the king wants? You’ll get the help you need whenever the time comes. That’s how well then we add this as well.

John records this for us in John 16. Jesus says to the same group of guys, I still have many things to say to you, but you cannot bear them now. It’s too much. Whenever the spirit of truth comes, he’ll guide you into all the truth.

For he will not speak on his own authority, but whatever he hears, he will speak and he will declare it to you. the things that are to come. He will glorify me for he will take what is mine and declare it to you. Why?

Because I’m king. I’m the reigning king. He’s going to be the one that helps make this happen. So, thank the scribe in a hazardous court.

If you were one of those scribes having to carry out something so critical for this kind of king who is wanting to exterminate an entire nation of people, how carefully would you have written down the king’s decree and been careful to communicate exactly what he wanted and how he wanted it on the day that he asked it to be done. My suspicion is that you would be very careful. If we were to put together a celebration on October 25th, 2026, that’s today, by the way, and you were one of the ones that had to record it. Would you be as nonchalant as to maybe miss the day by one day?

No. Because the king told you to do this. Your job, your life, everything would depend on you being spot-on with your responsibility to do what the king’s asking you to do. And that’s what we see with the apostles.

That’s what we see with the others. Look at what the Apostle Peter said about this very thing in second Peter chapter 3. He says, “This is now the second letter that I’m writing to you, beloved.” And both of them I am stirring you up by sincere stirring up your sincere mind by way of reminder that you should remember the predictions of the holy prophets and the commandment of the Lord and Savior through your apostles. Things have been given to Peter and the others.

They’re dispersing it through these letters. Not only does he say it once, but he says it again because they’ll forget. but they have it within them to share the information that the king wants these people to hear. And Peter’s doing just that.

And so you see how that all starts to sandwich itself together. So you see the problem with disconnect of kingship today. It’s a challenge for us. The king’s commands are written for all to know and many of them maybe get looked over or could get a bit passive with.

But this is where we now see that others come in alongside Peter. We have the apostles, we have the prophets, we have the evangelists, we have the shepherds and teachers. So you start to see where things start to really unfold with these other gifts. Evangelists carry the message of the king that was given to the apostles through the Holy Spirit.

Just as Ahazarus sent the messengers into all the kingdom, again Ephesians 4⁠:⁠11, he gave the evangelists to carry out the king’s message, to spread the message about the kingdom, to tell of the good news, the feet that minister to the gospel. So just think, a messenger for the king. I can’t alter that message or else I’m going to have to answer to the king. I might be able to say something to sway you in a direction that is self-imposed or something that I want that’s selfishly desired, but I’m going to have to answer for that.

So, I can’t alter the message. I shouldn’t. I can’t change it to your liking and think, well, let’s do the date on the 24th instead of the 25th. We can’t do that.

Since parties are better on Friday instead of Sunday, more people would show up. I can’t do that. Evangelists must faithfully deliver the authentic will of the king, and it cannot alter. And that’s what we start to see how the king does what he does.

He depends on those he’s gifted to carry out his will. Let’s go to another second Timothy 2. You can’t make up your own message. This is what Paul says to a preacher.

He says, “What you’ve heard and seen, heard from me in the presence of many witnesses and trust to faithful men who will be able to teach others also.” So, you got a message from me. I got it directly from the king himself. I want you now to go give it to others. You’re going to continue to pass that on.

Galatians chapter 1 again, what Paul says to a group of churches who altered the message of the king. Notice this. those who were coming in and bringing in false teaching. He says, even if we, talking about apostles, if we or an angel from heaven should preach to you a gospel contrary to the one we preach to you, let him be accursed.

As we’ve said before, so now I say again, if anyone is preaching to you a gospel contrary to the one that you’ve received, let him be accursed. He’s not following the will of the king. And that’s serious. The message you’re receiving is one of a kind.

Do not alter it. It’s a big responsibility. Help those who don’t understand to know better what the king desires of them. That is your job, evangelist.

That is your job, shepherd. That is your job, teacher. Is to assist those who are seeking to know the king’s will. We then address those who threaten the will of the king and are disobedient to the laws of the king.

That’s what shepherds do. They protect the flock from what might come in and attack and destroy and take them captive just as the great shepherd, good shepherd would do. So, Acts 20, let’s do this real quick. Paul makes this very point to the shepherds there just to kind of keep going with these gifts.

Again, Ephesians 4⁠:⁠11, shepherds and teachers, I kind of think of them like the governors of a hazardous day, the satraps. Again, they help the people understand what the king wants. But Acts 20, Paul makes this very important point. He says, “Pay careful attention.

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. I know that after my departure fierce wolves will come in among you, not sparing the flock, and from among your own selves will arise men speaking twisted things to draw away the disciples after them. from among your own people. They’re going to be those who come and manipulate the minds of those who are trying to understand the will of the king.

It’s going to happen. People just do that. So, you’ve got to ensure that not only is the king’s will known and understood, but it’s lived out and led in such a way that people can understand it. Just because there are people who are here for the reasons that we might think is all for the right reasons, it doesn’t mean that they won’t make the mistakes of doing something such as not listening to the word or turning it into something that obviously wasn’t what the king had made clear.

So you got to watch, got to beware. People will come in, threaten the integrity of the king’s decree. And again, just because a congregation may not have shepherds, here’s something to think about. There’s a lot of churches out there that do not have what we have here.

And they’re struggling in many ways because of that. But just because there are not shepherds, it doesn’t mean that everything becomes a democracy. That’s terribly thought, but it’s actually what happens often. We don’t suddenly get to vote on what we want or how we want things done.

We don’t do that. Now, the church certainly has decisions to make. How long should the water hose be and who’s going to mow the yard next month? That stuff we can decide on.

But it has absolutely no authority to rewrite the will of its king. That’s where we draw the line. Imagine, just imagine this in a haz’s day. Imagine the foolishness of a village in Persia saying, you know, well, we’re a long way from the king.

He’s never going to come here. We’re a long way off. Why don’t we just vote on a few changes? Do things that are more us since he doesn’t understand us.

Do it the way that we want. Can you imagine that? And then you begin to place in mind what would evolve or what would transpire if that was to take place. That would be an act of rebellion against the king.

And under a king with that kind of power could put you to death without anyone interfering. the Persian troops would come marching in and put an end to it in a hurry. Titus 1⁠:⁠9 to wrap up this point. Shepherds, they have no authority of themselves.

They are simply carrying out the authority of the king. So Paul says that he must hold firm to the trustworthy word as taught talking about shepherds. so that he may be able to give instruction and sound doctrine and also to rebuke those who contradict it. It’s almost as if the shepherd must have this down pat in such a way that nothing can get by them.

It’s high level stuff. It’s a big responsibility and that’s one of the things that we see here. They keep the message firm. They keep it intact is so that the flock can thrive.

3. Jesus Our King Is an Unchanging King

So, lots of big ideas here and all of this is leading to this last one here and it’s the fact that Jesus our king, he is an unchanging king. Hebrews chapter 13 says that Jesus Christ is the same yesterday and today and forever. There’s a lot of ways that we can kind of start to put on a board as to what that’s implying, what that infers. But what we do see since verse 9’s talking about teaching, we recognize that his will, his decrees, his order, his word, what he’s done, what he’s gifted, all of that, Jesus calls us to not only be led by that, but we imitate it.

That’s what we’re trying to do. None of it is ever going to change. Which means that it is totally reliable. You don’t start to get comfortable in his word and all of a sudden it shifts next year, the next season that you find yourself in.

It’s not going to change. His teachings never alter. He’s an unchanging king. And that’s what this is saying.

Now, again, back to a democracy, which is what we’re so familiar with. Things often change. Did you know? I think you did.

But just a reminder, back in 1865, you can own another human being and call them yours. It’s not like that anymore. And how wild to think that it’s that way. Until the law changed and the 13th Amendment took place, you could own another human as your own property.

Isn’t that wild? At one time, same-sex marriage was prohibited until the law changed. And we can just go down the list and recognize that here where we are, we can do all sorts of things to change the rules, change the policies, change the amendments in the constitution and do all sorts of stuff to make things better since times are changing with man. Whenever the thinking and values change, laws change too in a democracy.

And we got to protect ourselves from ever adapting to that just to keep up with society. There are some famous sayings that get said in men’s meetings such as this, the times are changing. What’s going to come after that phrase? The church needs to change with the times.

People today want something different from the church. Others are growing. We’ve got to give them what they’re asking. We got to look into this or we won’t grow.

What can we do different? Those are important questions. But how different would things be if churches were led by these sort of questions? What’s the will of our king?

How does the king desire to be worshiped? What does the king revealed in his word about how we grow? What did the Holy Spirit reveal through the apostles concerning his will about how we arrange and do things according to order? So, you see, those questions ought to make us very careful about changing anything that the king has established.

Who would dare rewrite the king’s decree? It’s foolish. Yet, sometimes we bring our American democratic thinking right into the church. Well, I think we ought to do it this way.

And if it’s not done that way, guess what’s going to happen? We’ll just go and find a church who does. Bye-bye. You change churches like a tube of toothpaste.

And that’s terrible to think that that’s the reality of many. May we ask just the question in those moments we feel tempted whenever we think that we ought to do something different and ask the question, whose kingdom is this? Whose church is this? Who’s the head?

Who has all authority here? And once we make this connection with the lesson like we’ve got today, we start to see quite clearly Jesus is king, not me. That’s not the way we see it. Even if your last name’s king, but his authority never changes with the times.

Ephesians chapter 1 verse 20. Paul talks about Jesus as head of the church. And I want to just read this to you. It’s it’s rather longer, but it says that he worked in Christ when he raised him from the dead and seated him at the right hand in the heavenly places.

I mean, that’s like old who gets that privilege? No one except him. That’s a big deal with what we just read right there. He’s in a place that none of us are.

Far above all rule and authority and power and dominion. He’s over anyone we’ve ever imagined as being powerful as a human. He’s got he’s exceeds them. He’s above every name that is named, not only in this age, but also in the one to come.

He put all things under his feet. Gave him his head over all things to the church, which is his body, the fullness of him who fills all in all. So, there’s lots to be said about the headship of Jesus here, but to sum it all up, he’s king and rightfully so. Nowhere does it say he’s called for his people to counsel and make amends and start to figure it out depending on the generation and where you’re located.

Nowhere does he call even one person on earth to represent him, i.e. the pope. And did you know one of the six countries that I mentioned, Europe was one of them, recognizing the pope in the Vatican as a monarch. I am not kidding you.

That’s something to just say. We’ve got to be mindful of who is king. Jesus is sovereign. He’s the monarch.

He’s the one and only. And that will never change unless the king enacts that. But he hasn’t. And the promise is that he never will.

There’s not going to be a change. Which leads us to this last verse here. Philippians 2⁠:⁠9. Therefore, God has highly exalted Jesus him bestowed on him the name that is above every name.

So that the name of Jesus every knee should bow in heaven and on earth. That’s talking about the angels and all the amazing beings. All of them on earth, under the earth, every tongue is going to confess that Jesus Christ is Lord to the glory of God the Father. He is an unchanging king that every man, every woman will bow down to either now or later.

Conclusion

So, we began the lesson talking about how easily you and I can misunderstand a figure of speech and even begin to fail to appreciate what that really means. We’ve seen that Jesus is a real king possessing all authority on heaven and on earth. He’s reigning right now. His authority reaches into every single facet of our lives.

When you begin to meditate on that reality, you start to realize quite quickly, oh yeah, who am I? Because he is everything. I want you to think about who this king is today. This is the king who could have commanded legions of angels yet willingly allowed himself to be arrested.

This is the king before whom every knee will bow. Yet he knelt to wash his disciples feet. And this is the king who possesses all authority on heaven and on earth and under the earth, yet willingly gave his life on a cross for you and I. That’s the king we’re talking about.

What kind of king does that? It’s a king who loves us. A king who gave himself to save us. And I think it’s fair to say he’s a king who’s worthy of our allegiance, worthy of our obedience, which then just has to say our whole life is subject to this king.

So what does it really mean for Jesus to be my king? Because if Jesus is really my king, what part of my life am I still trying to rule myself? And that’s the kicker. And that’s ultimately where all of this pivots is because my responsibility in all of this has to be met.

Is there something I’m holding on to? Something I know he wants me to change, but I just keep on resisting. I admit that he’s king, but I’m unwilling to submit. Maybe some part of my life where I’ve decided that what I want matters more than what my king has commanded of me.

Because how can I look at a king who loves me enough to die for me and then insist on living however I please? One day every knee will bow and confess every tongue that Christ is Lord. But what about today? What about your life?

What about where you are in this moment realizing your state before him? Is Jesus truly your king? And the answer, I would say, comes by way of examining whether you are submitting to him in your life or not. He’s worthy of your whole life, not part of it.

So why not bow before him today and give him all? If you need to surrender all or become a Christian and give your life to him and follow him in service and have your sins washed and be renewed with this heart of new life that you’d receive through that decision and all of your days, commit to him as a servant in his kingdom. We’d love to talk to you more about that if that’s some stuff that’s interesting to you. Or if you’re ready to commit today to something that you know you need to do regarding your heart, giving it to your Lord.

If you need to respond, let us know as we stand and as we sing. >> [clears throat]