A good king is hard to find. In Jesus’ day, if the people of Jerusalem looked at the kings around them, they wouldn’t have found a true king. If they looked at their local king, Herod Antipas, they would have thought that a king was a bloodthirsty oppressor who thought little of his people, who sought only to satisfy his own whims and wishes. If they looked to the Roman Emperor, Tiberius Caesar, they would’ve thought that being a king meant being a successful military leader.
2,000 years later, we’re no better off understanding what a true king is. We have so few kings. And the kings we do know of are usually figureheads who have no real power. The few kings, or should I say dictators, who do have real authority over their subjects often act like Caesar and Herod. They do what they want, even if it means living off the pain of their people.
None of those examples show us a true king. They are blurred shadows, which the sin and evil of this world have darkened and tarnished. And so, if you want to know what a real king is like, look to Jesus. But we won’t get the real Jesus by taking in what our culture thinks of Him. We won’t get the real Jesus by taking in what we want him to be. We find the real Jesus as the Holy Spirit reveals Him to be in the Holy Scriptures.
From the Scriptures, we learn the true King has ruled the universe since the beginning of time, since God created time. But the Scriptures also tell us that He comes to give you and me His gifts of life and salvation.
Jesus is not like the other kings of history. Although the entire universe is His, He is penniless. Although the true King is the Word of God made flesh, who “is living and active, sharper than any double-edged sword, piercing as deep as soul and spirit, joints and marrow,” He holds no killing blade in His hand (Hebrews 4:12). Although the true King could call down thousands of angels to lay waste to all those who oppose Him, He has no destroying army. Jesus does not call His Church to arms. The power He wields is the power of His Word.
Jesus defeats sin, death, and the power of the devil by laying down His life. In the history of humankind, we saw His greatest glory when He was crowned with thorns. He is not a king that the world would ever invent. People would consider such a king as too weak to conquer and rule. No earthly king ever chose to let Himself to be tortured to death so He could save all His enemies.
Our experiences in this sinful world don’t point us to King Jesus. He is unlike any other king. And only Jesus embodies all that the Scriptures tell us about true kingship.
Prophet Jeremiah also knew about false kings. All through his life, the ambitious rulers of the pagan nations that surrounded Israel made pawns of the Israelites kings. And when Jeremiah preached what God had revealed about His kingdom, it described something that was far different than anything his hearers had ever experienced.
At first, Jeremiah’s description of the coming king was familiar. He would be a descendant of David. When Jeremiah received this promise, it probably gave the Israelites much hope. David ruled as king over the 12 tribes of Israel. He had been the leading hymn-writer of Israel. His poetry had told the people of Israel wonderful truths about their prophesied Messiah and Savior.
But the glory days of that Davidic kingdom were long past. God did promise that David’s descendants would rule on his throne forever. But after David died, Solomon became king, followed by David’s grandson, Rehoboam. Under his reign, the ten northern tribes broke away from Judah and Benjamin in the south (1 Kings 12:16-17).
The rebellious northern tribes installed their own king and set up their own kingly line. They became wicked in the eyes of the Lord, and the Assyrians would conquer and carry them into exile. The ten northern tribes would become no more, lost in the annals of history (2 Kings 17:1-7).
The southern kingdom also turned away from God. The Babylonians would overrun the southern kingdom and exile the people (2 Kings 25:1-11). Jeremiah was one of the prophets God used to call the remnant of His people to repent, so they would not suffer the same fate as the northern ten tribes. And so Jeremiah did that; he called God’s people to repent. But Jeremiah did more than that: He told the people that God would keep the promise that He made to David.
That was good news, mostly. For David wasn’t a perfect king. Although God had said that the king of Israel “must not collect wives for himself, so his heart won’t go astray,” David did exactly that (Deuteronomy 17:17). David’s lust for Bathsheba led him into adultery, deceit, and murder. His marriage to her sowed the seeds that would eventually divide Israel in his grandson’s generation.
But the king Jeremiah prophesied would be more than just a son of David. That king would also be a righteous Branch. That meant that the promised king would be faithful. He would flawlessly do what God required of kings in Deuteronomy 17:
When seated on his royal throne, he must make a copy of this Law for himself, from a scroll used by the Levitical priests. It is to remain with him, and he is to read it all the days of his life, so he may learn to fear the LORD his God and faithfully keep everything found in these teachings and laws. [Deuteronomy 17:18-19]
The true king would be a man who carefully studied God’s Torah, His revealed Word, all the days of his life. He would write out his copy of the Scriptures with his own hand, having the Levites make sure that every letter was exactly right.
The coming king would be a righteous branch immersed in the Word of God and who cherished it in His heart. And so the true king would rule wisely and do what is just and right in the land, just as Jeremiah had prophesied. His reign would be filled with all that God wished His people to have: mercy, the forgiveness of their sins, and safety from the slings and arrows of the evil one.
Because of that coming King, Jeremiah could speak this astonishing promise of God: “In his days, Judah will be delivered, and Israel will dwell in safety.” The days of the divided kingdom would become a forgotten memory. That king would take what this sinful world had broken and make it into one. He would unite all God’s people, both Israel and Judah, both the north and the south, in His gracious, loving, and merciful reign.
All of that probably sounded too good to be true for the Israelites. And it would’ve been too good to be true for a regular Israelite king to pull off against their powerful enemies. But God had never intended for just anyone to be Israel’s king, but Himself. David and the kings that followed were an interlude. They were lessons to teach Israel that they could never be ruled any better than when God Himself was their king.
And so, the promise to Jeremiah ends on the most-beautiful note that the people of Israel would ever hear. The coming king, the righteous branch of David, descended from his royal line, would be, “The Lord, our Righteousness.” God would again be Israel’s king, and He would be descended from David. God and man would sit on the throne of David forever.
But it was even better than that. God and man would sit on the throne and He Himself would be our righteousness. And because of that, God would remember our sins no more because God Himself would be our righteousness. The one born of the line of David will keep the Law perfectly, and He will do it as our Savior.
And by faith, the faith that God freely gives, all of His righteousness becomes ours. He is “the Lord, OUR righteousness.” He will be a gracious and loving King who will not hold our sin against us–He will rule over us. He will be called Wonderful, Counselor, the Mighty God, and He will carry our sins on His shoulders. His Church and the peace He gives to her will have no end. He will sit on David’s throne and rule over His kingdom in everlasting righteousness, innocence, and blessedness.
That, dear saints, is the hope, the assurance, that propels us forward into eternity all our lives. It is the promise in which, and by which, we live. And it’s the joy for which we prepare during this Advent season.
Advent is a season of preparation and repentance. We repent of our sins as we await the return of our King in glory. We wait, eagerly anticipating for the Day that He will take us and rejoin our bodies and souls to live with Him forever. But we also look forward to the joy we will celebrate in less than four weeks from now.
We celebrate that God is not a king like the kings of this world. We celebrate that Jesus did not think it beneath Him to be born of a sinful virgin and laid in an animal’s feeding trough. We celebrate that Jesus didn’t reject us because of our sins but, instead, turned toward us in love. He did that to cleanse us, to make us holy, and give us eternal life.
Jesus slept in the wood of a manger, so some 30 years later He could die on the wood of the cross. Jesus was born, all so He could die, so in His death, He could give you His life, and in doing so you would be with Him for all eternity. Amen.
