Your King Will Come

Christ the king sunday

Shepherd of the Hills Ev. Lutheran Church (WELS)

Daniel 7:13,14

¹³ “In my vision at night I looked, and there before me was one like a son of man, coming with the clouds of heaven. He approached the Ancient of Days and was led into his presence. ¹⁴ He was given authority, glory and sovereign power; all nations and peoples of every language worshiped him. His dominion is an everlasting dominion that will not pass away, and his kingdom is one that will never be destroyed. (NIV)

It is difficult for us to imagine how discouraging it must have been for faithful Jewish people around Daniel’s time.  The glory days of Israel certainly had not lasted long, and by now they were a thing of the past.  Division separated the once united monarchy into the Northern Kingdom of Israel and the Southern Kingdom of Judah.  The Northern Kingdom had already been defeated at the hands of the Assyrians, and now Judah was playing the role of punching back to Egypt and Babylon, both vying to take their place of prominence on the world’s stage.  Making it even more difficult to swallow was the fact that the majority of the kings who ruled in Israel and Judah were spiritually and morally reprehensible.  Eventually, just as he had predicted he would through his prophets, God allowed Judah to be delivered into the hands of Nebuchadnezzar, king of Babylon.

In an effort to assist in governing his defeated enemies, part of Nebuchadnezzar’s plan included taking some of them captive in order to assimilate them into the Babylonian culture.  “Then the king [Nebuchadnezzar] ordered Ashpenaz, chief of his court officials, to bring in some of the Israelites from the royal family and the nobility – young men without any physical defect, handsome, showing aptitude for every kind of learning, well informed, quick to understand, and qualified to serve in the king’s palace. He was to teach them the language and literature of the Babylonians. The king assigned them a daily amount of food and wine from the king’s table. They were to be rained for three years, and after that they were to enter the king’s service” (1:3-5).  Daniel was one of those young men chosen to be transplanted from his homeland to Babylon, so that he might become familiar with all things Babylonian.

Daniel was faithful to the Lord.  He was a man of integrity and honor.  Even in seeking to remain faithful to his Levitical diet and avoid eating unclean meals in Babylon, he was always very humble and respectful.  The Lord blessed Daniel, so that he was looked upon favorably by the Babylonians.  They witnessed his devotion and trust in God when he was sentenced to a night in the lions’ den, and they saw first hand how Daniel’s God rewarded that trust by keeping him from any harm.  God also blessed Daniel with the gift of interpreting dreams accurately, something their own wise men were unable to do, which endeared him all the more to the Babylonian rulers. 

Daniel was used to being called on to reveal the meaning of dreams for others.  Now, God had given him a vision of his own.  “In my vision at night I looked, and there before me was one like a son of man, coming with the clouds of heaven. He approached the Ancient of Days and was led into his presence.  He was given authority, glory and sovereign power; all nations and peoples of every language worshiped him. His dominion is an everlasting dominion that will not pass away, and his kingdom is one that will never be destroyed” (v.13,14).  Daniel had known wicked kings back in his homeland.  In Babylon he was able to witness how kings in foreign nations ruled and carrying out their reign.  But with this vision, God granted Daniel a glimpse of a King who would surpass them all.  With this vision, Daniel saw Christ the King.

While it may be difficult to say with any degree of certainty how much of this was clear to Daniel at the time (the context tells us the visions “troubled” and “disturbed” him), there faith worked in us by the power of the Holy Spirit reveals to us that Daniel’s vision is indeed depicting Jesus Christ.  We have the benefit of the New Testament Scriptures, where we again come across the phrase “son of man.”  Jesus himself used the title.  Often times when referring to himself as “son of man,” it was to emphasize his human nature.  When we connect Jesus’ use of the title to Daniel’s vision, we recognize what Jesus was truly revealing: he was the promised one, the Messiah.  He was the living, breathing, walking, talking, fulfillment of the very individual Daniel saw in his dream!  In Jesus, the hope revealed to and through the prophets of old had come. 

And that’s just the beginning.  It’s not just that Jesus is the fulfillment of the  “son of man, coming with the clouds of heaven,” but look at the manner in which he comes! “He was given authority, glory and sovereign power; all nations and peoples of every language worshiped him. His dominion is an everlasting dominion that will not pass away, and his kingdom is one that will never be destroyed” (v.4).  Do any of those descriptions sound like a rule that belongs to any earthly king?  Hardly!

Even earthly rulers recognize that Christ’s kingdom is unique.  Comparing Christ’s Kingdom to earthly kingdoms, Napoleon the Great said, “You speak of empires and power. Well, Alexander the Great, Julius Caesar, Charlemagne, and myself founded empires, but on what did we found them? Force. Christ founded His on love, and at this moment there are millions ready to die for Him… I see no army, no banner or battering-ram; yet a mysterious power is there, working in the interest of Christianity – men secretly sustained here and there by a common faith in the great Unseen. I die before my time, and my body will be given to the earth as food for worms. Such is the fate of him called Napoleon the Great. But look to Christ, honored and loved in every land. Look at His kingdom, rising over all other kingdoms. His life was not the life of a man; His death not that of a man but of God” (Encyclopedia of Sermon Illustrations, p. 36).

As Daniel’s vision made clear, Christ the King has all authority, glory, and power.  No earthly ruler has ever even come close.  Many claim authority on the basis of the number of books they’ve written or the letters P-H-D after their name.  Jesus wrote a book as well – the Bible – and when your name is spelled G-O-D, you don’t need any extra letters after your name to prove you’ve got authority; you simply speak and it immediately becomes evident.  At Creation he spoke, to the wind and waves he spoke, to the decaying corpse of Lazarus he spoke, and all could do nothing but bend to his authority.  Christ the King is the supreme authority. 

Christ the King has all nations and people of every tongue worshiping him.  Earthly kingdoms have boundaries; they may change over time, but they always exist.  Christ’s Kingdom has no boundaries.  No other kingdom is so expansive that it reaches the ends of the earth.

Christ the King’s dominion – his almighty rule – will continue into eternity.  Earthly rulers seek to grab power in any way possible, but the only certainty that exists when they come to power is that it will at some point be lost.  Nations rise and fall, but only Christ’s Kingdom extends to the heights of heaven, where it is unreachable to those who would oppose it.  It cannot and will not be overthrown.  It will exist forever, and so will its King.  And dear friends, the King who rules forever will return again. 

On the one hand it is beyond terrifying to think that Jesus will return again, knowing that he is coming to judge.  Think back to a time that you were given a task and you knew that someone – a parent, an unforgiving boss, a demanding officer – was going to return to meticulously inspect your task.  Almost worse than the actual inspection is the dreaded anticipation of it; the fear of what will happen if you’ve underachieved.  Now consider all that Christ has called us to do when he departed the first time into the clouds – love your Lord by loving your neighbor, loving the needy, loving the lost, loving your church – and he’s coming back to judge how we did?  We have every right to be terrified!  We’ve failed on all accounts!  When the King returns, we deserve to be treated as traitors who have consistently catered to ourselves at the expense of carrying out all that he has called us to do.  We don’t deserve to be cared for in his kingdom; we deserve to be cast out of it!

Ah, but Christ the King, when he comes, will not be coming to judge us on the basis of our failures, but on the basis of his merits.  And for that reason he cannot come again soon enough.  As we transition next Sunday into the season of Advent, that is our focus.  We long for the King’s return.  We want our Righteous Ruler to come back for us and make things as they should be.  We yearn for an eternity that knows no turmoil, that will not and cannot feel the emptiness of loss.

Christ the King, Christ our King will come.  Because he’s already made you his when he bled and died for you, he will come again for you.  They say there are no guarantees in life, but such a statement doesn’t apply with regard to our King’s return.  He will come again; he will come again because his kingdom is incomplete until all the souls he’s purchased are brought safely within the walls of the new Jerusalem. 

What difference does that make?  All the difference in the world!  When you woke up yesterday, in all likelihood there were a number of problems in your life – some relatively small; others looming large – that you would absolutely remove from your life if you could.  Chances are, when you wake up tomorrow morning, those problems will still be there.  Some of them you cannot do anything about, but dear friends, all of them Christ has done something about; he’s overcome them. He came to overcome – yes, your sin – but also sin’s lingering effects and all that it has touched and tainted.  Christ your King has overcome all.  He rules all, and his kingdom is incomplete without you.  Your King will come; he will come for you.  Amen.

“For the freer confidence is from one’s own works, and the more exclusively it is directed toward Christ alone, so much better is the Christian it makes.” (Luther)