We are going to explore one of the most pivotal passages of Scripture: “God’s promise to David.” But this promise was not just for David; it was for you and me. We have a Father who keeps his promises. His promises are pure and He possesses the power to keep his vows. 2 Samuel 7 is God’s oath to earth. This promise shaped the vision of the prophets and it is the hope of humanity.
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Jon Stallsmith
Series: One Story: Digging Deeper
January 27, 2013
Famous Kings: What Kind of King Shall Rule?
2 Samuel 7; 1 Kings 11-12
We’re going to continue with this One Story sort of narrative. We’re going through the whole big story of the Bible. Last week, as Amy mentioned, we were talking about David and his son Solomon and then the building of the temple. Right in the middle of this chapter of the One Story that we’re calling the Famous Kings (Saul, David, Solomon, the really well-known, famous kings), we’re going to tonight get into sort of what happened after Solomon, so the direct next link in those famous kings, two guys, Jeroboam and Rehoboam.
Before we get into that, 2 Samuel, chapter 7. We’re going to spend most of our time actually in 1 Kings 11 and 12. So if you want to flip there, that’s the place you want to be. If you need a Bible, slip up your hand. We’re going to be in 1 Kings 11 and 12. As sort of a way of getting into that story and getting a little bit of context, we just need to remember what happens in 2 Samuel, chapter 7.
In 2 Samuel 7, it begins with David kind of having rest from all of his enemies. Finally after the pursuit of Saul has ended and Saul and Jonathan have died and he has conquered all of his enemies, he is sort of at his rest in his house in Jerusalem. He looks around, and he sees he is living in a nice house, and the ark of God is in just a tent.
So he has this idea that he is going to build a house for God. We talked about this last week. God said, “No. You have too much blood on your hands to build this house,” but through Nathan the prophet, he did make an incredible promise to David. Okay? I’m going to read that promise to you.
This is Nathan telling David the word of the Lord in 2 Samuel 7, verse 11. “The Lord declares to you that the Lord himself will establish a house for you: when your days are over and you rest with your fathers, 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.” (2 Samuel 7:11-14)
Now it’s very interesting because talking about the one who was going to build the temple (which is Solomon), but also suddenly this promise is kind of putting together not just Solomon, David’s physical son, but it’s beginning to look forward to the one who will come and establish an eternal kingdom on the earth. Of course, that’s speaking of Jesus, right?
So now picking up again in verse 14, he says, “I will be his father, and he will be my son. When he does wrong, I will punish him with the rod of men, with floggings inflicted by men.” (2 Samuel 7:14) Of course he is talking about Solomon there, because Jesus never did anything wrong. It says, “But my love will never be taken away from him, as I took it away from Saul, whom I removed from before you. Your house and your kingdom will endure forever before me; your throne will be established forever.” (2 Samuel 7:15-16)
This is an important passage. Buddy preached the entire sermon this morning actually on 2 Samuel, chapter 7. It’s really powerful. If you have a chance, go download it, or go to the Grace app and listen to it on your smartphone. It’s amazing we have a Grace app. Technology has come a long way. We were hanging out with a guy who came in from Colorado. He was telling us how he and his wife dated. He was living in France at the time, and she was living in the United States.
They dated at a time when their sort of romantic correspondence was by fax. They weren’t sending love letters. They weren’t texting. They were sending loving faxes. I said, “Did you just wait by the machine?” He was like, “Yeah. You’d hear it start up.” The problem, though, is faxes had that ink that fades, so all of their love letters have disappeared. So if you have a chance, download the Grace app, and listen to the sermon. That’s the point of that little story.
Here’s what God is doing. He is making a promise to David that he is going to send one who will establish an eternal kingdom. Notice it’s going to be on the earth, and it has to do with a throne. A throne is a very important kingdom word. We talk about the kingdom of God all the time around here at Grace because it’s just so much in the Scriptures. Throne is one of those primary kingdom words.
The thing is, there are a couple of basics about a throne. A throne is the place from which a kingdom is ruled. Okay? So when you see throne, it’s talking about the authority, the place, the seat from which the kingdom will be administered and ruled. Whoever is sitting on that seat is holding the authority that will shape the character of the entire kingdom. So thrones are very important.
God promises David an eternal throne. There is going to come a descendant who is going to sit on that throne and rule well. Now we know (and we’ll get back to this later) the most important seat in the entire cosmos is God’s throne. We have some glimpses in the Scripture of the throne room of heaven. God is seated upon the throne, all the way forward to Revelation. The throne of God is determining the way of the entire cosmos. That’s an important, important seat obviously.
Then what is happening in this promise in 2 Samuel is that throne, that rulership, that authority of heaven, is going to come through David’s line and begin to extend over the whole earth. It’s a beautiful promise. Then the last bit we need to keep in mind before we dig into kings and look at Jeroboam and Rehoboam is that this talk of throne and kingdom, sometimes we can think, “Oh yeah. That’s all on a real high level, or maybe a little bit distant.”
The truth is each of us has an area of responsibility. We all have, in one way or another, a throne in our own lives. We have a kingdom, and we’re all part of a kingdom. Other people’s influence has an effect on how we live. You know, for our own kingdom, our own area of dominion (or maybe leadership is a better word), the places and the things we’re responsible for… I mean, the first place is our own bodies, right? Hopefully we have control over our own bodies.
So if I, in my heart, really want to do this, my arm comes up, right? I’m exercising dominion over this part of my body. Then it also extends outward into the way I relate to my wife or do my work or everything else. We are entrusted by God with a certain realm of responsibility. When I was playing ball, before games… It’s one of those sports where you have a lot of time to kill. You go out early, and you hit batting practice.
Then you get loose. Then there’s still like an hour and a half before the game. So what are you going to do? We would always play Flip, or we’d play Pepper. One of the rules of Flip is you have to toss the ball up in the air, and it goes all the way around the circle like that. If the ball falls, then you’re out basically. Sometimes you’d have three strikes, but I don’t need to give you all the details.
It’s a fun game. We can play later if you want. Everybody bring your baseball glove next week, and I’ll have some baseballs. We can play some Flip before the service. It would actually probably be good for me. I could work out a few nerves and preach better. So if somebody in the circle flipped it toward you and it landed way up there, then you weren’t responsible to make sure that ball… It was a bad flip. It just went over there. It’s like way outside of your pie. That’s what we called it…your pie. That was your little area you were responsible for.
If somebody flipped it and it landed in your pie, then you were out because you didn’t take care of your pie. Okay? You know, I don’t know if you guys want to use that, but instead of using throne or kingdom or responsibility, I mean, we all have a pie God has given us in our lives that we’re responsible for what falls in there and what happens in that pie and everything else. So that’s important to keep in mind as we read about the kings.
As we go through the books of 1 and 2 Kings and we go through the books of 1 and 2 Chronicles, we hear about these guys who have dominion and are ruling over whole countries. We kind of go, “Wow. They have a lot of responsibility, and their decisions are impacting thousands of people.” Really, that’s just their pie. The question is…How are they taking care of their pie? How are they ruling their kingdom? What’s the character flowing from that throne outward into the country?
When we start thinking about it that way, then all of a sudden, there’s a lot of application to the way we live, because we have a pie. Maybe it’s not like over all Israel, but we have a realm of influence around us. How are we ruling? How are we relating? How are we influencing that area around us, right?
So God makes a promise to David of an eternal throne. David’s son, Solomon, takes over. We talked about last week how God blessed Solomon with a wish. “What is the desire? What can I give you?” Solomon asked for wisdom. God gave him wisdom and also heaped on wealth and riches and all sorts of amazing things. Solomon really ruled at the apex of Israel’s history. Israel’s borders were the biggest. They had the most money in the treasury. I mean, it was like high times for Israel during Solomon’s reign.
What we find is Solomon drifted over time. Whereas he started off with a heart passionate for God, desiring wisdom, walking in lockstep with God, as time goes on, we see he starts to get distracted, to drift away. This is one of the questions in the Bible. If Solomon is so wise, how did he drift so far? You read through that story, and you see there are a few things that were happening there.
First of all, Solomon began to think a lot about his own stuff. As you see him building the temple, it says it took him seven years to build the temple. Right? Then the very next verse says, “Oh, and he spent about 13 years building his own house.” That’s the end of 1 Kings 6 and the beginning of 1 Kings 7. All of a sudden he is starting to put more effort and more time into kind of building his own comfort than he is building the temple.
Then a little bit further on, it talks about in 1 Kings 10 that the weight of gold Solomon was bringing in was 666 talents. The author of Kings wants us to recognize that number 666. Many of you guys have echoes of that from the book of Revelation. It’s not a good number in Revelation. The number six is the number of man, or fleshiness, really, in the Scriptures. So 666 means Solomon is focused on just getting accumulated manly wealth, human wealth, not thinking about the riches of heaven.
He has this sort of self-consumption. He is starting to draw in money and think more about that and the worldly wealth than he is about heavenly riches. Then, of course, we know about Solomon’s wives. He had about a thousand women (700 wives and 300 concubines). It’s funny. If you go to Jerusalem, they know archeologically where those women, the great harem of Solomon, were kept. It’s not the same hill as where like the Temple Mount is. It’s this other hill over there. They always called it the “Mount of Bad Counsel.”
It’s fascinating because the Scripture says in 1 Kings 11 that his wives turned away his heart. He married all these different women. He brought them into the household. Some of these were probably political weddings to create alliances but, I mean, I don’t know if all thousand were. You know, Solomon certainly had an appetite here of some kind. These women turned his heart. He was looking toward himself. He was bringing in wealth for himself.
Then also the women had a huge impact on him. That’s one of the themes as we read through and see how a lot of these kings drifted from God. One of the factors regularly is their wives. What we see scripturally is wives have an enormous amount of influence on their husband’s heart. They can lead their husbands toward God or away from God. It’s something to keep in mind as a lot of us are married and thinking about how things are going and everything. Let us lead each other and draw our hearts toward God, not toward the wrong stuff.
So as Solomon drifts away, it says the Lord raised up against Solomon an adversary Hadad and several others. So this is the fulfillment of the promise that God said, “When your son David goes away, I’m going to draw him back.” So he brings in adversaries, hardship around them. One of the men who is raised up is a guy named Jeroboam, the son of Nebat. He rebelled against the king, and then he was exiled. He was off in the distance.
Then Solomon dies. In 1 Kings 11:43, it says Solomon “…rested with his fathers and was buried in the city of David his father. And Rehoboam his son succeeded him as king.” (1 Kings 11:43) So Solomon dies. Rehoboam steps in as the next king. So now Rehoboam has this challenge of figuring out how he is going to rule. How is he going to sit on the throne of Israel?
First Kings 12, verse 1: “Rehoboam went to Shechem, for all the Israelites had gone there to make him king.” (1 Kings 12:1) It was kind of the place where they would crown him. It’s right in the center of the kingdom of Israel. “When Jeroboam son of Nebat heard this (he was still in Egypt, where he had fled from King Solomon), he returned from Egypt.
So they sent for Jeroboam, and he and the whole assembly of Israel went to Rehoboam and said to him: ‘Your father put a heavy yoke on us, but now lighten the harsh labor and the heavy yoke he put on us, and we will serve you.'” (1 Kings 12:2-4) So Jeroboam, who had led this earlier revolt, comes back and says, “Listen, one of the reasons we revolted is because your dad was a heavy taxation guy, and he recruited a lot of us to do work and everything else. It was a heavy yoke. If you lighten the load, we will serve you.”
Verse 6: “Then King Rehoboam consulted the elders who had served his father Solomon during his lifetime. ‘How would you advise me to answer these people?’ he asked. They replied, ‘If today you will be a servant to these people and serve them and give them a favorable answer, they will always be your servants.'” (1 Kings 12:6-7)
That’s good advice. They’re saying, “Rehoboam, you’re the leader. Be a servant leader. This is the way to win the hearts of your people. Serve them, and they will serve you. This is the way of the kingdom, continually being humble before others, serving them.” Verse 8: “But Rehoboam rejected the advice the elders gave him and consulted the young men who had grown up with him and were serving him. He asked them, ‘What is your advice? How should we answer these people who say to me, “Lighten the yoke your father put on us”?'” (1 Kings 12:8-9)
The young men dropped their Xbox controllers for just one moment, and they looked at Rehoboam. I mean, this is what it feels like, isn’t it? As we hear about these young men, we’re like, “These guys don’t know anything about anything,” because the advice they’re about to give Rehoboam is awful. It’s an important lesson about the people we’re having speak into our lives. The elders have some wisdom.
I know in American culture, it’s not necessarily so cool to ask people who are older than us for their advice. A lot of times you watch TV, or even just the way music… In a lot of things represented in America it’s like the older people are kind of irrelevant but, you know, they’ve survived for a while. They’ve learned some things along the way, some wise things. There is a great deal of wisdom in those who are older than we are.
I can think of so many times when, as a young man, I wanted to do one thing, and I asked somebody who was wiser, and they helped me see that would have been a terrible idea, especially in marriage. That’s helpful. “That is not a good way to be married.” “Oh, thank you.” Anyway, I have too many examples kind of at once that come to mind there. Listen to those who are wiser than you, not to those who are… It’s important not to listen to these kind of young men.
Verse 10. “The young men who had grown up with him replied, ‘Tell these people who have said to you, “Your father put a heavy yoke on us, but make our yoke lighter”—tell them, “My little finger is thicker than my father’s waist. My father laid on you a heavy yoke; I will make it even heavier. My father scourged you with whips; I will scourge you with scorpions.”‘” (1 Kings 12:10-11) This is terrible advice, but Rehoboam takes it.
Verse 12: “Three days later Jeroboam and all the people returned to Rehoboam, as the king had said, ‘Come back to me in three days.’ The king answered the people harshly. Rejecting the advice given him by the elders…” (1 Kings 12:12-13) I mean, the text wants us to know he is rejecting his elders’ advice.
“…he followed the advice of the young men and said, ‘My father made your yoke heavy; I will make it even heavier. My father scourged you with whips; I will scourge you with scorpions.’ So the king did not listen to the people, for this turn of events was from the Lord, to fulfill the word the Lord had spoken to Jeroboam son of Nebat through Ahijah the Shilonite.” (1 Kings 12:14-15)
There’s a bit of God’s sovereignty going on here also that he has predicted. He actually said it to Solomon and now is working it out in Jeroboam. Also the kingdom will be split because the disobedience of Solomon had grown so great. So look at verse 16. “When all Israel saw that the king refused to listen to them, they answered the king: ‘What share do we have in David, what part in Jesse’s son? To your tents, O Israel! Look after your own house, O David!’ So the Israelites went home.” (1 Kings 12:16)
They left. They said, “We’re not going to serve you. If you’re going to treat us this way, we’re not going to serve you.” Here’s the interesting thing. Here’s Rehoboam’s way of ruling, influencing his realm of responsibility, sitting on the throne. Here’s what defines Rehoboam’s kingdom: force. He is going to rule by force. He is going to lay the smack. “My father was tough; I’m going to be tougher. My father was mean; I’m going to be meaner. My father was hard; I’m going to be harder.”
Look what happens when he tries to rule, to lead, by force. The people rebel. It results in rebellion. We’ve probably all heard that voice in our own lives, whether it was a parent (a mom or a dad) or a boss at work or maybe a coach along the way. We all know what that voice sounds like of someone who comes along and decides to administrate his area of responsibility by force.
Maybe that voice has been our own sometimes. It’s funny. When we feel like maybe we’re out of control or we’re not being heard or not being respected, sometimes we resort to force to lead those around us. We have to remember when we try to do that, that results in rebellion. I was thinking of examples from my own baseball career of this, but they were all too profanity-filled to actually share with you guys.
We know what it’s like when people try to rule you by force. Think about this in your own life. You have your pie, your responsibility, folks God has entrusted to you. Is there anything you’ve been trying to grasp onto, to hold onto? Have you ever taken this approach like Rehoboam’s approach? It doesn’t work. It’s not the way of God’s kingdom.
So then half the kingdom (actually more than half), Israel, the whole group, splits off from Rehoboam’s rule. The only people who remain with Rehoboam are the tribe of Judah and a handful of Benjamites and some of the Levites who are living there. All the rest go off to follow Jeroboam. The kingdom is split. This is the beginning of the fracture between the northern kingdom of Israel and the southern kingdom of Judah right here, because Rehoboam decides he is going to rule this thing with a hard fist.
So Jeroboam actually displays a different way of ruling. This is interesting also. Look at verse 25. In 1 Kings, chapter 12, verse 25, it says, “Then Jeroboam fortified Shechem in the hill country of Ephraim and lived there. From there he went out and built up Peniel. Jeroboam thought to himself, ‘The kingdom will now likely revert to the house of David. If these people go up to offer sacrifices at the temple of the Lord in Jerusalem, they will again give their allegiance to their lord, Rehoboam king of Judah. They will kill me and return to King Rehoboam.’
After seeking advice, the king made two golden calves. He said to the people, ‘It is too much for you to go up to Jerusalem. Here are your gods, O Israel, who brought you up out of Egypt.’ One he set up in Bethel, and the other in Dan. And this thing became a sin; the people went even as far as Dan to worship the one there.” (1 Kings 12:25-30)
This is Jeroboam’s way. What motivates Jeroboam’s actions? Fear. Yeah, we know that one. If Rehoboam rules by force, Jeroboam rules from fear. He is ruling from fear. He is terrified about losing his influence and losing his own life. “People are going to down to Jerusalem. It’s going to be so beautiful. They’re going to go, ‘Oh yeah. Solomon’s descendants. Solomon built this. Hey, let’s go back to Rehoboam, you know the guy who is going to whip us with scorpions. Let’s go back to that guy.'”
So he is terrified, and fear shapes the entire way he views his throne, his influence, his kingdom, his pie. What happens when you lead from fear? You lead people to value the wrong things. That’s what happens. What happens? They run after all these other idols. We get afraid when we value the wrong things.
We become fearful of losing our kingdom or our roles or our responsibilities when we begin to think we’re the ones who have to hold it altogether. We value our own role in influence and gravity in the situation above God’s responsibility entrusting us with that. We begin to value the wrong things, and we teach the people around us to value the wrong things.
If ruling by force leads to rebellion, ruling from fear results in idolatry. Again, I think we can all think of the voices of people in our lives (maybe it’s our own voice) where we have led or we have exercised authority or we’ve handled our responsibilities from fear, thinking first of what we could lose rather than what God wants to lead us into.
When we get into that spot, we start being concerned with our own survival. When we start thinking about just our own survival and maintaining our own little pie, we’re already lost. The decisions we’ll make are going to be really rotten decisions. That’s what we see with Jeroboam also. A summary of this little section is that Jeroboam and Rehoboam were at war their entire lives. There was no unity here. So these are not advisable ways to lead, not by force, nor from fear.
So let’s fast forward and think about God’s kingdom. How does God’s kingdom work? What defines it? We mentioned earlier the most important seat in the cosmos is not who is sitting on the throne (Jeroboam, Rehoboam). The most important one is God’s own throne. The Scriptures have a lot to say about the throne of God. Ezekiel 1 is maybe the most important passage where we kind of see in the Old Testament this vision of a throne room, right up there with Isaiah 6.
In Ezekiel 1, he has this vision. There are beasts, and there are four sides, and it’s over the sea of … It’s amazing. Actually the Jews would mediate on the throne chariot of God as a way of really cultivating appreciation for God’s grandeur. They would read through that Ezekiel 1 and 2 section and just be thinking about how amazing God is.
It was funny. Last night we were talking to one of the guys. We were down in Midtown in Atlanta. One of the guys at the training read a tweet he had gotten right out of Ezekiel 1. One of his friends had seen a car in Atlanta that was on huge dubs. The wheels were massive. So he tweeted out, “And their rims were tall and awesome” (Ezekiel 1:18), which is Ezekiel 1:18 describing the throne of God resting upon these wheels.
Ezekiel, as he is describing it, says, “Their rims were tall and awesome…” So this guy was talking about how whoever was driving that car really had an appreciation for the throne of God. That’s what those mean, guys, when you see them out and about. Those guys are just worshiping God with their rims. Just kidding. I don’t know what their hearts are toward God. They like their cars, though.
We learn a lot about God’s throne. Psalm, chapter 9, talks about God establishes his throne for justice. The word for justice in the Old Testament speaks of when everything is set right. So the intention of God’s leadership and rulership is for things to be set right. It says righteousness and justice are the foundations of the throne. Psalm 47 says he sits on the throne over all the nations. This throne is the one that administers the entire cosmos over all the different nations.
So this is a really, really important seat scripturally: God’s throne. Rehoboam rules by force. Jeroboam rules from fear. Solomon gets so consumed with himself that he walks away from God. What characterizes the one who sits on God’s throne? That’s the question. That’s the pattern we want to follow. Revelation in the New Testament gives us two amazing glimpses. I want you to see what John sees when he is given a glimpse into heaven and when he sees who is sitting on the throne of heaven.
Revelation, chapter 5, talks about this scroll, the deed to the cosmos. They’re looking for one who can open the scroll. John is weeping because no one could be found who was worthy to open the scroll. Then Revelation 5, verse 5, says one of the elders who has gathered around the throne worshiping, said, “Do not weep! See, the Lion of the tribe of Judah, the Root of David, has triumphed. He is able to open the scroll and its seven seals.” (Revelation 5:5)
This is the fulfillment of 2 Samuel 7, the promise God made to establish the throne through David on the earth forever. This is it, the Lion of the tribe of Judah, the Root of David. So then John turns his eyes, and it says, “Then I saw a Lamb, looking as if it had been slain, standing in the center of the throne, encircled by the four living creatures and the elders.” (Revelation 5:6) Okay, let’s go ahead to Revelation, chapter 7. I want you to see the same thing again.
John turns his gaze toward the throne. He sees the Lamb. Revelation 7, verse 15, describing again the throne of God: “They are before the throne of God and serve him day and night in his temple; and he who sits on the throne will spread his tent over them.” (Revelation 7:15) This is talking about those who have been redeemed out of the challenge of the Tribulation and the bloodshed of the kingdom of darkness.
“Never again will they hunger; never again will they thirst. The sun will not beat upon them, nor any scorching heat. For the Lamb at the center of the throne will be their shepherd; he will lead them to springs of living water. And God will wipe away every tear from their eyes.” (Revelation 7:16-17) Beautiful promise. In both places, what does John want us to see about who is seated on the throne of God? It’s the Lamb. It’s the Lamb!
When he looks toward the throne, it’s the Lamb as though slain seated on the throne. What does that mean? Well, we know throughout the Scriptures, one of the ways we understand the work of Jesus is as the fulfillment of the sacrificial system. In the Old Testament, God gave them this sacrificial system where the blood of the rams and the goats was symbolically atoning for their sins.
That set the stage for when Jesus came on to the scene, and he hung on the cross, and he shed his own blood and gave up his own life for the sins of all mankind, that whoever would believe in him would not perish but have eternal life. There he is: the Lamb, the sacrificial Lamb. So when John looks at the throne, there are many images of Jesus, many different ways to describe who he is, many different things. When he looks, he says, “There is the Lamb seated on the throne.”
Not one who rules by force. Not one who rules from fear. One who rules from a place of self-sacrificing love. Think about what shapes the cosmos. What is flowing out of that heavenly throne, the most important seat in the cosmos that determines the direction of the universe? The Lamb sits on the throne. It’s not the lion. John never looks and says, “I saw a big, scary lion seated on that throne.” He said, “I saw the Lamb as though slain,” a symbol of mercy.
Jesus giving up himself, letting himself be led as a sheep to slaughter for all men, that picture, that portrait, is what sits on the throne even now in heaven. If you think about, “Whoa! That’s a big deal.” That means the model of even our own leadership…home or work, sports, school, wherever it is…is to follow that pattern of Jesus the Lamb. Not the Lion. God great and glorious. I mean, it is a glorious and beautiful scene. It’s an amazing scene. It’s drenched in glory, but at the core of it all is the Lamb who was slain.
I think sometimes we forget that. Sometimes we want to come in, and we tend toward Rehoboam. We want to be a bit more forceful than we need to be. I think sometimes maybe we forget that Lamb slain is a guarantee of our eternal place with God, and we begin to fear we’re going to lose this or that or the other thing, or that’s going to be taken away or our lives are going to crumble around us.
We forget at the center, the core, on the seat of most importance in the entire cosmos is the Lamb, the promise of God’s covenant faithfulness fulfilled and offered to us. When you think of heaven and who is seated in heaven, when you think of God, you just imagine that heavenly realm. Do you see what John sees (the Lamb seated on the throne extending mercy and grace), or do you have another picture of what the King looks like? John wants us to remember the King of all the cosmos is the Lamb.
Now he is powerful. He is mighty. He is amazing. At the beginning of Revelation, we catch a vision of Jesus, and his eyes are like fire, and his words… I mean, he is just radiant and powerful and terrifying. John falls at his feet before that vision of Jesus, but when he is talking specifically about the throne and the way the kingdom of the cosmos is administrated from on high, he wants us to remember it’s the Lamb seated on the throne, the one who gives up his life.
It’s important for us to continually come back and reconnect with that for a couple of reasons. First of all, just in our own sort of relationship to God, it’s important that we are thinking rightly, that our God is a God of grace and mercy and love. He is just. He is holy. He is righteous, but he has stooped to make a way for us to be reunited to him through that sacrifice. It’s a forever covenant kind of thing he invites us into.
It’s also important to remember as we look outward into our own pie, whether it’s just two people who are my friends or lots of influence and you’re the CEO of a company, whatever it is, in your responsibility it’s important to remember on the throne is the Lamb. He sets the standard for how we rule and lead and handle responsibility in our own kingdoms. We don’t need the way of Rehoboam in our families. We don’t need the way of Jeroboam in our jobs. We need the way of the Lamb in our lives. That’s the way of the kingdom.
For a long time, ever since the crucifixion, one of the ways we have remembered that and reconnected to that truth of the Lamb slain is through Communion. So what we’re going to do is we’re just going to remember the Lord through Communion kind of corporately as a body. I want to invite the ushers and some of the servant team to hand that out. We haven’t done it in here for a while, but I think it would be really sweet to do that as we move toward just responding to God in worship and in song.
So we’re going to distribute the elements. Here’s what Paul has to say about this issue of the bread and the cup. Of course, Jesus was the one at the Last Supper who was gathered with his disciples, and he tore bread, and he handed it out. He blessed it, and he said, “This is my body broken for you.” Then he poured wine into the cup, and he handed it out. He said, “This is the blood of the new covenant poured out for you.”
So the church, remembering that scene when Jesus said, “Do this in remembrance of me. Do this. Do this,” would do it. They would do it. Then Paul was writing about this in 1 Corinthians, chapter 11. He described how he had passed on this tradition to the early church there in Corinth. He said, “For I received from the Lord what I also passed on to you: the Lord Jesus, on the night he was betrayed, took bread, and when he had given thanks, he broke it and said, ‘This is my body, which is for you; do this in remembrance of me.’
In the same way, after supper he took the cup, saying, ‘This cup is the new covenant in my blood; do this, whenever you drink it, in remembrance of me.'” (1 Corinthians 11: 23-25) Verse 26 says, “For whenever you eat this bread and drink this cup, you proclaim the Lord’s death until he comes.” (1 Corinthians 11:26) You proclaim the Lord’s death until he comes.
We’ve been talking about how on the throne is the Lamb, the one who was slain out of self-giving, sacrificial love. Whenever we come together to take Communion, the Lord’s Supper, the Eucharist (different words, different traditions talk about this), we are proclaiming the death of the Lord until he comes.
We are proclaiming, we are remembering, we are announcing the one on the throne is not furious, is not terrifying. The one on the throne is the one who died for us and for those around us. That’s what we’re savoring. That’s what we’re remembering. We’re tasting that grace of God that defines the direction of the cosmos from the throne of heaven.