Ten Minute Bible Talks Devotional Bible Study - Why Jesus is King | Torah | Deuteronomy 17:14-20

Episode Date: October 17, 2022

Who is king or queen in your own life? Who governs your decisions? Do you long for power? Does power change people? Keith discusses all of this and more on today’s episode on Deuteronomy 17:14-20. Your support makes TMBT possible. Ten Minute Bible Talks is a crowd-funded project. Join the TMBTeam to reach more people with the Bible. Give now. Like this content? Make sure to leave us a rating and share it with others, so others can find it too. Use #asktmbt to connect with us, ask questions, and suggest topics. We'd love to hear from you! To learn more, visit our website and follow us on Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter @TenMinuteBibleTalks. Don't forget to subscribe to the TMBT Newsletter here. Passages: Deuteronomy 17:14-20

Welcome to 10-minute Bible Talks, where we connect the Bible to your life. In the time it takes to get to work. I'm Keith Simon. Let's start with a thought experiment. Imagine you saw a LinkedIn account, but could only see the person's resume, not their name or their title. And on this mysterious person's resume, you read, Lord, Son of God, divine ruler, savior of the world. On the list of the person's accomplishment, they put, brought peace to the known world. Who is this mysterious person?

Well, the answer is easy, isn't it? Of course it's Jesus. Well, maybe. If you lived in the Roman Empire during the first century, you would have said, of course, the answer is easy. This is obviously talking about Caesar. All the titles that we think of belonging to Jesus were the titles that first belonged to the king of Rome, which of course means that when the titles Lord, Son of God, and Savior were given to Jesus, they were making a claim that Jesus was the true king, not Caesar.

And when the early Christians declared that Jesus is king, there was this unspoken implication. If Jesus is the true king, then Caesar isn't. Now that's the kind of thing that could get you on the sharp side of the guillotine. Since we're on the topic of death, why do you think the Romans killed Jesus? because he was an itinerant preacher who taught about loving your neighbor and your enemy? Well, of course not. They killed Jesus because he claimed to be the true king and therefore was considered a rival to every earthly king.

Jesus' mission and his message were revolutionary. Is there anything revolutionary about your faith? If not, I wonder what happened. But when we hear the Bible declare that Jesus is king, that doesn't do much for me. most of us. Why not? Why aren't we inspired by that? Well, what do you think of when you hear the word king? When you think of the word king, what comes to your mind? Like Burger King or King George in Hamilton or King James? Elvis Presley was the king of rock and roll and Michael Jackson was the king of pop or do you think of Dr. King or the Lion King or Stephen King or Smoothie King or

the King James Version or King Tut or King-sized candy bars or King Kong? Well, none of those things makes me very excited about following a king. On top of that, the TV shows like The Crown or Game of Thrones show kings as corrupt, power-obsessed, and selfish. Our nation was founded by overthrowing a king. Why? Well, kings become authoritarian. Kings have pretty dismal records of how they rule.

Across the world, Christians have fought against kings and they fought for democracy. And of course, that's because we all acknowledge that absolute power corrupts absolutely. All that means is that power changes people and rarely for the better. None of this is new. Kings have always been prone to grab power and then use their power for selfish ends. God knew his people would eventually want a king when they entered the promised land. Here's Deuteronomy 17. When you enter the land, the Lord your God is giving you, and have taken possession of it and settled in it, and you say, let us set a king over us like all the nations

around us. Be sure to appoint over you a king the Lord your God chooses. He must be from among your fellow Israelites. Do not place a foreigner over you, one who is not an Israelite. The king, moreover, must not acquire great numbers of horses for himself, or make the people return to Egypt to get more of them. For the Lord has told you, you are not to go back that way again. He must not take many wives, or his heart will be let astray. He must not accumulate large amounts of silver and gold. See, all the way back in Deuteronomy, all the way back in the earliest parts of the Bible, God says to his people what kind of king they should and shouldn't want. And the bottom line is, they should want a king that God chooses, not a king who accumulates horses and wives and silver and gold.

Those are shorthand for military strength, political alliances, and great wealth. When a king craves those things, he exploits people and he leads people astray. Back to Deuteronomy 17. When he takes the throne of his kingdom, he is to write for himself on a scroll a copy of this law taken from that of the Levitical priest. It is to be with him, and he is to read it all the days of his life so that he may learn to revere the Lord is God and follow carefully all the words of this law and these decrees, and not consider himself better than his fellow Israelites, and turn from the law to the right or to the left, then he and his descendants will reign a long time over his kingdom in Israel.

See, the king God chooses, submits himself to God's laws, and doesn't consider himself better than any other Israelites. So in the one hand, we are right to be suspicious and even resent a certain kind of power-hungry, selfish king. But on the other hand, there's hope that we could have a good kind of king, a kind of king that is gracious and kind and loving. So one reason that we reject kings is because they accumulate too much power and then they use that power for selfish ends. But we also reject kings because we don't want them to have too much power or control over our own lives. We are our own people and we'll do whatever we want. We're not going to do what someone else tells us to do.

True story. There's a guy named Kevin Baugh who started his own country. He calls it the Republic of Melossia. And he wants you to call him His Excellency, Kevin Baugh. He wears a really impressive khaki uniform with big metals and a gold braid. And he also wears a general cap. Now, if you've never heard of the Republic of Melossia, That's completely understandable because it only consists of Kevin Baugh's three-bedroom house,

his one-acre yard right outside of Dayton, Nevada. According to an article in the Chicago Tribune, Molossia is the smallest republic. It has a population of six. Kevin Baugh, his two sons, and his three dogs. You need a passport to visit it, and it even has its own currency. The Chicago Tribune goes on to say that Baugh is a 45-year-old father of two, and he's what they call a micro-nationalist. It's kind of a do-it-yourself nation builder

that raises their own flag over their front yard and declares their property to be the kingdom of me. Now, for Kevin Ball, it's just kind of a fun joke, a weird joke, but just a fun joke. But he's touched on something that all humans want to do, and that is that we all want to build a kingdom of me in which we are king or queen over our own lives. And it can be a good moral life. It's just that in this life it is about me and for me. It's a kingdom

built on meeting my needs, seeking my comfort, achieving my goals, fulfilling my needs. If you think Jesus is going to be a threat to your kingship over your own life, that's because he is. See, Jesus just wasn't a threat to Caesar and his kingship over Rome. He's a threat to you and your kingship over your own life. But what if Jesus is a different kind of king? What if he's the kind of king we need? What if he's not selfish but compassionate? Not power hungry, but instead uses his power on behalf of others. That he uses his power to heal our broken bodies and to fix our broken world. You see, when Kanye West put out that album, Jesus is king, he was right. In Times Square, it said Jesus is king, but it doesn't just need to say it on a billboard in Times Square.

It needs to say it everywhere in Washington, D.C., in Hollywood, but maybe most importantly, it needs to say Jesus is king in our own hearts. Jesus is the kind of king we need. He doesn't use his power to dominate, but to serve, to forgive, to rescue, to heal and protect. Jesus is the compassionate king who cares for the needy and the broken. He seeks out those in the margins. Jesus is the king, in whom all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge are found. Jesus is the humble king, choosing to be made like us in every way. Jesus is the powerful king who has been given all authority in heaven on earth. Jesus is the suffering king, giving his life for others. King spilled the blood of their enemies, but King Jesus's blood was spilled for his enemies.

Deuteronomy 17 says that we need the king that God chooses. Jesus is that king. Now what we must do is bow our knee, bend our neck, submit to his rule in our life. Hey, thanks for listening. If you want to go deeper, sign up for the 10-minute Bible Talk newsletter. You'll get a short email once a week. It'll challenge you to grow in your faith, give you interesting background on today's passage, and a lot, lot more. Just click the link in the show notes to sign up. It'll help you deepen your journey with Jesus.