Today is a day for wrapping up. Next Sunday, I’ll start telling the story from the top once again. What crowns the story, its conclusion and vision, is Christ the King, our King. Through my preaching over this year, and every year, I have tried to draw us deeper into Jesus Christ: our origin, our salvation, our Lord, our life. Apart from grace, apart from the Spirit, I cannot draw us in, and you cannot get to where he is. I hope that, to the best of my ability, I have preached according to the Word of God. Such preaching demands great humility and great conviction. Such proclamation requires faith, hope, and love. Any value you’ve received in anything I have said here is from the Spirit. The Spirit makes all the difference. The Spirit is leading us into all truth.

Some fellow West Columbia pastors and I recently spoke about the importance of reading Scripture together in the church, lest each believer (including the pastor!) begin to develop private, personal interpretations. One of them rightly observed that, when someone reads the Bible without the community of faith, he or she happily discovers that God always agrees with him or her. Scripture begins to fit remarkably well with personal opinions, personal values. That is not our goal. Our goal is that, through the power of our King, by the Spirit, together, we come to agree with God.

I hope you’ve found some sense in what I’ve preached over this past year. I hope that nothing I have said from this pulpit has offended your understanding of Scripture. I have no authority apart from God’s Word. God is the authority, and Scripture interprets Scripture. If you fear that I have preached contrary to Scripture, let’s sit down together, read this book together, and pray to arrive at mutual understanding, which is the blessing of the peace of the Spirit. Our King will bless his Church with this peace, peace in His Word, peace in his grace, joy in his love.

We live in confused times, beloved, and the church is not immune from the confusion raging through the world. The Bible seems so out of touch with our times, modern society, modern ideas, modern values. The Bible tells us more about our own times than we care to admit. Here is the work of the Spirit, the power of the King, ruling and overruling those God has given him. God’s people continually need the King’s ruling power. We go woefully astray, left to our own light, no matter how much more of it we think we now have.

Scripture makes that truth plain. Jeremiah makes it plain in what we hear him say today, this Christ the King Sunday. Christ is King every Sunday and every day—still we don’t live like it, every day. Jeremiah speaks sternly to those charged with tending God’s flock, serving God’s people. The history of the priests and kings is a history of straying, of self-seeking. Self-seeking always ends in idol worship because there is only one idol: self. That idol wears many faces and is called by many names, but it is one idol. Self-worship always destroys, always scatters.

God wants His people to be lifted, built up; He wants His scattered people to be gathered. God wants people in positions of authority who live according to God’s own heart. With few exceptions, all those authorities—kings, priests, scribes, and so on—failed. Oh, many started off well enough. Then came the wobbling, the swerving and veering.

We hear echoes of Jeremiah’s stern words in the New Testament. James writes, “Not many of you should become teachers, my brothers and sisters, for you know that we who teach will be judged with greater strictness” (James 3:1). I tremble every time I read that.

We must exercise authority in the Spirit of our King. Peter sees the present in the history of Israel: “But false prophets also arose among the people, just as there will be false teachers among you, who will secretly bring in destructive opinions” (2 Pet 2:1). These false teachers, with their destructive opinions “will even deny the Master who bought them—bringing swift destruction on themselves. Even so, many will follow their licentious ways, and because of these teachers the way of truth will be maligned” (2 Peter 2:1-2). What is the way of truth? Who can tell us? How can the church be in such disagreement? Peter then calls attention to that old idol: “And in their greed they will exploit you with deceptive words. Their condemnation, pronounced against them long ago, has not been idle, and their destruction is not asleep” (2 Peter 2:2). For what were these false teachers greedy: money, prestige? Self-justification—to make their way right and God’s way, God’s Word, wrong; to make their way God’s Word.

It doesn’t take much searching and reading to see those destructive opinions even today, and not just in our denomination. Satan has a bigger catch in view than this or that denomination. When good Christians affirm that there are many ways to God, they are denying the Master who bought them, denying their King. That’s not their intention or desire. But we love the love and we hate the judgment and we don’t want to see or believe that love judges, any more than did those ancient Israelites, with whom we have nothing in common because that was then and this is now. Love just . . . loves. Those ancient Israelites would not believe that God would judge them. Judge the people He loved?! They grasped at this conviction right up to the moment the Babylonian hordes broke through Jerusalem’s mighty wall and began rushing in like an angry swarm of hornets.

Just be a good person, we hear, even say, forgetting, or failing to consider that, apart from God, from Christ our King who rules and overrules, apart from the Spirit who is the power of Christ our King even now at work—apart from Him, no one is good; no one can be. But we know plenty of people who don’t believe, and they are good people. Then surely God will save them because of the good they have done? Islam gets this much right: if you’re going to think that God will save people who don’t believe because of the good they have done, then it’s clear that the good will have to outweigh the bad. How do we know our good outweighs our bad? One lie can undo much truth. One unkind word can taint many kind words. One wicked act weighs down the heart for a lifetime.

When we put self above all, we are coming to a time, as Paul writes to his protégé Timothy, “when people will not put up with sound doctrine, but having itching ears, they will accumulate for themselves teachers to suit their own desires” (2 Tim 4:3). Their own desires. Their god. Jeremiah speaks very seriously about the shepherds, the authorities, both civil and religious, whom God charged with the sacred duty to protect and nurture His people. The many, many centuries that pass by in Scripture record how easily we all begin to slip. The authorities are human, too, and just as tempted—maybe even more. The lesson is this: apart from God, we cannot do what He asks; apart from God, we cannot get to where He invites us. Apart from God, we will not want what He offers. What He offers is Himself. Apart from Him, I can do nothing; apart from Him, you can do nothing. Our deeds won’t lead us to God. We need God to lead us to God; we need a Christ, a King.

We’re all good people. Just be a good person. Just love and don’t judge. Yet God is love, and God judges, judges in love. I’m beginning to think that love that does not judge is love that does not love. It is Jesus Christ, our King, who will say, “Well done, good and faithful servant,” and who will say to some, “I never knew you. Depart from me.” We are to forgive seventy-seven times (Mt 18:22), and we are instructed to counsel with those who stray (Mt 18:15-20), yet always in humility, charity, and love. For we have such a King.

King? It’s hard for us to wrap our minds around that. Americans don’t have much to do with kings. We don’t have anything that really comes close. CEO? No. President? No. Chief Justice? No. General, Admiral? No. So, what’s the point? What does this king do? He will do what Jeremiah prophesied, more than 2,500 years ago. He will gather and bring back God’s scattered people (23:3). All those before, even Solomon, even David, had not lived to gather. The one who gathers does so from love, does so with love, true love: vigorous and gentle, demanding and constant, deep and patient—a king’s love, love that only God can give.

Jeremiah foresees that, under this King of God’s love, who gathers God’s scattered people, God’s people will be fruitful and multiply (23:3). God has always wanted this for His people. The King will see to it that the Genesis commission is fulfilled. The King comes and rules to lead us to the Garden: not the garden that was, but the Garden of God.

Noah, Abraham, Joseph, Moses, David—each was given a sacred charge to care for God’s people, so that the people might live in safety. Living in God’s grace is safety. God does not want us to be afraid. We live in angry times. The anger is an expression of something deep underneath: fear. We live in fearful times. Fear begets mistrust. Mistrust erodes love. Anger, fear, mistrust, eroding love—we enlightened people scoff at that ancient, quaint notion of Satan, the Accuser, the Enemy. How much easier we make his work.

The king whom God sends, whom God gives, will keep us safe. Grace is safety. The King comes with plentiful grace. We are safe in Christ our King. In him our salvation and our life are secure. The Spirit, who enables us to receive Christ as our King, gives us faith. Faith frees us for the fullness of love, the fulfillment of our purpose to glorify God and enjoy Him forever. To glorify is to enjoy; to enjoy is to glorify. This is the way to fruitful, multiplying discipleship. The Spirit of the King keeps us safe and, in that safety, in that Spirit, in that King, we have the ability to fulfill the Genesis commission, which was always first of all spiritual: a fruitful spirit, a multiplying spirit.

In this life, we think we choose. Our politics are based entirely upon the notion that we choose. Our economy is founded upon the idea that we choose. We choose our church; we choose our faith. Our living reflects what we actually believe, actually value, actually desire: not our theoretical faith, but our practical faith. Through Jeremiah, God tells us what God chooses. “I will choose as king a righteous descendant of David. That king will rule wisely and do what is right and just throughout the land. When he is king, the people of Judah will be safe, and the people of Israel will live in peace” (23:5-6).

God’s choice fulfills God’s promise. God is faithful to His promise. Christ, our King, is our safety and our peace. He is God’s faithfulness to God’s promise. His promise is not obscure or unfamiliar. Jeremiah tells us the name of God’s promise: “The Lord Our Salvation.” We live as if we choose, yet we are chosen. We live as though we had no king, had no need of one. The angel told Joseph, “you are to name him Jesus, for he will save his people from their sins” (Mt 1:21). Save us, O mighty King, King of Grace, King of Love. Rule in our hearts. Make your throne, there.

To the blessed and only Sovereign, the King of kings and Lord of lords, who alone has immortality and dwells in unapproachable light, be honor and eternal dominion.