"Songs for Weary Shepherds: Jesus Shall Reign" Psalm 72:1-20 Sunday Evening Worship Service

Of Solomon.

Give the king your justice, O God, and your righteousness to the royal son.

May he judge your people with righteousness and your poor with justice.

Let the mountains bear prosperity for the people, and the hills in righteousness.

May he defend the cause of the poor of the people, give deliverance to the children of the needy and crush the oppressor.

May they fear you while the sun endures, and as long as the moon throughout all generations, may he be like rain that falls on the mown grass, like showers that water the earth.

In his days may the righteous flourish and peace abound, till the moon be no more.

May he have dominion from sea to sea and from the river to the ends of the earth, may desert tribes bow down before him, and his enemies lick the dust.

May the kings of Tarshish and of the coastlands render him tribute.

May the kings of Sheba and Seba bring gifts.

May all kings fall down before him.

All nations serve him.

For he delivers the needy when he calls, the poor and him who has no helper.

He has pity on the weak and the needy, and saves the lives of the needy.

From oppression and violence he redeems their life, and precious is their blood in his sight.

Long may he live.

May the gold of Sheba be given to him.

May prayer be made for him continually, and blessings invoked for him all the day.

May there be abundance of grain in the land.

On the tops of the mountains may it wave, may its fruit be like Lebanon, and may people blossom in the cities like the grass of the field.

May his name endure forever, his fame continue as long as the sun.

May people be blessed in him, all nations call him blessed.

Blessed be the Lord, the God of Israel, who alone does wondrous things.

Blessed be his glorious name forever.

May the whole earth be filled with his glory.

Amen and amen.

The prayers of David, the son of Jesse, are ended.

Amen.

There are others of different clans.

There are Harry Potter fans.

I know them.

There's Star Wars ITES.

I get that.

We are Narnia people in our house.

I have read the entire series with my eldest daughter as a daddy-daughter thing.

It was very sweet and adorable.

I've read most of them with my middleest daughter.

And we just recently decided that as a family we would gather at night and read a couple chapters so that we could bring our youngest daughter on board, kind of indoctrinate her, brainwash her into the Narnia clan.

We're Narnia people.

And I don't know if Narnia counts as a Christmas book.

Santa Claus definitely shows up, so spoiler alert, but it's absolutely and 100% an Advent book.

And one of, I think everyone would agree, if you've ever read Narnia, one of the most delightful exchanges that ever happens in C.S.

Lewis's series shows up towards the very beginning of the very first book, The Lion, the Witch, in the Wardrobe, where Mr.

and Mrs.

Beaver are entertaining the four Pevency children, Peter and Susan and Edward and Lucy, for dinner.

And then after dinner, they begin, Mr.

Beaver begins to tell the children about Aslan.

I'd like to read an excerpt from it, if you would.

The kids are asking him about Aslan.

Oh, yes, tell us about Aslan, said several voices all at once.

For once again that strange feeling, like the first signs of spring, like good news had come over them.

Who is Aslan?

asks Susan.

Aslan, said Mr.

Beaver, like, don't you know he's the king?

He's the Lord of the whole wood.

But he's not often here, you understand?

Never in my time or my father's time, but the word has reached us that he has come back.

He'll put all to rights, as it says in an old rhyme in these parts wrong will be right when Aslan comes in sight.

At the sound of his roar, sorrows will be no more.

When he bears his teeth, winter meets its death.

And when he shakes his mane, we shall have spring again.

You'll understand when you see him.

But shall we see him?

asked Susan.

Why, daughter of Eve, that's why I have brought you here.

I'm to lead you where you shall meet him, said Mr.

Beaver.

Is he a man?

asked Lucy.

Aslan a man, said Mr.

Beaver sternly.

Certainly not.

I tell you, he's the king of the wood and the son of the great emperor beyond the sea.

Don't you know who is the king of beasts?

Aslan is a lion.

The lion.

The great lion.

It's definitely an Advent book.

You'll understand when you see him.

Lewis understood something about Advent.

That bittersweet mixture of hope and anticipation.

Of eager longing mixed with a dash of healthy fear.

He knew what it meant to wait for a king.

And he puts in the mouths of the Pevensey children our own questions about waiting for a king.

What will he be like?

What will he look like?

When will he finally get here?

So too does our psalmist know something about Advent.

He too knows what it was like to hold these questions in his heart.

And in Psalm 72, he gives a voice to his hope.

A hope that we all still today share.

And he paints a portrait of what the coming king is going to look like.

A portrait that's pieced together by prayers and petitions that compel us to ask, what will the king be like?

How will we know him and when will he get here?

And perhaps more pointedly, it forces us to wrestle with this question: What kind of king are you looking for anyway?

And there was no one in the Old Testament better qualified to address that question than the author of this psalm, Solomon.

You'll note the inscription in your Bibles.

It says, of Solomon, indicating that he was the author of this text.

But you should also note the words of the final verse of the psalm in verse 20, where it reads, The prayers of David, the son of Jesse, are ended, which certainly seems to imply that this psalm was, well, that it came from Solomon's father, King David.

And even if you, like many modern scholars and myself, think that the final stanza of this psalm, verses 17, or verses 18 through 20, are best understood as a doxological postscript for the whole of book two of the Psalter, all of that anthology from Psalm 42 to 72.

Even if you think that that final stanza is really affixed to the whole of that text, it doesn't get you off the hook from wrestling with that question.

Because, you know, book two still includes Psalm 72 in it, ascribed to King David.

Plus, as you're reading this, there's a lot of similarities in the language, in the imagery, and the pictures that the psalm is bringing out that sound very similar to the final recorded words of King David in 2 Samuel chapter 23.

2 Samuel 23 · chapter mention

So I think the most likely origin story for our psalm is that Solomon composed it in order to capture the final words and the prayers of his father as he was preparing to pass on the throne to his son.

As he was getting ready to take off the crown and give it to his heir, the heir of the throne, and more importantly, the heir to God's promise.

The covenant that God had made with King David in 2 Samuel chapter 7.

2 Samuel 7 · chapter mention

That he would establish David's house, that he would establish David's kingdom, and that one of his sons would sit on David's throne and rule David's kingdom, and that that kingdom, that son, would have an everlasting kingdom without end.

And so this psalm that we read is what we call a royal psalm.

It was probably sung or read or recited at each coronation ceremony that came along, maybe even at Solomon's coronation ceremony itself, to express all the people's hope and all the people's desire that God would finally bring the promised king, the messianic king, the one who would inherit all of the covenantal blessings, all of the covenant, not only to David, but also to Abraham, and also to Noah, and also to Adam, who would finally step in and receive all that God had promised to his chosen one.

Or the way we might say it, the king in whom all the hopes and fears of all the years would finally meet and find fulfillment.

But what would that king be like?

What would he look like?

What would he sound like?

What would he do?

And how would we recognize him when we saw him?

Well, Solomon paints a picture so we would know.

First, this king would be a righteous king, Solomon says.

He would be a righteous king.

Verse one, give the king your justice, O God, and your righteousness to the royal son.

You know, it's interesting.

This verse, the first verse, is the only time in the entire psalm that Solomon chooses to use an imperative.

It's the only time he makes a direct request for God to take action.

Almost all of the rest of the psalm is written as an expression of hope, as a wishful anticipation of what a possible future outcome could be.

And you see that in your English translations.

The ESV uses the word may over and over and over again to kind of clue you into the fact that this is a hope, a desire, a thing you want to see happen.

May he judge, may he defend, may they fear, may he live.

But in verse one, there's no maze.

Just a direct, straightforward ask.

To be sure all of those maze, all of those hopes are that God would bring them about, that God would take action in this world.

But here in the first verse, a direct request.

Oh God, give to your king your justice and your righteousness.

Justice and righteousness, two hugely important words in our Old Testament scriptures.

Justice, Mishpat, righteousness, tsadiq.

Give him justice.

Give him righteousness.

Now there's a lot of ways that people try to define those two words, justice and righteousness.

Justice simply means doing what is right and then using your authority to ensure that what is good and what is right is what's being done.

That is what it means to do justice, to ensure that equitable, fair, impartial, unpartial, without partiality, is being accomplished in this world.

That is justice.

And I ensure that the toy is cut in half and given to each child equally.

That's very Solomonic wisdom, by the way.

It's justice.

Doing what's right and making sure that what's right is being done.

And righteousness is just the character of the man who does that, who adjudicates what is good and right and does it himself.

That's all that righteousness means.

But those definitions are meaningless if you don't have a definition for good and right.

And Solomon's world, just like our world today, is filled with kings and judges and rulers and authorities who are happy to redefine good and right all the time.

To redefine it according to the whims that will suit popular opinion.

Or more often than that, the perspectives that might lead to personal enrichment.

Justice is on the auction block for the highest bidder.

Politicians, princes, private corporations, they're all happy to pander to whomever will line their pockets and fill the poles.

As long as it's good for the one in charge, he's happy to do whatever the people beneath him want.

Rules can be bent, corners can be cut, and a little thumb on the scales of justice never hurt anyone, right?

We see it all the time.

We feel it in a very personal way.

Injustice is everywhere.

But Solomon realizes that true justice and true righteousness, they're not arbitrary concepts.

And they're not decided by popular opinion, and they certainly aren't optional for the king.

True justice and true righteousness come from God, who defines what is good and right by his own character.

That which conforms to God is good because God is good.

That which corresponds to his word is justice because he is just.

And God's king, when he comes, he is going to rule with God's own righteousness.

Indeed, that is the chief job of a king.

If right now we got together as a country, decided we're done with this presidency business, it was a fun experiment, 250 years, almost made it.

We're gonna get a king, we're gonna put together a search committee, you're in charge of the search committee.

Job number one, you have to write a job description for the new king of America.

The very first bullet point that you would put on there is probably to adjudicate with righteousness.

That is the first virtue of government.

This is the chief job, to rule with righteousness.

And that's precisely what God's king will do.

He won't show partiality.

He won't do what's right only to the wealthy, but to the wealthy and the poor.

As we read in Isaiah 11, the famous Christmas prophecy, that he shall not judge by what his eyes see or decide disputes by what his ears hear.

He won't be swayed by the voices and the evidence that comes before him.

That won't be what tips him over because he knows what is right and true and good.

In fact, it's with righteousness he shall judge the poor and decide with equity for the meek of the earth.

Righteousness shall be the belt of his waist and faithfulness the belt of his loins.

Imagine a king who was perfectly righteous, who was perfectly just in all of his judgments.

Every policy was fair and equitable all the time.

In fact, verse 4 says, not just that he won't be unfair, but that he will defend the cause of the poor and deliver the children of the needy.

He will take up as his own special cause fairness and justice and righteousness.

There will be no injustice in his kingdom, no oppression, no undeserved suffering at any corner of his kingdom.

Even the mountains, verse 3, even the mountains, which were a place of conflict and danger in Solomon's time, they are gonna ring out with prosperity.

The word there is shalom.

Even in the mountains where the bandits lurk, all you will be able to find is peace and wellness and goodness and justice.

But the king with his authority is ruling.

I long for that kind of king, don't you?

A.W.

Pink remarks as one sees the apparent defeat of the right all around us, and the triumphing of might and wrong, it seems as though Satan has gotten the better of the conflict.

But as one looks above instead of around, there is plainly visible to the eye of faith a throne.

And this then is our confidence that God is on his throne.

There is no act of injustice that will go unpunished.

There is no oppression that will go unadjudicated.

There is no suffering that will not be seen and repaired.

Do you long for a king that would do that?

That would that would undo injustice?

A king that would right every wrong and who will protect the vulnerable and defend the weak?

Well then you're looking for God's king.

That's what he's going to look like.

Secondly, the next verse of Solomon's Advent song tells us that God's king is going to be an eternal king.

He writes, May they fear you while the sun endures, and as long as the moon throughout all generations.

Kings come and kings go.

That's just the way it works with kings.

They never stick around that long.

You and I, we remember sitting through Western Civ class at some point in our lives, trying in vain to remember all the names and the dates.

Right?

Henry, Richard, John, Henry, Edward, Edward, Edward, Richard, Henry, Henry, Henry.

Right?

You're tracking, right?

Me too, obviously.

Everything I know I learned from Braveheart.

So, you know, kings come and kings go.

That's just how life works.

Every four years we vote.

And isn't it fascinating that the very week after the election, no matter who wins, by the way, the very next week you can find available on Amazon bumper stickers that say January 20th, four years from now, already looking forward to the moment when that person will pack his bags and leave.

Kings come, kings go, they never stick around.

There's always a forwarding address.

And that's what makes God's promise to David in 2 Samuel 7 so incredible.

God says to David, I will raise up your offspring after you.

And I will establish the throne of his kingdom forever.

Forever.

An eternal king.

A forever king.

Who leads his people for as long as the sun burns and as long as the moon glows.

For as long as the world exists, this king will remain unshakable.

There will not come even the tiniest glimmer of diminution in his authority.

There won't be even the slightest, slightest sliver of a waning of his power.

There will be no lame duck sessions of his court.

Forever.

Every day, for eternity, he will sit on his throne and he will adjudge in righteousness.

Perfect righteousness forevermore.

A kind of perpetual rain that, like the rain, ensures everlasting refreshment and sustainment.

A constancy of goodness on his throne that flows out and floods his kingdom with life, Solomon says.

That he would be like the rain that falls on the mown grass, like showers that water the earth.

You know, my first job was cutting grass at a cemetery, which that's a fascinating job, by the way.

There is such a remarkable juxtaposition of life and death.

It's sobering for a 16-year-old kid.

I think every kid should work at a cemetery.

But there's something remarkable about fresh cut grass.

And you smell it hit your nostrils, and you look at it, and it's so pristine, but you realize that you just inflicted terrible violence on all of this grass.

Swirling blades, wrecking and ripping and tearing it all down.

Each one of those blades broken and in a way bleeding.

But then you water it.

And it refreshes it, and it grows richer and fuller and stronger and more robust than it was before.

Which is a 16-year-old is a problem.

Because you gotta go cut it again.

What a beautiful picture of the life-giving effect of water.

Solomon picks up on that.

This eternal kingdom will be refreshing.

It will be sustaining.

For every one of his subjects who has been beaten and broken and ripped and torn, he will sit on a throne and he will not be shaken.

And from him will come justice and mercy and goodness and love.

And it will refresh your soul.

And it will be a place that allows you to flourish and prosper and grow.

A kingdom filled with life where formerly death reigned.

It's almost hard for us to conceive of this kind of kingdom.

We live in a world of cyclical power struggles.

With various factions vying for power and influence and producing in their wake only volatility.

We've all been there trying to figure out like when is the market gonna be right.

Well, one day God's king is gonna come.

And he's gonna settle every matter once and for all.

And so that in his unending rule, what will flourish is righteousness without fear, without worry, without wondering if tomorrow carries the calamities on its dawn.

And so with this unshakably firm kingdom, Solomon says in verse 7, this eternal reign will cause peace to abound.

It will overflow, it will spill out over the banks of his throne.

And it will fill every nook and every cranny of life, every town, every city, every home, every heart, every relationship, everything will flourish with life and peace and goodness.

Do you long for a king who will come and establish his throne with everlasting peace, never to be disrupted by danger or discord or strife ever again?

Do you long for a king who will come and put every conflict to rest?

Well, if so, then you are looking for God's king.

We know that his kingdom will remain unshaken because next Solomon tells us that he will be a sovereign king.

He's a righteous king, an eternal king, and in verse 8, a sovereign king.

May he have dominion from sea to sea and from the river to the ends of the earth.

Here Solomon is evoking the language of Exodus 23, from sea to sea, from the great river to beyond, to depict a sprawling territory under this promised king's authority.

All of the land that God had promised to Abraham, all of the land that God had promised to Isaac, all of the land that God had promised to Jacob and to Judah and to his eleven brothers, all of the land which Moses had brought Israel back to, all of the land that Joshua had fought to conquer, every square inch of covenant fulfilled.

All of it.

But here Solomon blows down the fences.

And it burst beyond the historical promise of the land because he says that it will go not just from sea to sea, not just from the great river Euphrates, but to the very ends of the earth.

Every square inch of creation reclaimed.

It will belong to this king, and there will be no rebellion in it.

It's not only property that he comes to claim, but people that will fall under the promised king's rule.

Verses 9 and 10 present three representative groups Solomon uses to show the comprehensiveness of this king's sovereign authority.

First, you see in verse 9, the desert tribes bow down before him and his enemies lick the dust.

All of the rebellious are brought into his authority.

That phrase desert tribes and enemies, it describes Israel's closest neighbors, the neighbors with whom they have the most problems.

They're easy to spot, by the way, they're always just on the other side of the battlefield from wherever Israel is standing.

You know these names, the Philistines, the Amalekites, the Edomites.

For decades, Solomon's dad, David, had squared off against them and valiantly fought to defend the promised land.

When Solomon takes over, he has a different tactic.

He keeps them at bay with clever diplomacy.

But always the threat hovered just on the other side of the horizon.

Always war was looming.

Always they were sharpening their swords and preparing their spears.

But one day, the promised king, the messiah, he would show up and he would end all the wars.

He would end all threat of war.

All of his enemies will either bow the knee or be bent.

Those are the only options.

He will not enjoy any pretenders to authority and power.

Every knee will bow before him.

So the rebellious come under his authority.

Secondly, all the far-off nations are brought under his authority.

Look at verse 10.

Tarshish and the coastlands render him tribute.

We know about Tarshish because we've read from the wayward prophet Jonah.

We've got the awana level understanding of Tarshish.

Right?

Jonah gets a mission from God to go and bring a message to the Assyrians.

He's like, I'm out, can't do that.

I'm gonna get a ticket to far away from God, please.

And he goes to his travel agent there at Tel Aviv and he buys the ticket for the farthest off place he could find, Tarshish.

Hops in the boat, it works out great for him.

He's trying to get as far away as possible, what we would think of as modern-day Spain, all the way on the other side of the great ocean.

He wants to be nowhere near God.

That's as far away.

Tarshish was the furthest off place he could come up with in his mind, Solomon Wood.

There's nothing beyond there, it's just dragons.

And that phrase, the coastlands, that's kind of a catch-all term that shows up in, especially in the prophet Isaiah, to describe the most far-flung reaches of the world.

The undiscovered islands off in the distance, the most remote places you can imagine.

This is as far away as it gets in Solomon's world.

And for all of Solomon's wealth and all of Solomon's wisdom and all of Solomon's power, if he had tried from his throne to enact a royal decree on Tarshish or on the coastlands.

Spoiler alert, we're changing the tariffs.

You must send in your money.

Do you know how Tarshish would respond?

They would laugh and they wouldn't read the email and they'd say, Come make me.

They were beyond the reach of Israel's most powerful king.

Nothing he could do.

But the promised king, the king who is on his way to come, he will bring even the most distant places under his authority.

There is nothing beyond the reach of his hand.

There is no country, no king, no person so far away that he cannot bring them to himself.

So all of the rebellious people brought under his authority, all of the distant, far-off people brought under his authority.

And thirdly, all of the wealthiest nations are brought under his authority.

Verse 10, the kings of Sheba and Seba will bring gifts.

Sheba and Seba were nations of almost unimaginable wealth.

We know about Sheba most frequently because of the encounter in 1 Kings chapter 10 with Solomon and the queen of Sheba, where she comes to visit and see, is it true?

1 Kings 10 · chapter mention

Is Solomon all he's cracked up to be?

And she shows up and she's so impressed with King Solomon that she gives him a gift.

120 talons of gold plus a very great amount of spices and precious stones.

In case you're wondering, yes, I did the math.

120 talons of gold is roughly 12,000 pounds of gold.

I mean, that's pretty good.

And according to uh today's market value of gold as of last night at 11 p.m.,$4,211.16 per troy ounce is the going rate of gold.

Or that's roughly$61,424.31.

I don't think you can say roughly if you put the cents on there, Alex, per pound of gold times 12,000 pounds.

Are you ready?

$737,091,720.

That's a pretty nice housewarming gift.

Like that, that's a pretty good welcome to the neighborhood.

That's incredible.

If ever there was a nation in ancient times that had the cash to buy their way out of authority, if ever there was a nation that could bribe a king to get on his good side and not have to bow down, it was Sheba and Seba.

But you see, the thing about the promised king is that he can't be bought.

You can't bribe him.

He rules in unassailable integrity and unquestioned authority.

Solomon is trying to convey for us that everyone and everything belongs to him.

He will inherit all of it.

He will reign where the sun does its successive journeys run.

There is no one too dangerous, there is no one too distant, there is no one too affluent to escape the sovereignty of the coming king.

Everyone will be his.

It speaks of rescue that surprises us in our darkest and most desperate hours.

A light that shines, a hand that reaches in and lifts us up when our hands are too weak to do anything about our problems.

He's a delivering king.

There is no calamity that will fall on you that is beyond the reach, the scope, and the strength of his power to rescue.

And what's incredible about this king that's coming is he doesn't merely act out of a cold, calculating duty, but out of a deep-rooted compassion.

Verse 13, he has pity on the weak and the needy.

He's snatching his people out of the clutches of death.

Why does he do it?

Because he loves his people.

Verse 14, they are precious in his sight.

And when any calamity befalls them, when any oppression falls upon them, when any persecution draws even a drop of their blood, he sees it and it is precious to him.

He loves them.

And when they cry out for him, when he calls out to this king, he is quick to come and rescue.

That's how fathers are with their children.

I'm a dad, I have three daughters.

And we all know that mode your dad can flip into.

So much cacophony in the house, so much noise upstairs, so much noise downstairs, so much stairs, all the noise.

But then you hear it.

The unmistakable sound of your child crying in danger.

I mean, I'm faster than Superman and the Flash put together in that moment.

I am up, sprinting up the stairs.

Do you know how hard it is to get me to sprint?

Dan will tell you.

It's a challenge.

Do you know why I run?

I love my kids.

This king will come and rescue because he loves you.

Because you're precious to him.

Imagine, if you would, a king for whom the destitute and the disadvantaged, the lowest and the poorest of his citizens, were not merely his subjects, but they were his special concern.

The chief thing on his heart.

Do you long for a king who would see you in your suffering?

And would come down to where you are, to wrap his arms around you and rescue you and carry you back to safety.

A king who refuses to abandon you and who loves you with his deepest affection.

Because if so, you're looking for God's king.

He's righteous, eternal, sovereign, compassionate, and finally he is prosperous.

Every candidate for every office from time immemorial has run on economic promises.

That's just how it works.

Put your trust in me.

There's a bright future waiting for all of us.

A chicken in every pot.

Unless you're a vegan and then it's a tofu in every teacup.

Just just trust me.

I will make it work out.

You'll have more than you've ever dreamed if you'll just put your trust in me.

That's one of the primary roles of a ruler, by the way.

I don't even think it's illegitimate that that's how every candidate tries to draw your vote.

That's what they're supposed to do.

They're making a promise to do their jobs, to ensure the prosperity and the productivity of their people.

That's what rulers are supposed to do.

And this final verse of Solomon's Advent song is loaded with lavish language.

This is a this is an abundance wealth kind of kingdom.

Notice Sheba shows back up, but no weird euphemisms about gifts.

It's just gold.

The gold of Sheba is gonna be given to this guy, which is not even a metaphor in Solomon's case.

The blessings, abundance, grain, fruit, blossoming, the language is just overwhelming us with wealth and abundance and prosperity.

That's what's going on here.

The picture that's being painted here is a land that's flowing with milk and honey, where everything is cared for and taken care of.

A land that's so prosperous, even the mountaintops have amber waves of grain.

I'm not a farmer, never been a farmer, probably never gonna be a farmer.

Right?

But I know you don't plant on the top of the mountain.

It doesn't work.

The soil is too thin.

But when the promised king shows up, even the mountaintops will have will have wheat stalks as thick as the cedars of Lebanon, he says.

It will be overwhelming, unimaginable wealth, where the people are flourishing instead of just scraping by, where there will not be scarcity and lack and hunger and want, because the king will ensure that all the good provisions are flowing to them.

And they respond in return to the benevolence of their good king's rule with continual worship and praise and blessing, magnifying his name over and over again for the abundance of his wealth.

And then in echoes of Genesis 12, where the blessings of this promised king's reign reach around the entire world, all the nations, because they all belong to him, under his sovereign authority, all of them join in this abundance and wealth and prosperity, and all of them are blessed by him and sing blessings to him.

I mean, do you long for a king who will make scarcity a thing of the past, who will ensure that every single person has more than enough, and that all of their labor, which is right now cursed with thorns and sweat, will return to its edenic intentions, and that work itself will return to being a blessing.

If so, you are looking for God's king.

You know, David was a man after God.

Own heart.

He was a great king, but he wasn't the promised king.

He fell far short.

His son Solomon was the wisest king who ever lived.

The wealthiest king Israel ever knew.

The borders of Solomon's kingdom extended beyond any other Israelite king.

But even he wasn't the very wisdom and word of God in flesh.

And year after year, coronation ceremony after coronation ceremony, the people would gather.

And they would watch the crown being placed on the next king's head.

And they would sing this song.

Hoping, praying, wishing, trusting that God would bring the promised king.

Finally, someday.

Maybe this one's the one.

Until Israel had no more kings.

And so the people sang and hoped and waited.

Now I don't know what songs the shepherds were singing while they kept watch over their flocks by night there on the outskirts of royal David's city.

I don't know which song was in their minds, but I know the world they lived in.

It was a world that was filled with pretend kings.

Herod's and Caesars and men who would come and men who would go.

Some were better than others, but none of them were righteous.

Surrounded as they were with temporary monarchs making promises they could never fulfill.

I know those shepherds were men who were literally under occupation by a foreign army.

Worried every minute whether an invading force was going to come and destroy their homes and take them away.

I know that they knew the kings in their area didn't know who they were or care about their problems.

I know that they wasted away in poverty while Herod built larger and larger palaces.

I don't know what song they were singing.

But I imagine that they were hoping for the king that was going to come.

The promised king.

The king who would finally fulfill all of their hopes and all of their expectations.

So maybe this was the song they were singing that night.

But if it was, they weren't singing it with a cheerful tune, but with a plaintive melody.

And through tears that were dripping with patient longing for a king who would finally come and put everything right.

But if this was the song they were singing to start their night, they were interrupted by a joyful outburst of an angelic choir.

And after the last note of the angelic choir ceased to echo, these shepherds went to the manger and they found him, the promised king, right there.

The king in whom all of the justice and righteousness of God dwelled by virtue of his own divine nature.

The king upon whom they did not yet realize all of the justice of God would fall in order to make his people righteous by faith in him.

There he was, the king, newborn and lying in a manger, yet somehow also the ancient Lord of David.

The king who would soon lay down his life in exchange his manger for a tomb to provide eternal life for his people by the power of his own resurrection.

The king who came into a humble home without fan fear or earthly acclaim, but who will one day be exalted as the sovereign Lord to whom every knee will bow and every tongue will confess.

The king who loved his people enough to condescend to them, to come to earth and take on flesh, to become obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross.

The king who would weep with his people, rejoice with his people, rescue his people, to take away their affliction and iniquity and the punishment of their sin on his own person.

And the king who would one day return again for his people.

There he was, the king who unites us to himself by calling us his bride, so that in the ages to come we may enjoy the immeasurable riches of his father's grace to us in heaven forever.

Abundant, overwhelming, incomprehensible riches of his grace flowing out on us.

I can imagine the shepherds on their way to the manger singing this song again, but with dried tears.

In anticipation, just as we do now in celebration, the final stanza of this hymn.

Blessed be the Lord, the God of Israel, who alone does wondrous things.

Blessed be his glorious name forever.

May the whole earth be filled with his glory.

Amen and Amen.

Let's pray.

God, we long for your king.

A king who will undo injustice.

A king who will cause all of the nations to bow and join him.

A king who will put an end to strife, who will undo the curse, who will remove the thorns, who will defeat death and give us everlasting life.

God cause us to love this king.

Cause us to long for this king.

Cause us to put all of our trust and our hope in this king because you are faithful to your promise.

Amen.

And now for a parting word for Pastor Jesse Johnson.

If you have any questions about what you heard today, or if you want to learn more about what it means to follow Christ, please visit our church website, iBC.church.

If you want more information about the Master Seminary or our location here in Washington, D.C., please go to TMS.edu.

Now, if you're not a member of a local church and you live in the Washington, D.C.

area, we'd love to have you worship with us here at Emmanuel.

I hope to personally meet you this Sunday after our service.

But no matter where you live, it's our hope that everyone who uses this resource is involved in their own local church.

Now may God bless you this week as you seek Jesus constantly, serve the Lord faithfully, and share the gospel boldly.