The Bible abounds with the use of the word ‘king’ and ‘kingdom’. There are over 2700 references. Associated words like ‘throne’ and ‘reign’ also abound.<\/p>\n
In the Old Testament God is frequently referred to as king (Ps. 10:16<\/a>; 7-10; 84:3). In the New Testament it is Jesus who is referred to as the king. The parables particularly speak both of His kingdom and of His reign (e.g. Matt. 18:22; 25).<\/p>\n The life of Jesus saw Him worshipped as a king by visiting wise men (Matt. 2); tempted as a king (Matt. 3); as a king of cheering citizens on Palm Sunday (Matt. 21); a king by enquiring Pilate (Matt. 27); rejected as a king by a blood-thirsty mob (Mk 15:9-12<\/a>); mocked as a king by jeering soldiers (Matt. 27); and taunted as a king by onlookers as he died (Matt.27).<\/p>\n Yet Jesus rejected the temptation to establish an earthly kingdom both at the beginning of His ministry (Matt. 3:8-10) and at the height of His popularity when the Northern Galilean crowds wanted to make Him their king (Jn 6:15<\/a>), long before the epistles or gospels were written. While Jesus was alive on earth the first thing ever written about Him proclaimed him king! (Jn 19:19<\/a>).<\/p>\n FOR TODAY<\/span><\/p>\n The king rules wherever his kingship is recognised. The Kingdom of God is wherever Christians accept Christ as king. A young friend of the author Tolstoy, when being examined by a Russian judge for refusing to be conscripted on the grounds that a Christian should love his enemies, was told that the Kingdom of God had not yet come. He replied, “Sir, I recognise that the kingdom has not come for you, or Russia, or the rest of the world, but it has come for me, and I cannot go on living as if it hadn’t.”<\/p>\n One of the beautiful stories associated with Handel’s “Messiah” concerned its first presentation in London in 1743. As the choir began singing the “Hallelujah Chorus” King George II was so impressed with the thought that Jesus was “King of Kings” that he stood to his feet in acknowledgement. The audience stood too, and remained standing until the end of the chorus. That custom persists today whenever the oratorio is presented.<\/p>\n During the 1930s a Christian Youth Conference in Japan sent a telegram to a similar Youth Conference in Scotland. It read simply, “Let us make Jesus king.” This surely is the directive for all who claim Him.<\/p>\n The late British theologian Leslie Weatherhead considered that to claim Jesus as king is a sneer by those who do not see His kingdom, a vision of those who see the triumph of God, and a challenge to those who work in His service.<\/p>\n REV THE HON DR GORDON MOYES AC MLC<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" The Bible abounds with the use of the word ‘king’ and ‘kingdom’. There are over 2700 references. Associated words like ‘throne’ and ‘reign’ also abound. In the Old Testament God is frequently referred to as king (Ps. 10:16; 7-10; 84:3). In the New Testament it is Jesus who is referred to as the king. The […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4129,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-409855","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/409855","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4129"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=409855"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/409855\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=409855"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=409855"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=409855"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}