As King, Jesus’ harshest words are always given to those who have taken over His Kingdom. Their kingdom stands in direct opposition to His yet masquerades as the Kingdom of God. Their poisonous hypocrisy infuriates Him – they have received so much from God (rescue from Egypt, establishment in the Promised Land, the wake-up call of exile, the gift of restoration after exile) and yet they have repeatedly defiled God’s good gifts by twisting them, ignoring them and using them to oppress people. Yet you can see Jesus’ heart bleeding through His anger – He knows that the Pharisees will be crushed and He is grieved. They have missed what was plainly before them and though the Father longs to save them, they are not willing. Friends, this is Jesus’ heart for you: grief and anger – especially you good church people who are relying on your own good works to earn you a place in heaven and make you seem better than people who don’t conform to your standards. The grief has led Jesus to die so that we might be saved (he did all the work, we do none so we are rescued from our stupid inclination to boast), and the anger will persist if we do not take shelter by Jesus’ side.

This parable sums up Matthew’s entire gospel. God established his Kingdom on earth and handed it over to Israel. In due time, Israel failed to give God a harvest and even began killing God’s messengers and servants. God sent one last messenger, his Son, who was rightfully King. But the leaders in Israel had grown so wretched and far from God, that they killed God’s Son thinking that would secure their hold on the Kingdom. The Pharisees were correct in saying God would take the Kingdom from them and give it to those who would give God a harvest, but they totally failed to see that they were in the process of rejecting and killing God’s Son. Jesus gives the Pharisees, and us, this challenge – either fall on Him (the capstone) and have our own kingdoms/queendoms crushed and replaced with God’s Kingdom (which would be painful but end with joy) or cling to our kingdoms/queendoms and be crushed when God’s Kingdom finally arrives (which will seem like joy now but be painful in the end). Think this over today – will you fall on the rock or will the rock fall on you?

The entrance into Jesus’ Kingdom is free, but costly. The young rich man found this out – he was ready to give up everything but his money to enter the Kingdom. Jesus’ response is one of the most famous of His quotations: ‘I tell you, it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the Kingdom of God.’ We all have things that make us feel rich – they are the things that we absolutely cannot do without. For this young man, it was his money. But at the heart of his issue is this: he wanted to be his own king, to use his money for his own purposes, to live his life according to what made him happy. Jesus asked him to give this up and he was heartbroken. He couldn’t. We have the same struggle – we all want to be our own king/queen and do whatever will make us happiest. We might even follow all the religious rules because that self-righteous feeling makes us happy. But Jesus calls us to step down from the throne of our hearts and place Him there. We must surrender our in order to enter His Kingdom. Otherwise Jesus is not our King. Prayerfully search your heart today – where are you clinging to kingship/queenship? How can you give up that richness and follow Jesus?

The Pharisees saw Jesus casting out demons, something they didn’t understand, but they did not come to Him with their questions. In arrogant pride, they relied on their own thinking and denounced Jesus as a demon casting out demons (a claim Jesus quickly rebukes as foolishness). On the other hand, the disciples heard Jesus teaching in parables, highly symbolic stories, and they, too didn’t understand. But they came to Jesus with their lack of understanding, knowing He would give them Truth. Truly, the Man Jesus can appear to us surrounded in mystery. But that mystery is an invitation to come to Him and find Truth. Do you stand back in your own understanding and reject Jesus, or do you come to Him with your confusion and receive the answers He gives?

In today’s passage, we see Jesus offering what we all truly long for – rest and relief from our burdens. But we must come to Him. We are a people who carry our own burdens – either because we just don’t know there’s another way, or because we are so proud as to think we can handle everything ourselves. Jesus’ call is to give up that pride, give up that self-reliance and self-righteousness, and to come before Him humbly, admitting that we need help and that He is our Helper. The relief He offers is hidden from the self-righteous and self-reliant, but it is revealed to the humble, child-at-heart people who confess that they can’t carry the burden themselves. What burden are you carrying? Are you trying to be a good enough person to win some kind of approval? Are you trying to solve all of your own problems? Stop. Instead, come to Christ. Jesus has taken your burden to the Cross to release you from it and offers you a better way.

The two episodes in today’s excerpts highlight two crucial realms of Jesus power and authority as King. First, Jesus has total control over the spiritual realm. Demons must obey Him – and they know it. Second, Jesus has total power over the physical realm. Jesus can heal the sick and even raise the dead. How exciting to think that this power can be wielded in our lives. Through Jesus we can have freedom from evil, healing and even life. With Jesus as our King, we have great hope – we must only respond to Him in faith. Where do you need healing (spiritual or physical)? Jesus has the power and authority to heal your spirit and your body (although, with a healed spirit, the sufferings of this life often fade from us).

After establishing Jesus as King, Matthew takes us on an unexpected turn. In the wilderness, Jesus chooses to endure fierce hunger and thirst for 40 days. And when He is at His weakest, Satan comes to tempt Him. Jesus’ temptations are all centered on His power – to turn stones to bread, to call on angels to serve Him and to rule over all the earth. He could have done anything Satan tempted Him to do, but instead Jesus shows what kind of King He truly is. Absolute power did not corrupt Him at all. He resisted what must have been enormous temptation for the sake of fulfilling God’s larger purposes for Him. Our lesson, however, is not to resist temptation like Jesus did. Our lesson is to realize that Jesus faced temptation, just like us, and never succumbed, just not like us. So when He died, He died as an innocent so that we might be saved. That’s why we swear our allegiance to Him as our King. Offer a prayer of praise to Christ our King today.

The first seventeen verses of Matthew are probably the easiest to skip over – especially if you haven’t studied the Old Testament much – but they are also some of the most important verses in all of the gospels. Matthew takes us on a journey from Genesis to Malachi (and even through the 400 years of ‘silence’ between the Old and New Testaments) with one purpose in mind: to connect Jesus all the way back to Abraham (which would set up the fulfillment of God’s promise to Abram in Genesis 12:3 that his descendants would bless all nations) and to establish Jesus in the royal bloodline of David (which would make Jesus a legitimate heir to David’s throne and so fulfill the promise in 2 Samuel 7:16 that David’s throne would last forever). Jesus Christ is the fulfillment of thousands of years of promises that God would redeem his people. Today, meditate on the fact that Jesus fulfilled the longings of 42 generations of men and women, and on Jesus’ ability to fulfill your deepest longings as well.

God doesn’t want our worship to stay contained within the brick, stone, wood and glass of a church building. God wants our worship to spill out from our walls and reach the nations. The world is watching Christians worship, not only on Sundays but all days. God wants our transformed lives to testify that all other gods are false for they can effect no such transformation. God wants us to proclaim his salvation day after day, to worship among the nations. Clearly, God wants people to know him and know that he will one day judge in truth so that they will see their need for refuge. As you scatter for worship, remember that you must worship as a missionary in your daily life. Give God his due glory with your whole life.

When we sing, play and shout to the Lord, we are simply expressing our great joy over who he is and what he has done throughout history and through his Son. All movements of our worship gatherings should be marked by joy. Joy isn’t always happiness, and we will certainly lament as a body. Joy is profound satisfaction, deeper and more constant than any emotional response. Joy endures through sorrow and pain, when it’s perfectly natural not to feel happy. In the midst of smoke and fire, may the righteous rejoice before God. As you gather for worship, be reminded of the profound satisfaction you have found with God and may that joy color your call to worship, your confession of sin, your assurance, your passing of peace, your participation in communion and your being sent with the benediction.