O Lord, our Father!
We have gathered here at the turn of the year
because we do not want to be alone but want to be with each other,
and together be united with you.

Our hearts are filled with somber thoughts
as we reflect on our misdeeds of the past year.
And our ears are deafened by the voices of the radio and in the newspapers,
with their numerous predictions for the coming year.
Instead we want to hear your word, your voice, your assurance, your guidance.
We know that you are in our midst,
and are eager to give us all that we need, whether we ask or not.

On this night we ask for one thing only:
that you collect our scattered thoughts,
getting rid of the confused and defiant thoughts that may distract us,
and thus enable us to concentrate on your limitless generosity to us.
You were abundantly generous to us last year,
and will be no less generous to us next year, and in every year to come.
Fill us with gratitude to you.

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If we find that we have not trusted in the only one with authority, the one who has already conquered, the one who will return again we are actually his enemies. We are the ones who are standing in opposition to His Kingdom.

The clarion call of the Gospel is Repent! The Kingdom of God is at hand! The Son is coming back! We must submit to the power and authority and majesty of him who has been declared both Lord and Christ else we stand on our own power and authority in contradistinction from him.

That pride and idolatry will be dealt with.

And if we have trusted in him? Let us strengthen feeble arms and weakened knees (Heb 12:12) while making every effort to live in peace with everyone and be holy (Heb 13:14). Let’s continue to draw near to the Lord because we’re his people.

We’re not those that have to approach with trembling with fear (Heb 13:21) but we can come near to the Lord, to the very Kingdom of God established in Mount Zion (Heb 13:22-24) as part of a kingdom which cannot be shaken.

We can worship Jesus, the Lord God our King, with reverence and awe (Heb 13:28) as a holy nation with an inheritance that doesn’t fade away (1 Peter 1:3).

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Jesus is no weakling King.

He is a King who has authority right now, and will enforce that authority on a later date. Gentiles will continue to flock to him and eventually sit beneath his banner (Is 11:10) while the Jews realize their error and flock to him (Ho 3:5) and ultimately all his handed over to God (1 Cor 15:28).

When he has done this, then the Son himself will be made subject to him who put everything under him, so that God may be all in all.

And it is in this context that Paul thinks about Adam: the King who failed and didn’t conquer. Adam couldn’t even rule over his own home and winds up having creation rule over him.

Jesus is a King who conquers.

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The father of the house might call himself King over the home and we get what he’s saying. In the home, Dad’s Rule reigns.  How far will Husband get with Wifey if he says “Woman, I am King in this house”?

Or what about the teenager who has on the door of his room “King of My Castle”: weird thing to have a King who has authority over a room in a house that isn’t his. A King without a Kingdom is a strange thing.

Christ is not a King without a Kingdom. He outright says that his Kingdom is not of this present world (John 18:36). But more so, his Kingdom is one that is everlasting (Dan 2:44; Luke 1:33), is righteous (Ps 45:6; Heb 1:8-10; Isa 32:1; Jer 23:5), in which all the saints are subject to Him (Col 1:13).

For he has rescued us from the dominion of darkness and brought us into the kingdom of the Son he loves

Jesus has an overarching eternal kingdom.

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In Lord of the Rings by the Christian author JRR Tolkien, a man lives in the wild. He is an ugly man, rough around the edges from long harsh years. But we discover that this man, out of all men, is actually of the lineage of the old Kings. By the end, he is revealed as King with a crown and a flag—but before that he is revealed by action and circumstance.

Jesus declared himself to be a king in various ways, but not usually the way the people expected. For example, in Matt 25:34, he speaks of the Son of Man returning to separate the Goats and the Sheep and we see that he is speaking about a King is functioning in a kingly capacity under God.

Then the King will say to those on his right, ‘Come, you who are blessed by my Father; take your inheritance, the kingdom prepared for you since the creation of the world.

But he doesn’t only illustrate the point, he acts on it. So you’ll see him commanding the very dead to come back to life in John 11, or feeding the crowds by fiat (John 6) ,  or demanding the storm to be still (Mark 4:35-40) thus revealing a power over creation that has been lost since Adam.  You’ll see him forgiving sin and making the lame walk, and even pointing out that both occur because the Son of Man has authority (Matthew 9:4-8) to do so:

Which is easier: to say, ‘Your sins are forgiven,’ or to say, ‘Get up and walk’? But I want you to know that the Son of Man has authority on earth to forgive sins.” So he said to the paralyzed man, “Get up, take your mat and go home.” Then the man got up and went home. When the crowd saw this, they were filled with awe; and they praised God, who had given such authority to man.

The Wise Men came seeking a king and they found him (Mathew 2:2) and one day every knee in heaven and on earth will bow to him (Isa 45:23; Phil 2:10) but Jesus points out that he was a King right while he was here (John 18:37) and more so, when he conquered over the grave waiting until his enemies are made his footstool (Psalm 110; Acts 2:32-33).

God has raised this Jesus to life, and we are all witnesses of it. Exalted to the right hand of God, he has received from the Father the promised Holy Spirit and has poured out what you now see and hear.

Jesus was revealed as King.

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