Dennis Tuuri

# Sermon Transcript: Christ the King Sunday
## Pastor Dennis Tuuri

Sermon scripture is found in Proverbs chapter 30. And I’m going to read the opening verses and then the closing verses of Proverbs chapter 30. So I’ll read verses 1-10 and then 29 through 33. If you have the handout, which I always encourage you to have, you can follow along. On the handout, it shows what I think is the structure of Proverbs 30 and it also has some alternate translations of some of the first few verses particularly, which are difficult to translate.

Please stand for the reading of God’s word. The words of Agur the son of Jakeh, his utterance. This man declared to Ithiel and Ucal: “Surely I am more stupid than any man and do not have the understanding of a man. I neither learned wisdom nor have knowledge of the Holy One. Who has ascended into heaven or descended? Who has gathered the wind in his fists? Who has bound the water in a garment? Who has established all the ends of the earth?

What is his name? And what is his son’s name? If you know, every word of God is pure. He is a shield to those who put their trust in him. Do not add to his words, lest he rebuke you and you be found a liar. Two things I request of you. Deprive me not before I die. Remove falsehood and lies far from me. Give me neither poverty nor riches. Feed me with the food allotted to me, lest I be full and deny you and say, ‘Who is the Lord?’ Or lest I be poor and steal and profane the name of my God.

Do not malign a servant to his master, lest he curse you and you be found guilty.” And then dropping down to verse 29: “There are three things which are majestic in pace. Yes, four which are stately in walk. A lion which is mighty among beasts and does not turn away from any. A greyhound, a male goat also, and a king whose troops are with him. If you have been foolish in exalting yourself, or if you have devised evil, put your hand on your mouth.

For as the churning of milk produces butter, and wringing the nose produces blood, so the forcing of wrath produces strife.”

Let’s pray. Lord God, we celebrate and rejoice in the kingdom brought by our Lord Jesus Christ. We celebrate and rejoice his being the King of Kings and Lord of Lords. We thank you, Father, for making us kings and queens in the land as well. We pray today that you would instruct us by your word and by your spirit in how to exercise that rule and authority correctly. In Jesus’ name we ask it and for the sake of the continued manifestation of his kingdom, not ours. Amen.

Please be seated.

We follow loosely the church year here at Reformation Covenant Church. Next Lord’s Day is the first Sunday in Advent and that’s where our Sunday school program begins every year. That’s where the change in classes occurs. And we come today to a Sunday that is an innovation—the only one on the church calendar celebrated by most churches that is new and novel perhaps. And some people think maybe it should be there. Some people think maybe it shouldn’t be there.

The way the church calendar works is the first half of the year celebrates the coming advent of Jesus Christ, his birth, his epiphany, his demonstration of who he was to the Gentiles through the magi. It moves on into the season of preparation for his death on the cross and resurrection through Easter. It moves on from that into ascension and then finally ends on Pentecost Sunday with the birth of the church, so-called the new church.

And so the first half of the year is primarily concerned with the life of our savior and his advent and then his enthronement at the right hand of the father. The second half of the year are so-called ordinary Sundays—not ordinary in the sense of common or plain, but ordinary in the sense of numbered Sundays. The first Sunday after Pentecost, the second Sunday after Pentecost, ordinals, numbers. And so today would be what, the 26th Sunday after Pentecost or something like that typically.

But back in the 1930s there was the rise of tyrannical fascist dictators and the beginning of some real troubling things in formerly Christian nations. And the pope at the time decided that it would be a good thing to assert the sovereignty of Jesus Christ, his kingship. And so in the Roman Catholic Church, they began marking at first the last Sunday in October and then it was moved to the last Sunday in November as Christ the King Sunday.

So usually we don’t make a big deal out of this here because typically it’s kind of the same Sunday as Thanksgiving Sunday and we’ve done that traditionally more than we have the other. But this year, because Thanksgiving was as early as it can be because of the way the calendar laid itself out, we did Thanksgiving Sunday last week and Advent is until next week. So here we are with Christ the King Sunday this week.

Now, it is a useful addition to the calendar because in the world that has gone increasingly secularist in the last century or so, it is a good thing—and this is what the pope thought and this is why Anglicans adopted the holiday and the Lutherans, etc. So now it’s become part of the normal church calendar for most liturgical churches. But one of the reasons for doing this was because of the growing secularization and the need to remind people that Jesus Christ is king.

Now you can look at it as the postponement of the kingdom of Jesus Christ till the end of human history by the last half of the year focusing on the church. But that’s not really the idea. The idea is that history does have a consummation—not Christ becoming the king, but in 1 Corinthians 15, it says he must reign as king until he’s put all things under his feet and then he delivers the kingdom over to his father.

And so Christ the King Sunday is a reminder that what we’ve labored to do as the church in terms of commemorating this in the six months of ordinary time is really all under the rubric of the king, the Lord Jesus Christ, and culminates in the manifestation of his kingdom increasingly over time. And so it has a nice—or it can have a nice, you know, optimistic eschatological postmillennial slant to it.

And of course that’s the slant we would take to the day here. And we would also say, like the pope said, that it is important to recognize that Jesus Christ’s kingship is over every last bit of space, every last square inch of ground and over every human being in this world in the created order. And so it’s good to affirm that and it’s also good to remember that Jesus Christ executes the office of king presently for us.

The Westminster Shorter Catechism says: “How does Christ execute the office of a king?” “Christ executes the office of a king in subduing us to himself. First he wins this for himself in ruling and defending us presently and in restraining and conquering all his and our enemies.” And so this is the summary statement of what Jesus as king does.

Now we also read in the larger catechism a little expansion of that. It says: “He executes the office of the king and calling us out of the world—the people—to himself and giving them officers laws and centuries by which he visibly governs them. So he preserves and supports us and defeats all of our enemies and his, but he does this”—the Westminster Larger Catechism says—”in part by giving us laws and officers and punishments to make manifest his kingdom.”

Now, we’re entering into a political year. The election of the president is next year. There’s already been plenty of talk, particularly amongst evangelical Christians, over what to do. And it’s useful, I think, perhaps this Sunday to sort of kick off the idea that part of the kingdom of the Lord Jesus Christ is giving us officers, laws, and judgments. And so we want to see those increasingly reflected in our particular country’s laws and judgments and in her officers, her office bearers.

So Christ the King Sunday, reminding us of Christ the King, is a reminder also of our civic obligations to enter into, every year, the political action being good citizens that God has called us to be and to evaluate these things in the biblical Christian way. So I have already had a series of discussions over the last few weeks with various people. I assume we’ll have a lot more as we go into the new year. Every political season brings its own idiosyncrasies. This is an interesting political season for Christians.

And while it’s not the purpose of my message today to focus on political action, but rather how we actually do reign in the context of the world, let me say just a couple of things about Christian political action applying the celebration. You know, Alexander Schmemann said that “tell me what you celebrate and I’ll tell you who you are.”

And so we’re a church that doesn’t shrink back and enters fully into the celebration of Christ the King because we’re a people that believes that Jesus Christ is sovereign and Lord over all things and we proclaim that message of the sovereignty of the king in every area and that includes the political area. So we have an obligation to walk into political action, to be involved, but be involved in a Christian way.

I’ve mentioned Marvin Olasky’s call for a new Christian urbanism several months ago. The cities are crummy places to live and places where anti-Christian thought flourishes because the church abandoned the cities, and for us to regain culture we have to retake the cities—the place where ideas and much of what happens occurs, particularly in an era of urbanization. So the cities are crummy places to be, but that’s because we abandoned them and in the short term we have to go beyond crummy places to bring the gospel of Christ and to have a new perspective of Christianity in the context of the city.

Same thing’s true of politics. “Well, we don’t want to get involved in political action because it’s a dirty business.” Well, I’d say it’s the same with the city. It’s a dirty business because we backed out of it. Because the amillennial or dispensational church saw no relevance to Christ’s kingdom in terms of civil rule or very little, and so backed out of it. We say that it’s the job of Christians to bring light, love, peace, and joy into that arena just like every other arena.

We say that for the next several generations, we and our children and grandchildren will be taking the message of Christ into political action. And it won’t be such an evil place when we’re done with that endeavor. Just like the cities will be cleaned up, political action will be brought more obviously and visibly subject to the kingdom of Jesus Christ and his reign over them. So this is what we’re called to do in terms of political action.

Let me just say a few things to generate a little discussion today or into the next few weeks or months into the next political season. You hear a lot of Christians talking about not voting for the lesser of two evils, but rather voting for a righteous person. Well, that’s a good slogan, but like most slogans, it has some difficulties as well. And particularly for Christians, we have to define these terms.

I had a discussion with a woman—I want to make sure to say a woman—who told me that she thought Hillary Clinton was evil this morning. I think that may be an accurate assessment. I really think it might be. I don’t think it’s an accurate assessment of most of the political candidates on either the left or the right. I don’t think they’re evil the way the scriptures use evil. If we’re going to define them as evil, then we have to come up with some kind of super evil word for people like Hitler and Stalin and Mao, etc.

So I think we have to be careful here. The lesser of two evils—well, how many evils are there out there? Now, if you want to define evil as anything other than a theocratic postmillennial Christian, well, then I guess you could use the term. But I don’t think that’s a proper use of the English language. We use the word evil for something else. And it unnecessarily puts Christians in a position of feeling guilty for supporting something evil that may not be evil at all.

So the definition of evil is important. And then how do we apply that definition to the candidates? And the same with righteous. I have been around in Christian political circles for twenty, thirty years. And I am really amazed. There was a man who ran as a Christian years ago for the governor of the state here. And one of the solid Christians opposing this man had an ad on KPDQ, I think, and said, “Well, we’re born again, but we weren’t born yesterday.” And I think that unfortunately all too many Christians are sort of born yesterday, immature politically. When if a man makes a profession of faith in Christ and posits some conservative ideals, all of a sudden we’re like lemmings to the sea, thinking this is a righteous man.

Well, be careful with how you define righteousness, the same way be careful how you define evil. Are there any candidates for any elected office anywhere that I know of, for instance, who would desire to honor the Lord of the Sabbath and the Christian Lord’s Day? I don’t think so. So how righteous are all these candidates?

It is almost impossible to find church membership out of supposed righteous candidates. I’ve been trying to do it with one of the candidates for the last month. I’m told what sort of church he goes to, but I don’t know if he’s a member in good standing. I don’t know the name of his pastor or his church. And yet Christians think that it’s our obligation to line up behind such a candidate because he claims a personal faith in Jesus Christ and has conservative ideas about things.

Well, we have to be more. If we’re going to engage in political action effectively, we have to be a little more mature than that. We have to be careful about these designations.

Additionally, there’s a proper warning that’s gone out over and over and over again in the last 20 years. Warning: “When they go into the promised land, God says, ‘Now, be careful because they’ve got gods there that they serve, and you’ll be tempted to serve those same gods.’” Well, if you believe vox populi, vox Deus—the voice of the people is the voice of God—and that the state is God incarnate, then true religion is political action. And that’s what we’ll be tempted to engage in, right?

We don’t want to do that. We don’t want to think that salvation comes through political action. Used to elect dogcatchers. Well, I know it’s a bit more than that what civil governors do today, but I think it’s on a line with that job—dogcatching. We want people who are efficient at what they do. And when we insist that they have a political set of positions based upon what we think the scriptures or some conservative position is, and if they don’t do that, they’re evil, and we’re not going to vote for them because we want to have good consciences by not engaging in horrible, wicked activity of voting for somebody that’s less than a theocratic postmillennial Christian.

What we have done, I think, is elevate political action to a place it’s not supposed to be. We don’t apply that same standard when we go and look for a job. Yeah, we’d like to work for a Christian man and enrich him with our service and labor and have that kind of environment. We don’t insist on that in business. Why would we insist on that in political action? To me, it’s because we’re tempted to fall into the gods of the nations. We’re tempted to think of civil government as somehow much more important than, you know, who’s going to employ us. When of course that isn’t the case.

One final comment before we get into a discussion of Jesus’s kingship, which I think should inform our selection of officers and who we vote for based, I think, on what the scriptures tell us about what kings, good kings are like, what Jesus is like: The other thing we have an obligation to remember is our Good Samaritan obligations, right? We have an obligation to help people. And if we can engage in political action that ends up helping the poor, for instance, this should be a good thing to us.

It’s interesting. We’ve had conversations about honest weights and measures. Where you see that talked about in the Old Testament nearly exclusively—apart from just abstract laws about having just weights and measures and general laws against not stealing—but the specific application of the prophets are commercial systems that are designed to take advantage of the poor. Is that our concern? No. See, is that our concern with just weights and measures and fairness in transactions that the poor are not mistreated? It should be. That’s what the Bible says, but that almost sounds like a liberal position.

It’s the liberals who want to close down the payday loan centers and we want, you know, free market. Well, I’m not saying we should—I’m not taking a position one way or the other on that issue of the kind of loans that are made and the sort of enslavement that some people fall into. But I am saying that if we’re going to put a lot of time and attention into just weights and measures, then we ought to apply it where the scriptures apply it. And that’s in a consideration of how our economic systems treat poor people. That’s what it’s about.

Because of course, poor people are regularly oppressed by people of power. As Christians, we want to, you know, the common parlance says, “speak truth to power.” And that usually comes from a bad source, but we have truth and there is power. Our obligations as Christians on Christ the King Sunday is to remember we have an obligation to speak the truth of the King and his righteous reign to the powers that be. And frequently we should be, I think, in a time of sinfulness and evil, speaking the truth in defense of the poor.

Now, we do that with abortion—you know, the fatherless child who is prone to be murdered—but we don’t do it so much with poor people, people that are entering into economic transactions that enslave them.

So these are just some things to get us started in thinking about what the implications of Christ the King Sunday are in our lives. And I think they’re pretty wide ranging. And I think that we shouldn’t feel bad that we don’t know how to think about these things very much. It’s just been in our lifetime, in the last twenty, thirty years at this church, where many of us have thought about these issues. Of course we’re going to be simplistic and naive. But what Christ the King Sunday should be to us every year is a reminder, first of all, of optimism. Christ reigns. Secondly, of our requirement to speak the truth to power in terms of Christ’s reign. And that means knowing our Bibles well enough to address governmental officials and authorities and laws based on those scriptures. That’s what we want to do.

So in this kingdom season, may the Lord God grant us a small degree of maturity as we try to apply ourselves to the truth of his word, as we try to extend the realm of Christendom by obedience to him and what his scriptures tell us to do.

Now Jesus Christ is king and there is in the life of the church a celebration of that in various aspects. But part of—let me just start by reading from Romans 1, the first few verses:

“Paul, a bondservant of Jesus Christ, called to be an apostle, separated to the gospel of God which he promised before through his prophets in the holy scriptures concerning his son Jesus Christ our Lord, who was born of the seed of David according to the flesh and declared to be the son of God with power according to the spirit of holiness by the resurrection from the dead.”

Now we take that as a proof text usually for the divinity of Jesus, the second person. He’s here. But really this word “appointed” can mean “became” or “is announced to be”—”declared to be the son of God with power.” “Son of God” is a term relating to kings. The king of various pagan countries would be called the son of God, the son of the name of their god. Benhadad was the son of Hadad. Hadad was the god. Adam was called the son of God because he was to exercise reign and authority for God over the created order. Mankind is supposed to do that.

And when Jesus Christ comes—when Christ comes, the second person of God—and takes on incarnate flesh, Jesus then by his death on the cross is declared with power by God to be the son of God, the ruler of all the world. So the kingdom is inaugurated in a full sense with the coming and the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. And that’s the time in which we live. That’s part of the message of Christ the King.

Through him we have received grace and apostleship. So now we have, through Jesus, man is now reigning at the right hand of the father. We are in Christ and through him then we have received grace and apostleship for obedience to the faith among all the nations for his name. So our job is to convert the world, to save the world, and part of that is speaking forth a big part of it—the truth of Christ the King Sunday—that Jesus Christ is king. So that’s what we’re to do.

What kind of king is he? Well, Jesus said the Old Testament spoke of him. We can look at the text that we just read. Understand that its context is the book of Proverbs. The purpose of Proverbs is to create a king—it’s to take a young son and then to train him up and by the end of the application of wisdom to show him how to reign correctly as king. And that’s what the text in front of us is said—in that’s the context for the text in front of us. The context for Proverbs 30 is the entire book of Proverbs.

And if you take your handouts, you’ll see on the outline—the first attached sheet, I believe it is—I give you here the structure of Proverbs as I understand it. And we don’t want to belabor this point. There’s a lot of material here. You can take it home, keep it if you think it’s useful for reference. But there is a movement: the Proverbs start with a little introduction. And the introduction is short and it says, “I’m going to bring wisdom.” And so this is the proverbs of Solomon. They’re going to bring wisdom and it’s going to change a prince and have him become a king.

And by the end of the book, chapter 31, we have a king speaking. And we have a king who listens to his wife and in fact repeats the words of his wife to us. So it’s mission accomplished at the end of Proverbs. What he started to do in the introduction is accomplished at the end.

Now then there’s a longer introduction in the second part—from the second half of chapter 1 through chapter 9—all an introduction. The actual proverbs of Solomon don’t start till chapter 10, verse one. And it says, “The proverbs of Solomon.” So we have a long introduction. And what is it about? Well, it’s about young men and it’s about two paths: hard work to get riches or stealing. It’s about two kinds of women. It’s about two approaches to life.

And as Proverbs opens up, it addresses young men, young foolish men, who in their pride are tempted to go with the wrong crowd instead of the right crowd, hang out with the wrong women instead of the right women and end up trying to get glory or money or wealth through the wrong way as opposed to the right way. It starts with immaturity and it starts with a solid warning that there are two paths and if you walk down the path of folly and of pride you will be destroyed. So it’s a strong warning against pride.

Now matching that, you know, the first little first half of the chapter is matched by the king. But moving in from the center, then matching that “My son” introduction—”My son, there are two paths. My son, don’t be foolish, be wise.”—matching that is this chapter 30, a distinct section. This is the writing of Agur, which means “sojourner.” This is a sojourner speaking. And this sojourner, as you could tell from the opening verses and the closing verses, what he’s all about is humility.

It’s almost shocking to us that this is what a king should be like. But that’s what the point of the book is. You don’t get to be the king Lemuel if you haven’t learned to be the sojourner who knows that he knows nothing. “I don’t know a doggone thing,” he says, “except maybe Yahweh.” So his humility is an essential, essential component for reigning.

Jesus Christ says that he is meek. All right. He’s humble. He comes to do the father’s bidding. He’s not a man who declares and says, “Look at me. Look at me. Look at me. I’m king. I’m the great one. I’m the wise one. Do everything that I tell you to do.” Jesus comes humbly. He comes serving, not to be served. He comes to serve.

You see, the Proverbs tell us that true kingship—look at the preeminent the King of Kings. This is Christ the King Sunday, not Christ-a-King Sunday. This is a Sunday that’s an offense to political will correct us because it says that only Christ is the king, king of kings and lord of lords. And this King of Kings and Lord of Lords tells us over and over again in the gospels that he didn’t come to be served but to serve and to give his life as a ransom for many.

He came, he is meek. “Take my yoke upon you. I have a yoke,” he says. He’s learned humility. He is humility incarnate. And so the movement of Proverbs is the setting for this description in chapter 30 of this humble man who says, “I don’t know anything. And all I know is I’m tempted to sin. So don’t give me too much. Don’t give me too little. I don’t want to steal and I don’t want to be full and deny you.”

He knows his limitations. He’s humble. He knows that he knows nothing. He knows that only God’s word, not his, is pure and valuable and good. And at the end, he tells us that there is a way to become stately in walk. There is a way to be a lion. There is a way to be a king with his troops. And how is it that happens? Well, he’s told us in the whole chapter that the way you attain to that kingship, which will be described more in chapter 31 by the king, is to be humble.

So the overall arc of the book of Proverbs is a tremendous statement to us of not seeking our own glory, but rather seeking the glory of God and submitting ourselves to him, not being self-serving in what we do but rather serving others as true kings. That’s a mark of a king, a biblical king—someone who serves others.

So that’s the overall context in Proverbs 30. There’s another context to it, however, and that is that it follows the section five. Section five begins in chapter 25. So the fifth section of the book is the Hezekiah section. Turn to chapter 25, verse one, in your scriptures. I want to point out a few things here.

So we get to six by going through five. Now, five tells us right away what it’s about. We read in verse one: “These also are proverbs of Solomon, which the men of Hezekiah, king of Judah, copied out.” So this is a later collection. Solomon is long since dead. Hezekiah’s men, a king’s men, copy these proverbs out. And the first proverb tells us what they’re going to be about. We could intuit it because these are by Hezekiah, the king, his men. But we read: “It is the glory of God to conceal a matter, but the glory of kings is to search out a matter.”

So he’s going to tell us about kings. This is repeated in verse four: “Take away the dross from silver and it will go to the silversmith for jewelry. Take away the wicked from before the king and his throne will be established in righteousness.”

There’s a movement of the book as we go from the third section—most of Solomon’s proverbs that we think of—to the fifth section of Hezekiah’s collection of Solomon’s proverbs. There’s a movement. The first set of proverbs, beginning in chapter 10, and we’re going on, are mostly antithetical parallelisms. They’re easy. They’re “this but not this.” They’re things set in opposition. But by 25, the proverbs become more complicated. They’re longer. Some of them have three, four, five lines to them. They’re more difficult to understand. They’re not quite simple anymore because a king attains to wisdom and he gets beyond, you know, the simple right and wrong of a thing and he gets to be able to search matters out.

So the very form that the proverbs are written in shows this movement—from immaturity in your youth, learn simple “this but not this,” and in your maturity that’ll prepare you to become mature where you can understand deeper wisdom.

This fifth section is about kings. The whole section is about kings. So we got section five talking about kings. Then we’ve got the humble Agur. And then we’ve got Lemuel who’s become the king. Mission accomplished. Proverbs has fulfilled what it set out to do. It’s made a king out of a young man.

So these are this—this is the immediate context of the humble chapter 30. The description in 25 of what a true king is. Now it begins by saying that these are the proverbs of Solomon which the men of Hezekiah, king of Judah, copied out. And it ends in verse 28—this chapter, and I believe it’s correct chapter break: “Whoever has no rule over his own spirit is like a city broken down without walls.”

Well, you see that’s a kingly statement. A king’s job is to defend the city. That’s what Christ does for us. That’s what a king was to do. That’s what Hezekiah, king of Judah, was to do for Jerusalem. And so, you know, he is the one that’s being talked about here ultimately. But he’s telling us that a king has to have rule over his own spirit.

Now, he had started out by saying that it’s the glory of kings to search out a matter. And in verse 27, matching that, we have: “It is not good to eat much honey. So to seek one’s own glory is not glory.” So the book ends—the actual proverbs—tells us that chapter 25 is about glory. It’s about hidden glory. It’s the glory of God to conceal a matter, the glory of a king to search a matter out—maybe it’s a judicial case, maybe it’s something going on in political intrigues, but it’s his glory to search it out. Glory is hidden. That’s what this chapter tells us.

And if you want to have true glory, don’t go about it in a grasping sort of a way. Glory is hidden. Glory is not to be sought for. If we seek our own glory, that’s foolishness and shame.

Going back to verse four, we said: “Take the dross away from the silver, and we’ve got something beautiful. But take away the wicked from before the king and his throne will be established in righteousness.”

How is a king, how does a king become unglorious? If he’s a glorious king, a humble king, knowing what to do, it will be hidden when he makes bad choices in terms of his cabinet appointments. The dross around the king are these men that are no good, that are evil and wicked. And one of the first things the king has to know is those are the guys grasping for power who will ask for a position and then the last ones you should give the position to.

But if you give it to them, you see your glory—that’s supposed to shine forth from you as king—becomes hidden and obscured. It becomes obscured by your own sin.

In other words, verse six: “Do not exalt yourself in the presence of the king. Do not stand in the place of the great. It’s better that he say to you, ‘Come up here,’ than that you should be put lower in the presence of the prince whom your eyes have seen.”

So what is this about? It’s saying: “Well, if you want glory, it’s got to be hidden. It has to be humbly sought for. You don’t exalt yourself. You don’t seek your own glory by pushing yourself upon the king. No. If you exalt or glorify yourself, you’re going to end up being sent away. You’re going to end up with shame on your face.”

“Don’t go hastily to court. What will you do in the end when your neighbor has put you to shame? Debate your cause with your neighbor, and do not disclose the secret to another, lest he who hears it expose your shame and your reputation be ruined.”

So again, it’s a discussion of glory. And we think the right way to be glorious is to immediately take the neighbor to court, make our position known, and we’ll become glorious. And God says, “No, don’t reveal things. Glory is to be hidden.” If you attempt to get your own glory by going to court too quickly, by showing how weighty and important your opinions are, then what will happen is someone will come and test you, and you’ll be put to shame.

So this whole chapter is about proper glory and improper glory. It’s about the right way to have glory from God, reflected glory from God, and it’s about those who have wrong glory and seek to achieve it in other ways.

Verse 14: “Whoever falsely boasts of giving is like clouds and wind without rain. You’re seeking your own glory. You’re saying, ‘What a good man am I?’ And yet the Bible says that is not the way to achieve glory.”

So chapter 30 culminates this chapter—this section began in 25 where men are seeking out their own glory and so they’re not to do that. So we’re told: As we consider the kingship of Jesus Christ again, he is not someone that did seek out his own glory. He was the one who was humble, came as a servant, came humbly and meek to the father and by implication that’s who we’re to be as well.

So section five is a reminder too. It sort of gets us ready for what’s going on. It talks about the hidden glory of kings, not an external glory, not something to be grasped for. It talks about humility being the precursor to glory, not—and if we seek glory first, then we’re going to be shamed at the end of the thing. And it tells us that when we consider kings, this is a good section of the Bible to consider.

What kind of appointments will he make? Is he self-serving? Well, it’s pretty difficult at the presidential level to find a candidate that’s not self-serving. But maybe there are some. So you see, these are little—you can’t go down a position list and say, “What’s his position on this issue and this issue and this issue?” That’s not a bad thing to do. But in the Bible, civil rulers are characterized as those who do not grasp after glory but rather who are humble, whose glory they prefer to remain hidden and put away rather than on display for all to see.

“You know, humble yourselves before the hand of God and he’ll exalt you in due time.” This is what kings are to be like.

So that’s the context. And let’s look now at the text itself in chapter 30. So going back to chapter 30 itself and what’s being said here, and we don’t have time to deal with the whole chapter, but consider what is said here.

Now there’s a translation on the handout. You know, you have words like Jacob, Epheluk. What do these words mean? Are they common? Are they proper names or should they be translated? That’s always the discussion in these Hebrew texts—should the names be translated? And the translation I’ve given you here is from Jim Jordan. He believes that Agur should be translated as “the sojourner”—that it’s not a proper name. He thinks there’s a riddle here as to who Agur is. He thinks the right answer to the riddle is maybe Jacob.

We don’t know. But Jacob would fit the mold. And Jacob was the humble man who at the end of his life, what happens to the humble Jacob? Well, what happens is he, you know, as it were, leads Pharaoh to faith in Yahweh and his son is exalted to be ruler over all of Pharaoh’s world and realm.

Well, in any event, the words of the sojourner are then the son of Jacob. Jacob could be translated “Yahweh, blessed be he.” So he’s calling himself “son of Yahweh, blessed be he.” And this would be a royal title again—”son of Yahweh” is the king. So we know that this is in the kingly section. And perhaps he’s declaring that he is the son of Yahweh and Yahweh, blessed be he—blessed be Yahweh.

“This man declared, this is his utterance or burden. He declares: ‘I have wearied myself, oh God. I labor, God, I weary. I have wearied myself, oh God, and have come to an end.’”

So he starts by the declaration of his own inability really in terms of accomplishments.

In verse two: “Surely I am more stupid than any man. I do not have the understanding of a man. I neither learned wisdom nor have knowledge of the Holy One.”

That’s a conjunction there and it could be translated “but.” It could be “nor.” What he’s saying is he’s the son of Yahweh. He does know Yahweh, but that’s it. And at the end of the day, that’s what we would say as well, correct? The older you get, the more you realize you really don’t know anything, but you know Yahweh. And that knowing Yahweh is enough. And of course, you could also declare that you don’t really even know Yahweh. So either way, this is translated as okay. But the point is this is a humble old man.

So the young, brash, prideful man who was tempted to take the wrong way back in the second section of the Proverbs—the long introduction from chapter 1 to 9—this man now is a humble old man who has learned a few things. And what he’s learned more than anything else is that if he’s going to have glory it’s got to be hidden. That humility precedes glory. That he can’t, he doesn’t have any external glory that he’s grasping after at all. Not him. No, he doesn’t know anything.

He says, “But he does know that God is the one who determines all things and has strength to make all the ends of the earth.” And so verse four talks about that. “And God’s word is what we must cling to. Every word of God is pure. He is a shield to those who put their trust in him. Don’t add to his word.”

So that’s how it all begins. And then not only is he humble in terms of his lack of knowledge of all things, but he says, “The one thing that I do know”—now we’re talking here about a king. We’re talking about Christ the King Sunday. We’re talking about Jesus Christ being ultimately the one that is this person. He’s the son of Yahweh. He’s the son of God that’s described in verse four.

But he’s also the one who is humble. And this is the way to be a king, to exercise rule and authority in our day as well. Christ the King Sunday is a reminder of his reign, his reign. It’s reminder of our responsibility to speak truth into our situation and what we do as we speak our humility. He knows nothing but Yahweh and his word. So that should be our claim as well.

But the one other thing he does know, he knows his own limitations. He knows of his tempted to be his temptations to fall into sin.

“Two things I request of you. Deprive me not before I die. Remove falsehood and lies far from me. Give me neither poverty nor riches. Feed me with the food allotted to me, lest I be full and deny you and say, ‘Who is the Lord?’ Or lest I be poor and steal and profane the name of my God.”

The one thing that the man who would reign—that God will give glory to—who doesn’t exert his own glory—this man recognizes his lack of knowledge of anything but Yahweh and his word, but he does know himself and he knows that he’s tempted to sin. He is tempted to sin. He knows his limitations. So rulers must know their limitations.

This man, you know, may be a ruler, at least as precursor for Lemuel’s statements in 31. So this is what he says. And the numbered list, I won’t go through the whole chapter, but I believe it’s interesting how these numbered lists sort of shake themselves out. And what we have then in section seven, the last of the numbered lists, verse 29: “There are three things majestic in pace. Yes. Four which are stately in walk.”

So we could rephrase it: “There are three, yeah, four things that are glorious.” Yeah. Okay. There are three or four things that are glorious. And what are these things?

Well, first is a lion who is mighty among beasts and does not turn away from any. So the lion has a glory to him because of his power, authority over all that he is in the context of. So the other beasts, he doesn’t turn away from any beast. He is brave. He is courageous. That bravery, courageousness, and strength is his glory. Now he’s just doing what a lion does. He’s just being a lion. But this lion is majestic, has a glory in pace.

The second word is greyhound. Well, most modern translations now would say that this is probably not a greyhound but rather a rooster, a cock, a strutting cock. So the idea here seems to be that the rooster—who, you know, is—all the hens look at him—struts around. There is a glory of ceremony that accompanies the rooster. His glory is the way he is, you know, he carries himself, his pace, the way he walks. There’s ceremonies that surround him. And as we come before the King of Kings, the Lord Jesus Christ, we engage in a liturgy, a ceremony that is the glory of the king that we serve—can be seen in this sort of a thing.

Third, a male goat also. The male goat is the leader. While the lion is courageous and the cock has ceremony, the male goat is the leader of, you know, all the goats that travel with him. He’s the head of the pack. He’s the leader and there’s glory to that.

And then a king whose troops are with him. So finally we end by knowing that what he’s describing to us throughout this chapter 30 is the humble king. Because the matching sections here indicate that if a person understands their limitations, if they’re humble before God, if they recognize their lack of anything in them that is glorious, lo and behold, what they have then come out is the hidden glory of what God has called them to be.

The way to attain to becoming a king is to be humble. That all true kings who have reigned throughout human history that are worth their salt are those who are humble before God. They know their limitations and as a result they are now glorious in what they do.

So Christ the King Sunday, how do we get to glory? How do we get to reign in authority? We do it through humility. We do it through knowing Yahweh and his word. And we do it by recognizing that the glory that he gives us is hidden from the world and yet becomes real as we submit ourselves humbly to him.

And then there’s the conclusion to chapter 30: “If you have been foolish and exalting yourself, well, here it is again—over and over again in this last couple of sections of the book dealing with kings—is the folly of exalting ourselves, of putting our own glory forward. If we’ve done that, when we do that, we could say because we all do this at times, put your hand over your mouth. Just, you know, don’t make somebody else shut you up. Shut yourself up. Don’t exalt your own wisdom. Rather be humble before God.”

And then this last verse, so mistranslated, and yet when it’s translated correctly is so significant: “As the churning of milk produces butter, and wringing the nose produces blood, so the forcing of wrath produces strife.”

Let me read it correctly: The churning of milk produces butter. The churning of the nose produces blood. And the churning of wrath produces strife. So reading it correctly, the churning of milk produces butter. The churning of the nose produces blood. And the churning of wrath produces strife.

How do we exercise dominion? How did Jesus Christ receive the glory of King of Kings and Lord of Lords in his incarnate resurrection and ascension to the father’s right hand?

He churned milk and turned it into butter. He took the work that his father had called him to do. He took his vocation and calling and he did it. And that vocation and calling was to walk thirty years in humility, not revealing who was really to anyone. And not walking around proudly and exalting himself, but humbly letting his parents raise him, becoming obedient to them, and then finally entering into his vocation.

But even that vocation is the essence of humility—despised, rejected, man of sorrows—and finally the culmination of his vocation is hanging on that cross as he dies for you and I. Hardly the way we would aspire to be kings. And yet God says that the cross of Jesus Christ is the reminder to us of the truths of Proverbs 30, of the truth of the whole measure of Proverbs, teaching us how to rule in the context of the world.

It’s the truth of chapters 25 and following. It’s not exalting himself. It’s coming rather to exalt the father, to do his work. It’s churning milk. It’s doing the simple things faithfully, consistently, moment after moment. It’s winning the day and eventually winning the whole thing. And as a result of that, Jesus Christ is exalted to the right hand of the father.

How do we reign in the world? What do we have to give to the political arena? What do we have to give to the world? We have dominion and rule to give to the world. We’re called under the Lord Jesus Christ. If we’ve suffered with him, then we’ll also reign with him. The scriptures say: if we’re buried, we’ll be raised up. If we humble ourselves under the mighty hand of God, he’ll exalt us in due season. Reign is ours.

The problem is we want to go about doing it in a fleshly sort of way. We don’t want to rely upon the hidden glory of faithful vocation—doing the faithful tasks of going to work day in day out to a boring job, getting up and taking care of your wife and children. A wife coming, you know, I use this illustration far too often, but changing the diapers one more time, washing the dishes one more time, cleaning the rugs or the carpets one more time. You know, the husband coming home and after his long day at work, engaging the children thoughtfully about their lives and trying to bring a little advice or counsel or just to pray for them one more time, even when it doesn’t seem to get anywhere. Churning the milk.

And the scriptures tell us that sort of humiliation, that sort of humbling ourselves into the mighty hand of God—it doesn’t stay milk. By faith, we recognize that it becomes butter. What’s the other alternative? To turn somebody’s nose. To exalt our own abilities. To force our pride out onto others. To turn their nose as a result. But the end result of the assertion of our power and authority is the loss of power and authority. It’s the producing and the churning of contention, strife, warfare. It’s the reverse of the exercise of dominion.

Dominion comes about, reigning comes about as a result of humbly doing the things that God has called us to do day in day out.

Jesus Christ is the great reminder of this. He does his vocation simply, thirty-three years, and then raised up, sits at the right hand of the father. But now is he all glorious? Well, sort of. You know, “Who is this King of Glory?” He enters to be with us. He is the King of Glory. His glorification at the right hand of the father is real. But is it an overt glory? Is it? Where do you see it? I don’t see it. Do you see it? I don’t. The world doesn’t see it.

Now we can talk about this and say, “Well, we would see the glory of Christ in every created thing if we just weren’t so rebellious and sinful.” And there’s some truth to that. We’re actively suppressing the truth of the glory of Christ. But I think that there’s something other than that going on. I think God has clearly keeps the glory of Christ somewhat hidden in the context of the world. Somewhat hidden.

And the same thing’s true of us. How does your life compare with your neighbor’s life? Well, probably not much different. Am I right? Oh, maybe your family isn’t quite gone off the edge of the world that his the way his children have. There are some differences. I’m not saying they’re not, but more often than not, we live our lives the way the other guy lives their lives. Everybody puts on their pants one leg at a time, right? We all get up and do our jobs. We go about our vocation. Really is no external glory of the church of Jesus Christ to commend it. It’s not by faith, or it’s not by sight, rather. It is by faith. It’s by the glory of God revealed to those that he decides to reveal it to who will humble themselves under him.

We have a hidden glory. Jesus came and there was hidden glory. And even after Jesus’s ascension, what does he do? He doesn’t sit at the right hand of the father banging away at you. He sits at the right hand of the father. He lives. Hebrews says to make intercession for you. He’s still churning milk. He’s turning, he’s turning the milk of your life and he’s turning it into butter. This is what the scriptures teach.

We don’t know anything. We don’t know how to get power and dominion and all this stuff and the worldly ways. We try it and fail. But what we do know is Yahweh. And what we do know is that his word tells us the truth. And that word tells us that whether we believe it or not, in spite of our doubts, we should confess them as sin—doubt—because this is the word of God. It is reality.

That word tells you that the way to achieve kingdom reign in the world today is the simple act of the normal vocation you’re called to do. And by vocation, I mean your whole calling in life—to be good churchmen, to be good citizens, to be good parents, to be good spouses, to be good workers, to be good parents in terms of taking care of children as your calling. All that stuff God says: Turn away, Christian, today on Christ the King Sunday.

Remember that Jesus Christ turned away. And we know the end result of that is the world has never been the same. We can look back on two thousand years of history and say, “Where are the Stonehenges of our day? They’re gone. Where are the child sacrificers that seem to fill the pages of Old Testament history and pagan culture so much? Where are they? They’re gone.”

Now there are new monsters. Yeah, new enemies to be defeated by Jesus Christ. Secularism, statism. That’s where the sacrifices go on now. But still, can’t we see an improvement in that over the sacrifice of children by the horrible ways that happened in the past? Can’t we look back and say, “Well, the world has changed markedly for the better because of the coming of Jesus Christ?”

We can. We can say that Christendom has affected even the false religions of Judaism and Islam. They’re not able to come to their full fruition as horrible as they are because of Christianity. It’s the Christianized version of Islam that people say is a religion of peace and they pray to the same God as we do. And there’s a degree of truth to that because their religion has been affected so much by Christianity, by self-sacrifice, by loving, not by forcing others, by churning away milk.

Our Savior has produced butter. He’s become King of Kings and Lord of Lords. And he has given that job to the church. And as the church has churned away faithfully for two thousand years, the world is becoming more and more butter.

Now, Christ the King Sunday says that at the end of the church age, at the end of the 26 weeks—at the end of the 26, I don’t know, thousand years—Jesus Christ will have defeated every enemy and he’ll hand over a completely manifested kingdom of the earth to the father.

How does he do it? Some people continue to think, “Well, he’ll do it with a tremendous show of power.” Well, he did it with a tremendous show of power. And that’s the way the church conquers the world—is by turning away at the simple callings you have.

I know you’re tempted to do great things for the kingdom. But recognize, Christian, that God has said what you are doing every day in faithful acts of service—humbly being an Agur in the place where God has called you to sojourn. Humbly recognizing your limitations, not exalting yourself, which is folly and shame, but rather relying upon the hidden glory that God has given you to shine forth as you turn milk into butter.

Understand, Christian, that’s the way that the kingdom of Jesus Christ becomes manifest again and again and again in the world.

Let me close with another quote from Proverbs. Proverbs chapter 3, verse 34: “Surely he scorns the scornful but gives grace to the humble. The wise shall inherit glory, but shame shall be the legacy of fools.”

Let’s pray. Father, we want to inherit glory. We want to see your kingdom made more manifest over this world. We want the glory of Jesus Christ to fill this earth from pole to pole. And because we want that, Lord God, we’ve gone to your word today to seek out wisdom. How shall it happen? How shall it come to pass? And we thank you for reminding us that it comes to pass not as we exalt ourselves as the church but rather as we serve as the church.

Help us, Lord God, in our homes to be not just content but to be excited about the task, the daily routine tasks you give us, knowing that your word has told us definitively, powerfully, and surely today that as we churn the milk, butter is the result. Bless you, Lord God, for the tremendous ways that demonstrate your wisdom in the world. Make us, Lord God, a people who are wise, humble, diligent, called to serve you. And then, Father, we believe by faith that we will become those things—majestic in pace and in walk, kings with their troops, lions who fear no men, roosters who have ceremony to their lives—and, Lord God, people that have leadership in the context of the world.

We thank you, Lord God, for calling us to humble glory, hidden glory. We bless your name for this. In Christ’s name we pray. Amen.