It is Presidents Day weekend. Amen. While it seems obvious now that our country has a president, it was not always so obvious during the era of the Founding Fathers as they were writing the Constitution and negotiating and trying to get all thirteen colonies on board. There was actually a very complicated debate on what the president would be called. The Founding Fathers had agreed on three branches of government. They agreed that one branch would be marked by people with lifetime appointments that would decide cases and not make laws, but decide cases. They agreed that another branch would be a collaboration of people that would be elected every two to six years and would, by necessity, have to compromise. That was the idea of Congress that they would have to compromise as they pass laws, and the third branch would be led by. They agreed that he would be a unitary executive. That's what they called him. But it is not unitary executive day, and it doesn't quite have the same ring to it, a unitary executive. And it was a massive controversy. What that person would be called, he was supposed to be a liberal, not the way we would use it today, but he was supposed to be energetic and liberal. That's the language, uh, from the Federalist Papers, that he was supposed to have energy and be leading the whole government hands on this unitary executive. Some argued that he should be called His Highness, not Your Highness, but His Highness. But there was the fear that that sounded too much like a king. They didn't want a king. What about His Excellency? That was the second place choice, his Excellency. And those that argued for that said, it's royal, but not aristocratic. I don't know if I buy that. His Excellency sounds pretty aristocratic to me. If you're asking which you're not, his Majesty, that was ruled out. In fact, when people were arguing for His Highness, everybody said just, you know, cut the chase and call him His Majesty. Like I said, this is the title's controversy. It was a big deal back in the day. It seems quaint now. John Adams proposed the compromise that ended up sort of carrying the day John Adams proposed, quote, His Highness, the President and Protector. That was the compromise position. His Highness president and protector. And so that's what everybody adopted. They agreed to that one. But then in practice, that became too long to say. And so it settled on his president. And so today, this weekend is Presidents Day, not His Highness, president and Protector Day. God, it is safe to say, went in a different direction. God did not choose to work through a Highness, a protector or a president, but chose to embody the hope of the Messiah on earth in that of a king. Remember, it wasn't always this way in the Garden of Eden. There were no mediators between God and man. That was the era of innocence. There was no sin and there was no mediator. People walked with God. When sin entered the world, so did separation from God. And that led into the era of conscience, where there was the conscience that was mediating between God and man. There were no people, there were no laws, there were no people that were in authority. There were no laws or governors or anything like that. There was merely conscience and that did not restrain sin. And that led to the global flood. After the flood became the era of nations or the era of government, God established government, but there was no binding revelation from God about what he required beyond government was supposed to bear the sword and keep people from killing each other to protect food and family and life And worship. That was government's calling, but it would fall to the next era that we looked at in one Chronicles two. Last week, the era of law. God then chose one person to make one nation. He decided he was going to enter his messianic hope into the world through a human being, and that human being would exist inside of a nation, not just any nation. But he chose the nation. He actually didn't choose an existing nation. He chose a man, Abram, to make him into a new nation. And then he would reveal his law through that nation. So that's the era of law that takes you from Mount Sinai, where the law was delivered for the forty years in the wilderness wanderings, for the four hundred years of the book of judges, judges about four hundred years long, more or less, to the people of Israel clamoring for a king. They demanded a king from God. And God, of course, was supposed to be their king, but they wanted a human king. It was always God's design. As we read earlier in John chapter five that Moses spoke of Jesus, Moses had in his mind there would be another human ruler who would come and lead them. They wanted it to be a king. Now God did not reject the idea of a king. And he told Samuel that, remember, Prophet Samuel was upset about this. He felt like he was being fired. They're getting rid of the prophet to replace him with the king. The prophet was upset about it and God told Samuel, don't be upset. They're not rejecting you. They're rejecting me. But God gave them a king. He gave them a king exactly like they deserved, namely Saul. You'll notice that Saul's genealogy is not here. We'll get back to Saul later. First Chronicles is going to circle back to him. We'll hear more about him later. But as far as the kingly promise goes from Judah that we looked at last week, we jump to David. You see that in chapter three, verse one, these are the sons of David. Why did God choose to work through a king? That'll be our outline tonight. Why God chose to use the King. Remember, he didn't have to use a king. He could have used a democracy. He could have had everybody vote on their leader. He didn't do that. He could have had a representative democracy. Have each of the twelve tribes have some kind of bicameral structure where they rotate through senators and congressmen? He did not do that either. Instead, he chose to use a king. Why? There's lots of reasons, but I have five of them for you tonight. The first is that humanity is royal. The humanity is royal. The people already have embedded in them this royal image, the way the Scripture describes human beings, is with royal language. We are made in the image of God. That concept of being in someone's image is foreign to us, but it is royal in its vocabulary. The way the the language that describes people as being in the image of God implies a relation to royalty, wherein somebody above us, we're in his image, not just language of being in his image, but God gives us in his image dominion. That's another royal term. Adam and Eve had dominion on the earth. They were supposed to be fruitful and multiply and create others that would share dominion with them. This is Psalm eight. What is man that you are mindful of him? The son of man, that you would care for him. You made him for a little while lower than the angels, and you've given him dominion. David writes in Psalm eight over the works of your hands, people are made in God's image and are given dominion, and then finally they're supposed to subdue the earth. That's more kingly language. They're supposed to go to war against the world. That's because we are kings of this world. And if you don't want to go to war against the world, you're going to end up getting overrun by weeds and ants and stink bugs. They will carry you away. You have to fight nature back in order to hew out your own little corner of this world. We are, in that sense, kings. Not in every sense kings. We don't make our own laws, but perhaps even in your own household, you have that kind of authority and dominion so already baked into mankind is this concept of royal imagery that longs for something more. And certainly that is what behind is behind the Israelites that are asking for a king. They have the vocabulary down. They know they're in God's image. Yahweh is their king. They know they're supposed to conquer and subdue. In fact, the very context in which they ask for a king was that of conquering. They were going to war against the Philistines. They wanted a king to lead them. It's not in itself a bad desire, because the image of that is already in the very nature of humanity. And so it's appropriate then, that after going through the twelve Tribes first Chronicles three zooms in on the kingly line. It's shuffling your focus here, funneling your focus down to the king. Remember, there are the nations of the world. That's where we were in first Chronicles one. There was nations everywhere, and God funneled what he's doing in human history down not to any nation, but to Israel. That was chapter two, that God was working through Israel. And now the the author's intent here in First Chronicles is to get even more narrow and tell you what specifically he's doing inside of Israel, and he's building towards the King. The kingly promise that's not recorded here, it's going to come later in first Chronicles is that to the family of David, the line of David, God makes the Davidic covenant with him. The Messiah and the King will come through David, not just from anyone from the line of Judah, but specifically through David, not his six older brothers, but David. It will be David. So chapter three, verse one picks up with David, who were born to him. He's going to have we're going to see nineteen sons. They're split into two groups. Those who were born to him in Hebron. The firstborn, Ammon Ahinoam of the Jezreelite, was his mother. The second Daniel by Abigail. We know Abigail, that she was the woman of wisdom. She had David's second son. Now we can just pause right here and think through this idea. The first group of people, the first group of sons, are those that were for David, even landed in Jerusalem. This is when the twelve tribes are still divided. They had Saul as their king. But Saul died and the tribes went their own way. Remember? They blew the trumpets and said every tribe to their own house. David becomes king over Judah. Benjamin is kind of folded in there because there's so few of them. Simeon kind of attaches on next, but the other eight tribes, because Levi doesn't have land. The other eight tribes, two of them are across the river. They're kind of going their own way. And so David begins his time as king. Not even in Jerusalem, not even with all twelve tribes under his leadership. He had some sons there, Ammon. Amnon being the oldest. Remember what happened to Amnon, by the way? He raped one of his half sisters and was murdered by his other brother. And that so grieved David, because we might lose sight of the fact. But he was the oldest son. If David is passing down the mantle of being king through any kind of hereditary structure, it would be to the oldest. That's how the kingship gets passed down to the oldest son, but his oldest son is murdered by a half brother. Second. Second son was Daniel. We don't know much about Daniel. Jewish sources say that he lived into Solomon's lifetime. Though he didn't put himself forward. He's not recorded anywhere else in Scripture. But there are secular Jewish sources that say that he was buried during the reign of Solomon, after the temple was built, and that Solomon took some of the artefacts from the temple and put them in his grave with him. Third, Absalom, whose mother was Absalom, is the one that murdered Amnon, and Absalom is also the one that had the overthrow of David because David didn't deal with the the rape of Absalom true sister Tamar, he took the law into his own hands, and Absalom started hanging out. As people were lining up to talk to David, Absalom would hang out in line and tell everybody, you know, don't you don't need to talk to David. He doesn't really know what's going on. He's too busy. You can talk to me, though. And Absalom started solving everybody's problems until they finally made him king. He overthrew David. David was basically frogmarched out of Jerusalem. He had to go back across the Jordan River, back into Jordan, filled with shame. That was Absalom. Number three there. The fifth was from Abigail, the sixth Ethereum by his wife Eglah never met anybody with those names, including Eglah. Six were born to him in Hebron, where he reigned for seven years, in six months. Then he reigned thirty three years in Jerusalem. Now, the events I described earlier with the rape of Tamar and Absalom and all that that took place when David was in Jerusalem, even though the children involved were born before that. But they moved to Jerusalem with him, and that's where everything unfolded. But he had other sons in Jerusalem. Verse five. Shimei, Shobab, Nathan and Solomon. Four By Bathsheba, the daughter of Ishmael. Than Ebah Elisheba Eliphelet Neag Japhia Elishama nine of them those were David's sons. Beside that he had a whole load of sons from concubines Plus Tamar, their sister. This is the David's family. Why does the author begin here with all of David's sons? He gives you all of them because, remember, he's writing after the exile. I didn't really have a Davidic heir after the exile. They know the Davidic line is still alive. And he's going to trace the line all the way to present day as he's writing. So he knows the line of David. But they don't have a king. They don't have a throne. They don't have a crown. They don't have a territory. They don't have a king's palace. They don't have anything. A king needs they don't have Davidic in that sense, reality. But they have Davidic hope. And that's why this line is letting you know that, David, the promise of God came to David. And David had lots of sons, more than you probably remembered him having. Sons were everywhere. Why so many sons? Because it's an abundance of blessing. God promised David a nation, promised him a kingly line that would last forever, and then showered him with so many sons. First Chronicles three doesn't begin lamenting the absence of David's line, but affirming the existence of the line there's an absence of a king. Of course it's going to hang over this. Be like a nation that falls, recounting their presidents, the presidents they used to have going down the line. But there would be a sadness to them. That's the tone here. You have all of David's kids. That was so long ago. So long ago. But there is the promise in one Samuel seven that God will raise up offspring for David. The promise given in one Samuel seven is that God will give David a seed, a house, a throne, and a and a dynasty. The seed is obviously here. There's so many sons. The house is the line we're going to read about through all the kingship. The throne is future. Now it's not on earth. the dynasty is believed by faith. The total list there in verses one through nine are nineteen sons from seven wives. This shows God's abundance of blessing. God's promises are historical, not mystical. His promise to David is actually fulfilled as God gives him sons, and it shows that God's judgment on David for the rape of Tamar and Ammon's murder and Absalom's overthrow, that God's judgment didn't nullify his covenant with David, even though David deserved punishment and judgment for how he handled that. He gets punishment. Of course, there's the the plague that kills people, and yet it doesn't nullify the covenant. God's covenant still stands. It still stands. And that's because people were made with a royal image on them, and God enters into a relationship with them. That is, federal. Kings are federal. Number two kings are federal Humanity is royal, but kings are federal. What does federal mean? It's a cool Latin word means covenantal, but it means representative. It's a broader word than just a covenant. We have a federal government. What that means is that each state elects senators. Federal is taken on from the senators that go to Washington, D.C. and represent you. They're your representative. It doesn't matter how you would vote in D.C., your representative votes in your place through some kind of covenantal arrangement. As the states are, commonwealths gather together. That's the way kings function. Kings represent their people. It seems odd, as we read the David and Goliath battles now, that nations would choose one man to go fight for the nation. It's practical, I guess. It saves bloodshed. But those warriors are an extension of the king. And the idea is, if the king falls, the nation falls. If the king sends his warrior or his champion and he falls, the king has fallen. The nation has fallen. It's all by extension. It seems strange to us, but not to them, because they're living in a federal society. Their identity is bound in with their king, and it's reciprocal. The people represent their king. The people represent their king. The king represents them. The people represent him. And this is all over the Bible. This kind of language is beyond just the genealogy. Here we have a genealogy, and I'm trying to do what I can with the genealogy. I'm working with what I got here. But this language is all over the Bible. We're called citizens of heaven because God is our King. We have dominion because we are little kings, and God is the High King of heaven over all of us. We have royal service. We're a royal priesthood. Peter says there's all this royal language that's involved in being a citizen of the King. Certainly every human being in the image of God is given dominion over the earth. And so every human being, in a broad sense, has some kingly authority, but in a specific covenantal sense, that is through the followers of God. Those who are in a relationship, who have faith with Christ to the New Covenant are his true citizens of heaven. Concept of a king is personal and federal. And so it's interesting here that maybe you just have come to expect it. But the verse ten is a little bit surprising. As surprising as you can find in a genealogy. The Son of Solomon. Wait, what? Solomon. That's not where the genealogy should go. Generally, the genealogy, as we noted all through chapter two, start with the oldest son. Solomon's not the oldest. He's barely in the top five. Why does it jump to Solomon? Well, because the promise goes through Solomon. That's going to come later in first Chronicles. But I'm going to steal from the end of first Chronicles. Towards the end of the book, God speaks to David and tells David with an audible voice. Solomon will be your heir. So the promise does go by God's voice to Solomon. And so that's why here the focus shifts to Solomon in verse ten, but he's not the expected king. Like I said, Amnon was the oldest, and he was not made king because he was dead. Daniel takes himself out of the running. Absalom is murdered by one of David's generals to punish him for overthrowing David. And that leads you to the fourth son, Adonijah. Adonijah is the oldest son. Again, barring Daniel, he's the oldest son that is involved in the royal affairs. He's the one that people wanted to be king. He's the one everybody expected to be king. There is a transition plan in place with David's advisors. When you read One Kings one, that was the plan. As David is getting in his old age, they put him up in the room with the concubine. And there's this idea then, or the the nurse, whatever you call her, to keep him warm or whatever that is. There's the idea where the advisors then leave that and then go to work forward in putting Adonijah on the throne. As you read the story, it is kind of crazy. There's this language all over it that Adonijah exalted himself. He brought all the key leaders together. He called a cabinet meeting and brought all the cabinet members together and made himself king. But everybody celebrated it. They rejoiced that he was king. Adonijah gathered chariots one Kings one. Verse five says, he exalted himself, telling everyone, I am the king, I will be king. He didn't consult David, and he didn't get the prophets. Of all the people Adonijah got around himself, Zadok was not one of them. Nathan the prophet was not one of them. He neglected the prophets, appealed to the political base and the the will of the masses, and made himself king. But when word got to David on his deathbed, he shut it down. He was old and frail, but not too old to miss the fact that one of his sons overthrew him in the final weeks of his life. Why did David take the kingship from the oldest son? There's a contrast in there that's beyond our time this evening. But if you go back to First Kings one, the contrast is pretty evident. Adonijah put himself forward. He thought it was his by birthright. He thought it was his by age. He thought it was his by his own political ability and maneuverings. And he put himself forward, and he did not pray, and he did not seek the Lord. And by the way, David was not the oldest son. Isaac was not the oldest son. Jacob was not the oldest son, Judah, or even Benjamin. Joseph. They were not the oldest sons. So if you think of the long line of key leaders that God has used in Israel's history, none of them were oldest sons. And so the idea that somebody would put himself forward because he fit the part as king to take David's spot, not like twenty kings down the line, but King number two and David's line that he just assumes it's going to be his by cutting the prophets out of the thing is actually an insult to God. It's a disregard for the entire history of Israel up to that point. And God didn't have it. God has a habit of picking the younger over the older. And so in Adonijah appoints himself, because he's in his mind, the oldest. There it's disregarding God. The true king is going to come to the world to represent God, not be somebody who puts himself forward. He's going to be in submission to the prophets, not in somebody who puts himself over the prophets. He's not going to be confirmed by ungodly men. It's not going to be based on looks. It's not going to be elitist. It's going to be about the will of God. And so David, of course, shuts it down and has Solomon anointed and then everybody dies is basically how that goes. And so the narrative here picks up with Solomon in verse ten. Now it is there's a tension in this which I'll get to, I'll get to. Well right now, number three, these kings are fallen. Humanity is royal. Kings are federal, but kings are also fallen. They're mortal. They sin, they die and they do wicked things. All of this people on these lists are like that. There's a couple kings as we go through this list that are better than others, but it's by the end of the line. The line is so bad that Jehoiachin being one of the last ones that God says, I'm rejecting you and you're cursed and nobody from your line will be king ever again. So that's the conflict in the genealogy that David is told that a descendant of his will be king forever and will be the Messiah. And then one of those people who's reigning on his throne after him is told, the line ends with you, and none of your descendants will be king. So how do you solve that riddle? You don't in the Old Testament. You leave it hanging there in the Old Testament just going, well, I trust God. Someday he'll figure that out. You do get it solved. In the New Testament, Matthew traces his genealogy through Solomon, which is the line that is eventually cut off by God, whereas Luke traces his genealogy through another one of David's sons, Nathan. Those lines come back together again. We'll see where they come back together. But it's interesting that God, in his providence, had the line split here, and the royal line does indeed go through Solomon, and God cuts it off. But the Davidic line stays alive outside of Solomon and outside of the kings through Nathan. And it's eventually reunited with Zerubabbel after all the kings come and go. So the New Testament solves the riddle that is still standing right here. First Chronicles is on the side of Matthew, though over Luke, the author of First Chronicles had not read the Gospel of Luke yet, so cut him some slack. He picks up the line with Solomon and traces it down. And what you see here is a long line of fallen kings. First is Rehoboam. Rehoboam is the one who split the empire. Solomon was the wisest king they had. Rehoboam comes in fires all of Solomon's advisors, hires his homies and asks them, what should I do? And they say, tax everyone, make us rich. We need you. We need new chariots. And civil war starts. The empire is split and Rehoboam crashes the whole thing into the creek and it's over as far as the twelve tribes together. It ends with Rehoboam. He is followed by Abijah, who did not have even a noteworthy reign. He's followed by Asa in verse ten. There Asa was his son. Asa was a good king. He led the reforms. He led a revival. He was a faithful, faithful king. He was followed by Jehoshaphat, who kept on the teaching of the Lord. But Joseph had, as the funny king that goes to war with Ahab, makes an alliance with Ahab. This is the end of first Kings. He's the one that when the Ahab is wearing the disguise, and when the disguise gets ripped off, Jehoshaphat goes running away, screaming like a little girl. All due respect, the little girl's not a very kingly moment in the line of Israel right there. That's Jehoshaphat, and it's more than a throwaway story for chuckles when you're reading First Kings. The problem with it is that he had made an alliance with wicked King Ahab from Samaria, from the ten tribes, and Joseph's son marries into Ahab's line that's Joram. So the compromises Jehoshaphat made came home to roost, so to speak, because his son married into a wicked line that brings judgment. In verse eleven, you have Ohisa, who reigned for only one year, and he died. Joash had a priest that led him. Joash became king when he was young, and he had the the faith of the priest above him. And he was faithful to the text says, as long as that priest was alive. When that priest died, Joash rebelled immediately he shows you the danger of borrowed faith. Verse twelve. Amaziah, he was had a divided heart. Uzziah. In verse twelve, he was a good king. Azariah. He's also called. He died from his leprosy, but he's the king that Isaiah thought would be the one, the Messiah In the year King Uzziah died, I saw Yahweh seated on his throne. That's this king, verse twelve. He's replaced by Jotham, who was faithful but quiet, because he had Isaiah to prop him up. Ahaz Ahaz embraced in verse thirteen, embraced idolatry. Killed infants, offered infants to Molech. That's Ahaz. He aligned himself with Syria, tried to kill the prophets. He was replaced by Hezekiah, who was a great king in verse thirteen delivered Israel. He was followed by Manasseh in verse thirteen. He was the worst king of them all. The most wicked king in Israel's history filled the temple with idols. And yet you're going to find out in first and second Chronicles that he repented at the very end of his life. He repented, which allowed three more kings. He's going to end with Manasseh, but because of his repentance, more kings came. Ammon in verse fourteen followed his father's wickedness, denied his father's repentance, lived a life of idolatry just like his dad spent most of his life. Josiah leads the final revival. Josiah verses fourteen to fifteen. He discovered the book of the law in the temple, which is just bonkers to think about, like, oh, here's the Torah. Never seen this before. Somebody should read it. Imagine being the King of Israel and never having seen the Word of God. That's because of what Manasseh and his grandfather and Amon and his father did do. Jehoahaz became king and reigned three months. He's the one that gets the hook in the nose. The Egyptians pierced his nose, locked it with a fishhook, and let him out of Jerusalem on a chain. That's how the the reign basically ends. Jehoiachin. He rebelled against God spent much of his time in Babylon. Jehoiachin in verse sixteen reigned three months before he was taken away also by the Babylonians. Zedekiah he was installed by Babylon, but rebelled, leading to Jerusalem's destruction. He's the one the Babylonians put in the the throne just to be like a, you know, a figurehead. And he rebelled. Even against that. He rebelled against everybody, rebelled against the Babylonians, rebelled against Jeremiah, rebelled against anyone. He didn't care. And everything was lost. These are fallen. This is a long line of losers. Basically, with a few odd exceptions, these kings are all fallen. Number four, history is regal. History is nevertheless moving back towards the King. The Kingdom of God is the telos of history the goal or the aim of history? God is directing all of history, even through these fallen, mortal, frail sinning king's. He's still directing history towards the Messiah. Look at verse. Five, verse seventeen in my notes here. Is that right? Verse nineteen Zerubabel comes. He's the one in the book of Ezra that begins rebuilding the temple. He has his own sons there from the line of David. They're all listed there. I'm not going to go through all the names of his ancestors, but it goes all the way down to the writing of First Chronicles. There is a line still alive, brought back. This is where Matthew and Luke join back up again. When the kings are over, the genealogy becomes one. It lets you know that God is directing history towards a king that will reign on earth. Zerubabel is not a king, but he is Davidic. The point is that God uses fallen kings. That teaches people that the problem was never the throne, but it was the man sitting on the throne that was the problem. Until the Messiah comes. In other words, the fallen people give you a hope that there's going to be a non fallen king coming. And then God directs all of history by putting Zerubabel back in. Israel directs all of history towards Jesus Christ. And finally, number five, God is royal with an underlying royal. Royal differently than people are more royal than you're royal. I'm royal, God's more royal than we are. And God himself is a king. He is the high King of heaven. He does reign over the angels. As king. We have dominion on the earth, but he is our king on the earth. This has to be in the background of the chronicler's mind because again, he's writing when there is no throne, no independence, no king, and no glory. But he writes down these names anyway. imagine the the chutzpah here, to borrow a Jewish word. They would take to write down a genealogy. A genealogy of kings. When you have no king. That is bold faith. He understands that God keeps covenants longer than kingdoms last. These names at the end of this passage here, the ones that were never kings, just Indesirables line. They keep the Davidic Covenant alive on paper. We don't know anything about any of these people. We don't know where they're buried. We don't. We know nothing about them. They're completely inconsequential. These names here, except that they keep the Davidic hope alive on paper. When it had vanished from the palace. No hope in Jerusalem. But there is hope in the Word of God. So when you take all five of these together, I'm going to leave them on the screen for a second. You take all five of these together. You see that humanity was crowned with royalty in their creation. The kings represent God to them, and yet their kings rebelled against God and against them. But history keeps waiting for the true King to come. Well, God keeps reigning over every rise and fall in Israel's history. He's directing all of this, the creation and the hope of redemption. His representative representation on earth through these fallen people. While history is waiting for the Savior to come, what ends after Second Chronicles is four hundred years of silence. The prophets not speaking God, not speaking history, just moving until the virgin birth arrives and David brings all these genealogies. Our Jesus brings all these genealogies together, fulfilling the hope that was promised to David. Jesus comes as the true Son of David, not to exalt himself like a Adonijah, but to obey, to suffer, to give his own life down. Ultimately to resurrect and reign forever. Lord, we're thankful to all of history works towards the cross. You direct all things for your purposes and your glory. You also come as the true King of Heaven. You were, of course, King at your birth. You received gifts fit for a king. Even Herod the Butcher of Bethlehem recognized that you were a king, wanting to know where is he who is born King of the Jews? Pilate didn't understand. Pilate recognized that you were a king as well. The sign above your head on the cross said, the King of the Jews. The Pharisees objected, wanting it to be changed. But what is written is written. And when Pilate said that, it's obviously more than the sign. What's written here in one Chronicles three is written, you promised the Savior would come through the line of David and you brought it. You brought it to pass. What is written is truly written. Lord Jesus, you are the High King of Heaven. We long for your kingdom to come on earth, for your will to be done here as it is in heaven. We pray that you would return to earth and establish your kingdom, that you would shake the nations of the silver, and the gold would funnel towards Israel the hope of the nations. The desire of the nations would be manifest when you reign truly on earth. Until that day. Lord, we are the stewards in the parable. The King has gone away to receive his kingdom, and we remain to be good stewards of what you've left us. Help us serve you as our king. We're your servants. We're your slaves. Were your subjects. Were your citizens. We're also your friends. We pray that we would be found good stewards when you return. We ask this in Jesus name. Amen. And now for parting word from 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. If you want more information about the Master's Seminary or our location here in Washington, DC, please go to TMZ.com. 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 Immanuel. 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.