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Crown
Him Lord of All |
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A Pocket Paper Robert J.
Morgan Recently
I’ve been reading the biography of Samuel Logan Brengle,
an American leader in the early Salvation Army movement. He did evangelistic work, traveling by
train and ship from place to place, living an itinerate life as a tramp for
the Lord, as someone put it.
Because of his work, he was seldom home with his wife or children. Brengle was
married to a wonderful woman, and the two of them loved each other
deeply. They wrote to each other
constantly, and their love letters are among the most tender I’ve ever
read. They had hoped, I suppose,
to finally be together without the separation of travel and ministry in their
later years. But then both of
them developed illnesses. Brengle had to have surgery, and while he was recovering
from very painful surgical wounds, his wife fell ill. One day, Brengle’s
doctor entered the room with a grave expression on his face. He told him that his wife was dying. I want to read you what Brengle later wrote: A thousand
times, in distant lands and lonely hours, I have been stabbed by the thought
that possibly my darling might die before I could cross oceans and continents
and reach her side. Now, lying
only a hundred miles away, she was dying—and I was at the point of
death and couldn’t go to her.
It seemed as though my heart would break, and it seemed as though God
didn’t care if my heart did break.
But I did not go by appearances.
I had preached all round the world that God does care, that all things do work together for good to them that
love the Lord, and I didn’t cast away my confidence and charge God
foolishly. I was very weak, but I
took my Bible and songbook and I read the promises and nestled down upon
them, and I read the hymns of comfort and guidance and heaven and I nestled
down into the will of God. I
said, “O Lord, Thou knowest how I love my
darling and how desolate I shall be if Thou dost take her, but I don’t
know what is best for her or for the dear children or for myself. Thy will be done.” And peace entered my heart.[1] As it
happened, three weeks later he was able to go to her side and be with her
during the final hours of her earthly life and as she slipped into the presence
of the Lord. But as I read those
words, I thought to myself: In
every situation however bleak or bright, we have to nestle down into the
promises and into the providence of God and say Thy will be done; and we have to crown Him king of our lives. In every situation in life, we need to
bring forth the royal diadem and crown Him Lord of all. That’s
the theme of today’s message, and my question this morning is
this: Is Jesus Christ King of
your life? Does He reign and rule
over your daily life, over your thought life, over your ambitions and goals,
over all there is of you? Is He
on the throne of your heart?
That’s our subject today.
We’re in a series of sermons from the book of Zechariah, a
seldom-read portion of Scripture near the end of the Old Testament. It’s the second-to-last book of
the Hebrew Scriptures. Let
me briefly review the background for anyone who is visiting today for the
first time. Zechariah was a young
man living in In
Zechariah 1-6, we have a series of eight different visions that came to
Zechariah, all of them given on one particular never-to-be forgotten
night. Last week we finished our
study of these eight visions, but I want to go back for a moment to the
fourth vision, which is found in Zechariah 3. It involves this High Priest, the
spiritual leader of the remnant,
Mr. Joshua. Look at how
chapter 3 opens: Then he showed me Joshua the high priest
standing before the angel of the Lord, and Satan standing at his right side
to accuse him…. Joshua the High Priest was suffering from feelings of
guilt and shame and inadequacy.
He was the spiritual leader of The Lord said to Satan, “The Lord
rebuke you, Satan! The Lord, who
has chosen I’ll
not recount the rest of the story or the message of this chapter since
we’ve already studied it a few Sundays ago, but I do want to draw your
attention to one very interesting sentence in verse 8: Listen,
O high priest Joshua and your associates seated before you, who are men
symbolic of things to come: I am
going to bring my servant, the Branch. This
verse tells us that High Priest Joshua was a symbol of someone to come. He was a type, a prototype of a coming
Messiah, the Branch. This is
telling us that there is much symbolism and Messianic typology about this man
Joshua, the High Priest. He was
one of God’s chosen men in the Old Testament who served as a forerunner
and prototype of Christ. Now
today we are coming to the last part of chapter 6, and we again encounter
this remarkable fellow, Joshua, the High Priest of Israel. For today’s Scripture reading,
I’d like to turn you to this passage, Zechariah 6:9-15: The word of
the Lord came to me: “Take
silver and gold from the exiles Heldai, Tobijah and Jedaiah, who have
arrived from It is
impossible to understand this passage or to interpret it correctly without
remembering what we read in chapter 3—Joshua is symbolic of Him who is
to come. He is a type of Christ,
and this passage is all about the Messiah. The last half of Zechariah 6 is all
about Jesus Himself. It is
prophetic. It is Messianic. Here’s
what happened. One day God spoke
to Zechariah and said to him, “There are some more Jewish exiles coming
back to Now
this was shocking, as I’ll explain in a few minutes, but it is
wonderfully symbolic. This story
of the crowning of Joshua is all about the role of Jesus Christ. There are three aspects of our
Lord’s ministry that are here predicted four hundred years in advance. Jesus is the
Branch of Israel First,
He is the Branch of Israel. Verse
12 says: Here is the man whose name is the Branch, and He will branch out from
His place. This was addressed
to Joshua, but it wasn’t really about Joshua. It was about the one symbolized by
Joshua, the coming Messiah. He is
called the Branch. We saw this
title earlier for the Messiah, in chapter 3. It’s a common Old Testament name
for Jesus, and the significance is this:
The Messiah will be a branch, a shoot, springing up from the stump of
David. God had promised King
David that one of His descendants would sit on the throne of A shoot will come up from the stump of Jesse; From his roots a Branch will bear fruit. The Spirit of the Lord will rest on Him… Now
Zechariah says that there’s another aspect to this title for
Christ. Look at verse 12: Here
is the man whose name is the Branch, and He will branch out from his
place…. In
other words, He will spread out.
His influence will spread.
He will be like a Banyan Tree that spreads over wide acreage,
branching out from Jesus is the
Builder of the Second,
He will be the real builder of the temple. I think there are two fulfillments to
this. First, the New Testament
compares the Old Testament temple with the New Testament church. And
Peter told us (in 1 Peter 2:4ff.) that we as Christians are a spiritual
temple, built on the cornerstone of Jesus Christ, being built into a
spiritual house for His glory. The
other fulfillment concerns the Millennium. During the thousand year reign of
Christ on the earth following His return, there will be a great Jesus is Both
Our Priest and King And
now we come to the primary point of this lesson. When the Messiah comes, He will be the
Branch, the Builder of the temple, the Majestic One, and most importantly, He
will combine in His Person the two great Jewish offices of priest and
king. Let’s keep reading: Verse
13: It is He who will build the temple of the Lord, and He will be
clothed with majesty and will sit and rule on His throne. And He will be a priest on His
throne. And there will be harmony
between the two. Do
you remember during the days of the Exodus, when Moses and Aaron led the
children of In 1
Samuel 13, we read the story of King Saul, who became king when he was thirty
years old. One of his early tests had to do
with attacking the Philistines, and Samuel told him not to go to war before
the sacrifices had been offered.
But when the men of We
have a similar story in 2 Chronicles 26, and this story must have come vividly
to mind as the remnant watched Zechariah place the royal crown on the head of
High Priest Joshua. It concerns
King Uzziah, one of the final kings of But after Uzziah became powerful, his pride led to his
downfall. He was unfaithful to
the Lord his God, and entered the temple of the Lord to burn incense on the
altar of incense. Azariah the priest with eighty other courageous priests
of the Lord followed him in. They
confronted him and said, “It is not right for you, Uzziah,
to burn incense to the Lord. That
is for the priests, the descendants of Aaron, who have been consecrated to
burn incense. Leave the
sanctuary, for you have been unfaithful; and you will not be honored by the
Lord God.” Uzziah, who had a censer in his hand ready to burn incense,
became angry. While he was raging
at the priests in their presence before the incense altar in the Lord’s
temple, leprosy broke out on his forehead. When Azariah
the chief priest and all the other priests looked at him, they saw that he
had leprosy on his forehead, so they hurried him out. Indeed, he himself was eager to leave,
because the Lord has afflicted him. King Uzziah had leprosy until the day he died. He lived in a separate
house—leprous, and excluded from the temple of the Lord. Jotham his
son had charge of the palace and governed the people of the land. Now,
this story was very, very well known to the remnant of Jews in
Zechariah’s day. It was
just as well known to them as the assassination of John F. Kennedy or the
Watergate Affair of Richard Nixon is known to us. And when Zechariah placed the crown on
the head of the chief priest, Joshua, they must have gasped; but it was
prophetic. He said, “One
day the Messiah is coming, and He will combine in His own person the two
great Jewish offices of High Priest and King. The
book of Hebrews presents Christ as our great High Priest, the fulfillment and
ultimate personification of this Old Testament type. He represents us before Almighty God,
makes atonement for our sins, sympathizes with our weaknesses, and intercedes
for the saints according to the will of God.
Crown Him with
many crowns, the Lamb upon His throne. Hark! How the
heavenly anthem drowns all music but its own. Awake, my
soul, and sing of Him who died for thee, And hail Him
as thy matchless King through all eternity. He Unites both
Jew and Gentile Conclusion Now
let’s finish the chapter.
Zechariah 6:13ff says: It is He who will build the temple of the
Lord, and He will be clothed with majesty and will sit and rule on His
throne. And there will be harmony
between the two. That
is, between the two offices of Priest and King. Now, verse
14 is very intriguing to me: The crown will be given to Heldai, Tobijah, Jedaiah, and Hen son of Zephaniah as a memorial in the
temple of the Lord. Zechariah
tells them to take the crown and place it in the temple as a reminder of this
prophecy and to await Him who is coming.
This is remarkable to me.
Here we have some men who came from I
wonder what happened to that crown.
We don’t know. It
was never mentioned again as far as I can tell in the Old Testament, and it
never showed up in the Gospels. Jesus
came four hundred years later, He came into that very temple, He came as King
of the Jews, He came as High Priest of Israel, He came exactly as Zechariah
had predicted. But no one brought
out that crown to place it on His head.
No one thought of it. He
came unto His own, but His own received Him not. He came as king, but the crown
wasn’t fetched. I
wonder today if someone needs to crown Him as King of your life. Recently I’ve been reading about
the early history of major league baseball in the Well,
we all need to have something that fills our hearts and that gives meaning to
our lives. We need something or
someone to be our meat and drink, our dream, our blood and breath, our very
reason for living. But I suggest
something greater than baseball.
Only the Lord Jesus Christ can fill that role in our lives. For His purposes we were and are
created, and He is our all-in-all.
Let Him be the King of your life.
Let Him be Lord. Let Him
be God. Today, let Him rule and
reign on the throne of your heart. All hail the
power of Jesus Name, Let angels
prostrate fall; Bring forth the
royal diadem, And crown Him
Lord of all. ____________________________________ 1 Clarence
W. Hall, Samuel Logan Brengle: 2 Jonathan Eig, Luckiest
Man: The Life and Death of Lou Gehrig ( Copyright StatementWe grant permission for any edition of The Pocket Paper to be photocopied for use in a local congregation or classroom, provided no more than 1,000 copies are made, the material is distributed free, and the copies include the notice: "Copyright (year) The Donelson Fellowship."For any other use, advance permission must be obtained from The Donelson Fellowship church office. |
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