Jesus: the Warrior King and OLP

a. Jesus: The Warrior King

I preached at my Church recently, which went okay, but I felt constrained by time and did not finish my sermon. Here's a very edited part of it I didn't get to (the text was 2 Samuel 7:1-17, the Davidic Covenant):

Right now, when you think of royalty, you probably think of Prince Charles. Perhaps you have seen Prince Charles. He usually is wearing a suit, is rather pale-skinned, and will never be on the front of any fitness magazines. Israel is not asking for Prince Charles. Israel is asking for a god: a sovereign king who will lead them in battle against the surrounding nations. That’s what they meant by king. But the Bible tells us you don’t need a god-like king when you have a king-like God. It was God who freed them from slavery. It was God who got them into the land and gave the Israelites military success. It was God who reigned over Israel and was their king. And if their human king is to have any success in Israel, he must acknowledge the true king, the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.

God does a remarkable thing. He gives us a perfect human King: both a strong warrior and a humble and obedient man of God. And God restores Himself on the throne of His Kingdom. He does this all through Jesus Christ: the Son of David and the only begotten Son of God.

Jesus is the King of God's people. This is good news for us. The Kingship of Jesus means that we have a warrior King fighting for us and investing His resources to us. We don't fight the fight of faith alone, but have the full investment of the Royal Throne. And the resources of that throne are all authority in Heaven and on Earth.

Today, you might feel your spiritual life has been an endless cycle of trying harder by your own strength. Trying harder to fight the sin of lust. Trying harder to fight the feelings of loneliness. Trying harder to fight against the constant failure to act Holy. But that is not the Christian life. The Christian life is you come as a broken and defeated rebel and fall at the feet of the King of Light and Life. He then clothes you with His armour, walks with you back into the heat of battle, and brings along His most trusted counsellor, the Holy Spirit. You have everything you need to fight the fight.

We work with all our might, but not ours only, for we are in the service and in the company of the King of Heaven and Earth.

Note: This is so practical, especially for me.

b. Our Lady Peace

Went with the gf to an Our Lady Peace concert in Kitchener. They are doing this tour where they are playing their two shows in each city, and playing their whole 2nd (clumsy) and 4th (spiritual machines) albums in their entirety. It's a pretty good idea: its retro without being tacky (unlike say, a reunion tour or a Beach Boys concert). Most people looked older than 25 (not normal for concerts without Sting).

When I started getting into rock music, OLP was in their post-clumsy stage, and had ceased to be "cool" to music fans. I loved them though (until the fifth album). Their music was part of what formed the musical and emotional framework of my teenage years.

They've changed, as have I. They are still as earnest and quasi-spiritual as ever, but in more of a U2 stadium anthem kind of way than the post-grunge angst of their earlier albums. And me? I'm not so serious about rock music and I've given up on viewing life through the gloom-coloured glasses of my youth. But I'm still serious about life, and appreciate their desire for answers. Maybe they'll find the right ones someday.

The music fan in me feels so lame putting up such a mainstream song, but a theatre full of people singing this song really struck me as sad. A song that almost expresses the reality of sin, but concludes by admitting its own inability to formulate a solution: