King Me

 

“I am the Lord; that is my name! I will not give my glory to another or my praise to idols.”

—Isaiah 42:8

Most of us have played the game of Checkers at one time or another and know that when our “man” reaches the first row of the other player’s side, we gleefully shout, “King Me!” As a result, we get an extra “man” on top and can move in any direction we want to move.

Don’t all of us want to be “King” of our lives in that way, so that we can move wherever we desire? According to Paul David Tripp:¹

We all demand to be in the center of our world. We all tend to be too focused on what we want, on what we think we need, and on our feelings. We all want our own way, and we want people to stay out of our way. We all want to be sovereign [king] over our lives and to write our own rules… When we are angry, it’s seldom because the people around us have broken God’s law, most often we are angry because people have broken the law of our happiness.

Yet, over and over again in Scripture, Jesus reminded us that He is King and wants us to honor Him as King. Paul reminds us in 1 Timothy 6:15-16, that He is:

God, the blessed and only Ruler, the King of kings and Lord of lords, who alone is immortal and who lives in unapproachable light, whom no one has seen or can see. To him be honor and might forever. Amen.

Again and again, Jesus taught about His Kingdom: how to become great in that Kingdom, how to enter the Kingdom, what the Kingdom is like, and to whom the Kingdom belongs. Those who belong to His kingdom have made, and continue to make, Him the Sovereign over their lives.

Our sinful nature compels us to want to be king of our own lives. The culture around us lives with that guiding principal. This poem perfectly demonstrates that philosophy.²

Out of the night that covers me,
Black as the pit from pole to pole,
I thank whatever gods may be
for my unconquerable soul.

In the fell clutch of circumstance
I have not winced nor cried aloud.
Under the bludgeonings of chance
my head is bloody, but unbowed.

Beyond this place of wrath and tears
looms but the Horror of the shade,
And yet the menace of the years
finds and shall find me unafraid.

It matters not how strait the gate,
how charged with punishments the scroll,
I am the master of my fate,
I am the captain of my soul.

See the contrast in this passage from Philippians 2:8-11 written about our King of kings:

He humbled himself and became obedient to death—even death on a cross! Therefore, God exalted him to the highest place and gave him the name that is above every name, that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.

Though it requires of us humility and suffering, this remains the Kingdom to which we belong and the King to whom we bow!

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1 Tripp, Paul David. Come, Let Us Adore Him. Wheaton, Illinois: Crossway Publishing Company, 2017. p. 83.

2 Henley, William Ernest, Invictus. Chicago, Illinois: Poetry Foundation Publishing Company, 2019.