When the Word of God is not enough for a worshipper or church congregation, when we allow that kind of idolatry, it always leads to oppression because “like idols shall become those making them, all those trusting in them.”
Mouth they have, and not speaking. Eyes they have, and not seeing. Ears they have, and not hearing.
By tuning out God, idolaters also will tune out images of God. They will screen out everyone but themselves. If they will not bow to and serve other images of God, their rulers, their brothers and sisters, they’re certainly not going to bow and serve God.
Christians do not need to out-think Jesus Christ, the Word. Jesus is not only King, Lord of Lords, but He is the Word whose reign is final. And sometimes telling someone, “The Bible says so,” is all they need to hear.
What the famous 19th century minister Charles Spurgeon preached:
Many and many a time I have tried, till my head has ached, to work out a problem in church government, but have not discovered the solution, I could not see any way out of it, so I have just done as a schoolboy would who shuts up the two parts of his slate and puts it on the shelf.
I have said to myself, “I will never have anything more to do with the matter, but will leave it for the Lord to solve,” and I have found that the proposition has been worked out for me in due time.
So, dear friends, your strength is to sit still, and to feel that you have a King who can settle all your difficulties.
When the servant at the door is puzzled by the many questions that are put to her, she says, if she is wise, “I cannot answer you, but I will go and ask my master,” and when she has received the message from her master, she has no further trouble about the matter, she simply says, “I have told you what my master says, if you do not like it, I cannot help that, for I am only his messenger.”
That is the way to end all controversy.
A young man, or anyone else who has a number of questions put to him by various persons, will be wise if he says, “Well, I have searched my Bible and found what the King says about these points, if that does not satisfy you, I am sure I cannot. Your quarrel is no longer with me, but with my Master, you must settle the matter with Him.”
This is a blessed consolation, it gives joy to the spirit to have God for your King. No man is so free, no man is so happy, as he who loyally bows before the King of kings. To serve God is to reign. He who has God for his King is himself a king.
Further, think how gloriously inspiring it is to have God as our King. I should not like to be a soldier in the armies of certain kings whom I might mention, if I were in their service, I should try to run away as soon as I could, for I would feel ashamed to have anything to do with them.
If you were a soldier in the army of some little, mean, beggarly tyrant, I think that you would be glad to leave your regimentals at home whenever you could. It is strange that any man could be found to fight for some of the miserable miscreants who have been found in the ranks of kings.
But with Alexander as leader, every Greek became a hero, he was so great a warrior that each man in his army felt that he was himself great.
Now, when the Lord Jesus Christ becomes our King, it is most inspiring to us, for He leads us on to fight with sin, to fight with selfishness, to overcome evil by love, and to conquer hate by kindness.
It is a grand thing to serve the King whose fights are all of that sort, and to have Him for a King who never shirked a battle, but who was always to the front, the bravest of the brave. It is grand even to unloose the latchets of His shoes. To be trodden on by Him would be a high honor. To do anything, however little, in His cause, makes us feel ourselves elevated.
My dear young friend, if you have God in Christ Jesus to be your King, your life will be sublime, with Him for your example, with His grace to lead you on, you shall continually rise higher and yet higher still until even your common life shall be made sublime.
Oh, blessed, blessed, blessed—thrice blessed—is everyone to whom Jesus Christ is King and Lord! If we are linked with Him, we are ready either to live or to die.
Sermon edited with preface by Zach Parker, news editor at The Ouachita Citizen, and pastoral intern at Church of the Redeemer in West Monroe. The excerpt is from Charles Spurgeon’s sermon, “Theocracy,” delivered on Sept. 23, 1877 at the Metropolitan Tabernacle in London.
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