May 7th, 2020 – Morning Devotion With Pastor Dan
To the King of ages, immortal, invisible, the only God, be honor and glory forever and ever. Amen. (1 Timothy 1:17 – ESV)
For to us a child is born, to us a son is given; and the government shall be upon his shoulder, and his name shall be called Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace. (Isaiah 9:6 – ESV)
Which He will bring about at the proper time—He who is the blessed and only Sovereign, the King of kings and Lord of lords,….(1 Timothy 6:15 – ESV)
“Therefore let all the house of Israel know assuredly that God has made this Jesus, whom you crucified, both Lord and Christ.” (Acts 2:36 – NKJV)
We never grew up under the rule of a king here in the United States of America, so the idea of having a single supreme power over us is difficult for us to process. Add in the many freedoms we have (of which I am grateful) and the idea of complete submission to a king is foreign to our thinking. This might explain many people’s difficulty in submitting even to Christ the King. But Jesus is different from every other king that has ever lived or is living. This King (Jesus) is none other than the crucified Lord. All that we have to say about Him, His divine power, His abiding presence, His wonderful love, does not teach us to know Him as we should. We must maintain in our daily thinking that our King is the crucified Jesus. God has placed Him in the midst of His throne as a Lamb, as it had been slain. And we worship Him as our King.
Christ’s cross is His highest glory. It is through this that He has conquered every enemy and gained His place on the throne of God. And it is this that He will impart to us too if we are to know fully what the victory over sin is to mean. When Paul wrote: “I have been crucified with Christ, Christ liveth in me,” he taught us that it was as the crucified One that Christ ruled on the throne of His heart, and that the spirit of the cross would triumph over us as it did in Him.
This was true of the disciples. This was their deepest preparation for receiving the Holy Spirit. They had with their Lord been crucified to the world. The old man had been crucified: in Him they were dead to sin and their life was hid with Christ in God. Each one of us needs to experience this fellowship with Christ in His cross if the Spirit of Pentecost is really to take possession of us. It was through the Eternal Spirit that Christ gave Himself a sacrifice and became the King on the throne of God. It is as we become “conformable to His death,” in the entire surrender of our will, in the entire self-denial of our old nature, in the entire separation from the spirit of this world, that we can become the worthy servants of a crucified King, and our hearts the worthy temples of His glory.
Andrew Murray
How many people today are still ruled by their own will, their old nature, and have not totally separated themselves from the spirit of this world? Our King was crucified so that we could do those very things. We truly have a “Great King’ who we should be willing to submit to in every way, even dying to ourselves.