Our Unchanging King

The wind was changing and now it has changed.

For some reason over the last 2-3 weeks I haven't been able to sit down and read my Bible. Its isn't for lack of desire, but a lack of concentration. The words get all jumbled together and I can't make sense of them.

So, I have started to listen to scripture in the mornings. My bible app on my phone has a option to stream a golden-voiced man read the Word of God to me. (I don't think it is live. I think it was prerecorded :) This morning my New Testament reading was John 19. 

Then Pilate took Jesus and flogged him. And the soldiers twisted together a crown of thorns and put it on his head and arrayed him in a purple robe. They came up to him, saying, “Hail, King of the Jews!” and struck him with their hands. Pilate went out again and said to them, “See, I am bringing him out to you that you may know that I find no guilt in him.” So Jesus came out, wearing the crown of thorns and the purple robe. Pilate said to them, “Behold the man!” When the chief priests and the officers saw him, they cried out, “Crucify him, crucify him!” Pilate said to them, “Take him yourselves and crucify him, for I find no guilt in him.”
(John 19:1-6 ESV)

It goes on, of course. There is irony in this: the King of the Universe is being mocked by those who do not understand him...but they are telling the truth about him while they mock him! They call him "king" in jest, but in reality they are saying something profound about him: he deserves a crown and he proudly (though painfully) wears it.

He deserves a crown of laurel or of gold, but he willingly wears the thorned crown.

Jesus the king stood quietly among the powers of a world antagonistic toward him while the people he came to save stood outside and jeered him. Yet, because of the depth of his character, his love and his mission were unaffected, unchanged.

There are two things that stand out to me today:

• Jesus trusted himself to his Father in such a way that the entire world could be against him, not getting angry nor impatient nor fearful. He still walked the path of love and set his heart on a mission that was not only unhindered by the political power of the day, but encouraged by it.
• Jesus still loved his neighbors who were gloating over his "loss" in the highest court (Pilate's) in their land. They saw him as the enemy of all that they held dear to them. He saw them with compassion.

The same King who had the character of heart to absorb the pain of all of our foolishness and the harm we cause to one another is the same king who is ruling over all aspects of the universe. He is a different kind of king than we expect and the only one we really need... and he does not change.

And today, he is still not impatient or fearful. I don't have to be either.

So Jesus also suffered outside the gate in order to sanctify the people through his own blood. Therefore let us go to him outside the camp and bear the reproach he endured. For here we have no lasting city, but we seek the city that is to come.
(Hebrews 13:12-14 ESV)

Why should the nations say, “Where is their God?” Our God is in the heavens; he does all that he pleases.

(Psalm 115:2-3 ESV)