30: Behold, the King (An Easter Series, Part 1) | S4E30

(00:00) Stephanie Warner: Welcome to Season 4, episode 30. Hello, Father.

(00:04) Marcus Warner: Hello, Daughter. It’s time to dive into Easter. This is going to be good.

(00:11) Stephanie Warner: Yes. I think I say this every Easter on the podcast, but I just continue to feel like Easter is so underrated.

(00:21) Marcus Warner: Underrated?

(00:24) Stephanie Warner: I just feel like in our culture, in an American culture, we’ve just relegated it so much to just like a spring Sunday thing that happens, instead of like the most epic event in history. I’m very excited that we’re gonna just linger here. We just wrapped up our Jump Start Your Prayer Life series and before we start our new series, we just wanted to linger with the Easter season a little bit. Also, this is off topic, but I feel the need to just give a little shout out that April 5th, this past weekend, was the 10th birthday of the Rare Leadership release. So Happy Birthday, Rare Leadership. We’ll celebrate that more in due time, but for now, congratulations!

But for now, we wanna keep the focus here on some Easter musings. So Father, for this one, I have some questions, but I also kind of want to sit at your feet and let you give your Easter musings. You’ve been thinking about some things from different angles and I’ve really loved what I’ve heard so far. So what do you want to share with us?

(01:44) Marcus Warner: We’re going to start with just the Holy Week before we actually get to Easter. I think we’ll save that for another podcast. But what we’re actually focusing on here is some of the things that happened in the Holy Week and particularly Palm Sunday.  I remember growing up as a kid thinking that Palm Sunday was a kid’s holiday, because the kids would walk in with palm branches and wave those around.

And we’d say, “Hosanna”! And I would hear sermons about fickle crowds. That was kind of my memories of Palm Sunday. I remember as an adult reading the stories and realizing that Jesus was actually making a legitimate offer to these people to be their king. Without using the words, he sent them a message that nobody could miss.

Based on Zechariah 9:9 where it says, your king comes to you riding on a donkey and on the foal of a donkey, that’s one of ways you’re going to recognize the Messiah has come. So he was very intentional about that. I remember again, as a kid, I used to think he was cheating. Oh, he’s cheating and fulfilling prophecy, but no, that’s not actually what he was doing. He was using the prophecy to intentionally send a signal to the people, like, okay, it’s happening. The king has shown up riding on a colt, and the Messiah is here. What are you gonna do?

And he came in and the religious leaders tried to stop him by saying, tell the people to be quiet, cut this out. You’re gonna get us in trouble with the Romans kind of thing. And he said, no, this is a God event. And even the rocks will cry out. And he wept, he wept. Not for himself, like, I’m here to die, which would have been very understandable. He wept for them because they missed it. It’s like everything was handed to them on a silver platter and they missed it.

(03:57) Stephanie Warner: Can you explain to us, for those who don’t understand what that “silver platter” is, can you explain that a little bit more?

(04:05) Marcus Warner: Let’s put it this way, imagine what would have happened if they had said, yes to Jesus? There was a scenario here where if they said, yes to Jesus, he actually ascends to the throne of David at some point, right? There’s all these things that could have happened. Now he knew it wouldn’t happen because he knew their hearts were hard. And it gets us into this whole thing of foreknowledge versus predestination. Jesus knew their hearts were hard and that this wasn’t going to happen, but he still made the offer. And we see this a lot.

(04:41) Stephanie Warner: Yeah, foreknowing is not the same as foreordaining.

(04:45) Marcus Warner: Exactly. Foreknowing is not the same as foreordaining. We see God do this and Jesus do this on multiple occasions in scripture where he knows what’s going to happen, but he still does the right thing so to speak. And the right thing here is to make them the offer and let them reject it. And so he sends prophets knowing they’re going to get stoned and rejected, but he still sends the prophets. He still sends them with the message. And finally he sent his son. It was a legitimate offer and it was a legitimate thing, but even though he knew it was going to be rejected, he’s weeping at the long history of the hardness of heart.

Hardness of heart and blindness go hand in hand because when my heart is hard, I become blind to obvious things, and it should have been obvious who Jesus was. He had fulfilled scripture. He had miraculously healed thousands of people, right? He had taught like nobody had ever taught. He had angelic announcements about him. He’d had John the Baptist pointing people to him. And literally just a few weeks before this, he had raised somebody from the dead who had been in the tomb for four days. Nobody had ever seen anything like this. And there wasn’t really much more that I could think of that he could have done, other than become the Messiah they wanted him to be.

And that was to raise up an army and to march into Jerusalem at the head of an army saying, hey, let’s kick out the Romans. That’s what they wanted, but that wasn’t the Messiah he came to be. So their hardness of heart blinded them to things. Their response to Lazarus being raised from the dead was, we need to kill him again. Because people will start following Jesus if we don’t. I’m like, that’s… some pretty severe hardness of heart and some pretty severe blindness. And Jesus’ immediate reaction to that was to weep.

Because he knew the consequences that were going to come from this level of blindness and that he knew within a generation, like Jerusalem was going to be destroyed. And he told them, he didn’t mince any words. He warned them very clearly, as unambiguously as he ever spoke to anybody. He was like, this is going to end in disaster and I’m weeping for you because of it. So I find it interesting that he made this legit offer to be king and that it was rejected. And as a child, I didn’t really fully understand that. So that was kind of my first “Aha” moment about Palm Sunday.

(07:30) Stephanie Warner: Yeah. I liked when we were talking about it some time ago, you said something about that this wasn’t just marketing for Jesus. Palm Sunday wasn’t just him being like,”Ta-da, I’m Jesus.” But it was an offer. He’s like, hey, I’m King Jesus.

(07:52) Marcus Warner: The idea of King Jesus is also the next thing I kind of wanted to build on. There’s been this whole trying to understand the roles of grace and faith in the salvation process and what exactly does this mean? And I think that bringing kingship in helps to bring some clarity to the salvation process. Apostle Paul said there’s two foundations to salvation in Romans 10:9, 10. He says, if I say with my mouth, Jesus is Lord, and I believe in my heart that God has raised him from the dead, I will be saved. Well, to say with my mouth Jesus is Lord could just as easily imply very clearly that Jesus is king.

And so in other words, in the same way that he was rejected on Palm Sunday as king, all of those who are followers of Jesus are saying, no, he is king. And in fact, he’s your King and my King. He defeated the powers of darkness. He was given authority in heaven and on earth, and he is the rightful king of every place. Just every place has not yet been recognized; there’s still a lot of spiritual blindness. But in my life, I’m saying yes, Jesus is king. So when I say Jesus is Lord, that’s what’s happening there. And so when you think about faith, what that means is I may have doubts about that from time to time, and I may question it from time to time. I may not fully live it out always from time to time and I may not live consistently with it, but I keep coming back to it. No, that is actually the foundation of my life. That’s where I stand, is that Jesus is King: Jesus is my King.

(09:37) Stephanie Warner: An allegiance.

(09:38) Marcus Warner: There’s an allegiance to it. So it’s this idea that faith is allegiance to a King.

(09:44) Stephanie Warner: Yeah, I do want to come back to this idea, but I also want you to circle back to the idea of Palm Sunday and rejection. Because mostly we think of Palm Sunday as, that’s Hosanna, Hosanna and treating him more like a king, at least initially. Can you unpack that a little bit?

(10:01) Marcus Warner: Yeah. So I am not sure the crowd was as fickle as is sometimes presented. I think that different parts of the crowd had control. There was a part of the crowd that loved Jesus and wanted to see him be king, but then when the power brokers got involved and the tide turned, those people got quiet. The other crowd took over. I don’t know how many people literally switched from praising him to calling for his crucifixion, but the crowd as a crowd switched. We’ve seen that happen before where you’ll get a few people rallying for one cause, but they eventually get shouted down and silenced.

And so there has always been a remnant of true believers who recognize things who are not spiritually blind, who receive what God wants to give them. And it sometimes comes with a price, right? Courage, I think, is the willingness to pay the price that you know your decision is going to create. And that’s kind of what faltered for Peter during Holy Week, it was his courage because he wasn’t sure he was willing to pay the price.

For what it was going to take to stay with that Palm Sunday declaration it’s understandable. And even Jesus understood it. Like, that’s hard, and that’s not easy. The call to follow Jesus is not an easy one. And that in the end, when I’m calling Jesus King it means I am not saying, okay, Jesus, if you will be the Messiah I want you to be, I will follow you. If you will defeat the Romans and give us freedom, if you will grant me health and wealth and prosperity, then I will follow you. It doesn’t come with that kind of condition.

It’s like you’re either the king or you’re not. And if you’re the king, then I need to get my life in line with that. And I need to take a good look at where in my life am I not living as if Jesus is truly the king? Where am I not in submission to him? That’s why it’s such a call to reflection during Holy Week. And it starts with this idea of the kingship of Jesus. And am I willing to take a good or hard look at my life and see if I’m truly living that way?

(12:39) Stephanie Warner: Are you like, yay King Jesus, when you think that the king is going to fix everything and make my life easier? Or is he still King Jesus if things are going to get harder? You suffer and die for a king, right? And this king suffered and died for us, but also, there’s an allegiance and a loyalty.

(13:10) Marcus Warner: This king called Saul to become Apostle Paul. He said, I must show him how much he must suffer for my name. It wasn’t, I’m about to make this guy’s life as though he just hit the jackpot. I’m about to give this guy everything he ever dreamed of. Now in the midst of all of that suffering Paul found incredible contentment. He found joy. He found a lot of things he didn’t know he was even looking for.

(13:43) Stephanie Warner: He had family, he built a spiritual family.

(13:47) Marcus Warner: But it doesn’t mean that the king doesn’t sometimes ask you to do very hard things.

(13:57) Stephanie Warner: Yep. And the best leaders don’t ask you to do something they wouldn’t do themselves. And Jesus is the best leader.

(14:09) Marcus Warner: Right. It then becomes, now that I say Jesus is king, I’m like, well, how much do I trust this king? And then even when I’m having doubts, it’s like, well, God, you know I don’t understand what you’re doing. This is not how I would do things, but you’re Lord. So I’ll just trust you even though I don’t understand. And I just think back to your grandfather, my dad’s story of losing his first wife, and the idea that I choose to believe that God is good as he paced his floor at night. Like, I don’t understand this. This makes no sense. I don’t see how in the world this is good.

And for me as a little kid hearing this story I was like, well, of course it was good or I wouldn’t have been born. I was a little narcissist and hey, it’s all about me. But it is an example of how God can take even those things and use them for good. And my father did remarry and they did have two more kids and I was one of those two kids. And so God I feel like redeemed that situation. And that’s part of what he’s asking for when he asks us to trust him, that he’s always got a plan.

(15:38) Stephanie Warner: This is so good and a good practical segue I think into, what can it look like on a practical basis to honor Jesus as king of our lives? I know that’s a ginormous question and there are different angles on that whether that’s building trust with him or submitting to him in certain areas and obeying, but what comes to your mind?

(16:09) Marcus Warner: The first thing that pops into my mind is usually that old story, My Heart, Christ’s Home, where a guy invites Jesus to come and to move in with him and live with him, and they have their times together. And then eventually he invites him out of the living room and then, hey, come help me in the kitchen, and then go here to my bedroom. It’s like one room at a time, he’s gradually opening up his whole heart to Jesus. And I’ve liked the imagery in that story because I find that a lot of us want to, through a sheer act of will, just declare that Jesus is Lord of my whole heart. But the reality is that there are parts of my heart that are shut down and shut off because of trauma. Parts of my heart are still hard and there are parts of my heart that are divided. I want to continually bring it back and ask, God, is there a part of my heart where you are not king? And what should we do about that?

What I find is that the path to kingship is often healing. Because as he heals those broken places in our hearts, we trust him more. And when we trust him more it’s much easier to say, oh yes, please be king. I mean, that is the absolute best thing that could happen here because now I will have somebody over me, and somebody watching out for me. I have somebody in charge who knows what they’re doing, that’s actually a really good deal.

So I think that the healing journey and the submission to the kingship are not opposites. They’re often very integrated with one another because it’s going through the various “rooms of my heart”, so to speak. And one of the clues that I might have a stronghold, honestly, is that I don’t really welcome Jesus into some area of my heart.

(18:07) Stephanie Warner: So what can that look like? Is that something you can do by yourself? Is that something you do with another person and what kind of person? I think the answer to all of that in my mind is, yes and yes. But what would you recommend?

(18:25) Marcus Warner: Sure. There are times when God just meets us and we deal with things one-on-one with him and it’s just us and God, and business is taken care of. I think a lot of us are hoping we can always fix it that way. But there are times when we need to go outside of ourselves and say, I am struggling. I need some help with this. And that can be a small group of people. It can be a counselor or pastor. You have to find somebody who isn’t overwhelmed by what you’re saying and who can actually meet you with grace so that it does turn into not just, “you better submit or else.” It turns into an opportunity for healing and increased trust because of that.

(19:20) Stephanie Warner: Also, I’m just thinking about even the mirror neuron side of things. Okay, here is a random example. I remember the first time I saw a pastor kneel down and pray, or a professor kneel down and pray on the stage. Not kneeling like, we’re gonna just kneel to ourselves, but it was like the pose of a knight before a king. And it gave me this impression of, wow!  It shook up my impression of what was going on right there. Like, we’re talking to the king of the universe and the king of my heart.

And I think that sometimes, yes, there’s trauma. Whether that’s A or B trauma there’s wounding and repair that needs to happen, and there is trust that needs to be built. Sometimes there’s just growth and new perspectives of, this is the character of God and I’m getting to know Jesus even better because I know this part of him. He will always be a mystery, but this part isn’t quite as mysterious anymore because I’m getting to know him on this level. I’m gonna trust him a little bit more because I didn’t even think I was holding anything back, but now I’m like, oh, hey, this is an area that I should give over. Or this is a perspective that I should have. And so just continuing to think of Jesus as king I think is a huge step toward practically making him king. Troddering him as king of your life as if you’re thinking about him, in that way, you’re gonna tend to actually not take it for granted.

(21:13) Marcus Warner: Yeah, and it connects to our last series on prayer too. That I’m making petitions to a king and I think that is where we started that whole series. I find that for most of us who grew up in America, thinking about kings is either romanticized or just hard to even wrap our heads around. We’ve never experienced it and we don’t default into that kind of a setting. But I do think that is one of the core lessons of Holy Week, Jesus is offering himself as king, and by the end of the week he had become the rightful king of the entire universe through his death and resurrection.

So that all authority in heaven and earth was given to him. And today it’s like, are we going to acknowledge that and live out of that? Or are we going to be passive about it? Are we actively going to fight him on the things that he’s trying to do in our lives? So it’s an opportunity for reflection.

(22:14) Stephanie Warner: Yes, indeed. I’m so excited to continue talking to you. We’re going to continue some of our Easter musings next week. And I just want to take the moment to say, thank you to everybody who’s walking this trail with us as we go deeper on our walks with God. We are so happy to be with you. And thank you to every donor and volunteer and prayer partner who keep us here. Father, any final thoughts for this episode?

(22:40) Marcus Warner: Yeah. Again, we talked about this idea of faith and allegiance. And one of the things that it has helped me with is that I think every Christian goes through times of doubt. They go through times when they’re struggling with, how much do I believe? How much do I trust? It helps me to think that Jesus is king. And the rest of it is me working that out. Whether I have great faith in my king or a little bit of faith in my king, whether I’m really on it today or not, it doesn’t change that foundation of my life.

And so I personally find it kind of comforting and helpful to think of him in that way and that my struggles don’t change that. And so I would just encourage people that wherever you’re at, this is good news, and it’s for you. So use the opportunity to reflect not only on shortcomings, but use it to reflect on the grandeur of who he is and exactly what he’s offering to us.

(23:41) Stephanie Warner: Yes, I love it. And Jesus Christ is epic. All right, see you next week.