THE LORD IS KING
PSALM 8:1 O LORD, our Sovereign, how majestic is your name in all the earth! You have set your glory above the heavens. 8:2 Out of the mouths of babes and infants you have founded a bulwark because of your foes, to silence the enemy and the avenger. 8:3 When I look at your heavens, the work of your fingers, the moon and the stars that you have established;
8:4 what are humans that you are mindful of them, mortals that you care for them? 8:5 Yet you have made them a little lower than God and crowned them with glory and honor.
According to a folktale, once upon a time there was a king who had three daughters and the King was quite aged, and he wanted to decide who out of the three daughters of his will we'll get the majority of his wealth as an inheritance. Thus, he organized a public hearing, and the throne room. asking his daughters one by one how much they love him.
The first daughter answered I love you my dear father as the doves like the fresh wheat.
The king loved to hear then and he said I give you a castle right now beside the inheritance.
The second daughter said I love you my dear father as people love a cool breeze during the summer heat. The king loved to hear then and he said I give you a castle right now beside the inheritance.
The youngest daughter of the King said to her father, that I love you daddy as people love salt. The king didn't like what she said he took it as an insult like a palmful salt in the open wound and he disinherited her youngest daughter on the spot, chasing her away from the palace, so she ended up in the wild forest.
About a year later the Crown Prince of the neighboring Kingdom came to the forest to hunt and he found the arboreal princess in a grove fighting off a beer. As it is normal in a folks tale, the prince saved the homeless princess, fell in love with her, took her into his home country and married her.
After a while the crown pins became king and asked his wife why his father chased her away? The queen said, because I told him that I love him like people love the salt.
Thats a real reason doubted his husband. All right I will fix this.
He sent an invitation to his father-in-law the de iure, to come and be his guest for a long weekend. When it came to a festive dinner all the food which were served to the father King lacked any amount of salt, being so unsalty, as just a modern tasteless hospital food could be. A did not take long and the father King, losing his patience, demanded from the host that he should fire his chef.
The young king said I shouldn't because it's a very good chef, just she said that everybody knows in your kingdom that you don't like and even hate salt.
The old kin almost exploded: Where did she get that information?
So that young king had the chef called from the royal kitchen, who was none else but his wife. When the old king saw her daughter, his tears began to fall, and said, I am sorry, I am so sorry, I will give you the half of my kingdom.
This tale was about a stubborn and superficial king.
Once upon another time in another galaxy another king called David and Jerusalem fell in love with another man's wife as he was the king he ordered the man who was his soldier to go to battle and the King told the commanding officers to put the soldier into the most dangerous position in the bottle hoping that the surgery is surely die and he did so the king took the video to the palace and married her himself. This tale was about a lustful King.
The widow he grabbed was Bathsheva, the very mother of King Solomon. David King is held as a poster boy of all Kings who are deemed honorable Kings, though he did not fare too well and his son Solomon became a tyrant, who overburdened the people with enormous taxes and servitude. It is quite questionable why Protestants treat them as faith heroes, while the Bible is not shy pointing out their flaws.
Once upon a time in the land of Israel another kingish figurehead, a tetrarch, according to the storytelling in the Gospels, Herod Antipas had John the Baptist beheaded on the request of his wife's daughter Salome. His executive order was hardly based on a whimsical burst of anger against John, as the prophet publicly criticized the King, it was rather a political consideration of beheading a revolt against his rule. And the tale was about a cruel, cynic King.
The prophet Samuel, when people went to him to select a king for them, he told them, that trying to have a human king was a blasphemy in itself, because they already had a king, who happened to be God.
They should not copy the pagans, because they belong to God as people. And it is not only about the earthly ranks and leadership, because the earthly kings, especially emperors, always try to dethrone God, as well.
For example, the Tower of Babel, beside its astrological function, was not built only for the purpose to survive the next flood, but as an open revolt against God. In the Bible, the building project was ordered and organized by Nimrod, the King or Emperor, who made the nations united under his iron scepter, as legends have it.
His ultimate goal was to besiege Heaven and to overthrow the kingship of God.
We know from the Bible that the builders became scattered on the surface of the Earth, Nimrod and his empire became ashes and sand. Only one man took a stand against him, and he was Abraham, and he did it by faith in the Father of Heaven, who is the everlasting King of the Universe.
All the subsequent empires, which came after Nimrod, all tried the same pattern, namely to rule the Earth or at least half of it, and to take away the kingship from God. All in vain, including Egypt, Assyria, Greece, Rome, Germany, Russia. All in vain.
So. What are the characteristics of a king in people's minds?
The major one is kings they do as they please, what they want, whenever and whatever what they want. As mightier a king might he, as more grandiose his desires might grow.
However, when an earthly King acts in anger, he serves his anger as a slave. When a king acts chasing his lustful desire, then the king is a slave of his own lust. When a King acts in bloodthirst, then that king is a slave of bloodthirst. When a King is greedy, that King is a slave of his own greed. They do not act as should want, they do not act they should please, but serving demons, and dark entities.
If we understand that a king must be an absolutely free entity, not serving demons and dark forces, not being lustful, greedy or bloodthirsty, cruel and psychopathic, then we should also understand, that king like this, there is only one.
God, the King of the Universe, who is not partial, who does not act on a whim, who does not act in sudden anger, who does not condemn unjustly, who is no tarrying with the reward for the good and honorable people.
Happy is the nation who chooses God as their only King. May we do the same. AMEN.
