Audio Transcript:

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Good morning church. Welcome to Mosaic Boston, Brookline. For those of you who don't know me, my name is Tyler. I'm the teen director here and I am really excited to be worshiping with you this morning. And I say that partly because I was real nervous coming up to this. I always get nervous before I preach, but as amazing as our worship team is, even they could not have planned how perfectly those songs line up with what we are talking about today. Each and every verse in those songs, I was like, "Oh, I'm talking about that. Oh, I'm talking about that." And so it is clearly moving of the Holy Spirit and I'm encouraged by that and I hope you're encouraged by that too. But before we begin, will you pray with me over the preaching of God's word?

Heavenly father, Lord, we come to you and we thank you and we praise you that you are king, that you are the ruler over all the universe, but you are also the ruler of our lives. We pray that if we have not yet, we will give you. We will help you reclaim your rightful throne as the king and ruler over our lives and that we will proclaim the truth of who you are to those who don't yet know. And this time come and speak to us through your word and reveal your majesty, your greatness and awe of you through your kingship. We pray all this through your wonderful son, Christ Jesus. Amen.

I'm very excited and happy to be concluding our advent series through the different roles of Jesus Christ. Pastor Shane started the first week going through Jesus' role as Messiah, what it means for Jesus to be fully God, fully man, and to come and to deliver his people. Pastor Andy talked to the next week about Jesus as prophet, Jesus coming proclaiming truth, proclaiming the word of God and giving meaning to our lives. And last week, Pastor Yann talked about Jesus as priest, Jesus as Emmanuel, God with us, the sacrifice of bringing us, reconciling us with God. And today we're talking about Jesus as king. And I think for me personally, thinking about a king can kind of be fantasized because we don't really live in a culture with kings right now. We can't really think of very many kings in power today. And most of our thoughts about kings come from storybooks or from fantasies.

But one of the things that I think is consistent with our understanding of a king is that they are powerful, that they rule. And when people come to them, they are in awe of the majesty that is around them. And part of my goal today is to have an awesome sermon. And when I say that, I don't mean that I do a good job. I don't mean that you leave here thinking, "Oh Tyler, he was great, or I remember that sermon so well." No, what I mean is I'm going to the dictionary definition of awesome, which is profoundly reverent or inspiring awe. What I want this time to be is a time where we grow in reverence for Jesus Christ in his role as king and to be inspired to be in all of his greatness and his majesty. And the reason for this is because this idea of awe I believe is inherent to Christmas, is inherent to the holidays because this is something we are all waiting for.

For me as a kid, I would wake up super early Christmas morning so early that my parents had a rule. I wasn't allowed to leave the bedroom until at the earliest 6:00 AM. But they hoped to it was more like eight or 9:00 AM because they knew that I was up at three or four every Christmas morning and I was ready to go. And so instead I had to take the action figures and the stuffed animals off my shelves and I had to play games with myself and it seemed like an hour would pass. And I'd check the clock five minutes, could play another game, make up another scenario, continue going another five minutes. And it seemed forever. But the reason was because I was so excited for Christmas and in the newsletter I explained about a particular present that my parents gave me that inspired me to awe.

But the reason why I was so excited about Christmas was because of this feeling of all that came with the day, not because of presents themselves, but the feeling of awe. And it's not always presents. For some of us, it's that holiday meal, holiday ham. For my dad, it was a holiday steak and potato latkes and it was a beautiful meal. But then the biggest thing that I could think of when I think about what inspired me to be in awe at Christmas was a Christmas light show. I don't know how many of you have ever been to a Christmas light show, but I grew up in a neighborhood where everyone decorated their house for Christmas lights everywhere. And when my parents said, "We're going to drive to a different neighborhood, to a different house to see a light show." This was intense.

"I've seen light shows. All these houses here have lights. What is so great about this show that we're going to be driving to?" And as we drive and we get there, I'm a little kid, I'm looking up and this house is covered every inch plastered with lights. Not only is the house covered, the lawn is covered, they have a front lawn and a back yard, and they actually let you walk into the backyard. And there's different paths in the back yard that you wind in and out of seeing different Christmas light displays in different shows of Christmas. But that's not even the best part. The best part is that the lights, they change colors, they flash and they're synchronized perfectly to Trans-Siberian Orchestra's Carol of the Bells. Oh wow. And as a kid, and as I'm standing there being in awe of the bright lights, the flashing colors, the precision in the synchrosy, the powerful chords that are being played, the brisk air around me so that my fingertips are starting to lose feeling.

I can't feel my toes. And the only warmth is coming from that sweet cup of warm, hot chocolate with many marshmallows. That's important that I'm holding awe, amazement and this comes not because it was Christmas or because it was lights, but specifically because of the greatness of the thing I was experiencing. I was overwhelmed by the greatness of it. And so when we're talking about awe and we're talking about awe involving Christmas, the point is that we are to be overwhelmed by the greatness of Jesus' role as king specifically as it relates to Christmas. So today we're going to be spending our time talking about three different points. The first point is a question, are you the king? The second point is awe of the king and the third point is align to the king and we're starting with the question, are you the king?

Because the people of Israel had been waiting centuries for the promise of a king. This is what Pastor Shane addressed in the first week going through Isaiah nine specifically in the text verses six and seven that promised a king that would be born, whose government would be forever and that government would bring peace. And then we told that we will know that this is the king. When a Virgin conceives and bears a son and is called Emmanuel. This is what Pastor Yann talked about last week explaining how Jesus is Emmanuel. Jesus is God with us. If you haven't listened to the sermons, I'd encourage you to listen to them. They are great. They're encouraging and they're uplifting and they're important to what we're talking about today as well. And so when Israel sees, when Mary specifically gives birth to a son and sees, wow, I'm told that he is the one fulfilling this prophecy of being Emmanuel, he's fulfilling the prophecies in Isaiah.

We see in the last few weeks how he has fulfilled the role of Messiah, prophet and priest. He should also be fulfilling the role of king. So as Mary gives birth and watches her son grow, as Joseph watches Jesus grow, as the people of Israel are listening, he gains disciples, they're watching him grow. The thought in their mind is, when are you going to take this mantle of king? And this isn't an idea that I'm placing in their minds. To be clear this is an idea that was inherent to the people at that time because when the wise men came to visit Jesus as an infant, they go to Herod and they say, "We are looking for a king. We are going to worship the king." And Herod is so frightened by this idea that there is a king that he seeks to put Jesus to death because he understands what it means if there is a king in Israel.

And so as we see Jesus grow, the Pharisees and the religious leaders at the time are threatened by Jesus. They say he is teaching with authority, he is teaching with more authority that we have. And so they seek to put Jesus to death. And in the Roman Empire occupied nations such as Israel were allowed to convict people of crimes, but they were not allowed to convict people to death. That was part of the Roman Empire's job. And so they delivered Jesus over to Pilate saying that we want him to be put to death. And this is where our main text is today. In John chapter 18 we see that Pilate is going to meet with Jesus and in chapter 18 and verse 33 he says, "So Pilate entered his headquarters again and called Jesus and said to him, are you the king of the Jews?" And this is the question we're starting with because this is the important question.

"Jesus, you say that you're king. These people are condemning you saying you are king, but are you? Because honestly Jesus, you don't look like any other king I've ever seen. Jesus, where's your army? Jesus, where's your crown? Where's your robe? Where's your sword? Who is fighting for you? Jesus, are you a king? Are you specifically the king Isaiah prophesied about?" And Jesus responds saying, "Do you say this of your own accord or did others say ...