Jesus Christ the Lord IS King!

Amen!

(see an article about amen following the article below written by Jordan Chamblee).

Ken Pullen

Thursday, November 5th, 2020

ACP — A Crooked Path

If Christ is King

Wednesday, November 4, 2020

By Jordan Chamblee

Reprinted from American Family Association

Throughout the entire Bible, the theme of Jesus Christ’s Kingship is prominent. His authority is apparent from the beginning of time when He as the Word of God “was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God. All things were made through Him, and without Him nothing was made that was made. In Him was life, and the life was the light of men” (John 1:1-4). When the Bible closes, it ends on a triumphant scene: “And there shall be no more curse, but the throne of God and of the Lamb shall be in it, and His servants shall serve Him. They shall see His face, and His name shall be on their foreheads” (Revelation 22:3-4).

This theme is not a light matter. We believe the words of this book are true, so when it says that this universe is under the rule of a King who is very involved in the matters of His kingdom, it should have an impact on how we live. In fact, it should have a transformative, life-changing effect on us.

So how does this change the way we live every day?

If Christ is King, we have nothing to fear. From a worldly perspective, our lives are full of uncertainty and reasons to be fearful. But if Christ is the King and we are His subjects, we must understand that nothing can happen to us or harm us outside of His will. When sorrows and trials come our way, we can be confident that it is for our good under the sovereign direction of Jesus.

If Christ is King, His opinion of us is the only one that matters. It can be all too easy to get caught up in how we appear to those around us, especially in our social media inundated lives. But if we live under a King, it doesn’t matter how the world perceives us… as long as we’re living in surrender to His rule.

If Christ is King, our sins are serious. In my personal experience, sin was always presented to me as something on the level of being rude to a very good friend. But that is far from the truth. Jesus isn’t just a good friend whose feelings are hurt when we “make mistakes”. No, He is a King, and if He is a King then our sin is treason of the highest degree. We cannot miss this or gloss over it, no matter how uncomfortable it makes us. There is nothing more disgusting or vile than sin. But thank God that our King is also our Advocate!

If Christ is King, Satan is under His authority. One of the beautiful truths we see in the book of Job is that Satan himself is subject to the will of Heaven’s King. No doubt, Satan has a measure of authority and a degree of power, but these are borrowed and used only as God allows. If Christ is King, surely we must feel the greatest security as His subjects in the knowledge that our most powerful enemy is leashed like a dog to the sovereignty of Jesus Christ.

If Christ is King, we must obey Him. The simplest things are often the hardest things. It can be easy to accept that our King will provide for and protect us. It is relieving to think that our King has our best interests at heart. But when it comes to obedience, all too often the old nature of sin stirs up rebellion in our hearts. We do have ways to combat this, and they are weapons forged by the King Himself. We have the Church, where we sharpen one another like swords for war. We have prayer and meditation that invigorate our minds. We have the Scriptures, the words of God Himself that are more beneficial than food. These are the culture of Christ’s Kingdom, and if Christ is our King we will live in the way that He decrees.

(This was first published HERE)

AMEN

By Daniel Doriani

http://Bible Dictionaries – Baker’s Evangelical Dictionary of Biblical Theology – Amen

In current usage, the term “amen” has become little more than a ritualized conclusion to prayers. Yet the Hebrew and Greek words for amen appear hundreds of times in the Bible and have several uses. Amen is a transliteration of the Hebrew word amen [em’a]. The verb form occurs more than one hundred times in the Old Testament and means to take care, to be faithful, reliable or established, or to believe someone or something. The idea of something that is faithful, reliable, or believable seems to lie behind the use of amen as an exclamation on twenty-five solemn occasions in the Old Testament. Israel said “amen” to join in the praises of God ( 1 Chron 16:36 ; Neh 8:6 ; and at the end of each of the first four books of Psalms, 41:13 ; 72:19 ; 89:52 ; 106:48 ).

Amen is never used solely to confirm a blessing in the Old Testament, but Israel did accept the curse of God on sin by it (twelve times in Deut. 27, and in Neh 5:13 ), and once Jeremiah affirms God’s statements of the blessings and the curses of the covenant with an amen ( Jer 11:5 ). It can also confirm a statement made by people ( Num 5:22 ; 1 Kings 1:36 ; Neh 5:13 ). These kinds of uses lie behind the popular, basically correct, dictum that amen means “So be it.”

Amen has other uses. Jeremiah mocks the words of a false prophet with an amen (28:6). Because God is trustworthy, Isaiah can call him “the God of amen, ” in whose name his servants should invoke blessings and take oaths ( Isa 65:16 ; see also Rev 3:14 ). But Jesus’ use of amen is the most striking innovation.

Jesus introduces his teaching by saying amen lego humin [ajmhvnlevgwuJmi’n], that is, “truly I say to you, ” on nearly seventy occasions in the Gospels (thirty times in Matthew, thirteen in Mark, six in Luke, and twenty in John, where the amen is always doubled). Where the prophets often said, “Thus says the Lord, ” Jesus often says, “Amen I say to you.” Although some scholars see the formuLam merely as a method of giving emphasis to a statement, in actuality it constitutes a significant part of Jesus’ implicit teaching about himself. We ought to consider Jesus’ use of the term “amen” alongside his other implicit claims to deity, such as his claim of the right to forgive sins and to judge humankind, and his custom of performing miracles on his own authority. No mere human has the right to forgive sins, yet Jesus forgave sins. God is the judge of humankind, yet Jesus judges. God’s agents ascribe the will and the glory to God when they perform miracles, yet Jesus performed miracles on his own authority. Likewise, prophets never spoke on their own authority. They say, “Thus says the Lord.” Or, like Paul, they say they received a revelation from heaven. But Jesus says, “Truly I say to you” dozens of times, asserting that his words are certainly true because he says them.

Jesus often uses the formuLam when he corrects errors or is engaged in disputes. When Jesus instructed Nicodemus, for example, he appealed not to Scripture but to his own authority, saying “Amen, amen, I say to you” (John 3:3, 5; see also Matt 6:2, 5, 16; 18:3; Luke 13:35; John 5:19, 24, 25; 6:26, 32, 47, 53). Amen lego humin also punctuates the teaching of truths unknown in the Old Testament, and seasons startling sayings for which Jesus offers no proof other than his own authority. Here the amen implies that Jesus’ words, like the Father’s, are true merely because he utters them (Matt 24:34; 26:13; Mark 3:28; Luke 12:37; John 10:1). So in Matthew 5 Jesus comments on the Old Testament or Jewish interpretations of it six times in the chapter, saying, “You have heard that it was said , but I tell you.” He concludes the first section with the amen in 5:26, and by so doing asserts that his authority exceeds the Jewish interpreters’, and even brings a revelation that surpasses that of the Old Testament law itself.

In this way, whenever Jesus says “amen lego humin” [ajmhvnlevgwuJmi’n], he shows awareness of his authority, his deity. This evidence of Jesus’ messianic self-consciousness is important because it resists skeptical attacks on the faith. Critics try to exclude many texts that present Christ’s deity on the grounds that they are unauthentic. But implicit claims to deity, whether they be Jesus’ use of the amen or other ones, appear in virtually every paragraph of the Gospels, and cannot be explained away.

Paul’s use of amen returns to the Old Testament world, except that he utters amen only to bless, not to curse. Many times Paul’s letters burst into praise of God the Father or God the Son and seal the confession with the amen (Rom 1:25; 9:5; 11:36; Gal 1:3-5; Eph 3:21; Php 4:20; 1 Tim 1:17; 6:16; 2 Tim 4:18). A doxology appears at or near the end of several letters, and all close with the amen. Other letters end with a blessing on his readers, again completed with amen (1 Col 16:23-24; Gal 6:18). Paul also invites his readers to say amen to the promises of God (2 Col 1:20; see also Rev 22:20). Amen also closes spontaneous doxologies in Revelation; there, however, the object of praise is more often the Son than the Father (1:6-7; 5:14; 7:12; 19:4). In all this Paul and Revelation resemble the Jewish custom of the day, in which Jews said amen when they heard another bless the Lord whether in private prayer (Tobit 8:8) or in worship. But they surpass it in the sheer spontaneity and enthusiasm of their praises.

Several other New Testament epistles follow Paul by praising God and/or calling on him to bestow the grace the readers need (Heb 13:20-21; 1 Pet 4:11; 5:10-11; 2 Pet 3:17-18; Jude 24-25; Rev 22:21). As in Paul, these final words often recapitulate the main themes of the letter, which the writer seals with the amen that both declare and pleads, “So be it! May God indeed be praised for bestowing the gifts his people need.”