He Will Reign
Competing AIs
I don’t know about you, but I’m experiencing some real confusion this Christmas about which AI to buy into. Is anyone else having this problem?
By AI, I mean Artificial Intelligence. I’m talking about the different Digital Assistants we have to choose from.
For a long time, in our family we have been Apple users. Now I know that not all of you like Apple products. And that’s ok. But with Apple you get their built in AI called Siri.
If you need something or have a question, you can just ask Siri & most of the time, Siri can help you find what you need or answer the question you might have. You just have to say, Hey Siri… then ask your question.
Then, last year, my wife brought home one of those Amazon Echo Dots.
So now, we have Alexa in our kitchen. And, Alexa is great. She can play music for us, tell us the weather, give us the score to the games we missed & all that.
But I have to be honest, every time we ask Alexa a question, I feel like we’re cheating on Siri. I mean, what happens when Siri finds out we have Alexa in our house!?
Competing Kingdoms
I think this points to a larger issue we all have. I think we live in a world where we have competing kingdoms.
I think we feel this tug & pull constantly. And our inability to resolve this tension in our lives around competing kingdoms leaves us stressed out, worn out & burnt out more often than not.
Should I stay late at work or get home in time to have dinner with the wife & kids?
Should we be saving more money for the future or use it for things we need now?
Should we be giving more money to the church or to other charities we believe in & support?
Should we make church more of a priority or do we just go when we can?
Should I try to keep advancing my career and make a name for myself or be content with where God has me and spend my energies for His name & His renown?
Should we eat at Whataburger or is it ok to eat at In-N-Out? 🙂
Competing kingdoms.
It seems like life is filled with these kinds of tensions & choices & if we’re not careful, if we don’t make some decisions about what matters most first, these competing kingdoms, this division of our allegiances can tear us apart!
An Allegiance Problem
In the land of Israel when Jesus was born, the people of God had an allegiance problem.
There were multiple competing kingdoms.
On the one hand, they wanted to pretend that God & God alone received their entire devotion. And no doubt, that was true for some.
But for others, they used their religious position to secure their own power over other people.
Some were living apart from God in straight up sin.
Still others had given their allegiance to their Roman oppressors – this was their way of securing their power & protection.
The allegiances of the people were divided in several different directions.
He Will Reign
It’s during this time that we learn about a young couple living in the small village of Nazareth.
Joseph was a carpenter in Nazareth.
Mary lived with her parents in the same town. Nazareth was located in Galilee, in northern Israel.
It’s at that time that this story unfolds as told by a man named Luke.
In the sixth month of Elizabeth’s pregnancy, God sent the angel Gabriel to Nazareth, a village in Galilee, to a virgin named Mary. She was engaged to be married to a man named Joseph, a descendant of King David. Gabriel appeared to her and said, “Greetings, favored woman! The Lord is with you!”
Confused and disturbed, Mary tried to think what the angel could mean. “Don’t be afraid, Mary,” the angel told her, “for you have found favor with God! You will conceive and give birth to a son, and you will name him Jesus. He will be very great and will be called the Son of the Most High. The Lord God will give him the throne of his ancestor David. And he will reign over Israel forever; his Kingdom will never end!”
This is what Mary and her family & her people really wanted. They wanted God’s Messiah to come & God’s Messiah’s to REIGN over them forever! To make things right again. Make things the way they were supposed to be again. To free them from oppression. And to restore life & prosperity to their people.
Of course, the problem is that “he will reign” didn’t mean what most of Israel wanted it to mean. It didn’t mean that the Messiah would lead a revolt, kick the Romans out of Israel & establish a Davidic kingdom as a sovereign nation that would never end.
This is what they had all been praying for, hoping for, desperate for. Messiah. Deliverance. Rescue. Peace.
But that’s not what Gabriel meant when he said that the Son of God would “reign forever.”
Jesus would be a different kind of King. And He would usher in a different kind of kingdom. A different kind of peace.
Mary’s response?
Mary asked the angel, “But how can this happen? I am a virgin.”
The angel replied, “The Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you. So the baby to be born will be holy, and he will be called the Son of God.
Mary responded, “I am the Lord’s servant. May everything you have said about me come true.” And then the angel left her.
Luke 1.26-35; 38
She didn’t respond in fear. She didn’t object. She didn’t hesitate or complain. She didn’t second guess or ask the angel if there was someone else who could do this.
She knew, this is not going to be easy.
For starters, What was she going to tell her parents? Her friends? What about Joseph? How’s that conversation going to go? Who’s going to believe her? Will she be put to shame? Divorced? Worse?
But, the God who was with her was about to move inside her so that through her the hope of the world could come.
And here’s what I want you to see, there wasn’t a battle for Mary’s heart in this moment. The LORD who was about to dwell in her was already reigning over her.
God had found favor with Mary because Mary was already living her life under the reign of God.
The One who was about to come, the One to whom Gabriel said, “He shall reign forever…” was already reigning over Mary’s heart. There was no competition for her allegiance.
Because of the faithfulness of Mary’s life & because of her faithfulness in this moment God was able to do something miraculous through her.
What’s Competing for your Heart?
Is there a battle for your heart?
What’s competing for authority over your life?
There are kingdoms competing for your heart. There are wars being waged for your marriage. There is a battle being fought for the souls of your kids. There are competing forces clashing over your future.
And the question is always the same question… where do your allegiances lie? Which kingdom is winning the war?
The question is, WHO IS LORD? Who reigns over your life?
Maybe that’s where you are today.
When Gabriel came to Mary there wasn’t a battle for Mary’s heart. The LORD who was about to dwell in her was already reigning over her.
She had already found favor with God. Why? Because the One who was about to be conceived in her already reigned over her.
And here’s what God wants you to know today… that,
The One who reigns over you wants to reign in you so He can move through you to others.
When the faithfulness of your life intersects your faithfulness in the moment, God can do incredible things in & through you.
What if…
What if we placed our lives totally & completely under the reign of Christ? What if our confession wasn’t just, Jesus is Lord… what if our confession was, He shall reign. He is Lord. We want to live the totality of our lives under the reign & lordship of Christ & Christ alone!
This is the constant struggle, isn’t it? To submit our lives daily to the rule of Christ.
The hard part is, it doesn’t make everything BETTER.
Placing our lives up under the reign of Christ doesn’t make the pain go away. It doesn’t take away suffering. It doesn’t mean we won’t have heartache or trouble. We know that we will still have hardship.
Even Mary, pregnant with the Son of God, had trouble finding a place to give birth in Bethlehem that night!
Giving our lives to Christ, allowing Christ to reign over us & reside in us doesn’t take away the hard parts of life…
BUT…
It does make everything DIFFERENT.
His presence over us & in us changes everything. Because Jesus reigns over us & His Spirit lives inside of us it means that we are never alone. And when we live life under the reign of Christ with the Spirit of Christ alive in us, we are able to point others to Christ.
[Tweet “God’s presence over us & in us changes everything.”]His presence over us, in us & through us changes everything.
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