By Sidharth Mohandas 

Shibu’s article on “The Return of the King“ reminded me of something Myles Monroe shared in his book “Kingdom Principles”.

Dr. Monroe shared some basic but eye opening principles on the Kingdom of God. Here is one of them: He said, “Everything in the Kingdom belongs to the King, and the subjects of the Kingdom are just using that which belongs to the King- the plants, the animals all belong to the King”. This statement will change our attitude when we start applying it to our own life- nothing we use or have belongs to us- it all belongs to our King. Here’s a passage from the Bible that he used to explain this truth:

As Jesus started on his way, a man ran up to him and fell on his knees before him. “Good teacher,” he asked, “what must I do to inherit eternal life?”. “Why do you call me good?” Jesus answered. “No one is good—except God alone. You know the commandments: ‘Do not murder, do not commit adultery, do not steal, do not give false testimony, do not defraud, honor your father and mother’.” “Teacher,” he declared, “all these I have kept since I was a boy.” Jesus looked at him and loved him. “One thing you lack,” he said. “Go, sell everything you have and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven. Then come, follow me.” At this the man’s face fell. He went away sad, because he had great wealth. Jesus looked around and said to his disciples, “How hard it is for the rich to enter the kingdom of God!” [ Mark 10:17-23]

Here we find a rich man who comes to Jesus wanting to enter His eternal Kingdom… Jesus asks him if he had obeyed God’s commandments, and the man says he had kept the commandments ever since he was a boy… Jesus asks the man to sell everything he had and give it to the poor, to which the man disagrees. Now, friends look, if this man was really in the Kingdom, he would have acknowledged the King and would have known that all that he had actually belonged to the King, and that he was just using what belonged to the King. So if the King said, “Give my money to the poor!”, the citizen of the Kingdom had no say over it! Him refusing to give what the King asked him to give shows that He was not in the Kingdom of God.

Everything you have belongs to the King. Are we acknowledging the King?

By Shibu Abraham

[Scripture Reading Matt 21:1-11, Mark 11:1-11, Luke 19:28-44, John 12:12-19]

It’s about Passover time in Jerusalem, and speculation is going on. Will Jesus really risk coming into Jerusalem? In Matthew 21 the crowds proclaim him as the “Son of David” which was enough to get quite a number of emotions flaring. Just see how they tried to make blind Bartimaeus shut up when he addressed Jesus by that title (Mark 10:48). Or look at what happens in Matthew 20:29-31 where Matthew says that there are two blind men shouting and not just one.

As we read about the triumphal entry in Mark the crowd proclaims the coming kingdom of their father David. In the book of John, there is a step further as the crowd shouts “Blessed is the King of Israel!” The high priests have had it with him; Jesus was actually accepting this adulation! They tell him to quiet his disciples but in Jesus fashion, the Lord says “if they keep quiet, the stones will cry out!” (Luke 19:40).Whoa! The universe knew who was boss.

And what about the Romans? The Jews could be annihilated if loyalty to Caesar was challenged. And here you have a huge crowd shouting praises to the King.

It is surprising to see that this whole time there is no Roman involvement. I suspect Herod would not have been enjoying this either. Anyway, the Jews did not want to be once again thrown into exile. To the Pharisees and their followers, Jesus was blasphemous, making claims to be the son of the most high God. That’s like calling himself God. He was racking up followers in even bigger numbers especially after raising Lazarus from the dead. They tried even harder to have him arrested or stoned, they even wanted to kill Lazarus. Jesus was taking a big risk in coming to Jerusalem like this.

From the passage it’s clear that Jesus was in good standing with most of the people of Jerusalem, “..if anyone says anything to you, tell him that the Lord needs them..”. He knew that the people who knew him would be more than willing to oblige and give them the donkey. But it’s more than just faith in a good man. They recognized Jesus as their King. There had been attempts to forcefully make him King before, since he fit their messianic character sketch, the one who would save them from the Romans. They still did not have quite the right idea about Jesus’ kingdom and what the messiah would be like. Yet, they herald Jesus’ entry into Jerusalem waving palm leaves and laying branches on the road which was a symbol of victory and was used customarily in rejoicing before God (Lev 23:40). They were now using it to rejoice for they had seen their salvation. And so they lay them down before Jesus singing “Hosanna”. The disciples must have been able to understand it all better once the temple was destroyed.

Imagine Jesus. His time was near. And there he was in the middle of all those people who looked at him with hope. They sang songs and danced around him. He looked at them and loved them. And then he began to weep when he saw the city, their future was bleak. He speaks of it in detail in Luke 21(and history tells of the fall of Jerusalem in AD 70). Jesus would teach more often at the temple from here on.