“Jesus Christ is King and he will reign forever.” This is true. By itself it’s not the whole of the good news, but all the same it’s huge.
When our band, Ghost Ship, set out to write our upcoming album, The Good King, this theological concept of God’s kingship was a core truth we wanted to proclaim loud and clear through in these songs. We started reading our Bibles and studying passages about Jesus’ kingship, passages like these:
“And he will reign over the house of Jacob forever, and of his kingdom there will be no end.” Luke 1:33
“To the King of the ages, immortal, invisible, the only God, be honor and glory forever and ever. Amen.” 1 Timothy 1:17
“. . . he who is the blessed and only Sovereign, the King of kings and Lord of lords, who alone has immortality, who dwells in unapproachable light, whom no one has ever seen or can see. To him be honor and eternal dominion. Amen.” 1 Timothy 6:15–16
But we weren’t done.
The good King comes near
As Doug, Jamison, Chae, Shay, Fancy, and I were meeting, practicing, and writing for the record, all of us were also continuing to serve and lead our people in worship week after week at Mars Hill Church. At the time, our church was in the middle of the Esther sermon series. As Pastor Mark preached through verse after verse, week after week, our band learned something new about our King Jesus: the book of Esther, though it never mentions God by name, says something powerful about God’s reign, we can see the invisible hand of God and his providence silhouetted throughout the book. We started to fixate on the fact that God is big, God is powerful, God is sovereign, God is great, God is in control, and God is reigning.
But one Sunday the Spirit hit us with another truth that we had been overlooking: God is near.
The good King speaks
That sermon series ended but I kept reading. The book of Job comes after Esther in the Old Testament.
When I got to Job 38, it stopped me cold. Job had been questioning God for 37 chapters and all of the sudden, God speaks. God speaks to a man. God answers Job with one of the most compelling statements of his power and sovereignty I’ve ever read. He spends the next four chapters (38–41) bellowing “out of the whirlwind” about when created the heavens and the earth and everything in it—as if there were any doubt as to who did—and how he continues to hold all of creation together with his bare hands.
Now, if you read those chapters out loud it takes about 20 minutes, so basically God spoke to Job about his greatness for 20 minutes straight and only took a breath for three verses in 40:3–5 to let Job basically say, “I’m going to keep quiet, please continue.” After all that, all the talk of forming constellations and feeding lions and walking around on the ocean floor and fishing for Leviathan, you would think Job would have been crushed by the sheer weight of the power that God was describing.
The good King kneels
But what’s amazing is the way Job responds when God’s done speaking in chapter 42. He testifies to God, “I will question you, and you make it known to me.” I take his response to mean he was thinking: Wow, I questioned God, and he answered. My God just spoke to me.
God knelt down and spoke to a man.
The God who spoke the world into existence speaks to us.
God is near enough that I can hear him.
Our big God is a close God.
“Therefore I have uttered what I did not understand, things too wonderful for me, which I did not know. ‘Hear, and I will speak; I will question you, and you make it known to me.’ I had heard of you by the hearing of the ear, but now my eye sees you.” Job 42:3–5
Our big God is close. He is so big that he can orchestrate his will no matter how brutal the circumstance, and yet he is so close that he would use a peasant girl to save her people. The King of the universe is involved in our lives. The King loves us enough to save us.
I believe the Holy Spirit used the story of Esther and of Job to show me how I could better serve our people. As a worship pastor who is shepherding people at a local church and trying to teach them something about Jesus by making a record, my vision shifted. I realized that our people do not need to just hear that Jesus is a King, and he’s a powerful King and he’s in control—that’s only part of the truth. They need to know he’s a good King who comes to us and loves us personally and perfectly.
The good King is for us
The reality of our situation is that Jesus Christ is on a throne reigning, and he will be forever. But the reason that that is good news for us is because our strong King is a good King. The good news is that the eternal King of the universe loves us. He powerful and he is also kind and patient and long-suffering and gracious. Job realized this good news when he realized that the hands that hold the constellations together also hold his life together. Esther realized this good news when she saw the God who made the earth stoop down and save her family. We see this good news in what happened on the cross.
I pray for our people that we will see this good news in the work of Jesus Christ. This is why we wrote this record, so that people could hear that the perfect reign of Jesus Christ is good news for them.
“In this the love of God was made manifest among us, that God sent his only Son into the world, so that we might live through him. In this is love, not that we have loved God but that he loved us and sent his Son to be the propitiation for our sins.” 1 John 4:9–10
Our big God is a close God.
Our Creator God is a loving God.
Our Master is our Savior.
Our strong King is a good King.
Ghost Ship’s first full-length album,The Good King, will be released June 11 on Mars Hill Music.
