The True King

Give the king thy justice, O God, and thy righteousness to the royal son! May he judge thy people with righteousness, and thy poor with justice! Let the mountains bear prosperity for the people, and the hills, in righteousness! May he defend the cause of the poor of the people, give deliverance to the needy, and crush the oppressor!

Psalm 72:1-4

One of those interlaced themes in the old and new testaments is the role of the King. The spectacular promises that God made to David, i.e. that his royal house would continue forever (2nd Samuel 7) came tied to the warnings issued by the prophet Samuel about the oppressive way all earthly kings behave (1 Samuel 8). David's own behavior, a man guilty of adultery and pre-meditated murder, along with his son Solomon, who worshiped idols within the holy city, demonstrated Samuel's point only too well. And, most of David's successors about whom we read were weak or positively bad. Even those who succeeded in restoring the life and worship of Israel for a time, like Hezekiah and Josiah, could not prevent the final catastrophe of exile. Psalm 89, one of the most majestic and haunting of the Psalms, states the problem as starkly as it can be put. On one hand, God made all these great promises to David; and, on the other hand, it looks as though they have all come to nothing? The Psalm lays both halves before God as an interrogatory as though to say, "Well God, what are you going to do about it?"

It is out of this longing for a true king, that the above Psalm says that when he takes the throne the poor will get justice! And, creation itself will sing for joy! So this is how God's plan is to be fulfilled. There will be a new king. This time, however, he will be a man who is the True King! He will be "anointed"; but, not with oil like the kings of old. Rather, the proof of his identity will be by his anointment with God's own spirit. The Hebrew word for "anointed one" is "Messiah". The Greek word is "Christ". He will be the one to put the world back into proper order. The echoing voice that yearns for justice will, at last, be answered.