I invite you now to turn your Bibles to page 237 if you're using the Bibles in your seats. It's first Kings, chapter 2, and people will be looking at verses 10 through 12 this morning. First Kings, chapter 2, beginning in verse 10. This is God's Word, eternal and true. Then David rested with his fathers and was buried in the city of David. He had reigned 40 years over Israel, seven years in Hebron, and thirty-three in Jerusalem. So Solomon sat on the throne of his father David, and his rule was firmly established. Here in our reading there's a response to thankfulness of his printed force, the word of the Lord. Thank you. Thanks indeed, let's pray. Augustine, St. Augustine, after whom we named the grass. If you've been in Florida, you know there's lots of St. Augustine grass, and that stuff just grows in the sand. So that's fun. When you have weeds in Florida, we live there for three and a half years in your yard. You just pull them out, the whole thing comes up, all the roots, and everything. It's just sitting in sand. But St. Augustine said this, you have made us for yourself, oh God, and our hearts are restless until they find their rest in you. 2020 and 2021 haven't been great times of rest for us, personally and in society. And if you'd like to fill up links in an outline, you're welcome to do that. There's an outline that's up for you that you can reference on Facebook, and you've got that here in your hand if you're here with us. Our introduction this morning makes this point, that the church at large and the culture all want rest. What everyone wants, those inside the church and those outside the church. But the church at large today and the culture certainly has settled on this. We don't need Jesus for that. We don't need Jesus for rest. Now, rest can be defined in lots of different ways, or physical rest. I got a lot of that yesterday when I was going through my little COVID period after my second vaccination on Friday. Lots of rest in bed. There can be physical rest, but you know, there can also be rest of soul. There's things that affect our hearts and our minds where we have anxiety. We're worried about stuff. We're considering things and we don't know how it's going to turn out and there's not rest. Or maybe it's about something that's happened and we don't have rest of soul. Well, this passage this morning emphasizes for us that Jesus is the key to rest. He's the key to rest for us and our souls. He's the key to rest for any person for rest for their souls. Now, the issue was when first and second kings was written, God's people were in exile. They were often Babylon. So, if you look at the end of second kings, you find that out. They've gone through exile. Their king, Johorichin, is imprisoned in exile. But finally, he's brought back and he gets to eat at the king of Babylon's table every night and ends up getting treated well. But the question was for God's people as the Jewish people, his real life, had been transported in exile off to Babylon. The question for them was, do we need David and his sons as our kings anymore? Another scripture said that, and we read the second Samuel 7, God tells David through Nathan the prophet that the kingship will be with you David and with your sons forever. It'll be enduring. But the question was, what did that do for us? Now that we're next out, does that promise still stand anymore? Our king has been imprisoned. He's a humiliated figure described in Isaiah 53, despised not as things. And if we ever get back to the promised land, should we seek to have a king from David's line? Maybe David's line is not really necessary for us. So that's what the writer of 1st and 2nd Kings writes to. He's writing to people sitting in Babylon, whose real home was Israel, the promised land. They didn't know if they'd ever get back and if they did, whether they should have a king or not. Northern Israel had abandoned the Davidic kingship a long time before in 722. They were exiled but long before that in 930, Solomon ends his reign as king. And the 10 northern tribes of Israel leave David's house and they have other kings from other lines all through their history for 200 years until they're exiled. So they had already said we don't leave David as our king if we want to be at rest in the promised land. But they suffered lots of unrest during those 200 years before leaving the promised land. For nations coming in and badgering them and requiring tax money of them, burning down their homes and such. But then even southern Israel known as Judah, the tribe of Judah and Benjamin along with them, they were often exiled too and they had questioned the need that they had for David. So they're not too different from us. Certainly culture today is not where it was in the 1950s, where King Jesus and his word, the Bible, were the standard of what was moral, what was right. What you did in marriage, what was true about about genders and society now, even in it's striving for all various kinds of things. It is not looking to Jesus who says things to us in his word like all men, bear God's image and that's women and boys and girls as well. And on that basis we don't even speak a harsh word to somebody else who's a human being. But that's not offered as a solution today in our culture. Rather our culture is looking at all our differences and somehow thinking that that will make us unite. So Jesus has been discarded in culture, we all know that it's Christians that Jesus is discarded in culture. But also if we look at the church as a whole, we see that Jesus is discarded. Starting in about 1900, those who took on to liberal theology, liberal theology is not like the Democrat Republicans, that's not that kind of liberal, but liberal theology is those churches that said the Bible is full of errors. It's just a human book, it's not inspired by the spirit of God and contains many errors. And so they did disregarded things in the 19 teens primarily that were anything supernatural. So Jesus didn't rise from the dead, he didn't do the miracles, all those kind of things. And so the theological and liberal churches around the United States and other places have disregarded Jesus and what Jesus said. Jesus spoke of Jonah being a historic figure, Adam being a historic figure. But it's not just theological and liberal churches that have discarded Jesus. I think that churches as a whole that are described as evangelical, yeah, I mean, just, you know, eastern time if you're paying attention for anyone looking for a church. Yeah, I heard this from at least a couple of you, they were looking for everything but Jesus in a church. I want a church for the good youth group or a bounty house. Or as we call it, the dog and pony show. I'm going to church that has a great worship pans. And all this stuff and then people responding on social media, our church is great, we have a great worship pan, it's cool. You know, our church is a great youth group and all this discussion, guess who's missing? Jesus. And to warm my heart, those of you who mentioned this to me said, Jesus is left out of this, isn't it? Yeah, he is. The churches have thought in order to grow, we can't focus upon him. We have to have things that, you know, bread and circus. We have to have things that entertain people. If we really talk about Jesus and if we really teach his words that's going to drive people away, we don't need him for rest. We don't need him and our church. Now if he said that to any of these churches, he'd say, what do you mean? And they'd be offended but we'd say, where is Jesus? And hopefully if they had an open mind, they'd say, you know, we have less than that. So this passage is a passage that is in great contrast to this where we don't look to Jesus for rest. This passage says, Jesus is absolutely what you need, what any person needs for rest. So number one in your outline there, the Bible says that there is no soul rest, S-O-U-L. There is no soul rest in life and after, apart from being under Jesus, apart from being under Jesus and in his kingdom. Look at verses 11 and 12 there. We see here, it's essential in Old Testament times that God's people be under a king descended from David. Okay, we know Jesus is the son of David. He's called that over and over again because he was descended from David. And his message of good news was the kingdom of God as it had. He came as the king. He came as son of David. And so your Testament folks, they knew this. We saw in 2 Samuel 7, the covenant to David. We call it the Davidic covenant where God says, the people have not had rest since I've brought them out of Egypt. But now I will give you rest. I'll give you rest from all the nations that have troubled you, from all the chaos you've had internally in the nation by David, you're being king and by your kingdom being extended in your son, who we know is Solomon, and then Solomon's son and his son and his son and his son. And God makes us promise my method for rest. 2 Samuel 7, 11 is where you see that rest. My method for rest is that a son of David rule over my people. Absolutely not search. You've done it in other ways. You've done it with Saul. He wasn't the son of David. You've done it with judges. They weren't son of David. They weren't even kings. And there was chaos among God's people, chaos in the promised land. So David is promised that the kingship is in the kingship of the sons after him, a God's eternal plan that is forever. David was central and necessary. Here in verses 11 and 12, as you look at those, you see that God has carried out his plan with David's ravenous king for 40 years. And then here establishing his son as the next king. This is the first step, the establishment of the divinic line. It wouldn't end with just David because God cared for his people. God wanted his people to have rest. And so he was giving them rest in David and his line. And when we read on and we'll read on in first things, we see that the greatest period of peace that God's people ever had in the promised land was under Solomon. In David's day, they had all kinds of wars. Now David won all the wars. He won all the battles, but they had borers coming into the land and causing chaos. But in Solomon's day, no one came into the land. His kingdom was firmly established. And things were all settled in the land, right? And the queen of Shiva comes out from Africa somewhere and she's amazed. And she says, all that I've heard about you, the way you administrate your kingdom, the way your palace works, the way the land works, how everything is at peace. It's greater than it was even told. So David establishes this so that God's people could have rest. He establishes his line as kings forever. So verses 11 and 12 are good news there. So A, in your outline there, a son of David, a son of David, raining as king and Jerusalem, was to be a central feature in Israel's resting again in the promised land after exile. So the writer of first and second kings, writing to people in exile, he's showing them, no, this is the way. And David did his job and he established his line forever and this is God's plan. And so you see that in verse 10 here, and then all these verses that have listed for you, these are the prophets speaking about when you come back from exile, you will have a son of David rain over you as king after the exile. So all of the passages speak to that. So how do we relate to this as Christians today? In this way, the Christians, lives on earth, are now described in the Bible as an exile. You know that? Peter does it three times. First Peter 1-1, he says to his audience that he's writing to the people he's writing to, he says you were an exile. He says that again that you're living as exiles on this earth in verse 11 of chapter 1. And then chapter 2 verse 11, he says the same thing. He says, you know, dear friends, I urge you as aliens and exiles to abstain from sinful desires which war against your soul. So we relate to this because we're exiles from heaven. This earth for Christians is a foreign land. Peter at the end of his book says, I write to you from Babylon in verse 1 Peter 5. And he was really writing from the city of Rome, you know. But he calls it Babylon because he's communicating the same idea that he has through the rest of his book that Christians live in exile. This is not our home. We're living as fourers, it's like we're from America but we're living in Estonia or we're living in Spain. I have a good friend from high school, Jeff Shelton, who lives in Spain. He's living there as an exile. It's not really his home though he's lived there a while now. So we relate to it in this way. And then we relate to it in this way too. Jesus is the son of David. That's your seed point there. Jesus the son of David, he's our king. And he's absolutely necessary for you're having rest of soul now in your exile on earth. And you're absolutely necessary for you're having rest, eternal rest, eternal rest when your exile on earth is over. Hebrews 4.1 speaks of a person today being able to enter God's rest through faith in Jesus. Hebrews 4.1 says, the promise of entering his rest still stands. That's the case for any non-believer today. As long as Jesus hasn't come back, the promise of entering Jesus rest still stands through a person coming to Jesus for that rest. No longer saying, I'm good enough for God and God should accept me based on who I am and what I've done. But we enter God's rest by coming to Jesus and saying, I need your forgiveness because I'm not good enough. And my deeds are not good enough to enter your rest in heaven. I don't deserve to be there. I need the forgiveness that only you provide only through Jesus. And so as we come in faith to Jesus, we can enter his rest if we believe that he is our only hope of forgiveness and eternal life. It's a twofold rest that we get when we come to Jesus. Jesus spoke of it in Matthew 11, 28. We saw this earlier in our service or declaration of the gospel. You can look at that if you want to. Jesus said, come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest. That's who we are, weary and burdened. I love the opening of Psalm 63, it's what we had in our declaration of the gospel this morning. Oh God, you are my God, earnestly I seek you, my soul, thirst for you, my body will hold you for you in a dry and weary land where there is no water. That's where we are, right? A dry and weary land where there is no water. And so our soul's thirst goes on and says, my soul finds rest in God alone, in God alone. So Jesus says, come to me, all you who are weary and burdened and I will give you rest. Take my oak upon you, learn from me, frame gentle and humble and heart and you will find rest for your souls. So David rest to get the end of his life, verse 10, as those did who were under his reign. But those without a divided king over them were those who were in exile and they weren't at rest. There was a second kind of rest of soul and body that scripture speaks of and that's a rest for eternity, the rest that we get for eternity. For those who have Jesus as their king, Revelation 14 and 13 speaks of this rest. It says, the state of every Christian upon his or her death, John speaks of this and he says, then I heard a voice from heaven. Right this, blessed are the dead who die in the Lord from now on. Yes, that's the spirit, they will rest. So there's any trial rest that we get when we die or when Jesus comes back, whichever comes first, that is ours if Jesus is our king. And blessed are we if Jesus is our king because we get that rest at death. Why is this so? Why is Jesus crucial in this? Why is Jesus central for you and anyone else getting rest? Number two, number two. Jesus is central for rest for your soul because he completed. He completed his kingly mission on earth to obtain rest for you. Jesus is central because he had a mission to get rest, to obtain rest for you when he came to this earth and he did that. He completed it. David completed his mission. The mission God gave him in the Davidic covenant to give rest to God's people. So David did this in a couple of ways, giving rest to his people. David first of all, rain 40 years. Verse 11, we see that. Rained is their king and he gave his people rest because he protected them first of all. Military way. Throughout those 40 years, God's people, if you were just an ordinary citizen in the promised land, he didn't have to worry because David was leading the troops. And then if any four army came in from Moab or Ammon or Edom, David took them on him, and he won. And there was rest in the lands. He did completed that part of his mission. And people didn't have rest when there wasn't a king in the promised land. He read the book of Judges. It's not constantly. He gave them rest for periods of time. But he would go back to the long periods of time where God's people had no rest there and they were oppressed in the land. And so when David had accomplished his mission, he rested with his fathers. He died and was buried in the Jerusalem below. But before he did that and introduced eternal rest in heaven, he made sure the second part of his mission was done. First part of his mission was accomplishing rest through his military victories during his life. The second part of his mission from that covenant God gave within the second Samuel 7 was that he needed to establish the kingship. He needed to establish his line as kings for his people, for God's people forever. And he does that almost with his dying breath here. We saw that in the first Kings chapter 1. That's what first Kings chapter 1 was about. David establishing Solomon, his son, as king. And once David does this, he steps into that promise of God. Now we'll give my people rest through giving them view David and your sons as kings over them. So with the kingship of Solomon in place, God's people would experience this greatest period of rest this next 40 years would be their greatest period of rest in their entire history. David's mission was to defeat all Israel's enemies. That's the first part. David's mission was to defeat all Israel's enemies and second part to establish his line as the kings of God's people forever in order to give God's people rest. Listen to what God had said to David in second Samuel 7 beginning in verse 10. God says to David, and I will provide my people a place and I will plant them so that they can have a home of their own and no longer be disturbed. Wicked people will not oppress them anymore as they did at the beginning that is during the period of the judges and have done ever since the time I pointed leaders over my people Israel. I will also give you rest from all your enemies. Verse 12, he says, when your days are over and you rest with your fathers, I will raise up your offspring to succeed you who will come from your own body and I will establish this kingdom. So we see that command to David, have your son be established as king. That's what I am doing here establishing your line. We see that here in verse 12 in 1st Kings chapter 2, don't we? David firmly establishes Solomon's kingdom to give his people rest and then to be that David's death, we see that he accomplished both leaving God's people in a state of rest. The nation's knew not to mess with David and he established rest with his son Solomon raining over the Solomon's name. It's the same SLM, see that in Solomon. It's the same as Shalom. It's the same war brute. Shalom means peace, rest, well-being. And his name represents the peace that God gave the rest that God gave his people under Solomon. So see, Jesus' mission like David was to defeat our enemies. The David's first half of his mission was to defeat the enemies of God's people and that was Jesus' mission too. When he came to this earth, it was to defeat our enemies which are, for us, death and Satan. And to, at the end of its life, establish the line of David forever. So David's, Jesus' mission was like David so it was to defeat all our enemies, all the enemies of God's people, those enemies for us are death and Satan. And then to establish the Davidic kingship forever so that we would eternally have peace. So, D, at Jesus' death, we see Jesus as accomplishedness. First, at the end of its time on earth, he established, at his death, he accomplished both which guarantees our rest. That's your de-point. He does both which guarantees our rest. That is first, at the end of his life, Jesus established. That's your blank. He established the line of David as the forever kingship by his ascension. In the days of when first kings was being written, it wasn't certain that the line of David would go on. There was no one on the throne in Jerusalem, no one from the line of David on David's throne, so that was uncertainty. But when Jesus dies, he rises up, doesn't it? He rises up and he sits at the right hand of God and Jesus lives forever. There will be no death of our king in heaven as Jesus sits in the Jerusalem above. There's no going to be no break at the kingship of the de-vitic lines anymore because Jesus is in ever-living kings. So, to fill up your blanks number one, Jesus established the line of David as the forever kingship by his ascension, taking his throne in the Jerusalem above heaven, to begin his reign as our king forever, to guarantee our rest. So, David does this, establishing Solomonist king, Jesus does this, and he is established by his father as king. So, Jesus sits in Solomon's shoes here, definitely. Son of David, enthroned, seated at king by not David his father, but Jesus by God his father in heaven. Hebrews 1, 3 speaks of this, after Jesus had provided purification for sins on the cross, he ascended into heaven, he sat down at the right hand of the majesty in heaven. Jesus is enthroned permanently and forever establishing the line of David in heaven. Luke 1, 3 speaks of this as well. The angel said to Mary, we read it this morning, do not be afraid Mary. You have found favor with God. You will be with child Jesus. You will give birth to a son and you are to give him the name Jesus. He will be great and will be called the son of the most high. The Lord God will give him the throne of his father, David. We skip over those words at Christmas time. But this is huge. Jesus has given the throne of his father, David. He is a son of David, come to take David's throne, but not on earth like Jerusalem. As we talked about last week, he comes to take that throne and the Jerusalem above to guarantee our peace, to guarantee our rest. The writer P. Rusyn chapter 4 discusses how Jesus death brings eternal rest and entrance into heaven to all who look to Jesus for their rest because he is reigning data as their king. And so when we die, Jesus says, yep, he's one of my citizens. Yep, she's one of my citizens. Come on in and we have eternal rest. Our Jesus returns and we go through final judgment and we don't have to have all our sins read out from the books that have recorded all those things. Instead, we hear Jesus open up his book of life, the Lamb's book of life, and he declares our name and we enter into the rest of the new heavens and the newer. So, here's your next line, under Jesus rule from heaven. Under Jesus rule from heaven, you're protected in this life so that you might live without anxiety with your soul at rest knowing that the sovereign God Jesus is enthroned above and watching over you. The enthroned above Jesus is sovereign. He's king and he's watching over you from heaven and you are in his good, in his good loving care. The good news, the ascension of Jesus, 40 days after his resurrection, is that he has sat down with the right hand of God his father, taken his place as our king and from his position of being king, he watches over us. He protects us. He defends us in our lives now. So Ephesians 1, 22 talks about this, Paul writes this, and God placed all things, God the Father placed all things under Jesus' feet and appointed him to be head over everything for the church. Jesus has sat down now and is ruling and raining over us. He is making sure everything is okay for us and this is why we can claim and trust in the promise of Romans 8.28 that all things work together for the good for those he, Jesus, has called. So he's called, a special calling for those people who are in Sunday school, although he's called, brought into his kingdom, all things work together for your good, whether it's a difficult thing or whether it's an easy thing, whether it's something you like and that you were hoping for, whether it's something you were hoping wouldn't happen, it's something that's for your good because Jesus is on his throne in heaven and he is ruling sovereignly over every detail. That affects you in your life and that gets you rest. No matter what bad thing is happening to you, no matter what tough circumstances going on for you, you can be at rest because it's under Jesus' sovereign care for you. We understand things or try to understand things like James 1, 2, 4, which is the only way we get mature in Christ is through trials and hardship. Romans 5 says that too, we don't mature, we don't have perseverance in our faith unless we've gone through trials. That's how God makes us mature. If you're in battle, if you're in a war, the one who's mature, the one who's the one you want to be behind, the one who you want to do what he tells you to do is the one who's been in battle before. He's been through the trial of battle so he knows how it works and knows how to get through it alive as much as you can. It's the same way in life God tells us, but we can have rest in these trials. When we're having trials, when difficulties are happening to us, it's not because God has abandoned us. It's not because God has forgotten about us, or gone to sleep like Elijah talked to Dale. You know, Mount Cardinal, maybe you've gone to sleep, maybe you've gone to the restroom. Maybe that's why I thought answering you. But we have rest because we know God not only sees what's going on in our hardship, but he bought it for our good. And that gets us rest. And I was hoping to get through yesterday without effects of the COVID shot. Some people do the angel in and then got through with nothing. Other people have gotten through with nothing. But I, you know, it's like full flu. But I was at rest. Okay. So God wanted for me on that day yesterday. And so that that happened. But that gets us rest knowing that Jesus is in thrown king looking over us, watching over us, protecting and defending us as our king like David did, like Solomon did. But additionally, number two, at the end of Jesus' time on earth, Jesus defeated our enemies, death and Satan in his resurrection. This has become a new favorite of mine. I don't have favorite verses, but I just saw this into the pop out at me this week. Second Timothy once and here's what Paul writes. Paul says to Timothy points out that Jesus in his resurrection clearly defeated death. This is Christ Jesus has destroyed death. Like right. Christ Jesus has destroyed death and has brought life and immortality to light through the gospel. So Jesus was this, this David, the feeding death, the feeding Satan who held the keys to death, Hebrews two. Well, so Jesus earns us rest as we think about our deaths in front of us and we'll all die unless Jesus comes. But even think about Jesus coming back. We have rest about this. It's okay to die. I'm okay because Jesus is my king. I don't have to fear Satan accusing me for the sins I committed. I don't have to fear death itself. Death means greater rest than I have experienced here on the earth. So Christ Jesus has destroyed death. Hebrews 2.14, the writer of Hebrews makes his point. Since we, the children of flesh and blood, Jesus too, shared in our humanity so that by his death, he might destroy him who holds the power of death. That is the devil. So we have in scripture that Jesus destroyed death in his resurrection and that he destroyed him who holds the power of death. That is the devil in his resurrection as well. And because Jesus defeated your enemies, here's your last blank fear in this section. Because Jesus defeated your enemies, you will have no enemy, no enemy at the end of your life, and no enemy at Christ's return when final judgment happens, keeping you from the rest to be had in heaven. People fear death. It's perhaps the greatest fear people have. Because they know God exists from and gone. They know judgment is coming from and gone. And so they're nervous about it. But we don't have to fear this because we don't have, are those enemies, death and Satan are defeated for us. There's nothing blocking us from entering the rest that we will receive at Jesus return and at our death. So our conclusion are some of this. Because Jesus defeated your enemies, Satan and death. Because Jesus defeated your enemies, Satan and death in his death and resurrection. And because his kingship was established in heaven and he's raining there now, you have rest in your soul. We have rest in your soul now and we'll have rest for all eternity. Our Godfather, we are grateful that you have given us rest through our Davidic King, our son of David, Jesus. We're grateful that he is with you now and that he's raining in heaven above as our king protecting and defending us in the good things and in the difficult things. And that he has defeated our enemies of death and Satan so that we have nothing to fear as we approach death and as we approach final judgment to God. Thank you for fulfilling your promise to David to put one of his sons on the throne forever over your people. We indeed embrace him as our king. We pray this Father in Jesus name. Amen. We now come to celebrate what Jesus did for us. As we talked about this morning, David's last deeds before he died. Jesus' death itself was a great deed and then his riding from the dead for us that we would have rest. And so we bring that to remembrance as we celebrate one of these two sacraments that Christ gave to his church this sacrament of the Lord's Supper. I'll read to you from the book of 1 Corinthians chapter 11 that Paul wrote to us about the Lord's Supper. Paul wrote this, for I received from the Lord what I also passed on to you. The Lord Jesus on the night he was betrayed took bread and we need given thanks he broke it and said this is my body which is for you. Do this in remembrance of me in the same way after supper he took the cup saying this cup is the new covenant in my blood. Do this whenever you drink it in remembrance of me. For whenever you eat this bread and drink this cup you proclaim the Lord's death until he comes. Paul continues on and says this, therefore whoever eats the bread or drinks the cup of the Lord in an unworthy manner will be guilty of singing against the body and blood of the Lord. A man ought to examine himself before he eats the bread and drinks the cup for anyone who eats and drinks without recognizing the body of the Lord eats and drinks judgment on himself. Jesus declares that the bread is his body and that the cup the wine has served to his disciples was his blood, the blood of the new covenant. And so we eat and drink this and know that this is the body and blood of Christ not in a physical way for us. It still remains great juice and bread for us but spiritually this is the body and blood of Christ given for us. And we unite with Jesus our King in this great way in this special way and remind ourselves that we are united to him and that through his death represented here that we do become partakers of justification, adoption and sanctification. And we are set apart people that we are given all the rest that declared for us in the scriptures for all who are believers in Jesus. So if you're a believer in Jesus this morning, a member of this church or a member of another church who has been admitted to the Lord's Supper through giving your own testimony of your belief in Jesus is your only hope for eternal life. We the session here the elders invite you to come and come forward and to take the bread and the cup. If you haven't come before our session if you're a child in the church here and haven't done that yet, please refrain or if you're here visiting and just looking at what Jesus is about and who he is, we'd ask you to refrain to if you don't have your hope set on Jesus for your eternal life. Paul declares in what we read that someone can bring condemnation upon themselves for coming to the Lord's table without faith in the Lord's body and blood and what that did for his people. Having said these things, what's next?