He will be King

Preparing for yesterday's sermon at CCC on Daniel 2, I was struck by how important it is that we talk in the future tense, especially when we're talking about God's reign over the earth.

In chapter 1 of Daniel, the author has established that God is certainly still King, despite the catastrophic events of the exile.  It was Yahweh who gave Jehoiakim into the hand of Nebuchadnezzar, and it was also Yahweh who enabled Daniel and his friends to flourish without touching the king's food, and Yahweh who gave these young men wisdom and skill.  The God of Israel is King in Babylon, King in spite of Nebuchadnezzar in all his pomp and strength, and perhaps most strikingly King in spite of his people's sin and fall.

So we can and should say: our God reigns!  He is King, in the midst of the muddle and mess and confusion of history.  He is King over the nations.  Remove the surface froth, the churning of human endeavour and wickedness, and underneath is the deep, clear water of God's sovereignty.  This is a comfort, and can surely be applied not only to the affairs of nations but also to the turmoil of our personal lives.  In spite of it all, God reigns.

But Daniel 2 says something a bit different.  In Nebuchadnezzar's dream, we certainly see the froth and the churn: one kingdom follows another, splendour comes and goes, strength and unity are mingled with weakness and division.  Nothing human lasts, and what, in the end does it all mean?  And of course the fact that God can reveal to Nebuchadnezzar, through his dream and through Daniel's interpretation, that this is the future state of his kingdom shows once again that God reigns.  But there is more.

In the dream, a rock - something fairly unspectacular to look at, compared to the glories of the statue representing the human kingdoms of the earth - appears.  It was not cut out by human hands; in other words, the origins of this rock are divine.  And it is flung at the statue, utterly destroying it, pulverising it.  The rock itself becomes a mountain, growing until it fills the whole earth.  Because God will be King.  He is not merely King-in-the-background, the undercover Sovereign, in control despite it all.  He is the King-who-is-coming, the King who will reign over all the earth, the King who will be acknowledged by every tongue and every heart.

So we must say: our God will reign!  Though the visible beginning of his Kingdom is just a little rock - the stone rejected by men, but in the sight of God chosen and precious - it will fill the earth.  And this matters.  We are not saying to the world, or to our own troubled hearts, merely that God is in control of all the mess and evil that we see (and commit!); we are also saying that he will end it, and will himself be all in all through his Christ whom he has installed on his holy hill.  It is not just that God's sovereignty limits evil; God in his coming sovereignty will overcome evil.

He will be King.