Longing for Home

Dannah Gresh: “In times of unrest,” Mary Kassian says, “we need to find our safety in the Lord.”

Mary Kassian: Take refuge. Take shelter. Take refuge in Him. “Blessed are all who take refuge in him.” 

Really, that’s the only way to find peace and joy and strength and resolve in uncertain and tumultuous times, political or personal.

Take refuge in Christ and cling to His promises because the coronation of Jesus Christ changes everything. 

Dannah: This is the Revive Our Hearts podcast with Nancy DeMoss Wolgemuth, author of Heaven Rules, for Friday, November 1, 2024. I’m Dannah Gresh.

Nancy DeMoss Wolgemuth: In case you haven't heard (and I'm sure you have!), there's a national election coming up on Tuesday here in this country, and with all the political posturing and rhetoric and noise going on, it can be easy to become distressed or even experience a sense of despair. 

The message Mary Kassian shared a couple years ago at a True Woman conference is meant to bring it all into perspective. The government of her home country, Canada, provided some illustrations of ways she had slipped into concern and, really consternation, at choices her govenment was making. 

Yesterday we heard part one of her message. It’s called “Heaven Rules over Earthly Kingdoms.” I can't remember a time where we've more need that reminder. Mary took us to the second psalm. She said there are four truths represented in the four stanzas we find in this psalm. Truth #1 was that “politics magnifies the underlying spiritual battle.” Now let's continue that message as we listen to Mary Kassian.

Mary: The second stanza begins in verse 4:

He who sits in the heavens laughs;
   the Lord holds them in derision.
Then he will speak to them in his wrath,
   and terrify them in his fury, saying,
“As for me, I have set my King
   on Zion, my holy hill.” (vv. 4–6)

And here’s the second truth: No one has an inherent right to rule.

God laughs in virtual disbelief that rulers who think they have an inherent right to rule, or who set themselves up as “king of the castle, kiss my feet.” It’s audacious. Ridiculous. Laughable.

God says, “I am the one who oversees kings and kingdoms. Who are you, oh puny mortal, to think that you possess any kind of power and authority.”

That doesn’t mean that there isn’t a cosmic spiritual struggle going on. At the temptation of Christ, the devil took Him up and showed Him all the kingdoms of the world in a moment of time and said to Him, “To You I will give all this authority and their glory, for it has been delivered to me, and I give it to whom I will. If then You will worship me, Jesus, all this will be Yours.” (see Matt. 4:9)

Some of what Satan said was true. Satan does have authority over kingdoms, and he does give them to who he wills, and does give them to those who are loyal to him. However, as for the devil’s normal modus operandi, it’s only a partial truth which actually amounts to a sinister lie.

Satan does grant authority to rulers, but the truth is: God is sovereign over how much authority Satan has and whom Satan grants authority to. The devil admitted as much when he used the passive voice saying, “To You I will give all this authority for it has been delivered to me.”

Which, of course, begs the question: “Who delivered it to you, Satan? Who sets the boundaries of your power? Who is boss, even though you rebel against His rule and slink around, killing and stealing and destroying?

When Pilot asked Jesus, “Do you not know that I have authority to release You and authority to crucify You?” 

Jesus said, “Ha! You would have no authority at all unless it had been given to you from above.”

All authority is delegated by Father God. There is no authority except from God, we’re told in Romans chapter 13. No one has inherent right to rule:

• not governments
• not politicians
• not judges
• not supervisors
• not employers
• not pastors
• not teachers
• not husbands
• not parents

God entrusts us as stewards of His authority. The authority ultimately does not belong to the human. It belongs to God. Governance is not a right. It is a God-given responsibility, and it’s ridiculous to think otherwise, laughable even.

 

When they were in their early thirties, three of the four royals found themselves in hot water, or maybe I should say, hot fire, when some snitches ratted them out to King Nebuchadnezzar for not bowing down at the dedication of the twenty-story high gold image he had built of himself. And magnanimously, Nebuchadnezzar gives them a second chance.

He says, “If you fall down and worship the image that I have made of myself, well and good. But if you do not worship, you shall immediately be cast into a burning fiery furnace. And who is the God who will deliver you out of my hands?” (Dan. 3:15)

Do you know how the three royals responded? They answered and said to the king,

“Oh, Nebuchadnezzar, we have no need to answer you in this matter. If this be so, our God whom we serve is able to deliver us from the burning fiery furnace, and he will deliver us out of your hand, oh king. But if not, be it known to you, oh king, that we will not serve your gods or worship the golden image that you have set up.” (Dan. 3:16–18)

Essentially, they have the same sort of response to Nebuchadnezzar’s Bobby-Big-Wheel bluster that we see in second stanza of Psalm 2. They scoffed at him in derision.

“We have no need to answer you in this matter. You tore us away from our homes, our loved ones, our community, our culture. You used our talents for your selfish gain. You destroyed our future and our dreams of a family. You destroyed our city and tore down our temple. And with the gold you pilfered, you built an image of yourself and you expect us to bow down and worship it? You’ve taken everything from us that a ruler can take. Everything. But you cannot take the place of our God. (applause) The audacity! Who do you think you are? God can rescue us, and even if He chooses not to, He is still God, and you are not God.”

You know who made an appearance in the fiery furnace to put an exclamation on that claim? The King of kings!

As we heard last night, down the road, the Lord afflicted Nebuchadnezzar with a humiliating mental illness until he finally acknowledged that God, the Most High, rules the kingdom of man and gives it to whom He will. He is the God who rules over kings. He is the God who rules over history.

No one has an inherent right to rule. Anyone who goes on a power trip thinking that authority is an inherent right rather than a God-given responsibility is laughably misguided.

Truth number three: God’s Son is King over all.

The third stanza starts in verse 7:

I will tell of the decree:
The LORD said to me, “You are my Son;
   today I have begotten you.
Ask of me, and I will make the nations your heritage,
   and the ends of the earth your possession.
You shall break them with a rod of iron
   and dash them in pieces like a potter's vessel. (vv. 7–9)

Now, theologians say that the words in this stanza were formally declared by the new Davidic king after he was anointed during the coronation ceremony.

During the Jewish coronation ceremony, the incoming monarch was given a decree as part of the ceremony. He’s given a legal document that validated his new status, like a wedding certificate, or a marriage certificate at a wedding.

The document that the king was given cited God’s new covenant . . . God’s covenant commitment, the dynasty of David, as well as the newly coronated king’s commitment to God. At the heart of this covenant agreement was the concept of sonship. The human partner in the covenant, the newly crowned king, was certified as son of the covenant, God who was his father. And the pronouncement, “You are my son,” marked a renewal of the family relationship between God and David’s descendants each time a new king was crowned.

“Today I have begotten you,” is metaphorical language that implies a new birth takes place during the coronation. During the ceremony, the incoming monarch was spiritually begotten as the firstborn son of the nation. By God’s decree, he became the representative head of all of the siblings in the family. This appointment placed on his shoulders the responsibility to serve as their example, to look out for their well-being, and to help them obey the directives of their heavenly Father.

Most Judean kings failed miserably at fulfilling their responsibility of firstborn son. Truth is: no human could really fulfill that role. But Psalm 2 and the book of Daniel prophetically point to a time of the Messiah, when a perfect firstborn son would begin to reign over an everlasting spiritual kingdom, a time when God the Father would establish a new covenant in which Jesus Christ, God’s Son, would be begotten, coronated as King over all.

And according to Hebrews 5:5, Christ did not exalt Himself to this position. God the Father appointed Him by the decree. God actually spoke the words of the coronation psalm over Jesus. He said, “You are My Son,” said God the Father to the King of the new covenant. “Today I have begotten You.”

He seated Christ on the throne, far above all rule and authority and power and dominion, above every name that is named, not only in this age, but also in the one to come.

Throughout history people have stood up in respect whenever a sovereign entered the room, that’s tradition, or whenever a sovereign rose from sitting to standing. It was a way to symbolically affirm the monarch’s higher position.

It’s said that King George II was present at the first performance of the oratorio, Handel’s Messiah,” in London in the mid-1700s. And when the choir began to sing the Hallelujah Chorus: King of kings. Lord of lords. Hallelujah. Hallelujah. King of kings. He shall reign forever and ever.

You know what happened? King George jumped to his feet. He stood to respect the King of kings who is King even over him. And when King George stood, everyone stood. And the tradition of standing during the performance of the “Hallelujah Chorus” continues to this day.

And that brings us to the final truth. Truth number four: We owe our highest allegiance to the Highest King.

Verse 10:

Now therefore, O kings, be wise;
   be warned, O rulers of the earth.
Serve the LORD with fear,
   and rejoice with trembling.
Kiss the Son,
   lest he be angry, and you perish in the way,
   for his wrath is quickly kindled.
Blessed are all who take refuge in him.” (vv. 10–12)

All you people in positions of authority: be warned. Everyone owes their highest allegiance to the Highest King. Rulers will answer to God for how they exercised their God-given authority. God gets angry with anyone who exercises authority in an unjust, unkind, self-serving, oppressive manner.

A pastor who lords it over his congregation, a husband who abuses his wife, a politician who governs with two sets of rules. Be warned: this makes God’s blood boil. His wrath is quickly kindled. And when it comes to the misuse of authority, sooner or later, He will bring you down.

Rulers will answer to God for how they exercise authority, and all of us will answer to Him for how we respond to authority.

And there’s a tension that exists here. We have an obligation before God to be respectful and amenable towards human authority. But our highest loyalty is to the Highest King.

So when earthly rulers contradict God, if the earthly rules say, “No,” when God says, “Yes,” or “Yes,” when God says, “No,” what are we to do?

It’s not an easy answer. And we wrestle with this. And I think the four Jewish royals often wrestled with the question.

And the book of Daniel recants three occasions when they pushed back. As teenagers, they told the chief eunuch they didn’t want to eat what the king was putting on their plates.

In their thirties, Daniel’s three friends refused to bow to the golden image. That’s when the king threw a fit and threw them into the fiery furnace.

In his early eighties, it was Daniel’s turn. He got tossed into the lions’ den when King Darius made it illegal to pray.

And those are probably just the most notable occasions. I dare to say that there were dozens of times when the exiles had to wrestle with the question of whether they were going to obey the reigning king or the King of kings. They served their earthly rulers with integrity to the best of their ability.

But when push came to shove, they knew that they owed their highest allegiance to the King of kings. It was their loyalty to the King of kings that gave them the courage to stand against Nebuchadnezzar’s edict when everyone else took a knee and bowed. And they did so knowing that doing so might cost them their lives.

And that’s the kind of commitment that Christ’s kingship demands of us.

I think of John Bunyan, a seventeenth century Puritan preacher. The government told him it was illegal for him to preach because he hadn’t been authorized by the Church of England to do so. He didn’t have the right papers.

And when he continued to preach, they threw him in jail. He could have freed himself at any time if he would have promised not to publicly share the gospel, but he refused. He told authorities that he would rather stay imprisoned until moss grew on his eyebrows than violate the commitment to share Christ.

He stayed in jail for twelve years until the law he had broken was finally repealed. To him, Christ was worth it. His loyalty was to the highest King.

And I ask myself, "Is mine?"

When pressed, will I have the courage and conviction to stand? Is Christ truly my King? Is my heart loyal to Him above all? Is yours?

I’m so grateful for the Corrie ten Booms and the Dietrich Bonhoeffers, the Amy Carmichaels, and the William Wilberforces.

I am grateful for the great cloud of witnesses cited in Hebrews chapter 11, who, through faith, conquered kingdoms, enforced justice, obtained promises, stopped the mouths of lions, quenched the power of the fire, escaped the edge of the sword, were made strong out of weakness, became mighty in war, put foreign armies to fight, and received their dead back to life.

But truth be told, I am even more grateful for those in the list who, through faith, were tortured, refused to accept release, those who were mocked and flogged and chained and imprisoned. Those who were martyred and stoned and sawn in two, killed with the sword. Those whose allegiance to Jesus led to financial ruin and social blackballing. Those who were afflicted, mistreated, silenced and persecuted. Those who were forced to flee and wander about with no place to call home, of whom Scripture says, “The world is not worthy.”

The ones who took a stand, knowing that they might pay the consequences are my heroes because we will need that kind of strength and resolve when the time comes, and I sense it is near.

During the past couple of years, I have often had to counsel my soul to do what the last phrase of Psalm chapter 2, advises: Take refuge. Take shelter. Take refuge in Him. “Blessed are all who take refuge in him” (v. 12).

Really, that’s the only way to find peace and joy and strength and resolve in uncertain and tumultuous times, political or personal.

This world throws all kinds of evil and ugly things our way, and things might get a whole lot worse. But I hope that you will take comfort and find strength and anchor yourself in the truth of Psalm chapter 2.

I want to encourage you, dear sisters, in this turbulent time to stand firm. Take refuge in Christ and cling to His promises because the coronation of Jesus Christ changes everything. (applause) Christ has been coronated as King. I want you to declare that with me: Christ has been coronated as King.

You can thrive in times of political turmoil because, say it with me: Christ has been coronated as King.

You need not fear any pandemic. Why? Because Christ has been coronated as King.

You can laugh at oppressive rules and regulations. Why? Because Christ has been coronated as King.

You don’t need to worry about rising gas prices or panic when you lose your job. Christ has been coronated as King.

You can face power shortages and empty grocery store shelves because Christ has been coronated as King.

You can remain calm when troubles come because Christ has been coronated as King.

You can bravely stand when others are bowing because Christ has been coronated as King.

You can be delivered from the powers of darkness that have haunted you because Christ is coronated as King.

You can walk free of the chains that bind you because Christ has been coronated as King.

You can have hope in the most hopeless situation. Why? Because Christ has been coronated as King.

You can find comfort when your heart is broken. You need not lie awake with worry.

You can face every tomorrow with courage and confidence. Why? Because Christ has been coronated as King.

Is He your King? Because Christ is the King, and He gets the last move. And we know how the story will end.

One day He will ride forth on a white horse, brandishing a massive sword. He’ll come in fury to take down Satan and evil regimes and evil rules and every enemy of the cross, to put an end to war and to bloodshed, poverty, famine, sickness, and death, violence, rape, abuse, and oppression. He will take them all down.

He will wipe every tear from our eyes, and He will reign on His heavenly throne in the Holy City where we will dwell with Him forever.

Don’t you long for it? Doesn’t all the political craziness and sin and ugliness of the world make you long for the King and for His kingdom?

 

Whenever I lament with my dad about what the government is doing, he reminds me to take comfort in the fact that regardless of what happens on the political landscape, I can be confident that God rules the course of history.

My dad often says these words, and I can’t even count the number of times he has exhorted me. “Mary, this is not our home.”

My dad will be going home soon. He’s going to make his final journey, where? Across the great sea to Königsberg, the King’s mountain, the place that will satisfy his longing in a way that his beloved childhood home never could.

I want to close with a poem he wrote in the epilogue of his memoirs. I’ll read you the English version, which doesn’t quite capture the beauty and depth of the German, but I think you’ll catch the emotion.

The poem is called, “Longing for Home.”

It hits me suddenly at night,
Confronting me with all its might.
My wildest dreams could not foresee
The agony it brings to me, 
This Longing.

Fog upon the waters hover
Clouds descend and reason cover.
Frightful. Dark. With such control
Falling heavy on my soul,
This Longing.

Alas, that burg no more exists,
Fell prey to foreign soldiers’ fist.
But shadows draw me ever more
To reminisce on the distant shore,
This Longing.

Stronger grows its inky hold
Wraps me helpless in its fold.
Lurid down the slipp'ry slope
Mercilessly beyond all hope,
This Longing.

Slowly doth the sun arise
Rays of peace for troubled eyes.
For God in His abundant grace
Whispers of a better place.
Invulnerable to time and space
It calls us home,
This Longing.

("Longing for Home" by Ulrich Karl Thomas)

Nancy: And the longing of Ulrich Karl Thomas is now, gloriously, fulfilled. Earlier this year, he did go home to the King’s mountain. That’s Mary Kassian from True Woman '22, reading a poem by her father. 

She’s also been helping us remember that Heaven rules over all earthly kingdoms. That truth is a massive comfort for us to hold onto in times of governmental uncertainty and political upheaval. It’s something we need to rest in as we vote and trust the Lord for the outcome—maybe not the outcome we would all choose, but the outcome God knows is according to His purposes and His working in this world. Heaven rules! God really is in control. 

Dannah: And Nancy, the fact that Heaven rules is something you expand on in your book by that same title, Heaven Rules.

Nancy: It is. That phrase is really another way of talking about God’s sovereignty over everything in heaven and on earth. The poet and hymn writer Margaret Clarkson said it this way: “The sovereignty of God is the one impregnable rock to which the suffering human heart must cling.”

That’s good. The sovereignty of God is the one unshakable rocks our suffering hearts must always cling. So if your heart is suffering today, cling to the fact that the King is still on His throne, and no problem you’re facing, no election, no human government is going to shake Him. 

Dannah: Amen! I’d like to let our listeners know how they can receive a copy of Heaven Rules. This week Nancy’s book is our thank-you gift to you for your donation of any amount to Revive Our Hearts. All you have to do is request it when you give at ReviveOurHearts.com, or ask about Heaven Rules when you call us at 1-800-569-5959. I personally want to say,
Thank you so much for your support!"

Nancy: You know, the Bible exhorts us to pray for those in authority over us. Next week on Revive Our Hearts, we’re going to do that. We’ll pray for our nation. We’ll confess our sins. We’ll cry out to God for His mercy, and we’ll ask Him, plead with Him to revive His people in such a way that it transforms our country and world.

We’ve invited various leaders to lead us in a time of prayer for the United States in this season. I hope you’ll be a part, praying along with us. And you don’t have to wait until Monday to start praying. Take some time today and this weekend to ask God for His grace, His mercy to be poured out on you, your family, your community, and your nation.

Dannah: In fact, Nancy, we’re going to close today in prayer for our nation. Here’s Karen Loritts to lead us.

Karen Loritts: Several verses from Psalm 29:

Ascribe to the LORD, O heavenly beings,
   ascribe to the LORD glory and strength.
Ascribe to the LORD the glory due his name;
   worship the LORD in the splendor of holiness.

The voice of the LORD is over the waters;
   the God of glory thunders,
   the LORD, over many waters.
The voice of the LORD is powerful;
   the voice of the LORD is full of majesty. . . .

The LORD sits enthroned over the flood;
   the LORD sits enthroned as king forever.
May the LORD give strength to his people!
   May the LORD bless his people with peace! (vv. 1–4, 10–11)

Father, as we traverse these coming waters, may Your people listen to Your voice and look clearly to You alone. May we seek strength to obey and surrender our will to Your perfect will.

Father, may we place Your wisdom and direction above all else. May we confess and repent from anything that occupies our hearts, thoughts, and actions. May we honor You with clean hands and pure hearts before a watching world.

Father, our request is to hear Your powerful voice, embrace Your strength from You, and bask in the peace that You so freely provide. We humbly submit to You, our enthroned King. Amen.

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