The Lord’s Reign (Psalm 93)

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Good morning, church. You can go ahead, grab your Bibles, open up to Psalm 93 Psalm 93 as you are flipping there, perhaps at some point in your life you have asked the question, undoubtedly in a moment of exasperation, Who is in charge here? That is more accusation than question. When it comes out, of course, it’s uttered when things aren’t going as they should, and there’s this sense that well, somebody’s responsible for this mess, and I would like to talk to them, you’re gonna make your complaint, you know. So you, you’re asked for the supervisor, they come, and then they’re supposed to set it right. You get your apps for free, or something like that. Like, I want to know it’s taken care of. Now, we could be forgiven, I think, if we have occasionally felt like asking this of the world at large, is anyone in charge? Is anyone responsible for what’s going on? When I read that the invasion of Ukraine, for example, Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, is now been going on longer than World War One. We got war in Iran, Ethiopia, elsewhere, from Ebola to the new world screw worm, from inflation to immigration unrest in Northern Ireland. There’s a lot going on, and that’s just the news headlines, of course. That’s not anything to do with your life personally. What could be happening there? Maybe you just went through their third reorg in as many years, or you got a kid struggling academically, mentally, relationally, spiritually, or a loved one dementing, deteriorating in other ways. We are often apt to wonder if anyone’s in charge in the midst of so much instability and insecurity, and it breeds anxiety in us, and we have been called the anxious generation, breeds anxiety and anger as well. This world so often proves chaotic, dangerous, overwhelming, but someone is in charge. That’s the good news. That’s the good news of Psalm 93 We are beginning a new series today, as has been mentioned. We’re going to look at a set of eight psalms that are linked together by a common theme, the kingship of God. The Lord reigns, He reigns above all pretenders to His throne, above all powers and potentates and princes above, as our series has it, all would be gods, and the opening psalm of this little section of the psalter declares it from the start, declares it, and then describes it, and in the process of describing his reign answers our question, just who is in charge brings peace in the midst of very real storms. We’re gonna see three truths about God’s rule and reign as we go through the psalm together. So let’s start with verses one and two, Psalm 93 verses one and two, as we look at God’s eternal reign, His eternal reign, Psalm 93 one and two. The Lord reigns. He is robed in majesty. The Lord is robed in majesty and armed with strength. Indeed, the world is established firm and secure. Your throne was established long ago. You are from all eternity. So our psalm opens with the words The Lord reigns. This really is the headline for all of Psalms 93 to 100 Like, headline is about right. You can almost picture the paper boy on the street corner going extra, extra, you know, read all about it. The headline is meant to catch your attention, especially because it’s not felt reality. That’s what a headline is meant to do, though. Right? Grab your attention, go. I want to read the rest of the article, and in this case, it’s because how can this be true? And it goes on to explain it, as we’ll see now. This phrase, the Lord reigns, is repeated verbatim in Psalm 9697 99 and we’re going to see it a bunch, and the idea is present in all of them. God is king, and it reads almost like a proclamation. It needs exclamation points after it. The Lord reigns. We see this elsewhere, this sense of announcing the news of God’s. In Isaiah 52 verse seven, the prophet says, “How beautiful on the mountains are the feet of those who bring good news, who proclaim peace, who bring good tidings, who proclaim salvation. You’re going, “Wow, this sounds awesome. What is our salvation? What’s the good news that’s going to give me peace in this moment? And it’s this who say to Zion, your God reigns.
That’s the good news. Your God reigns. God is on the throne always. Who’s in charge here? The Lord is, without question. It is a fixed state of reality. It has always been true, and it always will be true. There is not one maverick molecule in all of God’s universe. He is never surprised by what is happening, even though we so often are, and whether it was the pandemic that caught us all off guard worldwide or the detour that you weren’t expecting to take when you tried to go down West Avenue this past week, like he’s not surprised by any of it. He knows what’s happening where you are, and he’s using them for his good purposes. And what sort of king is he? Well, Psalmist tells us that he is robed in majesty. Now, clothing is important. It’s important in scripture, but it’s important in our lives as well, because clothing tells us who a person is, what he or she does, like a uniform, almost. You pull up in front of a fancy restaurant, or whatnot, you hand the keys of your car to the guy in the red jacket, not just as somebody standing there, that would be a bad idea, right? They say you kind of know, okay, he’s the valet that helps. Or we had a group of women who were down in Indianapolis these past few days for the Gospel Coalition Women’s Conference, and they always have lots of people at these conferences very helpfully fitted out in T-shirts that say, like, I know what I’m doing, you come and ask me a question, if you got a question, so you know. Okay, that’s the person I talked to. So clothing tells us who a person is, and God is clothed in royal robes, because He is king and intends to reign as king. He’s not a weak king, either. He’s not an impotent king, he’s not a king in exile. No, he is a king on the throne who is armed with strength, girded with strength, like he is ready for action. He has the power that he needs to rule, and so when God shows up on the scene, he is dressed as the commander in chief of the universe. You might picture that scene just moments before Israel enters the promised land, right before Jericho’s walls fall down, all of that, and Joshua has a vision of the angel of the Lord, like God embodied the commander of the Lord’s army, like that’s what he looked, he got a sword in his hand, that’s how God looks when He comes to act as a result. Then the world, and by world, here we’re not talking about the landmarks, it’s not the stones and the plants and things like we’re talking about the people. The world’s population is established, it is firm and secure. In other words, it can’t be moved. There’s a certain solidity to human affairs, which is why nothing seems to change much under the sun. No one can upset the order, but notice that the world is established because God’s throne was established from eternity past, like he set up his throne from before the beginning. He is eternally the king. That’s significant. There’s an implicit conclusion to be drawn here. The stability of the Lord’s throne, the fact that he is always the one reigning, that’s what provides stability to the world. You can see it in the passive tense that’s used. The world is established, like someone else is establishing it. It can’t establish itself. The Lord holds it up and holds it in place. You ever drive along, you know, rocky cliffs or something like that, and sometimes they’ve got those wire cages over the rocky cliffs, so you don’t get fallen rocks hitting your car or something like that. That’s like those cages are holding the chaos in place. If you’re to pull them off, the whole thing would fall to pieces. That’s the Lord with this world, He’s holding the chaos in place, so it doesn’t fall to pieces. We read in Hebrews one that the king sustains all things by his powerful word, and if he were to stop sustaining them, it would be absolute chaos. So his eternal reign brings stability, his eternal. Rang brings stability. He keeps the chaos at bay. All that happens happens according to his will and for his good purposes.
Except that I already said that it doesn’t feel that way most of the time. So, what do we do about that? We’ll get to the chaos in a moment, I promise you. But what do we do about that? I think there’s an application point here. It’s just that we follow the psalmist, do what the psalmist did here. What I mean by that is this: when trouble comes, start with theology, not the trouble, start with theology, not trouble, like the psalmist takes care to make sure that he’s going to interpret his circumstances in light of God’s unchanging character, instead of backwards, because so often we are tempted to interpret God in light of our fluctuating circumstances, but no, God is who He always is, and He’s always reigning. So, the psalmist, again, the psalmist is going to talk about chaos in the next section, but He reorients His heart first. It’s like He puts His feet down on solid foundational truth, the Lord really does reign, that is true, regardless of my or your feelings or impressions, and he has proven it time and time again. He has proven it supremely, of course, in the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead, because that is the triumph of good, of order, of stability over all the powers of darkness and chaos, so like the psalmist, we need to preach this truth to ourselves regularly, like maybe you’re that one in the reorg, you’re out of a job right in that moment when you get hit with unexpected medical bills, guess what, even then he is still King John Calvin, the Swiss reformer, back in the 16th century, had this to say about this psalm, and this idea, he says, our not investing God with the power which belongs to him, as we ought to do, and thus despoiling him of his authority is the source of that fear and trembling, which we very often experience. The whole reason we’re all anxious all the time is because we forget who God is. We strip him the authority that is his, and so Calvin goes on to say, I love this: were we well persuaded of his invincible power that would be to us an invincible support against all the assaults of temptation, the temptation to doubt, to anxiety. That’s it exactly. We fear and tremble. Understandably, there are all sorts of things in the world that should make us afraid and trembling, but we fear and tremble, because we doubt his reign, and when we remember, it brings us stability, and see him there on his throne, robed in majesty, girded with strength, strong to save and breathe rest the same God who toppled Jericho’s walls, who plucked Daniel out of the lion’s den, who created and sustains all things by his powerful word, who cast sickness and darkness out with a word, with a touch, when he walked among us, sometimes even with the faintest feel of the fringe of his robe, like that God, that same God has got you. His eternal reign brings stability. Second, then let’s talk about His mighty ring, verses three and four. The seas have lifted up, Lord, the seas have lifted up their voice, the seas have lifted up their pounding waves, mightier than the thunder of the great waters, mightier than the breakers of the sea. The Lord on high is mighty. I love this, because it’s the reminder that we need so often that the Bible won’t lie to you. The Bible is not trying to fool you, it doesn’t sugarcoat or whitewash the harsh reality of life in a world in rebellion against God’s good and rightful rule, and so it tells us this there in verse three, in this it’s staircase parallelism, if you want the cool name for it, right? Staircase, like we’re going up in intensity, the seas have lifted up, they’ve lifted up their voice, they’ve lifted up their pounding waves. We use this same idea, we’re trying to dramatically capture the intensifying threat. So, maybe you’ve walked into a meeting before, and somebody said that we have a problem, a big problem, a problem. That threatens to derail the whole project, that’s that same staircase parallelism, that’s what we’re talking about here, and the imagery helps us feel exactly the unrest that this causes.
Like, put yourself in the scene for a moment, maybe you experienced this even as a child. I know I did many times, because I loved playing in the waves, and so you’re there at the beach, you know, it’s summer vacation, you’re at the ocean or something, you got having fun playing in the ocean waves, but you know, the second day, third day, whatever, they’re a little bigger than they were the past couple days, and so that first one hits you and knocks you down, and it’s kind of fun, you know, but then before you can get up, the second one hits you, and so you’re stuck underwater, and by the time the third one hits, like you’re out of breath, and you’re so disoriented that it smacks your head into the sand, like that’s really different experience, you’re hoping somebody sees you, Mom or Dad, come and just put you down, so you can breathe again. That’s how life feels. It feels like no one’s in charge, because the hits just keep on coming. We’re waiting for Dad to pick us up, still can’t catch our breath now. These ocean currents, these pounding waves, literally, the word there is crushing. We’ll see it again in the next psalm, but these crushing waves, they’re a symbol of the world’s unrest. In Hebrew thought, the sea is like the gateway to the abyss. This is where chaos comes from. It’s such a powerful image to the Hebrews that they would even use it of invading nations, like if Assyria was coming, Isaiah 87 you can see this, Assyria is coming, it says the Euphrates is coming against you, like there’s a river coming at you, because water is so scary, it’s everything that overwhelms us. Even that word has it in it, right? Overwhelm. We’ve used it so often, figuratively, we forget the literal meaning, which means your head’s underwater at the time. Support me in the whelming flood. We sometimes sing, so that’s the chaos, that’s the unrest. How many of you have been sitting here wondering this whole time, how do we square verse three with verses one and two? It doesn’t make any sense at all. The Lord reigns, this world is established, it’s firm, it’s secure. You’re drowning. Well, which one is it? Revelation doesn’t match reality here. The answer to the question is in verse four. You see, we take the staircase up to peak freak out, but then we get a staircase down in the next verse to peace, because mightier than the thunder of the great waters, literally the voice of the waters, the same word “voice” that we saw in the previous verse. Mightier than the breakers crashing over you, the Lord on high is mighty, and this is the God who brought order out of chaos, the spirit of the Lord hovered above the primordial waters in creation. This is the God who split the Red Sea, so Israel could walk through on dry land. Oh, you’re worried about drowning? Don’t worry, I got that for you. We’ll just make walls out of water, no big deal. Who, a little bit later in the next generation stopped the Jordan River from flowing, so that again they could walk on dry land as they crossed into the Promised Land. This is the Lord who, when He walked among us, fell asleep in the middle of a storm. You know why Jesus fell asleep in the middle of the storm on the boat, because He was not confused about who’s on the throne. This storm doesn’t threaten me. I know who’s raining. He’s snoring. The disciples are freaking out. They got verse three going. They forgot verses one and two. They wake Jesus up, and what does Jesus say? Hush, be still, and all the storms still, so what’s true literally of the waters and all those stories I just told is true of every figurative flood and storm in your life as well. God is bigger, He is stronger, and He is more than enough. Even when we drown in the flood, which will happen one day, right? Something’s going to get us in the end. We know that we’re going to die, but even when we drown in the flood, He’s got us, because He already defeated the final storm we face, death and judgment. And so His mighty reign brings security, His. Mighty rain brings security.
You are secure in His mighty hands, no matter the crushing breakers. So, what do we do with that truth? How do we put it into practice? Cling to it like a life preserver when your ship sinks, will you let the knowledge of His mighty reign put your circumstances in perspective? And can I say that that’s corporate application for us, like this is what we do for each other as a church, and why community is so important, especially in the midst of storms. We often quote Ephesians four here as a church. It talks about the fact that we speak the truth in love to one another, and for some reason we’ve got it in our heads that when Paul says speak the truth in love, he means when you have to rebuke somebody, just try to be nice about it. That is not what that verse means. That is true, by the way. That’s just Galatians six. Okay, Ephesians four: speak the truth in love. What is the truth that we’re speaking, so that we’re built up in Christ? It’s Ephesians one to three. It’s the gospel of Christ Jesus. We are by nature deserving of wrath, but because of His great love for us, God made us alive with Christ, even when we were dead in transgressions. It is by grace that we have been saved. We speak that truth to each other, gospel truth. It’s the reminder that we need to keep our head above water. Again, firm feet firmly planted on the foundation of truth, illustration for those my age and older, you all see Robin Hood, Prince of Thieves, Kevin Costner, one, there’s that great scene when he first meets Little John, who’s a big dude, meets Little John, and they fight, you know, kind of over the river and whatnot, and eventually Little John falls in, and he is freaking out because he can’t swim, and he’s about to drown, and so Kevin Costner’s got him Robin Hood, and he’s like, “Do you yield, kind of thing? and he’s like, “Yes, yes, yes, just help me, and all that Robin Hood does is say, “Put your feet down, because he’s standing, he’s in three feet of water, he’s about to drown in three feet of water, he’s like, “Whoa, I’m fine. Like, that’s what we do when we speak the truth and love to one another. We say, put your feet down, put your feet down, and breathe. Get your head above water. You got a financial struggle going on right now. Guess what? Your God owns the cattle on 1000 hills. He’s got enough to provide for you, and better still, He set you in church. He set you in a community of people. Like, at one point, the disciples were worried about findings. What happens if we lose everything because we’re following you? And Jesus says, yeah, yeah, that’s that’s likely. You’re probably gonna happen, actually. But here’s the thing: you lose your house, you get 100 houses, not just in the life to come, but in this life. Why? What house? Your houses, your houses. You’re the 100 houses for the people in need in those moments, of course. God provides through his people. He provides. I mean, the God who gave us Jesus, how will we not also, along with Him, graciously give us all things? Romans 832 You facing physical struggle right now, sickness, maybe even a sickness that will end in death. The king said, I’m the resurrection and the life. That’s solid truth. Death is not the way life is supposed to be. It is hard when you lose someone you love, that is a wound you carry with you for the rest of your life. It’s real. It’s a real storm. But if I could quote somebody, it’s one short sleep, and then we wake eternally. If we are in Christ, and we see our loved ones again, is there a sin you can’t overcome? Is that your struggle? Well, God made Him who had no sin to be sin for us, so that in Him we might become the righteousness of God. We might become like Jesus, our Savior, conformed to His image. The one who saves us promises to sanctify us, to make us like Jesus. He’s faithful, and He will do it. He will sanctify you. That actually takes us to our third point.
Then, let’s talk about His holy reign, as long as we’re talking about sanctification. The last verse of Psalm 93 verse five: Your statutes, Lord, stand firm. Holiness adorns your house for endless days. At first glance, this doesn’t seem to fit the rest. To the psalm, it’s kind of a weird end to it, but a second glance will show us that it is the perfect punctuation mark to what has gone before. The word statutes here, laws, decrees, testimonies, all good translations, it’s a word that’s used throughout Psalm 119 which talks about the glory of God’s word, and so it’s what God says about himself, what he says about the world, what he says about us, that’s statutes, and then his statutes stand firm, literally are trustworthy, this really important word, anytime you talk about the faithfulness of God, it’s the same idea, the same root word that’s there, where to get our word amen from it. God is faithful to all that He says, faithfully keeps every promise He makes. So, what God is doing here in Psalm 93 verse five, is he’s vouching for the words of scripture. If I can misquote the FDIC, the Bible is backed by the full faith and credit of Almighty, eternal God, which is not bad, even better than being backed by the full credit of the US. But what does God’s law have to do with His sovereignty over creation? Well, the law shows us, tells us explicitly God’s character, His nature, and it’s His character, His nature that underlies and establishes the moral and physical order of creation. This is why God points to nature in Job. So, you haven’t read the book of Job. What happens? Job, he goes through some storms, about as intense a storm as you could possibly imagine, a series of them, and he’s got questions for God, who’s in charge here, is kind of his question, like this doesn’t make sense. I didn’t sin, my kids didn’t sin, they’re dead, I’m suffering. How come all these sinners are doing just fine? And the Lord answers him out of the whirlwind, we’re kind of expecting him to, you know, actually explain what happened, like Satan and I, we had this bet going, and he doesn’t, instead he just takes Job on a tour of creation, it’s like a nature documentary, why, and not only that, why does Job go awesome? Thank you. I got what I needed, because that tour of nature shows the moral order of the universe. It’s not perfect, because we’re in a broken world, of course, but there is order in creation, the same order that is in the universe as a whole. Christopher Asch, in his commentary on Psalms, says it like this: the stability of the world and the trustworthiness of the scriptures are two sides of the same coin, because the same faithful God stands behind both. The sun rises in the east each morning, spring follows winter inevitably. Why? Because God is who He always is. That’s why. That’s the only reason that it keeps happening. He orders the world. The whole reason science is possible is because God made the world. So, if that orders the world, though, that should order our lives too. That’s why the psalmist homes in God’s home, at the end there, like God’s house, the temple, of course, is what we’re talking about, because the temple is the place where God’s rule should be acknowledged like this is the place where we say yes, exactly, God is king. So we should see a world rightly ordered in the temple, not always, though. I mean, you know that you go to church, you know this isn’t always the case. We are in a broken world, and even God’s people are still infected with the virus of sin, and so we are being remade. We are not without sin yet. We are not glorified yet. In fact, if this psalm was written after the exile, which is most likely, then that means God’s house had already been knocked down, like Nebuchadnezzar took care of that, razed it to the ground. Temple was destroyed as punishment because the people in the temple, and going to the temple to worship, weren’t holy. And so it leaves us wanting more as we read this, even as we read this verse, he.
Here in its context, if we were like fifth century Jews or something, would leave us wanting more. It points us to the one who said, I’m greater than the temple, Jesus, who deals with that sin and who makes us holy. And, of course, through Jesus, it points us to the church, God’s people being conformed to God’s character bit by bit, because we are now the temple of God, First Corinthians 316 and 17. Don’t you know that you yourselves are God’s temple, that God’s spirit dwells in your midst. If anyone destroys God’s temple, God will destroy that person, for God’s temple is sacred, holy, and you together are that temple. His temple is a holy, which means holiness should adorn that temple. The holiness that should adorn his house should adorn those in his household. It should mark his people, and so his holy reign, his holy reign brings sanctity. His holy reign brings sanctity, changed lives, a transformed people living out their transformation in increasing measure every day. If we are God’s people, if we are the house of God, we must be a people committed to holiness. And this is why we gather. This is why you’re here now, so we all can sit under the authority of God’s word, because God’s word is the transforming agent, the power for our change. That’s why we gather in smaller groups, community groups, to talk about the sermons. We can say, okay, how should this be changing me personally, not just in general ways, or why we get together in journey groups to speak the truth in love to one another. We fight sin with the gospel. That’s why we have informal conversations as His people to rebuke, to encourage. It’s why we disciple, we invest in the next generation, or just in the people around us. We cannot pretend that He is our King if we’re not living in submission to His rule. So I ask you a question now that we often ask ourselves in our journey groups, is there any area of your life where you are a hearer of the word but not a doer of it, where you are not in submission to what you know His word says is true. If so, God addressed that, because a speaking God looks for and expects a listening people, and to listen in scripture is to obey. Jesus himself taught how important this is. Interestingly, he even used the image of a flood that’s coming otherwise. If you grew up in church, you’ve heard this parable before, of course, about a house and where exactly you should build it. He says this at the end of the parable in Matthew seven, but everyone who hears these words of mine and does not put them into practice is like a foolish man who built his house on sand. Problem with sand, of course, no solid foundation to it. The rain came down, the streams rose, and the winds blew and beat against that house, and it fell with a great crash. We don’t want that for ourselves, and so we’re going to build our houses, build our lives on the solid foundation of the truth of who God is. An eternal God brings stability, a mighty God brings security, a holy God brings sanctity that leads us to our big idea. Now, you got the big idea already, because I told you the big idea the whole series, but there’s a response that’s built into it, of course. The big idea, the Lord reigns, the Lord reigns. So take heart and take care. The Lord reigns. So take heart and take care. Take heart. Take courage in the knowledge that God reigns over the rains. He reigns over the storms. He also holds the reins. I could just keep going if you want, but I won’t. That’s fine. God reigns, and his character is more important than your circumstances, like the truth of who he is is more important than your experience. So take courage in that, take heart, but take care, take care to live in submission to King, to God, this good, glorious, great, and gracious, thank God, gracious, and you are here and in Christ, like if you have submitted yourself to the rule of God by turning from your sin and trusting in the person and work of Jesus Christ.
Scripture tells us you are a new creation in Christ. The old has gone, the new has come, and we’re a preview of what’s coming cosmically, because, like the new creation that you are, the new creation that God is bringing, the new heavens and the new earth of Revelation 21 and 22 it will be in line with God’s order, so we read in Revelation 21 we get the description of the new heavens and the new earth, and it says that basically there’s no more chaos, there’s no more sin, no more suffering, there’s no more sickness, there’s no more death, no more tears as a result, and on that last day, then we will sing with joy at the wedding supper of the lamb and his bride, the church. Verse that Erica already read it for us. What will we sing? What’s the song we will sing together? Hallelujah, for the Lord God Almighty reigns by the blood of the lamb. His kingdom comes in fullness at last, the kingdom that Jesus announced at the start of his ministry. Repent, for the kingdom of God is at hand. It’s the kingdom that Jesus proved when he stilled the storm, the throne of which kingdom Jesus ascended at the cross of Christ, crowned with the crown of thorns, but that’s his coronation. He’s robed, even in that moment they offer him mock worship, the Roman soldier, but this is his coronation ceremony. When he’s lifted up on the cross, he is lifted up on to the throne, and there he drowned in the ocean of God’s wrath, his righteous anger at our sin to still that storm forever for those who would put their trust in him. So, what’s happening in the meantime? First Corinthians 1524 and 26 Then the end will come when he hands over, when Jesus hands over the kingdom of God to the Father, after He has destroyed all dominion, authority, and power. For He must reign until He has put all His enemies under His feet. The last enemy to be destroyed is death. Jesus reigns. He is on the throne, even now there are parts of the world still in rebellion against Him, and he is putting down those rebellions one at a time. So, why wouldn’t we submit to a king like this, who loved us, who adopted us, who reigns with wisdom and goodness and power, and even in those moments where it feels like he’s not reigning, we have the reminder that he is waiting, he is tarrying, so that people have time still to repent and submit to his rule, so they can enter that kingdom eternally. We see the goodness of our Savior, I mean, even in the Declaration we read back in Isaiah, where we started here, right? How beautiful on the mountains are the feet of those who bring good news, and the good news that was proclaimed was, ‘Your God reigns. That’s Isaiah 52 seven. Few verses later, Isaiah 53 A lot of you know this. Here’s your king, who is reigning, surely he took up our pain and bore our suffering. We considered him punished by God, stricken by him, and afflicted, but he was pierced for our transgressions, and he was crushed for our iniquities, and the punishment that brought us peace was on him, and by his wounds we are healed, and because of that one day in the new heavens and the new earth, Revelation 21 verse one, the sea will be no more. That’s the good news. Now, that doesn’t mean there’s no sailing like days at the ocean, that’s not it at all. We’re talking about the chaos, we’re talking about the abyss. There’ll be no more pounding waves, no more rushing torrents, no more drowning floods. Take heart, He’s overcome the world. The Lord reigns. So take heart and take care. Let’s pray. Hallelujah! We praise you, Lord, because you, Lord God Almighty, reign.
You are on the throne, and we would have no one else on the throne, because we see who you are, who you always are, who you have been from eternity past, your wisdom, your goodness, your power, your holiness, your love. Lord, we pray, then that you would reign, that you would bring your coming kingdom at the proper time, and that in the meantime, Lord, that we would submit to your rule. May our love of our King be written on our lives as a declaration to those around us that you reign and that you are a good king, we pray this for your name’s sake, Amen.