This morning it was in the low thirties Fahrenheit where I was when doing my a.m. physical training. I’d hit the gym when it was still dark but took to the running trails when dawn neared. The sun slid silently skyward from behind the pines and poured gold around. The grass was still covered with hoary frost. The sky was azure. No wind. And cold. I heard no birds and saw no wildlife. I got a few miles in and then went and had a protein shake and cooked myself some breakfast.

Later when I jumped online to catch up on the news, it was more of the same: coronavirus (99.9 percent survivable unless one is already physically weak/compromised) narratives; the staff in the White House trying to find something encouraging to spin for those who might attend to what they promulgate; and the new round of lockdowns and scenarios being forced upon the war zones of Chicago, New York, and Los Angeles.

Politicians have their narratives for the gullible. Meanwhile, reality persists. Gas prices have doubled over the last year and a half. Suicides have risen unlike any period in American history. And have you bought groceries lately? I went to Walmart this week and spent a hundred dollars and left with only three bags of food.

I don’t care for politics or many of the people who engage in politics. Their assumption is that government is god. Rest assured, if you reject the true God, you will be governed. But it will not be by the holy, omniscient, omnipresent God of the Bible. If you abandon the God of the Bible, you will find that government unhinged from God is not your friend but your slavemaster.

Things are being shaken, whether we like it or not. I was reading some well-known NT passages this morning in my studies and they concerned how this world-system gets shaken but not without reasons. Here is the way it is phrased:

At that time his voice shook the earth, but now he has promised, “Yet once more I will shake not only the earth but also the heavens.” This phrase, “Yet once more,” indicates the removal of things that are shaken–that is, things that have been made–in order that the things that cannot be shaken may remain. Therefore let us be grateful for receiving a kingdom that cannot be shaken, and thus let us offer to God acceptable worship, with reverence and awe, for our God is a consuming fire. (Heb 12:26-28)

The metaphors abound here. The kingdom of God rules over the vain attempts of men to establish their fiefdoms. And God shakes things up. To remind us that we are clay and He is the Potter, that we are dust formed from the earth by the only true and sovereign King. The Caesars of this world are temporary in their platitudes for the gullible.

God shakes things up to reveal to us our finitude, our sin, our necessity to look to the King of kings and Lord of lords, not to lesser potentates. And all earthly potentates are by definition lesser than the One whose kingdom is forever. And yet the One whose kingdom is forever became flesh and dwelled among us. That’s the King, I tell you, and He deserves acceptable worship.

That is one reason He shakes the kingdoms of this world–so that we’d see our folly and His wisdom, so that we’d see we need not trust in platitudes of politicians but in covenantal promises of the crucified and risen Lord.

No one spoke like Him, One with authority, One who was sinless, One who conquered the grave so that the kingdoms of this world would become the kingdom of our Lord and of His Christ.