What It Really Means to Be a King in God’s Kingdom

All right, all right, everybody, welcome back to another episode of the King's Council podcast. Back at you today.

You say it every time, back at you, back at you. Yeah, well, we're back.

We are back and better than ever.

That's right.

It's a great day to have a great day.

It is.

Yes, it's a choice that we get to make.

Yes, new mercies every single day. Every single day.

Praise the Lord.

Yes, Lord.

And we are— we're still on Kingdom Money Principles. We are.

We're in our last one of them.

Yes, rounding up this series. Principle— the last principle. If you guys have not been listening to us, where you been? Uh, welcome to the show. If this is new, I'm gonna encourage you to actually listen to the past few episodes though, because we've been diving into, uh, Kingdom Money Principles and what the heck is that. Um, essentially The Bible is littered with principles, and we in the King's Council like to talk about business, entrepreneurship, and money. Why do we like to talk about it? Because Jesus talked about it a heck of a lot.

Oh, so you can't buy good things, fancy things? Well, many things.

That's nice, but that isn't the core of it.

Yeah, I guess you're right. Yes, you're right.

If Jesus talked about it roughly a quarter of the time, most of the parables that he had that he went through were in reference to money and the power that it has over us. And I think if it's important enough that he talked about it, we should be talking about it. And, uh, that's why we talk about it a whole lot here. Yeah, because it is a powerful thing, man. It's the strongest drug on the earth. I think our— the battle in the earth realm here is between us and the battle between, like, who is our true Lord? Is it God or is it money? Yep. Is it mammon? Yep. I know for a fact in my life, uh, it was for a good chunk of my life, it was me serving money. Um, whether you have a little bit of it or a lot of it, I think we, especially Christians, tend to serve money in their poverty. And, um, and then you get those prosperity people telling you to sow their— sow your dollar for their green prayer cloth. Yeah, you know, which is all heresy.

Well, it's the law of sowing and reaping.

That is a law, absolutely. And the cool thing about principles and laws essentially is they work whether you are in lordship of God or not, they still work. But what we're trying to teach here is these money principles on, we talked about ownership, God owns everything. We talked about stewardship, meaning, hey, we are simply the managers of everything that God owns. God doesn't just own the tithe, But he owns 100%.

100.

100. And then we talked about worship, which is the tithe, right? And really that just starts, that begins this process in us of what I believe is God's management system.

Right.

But ultimately it begins the process of acknowledging God's owner of everything. We're just managers. But as managers, we are called to increase everything we've been given.

Add value.

Add value to it, yes. And now we're going to dive into Kingship, which is gonna be fun. That's right, because what does this even mean? Yes, ownership, stewardship, worship, and now kingship. Again, important to mention, I know I mentioned this on past episodes, that none of these principles are meant to operate individually, right? There's a synergistic effect here. Um, this is why there are broke tithers. This is why there are rich people that don't tithe, right? Not rich in spirit, but they can, they can have a lot of money, wealth, and possessions. Argue that money, wealth, positions has them just as much as them having it. And so how do we do this? How do we walk this kind of difficult thing out on earth here? How do we steward what we have well and ultimately walk with the God-given authority in the kingship that he has given us?

Well, good thing for the Bible. It's our playbook.

Yes, it is, man.

It reveals much.

If you don't know the plays, how are you going to run them? Gotta study this playbook.

And if you want to dive into the word even more, join us on Wednesday mornings, 8:00 AM Central Time, where we dive through usually one book at a time in the Bible. We go through expository teaching. We just got done with 1 John and took 2 months to get through 5 chapters.

Right.

Gonna go through 2 John and 3 John over the next couple of weeks.

Yeah. Those are nice short ones.

Yeah. Yeah. They're little postcards that John sent out rather than the epistle of 1 John.

He just had a little bit of a parchment paper. What did you write on back then?

Parchment.

Was it parchment?

Yeah, yeah, I believe so. He had postcard when he wrote Revelation on the Isle of Patmos. Yeah, he's like, here, get this to the post office, send this out. The world needs to hear this.

One stamp.

He's like, oh, oh man, cool. So kingship. Yes, we are the King's Council. We actually wear shirts. When you're part of the coaching community, you get a shirt that says King.

He is King.

Well, yeah, some, some of them say King. The New Edition. Yes, the New Edition. Were you a fan of New Edition?

Um, I like, I like the way the other one fit better.

I was talking about New Edition, the, uh, the R&B hip-hop group. Oh, of course you're talking about of the '90s.

Uh, no, I don't have any idea who that is.

New Edition, Bobby Brown. Nope. And then the guys from like Bell Biv and DeVoe.

No idea who you're talking about.

You don't know Bell Biv DeVoe?

No.

Do you know the song Poison? Bell, Biv, Biv, and DeVoe.

Those are 3 people?

Yes. Uh, I don't know the first names except for the guy Michael Bivins. He's Biv.

If anybody is on YouTube listening to this and you know who these people are, please just—

Bobby Brown. You know Bobby Brown? Bobby Brown. Remember he dropped his cocaine on stage when he's performing at Arsenio Hall?

I didn't know that.

You never saw that clip?

No.

Oh yeah, it fell right out of his pocket.

He's like, oh, watch yourself. Is that Bobby Brown? No, dang it.

Oh, watch yourself. Who's that?

Show me what you're working with.

That's— oh my God, come on, come on. That's Mystikal. That's like 20 years later.

Or my era. Yeah, I'm not as old as you, bro.

No, I mean, New Edition wasn't really my era either, but you know, I listened to all— I mean, was there nobody before Mystikal that said that?

I don't know.

Anyways, if you're on YouTube, the first part of that is shake your blank. Watch yourself, show me what you're working with. You're listening to that when you're courting that young, um, black girl in elementary school, right? Right.

I made the mistake of, uh, telling Christian—

his first crush was a black woman.

Woman, 5-year-old.

And you were 5 too, let's clarify that.

Yes, actually I was— I just turned 5. So my birthday's in August, you know, and my parents really wanted to get me out of the house. I know my mom listens to this, and so they think they wanted to get me off to school right away. Isn't that right, Mom? Put it in the comments. I know you're watching. Um, that's how— so I turned 5. Yeah, in August 14th, and then, uh, they shipped me off to kindergarten.

Yeah. And when I found out your first crush was a Black girl, that's when it was absolutely confirmed and sealed that we're BFFs.

Yes.

Although with me, it wasn't until later on in life, right?

Yeah, you didn't know that.

Yeah, and it's all because of that cadaver bone. I, I believe you know this.

Oh yes, I don't know if the listeners know this, but now they're gonna be hanging on the edge of their seats.

Yeah, when I was 24 years old, I had my fourth back surgery. I had a back injury from basketball, led to multiple surgeries, painkiller addiction, which ultimately led me to Jesus Christ. So praise the Lord for that. But when they fused my spine together, I had no idea what was going on. I was 24 years old, but they just told me they were getting a cadaver bone. I didn't know what that meant until after the fact, that it was like a dead guy's bone that they were going to like fuse into my spine, right? And the crazy thing is I had no interest in, or, or no attraction really to Black women until after that surgery. Woke up from the surgery, my nurse was the first Black girl ever dated. And, um, more so than my attraction to her black woman all of a sudden became attracted to me.

How did you find out that it was a cadaver bone from a black person?

Well, that's just a theory. Oh, that's just a theory. Yeah, but that— okay, I, I believe it's got to be the case because when I woke up, all of a sudden I'm in love with this black girl. I see her and all of a sudden she's the apple of my eye.

Uh, if we have any medical professionals in the community here, let us know if that's actually accurate. Let's get into the show.

Yeah, I think this is really why people listen. I don't know, probably.

Yeah, if we actually watch the data of when it shuts off, it's like when we actually dive into that.

Now we're gonna talk about the Bible, it's like, everybody turns off.

Hopefully they're tuning in here.

We'll have more stories probably about 15 minutes from now.

Yes, more and more, stay tuned.

Yeah.

Stay tuned.

Yep.

Anyhow. Yes, regardless of if you have a preference for white women or black women, you can. We're all God's children. Yeah.

Well, we're not all God's children.

That's true.

Right. Those who believe in Jesus Christ are.

Yes, exactly right. Hopefully our listeners are, or hopefully if you're not, hit us up, hit us in the DMs. We want to get to know you a little bit more and tell you what it's like to actually give your life to Jesus. Yeah, there's nothing like it, baby.

The best decision anybody can make in their life. The most crucial decision anybody can make in their life.

Absolutely, absolutely. And if you have given your life to Jesus, you are now— you are adopted. Uh, you are, uh, within the— uh, you get to spend eternity with him, number one, but now you are a royal priesthood. Yeah, right. Yeah, scripture tells us that.

It does. 1 Peter 2:9 says, but you are a chosen people, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, God's special possession, that you may declare the praises of him who called you out of darkness into his wonderful light.

Yes.

Then Revelation 1:6 says, and he has made us kings and priests to his God and Father. To him be glory and dominion forever and ever. Amen. So we're called the royal priesthood. We're called kings. You know, everything written back then is in the masculine. So if you want to say we're kings and queens, we 100% are. We are birthed into this royal family. And the way we're birthed— because think about it, if we're a king, what's a characteristic of a king? It's a birthright. Yeah. You inherit your king status. So John 1:12-13 say, but as many as received him, him being Jesus Christ, to them Jesus gave the right to become children of God. So we're not all children of God, we're all creation of God, but only those who put their faith in Jesus Christ become children of God, and those who believe in his name. And in that moment when we're sealed with the Holy Spirit, that's when we become a child of God. And what happens when a little baby enters this earth? They're birthed, right? They're born. That's what happens with us spiritually. We're born again, we're born of the Spirit, and we become children of Jesus Christ. And but with that, we assume that birthright, that king status, which is really remarkable. And if you just think about the world of Christianity and how many Christians are in this, on this earth, or at least profess Christ, I mean, if we all walk in the authority of kings and queens, if we are all a royal priesthood, Why the heck are most Christians walking with their head down? "Woe is me." And they're not walking in the power and authority that God's blessed us with.

Right. Yes. Why is that? And I think it's— I remember going to a sermon and attending a church service a few years ago, a number of years ago. And I remember him talking about— the pastor at the time was talking about like the Holy Spirit essentially. And he made a reference, which I thought was so cool, to his car that he had that he didn't realize that it had like remote start and all these different things. And he owned this car for like a couple of years. And it wasn't until he went and traded it in where he realized that he had all these things. And it was the revelation was like, you mean I've had this, I've owned this the whole time and I didn't actually utilize all the giftings that this vehicle provided to me? And I think a lot of Christians go through that same kind of transition or understanding. It's like we, we look to Jesus solely as Savior, but when we truly walk this thing out as Lord and understand the power and the authority that he's given us, then we get to truly walk as kings and queens here on this.

Yeah, it's our identity.

Yes.

And we learn it from actually reading the word of God.

Yes.

Once you come to faith, I mean, you should have a draw to read scripture because this is the This is God's written word. It's living, it's breathing, and this is what he left for us to commune with us. But then also, in addition to that, get discipled, right?

Yes.

Get discipled. Let yourself be opened up and poured into by those who are ahead of you in the faith, because we're born as babes, right? We're babes in Christ. And then even in 1 John, it talks about how we progress from babes or children all the way up through like an adolescent stage to fathers.

Yep.

And when you're at that stage, what are you doing as a father? You are helping birth other disciples.

Yes.

Helping build this family of faith.

Yes, absolutely. Absolutely. And to be clear again, Christian mentioned those King shirts that we wore. Some of us have shirts also that say Jesus is King, which by the way, you can get at kingscouncilshop.com. Shameless plug.

I'll wear that next episode.

Okay. All right. Perfect. Perfect. Because Jesus is King, right? And him being King, uh, he has created us, uh, and when we, we submit our life to him, he is Lord. We, we profess— you mentioned just believe. You probably know this, like, the root of that word believe isn't just like you believe in Santa Claus, right? You believe in something, but it's like you're, you're committing your life to this. Because I think a lot of quote-unquote Christians believe, yeah, in Jesus, but are they truly followers of Jesus?

If you believe, the Greek word is pistuo. The best definition of it is really three things: to trust in, to rely on, to cling to. Trust in, rely on, cling to. Pistuo, believe, faith in the Lord. And because, yeah, I mean, even the devil believes, right, in Jesus, right?

Right.

He doesn't believe, he doesn't put his faith and trust in Jesus. Yeah. So it's a big step.

Yeah.

And really, I just want to mention this, the whole cling to part. Yeah, that's the repentance piece. Because if I'm, if I'm clinging to anything, if I'm clinging to this computer that's in front of me, guess what? I can't cling to anything else. I'm clinging to this. So you're turning from the things that once were idols in your life, the things that you did find your joy from, although a fleeting joy. Any joy from the world is fleeting, but You let go, you release those things, you make an about-face, you turn to Jesus, you cling to him. And the key to this thing is abiding in Jesus, making it, making a decision every single day to walk with the Lord, abide in him, grow closer to him every single day, conform more and more to his image.

Yes, that's good. And that's good. And just to correlate that with what we're talking about, kingdom money principles here, and even just this war that we wage between God and money, Uh, what do you believe in? Is it Jesus or is it money? Do you trust in money? Do you, do you put your, your faith in money? Do you cling to money? Um, because I, I even still struggle with this at times where it's like you see the bank account dip a little to a point and it's like the fact that there was money in there that made me feel secure, or is it my faith in Jesus? Yeah, that makes me feel truly secure. Yeah, right. That's a wild thing to really talk about.

Even it's almost impossible to not have those feelings, right, when the bank account dips low.

Yeah, and that's why he tests us in it, I think, right?

Money does provide security.

Yes. Yeah, absolutely, absolutely. And so, and I think I love it that this is— God continues to test us no matter how long you've been walking with him, um, because I think we mentioned this last week, like, God is— he's a jealous God. He wants our, our 100% devotion and commitment to him. And when we put our trust and our faith and our hope in things outside of him, you better believe he's gonna put that to the test, right? We've all experienced that, especially when it comes to money. And this is again why I think it's so important for us to continually always talk about these things because it will forever be a thing until he ultimately calls us home.

[Speaker] Yeah, absolutely. Well, right here we're gonna get into 1 Samuel chapter 8. Because Israel, for the past 400 years, they had judges, right? But they wanted to be like all the other fancy nations and have a king. Yeah. And God was saying, it ain't time for a king, but I'm going to give you what you desire and look out now, right? Which is interesting. And this is why it's so important for us to always pray according to God's will. And scripture says if we pray according to God's will, it will be done. Yeah. Right? Because if it's God's will, and it's a whole, another two-part episode probably we could do on praying for God's will, even if it's God's will and he predetermined something's going to happen, how God still requires us as co-workers with him to pray for that thing to make it manifest in the physical. But anyhow, so King Saul, obviously, or maybe not obviously to some, he was the first king of Israel.

Yep.

And God is the one who did choose him, but it wasn't his choosing ultimately because—

for a king.

For a king. Yeah. But It's like, all right, you want a king? Here you go. And God will do that too.

He's their king.

Yeah.

Right?

Right. And people were sick of, all right, we're tired of this whole putting our faith in God stuff.

Right?

Let's have a king to rule us. And stuff got quite out of hand pretty quickly with that.

Yes, it did.

Yep.

Yes, it did. So that's in 1 Samuel chapter 8.

Yep.

What we're going to ultimately walk through here with you guys is really what we've considered to be qualifications of a king. Right. And what's really cool is gonna be kind of the correlation that we'll walk you through throughout Deuteronomy, which would've been hundreds of years before this, but God already knew that we were gonna ask for a king. When I say we, I mean the people of Israel at the time. Yeah. It's like he already knew they were gonna start to bellyache that they wanted a king.

Yeah.

But it's fascinating that in Deuteronomy, he set up, and you'll see reference to these, he set this up of like what the qualifications of a king actually are.

Yeah. God had anticipated the time already when his people would ask for a king. So all the way back in the book of Deuteronomy, he gave a profile of the person who should be king amongst his people. He gave basically the distinct qualifications of who should be king. And in chapter 10 of 1 Samuel, it says that Samuel, he explained to the people the regulations of kingship. And most likely he shared this passage in Deuteronomy because God lays it out pretty explicitly. Of the qualifications of a king.

Let's dive in. And, and so while we're talking about this, uh, we're going to talk about these qualifications and we're going to get into some more money, you know, how this kind of overlaps with money. But we really wanted to set the stage here with what are the qualifications for kingship, um, because this is stuff that, that we as kings and queens here— this, these are the qualifications, right? And, and the 3 previous money principles are absolutely need to be intact in order for these qualifications to be evident in our life. And you, I think you guys will see that here. So the first one is the king must be anointed by God.

Yeah, this comes from Deuteronomy 17, verses 14 to 15, and it says, when you enter the land the Lord your God is giving you and have taken possession of it and settled in it, and you say, let us set a king over us like all the nations around us— so this is back in Deuteronomy, so God knew that the people would do this— be sure to appoint over you the king the Lord your God chooses. If God did not approve the king, there was no hope in him advancing God's purpose. Right?

Right.

So it was somebody who God chose. And like we said, God was ultimately the one who chose King Saul to be the first king.

Yes.

Who's the second king?

David.

Yeah. Why did I have to think so long?

Sure. Good little Bible trivia.

It's so fresh in my mind because, you know, My son Ezra, he loves the story of David and Goliath, but he knows so much of the story from Saul being anointed as king, Saul's having a son named Jonathan, Jonathan and David becoming best friends. And, you know, the whole story in 1 Samuel 16 of David getting anointed and then 17 fighting Goliath. And like, we literally act out different parts of it all the time. Sometimes I'm Saul, sometimes I'm Jonathan, sometimes I'm David, sometimes I'm Goliath. It's whatever he wants to do that day. Right, right.

Yeah. That's great.

Yeah, um, but anyhow, the correlation here is in, in Acts 6 when the first deacons were appointed, and it says the church was to choose men who are filled with the Holy Spirit. There must be a mark of God's presence in your life, so you must be chosen by God. And guess what? If you are filled with the Holy Spirit, you've been chosen by God.

Yes, and I think it's important for us to all understand that because sometimes when, when you, when you hear the word anointed, it might just mean like the, you know, somebody that's anointed to do worship where you've— we've all been a part of those experiences where it's like, man, they just— there's something special about them, or a preacher or something. Uh, but the reality is all of us, if, if we are children of God, there is an anointing within us.

Yep.

Right?

Yeah. In 1 John 2:20 it says, but you— remember, 1 John, he's writing to children of God, he's writing to believers. He says, so you as a believer have an anointing from the Holy One, and you know all things. So, and then John, it says that the world doesn't have this, but us collectively through the Holy Spirit. And this is why it's so important to have fellowship with brothers and sisters, because we collectively have an anointing. We've been set apart. And that's really what the anointing is.

Yes.

Even think about when David was anointed by Samuel to be the next king after Saul, the anointing, the oil, represented the presence of God and the favor of God. And there's no difference now when we have an anointing within us, we have the presence of God because we have the Holy Spirit living inside of us. And if we have the Holy Spirit living inside of us, we have the favor of God. We have the protection of God. The Holy Spirit, the anointing represented the protection of God as well, and really the power of God. And you see this all throughout the Old Testament, what for those who were endowed with the Holy Spirit for a specific purpose. And now, this side of the cross, anybody who believes gets filled and sealed with the Holy Spirit, and that's our ticket to heaven.

Signed, sealed, delivered, baby.

That's right. That's right.

Reminds me of, uh, Toby— not, not that one, but Toby Mac's "I Got a Ticket." We've been through this.

I don't know any Toby Mac songs.

Ticket on the J train, baby.

The Jesus train?

Yeah.

Okay.

Toby. He's a good one.

So one, the first qualification, of course, as we just mentioned, is that the king must be anointed by God.

Yes.

That brings us to two, the king must belong to God's people. Deuteronomy 17:15 says, "Be from among your own brothers. Do not place a foreigner over you, one who is not a brother Israelite." So he must be from among you. And we see in Acts chapter 6 that church members are told that they are to choose leadership from amongst the believers.

Yeah.

Right? So there's correlation. So it's really establishing here in the Old Testament, and I love when you just put the pieces of the puzzle together from the Old Testament to the New Testament, that if we are declared kings and queens, we are a royal priesthood in the New Testament, that these qualifications of a king in the Old Testament would be the qualifications of leaders of the church, right, in the New Testament, right?

Yes. So king must belong to God's people. How great would it be if, uh, that happened in America today with our— all of our politicians, right? Right. This is why we need more church people to step up to the plate, right? Real people.

Well, we don't really want a government that's a monarchy, right?

Yeah, yeah, that's true. We do live in a democratic republic, which is great if it operates that way truly.

Yeah, Myron Golden told a story about Wayne Malcolm, who's from England. Myron was over there years ago to speak at his church. Wayne Malcolm told him, we have to find a new building. And he said, why? He said, because the Queen said she needs this one. And he's like, what do you mean the Queen?

He's like, the Queen took it.

Right.

What do you mean that she took it? Right.

And he's like, well, that's how a monarchy is. If the Queen says she wants this building, it's hers.

He needed that. Yeah.

Yeah.

So yeah, it's definitely a different world to live in. Right. Which is why we need to vote accordingly and appropriately along biblical values. And there is, yeah, there's a, go listen to our podcast on church and politics. Yes. Yes. We did that a few months ago.

Yep.

So great episode. We won't get into that now.

Right. So the third qualification of a king, the king must exercise faith. Deuteronomy 17:16 says, the king moreover must not acquire great numbers of horses for himself or make the people return to Egypt to get more of them. Because the, the whole idea is you're, you're gonna have power, you're gonna have authority. Don't just build up this wealth, these possessions for yourself, because the more you do that, then you start to lose dependency on God. So you must exercise faith.

That's great. Exercise faith, baby. And that's— who's your faith in? Is it your possessions, again, your money, uh, or is it faith in your source, the ultimate source, God?

Right, because if you're a king, you're looking at what the other kings have in the nations around you. Like, oh no, he's got 30,000 stables for his horses, I'm gonna get 40,000 stables for my horses like Solomon, right?

Yeah, yeah, a stable measuring contest.

And Acts 6:5, says that when the church appointed the first deacons, they chose Stephen because he was a man full of faith. So an early church leader, a man full of faith.

It's great. It's great. Number 4, right?

4.

Okay. The king must be loyal. Deuteronomy 17:17 says he must not take many wives or his heart will be led astray.

That's right. And the same principle is reflected in the New Testament when it says elders, they must be the husband to one wife. Yeah, have one wife, no more than that. So just mentioned Solomon, how he had those 40,000 stables of horses for his chariots, and he did even go to Egypt to get them. So, right, completely contradicting, uh, what God is saying. And also, he kind of screwed up in, in the form of having, what, 700 wives, 300 concubines?

Yeah, bro, nuts.

Yeah. And what happened? His wives led him astray from the Lord.

Yes.

Yeah.

Yes, he was not—

so it must be loyal.

Yes, that's great. Number 5 in is the king must be ready for sacrifice. This is a good one.

Yeah, Deuteronomy 17:17 says he must not accumulate large amounts of silver and gold. So kings had the opportunity to obviously compile large amounts of wealth. And what would you say— you mentioned it earlier when we were just chatting— what was like today's dollar amount of how much money Solomon had?

Oh, $2.1 trillion.

That's ridiculous, with the T. Yeah, right.

You can get us out of our debt in this country, although they'd get right back in it real quick, right? Because they're not operating on any of these principles.

But right, so when you're given this responsibility of leadership, it's a privileged position and it comes with great responsibility.

Must not to build bigger barns for yourself, but to use for, for, you know, good and, and ultimately the, the kingdom, right? Like if you think of like the king and their kingdom characteristics of kings back in, you know, the day when kings were more prevalent than what we live now in 2024.

The—

his kingdom, his— the patrons, I guess we'll call them, of their— I mean, they were a reflection of his kingship, right? And so just using your wealth to gain more and more for yourself, uh, is not a true act of kingship. It is to actually use for the greater good for everybody else, right?

Right. And the correlation in the New Testament for this is 1 Peter 5:2-3, when Peter is speaking to the pastors and elders. He instructs them to not be greedy for money but eager to serve. So don't strive after this. Be willing to sacrifice, willing to serve, and not lording it over the flock.

It's great. It's great. Number 6 then: the king must know the scriptures. Come on.

Yeah. This is good. Deuteronomy 17:18-19 says, when he takes the throne of his kingdom, he is to write for himself on a scroll a copy of this law taken from that of the priests who are the Levites. It is to be with him, and he is to read it all the days of his life so he may learn to revere the Lord his God and follow carefully all the words of this law and these decrees.

Sounds a lot like Joshua 1:8. Yeah, meditate on this book of the law. Do not let it depart from your lips so that you may do what it says. Then you will be prosperous and successful.

Yeah, make a handwritten copy for yourself.

Heck yeah, that's what Ash writes, all those note cards, right?

She's gonna be queen one day.

She is queen, baby.

Yeah, yeah. And the equivalent in the New Testament here is 1 Timothy 3:9. Um, it's the priority for the leaders in the church. It says deacons must keep hold of the deep truths of the faith with a clear conscience.

And how do you do that? You meditate on scripture. Yeah, absolutely.

Can you imagine, like, we talk sometimes, like, because you see some of these cyber attacks that have been going on, and of course the world would be in chaos. I mean, I just remember after Hurricane Sandy back in 2011, I think it was. I think it was right after I got saved in 2011, maybe it was the next year, 2012. But Hurricane Sandy came through, power was out in much of the New North Jersey, New York City area for a couple weeks for some people, but there's no gas for like a week. I remember that, and it was like, it was getting close to like The Purge, that movie. Yeah, where like people were robbing and hurting people for gas.

Remember that?

Yeah. And that's just gas. Now think about this, if there's a cyber attack where Oh, I mean, planes. My flight was delayed the other day because there was an IT issue, right?

Right.

Because they couldn't sign off.

Let's be clear, your flight is delayed every time I fly.

Yeah, but a couple weeks ago in particular is because there was an IT issue where the, the computer systems were down, and the only way they could sign off that they did all the checklists to fly is to sign off on electronically.

Oh God, just something like—

there wasn't even anything like wrong with the plane, right? And we had to wait till somebody brought something in paper to the pilots and they signed off on it. We had to wait like an hour for that. But there would be so much chaos. But the biggest thing I think people will lose is, listen, there's going to be a day where technology gets wiped out. It's going to be a day where perhaps in this country very soon where it'll be illegal to have a Bible. Right? We need this word written on our heart. We need to memorize this word. Yeah, we can't meditate on it if we don't— like, it's great we have it in front of us now, but what if we don't?

Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, I think, uh, Jack Hibbs, uh, love Jack. He's so good, man. If you guys don't listen to Jack Hibbs, do yourself a favor. Yeah, I think they put together like— it might be like a thumb drive or something like that, that it probably comes in like a package with a Bible or something like that, but it's like a video of him. It's like if you're watching this and they're telling you, and the news is telling you that it's just aliens, it's basically like a message to after the rapture.

Oh really?

Yeah, it's radical, bro. I was like, that is such a good idea. Yeah, it's like a 20-minute message and he basically just addresses people. It's like a State of the Union. He's like, if you're watching this and the news is telling you that there's been alien attacks and there's just— I get goosebumps, man, just talking about this. He's like, you need to know this, the scripture, you need to know the word of God. And he just kind of walks them through this. Yeah, there's still chance. Yeah, some have been raptured, but there's still time.

Yeah, during the crazy— during the pandemic, early on, like up where I was in New Jersey, I mean, there was a good stretch where it was a ghost town. Nobody was out. Like, you— we look outside our door, like, there was just nothing. It was an eerie quiet. Everybody's afraid to even go outside their doorstep. And I was like, man, if the rapture happened right now when people finally left their houses, they'd be like, oh, all the Christians, they must have been susceptible. They're all dead, right?

They're all dead, you know. Yep. But at the time, right?

But don't be surprised if something like that absolutely happens.

Absolutely.

Yeah.

Yes. All right, so the king must know the scriptures. Number 7 then is this: the king must be an example of obedience.

Yeah. Deuteronomy 17:20 says the king must not consider himself better than his brothers and turn from the law to the right or to left. That all these requirements are of the king, it's like just requirements of a decent human being, it seems like.

Right, exactly right.

It's not like these were such egregious qualifications to be king, right?

Yeah, this is— but it's so true. I mean, and that's, that's why these are so applicable to us again as kings and queens listening to this. Like, this is what it takes in order to, to walk in kingship. It ain't that hard.

Yeah.

Right? But what the world throws at you, sometimes it can be hard to be an example of obedience, right? It can be hard to do a lot of these things. You don't— it's not hard to know the scriptures, you just got to do it, right? Right. You just got to put it into practice. To be ready for sacrifice, to be loyal, it's— I mean, with what the world throws at us, these are just choices that we make, right, on a regular basis. And the best way to do all of them is to continue to know the scriptures, right? As you mentioned, it's written on our hearts so that we do what it actually says, right?

And the New Testament equivalent of that one right there is 1 Peter 5. Again, when Peter's writing to the leaders of the church, he says that they are to be examples to the flock. So anybody— if you're a Christian, period, you can't be a hypocritical Christian. And that's why a lot of people are turned off from church, because people who call themselves Christians are hypocritical, right? And they totally It's such a poor witness for God that people turn from God when they see hypocritical Christians. So it should never be, do as I say, not as I do.

Right, right.

I heard that a lot growing up.

Yes, absolutely. Yeah, I think we all did. So just a quick recap, the 7 distinct qualifications of you, what it should be, is the king must be anointed by God. If you've given your life to Christ, uh, or he's— if you've accepted him, uh, he's accepted you. You are anointed by God because he's already died for you, uh, and, and all you have to do is, is believe, right? To trust you, to cling to him, uh, and you can become anointed by him.

Yes.

Number 2, again, the king must belong to God's people. The king must exercise faith. The king must be loyal. The king must be ready for sacrifice, must know the scriptures, and then be an example of obedience. Yeah, so this is what it's like to walk in kingship.

Yeah, I, I could dig it.

I'm down. Yeah, dig it down, baby.

Now we mentioned King Solomon, how he, um, was a notorious breaker of a lot of these. Mentioned the 40,000 stalls of horses he had for his chariots, how he got some from Egypt, all the wives and concubines, how his wealth surpassed all the wealth of all the kings on earth. Yeah, right. However, before all those, I almost said something that would be inappropriate, all those ladies that led him astray to other gods, I mean, he was the wisest man on earth, right? And I don't know if he ever lost that status. He just wasn't obedient to the wisdom that God was bestowing upon him. But he wrote the book of Proverbs and he's got many money principles in the book of Proverbs. What better person to hear them from than the wisest man on earth?

Yeah, and the richest man on earth, right? Right.

And then later on in life when he wrote the book of Ecclesiastes, he's got some, some money principles as well in there.

Yeah, some great ones in there. If you remember one of them that we would have mentioned a few episodes prior is that money answers everything, right? Like, what? And it does, it does. Go listen to that episode if you haven't listened to that. Um, but we're gonna dive into that. I mean, there's so much to, to unpack with that through Proverbs. Yeah, through Ecclesiastes, that we're gonna— we're gonna do that on next week's episode.

Yeah, this is just kind of the intro to this, just understanding what it means to be a king in the kingdom of God right now. And that's what Jesus preached, right? You talk about it all the time. What did Jesus come and preach? He started his ministry, he preached the kingdom of heaven.

The kingdom of heaven is here. Yes, yes. But we have to grab it. We have to, to walk this thing out. And these qualifications, consider them qualifications, because if you're not doing those, I'd argue if you're truly walking in the God-given authority that he has, he wants to bestow and wants to just pour out upon you. And back to these money principles, they're synergistically— there's an effect here that takes place when you acknowledge God as owner of all things, not just your bank account, but your spouse, your kids, every possible thing that you could imagine. He owns it all. Therefore, Everything that we've been given, we need to manage it well. We need to steward it well with the idea of adding value to it, not just maintaining it, putting it on the shelf and polishing your trophy, but like adding value to it on a regular basis. And an act of worship, that sacrifice that we talked about in here, acknowledging that God owns it all, not just the 10%, but he owns 100% of it. And you get to steward that 90% appropriately. That then allows you to walk in this kingship. And what we'll unpack next week is— so lots of good nuggets in here.

Yeah.

Yes. So much to glean from King Solomon here. A lot of wisdom, of course, being the wisest man. So it's just amazing that of all things he asked for, it was wisdom, right? And because of that, he got all these other things as well, right? Right now, he made some poor choices along the way, but that's why we got this, baby, so we can learn from it, right? Right. This is our playbook, our instructional manual. I love it. The Bible being that because it's like we got the enemy's playbook too. We know exactly what he does every single time.

Yep.

Right. We're like Tom Brady and Bill Belichick here stealing the enemy's playbook. They did that, right?

Oh yeah. Yeah.

It's not a theory.

Yeah. They filmed other practices, other teams' practices.

Was it cheating or was it wisdom? Them.

I think that would be cheating.

Yeah, well, it's not cheating if it's in the Bible because it's God's word. He's given it to us to learn from and to be able to make wise decisions on our time here on Earth.

That's right.

Yes. So that all being said, we'll see you on next week's episode.

Peace.