Peace Comes from a Righteous King

“Behold, a king will reign in righteousness.

And the effect of righteousness will be peace, and the result of righteousness, quietness and trust forever.  My people will abide in a peaceful habitation, in secure dwellings, and in quiet resting places.”  Isaiah 32:1, 17-18.

Looking at the current political landscape, righteous political leaders are hard to come by.  I’ve heard many say during multiple elections that they’re choosing “the lesser of two evils” when voting for the president.  Scandals are common place, reason and understanding hard to find.  And that’s just in our own privileged country, much worse situations exist around the world as corrupt leaders abuse their subjects, Christians and other faith groups are persecuted and killed for practicing their beliefs, and human trafficking runs rampant.  It’s discouraging, to say the least, and we’re left asking “how long, O Lord?”, (Psalm 13:1). 

This isn’t a new problem, righteous leaders have been few and far between throughout history.  Throughout the Old Testament we see God’s people go through persecution and slavery again and again.  God is speaking to a people broken and longing for peace in these verses in Isaiah.  If we read Isaiah 32:17-18 on its own, we can mistake this righteousness as something we must achieve on our own, but when we look back to verse one, we see that this righteousness is coming from a King.

“Behold, a king will reign in righteousness”.  Who is this king? 

One very clear picture we have of this King is in the book of Zechariah, written roughly 500 years before Jesus was born, “Behold, your king is coming to you; righteous and having salvation is he, humble and mounted on a donkey, on a colt, the foal of a donkey.” (Zechariah 9:9)  A King riding on a donkey during this time symbolized that he was coming in peace.  When Jesus came He fulfilled every Old Testament prophesy about the coming King, and this specific one is fulfilled in Matthew 21, “’Go into the village in front of you, and immediately you will find a donkey tied, and a colt with her.  Untie them and bring them to me.  If anyone says anything to you, you shall say, ‘The Lord needs them,’ and he will send them at once.’”  (Matthew 21:2-3).  This is how Jesus rode into Jerusalem, our humble King coming to make peace for us, but the peace He brought at this time did not come through war but through sacrifice.  He didn’t come to slay people but to destroy Satan, sin and death.  He came to bring His kingdom to earth not through force but through grace. 

The righteousness we read of in Isaiah 32 is not our own!  It comes from Jesus.  “For our sake he made him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God” (1 Corinthians 5:21).  Jesus knew no sin, He is the Righteous King we long for, and it is through faith in Him that we can find peace no matter what our earthly leaders may look like.  May that hope fill our hearts with peace today, that we can rely on this faithful, just King for eternity.