January 6 each year is “King’s Day,” a tradition originally established to honor Baby Jesus. Someone centuries ago estimated that the Magi arrived in Bethlehem on this day and since they worshiped Him as “the King of the Jews,” ta-da—King’s Day.

Bakeries all over New Orleans are turning out King cakes. If you have ever lived in this area, you need no explanation. These pastries are calorie-rich and more expensive than they should be. Think of taking enough dough to make a cake, spreading it out flat, cutting it in strips, and then braiding the strips together and forming it all into a huge ring (of various sizes, but most are large enough for you to poke your head inside!). Inside or on top of the cake, you’ll find cinnamon and colored sugar and various kinds of fillings. And one more thing.

There’s a baby inside.

Supposedly representing Baby Jesus who was hid from King Herod by Joseph and Mary, the “doll” is plastic and an inch or two long. Just the ideal size for you to choke on it or break a tooth if you happen to bite down on it. That’s why some bakeries have discontinued hiding the baby inside the ring and including it inside a cellophane baggie.

The custom originated sometime in the past that when friends share a king cake, whoever ends up with the baby has to buy the next cake. And that has been the cause of friends falling out with one another! As I said, they’re not cheap.

Mike Dupont used to work at Pellerin Milnor, a factory in Kenner that produces industrial washing machines and dryers. He enjoys telling about the time he and some co-workers pulled a prank on a guy in their department known to be a cheapskate. They cut the king cake and put the baby in the piece that fellow would get. He was the only one not in on the joke. As they sat down together for the morning break, they saw when he bit down on the plastic doll. No one said anything, but they watched in horror as he swallowed it whole. Anything to get out of buying the next cake. Now that is cheap!

King’s Day is the official kickoff of the Mardi Gras season. Tonight a local club that calls itself the Phunny Phorty Phellows will charter a streetcar and ride down Canal Street and St. Charles Avenue for the official start of the season which many locals and apparently a vast number of visitors to this city live for each year.

What any of this has to do with King Jesus is anyone’s guess. Sometimes a good idea can get corrupted into something completely opposite to what was intended. There’s a story about such in the Old Testament.

In Numbers 21, we read of the time Israel was being punished for their constant bellyaching. Poisonous (“fiery” the Bible calls them) snakes came into the camp and bit a lot of people. When Moses prayed, the Lord told him to fashion a bronze snake and hoist it on a pole. Anyone looking at it was healed. That story takes only five verses to tell and there’s not a single word of commentary as to what it means or teaches. (In John 3, Jesus said it was a picture of Himself on the cross!) The people were simply healed and the snake-on-a-pole was put away and life went on.

Except it didn’t.

Hundreds of years later, Hezekiah is king over Judah and is cleaning house, throwing out idols, destroying pagan altars. “He…broke in pieces the bronze serpent that Moses had made; for until those days the children of Israel burned incense to it, and called it Nehushtan.” (II Kings 18:4)

“Nehushtan,” my Bible says in a footnote, means “bronze thing.” However, the Hebrew word for snake is “nahash,” so maybe it means “bronze snake thing.” Anyway….

It’s all too, too weird.

King’s Day. Jesus Christ is King of Kings. (See Revelation 19:16.) Today and every day.

In 1982, I was preaching a revival at the First Baptist Church of Denton, Texas. One of my messages had to do with the exalted Lord Jesus Christ and His being the rightful Ruler over this universe. I made some little comment about how it irritates me that people refer to Elvis Presley as “the king.” After church, a young woman in the congregation came up.

She said, “I was in the car coming home from the grocery store when I heard on the radio that Elvis Presley had died. When I got home, I ran in the house and told my husband, ‘Honey, the king is dead!’ He sat up in his chair and said, ‘George Wallace died?'”

It’s baffling who people think of as ‘the King.’ But there’s only one entitled to the title.

There’s an interesting Old Testament prophecy that fits here. Old Jacob was dying and had called his sons around his bedside for his final blessing (if you want to call it that; some of his last words to the ‘boys’ were anything but positive). He had several things to say to his son Judah, culminating with this: “The scepter shall not depart from Judah, nor a lawgiver from between his feet, until Shiloh comes; and to Him shall be the obedience of the people.” (Genesis 49:10)

A scepter is a symbol of the king’s power. The name “Shiloh”, we’re told, means “he whose right it is.” Thus, Jacob is saying that Judah will remain strong and viable until the One comes who has the right to rule.

Much later, under Moses, Judah had the largest population of all the twelve tribes (Numbers 1:27 and 26:22) and led the way when God’s people marched through the wilderness (Numbers 10:14).

In 722 B.C., the nation of Assyria conquered the ten tribes then calling themselves “Israel,” and carried the population into exile, never to return. From that time until 1948, there was no nation called Israel. However, Judah continued to exist.

In 586 B.C., the Babylonians conquered Judah and carried most of its people into exile, but some 70 years later, they began returning. By the first century, the nation called Judea was still in existence, although ruled over by Herod who himself was under the authority of Rome. The Lord Jesus was born in Bethlehem, and after His death-burial-resurrection, within one generation, in A.D. 70, the Roman general Titus conquered Judea, destroyed Jerusalem, and the small country ceased to exist.

Shiloh had come and had taken the scepter, then Judah had gone out of business.

“Jesus shall reign where’er the sun

Does his successive journeys run;

His kingdom spread from shore to shore

Til moons wax and wane no more.”

(Thank you, Isaac Watts)

As we prepare to inaugurate a new president for this country in a few days, let us determine to pray for him and support him. And let him remember that he is a steward of all in his hands and accountable to the Heavenly Father for all he does. There’s only one King. The rest of us eat cake.