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Christ Reigns over All: Biblical Survey of God’s Kingdom


Chapters

0:0
1:25 Distinctions about How the Word Kingdom Is Used in the Bible
9:34 Difference between the Present and the Future
25:16 The Origins of Jesus Christ

Whisper Transcript | Transcript Only Page

00:00:00.000 | Today, in the United States, we inaugurate our 45th president.
00:00:05.680 | And politics aside, there's always something majestic about presidential inaugurations
00:00:10.340 | and royal coronations.
00:00:12.760 | They carry with them an unusual weightiness.
00:00:16.600 | These rare events transcend time by the regalia of their gravity, something more like a wedding
00:00:22.780 | or a funeral or some combination of the two.
00:00:27.220 | Inaugurations are events so significant they almost seem to overshadow the person at the
00:00:31.240 | center of it all, the people present, and even the generation who witnesses it.
00:00:36.760 | In an inauguration, we get a small sense of a nation's weight.
00:00:41.440 | The theme of kingdom is a very significant one in scripture.
00:00:45.040 | Christ himself is a sovereign king.
00:00:47.240 | He was coronated in his resurrection and ascension, and he now reigns over a kingdom yet fully
00:00:54.240 | manifested.
00:00:55.920 | Here to explain how this works out from Genesis to Revelation, we welcome to the podcast Dr.
00:01:00.520 | Don Carson.
00:01:02.160 | Carson is the co-founder and president of the Gospel Coalition, and he's also the editor
00:01:06.280 | of the NIV Zondervan Study Bible.
00:01:08.920 | I recently talked to him on the phone and asked him to explain the doctrine of the kingdom
00:01:13.240 | as it develops from Genesis to Revelation.
00:01:17.680 | Before I start to trace out the theme of kingdom through the Bible, it will prove helpful,
00:01:23.840 | I think, to make four distinctions about how the word "kingdom" is used in the Bible.
00:01:30.360 | These are distinctions that every Bible reader comes to terms with with time, but they really
00:01:36.600 | are very important.
00:01:38.040 | Number one, the notion of kingdom in the Bible is often closer to what is sometimes called
00:01:44.840 | king dominion, that is, reign.
00:01:47.840 | When we speak of kingdom today, we often think of a realm rather than a reign, the kingdom
00:01:55.160 | of Saudi Arabia, the United Kingdom.
00:01:58.240 | We're thinking of a geographical area with its people and buildings and institutions
00:02:02.280 | and so on.
00:02:03.840 | The kingdom is that over which the king reigns.
00:02:07.120 | There are some usages like that in the Bible, of course.
00:02:10.440 | The kingdom of Israel and the kingdom of God can be seen as the domain over which he reigns.
00:02:17.440 | But very frequently, kingdom has to do more with the reign of God rather than the realm
00:02:23.920 | of God's reign.
00:02:27.080 | And that will become important, as we'll see in due course.
00:02:30.560 | Second, this is a republic here in America, so our mental associations connected with
00:02:38.280 | kingdom are not necessarily very positive.
00:02:41.280 | The last king that Americans acknowledged didn't turn out too well, and hence the American
00:02:49.400 | Revolution.
00:02:50.880 | Moreover, if we think nostalgically about a monarchy today, probably for many Americans,
00:02:58.480 | the first monarch that they think of is Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II.
00:03:03.120 | And she's a constitutional monarch.
00:03:05.920 | She has precisely two powers, apart from her enormous personal influence and integrity
00:03:11.120 | and all the rest.
00:03:12.600 | But she has two powers.
00:03:14.720 | She signs legislation that gets through Parliament into law.
00:03:19.520 | And second, she can dissolve Parliament any time she wishes to.
00:03:24.480 | Yet in point of fact, if she did either of those things over against what the Parliament
00:03:30.800 | wanted, over against what the Prime Minister wanted, it would precipitate a national crisis.
00:03:35.920 | And there would be an election called, and whatever party was in power would be returned
00:03:40.220 | with a massive majority.
00:03:42.040 | So we're used to the notion of a king or a queen, a monarch, who is head of state, but
00:03:48.000 | not head of government.
00:03:49.800 | Whereas there's no such distinction in the Bible.
00:03:53.280 | If you are the king, you reign.
00:03:55.160 | That's what you do.
00:03:56.200 | You have the authority.
00:03:57.840 | So we should not be thinking United Kingdom.
00:04:00.840 | We should be thinking Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, where there is an absolute authority.
00:04:05.040 | And even then, it's often mediated through an extended family or something like that.
00:04:09.720 | And when we speak of the Kingdom of God, we're not saying that he's the constitutional monarch.
00:04:15.840 | We're not saying that he's head of state, but he doesn't reign.
00:04:18.640 | By definition, this is the reign of God.
00:04:22.720 | God rules.
00:04:24.000 | God reigns.
00:04:25.000 | So that's the second distinction we simply have to come to grips with.
00:04:29.800 | Third, the Bible can make a distinction between the reign of God in all of God's sweeping
00:04:37.440 | sovereignty, the reign of God under which everybody falls, whether they even believe
00:04:42.800 | in God or not, and what might be called that subset of God's sweeping reign under which
00:04:49.440 | there is life, under which there is salvation.
00:04:52.680 | The first is found strongly, for example, in a psalm like Psalm 145, "I will exalt
00:04:58.440 | you, my God, the King."
00:05:01.080 | God is reigning over all.
00:05:03.840 | That's part of the point of many verses in the psalm.
00:05:08.040 | In that sense, you're in the Kingdom of God, whether you like it or not.
00:05:10.920 | You don't choose to be in that kingdom.
00:05:13.040 | It's part of being a creature.
00:05:17.280 | God reigns.
00:05:19.000 | In that sense, kingdom is virtually equivalent to divine sovereignty or to divine providence.
00:05:26.400 | God reigns, and every one, everything, every event, every item, every matter, every thought
00:05:32.760 | is finally subject to that sovereignty.
00:05:36.040 | On the other hand, sometimes the kingdom is that subset of God's sovereignty under which
00:05:42.000 | there is life.
00:05:43.000 | For example, in John 3, verses 3 and 5, "Unless you're born again, you cannot see or enter
00:05:50.840 | into the kingdom."
00:05:51.840 | Well, clearly, in that sense, there are some people who are in the kingdom and some people
00:05:55.880 | who are not.
00:05:56.880 | That's not to be confused with God's sovereignty.
00:05:59.040 | It's that subset of God's sweeping sovereignty under which there is life.
00:06:05.160 | In that sense, then, the kingdom comes.
00:06:09.160 | The kingdom of God in the sovereignty sense doesn't come.
00:06:13.360 | It's here.
00:06:14.360 | It's unavoidable.
00:06:15.360 | It's eternal.
00:06:16.960 | It's primordial.
00:06:18.240 | It has come from forever and will go to forever.
00:06:22.520 | You cannot escape it.
00:06:23.640 | You're never outside it.
00:06:25.440 | If "kingdom" refers to that subset under which there is salvation and reconciliation and
00:06:30.160 | forgiveness and eternal life and so forth, then that opens up the possibility to speak
00:06:35.240 | of the kingdom coming.
00:06:37.440 | It can then be mediated through the coming of the King Paracelos.
00:06:43.000 | It has to be said that this distinction, this distinction between the kingdom as God's sovereignty
00:06:48.960 | and the kingdom under which there is life, is not only a New Testament distinction.
00:06:55.840 | You can find something of the same thing, for example, in the book of Daniel.
00:06:59.380 | In Daniel chapter 4, when King Nebuchadnezzar makes his decree, he says, "How great are
00:07:06.360 | his signs," speaking of God, "how mighty his wonders," Daniel 4.3.
00:07:11.800 | "His kingdom is an eternal kingdom.
00:07:15.200 | His dominion endures from generation to generation."
00:07:19.000 | On the other hand, in chapter 2, verse 44, when Daniel interprets Nebuchadnezzar's dream
00:07:26.840 | of a succession of kingdoms, we read, verse 44, "In the time of those kings, the God of
00:07:33.480 | heaven will set up a kingdom that will never be destroyed, nor will it be left to another
00:07:38.320 | people.
00:07:39.360 | It will crush all those kingdoms and bring them to an end, but it will itself endure
00:07:44.200 | forever."
00:07:45.200 | So, in that sense, this kingdom, of which 244 is speaking, comes.
00:07:51.880 | It's not an eternal kingdom.
00:07:54.080 | It comes at a certain point in redemptive history.
00:07:57.160 | And so it's important to understand that.
00:08:01.080 | And in a few places, it's not.
00:08:04.880 | The two themes are getting merged a wee bit.
00:08:06.840 | Think, for example, of the parable of the wheat and the tares, or the wheat and the
00:08:10.120 | weeds.
00:08:11.120 | It's with the kingdom of God, as it is with the parable of the wheat and the weeds.
00:08:17.520 | That is, a farmer goes forth to sow, sows good seed, but then an enemy comes in and
00:08:22.320 | sows a lot of weeds.
00:08:24.320 | And the disciples want to go out immediately and pull the weeds.
00:08:29.300 | But the master says, "No, wait until the end, and then a distinction will be made."
00:08:37.520 | So at one level, that means that this dawning kingdom is a kingdom that allows weed and
00:08:45.640 | wheat to grow together in anticipation of a consummated kingdom, where there will be
00:08:51.860 | a final division that is absolute.
00:08:54.840 | So here you've got a couple of distinctions being made.
00:08:58.400 | The kingdom comes with the sowing of the seed, but it's being contested so that under this
00:09:05.560 | coming of the kingdom, you have not only a sphere of life, but a distinction between
00:09:11.280 | what has been done in the past—the wheat hadn't started to be sown—and what is happening
00:09:17.280 | now.
00:09:18.280 | The wheat is being sown, but yet a distinction between the wheat being sown and the tares
00:09:23.060 | also being sown.
00:09:24.240 | So you've really got a mixture of the second and the third distinctions mingled together
00:09:30.360 | in one parable, and then introducing the fourth distinction, the difference between the present
00:09:36.520 | and the future.
00:09:37.520 | There is a sense in which the kingdom has dawned with the coming of Christ.
00:09:40.600 | There's a sense in which the kingdom is not yet.
00:09:43.880 | So on the one hand, Jesus, after his resurrection, can say, "All authority is given to me in
00:09:48.520 | heaven and on earth."
00:09:50.560 | So he reigns already.
00:09:51.560 | We'll see more of that in a few moments.
00:09:54.760 | But not only does he reign with all authority, all of God's mediated authority runs through
00:10:00.960 | him according to 1 Corinthians 15.
00:10:03.520 | And yet under that mediatorial reign of King Jesus, that reign is being contested.
00:10:09.200 | It's being challenged.
00:10:10.480 | There are weeds as well as wheat.
00:10:13.060 | But the time is coming when the kingdoms of this world become the kingdoms of our God,
00:10:17.320 | when the last enemy will be destroyed.
00:10:20.060 | And so there's a distinction to be made between the present and the future.
00:10:23.520 | And that is what stands then behind the Lord's Prayer.
00:10:27.160 | Your kingdom come, your will be done on earth as it is in heaven.
00:10:32.440 | So here's a distinction.
00:10:33.840 | God's will is being done without being contested in heaven.
00:10:40.360 | There will come a time in the new heaven and the new earth when it will not be contested
00:10:44.160 | anywhere.
00:10:45.160 | But right now it is being contested, even though Christ is reigning, even though God's
00:10:48.600 | sovereignty is not removed.
00:10:51.640 | But there is a sense in which it is still being contested, and therefore we pray, "Your
00:10:56.880 | kingdom come."
00:10:57.880 | That is, in a fashion in which it is no longer contested.
00:11:00.960 | So all of these subtleties and the notion of kingdom have to be borne in mind when we
00:11:05.440 | start wrestling with the way the kingdom theme begins to develop and run through the whole
00:11:10.160 | of Holy Scripture.
00:11:11.680 | Now we want to follow how it develops through the Scripture, and we begin, as always, with
00:11:17.760 | creation and fall.
00:11:20.360 | Just as other themes find their rootage in Genesis 1, 2, and 3, so also kingdom.
00:11:29.440 | And just as these other themes find their rootage in Genesis 1, 2, and 3 without the
00:11:34.400 | technical terms showing up, so also with kingdom.
00:11:40.600 | For example, the notion of covenant is introduced in these chapters without the word showing
00:11:46.200 | up; the notion of sacrifice for sin is introduced, but only in a gentle, preliminary, anticipatory
00:11:55.240 | sort of way, when you have the skin coverings made for the people who have fallen into rebellion
00:12:03.480 | against God.
00:12:05.320 | More than a dozen themes develop in these first two or three chapters without actually
00:12:12.000 | being teased out in any sort of detail.
00:12:14.360 | They anticipate; they point the way forward.
00:12:17.700 | So also the doctrine of the Trinity is not established in the first three chapters of
00:12:23.640 | Genesis.
00:12:24.640 | There's nothing like what you find in John chapter 14 and following.
00:12:29.400 | But on the other hand, there is this hint, "Let us create mankind in our image."
00:12:36.640 | And that plural reference, self-reference to God, is seminal; it's evocative; it begins
00:12:45.240 | to point forward to what is teased out much later in Scripture.
00:12:49.640 | So also for the notion of kingdom, there is no use of the word "king" or "kingdom"
00:12:54.820 | in these opening chapters, and yet what you get is a picture of God reigning.
00:13:00.680 | He is the king; he exists, and he, by his decree, calls the world into being.
00:13:08.120 | He establishes what is right and wrong.
00:13:11.720 | He rules; he holds people accountable.
00:13:15.000 | In all of these ways, the notion of kingdom is bound up with the doctrine of creation
00:13:20.480 | right from the very beginning.
00:13:22.580 | But it's not too long until you find kingdom used in a more restrictive sense, not for
00:13:30.020 | all of creation, but for the sphere that takes in the covenant people of God.
00:13:37.240 | Perhaps the most crucial passage, initially, is Exodus chapter 19.
00:13:42.160 | On the first day of the third month after the Israelites left Egypt on that very day,
00:13:47.120 | they came to the desert of Sinai.
00:13:49.720 | After they set out from Rephidim, they entered the desert of Sinai, and Israel camped there
00:13:55.280 | in the desert in front of the mountain.
00:13:57.680 | Then Moses went up to God, and the Lord called to him from the mountain and said, "This
00:14:03.140 | is what you are to say to the descendants of Jacob, and what you are to tell the people
00:14:08.260 | of Israel.
00:14:09.680 | You yourselves have seen what I did to Egypt, and how I carried you on eagles' wings and
00:14:15.600 | brought you to myself.
00:14:17.240 | Now if you obey me fully and keep my covenant, then out of all nations you will be my treasured
00:14:23.400 | possession.
00:14:25.240 | Although the whole earth is mine, you will be for me a kingdom of priests and a holy
00:14:31.360 | nation.
00:14:32.800 | These are the words you are to speak to the Israelites."
00:14:36.760 | So on the one hand, God reigns over everybody and everything and all the nations.
00:14:42.240 | And on the other hand, there is a sense in which the Israelites are peculiarly the people
00:14:48.360 | of God.
00:14:49.360 | They are peculiarly a kingdom of priests.
00:14:52.320 | And now in this sense, you're not only facing a more restricted realm, but also the focus
00:14:59.440 | is on the realm rather than the reign.
00:15:02.440 | They are the kingdom of priests.
00:15:04.880 | What's interesting then is that that theme is taken up and applied to the new covenant
00:15:10.320 | people of God in 1 Peter 2, verse 9.
00:15:13.720 | The same thing there is addressed to Christians.
00:15:16.160 | So exactly the same kingdom of priests language is picked up in 1 Peter 2, 9 and in Revelation
00:15:23.920 | 1, 6.
00:15:25.240 | Then the notion of God as king, the God who rules over his people, is very common in the
00:15:32.720 | Old Testament and traces in many ways to this use of kingdom in Exodus 19, 1-6.
00:15:42.800 | So God is the king.
00:15:44.080 | God is the lawgiver.
00:15:45.800 | God is the one who judges his people.
00:15:47.880 | God is the one who is sovereign.
00:15:49.600 | And so Moses and other leaders are regularly seen then as under-reigners.
00:15:55.120 | It's not a very useful word, but God's spokesman, God is reigning through them.
00:16:02.760 | And it's in that connection that shepherd language is often used.
00:16:06.320 | Shepherd language has many elements to the image, but the shepherd cares for the sheep,
00:16:13.440 | rules over the sheep, disciplines the sheep, provides for the sheep, and all of those notions
00:16:17.920 | are bound up with the notion of kingdom in the ancient world where you're not thinking
00:16:20.760 | of a constitutional monarch.
00:16:23.000 | It's worth remembering, for example, the book by Tim Laniac, "Shepherds After My Own Heart."
00:16:27.840 | The kings of Israel, about whom I'll say more in a few moments, are under-kings.
00:16:33.920 | They are under God's kingship.
00:16:36.680 | So this notion of God as king runs right through Holy Scripture, with God being the particular
00:16:44.760 | king, the peculiar king of his kingdominion, and of the people who are then called his
00:16:50.960 | kingdom of priests.
00:16:52.620 | But already in the time of Moses, there is an anticipation of the time when God will
00:17:01.400 | raise up a human king over his people.
00:17:04.480 | Moses is not called king, although in many ways he reigns.
00:17:07.160 | Joshua is not called king, though of course there are many ways in which he reigns.
00:17:12.800 | But already in the book of Deuteronomy, there is the anticipation of the time when there
00:17:19.900 | will be a king who must act in a certain way.
00:17:23.760 | Perhaps the most telling passage is Deuteronomy chapter 17, verses 14 and following.
00:17:29.200 | "When you enter the land the Lord your God is giving you, and have taken possession of
00:17:33.480 | it and settled in it, and you say, 'Let us set a king over us, like all the nations around
00:17:38.320 | us,' be sure to appoint over you a king the Lord your God chooses.
00:17:42.680 | He must be from among your fellow Israelites.
00:17:45.520 | Do not place a foreigner over you, one who is not an Israelite.
00:17:49.240 | The king, moreover, must not acquire a great number of horses for himself, or make the
00:17:53.720 | people return to Egypt to get more of them.
00:17:56.360 | For the Lord has told you, 'You are not to go back that way again.'
00:18:00.120 | He must not take many wives, or his heart will be led astray.
00:18:03.440 | He must not accumulate large amounts of silver and gold.
00:18:07.040 | When he takes the throne of his kingdom, he is to write for himself on a scroll a copy
00:18:11.700 | of this law, taken from that of the Levitical priests.
00:18:15.640 | It is to be with him, and he is to read it all the days of his life, so that he may learn
00:18:20.440 | to revere the Lord his God, and follow carefully all the words of this law and these decrees,
00:18:26.480 | and not consider himself better than his fellow Israelites, and turn from the law to the right
00:18:31.240 | or to the left.
00:18:32.240 | Then he and his descendants will reign a long time over his kingdom in Israel."
00:18:36.680 | In other words, they'll reign—that's the active notion of rule—over the kingdom of
00:18:43.560 | the Israelites.
00:18:44.560 | That's the notion of realm.
00:18:47.440 | And thus you see a picture of a coming king who is, on the one hand, authoritative.
00:18:52.840 | He rules.
00:18:53.840 | He reigns over the people.
00:18:55.320 | And yet, on the other hand, he is under God's authority, so much so that the first responsibility
00:19:00.760 | he has when he takes on the throne is not to appoint a secretary of state, or to arrange
00:19:08.920 | for the military, or to water the books of his predecessors.
00:19:11.680 | His first job is to write out longhand the words of the book of the law, and that will
00:19:16.960 | be his reading copy every day of his life, as long as he lives, so that he learns not
00:19:22.960 | to turn to the left or to the right, away from the Word of God.
00:19:27.360 | If those few verses in Deuteronomy 17 had been followed, all of Old Testament history
00:19:33.360 | would have been different.
00:19:34.600 | So that's the anticipation of the coming of a king, even in the time of Moses.
00:19:41.800 | Then finally the people do get in the land, and in the days of the judges there are these
00:19:46.120 | wretched cycles that see the people spiraling down into idolatry again and again.
00:19:51.960 | God raises up not kings, but judges who have some kind of kingly function.
00:19:57.360 | They rule, they lead the people, and they hold the people to account, and they fight
00:20:02.240 | off the Midianites, or they fight off the Philistines, and so on.
00:20:06.640 | But then it's not long, a generation or two, and everything cycles down again.
00:20:10.800 | Gradually the cry becomes stronger and stronger, "Oh God, how we need a king."
00:20:15.920 | In those days, everyone did that which was right in his own eyes, "How we need a king."
00:20:21.320 | And so there is a kind of wretched tendency towards sin, and a hope that a king would
00:20:27.760 | hold people in line and fight their battles for them.
00:20:31.760 | But when the people do ask for a king, they ask with the most appalling motives.
00:20:37.600 | They think that a human king is going to save them in a way that God, the king, cannot.
00:20:44.000 | So God, in the time of Samuel, lets them have a king, and even gives them one that seems
00:20:50.920 | promising, King Saul.
00:20:53.240 | But Saul turns out to be a very insecure man who wants to take over not only the kingdom,
00:20:59.480 | but also the priesthood, and eventually he falls in disgrace, he dies, there is no succession,
00:21:07.500 | there is no dynasty.
00:21:08.800 | And that's when God raises up a man whom he calls, "A man after my own heart, a king after
00:21:14.080 | my own heart."
00:21:15.080 | That brings us to the great passage, 2 Samuel, chapter 7.
00:21:19.360 | So in 2 Samuel, chapter 7, by which time King David has been installed, King David appears
00:21:26.800 | as the king whom God's own appointment, and reigns for seven years in Hebron over the
00:21:34.200 | southern tribes, then another 33 years over the whole 12 tribes of the capital in Jerusalem.
00:21:41.520 | And he wants to build a temple for God.
00:21:45.820 | But God says that he, God, will build a house that is a dynasty for David.
00:21:51.120 | And thus the Davidic dynasty is finally wonderfully established.
00:21:55.240 | That becomes one of the major storyline threads right through all of the Bible.
00:22:00.720 | The Davidic dynasty, the Davidic dynasty, the Davidic dynasty, and even the promise
00:22:06.120 | that there will be a continuity in this succession, there will be a succession that lasts forever,
00:22:13.400 | which can only be fulfilled, finally, by a king that replaces his father, and another
00:22:19.160 | king that replaces that father, and another king that replaces that father, or, conceivably,
00:22:24.640 | please God, a king who would actually live forever.
00:22:28.000 | And that promise takes place about 1000 BC, during the time of King David himself.
00:22:35.320 | Then in the late 8th century, in the time of the prophet Isaiah, you find more references
00:22:42.200 | to the Davidic king.
00:22:44.520 | To us, a child is born, to us a son is given, and he will reign on the throne of his father
00:22:50.560 | David.
00:22:51.560 | So we're talking about the Davidic dynasty.
00:22:53.200 | Of the increase of his kingdom, there will be no end.
00:22:57.120 | But he shall also be called the wonderful counselor, the mighty God, the everlasting
00:23:01.360 | father, the prince of peace.
00:23:03.280 | So now you have an anticipation of a kingship that is being so associated with God himself
00:23:09.200 | that it's unlike any Davidic king that has appeared up to that point, or that is anticipated
00:23:16.640 | in the near future.
00:23:18.560 | And there are other hints along the line.
00:23:21.520 | The prophecy of Micah, chapter 5, too, that this coming, crowning king will be born in
00:23:27.080 | Bethlehem.
00:23:29.880 | And then using the shepherd language that's already been introduced in Ezekiel, chapter
00:23:33.480 | 34, God himself says again and again and again that he will come and shepherd his people.
00:23:39.640 | That's equivalent to God saying he will come and reign.
00:23:43.000 | He will come and rule over them directly.
00:23:44.640 | He will nurture them.
00:23:45.640 | He will provide them with the food and the water they need.
00:23:48.080 | He will discipline them.
00:23:49.560 | He will separate sheep from goats.
00:23:51.080 | He will be their shepherd.
00:23:53.440 | It's shepherd language to talk about his coming kingdom.
00:23:56.480 | And then at the end of that, he says, after declaring about 25 times that he will come
00:24:01.960 | and reign, then he says, "I will send my servant David to do so."
00:24:07.000 | So again, you're seeing the coming of God himself in the coming of the promised Davidic
00:24:13.120 | king.
00:24:15.680 | And so we could trace out more of the drama of the Old Testament when Jerusalem falls
00:24:22.760 | and the nation of Judah follows the fate of the nation of Israel off into exile.
00:24:31.740 | And there is no Davidic king in Jerusalem.
00:24:35.080 | It just seems so bleak for the covenant people of God.
00:24:37.640 | Where are the promises of God?
00:24:39.000 | The temple is destroyed.
00:24:40.640 | There's no Davidic king.
00:24:41.960 | They know who it should be.
00:24:43.440 | The genealogical records are maintained, but he's not on the throne.
00:24:47.520 | And then the people of God return after the end of the exile, and the Nedo-Persians allow
00:24:54.840 | them back under Cyrus and Darius, under Artaxerxes and so forth.
00:25:00.840 | And the city is rebuilt.
00:25:03.280 | The temple is rebuilt.
00:25:04.280 | The temple first, then the city, the city under Nehemiah.
00:25:07.960 | But still there's no Davidic king.
00:25:11.800 | And then you turn to the pages of the New Testament, and the first words you read are
00:25:18.280 | the origins of Jesus Christ, the son of Abraham, the son of David.
00:25:24.760 | And then you begin with a genealogy, a genealogy slightly artificially constructed into three
00:25:29.880 | fourteens, where the central fourteens are the years of the Davidic monarchy, the Davidic
00:25:38.200 | line, the Davidic dynasty.
00:25:40.840 | And now what you have is the coming of Jesus, who is legally in line to take up that claim.
00:25:50.560 | And so the Magi come and ask, "Where is he who was born king of the Jews?"
00:25:56.840 | And when John the Baptist and Jesus begin to preach, they use the same words, "Repent,
00:26:03.960 | for the kingdom of heaven is near."
00:26:07.280 | And they probably mean near in slightly different ways.
00:26:10.800 | John the Baptist seems to mean it in the sense, the kingdom is impending.
00:26:15.040 | It's just around the corner.
00:26:17.560 | Jesus is maybe saying the same thing, but may also have another overtone in his utterance.
00:26:23.940 | It's near you.
00:26:24.940 | It has come, and it's near you.
00:26:26.320 | It is close, for he himself is there.
00:26:31.640 | And then whether you're talking about the Sermon on the Mount or the parables of Jesus
00:26:39.680 | and so many of his miracles, the kingdom theme is never far away.
00:26:45.080 | Who inherits the kingdom?
00:26:46.400 | Well, the Beatitudes address that question.
00:26:52.040 | We are to pursue the kingdom of God and his righteousness, knowing that all other things
00:26:56.880 | will be added to us in Matthew 6.33.
00:27:00.800 | And the miracles of healing and of raising the dead and the transformation, all of these
00:27:06.320 | things are announcements that the kingdom is near.
00:27:10.400 | It's dawning.
00:27:11.400 | It's present.
00:27:12.400 | It's manifesting itself.
00:27:14.560 | And at the same time, there is patently misunderstanding on the part of the disciples as to how the
00:27:22.440 | kingdom will manifest itself.
00:27:25.000 | One of the most striking passages in this regard, of course, is Matthew 20, verses 20-28,
00:27:32.560 | with a parallel in Mark.
00:27:34.160 | And on this occasion, the two brothers, James and John, approach Jesus with their mother.
00:27:39.680 | And what they're really asking for is a leg up when the kingdom dawns, when he, Jesus,
00:27:47.720 | enters into his kingdom, that is, into what they take to be the full plenitude of a restored
00:27:55.280 | Israel with powerful dominion over the nations and a great display of righteousness and integrity
00:28:03.920 | and authority.
00:28:05.000 | They want to be senior administrators above the other disciples in that kingdom.
00:28:10.720 | Grant that one of these two sons of mine may sit at your right and the other at your left
00:28:14.720 | in your kingdom.
00:28:15.720 | And it turns out that they don't really understand at all what that kingdom is going to be like.
00:28:22.080 | Can you drink the cup I'm going to drink?
00:28:24.560 | He's going to drink the cup of the cross.
00:28:26.280 | Can they go there?
00:28:27.720 | They have no idea what they're saying when they reply, "We can."
00:28:30.760 | They think that they'll follow Jesus courageously no matter what.
00:28:34.320 | And Jesus says, "Well, there's a sense, of course, in which you will drink from my cup.
00:28:38.040 | After all, one of them would become the first apostolic martyr and the other would end his
00:28:41.100 | life in exile.
00:28:42.320 | So in that sense, they'll suffer too.
00:28:44.480 | But it's up to my heavenly Father to grant these things."
00:28:48.080 | And then when the ten other apostles hear about this, they're indignant.
00:28:53.080 | And they're indignant because those two got their gibs in first, not because they're indignant
00:28:58.400 | that what they did was wrong.
00:29:00.440 | And that's when Jesus calls them all together and says, "You know that the rulers of the
00:29:03.760 | Gentiles lorded over them and their high officials exercise authority over them.
00:29:08.840 | Not so with you.
00:29:10.400 | Instead, whoever wants to become great among you must be your servant, and whoever wants
00:29:15.280 | to be first among you must be your slave."
00:29:17.400 | And it's sort of passages like this that we have sometimes spoken of servant leadership.
00:29:24.480 | Jesus is the servant king, which does not mean that he is less of a servant.