Today, in the United States, we inaugurate our 45th president. And politics aside, there's always something majestic about presidential inaugurations and royal coronations. They carry with them an unusual weightiness. These rare events transcend time by the regalia of their gravity, something more like a wedding or a funeral or some combination of the two.

Inaugurations are events so significant they almost seem to overshadow the person at the center of it all, the people present, and even the generation who witnesses it. In an inauguration, we get a small sense of a nation's weight. The theme of kingdom is a very significant one in scripture.

Christ himself is a sovereign king. He was coronated in his resurrection and ascension, and he now reigns over a kingdom yet fully manifested. Here to explain how this works out from Genesis to Revelation, we welcome to the podcast Dr. Don Carson. Carson is the co-founder and president of the Gospel Coalition, and he's also the editor of the NIV Zondervan Study Bible.

I recently talked to him on the phone and asked him to explain the doctrine of the kingdom as it develops from Genesis to Revelation. Before I start to trace out the theme of kingdom through the Bible, it will prove helpful, I think, to make four distinctions about how the word "kingdom" is used in the Bible.

These are distinctions that every Bible reader comes to terms with with time, but they really are very important. Number one, the notion of kingdom in the Bible is often closer to what is sometimes called king dominion, that is, reign. When we speak of kingdom today, we often think of a realm rather than a reign, the kingdom of Saudi Arabia, the United Kingdom.

We're thinking of a geographical area with its people and buildings and institutions and so on. The kingdom is that over which the king reigns. There are some usages like that in the Bible, of course. The kingdom of Israel and the kingdom of God can be seen as the domain over which he reigns.

But very frequently, kingdom has to do more with the reign of God rather than the realm of God's reign. And that will become important, as we'll see in due course. Second, this is a republic here in America, so our mental associations connected with kingdom are not necessarily very positive.

The last king that Americans acknowledged didn't turn out too well, and hence the American Revolution. Moreover, if we think nostalgically about a monarchy today, probably for many Americans, the first monarch that they think of is Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II. And she's a constitutional monarch. She has precisely two powers, apart from her enormous personal influence and integrity and all the rest.

But she has two powers. She signs legislation that gets through Parliament into law. And second, she can dissolve Parliament any time she wishes to. Yet in point of fact, if she did either of those things over against what the Parliament wanted, over against what the Prime Minister wanted, it would precipitate a national crisis.

And there would be an election called, and whatever party was in power would be returned with a massive majority. So we're used to the notion of a king or a queen, a monarch, who is head of state, but not head of government. Whereas there's no such distinction in the Bible.

If you are the king, you reign. That's what you do. You have the authority. So we should not be thinking United Kingdom. We should be thinking Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, where there is an absolute authority. And even then, it's often mediated through an extended family or something like that.

And when we speak of the Kingdom of God, we're not saying that he's the constitutional monarch. We're not saying that he's head of state, but he doesn't reign. By definition, this is the reign of God. God rules. God reigns. So that's the second distinction we simply have to come to grips with.

Third, the Bible can make a distinction between the reign of God in all of God's sweeping sovereignty, the reign of God under which everybody falls, whether they even believe in God or not, and what might be called that subset of God's sweeping reign under which there is life, under which there is salvation.

The first is found strongly, for example, in a psalm like Psalm 145, "I will exalt you, my God, the King." God is reigning over all. That's part of the point of many verses in the psalm. In that sense, you're in the Kingdom of God, whether you like it or not.

You don't choose to be in that kingdom. It's part of being a creature. God reigns. In that sense, kingdom is virtually equivalent to divine sovereignty or to divine providence. God reigns, and every one, everything, every event, every item, every matter, every thought is finally subject to that sovereignty. On the other hand, sometimes the kingdom is that subset of God's sovereignty under which there is life.

For example, in John 3, verses 3 and 5, "Unless you're born again, you cannot see or enter into the kingdom." Well, clearly, in that sense, there are some people who are in the kingdom and some people who are not. That's not to be confused with God's sovereignty. It's that subset of God's sweeping sovereignty under which there is life.

In that sense, then, the kingdom comes. The kingdom of God in the sovereignty sense doesn't come. It's here. It's unavoidable. It's eternal. It's primordial. It has come from forever and will go to forever. You cannot escape it. You're never outside it. If "kingdom" refers to that subset under which there is salvation and reconciliation and forgiveness and eternal life and so forth, then that opens up the possibility to speak of the kingdom coming.

It can then be mediated through the coming of the King Paracelos. It has to be said that this distinction, this distinction between the kingdom as God's sovereignty and the kingdom under which there is life, is not only a New Testament distinction. You can find something of the same thing, for example, in the book of Daniel.

In Daniel chapter 4, when King Nebuchadnezzar makes his decree, he says, "How great are his signs," speaking of God, "how mighty his wonders," Daniel 4.3. "His kingdom is an eternal kingdom. His dominion endures from generation to generation." On the other hand, in chapter 2, verse 44, when Daniel interprets Nebuchadnezzar's dream of a succession of kingdoms, we read, verse 44, "In the time of those kings, the God of heaven will set up a kingdom that will never be destroyed, nor will it be left to another people.

It will crush all those kingdoms and bring them to an end, but it will itself endure forever." So, in that sense, this kingdom, of which 244 is speaking, comes. It's not an eternal kingdom. It comes at a certain point in redemptive history. And so it's important to understand that.

And in a few places, it's not. The two themes are getting merged a wee bit. Think, for example, of the parable of the wheat and the tares, or the wheat and the weeds. It's with the kingdom of God, as it is with the parable of the wheat and the weeds.

That is, a farmer goes forth to sow, sows good seed, but then an enemy comes in and sows a lot of weeds. And the disciples want to go out immediately and pull the weeds. But the master says, "No, wait until the end, and then a distinction will be made." So at one level, that means that this dawning kingdom is a kingdom that allows weed and wheat to grow together in anticipation of a consummated kingdom, where there will be a final division that is absolute.

So here you've got a couple of distinctions being made. The kingdom comes with the sowing of the seed, but it's being contested so that under this coming of the kingdom, you have not only a sphere of life, but a distinction between what has been done in the past—the wheat hadn't started to be sown—and what is happening now.

The wheat is being sown, but yet a distinction between the wheat being sown and the tares also being sown. So you've really got a mixture of the second and the third distinctions mingled together in one parable, and then introducing the fourth distinction, the difference between the present and the future.

There is a sense in which the kingdom has dawned with the coming of Christ. There's a sense in which the kingdom is not yet. So on the one hand, Jesus, after his resurrection, can say, "All authority is given to me in heaven and on earth." So he reigns already.

We'll see more of that in a few moments. But not only does he reign with all authority, all of God's mediated authority runs through him according to 1 Corinthians 15. And yet under that mediatorial reign of King Jesus, that reign is being contested. It's being challenged. There are weeds as well as wheat.

But the time is coming when the kingdoms of this world become the kingdoms of our God, when the last enemy will be destroyed. And so there's a distinction to be made between the present and the future. And that is what stands then behind the Lord's Prayer. Your kingdom come, your will be done on earth as it is in heaven.

So here's a distinction. God's will is being done without being contested in heaven. There will come a time in the new heaven and the new earth when it will not be contested anywhere. But right now it is being contested, even though Christ is reigning, even though God's sovereignty is not removed.

But there is a sense in which it is still being contested, and therefore we pray, "Your kingdom come." That is, in a fashion in which it is no longer contested. So all of these subtleties and the notion of kingdom have to be borne in mind when we start wrestling with the way the kingdom theme begins to develop and run through the whole of Holy Scripture.

Now we want to follow how it develops through the Scripture, and we begin, as always, with creation and fall. Just as other themes find their rootage in Genesis 1, 2, and 3, so also kingdom. And just as these other themes find their rootage in Genesis 1, 2, and 3 without the technical terms showing up, so also with kingdom.

For example, the notion of covenant is introduced in these chapters without the word showing up; the notion of sacrifice for sin is introduced, but only in a gentle, preliminary, anticipatory sort of way, when you have the skin coverings made for the people who have fallen into rebellion against God.

More than a dozen themes develop in these first two or three chapters without actually being teased out in any sort of detail. They anticipate; they point the way forward. So also the doctrine of the Trinity is not established in the first three chapters of Genesis. There's nothing like what you find in John chapter 14 and following.

But on the other hand, there is this hint, "Let us create mankind in our image." And that plural reference, self-reference to God, is seminal; it's evocative; it begins to point forward to what is teased out much later in Scripture. So also for the notion of kingdom, there is no use of the word "king" or "kingdom" in these opening chapters, and yet what you get is a picture of God reigning.

He is the king; he exists, and he, by his decree, calls the world into being. He establishes what is right and wrong. He rules; he holds people accountable. In all of these ways, the notion of kingdom is bound up with the doctrine of creation right from the very beginning.

But it's not too long until you find kingdom used in a more restrictive sense, not for all of creation, but for the sphere that takes in the covenant people of God. Perhaps the most crucial passage, initially, is Exodus chapter 19. On the first day of the third month after the Israelites left Egypt on that very day, they came to the desert of Sinai.

After they set out from Rephidim, they entered the desert of Sinai, and Israel camped there in the desert in front of the mountain. Then Moses went up to God, and the Lord called to him from the mountain and said, "This is what you are to say to the descendants of Jacob, and what you are to tell the people of Israel.

You yourselves have seen what I did to Egypt, and how I carried you on eagles' wings and brought you to myself. Now if you obey me fully and keep my covenant, then out of all nations you will be my treasured possession. Although the whole earth is mine, you will be for me a kingdom of priests and a holy nation.

These are the words you are to speak to the Israelites." So on the one hand, God reigns over everybody and everything and all the nations. And on the other hand, there is a sense in which the Israelites are peculiarly the people of God. They are peculiarly a kingdom of priests.

And now in this sense, you're not only facing a more restricted realm, but also the focus is on the realm rather than the reign. They are the kingdom of priests. What's interesting then is that that theme is taken up and applied to the new covenant people of God in 1 Peter 2, verse 9.

The same thing there is addressed to Christians. So exactly the same kingdom of priests language is picked up in 1 Peter 2, 9 and in Revelation 1, 6. Then the notion of God as king, the God who rules over his people, is very common in the Old Testament and traces in many ways to this use of kingdom in Exodus 19, 1-6.

So God is the king. God is the lawgiver. God is the one who judges his people. God is the one who is sovereign. And so Moses and other leaders are regularly seen then as under-reigners. It's not a very useful word, but God's spokesman, God is reigning through them. And it's in that connection that shepherd language is often used.

Shepherd language has many elements to the image, but the shepherd cares for the sheep, rules over the sheep, disciplines the sheep, provides for the sheep, and all of those notions are bound up with the notion of kingdom in the ancient world where you're not thinking of a constitutional monarch.

It's worth remembering, for example, the book by Tim Laniac, "Shepherds After My Own Heart." The kings of Israel, about whom I'll say more in a few moments, are under-kings. They are under God's kingship. So this notion of God as king runs right through Holy Scripture, with God being the particular king, the peculiar king of his kingdominion, and of the people who are then called his kingdom of priests.

But already in the time of Moses, there is an anticipation of the time when God will raise up a human king over his people. Moses is not called king, although in many ways he reigns. Joshua is not called king, though of course there are many ways in which he reigns.

But already in the book of Deuteronomy, there is the anticipation of the time when there will be a king who must act in a certain way. Perhaps the most telling passage is Deuteronomy chapter 17, verses 14 and following. "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,' be sure to appoint over you a king the Lord your God chooses.

He must be from among your fellow Israelites. Do not place a foreigner over you, one who is not an Israelite. The king, moreover, must not acquire a great number of horses for himself, or make the people return to Egypt to get more of them. For the Lord has told you, 'You are not to go back that way again.' He must not take many wives, or his heart will be led astray.

He must not accumulate large amounts of silver and gold. 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 Levitical priests. It is to be with him, and he is to read it all the days of his life, so that he may learn to revere the Lord his God, and follow carefully all the words of this law and these decrees, and not consider himself better than his fellow Israelites, and turn from the law to the right or to the left.

Then he and his descendants will reign a long time over his kingdom in Israel." In other words, they'll reign—that's the active notion of rule—over the kingdom of the Israelites. That's the notion of realm. And thus you see a picture of a coming king who is, on the one hand, authoritative.

He rules. He reigns over the people. And yet, on the other hand, he is under God's authority, so much so that the first responsibility he has when he takes on the throne is not to appoint a secretary of state, or to arrange for the military, or to water the books of his predecessors.

His first job is to write out longhand the words of the book of the law, and that will be his reading copy every day of his life, as long as he lives, so that he learns not to turn to the left or to the right, away from the Word of God.

If those few verses in Deuteronomy 17 had been followed, all of Old Testament history would have been different. So that's the anticipation of the coming of a king, even in the time of Moses. Then finally the people do get in the land, and in the days of the judges there are these wretched cycles that see the people spiraling down into idolatry again and again.

God raises up not kings, but judges who have some kind of kingly function. They rule, they lead the people, and they hold the people to account, and they fight off the Midianites, or they fight off the Philistines, and so on. But then it's not long, a generation or two, and everything cycles down again.

Gradually the cry becomes stronger and stronger, "Oh God, how we need a king." In those days, everyone did that which was right in his own eyes, "How we need a king." And so there is a kind of wretched tendency towards sin, and a hope that a king would hold people in line and fight their battles for them.

But when the people do ask for a king, they ask with the most appalling motives. They think that a human king is going to save them in a way that God, the king, cannot. So God, in the time of Samuel, lets them have a king, and even gives them one that seems promising, King Saul.

But Saul turns out to be a very insecure man who wants to take over not only the kingdom, but also the priesthood, and eventually he falls in disgrace, he dies, there is no succession, there is no dynasty. And that's when God raises up a man whom he calls, "A man after my own heart, a king after my own heart." That brings us to the great passage, 2 Samuel, chapter 7.

So in 2 Samuel, chapter 7, by which time King David has been installed, King David appears as the king whom God's own appointment, and reigns for seven years in Hebron over the southern tribes, then another 33 years over the whole 12 tribes of the capital in Jerusalem. And he wants to build a temple for God.

But God says that he, God, will build a house that is a dynasty for David. And thus the Davidic dynasty is finally wonderfully established. That becomes one of the major storyline threads right through all of the Bible. The Davidic dynasty, the Davidic dynasty, the Davidic dynasty, and even the promise that there will be a continuity in this succession, there will be a succession that lasts forever, which can only be fulfilled, finally, by a king that replaces his father, and another king that replaces that father, and another king that replaces that father, or, conceivably, please God, a king who would actually live forever.

And that promise takes place about 1000 BC, during the time of King David himself. Then in the late 8th century, in the time of the prophet Isaiah, you find more references to the Davidic king. To us, a child is born, to us a son is given, and he will reign on the throne of his father David.

So we're talking about the Davidic dynasty. Of the increase of his kingdom, there will be no end. But he shall also be called the wonderful counselor, the mighty God, the everlasting father, the prince of peace. So now you have an anticipation of a kingship that is being so associated with God himself that it's unlike any Davidic king that has appeared up to that point, or that is anticipated in the near future.

And there are other hints along the line. The prophecy of Micah, chapter 5, too, that this coming, crowning king will be born in Bethlehem. And then using the shepherd language that's already been introduced in Ezekiel, chapter 34, God himself says again and again and again that he will come and shepherd his people.

That's equivalent to God saying he will come and reign. He will come and rule over them directly. He will nurture them. He will provide them with the food and the water they need. He will discipline them. He will separate sheep from goats. He will be their shepherd. It's shepherd language to talk about his coming kingdom.

And then at the end of that, he says, after declaring about 25 times that he will come and reign, then he says, "I will send my servant David to do so." So again, you're seeing the coming of God himself in the coming of the promised Davidic king. And so we could trace out more of the drama of the Old Testament when Jerusalem falls and the nation of Judah follows the fate of the nation of Israel off into exile.

And there is no Davidic king in Jerusalem. It just seems so bleak for the covenant people of God. Where are the promises of God? The temple is destroyed. There's no Davidic king. They know who it should be. The genealogical records are maintained, but he's not on the throne. And then the people of God return after the end of the exile, and the Nedo-Persians allow them back under Cyrus and Darius, under Artaxerxes and so forth.

And the city is rebuilt. The temple is rebuilt. The temple first, then the city, the city under Nehemiah. But still there's no Davidic king. And then you turn to the pages of the New Testament, and the first words you read are the origins of Jesus Christ, the son of Abraham, the son of David.

And then you begin with a genealogy, a genealogy slightly artificially constructed into three fourteens, where the central fourteens are the years of the Davidic monarchy, the Davidic line, the Davidic dynasty. And now what you have is the coming of Jesus, who is legally in line to take up that claim.

And so the Magi come and ask, "Where is he who was born king of the Jews?" And when John the Baptist and Jesus begin to preach, they use the same words, "Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is near." And they probably mean near in slightly different ways. John the Baptist seems to mean it in the sense, the kingdom is impending.

It's just around the corner. Jesus is maybe saying the same thing, but may also have another overtone in his utterance. It's near you. It has come, and it's near you. It is close, for he himself is there. And then whether you're talking about the Sermon on the Mount or the parables of Jesus and so many of his miracles, the kingdom theme is never far away.

Who inherits the kingdom? Well, the Beatitudes address that question. We are to pursue the kingdom of God and his righteousness, knowing that all other things will be added to us in Matthew 6.33. And the miracles of healing and of raising the dead and the transformation, all of these things are announcements that the kingdom is near.

It's dawning. It's present. It's manifesting itself. And at the same time, there is patently misunderstanding on the part of the disciples as to how the kingdom will manifest itself. One of the most striking passages in this regard, of course, is Matthew 20, verses 20-28, with a parallel in Mark.

And on this occasion, the two brothers, James and John, approach Jesus with their mother. And what they're really asking for is a leg up when the kingdom dawns, when he, Jesus, enters into his kingdom, that is, into what they take to be the full plenitude of a restored Israel with powerful dominion over the nations and a great display of righteousness and integrity and authority.

They want to be senior administrators above the other disciples in that kingdom. Grant that one of these two sons of mine may sit at your right and the other at your left in your kingdom. And it turns out that they don't really understand at all what that kingdom is going to be like.

Can you drink the cup I'm going to drink? He's going to drink the cup of the cross. Can they go there? They have no idea what they're saying when they reply, "We can." They think that they'll follow Jesus courageously no matter what. And Jesus says, "Well, there's a sense, of course, in which you will drink from my cup.

After all, one of them would become the first apostolic martyr and the other would end his life in exile. So in that sense, they'll suffer too. But it's up to my heavenly Father to grant these things." And then when the ten other apostles hear about this, they're indignant. And they're indignant because those two got their gibs in first, not because they're indignant that what they did was wrong.

And that's when Jesus calls them all together and says, "You know that the rulers of the Gentiles lorded over them and their high officials exercise authority over them. Not so with you. Instead, whoever wants to become great among you must be your servant, and whoever wants to be first among you must be your slave." And it's sort of passages like this that we have sometimes spoken of servant leadership.

Jesus is the servant king, which does not mean that he is less of a servant.