A King is Coming
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We are continuing our survey of the Old Testament this morning, as we look at the overview of what took place after God revealed Himself to the people of Israel at Mt. Sinai.
Each week, we have been asking two main questions.
What do we learn about God? What do we learn about mankind, or ourselves?
Over the last two weeks in our overview of Exodus, we have learned something about God, and something about ourselves.
Two weeks ago we saw God’s great desire. What does God desire?
I will take you as my own people, and I will be your God. Then you will know that I am the Lord your God, who brought you out from under the yoke of the Egyptians.
You will be my people, and I will be your God
You will be my people, and I will be your God
A people to be his own possession, and that He would be their God
That they would know and Fear Him.
Then last week we saw through the law, that God is Holy and Righteous, and that we are not. God gave us The Law to better know Him and ourselves.
The Law shows us our sin, and the Sacrifice shows us how God will make us His own people
The Law shows us our sin, and the Sacrifice shows us how God will make us His own people
Just as the people of Israel repeatedly swore that they would obey the Lord and then very quickly rebelled against His commands, so too, we often swear or say that we will follow the Lord, and then we rebel against Him seeking our own way.
The law helps us to rightly fear Him. It shows us that we are not worthy of being his people. It shows us our failings and that we deserve his wrath. Fear of the Lord’s wrath.
The Law also helps us to fear the Lord in that it provides the means to approach Him in light of our sin: Sacrifice.
God showed the Israelites through the sacrifices that the wages of sin is death.
He also showed that He would provide the sacrifice to cover sin. This leads to the fear of the Lord as we are in awe of His gracious provision of salvation.
The law and the sacrifice are meant to lead us to know and fear the Lord, fulfilling His desire to have us for his people, and His desire that we would have him as our God.
I will be their God
I will be their God
Actually, that latter part, Having Him for our God is what the rest of the history in the Old Testament is about.
You see, God want to have us for His people. So, He gave us the law to show us why we are not His, and then the sacrifice to make us His people. God does all of the work when it comes to our salvation, and making us His own.
Then comes our part. We are to have Him as our God, as our King. We are to have Him as the One we will follow daily. Then, as we worship this great God, it leads to the final aspect of fearing him, obedience from the heart. Walking with him daily.
God knows that we need Him. We need him not just for salvation, but to lead us every day. Otherwise we are quick to forget and forsake our God.
This is the lesson we learn from the rest of the Old Testament as we see the Lord working with Israel.
God showed them his desire.
God showed them the law and their sin.
God showed them how he would provide for their sin.
They needed to remember him, and walk daily with him. We need Him as our leader, our King on a daily basis. But would they remember? No. Would they follow him as their king? No.
The reality we see from the rest of the Old Testament is that we are followers. We will follow someone. The question is, who will we follow?
Who will we have as our God and King?
Who will we have as our God and King?
Let’s walk through the history of the Old Testament and see this great theme of having Him as our God and King.
After Israel spent a year at Mt. Sinai, they moved out. God led them daily with a cloud by day, and a pillar of fire at night. When the cloud moved out, so did they. When it stayed over the tabernacle, they stayed put. They had to follow him, and they did… but did they?
At the end of Numbers 10, they finally set out and God was going before them to show them the good places to rest and camp.
What happens right away?
Now the people complained about their hardships in the hearing of the Lord, and when he heard them his anger was aroused. Then fire from the Lord burned among them and consumed some of the outskirts of the camp.
They after they cried out to Moses and Moses prayed to the Lord…
The rabble with them began to crave other food, and again the Israelites started wailing and said, “If only we had meat to eat!
We remember the fish we ate in Egypt at no cost—also the cucumbers, melons, leeks, onions and garlic.
But now we have lost our appetite; we never see anything but this manna!”
God is their God and King, but will they have Him?
God is their God and King, but will they have Him?
Right away, though the Lord is leading and providing for them, they do not like what He is providing. They are not satisfied with Him as their God and King.
Then, Numbers 12. Aaron and Miriam complain about Moses being the leader. They are not satisfied with the leader God has chosen.
Numbers 13. They arrive at the promised land, and send out 12 spies, 10 of whom say we can’t go up there. They are giants.
Numbers 14, the people wail and want to go back to Egypt. They do not like where God is taking them. So, God says they have to wander the desert until that generation dies. They don’t like what God has said, and try to attack the land on their own and die.
Numbers 16. More men rebel and want to be the leaders instead of Moses and Aaron. God opens the ground to swallow the leaders and their families alive, and then burns up the other 250 of their followers. The next day, the whole nation opposes Moses and Aaron for this, and God sends a plague, but Moses and Aaron intervene, and God stops the plague.
They needed someone to lead them daily to help them remember and follow their God. They needed the king.
Numbers 20, they are needing water again. But instead of remembering how God had provided before, they complain.
Numbers 21, they complain again about having to wander through the desert, and the Lord sends venomous snakes. This is when God makes a provision of the serpent on the pole, so that if anyone just looks, they do not have to die.
Numbers 25 we have the people engaging in sexual immorality as they worshiped the god of the Midianites, Baal of Peor.
Does this sound like a people who have taken Him as their God, as their King that they want to follow daily?
‘Because they have not followed me wholeheartedly, not one of those who were twenty years old or more when they came up out of Egypt will see the land I promised on oath to Abraham, Isaac and Jacob—
not one except Caleb son of Jephunneh the Kenizzite and Joshua son of Nun, for they followed the Lord wholeheartedly.’
Only be careful, and watch yourselves closely so that you do not forget the things your eyes have seen or let them fade from your heart as long as you live. Teach them to your children and to their children after them.
Remember the day you stood before the Lord your God at Horeb, when he said to me, “Assemble the people before me to hear my words so that they may learn to revere me as long as they live in the land and may teach them to their children.”
So be careful to do what the Lord your God has commanded you; do not turn aside to the right or to the left.
Walk in obedience to all that the Lord your God has commanded you, so that you may live and prosper and prolong your days in the land that you will possess.
Hear, Israel, and be careful to obey so that it may go well with you and that you may increase greatly in a land flowing with milk and honey, just as the Lord, the God of your ancestors, promised you.
Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is one.
Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength.
These commandments that I give you today are to be on your hearts.
be careful that you do not forget the Lord, who brought you out of Egypt, out of the land of slavery.
Fear the Lord your God, serve him only and take your oaths in his name.
Know therefore that the Lord your God is God; he is the faithful God, keeping his covenant of love to a thousand generations of those who love him and keep his commandments.
But those who hate him he will repay to their face by destruction; he will not be slow to repay to their face those who hate him.
Therefore, take care to follow the commands, decrees and laws I give you today.
He humbled you, causing you to hunger and then feeding you with manna, which neither you nor your ancestors had known, to teach you that man does not live on bread alone but on every word that comes from the mouth of the Lord.
Your clothes did not wear out and your feet did not swell during these forty years.
Know then in your heart that as a man disciplines his son, so the Lord your God disciplines you.
Observe the commands of the Lord your God, walking in obedience to him and revering him.
For the Lord your God is bringing you into a good land—a land with brooks, streams, and deep springs gushing out into the valleys and hills;
When you have eaten and are satisfied, praise the Lord your God for the good land he has given you.
Be careful that you do not forget the Lord your God, failing to observe his commands, his laws and his decrees that I am giving you this day.
Otherwise, when you eat and are satisfied, when you build fine houses and settle down,
and when your herds and flocks grow large and your silver and gold increase and all you have is multiplied,
then your heart will become proud and you will forget the Lord your God, who brought you out of Egypt, out of the land of slavery.
Deuteronomy 10:12-13 (NIV)
And now, Israel, what does the Lord your God ask of you but to fear the Lord your God, to walk in obedience to him, to love him, to serve the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul,
and to observe the Lord’s commands and decrees that I am giving you today for your own good?
Fear the Lord your God and serve him. Hold fast to him and take your oaths in his name.
See, I set before you today life and prosperity, death and destruction.
For I command you today to love the Lord your God, to walk in obedience to him, and to keep his commands, decrees and laws; then you will live and increase, and the Lord your God will bless you in the land you are entering to possess.
Deuteronomy is Moses making his final plea for the people to have God as their God. To love Him, and to walk with Him daily.
Joshua is the story of conquest. God takes Israel into the land, and drives out their enemies before them. But not without issues.
The very first city is Jericho, and it is to be dedicated to the Lord. Nothing is to be taken from it for themselves. But, one man, Achan takes some of the loot for himself.
Then, the people quickly forget seeking the Lord. They just go on to the next city on their own without consulting the Lord, and they lose badly.
They quickly forget to walk with God as the leader, as their king.
God does give them the land as promised but there is something interesting at the end of Joshua.
“Now fear the Lord and serve him with all faithfulness. Throw away the gods your ancestors worshiped beyond the Euphrates River and in Egypt, and serve the Lord.
But if serving the Lord seems undesirable to you, then choose for yourselves this day whom you will serve, whether the gods your ancestors served beyond the Euphrates, or the gods of the Amorites, in whose land you are living. But as for me and my household, we will serve the Lord.”
Then the people answered, “Far be it from us to forsake the Lord to serve other gods!
But the people said to Joshua, “No! We will serve the Lord.”
Then Joshua said, “You are witnesses against yourselves that you have chosen to serve the Lord.” “Yes, we are witnesses,” they replied.
“Now then,” said Joshua, “throw away the foreign gods that are among you and yield your hearts to the Lord, the God of Israel.”
And the people said to Joshua, “We will serve the Lord our God and obey him.”
Why did they have to throw away other gods if they were already walking with the Lord as their God? Because they had not been. They quickly left the Lord, and did not have Him as their God.
After that whole generation had been gathered to their ancestors, another generation grew up who knew neither the Lord nor what he had done for Israel.
Then the Israelites did evil in the eyes of the Lord and served the Baals.
They forsook the Lord, the God of their ancestors, who had brought them out of Egypt. They followed and worshiped various gods of the peoples around them. They aroused the Lord’s anger
because they forsook him and served Baal and the Ashtoreths.
In those days Israel had no king; everyone did as they saw fit.
Samuel…
But when they said, “Give us a king to lead us,” this displeased Samuel; so he prayed to the Lord.
And the Lord told him: “Listen to all that the people are saying to you; it is not you they have rejected, but they have rejected me as their king.
As they have done from the day I brought them up out of Egypt until this day, forsaking me and serving other gods, so they are doing to you.
Kings - Saul, David, Solomon, Divided kingdom
bad kings, good kings… ultimately it was whether they would follow the Lord.
Exile
Return
Promise...
I will give them an undivided heart and put a new spirit in them; I will remove from them their heart of stone and give them a heart of flesh.
Then they will follow my decrees and be careful to keep my laws. They will be my people, and I will be their God.
I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit in you; I will remove from you your heart of stone and give you a heart of flesh.
And I will put my Spirit in you and move you to follow my decrees and be careful to keep my laws.
Then you will live in the land I gave your ancestors; you will be my people, and I will be your God.
The word of the Lord came to me:
“Son of man, take a stick of wood and write on it, ‘Belonging to Judah and the Israelites associated with him.’ Then take another stick of wood, and write on it, ‘Belonging to Joseph (that is, to Ephraim) and all the Israelites associated with him.’
Join them together into one stick so that they will become one in your hand.
“When your people ask you, ‘Won’t you tell us what you mean by this?’
say to them, ‘This is what the Sovereign Lord says: I am going to take the stick of Joseph—which is in Ephraim’s hand—and of the Israelite tribes associated with him, and join it to Judah’s stick. I will make them into a single stick of wood, and they will become one in my hand.’
Hold before their eyes the sticks you have written on
and say to them, ‘This is what the Sovereign Lord says: I will take the Israelites out of the nations where they have gone. I will gather them from all around and bring them back into their own land.
I will make them one nation in the land, on the mountains of Israel. There will be one king over all of them and they will never again be two nations or be divided into two kingdoms.
They will no longer defile themselves with their idols and vile images or with any of their offenses, for I will save them from all their sinful backsliding, and I will cleanse them. They will be my people, and I will be their God.
“ ‘My servant David will be king over them, and they will all have one shepherd. They will follow my laws and be careful to keep my decrees.
They will live in the land I gave to my servant Jacob, the land where your ancestors lived. They and their children and their children’s children will live there forever, and David my servant will be their prince forever.
I will make a covenant of peace with them; it will be an everlasting covenant. I will establish them and increase their numbers, and I will put my sanctuary among them forever.
My dwelling place will be with them; I will be their God, and they will be my people.
Then the nations will know that I the Lord make Israel holy, when my sanctuary is among them forever.’ ”
Israel Rejected God as their King
Israel Rejected God as their King
But…
But God promises restoration… A King is Coming
But God promises restoration… A King is Coming
Question… What about me?
God revealed Himself to Israel
God revealed His desire and purpose
God revealed the Law and the Sacrifice
God wanted to have them, and to be their God
That is God’s desire for us, to follow him.
Jesus said this to indicate the kind of death by which Peter would glorify God. Then he said to him, “Follow me!”
Peter turned and saw that the disciple whom Jesus loved was following them. (This was the one who had leaned back against Jesus at the supper and had said, “Lord, who is going to betray you?”)
When Peter saw him, he asked, “Lord, what about him?”
Jesus answered, “If I want him to remain alive until I return, what is that to you? You must follow me.”
What about me? Is He my God and King?
What about me? Is He my God and King?
Has He revealed Himself to you and me?
Has He revealed His desire and purpose?
Has He revealed the Law, our failure and sin?
Has He revealed the Sacrifice? Our salvation?
Does God want us to be His people?
Do we have Him for our God?
Or… do we desire other things?
Do we desire other earthly leaders?
Do we desire to be our own people, doing what is right in our own eyes?
Do we forget the Lord our God daily?
Do we walk with Him in obedience?
Good news… A King came. A King who came to give us a new heart to love Him and obey Him.
Obedience for the sake of obedience doesn’t go far. Obedience out of love goes the distance.
Obedience for the sake of obedience doesn’t go far. Obedience out of love goes the distance.