The Kingdom of Immanuel

INTRODUCTION

According to a survey of English-speaking Americans, 20% of Americans use slang on a daily basis.

The most popular slang words in our country right now would be:

Boujee: Rich, luxurious, special, fancy

Extra: Being dramatic or attention-grabbing

Let them cook: A word used by people to say that someone should be able to do something without interference.

Ex. The Warriors coach should stop making Steph Curry pass the ball. Let Chef Curry cook.

And yet—here is the deal—of the 20% who say they use slang everyday, half of them say they don’t know what these words mean!

I blame most of this on Gen-Z.

They are saying slang words like Sigma and Skibidi and Rizz and no one knows what is going on.

So you have a bunch of parents using words that they don’t understand.

As Christians, we don’t want to be like Gen-Z parents.

We don’t want to use buzz words and not really know what they mean.

There are a lot of words you hear quite often in the church and in theology.

But do we know what they mean?

And I am not just talking about ten dollar theological terms like infralapsarian and supralapsarian.

I am talking about words that we use a lot as church people...

Words like Grace and Propitiation and Intercede.

And for our purposes this morning—a word like KINGDOM.

We talk about the Kingdom of God all the time as believers...

We say we are building the kingdom...

We say that we want God to advance His kingdom...

We pray that the Kingdom would come and His will would be done...

But we do know what God’s Kingdom is?

And do we understand how crucial it is to understanding the story of Scripture.

I certainly hope we will by the end of today, as we wrap up our Advent series in Isaiah 9.

CONTEXT

So far in our series, we have seen Isaiah speak to Judah during a dark time and give them hope of the Messiah to come.

In the midst of political turmoil and the threat of foreign invasion, God spoke through the prophet and told the people of an Anointed Child to come whose name would be called:

Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace.

This morning, we are going to see that this Child is a King. And we are going to talk about the nature of His Kingdom.

I’ll give you our three teaching points from today and then we will jump into the passage:

1. The story of Christ’s Kingdom is the story of Scripture.

2. The story of Christ’s Kingdom is your story.

3. The story of Christ’s Kingdom is the Lord’s to finish.

TEXT—THESE ARE THE VERY WORDS OF GOD

Isaiah 9:6–7 ESV

For to us a child is born, to us a son is given; and the government shall be upon his shoulder, and his name shall be called Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace. Of the increase of his government and of peace there will be no end, on the throne of David and over his kingdom, to establish it and to uphold it with justice and with righteousness from this time forth and forevermore. The zeal of the Lord of hosts will do this.

THE STORY OF SCRIPTURE

1. The story of Christ’s Kingdom is the story of Scripture.

It is undeniable that Isaiah 9:6-7 has much to say to us about the Kingdom of Christ.

The Messiah is a Prince of Peace who will have the government upon his shoulder.

He has a rule of peace which will increase with no end.

He has a throne that He rules His Kingdom from in perfect justice and righteousness forever.

And this Kingdom is truly the story of Scripture.

That is where I want us to start this morning.

I want us to see just how central the Kingdom is in the King’s story.

We will do this in a 30,000 feet overview of the Bible.

Then I want us to zoom down and see our place in it this morning.

To understand the Kingdom of the Child who is born, we really need to go back to the very beginning of the Bible.

EDEN: KINGDOM ESTABLISHED

We are going back to Eden, where the Kingdom of God is established.

And when I say established—it is really the pattern of the Kingdom which is established.

The Bible begins with an explicit statement about rule and ownership.

Genesis 1:1 ESV

In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth.

What that means is that they belong to Him.

They are the work of His hand.

He is the Ruler of the heavens and the earth and all that exists within them.

He is the King over all of it and the Maker of all of it.

And in the Garden in Genesis 1, we see the King establishing His Kingdom.

Now before I go any further, I want to give you a really helpful definition from Graeme Goldsworthy about the Kingdom of God:

He says, The Kingdom of God is God’s people in God’s place under God’s rule.

And with that definition in mind, we can really see the Kingdom throughout the story of the Bible.

So for example, here is what we have in the Garden:

God’s People: Adam and Eve

God’s Place: Eden

God’s Rule: They are living under the rule of His Word.

His Word which commands them to be fruitful and multiply

His Word which forbids them to eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil or they will surely die.

This is what we mean when we say pattern of the Kingdom is established.

In the Garden, The King who rules from heaven establishes His Kingdom on earth by placing Adam and Eve in the Garden as His vice-regents.

A vice-regent is someone who acts in the place of a King.

God is the One with total dominion and power, but He creates man in His own image and blesses them and says:

You rule in my place. You have dominion over every living thing that moves on the earth.

And as Adam and Eve are obedient in this role as vice-regents, they will fill the earth and multiply and through them, God’s rule will fill the whole earth.

And then, just as God rested on the 7th day, the implication is that Adam and Eve—if they are faithful—would enter in a similar sort of rest in God’s Kingdom.

THE FALL: KINGDOM INTERRUPTED

But we know they were not faithful. Instead, they rebelled against God’s rule and were ousted from God’s place and the established Kingdom is interrupted.

God’s People: Adam and Eve—the vice-regents are now enemies who have declared war on God.

God’s Place: They are exiled from the Garden.

God’s Rule: And since they have rejected God’s rule, they will surely die.

Now, instead of the world being a perfect place where God’s Kingdom is multiplying and expanding, it is a fallen place.

The Serpent has a degree of influence that is devastating and awful.

Sin and death are in the world.

And Adam and Eve and their children, who were supposed to perfectly rule God’s world are now ruining God’s world by trying to rule each other.

God’s Kingdom plan has been interrupted.

If it will not be thwarted, God will need to act in a saving manner.

How will we get back to a place where a man is perfectly ruling God’s people in God’s place as the vice-regent of the King?

God will have to do something.

And that is exactly what He promises to do in Genesis 3:15

Genesis 3:15 ESV

I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your offspring and her offspring; he shall bruise your head, and you shall bruise his heel.”

From Eve’s line, there will come Offspring who will strike a fatal blow to the lying, deceiving Serpent.

From Eve’s line, there will be a Child who will step on the head of the Devil.

There will be a Hero to bring about God’s Kingdom pattern and design.

God’s people in God’s place, under God’s rule.

The question is—who is this Hero?

ABRAHAM: KINGDOM PROMISED

The generations that came after Adam proved to be as wicked as expected.

Their wickedness resulted in God judging the world with a Flood.

He started over with Noah and his family.

Maybe Noah is this Hero that we are looking for?

But then, right after God’s mercy has been on full display, Noah gets drunk.

This is not the royal hero we were looking for.

The generations that come after Noah prove to be just as wicked, with their wickedness culminating in God scattering humanity at Babel in Genesis 11.

But in Genesis 12, we see God call another man who is an important figure in the Kingdom story.

This was Abraham.

God made a promise to Abraham.

He promised him that he would be a father of a great nation (Genesis 12:2)

He promised to bless him and make his name great and bless all the nations through him (Genesis 12:2-3)

He promised him that he would have a vast amount of descendants like the sand on the shore or the stars in the sky (Genesis 15:5; Genesis 22:17)

He promised him a land to rest in with the land of Canaan (Genesis 12:7; Genesis 15:18-21)

And promised that He would be the God of Abraham’s people (Genesis 17:7-8)

Genesis 17:7–8 ESV

And I will establish my covenant between me and you and your offspring after you throughout their generations for an everlasting covenant, to be God to you and to your offspring after you. And I will give to you and to your offspring after you the land of your sojournings, all the land of Canaan, for an everlasting possession, and I will be their God.”

And so we see the Kingdom Promised:

A people who would come from Abraham—God’s people

Dwelling in the place that God had given them

Living under God as their Ruler and King

The promise is a return to the established pattern of the Kingdom in Eden.

MOSES: KINGDOM CODIFIED

But the promise given through Abraham seems to be in jeopardy when you see the way the story of Genesis and Exodus unfold.

Due to a famine in the land, God’s people end up in Egypt and after some time, they are enslaved there.

God raises up Moses to deliver them from the chains of Pharaoh and then Moses is leading the people back toward the land promised to Abraham.

When they come to Mount Sinai, we see the Kingdom Code given to God’s people—God delivers His Law to Moses for the people.

Deuteronomy 30:16 ESV

If you obey the commandments of the Lord your God that I command you today, by loving the Lord your God, by walking in his ways, and by keeping his commandments and his statutes and his rules, then you shall live and multiply, and the Lord your God will bless you in the land that you are entering to take possession of it.

So if God’s people (Israel), live under God’s rule (The Law), they will be blessed by possession of the Promised Land—God’s place.

And the idea is that they will live in the land with God as their King.

So when the Law is given, the nation of Israel is codified as a theocratic nation.

They are one people who have God as their one King.

So then, is Moses this Royal Hero that was to come from Eve and destroy God’s enemies?

Well the answer is no.

While he was instrumental in seeing the theocracy of Israel set up, his own sin kept him out of the Promised Land.

If He isn’t even within the boundaries of the Land, we can’t say that he is the one we are looking for.

DAVID: KINGDOM FORESHADOWED

Then we get to time of the kings in Israel.

God’s people had rejected His theocratic rule and demanded a king.

At first, they get Saul, who is a clear picture of how fallen human kings are.

You reject God as your King and God will show you how foolish that is by giving you a faltering king like Saul.

However, after Saul, you have David—a King after God’s own heart.

And under David, we get this beautiful picture of God’s Kingdom.

You have God’s people—Israel.

Living in God’s place—The Promised Land—and Jerusalem in particular.

Under God’s Rule—the Law from Moses.

It is so beautiful that we may wonder whether or not David is this Royal Hero from Eve’s line that we have been waiting on...

But it becomes clear he isn’t because just like Noah and Moses before him, he is a sinner and it shows in the worst of ways.

He lusts after a man’s wife, sleeps with her and then proceeds to have her husband murdered when he can’t manage to get the husband to unknowingly participate in the cover-up.

And THIS GUY—Uriah—was one of his trusted mighty men that he kept around him for protection and guidance.

So then, David isn’t the One we are waiting on to inaugurate the Kingdom that was interrupted in the Garden.

However, David’s family has a vital role to play.

For David, who is from the line of Abraham, is promised that a Child from his line will sit on the throne of God’s Kingdom forever:

2 Samuel 7:12–13 ESV

When your days are fulfilled and you lie down with your fathers, I will raise up your offspring after you, who shall come from your body, and I will establish his kingdom. He shall build a house for my name, and I will establish the throne of his kingdom forever.

David’s Kingdom foreshadows the ultimate reality of God’s Kingdom.

And David’s throne will be the chair that a Son from David’s line sits on forever, as He rules over God’s Kingdom.

This is why Isaiah says that the Messiah’s government will come from the “throne of David,” in verse 7.

PROPHETS: KINGDOM FORETOLD

Then we come to the time of the prophets.

Most of the Old Testament prophets ministered from the 8th century to the 5th century BC.

During this time, God’s people were continuously unable to fully manifest the reality of God’s Kingdom because they were unable to stop sinning.

Their disobedience kept separating them from God.

What that means is that the prophets are mostly dealing with the sin of Israel and Judah and the reality of God’s discipline toward them.

Discipline coming at the hand of the Assyrians, Babylonians and exile from the Promised Land.

In all of these prophecies, God’s prophets are often warning the disobedient in Israel, while speaking to the remnant of Israel.

He was making promises to His true people who were not just Jewish by blood, but they were the true Israel because their hearts were turned away from sin and turned to the Lord.

They were the people that believed God.

And God spoke to His remnant through His prophets and what He promised them was this:

They are God’s people.

They would lived in God’s place—a restored land.

And they would have God’s rule, but it wasn’t the Mosaic Law and Covenant.

It was a new law and a New Covenant that God would use to rule His people:

Jeremiah 31:31–34 ESV

“Behold, the days are coming, declares the Lord, when I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and the house of Judah, not like the covenant that I made with their fathers on the day when I took them by the hand to bring them out of the land of Egypt, my covenant that they broke, though I was their husband, declares the Lord. For this is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel after those days, declares the Lord: I will put my law within them, and I will write it on their hearts. And I will be their God, and they shall be my people. And no longer shall each one teach his neighbor and each his brother, saying, ‘Know the Lord,’ for they shall all know me, from the least of them to the greatest, declares the Lord. For I will forgive their iniquity, and I will remember their sin no more.”

But how will this New Covenant be ushered in?

Where is our Royal Hero from Eve’s line?

Where is our King to sit on David’s throne?

This brings us to the center of our Universe as Christians.

CHRIST’S FIRST COMING: KINGDOM INAUGURATED

Christ is born in Bethlehem—the perfect Son of God.

And then He begins His public ministry around the age of thirty years old.

From the very start, what does He say?

Mark 1:15 ESV

and saying, “The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God is at hand; repent and believe in the gospel.”

From the very beginning of His ministry, Jesus wanted everyone to know that with His arrival, the Kingdom was at hand.

Meaning—it had come near. It was close by.

And the message He is preaching—The Gospel—it the message of Kingdom.

It is a Kingdom-bringing message.

The Kingdom pattern was established in Eden.

It was interrupted in the Fall.

It is foretold and foreshadowed throughout the Old Testament.

But when Christ comes and He lives, dies and resurrects, what was previously foreshadowed and foretold is inaugurated.

What was previously interrupted is instituted.

God sends His Son, who does not give into temptation, but remains sinless under God’s Law.

Jesus dies on the Cross and pays for the sins of His people so that they would no longer separate them from God. And He dies to establish a New Covenant in His blood, just as Jeremiah said He would.

Jesus rises again, proving that He is the Conqueror of sin and death

Jesus ascends to the right hand of the Father, affirming that He is the King of God’s Kingdom.

And then now Jesus is building His Kingdom, soul by soul.

As each sinner repents of their sin and trusts in Christ:

They are brought into the Kingdom

They become a Kingdom citizen

They are God’s people—reconciled to God by Christ

Living in God’s place—they are in God’s spiritual household—His Church

Under God’s rule—they live under the New Covenant rule of Christ the King

This was all accomplished by Jesus’ first coming.

This was all accomplished by the Royal Hero.

The child born to us in Isaiah 9, is the Child promised from Eve in Genesis 3, who would stomp on the Serpent’s head and give him a fatal blow.

But while we can say that the Kingdom is inaugurated in the first coming of Christ, we cannot say that the story is finished.

After all, we have to remember the Kingdom pattern that was established and interrupted in Genesis 1-3.

God is the King over all.

He chooses to have a Man—Adam—rule over creation in His place, as His vice-regent.

As God’s people are obedient to His commands, they would ultimately enter into His rest.

There is a sense in which these things have already come to pass.

Jesus is the King of God’s Kingdom.

We are His spiritual subjects

But the world is not yet right.

We can still see the effects of Adam’s sin and we still have spiritual rebellion all around us.

So the Kingdom is already, but not yet.

Inaugurated, but not consummated.

CHRIST’S SECOND COMING: KINGDOM CONSUMMATED

And that is how it will be until Jesus returns. That is how it will be until His Second Coming.

It is not until then that the Kingdom will be consummated.

Because here is what will happen when Jesus comes back:

All of the dead will be raised and judged.

Some to eternal life and some to eternal death, depending on whether or not their names are in the Lamb’s Book of Life...

…Depending on whether or not they are Kingdom citizens by faith.

Anyone whose name is not found in the Book of Life will be judged and cast into lake of fire.

All the enemies of God will be removed.

And then, as the New Earth is put in place, here is what you will have:

God as the King over the New Creation.

His Son, Jesus—the 2nd Adam—ruling the New Creation as Vice-Regent

And God’s people ruling creation with Him as His co-heirs

God’s people: All of the redeemed

Living in God’s Place: The Final, Glorious Promised Land

Under God’s Rule: The Kingship of Jesus Christ.

When Isaiah speaks of the government upon His shoulder—this is the government he speaks of.

This is the rule he is talking about.

The increase of this government and the eternal peace it will bring, will know no end.

The people under His rule will grow and grow and grow in their love and affection and adoration for Him as King.

Their submission to His rule will expand and expand.

There will never be a moment or a molecule of spiritual regression.

What was interrupted and lost in Adam is consummated and sustained in the 2nd Adam.

Jesus will rule in the way Adam was supposed to.

And He will do it with total justice and pure righteousness forever and ever.

It has already begun in His spiritual reign over His church. It has been inaugurated.

But it will be fully realized in His return and His complete reign over all.

YOUR STORY

So that is our first point this morning.

When we think of the Kingdom, we should understand that it is truly the story arch of entire Bible. It is the story of Scripture.

However, it is also your story:

2. The story of Christ’s Kingdom is your story.

Here is what I mean by that—God, in His infinite wisdom, has chosen you and I to be ambassadors for His Kingdom.

2 Corinthians 5:20 ESV

Therefore, we are ambassadors for Christ, God making his appeal through us. We implore you on behalf of Christ, be reconciled to God.

We live in this period of already/not yet.

Christ has already come.

The Royal Hero from Eve’s line has already lived a perfect life, died an atoning death, risen in victory and secured a way back into the throne room of God for every Kingdom citizen.

He is already ruling and reigning in heaven as the exalted Lord.

But He has not yet returned.

He has not yet eradicated His enemies.

He has not yet consummated the Kingdom and established the new heavens and new earth.

As those who live in this period between the first coming and second coming, we are like kingdom exiles.

We live here in the world, but this world is not our home.

Our home will be the New Jerusalem, where God will be our God and we will be His people.

1 Peter 2:11 ESV

Beloved, I urge you as sojourners and exiles to abstain from the passions of the flesh, which wage war against your soul.

Until we get to that home, we have been given a disciple-making task here in this fallen world.

We have been given the Kingdom work of following in the footsteps of Christ and proclaiming the Kingdom message.

We are to preach the Gospel to all of creation.

Mark 16:15 ESV

And he said to them, “Go into all the world and proclaim the gospel to the whole creation.

We are like ambassadors in a foreign land, heralding to anyone who will listen, that King Jesus is coming and He is going to establish His rule forever.

We are like ambassadors going ahead of a Conquering Majestic, saying, “A King is coming who demands total allegiance. He is a King of love, but He will not tolerate rebellion. He is a King who has done everything necessary for you to be in His Kingdom, but you must surrender to Him.”

And God is making His appeal through us until God makes His appeal no more.

One day, the final citizen will come in. The time for decision will be done.

The Lord will descend.

But until then, we say that the Kingdom story is your story because:

A) If you are a believer this morning, you are a Kingdom citizen.

God rescued you from your enslavement to sin.

God has given you new life.

God has made a place for you in His Kingdom.

When God wrote the Gospel story, He wrote your name into the book of life.

When God wrote the Gospel song, He wrote your voice into the eternal chorus of praise.

The Kingdom story is your story because Christ is your King.

You are God’s Child, living in God’s church, under the rule of God’s Son.

That is a Kingdom Citizen.

B) But church, we also say that the Kingdom story is your story because God is now using you to bring others into the Kingdom.

He has ordained you to be His Kingdom messenger.

He has appointed you to be His Kingdom representative.

He has set apart your tongue to tell of the Coming King.

You may say, “How do you know?”

My response is, “Do you have the Holy Spirit?”

Is the Kingdom Spirit dwelling in you?

If so, the Spirit of witness is the evidence that God has set you apart for this work.

He is the same Spirit who was upon Christ as He began His preaching ministry.

He is the same Spirit who was upon the Apostles as Peter stood and declared the Gospel on the day of Pentecost.

He is the same Spirit who moved Philip along and carried him to Azotus in Acts 8.

And now, the Spirit dwells in you.

And while we can say He is there to comfort us and convict us and break the power of sin in us, we can also say, “The Spirit has come to make me a witness.”

He has come to loose your tongue and inflame your heart and to use you as preacher of the Gospel of the Kingdom.

God has sent Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father and Prince of Peace.

And as He has sent Him, so now the Lord is sending you.

John 20:21 ESV

Jesus said to them again, “Peace be with you. As the Father has sent me, even so I am sending you.”

Christ is building His Kingdom.

Amazingly, He doesn’t just give us a front row seat to the construction.

He hands us the hammer of the Gospel and calls us to swing.

This is an amazing motivation to be faithful as witnesses for Christ.

When we do so, we are a part of the great epic story that God is weaving day by day, until the King returns.

THE LORD’S TO FINISH

But as we close this morning, I don’t want to leave you thinking that the pen for the epic is in your hand.

The Gospel is in your mouth, but the pen is not in your hand.

You are not the Author.

3. The story of Christ’s Kingdom is the Lord’s to finish.

Look at the end of verse 7.

The zeal of the Lord of hosts will do this.

The zeal of Yahweh Sabaoth.

The zeal of the Lord of heaven’s armies.

If the story was on us to finish, who could know if the Kingdom would ever be consummated?

Things that depend on us don’t always go so well.

But praise the Lord that this is not His way of accomplishing His will.

Instead, the One who established the Kingdom pattern in Eden, will see in consummated in the New Jerusalem.

God’s zeal will see to it that Christ reigns over His Kingdom from David’s throne forever.

The Hebrew word for zeal can also translate to jealousy.

And this is appropriate.

For God is jealous for the glory of His own name.

And it is for the sake of His name, that He will see His Son to His throne.

See, in Psalm 2, God the Father made a promise to Jesus—God the Son.

After this picture in the beginning of the Psalm of all the nations of the earth raging against the will of God, God declares:

Psalm 2:6 ESV

“As for me, I have set my King on Zion, my holy hill.”

And then he says:

Psalm 2:7–8 ESV

I will tell of the decree: The Lord said to me, “You are my Son; today I have begotten you. Ask of me, and I will make the nations your heritage, and the ends of the earth your possession.

Do you see the promise?

God the Father has promised God the Son that the nations will be His inheritance.

Do you think God will keep that promise?

What sort of shame would it bring to His name if He didn’t?

But God will keep that promise. For the sake of His name, He will keep that promise.

And ultimately, the promise is nothing more than the Kingdom pattern itself:

God’s people—all who pay homage to the Son in the nations

in God’s place—Living as citizens of Zion with God as their refuge

Under God’s rule—They are living under the rule of Jesus—the Perfect Vice-Regent

The Kingdom will come.

The zeal of the Lord of hosts will see to it.