The King and His Obedience
The Birth of a King • Sermon • Submitted
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Introduction
Introduction
Last week we saw that Jesus is the promised King of the OT and that this theme of Jesus being the promised King finds it origin and it meaning all the way back in .
In the following weeks we want to look at
The King and His Obedience
The King and His Suffering
The King and His Reward
Today we will be thinking about the King and His Obedience and so to begin our time together today I think that it will be helpful if we begin by asking this question
What is it that God requires?
What Does God Require?
What Does God Require?
What is it that God required of Adam and Eve?
The Lord God took the man and put him in the garden of Eden to work it and keep it. And the Lord God commanded the man, saying, “You may surely eat of every tree of the garden,
But there is more going here if we understand this passage in light of the rest of the Scriptures.
Listen to this historic baptist confession 1689
God gave Adam a law, written in his heart, that required his full obedience; also one command in particular, namely, that he must not eat the fruit of the tree of knowledge of good and evil. Thereby Adam and all his posterity were bound to personal complete, exact and perpetual obedience. God promised life upon the fulfilling, and threatened death upon the breach of the law, and endued Adam with power and ability to keep His law.
The same law that was first written in man’s heart continued to be a perfect rule of righteousness after Adam fell into sin, and was given by God upon Mount Sinai in the form of ten commandments, written in two tables. the first four commandments constitute our duty towards God and the remaining six our duty to man.
So what has God required of man from the beginning?
Jesus summarized the ten commandments for us
“Teacher, which is the great commandment in the Law?” And he said to him, “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind. This is the great and first commandment. And a second is like it: You shall love your neighbor as yourself. On these two commandments depend all the Law and the Prophets.”
Matthew 22.
So the first four commands
You shall have no other God’s before me is an expression of our love for God, our delight in Him
The second command, not having a carved image is an expression of our love for God. The Lord is jealous and He has no physical form and is not to be considered as localized in one.
The third command not to take the name of the Lord our God in vain is an expression of our love for God, God’s name is not to be taken lightly, God’s name is not to be used irreverently or disrespectfully.
The fourth command is an expression of our love for God. It is an expression of our love for God because it is an expression of our desire to enter into God’s eternal rest. Remember ? An invitation to enter into God’s eternal rest. Adam had not entered into God’s eternal rest. There was not perfection in the Garden of Eden but there was potential there.
We know that there was not perfection there because satan entered in and Adam and Eve fell.
Adam and Eve were naked, I don’t think the Bible presents that to us as the ideal state, instead the idea is that Adam and Eve were not yet clothed with the royal robes of a perfect righteousness before God.
The sabbath is an opportunity for man to express His desire to enter into God’s eternal rest, that is to be safely and securely in God’s eternal Kingdom.
Even today brothers and sisters we have the Lord’s Day. We have a day that we have set aside to gather with the Lord’s people to declare that though we have rest in Christ we do not know the consummation of that rest in God’s eternal Kingdom and that we long for that.
We could walk through the second table of the law and see how the second table is a expression of one’s love for neighbor.
Love does not commit adultery
Love does not steal
Love does not lie
Love does not murder
Love honor’s mother and father, love submits to authority God places in our lives
Love does not covet
Of course Jesus in the sermon on the mount helps us to understand even the heart behind these commands right
Love does not look at a woman lustfully
Love does not hate
Love does not use others for one’s own advantage, but love lays down one’s life for the good of others.
So, what is the righteous requirement of the law?
Love of God
love of neighbor
A Long Line of Failures
A Long Line of Failures
As we begin to read the record of God’s Word it becomes pretty clear that this requirement is something that we cannot meet on our own.
We looked at Adam last week and we saw his inability to keep the righteous requirements of the law.
But Adam is not alone
If you notice in the story of Noah, Noah is pictured as another Adam.
In we have creation emerging from the waters if you will
In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth. The earth was without form and void, and darkness was over the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God was hovering over the face of the waters.
We see man created and the creation mandate.
In and 9 what we have pictured is a new creation emerging from the waters and you have Noah and God entering into covenant with Noah and what does God say to Noah?
And God blessed Noah and his sons and said to them, “Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth.
Does that sound familiar?
But not only that as we continue to read, just as Adam fails so does Noah we are told of this account in .
Adam fails with the fruit of the tree
Noah with the fruit of the vine
Adam’s is naked and has to be covered by God
Noah is naked and has to be covered by his sons
But it doesn’t stop there
Israel is pictured as God’s son with whom God enters into covenant.
Again the similarities.
Waters reside and Adam is created
Waters reside and God covenants with Noah
Think of Israel and how they are born through the waters of the Red Sea if you will
Coming safely through the Red Sea, a people created by God a people with whom God enters into covenant.
Then you shall say to Pharaoh, ‘Thus says the Lord, Israel is my firstborn son,
God places Israel in a land flowing with milk and honey
And when the Lord brings you into the land of the Canaanites, the Hittites, the Amorites, the Hivites, and the Jebusites, which he swore to your fathers to give you, a land flowing with milk and honey, you shall keep this service in this month.
Listen to
‘You yourselves have seen what I did to the Egyptians, and how I bore you on eagles’ wings and brought you to myself. Now therefore, if you will indeed obey my voice and keep my covenant, you shall be my treasured possession among all peoples, for all the earth is mine; and you shall be to me a kingdom of priests and a holy nation.’ These are the words that you shall speak to the people of Israel.”
Israel as a kingdom of priests is Israel committed to the extension throughout the world of the ministry of Yahweh’s presence.
Israel was to take the redemptive knowledge of God to the ends of the earth in the same way that Adam was to spread the image and the worship of God throughout the earth.
Israel is a new Adam, a corporate Adam if you will.
God gives His law to Israel, He enters into covenant with them.
And what happens, even before Moses can get back down with the 10 commandments, the people of Israel has already broken the covenant.
Then Moses turned and went down from the mountain with the two tablets of the testimony in his hand, tablets that were written on both sides; on the front and on the back they were written. The tablets were the work of God, and the writing was the writing of God, engraved on the tablets. When Joshua heard the noise of the people as they shouted, he said to Moses, “There is a noise of war in the camp.” But he said, “It is not the sound of shouting for victory, or the sound of the cry of defeat, but the sound of singing that I hear.” And as soon as he came near the camp and saw the calf and the dancing, Moses’ anger burned hot, and he threw the tablets out of his hands and broke them at the foot of the mountain.
As we continue to read the OT, God enters into covenant with David in , David is to be the representative of Israel, the embodiment of Israel and her king and we see that David cannot be faithful.
Right after we have (Bathsheba)
Solomon could not keep covenant and the list goes on and on and as we follow the kings, king after king that was not faithful to the Lord God and that lead the people of Israel into idolatry.
But let me say this to us brothers and sisters, the OT is a mirror for us.
As we read about this long line of failures, none who could keep covenant with God, we are not reading some histories that have nothing to do with you and me.
No, instead we are reading our stories as well. The OT is a mirror, in the OT we see our faces.
In Israel we see a picture of ourselves. We cannot keep covenant with God.
On our best days our hearts are full of idolatries.
Instead of loving the Lord our God with all of our heart, all of our strength, all of our mind; are hearts produce one idol after another that we chase.
We come from a long line of failures that has not loved the Lord their God and has not loved neighbor as themselves.
A Life of Faithfulness
A Life of Faithfulness
And yet in the background of that Biblical reality is this promise of the King that would come that would be an obedient King.
Isaiah has a group of verses that have been referred to as the Servant Songs and the church has rightly understood that these songs ultimately are referring to the great Messianic King to come, to the King who would be faithful and through whom God would bring salvation.
Behold my servant, whom I uphold,
my chosen, in whom my soul delights;
I have put my Spirit upon him;
he will bring forth justice to the nations.
He will not cry aloud or lift up his voice,
or make it heard in the street;
a bruised reed he will not break,
and a faintly burning wick he will not quench;
he will faithfully bring forth justice.
He will not grow faint or be discouraged
till he has established justice in the earth;
and the coastlands wait for his law.
Thus says God, the Lord,
who created the heavens and stretched them out,
who spread out the earth and what comes from it,
who gives breath to the people on it
and spirit to those who walk in it:
“I am the Lord; I have called you in righteousness;
I will take you by the hand and keep you;
I will give you as a covenant for the people,
a light for the nations,
The Lord God has given me
the tongue of those who are taught,
that I may know how to sustain with a word
him who is weary.
Morning by morning he awakens;
he awakens my ear
to hear as those who are taught.
The Lord God has opened my ear,
and I was not rebellious;
I turned not backward.
I gave my back to those who strike,
and my cheeks to those who pull out the beard;
I hid not my face
from disgrace and spitting.
But the Lord God helps me;
therefore I have not been disgraced;
therefore I have set my face like a flint,
and I know that I shall not be put to shame.
This King would be tested like the others that came before Him and yet He would be faithful.
The serpent who visited Adam in the garden visited this King in the wilderness and unlike Adam He is found faithful.
Matthew teaches us that Jesus is the obedient Son who was called out of Egypt.
Jesus comes out of Egypt
Jesus can say
Jesus said to them, “My food is to do the will of him who sent me and to accomplish his work.
John
and you do not have his word abiding in you, for you do not believe the one whom he has sent.
He committed no sin, neither was deceit found in his mouth.
Listen to what the Bible has to say about our Lord and His perfect obedience, His unblemished righteousness
He committed no sin, neither was deceit found in his mouth.
Therefore, as one trespass led to condemnation for all men, so one act of righteousness leads to justification and life for all men.
There was never an evil deed, an evil word, and evil thought.
His life was one perfect unbroken act of righteousness.
Lets begin heading toward the end and some application.
What happens when Adam disobeys? He knows he needs garments and tries to cover himself
God provides him garments, this is God promising that He will provide the robes of righteousness that His people need.
crowned King of Kings
God provides him garments, this is God promising that He will provide the robes of righteousness that His people need.
Lord of lords
Israel had certain types of garments that were to wear and certain garments that they were not to wear. What is all of this about?
etc.
Partly to teach them that God we cannot come before God anyway that we want, that we need a certain garment, that we need the unmixed, pure garment of righteousness if we are going to be God’s people.
We all know that we need garments to clothe ourselves, that we can’t stand naked before God.
Of course all of this points us to the garments that are provided for us in Christ.
“I am the Lord; I have called you in righteousness;
I will take you by the hand and keep you;
I will give you as a covenant for the people,
a light for the nations,
For our sake he made him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.