Kingdom Come (Part 4)

Introduction

English Standard Version Chapter 1

26 In the sixth month the angel Gabriel was sent from God to a city of Galilee named Nazareth, 27 to a virgin betrothed to a man whose name was Joseph, of the house of David. And the virgin’s name was Mary. 28 And he came to her and said, “Greetings, O favored one, the Lord is with you!” 29 But she was greatly troubled at the saying, and tried to discern what sort of greeting this might be. 30 And the angel said to her, “Do not be afraid, Mary, for you have found favor with God. 31 And behold, you will conceive in your womb and bear a son, and you shall call his name Jesus. 32 He will be great and will be called the Son of the Most High. And the Lord God will give to him the throne of his father David, 33 and he will reign over the house of Jacob forever, and of his kingdom there will be no end.”

This week we reach our fourth and final part of our series on eschatology from an amillennial perspective, a series I’ve titled Kingdom Come. In the first three parts of our series we looked at the NT witness that Jesus’ second coming will be accompanied by judgement, and therefore the period of time often referred to as the millennial kingdom in Revelation chapter 20 is descriptive of the age we’re living in now and that it began at the first advent of Christ. That his resurrection and ascension to his throne in heaven was the beginning of Satan’s undoing, that the devil was cast down to the earth and bound from deceiving the nations in order that the Gospel of the Kingdom might prevail upon the whole earth.

I argued that Jesus’ first advent marked the inauguration of the kingdom of heaven, that the kingdom has come, and that the kingdom of heaven is first and foremost spiritual in nature, that the kingdom did not come in ways that can be observed, nor in any way that others will say, ‘Look, here it is!’ or ‘There!’ but rather the kingdom of God is in our midst. (Luke 17:20) Which is also why Jesus came preaching that the kingdom of heaven was at hand. You might say, when the king came, so came his kingdom with him. Yet, we wait for his second coming when this present evil age will finally be done away with, when death is finally destroyed, and the dead are raised to imperishable life in a new heavens and a new earth.

Two weeks ago we also looked at the NT witness that there are two ages, this present evil age and the age to come, yet since the inauguration of the kingdom of heaven we experience an overlap of these ages. An already, but not yet reality. While we have been redeemed we still look forward to the day of our redemption, that while we have received the Spirit of adoption we still eagerly wait for our adoption as sons at Christ’s second coming. We saw that what we experience in this age, in these last days, are but firstfruits of the age to come, and that these firstfruits of the Spirit are a guarantee, they’re a pledge, of even greater blessings to come. (Anthony Hoekema)

The church is the promised Davidic kingdom

And lastly, this week, I want to wrap up with one final point, that the church is the promised Davidic kingdom. There are those who argue that the time of the church is a temporary interlude, or a parenthesis, in God’s redemptive plan for Israel. That God has put Israel’s prophetic history on hold during the church age, and will resume his plans for Israel at a future date when their temple will be rebuilt, their sacrifices resumed, and ethnic Israel saved. This is called dispensationalism. And dispensationalists argue for a hard distinction between Israel and the Church. That rather than the OT prophecies finding their fulfillment in Christ and his church, that many of the OT prophesies must find their fulfillment in a millennial age after Christ’s second coming. The millennial age becomes sort-of a catch-all bucket for any OT prophesies they see as not yet being fulfilled. This is why dispensationalists are inherently premillennialists, because they need a period of time for these prophecies to be fulfilled in the manner they believe is necessary. However, that doesn’t mean all premillennialists are dispensationalists, but dispensationalism does depend upon premillennialism.

However, I’m going to argue that instead of being a temporary interlude, or parenthesis, in Israel’s redemptive history, that Christ and his church are the fulfillment of the promised Davidic kingdom. That, as the Apostle Paul says, “for all of the promises of God find their Yes in [Jesus Christ]” (2 Cor. 1:20). That Christ and his church are the fulfillment of everything the prophets spoke of, whether at his first or at his second coming.

All believers, Abraham’s offspring

I’m going to argue that all believers, even the church, are Abraham’s offspring. That, even as Gentiles, we have been grafted into the same vine that existed throughout Israel’s history, that began with Abraham, that the church is not a parenthesis in redemptive history, but a fulfillment of it. That we are a part of the true Israel, and that it’s why the Apostle Paul calls all believers in Galatians 6:16 “the Israel of God.”

And this is fundamental to the amillennial view, that Christ and his church are a fulfillment of the long expected Davidic Kingdom, and therefore all believers, even the church are Abraham’s offspring. It was actually this particular issue that eventually drove me to an amillennial position. Many of the teachers I listened to (and still listen to today) would draw lines of distinction between Israel and the Church that I simply didn’t see in Scripture, while the Apostle Paul seemed to be constantly connecting the Church to believing Israel.

For instance, in Romans 2:28, Paul writes,

English Standard Version Chapter 2

28 For no one is a Jew who is merely one outwardly, nor is circumcision outward and physical. 29 But a Jew is one inwardly, and circumcision is a matter of the heart, by the Spirit, not by the letter.

In other words, even though the Jews were given the Law, circumcision, and were descendants of their father Abraham in the flesh, that this was not what made them a Jew, but instead it was whether they possessed the same faith as their father Abraham. In fact, this is at the heart of Paul’s argument to the church in Galatia that we are justified by faith alone, apart from works of the law. He says in Galatians 3:7-9,

English Standard Version Chapter 3

that it is those of faith who are the sons of Abraham. 8 And the Scripture, foreseeing that God would justify the Gentiles by faith, preached the gospel beforehand to Abraham, saying, “In you shall all the nations be blessed.” 9 So then, those who are of faith are blessed along with Abraham, the man of faith.

You see, Paul labors to teach the church (whether Jew or Gentile) that they’re the sons of Abraham because they possess the faith of Abraham. That, in fact, the same gospel of justification by faith alone was preached beforehand to Abraham, and that God had the Gentiles in mind when he promised that all of the nations would be blessed through him.

In Philippians 3:3 Paul tells the church in Philippi that,

English Standard Version Chapter 3

3 For we are the circumcision, who worship by the Spirit of God and glory in Christ Jesus and put no confidence in the flesh—

The Apostle Paul sees such continuity between the OT and NT that he calls the believers in Philippi “the circumcision” Why? Because it wasn’t the circumcision of the flesh that mattered, but rather the circumcision of the heart.

He also says in Colossians 2:11-15, that

English Standard Version Chapter 2

11 In him also you were circumcised with a circumcision made without hands, by putting off the body of the flesh, by the circumcision of Christ, 12 having been buried with him in baptism, in which you were also raised with him through faith in the powerful working of God, who raised him from the dead. 13 And you, who were dead in your trespasses and the uncircumcision of your flesh, God made alive together with him, having forgiven us all our trespasses, 14 by canceling the record of debt that stood against us with its legal demands. This he set aside, nailing it to the cross. 15 He disarmed the rulers and authorities and put them to open shame, by triumphing over them in him.

And this idea of the circumcision of the heart was nothing new in Paul’s day. In Deuteronomy Moses tells the Israelites in chapter 10, verse 12 to,

English Standard Version Chapter 10

16 Circumcise therefore the foreskin of your heart, and be no longer stubborn. 17 For the LORD your God is God of gods and Lord of lords, the great, the mighty, and the awesome God, who is not partial and takes no bribe.

In other words, Yahweh doesn’t care if you merely circumcise your flesh or claim to be a descendant of Abraham, for God shows no partiality, therefore circumcise your hearts. You’re not saved because of who your father or your mother was, but by whether or not you believe God like Abraham did, for it is faith that makes one a child of Abraham.

What is the Davidic Kingdom?

So it’s important for us to understand that all believers, even the church, are Abraham’s children. No matter whether that person is an ethnic Jew or Gentile, no matter whether they lived before Christ or after. And when we understand this it helps us answer the question, ‘What is the Davidic Kingdom?’ because a kingdom is made up of people, and when we understand that all believers throughout history are Abraham’s children we can begin to see how the church is the fulfillment of the promised Davidic kingdom.

And to answer that question we also need to look at the original prophecies that describe this promise of a Davidic Kingdom, and so we must begin with Abraham, because the Davidic kingdom began as a promise given, first, to Abraham. We read in Genesis chapter 12, starting in verse 1,

English Standard Version Chapter 12

12 Now the LORD said to Abram, “Go from your country and your kindred and your father’s house to the land that I will show you. 2 And I will make of you a great nation, and I will bless you and make your name great, so that you will be a blessing. 3 I will bless those who bless you, and him who dishonors you I will curse, and in you all the families of the earth shall be blessed.”

then, in verse 7, after Abraham leaves his hometown of Haran he arrives in the land of Canaan and the Lord appears to him again and says, and “to your offspring I will give this land.” So God promises to give Abraham a nation, a people and a territory. And it’s in this covenant that God begins to reveal his redemptive plan for mankind.

Seed of the woman

In Genesis 3 the hope of redemption after the fall of Adam and Eve was given only in God’s cursing of the serpent when God said,

English Standard Version Chapter 3

15  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.”

In other words, all of the hope for mankind was found, predominately, in one verse until Abraham, who lived some 340 years after Noah’s Flood, almost 200 years since God had since confused and scattered Noah’s descendants in judgement at the Tower of Babel, and Abraham was merely a pagan among pagans whom God called to himself. And with this man God intended to make a name for himself and to make Abraham the father of many nations, but of one nation in particular God intended to use for his own glory and to use it to bring about salvation from the curse.

More than Canaan

And we know that many nations arose from Abraham’s descendants, the Ishmaelites from Abraham’s first son, Ishmael, who was conceived with his wife’s maidservant Hagar, then the nation of Isreal from his son Isaac with Sarah, the son that God had promised him, and then even Isaac’s grandson Esau would become the father of the Edomites.

But it would be more than 500 years after Isaac’s birth before the Israelites would leave slavery in Egypt and enter the land of Canaan. However, Israel would largely be dominated by anarchy, war, rebellion, unbelief and idolatry. It was hardly what Abraham had envisioned hundreds of years earlier. In fact, the writer of Hebrews tells us in chapter 11, verse 16, that when Abraham went to live in the land of promise that he desired "a better country, that is, a heavenly one,” and therefore God “has prepared for [him] a city.” In other words, we’re told that Abraham saw beyond the land of Canaan and desired “a better country, that is, a heavenly one.” Abraham apparently understood that the promise would find its fulfillment not in just another earthly nation, but a heavenly one, “looking forward to the city that has foundations, whose designer and builder is God.” (Hebrews 11:10)

Promised Davidic kingdom & heavenly city

But even in the midst of the earthly nation of Israel that would arise hundreds of years after Abraham, the nation of Israel was promised a king, a king like David, who was considered Israel’s greatest king, a man after God’s own heart. That this future king would come from David’s line, from his own body, an offspring of David, and God made this covenant with David in 2 Samuel 7:12-14 and said to him,

English Standard Version Chapter 7

12 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. 13 He shall build a house for my name, and I will establish the throne of his kingdom forever. 14 I will be to him a father, and he shall be to me a son.

So, not only will God raise up one after David who will sit on his thrown but God will establish his throne and his kingdom forever, he’ll give this king a kingdom that will not end. Again, this will be a kingdom whose builder and maker is God, a heavenly city. And I don’t say that to mean that the kingdom of God is only spiritual or that it will only ever be spiritual, but that the kingdom promised to David (and to Abraham) will be a kingdom that comes from heaven, a kingdom that finds its origin in heaven. Or as the prophet Daniel described it in Daniel 2:44-45, that at a latter time “the God of heaven will set up a kingdom that shall never be destroyed,” like “a stone … cut from a mountain by no human hand.”

Which is why David’s immediate offspring would never live up to that hope, in fact, most of the kings after him would be said to have done evil in the sight of the Lord. Most of them embraced and promoted idolatrous worship within Israel, and within just a couple of generations the nation would split into the nothern kingdom and the southern kingdom of Judah. On top of that, the Davidic monarchy in Judah would eventually come to an end in 586 B.C., not long after the Babylonian captivity, and nearly 600 years before Christ. The promises given to Abraham likely seemed as though they had failed, and the king who was promised to Israel, a descendant of David, undoubtedly seemed impossible.

And this is why the prophets would continually remind the people of these promises, to exhort the people to trust in the Lord, to wait on his promises, because their waiting was a test, a test of their faith, and the failure of these earthly kings was meant to direct their gaze to heaven, to look to God for salvation, not merely an earthly king, but to a heavenly one, and not merely an earthly kingdom, but a heavenly one. To look for hope in God’s coming Messiah, God’s anointed one, a king of kings. To look for salvation not merely from external oppressors or circumstances, but from the very sin of their own hearts, the sin that destroyed King Solomon’s life, the sin that divided their own nation, the sin that lead them astray to worship false gods, gods made by their own hands and in their own image.

The failure and collapse of the earthly nation of Israel was intended to show them that their hope ought to be elsewhere, that they must seek something better, to seek not merely an earthly kingdom. And we must realize that the earthly kingdom of Israel was a type and a shadow of a better kingdom, a kingdom not made with human hands. That, yes, the law, circumcision, the temple, the land, Jerusalem, and ethnic Israel, all served a purpose, but that the purpose was not to restore Israel to its glory days, but to point ahead to Christ.

Christ prophesied

And as time when on the prophets also gave the Jews a more descriptive picture of the Messiah and his ministry. Isaiah famously said in Isaiah 9:6,

English Standard Version Chapter 9

6  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.

7  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.

They were also told in Micah 5:2 that the Messiah would come from the town of Bethlehem,

English Standard Version Chapter 5

2  But you, O Bethlehem Ephrathah,

who are too little to be among the clans of Judah,

from you shall come forth for me

one who is to be ruler in Israel,

whose coming forth is from of old,

from ancient days.

and that he would be born of a virgin in Isaiah 7:14,

English Standard Version Chapter 7

14 Therefore the Lord himself will give you a sign. Behold, the virgin shall conceive and bear a son, and shall call his name Immanuel.

and probably the most explicit of all the prophecies is a section in Isaiah 53 called the suffering servant in which Isaiah describes, in remarkable detail, the suffering of the Messiah. That somehow this Davidic king would not only sit on David’s throne but would also suffer for the people’s transgressions.

Jesus, his throne and his kingdom

So, as time went on in Israel’s history the prophet’s increasingly revealed to the people the identity of this Messianic figure. Until eventually, after hundreds of years of prophetic silence the angel Gabriel was sent to a city in Galilee named Nazareth, and starting in Luke 1:26 we read,

English Standard Version Chapter 1

26 In the sixth month the angel Gabriel was sent from God to a city of Galilee named Nazareth, 27 to a virgin betrothed to a man whose name was Joseph, of the house of David. And the virgin’s name was Mary. 28 And he came to her and said, “Greetings, O favored one, the Lord is with you!” 29 But she was greatly troubled at the saying, and tried to discern what sort of greeting this might be. 30 And the angel said to her, “Do not be afraid, Mary, for you have found favor with God. 31 And behold, you will conceive in your womb and bear a son, and you shall call his name Jesus. 32 He will be great and will be called the Son of the Most High. And the Lord God will give to him the throne of his father David, 33 and he will reign over the house of Jacob forever, and of his kingdom there will be no end.”

Notice the kingdom language, that “the Lord God will give to him the throne of his father David … and of his kingdom there will be no end.” This the same language spoken to David in 2 Samuel 7:12, when God said,

English Standard Version Chapter 7

12 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. 13 He shall build a house for my name, and I will establish the throne of his kingdom forever.

My point here is that when Jesus came, so also was his kingdom established, he came with this government upon his shoulders (Isaiah 9:6), and after Jesus suffered, died, and was resurrected he ascended to his throne at the right hand of his father in heaven.

The church is the promised Davidic kingdom

In fact, in Acts chapter 2 when the Apostle Peter gave his famous sermon on the day of Pentecost he told the the crowd that Jesus’ resurrection was a fulfillment of the promise to the patriarch David that God would set one of his descendants upon his throne. Turn with me to Acts 2, starting in verse 29,

English Standard Version Chapter 2

29 “Brothers, I may say to you with confidence about the patriarch David that he both died and was buried, and his tomb is with us to this day. 30 Being therefore a prophet, and knowing that God had sworn with an oath to him that he would set one of his descendants on his throne, 31 he foresaw and spoke about the resurrection of the Christ, that he was not abandoned to Hades, nor did his flesh see corruption. 32 This Jesus God raised up, and of that we all are witnesses. 33 Being therefore exalted at the right hand of God, and having received from the Father the promise of the Holy Spirit, he has poured out this that you yourselves are seeing and hearing. 34 For David did not ascend into the heavens, but he himself says,

“ ‘The Lord said to my Lord,

“Sit at my right hand,

35  until I make your enemies your footstool.” ’

36 Let all the house of Israel therefore know for certain that God has made him both Lord and Christ, this Jesus whom you crucified.”

Moreover, just a few chapters later, in Acts 15 the apostles and elders are gathered together to consider whether it was necessary to circumcise believing Gentiles, because some of the Jews were teaching that unless they were circumcised according to the custom of Moses that they could not be saved, but Peter stands up and says to the assembly in verse 7,

English Standard Version Chapter 15

“Brothers, you know that in the early days God made a choice among you, that by my mouth the Gentiles should hear the word of the gospel and believe. 8 And God, who knows the heart, bore witness to them, by giving them the Holy Spirit just as he did to us, 9 and he made no distinction between us and them, having cleansed their hearts by faith. 10 Now, therefore, why are you putting God to the test by placing a yoke on the neck of the disciples that neither our fathers nor we have been able to bear? 11 But we believe that we will be saved through the grace of the Lord Jesus, just as they will.”

12 And all the assembly fell silent, and they listened to Barnabas and Paul as they related what signs and wonders God had done through them among the Gentiles. 13 After they finished speaking, James replied, “Brothers, listen to me. 14 Simeon has related how God first visited the Gentiles, to take from them a people for his name. 15 And with this the words of the prophets agree, just as it is written,

and then James quotes from the book of Amos and says,

English Standard Version Chapter 15

16  “ ‘After this I will return,

and I will rebuild the tent of David that has fallen;

I will rebuild its ruins,

and I will restore it,

17  that the remnant of mankind may seek the Lord,

and all the Gentiles who are called by my name,

says the Lord, who makes these things 18 known from of old.’

In other words, this prophecy from Amos 9:11, that speaks of the future Davidic kingdom when God will “rebuild the tent of David that has fallen”, is being fulfilled in there hearing as the Gentiles are now seeking the Lord, all of the Gentiles who are called by his name. That Christ and his church are the fulfillment of the promised Davidic kingdom when the tent of David, that had fallen, is now being restored.

Conclusion

And one day that restoration will be complete, and the kingdom will be consummated at Jesus’ second coming, and on that day it will be as the Apostle John describes in Revelation chapter 21 that he,

English Standard Version Chapter 21

saw a new heaven and a new earth, for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away, and the sea was no more. 2 And I saw the holy city, new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride adorned for her husband.

English Standard Version Chapter 21

22 And I saw no temple in the city, for its temple is the Lord God the Almighty and the Lamb. 23 And the city has no need of sun or moon to shine on it, for the glory of God gives it light, and its lamp is the Lamb.

You see, the church here is pictured as the new Jerusalem, a city that’s coming down out of heaven, prepared as a bride adorned for her husband, representative of not only the church but of all the children of Abraham, throughout all the ages. But until Christ returns we live at a time when this present evil age lingers, yet we take great hope in knowing that the kingdom of heaven has already come, and devil’s undoing has already begun.

And to any of you who may not know the Lord, I implore you to hear the gospel, to hear the message of salvation, salvation from sin and death, salvation from the curse and the righteous judgment of God, to all those who turn away from their sin and trust in God’s Son. As the Apostle Paul says,

English Standard Version Chapter 6

Behold, now is the favorable time; behold, now is the day of salvation.

And what he means is that one day, when Jesus returns on the clouds of heaven with his angels, he will judge the earth, and there will be no opportunity to repent, therefore, now is the day of salvation. Some say that God is slow to fulfill his promises, as some count slowness, but the Lord isn’t slow, instead he’s patient toward you, not wishing that any should perish, but that all should reach repentance, but he is also coming at a day that we do not expect, and one day he will judge the earth in righteousness, so you still can turn to Christ.

Prayer