The Kingdom Of God

Well good morning.

I got a few good mornings out there, I appreciate that.

All right.

It is cold, it's a cold one.

I feel it in my bones.

Well all right, we are getting ready to start this morning.

Just want to tell you all welcome and just want to thank you all members of 12 .5 Church for faithfully coming here this

morning.

This is simply an overflow of our heart of being obedient to what God has called us to do.

The writer of Hebrews says not to neglect the gathering together of the saints and we do so to rally

around each other in love and truth and to encourage one another in love and good works.

And so thank you so much 12 .5 family for bringing your gifts to the body and to

serve one another.

For our guests and perhaps regular attenders, we just want to thank you all for being here as well.

You are loved and we enjoy spending this time with you and if you get a chance please fill out one of our connect cards.

We would love to reach out to you, we would love to pray for you and answer any of your questions and we look

forward to getting to know you more and more.

And so that being said, our heart this morning is to grow in the knowledge and love of our sovereign

triune God.

Amen.

Alright, before we start our service, what we do every Sunday is we pray for a local church.

And we do this because we want to unify with other gospel proclaiming churches that unify together on

the gospel of grace.

We are not saved by all the works that we can accomplish and do before God Almighty.

And so there are so many churches that say that you must put your faith alone in Jesus Christ alone all to the

glory of God alone.

And one of those churches is Bethany Baptist Church.

So if you would, let's pray together this morning.

Heavenly Father, we just want to praise your holy name for all of who you are and how you've blessed

us.

Lord, we just want to lift up Bethany Baptist Church.

The pastor there let us know that they have a kids ministry on Wednesdays and there's about nine

kids that come from unchurched families.

And so, God, this is such a wonderful opportunity for these families to hear the gospel, God.

For their kids, for whatever reasons, may be learning more about you, Jesus.

And we pray that they would be saved.

God, we pray that they would grow in their understanding of who you are, Jesus.

And they would bring that to their homes.

And God, that the gospel would be contagious.

Lord, I just want to pray for Bethany Baptist Church that the discipleship groups that they're planning on having

every Sunday night.

God, I pray that, Jesus, your name would be magnified and that there would be great unity

amongst the body.

Lord, the pastor also said that they are starting a home Bible study at the end of January.

And God, I pray that their plans to do that would come through and that everything would go smoothly in that.

And lastly, Lord, I just want to lift up the primary preaching pastor.

God, I pray that he would be able to boldly proclaim your truth this morning and that the gospel would be

made known.

Lord, we love you and praise things in your name, Jesus.

Amen.

All right.

If you would, please stand and join me for our call to worship.

Our call to worship comes from Psalm chapter 8 from King David.

And so our call to worship is...

There we go.

Can y 'all hear me a little bit better?

I got to remember that.

Thank you, Keith.

Our call to worship is a time of togetherness where we interact with God's word

together.

So let us proceed with Psalm chapter 8.

O Lord, our Lord, you

have set your glory above the heavens.

Out of the mouth of babies and infants, you have established strength because of your foes.

When I look at your heavens, the

moon and the stars, what is man that you are

mindful of him?

Yet you have made him a little lower than the heavenly beings.

You have given him dominion over the works of your hands.

All sheep and oxen and also the beasts of the field and the birds of the heavens and the fish of the sea.

And all God's people said...

All right, let's pray one last time for just adoration to God that we would remove

distractions and that we would give him honor that is due his name.

Let's pray.

Heavenly Father, thank you so much for your word this morning.

Already reminding us that your steadfast love endures forever, God.

That you own cattle on a thousand hills and all the hills and all of creation is yours.

It proclaims your handiwork.

And so, God, I pray that we would be reminded of who you are this morning.

That Jesus, you are king and Lord over all.

Yes, Jesus, we love you.

Pray this in your name.

Amen.

God, we thank you for this time of worship and we praise you, Father.

Thank you for allowing us to be here and for the people that you brought here to worship and honor your name.

Pray, God, that you would prepare us for this time, Lord.

As we study your word, we gather together corporately to worship your name, God.

We just thank you, Father.

Thank you for your goodness, God.

Thank you that you are our only boast.

Praise you, God.

Thank you, Lord.

Amen.

Let's sing this one together.

Scripture

reading

comes

this

morning

from

Psalm

145, which, once again, is a psalm of David.

Where he says, I will extol you, my God and king, and bless your name forever and ever.

Every day I will bless you and praise your name forever and ever.

Great is the Lord, and greatly to be praised is his greatness, and it's unsearchable.

One generation shall commend your works to another and shall declare your mighty acts.

On your glorious splendor and your majesty, on your wondrous works, I will meditate.

They shall speak of the might of your awesome deeds, and I will declare your greatness.

They shall pour forth the fame of your abundant goodness and shall sing aloud of your righteousness.

The Lord is gracious and merciful, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love.

The Lord is good to all, and his mercy is over all that he has made.

All your works shall give thanks to you, O Lord, and all your saints shall bless you.

They shall speak of the glory of your kingdom and tell of your power, to make known the children of man your mighty

deeds and the glorious splendor of your kingdom.

Your kingdom is an everlasting kingdom, and your dominion endures throughout all generations.

The Lord is faithful in all his words and kind in all his works.

The Lord upholds all who are falling and raises up all who are bowed down.

The eyes of all look to you, and you give them their food in due season.

You open your hand, you satisfy the desire of every living thing.

The Lord is righteous in all of his ways and kind in all his works.

The Lord is near to all who call upon him, to all who call on him in truth.

He fulfills the desire of those that fear him.

He also hears their cry and saves them.

The Lord preserves all who love him, but all the wicked he will destroy.

My mouth will speak of the praise of the Lord, and let all flesh bless his holy name

forever and ever.

Amen.

We

praise

you

this

morning,

great

is

your

faithfulness,

Lord.

What an awesome worship service, Lord.

I'm just so grateful for your faithfulness, Lord.

And strength for today, and great hope for tomorrow.

I praise you for paying the price, paying the penalty.

I'm so unworthy, but I'm so grateful.

Lord, I pray that you just bless the remainder of this service this morning, Lord.

Lord, I pray that you'd be with Brother Nathan, Pastor Nathan, Lord, as he stands and boldly proclaims your word, Lord.

Lord, I pray that you would just anoint him, anoint the word, Lord, and just

clear out any distractions that we may have, Lord.

Open our hearts and our minds, and we may receive your word, Lord.

Lord, I pray that you'd bless this offering this morning, Lord.

Bless the giver.

We love you.

We praise you.

We ask all these things of your son, Jesus, precious and holy name, Lord.

Thy faithfulness.

Not great is our faithfulness.

Our faithfulness falls short, doesn't it?

But his faithfulness is true and clear and good.

We've got a bit of a ring here, guys.

We've got to work through it.

Bear with us.

We're sorry.

We're still working through all the sound system here.

But today is going to look quite different.

We are going to take a little detour from our exposition through the book of Ephesians

in order to take a closer look at one of the concepts that the Apostle Paul has alluded to

in the second part of verse 5, in which we looked at last week, the kingdom

of Christ and God.

When he declares that truth that, for you may be sure of this, you may be guaranteed,

Saint, that everyone who is sexually immoral or impure, who is covetous, that is an idolater,

has no inheritance in the kingdom of Christ and God.

And, of course, we looked a little more detail at that inheritance that we have been

adopted, that we have been brought in.

Paul has been speaking of earlier on that we've been made sons and heirs, as he has pointed out.

However, this is the first mention of the kingdom here in Ephesians, at

least by name.

So we, the elders, as we met this week, found it incumbent upon us to

stop and address this topic of the kingdom.

Because I believe that much of Western Christianity today is not quite sure what to

make of this concept of the kingdom.

We often have vague ideas when we come across this in Scripture.

We think of the kingdom as being maybe heaven, right?

As Jesus said, pray your will be done on earth as it is in heaven.

The kingdom of heaven.

Some of us think maybe some future realm that will be created one day,

maybe that's the kingdom of heaven, that's the kingdom of God.

Some of you in your eschatological positions may believe that it's the millennial reign

when Jesus reigns here on earth, and that's the kingdom of God.

But let's be honest, many times those ideas aren't very defined in our minds.

We're not real sure exactly what all this encompasses.

And so we hear this phrase, the kingdom of God, we generalize it and then kind of move on from it.

This is why we want to stop and take a closer look at how Scripture defines the kingdom.

And as I prepared for today, I realized, and this is something that we had wanted to do anyways,

but I needed a minimum of 12 to 14 weeks to adequately and systematically

lay out this immensely complex topic.

Because this encompasses so many areas of theological

study.

Your view of eschatology, your view of the end times, will affect how you see the kingdom of God.

Your view of ecclesiology, the study of the church, is going to be molded and it's going

to affect how you see the kingdom of God.

Your view of soteriology, the study of salvation, is going to be affected in how you see the

kingdom of God.

And one day we would like to stop and do that 12 to 14 week series, but don't worry, we're not going to do it

at this moment.

We're going to continue to press on in our study in Ephesians and then possibly do that later.

So for now, I'm left to give you a 10 ,000 foot flyover view of this

wonderful concept of the kingdom of God, so that we don't divert from our context in Ephesians

too long.

In order to do that, we must go back to the beginning.

We must go back to the very beginning, at least our beginning, right?

Right there at the beginning of this beautiful book that we hold to

and look to and glean from, the very first phrase in Genesis 1 and

verse 1, in the beginning, God created the heavens and the

earth.

You see, there was once a kingdom.

There was a kingdom, a good kingdom.

There was a righteous kingdom.

One that was created and established by a good and righteous creator.

Remember when he created it all, he said it is good.

Because he is good.

And all the glory goes to that creator and that kingdom.

And it was the kingdom of man.

Of course, this is the kingdom of God, God's kingdom.

But if you remember in chapter 1 of Genesis, as a matter of fact, you can look in your

scriptures and follow along with me.

We're going to be kind of walking through just a few different texts.

But in verse 26 of chapter 1, right as he's created

all these things, he's created the universe.

There was nothing in existence, and everything that was created was created from nothing.

And then there in verse 26 of Genesis 1, God said, let us make man in our image.

It's almost like he pauses for a moment.

He says, okay, now we're going to really focus on something here.

Let us make man in our image, after our likeness.

And what does he say about this man that he eventually creates out of dust?

He says, and let them have dominion.

And then he goes on to list all of the creation.

He creates man to have dominion because he is an image

-bearer of the creator.

He had created a kingdom, then created this image -bearer of himself in order to have dominion

over this kingdom.

That goodness and righteousness that was in heaven was to be the same on earth.

Because the earth is a reflection of heaven, isn't it?

At least at that moment it was.

Just as man was a reflection of God.

This is the kingdom of man.

And look at what he told man to do in verse 28.

And God blessed them.

And God said to them, who is he talking about?

Adam and Eve, right?

Both made in the image of God.

He says, be fruitful and multiply.

And fill the earth and subdue it.

And have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over every living thing that

moves on the earth.

To multiply.

He tells Adam and Eve to multiply, to fill the earth and in so to subdue it.

To have dominion over all of creation.

Multiplying meant that Adam, being the first image bearer created, right?

Out of the dirt, was called under the rule of the almighty God to represent that

posterity, that multiplying.

He was to rule over them as prophet, priest, and king.

This was Adam's job in this kingdom of man.

His father of all, the representative of all.

With the garden that he's been placed in being the very temple where God dwelt with his

people.

You realize the garden was the first temple?

The garden was set there on this creation and made a place where God came and dwelt with his

creation, with his people.

And this kingdom was to expand throughout all of creation with the presence of God being

with his people throughout the whole of their dominion.

This was the kingdom of man.

And just like with any kingdom, there's a covenant.

There's a constitution of sorts, right?

There must be rules, there must be regulations, there must be an understanding that binds this kingdom

together.

And this covenant is what we refer to as the law of liberty.

This covenant in this kingdom of man was the law of liberty.

One that was based on perfect righteousness.

It was a covenant of works.

A covenant of works, one given to a people who were upright.

This covenant of works was given to Adam and Eve in a moment and when they had no

sin, they were upright.

There was nothing hindering them from a relationship with God.

And so this covenant of works was good.

And God placed this covenant, if you remember, right dead center of the garden, didn't he?

Almost like a constitution planted right dead center of this temple.

And God says, you may enjoy my presence.

You may enjoy perfect communion with me.

You may have dominion over this kingdom and enjoy the fruit of any tree and live.

But eat of this tree and die.

This is the covenant of works, isn't it?

This covenant had two sides.

Just like any covenant, this has two sides.

It could bring life or it could bring death.

It could bring blessing or it could bring curse.

It could justify or it could condemn.

It could provide communion with God or it could provide isolation from God.

This was the covenant.

And we all know what happened, don't we?

We all know what happened.

By the time we get through just the third chapter of this picture

of this beautiful kingdom of man, we don't even get out of the third chapter and a seemingly

insignificant small spark of sin sets off an explosion

that decimates this kingdom into rubble.

The serpent, who we know to be Satan, has made his way into the garden,

comes into the garden, comes into the very temple where God is meeting

with his people.

He does so with lies and hatred in his heart.

And he planted that seed into the mind of Eve.

Did God really say, here's the thing,

God's holding out on you.

You will not surely die.

You'll be like him.

And I know that in Satan's heart, he was hoping to usurp the creator.

He was hoping to bring this good creation, this kingdom of man, into the same fate as

himself.

To crush it.

To cut right at the heart of God, his creation.

It's almost as if you can see the hatred in his heart.

How dare these inferior creatures have dominion over this?

How dare they?

I am a superior being, and they're the ones made in the image of the creator?

And they are the ones that gain a kingdom to reign over and to rule over?

How dare they?

How dare God?

You can only imagine his ecstatic joy as Eve takes the first bite of

this fruit, handing the fruit over to her husband, Adam, who is obviously neutral

in this, and just following the lead of his wife, and watched as

Adam blatantly spat upon this covenant of works.

As Adam, the prophet, priest, and king of this kingdom,

stomps on this great covenant, and bringing this

kingdom to its knees so that Satan may dance upon its

ruins.

This kingdom didn't last very long, did it?

The kingdom of man did not stand more than three chapters.

You see, Adam failed at his job of prophet, priest, and king.

He failed to protect that sanctuary.

He failed to protect his wife, whom he was tasked to care for and oversee.

He failed to protect his posterity from futility.

He failed.

And because of this, what happened?

Because of this, they were cast out of the very presence of God.

They had broken that covenant of works.

And instead of blessing, they got cursing.

Instead of presence, they got the casting out

from the very presence of God, and Satan became their ruler.

This once beautiful, luscious kingdom of man in a

moment becomes the kingdom of darkness.

Sounds hopeless, doesn't it?

This would have been a very seemingly hopeless moment.

And that grace and mercy that God had shown to his creation turned

into righteous wrath and judgment that was deserved for breaking his

law, for sin had brought death into the world.

You see, God's goodness sustained life.

You ever wonder if there would have been death early on in the garden before the breaking of this covenant?

No, because the goodness of God only sustains life.

The goodness of God sustained life, but now the wages of sin are what?

Death.

There's a cost to breaking that covenant.

And everything was subjected to this.

The animals were subjected to this.

The trees were subjected to this.

The plants were subjected to this.

The weeds, the ground itself in which Adam was made out of is now

subjected to it because Adam was the prophet, priest, and king to care and have dominion over it.

And now, as a representative, he brought death into the world.

And they themselves, as Paul said in Ephesians, became darkness.

They weren't just in darkness.

They themselves became darkness.

However, if you keep reading, as

soon as that darkness set in, a single ray

of light burst through the darkness.

It's small, but it was a single ray of light that's penetrating through.

A gracious, loving, merciful creator, the one

who had been sinned against, the one whose covenant was broken.

He rushed in to provide hope.

That's the God we serve, right?

We're just saying it.

Great is thy faithfulness.

What faithfulness in our unfaithfulness.

And that hope came as a promise.

That small ray of light came as a promise.

And what was that promise?

It was a seed.

That promise was a seed.

Look at chapter 3 there in Genesis.

In verse 15.

You know the passage well.

God is laying out the consequences of breaking this covenant to Adam and Eve and the serpent.

And he says to Eve, I will put enmity between you and the woman

and between your offspring and her offspring.

I want you to notice it doesn't say Adam's offspring.

He says her offspring.

The significance there, right?

It's a seed.

He shall bruise your head and you shall bruise his heel.

And then God furthered that very imagery by clothing them in

skins.

You ever wondered why God did so?

You remember the moment they take of the fruit?

They now feel shame.

They know of their shame and nakedness and they try and cover it with fig leaves.

Right?

But in the grace of God, he could have left them in that shame.

But what does he do?

He takes the life of an innocent animal, sheds its blood, takes

its skin, and covers their shame.

You see that glimmer of hope.

That glimmer of hope.

He's basically telling them, hey, guess what that seed of the woman will do?

He will clothe you.

Ah, so good.

You see, what God knew all along was something that Satan was not privy to was that this wasn't

plan B.

This was always God's plan A.

His eternal plan.

And this plan was to reestablish the kingdom.

They broke the covenant.

They brought the kingdom into ruins and God had already had a plan to

reestablish the covenant.

But here's the thing, like a good and gracious God, better.

Stronger.

And everlasting.

Where there's not a tree of life in the center to condemn.

Right?

That kingdom could not be reestablished as long as the covenant of works remained unfulfilled.

A covenant has been broken.

It cannot be rebuilt until this covenant of works becomes

fulfilled.

So this hope requires that this covenant would be satisfied.

This hope in a seed that he has promised.

This would mean that a new covenant of grace would not do away with the covenant of works, rather it would

establish it.

This is important.

This may seem like nuance to you, but this is important.

The covenant of works must be fulfilled and the new covenant will establish that.

Just as we see God's promise of hope intertwined in his declaration of judgment there in

verses 14 through 19 of chapter 3, right?

Notice when he's telling them about this great judgment that has come upon them because of their breaking this

covenant, he also gives them hope intertwined in all of it.

The actual outworking of this great hope came in the midst of great judgment.

We see this great hope unfolding before us in the midst of the judgment.

The wrath of God being poured out upon the iniquity of the unbelievers.

You see, even though the walls of this old kingdom had come crumbling down, the foundations of a new kingdom were

being laid at this very moment.

This is what is known as the Edemic Covenant.

I'm going to mention a few of these as we go.

You might want to jot them down and do a little research.

This is what we'll talk about in that 12 to 14 week series down the road, but let's introduce it to

you.

This is what is known as the Edemic Covenant.

The covenant of works that Adam broke must be fulfilled.

We see another glimmer of this hope in what we know as the Noahic Covenant.

The Noahic Covenant comes not long after all of this.

The result of this fall of Adam's posterity being brought into

futility and into darkness and under the reign of Satan had led to

unprecedented wickedness in the world.

This debauchery at every turn.

And what did God choose to do?

He chose to wipe the slate clean of sorts, didn't he?

He decided to start over at some level and

wipe out this wickedness.

In order to do that, though, God must maintain who he is

and God is a God of his word.

You see, God could not have wiped out the entire human race,

burnt the entire universe and said, I'm starting afresh and anew with a new Adam.

And he couldn't because he could not lie and he could not go against what he has set out to do and what his word said to do.

So he is a God that is true and faithful to his word.

So he could not.

He had promised that the seed of the woman would defeat the serpent.

He had already promised this.

So God preserved Noah and his family, didn't he?

He preserves him.

He had him build an ark.

You remember the story.

You all learned it in probably Sunday school as children where Noah is told to build

this boat, to build this ark.

And when the floods came, when the waters came and covered the earth, killing every living creature, Noah

and his family were safe.

They were safe inside God's provision of an ark.

You see another glimmer of hope shining through the darkness here?

The wrath of God was poured out upon wicked men, men that deserved the wrath of God because they hated

God and turned from God at every turn because all man does.

And the world had become overrun with wickedness.

And even though Noah and his family were also descendants of Adam, God had made a way

of protection.

He had given them faith.

We see this glimmer of hope pointing to the provision of God and providing a Messiah, don't we?

Just like the Noahic covenant.

Just like Noah and his family brought into a boat and shielded from the wrath of

God poured out upon wicked men.

This is the gospel, isn't it?

Is this a picture of the gospel?

When we are in him, when we are in Christ, as the whole letter of Ephesians has been

driving home, isn't it?

We are protected from the wrath of God.

We are shielded from the wrath of God poured out upon the iniquity of the earth.

And after this, God promised never to destroy the earth with water again.

And he's held true to his promise.

He has never flooded the entire earth, and he never will.

He will burn the earth up one day, but he will never flood it.

You see, the light gets even brighter as we go on through the narrative of Scripture,

as we come to the Abrahamic covenant.

So we come from the Adamic covenant, the Noahic covenant, and now the Abrahamic covenant.

You see, even though God had wiped out the wicked men in Noah's day, Satan still had and was

still the ruler of this kingdom.

And that darkness remained.

It was great darkness.

The hope of that promise that seemed to be fading, the promise of that seed seemed to

be fading.

The people of God were far and few.

It was hard to tell them between the world.

It was hard to distinguish them.

And it was impossible to identify the very people of God, those that he had granted faith to and set

apart that were not a part of this kingdom of darkness.

And I'm sure in the midst of this, once again, Satan was hopeful of his victory, wasn't he?

He probably just roamed around the earth celebrating like God even wiped him out.

He saved Noah and his family.

Apparently, I hated that, but he did it anyways.

And now their posterity are still falling into my hands.

Their bloodline is still falling into my hands, and I'm still wreaking havoc.

So as history is unfolding, God chose to reestablish this covenant of works.

Mind you, this Abrahamic covenant is not a covenant of grace.

This is a reestablishing of the covenant of works with a particular

people of his choosing.

This is why we call it the Abrahamic covenant.

Look at Genesis 12.

The first three verses is all we'll look at here,.

But

in Genesis 12, verse 1,.

"'But now the Lord said to Abram.'".

Now, this is obviously Abraham, right?

Abram was his name.

It says, "'Go from your country and your kindred.'".

Now, I want you to notice something.

God separated him from the other people of this kingdom.

Okay?

He says, "'Go, go from your country.

"'Go from your kindred.

"'Leave your family.

"'Leave your friends.

"'Leave your neighbors.

"'Leave all of those people "'who are still a part of the kingdom of darkness.

"'Leave them.

"'Separate from them.

"'And your father's house, "'and to the land that I will show you.'".

And promised him a land, didn't he?

Promised him something.

He was separating his people from the kingdom of darkness

under a covenant of works.

"'And I will make of you a great nation.'".

There's a whole new nation being created here.

"'And I will bless you and make your name great "'so that you will be blessed.

"'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.'".

This light keeps getting brighter, doesn't it?

It's becoming clearer and clearer as we go through.

I can feel Satan getting nervous about this point, right?

Like, oh man, he doesn't quite have a picture, but he knows something's up.

Something's going on.

You notice it's a much bigger picture than just the nation of Israel.

He says that all the nations of the earth shall be blessed.

We'll see that later as we come into a covenant of grace, right?

But this, this Abrahamic covenant, Abrahamic covenant was meant to separate a

people out of the kingdom of darkness and have his law represented

amongst a people.

Abraham knew this was something much bigger than just him.

We know that because the writer of Hebrews confirms all of that.

You can jot these passages down, Hebrews 11 .10.

For he, talking about Abraham, was looking forward to the city that has foundations,

whose designer and builder is God.

He wasn't looking for an earthly city.

Abraham knew that God's going to provide a physical land for us, but this isn't the promise.

The promise is that I will make it a physical land because he's separating us from the rest of the world, but this is a greater promise.

In verse 16 of chapter 11 of Hebrews, it says, but as it is, they desire a better country that

is a heavenly one.

That's what Abraham knew.

Therefore, God is not ashamed to be called their God, for he has prepared for them a city.

This is so much bigger than just the people of Israel in a particular

location geographically.

This is something spiritual.

Through this covenant, walking through this world as sojourners, they were set apart in the

Abrahamic covenant.

In the midst of these people, we get the law defined now in the Mosaic covenant.

When we come out of the Abrahamic covenant, he sets a people for himself, and now this very people gets a

Mosaic covenant.

He brings Moses into the picture, doesn't he?

We get the priest of this kingdom in the Aaronic covenant

with Aaron.

I'm not going to define all of these.

I'm just kind of walking through.

I want to get to this one.

And we get to the king of this covenant, the Davidic covenant.

You see, God is making covenants with his people, shedding light

upon this new kingdom that is to come, little bits at a time.

And each one of these covenants, none of them are a covenant of grace.

They are a covenant of works.

You see, after 700 years or so, this people of God have been overtaken,

seen as insignificant, but then comes the great king, David.

Right?

God provides a king.

First, he provides Saul, because that's what the people wanted.

He turns out to not be such a great king.

Oh, but then David, God's anointed.

That's who God chose.

And this was pointing to the seed of David.

This Davidic covenant is pointing to the seed of David, the victor, the king of kings,

the one that would set upon the throne of David.

2 Samuel 7, verses 12 through 13 says, when your days are

fulfilled and you lay down with your fathers, who's he talking to?

David.

He's talking to King David.

When it's done, when your life is over, you'll be buried with your fathers.

I will raise up your offspring after you.

You shall come 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.

This is a great promise.

It's not the gospel, but it points to the gospel, doesn't it?

The seed of the woman.

And now David is coming from that line, and now Jesus comes from that line.

These people that he has set apart for himself coming right out of that Abrahamic

covenant.

But the context a little bit of this passage in 2 Samuel, you see David wanted to build a house

for God in his kingdom.

David had set out, right?

If you remember the story, David wanted to build a great kingdom.

He's like, it's not right that I live in this palace and God's got this tent over here, and we worship God in this tent like we did out in the

wilderness.

I want to raise money, and I want to raise people, and we're going to build God a real temple.

Like we're going to build something great, and God stops him.

God doesn't let him build this great temple.

You see, God promised to build David a house

by giving his son a kingdom.

He's building David a house that would be the dwelling place for both God and his

people.

David was short -sighted.

David thought, oh, I'm the king.

Israel will stand forever, and we will be this kingdom, and I'm going to build God this great temple.

And God's saying, that's short -sighted.

Yeah, you're king right there of your little kingdom.

I'm just setting you apart in the midst of the kingdom of darkness to bring about the real kingdom, and I'm going to

build you a house where I can dwell with you.

I'm going to build you a new, better garden.

That's what I'm going to do, and David believed this to be true.

This is the Davidic covenant.

By the time we make it to Isaiah, you remember the Christmas passage in Isaiah 9?

We see prophesied again that light starts to break through the darkness even greater.

And he says, For unto us a child is born, unto us a son is given, and the government shall be

upon his shoulders, 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 righteousness from this time forth and forevermore the zeal of the

Lord of hosts will do this.

This glorious promise.

See, all of these covenants were part of that covenant of works pointing to a covenant of grace, the

new covenant that was to come, where God did it.

Not David.

Not Abraham.

Not Moses.

Not Noah.

Not Adam, for sure.

God.

But remember, that covenant of works has to be fulfilled before that.

This must be fulfilled.

So here's the thing, at the perfect time, at the perfect moment,

when the darkness was at its darkest, you've got to remember,

too, God hadn't spoken to his people in a few hundred years by the time we get to this point.

It had been silent.

There's not much going on and the darkness seems to be coming in and destroying.

The people of Israel, the physical children of

Abraham are overtaken by Rome.

Everything seems the darkest.

And then the last Old Testament prophet appears, John the Baptist.

John the Baptist comes on the scene and declares out in the wilderness, as we see in Matthew chapter 3,

repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand.

Are you starting to see this grand narrative throughout Scripture now?

God's been working this all out all the way through with all of these covenants of works

that point to that one covenant of works back at the garden to be fulfilled and

to be pointing to this new covenant.

Jesus, the very Son of God, God in the flesh, the

light of the world stands in line

with the weak and the broken.

Walking down to the river to be baptized by this seemingly crazy

man who eats locusts and has honey in his beard, declaring, repent,

the kingdom of heaven is at hand, come be baptized.

And the Son of God comes down with the weak and the broken.

And he comes out of the water as John baptizes Jesus, the very Son of God.

The clouds open up out of the sky.

It's almost as if there's imagery here of God shining his great light

into the darkness.

It was overwhelming in the moment.

And all of the sudden, the voice of God comes, behold, this is my beloved Son with whom I am well

pleased.

You see, back in Genesis 3, we had but a beam, a small glimmer of light.

That light kept getting slightly bigger and slightly bigger, and then the Son of God shows up.

And the very voice of God comes in.

This is my beloved Son.

With whom I am well pleased.

This light comes into the world and appears.

And Jesus then sets out to fulfill that covenant of works.

You realize that, don't you?

The one, that covenant of works that Adam could not fulfill, the one that he failed to fulfill,

Jesus comes to do that.

He does so first, but immediately after his baptism, where does he go?

He goes straight to the wilderness.

He goes into the wilderness.

You see, I want to pinpoint this.

Adam, the prophet, priest, and king of the kingdom of man, he had a lush,

beautiful garden, a full stomach, and

comforts unimaginable.

And his temptation was merely the fruit of a single tree, and he still

failed.

If anyone was given the ideal circumstances in which to

not fail, he did it.

But that's the thing about the true and better Adam.

In order to fulfill the covenant of works, he goes into a

desert wasteland that has been decimated by the fall,.

Starving, thirsty,.

Hot, exhausted, none of the things Adam had.

And here comes Satan once again, doesn't he?

Just like he roamed into the garden, he comes into this

wasteland where Jesus is struggling and suffering physically, and not

offering him a single tree and a piece of fruit from a tree, but he offers him the whole of

creation.

Remember, he is the ruler of this age.

He is the one that is the ruler of this kingdom of darkness, and he offers

it to Jesus in his most pivotal moment of

starvation and need and hunger and pain.

But unlike Adam, who tasted the forbidden fruit, what does Jesus do?

He said there in Matthew chapter 4, in verse 10, he says,.

Be gone, Satan.

For it is written, You shall worship the Lord your God, and him alone shall you serve.

The very phrase that Adam should have declared, ripping the fruit from the hands of his wife

and casting the serpent out of the garden, Jesus does

and fulfills the covenant of works.

The true and better Adam.

And in verse 17 of Matthew 4, it says from this time Jesus began to preach, saying the same

thing that John the Baptist was declaring, right?

Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand.

Here's where we get a little confused about this kingdom.

You see, in English, we have the word kingdom.

And if you look up kingdom, it primarily refers to a place, doesn't it?

It's a noun.

Kingdom is a noun.

It's a place.

You want to know if there's a kingdom, you look for a location.

There is a kingdom there.

But in the Greek and in the Hebrew, it's something different.

The word that's used here actually refers to an activity or an action.

Now, is there a place along with that activity and action?

We believe so, yes.

But I think there's so much more that's here when we just think of a location.

That's why we categorize it wrong.

We think, well, maybe the kingdom of God is heaven.

Maybe the kingdom of God is some new creation, like new heavens and new earth when he creates it.

All of those are true, mind you.

Maybe the kingdom of God is the millennial reign in my eschatology.

Maybe that because we can only see kingdom as a noun.

But this is an activity.

There's something deeper here.

It's the reign of a king over a people.

Jesus, the true and better Adam, is the true prophet, priest, and king.

He is what Adam was supposed to be, but infinitely greater.

And he solidified this in his life, fulfilling the covenant of works.

He fulfills it in his death, bearing the guilt of his people.

And he fulfills it in his resurrection, a declaration that, hey, death has no hold of me.

And now Jesus reigns as king.

He reigns as king, a king of a spiritual kingdom.

This is not necessarily a place.

You see, this is spiritual because Christ's reign encompasses all.

And when I say all, if there's anything more than the created

universe, he's king of it.

Every single, both physical molecule and

spiritual realm, Jesus reigns.

That is his kingdom.

So when the kingdom of heaven is at hand, Jesus is saying, it's here.

It's coming.

It's right here in your presence.

That's why we call it the already and not yet, right?

Jesus reigns.

Jesus reigns.

Jesus is waiting to the very last sheep of his to be called and brought into

this kingdom through adoption, through sonship, so they can too be heirs in this kingdom.

And then he will put the final enemy, death, under his feet.

But it doesn't mean that he doesn't reign supreme over all of it now.

He does.

We just don't get to see it and experience it because this is a spiritual reign.

And one day he will burn up this world and all of the iniquity as a result of the fall

and create a new heavens and a new earth.

But even in that, it is a spiritual realm in which he reigns over all

created or not created.

Again, I don't know if there's a category for that.

I'm not God.

I just want to make sure you understand that he reigns supreme.

And here's the whole point.

If you get anything from today, okay?

And we covered a lot of ground.

I told you it was a 10 ,000 -foot flyover view.

I couldn't really deal with any of these things.

But here's what I want you to go away with.

Saint, if you are in Christ today, the kingdom of God

is in you.

You no longer need a garden.

You no longer need a tent.

You no longer need a building.

The kingdom of God is in you.

God is dwelling with his people because of the

fulfillment of the covenant of works by our new

representatives, the true and better Adam, Jesus Christ.

It's good news, isn't it?

In light of that, let's prepare our hearts to go to the table.

At the table, we, his children, get to express

the inward truth that we are part of this kingdom

and we partake in the suffering of Christ.

We partake in the inheritance in which we share in this

glorious kingdom with Christ because he is in us and we are in him.

This wine and this bread represents the sacrifice of his body, his body

that fulfilled the covenant of works, his blood that was spilled to pay the penalty for us who

broke that covenant of works.

It's beautiful.

So let us pray that God will be honored.

If you are a guest, and I want you to know if you are in Christ today and you are in good standing with a biblical

church, you are welcome to this table.

How we do this is we all come around.

There are side tables.

Pastor Jeremiah will be at this side.

I will be over here if anyone needs to pray with us, talk to us, anything.

We're here.

But get the elements.

Go back to your seat through the center and you can pray together.

You can pray individually.

You can partake.

And then we will come back together to sing the doxology and continue on with our service.

But let's pray that God will be honored in this.

Dear Heavenly Father, Lord, we thank you for this glorious

kingdom that is so much greater than the garden before the fall.

So, so glorious that we have a true and better Adam in Jesus Christ.

Our new representative is perfect, and he will not and did not fail.

And now if we are in him, we share in his sacrifice because we

have obtained his righteousness.

So be honored in our time of worship through this table.

Guard our hearts from unrepentant sin.

Lord, help us to lay things at your feet.

Lay them at the foot of the cross, knowing that our Savior has paid for them.

Seek to live for the Lord Jesus Christ.

Mold us together as we partake.

In Christ's name, amen.