The Postmillennial Hope: Old Testament Expectation

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You guys can go ahead and grab your Bibles, have them ready. I hope you guys brought your Bibles and pens, have your sermon notes page, paper, all that stuff.

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Big message tonight, it's a lot. I have to confess, before we get into the word start, our prayer for the message,

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I have to confess, it's sort of like drinking from the fire hose tonight because we're gonna take everything we've done over the course of the last bunch of weeks and we're gonna give them to you all at once tonight, but hoping that you grab on the essential pieces and so I've put it all together for you guys so you can see it up here, but what

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I'd like you to do is I'd like you to make sure you have a Bible available and ready because what I wanna do for some of these passages,

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I have purposely not put them up on the PowerPoint because I want you to know your

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Bibles. I want you to know where it's at and I want you to be able to go to it and see it with your own eyes. So have a

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Bible ready, have a pen ready and be ready to get into the word. If you guys would join with me as we pray and ask God to bless the message for the evening.

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So, Father, we come, Lord, into your presence, God. Acknowledging now,

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Lord, as the shepherd over these people, God, in myself, my own unworthiness, God, to deliver such a message that is full of so much hope and,

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Lord, and victory and it is so transcendent and holy, Lord, but I thank you,

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God, for your salvation that you've given us in the Messiah, that we are righteous in him, that our sins have been dealt with,

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God, that you've kept your promises, Lord. I pray, God, that you would speak tonight through your word to your people,

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God, that this would lead, Lord, to reformation and revival amongst your people,

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God, that you would change our minds and our hearts, Lord God, to hope in you,

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Lord, not to look around us at the circumstances of the things that are seen, but the things that are unseen,

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Lord, the hope, the guaranteed hope we have in you, Lord, because of the certainty, God, we have in your promises,

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Lord, that you've given to us. Thank you, Father, for revealing yourself to us. Most of all, thank you,

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Lord Jesus, for coming to live righteously in the place of your people, to die for their sins and being buried and raised again,

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Lord Jesus, we thank you. We pray, God, Holy Spirit, that you'd meet us in this place and teach. I pray that you'd get me out of the way,

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God, in Jesus' name, amen. So we've been doing our study on eschaton and eschaton really is another word playing off of the word eschatology, the

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Greek word eschatology, that has to do with the study of last things. Eschatons and logia is the study of last things.

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And so we've been talking a lot, if you've been with us even for one week, you know that we are optimistic in our eschatology.

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That is to say that we don't hold to the common, very popular, modern view in the

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Western church, the American Christian church of pessimilinealism. Now, we're not pessimistic in our view of the future.

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We are optimistic. And that optimism isn't sort of a wild -eyed, crazy, hey, for us, the glasses always have full kind of optimism.

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We really believe that the optimism we have as believers is secured to a guaranteed hope.

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And that's because we see in the scriptures that God promised us that he would have victory in history.

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And so really, it's interesting, the view of Apologia Church, our community, our church, the leadership of this church is really a view that is much more old school, much more ancient, much more something you would have found around the time of the

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Puritans and guys like Jonathan Edwards and those kinds of guys. And so it's peculiar to hear a

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Christian today in our modern context in America speaking so optimistically about the future.

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And so I know that if you're coming to Apologia Church and you're new to the church, a lot of this has been a jolt to you.

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And I have to confess, it was for me, it wasn't raised in church and going to Bible college, I was trained in and raised up in a

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Christian context of pessimilennialism. That is to say, I believed in the secret rapture, seven years of tribulation, and a future 1 ,000 -year reign of Christ, and ultimately the defeat of the church within human history before Christ really actually brings this kingdom to the earth.

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Our view, I think, is much more biblical, much more old school and ancient and rooted in the scriptures. And so what we've been doing is we've been talking about Eschaton, which is the climax of human history.

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And if you look at the first foundations, and so if I can have someone to switch that slide for me real fast, the foundations we have in the series we've been doing is on the fact, number one,

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God is sovereign. So if you're taking notes, I wanna have something underneath the message, okay?

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Underneath the message, I want you to grab onto some essential truths. Number one is that God is sovereign.

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And that should help us a whole lot because what we're talking about is history in the hands of a God who guides it.

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Now, that is something that I have stressed over and over to us as a body of believers.

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I've stressed to us that that is a unique thing to think about Christians talking about history going somewhere.

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The very words, climax of history, is something that we own.

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Now, when I say own it, I don't mean that in an arrogant, kind of pompous way, we own it. I'm saying that we're children of that God.

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We're children of the God who is spinning Saturn as we speak. We're children of the

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God who is holding the moon just the right distance away from the earth at this moment. We're children of the

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King who is the King and he governs the entire universe. We're children of the God who's actually revealed himself in human history.

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It's not a God that's a figment of some wild -eyed, religious, charlatan, con -artist imagination.

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We're children of the God who has actually condescended and entered into human history and revealed himself.

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And he's told us about his sovereignty and he's demonstrated it in a host of different ways.

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But most important for our look into the study of Eschaton is really the fact that God has told us about what he's going to do in history.

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We own this because we're his kids. The Bible says that the secret things belong to the

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Lord our God, but what he has revealed belongs to us and to our children. And so that's why we have this hope.

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God is sovereign. This is the God, guys, that declares the end from the beginning. He controls everything.

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Everything down to the big events to the small macro events, the micro events, the small things.

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We're talking about the God that it could be said of and acts as the church prays that all the people were gathered against Jesus.

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Pilate, the Gentiles, the leaders of Israel to do whatever his hand had predestined to occur.

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We're talking about the God who actually is sovereign over the murder of the Messiah on a tree 2 ,000 years ago.

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That kind of God. It's a God is sovereign over history. So I'm gonna just say this just briefly as an excursus off of where we're at here.

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I gotta say this. This has got to embolden you because I wanna say I know that as Christians when you hear a pastor telling you in a context where there's so much idea of defeat in history that we're just waiting for things to go to hell in a handbasket and why polish brass on a sinking ship when you hear a pastor today really telling you that no,

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God is gonna transform all of history because of his gospel. I know that you can look around you. I know you could say, but Jeff, look at this instance of evil in our culture.

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Look at this wickedness in our society today. Jeff, look at this and look at that. And what about this? And it's just the sovereignty of God and his revealed word that gives us the actual hope, the guaranteed assurance that we don't walk by sight the things that are around us.

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We don't do our reading of our Bible through the lens of the current newspaper, right?

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We don't get our eschatology based on the Jerusalem Post today. And what's

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Benjamin Netanyahu up to? Those kinds of things. Where we get our hope is the scriptures, the word of the living and true

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God who's revealed himself. And so the very foundation of everything we've been discussing in Eschaton, the climax of history,

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God's victory in history is just this single point, God is sovereign. He raises up kings and he takes down kings.

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The king's heart is like a river in his hand. He moves it wherever he wishes.

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That's the God that we're talking about. I mean, guys, when we look at the world around us, we do see transformation, gospel transformation in the world.

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It's an amazing, amazing thing. But I know, of course, we look around, we see evil around us. And I wanna just say this, we're talking about the

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God who, as a man walked among us, was murdered on a tree, rose from the dead and ascended into heaven with 11 disciples.

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Very confused, looking at a descended Messiah. To today, here we are 2 ,000 years later with Christians who named the name of Christ all over the world.

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I'm not sure how many of you guys are on my Facebook page, but I communicate a lot through Facebook because I know everyone in our culture is about social media.

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And so I posted a video just the other day of a tribe in Africa receiving the gospel and they were flipping out.

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They celebrated for two and a half hours after the proclamation of the gospel and people turned to Christ.

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They were freaking out. I mean, they were like crowd surfing. The whole tribe is going nuts.

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That is happening around the world as we speak. Jesus is in control of history. He is the head of the church and he is on his mission to bring his sheep out of the world.

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He's been doing it for 2 ,000 years and he is not gonna stop until every enemy is under his feet. God is sovereign.

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It's this God we believe in. He controls everything. History is going somewhere is the second point.

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You've got to grasp the beauty of the biblical worldview and that you have certainty that history is going somewhere.

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It's not in flux. I have stressed the point that our public school education today are our kids are raised with the idea that they are just blobs of protoplasm, accidents in the cosmos.

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They're just highly evolved societies of bacteria that are moving around in the universe and didn't have them in mind.

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That is not our worldview. Our worldview is a God who creates people in his image.

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He puts them in his world. He owns everything and he has us in his world to be his light into all creation, to reflect to the world his glory.

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That's our place, our position, and history is his story of redemption.

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He's in control of everything, all things. He's sovereign and it's going somewhere. It's not out of his control.

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As hard as things look, it's not out of his control. He's in control of every single thing. History is going somewhere.

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He owns it. The third point I want you to get as a foundation underneath all the series we've done so far in the

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Old Testament is this, is that our eschatological beliefs, our beliefs about the end of history and getting us to it.

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Our eschatological beliefs have severe consequences to our lives, that's personally, and to the world around us.

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I want to stress that so much. Our personal lives are impacted by our eschatological views, our views of history, last things, end times, and we forget this.

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Our eschatology, our belief about the end also impacts our neighbors.

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Because I want to say this as Christians, we have simply checked out of our culture. We just have, we've checked out.

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And I think there could be a whole host of reasons that could be listed as to why that is. I think a lot of it has to do with the preaching of the gospel in our days.

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I think it has a lot to do with wolves in the pulpit. I think it has a lot to do with having bad pastors in charge of churches today, people who aren't committed to the word of God as the ultimate authority.

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I think you could list those things, but I want to say at least this point can be said.

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We've checked out of culture today because of our views of the kingdom, because of our views of the victory of the

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Messiah in history, because when you're telling Christians from the pulpit for almost 200 years now that Jesus didn't really bring his kingdom in the first century, he didn't really bring it on time as planned.

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There's been a pause in the kingdom -building project of God that he promised.

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There's a pause there, there's a gap there. He'll bring it again someday. And that the world's just gonna get worse and worse and worse until Jesus returns.

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But guess what, Christians? Your pants and underwear are gonna be left behind because you're gonna be secretly raptured away.

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And Jesus is gonna snatch you out of the world. The world's gonna go to hell in a handbasket. And let me tell you what, you cannot tell me, you cannot tell me that if you tell

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Christians that story, that they're not gonna be somewhat excited, subtly excited as culture goes to hell in a handbasket.

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Because what are we thinking as it does? The worse it gets around us, the better it is for us.

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You can't tell me that it doesn't affect how we live in the world. And I wanna say that when Jesus was walking among us, he, in the

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Sermon on the Mount, says so much. He says that the meek will inherit the earth. That's different. We're gonna inherit the earth.

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The meek shall inherit the earth. Jesus talks about you're a city on a hill. He talks about you're the light.

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No one puts it under a basket. You put it out to light everything up, that you're the salt.

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And we've forgotten that salt is a preservative. And we just simply don't preserve with the word of God the culture around us when we believe that the worse it gets, the better it is for us.

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All we're doing is we're sitting at pool sides, reading Left Behind series, wishing ourselves into rapture.

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Like I told you, my personal story of just that, believing in that kind of world, and sitting by a pool side, excited about the fact that the world's gonna go to hell in a handbasket because I'm gonna get raptured out of here.

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It just does. It impacts our world. Now, I wanna go into the next point here, and that is that we are post -mill.

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So be ready to switch that for me real fast. We are post -mill and millennial. And listen, I don't wanna go into a long thing tonight on post -millennialism versus amillennialism versus premillennialism versus dispensational premillennialism, whatever.

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I broke it down into two things. What was it? Pessimillennialism and optimillennialism, right?

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Now, understand this. I wanna stress this because I know this sermon's gonna be broadcast out.

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People are gonna hear this around the world. We have people listening to this from around the world right now. I wanna say something very important.

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I am not jealous of the term post -millennial. I don't walk up to people when

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I meet them and say, hey, I'm post -millennial. How you doing? Like, I'm not just super thrilled about just the title.

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I'm not jealous for it. I am jealous for the idea that Jesus is the Messianic king.

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I am jealous for the idea that Jesus' kingdom came on time and as promised. And I am very jealous for the idea that God promised to have victory in history.

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I want to believe that, and I wanna tell people that. But the position is basically called post -millennial.

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And here's what it essentially is, okay? Jesus, the Messiah, brought the expected kingdom on time and as planned.

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He is seated and reigning now. His kingdom will grow in history through the preaching of the gospel and the power of the

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Holy Spirit. The world will experience the transformational blessings that peace with God brings.

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Jesus will return for the resurrection of the just and the unjust after all of his enemies are put under his feet in victory.

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The last enemy is death. Okay, the next point here, I want you guys to get something as we move forward.

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Are you ready for this? Let's move forward now into where we've been. Now, this is where you wanna have your pens and paper ready.

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Some of this stuff I am just going to mention briefly. If you want more, go back and listen to the other messages.

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But I wanna basically give you the picture because listen, guess what? We are moving soon into the

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New Testament. Are you excited? We're going into the New Testament. Eschaton, the series, we've only been in the

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Old Testament thus far. We're moving into the New Testament starting next week. All right, exciting.

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And I want basically for you guys to put yourselves in the mindset of a Jewish person who is hearing the promises about the coming

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Messiah. I want you to know what they were expecting, the things that they were hearing from God and his prophets.

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And the first point I want you to grab that is killer, it is theologically awesome.

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It is something that really, really should set you on fire. And it's just a single point. And watch this.

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So much of what we're gonna talk about in the New Testament when Jesus enters really hinges on this.

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I mean, New Testament eschatology is about God, the king becoming man to take his rightful position as king over the world and his people.

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And so I want you not to forget this. We cannot forget that God is the king. And there was a little instance in the

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Old Testament. It was in 1 Samuel 8 and 11. You can write it down and go read it later.

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The children of Israel are basically like, we want a king, we want a king. Like, we're always doing that, right?

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I mean, think about the last presidential election. Think about even Christians in the last presidential election.

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Like, you know, foaming at the mouth, like, we gotta have a leader. We gotta have a leader. We want a king, right?

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Essentially. And it's amazing, Israel's in the same place. In the BC era before Christ comes, they're in the same place.

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They want an earthly king like the other nations. Now, Samuel is a little perturbed by this.

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And God basically tells him, don't worry, Samuel. They're sitting against me because I'm their king.

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And the amazing thing is just that point. What does the Old Testament promise?

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That a king is coming who will have a kingdom that will endure forever. It will never be destroyed.

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That God's gonna make a kingdom with a king over it. And that all, everyone in the world is gonna have to be in subjection to this king.

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And yet God says that he is the only king. He's king.

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So if you know that God is the only legitimate king over his people, and if you know that God is bringing a messianic figure into history to be king forever, who is coming as king?

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God is coming as king. And you gotta grasp that point. You cannot forget that.

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That God called it sinful for the people of Israel to want an earthly king over themselves in place of God.

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And so what God did in the Old Testament was he gave them earthly kings. And it didn't go so well for them.

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You got one king that's like destroying the people of Israel. They're taxing them, sending them off to war. You got another king who's committing adultery and murder.

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It's not going so well for Israel with their kings, right? But then God promises that he is gonna set up a kingdom that will never be destroyed.

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God is coming as king. And then the New Testament is about God taking his rightful place as king over his people for eternity.

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Next point, now here's where you can start to write down sections, all right? So if you're getting this, get ready.

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I'm gonna put it in sections under the victory theme. We're gonna talk about the victory theme in Moses.

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We're gonna talk about the victory theme in the Psalms, the prophets, and things like that. So if you're making this kind of broken into chunks now as you're writing, put it under victory

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Moses. Who wrote the first five books of the Bible? Moses.

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And when Jesus is walking in the first century amongst his people, he tells them, if you believed

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Moses, you'd believe me because he wrote about me. Now that is something that is super cool is that the

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Bible actually tells us about the Messiah before he comes. And Jesus is saying, look, if you're reading

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Moses, if you're doing your daily devotionals, if you're in there and you believed him, you'd actually believe me because he wrote about me.

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Now that is something that is astonishing. It means that you go to your Bibles and you know

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Jesus tells you Moses wrote about me. So we can look in the first five books and we know that we're talking about Jesus.

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The Old Testament is about the Messiah. So the first thing is the victory theme in Moses.

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And that's this. Moses recorded, number one, the Proto -Evangelium.

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And that was basically that the first proclamation of the good news, the gospel. It's in Genesis 3 .15.

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Many of you know it. The fall occurs where? In a garden. What did

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God promise? If they broke that covenant, death would enter. So the fall occurs in the garden and God promises

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Adam and Eve and really all of the human race, he promises that the woman's seed would come and would crush the head of the serpent but he'd be wounded and bruised on his heel in the process.

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You have a promise of Messiah in the third chapter of your Bible that God is going to send a

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Messiah, the woman's seed, and there's a, we believe a proclamation of the virgin birth there, that's going to deliver the death blow to Satan but be wounded in the process.

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That's the first point. Second, Moses recorded the first sacrifice and covering. Now you know this and I think

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I told you guys, like to be honest, I missed this in my walk with Christ.

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Initially, as you're reading the Bible, you don't necessarily catch these things right away but the fact that the fall occurs in a garden, death enters the human race in that day.

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God promises to send the Messiah to crush the head of the serpent. Satan's works are gonna be destroyed but what do you see immediately?

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God has Adam and Eve covered, their nakedness covered with the skins of an animal.

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What took place that day? The first animal sacrifice, the innocent for the guilty display happened that day.

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And what happened to Adam and Eve? In a garden, they're covered and they brought death in.

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And then they're separated from God's presence but God is speaking over that moment in just one chapter.

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In the one chapter that death occurs, Adam and Eve, this was brought in and God says,

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Messiah's coming, the woman's seed crushed the head of the serpent, be bruised in the process and then he has

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Adam and Eve covered, their nakedness and shame covered in the skins of the innocent sacrifice.

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It's an amazing story already beginning as your Bible opens up. And remember guys, Moses writes this about 1500 years before the atonement occurred.

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Now, Moses recorded the dominion mandate and this is really important.

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Adam is the image of God, Eve is the image of God. And what does

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God say? He tells them, take dominion over the earth.

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What's he say? Subdue it. The image of God has authority and dominion over all the creatures and God says, take dominion and subdue it.

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Adam and Eve collapse and fail. Now, what's amazing about Jesus in a

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New Testament, I gotta cite this, is that Jesus is referred to essentially as really the second

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Adam. He does what Adam failed in doing. In other words,

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Adam is to be the image of God, to keep covenant with God. He breaks it, he brings death in a garden.

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He's told to take dominion over the earth, subdue it, but the curse and the fall occurs. Enter Jesus, God becomes man.

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He actually is now the representative of the redeemed race of humanity.

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He dies, he is raised, where? In a garden. So he actually took death naked, where Adam and Eve were naked and should have stayed that way and they were covered.

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Jesus, the Messiah, the second Adam, lived righteously where Adam failed. Adam was a covenant breaker,

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Jesus was a covenant keeper. Adam was unrighteous, Jesus was righteous. Jesus took death, the death penalty, for the fall, he takes it all.

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And Jesus was raised where? In a garden. And I said this this week on the radio show,

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I said this, it cannot be. I refuse to believe that it is an accident that when

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John records the resurrection accounts, that the resurrection occurred in a garden.

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Where did death occur? In a garden. Where does the second Adam actually defeat death?

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In a garden. And don't you think that it's impossible that it's an accident? That John would record that the women thought that Jesus was a gardener.

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Why would a woman think that Jesus was a gardener? Because he's hanging out?

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Because he's standing there just kind of like, hey, she goes, are you a gardener? Like what do you think he was a gardener for?

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Why did she think he was a gardener? He must have been working in the ground. It can't be an accident that the first Adam was told to take dominion over the earth, he dies in a garden, and then

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Jesus comes, defeats death in a garden, raised from the dead, and the first thing he's doing is working the ground.

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He was to take dominion, and Jesus is about getting that dominion, okay?

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He's taking it, and we're in Christ, and we take that dominion with him. That can't be an accident.

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Moses recorded the dominion mandate. Next, Moses recorded the covenant with Noah. Genesis 9 -11, what does he say in Genesis 9 -11?

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That he makes a covenant with Noah and the generations after him that he will never again do what, guys?

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Destroy the entire world with a flood. That's the Noahic covenant.

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The next thing Moses records is Moses recorded the covenant with Abraham, and this is awesome. Now watch this, you ready?

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There's a couple things here you're gonna really need to grab, and it's central, and it's constantly gonna be shouted to you from the

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New Testament over and over and over. Are you ready for this? The covenant with Abraham, the

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Abrahamic covenants, and that was in Genesis 12 -2,

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Genesis 15 -5, that God was, listen, in Abraham's seed, a singular seed.

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He was gonna bless the whole world, and God told Abraham that through his seed, that his seed would be more numerous than the stars of the heavens.

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Have you ever done that? I mean, seriously. I mean, we kind of got a little glimpse of it at man camp recently, the night that it wasn't raining, right?

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There's stars out there, they're spectacular. There's so many. Like, it's really kind of,

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I feel kind of like cheated a bit. Like when you're out like in a city, and there's so much like light pollution, you can't really see the sky.

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I mean, I've been on a cruise before, and I was out in the ocean, and there's just no lights, and there's so many stars, it absolutely boggles your mind.

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It blows you away how many stars there are, and God tells Abraham, and there probably wasn't a whole lot of light pollution then.

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He tells Abraham, he says, look up, your descendants like the stars.

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It's just unbelievable. It's too hard to even imagine or count, and God says, look up, your descendants like that.

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And then he says, your descendants be like the sand, and it's impossible to even count. It's impossible.

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So the idea of the Abrahamic covenant that through Abraham's seed, the Messiah was gonna bless the whole world, and that Abraham was gonna have descendants more numerous than the stars or the sand has got to shout to you something, victory.

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Because if humanity basically is going to hell in a hand basket, and really, ultimately, very few people are saved in that scheme, then

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I wanna say, where's the real hope in the Abrahamic covenant? Because the Abrahamic covenant shouts something much greater and something much more, that this is going to be a covenant that blesses so much that you're gonna be so dazzled by it by the end of time that it'd be like the stars of the heavens shouting to you about the multitude of God's people he's saved.

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That's the Abrahamic covenant, and that's in Moses. Next, I wanna say as an aside, listen, it's not in the five books of Genesis, but you need to hear it regardless, and you already did at the beginning of the service with Elliot, skinny jeans.

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The Davidic covenant, the Davidic covenant, and that's in 2 Samuel, it's in chapter seven, verses 10 through 13, and you can go ahead and go to this one because we haven't really gone into this very much, and I want you to see it.

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Go to 2 Samuel, that's in your Old Testament. Again, this is not necessarily in Moses, but I just at least wanted to see it regarding the covenant.

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2 Samuel, chapter seven, verses 10 through 13.

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Gotta hear those Bible pages turning, guys. Okay, here's what

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I want you to see, the promise in the Old Testament. I want you to hear it and put yourself in the position of the Israelites, the

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Jews. I want you to know all these promises. 2 Samuel, chapter seven, verses 10 through 13.

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Okay, here we go. I will establish a place for my people Israel and plant them so that they may live there and not be disturbed again.

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Evil doers will not afflict them as they have done ever since the day I ordered judges to be over my people Israel. I will give you rest from all your enemies.

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The Lord declares to you, the Lord himself will make a house for you. When your time comes and you rest with your fathers, that's

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David now, okay, he says, I will raise up after you your descendants who will come from your body, and I will establish his kingdom.

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

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What was promised to David that from David's line, now, by the way, watch this, you can bring this all the way through,

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Adam to Noah to Abraham to David, and then

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David is being told, someone's gonna come from your own body that's gonna be the king forever.

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How do you have a king forever? Unless he doesn't die. He has a kingdom that lasts forever, and he's from David, and by the way, people say, oh man, the genealogies of the

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Bible, like why do I gotta go to the genealogies? If those genealogies weren't there, you wouldn't know that God kept his covenants.

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So you better like freak out and love those genealogies of Matthew and Luke because they're important, because if you couldn't trace

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Jesus back to David, to Noah, to Abraham, to Adam, then he's not the Messiah. And so David's being told that he is given a covenant that his seed will have a kingdom forever.

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Next, Moses recorded the promise of the lamb. Now, this is awesome. In Genesis chapter 22, many of you guys know, this is one of my favorite things to bring people to.

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On purpose, on purpose, when I've done ministry over a long period of time with a particular set of people,

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I have made sure that when I do the Old Testament survey, I make sure I get up front in someone's face,

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Genesis chapter 22, because it is awesome. Genesis 22, Abraham, the father of our faith, the one that God promised to bless the whole world through his seed,

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Abraham is told to take his son, Isaac, the son of the promise, the son of his love, his only son, to take him to a place to offer him as a sacrifice.

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Abraham rises early in the morning, he takes his men with him, and Isaac, the son of the promise, the one that God's gonna bless the whole world through.

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And he goes on a three -day journey to a place that his son carries the wood to. His son sees the fire and the wood and says, dad, the fire and the wood, where's the lamb?

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And Abraham tells his son these words, God will provide for himself the lamb.

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He binds his son, Isaac, he goes to slay the son, the firstborn, the heir, the son of the promise, the son of his love, and God, the angel of the

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Lord, tells him, no, don't hurt him, don't do a thing to him. And then what happens is

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Abraham names that place, the Lord will provide it, and it was about 2 ,000 years later that Jesus, the son of God's love, his only son, the firstborn, the heir of all things, the son of the promise, carried the wood to the place of that sacrifice, and that God provided the lamb in that place, as promised.

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It's an amazing thing. It is truly an amazing thing to look at this story that God has been weaving in history.

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It is a symphony. It truly is a symphony, and you need to grab all these parts. The next piece

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I want you to see is at number eight. Moses recorded the foreshadowing of temple, priest, and sacrifice.

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Jesus said that he was the temple. You destroy this temple, and in three days,

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I will raise it up again. He told the people of his day something greater than a temple is here.

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The Bible constantly is telling us that Jesus is interceding for us forever, that he is the high priest forever, and that his priesthood never changes because he never dies.

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It never gets passed to somebody else. And that Jesus is the perfect sacrifice, the lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world, who will never die again, who offered a once -for -all sacrifice, and he's able to save to the uttermost everybody who comes to God through him.

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Jesus is that perfect sacrifice, perfect temple, perfect priest. The next thing

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I want you to see is this, and here's where you're like, all right, Jeff, give me the victory verse, okay? There's a bunch, but in Moses, two great ones, and I want you to go to them.

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Go to Numbers chapter 14, verse 21. Numbers chapter 14, verse 21.

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Again, I want you guys to have these written down. Somebody asked me, can you give me a bunch of verses that demonstrate victory in history and the post -millennial hope?

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And I thought, that's almost impossible. How do you do that? Do you have like six years for seminary courses?

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Like, how do you actually lay all this out? But I wanted to put it all together, at least a bunch of verses you can all grab.

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You can go back and listen to this message again to get these verses if you want, but I want you to have these. Numbers 14.

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This is Old Testament. Moses wrote this. Verse 21. Here we go.

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Yet as surely as I live, and as the whole earth is filled with the

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Lord's glory. And some of your translations say, as surely as the Lord lives, the whole earth will be full of his glory.

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Now, you know what is an amazing thing is that we see a promise like that as Christians, and oftentimes it looks so glorious and so huge.

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Be honest. We don't even actually think that that could be true. We don't actually revel in the fact that God's promising that his whole world is gonna be full of his glory.

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That's massive. And let me tell you something, guys. Jesus shared that opinion. Think about it.

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When Jesus comes, Sermon on the Mount, most famous sermon, what does he say? When Jesus is doing the Sermon on the Mount, the meek will inherit the earth.

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You're the light of the world, salt and light. And then he even tells us how to pray. How is the Messiah telling us to pray?

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The one that was promised to come, to bring God's glory throughout the whole world. The one who was the seed promised to Abraham.

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How does he tell us to pray? He says, Father, your name be holied throughout the earth.

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Your kingdom come, your will be done on earth as it is in heaven. And I've constantly said to us as a body, as brothers and sisters, guys, just how rigorous do you think

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God's will is kept to in heaven? And our Messiah is telling us, you pray like this.

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Pray that God's name would be holied in Africa. Pray that God's name would be holied in Papua New Guinea.

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Pray that God's name would be holied in Australia, in Russia, all over Europe, in South America, in North America, that God's name would be holied, that his kingdom would come, that it would expand and grow throughout the whole world, and that the

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Father's will would be done on earth, on earth as it is in heaven.

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Just how far reaching did the Messiah, Jesus, believe that his kingdom would impact the world?

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Well, he told you to pray that God's will would be done on earth as it is in heaven. And I just simply do not believe, as a follower of Christ, as fallible as I am, as much as I don't know,

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I do not believe that Jesus would be telling his people to pray a prayer that God would not honor.

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I don't believe it. I don't believe Jesus would tell us to pray a prayer the Father's not gonna honor.

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I believe that Jesus told us to pray that prayer because that was the anticipated future of the world.

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And we're the means of that occurring through the proclamation of the gospel and the Holy Spirit's empowering.

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The next verse is Genesis 49, 10. This is actually one of my favorites because I like the name,

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Shiloh. Genesis 49, I just do, I like the name. It's fun to say.

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Genesis 49, 10. Genesis 49, 10, big one. We miss it a lot.

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Genesis 49, 10. Moses records for us these words. Genesis 49, 10. The scepter will not depart from Judah or the staff from between his feet until Shiloh comes.

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And the obedience of the peoples belongs to him.

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Now, I have got to stress this. When you look at Paul the rabbi,

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Rabbi Paul, telling us the gospel in the book of Romans, don't you think it's interesting that he starts the book and ends the book with the proclamation that their purpose is to bring about the obedience of faith in all the world?

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Because that's what the promise was. Moses records that this Shiloh's gonna come, this messianic figure's gonna come, and the obedience of the peoples is his.

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And don't you think it's amazing that our favorite book, I mean, Martin Luther's like, you gotta read Romans every day.

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That's the gospel, Romans every day. And his Christians were like, yeah, go to Romans. You want the gospel? Read Romans. You open

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Romans, and this Jewish rabbi who's come to Messiah, Jesus, is telling you the obedience of faith in all the world is what we're aiming at.

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So I wanna say the victory theme is in your Bibles the very moment you open it up.

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Moses shouted the victory of the Messiah to us. The next is this, victory in the

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Psalms. And we're gonna go kind of fast here on the victory in the Psalms, but I want you to be ready with your

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Bibles, victory in the Psalms. First thing, let's see who gets there first. Are you ready? Let me, just kidding.

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Psalm 66, four. Psalm 66, four, I win. Psalm 66, four.

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Now remember, your Psalms are written down long before Jesus comes, and I want you to put yourself in the right perspective.

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Can you guys do this for a second? I want you to imagine for a second that you are Jewish. You are raised in synagogue.

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You are raised under the teaching of the law and the prophets. Listen, the Psalms operates essentially as your hymnal.

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You're singing these songs. And you gotta put yourself in the position of the Jews for a second.

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Guys, were they anticipating a messianic figure who would rule the world?

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Yes, yes they were. Why do you think the Jews are like trying to force

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Jesus and make him a king? Why? Because they knew the Psalms. All you get in the

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Psalms is victory, victory, all the nations, the world. He shall have dominion.

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And these early followers of Jesus, when they're following Jesus, admit this, it must have been kind of strange that this is him, this guy from Nazareth.

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For real? Can anything good come from Nazareth? This guy right here, this carpenter's son, he's got no money.

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How's this guy gonna run the world? He didn't have any money. He didn't have a budget, nothing.

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He can't even feed his followers. He's gonna run the world. This guy right here is the king of the world. He is the Messiah. He's the figure of the promise, right, right.

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No one likes him. His followers are leaving him. The leaders of Jerusalem are like, eh, false prophet. Kill him.

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And this has got to just be something that just like they must have struggled with because they're singing the Psalms.

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They know what it says, that all the obedience of the nations is gonna be Shiloh's, the Messiah, his.

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The whole world's gonna be full of the glory of the Lord. Abraham's gonna have descendants more numerous than the stars of the heaven, the sand of the sea.

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And then you're reading Psalms like Psalm 66 .4. Did I tell you 66 .4?

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Okay, good, 66 .4, good. I thought I had the wrong reference there, 66 .4. It says, all, are you ready?

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All the earth will worship you and sing praise to you.

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They will sing praise to your name. Where did we ever get the idea that Jesus, the

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Messiah's kingdom, is defeated in history? Let me tell you right now, if you're reading the Psalms, you don't get that idea.

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You don't get the idea that his kingdom is defeated in history when you read that simple verse in Psalm 66 .4.

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And our problem isn't that God isn't clear. Our problem is that we have believed things, systems and philosophies and traditions that simply are not found in the scriptures.

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If we'd be singing the Psalms before our worship as Christians, we would never get the idea that this Messiah's kingdom is defeated in history.

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Psalm 66 .4 says, all the earth will worship you and sing praise to you.

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They will sing praise to your name. That's a promise. And I just gotta ask you a simple question. This is it, brothers and sisters.

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Here's the question. Do we believe it? That's all. Do we believe it? Is it just something we say as Christians?

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Are these just words that we just recite and we sing out loud, but we don't really actually contextualize it?

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Do we not actually embrace the truth in this that all of the earth will worship him?

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Do we believe that history is going that direction? Jesus told you to pray for it. The Psalms actually testify to that truth.

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Next verse, Psalm 67 .2. Psalm 67 .2. So that your way may be known on earth, your salvation among the nations.

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I tell you what was getting me so excited the other day. I posted this thing. I'll be honest with you. Maybe you think, you might think

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I'm weird. You might think I was out doing stuff for ministry. I was just going place to place. I had someone send,

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I saw it, I pushed play, I pulled over, I watched this thing. I had tears in my eye. I watched it probably 10 times in a row.

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I over and over and over. It's like a minute long. I just played it again and I played it again and I played it again. Because to me,

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I saw in this beautiful picture right in front of my face, this white guy bringing the gospel to this

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African tribe with nothing, just dirt. Dirt everywhere, just dirt. And they're just saying,

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I don't even understand what they're saying. I don't even know what they're saying. They're saying, etow, and everyone's like, etow. I'm like, etow.

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And I guess it means it's true, it's good, it's very good, it's very true. And they're shouting, etow, because they're telling him that if you've trusted this

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Messiah, that he died for you and rose from you, your sins are forgiven. And they're all standing up. They're yelling, etow, etow.

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And they all just start freaking out. They had like old school rave, no glow sticks. Crowd surfing.

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And it says it lasted for two and a half hours. And what I see there is

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I see something that's the death blow to this ridiculous, pessimistic eschatology that we have been feeding

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Christians for the last 200 years. I see Christians, God's people, his sheep coming to him from all the corners of the earth.

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And what will stunt our growth, and it's not gonna stop his glory, it's not gonna stop his work, but what will stunt the growth of the kingdom, and it's all in God's providence, is our indifference as Christians.

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And it's our idea that this Messiah can be defeated. It's our running away from the world acting like giants of the land is actually a problem for us.

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It's not. These are the promises that we have. And this is certainty. It's certainty.

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So that your way may be known on earth, your salvation among the nations. And I'll tell you right now, if any of you guys in your heart right now have in your heart the idea, maybe

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God's calling me to be a missionary somewhere. Your anchor to your soul is right here.

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What kind of church sends missionaries out to the world to subdue the earth for God's glory, to bring the gospel to the nations?

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Is it a church that tells everyone that the earth is going to hell in a handbasket and everything's gonna be defeated? So go, go, go.

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Or is it the church that says, look, this is where history is going. This is the

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Messiah. He conquered death, he rose from the dead. God's commanding all the kings to bow to him and worship him.

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He subdues the earth. All the nations belong to him. It's that kind of kingdom that advances with courage and with power.

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The next, Psalm 67, seven. Same chapter. God will bless us and all the ends of the earth will fear him.

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And I gotta say it again. It's right there in front of us. Do we believe it is the only question? It's true anyways, amen?

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It's true anyways. It's just true. And you know what we need?

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You heard me pray for it at the beginning of this message. I said, what we need is reformation and revival in our day. Back to the words of God in scripture as the authoritative word.

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Pastors and people of God underneath the authority of his word submitted to it telling people the hard truths when necessary and always faithfully.

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And it also comes down to a point today. We have to have a reformation in our thinking as believers to say this. You know what?

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Maybe we're not out of here anytime soon. Maybe we have a long way to go.

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What God calls you to do is to stay here and to occupy until he comes.

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And that Jesus says in his high priestly prayer, John 17, what does he say? He says, father, I do not pray that you take them out of the world, but that you keep them from the evil one.

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Jesus's prayers were so much different than the prayers of modern 21st century evangelicals.

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We're praying, Jesus, get me out of here. Get me out of here. And Jesus is saying, father, keep them there. Just keep them from the evil one.

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Our thought process is so different. And it's because our hearts are not rooted in the text of God's word.

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Next is Psalm 86, nine. Psalm 86, nine. I told you it would be in the text a lot. I want you to see it with your eyes.

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I don't want you to believe things because your pastor tells you a system. I want you to see it with your own eyes so that your hope is firmly rooted in what

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God says. Psalm 86, verse nine. Psalm 86, nine.

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All the nations you have made will come and bow down before you, Lord, and will honor your great name.

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Are we done? Let's go home, right? Are we done? The message, the message, just be over now?

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Think about these promises. Let me ask you a question. Can God ever lie? Never.

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Is that a promise? It is. It's a promise.

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He cannot lie. This is his story of history. I'm gonna say the promise to you again because I want you guys to grab it.

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Psalm 86, nine. All the nations you have made will come and bow down before you,

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Lord, and will honor your name. That's a promise. Psalm 102, 15. Psalm 102, 15.

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Then the nations will fear the name of Yahweh and all the kings of the earth, your glory.

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Now go back. Psalm 72, five through eight. Psalm 72, five through eight.

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I've put this in your bulletins a bunch of times. I want you to get the verse. It's so easy. It's so simple. And I've already talked about it with Adam and the dominion and everything else.

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Psalm 72, five through eight. I want you to hear the verse as, here we go. May he continue while the sun endures and as long as the moon throughout all generations, may he be like rain that falls in the cut grass, like spring showers that water the earth.

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May the righteous flourish in his days and prosperity abound until the moon is no more.

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Here we go. May he, this is the Messiah, may he rule from sea to sea and from the

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Euphrates to the ends of the earth. And the word there is he shall have dominion.

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He shall have dominion from sea to sea, from the river to the ends of the earth.

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That's the promise we have, the hope we have in Messiah. Guys, I just got to say how obvious this is.

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How obvious is it to us that Jesus, the resurrected King, ascends to heaven.

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His disciples looking up in anticipation of this moment from Daniel chapter seven, ascension of the

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Messiah, that before he does in Matthew 28, 18 through 20, Jesus says, all authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me.

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Therefore go, make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the

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Father and the Son of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you. Jesus did not tell us to go simply get decisions for Jesus one day.

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Jesus says, you go and you get my disciples, all the nations, and you teach them to obey everything

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I've commanded you. What did we expect? What do we expect from this

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Messiah? Exactly that. Next is two powerful verses,

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Psalm chapter two and Psalm 110 .1. You can go ahead and read them later, but write them down because if you want some anchors, there's your anchors.

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Psalm chapter two and Psalm 110 .1, and I'm going to just do Psalm 110 .1 right now.

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Psalm 110 .1 is the most quoted verse from the

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Old Testament in the New Testament. Now pause for a second, guys. Brothers and sisters, just think about it for a second.

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If you've got a verse in the New Testament, God's word, you've got a verse that is used the most from the

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Old Testament, I think it has some special significance. If it's the verse that's used the most, often quoted from the

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Old Testament, it has to have some significance. And what is it? It's quoted by Paul in 1

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Corinthians 15. And what does he say? He must reign until he has made all of his enemies a footstool for his feet.

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That this Messiah is reigning until all his enemies are made a footstool. And then Paul says the last enemy to be defeated is death.

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So Jesus, ready, is reigning now. He is making his enemies his footstool, and the very last enemy he defeats is death.

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Does that sound like victory to you? Sounds like victory. And I wanna say from Psalm 2, it's just an amazing little conversation.

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By the way, it's gotta trip you out. The Old Testament, it's a conversation between the Father and the

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Son. How do you like that? How do you like that? Old Testament, monotheistic Jews. Here's God talking to the

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Son in the Old Testament. I love it. Take that, modalism. That was a little theological joke for all you guys that love your ancient heresies.

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Not love them, but love to refute them. And keep scorn upon them. Sabellianism, modalism.

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Take that. In the Old Testament, Psalm chapter two, the

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Father says to the Son, ask of me and I will give you the nations for your inheritance and the ends of the earth for your possession.

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I love that verse. I love it. Psalm two, the Father tells the Son, he's talking to Jesus.

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We know that. He says, ask of me and I'll give you the nations for your inheritance and the ends of the earth for your possession.

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And guess what? You know what? I know Jesus didn't forget to ask. And you know why? I've already told you.

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Matthew 28. What did he tell us to do? Go make disciples of all the nations. So did

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Jesus forget to ask? No. What did the Father promise to Jesus if he asked?

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I'll give you all the nations for your inheritance and the ends of the earth as your possession. And isn't it awesome? Jesus ascends.

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He says, go get them. You and I, as insignificant as you might think your life is, are a fulfillment of the promises of God from the

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Messiah to the glory of God and the exaltation of Christ in the world and in history. You may think your life is small and meaningless and insignificant.

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You may think very little of yourself at times in your life. But I wanna say this right now. God sees you as a trophy of his grace in the world.

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And that is where history is going. This Messiah subduing all the nations, all his enemies under his feet, and you are a trophy of his grace.

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You are a fulfillment of these promises. Amen? And that is to the glory of God. And that should excite you.

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And that should give you fire. And that should give you zeal and passion and power and boldness to go into the world wherever God has called you to speak his gospel to those around you.

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The good news of the gospel, the good news of the kingdom proclaimed throughout the whole world. All the nations belong to this

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Messiah. It's just a matter of time. Amen? That is where we're going. Next, the next thing is victory in the prophets.

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Victory in the prophets. I'll go a little faster here. I'm just gonna recite for you guys the passages. Isaiah chapter nine, verses six through seven.

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It is a famous verse. You all know it. You all love it because you love your Christmas cards. It talks about a son being given, a child born to us.

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Wonderful counselor, the mighty God, the father of eternity.

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And the next part of the verse is not always quoted as often. In Isaiah chapter nine, verse seven.

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I wanna read it to you. I have to say it. Prince of Peace. And then it says, the dominion will be vast and its prosperity will never end.

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He will reign on the throne of David. There's that promise. And over his kingdom to establish and sustain it with justice and righteousness from now on and forever.

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And if you have any question, guys, about how this takes place, here's how. The zeal of the

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Lord of hosts will accomplish this. There is nothing impossible with God. Don't we say it all the time? We have little bumper stickers and pithy

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Christian t -shirts that say it. With God, all things are possible, right? All the time, right? Make funny little may -mays on Facebook.

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With God, all things are possible. I know it's mean. I prefer may -may. With God, all things are possible.

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Listen, how is this gonna take place? How is he gonna have this kingdom that will never end? How? How is it gonna take place?

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It's gonna last forevermore. The zeal of the Lord of hosts will accomplish it. Daniel chapter seven, verses 13 through 14 talks about Daniel saying,

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I saw one like a son of man, and he came where, guys? Up.

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He came up to the Ancient of Days, and he was given a kingdom, dominion, and the promise there is that all the nations were gonna come and serve him, and that it would never pass away.

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Why do you think the Jews anticipated a Messiah that would have such a victorious reign? Because they were told so by God.

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And when Jesus ascended, what's the last thing he says? Go get my disciples. Teach them to obey.

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That was the promise. Micah five, two through four. Habakkuk two, 14.

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Zechariah nine, nine through 10. Zechariah 14, verse nine. Malachi chapter one, verse 11.

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Again, I'm throwing these out for you guys to look at them later, but a big one I want you to see is Isaiah chapter two. Go to Isaiah two, same book.

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Isaiah chapter two. I want you to hear it, and I want you to see it.

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Isaiah chapter two, the vision that Isaiah, son of Amoz, saw concerning Judah and Jerusalem.

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Here we go, ready? In the last days, the mountain of the

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Lord's house will be established at the top of the mountains and will be raised above the hills.

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All nations will stream to it, and many peoples will come and say, come, let us go up to the mountain of the

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Lord, to the house of the God of Jacob. He will teach us about his ways so that we may walk in his paths.

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For the law will go out from Zion and the word of the Lord from Jerusalem. He will settle disputes among the nations and provide arbitration for many peoples.

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They will turn their swords into plows and their spears into pruning knives. Nations will not take up the sword against other nations, and they will never again train for war.

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Let me say this right now. The promise is, as this occurs and moves in history, peace with God leads to peace among men.

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That's the promise. You want peace in the world? It does not come with fallen men like Barack Obama or George Bush or Abraham Lincoln or George Washington.

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Peace among men occurs when people come to know this God. Peace with God leads to peace among men.

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You wanna stop war in the world? You wanna stop fighting in the world? Then we focus on the gospel proclamation to the fallen world.

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And as people come to know this God, that is where this stuff ceases. Amen? It's the gospel.

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The promise is there all nations will come. And by the way, I think it's pretty cool. I think it's pretty awesome.

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I think it's amazing. The promise here is that all nations stream up and that the word of the

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Lord goes out. And then it says, look at the words. It says, the law will go out from Zion and the people will say, teach us his ways.

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What did Jesus say as he ascended? Teach them to obey. What is the promise in Isaiah?

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All the nations are gonna come to God. They're gonna stream up to this mountain and they're gonna come to say, teach us his ways.

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And the law will go out from Zion. I like them apples. I like it. The next, and this is the last point here.

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The victory in the timing. And this is just really brief, but interesting.

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And I think you guys should grab it because watch this. As we move into the New Testament, what you guys are gonna begin to see is the fulfillment of what we have gone through so far.

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But there's something more spectacular. There is something a little more hair raising in all of this.

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I told you guys last, the last two weeks we did Daniel chapter nine. The Daniel chapter nine is spectacular.

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And it wasn't, would you think? I thought it was amazing. Daniel nine is amazing. God is telling us history before it happens and is down to the smallest details.

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I told you guys that in my moment of transparency, it was frightening. As I'm studying

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Daniel nine to bring it to you, it's frightening. It is frightening. This God is a God to be feared with reverent awe, not fear of God as though he's volatile and you're scared of him because he could fly off the handle.

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But it's a fear that God is God and he really controls history. Daniel tells us that. The timing issues are so powerful.

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The Old Testament victory in the timing, here we go, number one, is that God would establish the

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Messianic kingdom during the time of the fourth kingdom. We know that that was Rome and that is spelled out for us in Daniel chapter two, verses 31 through 44.

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So get this, before Jesus comes, we know from Daniel's day that there are four kingdoms before God establishes the

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Messianic kingdom during the time of the fourth. Quick question, and this should be easy for us to grasp, when did

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Jesus come? Which kingdom? The fourth kingdom, which was what, guys? What did

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Jesus say in Mark chapter one? He says, the time is fulfilled. The kingdom of God is at hand.

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Repent and believe the good news. Jesus told everyone the time was fulfilled. The kingdom of God is at hand and repent and believe the good news.

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Next, second promise of the timing and the victory of the timing. God promised the forerunner,

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Elijah, who we know from Jesus was John the Baptist, would call his people to repentance before the time of judgment.

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Malachi chapter four, verses one through six tells us this, that the coming of the

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Messiah would be preceded by a forerunner who would come in the spirit and power of Elijah, who called the people of Israel to repentance, and that that timing would be a time, listen, burning like an oven.

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There's all this talk of wrath and judgment, so the Messiah's coming would be preceded by an

01:03:31

Elijah figure but it would be a time of calling people to repentance because judgment was coming.

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I need you to mark that down in your calendar, in your mind. Mark it down. God promised the Messiah would come with judgment and salvation.

01:03:45

Here we go. Number three, God promised a time of judgment on the covenant breakers and that he would give his people a new name.

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Isaiah chapter 65. Go there briefly, look in Isaiah 65 because you're probably already there from Isaiah chapter two.

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Isaiah 65, just a couple verses. Number one, verse one,

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I was sought by those who did not ask me. I was found by those who did not seek me.

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I said, here I am, here I am, to a nation that was not called by my name.

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I spread out my hands all day long to a rebellious people who walk in the wrong path following their own thoughts.

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These people continually provoke me to my face, sacrificing in gardens, burning incense on bricks, and then moving down.

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Verse nine, I will produce descendants from Jacob and heirs to my mountains from Judah.

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Listen, my chosen ones will possess it. Now move down a little further.

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Verse 13, therefore, this is what the Lord God says. Now here we go. Picture yourself as a

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Jew in synagogue, hearing this before the time of Christ. Here's the promise.

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My servants will eat, but you will be hungry. My servants will drink, but you'll be thirsty.

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Verse 13, my servants will rejoice, but you'll be put to shame. My servants will shout for joy from a glad heart, but you will cry out from an anguished heart, and you will lament out of a broken spirit.

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You will leave your name behind as a curse for my chosen ones.

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And the Lord God will kill you, but he will give his servants another name.

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What did you expect? Judgment was coming with this Messiah. The covenant breakers were going to be judged and God would give, listen to the words,

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God would give, he says this, you will leave your name behind as a curse for my chosen ones.

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The Lord God will kill you, but he will give his servants another name. And Jesus comes in and does exactly that story.

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He tells a story briefly about a vineyard owner who has a vineyard. He keeps sending people to the vineyard, but they keep stoning one and everything else to the other.

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And finally, the owner of the vineyard says what? I'll send my son. They'll respect my son. And when the son comes, they say, look, it's the heir, let's kill him and take his inheritance.

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And Jesus tells the leadership of Jerusalem in that day, he says, what will the owner of the vineyard do when he finds out?

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And they said it themselves, he's gonna kill them. And Jesus says, have you not read that the stone the builders rejected became the chief cornerstone?

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And Jesus says, the kingdom of God's gonna be taken away from you and given to another. And that's exactly what Isaiah 65 says will happen.

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And the last point, and this is great, because we did this over the last two weeks. God promised to make an end of sin and bring reconciliation.

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And you can see that played out in Isaiah 53. During the time, the Messiah would be cut off leading to the destruction of the second temple, which occurred in 70

01:07:01

AD. Daniel 9, the prophecy of the 70 weeks. So what do you know, guys?

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The Messiah was to come, be counted among the rebels, as Isaiah 53 says, justify the many, he bears their iniquities.

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He'd be pierced through for their transgressions. God was gonna lay on him the iniquity of us all.

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And then Daniel says what? That this was gonna occur, end of sin, reconciliation for iniquity.

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The everlasting righteousness. The Messiah was gonna be cut off and have nothing. And then it says that the people of the prince who was to come will destroy the city and the sanctuary.

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Guys, when Daniel wrote it, there was no city and sanctuary. He was predicting both the coming of the

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Messiah and the destruction of that next temple. And watch this, the timeline goes here. Daniel said it,

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Jesus did it, temple destroyed. It's over. The timing is all there in your

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Old Testament. The eschaton flows through the scriptures like this beautiful symphony.

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And the amazing thing is this, is you guys are getting ready now that you've heard this.

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You're getting now to hear that part of the symphony where all of the instruments rise. This is the part of the symphony where in reality, as the story's coming together and moving to the

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New Testament, the goose bumps begin to just fill up your back and your legs. You should have a moment of awe.

01:08:28

There should be moments coming up for us as we enter the New Testament text and we see this Messiah now walking among us.

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There should be moments where your heart fills and tears fall from your eyes because this is

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God's story of history. It's his redemptive plan and you're part of it. The New Testament is not a plan

01:08:46

B in God's plan. This is why Paul says in Romans one that God promises beforehand in his prophets through the

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Holy Scriptures. Two things I want you to consider and then we're done. This is two things.

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First, first, very important, two things. This is a lot of stuff. I know it's overwhelming in a sense.

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There's so many verses and believe me, I scratched the surface. I left out so much. I left out a lot.

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Two things should be floating around in your mind as you move through the rest of the New Testament. Two, first, did

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Jesus bring the kingdom on time and as promised?

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That should be in your mind. I want you to consider it, that you're anticipating it. You've been reading the

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Torah, the Tanakh, the Old Testament, you're anticipating it and I wanna ask you this question.

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As you read the New Testament, do you get the sense from Jesus, the apostles, the

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New Testament authors, do you get the sense that they believe that Jesus had brought it and that it had actually invaded history?

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Do you get that sense? The second question is just this, ready? What, according to the scriptures of the

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Old and New Testament is the nature of the victory of that kingdom?

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Is it defeated or is it victorious? It's two questions, that's it.

01:10:19

You know what, watch this. Ultimately, eschatology can be boiled down to those two questions. Everything I just did up here was big and full and a lot of explanation and elaborate,

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I understand that. But ultimately, listen, eschatology is really broken down into those two questions.

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Did Jesus bring the kingdom, really bring it, actually bring it in history, did it come?

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And the second is this, what's the nature of the victory? Answer those two questions.

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I believe with all my heart that if you go to the scriptures with those two questions, you can't but help walking away a rabid, fire -breathing post -millennialist.

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Because I think your anchor is just right there in the words of God and someone will shout to you, they'll say, oh, woe is us.

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Because this is happening, that's happening, this is happening, we're being defeated here and there and all this, there's persecution here and there and everywhere else and you will laugh and say, but he says this about history.

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Think about the history of missions. How many times a Christian went to a place where people said, there is no way in the world, it'll be a cold day in hell before this nation ever comes to Christ.

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Before you ever see that tribe of headhunters and cannibals come to Jesus, it'll never happen.

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Never happen. Before you ever see that city brought to Christ, it'll never happen.

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How many times in history has that happened and the world been proven wrong? How many times?

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And I wanna say that if you think about the world around us and you see how defeated things look or bad they look on the surface and you think that God isn't powerful enough and mighty enough to completely change everything in an instant, then

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I wanna say this. You don't know the darkness of your own hearts and the miracle that God did to bring you to life.

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We think too little of our own conversion and God bringing us to life when we look around us at the world and we think

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God can't do something now. I wanna say if you reflect on the beauty of the miracle of God raising you to life to trust in this

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Messiah and bringing you out of darkness, if you reflect on that and you look at his words, you can't help but look at the future and say

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Jesus reigns and he is putting all of this under his feet. Proof, right here.

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Amen. Let's pray. Father, I wanna thank you, Lord, for your goodness, your power, these words.

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I just pray you use this for your glory. I pray that of everything else that went out today,

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Lord God, that I completely get forgotten and that everybody remembers for good your promises about the future and the glory of Christ in this moment.