Thank you for joining us in this ongoing study on the Kingdom of God. For the introduction to this study, read the blog here. Follow this link to find the workbook for this study. Follow each of these links to see Week 2, Week 3, Week 4, Week 5, Week 6, and Week 7.

If you prefer to watch a video of today’s teaching, I have posted one to YouTube here. Thanks, again – it’s been a privilege to share this time with you!

At creation, God established a beautiful paradise upon which he tread alongside his creation. Daily he would come, in the cool of the day, to talk with man, in whom he had breathed life. When sin entered the world, desecrated the beautiful space He had created, God remained in Heaven and gave over the world to the serpent, warning the serpent that his head would one day be crushed.

From that moment, the beauty of creation and the agony of man’s fall have been intertwined. The reign of the enemy over man’s hearts has juxtaposed continuously with the backdrop of the world as God intended it. Darkness still gives way to light. Creatures still multiply and sing his praise. The water continues to lap against dry land and the lights of the expanse still govern both the day and night. His fingerprint is still here, reminding us that He has not left us or abandoned us, even while we toil under the weight of sinful choices and a ruler of this world that seeks our utter destruction.

As further reminder of what was meant to be, we have been left a road map to his kingdom. His Word shows us all what He intended and what He intends still for His creation. From the moment man – the pinnacle of His creation – fell away from Him, God had a plan to rescue him back. Generations were rising up from those first two human beings, and His plan was ever in motion. Though the world itself had been given over for a time to a new ruler, God was – and is still – King over all. In our hearts, man knows this to be true.

Did you do the homework I posted previously? If so, you may have noticed that in every on-line source for defining the word “kingdom” there is evidence of man’s acknowledgement that despite the rise and fall of many kingdoms on this earth, the very word “kingdom” has implicit in it the notion of the spiritual realm over which God reigns eternal. Oxford lists it as its second gloss: “the spiritual reign or authority of God.” Britannica calls it, “the spiritual realm over which God reigns as king, or the fulfillment on Earth of God’s will.” Webster points to “the eternal kingship of God” and “the realm in which God’s will is fulfilled.” Dictionary.com gives “the spiritual sovereignty” and “the domain over which the spiritual sovereignty of God or Christ extends, whether in heaven or on earth.” Sovereignty, for the record, is further defined as “the quality or state . . . of having supreme power or authority.”

Every. Single. Source. Defines God as being intrinsically linked with our understanding of kingdom. This is no small accident. We were born with a desire for this kingdom – for the sovereignty, or supreme authority, of God over His creation – in our hearts. We know in our bones that this world the way it is was not how God intended it to be. The Psalms show us this truth time and again as David and the authors of the psalms declare God’s kingship – many of these references were listed in the worksheets, so if you haven’t looked over those, go do that and revel in the beauty of these declarations of God as true King over all the earth. He may have handed over rule for a time, but ultimately, He will ever be our true King.

And, so, in Heaven, our King sat, watching over His creation, in the hands of his enemy. And when He was ready, He began to establish his kingdom. After the curse came upon the earth. After mankind was erased at the flood and simmered down into one family that was obedient to His will. After the nations were scattered at Babel. God came down and spoke to one seventy-five-year-old man. In Genesis 12 He makes himself known to Abram and promises him a land of his own and blessings thereof. Then in chapters 15 and 17 he again promises Abram nations of descendants – establishing a covenant and the promise of a king. In fact, in chapter 17, God even establishes a covenant of circumcision – a sign to indicate the members of his nation, of his kingdom.

This promise was made to one man. One man who as of yet, at the age of ninety-nine, had not even one descendant, let alone nations. Yet Abram, becoming Abraham, believed God. Not long after, this heir to the father of nations was born. In the end, Abraham would have multiple children, but only one through Sarah, his wife at the time of promise, and only one through whom God intended to build his nation. So, after Abraham had passed on, God revealed himself to Isaac (Genesis 26), the son of promise, and continued to affirm his covenant – nations would come. Nations over whom God would be king. Isaac himself had only two sons. And to one of these, Jacob, God continued to reveal himself and his promise.  In Genesis chapters 28 and 35, he appears to Jacob and voices again the words of promise – there will be a land established and nations in that land, and all will be under God’s  blessing.

Over time, Jacob, later called Israel, would have 12 sons – yet from what we have recorded, not one of these twelve sons ever had a personal revelation from God declaring the promise of this kingdom, these nations, in the way their father, grandfather and great-grandfather received this covenant promise. These sons and their offspring would be moved away from the land of promise into a foreign land, Egypt. And over the course of 400 years, the descendants of these 12 sons, now 12 full, established tribes, would indeed multiply into a nation.

Yet even now, after 400 years languishing and shepherding in the outer territories of Egypt reserved for them, as there are multitudes  stemming from one single family, we must remember this promise for a nation, for many nations, was only ever recorded as being spoken to three men, the last of whom heard the promise over four centuries before. Even if these men had passed down the promise to their sons who had passed it down to theirs, it’s still four hundred long years of not really hearing from this God who had promised their family so much. It must have seemed more a myth, a legend. And yet, here they toiled in the land of Egypt, the land of the sun god and gods ruling over every aspect of nature. The land where the pharaoh, the king, was, in fact, regarded as a god. They had no king over them, and no established form of worship for this God that had promised them land and prosperity and a nation.

We are often so quick to judge the whiny Israelites in the desert but let us remember that this lack of an established worship system and identity as a nation is what they were coming out of. Yes, they were given a myriad of signs as they were rescued out of the land of Egypt, but to the best of our knowledge, all of these great miracles were the first indication to them that this God of their fathers was even real. And so they had lived all of their adult lives, until the moment of the plagues, in the shadow of the Egyptian gods, with no organized religion for the God over them, no government other than that of Egypt, nothing to establish them as a true nation or, as of yet, God’s people. This idea of having a God over them, caring for them, leading them, was more foreign to them than the actual land of Egypt.

So, yes, as God rolled into motion his plan to rescue them from the land of Egypt and bring them into the land He had promised them, He sent a series of plagues. We often see this series of hardships as a goad to Pharoah to push him over the edge until he would finally release God’s people. However, I think something we may often miss is that it wasn’t just Pharoah who needed prompting. I fully believe this series of plagues was put into place so that God’s people would want to go. As of yet, yes, they were in slavery, but this slavery was all they knew – and to leave what one knows to wander into a wilderness of unknowns takes extreme courage and extreme motivation. These plagues not only pushed God’s people out of their nests of security, but also demonstrated the power of this God that called them His over the gods of the land. Every plague was specifically targeted at the Egyptian gods – as there were gods over every aspect of nature – gods over the River Nile, a “frog goddess,” a “Fly god,” gods over the fields, the cattle, healing, and even one who was meant to specifically protect from locusts. All of these false gods were refuted by the true God, who demonstrated his own power over nature. He had to show the Israelites that He had power over these “gods” so they would reject the gods of Egypt and submit themselves to His authority.

Joshua himself, the one who God chose to lead them into the Promised Land 40 years later, tells us this truth about the Israelites. As he gives his rallying speech just before crossing over into the Promised Land – the one with that famous phrase “As for me and my house, we will serve the Lord” at the end of Joshua 24:15 – he’s asking them to choose the Lord God over the gods of the Egyptians! “Now therefore,” he says, “fear the LORD and serve him in sincerity and faithfulness. Put away the gods that your fathers served beyond the River and in Egypt, and serve the Lord” (Joshua 24:17, emphasis added). God didn’t just put forth all of that effort back in Egypt because Pharoah was stubborn. He “hardened Pharoah’s heart” time and again because He had to show His nation that He was truly capable of being their King.

And so, He gathers His people, He rescues them as a King ought to, and brings them into their own land. An established Kingdom with Him on the throne. Just after rescuing them out of slavery, he actually spends two years showing them what this new kingdom will look like. Through Moses He gives them books of law – the famous Ten Commandments and a litany of laws to follow. This concept of a law code was not new. The famous Code of Hammurabi, a Mesopotamian law code etched into stone discovered by archaeologists actually pre-dates the Mosaic Law. This idea of a set of laws to govern a kingdom and establish order was what the Israelites would have known and understood to be the way a Kingdom is truly established. Their King has rescued them, He has established His laws, and He has provided them a land, a kingdom. He took all the right steps for man to understand and accept Him as their sovereign, their supreme authority.

But it wasn’t enough. Not for stubborn men.

After they move in to the Promised Land, God establishes judges over the various tribes and the Israelites fall into a dangerous pattern. Time after time, they rebel against the established law, and so their king allows them to be overtaken. In their distress, they cry out and their king rescues them. They live in gratitude and worship for a time, until the next generation comes and begins the cycle anew, in rebellion and rejection. And throughout the re-telling of this cycle, in the book of Judges, we are told “In those days there was no king in Israel. Everyone did what was right in his own eyes” (Judges 21:25). Despite all He had done to show His people He could be trusted, He would rescue them, He had established this land for them, the people still refused to see God as their king. In their eyes, they had no king.

Because His people refused to accept His authority and His kingship over them, God’s established Kingdom was failing. The people wanted something more. And soon enough He would show them, what they wanted was not what they needed.

This next week, we’ll be looking at what happened when God’s kingdom was challenged, and they were allowed a human king to rule instead. Here’s a little spoiler – it didn’t go well. Take some time this week to dig into the Scriptures and we’ll see you back here next week!

For the introduction to this study, read the blog here. Follow this link to find the workbook for this study. Follow each of these links to see Week 2, Week 3, Week 4, Week 5, Week 6, and Week 7. Visit the YouTube Channel for teaching videos.