[0:00] Turn in your Bibles to Romans 11. We're going to read verses 13 through 24.
[0:13] Romans 11, 13 to 24. This is the word of our God. I am talking to you Gentiles.
[0:28] Inasmuch as I am an apostle to the Gentiles, I make much of my ministry in the hope that I may somehow arouse my own people to envy and save some of them.
[0:40] For if their rejection is the reconciliation of the world, what will their acceptance be but life from the dead? If the part of the dough offered as firstfruits is holy, then the whole batch is holy.
[0:54] If the root is holy, so are the branches. If some of the branches have been broken off and you, though a wild olive shoot, have been grafted in among the others and now share in the nourishing sap from the olive root, do not boast over those branches.
[1:15] If you do, consider this. You do not support the root, but the root supports you. You will say then, branches were broken off so that I could be grafted in.
[1:29] Granted, but they were broken off because of their unbelief, and you stand by faith. Do not be arrogant, but be afraid, for if God did not spare the natural branches, he will not spare you either.
[1:46] Consider, therefore, the kindness and sternness of God, sternness to those who fell, but kindness to you, provided that you continue in his kindness.
[1:59] Otherwise, you also will be cut off. And if they do not persist in unbelief, they will be grafted in, for God is able to graft them in again.
[2:12] After all, if you were cut off out of an olive tree that is wild by nature, and contrary to nature, were grafted into a cultivated olive tree, how much more readily will these, the natural branches, be grafted into their own olive tree?
[2:33] Let's put ourselves under this word. Who's the only mediator between God and man? 1 Timothy 2.4 There's one God, one mediator between God and man, the man Christ Jesus.
[2:52] How many offices does Christ have as a mediator in his church? Three offices. What are they? Prophet, priest, and king.
[3:06] That means he's that final prophet that was to come like Moses, who mediates the word of God to us, since he himself is the word. And he's the last high priest who mediates for us by standing in our place before God in making the sacrifice that could take away our sins, that they be remembered no more, and then pleads with the Father for us.
[3:33] And he's the sovereign king whom God raised from the dead and exalted to his own right hand on the throne that rules over all rule and authority, power and dominion, and every title that can be given, not only in the present age, but in the age to come.
[3:49] And God placed all things under him to be head over everything for the church, Ephesians 1, 20 to 22. So we've been studying 2 Samuel chapter 7 as one of the great chapters of the Bible.
[4:05] And we've been doing that because it promises to David a dynasty of kings as his descendants and one of them whose reign and kingdom would never end.
[4:17] Now that's an unheard of promise, a king reigning forever and ever and a kingdom that never ends. The New Testament bends over backwards to tell us over and over that the Lord Jesus Christ is that promised king of David.
[4:37] But is he really our king as the church? Or is he only the king for the nation of Israel? After all, 2 Samuel was a promise to David, the king of Israel.
[4:55] And Isaiah, prophesying to the nation of Israel in chapter 9 and verses 6 and 7, said, For to us, us Israelites, to us a child is born, to us a son is given, and the government will be on his shoulders, and he will be called Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace.
[5:15] And of the increase of his government and peace, there will be no end. He will reign on David's throne and over his kingdom, establishing and upholding it with justice and righteousness from that time on and forever.
[5:29] Well, David's throne was in the kingdom of Israel. And David's kingdom was the kingdom of Israel, the descendants of Abraham. And after all, when Gabriel announced the birth of this king to the Virgin Mary, he said, You'll be with child and give birth to a son, and you're to give him the name Jesus, and he will be great and will be called the Son of the Most High.
[5:51] The Lord God will give him the throne of his father David, and he will reign over the house of Judah. That's Israel. Forever.
[6:02] His kingdom will never end. Do you sense something of the problem? 2 Samuel 7's long promised king of David is said to reign on the throne of his father David.
[6:15] That was a throne of Israel. And his never-ending reign is to be over the house of Jacob. So how can you say that Jesus Christ is the mediatorial king of the church?
[6:29] Well, because the New Testament says it over and over again. He reigns right now on David's throne for the church, for the benefit and advantage of the church.
[6:42] But that's the issue I want us to tackle tonight. Is 2 Samuel 7 a promise for us as the church of Jesus Christ? Is Jesus the king of the church or of Israel?
[7:00] Well, if you grew up in the last 100 years, it's more than likely than not that you were taught a dispensational system of interpreting the Bible.
[7:10] This system was widely popularized by the Schofield Reference Bible. Had his notes right in to the Bible.
[7:21] I was so taken with it that I bought three leather-bound copies and have two that are still in pristine condition if you'd like one. You may have been influenced by dispensational thought without ever hearing that word.
[7:38] It's a system of interpreting the Bible. And its key proponents, Schofield, Charles Ryrie, John Wolvard, taught that one of dispensationalism's most foundational principles, a key principle to what it is, is that Israel and the church must be kept separate and distinct.
[8:02] They're two distinct people with two distinct sets of promises and some even said with two distinct future destinies.
[8:13] But in that system, Old Testament promises to Israel cannot be fulfilled to the church, but only fulfilled to the national Israel.
[8:26] Now, this is a huge issue that we must resolve if we would understand our Bibles aright. Indeed, many promises to Israel in the Old Testament are we to say, hands off, that's only for the nation of Israel, not for us as a church.
[8:44] That would be to take much of Scripture out of our hands. So, do we as a church have the promised Davidic king on the throne of David or not?
[8:56] Is he there for us? I wanted to work this up into an overhead, but I'm sorry I didn't get that far, so just bear with me. Let's make the stage here, the overhead.
[9:08] So, this is the Old Testament on this side of the pulpit. This is where God took that family of Abraham. And at Mount Sinai, Exodus 19-20, he entered into a covenant with them and made them his nation, the nation of Israel, and gave them commands to order their life together called the Old Covenant, the Mosaic Covenant, all the sacrifices that must be made and all the commandments about diets and things, clothing and things to make them set apart from the Gentile nations around them.
[9:47] Now, this area is going to be the period from Christ's crucifixion to that time when dispensationalists say that Jesus is going to rapture the church, lift the church out of here in a secret rapture.
[10:03] So, from Jesus' crucifixion, at least to today, it's been a couple thousand years. And now they will call this the church age. This is the church age. So, there's a huge wall here.
[10:16] What happened? Well, at the death of Christ, a big change took place. Israel was offered the kingdom. They were offered the kingdom and they killed the king.
[10:29] And so, they rejected that kingship that was promised to David that there would be this kingdom and this king coming.
[10:40] But he was offering it to them and they rejected it. So, God started something completely different. That's why I say there's a wall here.
[10:52] This is the church. And Israel is now, the nation of Israel is now on the back burner. God's not really working in Israel anymore. It's with the church now that he's dealing with.
[11:04] And so, these are different people. It's a new thing with different promises. And so, this is viewed as a parenthesis in God's working with the nation of Israel.
[11:16] He was working with them here and in a future millennium of a thousand years he's going to work with Israel again. But for the present time he's working with the church.
[11:28] And we dare not get these two crossing the lines. They're to be kept distinct. So, this is the church age.
[11:39] And all those Old Testament promises about a kingdom that will last forever and ever, that's to come later for the Jews in this millennial age of the kingdom of Christ.
[11:54] So, after Christ raptures the church out of here in their scheme, the Lord Jesus will come back and reign for a thousand years over Israel, the nation of Israel.
[12:11] So, he's working with Israel again, you see. And during that thousand year reign they will once again worship him. Jesus will literally reign on a throne over in Jerusalem in a temple there.
[12:26] And 2 Samuel 7 then will happen then. That the king will reign forever and ever from then on into eternity.
[12:39] So, we have this system of keeping Israel and the church separate. That affects what we believe about 2 Samuel 7, our great chapter.
[12:54] If no promises made to national Israel can be fulfilled in the church, then do we have a king? Are we a part of that kingdom that was promised?
[13:07] Or is that something that is yet to be fulfilled in the nation of Israel? Well, according to the New Testament, we do have such a king. Jesus said that those, even in his day as he preached the kingdom of God, those who believed, he said, are entering the kingdom.
[13:24] Remember, he told the Pharisees that the prostitutes and the tax collectors are entering the kingdom ahead of you. So, they were entering the kingdom as Jesus was here.
[13:36] Preaching that kingdom, even though many were rejecting it. And, Paul can say to the Colossian churches in Colossians 1, 2, 12, and 14 that we're to joyfully give thanks to the Father who's qualified us to share in the inheritance of the saints in light.
[13:54] For he has rescued us from the dominion of the kingdom of darkness and he's brought us into the kingdom of the Son he loves in whom we have redemption, the forgiveness of sins.
[14:07] That we belong to this kingdom of Jesus Christ that had been promised in 2 Samuel chapter 7, a thousand years before Christ. So, according to the New Testament, the church is the eternal kingdom of David's greater son, Jesus Christ.
[14:27] And, contrary to dispensationalism, Old Testament promises to Israel are being fulfilled in the church. In fact, the church is Israel under a new constitution.
[14:45] With the coming of the Messiah, King of David, promised in 2 Samuel 7, the kingdom of Israel was changed. changed. It underwent some important changes.
[14:59] I'm going to point out two tonight. It got a new constitution and it got new citizens. Now, a constitution sets forth the basic principles and rules by which a government or a kingdom operates.
[15:14] We have a constitution. We've only had one constitution as long as we've been a nation. Now, we have amendments to the constitution, but you know, there's some countries that they write another constitution.
[15:28] They throw away the old constitution and they start a new constitution. It was that way with Chile. Their last constitution was written in 1980 and this past fall they tried to pass a new constitution, very progressive constitution, and the people voted it down.
[15:49] But that kind of thing happens where a nation will change its constitution. Well, it's still the same nation, but it's under a new constitution.
[16:01] And that's what happened in Israel. They got a new constitution and by that I mean the new covenant. That was their constitution.
[16:11] The old covenant was their constitution at Mount Sinai, the Mosaic covenant, covenant. And under that constitution, they organized and carried out their life together as the nation that God had made his distinct nation.
[16:27] It was not a salvific nation. It was not a salvific nation. It was not that everybody in that covenant was saved. There was an Israel within Israel, but that was just the national covenant with Israel. Here's how you're to live.
[16:40] Well, that was changed when Jesus, the Davidic king, came. When the Messiah king came, a new covenant replaced the old covenant.
[16:51] A new constitution for Israel. We read of it in Jeremiah 31. You're familiar with it. A time is coming, declares the Lord, when I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and with the house of Judah.
[17:03] It will not be like the covenant I made with their forefathers when I took them by the hand to lead them out of Egypt because they broke my covenant though I was a husband to them, declares the Lord.
[17:14] No, this is the covenant I will make with the house of Israel after that time, declares the Lord. I will put my law in their minds and write it on their hearts.
[17:26] That's regeneration. That's a new birth, a new heart. I will be their God. They will be my people. No, no longer will a man teach his neighbor or a man, his brother say, know the Lord.
[17:39] Why not? Because they will all know me from the least of them to the greatest, declares the Lord. For I will forgive their wickedness and will remember their sins no more.
[17:53] So this new covenant that was to be made when Christ came was made with Israel. That's what it says. This is a covenant.
[18:03] I will make this new covenant with the house of Israel, with the house of Judah. And by that new covenant, that constitution, Israel was changed. So under the new covenant, the Israel of God is no longer defined by whether you've got Abraham's blood in your veins, by whether or not you've been circumcised or kept those old covenant laws.
[18:27] Under the old covenant, unbelievers were a part of Israel. Are you circumcised? You're in. You know that Ishmael was as much in the covenant of the kingdom as Isaac.
[18:46] Esau was as much a citizen of the old covenant, the Israelite nation, as was Jacob. In other words, not everybody knew the Lord in the old covenant.
[19:00] That wasn't a requirement. Keep the law. Had the law written on, it was written on stone and they had to keep the laws and be circumcised, but not everybody in the national covenant was a Christian, as we would say, a believer.
[19:20] But in the new covenant, everybody knows the Lord. In the new covenant, the law is not written on stone, but it's written on fleshy tables of the heart, put into the mind.
[19:34] In the new covenant, everybody's sins are forgiven and remembered no more. So the new constitution made some changes to Israel.
[19:44] Still the same Israel in the sense that this is the Israel to which God promised, I'm going to make a new covenant with you. But that new covenant constitution would bring about other changes.
[20:03] Now, that new covenant belongs to the church. Indeed, one of the two ordinances for the church uses the Lord's words on that night in the upper room.
[20:18] Whenever we take the Lord's Supper and we say, we recite Jesus' words, this cup is the new covenant in my blood. So Jesus' blood on Calvary inaugurates the new covenant.
[20:32] It starts with him. You see, when Jesus came, the new covenant began. He purchased it. He inaugurates it with his own blood.
[20:42] He purchased all those benefits of the covenant to know the Lord, to have the new heart, to have our sins forgiven. It was paid for by the blood of the new covenant that Jesus shed on Calvary.
[20:57] And so, these new covenant blessings now define the new covenant Israel of God. Just like the old covenant defined who's in the kingdom of Israel.
[21:08] Now, the new covenant defines who's in the kingdom of Israel. Israel. So, the church is the newly constituted Israel under the new covenant.
[21:25] They got a new constitution and that also means they got a change of citizens. They got new citizens in the kingdom of Israel. Still Israel, but some real changes happened.
[21:40] And that's precisely what we had read for us in Romans chapter 11. Where Paul says that the old covenant people of God were like an olive tree.
[21:53] And some of the natural branches are the Jews. The natural branches are the Jews, the descendants of Abraham. And when Christ comes, he doesn't set that tree aside and say, I'm going to plant a new tree.
[22:09] This will be the Gentile tree. No. It's just the same tree. The one same tree, that olive tree. But something happens. Some branches are broken off of it and other branches are grafted into it.
[22:30] Some of the natural branches were broken off because of unbelief. Those were the Jews. So, as I said, not everybody in the old covenant was a believer.
[22:42] And when Jesus came, most of Israel didn't believe. They were broken off. They no longer belonged to the Israel of God. But there were many Gentiles that did believe.
[22:55] They're the wild olive branches that he talks about. Not the natural branches of the Jews. They were the wild branches and they were grafted in to the one olive tree.
[23:08] Just one tree. But it's the tree of Israel but it's undergone a change in constitution and that required a change in membership.
[23:20] Citizenship in the kingdom. Who's in the kingdom now? Well, it's not everybody that's been circumcised just in the flesh. No, it's now those who've been circumcised in heart and have the law written in their hearts and know God and have their sins forgiven through faith in Jesus Christ.
[23:40] They, the believing Gentiles have been grafted in and the unbelieving Jews have been broken off. Same tree. Israel. But it's changed with the coming of Christ and the new covenant that he instituted through his death.
[23:59] So, the only Israel of God today is reconstituted Israel under the new covenant.
[24:10] That's the church. Same people. Comprised of all believers be they Jew or Gentile. One body.
[24:21] One olive tree. Fellow heirs together of the promised blessings to Abraham and to David. So, Ephesians chapter 2 has a wonderful passage in Ephesians 2, 14 and 16.
[24:36] Earlier, he says in Ephesians 2 that this is what Christ has done by his cross. You Gentiles, you were separated from Christ. You were excluded from citizenship in Israel.
[24:50] And you were foreigners to the covenants of the promise. But now, you're included in Christ and you're now fellow citizens with God's people and members of God's household because Christ has made the two one and has destroyed the barrier, the dividing wall of hostility by abolishing in his flesh the law with its commands and regulations, circumcision, and all those regulations to divide Jew and Gentile.
[25:17] They've been demolished. that middle wall of partition has been torn down by Christ and his purpose was to create in himself one new man out of the two thus making peace and in this one body to reconcile both of them to God through the cross by which he put to death their hostility.
[25:38] So through the gospel, Ephesians 3, 6, the Gentiles are heirs together with Israel. They've been gathered into Israel, grafted in with the other believing Jews that remain in Israel and they're members together of that one body and they share together in the promises of Christ Jesus.
[26:02] So the New Testament knows nothing of this interpretive principle of keeping Israel and the church separate, keeping Jews, the Jewish nation of Israel separate from the Gentile church.
[26:17] It's rather just the opposite. They become one in this new, newly constituted Israel of God under the new covenant. Now that was a huge change.
[26:29] That was a big change and a hard one for the Israel of God to welcome Gentiles for all these centuries that had just been us Jews. And the Gentiles, they're going to hell and God really didn't send prophets to them much.
[26:46] It was God gave his word to Israel. And now Jesus comes and now Gentiles are being welcomed into the Israel of God. That caused real trouble.
[26:58] And so we see that early on in the book of Acts. We see it in the epistles of Paul. How should the Gentiles be included in the church in this reconstituted Israel of God?
[27:09] Acts chapter 15 is a passage where we have this council at Jerusalem that is to handle this very problem. Paul and Barnabas have just returned from their first missionary journey to the local church that sent them, the church in Antioch.
[27:27] And while they're there, chapter 15 of Acts, verse 1 says, some men came down from Judea to Antioch and were teaching the brothers, unless you are circumcised according to the custom taught by Moses, you cannot be saved.
[27:46] Well, that's tantamount to saying you must become Jews in order to become Christians. You've got to be circumcised in order to become a Christian.
[28:00] And if you're not circumcised, then you can't be saved. You can't become a Christian. Well, Paul and Barnabas, verse 2 says, this brought Paul and Barnabas into sharp dispute and debate with them. So Paul and Barnabas were appointed along with some other believers to go up to Jerusalem to see the apostles and elders of the church there.
[28:19] That was the mother church. That's the oldest church. That's where the apostles are. Let's go and have this matter settled there. So there's the Jerusalem council.
[28:29] Paul and Barnabas and others from the church in Antioch going and meeting with the apostles and elders in the church at Jerusalem. And Peter, the apostle Peter is the first to weigh in in verses 6 to 11.
[28:44] He tells how earlier in his ministry, God showed his acceptance of the Gentiles as Gentiles when they believed on Jesus Christ.
[28:55] Remember down at Cornelius' house? And Peter goes into the Gentiles there and preaches the gospel. And while he's preaching, they believe and they started speaking in tongues. Just like happened in Acts chapter 2.
[29:08] God was showing outwardly that I've accepted them. I've given them the Spirit now just as I gave the Jewish believers in Acts chapter 2 the Spirit. So Peter's saying this was part of God's plan.
[29:23] He has shown his acceptance of the Gentiles into the Israel of God. After Peter gave his testimony, Paul and Barnabas shared all the wonders that God did in their missionary travels among the Gentiles.
[29:35] How the Jews were, many of them, persecuting Paul and Barnabas, but the Gentiles welcomed the gospel and were welcomed into the churches.
[29:47] And then James speaks up. Now James is the brother of Jesus. He's the author of the epistle to James. He was one of the leaders in Jerusalem church.
[29:58] And he says in verse 14, well Simon, that's Peter, has described for us how God at first showed his concern by taking from the Gentiles a people for himself.
[30:09] In other words, that settled the case for us. We understand that, yes, they are to be allowed. And then he says, the words of the prophet are in agreement with this as it is written.
[30:22] James knows his Bible. And he quotes God's word from the prophet Amos, chapter 9, verses 11 to 12. Amos has just prophesied that Israel's going to be destroyed by the Babylonians, go into exile, but they won't be destroyed completely.
[30:39] And now comes the text that James is quoting. After this, I will return and rebuild David's fallen tent. Its ruins I will rebuild and I will restore it that the remnant of men may seek the Lord and all the Gentiles who bear my name, says the Lord, who does these things that have been known for ages.
[31:01] Now this is, this is five, six hundred years before Jesus is born. And its reference is clearly to 2 Samuel chapter 7.
[31:13] David's fallen tent. What is that? That refers to just how low the promised dynasty of kings from David's line is going to fall into.
[31:25] Remember, God says, you are not going to be the one to build a house for me. I'm going to build a house for you. And that was a dynasty of kings. Well, Amos is telling us how low this house of the Lord or this house of David, the dynasty of kings, was to get.
[31:41] It's to become a tent and a ruined tent at that. And sure enough, it was six hundred years without a king of David.
[31:53] It was a destroyed, shambles tent. But the Lord says through the prophet Amos, I'm going to rebuild it and restore it, which he did by sending King Jesus, the son of David, and rebuilt that fallen house of David and all for the stated purpose that the remnant of men may seek the Lord and all the Gentiles who bear my name.
[32:24] So the restoration of the kingdom to David's line in Jesus Christ was to be connected with the ingathering of the Gentiles into Israel.
[32:35] Those two were to go together. God did not set up a separate kingdom for the Jews and a separate kingdom or a church for the Gentiles. No, they were to be brought in.
[32:46] That's the reason he restored David's fallen tent in Christ and restored his eternal kingdom that all the Gentiles who bear his name might be welcomed.
[32:59] Now that would be you and me who have believed on Jesus and have been welcomed into the Israel of God. The newly constituted Israel of God.
[33:10] We bear his name. We believe and we were baptized into what name? The name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. That's God's name.
[33:22] We now bear that name. We're Gentiles who bear the name. That's exactly why God says, I'm going to restore and rebuild the kingdom of Israel. The king going to bring the Davidic king back to rebuild David's house.
[33:36] that the remnant of men may seek the Lord and all the Gentiles who bear his name. So James is enabled to see how these two things are connected.
[33:49] Two pieces of the puzzle from the Old Testament prophecies. Some of the prophecies talked about the Gentiles being included in Israel. Other prophecies talked about this coming Messiah, king of David.
[34:03] And it was James that was given the insight into the scriptures to understand that these two are connected. That it is going to be by the rebuilding of David's house and the coming of Jesus, the son of David, to be king that the Gentiles will be brought in.
[34:20] And that's happening right now in this age. Jesus is reigning and he is bringing Gentiles to faith into the kingdom, that eternal kingdom that has no end.
[34:34] Many other prophets spoke the same thing about the Gentiles. You remember in Isaiah 49 we have that word about the Lord Jesus, the servant of the Lord. Some 700 years before he's born we have the very words of Jesus put in his mouth telling us what God the Father had said to him.
[34:54] Isaiah 49, 5 and 6. The Lord says, he who formed me, Jesus speaking, he who formed me in the womb to be his servant to bring Jacob back to him and to gather Israel to himself for I am honored in the eyes of the Lord and my God has been my strength.
[35:10] He, that's my father, has said to me, it's too small a thing for you to be my servant to restore the tribes of Jacob and to bring back those of Israel I have kept. I'm going to also make you a light for the Gentiles that you may bring my salvation to the ends of the earth.
[35:27] Well, that's exactly what God did in restoring the fallen house of David.
[35:38] He brought the Savior and the Savior's words to his disciples before he left was to go into all the world, go to the ends of the earth. That's the Gentiles, gather them in as well.
[35:50] So Jesus didn't come to establish something different than the kingdom that he talked about in the Old Testament. It's fulfilled in the church.
[36:02] So the promises to Israel are being fulfilled in the church today. And that's not spiritualizing things. That's not just saying, well, Israel stands for the church. No, no, it's still Israel.
[36:13] They're just under a new constitution. And Israel's king is a Jew. And the 12 apostles were Jews that were the foundations of the church.
[36:26] And the first believers were Jews. And the gospel's to go first to the Jews and then to the Gentiles. So it is Israel.
[36:37] It's just Israel under a new constitution and therefore having the Gentile believers pruned in and the unbelieving Jews pruned out.
[36:49] Well, I'm sorry, grafted in and pruned out. So there's this interesting word at the end of Galatians chapter 6. You know, Paul was really hot and bothered about this so-called gospel of faith in Jesus plus circumcision there in Galatians, the Galatian letter.
[37:12] Twice he says, if anybody preaches that, doesn't matter who they are, me or an angel from heaven, let them be anathomized. Let them be condemned.
[37:25] And then he comes to the end of his letter and he says, neither circumcision nor uncircumcision. This is Galatians 6, 15 and 16. Neither circumcision nor uncircumcision means anything.
[37:39] That wasn't true in the old covenant. That wasn't true in Israel under the old constitution. It meant everything. It meant membership in the covenant. It meant membership in the kingdom. Are you circumcised?
[37:51] Now he's saying under the newly established Israel of God, circumcision nor uncircumcision means anything. What counts is a new creation?
[38:04] Oh, yeah, a new heart where you put the law of God on the inside. And then he says, peace and mercy to all who follow this rule even to the Israel of God.
[38:19] What rule? Well, the new covenant rule that circumcision and uncircumcision don't mean anything. What counts is a new creation. What counts is faith in Jesus Christ that causes all your sins to be forgiven and remembered no more.
[38:33] That's what counts now. And that's the rule he's talking about. That's what he's pressed through the whole letter. And he says, all who follow this rule have peace and mercy and are called the Israel of God.
[38:52] Do you have that rule? You don't believe that circumcision will save you? But there are only faith in Jesus and a new birth through the Spirit? Well, then you're one of these that follow that rule.
[39:04] You are the Israel of God. That's your name. Yes, an Israel under a new constitution. Chosen people, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a peculiar people belonging to God that you might declare the praises of him who called you out of darkness into his wonderful light.
[39:24] Once you were not a people, but now you are the people of God, the Israel of God. Once you had not received mercy, mercy, but now you have received mercy. So I trust that this study will help us to see the unity of the scriptures, that what is promised in the Old Testament to Israel is often fulfilled in the New Testament to the church.
[39:50] It's not something different. No, it's promised in the Old Testament, fulfilled in the New. And that's true of this promise that we've been studying for many weeks about David's son, descendant, who would be a king who would reign forever over an everlasting kingdom.
[40:11] To keep Jews and Gentiles separate is to rebuild the dividing wall that Jesus Christ destroyed by his death. So brothers and sisters in Christ, we're part of that eternal kingdom promised to David.
[40:26] and Jesus Christ is our everlasting king. So you're right to say that Christ is indeed the king of his church.
[40:41] That we belong to that kingdom. That he does have the offices of prophet, priest, and king. Is he your savior? He will be.
[40:54] If you receive him as he's offered to you in the gospel. And how is he offered to you? He's offered to you as a prophet to teach you the will of God.
[41:04] He's offered to you as a priest to die for your sins and to plead with God for you. And he's offered to you as a king to rule over you and to defend you.
[41:15] What a king he is. The king of mercy and of grace. And he's coming again to punish his enemies and to reward his people. May we all bow our hearts before this king.
[41:29] Serve him alone and then go and to declare his praises. The praises of him who brought us out of the kingdom of darkness and Satan and put us into his own kingdom. A kingdom of light and love and eternal kingdom.
[41:44] Well, we're going to sing of that king and of that kingdom. It's number 298 in your hymnal. I want to point something out as you get to that hymn. 298.
[42:02] You notice the heading at the top of the page? As you see the two pages? What does it say? The church, the kingdom of God.
[42:14] The church is the kingdom of God. That kingdom of God promised to David is fulfilled in the church of Jesus Christ. And so we're going to sing shout for the blessed Jesus reigns.
[42:27] He is our king. He is reigning on David's throne and will forever and ever. So let's stand and sing to his praise. 298. And so, and