The Partial Kingdom (part 3)

Well, for review, we've got some visitors with us this morning. Welcome. And I'm just going to ask the class to share with you what we've been learning in our study.

The study is on the book God's Big Picture by Vaughn Roberts. And we're looking at the big picture. What is the main storyline of the Bible?

There are 66 books in the Bible, but they all fit together around the unifying theme of? The kingdom of God, which we have a working definition of God's people.

God's people and God's place under God's rule and blessing. And so far the outline has been looking at God's kingdom in its different stages of development.

We've had four Ps so far. The first in the Garden of Eden was the patterned kingdom. Then in Genesis 3, at the fall, it became the parish kingdom.

And then God promised right away in Genesis 12 to Abraham the promised kingdom. And now we're looking at the partial kingdom or the partial fulfillment of that promised kingdom.

So it began at Eden. At the fall, it perished. God is determined to rebuild that kingdom and establish it on earth. And he made that promise clear to Abraham.

And we're seeing it partially fulfilled in Abraham's physical descendants, the Israelites. So we're looking then at the three aspects of the kingdom.

God's people, God's place, under God's rule and blessing. So far we've seen God's people, the people promise fulfilled partially in Abraham's descendants.

Remember he said, I will make you into a great nation. And indeed, what we have seen in that history of Abraham's descendants is to see them multiplied into a great nation of several million people.

But that is just partial. It's still not as great as God had promised that there would be many nations coming from Abraham's line. And indeed that the whole world would be blessed through Abraham.

And then we saw that this is partially fulfilled, a fulfillment of God's rule and blessing. Remember God's promise to Abraham, I will bless you. And that's fulfilled partially in Israel's history in two ways.

The giving of the law on Mount Sinai. Because it is a blessing to live under God's rule. And in his giving them of his presence in the tabernacle.

Now, that's the pinnacle of blessing, to have God with his people. And here's the partial fulfillment of it.

God's presence manifested in the most holy place. But we saw there's a problem there. How can a holy God dwell and have his presence with sinful men? And so there's where the sacrifices of the tabernacle came in.

And that's what we see in the book of Leviticus and Exodus. These sacrifices are pictures of how God will remove the problem of sin by an ultimate sacrifice of his own lamb.

The lamb of God. So we see these are just temporary and partial fulfillments of the promise to Abraham. They in no way fill up the cup of what God promised.

Since animal sacrifices could never really take away sins. Could never really open up the way through the curtain into the most holy place. And since our obedience to God's law is still only partial.

So the blessing itself is only partial. We're waiting for something better. And so now we come to the third aspect of the kingdom that was promised to Abraham. And it being partially fulfilled in Abraham's descendants.

Namely, God's place. The place that God promised to Abraham. He said to your offspring, I will give this land. Exodus 12, 7.

So he said, there's a land I'm going to lead you to. I'm going to give it to you. And I'm going to give it to your offspring. So we have God's people living under God's rule and blessing.

That's where we're at. But at this point, where we left off, they're still not in the land. They're still a people without a land. And we've already seen this long period of waiting over 500 years without possessing the land of promise.

The next part of the Bible focuses then on their entry into the promised land. And this will take the book of Numbers, Deuteronomy, and Joshua.

So here's the fulfillment, the partial fulfillment of the land promise. Numbers, Deuteronomy, and Joshua. So the book of Numbers opens with the Israelites ready to leave Mount Sinai and to head into the promised land.

It's a short distance. They should be there in no time. And yet it takes them 40 years. And why is that? Because the spies that were sent in of the 12, 10 said, we can't.

And only two said, we can. And they voted with the majority and said, we can't. In unbelief and in fear, they disobeyed God and refused to go in. And so God's judgment is 40 years in the wilderness until that whole generation dies off.

We saw, except for Joshua and Caleb, lots of hardship and death. Average of 85 funerals per day. The testing of their faith and often failure of their faith.

And so Israel's example is to be a beacon to us and to warn us against unbelief and disobedience as we're making our way to the promised land, the very new heavens and the new earth that God is preparing for us.

So that's Numbers. Then we come into Deuteronomy. And Deuteronomy takes us to the very front porch of the promised land. They've come through the 40 years of wilderness wanderings.

And now only the Jordan River is between them and the land. And Moses speaks to Israel one last time before he dies. And he pleads with the next generation, don't blow it like we did.

And he reviews their history and their unbelief and how they refused to go in and therefore could not enter. And he reminds them what God has said and what God has done and says, now trust and obey him.

Chapter 28, Moses sets forth the blessings and cursings in this covenant relationship. If you're going to be God's people, this covenant determines how this relationship will function.

And Deuteronomy 28, if we had time, I would have us read the whole of it together. But this is supposed to be a helicopter ride, right over these whole books of the Bible.

And we would be bogged down to do so. But the blessings are given in chapter 28 of Deuteronomy. If you obey, here's the things you will enjoy.

Here are the blessings of God. Verses 1 and 2 say, if you fully obey the Lord your God and carefully follow all his commands I give you today, the Lord your God will set you high above all the nations of the earth.

All these blessings then will come upon you and accompany you if you obey the Lord your God. And the rest of the chapter is just enumerating them. You'll be blessed in the field, in your garden, in your oven, in your wombs.

All the blessings that would come if they remained true to God. And reign in abundant prosperity. God fighting for them in battles.

But if they disobey, they will experience his curse. This too is part of the arrangement of their relationship. Verse 15 says, however, if you do not obey the Lord your God and do not carefully follow all his commands and decrees I'm giving you today, all these curses will come upon you and overtake you.

And the curses follow. You'll be unsuccessful in everything you do. And you will not succeed in the field, the garden, the oven, the womb, and so forth. And they would not have the Lord fighting for them but against them.

And eventually they would be driven out of the land of promise itself and taken captive into other lands. That's what's threatened if they turn their backs on God.

God would scatter you. God will uproot you from the land that you're going to possess and will scatter you among the nations from one end of the earth to the other. Verses 61 to 64.

Now if you familiarize yourself with Deuteronomy chapter 28. It's also found in Leviticus 26 and 27. You will have a wonderful key to the prophets.

Because when the prophets come to accuse Israel for their sin against God and to declare the judgments that God's going to bring upon them, very often it's just a reiteration of what Moses told them would happen if they forsook him.

And indeed that's the language that's used in the prophets. And so much of the prophets will become readily accessible to you if you're familiar with Deuteronomy 28 that enumerates the curses that would fall upon them if they disobeyed and the blessings that would come if they remained true to him.

Well, the promised land, we're talking about the land promised, that's one of God's blessings for those who live obediently under his rule.

If they do not want to live under his rule, he will not let them live in his land. Rather the land will vomit them out just as it did all the other rebellious nations that inhabited it before them.

So a big question hovers over the end of the book of Deuteronomy. Which will it be for Israel? Blessing or cursing? And so Deuteronomy ends.

Joshua. The book of Joshua then. And he's the leader to replace Moses and under him to take possession of the promised land.

And victory after victory follows. But there's absolutely no room for boasting, is there? Why not? Because walls fall down before them.

That's not something that they could take credit for. And God is clearly fighting for Israel. Even little Ai defeats them when God is not fighting for them.

So they had many indicators that your conquest of the promised land is due to God, not you. And so they make their way into the promised land.

They receive what God gives. And they only take what God gives. So God is the creator king. And he has potter's rights over all he's made. This land is his to do with as he pleases.

And to do with all the peoples in that land as he pleases. And these Canaanite people are destroyed because of their wickedness. It included idolatry, sexual immorality, and child sacrifice.

And so they were commanded to be wiped out lest they be a stumbling block to Israel and lead them into their idolatrous ways and become a thorn in their side and thorns in their eyes.

In fact, they didn't completely dry them out. And that does become some of their undoing. So the book of Joshua ends then on this high note of conquest.

The land promise. Here they are. They're now in the land. It ends, The Lord gave Israel all the land he had sworn to give to their forefathers. And they took possession of it and settled there.

The Lord gave them rest on every side just as he had sworn to their forefathers. Not one of all the Lord's good promises to the house of Israel failed. Everyone was fulfilled.

So this is a time of fulfillment. fulfillment. God's people, a multitude of them, millions of them, are now in God's place in the land promised and living under God's rule and therefore under God's blessing.

As blessings abound wherever he reigns. But a note of warning is also struck by Joshua as he gives his last words to Israel, much like Moses' last words.

And he urges them to fear and obey the Lord and warns them that if they disobey, they will be expelled out of this land that they now occupy. 23, 12, and 13.

If you turn away and ally yourselves with the survivors of these nations that remain among you, then you may be sure that the Lord your God will no longer drive out these nations before you.

Instead, they will become snares and traps for you until you perish from this good land which the Lord your God is giving you. So there's still this question mark, isn't there, at the end of Joshua.

Will the people obey God? How long will they be able to stay in the land of promise? And the following history will tell us that.

So we're seeing God's people in God's place under God's rule and blessing. And seeing it in this period of Israel's history.

Now, there's still much of Israel's history to go through. And much of it now follows the theme of God's king.

God's ruler. God's leader. God's king that he will have over his kingdom. And so we're going to trace the king promise. Which is really just a subset of God's rule and blessing.

Because the king and rulers of Israel were not something separate from God's rule. Rather, they were to be vice rulers and vice kings under God.

So, yes, they're king over Israel. But only under God as the ultimate king. So, Israel is not a monarchy with the king reigning out here and God over here.

No, it's a theocracy. God is king and he rules through his earthly king. And that's the way God wants this king in Israel to be, as we'll see. And so, much of the rest of the history of Israel, from Judges to the end of the Chronicles, traces out this king, the ruler.

How is God going to extend his rule over his people here on earth, the people of Israel? So, it's from Judges to 2 Chronicles.

And even before the Israelites had entered the promised land, God told them that they would be governed by a king. It's important to note that this king was not an authority separate from God, but was one who would rule under God and for God.

So, the promise. What was the promise about this king? Well, we don't see the promise made explicitly to Abraham, but we see it made to Abraham's grandson, Jacob, in Genesis 49.10.

And as Jacob is nearing the end of his life, he's blessing his sons and he comes to Judah and he says, The scepter will not depart from Judah nor the ruler's staff from between his feet until he comes to whom it belongs and the obedience of the nations is his.

So, the scepter and the ruler's staff, the symbols of kingly rule, they're not to depart from Judah's line until he comes to whom rule really belongs and to whom the obedience of the nations will be.

Now, notice the scope of God's kingdom. Even from this early, early promise about it, it's not just the obedience of Israel will be his. The obedience of the nations will be his.

So, this king that God will raise up is indeed to rule over all the nations. Genesis 49.10. We're looking at the promise of this king. And then in Deuteronomy 17, we have the whole instructions that God gives to Israel concerning this king.

We might just turn there quickly. In Deuteronomy 17, again, we're seeing this is even before they come into the land. They're on the doorstep and Moses is telling them that when they come into the land, and he says in Deuteronomy 17.14, When you enter the land the Lord your God is giving you and you've taken possession of it and settled in it, and you say, let us set a king over us like all the nations around us.

You'd almost think God knows what they're going to say, because that's exactly what they said, isn't it? As you'll see in 1 Samuel. But when you come in and you say, let us set a king over us like all the nations around us, be sure to appoint over you the king the Lord your God chooses.

You see, that's the acknowledgement that God is king, and that your king is not yours to determine with your own authority set up out here. He's just God's sub-king.

He's only to be the one that he chooses. And verses 18 through 20 says that when he takes the throne of his kingdom, he's to write for himself on a scroll a copy of this law taken from that of the priests who are Levites.

It's to be with him. He's to read it all the days of his life so that he may learn to revere the Lord his God and follow carefully all the words of this law and these decrees, and not to consider himself better than his brothers and to turn from the law to the right or the left.

Then he and his descendants will reign a long time over the kingdom of Israel. Again, showing that he is under God's kingship. How? Because he's to take the law and to make his own copy and to read every day out of it and to be very careful to fear that God and to show he fears him by obeying that law.

He's under God, God's king, and is to carry out his kingship according to God's law, enforcing God's law in the promised land.

Well, that's the promise of this king. What's its partial fulfillment in the history of Israel? Well, Judges to 2 Chronicles traces that. You know the cycle in Judges.

What do we see? Well, Joshua gets them into the promised land and then dies, and they're not long into the land until they forget the warnings of Moses and Joshua and rebel against God's rule.

And that heads into a cycle that is repeated throughout the book of Judges. Israel turns away from God, and God brings enemy nations in to judge them and to make their life miserable.

And under their misery, they cry out to the Lord for help. And God in mercy raises up a savior, a judge, a ruler, a leader to gather the troops together and go quell and to chase out the enemy nation and defeat them in the power of the Lord and to restore peace to the land.

But it never lasts long. And they turn and drift from God to other gods, and the whole cycle repeats itself. How many cycles would you put up before you said, that's it?

I just told you this morning, son, not to do that. Now, here you are doing it again. And you go through the whole thing, the discipline, and okay, now you're good again, and he does it again.

This is God dealing with his son Israel. And the cycle goes, it's a real lesson on not only Israel's inbred depravity and the fact that they have wayward feet because they have a wayward heart, but it's also a real lesson on God's grace.

It just keeps restoring, restoring, restoring, and never in judges do we see him giving up on them.

So it also tells us this isn't the full answer to Israel's problem. This isn't the real leadership for Israel.

It says that on many fronts, the judges themselves are a motley crew, certainly not models that you would always want to hold before your children. Jephthah killed his daughter, didn't he, because of a foolish vow.

He was one of the leaders that God raised up to deliver Israel. Samson was a womanizer. You know all about him. Gideon was far from perfect. I read it in my devotions this week.

He made a golden ephod, and it became the stumbling block of Israel as they worshipped this golden thing that he had made. And it became a snare to Gideon and to the Israelites.

So these judges are not heroes. They're just men that God raised up to show mercy, to deliver his people.

But they make us, and they made Israel long for a better leader who would bring about a lasting solution. You see, this isn't the lasting solution if it keeps repeating, is it? That's not the fulfillment of a king who will rule over them and bring blessing to them everlastingly.

It just points to better days under this coming king. And that's something of the theme running throughout Judges, almost an underlying theme.

Four times in the book of Judges, we have this phrase repeated, and it's the very last words of Judges that in those days, Israel had no king, and every man did what was right in his own eyes.

The cycle, the cycle, cycle. Why? Because there's no king. There's no king. It's telling us the book of Judges ends looking for this king.

Well, then we come to 1 Samuel, and Samuel's the last and greatest judge to rule Israel. He served God all of his life, but when he got old, he appointed his wicked sons to be the judges and the rulers in his place.

And the elders of Israel don't care to wait for the sad consequences of being led by such wicked men. And so they come to Samuel, and they demand that he appoint a king to rule them, such as all the nations have.

You heard those words just earlier, haven't we? Moses quoted them to Israel, to an earlier generation. We want a king, such as all the other nations have.

And God's angry at them for their request, chapter 8 of 1 Samuel. And he's angry not because they want a king. He's angry. That was his plan. So he's not angry at them for his plan, but he's angry because of their motivation in asking for one.

They want a king instead of God, rather than a king under God. God's plan was to give them a king under him. They want a king instead of God.

And that's what God tells Samuel. It's not you they're rejecting in their request for a king. It's me they're rejecting. They don't like having me as king, ruling over them through the judges and the prophets.

They want a king like the nations. They want a monarchy instead of a theocracy. And still God gives them what they ask for, and Saul is his anointed king.

But the people are not blessed under his reign because he persistently refuses to live under God's rule. He disobeys God. And because of it, he receives this verdict from God in 1 Samuel 15, 23, because you have rejected the word of the Lord, he has rejected you as king.

Again, we're seeing, if you're going to be king of God's people, you've got to obey the king, God himself. And because you rejected his word, he rejects you as king.

You can't be as king because this king has to follow my ways as he rules over my people. Indeed, it's my rule over my people through this king. And so God's anointing oil finds out David, and the focus of the scriptures shifts to this man, David, then.

His faith and God's presence with him is seen early in his defeat of Goliath. Saul grows jealous of David, and many years are spent trying to kill David.

David lives as a fugitive, often outside of the promised land of Israel until King Saul dies in battle, and then David becomes king. Now we're in 2 Samuel, and this is the kind of king God wants, a man after his own heart who will carry out God's rule.

And so what happens under David? He defeats their enemies, he brings peace in the land, he establishes Jerusalem as the capital city. He brings the ark there.

Remember, the ark is the symbol of God's presence and God's throne, God's rule. He brings that to Jerusalem. God is here now seen and symbolically dwelling with and ruling over the nation.

And Israel never enjoyed such peace and prosperity as they lived under God's rule, under David. And yet even this is only the partial fulfillment of the promised king, isn't it?

Because King David is also a flawed king with adultery and murder and numbering of the people that brought judgment down upon them. He's not the promised king of Genesis 49.10, to whom kingship belongs and to whom the obedience of the nations will be his.

And the fact is that eventually King David died. And couldn't continue to reign over the people and bring them blessing. So there's still one greater than David to come and God made that clear while David was still alive.

In 2 Samuel 7, he sends Nathan the prophet to David. David wanted to build a house for him. God says, no, you're not the one to do it. Your son will do it. But I will build a house for you.

Meaning a dynasty of kings. A family of kings that would come from him. His offspring of kings. And here is the promise then of a future king who is far greater than even David.

One of David's offspring. So he will be a son of David. And yet God says, he will be my son. That must have caused many an Old Testament Jew to scratch their heads.

He will be a son of David. And yet he will be my son. And in him the throne of David would be established and endure forever. So from 2 Samuel 7 on, we're waiting for the arrival of God's great king, the son of David.

Now we come to 1 Kings. Well, the name of these books shows us we're tracing out this promise of the king. This king promise. 1 Kings 1 to 11 is the first section of history.

We see David's son Solomon succeeds him as king. And he rules wisely for God. And so under Solomon, Israel enjoys even greater prosperity and security.

And this becomes the pinnacle of blessing. This is as good as it got, it ever got for Old Testament Israel, the descendants of Abraham, during Solomon's reign.

It's the highest fulfillment of the promised kingdom as far as its partial fulfillment of having God's people and God's place under God's rule and blessing.

God's people, you'll read in 1 Kings 4, 20, the people of Judah and Israel were as numerous as the sand on the seashore. All right, there's the people promise. The place, 1 Kings 4, 21, Solomon ruled over all the kingdoms from the river to the land of the Philistines as far as the border of Egypt.

The promised land. They're in the land. The people of God in the land of God, the place of God. And living under God's rule and blessing.

What does Solomon do? A tent isn't good enough for God. No, we must have a more permanent structure. A temple is built in Jerusalem. The symbolic, the place where God had his presence on earth among his people.

And during Solomon's lifetime, we read in 1 Kings 4, 25, Judah and Israel from Dan to Beersheba. That's Dan in the north to Beersheba in the south. They lived in safety.

Each man under his own vine and fig tree. That phrase becomes a symbol of living under the covenant blessings of God. I don't know if you have great vines and fig trees, but that was the symbol.

Having every man living under his own fig tree and vines. Enjoying the prosperity of the land and peace. Not fearing marauders coming in and taking it.

That's the promise that God said would be theirs as they followed his rule. So here under Solomon, we have the pinnacle of blessing. They're living under God's rule in God's place as God's people.

Each man under his own vine and fig tree. But even this does not last, does it? As you keep reading, you find that Solomon marries many foreign wives and begins to worship their gods and leading all of Israel astray.

And so God's judgment falls. He says, I won't judge you in your lifetime because of David's sake. Out of kindness to David, I'm going to spare my judgment until you're gone. And as soon as Solomon dies, what happens?

We have civil war breaking out. We have a rebellion of ten tribes following after Jeroboam and breaking off from the kingdom of Israel.

And so we've got a double, a division in the kingdom. The kingdom split into two. The northern kingdom, ten tribes break away under Jeroboam.

The southern kingdom, just two tribes under Solomon's son, Rehoboam. And both of them depart from God. The northern kingdom goes first because at the very beginning of their kingdom, they institutionalized idolatry.

Jeroboam's afraid that all the people will go down to Jerusalem for the feast days and maybe they'll join the southern kingdom when they do so.

So he says, well, let's have our own centers of worship. And he puts up two places of worship with golden calves and says, these are your gods, O Israel, that brought you out of Egypt. And so they go downhill real quick.

And it's not long before the Assyrians come and destroy their capital, Samaria, and never again are the ten tribes ever a united kingdom of their own thereafter.

They're scattered. They intermarried with the nations and they became the Samaritans, the half-breed hated people of the New Testament as you find them, the Jews and the Samaritans hating one another.

That's the northern kingdom. They went first. The southern kingdom followed in line, though. They lasted a bit longer. Some of David's sons and offspring were good kings. Some were bad.

But still, the people turned away from God to other gods. And God used the Babylonians to come and to defeat Judah in 597 B.C.

and to take some into exile. Nine years later, they come back and destroy Jerusalem, burn the temple, and take many, many more people away out of the promised land into exile under Babylon.

So the partial kingdom. So there had been the promise of this kingdom of God reestablished on earth after the fall, and that's partially fulfilled in Israel's history, but we're seeing the partialness of it is the painful word there.

It's now dismantled. There's very little evidence that these are God's people. They're not in God's place anymore. They're off into Babylon and exiled all over. The promised land is decimated.

And since they're rebelling against God's rule, they definitely are not under his blessing. They are under all the curses of Deuteronomy 28 that define their relationship. It's almost like the fall has taken place all over again.

So you had the perfect kingdom, and then it became the parish kingdom. And God promises to restore his kingdom, and we see it partially fulfilled. We see the pinnacle under King Solomon, and then we see them fall again into sin and turning away from God as their king and so no longer enjoying his presence.

God had warned them even before they went into the promised land that if they rebelled and broke covenant with God, that they would be ejected, evicted, vomited out of the promised land.

And so having rejected God's rule, they were banished from his presence, put out of the promised land. And yet our Bibles don't end at 2 Chronicles, do they?

The story goes on. God's work with the nation of Israel was never intended to be the final fulfillment of his gospel promises. Let me say that again. God's work with the nation of Israel was never intended to be the final fulfillment of his gospel promises, what he was promising to do.

It was never to be fulfilled just with Israel and the descendants of Abraham, physical descendants of Abraham. Rather, the kingdom of Israel serves as a model for the kingdom of God, the coming kingdom.

It's a shadow of the perfect kingdom of God that would be established under his king, Jesus Christ. So yes, Israel as a nation is redeemed from slavery in Egypt.

And that's a wonderful thing for a nation to have physical freedom. We're enjoying that ourselves. But that's just a model and a picture of the greater freedom, of being set free from the reigning power of sin and Satan that would be the work of this coming king that he would do for his people.

And yes, having God's presence with them in the tabernacle and then later in the permanent structure of the temple. Oh, that was a blessing indeed to have God in the midst of his people. But those were just mere shadows of one in whom the fullness of God's presence was perfectly manifested in front of them for the word was made flesh and tabernacled, dwelt among them.

Who? God himself. And so there's the fulfillment of the presence of God in the midst of his people when Jesus, who is fully God, comes into our midst as the temple.

And yes, David and Solomon were great kings, but the New Testament says Jesus Christ is David's greater son and that a greater than Solomon is here.

So God may have rejected the model of his kingdom set up in Israel, but he did not forget his promise.

His promise, I am going to bring my kingdom to earth. And you've seen the model of what I plan to do. You've seen it.

It's been partially fulfilled. You've had the appetizer set before you to make you hungry and thirsty for the real thing. Now, models are never meant to replace the real thing.

We're not just to fall in love with the model and say, well, I really don't care about the real thing because this is so great. No, it's meant to make us anticipate the real. And so, though God will not rebuild the model again, the model of Israel being his kingdom people, the offspring of Abraham being his kingdom, though he will not rebuild the model again, he will establish the real thing in and through Jesus Christ, the son of Abraham, the son of David, the son of God.

So, that's where we're headed. Can you see why in the light of where we're headed, Robert's entitles this chapter the partial kingdom or the partial fulfillment of the kingdom.

We have the real, the full, the final kingdom to be found in Jesus Christ. So, we're going to move on then next week to the next P as we come to the, well, I'll leave that for you to come back next week and learn what the next P is, but it's, it's God developing this coming reality.

Are there any comments or questions? We've got just a couple minutes here before we need to dismiss, but at this point we're, we're just wanting to see that what God established in Eden as the perfect kingdom, perfect blessing under God's rule, his people, Adam and Eve in his place, the Garden of Eden, and what perished in their fall, they were driven out of God's place and separated from the blessing of God, God's presence.

God promises Abraham, I'm going to restore my kingdom. And then he begins to fulfill that in Abraham's own physical offspring. But all along the way we see the fulfillment is lacking something.

It's, it's always just, it's not it. It's not it. That can't be it. It keeps saying there's got to be something more. And now we're going to see the prophesied kingdom.

There I gave it to you. The next P is the prophesied kingdom because God, just as Israel hits the skids and Israel and Judah, the whole people, Abraham's descendants are decimated.

God sends these prophets, Isaiah, Jeremiah, all the prophets, to say not only is this coming to an end, but something better is coming.

And these prophets then will, will, will bring up that promise that God made to Abraham and they will make it even clearer and they will give even more light concerning this coming king and this wonderful kingdom that he will bring.

So the next phase of your Bible, we're heading into the prophets, aren't we? And so that's why it will be called the prophet, the prophesied kingdom as we look at what did the prophets have to say to Israel with a shattered kingdom then?

It's coming. He's coming. And we'll see the kingdom prophesied. Any last words? Yes. I confess, I've really been feeling so sad about this sensitive world.

And after hearing this, I just went, yay! Well, let's all go yay. That's what we're going to do in the next hour. We're going to corporately go yay, aren't we? We're going to rejoice in our king.

Let the children of Israel rejoice in their king. Because we don't just look at the crumbling kingdoms of this earth and say, man, our hopes are dashed. No.

We're receiving a kingdom that cannot be shaken. We're looking for our king to come and to establish the perfect kingdom. That which is, he's been working toward that's the reason that the kingdoms of this world are perishing.

Why? Because his kingdom must come and smash them all because they're not under his rule. They can't be the answer to the promise. There's this coming kingdom when Jesus returns.

So it's meant to lift our eyes to Revelation 21 and 22. And I trust you'll memorize these verses and encourage and refresh your heart in them.

And what happens? What are some of the blessings under this coming king? No death, no mourning, no crying, no pain. And on we go into the rest of 21 and 22.

Good. There are any other comments? All right. We're dismissed. you