Heart and a brightness, doing according to all that I have commanded you and keeping my statutes and my rules. Then I’ll establish your royal throne of Israel forever, as I promised David, your father, saying, ‘You shall not lack a man on the throne of Israel. But if you turn aside from following me, you or your children, and do not keep my Commandments, my statutes that I have set before you, but go and serve other gods and worship them, then I will cut off Israel from the land that I have given them, and the house that I have consecrated for my name, I will cast out of my sight. ‘ And Israel will become a proverb and a byword among all peoples, and this house will become a heap of ruins. Everyone passing by will be astonished and will kiss, and they will say, ‘Why has the Lord done this to this land and to this house? ‘ Then they will say, ‘Because they abandoned the Lord their God, who brought their fathers out of the land of Egypt and laid hold on other gods, and worshiped them and serve them, therefore the Lord has brought all this disaster upon them.
‘ That’s the word the Lord. When we read the Bible, there are two horizons that we are to keep in mind, a near and a far horizon. You can even speak of it as a micro and a macro. We see the events of the Bible in that way. We see things like Joseph fleeing the advances of Potiphar’s wife, Rebecca struggling with infertility, David in the struggles he has with his son, Absalom, the widow, Ruth, finding a new beginning. These are the near events, the micro things that we easily relate to. Then there are these events that we see from a far horizon, the bigger picture that the Lord is doing. How is God using David becoming king and the whole plan in the history of redemption? How is the Lord advancing and broadening his covenant with his people? This morning, we come to these two horizons merging together in the story and the life of King Solomon, he builds the temple of God, and the Lord comes to him a second time with a conditional promise. He says to him, Do well, and you and Israel will be blessed. Don’t do well, and things will go poorly for you and for Israel.
Now, immediately someone probably is going, Wait a minute. Isn’t that the thing you reform preachers are always saying is wrong? Isn’t working for a blessing rather than receiving a blessing? Wasn’t this the whole problem with Job’s friends? That’s why it’s important to see these two horizons. Are God’s promises, God’s covenant, conditional or unconditional? Yes and no. Because the Lord has promised to redeem his people, he will accomplish the task. And because we are responsible for our our actions, we are accountable for the things that we do. And the problem can only be solved by the God man, Jesus Christ. Another quick word on that word covenant that I mentioned a couple of weeks ago. A covenant is God making a special promise with his people. Our word contract doesn’t quite fit the bill because there’s a relational side to this promise, to this covenant. You have a contract with a He’s not coming to live in your home. You’re not sharing meals together. He’s just supposed to do a task. In a covenant, there’s a relationship that’s being formed. And the easiest example of that we always think of is the marriage covenant. Two people are pledging to each other to be faithful.
From the lady’s colloquium yesterday, a covenant is an agreement between God and us, where God promised blessings if the conditions are kept, threatens curses if the conditions are broken. When you hear us speak of covenant theology, we like to use that word. Covenant theology simply means the Bible is connected together by a single story. God keeps his promise to save his people. That special promise unfolds to human history through Israel’s history and is finally revealed and fulfilled in Jesus Christ. That’s the far horizon of all the Bible stories, the big picture. But this big picture always gets filled out with hundreds of snapshots, the near and the close events that we read about. From a couple of weeks ago, we saw how God graciously rescued Israel from slavery in Egypt. He then gave the law telling them what being in relationship to a Holy God should look like. They were to be free in order to serve the Lord and to serve one another. The law showed them what this type of service should look like. It said things like, Don’t be a selfish jerk. Think about God and other people before yourself. You can’t claim God’s family name and live like a crazy wild man.
It’s not okay to steal into covenant. The people on hearing what this relationship should look like, they responded and said, We will do everything the Lord has said. In the life of Israel, as we keep an eye on both the near and the far, we see a covenant nation at work. All the while we’re waiting for the new covenant to be received. So this covenant nation at work, in Exodus 19, again from a couple of weeks ago, the Lord told his people, If you obey me fully, keep my covenant, then out of all the nations, you will be my treasured possession. Although the whole earth is mine, you will be for me a kingdom of priests and a holy nation. They were set free in order to serve the nations as the Lord’s representatives. They were to be set apart, to be holy. And by God’s gracious laws being given to them, they mediate the Lord’s presence to their neighbors, to the nations. As a holy people, they are to be God’s Priestley presence. They are God’s treasure, and God delights to share his treasure to the world. And all this sounds so wonderful. If you do this, then I will bless you.
They don’t even make it off the mountain before this fails. Then they spend 40 years detouring in the wilderness because they refuse to obey the Lord or believe his promises. Finally, they’re in the land of promise. Joshua, the great leader, has led them in. They have conquered a lot of the land, and now it’s coming to the end of his life and his ministry, and he gathers them together to warn them of their inability to serve the Lord wholeheartedly. In Joshua 24, he says to the people, You are not able to serve the Lord, for he’s a holy God. He’s a jealous God. He will not forgive your transgressions or your sins. If you forsake the Lord and serve foreign gods, then he will turn and do you harm, consume you after having done you so much good. But the people, said to Joshua, No, we will serve the Lord. And then we get the whole Book of Judges. Every man does what’s right in his own eyes. And we get these incredible snapshots. Characters in there, that’s Samson and Delilah, amazing things happening. But the overall picture is just one big failure after another.
They can’t get it together. David then is made king. The people are united. God promises David an everlasting kingdom and kinship, kingdomship for his descendants. David dies. His son Solomon is now on the throne, and he’s the wisest man on the planet. Think Proverbs. The word wisdom and wise occurs 21 times in the Book of Kings, chapters 1-11, all during the life of Solomon. Not one afterwards in first Kings or second Kings. Not one reference to wisdom. And what we see is that wisdom is no guarantee of faithfulness. Solomon, he consolidates the empire, he fills the temple. It’s so overwhelming that it’s as the cloud came down and the priest couldn’t even minister. There’s thousands of sacrifices. I’m sure if you were there, it would have been the highlight, probably, of your religious life. To be a part of all that was taking place at the temple. And you say, I was there, I saw it. It was amazing what God did. And there in the midst of all of that, chapter 9, the Lord appears to Solomon and he says to him, As for you, if you will walk before me as David your Father walked with integrity of heart, uprightness, doing according to all that I have commanded, keeping my statute to my rules, then I will establish your royal throne over Israel forever, as I promised David your Father, saying, ‘You shall not lack a man on the throne of Israel.
‘ A conditional promise. But it’s promised that David was unconditional. What’s happening here? And the Lord goes on. He said, If you turn aside from following me, you and your children, do not keep my commandments, my statutes that I have set before you, but go and serve other gods and worship them, then I will cut off Israel from the land I have given them. And the house that I have constructed for my name, I will cast out of my sight, and Israel will become a proverb and a byword among the peoples. Now, this is a part of God’s agreement with Israel all the way back to Mount Sinai. Again, put this in the context of a relationship. How easy it is for people to go, God’s just grumpy in the Old Testament, it gets nicer as it goes along. No, if you have a different picture of God than the Old and New Testaments, you have a wrong picture. It’s not about a grumpy God, all of these unreasonable demands he’s making on his people. No, God is making very reasonable demands. God is saying to his people, Don’t cheat on me. Don’t cheat on me.
Be faithful. If you are married, this is a part of your vows. You don’t get a lot of sympathy if after your marriage, you start complaining about how restrictive monogamy is on your life. You can’t go and say, I can’t believe my wife and my husband expect me to not sleep around when I’m on a business trip. There’s so many good-looking people at the convention. This is so unreasonable. Nobody outside of a few bars is shaking their head going, Yeah, this is terrible. No, because why? You’re married. Don’t cheat on your spouse. That’s what God is saying to his people. Don’t cheat on me. If you do, this house will become a heap of ruins. Everyone passing by will be astonished. They’ll say, Why has the Lord done this to the land and to the house? And they will say, Because they have abandoned the Lord, their God, who brought their fathers out of the land of Egypt, they laid hold of other gods and worshiped them and serve them. Therefore, the Lord has brought all this disaster upon them. God’s people were not faithful to him, and they also were not faithful to one another.
You see, there was to be no idolatry, and there was to be no taking advantage of and oppressing other people. Love God, love your neighbor. This is the work of the covenant. It’s not unreasonable. King Solomon, with all of his wisdom and knowledge, failed to do this. His heart strayed after other gods. And he also had a heavy hand on his people, oppressing them with work and taxation. He tried to serve the Lord with a half heart. He was led away by the many foreign wives that he was trying to appease. He was led away by trying to look like the Kingdoms of the world around him. And God does just what he says he would. The kingdom, right after Solomon dies, divides. And then the Lord comes to those different Kings with the same promises, If you are faithful to me, I will bless you. But they couldn’t walk by faith. They couldn’t follow the Lord in the way that he said because they were fearful that if they did it in this way, it wouldn’t look like the kingdom’s around them. People would not follow after them. There was always, we must compromise in order for this to work.
They refused to believe and take God as his word. For the next 350 years, in the lives of all the different Kings we read about, Kings and Chronicles, we get something like this. He did what was evil in the sight of the Lord, or his heart was not fully true to the Lord his God as the heart of David, his Father. There’s some variation of that. And this kingdom stays divided until it actually reunited at Pentecost in the work of Christ. It’s divided. What God had meant as the expression of his presence on the earth has fallen apart because they could not be faithful. And far from an angry God just whacking them every time they get out of line, when you actually read through Kings or Chronicles, you really see God is overly indulgent with his people. He lets them go a long time, 350 years of this. Going back and forth and trying and prophets coming and trying to tell his people to follow them. He gives them so many chances to do it right. We do see a few good kings, a few reforms, but in the end, it’s far too little, far too late.
God’s people are incapable of keeping their side of the promise. The if then work of the covenant is beyond them. They need a new and permanent champion if they are going to live. They need a new covenant that they will receive. God’s promises, David, was unconditional as it was to Abraham. And yet in both of those, there was a call to obedience, a call to follow. So how does this get worked out? God is going to have to do the if part as well as the then part. The Book of Kings answers this question that people wouldn’t actually have. If the God of Moses does exist and God is all good and all powerful, how is it that God’s chosen city and temple been destroyed? How is it that God’s chosen line of David has all but been wiped out. We see the answer. From the fall, humanity is in a state of sin and misery. God has to come in and rescue us. And part of the challenge of the rescue is to convince us that we need rescuing. The life of Israel, starting all the way back with Abraham, is that convincing. All these snapshots get collected into one big family photo album, the Bible, showing all these individual events and people and how God ties them all together, keeping his promise.
When you look at a high school annual and you see all the team smiling for the camera, and there’s really not that much difference between them all, pick your annual from whatever year. Hairstile’s changed, clothing changed, but Everybody looks the same. That’s what Israel was, too. The pictures in their annual look just like the Canaanite kids, the Egyptian kids, the Philistines kids. A few bright spots along the way, to be sure, but not for very long. The life of Israel showed up in close and personal what it would take for God to remove his people from their condition of sin and misery. And what we do see is that Jesus is the fulfillment of God’s intention for Israel. This is the entire story of the New Covenant, the New Testament. Jesus does what Israel was never able to do. And because Jesus does this so completely, so perfectly, the rest of the world is also brought in at the same time. When you consider the message of the prophets who came to Israel time and time to get them back on track, the message to Israel was not, Straighten up and fly right. Get your act together.
The message to Israel was to put their hope in the God who will bring new life after death. If you obey me, then I will bless you, turns into my faithful Adam, my faithful Noah, my faithful son of promise, my faithful David, my faithful Israel, my son Jesus has obeyed, and because of that, I will bless you. He is the fulfillment of all of those. In Jesus, the near and the far horizons of the Bible now come together. The Prophet Ezequiel, speaking ahead, he says, My servant David shall be king over them, and they shall all have one shepherd. They shall walk in my rules and be careful to obey my statutes, and David, my servant, shall be their prince forever. I will make a covenant of peace with them. It shall be an everlasting covenant with them. In the Old Testament, there is this idea that the nations were to come and to see the beauty and the wonder of Yahwe in the life of the Kingdom of Israel. In the Book of Kings, the Queen of Sheba comes from a long distance because she heard of the renown, the wisdom and the knowledge of Solomon, and she came to see herself.
Jerusalem was to be a city on a hill, the light of God, shining as a beacon to the nations. They could never do it. If you came and saw through most of their history, you would have been really unimpressed. Israel looked like everyone else. With Jesus, we move into now the go and tell mode, not just come and see. Because the citizens of his kingdom now go into the Kingdoms of the world to tell them about King Jesus. That’s the good news. This is what Ezequiel and the prophets are pointing forward to, one will come to accomplish all of God’s purposes of the if then. However, we also must be aware that any attempt to try and bring Christ’s Kingdom by force will never work. It’s a fool’s errand to think that we have finally figured out how to bring God’s Kingdom on Earth in a political form of one kind or another. Everywhere this has been tried, It has failed miserably to being Christ’s Kingdom by force. It failed in the same way that Israel failed, a refusal to live by faith and not by sight. And in the same way that Israel was challenged.
You don’t understand. The time in which we live, we can’t do it that way. We can’t do it this way because every kingdom looks like this. This is the response. Things are different now. We’re not back in the time of the judges. We’ve made it now all the way to King Rea Boam. Things are changed. Every generation finds that things were changed in order to try to walk by sight and not by faith. And we must resist that. The citizens of Jesus are to look like Jesus in who he is and how he does everything that he does. There’s no one earthly kingdom that’s going to bring all of this together. It is the Lord who must advance his kingdom, and he does not share his throne with anyone. History is littered with woodpey Kingdoms who thought that they were the embodiment of Christ’s kingdom, filled with Christians who try and wage war against the world with the world’s weapons, the world’s warfare. Because Jesus has done the if-then part, because he has met the conditions of the covenant, he has given to us authority to bring the good news to liberate the world. The gospel of John, he said, I am the good shepherd.
The good shepherd lays down his life for the sheep. What did Jesus then tell his disciples? In the gospel there, he also said, Behold, I am sending you out as sheep in the midst of wolves. See, Jesus is telling us, You’re going to be eaten. That’s what wolves do to sheep. And that’s okay, because no one can snatch you out of my hands, and I will bring you life after death. Now, the difficulty is, I’m sure I can speak for you, I don’t want to be eaten. And I don’t think you want to be eaten. And now we come into the conflict of the kingdom. We go as Christ has gone. We are called to walk by faith and not by sight. If Jesus has done this, then we have been enabled to follow, to bring his authority and his power to the world around us. And it will look like many times in places being eaten by the very people you’re wanting to serve. It means laying down your life in the same manner that Christ did. That’s what his kingdom looks like. That’s what warfare in his kingdom entails. When he returns, he’s going to set all things right, and we look forward to that.
But until then, we go forward in the manner that Christ has gone forward. And we do so because he has completed the if part. And the then part comes to God through him to us. That is really, really good news. And there’s also with it a tremendous challenge. How does this look differently in my life? How do I go into these difficult and hard places? Where Jesus said, to pray for those who despitefully use you, who say all kinds of evil against you for my name’s sake, to bless them. That takes an entirely different horizon than what we see in front of us. In the Bible, it brings those horizons together in the person and work of Jesus Christ. I could not complete any of the conditions that God has laid on me and these are good in reasonable conditions for his people. I have failed at all of them. The one who has not failed has gone ahead of us. He is the embodiment of all to follow God’s promises. He is the fulfillment of everything needed to rescue us from our state of sin and misery. He now comes to each of us and he says, You are to follow me.
I claim ownership upon on you. I have saved you by grace, and you have no claim on your life if you belong to me. But that’s good news, too. You don’t want your claim on your life because it’s not worth anything. The promise of life after death comes only through Jesus. The promise that the significance in the meaning of our life and what we do now comes only through Jesus. He has set us free from an empty and vain way of life to have fulfilled one only in him. That is what his kingdom looks like. When the kingdom that we’re a part of stops looking like that and it starts looking like the pictures of everybody around us, and we pull out the annals and are like, These kids all look the same. Something is wrong. We all look at this and go, Oh, here’s another picture of Jesus. Here’s another picture of Jesus. Here’s another picture of Jesus. Look at the life of this person. It’s been transformed. It’s been renewed. It looks and smells and walks like Jesus. That is so freeing and so liberating to us that we do not have to love our lives even to the point of death.
That all the promises that we have received, even in the heartache and the loss, is that Jesus brings life even after death. There is nothing in your life that he cannot resurrect in some way, in some form. He is the God of resurrection, of renewal, of hope, because he has completed the if. And we now are the recipients of the then. Pray with me. Father Almighty, as we come before you, we just say thank you. Lord, it is so hard for us. Father, we fail so miserably. And Lord, there you are in your kindness and your graciousness and your mercy, calling us to new and fresh obedience. Father, thank you. And Lord, we do ask that you would empower the lives of your people, that we would look and smell like Jesus. Father, thank you that you have shamed the wisdom of this world by your foolishness in Christ. And Lord, may it please you to use our foolishness for the furtherance of his kingdom. We pray and ask this all in his name. Amen.
Discaimer: This sermon text was generated by an automated transcription service.