Life of Christ 69
To answer these questions let me take you back to Genesis 12, and what is commonly known as the Abrahamic
Covenant. In the beginning of this chapter God makes Abraham, the first Jew,
some promises, and later passes those promises on to Abraham's descendants, the
nation of Israel. Amongst other things, God promised Israel through Abraham
eternal deed to the land of Palestine, indeed to a geographical area larger
than any they have ever yet controlled.
This is not the only
covenant in the Old Testament by any means, and another one that has a direct
bearing on the idea of 'the kingdom' is the Davidic Covenant. This set of
promises made by God to David and his descendants can be found, amongst other
places, in I Chronicles 17. In it God promises David that one of his
descendants will sit on the throne of Israel forever.
In these two covenants,
then, God promises Israel an eternal deed to the land of Palestine, and its
environs, and He promises that a descendant of David will sit on Israel's
throne forever. Neither of them have ever been true in the years since David
and Abraham and they aren't true now. It is my belief in this, and in a
literal fulfillment of God's promises that drives much of my doctrinal position
as a premillennialist. But beyond that, it drives my understanding of the arc
of the life of Jesus Christ.
To the Jews of Jesus'
day these were precious promises indeed. Their theology understood this like
mine does in the sense that they believed it to be a literal fulfillment, and
to be ushered in by the coming of the Messiah. Thus, when John the Baptist came
blazing out of nowhere to shake up the system just prior to the beginning of
Jesus' ministry his message needs seen in this light: 'Repent ye, for the
kingdom of heaven is at hand' (Matthew 3.2). The Baptist was preaching that the
fulfillment of these promises was right around the corner, and that to prepare
for them Israel corporately and individually needed to repent of her sins.
Jesus Himself, when He
came on the scene, interacted much with John the Baptist, and indeed preached a
very similar message toward the beginning: 'From that time Jesus began to
preach, and to say, Repent: for the kingdom of heaven is at hand' (Matthew
4.17). When we read this we must understand that since He clearly claimed to
be the Messiah from the beginning, and since all the Jews knew that when the
Messiah came the kingdom came too, then He was here essentially proclaiming
Himself to be Israel's sovereign King and offering Himself as such to the
people.
In the Old Testament
there are many prophecies regarding the coming eternal King of Israel, one of
which is found in Isaiah 60 and 61. It was precisely from this passage that Jesus
read the first time He went back to preach in Nazareth. 'And he began to say
unto them, This day is this scripture fulfilled in your ears' (Luke 4.21). In
other words, Jesus reads one of the prophecies regarding the long promised king
and says, 'It's me'.
So what was Israel's
reaction to this astonishing claim? Well, we already saw that in Nazareth that
day they tried to kill Him by throwing Him off a cliff, but Israel as a whole
hardened her heart against those claims. Jesus, in an effort to prove His credentials,
did miracle after miracle. In response, the Pharisees advance the unforgivable
theory that He does these in the power of Satan, and when Israel chose to
follow the Pharisees in believing this in Matthew 12 she chose to reject her
King. There, Jesus told them that for this rejection of Himself they would be
condemned. 'But I say unto you, That every idle word that men shall speak, they
shall give account thereof in the day of judgment. For by thy words thou shalt
be justified, and by thy words thou shalt be condemned' (Matthew 12.21-22).
Not only is it my
understanding that this eternal throne of David is what Jesus claimed for
Himself, but it was also the understanding of the Jews of His own day as well.
We see this clearly at the crucifixion when Pilate wrote 'the King of the Jews'
(John 19.21) and hung it over Jesus' head on the cross. The Sanhedrin got upset
about it, and asked Pilate to rewrite it as 'he said, I am King of the Jews'.
Pilate, of course, refused, but the point is that Israel's religious leadership
clearly understood that Jesus claimed to be that king, and that He claimed to
be coming to usher in the kingdom long promised via the Abrahamic and Davidic
Covenants.
The reality is that
Israel didn't reject Him at Calvary. She rejected Him over a year before in
Matthew 12 when she chose to believe the Pharisees unforgivable assertion that
Jesus was possessed by Satan. It is for this reason that Jesus would later tell
the Jews that the kingdom had been taken from Israel and given away. 'Therefore
I say unto you, The kingdom of God shall be taken from you, and given to a
nation bringing forth the fruits thereof' (Mathew 21.43).
He did not mean by this
that the land and throne were taken from them in a literal, permanent sense,
but that His own generation had lost their opportunity and it would take an
entirely different Israel, purified of her stubborn rejection in the awful
fiery armageddon of the Tribulation period, to be receptive enough of her King
to bring in the kingdom.
That was what the phrase
'the kingdom' meant as John the Baptist used it, as Jesus used it, and as the
Jews of His day understood it. In the next
post I will discuss how that changed with the hinge pivot rejection of
Christ in Matthew 12, and what Jesus would mean by it as He explained it to the
Apostles in Matthew 13, and how that impacts us very much still today.
No comments:
Post a Comment