Your Kingdom Come Part 2: Promised and Partial

The Bible: one story, one author, one hero, one king.

Your Kingdom Come

Let’s remind ourselves where we have got to over the last two weeks.

Kingdom Patterned (Genesis 1-2)

In Eden God gave us an outline of what he would ultimately create.  God’s people (Adam and Eve) in God’s place (Eden) under God’s rule and blessing.

Kingdom Perished (Genesis 3-11)

But all people everywhere seek to live outside of this wonderful kingdom of God.  God’s people are now banished from God’s place and no longer under God’s rule and blessing.  (Genesis 3:23)

Genesis 4-11 shows this is not unique to Adam and Eve but the universal state of humanity: there is murder in the first generation (chapter 4); death through all generations (chapter 5); chaos in society (chapter 6-9); and a persuasive cultural arrogance (chapter 11).

However, even in the midst of the perished Kingdom of Genesis 3 we see a hint of the hope of Jesus.

·      There will ultimately be victory not surrender: an offspring of Eve’s will crush satan (3:15).

·    There will ultimately be life not death: Eve is the mother of life not the bringer of death (3:20).

·       There will ultimately be dignity not shame: God covers our shame (3:21).

God now shows us his promise of a kingdom restored and re-established.

Kingdom Promised (Genesis 12:1-3)

God promises the purposes of the pattern will come about.

John Stott gives these few sentences amazing significance.  ‘It may truly be said without exaggeration that not only the rest of the Old Testament but the whole of the New Testament are an outworking of these promises of God.’  (‘Understanding the Bible’ (1984).  Quoted in Vaughan Roberts ‘God’s Big Picture p.52-53)

It is the embryonic three-fold promise of people, place and blessing.

·       People: ‘I will make you into a great nation…’  God promises Abraham.

·    Place: ‘Leave your country and your people and your father’s household and go to the land I will show you.’  This is the land of Canaan, the land of promise.

·   Rule & Blessing: ‘…I will bless you…I will make your name great and you shall be a blessing…all the people’s of the earth will be blessed through you…’  God promises blessing of overflowing abundance and it leads to the blessing of others – globally!

Believing the Impossible

This all must have been very hard for Abraham to trust, but amazingly he did: Genesis 15:6 tells us Abraham believed in God’s promise and because of that was ‘credited with righteousness’.  Trusting God’s promises not our performance has always been the route to God’s kingdom.  But even Abraham wavered.  At one point he looked to a woman not his wife for a child, unable to believe God could reverse time and biology and years of trying and Sara his wife be able to conceive.  Abraham wavered because like all of us he defaulted to his performance not God’s promise.

This innate default to want to do it ourselves is why the next section of the story of God covers 1000 years and takes the last 28 chapters of Genesis plus the next 13 books of the Bible!  It takes that long for us to realise we can not do it and have to trust the promises of God that he has done it!  God knows we are slow to get this – so he lays it out across a living mass of evidence of why we must trust God’s promise not our efforts.

Kingdom Partial (Genesis 12 to 2 Chronicles!)

We cannot do it, but it takes a 1000 years of history before we are convinced of that!  This is now the history of God’s promise sort by human efforts and constantly falling short.

·         A Partial People (Genesis 12-Exodus 18)

‘I will make you a great nation…’ was the promise in Genesis 12:2.  Genesis 12 to Exodus 18 is the 400 years history of how a man became a family became a nation.  From Abraham to Isaac to Jacob and his 12 sons forms clan.  Joseph’s rise from prison to prime-minister in Egypt brings that clan to safety and over the course of 400 years a nation forms called Israel.

But they are only ever a partial fulfilment of the promise of a people.  We find them either enslaved in Egypt or wandering aimlessly lost in the desert.

·         A Partial Place (Exodus 19-Joshua)

‘To your offspring I will give this land (Canaan)’ was the promise in Genesis 12:7.  Exodus through Joshua is the 50 year history of how a nomadic people because an established nation.  Moses leads them through the wilderness.  Joshua settles them in Canaan.  They have arrived.

But the land of Canaan, now the nation of Israel, first shatters in civil war to become Judah & Israel, and ultimately is invaded, conquered and lost in history.

·         A Partial Rule & Blessing (Judges to 2 Chronicles)

‘I will bless you’ was the promise in Genesis 12:1-3.  Judges to 2 Chronicles is the 600 year history of trying to find the blessing of God through the rule of people.  First with Judges and then with Kings.

Yet both the Judges and Kings fail.  The repeated refrain in Judges is that ‘there was no king and the people did as they saw fit’, and is the last, sad sentence of the book (Judges 21:25).  It is a dark time in Israel’s history.

And leadership under kings (from 1 Samuel to 2 Chronicles) is not much better.  Even the ‘golden age’ of Solomon (1 Kings 1-11) begins to dissolve in his old age and Solomon’s disobedience to God ultimately leads to decades of civil war, instability and ultimately Israel as a nation is assimilated and lost under the reigns of generally awful kings (1Kings 12ff & 2Kings).

Which kingdom do you live in?

God’s Promise or Your Performance?

We cannot achieve God’s kingdom and need to trust God’s promise, but it takes 1000 years of history and 13 and a half Old Testament books and the creation & destruction of the nation Israel before we learn that lesson!  Are you trusting God’s promise (and next week we will see its fulfilment in Jesus)?  Or defaulting and wavering, as even great Abraham did, to trust in your own performance?  Have we learnt the lesson of Israel’s history – that doing it ourselves is at best only a partial experience of God’s Kingdom?