There is no phrase which it is more important to understand in connection with prophetic inquiries than “the kingdom of God.” To ascertain the origin and force of this expression, in the scriptures of truth, is the object of my present communication.
It must be obvious at the outset that our inquiries must commence farther back than the actual use of the phrase in the New Testament. No one can observe the way in which it is used by John the Baptist, as well as by our Lord Himself and His disciples, without perceiving that it was an expression with which their hearers were conversant. It was no new expression, and the mere utterance of it communicated no new thought to the minds of men (that is, among the Jews, of course). It would be of little moment to inquire what their thoughts of this kingdom were. The only source from which they could receive right thoughts on the subject is as open to us as to them; and open to us, blessed be God, with this difference in our favor, that the Holy Spirit, by whom holy men were inspired to write the scriptures of the Old Testament, now dwells in the saints-dwells in us, for this purpose among many others, to open to us fully, as the friends of Christ and members of His body, what was hid from saints in former ages, yea, what was but very obscurely seen by the prophets themselves.
Even the prophets of old are represented as “searching what or what manner of time the Spirit of Christ which was in them did signify, when it testified beforehand the sufferings of Christ and the glories that should follow.” Yes, it was not to themselves, but to us, that they ministered those divine communications of which they were made the vehicles; and we are thus in better circumstances for understanding those communications than even the holy men through whom they were made and recorded. And it is this, and this alone, the teaching of the indwelling Spirit, the Comforter, that can enable us to understand those varied testimonies to the grace and glory of Christ. It is not any natural clearness of judgment or any amount of humanly-acquired information, that will make us well instructed scribes in the kingdom of heaven. We are ignorant alike of the “old things” and the “new” which pertain to that kingdom, except as we sit at the feet of Jesus and learn of Him, Whose voice it is by the Spirit that we hear in the prophets of the Old Testament, as well as in the apostles and prophets of the New. May it be in the spirit of child-like submission to Him and dependence upon Him that we pursue our present inquiry; and may it be, through His grace, fruitful in instruction and blessing to our souls!
There is one point on which there can be no question. God is often spoken of as a King. “Hearken unto the voice of my cry, my King and my God; for unto thee will I pray” (Psa. 5:2). “Jehovah is King forever and ever” (10:16). “Jehovah sitteth upon the flood; yea, Jehovah sitteth King forever” (29:10). “Thou art my King, O God” (44:4). “For Jehovah Most High is terrible; He is a great King over all the earth” (47:2). “Sing praises to God, sing praises: sing praises unto our King, sing praises; for God is the King of all the earth” (vers. 6, 7). “They have seen thy goings, O God; even the goings of my God, my King, in the sanctuary” (68:24). “For God is my King of old” (74:12). “For Jehovah is a great God, and a great King above all gods” (95:3). “With trumpets and sound of cornet make a joyful noise before Jehovah, the King” (98:6).
All these citations are from one book of scripture, and many more might be quoted. See also the following, “Mine eyes have seen the King, Jehovah of hosts” (Isa. 6:5). “For Jehovah is our Judge, Jehovah is our Lawgiver, Jehovah is our King” (38:22). “I am Jehovah, your Holy One, the Creator of Israel, your King” (43:15). “Who would not fear thee, O King of nations?” (Jer. 10:7). “And it shall come to pass, that every one that is left of all the nations which came against Jerusalem shall even go up from year to year to worship the King, Jehovah of hosts” (Zech. 14:16). We cannot suppose that God would have so largely spoken of Himself as King if it had not been important for us to know Him in this character; and it will be found on examination of some of the above passages, along with many others of like import, that we have very explicit and copious instructions in God's word on this subject. May it be ours to receive it in simplicity of heart and godly subjection to the authority of the written word!
The first point to which I would solicit attention is this, that while God, the everlasting King, unquestionably reigns uncontrolled over all the works of His hands, visible and invisible, overruling by His power even the rage and rebellion of His enemies, it has pleased Him, at various periods for the display of His glory as King, to delegate His authority over a certain sphere, putting those entrusted with it under responsibility to Himself to exercise their delegated power and rule according to His will. Adam, for instance, was made ruler over all the lower parts of creation, as we read (Gen. 1:26), “And God said, Let us make man in our image, after our likeness: and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth.” The fulfillment of this we see in verse 28. The whole passage is referred to in Psa. 8:4-8, which is again quoted by the apostle in Heb. 2:6-9 as a prediction of the future dominion of Christ, the Son of man, the second Adam, the Lord from heaven.
I dwell not on these passages except just to remark that Adam, failing to exercise his delegated power in obedience to Him Who had entrusted him therewith, God's purpose to put this earth under the dominion of man was not to be set aside. The full remedy for the failure of the first man being found in the obedience unto death of the Second man, the Lord from heaven, He becomes the inheritor of the dominion and glory forfeited by the first. And for Him it waits. We see not yet, as Paul says, all things put under Him; but we see Jesus crowned with glory and honor; also in due time we shall see His dominion established over the whole sphere of Adam's delegated rule, and then will be fulfilled the first verse and the last verse of the eighth Psalm, which treats of these things: “O Jehovah, our Lord, how excellent is thy name in all the earth!” But more of this anon.
Before this great and final result in the universal blessing of Christ's acknowledged dominion was to he accomplished, further trial was to be made of man in various ways. Not to dwell on intermediate events, we find one nation selected of God to enjoy the blessing of His kingly authority, and it is in connection with this nation that we first find God spoken of as King. But, before pursuing this, I would notice for a moment a remarkable passage, which shows alike the foreknowledge and providence of God, and the exceeding importance of the subject on which we are entering, viz., the connection of God, as King, with the nation of Israel. The passage alluded to is Deut. 32:8, 9, “When the Most High divided to the nations their inheritance, when He separated the sons of Adam, He set the bounds of the people according to the number of the children of Israel. For Jehovah's portion is His people; Jacob is the lot of His inheritance.” Thus it appears that long before the children of Israel existed as a nation, long even before the call of Abraham, God had His eye upon that nation, and made it the center of all His providential arrangements in dividing the earth amongst the progeny of Noah. The perfect divine wisdom of these arrangements will be manifest in that period of universal blessing of which the eighth Psalm treats, as has been noticed, when, according to another scripture, “they shall call Jerusalem the throne of Jehovah; and all the nations shall be gathered unto it, to the name of Jehovah, to Jerusalem” (Jer. 3:17).
The first passage in which Jehovah's reign is definitely spoken of is in the song of triumph chanted by the victorious hosts of Israel, when they had passed safely through the Red sea, and left Pharaoh and his chariots and horsemen “sunk as lead in the mighty waters.” They not only celebrate the triumph already accomplished for them by their mighty captain and deliverer, but they anticipate those further victories pledged to them in the covenant with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. And then they add, “Thou shalt bring them in, and plant them in the mountain of thine inheritance, in the place, O Jehovah, which thou hast made for thee to dwell in, the sanctuary, O Jehovah, which thy hands have established. Jehovah shall reign forever and ever” (Ex. 15:17, 18). Connect this with the passage already quoted from Deut. 32, and you can hardly fail to see how the reign or kingdom of God is connected with the place which He had made for Himself to dwell in, and the nation of which He says, “Jehovah's portion is His people; Jacob is the lot of His inheritance.”
In Ex. 19 and the following chapters, we find God exercising His kingly government over this nation which He had separated to Himself. He gives them laws, and statutes, and judgments to be observed by them, with suited penalties for any breach of those enactments. We do not stop here to consider the character of that covenant of works under which they were thus, with their own full consent and choice, placed. Their immediate failure under that covenant, in chap. 32, and the renewal of it, with certain modifications, through the intervention of Moses as mediator (typical, no doubt, of the mediation of Christ), are points of extreme importance to any who would understand God's recorded dealings with them.
But I cannot enter into them here further than to notice, that in chap. 33 nothing less than Jehovah's actual presence with them can satisfy Moses, who pleads on their behalf; and this is pledged to him in verse 17. In consequence we find that when Balaam (inspired as a prophet, though a worthless and wicked man) pronounces a blessing upon Israel, he says, “God is not a man that He should lie, neither the son of man that He should repent..... He hath not beheld iniquity in Jacob, neither hath He seen perverseness in Israel; Jehovah his God is with him, and the shout of a king is among them” (Num. 23:19-21).
This then was what distinguished Israel from all the other nations of the earth. These were under the controlling power of God's invisible government in providence; but God was present in Israel as their King. The symbols of the divine presence, the pillar of cloud by day and of fire by night, went before them from the time when Pharaoh pursued them into the very bed of the Red sea, till they crossed the Jordan at the close of their forty years' wanderings in the desert. Their laws they received direct from His mouth; all their officers and judges were constituted such by His appointment; and in every time of difficulty and danger He was present to be consulted by them, nor did He ever fail, when they were obedient to His voice, to guide and preserve them.
And when they crossed the Jordan, He still accompanied or went before them. The cloud of the divine glory, which had journeyed with them in the wilderness, now rested between the cherubim which overshadowed the mercy-seat; and after their conquest of the land under Joshua, the tabernacle of the congregation, enclosing alike the ark of the covenant, the mercy-seat, and the shekinah and cherubim above, was set up at Shiloh, which from that time became the seat of government. It was there, “before Jehovah,” that Joshua divided the land among the tribes for an inheritance” (Josh. 18:1-10). The house of God was there during the period of the Judges, and up to the time of Eli and Samuel. It was in the days of the latter that the people, wearied of being under the direct government of God Who from time to time appointed judges over them, and desiring to be like the nations which surrounded them, asked Samuel to make them a king over them. This displeased Samuel, and he prayed to Jehovah. What was the answer of Jehovah to him? “And Jehovah said unto Samuel, Hearken unto the voice of the people in all that they say unto thee; for they have not rejected thee, but they have rejected me, that I should not reign over them” (1 Sam. 8:7). This is very plain. Up to this time the government of Israel had been a pure theocracy. God was their King. He might act by Moses at one time, who is himself said in this sense to have been king in Jeshurun, (see Deut. 33:4), or by Joshua at another, or afterward by the judges who were successively raised up. Still, God was their King. (To be continued, D.V.)