Isaiah - The Kingdoms King

Isaiah — Steve Gregg

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Isaiah - The Kings Kingdom

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Isaiah - The Kingdoms King

IsaiahSteve Gregg

Isaiah proclaims the Kingdom of God as a people of Israel conditionally. Steve Gregg discusses how God's kingdom exists among those who follow Jesus and how Jesus established his reign to fill the whole earth. Gregg examines the book of Psalms, identifying how Christians connect present-day events to the promises land of Israel. He also explores the concept of the tabernacle David, which refers to the restoration of the Davidic dynasty and musical worship. Ultimately, embracing Jesus as Lord means inheriting a place in the Kingdom of God.

Transcript

The main theme of the Bible, I believe, besides, of course, Jesus himself, is the Kingdom of Jesus, the Kingdom of God, which is introduced as a concept in scripture very early. The second book of the Bible is the first to mention God and his kingdom plan, his plan to have a kingdom on earth. It's carried forth through the prophets, of course, and the Psalms, and then it is fulfilled in the New Testament.

The message of Jesus was, in fact, the Kingdom of God. He called it the gospel of the Kingdom of God. In Mark 1, verse 14, it says, Jesus went throughout Galilee preaching the gospel, that is the good news, of the Kingdom of God.

Jesus said in Matthew 24, verse 14, this gospel of the Kingdom, this good news of the Kingdom, is to be preached in all the world as a witness to all nations and then the end will come. In other words, the Kingdom is the message. The Kingdom is the gospel, the good news.

So, the New Testament, then, is, of course, focused entirely on the subject of the Kingdom of God. The Old Testament has this kingdom running through it as a major theme from a very rudimentary beginning to a more developed concept. And the book of Isaiah is one of those books that develops that concept further than many of the other books of the Old Testament do.

Before we look at the kingdom in the book of Isaiah, it's good to look at the kingdom outside the book of Isaiah because Isaiah comes rather late. In the Old Testament, and there were a number of earlier things in the Old Testament that relate to the Kingdom of God. And Isaiah's prophecies fit into a pattern that is framed by other statements outside.

Isaiah fills in details to a picture that's already begun to be painted in broad strokes in other passages of the Bible. So, to pick up the context, I just want to give a very brief summary of what the Kingdom of God is said to be in other places. And then Isaiah will give us much that is left out of other parts.

The first thing we need to recognize is that the Kingdom of God is a concept that was first associated with the Kingdom of Israel. And we need to know what the relationship is between the Kingdom of God and the Kingdom of Israel. The two were identified initially as one and the same.

In Exodus chapter 19, we have the first reference in the Bible to God's kingdom. And it is clearly identified with the nation of Israel. These words are uttered at Mount Sinai only two months after the Exodus.

And so, he's just rescued Israel out of Egypt, he's brought them to Sinai, and he now enters into a covenant with them, making them his own nation. And it is in that connection that he first mentions his ideal of having a kingdom and of Israel having the opportunity to be that kingdom. He says in Exodus 19, verses 5 and 6, These are the words which you shall speak to the children of Israel.

Moses was to give this message to Israel. If you will obey God and keep his covenant, you will have this status of being his own chosen people, a holy nation, a kingdom unto God of priests. Now, what is very clear here is that the Kingdom of God, as it is first mentioned in the Bible, has nothing to do with heaven or the afterlife.

This is not an unearthly kingdom. This is Israel standing very firmly on the planet Earth, having the opportunity to be the kingdom. Which, of course, many of us have probably a very accurate and developed idea of the Kingdom of God, but many people do not.

And I can't be sure that everyone here would, because I don't know what you know and don't know. But the Kingdom of God very often is mistaken, in Christian thinking, for the afterlife. If someone is blown up, they're blown to kingdom come, in our parlance.

They've gone on to the next world. Sometimes the Kingdom of God in Scripture is referred to as the Kingdom of Heaven, which, of course, even further confuses things, because we think, oh, that means heaven. The Kingdom must be heaven.

But it's not the kingdom that is heaven. It's the kingdom that is from heaven. Of heaven means from, a kingdom that is not of earthly origin, but it is earthly in its venue.

God has a kingdom on this earth. Originally, it was the people of Israel. The kingdom, therefore, is not so much a reference to a place at all.

A kingdom is simply a political arrangement. A kingdom can exist with or without a place. Now, this is seen very clearly in the fact that Israel, at the time that God claimed them to be his kingdom, didn't have a settled place.

He had promised them a land that they would conquer and would occupy, but they weren't there yet. And they weren't there for another 40 years. They were from place to place.

They were not in any settled location with boundaries. But they were his kingdom. The kingdom does not require boundaries of a geographical sort in order to qualify as a kingdom, because although most kingdoms do have boundaries, most kingdoms do establish territory, and so did Israel.

Yet, what makes a kingdom is not a territory. What makes a kingdom is an arrangement that is essentially political. There is a king.

He has persons who recognize him as their king and who follow him. That's a kingdom. A kingdom is comprised of a king and his subjects.

David was a king before he was enthroned, because God had him anointed by the prophet Samuel, and the Spirit of God came upon him and left the political king Saul. Saul, therefore, although he held political office, was no longer the valid king of Israel. David was, but David held no recognized office until much later.

In the years intervening, he spent much of his time wandering around in caves and goatskins and deserts, running from King Saul's armies. David was the true king. There were some who followed him, 400 initially, then 600.

How large the group eventually got, we're not told. But David had followers. He was a king, and he had followers.

He did not have a physical throne on earth. He did not have a territory that he could claim for himself. He was wandering like Israel was wandering in the wilderness.

But he had a kingdom. There was a king, and there were followers of the king. That's a kingdom.

Now, God called Israel to be his kingdom, therefore, to be his followers. And we can see that that makes sense. He says, what you have to do is obey me.

That's what you do if you have a king. You obey your king. So he says, if you'll obey my voice and you keep this covenant I'm making with you, you'll be my kingdom.

A kingdom of priests, as it is. But the main thing for us to see is that God established his kingdom, not in the sky, not above the clouds, but on earth at Mount Sinai with a people. The kingdom of God should not be confused with a place, but with a people.

God's kingdom is a people. And Israel was that people, but conditionally. They did not meet the conditions.

We will not run through the Old Testament history as we could if we were to be focused elsewhere today. But we could show how Israel's later history resulted in their defection from God, their rejection of him as their king, their choice to have a king like all the nations instead of a king unlike all the nations had. And God told Samuel, they have not rejected you, they've rejected me, that I should not reign over them.

God was rejected as king in the Old Testament by Israel. But the prophets said that God would again be the king of Israel, that God would again be the king of the people. He would, in fact, send his shepherd, his servant, who would be the king, and that would be the Messiah.

So the Jews who were faithful, that remnant always looked for this coming of the king, the Messiah. In fact, the word Messiah is simply the Hebrew word for one who has been anointed with oil, the anointed one. This is also the meaning of the Greek word Christos or Christ.

In Greek, it means one who's had oil poured over him. And the imagery suggests royalty because the kings were anointed. That's how they were installed in office.

They were installed by having oil poured over their heads. So the Messiah, the anointed one, is simply a shorthand for saying the king, the one who's anointed to be the king. By the way, therefore, the word Christ also means that.

It means the anointed one, but it's shorthand for the king. When we say Jesus Christ, we're saying king Jesus. Jesus has been anointed by God to be the king, and that's exactly what the apostles preached, that God anointed Jesus and made him the king.

So anyway, Israel rejected God as their king, but God promised that he would send another king that would be him. Actually, he would shepherd his people in the person of this Messiah. Very mysterious because the Messiah is sometimes spoken of as being separate from God, one that God anoints, one that God rescues, one that God is pleased with.

And other occasions, it's God talking as if the Messiah is him. And this is probably nowhere more clear than in Isaiah, where the Messiah is said to be the mighty God, the everlasting Father in Isaiah 9, 6, or in chapter 7, verse 14, where he's called God with us. Obviously, the mystery of how the Messiah is and is not God, how he is God, but he's not just God.

Is something that, frankly, the Bible, even in the New Testament, never explains, but reveals in Christ. Christ, who is the God-man. And in Isaiah, more than other Old Testament books, the fact that he is not just a king sent by God, but he is, in fact, God with us, is brought out.

But this mysterious information was not fully processed by the Jews, at least they did not agree among themselves as to what it meant. The rabbis, some of them thought the Messiah would be a mere man, very much like David, a great hero that God would use as he'd use David to set his people free from the Philistines and so forth. He will raise up a Messiah like David who will free them from the Romans or whoever may be oppressing them at that time.

Others believed the Messiah would be sort of a divine figure who'd come floating out of heaven. Some believed there'd be two Messiahs. This is because Messianic prophecies sometimes spoke of the victories of the Messiah and how he'd conquer all the enemies.

Other prophecies, like some of the servant songs we talked about, spoke of the Messiah's suffering and even dying. It was hard for Jewish rabbis to know how to process all this disparate data about the Messiah. Some saw him primarily as a conqueror and ignored the suffering parts and interpreted the suffering servant as Israel, not the Messiah.

Others recognized the suffering servant as a Messiah, but they believed there were two Messiahs. Many of the rabbis in Jesus' own day had concluded there'd be two Messiahs, a suffering Messiah and a victorious Messiah. They actually had names for them.

The Messiah that would suffer they called Messiah Ben Joseph. Ben means son of. Messiah Ben Joseph.

And the triumphant Messiah they called Messiah Ben David. That's just a rabbinic convention. You see, they didn't quite know what to do with the data.

The New Testament brings it together in its own way, in Christ, but the rabbis didn't know about Christ. And therefore they had to speculate and they didn't really know quite what to make. But the point is they did expect a Messiah.

They did expect God to come and establish his kingdom again under his ruler. Israel had been at one time God's kingdom. They believed that Israel would be God's kingdom again.

You might remember that one of the last questions the disciples are recorded as having asked Jesus before his ascension. It's found in Acts 1.6. As far as we know, it's the last thing they said to him before he ascended. They said, Lord, will you at this time restore the kingdom to Israel? Notice, although they were perhaps not fully informed as to what the kingdom was going to look like, they knew very well they were not associating the kingdom with heaven.

This was something they thought Jesus was going to restore at that time to Israel. In other words, when we think of the kingdom of God, we are quite mistaken to be thinking about an otherworldly situation. This is a situation that from beginning to end is an earthly kingdom, not from earth.

It's from heaven. It's from God. Jesus said, my kingdom is not of this world.

He did not say, my kingdom is not in this world. It is. But he said it is not of this world.

Now, while Israel was offered the opportunity to be the kingdom and basically failed to meet the conditions, and by the way, the greatest failure was in their rejection of the Messiah, of course. When they turned and killed Christ, that was the ultimate covenant breaking on their part, and it was the last straw. We find that Jesus tells them in a verse we've looked at earlier in this series already, in Matthew 21, 43, because of the parable about the vineyard and the vine dressers who killed the owner's son and so forth.

He says in Matthew 21, 43, Therefore I say to you, the kingdom of God will be taken from you and given to a nation bearing the fruits of it. So the kingdom of God had been associated with Israel, and Jesus is speaking to them, Israel, and says the kingdom is now not going to be associated with you anymore. The kingdom is taken from you.

It will now be associated with a different people, a different nation. It will be given to a nation that will bring forth the fruits of it. There's no doubt at all that this is a reference to the church.

Jesus elsewhere said to his disciples, fear not, little flock, it is your father's good pleasure to give you the kingdom. The church, the disciples of Jesus, have been given the kingdom. It was taken from Israel and given to another nation.

Why? Well, it was conditional, and Israel didn't meet the conditions. Now, you might say, is it conditional now? Of course it is. You might say, well then, could the church possibly be rejected as the kingdom? No, because the church by definition is made up of those who bear the fruit.

The institutional church might be rejected, and no doubt should never have been accepted in the first place. It's not identified with the true body of Christ necessarily. But the true followers of Christ are by definition those who truly follow Christ.

They are the kingdom. If an individual among them stops following Christ, well then, that person's not in the kingdom anymore. But the kingdom still exists among those who do follow him.

Because if the kingdom is defined by those who keep his covenant and obey his commandments, as it was first defined and it's never been redefined, then those who do so are his kingdom. Those who don't do so are not. It's just that God in the old days allowed the whole nation of Israel to more or less wear that badge until that nation officially rejected the king, and Jesus said, okay, it's going to other people now, not you.

So this is how we're to understand Israel's identification with the kingdom. It was in the Old Testament that Israel was called the kingdom, but was conditionally allowed to be the kingdom. But now some other nation is the kingdom, and that nation is those who are the followers of Christ.

Now, in the Old Testament, the goals of the kingdom of God are laid out quite clearly, and it is an earthly set of goals. I've mentioned to you there are many kingdom or messianic passages, kingdom age passages, messianic age passages in Isaiah. We will look at those in the course of this particular topical study today, at least some of them.

But there are many kingdom age passages outside of Isaiah. In particular, there are four psalms in the book of the Psalms. There are four psalms that scholars usually call the kingdom psalms or the great kingdom psalms.

They are psalms that, like these passages in Isaiah, are talking about the messianic age. The subject matter is the same as what you find in, for example, Isaiah chapter 11 or Isaiah chapter 2 or whatever, where you have a messianic age prediction. There are four psalms that are messianic age predictions.

They are Psalm 2, Psalm 45, Psalm 72, and Psalm 110. If you didn't get those, those are Psalm 2, Psalm 45, Psalm 72, and Psalm 110. These are messianic age psalms.

The commentators usually call them the kingdom, great kingdom psalms. Like the similar passages in Isaiah, there are Christians who identify these with the future millennium. There are Christians who identify them with the present age.

Again, the pivot here between these two views is whether the kingdom is established by the Messiah at his first coming or at his second. My position throughout has been that it is at the first coming of Christ that the kingdom was established. The premillennial view is that it will be at the second coming, rather.

But one of these kingdom psalms, Psalm 2, makes it very clear what God's kingdom goals are in Christ. In Psalm 2 and verse 7, I hope you're familiar with Psalm 2. It's a wonderful and famous psalm, but it begins with the rebellion of the kings of the earth against God and against his Messiah, his anointed one. It's against God and against Christ.

In fact, these opening verses of Psalm 2 are quoted by the apostles in their prayer in the book of Acts. When they say, Lord, you are the one who said, why do the heathen rage and the kings of the earth conspire against the Lord and his Christ? Then they go on to say, for surely this has happened. Herod, Pontius, Pilate, and the Jews have conspired against Jesus, your holy one.

The apostles recognize this psalm as fulfilled not at the second coming of Christ, but at the first coming of Christ. Which, as I say, is the consistent manner in which the apostles always treated kingdom age predictions. But it says that despite the rebellion of the kings of the earth, in verse 7, he says, I will declare the decree.

The Lord has said to me, you are my son. Today I have begotten you. Ask of me, verse 8, and I will give you the nations for your inheritance and the ends of the earth for your possession.

You shall break them with a rod of iron. Now, some manuscripts actually say you shall rule them with a rod of iron. There's a textual difference.

But you shall rule them or break them with a rod of iron. You shall dash them in pieces like a potter's vessel. Now, therefore, be wise, O kings, be instructed, you judges of the earth.

Serve Yahweh with fear and rejoice with Tremen and kiss the sun, lest he be angry. And you perish in the way when his wrath is kindled but a little. Now, this makes it very clear that the Messiah is to be given the whole world.

I didn't read, but we could have read verse 6, where God rebukes the kings who are rebelling and says, Yet I have set my king on my holy hill of Zion. This is what God has done. He's established Christ at his right hand.

He's the king of the new Zion. The king has been established despite the efforts of the kings of the earth to overthrow him. They have not succeeded.

God has managed to get Jesus enthroned. And his enthronement will result in what it says in verse 8. God says to Jesus, Ask of me, I'll give you the heathen, the nations for your inheritance, and the uttermost parts of the earth for your possession. The kingdom of God, which began with the enthronement of Christ at his ascension, has as its goal the possession of the whole world.

Again, this is not a heavenly goal. This is an earthly goal. Jesus will rule the world.

And that's what God has promised him. And we, I think, can expect that God can pull that off. One of the other kingdom psalms, Psalm 72, describes the kingdom of the Messiah.

This is actually a psalm written by Solomon. He himself was a type of the Messiah. As a son of David who occupied David's throne after David's death, he was a type and shadow of the Messiah who would also be a son of David and would rule David's erstwhile kingdom.

But Solomon writes, Give the king your judgments, O God, and your righteousness to the king's son. He will judge your people with righteousness and your poor with justice. And it goes on, it talks about verse four, He will bring justice to the poor of the people.

He will save the children of the needy. He will break in pieces the oppressor. But then it says in verse eight, He shall have dominion also from sea to sea and from the river, that's Euphrates, to the ends of the earth or perhaps the end of the land.

Of course, the vision of the Old Testament is the land of Israel. But we will see that Paul understood the promises about the land of Israel to apply to the whole world. Well, we won't see it unless I tell you about where it is.

It's in Romans 4 in verse 13. Romans 4 in verse 13, Paul said, The promise to Abraham and his seed that they would be the heirs of the world. Now, you don't read anywhere specifically in the Old Testament that God promised Abraham and his seed that they'd be heirs of the world.

The promise was they'd be heirs of a certain piece of real estate that was delineated by certain boundaries that were named. But Paul understands that as a type and a shadow of a much larger dominion that God was promising Abraham and his seed, and that is the world, the whole world. And so references to the promised land in the Old Testament really extend to the world in Christ.

The meek shall inherit the earth, Jesus said. Why? Because he's going to inherit the earth and we're going to be co-heirs with him. We're joint heirs with Christ, Paul said in Romans 8. So we will inherit the earth along with Christ, the Messiah, to whom it has been promised.

And it says he'll have dominion from sea to sea. Verse 9, Those who dwell in the wilderness will bow before him. His enemies will lick the dust.

The kings of Tarshish and the Isles will bring him presents. The kings of Sheba and Seba will offer gifts. Yes, all the kings shall fall down before him.

All nations shall serve him. This is God's goal for the kingdom of God, that the Messiah will be served by all nations, all kings. Or as Paul puts it in Philippians 2, Every knee shall bow and every tongue will confess that Jesus Christ is Lord.

To the glory of God the Father. This is God's global goal for the kingdom. After Isaiah's time, Daniel the prophet, in interpreting the vision or the dream that Nebuchadnezzar had had, made this prediction based on one of the features in Nebuchadnezzar's dream, namely a rock that grew into a great mountain to fill the whole earth.

In Daniel 2, in verse 44, Daniel says, In the days of these kings, in the context that is the kings in the vision, the last of which was the Roman Empire, so it would have to be during the time of the Roman Empire, at least no later than that, the fulfillment. In the days of these kings, the God of heaven will set up a kingdom, which shall never be destroyed, and the kingdom shall not be left to other people. It shall break in pieces and consume all these other kingdoms, and it shall stand forever.

Now, in the vision that he's interpreting, this kingdom was represented by a stone that grew up to fill the whole earth, and it broke in pieces all competition, all the competing nations, a little bit like what Revelation 11, 15 seems to be saying, when it says, The kingdoms of this world have become the kingdoms of our Lord and of his Christ, and he shall reign forever. That's the goal. All the kingdoms of the world will be subsumed under one king, Jesus.

Evangelical Christians, especially of the dispensational sort, always are fearful that there's going to be a one world government, a new world order. Well, the idea of a one world government, a new world order, actually is God's idea. It's going to be under Jesus.

Jesus is the ruler of the new order, and he is going to rule over a one world government. All the nations, all the kings of the earth will serve him. Now, of course, the question comes to mind, how does this fit in eschatologically? Is this like the millennium? Is this the new earth? Is this something that's going to happen before the new earth, before Jesus comes back? After all, his rule is presently going on and expanding.

Is this going to expand to a whole world before he comes back? Those questions are separate questions for eschatological debate, but what is not debatable is that Jesus' reign is to be universal, and that is the direction that God is going with it. The kingdom of the Messiah is to be universal. Now, is it future or is it present? Well, both, in a way.

The New Testament talks, especially after Jesus rose from the dead, about the kingdom as something that we have entered, that we have experienced, that we are part of, but it also talks in a future sense about inheriting the kingdom. For example, Paul says, such and such people will not inherit the kingdom of God, and yet he says the kingdom of God is already something we are in. For example, in Colossians 1.13, in Colossians 1.13, Paul says that God has, this is past tense, has translated us out of the power of darkness into the kingdom of his own dear son.

So if I've been translated into the kingdom, I'm in it. I have entered. I was outside, now I'm in.

I've entered the kingdom, but I have not yet inherited the kingdom. There is a future aspect that is yet to come. Now, as I understand it, and not all would see it this way, because I don't think they would have to, but I don't think that when the Bible talks about inheriting the kingdom on one hand and entering the kingdom on another, I don't think it's just using two different terms for the same thing.

I think it's two different things. We enter the kingdom now. We do so as subjects.

We come under the king. We surrender to the lordship of Christ. That's conversion.

When you become converted, you embrace Jesus as Lord. If you confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord, and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you'll be saved. So when you get saved, it's because you have now acknowledged and surrendered to the fact that Jesus is Lord and King.

You have now come into a kingdom. You've entered the kingdom. That is, in fact, salvation.

What does it mean to inherit the kingdom, though? I understand inherit the kingdom to mean in a position of rulership, like a prince inherits the kingdom from his father. He inherits a position of rulership. Therefore, we enter the kingdom now as subjects.

At the end, we will inherit our own thrones. We will sit on thrones with him. Jesus said to him, I will grant to sit with me upon my throne, even as I have overcome and am seated with my father on his throne.

Revelation 3.21 Also, it says if we endure, we will reign with him. He said to the twelve, You twelve shall sit on twelve thrones, judging the twelve tribes of Israel. There is a position of rulership for those who are faithful unto death.

Jesus said to the church of Smyrna, Be faithful unto death, and I will give you a crown of life. A crown of life, a crown is what rulers wear. And so the day will come when some will inherit a kingdom prepared for them by the father.

That means they will inherit a throne. They will, like the king's successor, inherits his kingdom. That means he becomes the next ruler of the kingdom.

The people of God will rule. That's future. In the meantime, until then, we don't rule.

We are ruled over. That's in this present mode. We enter the kingdom as subjects of Christ.

We inherit the kingdom as co-regent with Christ. Someday. Okay? So, is it now or is it later? Well, you'll find both.

You'll find passages in the Bible that talk about the kingdom in a futurized way. But you'd also find references to the kingdom in the present, as in Matthew 12, 28, when Jesus said, If I'm casting out demons by the Spirit of God, then the kingdom of God has overtaken you. The kingdom of God has come upon you.

The kingdom of God, in other words, has arrived and you didn't notice. It snuck up on you. It is here.

And you should be able to deduce it, not by seeing the kingdom, which itself is invisible, but by seeing that I'm casting out demons by the Spirit of God. If that's happened, then the kingdom of God is here. Has come.

And in Luke 17, 20, the Pharisees, it says, they demanded of him when the kingdom of God would appear. And he said, The kingdom of God does not come with observation. It's not visible.

It's not what you think. You're not going to be able to see it. He says, you won't be able to look over and say, oh, there it is.

Or here it is. They will not be able to say, low here or low there. But he said, the kingdom of God is in your midst.

And I know that many translations, most actually translated, the kingdom of God is within you. But since he was talking to the Pharisees, in this case, not to his disciples, he could hardly be saying the kingdom was within them. They were as far from the kingdom as people could be.

In fact, Jesus said to them, the prostitutes and tax collectors would enter the kingdom before they would. He's saying the kingdom of God is in your midst. Within is a term in Greek that can mean, obviously, interior, or it can mean surrounding you.

It's within your midst. It's among you. And so he's saying the kingdom is already here.

It's among you. Its citizens are in this crowd somewhere. You'll find that as you are standing in this crowd, right here among you, there is a king and his subjects.

The kingdom has arrived, in other words. Not in its full and future glory, but it is not absent. In fact, in Romans 14, 17, Paul said the kingdom of God is righteousness and peace and joy in the Holy Spirit.

Now, as we read the Isianic kingdom passages, we'll find that the recurring features of the kingdom are righteousness and peace and joy. Now, they are described in terms of more or less political justice and righteousness, a king who rules in justice. And in terms of political and international peace, they beat their swords into plowshares and their spears into pruning hooks, and they don't learn war anymore.

And in terms of joy, because everlasting joy is upon their heads, and they are filled with joy and gladness. These features, righteousness and peace and joy, are the primary features that make up the descriptions of the kingdom of God in Isaiah and in other passages in the Old Testament. And Paul says, yeah, that's what it is.

It is righteousness and peace and joy in the Holy Spirit. In other words, not political primarily, but spiritual primarily. The spiritual reality of the kingdom has been fulfilled and has come.

And who has righteousness and peace and joy in the Holy Spirit? Christians do. Peace and joy, those are among the fruits of the Spirit. You see, righteousness and peace and joy in the Holy Spirit is the kingdom of God, and it is possessed already by those who are Christ's disciples.

So the New Testament tells us. Now, getting to Isaiah itself, we find the kingdom of God. First of all, we need to consider, although it's not the first thing mentioned in Isaiah, because the kingdom is described in chapter 2. But in chapter 6, we first find the reference to God as the king, which is the starting point for understanding the kingdom of God.

Remember, in Isaiah's day, Israel had not yet had the kingdom transferred from them to another nation that would bring forth the fruits of it. Therefore, Israel is the kingdom of God in some of the passages of Isaiah that are speaking about him in his own time. Now, when he looks forward to the Messianic age, things are different.

But in his own time, his own nation is the kingdom of God. And this is affirmed, for example, in Isaiah 6.1. In the year that King Uzziah died, I saw the Lord sitting on a throne high and lifted up, and his train of his robe, which is apparently a royal, kingly robe, filled the temple. And as you look at verse 5, it says, Then I said, Woe is me, for I am undone, because I am a man of unclean lips, and I dwell in the midst of a people of unclean lips.

For my eyes have seen the King, the Lord of hosts. Now, interestingly, there was a King Uzziah, who was the ruler of the country until that year. He died that year.

But King Uzziah is not the real king. And his successor, Jotham, is not the real king. The Lord is the real king of Israel.

My eyes have seen the King, the Lord. And therefore, that Israel is really God's kingdom, even though it has some earthly kings sitting on earthly thrones, is affirmed in Isaiah. God is the king.

Israel is the kingdom. Chapter 41 and verse 21. God says, Present your case, says Yahweh.

Bring forth your strong reason, says the King of Jacob. Remember, Jacob is simply a synonym for Israel. The King of Israel is Yahweh.

Israel is, therefore, his kingdom. He's still claiming it at this point. Chapter 43, verse 15.

I am Yahweh, the Holy One, the creator of Israel, your king. And, of course, there's more of this. Chapter 44, verse 6. Thus says Yahweh, the King of Israel, and his Redeemer.

Yahweh of hosts. So, the King of Israel, the King of Israel, the King is Yahweh. Israel is his kingdom.

At least, in Isaiah's day, that was so. However, there is reference to a future king that would be born who would be God. God, who was not incarnate in the Old Testament and was their king, would become their king incarnated as a human being.

And the reference to him being born as a baby is, of course, significant. Because Israel, as Isaiah testifies, already had a king. God.

Yahweh is the king. So, what do we need another king to be born for? Well, in a sense, he's not another king. In a sense, he's the same king taking on a new appearance.

In verse 6 of chapter 9. Chapter 9, both verse 6 and 7. It says, for unto us a child is born, unto us a son is given, and the government will be upon his shoulder. That means he's going to bear the responsibility of rulership. He'll be the ruler.

And his name will be called Wonderful, Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace. Particularly, of course, the terms Mighty God and Everlasting Father point to to him being deity. The only Mighty God and Everlasting Father Israel would acknowledge was Yahweh.

No other gods are ever acknowledged as legitimate in the book of Isaiah. In fact, it is one of the most emphatic messages of Isaiah that these other gods people worship are not gods at all. Because there's only one God.

God says, is there any other God besides me? I don't know any. So, here's a Mighty God. Can't be any god other than Yahweh, because there are no mighty gods other than Yahweh.

And then he clarifies it. The Everlasting Father, that kind of seals the deal. It can't be someone else.

It is Yahweh. And this child is Yahweh, apparently. And it says in verse 7, of the increase of his government and peace, there will be no end.

That is, his government will increase perpetually. Unless increase refers to prosperity and national product. It's possible that increase could refer to the prosperity and peace of the government.

And that would be fitting, too. But we do know that his kingdom does increase. There will be no end.

Upon the throne of David, sort of the Davidic idea here. And over his kingdom, to order it and establish it with judgment and justice. From that time forward, even forever, the zeal of the Lord of hosts will perform this.

So we see many of the features of the Kingdom Age prophecies here. We've got peace, which is a primary recurring theme. We've got justice, a primary theme.

We've got the eternal duration, as is mentioned here, as in many other places. So this child who is born is to be the king. But this is not a transfer of kingship from Yahweh to somebody else.

This is Yahweh coming as a human being to dwell and rule among the people. Of course, Isaiah 7.14 also speaks of this child. Though it is not the case that chapter 7 mentions him being the king.

In fact, the prophecy in Isaiah 7.14 is sufficiently ambiguous that it makes it possible for it to be fulfilled in Isaiah's own son, who is in no sense a king. As we see in chapter 8, many of the things are said about Isaiah's son that are prophesied in chapter 7.14 and following. We'll have more to say about this as we go through verse by verse.

We'll have to deal with the prophecy about the virgin bearing a son. But the point is, we Christians recognize this is talking about Jesus. And therefore, there are two times that Jesus' birth are mentioned in Isaiah.

In Isaiah 9.6, clearly the Messiah, all Israel would have to acknowledge that. Isaiah 7.14, less likely to be acknowledged by anyone other than Christians. But still, true, still we are Christians.

I have some cross-references in your notes. You say, why aren't you going to those? I'm going to go to those when we actually go through Isaiah 7, rather than now. It would detain us too much.

The Messiah would be David's seed on David's throne. We just read that in chapter 9, verse 7, upon the throne of David. But there's other references to David's throne.

The king would be David's seed, according to chapter 11, verse 1. It says, there shall come forth a rod from the stem of Jesse. That's David's father. And a branch shall grow out of his roots.

Although it only mentions Jesse in this case, nonetheless, of course, David's nickname often referred to as the son of Jesse. That's obviously a reference to David's line here, although it's David's father mentioned. Also in verse 10, in that day there shall be a root of Jesse, who shall stand as a banner for the people.

The Messiah is in view. And, of course, that he is from David is what is suggested. Lots of things in the Bible suggest that the Messiah would be from David.

It goes all the way back to 2 Samuel, chapter 7, where the prophet Nathan told David, in verse 12, that when you have died, when you're asleep with your fathers, the Lord will raise up one of your seed out of your body to sit on your throne after you. And he goes on to say, I'm going to establish his throne forever. There's a sense in which the prophecy seems to have fulfillment in Solomon, but it is quoted in the book of Hebrews as if it's about Christ.

Solomon being apparently a type of Christ, as the son of David who rules after him. So, again, David's the ruler. David's son is the ruler.

In Matthew 1.1, Matthew introduces Jesus as the son of David, the son of Abraham. That's basically how he calls him. And there are numerous other places that mention that Jesus occupies the position of David's son on David's throne.

We won't look at those right now. There's too many to go to at the moment. Chapter 16 of Isaiah, and verse 5 says, In mercy the throne will be established, and one will sit in truth in the tabernacle of David.

Now, judging and seeking justice and hasting righteousness. This justice, this just rule of one sitting on David's throne is again mentioned. That's the Messiah, but what's the tabernacle of David? This term is used in one other place, and that's in Amos chapter 9, where God says, After this I will return and restore and rebuild the tabernacle of David, which has fallen down.

What is the tabernacle of David? Many Christians who do not read the scripture in context, and especially who do not have much concept of what the prophets are talking about at all, they read the prophets anyway, to their own detriment usually, because they are looking for verses which taken out of context give an impression, and then they run with it. And when they read about God restoring the tabernacle of David, a very popular teaching today, in especially charismatic circles, is that in the last days God is to restore the tabernacle of David. What is the tabernacle of David? Well, their best guess is that it is distinct from the tabernacle of Moses, or else it would be called the tabernacle of Moses.

It's the tabernacle of David. Well, what tabernacle did David ever build? Well, when he brought the Ark of the Covenant to Jerusalem, he put it under a tent. It was not like the tabernacle of Moses.

It was just a protection against the weather. He put a covering, a tent, over the Ark in Jerusalem, and then he established a form of worship there that included singers and musicians who actually were priests who had musical talent, and they were organized into 24 courses, and they would take turns singing and worshiping around the Ark of the Covenant at the tabernacle that covered it day and night. So it was continual musical worship around the Ark of the Covenant, which was housed under this tent or tabernacle.

Now, the popular teaching is this. Apparently, the tabernacle of David is distinguished from the tabernacle of Moses in that although both of them housed the Ark, one was the worship was conducted through animal sacrifices, the tabernacle of Moses. But the tabernacle of David, the worship was singing and music.

So when Amos says that God will restore the tabernacle of David, there's a whole movement, books about this and all that kind of stuff. God's going to restore the tabernacle of David. Therefore, that means the musical worship has got to have to be restored.

As you can imagine, people who produce worship music for sale are great promoters of this doctrine. And that, therefore, is a feature of the last days is God's going to really emphasize the musical aspects of worship because that's what David introduced that Moses did not. And that's the only thing they can think of that resembles the idea of a tabernacle of David.

They're way, way off. This has nothing to do with the tent that David put over the Ark of the Covenant. That's not what is referred to as the tabernacle of David.

The word tabernacle, sukkoth in the Hebrew, it's the same word they use for the feast of tabernacles. Or you might know if you know any Jews, they call it the feast of booths. A booth, a sukkoth can be a tent or any other kind of shelter that's makeshift and movable.

Other than like a solid building. At the feast of sukkoth or tabernacles or booths, the children of Israel would go to Jerusalem and they'd make like lean twos out of branches and leaves and things. And they would become temporary shelters for the family to camp out in the streets of Jerusalem for a week.

It was one of the favorite feasts for children. It was a family camp out. And they were to be remembering the time when their fathers wandered through the wilderness for 40 years, living in tabernacles, booths, tents.

So sukkoth is the feast of tabernacles. It says in Amos and here, the sukkoth of David or the booth of David. In Amos 9, it says, I will raise up again the booth of David, which has fallen down.

Now, this verse in Amos is quoted in Acts 15 by James, who quotes it as being fulfilled in Christ and in particular in the coming of Gentiles into the church. Because Amos goes on to say, when God's restored the booth of David that's fallen down, that the rest of the Gentiles may call upon his name. So James sees this prophecy as a prediction of Christ having now come and now drawing Gentiles to himself.

So God, apparently, according to James, actually did restore the booth of David in Christ. Then what is the booth of David? It is a play on words, on the more common expression of the Old Testament, the house of David, which means the dynasty of David. The kingly line of David was the house of David.

The term is even used in Isaiah. Ahaz is referred to as the house of David. Why? Ahaz was the sitting king of the house of David.

But when Amos says that the booth of David has fallen down, what he's meaning is that the dynasty of David has become utterly corrupted. Pictured as a house, it's barely worthy to be called a house anymore. The house of David is almost giving it too much credit.

It's more like a shack. The kingly line has become so corrupted and so far from anything David ever intended that we can't even speak of it with so much respect as to call it the house of David. It's the shack, the shed, the booth of David, not the house of David.

In other words, it's a reference to the Davidic dynasty, which in Amos' day had been so corrupted it was like a fallen shack, not a house. Now God says, I'm going to restore it. What's he mean? I'm going to restore the Davidic dynasty.

I'm going to restore the dignity and the character of the line of David. This is in Christ, Christ the son of David. The descendant of David is the restoration of the house of David to its proper dignity and to its proper authority.

Jesus, the king, is as good a king as David could have imagined. Certainly worthy, the most worthy representative of the house of David. But what the house of David was before Jesus came was like a shack or a shed.

In other words, the tabernacle of David is not talking about musical instruments. It's not talking about the tent that he put over the ark in Jerusalem. It's a reference to the house or dynasty of David, spoken of disparagingly because of the low state to which the house of David, the kings of David's line, had fallen in the time of Amos.

The same expression is used here. No doubt Isaiah 16.5 refers to the house of David as the tabernacle of David, because in his time, perhaps this was during the time of Ahaz that this was uttered, David's line had also been corrupted to the point where it was hardly worthy to be called the house of David, so he uses the term tabernacle of David. It's not common to find the term tabernacle of David in Scripture.

Much more common, the house of David. On a few occasions, when the dynasty of David is so bad, the prophets almost want to underscore how unworthy it is even to be regarded as a house at all. Now, the Messiah is the ideal ruler in Isaiah 32.

In Isaiah chapter 32, verses 1 and 2, it says, Behold, a king will reign in righteousness, and princes will rule with justice. A man, no doubt the king himself, will be as a hiding place from the wind, and a cover from the tempest, as rivers of water in a dry place, as the shadow of a great rock in a weary land. All these images are suggestions of, you know, this is protection.

The king is the protector of his people. It's like if his people are in a dry land where they would die of thirst, he'll be like springs of water to them. If they're in a storm where they're threatened, he's like a shelter, a rock they can hide behind, and so forth.

This is the ideal king who is the protector, not the oppressor, of his people. He's not the storm they have to hide from. You know, in the book of Proverbs, it says, When the righteous rule, the people rejoice.

When the wicked rule, people hide. It says that a couple of times in the book of Proverbs. Wicked rulers, people have to hide from the ruler.

What a ruler is supposed to do is be a protector of his people, not the one they have to hide from. He's supposed to protect them from the dangers, not be himself the danger. And in many cases, the kings in Israel and Judah were so evil and oppressive, they were the ones people had to hide from.

Like people today hide from the IRS. They, you know, they have offshore accounts and stuff. They have to hide their money because the IRS is going to rip them off.

Now some people think that those who are hiding their money from the IRS are the ones who are ripping the IRS off. Depends on whether you think the IRS is a legitimate organization or not. Whether it's constitutional or not, we won't get into that.

But suffice it to say that many people regard the IRS as an illegitimate, unconstitutional, oppressive organization, and therefore you find them going places to hide. And so when the wicked rule, Proverbs says, people hide. In this case, though, this king is not a wicked king.

They don't have to hide from him. He will hide them and protect them from the real dangers outside, like a rock, a shade from the heat and the storm and so forth. So he is the ideal ruler.

And this is how the king is described. In the following chapter, chapter 33 and verse 22, he says, For the Lord is our judge, the Lord is our lawgiver, the Lord is our king. He will save us.

So this is a king who is a protector and a savior. He's not a king who simply is on a power trip and says, I'm the king. You bow to me.

I walk over your faces to get to what I want. He's the king who saves his people, like a shepherd who cares for his sheep. And so this king is different than the kings Israel has generally known, for that matter, that any nation has usually known.

There have been good kings, both in Judah and in some secular nations. There have been good rulers. But it's not the general trend.

It is human nature that power corrupts and that people who have power over others typically exploit it to their own advantage. It's just the fallen nature of man. It's the unusual thing to find a truly virtuous, selfless leader.

That's why so many people were attracted to the character of President Palmer in the 24 series. Everyone I know who saw it said, oh, I wish you could have a president like that. A guy who's actually honest, a guy who really has some principles.

Pretty unusual to find that. You only find it in TV shows. And in the kingdom of God.

Because there we have a ruler who actually is honest and principled and cares for the people, not just for himself. So this is the beginning of our exploration of the Isianic kingdom concept. We've looked mainly at what it says about the king himself, the Messiah.

After our break, we'll come back and we'll look at some of, as many as we can, of the kingdom age passages. These are the key passages in Isaiah. I've waited this long to get to them, not because they're not important and other things are more important, but because they are the most important.

And we save them to be the highlight of this topical arrangement. So we'll look at these kingdom passages, as many of them as we can afford to with our time. And then, of course, we'll be done with the topical considerations and we'll start going through the book verse by verse.