Audio Transcript:

Welcome to Missions on Point, the Propempo perspective on church and missions.

Welcome back to Missions on Point, this is episode 233. In our current series, we are preaching about missions. We’ve already looked at the first eight books of the Bible, and today, we are going to talk about the next six, and they are all history books. I hope you have noticed as we have been thinking about what scripture says, that the best way to get to missions is through the use of Biblical Theology, understanding how each book contributes to the grand narrative of scripture. So far we have thought a lot about how the Israelite’s need for a land to dwell in centered on their need for a temple where they would worship God. Their flocks and produce would supply the large need for sacrifices. The Levitical Priesthood was certainly limited to a fixed location, and thus the worship of God did not encompass the earth. Yet, the once for all sacrifice and mediatorial ministry of Jesus our Great High Priest enables those who worship him to go into all the world. The contrast of the Old Covenant to the New Covenant has missions stamped all over it.

Today, as we consider the books of 1 & 2 Samuel, 1 & 2 Kings, and 1 & 2 Chronicles, we will take the same approach. Just like the priesthood of Jesus empowers missions, so does the kingship of Jesus. Whereas the Old Testament shows us the need for the church to do global evangelization, the New Testament reality that we now live in shows us how the church fulfills the Great Commission. And there’s no better way to do that than to see Jesus as our risen king, now as head of the church, leading his kingdom of priests into all the world. Of course, we’ve already seen the need for a king in previous books. Deuteronomy gave us the job description of the king. The book of Judges showed us that the people need a godly king who would lead the people of God in faithfully keeping his covenant. And the book of Ruth showed us God’s gracious work in the future king’s ancestors.

Now when we get to 1 Samuel, we do not start the story with the ancestral lineage of the future Messiah, we instead start with the prophet who anoints him, and then the rejected worldly-minded king that the nation wanted instead. It’s a story full of opposites, as the rise of Samuel is contrasted with the pathetic priesthood of Eli and his two worthless sons. And the emphasis is on the people rejecting God as their king, and God rejecting the king that these worldly-minded people wanted. Chapter 8 verse 7 catches the mood well, saying, “And the LORD said to Samuel, “Obey the voice of the people in all that they say to you, for they have not rejected you, but they have rejected me from being king over them.” Before bringing about the kind of king that the people needed, he judged the people by giving them the kind of king that they wanted, one just like the nations of the world. The Israelites needed a godly king, and they were not to envy and become like all the other nations. So too, in missions today, the nations need a godly king over them, and we are not to envy them or become like them. The kingdoms of this world are first rejected. The only hope for all people is in God’s anointed king. With this paradigm of contrasts established, I’ll give you six ways that God’s true king is contrasted with the rejection of the kingdoms of this world. Each of these contrasts emphasize how King Jesus is the hope of all nations, and not just Israel.

1. Number one, God’s king brings a permanent dwelling of God with man. One interesting feature of 1 Samuel is that the ark of the Lord does not have a resting place until David establishes the city where the temple would be built. We know that the final dwelling place of God with man does not come until the new heavens and earth. So even today, we await a heavenly city and live as sojourners on earth. The greatest deterrent to missions is being too comfortable in the place we call home.
2. Number two. The true king is obedient to God. Saul was rejected by God twice, first, because he didn’t wait for Samuel as he offered sacrifices on his own, and second, he did not completely destroy the Amalekites. He rejected the word of God, by not honoring him as holy in worship nor in removing evil. Christians have the same objective today, to rightly worship God while keeping ourselves unstained by the world. Jesus, the obedient king, faithfully rules over all the nations that God has given him.
3. Number three. God’s king inherits the earth through meekness and humility and not by force. The second half of the book of 1 Samuel is an ever-deepening contrast between Saul and David. David is anointed, serves Saul, slays more enemies, and yet is forced to run for his life away from Saul. When he is given a chance to take matters into his own hands, he does not touch God’s anointed one. And this is an apt analogy for Christians as they think about the kingdoms of this world. We have an anointed king already, yet we do not enthrone him by force. We patiently serve the worldly kings we live under and trust that they are God’s appointed rulers for a time and that God will overthrow them when he wants to. As you’re beginning to see, missions is critically impacted by how we understand God’s kingdom having already come in Jesus Christ, and how we relate Christ’s kingdom to the kindgoms of this world. The nations of this world often feel threatened by Jesus as king and they are sometimes explicitly opposed to the idea. In contrast to the hostility of the world, the methodology of missions is meekness which inherits the earth.
4. Number four. God’s righteous king ruling over all people appeals to everyone currently living under a wicked ruler. As we turn to the book of 2 Samuel, the character of David takes center stage. David is found mourning the death of his enemies, Saul, his commander Abner, and Ish-bosheth. David is a compassionate shepherd of God’s people. He established Jerusalem as Zion, the one mountain where God is to be worshipped. And God established a covenant with David to enthrone his offspring forever. David has compassion on Jonathan’s crippled son, Mephibosheth. He wins a long victory against Ammon, yet his great error is in the matter with Bathsheba and Nathan the prophet says, “you are the man.” David is a model of the kind of king we need, yet he is flawed and a man of war. The second half of the book is a depressing account of court intrigue, with much of it seeing David running away from his son Absalom. It’s marked by conspiracy, rebellion, and deception. As great as David was, his people are not at peace, especially not even his own son is following him. And on top of it all, David takes a census, bringing 3 days of pestilence and the death of 70,000 people. A godly king is a precious gift from God, but the true king must be sinless to always do what is best for his people. No matter what people group we are talking to, the flaws of their leaders will lead them to want something better. All people long for a righteous king. The book of 1 Chronicles gives another retelling of these events, highlighting how important it is that God’s king be righteous.
5. Number five. God’s king leads his people to repentance and the restoration of every brokenness. After the books of 1 & 2 Samuel and 1 Chronicles, the books of 1 & 2 Kings, with the companion account in 2 Chronicles, give to us the history of the kings that followed after David. Beginning with the reign of Solomon, the wise and wealthy king who builds a temple for God and establishes the largest, most peaceful time in all of Israel’s history. Yet he, too, sinned by proliferating wives and wealth and enslaving many of his own people in hard labor. After Solomon, the kingdom is divided with Judah in the south and Jeroboam leading the 10 tribes of Israel in the north to forsake God and worship at a false altar. As long as sin and death reign in the world, our lives are marked by the curse of false worship and division. Every king in the north is evil and follows in Jeroboam’s sin. The disunity between Israel and Judah is founded on a devotion to false worship. Occasionally kings in the south are good, like Jehosophat, Hezekiah, and Josiah. But the story of the divided kingdom is one of gradual decline, and God’s longsuffering with his people, calling out every day for them to repent, warning them of the consequence of breaking the covenant: exile from the land. The call to repentance is clear in these stories with the weaving in of the prophets Elijah and Elisha. God has not forsaken his people, because of his promises to David’s line. Anyone reading these stories should be astounded at God’s patience. God’s kindness to Israel should lead us to repentance, humbled that those who were not God’s people have been adopted into his family. God’s king does not just reunite the divided kingdom of Israel and Judah, he reunites the entire earth in peace.
6. Number 6. God’s king is the eternal king. For this point, we recall perhaps the most important passage for the remainder of the Old Testament, 2 Samuel chapter 7 is God’s promise to David to establish the king from his line on God’s throne forever. The eternal nature of this promise is what makes this promise appealing to Gentiles. Regardless of your opinion about the future of national Israel, and even if Jesus should reign on a physical throne for a thousand years, the appeal of global missions is that Jesus will be king over people from every nation for all of eternity. The downward progression of the end of the books of 2 Kings and 2 Chronicles helps to make this point. By the time we get to the end of this history of Israel and Judah, the hardhearted unrepentance of the nation catches up with them. God is patient and longsuffering, but his promised consequences are still sure to come on the unrepentant. The great shock that came on the nationalistic people of Israel and Judah who thought that they would never be exiled is that they misunderstood God’s promises. The people thought that since they were descendants of Abraham and had the promise to David about an eternal throne that their kingdom would never be destroyed. The exile and the end of a king from David’s line sitting on the throne in Israel is proof that God had so much more in mind than simply a group of people living in this particular tract of land. Unfortunately for the people of Israel who returned from exile, to whom Jesus came preaching about his kingdom, they still had this very limited idea in mind. They couldn’t imagine any requirement more than being a physical descendant of Abraham in order to be in David’s eternal kingdom. Yet, Jesus promised that if needed, God could raise up children of Abraham from the stones. And this is the hope of the Gentiles, and the reason for missions today. Jesus is gathering a people for himself from every nation to be king forever over them. All other kingdoms of this world, including the nation of Israel, are temporary kingdoms. In Christ there is no more Jew or Gentile.

As always, there is more we could say. And as you preach from these history books, I am sure you will draw out more points that lead us to the application of global missions. But, I hope these few points have given you an example of how the deficiencies of the old covenant kingdom give us reason to rejoice as Gentiles are included in the new covenant kingdom.

Thanks for joining us today on Missions on Point. We trust that you'll find more help and resources on our websites at Propempo.com and missioserve.org. We are so thankful for those who support us, enabling us to produce this podcast. Now to God be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus forever and ever. Amen.