Welcome to the Plenteous Redemption podcast, where the cross and the culture are on a collision course for discussion. For the preaching of the cross is to them that perish foolishness, but unto us which are saved it is the power of God. For it is written, I will destroy the wisdom of the wise and will bring to nothing the understanding of the prudent. Where is the wise? Where is the scribe? Where is the disputer of this world? Hath not God made foolish the wisdom of this world? For after that in the wisdom of God the world by wisdom knew not God, it pleased God by the foolishness of preaching to save them that believe. For the Jews require a sign The Greeks seek after wisdom, but we preach Christ crucified. Under the Jews, a stumbling block. Under the Greeks, foolishness. But under them which are called both Jews and Greeks, Christ, the power of God and the wisdom of God. Now, here's your host, Thomas Ervin. All right now to introduce you to the idea and this is what we're going to do probably the first couple of Monday nights is is really try and lay a foundation and introduce you to the ideas surrounding the kingdom of heaven and the kingdom of God. Now what's interesting about the Bible is that if a man could take this book and it's a big book that the whole Bible and if I could teach you all of it in context tonight. Anybody want to stick around for that? No? Miss Pat's the only one willing to speak. No, I'm going home. Everybody else respectfully looks at me like, please don't. But if I could do that, if I had the ability to do that, do you know what the context would be? It would be a kingdom. All through the Bible, the dominant subject in the entire Bible is that of a kingdom, not your salvation, not even Jesus. Now, that is obviously the purpose of the Bible. What we learn in the Bible will all point us to Jesus Christ, and you'll find the Lord Jesus Christ, you should be able to find him on every page of the Bible. So I'm not, don't get me wrong, don't take that the wrong way. We're talking about context. You set the Lord himself aside for a moment. What would be the dominant context of the Bible? It would be a kingdom. That's what God wants. God wants on Earth a kingdom over which he reigns and he wants people in that kingdom to voluntarily subject themselves to him. Guess what? He's never had. He's never had a kingdom over which he's able to reign and populated by people who will subject themselves to him. Now, the temporary measure to that is the church. The church is not a kingdom. Jesus is not said to be the king of the church. He's not our king per se. Now, we recognize him as a king because he is a king. But very specifically, the Bible says he is the king of the Jews. He is king over the nation of Israel. The Bible talks about God being king over all the earth. So that's God's desire. But ultimately, he is the king of the Jews. As the church, he's our master. He's our savior. He's many things to us, but he's never in the Bible said to be our king. In fact, he made us kings, and we will rule and reign alongside him because we trusted in him. I'm telling you, what God has given to the church is a very unique and very special situation that no other people throughout history has ever had the opportunity to be part of. But God wants a kingdom, and we're going to start in Genesis chapter 1 to introduce that idea, but I'm going to read a few introductory notes, and then we'll get to Genesis 1. So first we want to recognize this is a complex subject. It's not easy. It's not something to just breeze over it can get as in-depth as you as you want it to be. And then of course there are some some shallow level some some surface level ideas that if you just had those it would help you in your understanding of the Bible when you teach on something like the kingdom of heaven versus the kingdom of God. the camp you would put that in is the rightly dividing camp or the idea the system of teaching and I've told you before I have a dispensational approach to the Bible and all that all that boils down to all that means is that that you make a valid attempt to rightly divide the word of truth. So that means when you study any passage of the Bible Before you go applying it to the people sitting in front of you, you need to make sure to properly divide that passage and put it and teach it in its context. If you don't, you end up teaching people that if they send you their seed faith gift, that you might heal them. Well, how do people get tricked into that? They have no understanding of where those ideas belong in the Bible. Why don't we go out back and build an ark? Well, God didn't tell us to do that. Right? So our salvation is not going to come through building a boat and hoping God sends rain and we're ready to get on the boat. Well, that's not going to... This is Mississippi. It rains a lot and you don't need a boat. It's just not going to happen. That's not the point. It's not the purpose. It has no relationship to salvation whatsoever. It did it one time. to certain people. And so anytime you're going to teach something you've got to have you got to put it in its proper place. And I'm telling you when you learn to put a passage of scripture in its place, it makes the Bible come alive. It's it just all starts falling into place and make sense and it becomes so enjoyable. And the opposite of that is when men have a soapbox or they teach you the Bible out of context. People love it. They're like, man, that sounded great, but I don't understand it. Well, there's a reason. The reason you don't understand it is because it made no sense. It doesn't fit in that passage. I told you before about a man who preached out a Song of Solomon about the Garden of Nuts. And he said, in order to be an independent Baptist, you have to be a little bit crazy. Those two ideas have nothing to do with each other. But here's the bad part. It's bad that he preached that. And he did. But it is what it is. You know what's worse? Several people in that congregation came up to me afterwards and said, man, I've never seen that there before. There's a reason. The passage is talking about a literal garden of literal nuts. Not crazy people. The food. All right, so there's no relationship there. Now, God used that man, and God blessed that night, and the service went great, and so it's hard to, you don't want to be that guy saying, well, that was stupid. It made no sense on a night when everybody was blessed by the preaching and God. Well, that should encourage you, because what that lets me know is that, man, I can, I have a lot of leeway to mess things up, and God can still use it. but we want to try not to mess things up. And so it's not something to be taken lightly. It's a very serious and complex subject that we want to dive into. It's my desire and my hope that this study will contribute to clarity and not add to confusion. Now sometimes Sometimes the complexity is just difficult to break down in an understandable way. And that's not a lack on your part. It's up to my ability to be able to take this information and disseminate it in a way that's understandable. Sometimes the person who has the information in his head gets in the way of disseminating the information. And so I will. try not to do that, but I can't guarantee that won't happen. My input on this matter is not the final authority, nor will it compare to the great men of God used in the past to teach these ideas. And if you've never read the books of Clarence Larkin or August van Ryn, these are unbelievable, just incredible books that every Christian should just sit down and waste hours sifting through, especially the drawings and the writings of Clarence Larkin. They're incredible. That man was an architect. back in a day when as an architect you had to hand draw everything and got saved and then began to use that talent he would go through primarily the book of Matthew. So you have to be careful with some of his stuff because he relied heavily on the book of Matthew only and so Some of the ideas don't have the full context because they don't have the other passages involved, but it's still great. And there's still a lot there to learn from and that is in context and is unbelievably helpful. But he took his talents as an architect and began to use his ability to draft out drawings to make these graphs and charts and things that try to put the Bible and prophetic events in chronological order, and man, it's amazing to see. And it shows you how several things, and this is what you miss sometimes, studying a single passage, you missed that five or six other prophecies might be running at the same time as the one you're looking at. And so when you look at the drawings and things of Clarence Larkin, you get to see all that at scale and it just blows your mind. It's incredible to see and to study and to look at and I have I think it's the 100-year anniversary edition, the larger copy of Dispensational Truth. I wish I had one that was about this big, that was like 36 by 36 or something like that. If somebody knew how to do that, I would be greatly indebted to them if they could make that happen. So anyone listening to this, if you want to do it, feel free. Go for it. All right, now, again, I do hope that this will challenge you, and I hope that it will Excite you to want to dig deeper in your Bible, you know, so why go into a topic like this? Well, first of all, it's fun. It's foundational. It's fundamental and it's unbelievably neglected in most churches you go into most churches. They will tell you that the kingdom of heaven in the kingdom of God or the exact same thing. They have no idea that there there there are unbelievable differences between the two and making the mistake of combining the two is going to end. It's going to result in confusion. They don't even know that there's a difference between them. They just kind of lump them together and even many commentaries. You read commentaries and they quote ideas about the kingdom of heaven and the kingdom of God without noting any separation between the two. They just... assume that they're the same thing. Well, that's a terrible mistake. It's a big mistake, and it's going to result in confusion. They are not the same thing. There are some similarities between them, but they are not the same. There are some similarities between us, and there are some striking differences. We're not the same. All right, so it's important to be able to distinguish between them. Now, unfortunately, a great deal of misunderstanding surrounds these two kingdoms, and we don't want to contribute to that. The idea of a kingdom may well be the dominant topic in the Bible. And other than the Lord himself, the term kingdom, when used in the context of the kingdom of God and kingdom of heaven, appears around 125 times in the New Testament. That's a lot. I don't know, of course there are some terms and some words that will come up more than that or less than that, but anytime God uses an idea like that 125 times in just a few books, it's important. It's worth looking into. Now, a study of the term would demonstrate that God's preferred form of government is that of a monarchy. Boo! We are republic-loving Americans. We have a constitution and rights. Well now I praise the Lord for that. I'm thankful for that. I think it's been a blessing and in a world in a world where where evil man and seducers shall wax worse and worse. It's a blessing to have a government so dumb that it's hard for it to do anything. But I mean, we're coming to a point where it's they're able to do more and more than they're supposed to be able to do and it's becoming a problem but If I have a choice, I want to live in a country that resembles a republic and that affords me freedoms and leaves me alone. And we've had that for a long time. It's going away. It's probably more gone than we would like to admit. But we're still doing pretty good compared to the rest of the world. So that's the hard part. We look back at what we had and we say, no, we want that. But it's not here anymore. And then because we're looking back at what we had as a country compared to where we are now, we get frustrated because they're not comparable. But we don't look at where we are now as compared to the rest of the world and say, well, you know, it could be a lot worse. And it is a lot better than the overwhelming majority of the world. And so we're thankful for that. But when God established a government, It was always a monarch. Now, I'm okay with that because God knows what he's doing and I don't. And as long as the monarch agrees with my politics, then everything goes well. That's not how a monarch works. He's the king. He does what he wants. Where are the checks and balances? He is the checks and balances. That's it. There's no one else. There's nothing else. Now, throughout history, there have been some great kings. If you've never read about King Alfred, you should. He's an incredible man. He was a king over, I guess you would call it, I don't know if they called it England at the time. I don't recall. I don't remember. It's been a long time since I've read much about him. But he gave his country the scriptures. If I recall correctly, he translated them so that his country could have them. I mean, that's the kind of king you want. That's the kind of man you want in charge. Unfortunately, that's rare. In fact, I don't know of another king in history who did that. Now, you go back into Israel's history, and you have kings like Hezekiah and Josiah and those type men, and they were incredible. And we'll talk about them a little bit, but it's so rare. Today, we got to pick a president and vote for him. And so you want a man that fears God and loves the Bible. Well, where's that man at? He's not there. If he is, he ain't going anywhere near the presidency. It's just not going to happen. And so we try to do the best we can with what we have. But when God set up a kingdom or a government, every time he picked a man, you're in charge. And that's what he established every time. And his hope was that that man would follow him, that the kingdom would be governed by a man who was governed by God. And I guess that power is just too overwhelming. Why be governed by God when I have all this control and I can kind of do what I want? And so it usually did not end well. Now, I am thankful to have had the type of country that we grew up in, but that's not how God would do it. In fact, if you, and I don't wanna get too far ahead of myself, and some of this is gonna be, as we go through, some of it will be repetitive, and it's in part by design, and it's also in part because it's just impossible not to be repetitive when trying to tie all these ideas together and bring it all to the forefront. Now, when God made man, he gave man dominion over the earth. That'd be your first attempt at what you could call a kingdom. God made man and woman, put them in the garden, told them to be fruitful, and replenish the earth, which is an interesting thing to say. Indicates that it had been plenished before. now I want you to replenish." And so, it's just food for thought. And so, God intended for man to reign over the kingdom of heaven under submission to God. Now, look at Genesis chapter 1, and let's read verse 26, probably a verse most of you have memorized. And God said, let us, let us, well, who's us? Father, Word, Holy Spirit. All right, these three are one. 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, what? All of it. God gave man that level of dominion and over every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth, even the bugs. So when I smash a bug, don't cry. I had dominion. He was subject to me and I didn't feel like he was okay to live. When you got to send a pig off to become food. I have dominion. We have dominion. I mean, I don't have pigs, but I know a man and a woman. And so God made man, put him in the garden, gave him one law to live by, and expected that man to be in fellowship with God, governed by God, and have this special relationship with God as he governed the earth. Well, it didn't go well. And in your Bible, you will often find the words dominion, king, and kingdom together. They have a very tight relationship in the Bible, especially in the book of Daniel, where you read a lot about several kingdoms. And you're going to read, it's used almost interchangeably, the kingdom and dominion, the king and dominion. They're often used together. They have a tight relationship. They are tied together. Now, when Adam sinned against God, we look at that in terms of, well, now we are in sin because Adam sinned, and that is true. But we're looking at it in the context of our situation, and our situation has little to do with the kingdom. Now we become part of the kingdom of God when we trust in Jesus Christ, but that's just kind of a side note to us. All we're worried about is I've trusted in Jesus. My sins are forgiven. I'm going to heaven and that becomes our main focus and for good reason. That's not a criticism. That's just kind of Your mind goes in the direction of the stuff that applies to you. And what applies to you in the Bible is that Christ died for your sins and was buried and rose again the third day. And if I will trust that, then I get to have my sins forgiven and I get to go be with Jesus when I die. And that that becomes dominant in our churches. And again, for good reason. But when Adam sinned against God, far more happened than him transferring his sin to us. Romans 5 says that, you know, for as by one man, sin entered into the world and death by sin. So Eve tricked Adam, so we'll blame the woman, all right, which Adam tried that and it didn't work out well. The woman thou gavest to be with me, you know what God said to him? Because thou hast hearkened unto the voice of the woman. But you gave me this woman. I told you to teach her. I did not tell her to teach you. You were responsible to lead her and she led you right up to the tree and gave you the exact fruit I told you not to eat. And what'd you do? You bit right into it like something had changed. And so you can blame women all you want, and God's going to turn right back around to men and say, I gave you the responsibility. And men like to boast about that position that they have, but they better really think through the responsibility and the accountability that is going to come with the place that God has given them. It's nothing to toy with. It's nothing you want to take lightly. But when Adam sinned, and going back to Romans 5, for as by one man sin entered into the world, God said sin started with Adam. Yeah, but Eve ate the fruit first. Sin started with Adam. And then Adam passed it on to his son who passed it on to his son. And so as for as by one man sin entered into the world and death by sin and death passed upon all men for that all have sinned. So it just it just carries on generation to generation. Now. Why did Jesus why was Jesus born of a virgin? Because sin is passed on from the man not the woman. And so Christ comes into the world born of a woman, not of a man. And he escapes that sinful nature. And it's almost like a reset where he gets to make the decision without the hindrance of a sinful nature. And throughout his entire life, he chose not to sin. That's what Adam was supposed to do. That's why Jesus is called the last Adam. He came and did what God expected Adam to do. Now, but here's back to the context of a kingdom. When Adam sinned against God, he turned that dominion over to the one who tempted him to sin. He gave that Dominion to Satan. That's why Satan is now called the God of this world. He he will read it eventually in our notes when we get to it, but he tempted Jesus Christ and he said he said he showed him all the kingdoms of the world and he said these are mine and I can give them to whoever I want and Jesus didn't say you're a liar. It was true. Satan is over the kingdoms that people say, well, God's in control of this world. No, he's not. If God was in control of this world, it would be ruled and reigned in righteousness. You can't say God's in control of a world where women are being violated. Children are being violated. People are being murdered, stolen from, robbed. Homosexuals dress up like Jesus and march naked through the streets. Are you going to tell me God's in control of that? He will be. So you have that liberty now. Enjoy it while you can. It comes with terrible consequences in the end. Now it's all fun and games right now. They enjoy getting a rise out of Christians because it makes them cringe and it should make you cringe, should make you angry. But a day of reconciliation is coming. And man, it's going to be rough on that day for those people if you don't trust in Jesus Christ before that time comes. Now, obedience to God comes with blessings from God, and willingness to be governed by God comes with blessings from God. And this is what, I heard a sermon once where a man preached about Christ being a prince. And he talked about how people complain about how God is not able to have his way in the kingdoms of this world. And he asked those people, how come God can't have his way in your life? Why are you worried about the kingdoms of this world and how wicked they are? What did you do today? Where did you go today? Those thoughts that ran through your head, did Jesus Christ get to govern those thoughts today? Those words that came out of your mouth, would they be approved by the Lord Jesus Christ? How'd you do today right now? I would like to see the kingdoms of this world governed by God. That would be great. I would also like to see you and me governed by God. Now, that's the difference between the kingdom of heaven and the kingdom of God. Once you get placed in the kingdom of God. Now, the question is are you going to let God govern you? In the midst of a kingdom we know is governed by Satan, based on the word of God, and based on the characteristics of the kingdom, you look around this world, there's no... you'd be hard-pressed to find a touch of God anywhere in this world. It's wicked. In fact, it's called this present evil world in the Bible. Now, God doesn't have control over that yet, He's got plans for that and they will come. He said the zeal of the Lord will perform it. He is going to take over this world and establish his kingdom and rule and reign in righteousness. We're not there yet. But why can't you be governed by God now? That's a choice that you get to make on a daily basis. And that's really the more important question. Is all of this important? Absolutely. You want to understand the Bible and you want to lay things out properly and gain a more in-depth knowledge of the Word of God? This is extremely important. You should know this. But if you learn all this information and you are not governed by the Holy Spirit of God, you're just going to be a puffed up devil in Jesus' name. That's not going to help. and we don't want to be that way either. So Adam sinned against God and turned dominion over to Satan and Satan has had it since. God has made multiple attempts to move it back into man's hands and man just, man is a mess. What is man that thou art mindful of us? Why in the world do you put up with it? and praise the Lord that he does. He's long-suffering. Now, eventually, God separated a man named Abraham. All right, so we go from Genesis 1 to God gave man dominion, gave him a few rules. Genesis 2, he summarizes what happened. He restates that man should not eat from that tree. Genesis 3, man has eaten from the tree. Didn't make it long at all. I mean, we have no idea, no concept of the time, but my guess is it wasn't very long. It probably was not very long at all, and man is in trouble. Oh, Adam, where art thou? Hiding from you? Well, why? I'm naked. And so he separated Abraham. So we go to Genesis 12. We get all the way to Genesis 12 and God separates Abraham and his desire was to create a nation that would be governed by God. So here we go again. All right. I created Adam. Adam failed. So I destroyed the entire earth, Genesis 5, 6, 7, and 8, and destroyed the entire earth with a flood, but Noah found grace in my eyes, so I'm going to start over with Noah. Noah gets off the boat, steps out on the land, and God told Noah the same thing he told Adam. Isn't that interesting? Adam, be fruitful, replenish the earth. replenish. Then we get to Noah. God has destroyed the world with a flood, killed everyone except for Noah and his family. They get off the boat and God says, Noah, replenish the earth. All right, we're starting over with you. Five minutes later, Noah's drunk, naked in his tent. It's like Well, that's great as to curse his son because his son saw him naked and went and come see this. No, don't don't you don't want to do that. And so God was hoping to rule over Israel and for a time he did even though Abraham so God calls out Abraham separates Abraham Abraham believe God it was counted unto him for righteousness. Abraham was called the friend of God and yet Abraham was constantly in trouble. constantly doing something foolish. Then his sons come along, and man, they were a mess. And so then we finally get all the way down, and God's going to rule over this nation himself, but eventually they wanted a man to be their king. And why? What was their reasoning for a man to be their king? The other nations. Why are you looking at the other nations? They're supposed to look to you. Well, we want to be like them. That's not how it was supposed to work. They were supposed to look at Israel and say, look at that shining light on the hill. We want to be like that. We want to know who their God is. I mean, what is this? And instead, they were looking at the nation saying, we want to be like that. We want to throw our babies in the fire as well. We want golden calves and altars to false gods. God said, it never came into my mind that you would do something like that, which is amazing to hear from God. God's dominion over them was not sufficient for them, just as it was not sufficient for Adam and Eve. Until Israel was given a king, God ruled Israel through men like Moses, Joshua, and so on. Now, by the days of the judges, Israel was a complete mess. Every man did that which was right in his own eyes, and there was no king in Israel. And God is just frustrated with the whole thing. He has to raise up a judge to keep them from being completely destroyed. And occasionally it would work. And then you had judges like, I mean, Samson, that's your judge, a man that murders people with the jawbone of an ass, marries women he's not supposed to marry, he's not supposed to be around a dead carcass, and he's eating honey out of the dead carcass of a lion. Just a complete mess and complete rebellion to God, and that's their hope. Now, when Samuel comes along, the nation has already abandoned God, and so why not make things worse through human leadership? Israel, jealous of their Gentile nations, go against God's counsel and demand that he give them a king. We want a king. Look at 1 Samuel chapter 8. 1 Samuel 8. Look at verse 7, and the Lord 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. What they say in Jesus' day, we will not have this man to reign over us. What they say to God way back then, we will not have you to reign over us. Well, that's a bit of a problem. Look at chapter 12. Chapter 12 and verse 12. Verse 12. And when you saw that Nahash, the king of the children of Ammon, came against you, you said unto me, Nay, but a king shall reign over us when the Lord your God was, was your king. What better king could you have? When I said, you know, I don't mind having a king as long as I agree with his politics. Well, it's hard to disagree with God. It's hard to disagree. You know, the best of politicians, there are a few that are okay. Not many, but a few. You still don't agree with them 100% of the time. What if you had a God that every time you disagreed with him or didn't like his policies, it was because you're wrong? Every time. You're not going to have God as your king and say, well, you know, he does all right, but I disagree with a few things he chose to do. I mean, you can say that, but you're just openly admitting that you don't have a clue what you're talking about. He's always right. He's always good. He's righteous. He's holy. He knows what he's doing. You don't. And so, what a blessing it'd be to have a king of that sort. And one day we will. One day we will rule and reign with Jesus Christ. But we're a long way from that. God warned them, a king is going to take your sons. He's going to take your daughters. He's going to take your money. He's going to take your land. But they didn't listen. Now, three kings reigned over a united Israel. The nation of Israel all together, it lasted for three kings. If you include God, four. Kings raced up among men, three. That's as far as they made it. I mean, that's not a very good track record. I have a brother today on the way here. I had a long conversation with him on the phone. He's the pastor of a church, and he just became the pastor of the church not long ago. And there are a group of people in the church who are conspiring against him and causing all sorts of really horrendous trouble for him. And he told me, This church has been around since the 1970s, and they've had a new pastor every three years since 1971, 1972. A new pastor every three years. I said, brother, it sounds to me like you're trying to tread water. You're trying to toss water off a sinking ship. I just don't know that this is going to work out. And he wanted to hear some advice. And I was like, well, I have about as much experience pastoring as you do. I'll tell you what I think. But you have no obligation to follow it. And I'm sure you have far more wise men than me to listen to. I said, what I would do is I would make a list. And he's got a long list of things these men have done behind everyone's back. to deliberately try and sow discord and ruin his pastorate there. I said, I would just take it to the church on a Sunday morning in front of everybody. I would say, this is what's happened behind your back. I'd be nice. I'd be kind. I wouldn't be rude. I said, I just want to let you know this is what's going on. Now, what I need to know from you as a congregation, do you want me here or not? If you want me to be here, praise the Lord, I'm happy to stay. If you don't want me to be here, then I need to know so I can go because this is not going to continue. And I'm telling you that. the reception we have had here, it has been a tremendous blessing. You have no idea what you're coming into when you do something like this, come and take over a church like this. And I know too many men who have done this and it went horrible because people in the church All excited, it's like I talked about Sunday, you know, you get a husband and wife, and during the dating, it's all excited. You know, they're wonderful, they're perfect. It's the woman of my dreams, the man of my dreams. Six months into the marriage, it's like, I didn't know it was going to be like this. You should have asked. You should have clarified. Now you've committed to it, and God expects you to follow through. And they get all excited, they get this young new pastor, and he comes in, and now, granted, he's a little zealous. probably a little brash, a little hard to take at times. And we had to talk about that. There are a few things that you might want to soften up on, not because you're compromised, but because if you want to lead the church, you've got to bring them around to your leadership. And the way I always explain it, these people have had no light. They've had no Bible teaching. It's a really shallow group of people that Maybe they love the Lord, but they've never they've not had any real Bible teaching and then he comes in and he's unloading on them with the Bible and I was like what you just did was you took a man who's been sitting in the dark for two years and you put a flashlight right in his eyes and they're like Wait a minute. So maybe back off that a little bit. Find out if they want you to stay here. If they want you to stay, then maybe space out some of the teaching. Go a little slower pace and try to help bring them along. It's going to be a long-term thing. And so Israel made it three kings. That's not good. I can't tell you how many churches, they reach out to men and say, hey, would you come be our pastor? And he says, yeah, but you've got to be willing to do what I say and throw out everything you've got there. Well, we're not doing that. Well, what you've been doing has been working great. You're sitting there with no pastor, nigh unto dead. You need to be willing to throw out what you think it doesn't work. Let somebody come in, reevaluate the situation, and lead you. And a lot of churches are not willing to do that. In fact, they will cling to what they have until the doors are shut and the building is sold. They will not let a man come in and say, I can fix this. No, you won't. You'll come in and do what we want you to do, or we won't have you. And that's just not how it works. That's Peter. Not so, Lord. come be our pastor. Just don't feel like you're going to be able to do anything when you get here." Well, why have a pastor? What's the point? And so they made it three kings, Saul, David, and Solomon. That's it. Solomon's the last king of Israel. That's amazing. You know, as a kid, you hear these stories about Saul, and you hear these stories. You ask Bethany, she knows a ton about Saul, and she knows a ton about David. I don't know about maybe Solomon. I don't know. We hadn't talked about him quite as much yet. We hadn't really got to him. But as a kid, you often hear a lot about Solomon. Well, Solomon was a disaster of a king. So was David, and then Saul. I mean it's just now David and Solomon were better than Saul and David was probably the best of the three. But your best king took another man's wife and then had him murdered. Well praise the Lord. That's what's available to you in the kingdom of heaven. You could have had God as your king, and he would have ruled you and led you in righteousness, and you would have had the blessings that come along with that. You read the book of Deuteronomy, and then it's somewhere around Deuteronomy 18 or 20. I forget exactly what chapter it is. And God, the chapter is like 65 verses long. 15 verses God says, if you obey me, I'll bless you. For 50 other verses, he says, you disobey me, this is what I'm going to do to you. And so when you look at the nation of Israel today and in Jesus time, it resembles those 50 verses. It does not resemble the first 15. It didn't have to be that way. This is what they chose right now. Now we're in the church age. All right. God has put his dealings with Israel on pause the nation. Now if if a Jew wants to trust in the death burial and resurrection of Jesus Christ, he will remove himself from from being a Jew in the flesh and be put in the body of Christ and be dealt with in accord with the church. That's where they are today. What do we do with Israel today? You preach the gospel. You try and get them in the body of Christ. That's what they need right now when the church is gone the tribulation begins God turns back to his dealings with the nation of Israel and we'll finish his dealings with them and then eventually redeem them after horrendous trouble. Now that's as far as they would make it before the nation split in two separate kingdoms. All right. So the United Nation You like that? United Nation of Israel. Let's add that moniker. The United Nations is a despot of crookedness. And so the United Nation of Israel split into two kingdoms right after Solomon. The nation fragments, and Israel, that term, Israel became the name of the kingdom in the north. And it was made up of 10 tribes. All right, so ten tribes went to the north and they became a part of the northern kingdom of Israel. You have to, I'll try my best to distinguish between Israel as the nation and the northern kingdom of Israel because they're not the same thing. And you got to be careful when you're studying your Bible. Again, rightly dividing. because God will talk about Israel and he might be talking about the Northern Kingdom or he might be talking about the nation. And so you want to be careful to distinguish and find out what is the context here. Right now the Southern Kingdom was Judah and Judah is made up of Judah and Benjamin the two tribes Judah and Benjamin and they became the Southern Kingdom. The nation will not be united again until the Lord Jesus Christ returns. Isn't that amazing? There will be no unity in Israel until Jesus Christ comes back and puts them back in their land. That is just wild to me. And so this will save you a lot of trouble. All right? Now, a world event happens. And what do Christians do? It's prophecy. No, it's not. They're doing something to Israel. What's the Bible say about it? Nothing. Absolutely nothing. God scattered Israel across the earth and they're going to stay that way until Jesus Christ returns. Now at some point God's going to send these Watchers through the earth who will force Israel to come back to the nation to the promised land. But until then they're scattered and whatever world event happens all it will do is demonstrate to you that this world hates Israel. And they hate Israel because they hate God. Who wants a pile of rock and desert in the Middle East? Nobody. And why is everybody fighting over it? Because it belongs to Israel. There's no other reason. If God said, OK, I gave Belize to Israel, guess where everybody would start fighting? So, it's because it's Israel that everybody wants to go and take the Dome of the Rock. There's nothing in that area. It's just a pile of desert. It's not like Costa Rica is beautiful. Let's go put the temple there and hang out in a beautiful jungle and see incredible things. No, it's in the middle of the Middle East where there's nothing but gunfire, missiles, bombs, suicide bombers, desert, just nothing. But everybody wants it because it belongs to Israel. They say, oh, that belongs to Israel? OK, we need it. Well, you didn't need it before. Well, we need it now. We want it. We're taking it. And that's the way it always works out. Now, 19 kings ruled over the northern kingdom of Israel for a period of 260 years. That's about how long they lasted, 260 years. By the way, about 300 years is the average length of a nation. The Northern Kingdom lasted 260 years. The Southern Kingdom lasted 393 years. How long has America been around? We're pushing right at 300. So goodbye. Now, I hope it doesn't. I have children. I'd like them to be able to live in the strongest country in the world and be in relative safety and protection. But we'll see. We'll see how it goes. The Northern Kingdom was taken captive into Assyria. Every single king, every king, everybody say that out loud. Every king over the Northern Kingdom was said to be wicked in God's eyes. Every single one of them. Not one king did that which was right in the eyes of the Lord. That's sad. That's the reality. They all did evil in the eyes of the Lord, and it seems they all followed after Jeroboam. He started it all. He was their first king. Jeroboam set up golden calves, one on the northern border of Israel and one on the southern border of Israel. That man was a devil with a crown. And every king after him followed suit in the northern kingdom. That's a sad heritage to have. He was a wicked king and it seems the rest all followed. Now Judah, the southern kingdom made up of Judah and Benjamin, they had 20 kings over a period of 393 years. Some of their kings did that which was right in the eyes of the Lord. Most of them did not. And, you know, if you've got a king that's going to do right in the eyes of the Lord, he can get a lot done in a short amount of time. That's why a president, you know, it's... You have a president in America who wants to take the country in an evil direction. Our system is designed so it's difficult for him to do that. It takes several presidents like that to really get it going in that direction. And then you have one good president come along, and I mean, they can get some things done, but you can't get as much done as you'd like. The system is made to get in your way. and to be difficult. And because of the negative, we thank the Lord for that. But then when we have a positive, we're like, man, just set the Constitution aside just for a little while. But when you play that game, it works in both directions. That's Mitch McConnell. He told the Democrats when they wanted to suspend the filibuster for appointing Supreme Court justices, he stood on the Senate floor and he told them, if you do this, it's going to come back to bite you. Well, guess who won the next election? Donald Trump. Guess who was in charge of the Senate? Mitch McConnell. Guess who got to elect Supreme Court justices? And Mitch McConnell told them, I told you. In our system, as frustrating as it can be, it's meant to be difficult. It's meant to be clunky and incapable of running off with itself. And we're getting to a point where those checks and balances are breaking down, and that's not good, but it's still relatively difficult. Everybody talks about, well, they cheated in the election. Have you thought about how difficult it is to cheat in a national election? You have to, whatever cheating you're going to do, it has to work county by county across every state, or a large number of states. It's not, well, we tricked a whole state. You've got to go to each county, and you have to be able to cheat in that county without getting caught. And you've got to do it in enough counties to carry the state. That's really hard to do. And then some states, if you won the state, you get all the electoral votes. And in other states, you win the state, you only get a proportion based on the percentage that you won. Well, how do you cheat in that? And so I'm not telling you that I really believe Joe Biden got 81 million votes. I am telling you, no one has supplied any real proof of it. And in our system, it's really hard to cheat. And if they found a way to cheat that well, well, we're done. It's over. Because that's really hard to do. But here you have this back and forth. You have four, five, six, seven kings to do that which is evil in the eyes of the Lord. Then you get one king. And the beauty about being the king, you have no clunky government to get in your way. You say, those altars of Baal, burn them down right now. Well, don't you think we should vote on it? Open your mouth again. Never mind. I'll just sit here quietly and hope you don't put me to death, which a king can do. And so Jehoshaphat, Hezekiah, and Josiah were outstanding figures in the kingly lineage of Judah. Josiah was an incredible king. just a great man, but eventually Judah angered God to the point that he sent them into captivity into Babylon. So Israel the northern kingdom went into captivity into Assyria. Judah the southern kingdom went into captivity into Babylon. Now Judah's going into Babylon was unbelievably significant when it comes to the kingdom of heaven. It began the time of the Gentiles. The Israel lost all rights to the land at that point now that they they still have God's promises and those promises will be fulfilled in a future time. But right now Israel has no rights to the land and some people say yeah, but what about the great prophetic event of Great Britain re-establishing the nation of Israel in England in what, 1964 or whatever it was, whenever Israel went back to the Middle East. That was not a prophetic event. That was just politics. We have all these Jews, we don't know what to do with them. Well, we'll just carve out a space in the Middle East and plop them there. That's gone great. They've been fighting over it ever since. Now one day God will clear out that land and Israel will have it. There'll be no question. Well, shouldn't we, you know, go to the United Nations and discuss this? No, I'm going to burn them down too. And so God is not going to have it. When he sets it up, it'll be done. It'll be final. Eventually, Judah angered the Lord, and they went into Babylon. When both Israel and Judah were taken out of the land and into captivity, this began the times of the Gentiles. And the Lord said, they must be fulfilled. In his day, Christ said, the times of the Gentiles must be fulfilled. It's going to run all the way to the end until Jesus Christ comes back and makes things right. There'll be no way around it. And so the times of the Gentiles is where we are now. Now we have this interesting overlap between the church age and so our focus is not political. Our focus is not a kingdom. Our focus is the gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ and the church of God. That's our focus. We're in the church age. And so this this idea of building a nation or a kingdom all that is on pause until the church age is done. And God's going to call the church out and then he's going to go right back to dealing with the nation and then he'll establish that nation and put down the Gentile powers. And then eventually the Lord will establish his kingdom over which the Jews will reign over the nations. Christ will rule over everything. David will be back on his throne. Israel will rule over the nations and then the nations will all come and pay homage to the Lord Jesus Christ. What a day that will be. That will be wonderful to see. All right, now, someday, as we just said, the Lord will reconcile these problems. He will restore King David to the throne, and then the nations will all be subject to him. We hope you enjoyed this podcast. You can learn more about our ministry by visiting www.plenteusredemption.com. You can hear more Plenteous Redemption podcast audio at www.plenteusredemption.media. Please comment below if this podcast has been a help to you. Also, inform us of future topics that would interest you. Thank you again for listening to the Plenteous Redemption podcast.