Alright, well for a few minutes we're going to take some time and kind of bring us back around where we have been in our study of Bible doctrine. And I want to remind you of a few things that we've been dealing with as it's been a few weeks since we've been in it. You remember we used that word prolegomnia? Prolegomnia is just basically giving you information before we give you information. And that's what we've been doing. We've been dealing with questions. And those questions are highlighting what kind of theology that we're dealing with. What is Bible doctrine and those things. And we've been using some big terms. Systematic theology. Systematic basically is stressing the idea of a system or a body of truth. So when we talk about end times, end times is a systematic study of end times called eschatology. It comes from the Greek word eschatos, which means end times. Or pneumatology. Pneumatology is a study of the Holy Spirit and that comes from the Greek word pneuma, which is translated spirit. Or maybe it's soteriology. Soteriology is a word for salvation. And that, again, is a systematic study of that particular topic. And so what we're trying to do is we're trying to emphasize or to set in our minds a whole set of Bible doctrines comprehensively. So when you're looking at the doctrine of salvation, it's going to be comprehensive. And what does the Bible teach about salvation? What does the Bible teach about end times? What does the Bible teach about God the Father? What does the Bible teach about God the Son? Or what does the Bible teach about prophecy? You pick the topic and you go into the Scripture and you look at it in that way. We're talking about systematic. Theology is forming it in a way that you see its wholeness, you see its interrelatedness, you see how it comes together as a body of truth. And so that's what we're doing. We're talking about how to do that. We're talking about systematic theology which collects and it understands all of those passages in the Bible that have to do with that topic. And so we've already dealt with eight questions so far. We've asked questions like, what is theology? Why study theology? What are the various major kinds of theology? What is systematic theology? What are the categories of systematic theology? What is the relationship between exegetical, biblical, and systematic theology? What are the benefits and limitations of systematic theology? What is the relationship of systematic theology to doctrine. That's the last one we dealt with tonight. I'm just going to mention one, and two weeks ago I mentioned, or maybe it was three weeks ago, I mentioned that we're going to talk about the overarching, unifying theme of Scripture. I think I asked you, I said, go home and think about that question. What is the overarching and unifying theme of Scripture? And just throw out some ideas. What do you think it is? The coming of Jesus Christ. Salvation of mankind. Anybody else want to throw out some ideas of what you think is the unifying theme of Scripture? What's the Bible keep emphasizing all throughout Scripture? My first thought would have been salvation. That probably would have been my first thought. But let me give you something that you maybe haven't thought about. When you study the idea of King, and kingdom. And you start looking at that, you find some interesting things about it. It seems to be pretty broad. It talks about human and divine when you talk about king and kingdom. With the exception of Leviticus, Ruth, and Joel, the Old Testament explicitly mentions this theme in 36 of its 39 books. We're talking about the Old Testament. In the New Testament, it occurs in 21 of the 27 books. So it doesn't occur in Philippians, Titus, Philemon, 1st, 2nd, and 3rd John. But it does occur everywhere else. In all, 57 of the 66 books include the theme Kingdom. That's 86%. That's a high percentage. So you take even the Hebrew word for king, or kingdom, or reign, or throne. That appears over 3,000 times in the Old Testament, while the Greek words for those terms appear 160 times in the New Testament. The first appearance of those terms go all the way back to Genesis 10, verse 10. The last one in the Old Testament goes to Malachi 1, verse 14. You go into the New Testament, it first occurs in Matthew 1.6 and it ends in Revelation 22.5. So talking about king or kingdom. And so the exact expression, you've heard this kingdom of God, kingdom of heaven, which those two phrases seem to be synonymous. Jesus never defines them and no one ever asked what they mean. Interesting. But they appear only in the New Testament, not in the Old Testament. Matthew alone uses that phrase, but he uses it again. They use them both interchangeably, Kingdom of Heaven or Kingdom of God. And Jesus, again, He never defines it. He often illustrated it, though. And probably the most telling is the plethora of king titles that are given to Jesus. I'll just give you a few of them. You have... He's called the King of Israel. in John 1.49, John 12.13. He's called the King of the Jews. John 18.39, John 19.3, 19 and 21. He's called the King of Kings in 1 Timothy 6.15. He's called King of the Ages, Immortal, Invisible. 1 Timothy 1.17. He's called the King of the Nations, Revelation 15.3. And it's even said that His reign, according to Revelation 11.15 and Revelation 22.5, His reign is said to be forever and ever. Jesus has no beginning. He has no end. Now you see the beginning of a body when He comes to earth and He takes on a body, but He's God. And God has no beginning and He has no end. Where did God come from? We don't know. He's just always been. He's self-existent, self-sustaining. No beginning, no end. He wasn't born. No one created Him. He's always been. And so when you go into a biblical study of God's kingdom, it would lead you to conclude that it's multifaceted, it's multidimensional, it's multifocal, it's multifactorial. I mean, it's a lot of things. And again, whenever you begin to examine it, You find that God is the King of eternity. God is the King of history. He's the King of creation. He's the King of redemption. He's the King of the earth. He's the King of heaven. I mean, when I think about nature, and I'm outside, and I'm looking at things, and you have all those little creepy bugs that you don't want to crawl on you, and you think about how many people are in this world, whatever, 7 billion people in the world, and God knows everything that's going on with all 7 billion at the same time, as well as every animal, every insect, The weather patterns, the weather changes, the rain, where it falls, where it doesn't fall, where it snows, where it doesn't snow, where it's cold, where it's hot, where hurricanes, tsunamis, earthquakes, tornadoes, you name it, He knows it all at the same time. And He knows it before it happens, and He even causes it to happen. He said to Moses, Because Moses, you know, was complaining because God was going to send him to Pharaoh. Remember? And you remember how Moses didn't want to go. And so he's given all these excuses. Well, why don't you send my brother? We all want to send our brothers, don't we? Our brothers or our sisters. And of course, the first thing he wanted to know, you know, who am I going to say who it is who's sending me? And he says, well, I am who I am. And that's where you get the self-existent, self-sustaining, and so forth. But he's complaining, and he's talking about the fact that he can't speak well. How many of you have given that answer? I can't talk to these people because I can't speak well. I stutter, you know? I have a hard time doing that. Yeah, but he goes in to tell him. Because he says, can't you use Aaron? He can speak fluently. He's got a gift of speech. We call that the gift of gab. How many of you guys have the gift of gab? But he didn't want that. The Lord said to him, who has made man's mouth? Or who makes him mute, or deaf, or seeing, or blind? Is it not I, the Lord? That's the realization that Teresa and I have to come to. Because Samuel was injured by a midwife. But you read that passage. Now, it doesn't alleviate her responsibility. But is it not I? Samuel has deafness. Samuel has vision issues, plus a host of other issues. But he could be worse than he is. Because there's a lot of things he can do. In fact, I'd rather major on what he can do than what he can't do, you know? And I remember when he was in the NICU, right after he was born, I kept one of the things that kind of holds you together is the fact that there are people in here that have worse situations than you have. In fact, there was a baby that died while he was in there and watching the family deal with that. But God is king of everyone and everything, even unbelievers. He's king. And everybody will stand before Him. Everybody will bow a knee before Him. And I always say this way, you can do it now or you can do it in eternity. Where, as I told this one person that I was talking to who's Catholic, I said, there's no purgatory as far as a third choice. So people hold on to that as like a hope that they didn't go to heaven, they didn't go to hell, and they're kind of in between, and maybe somebody will pray them out of that and they'll go to heaven. And there's no such thing as that. And there's no such thing as that. You know, if your sins are finally absolved, either the sacrifice of Jesus on the cross as atonement was perfect or it wasn't. And it is perfect. It was perfect. So all these kingdom passages and all the usages of them give us this understanding that the theme of the Bible is that God is King. And He has a kingdom. Interesting that in Matthew 6-9, we were talking about the Lord's Prayer that we went through in Sunday school. Do you remember? For yours is the kingdom and the power and the glory forever and ever. Amen? Or even the part in there where it prayed, Your kingdom come, Your will be done on earth as it is in heaven. Talking about His kingdom. We want His will on earth and His kingdom all to be the same as it is in heaven. And it will. It will. And despite all the chaos we see going on in our world, which will get worse, by the way, He's King. Isaiah, whenever God killed Uzziah, Uzziah reigned as a king for Israel for 52 years. Could you imagine having a president for 52 years? Talk about term limits. We've got some of those people in Congress that have been there 20 and 30 years, and they need to retire and move on. But they won't. It's power and money. But anyway, that's another sermon. But think of Uzziah. 52 years reign. He did a lot of good things for Israel. But the one thing that he did that he shouldn't have done is he took on the role of a priest and he offered up a sacrifice. And that was a no-no. Only certain people were to do that. And God struck him with leprosy and he died a leper. And when he died, Isaiah 6 records Isaiah coming into the temple. Chapter 1 tells us it's a vision. And so in that vision, he sees God and he describes what he sees. He sees God on a throne. See, the earthly monarch is dead. That now brought insecurity to a nation. But see, before Israel had any kings, they were a theocracy. They were ruled directly by God. But they wanted to be like all the other nations. They wanted to have a king. And God granted them a king and said, you will have to deal with the issues that come with a king. He will force your children to serve in His armies. He'll force them into slavery. You know, all these other things that will happen. But that will happen. Isaiah goes into the temple and he sees the king on the throne. And the point I want to make is that regardless of what we think is happening in our world and regardless of what we agree with is happening in our world, God is on His throne and He is always on His throne and no one can take Him off His throne. Now just think about this. The Bible says that a believer is in the Father's hands, right? And no one can snatch them out of His hands. That's how secure our salvation is. And something we have to talk about, right? And if God is King, and that's the theme of the Bible, then that's something we need to remind people, unbelievers especially. You might not want to believe in God, but as I've said before, I said, what if this is true? Let's say you've got a 50-50 chance it's not or it is. Well, what if it is true? You're going to hell. You die right now, you will be in hell. Well, the truth of the matter is, is when Adam took of the forbidden fruit, and what he did was passed on to every person who would ever live, they have the death sentence in them. And all the human race is going to hell unless God saves somebody. I mean, that's just a fact. And you guys, I know you're really young, and you need to believe on the Lord Jesus Christ now and stay in everything that you can hear and understand about the Bible. If Nanny reads the Bible to you, listen to it, you know? And realize that God is the King. He is the King of everything and everyone and of the universe. And it's Him that ultimately we're going to bow our knee to. And you can do it now, willingly, and receive the gracious gift of salvation, or you can be forced to, you know, in a place where you'll be tormented day and night before Him. Well, Father, we thank You for this time of just taking these few moments to talk about this in Scripture. We pray that You would bless the rest of our evening together we have. In Jesus' name, Amen.