Welcome to our next session on McLean's book, The Greatness of the Kingdom, and today we're going to look at Chapter 7, or begin to look at it. It's entitled, The Constitution and Laws of the Kingdom in History, and it's referring to the Mosaic Law that was given on Mount Sinai. The framework that was given to Moses on Mount Sinai provided for a civil government and it was a kingdom of God to be established on earth. And this was a theocracy. It was not like all the other governments of the earth. It wasn't like any other monarchy or republic or socialistic state. It combined really the best elements of some of those and it provided the best checks and balances of any. And so Obviously in this chapter we're not going to be able to cover the entire Mosaic Law with all 613 laws, but the Mosaic Code did lay the groundwork for a mediatorial kingdom as a nation governed eventually by a king. And perhaps the outstanding characteristic of the Mosaic code is the fact that it's a unity. While there are so many different aspects to it, different laws, different kinds of laws, there is a clear, indivisible unity to that code, that Mosaic system. Now within the framework of unity there are at least three different elements that can be seen and virtually all acknowledge this, from all different perspectives people acknowledge there are three aspects of the Law of Moses. And first, since man is a religious being, he needs to be guided in his relationship to God. So there's a spiritual nature to this, the element of man's relationship to God. And secondly, since man was created by God to be a moral being, then he needs a code that would tell him what's moral and what's immoral, the difference between right and wrong. And that also is part of the Mosaic system. And thirdly, since God created man not to be alone, but to be a social creature and a political being, he needs guidance in those areas of life as well. And all these three realms are found and described as a unit, separate aspects, but there's a unity to these three different aspects that are found in the Mosaic Law. And the unity is found in God himself. All of these different aspects relate in one way or another to God, the creator, and the sovereign. And as you examine the different aspects of the law, it indicates that there are many facets. The nature of the mediatorial kingdom of God in history is many faceted, many different sides to it. And also it will be found that as this law is executed, this legal constitution that made Israel a nation, In the historic kingdom, it is riddled with, it's shot through and through, he says, with provisions and interventions of supernatural character. So this was intended to be a theocracy with a supernatural element to it, even though this nation that was created was very physical and earthly and political in its constitution. So McLean is going to look at this Constitution from several different angles. And we're going to look at two of them, hopefully. The first one is that the historical kingdom is basically a spiritual kingdom. And this is something that is often overlooked. We read in 1 Corinthians 10 in verse 4 that the Israelites drank of that spiritual rock that followed them. So even in Old Testament history, as Israel began functioning as a nation, there was a spiritual side to that. And this needs to be emphasized today because There's really opposition in Christendom, in the evangelical world today. Most claim that, and this is a very popular view, that it was at his first advent, the first advent of Jesus Christ when he, during his earthly ministry, that the Lord Jesus established a spiritual kingdom on earth. It's a kingdom in the heart, so they say. And this was in contrast in the view of the Reformers. They say that this spiritual kingdom that the Lord Jesus established in the heart stands in contrast to the material and physical and earthly kingdom that Israel was in the Old Testament. And that's a wrong way to That's not the right way to distinguish Old and New Testament. The spiritual nature in the Old Testament kingdom should be obvious as you read through the Pentateuch. There's lots of material on it. Just think of the biblical meaning of the term spiritual and that really gets abused quite a bit. Theologians can sort of make spiritual mean whatever they want it to mean, and they say the kingdom is really a spiritual kingdom. It has no material nature to it. It's not physical and earthly and real in the sense that another nation would be. It's not that kind of a kingdom. It's spiritual. You know, the biblical use of that term spiritual doesn't really fit that analogy. Wherever and whenever we find God establishing a direct relationship between himself and other people, human beings, or whether it's individuals or a group or a tribe or a nation, regardless of the place, regardless of the conditions, that kind of a relationship is basically spiritual. And that's what Israel's kingdom was in the Old Testament. It was basically spiritual. We don't mean it had no material side to it, that there weren't Real kings sitting on real thrones and ruling, there was. But the basic nature of the kingdom God established on earth was a relationship between God and men. And that, since God is a spirit, that relationship is by its very nature spiritual. And that's very often ignored by most in Christendom today. So this spiritual aspect of the Old Testament kingdom is universally recognized that Israel as a singular community was separate and distinct from all other communities, all other nations, and from the very beginning of Israel's existence as a nation, it bore the character of a religious and a moral community, a spiritual kingdom, a theocracy in fact, God ruling over men. And Jehovah God himself was the head and the ruler and the king, if you will, of that theocracy. So it wasn't a hierarchy like a normal monarchy or some other form of government and it existed yet in a political setting in the nation of Israel. Now the theocracy did not just run roughshod over the tribal organization among the tribes of Israel and as a nation. Rather, the theocracy was the centralizing power behind it. It constituted Israel as a nation. And in place of a political center, the unifying bond was a common allegiance to Jehovah God, a common faith in Jehovah God. And it was trust in him. And that's what kept the tribes together. That was the unifying factor. And this consciousness that Jehovah was Israel's king was deeply rooted in the Jewish people. It was a national feeling and it inspired a true sense of patriotism. And so it would be kind of absurd to deny that a spiritual relationship between God and men did not exist in the Old Testament kingdom before Jesus came and so-called established a spiritual kingdom in place of the material or physical kingdom. That is not a correct look at what God was doing. The Old Testament kingdom was a spiritual relationship that God had with the nation Israel and it's kind of astonishing that that would be questioned or overlooked but it so often is. In fact in the Old Testament God referred to Israel as his son. He says, Israel is my son, even my firstborn. Let my son go that he may serve me. That's what was said to the king of Egypt. And the whole system of sacrifice and worship and the covenant kingdom laws that were given at Sinai. They all had a one central purpose, and that was all the maintenance of fellowship, spiritual fellowship, that the people of God, Israel, had with the Lord, and it was all based on a forgiveness of sins. Often we read in the Old Testament, if Israel did such and such, it shall be forgiven unto them. The tabernacle worship, God says there, I will meet with Moses. I will speak with Moses. I will commune with Moses. And later he said something similar about the people, the rest of the people, the congregation of Israel. He said, I will meet with the children of Israel and they shall know that I am the Lord, their God. That was a spiritual relationship that Israel had with God, who is a spirit. And the law of the kingdom was not concerned merely with external matters like governments are today. Governments tell us what laws, what things are forbidden. We can't do this and we must do that. We have to pay taxes and there are all kinds of laws that govern us externally. But in Israel's nation, it was spiritual. And it had many laws that were required of all the people that had to do with a hot relationship to the Lord. And so one of the key laws in Israel was, thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, with all thy soul, and with all thy might. And these words shall be in thy heart. So the government in Israel as a theocracy, as a spiritual, really by nature, had to do with the heart relationship of the people to the Lord. It was not like other nations. We don't have any laws in our country that tell us what ought to be going on in our heart. That's our business. It tells us what to do and what not to do, but that doesn't, The government doesn't require us to love and to have a spiritual relationship with God, but in Israel it did. And so what Jesus established in his earthly ministry, our Reformed friends tell us that he established a different kind of a kingdom, a spiritual kingdom. Well, the kingdom has always been spiritual. and at the same time it was physical and literal. Now obviously the law itself made nothing perfect, there was no salvation in just keeping the law But the law was holy, just and good, Paul tells us. And so this spiritual relationship that Israel had with God was really the foundation of all the other relationships that existed in the historical kingdom. And so we need to understand that this spiritual relationship and control that God had over his people was not inconsistent with the mundane, with the physical or the material kingdom in character. The two can go hand in hand. They did in the Old Testament, and they certainly will in the future millennial reign of Christ. where it will be a literal, earthly, physical, material kingdom, a political kingdom with a society, with a king ruling over it, but it too will also be spiritual to the core because the most important element in that future millennial reign of Christ is the hot relationship to God.