In my previous posts
in this series I’ve been attempting to demonstrate the extent to which the
content of the Sermon on the Mount, while often looking forward, remains inextricably
tied to the Old Testament.
But the kingdom of
heaven with which the Sermon is deeply concerned is itself a New Testament
concept — a new frame, a new way of describing the government of God on
earth. First proclaimed by John the Baptist, the kingdom occupies a central
place in the teaching of the Lord Jesus. You will not find the phrase in your
Bible prior to (or, rather remarkably, after) Matthew’s gospel, where it occurs
31 times.*
Before going much
deeper into the Sermon, we need to pause briefly to consider what “kingdom of
heaven” means.
A Kingdom That Shall Never Be Destroyed
When I say that the
kingdom of heaven is a New Testament concept, I don’t mean it has no connection
at all to the Old Testament. When the prophet Daniel interpreted King
Nebuchadnezzar’s dream, he finished up with the kingdom; it was the whole point
of the dream:
“The God of heaven will set up a kingdom that shall never be destroyed, nor shall the kingdom be left to another people. It shall break in pieces all these kingdoms and bring them to an end, and it shall stand forever.”
This kingdom is the final installment in a
series of multi-ethnic world empires that begins with the Chaldean monarch
privileged to hear Daniel’s prophecy, continues through the Medo-Persians and
Greeks and culminates, to all earthly appearances, in Rome. No empire in the
planet’s history has been so dominant for so long. We’ve have world powers
since, but none like the Romans.
But Rome is not the final word. God has the
final word.
The People of the Saints of the Most High
Daniel again:
“And the kingdom and the dominion and the greatness of the kingdoms under the whole heaven shall be given to the people of the saints of the Most High; his kingdom shall be an everlasting kingdom, and all dominions shall serve and obey him.”
So the “people of the saints of the Most
High” were to expect a kingdom, and given the information they had to work
with, it was not unreasonable for first century believing Jews to understand
this as a sphere of world dominance in which their own nation would be
foremost, just as Babylon, Persia, Greece had once dominated the known world,
and just as Rome now did.
The disciples believed this right up to the
time the Lord ascended into glory. And they were not wrong. They just didn’t
have the entire picture. Luke records them asking him, “Lord, will you at
this time restore the kingdom to Israel?”
Israel or the Church?
The answer to that question matters a great
deal — and not only to Jews. Large numbers of Christians today believe all
Israel’s kingdom hopes and all God’s promises to Abraham, Isaac, Jacob and
David are to be fully and exhaustively realized in the Church, a conviction
that leads to a whole lot of confusion in interpreting both the Old Testament
and the Gospels, not to mention the book of Romans.
Now, if the phrase “people of the saints of
the Most High” in Daniel’s prophecy was really intended to mean the Church all
along, and if the national hopes of Israel are all a big misunderstanding, this
would have been the perfect occasion on which to set the record straight. A
single sentence along the lines of, “Guys, you’ve got it all wrong: the kingdom
will NEVER be restored to Israel” would have eliminated all possible confusion.
Times or Seasons
But the Lord instead replies:
“It is not for you to know times or seasons that the Father has fixed by his own authority.”
The promised earthly kingdom is coming,
make no mistake. And the Church is not God’s final act on this planet.
Actually, we’re kind of the intermission.
* The word “kingdom” also appears another 25 times in Matthew without its usual qualifier and once or twice in the form “kingdom of God”, which Mark, Luke and John use consistently in its place. If the two terms are not precisely synonymous, they are close enough as makes no material difference.
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