Sovereign Grace Community Church

Jesus' mission was to announce, manifest and inaugurate Yahweh's long-promised kingdom, and that work involved proclamation, depiction, invitation, and challenge. But conflict was also central to Jesus' work, because the kingdom He was bringing contradicts and disallows every existing human expression of kingdom and rule. Thus He drew the fierce and unrelenting opposition of the world powers - human and supra-human - the moment He began proclaiming and manifesting His Father's kingdom. But that was the battle He'd come to fight, and He would achieve the victory.

The goal of incarnation is the kingdom of God - i.e., God becoming -all in all- through -summing up- everything in His creation in Jesus the Messiah. The Father had sent the Son to usher in His everlasting kingdom as He'd promised through His prophets, and all of the gospel writers constructed their accounts around this work and its completion. Thus they record that, following His baptism and testing, Jesus began proclaiming the good news of this kingdom and challenging Israel to embrace it by embracing Him and the way of being Israel -son, servant, disciple and witness- that He was disclosing to them.

The resurrection of Jesus is a core tenet of the Christian faith, but many Christians have little understanding of what it signifies, why it matters, or how it determines and orients Christian life and mission in the world. This message considers those issues and attempts to provide a framework for living authentically as resurrection people in the risen Messiah.

The Spirit who anointed Jesus as Messiah and led Him through His wilderness testing now brought Him into Galilee where He began proclaiming the good news of Yahweh's kingdom. That ministration led Jesus to His home town of Nazareth where He confronted the people's understanding and expectation of His work on Yahweh's behalf. All three synoptic writers mentioned Jesus' rejection in Nazareth, but Luke provided the best insight into it, showing that it was a microcosm and harbinger of what He would experience from the nation as a whole.

This message examines the third of Jesus' tests during His forty-day wilderness ordeal. Like the other two, this test was part of His Father's proving out of His own assertion concerning Jesus that He was His beloved and well-pleasing son. And because Jesus was being tested as Son of God in solidarity with Israel, His testing was as human son of God - God's True Israel in whom Israel was to be renewed and reconciled.

This message examines the second of three tests Jesus underwent during His forty-day wilderness ordeal. Like the other two, this test was ordained by Jesus' God and Father to prove out His human sonship as True Israel as affirmed at His baptism. Specifically, it involved a temptation to -put God to the test- by seeing if He would honor His promise to protect His faithful children.

The Scripture understands the incarnation as Israel's God taking up Israel's life and lot in order to renew Israel for the sake of its election and mission on behalf of the world. Jesus, then, was God's true Israel as true son, servant, disciple and witness. But in order to restore Israel in Himself, Jesus needed to fulfill Israel's sonship, even as the nation had failed to do. The forty-day wilderness ordeal was the fundamental proving out of Jesus' faithfulness as Yahweh's elect son, and this message is the first of three that examine that episode.

The Incarnation involved the God of Israel embodying Himself within Israel in order to redeem and restore Israel so that it should fulfill its election and calling in the world. Thus the incarnation's work was directed toward Israel becoming Israel indeed, and the gospels show this first through Jesus' genealogy, and then by His baptism by John, the forerunner promised by Isaiah.

Having examined the nature and implications of the Incarnation, it is necessary to consider its work - i.e., God's purpose in it and its functional significance in terms of Jesus' life and ministration. This first message in that consideration examines the images of light and life, both of which are central themes in John's understanding and treatment of Jesus the Messiah.

This message considers some of the crucial practical implications of the incarnation, including how it determines our understanding of God's purposes and work, the gospel and its proclamation, and the matters of personal salvation, progress in sanctification, and Christian mission.

Traditional formulations and controversies regarding incarnation have tended to focus on issues surrounding the conjoining of divinity and humanity conceived in existential and philosophical terms rather than biblical ones. Put differently, the Scriptures aren't concerned with philosophical notions of natures, persons, hypostases, etc., but with incarnation as fulfilling God's long-standing promise to arise in His world and put all things right, so that His eternal intentions for His creation could be fully realized. In biblical parlance, incarnation is about Yahweh returning to Zion to end the exile of the Abrahamic people and restore them to covenant fellowship so that they should fulfill their own election and calling to mediate His blessing to all the earth's families. This message considers that perspective and what it means for a truly biblical doctrine of incarnation.

John the Baptist was the prophesied forerunner who heralded Yahweh's return to Zion to liberate His people and inaugurate His kingdom. So also, Yahweh's prophets had linked His return with the emergence and work of His messianic servant who would embody faithful Israel, and this background provides the context for the incarnation, its meaning, its purpose, and its outcome.

The desolation of Jerusalem by the Babylonians saw the end of the Israelite kingdom and the final fracture of the covenant relationship between Yahweh and Israel. Many would return to Judea and the temple and city would be rebuilt, but the Israelite people recognized that their exile continued so long as their God remained absent. Incessant covenant unfaithfulness had moved Him to depart and scatter His people in exile, and only forgiveness and reconciliation would bring that alienation to an end. It was in view of that hope and longing that John the Baptist emerged in Israel and undertook his mission of preparing his countrymen for Yahweh's return to cleanse and restore His people and establish the kingdom He'd pledged to David.

Many point to Cyrus' decree and the subsequent return of Judean exiles to rebuild the temple and city of Jerusalem as ending Israel's exile. But this physical recovery didn't address the underlying and essential exile, namely the relational alienation between God and His covenant people. That relational exile would end when Yahweh returned to Zion to redeem His captive children, cleanse them from their guilt and defilement, renew the covenant, and gather them to Himself as true sons and daughters. In that great day, the Lord's oath to Abraham would at last be realized- -I will be your God and you will be My people.- This message examines the prophets' depiction of this promised deliverance and renewal, and how it finds its focal point in the messianic servant and branch of David.

Jewish exiles returning to Judea to rebuild the temple and restore Jerusalem was a significant episode of prophetic fulfillment, yet these astonishing feats of divine providence didn't fulfill the Lord's covenant promises to Abraham and David or His word through His prophets. Indeed, the exile of His covenant people wouldn't end until He returned and restored His relationship with them through the person and work of His messianic servant, the son promised to David.

Desolation, exile and captivity were the inevitable destiny of the Abrahamic covenant household. God had warned of this outcome through Moses and His prophets, and now it had come upon both houses of Israel. And yet this wasn't to be the Lord's final word- His covenant oaths to Abraham and David would stand, however impossible their fulfillment seemed in the context of such horrific desolation and despondency. Yahweh would one day end Israel's exile, not as a matter of geography, but realized sonship. This message takes a closer look at the scriptural theme of exile, as that which conjoins and carries along the salvation history that reached its climax in Jesus the Messiah.

The Lord brought His sword against David's house, and after dividing and devastating his household, it cleaved David's kingdom into two parts. Only the southern kingdom of Judah remained under Davidic rule, with Israel in the north forming its own distinct kingdom. But both kingdoms followed the same trajectory of idolatry and apostasy culminating with destruction and exile. Israel fell to the Assyrians in 722 B.C., while Yahweh gave Judah and David's royal house a reprieve. But not for long- Judah, too, would fall a century and a half later when the Babylonian forces burned Jerusalem and its temple to the ground and dragged the survivors into exile. Thus the Lord's sword had made a complete end of David's house, throne and kingdom, and yet His promise stood fast - one day, He would raise up a faithful son of David in whom He would build David's house and establish his throne and kingdom forever. Abraham's children were to hold onto this promise in faith, even in the face of seeming impossibility and crushing

The sword that Yahweh brought against David's house moved from his immediate household to the kingdom he ruled. The Lord revealed to Solomon His intent to cleave the kingdom, but this division occurred during the reign of Solomon's son Rehoboam. This message examines that episode and the history of the northern kingdom of Israel culminating with its destruction at the hand of the Assyrians.

Solomon was the Lord's chosen successor to David, and he was the king who brought the Israelite kingdom to the pinnacle of its glory. And the focal point of that glory was the Jerusalem temple that Solomon built according to Yahweh's covenant with David. But the Lord had also pledged to David to build a house for him, and yet David's failure provoked Yahweh to bring a sword upon his house, which sword escalated its decimating work because of Solomon's own failures as king. Solomon, too, would fall short of the kingship idealized in the covenant with David, but the Lord would yet fulfill what He had pledged. One day, He would raise up a son of David who would build an everlasting house for Him, a son in whom David's own house, throne and kingdom would be established forever.

The writer of Samuel chose to conclude his account of David's reign with the strange story of David's census that brought a devastating plague on Israel and led to the purchase of the site where the temple would be built by his son Solomon. This sermon considers that episode in the light of the Mosaic census law, which gives to it a profound significance and helps explain why the Samuel writer viewed it as the fitting way to end his account.