God's Big Picture: Lesson 11 (The Present Kingdom)

(To read more about the book we're using for our curriculum and a little more about why we chose it, click here.  Scroll to the bottom of this post to find the links to my lesson plans and printables.)


We made it to the New Testament and a lesson that got me teary-eyed and fired up!


Today we'll take a look at the Present Kingdom (the name can be a bit confusing because it refers to the fact that Jesus brings the kingdom with him and not the present time we live in, which is called the Proclaimed Kingdom in this study, but I stuck with the author's terms).  


Throughout this study we’ve been talking about God’s promise to Abraham and how he was going to bless all nations through him.  We’ve finally made it to the Gospels (you know, Matthew, Mark, Luke and John).  And Matthew starts out with something “boring.”  He starts out with a genealogy.  A family tree.  A long list of names (some of which are ridiculously hard to pronounce).  This isn’t a very exciting way to start out a book about Jesus… or is it?  Look at Matthew 1:1.  It says, “A record of the genealogy of Jesus Christ the son of David, the son of Abraham”  Woohoo!!!!  This is exciting.  The promise is being fulfilled!  That awesome promise from back in Genesis 12 is happening now!!!  Jesus is the one through whom all nations would be blessed and we’re about to find out all about him!!!

My lovely family tree... Hey!  They got the point.  :)

So, the Israelites were confused about what they were looking for in a Messiah.  They were definitely looking for one.  But they were looking for a king to help them regain their status as a powerful nation under God’s blessing again.  At the time of Jesus’ birth, they were ruled by Romans.  A far away country was in charge of them.  They had to obey their laws and pay them taxes and they were too weak of a country to do anything about it.  Jesus comes on the scene and some of the people get excited!  They think this might be the promised king they’ve been looking for!  On Palm Sunday (a week before Easter), they even “roll out the red carpet” so to speak.  They line the streets and lay out their cloaks and palms as Jesus rides into Jerusalem on a donkey.  These things were all fitting for a king of that time.  But they couldn’t fully understand the promises of the Old Testament because they couldn’t even begin to wrap their minds around the kind of Savior God was giving them. 

It’s like this…

About 100 years ago, a man promises his young son that he would give him a horse on his 21st birthday.  Not too long after that, cars are invented.  When the boy’s 21st birthday finally arrives, his dad gives him a car instead of a horse.  The father still kept his promise (a means of transportation), but not literally.  The dad couldn’t have promised a car to his young boy, because neither one of them would have understood the concept. 

I brought these two little figurines to show as I told the story above.

That’s a little bit like it is with the Israelites.  God gave them the promises in terms they could understand, but the fulfillment was much richer and better than they ever could have imagined. 

So let’s look at our definition (God’s people, in God’s place under God’s rule and blessing) with Jesus in the picture:

God’s People

First Adam fails at perfectly displaying the image of God.  Then Israel does.  But where they fail, Jesus succeeds.  He is what the people of God were meant to be.  He is the true Adam and Israel. 

He was like Adam in a lot of ways.  He was completely human.  He got tired and hungry and was even tempted.  (Note:  It’s not wrong to be tempted… it’s wrong to give into temptation.)  The difference is, he is the only human being who experienced all things human and never sinned.  Romans talks about Jesus being the new Adam.  Romans 5:19 says, “...just as through the disobedience of one man (Adam) the many were made sinners, so also through the obedience of the one man (Christ) the many will be made righteous.” 

Matthew deliberately identifies Jesus with Israel.  This is cool.  He starts with the story of Joseph and Mary fleeing to Egypt to escape Herod.  He then says it’s to fulfill the prophecy in Hosea 11:1 where God says, “Out of Egypt I called my son.”  What?!?  If you go back and read Hosea it’s talking about when Israel was freed from slavery in Egypt.  This is talking about Israel, not Jesus… 

And then Jesus is tempted in the wilderness for 40 days.  Hmmm…. Sound familiar?  The Israelites wandered in the wilderness for 40 years after being delivered from the Egyptians.  Only they failed when tempted and Jesus succeeded.

And then Jesus chooses 12 disciples.  Twelve?  Interesting number.  How many tribes were there in Israel?  Twelve! 

A major shift takes place with the coming of Christ.  The focus is no longer on the land of Palestine and the physical descendants of Abraham.  The true Israel are now the spiritual descendants of Abraham and those who place their trust in Jesus as the fulfillment of God’s promises.  So cool!

God’s Place

Jesus is the true Adam and is fully human, but he is also fully God.  When Christ came, God himself had drawn near and was living with us.  Remember in the Old Testament how God would dwell in the tabernacle?  It was a big tent that went with them while they traveled to the Promised Land.  Then, after they’d been in Israel for a while, they built a permanent building called a Temple.  God dwelt there.  His presence was in the Holy of Holies.  But when Jesus came, that changed. 

John 1:14 says, “The Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us.”  The phrase, “made his dwelling among us” could also be translated “tabernacled” among us.  “Tabernacled” is a funny word, so we don’t use it, but the idea is that God had previously been in the presence of his people in the tabernacle, and now he was out in the open among everyone.

Then Jesus himself refers to himself as the temple.  Remember when he cleared the temple and he tells the people, “Destroy this temple, and I will raise it again in three days.”  He was at the temple when they said that, so they assumed he was talking about the building, but he was talking about himself.  But John 2:21 tells us that “the temple he had spoken of was his body.”  Game changer!  Now, if we want to meet with God we must go not to a building but to Jesus!

God’s Rule and Blessing

Jesus brings a new understanding to God’s rule and blessing with the new covenant.  Remember the old covenant?  The Israelites were to obey God and keep his commandments.  They obviously didn’t live up to the standard.  We would fall short too.  But Jesus lived a perfect life and kept all of the law that God had given. 

Because no human besides Christ has ever been perfect, every single one of us deserves death.  The kind of death where we’re separated from God forever.  Hell.  Because wouldn’t heaven stop being perfect if God let imperfect people into it?  Yep.  So, outside of Christ, we’re doomed. 

But here’s the awesome-ness that Jesus being both human and God brings us.  While he was dying on the cross, he took the guilt of the whole world on himself.  Like, he looked at my sin and theoretically speaking, said, "I’ll take that" and underwent the death punishment for it.  The separation from God that I deserve.  If I believe that and trust that Christ’s death really did that for my sin, I’m clean!  I’m righteous before God!  I can be let into heaven because Jesus’ death makes it appear as if I’d never sinned before God.  Of course, I’ll continue to do wrong.  Being saved doesn’t mean you start acting perfect, but it does mean that those sins are covered by Jesus’ death on the cross.  His death paid for all of the sins we committed in the past and all of the ones we’ll commit in the future.  That’s a indescribable gift! (2 Cor. 9:15)  He is the source of God’s blessing!!!


Now that's a "kid's lesson" that I could get goosebumps teaching every time!

 

Note:  We're going to be making a notebook this year and adding to it each week.  (We're using 2 pocket folders with prongs).  By the end of the year, each child will have the material they've learned along with a timeline of the Bible and how it all fits together.  I'm sure they'll all take it home, hang it on their wall and study it everyday!  ;)  But, honestly, writing things down can help solidify things and help visualize the lesson, so we're going to do it anyway!  

If you'd like to print out my lesson plans, click here.  (They are designed to take between 15-25 minutes to go through.)  

If you'd like the supplemental worksheet, click here.

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