How the History of Israel Proves Postmillennialism
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This is part 2 of a Biblical case for Postmillennialism. If you would like to check out Part 1, it can be found here.
AN ANALOGY OF RELATIONSHIPS
In human romantic relationships, progress is made through promise. When a man enjoys the company of a particular woman, and natural desires begin bubbling up in that man for her, well, he ought to be the one to ask her if she will become his woman. This is not an open-ended promise where he reserves the right to desire and spend affectionate time with a throng of women, but a personal pledge that she will be the lone object of his affection moving forward. His commitment and promise carries with it exclusivity.
When the relationship advances beyond the dating stages, progress is again precipitated by promise. Without new pledges of increased loyalty and commitment, the relationship will stagnate and usually wither into a relational bramble. But after a pledge of lifelong fidelity, the dating couple becomes engaged with a ring of promise, and the engaged couple standing at the altar with rings becomes lawfully wed.
This normative period is filled with promises that progress every relationship from strangers and acquaintances to friends, from pals to dating and betrothal, and eventually into marriage. This period is a finite allotment of time to establish interest, trustworthiness, and commitment before the era of promises is over. And I mean that the era of promises must end because no woman wants to marry a man who continually rattles off guarantees and assurances but never ends up keeping any of them. Once all the promises have been made, and the man and woman say I do, he does not need to go on making oaths and pledges and explaining his intentions. He must transition the relationship from being a promise maker to a promise keeper, or the only progress he will make will be toward separation and divorce. This movement from promise to fulfillment is the most natural step toward maturation for any marriage; it is how trust is baked in time and how marriages become iron-clad centers of love, life, and community for a clan of burgeoning people.
In some ways, we can apply this to what we spoke about last week. We transitioned away from the wrong views of eschatology to the correct view. And we saw how God Himself littered the book of Genesis with monumental promises. He promised to fill the world with worshippers through Adam. He repeated those promises to Noah. He kept those promises during the rocky era of Babel. He made those promises even more explicit and exclusive through Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, and Judah. And like a young man making covenantal promises to the woman that He loves before their wedding day, God in those early years of Genesis was showering His people with all of His promises and was letting her know what He was going to do in covenant union with her and for her. And as we saw last week, the content of those promises was that God Himself would make His people into a fruitful, world-wide, people, who fill the earth with worshippers. Worshippers in the sciences, worshippers in local and national governments, worshippers in technology and engineering firms, worshippers in law practices, libraries, restaurants, public squares, plumbing and electrical businesses, and worshippers in faithful churches. God is going to fill the world, and every sector of this world, with His joyful human worshippers so that everything on this rebel planet will come under His dominion and will.
Yet, in just the same way a man shouldn't keep making promises with no intention of fulfilling them, God does not go on speaking without a plan for doing. He transitions the relationship from promise maker to promise keeper as we turn the page from Genesis to the book of Exodus. He continues that posture through the conquests and the histories of the people of Israel and Judah. And while Israel and Judah will be unfaithful to her husband and maker (Isaiah 54:5; Hosea 2:2), provoking Him to jealous fury (Deuteronomy 32:21), playing the harlot with the nations instead of bringing them into God's covenant family (Ezekiel 16:15), causing Him to issue a decree of divorce to the ten northern tribes of Israel (Jeremiah 3:8), God is never once unfaithful to His promises. He will fill the world with worshippers who worship Him in spirit and truth (John 4:23-24). And what we will see in the history of Judah and Israel is textual evidence that this is God's plan and that God will accomplish it with Israel's help or not!
In what follows, I would like to sketch out how all of the promises made in the book of Genesis, where the entire world will be filled with worshippers (Genesis 1:28), where all the families on earth will be blessed by the seed of Abraham (Genesis 12:1-3), all the nations on earth will come under God's blessings through the seed of Jacob (Genesis 28:14) and will obey Yahweh their King through the promises to Shiloh as promised to Judah (Genesis 49:10), are now beginning to come true in the life of Israel. Like an acorn transitioning from seed to sapling, the Exodus, the conquests, and the Kingdom of Israel will show how God is committed to what He initially said and is delivering on those promises in the life of Israel. In the weeks ahead, we will see how those promises are fulfilled ultimately in Jesus, but for now, let's trace the promises God made for a postmillennial and optimistic future out of the book of Genesis and see how they begin sprouting roots in the nation of Israel.
THE EXODUS AND A WORLD FILLED WITH WORSHIPPERS:
After God had given promises to Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, and eventually Jacob's fourth-born son Judah, the family of a dozen men and their wives and children settled in the land of Goshen, a providence of Egypt. You will remember from the book of Genesis that a massive famine hit the entire region. Yet, God, through wonderful providence, allowed Joseph to be sold into slavery and imprisonment, only to be elevated to the second position in the kingdom of Egypt, perfectly positioned to rescue Jacob's family (and the future nation that would come from his own body) from starvation and death. That family was reunited in Egypt and began growing in Egypt. For four hundred silent years, where the Bible does not speak, they continued being fruitful and multiplying in that foreign land.
In fact, this is precisely where the book of Exodus begins. God promised Adam and Noah in the earliest parts of Genesis that He would make them fruitful and multiply them. And now, in Egypt, in the earliest parts of the Exodus narrative, God keeps that promise on the ground and in their families. Here is what the text says:
"But the sons of Israel were fruitful and increased greatly, and multiplied, and became exceedingly mighty, so that the land was filled with them. - Exodus 1:7
Do you see how God is fulfilling His promises? Do not overlook the significance of this moment. God created a world in Eden where His covenant people were destined to thrive under His blessings, a key component of which was their call to be fruitful and multiply, to expand and populate all the lands, establishing dominion over them. These events unfold within this passage, though not yet on the universal scale envisioned for the future, but significantly on a local scale within Egypt. The people of Israel proliferated exceedingly, their numbers swelling to such an extent that they filled the land, indicating that God's hand of blessing was upon them.
In typical fashion, the native occupants, the adversaries of God, perceive this divine favor and are seized by terror at the prospect of losing their sovereignty. Egypt's apprehension, fearing that Israel's expansion and dominion will continue to the point of usurping their own, highlights a profound understanding lost on many today. God has not devised a plan destined for His people's failure but has laid a strategy where the foes of God will be stripped of their places, nations, and statuses. In this divine plan, God's people are destined to dispossess their lands, thereby extending Yahweh's dominion far beyond its current boundaries.
The Egyptian Pharoah and his advisors grasped the enormity of God's plan with all the visceral clarity needed, filling their hearts with dread and spurring them into a dark, desperate strategy of Jewish genocide, which became a futile attempt to thwart God's holy intentions (Exodus 1:9-10). Yet, as is the inevitable fate of all who dare to challenge the Almighty, their sinister schemes crumbled into dust flakes. Moses recounts with poetic justice that the harsher Egypt's tyranny became, the more prolifically God's favor was poured out, blessing His people with unimaginable success and growth (Exodus 1:12). In a twist of irony, when Egypt sought to drown the Hebrew legacy in the Nile, God orchestrated a covert resistance led by fearless midwives. These unsung heroines, under God's watchful eye, not only safeguarded the lives of countless infants but became unwitting architects of Israel's burgeoning population, further frustrating Pharaoh's draconian decrees (Exodus 1:20).
As we saw last week, God will not give up on His plans. He made promises to Adam and Noah. He came and elected a sinner named Abraham. He gave that man children in his old age who would eventually settle down in Egypt. And now, under the mighty hand of God, who is pouring out His blessings and favor upon them, they are doing what Yahweh promised. They are being fruitful, multiplying, spreading out, and threatening the enemies of God's security and dominion. Sounds a lot like postmillennialism. If you ask me, it sounds like God is ensuring He will extend His dominion globally until the world is filled with worshippers.
This plan, of course, ran afoul of the Egyptians, who whipped the Israelite's backs a little harder each day, all the while increasing their miseries in labor, that is, until a breaking point occurred. At first, the strapping forty-year-old Moses, whom God miraculously orchestrated by divine providence to grow up in the palaces of Egypt, took matters into his own hands, killing an Egyptian and attempting to work for the freedom of his people by his own strength and Vigor. This was not God's plan, so God exiled Moses into the wilderness for an entire generation so that he could cool his jets a bit and trust that the Lord would do precisely what he promised.
As an octogenarian, God summons Moses back to Egypt with a mandate to reassure His people that He had not left them to languish in the desert sands, He had not turned His back on them, and He would assuredly rescue them from the shackles of Egyptian servitude with a mighty hand (Exodus 3:7-10). This liberation was aimed not just about freeing them from bondage but at relocating them to a land reminiscent of Eden — a garden land brimming with milk and honey and other beautiful blessings. There, they were to flourish, tend the garden land, extending Yahweh's sovereignty across its breadth, and transform it into a region where God's will had come on earth as it always had in heaven (Exodus 3:8). This elaborate plan traces its way all the way back to the pages of Genesis. This was not merely for the benefit of the Israelites alone, but it was being enacted by a God who wanted the entire earth to hear about Him and worship Him because of His awe-inspiring deeds. God had appointed Israel as His emissary to bring His blessings to all the world. And He announced that purpose to the obstinate Pharaoh just before He crushed Him. God says to the Pharaoh in Exodus 9:16:
"But, indeed, for this reason, I have allowed you to remain, in order to show you My power and in order to proclaim My name through all the earth." - Exodus 9:16
Why would God tell the egotistical Pharaoh that His intention was to fill the earth with His name, stories of His power, and glory if He had no desire to fulfill it? Would God boast in a plan He had no intention of completing? I think not.
God rained down a furious assortment of ten devastating plagues on Egypt, crushing their egotistical pride, crashing their agriculture, farming, shipping industries, and the entire economic system that kept them afloat as an empire, bankrupting them for generations. More importantly, God was laboring to set Israel free so that Yahweh's name would echo in every hole, hollar, cave, plain, and hilltop on earth. This alone reminds us that God is still committed to His original plan and purpose. He will make His name great by multiplying His worshippers everywhere the sun shines, everywhere the shadow falls, and no one in hell or on earth will stop Him. If you doubt that, ask the Pharaoh of Egypt, who hardened his heart and got the unenviable opportunity to see all the wealth and power that remained within his empire flushed down the Red Sea toilet.
THE LAW AND A WORLD FILLED WITH WORSHIPPERS:
From there, God brought this newly freed nation of Jews along with an assortment of Egyptians (Exodus 12:38), consisting of a couple of million people who walked out of Egypt (Exodus 12:37), to the base of Mount Sinai, where He would enter into a covenant relationship with them. Like all covenants, this one would have specific stipulations, rules, and precepts that the people of God were to follow in order to be in a relationship with this holy God. If they followed these stipulations, they would inherit the blessings of the covenant, which God describes in various sections of the Law. For instance, He promised to walk among them as God walked amid Adam and Eve in the garden (Leviticus 26:11-12). He promised they would be fruitful and prosperous in a garden land (Leviticus 26:9). He told them He would give them dominion and authority among the nations on earth (Deuteronomy 28:13). And He told them He would partner with them in filling the world with worshippers, as He had said to Adam before, reminding them: 'I will be your God and you will be my people' (Leviticus 26:12).
God also encouraged them that if they were holy (Leviticus 20:26), they would obey His voice (unlike their Father Adam). They would follow His decrees, and He would make them fruitful and multiply them (Leviticus 26:9). He would bless them in the land that He was giving them (Deuteronomy 6:3). He would use them to bring His covenant blessings and extend His royal dominion to all the nations (Exodus 19:5-6). In the Law, God promises to enter into a Genesis 1:28 relationship with Israel and allow them to assist Him in accomplishing His Genesis 1:28 outcome of filling the world with worshippers.
From the outset of national Israel, God invited them into a covenant whereby they could partner with Him - like Adam long before - to bring God's glory into all the earth (Numbers 14:21). They were commissioned to live such holy and fruitful lives, aided by the Law and sacrificial system, that the nations would see the glories of God and would either stream into Israel to know this benevolent deity (Deuteronomy 4:5-6) or they would tremble in fear of Him and His people (Deuteronomy 28:9-10). Either way, the Lord was committed to His earth-filling promises. As long as Israel was faithful to Him, God would allow them to join Him in that work, using them as a light to the Gentiles (Isaiah 42:6). But, as we know from the story, Israel was regularly unfaithful to the Lord, they refused to be obedient to the terms of the covenant, instead of reaching the nations and filling the nations with the knowledge of God they polluted the land with the idols of demons. Instead of inheriting the covenant blessings, they often languished under the torrent of covenantal cursings (Deuteronomy 28).
THE CONQUEST AND A WORLD FILLED WITH WORSHIPPERS
Despite Israel's apparent inability to keep the covenant, God remained faithful to His promises. As we have said before, He is not only the promise maker from Genesis but also the promise keeper of Exodus, Leviticus, and Numbers. He is the God who kept covenant with the second wilderness generation in Deuteronomy where He graciously repeated His Law to His people who were preparing to take Yaweh's cosmic will and world-filling plan into the land of Canaan, and enact it on a local/regional scale. This means that the first phase of Yahweh's plan was to fill one nation full of worshippers. By choosing Israel, God would partner with one nation to reach all the nations. They were to become a people who loved Him and lived with integrity and righteousness under His dominion, and from there, God would multiply those blessings and use that nation to reach the nations.
In this way, the land of Canaan would become a microcosm, a blueprint for what God would do throughout the world. This work began as soon as the Lord's servant Moses died and the newly appointed leader, Joshua, was installed. Under Joshua, God commissioned the Israelites to go in and bring the entire land of Canaan under the dominion of Yahweh (Joshua 1:2-4). To do that, God charged the newly minted leader to live a life saturated with the Law of God, to lead the people to be ever consecrated unto Him so that the Lord would make the nation prosperous and give Joshua success wherever He went (Joshua 1:8-9). And, at the end of Joshua's life, he confesses to us that God accomplished every aspect of that plan. Joshua tells us that there was not a single promise God gave to Him that He did not complete (Joshua 21:43-45).
Thus, phase 1 of the plan was complete. Despite the apparent setbacks associated with partnering with a sin-loving people, God had used this motley people to populate one nation full of worshippers.
THE BOOK OF JUDGES AND A WORLD FILLED WITH WORSHIPPERS
Knowing this, it would be reasonable to assume that God would transition away from the local and national level fulfillment and begin using Israel to multiply the knowledge of God and His blessings all across the globe. But there was a significant problem. While God was entirely faithful and perfectly upheld His end of the deal to partner with Israel to fill His world with worshippers, Israel was entirely faithless on their end.
After Joshua died, the nation plunged itself into a cyclical pattern of idolatry and subjugation, which, sadly, became the norm throughout the Book of Judges. God would raise up a judge to rescue the people out of their slavery (a second Moses figure), and the people would walk with God so long as that man was alive and well. But, when the judge died, Israel experienced a kind of death, too, falling back into the most disgusting worship practices, harlotries, and macabre violence imaginable. This rebellion would cause God to give them over to their enemies, and the vicious cycle would begin again and again.
In this sense, no progress was made on God's world-filling goals throughout the book of Judges. In fact, this was a period of awful and bitter regression, where the people surrendered sovereignty in Canaan and tarnished their witness among the nations. For instance, the attitude of this tragic period can be summed up well by a couple of verses taken from the beginning and end of this book. In Judges chapter 2, God comes personally from heaven down to Canaan, showing up in the flesh as the angel of the Lord (a Christophany if you are familiar with that term), and He speaks to all the covenant-breaking sons of Israel, saying:
"I brought you up out of Egypt and led you into the land which I have sworn to your fathers; and I said, 'I will never break My covenant with you, and as for you, you shall make no covenant with the inhabitants of this land; you shall tear down their altars.' But you have not obeyed Me; what is this you have done? Therefore I also said, 'I will not drive them out before you; but they will become as thorns in your sides and their gods will be a snare to you.'" - Judges 2:1-3
The Angel of the Lord said to a nation of miscreants that He was the one who brought them out of the land of Egypt. He had been faithful to all His promises. And it was certainly not His intention to bring them into His royal family just to see them wallowing in their own filth and feces like barnyard animals. Christ Himself (God coming in the flesh) reminded them that if they had been faithful, God would have made them fruitful, multiplied them, and used them to take His blessings to the nations. But, because of their sin and rebellion, their country was collapsing in on itself, and God would be bringing them into judgment. Not the kind of judgment where God draws closer to them in white-hot fury, but the type of judgment where He abandons them to their own sick devices (e.g., Romans 1:24-32).
Nowhere is this judgment more clearly visible than at the end of the book, where the author reports to us:
In those days, there was no king in Israel; everyone did what was right in his own eyes. - Judges 21:25
In closing out this section, it is crucial to remember that while God remained perfectly faithful to His promises, partnering with a people to fill the world with worshippers, the plan encountered an all-too-familiar snag due to human sin, idolatry, and rebellion. This is the same snag that caused the world not to be filled with worshippers under Adam, nor with Noah's flawed line, Abraham's broken family, Moses and the idolatrous Israelites, Joshua and the warring tribes, and now with the kingless debased people of Israel during in the period of the judges.
At no point in this cosmic drama had God changed. He was faithful even though everyone else was exposed as liars and oath breakers. If anything, we are getting the most detailed glimpse of the unsearchable depths and riches of His limitless grace. God, by His mere good pleasure and long-suffering goodness, repeatedly rebooted His mission of partnering with humans to fill the world with worshippers. This is not only because He abounds with limitless grace, and it is not only to show us that we could never uphold our end of the covenant, but it was also to make way for His own Son, the one who stood before Israel and rebuked them, who would one day come and complete what they never could.
These passages in Judges do not remind us how useful and helpful we are to God, far from it. Instead, they show us God's unwavering commitment and patience to accomplish His plan. A plan to partner with a man to fill the world with worshippers. While the Bible repeatedly recounts how none of the sons of Adam could be faithful in that role, the true son of Adam and Son of God was coming, who would do what we could not do. Why? Because God does not give up on His plans even when we do. Despite the hundreds of years of failure and delay, God's plan was never in jeopardy and would never be thwarted. His intentions to partner with a man to fill the world with worshippers remained intact throughout the judges and, as we will see next, will continue throughout the era of the wishy-washy, topsy-turvy kings. How so? Because God will use those eras to usher in a true son of Adam, the nation's true Judge and God's truly appointed and anointed King, His only Son, who will be successful where everyone else has failed.
THE KINGS, JESUS, AND A WORLD FILLED WITH WORSHIPPERS
Humanly speaking, the era of the kings was birthed out of the same idolatry-addicted DNA that was typical during the period of the judges. The same people who craved the gods of all the nations were now asking for a king so that they could be like all the nations (1 Samuel 8:20). Instead of converting the pagan world, they were being converted by it.
In some ways, that dark period of Israel's history set the trajectory for how the kings would crash and burn and how a future messianic King would be needed. Since God would not abandon His plans and since no human could accomplish them, God would come from heaven to earth as a man to establish His will in all the nations. This is because neither Israel nor Judah's kings would, or ever could, do it.
Instead of taking the covenant with Yahweh seriously, partnering with Him to bring His covenant blessings to the nations, filling the world with worshippers as He intended, the kings of Israel and Judah fell like a blind man walking off a cliff's edge. There are, of course, notable exceptions, such as good kings scattered here and there within the line of Judah. But those good kings rarely got complete control of the land of Canaan (as Joshua had before them), let alone multiplying that out into the nations. The norm for the kings was to live and lead the people forcefully away from obedience to God and into the devastating fury of God's punishment and cursing.
Because that was the default mode of the human heart, God began the era of the Kings with a powerful admonishment. He speaks on the lips of the humble maiden (in Hannah's song), saying:
"Those who contend with the LORD will be shattered; Against them He will thunder in the heavens, The LORD will judge the ends of the earth; And He will give strength to His king, And will exalt the horn of His anointed." - 1 Samuel 2:10
God is warning the nation and its rulers that He will shatter anyone who is disobedient to Him and that He will execute His justice all over the face of the earth so that no one will escape His watchful eye. But to the Lord's anointed King, a picture of the future coming messiah, He will give His strength, and He will bring about the plan that God has been enacting since Eden.
In case you missed it, none of the Kings or priests of Israel would measure up (see also 1 Samuel 2:35). None of them ever would, or ever could, usher in the promises made to Adam, Noah, Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Judah, Moses, Joshua, or the lot of them. But, as I have been saying all along, even though we are unfaithful to God's plan, it does not mean the Lord will abandon His plan, forget His promises, or fail to bring about all He desires to do. If His plan is to partner with a man, and there are no good men to partner with, then He will leave heaven and come down as the true man! If God wants a true King, He will leave the throne of heaven and become the true and better King we have all been waiting on (Hebrews 1:8-9). Since God is looking to partner with a perfect priest, He (I am speaking about Jesus) will come as the eternal Priest from the eternal line, mediating that relationship between God and man forever (Hebrews 7:24-25). Jesus Christ, the righteous one, will bring God's Kingly victory to the nations (Revelation 15:4). The era of the Judges and Kings, as dark as it is, does not tell the story of God abandoning His plans but reveals that a better Man, Judge, Priest, and King is coming!
This shift in language is striking. Before the era of the Judges and Kings, God was using Israeli-centric language. He was speaking about partnering with this peculiar slave-saved nation to accomplish His global purposes. But, as the tremendous inability of this nation is being exposed over time, more light about God's plan floods in, and we recognize what God has been planning all along! In the providence of God, God had entered into partnerships He knew would fail! This was not an accidental bug or a mistake within His calculus but a feature. God partnered with Adam to fill the world with worshippers because He knew that and ordained that Adam would fail. God partnered with Noah because He planned for Him to fail. God partnered with Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Judah, Israel, and all the Kings because they would fail fantastically. And what we begin to discover in the era of the Judges and Kings is God choosing partners who can do nothing but fall flat on their faces.
This is not because God is capricious or enjoys the spectacle. He was showing us something in all of this: two things, to be precise. First, that He could never fail at bringing about His promises. You can doubt Him all you want; you can go on living in a doom and gloom worldview, where the world will collapse, the church will end in abysmal and pathetic failure, and He will never succeed at accomplishing what He promised to all those men in Genesis. Or (secondly), you can realize what our place within the divine meta-narrative has been all along!
Instead of being the story's heroes, we are cast as the villains. Our people failed, our priests failed, our prophets failed, all our kings failed, our morals failed, our ability failed; every aspect of the human story is accurately stated in the words of Romans 3:23: "All have fallen short." Because of this feature, God from Genesis and all throughout the Torah, the conquest narratives, the book of Judges, Samuel, King's, and Chronicles, was lining up in front of us, the very best of us, the most excellent representatives of us, showing us that even our mighty men have all fallen! And if they failed, we would all fail too! And here, we arrive at the point of what God is doing. He is teaching us to take our eyes off of us to the one He would send, who would succeed where Adam fell and who would be fruitful and multiply where Noah's progeny collapsed. God is pointing us to the overarching point of everything: we must look to the King He is going to send, His truly anointed Son, who will never fail in bringing about all the promises of God.
In case that is not clear enough for you, let me speak on the level of Crystal. God is going to fill the world with worshippers through His Son Jesus. No other man was worthy; the era of the Judges and the Kings alone proves that ugly point. But, after this long period of our ugly failure, God would send His Son, and He would be perfectly successful.
This means the coming messianic King (Jesus) will be a picture of faithful Israel (Matthew 2:15), succeeding where she failed. He will be the true firstborn son, like God called Adam (Luke 3:38) and Israel before Him (Exodus 4:22). He will be the one who fulfills and obeys the covenant with God, unlike all before Him (Matthew 5:17). And like Israel, He will be tasked with taking God's fruitful and multiplied Kingdom dominion to the nations (Isaiah 49:6; Matthew 28:18-20). Like Joshua, He will do that work first in Judah, bringing freedom and Kingdom to the captives (Isaiah 61:1; Luke 4:18) and setting on fire the city that was given over to destruction (Matthew 22:7; 23:36; 24:34; Luke 21:20-24). Like Joshua, He will send out His armies into all Judah's highways and byways, capturing that land and filling it full of worshippers (Matthew 22:1-14). Then, as ascended Lord of glory, He will do what no one had ever done before Him. He will lead His people outside Canaan and begin conquering the nations! By His holy Spirit, He will lead His Church into all the nations on earth like Adam was supposed to do, like Noah was commanded to do, and like Israel never could do (Acts 1:8). This shows us that in Christ, in His redemption and forgiveness of sins, in His death and reversal of the curse, in His new creation nature He has given us, and in our regeneration and indwelling, God has partnered with Christ, and He has brought us in union with Him so that with Him we will once more be partnered with God to accomplish His plan to spread His dominion to the nations (Matthew 28:18-20). This time, because of Christ, God Almighty will be perfectly victorious.
How do we see this truth revealed in the era of the Kings? Consider what God said to the first of His anointed kings, David, who is the first King and arguably the best king. In the covenant God made with David. God doesn't promise him that he will accomplish God's plans for the world. He does not even allow the warrior king to build him a temple with his blood-stained hands (1 Chronicles 22:8). He does not promise that His Son Solomon, who at the end of His life bowed the knee to countless idols (1 Kings 11:4), would usher in God's world-wide promises to the nations. He promises that an enduring house will be built for David and that a perfect King will come from David's line (Luke 1:32-33), the God-man, born in the city of David (Luke 2:11), taking up the mantle of God's mission to bring His rule and dominion on earth (2 Samuel 7:12-13, 16). And, in ways no human king could ever fulfill, this Jesus will have an eternal reign, in an everlasting Kingdom (1 Chronicles 17:11-14).
Jesus will be the one who indeed obeys the covenant stipulations of Yahweh and, as Solomon prayed, would bless all the peoples on earth (1 Kings 8:60; 2 Chronicles 6:32-33). He is the one who delivered Hezekiah from Assyria and who will ensure the world will know who God is (2 Kings 19:15, 19). He is the one who, unlike the kings of Judah, will not lead His people into idolatry or fail in righteousness but will establish and uphold justice and righteousness from this time forth and forevermore (Isaiah 9:7). Jesus, this perfect King, unlike Hezekiah, will not falter after great successes, nor will His kingdom face the downfall seen by Judah at the hands of Babylon. Instead, His reign will bring about the peace and prosperity that God promised to David—a peace that extends not just over Israel but all over the earth, fulfilling the true extent of the Abrahamic covenant (Genesis 22:18).
Jesus' kingship and His kingdom contrast starkly with the failures of the kings of Israel and Judah. Where they brought division, He brings unity. Where they led the nation into sin, He leads His people into holiness. Where their kingdoms ended, His is eternal. In this, Jesus Christ embodies the true and better King God promised would come from David's line—a King whose kingdom would be established forever.
In His first coming, Jesus inaugurated this kingdom not with the might of warfare but through the humility of a servant, dying on the cross to save His people from their sins (Philippians 2:6-8). And in His resurrection, He demonstrated His power over death and authority over heaven and earth, a foretaste of the kingdom to come. Now, as our ascended Lord, He is gathering a people from every tribe, tongue, and nation, building His church as the new Israel, a global assembly of worshippers who obey His commandments and bear witness to His kingdom (Revelation 5:9-10).
As we live today, we are caught in the already but not yet of God's kingdom. Through Christ's work on the cross and His resurrection, we have been made citizens of this kingdom, called to live under His lordship and extend His rule by making disciples of all nations (Matthew 28:18-20). Yet we await the day when He will return to consummate His kingdom, to judge the living and the dead, and to renew all things, fulfilling every promise God made from Genesis onward.
Therefore, with all its robust failures and flickering glimpses of godliness, the era of the kings of Judah foreshadows the true and better King, Jesus Christ. The adultery of David, the disloyalty of Solomon, the foolishness of Rehoboam, the pride of Josian and Hezekiah, the disgusting practices of Manasseh, Ammon, and Jehoikim, and the failure of their reigns make us yearn for a perfect reign. Their mistakes highlight the coming messianic King's perfections. Their temporal kingdoms point us to His eternal kingdom. And their inability to bring about God's promises makes us long for and rely on the only One who can and will fulfill every promise: Jesus, the Christ, the Son of the living God, the true King to whom every knee shall bow (Philippians 2:10-11).
We see the shadow in the story of Israel and Judah; in Jesus, we know the substance. As postmillennialism teaches, through this true and better King, God is partnering with His people, now made new in Christ, to fill the world with worshippers, bringing His rule and dominion to every corner of the earth, not through the sword or human might, but through the preaching of the gospel and the transformative power of the Holy Spirit. And so, our hope for the future, our work in the present, and our reading of the past are all anchored in Him—the cornerstone of our faith and the capstone of history (Ephesians 2:20). In this grand narrative, we find our place not as the heroes, but as the grateful recipients of His grace, called to faithful service in His kingdom as we await His glorious return.
CONCLUSION
The story of God's plan to fill the earth with worshippers is a sweeping narrative from Genesis to Revelation. We witness God's steadfast commitment to this promise throughout the ages, partnering with flawed human vessels who ultimately fall short. Yet, in His boundless grace, God remains faithful, using each failure as a canvas to paint a more vivid picture of the faithful and better partner to come—His own Son, Jesus Christ.
In the era of the Exodus, conquests, judges, and kings, we see this pattern unfold with striking clarity. God's people's cyclical rebellion and their leaders' shortcomings expose the desperate need for a perfect King, one who would succeed where all others failed. And in the fullness of time, God sent forth His Son, the embodiment of true Israel, the fulfillment of the Abrahamic covenant, and the eternal King whose reign knows no end.
Through His obedience, sacrificial death, and glorious resurrection, Christ inaugurated the everlasting kingdom foretold by the prophets. He has gathered to Himself a redeemed people from every nation, tribe, and tongue, forming the true Israel of God—a global assembly of worshippers who live under His lordship and bear witness to His reign.
As we await the consummation of this kingdom, when Christ returns to judge the living and the dead and to renew all things, we find our place not as heroes but as grateful recipients of divine grace. Our calling is to faithful service and obedience, extending the rule of our King to the ends of the earth through the proclamation of the gospel and the transformative power of the Holy Spirit.
In this grand narrative, God's promises stand sure, and His purposes will prevail. Every knee will bow, and every tongue will confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father. The era of Old Covenant Israel, with all its failures and momentary glimpses of godliness, serves as a backdrop to magnify the perfections of our true and better King, in whom our hope is anchored and our faith finds its fulfillment.
Brothers and sisters, do not doubt God's promises. Through Jesus, the world will not collapse like a planned demolition, but it will be filled with worshippers! And He will partner with His blood-bought church to take His victory to the ends of the earth for His glory! Believe that! Find your place in that! And until next time, may you be found working on that!
