Maybe you’ve had the experience of joining a conversation already underway and feeling lost. For you to understand what is going on, someone needs to catch you up. Or maybe you want to watch a ballgame on TV, but you turn it on halfway through. If so, you may wonder what the score is and how it came to be that way. We make sense of many things by the intuitive use of context. A punch in one context may be playful but in another context may start a fight. Context matters a great deal.
The same is true for our understanding of the kingdom of God. If we start with the New Testament as the foundation for what the kingdom means, we may find ourselves in the middle of a conversation that we don’t fully understand. In the first century, the people of God shared some expectations about what the kingdom means that were assumed by Jesus—even as He challenged some of those expectations. In other words, Jesus was not the first to introduce the concept of the kingdom. Scripture has much to say about the kingdom in the Old Testament. What Jesus says about the kingdom must be slotted into that context and understood in the light of those expectations. It will take us a bit more work to recover what those expectations were, but recovering them will go far in helping us understand the nature of the kingdom in the New Testament.
While the Old Testament does not speak about the kingdom with the same frequency as the New Testament, it would be wrong to conclude that the concept is foreign to the Old Testament. The kingdom of God permeates the Old Testament.
In my book The Kingdom of God and the Work of Christ, I explore in more detail the Old Testament background to the kingdom—which is substantial. Kingdom expectations start early in the Old Testament, but they really come into their own with David and his kingdom. David was the paradigmatic king of God’s kingdom in the Old Testament, and the Lord made a covenant with David that one of his sons would rule over the kingdom forever. Yet we also find great tragedy among God’s people in the Old Testament, with the kingship and the kingdom falling to the enemies of God’s people. Even so, God’s promises remained. It is in the light of such promises that we should understand the kingdom in the New Testament and Jesus’ identity as the messianic Son of David.
Foundations of the Kingdom
The Old Testament foundations of the kingdom of God are laid at the beginning in creation. Already God is portrayed as a great King whose power is apparent over creation. His resting on the seventh day of creation communicates that He has successfully completed His task of creation; He rests when His work of creation is completed.
The creation of humanity in God’s image also reflects the divine kingship of God. Man and woman are created in God’s image and commanded to rule over God’s creation (Gen. 1:26–28). This ruling over creation is part of what it means to be made in the image of God: Adam and Eve were to be royal image-bearers of the Great King and to spread His glory throughout the whole world.1 The royal dignity of humanity, therefore, reflects God’s divine kingship. This is reiterated later in the Psalms when David, reflecting on the creation in Genesis 1–2, speaks of the crowning with glory and honor that is characteristic of humanity (Ps. 8:5). If humanity, made in the image of God, is crowned with glory and honor, we can be sure that this is but a reflection of the kingship of God.
With the fall of humanity into sin in Genesis 3, the kingdom of God as it was in the beginning, as it was to be ruled over by Adam, was marred. Sin brought disorder and disruption and pain. God never ceased to be King, but now there is a conflict that will play out throughout Scripture and world history. It is a kingdom conflict between the offspring of the woman and the offspring of the serpent. This is the context for understanding the great gospel promise of Genesis 3:15, which foretells a coming Redeemer. Speaking to the serpent, whom He was cursing, the Lord God said,
“I will put enmity between you and the woman,
and between your offspring and her offspring;
he shall bruise your head,
and you shall bruise his heel.”
This promised Seed of the woman refers to a coming child who would destroy the devil and his kingdom and recover what Adam lost in the beginning.
God is portrayed in Scripture as a great King (see Ps. 10: 16),2 and those made in His image are also portrayed in royal terms. The same is true for Israel collectively. In the exodus from Egypt, Pharaoh is commanded to let Israel—the Lord’s firstborn son—go, or Pharaoh’s firstborn son would be killed (Ex. 4:22–23). This is a challenge of kingships. Pharaoh’s royal son would die if he would not let the royal son of the Lord go free. The story of the exodus is therefore the vindication of the true kingship of the Lord. This perspective continues in Deuteronomy, where the Lord is identified as a great King—or Father—who cares for His people. This is a significant emphasis of Deuteronomy (see 1:31; 8:5; 14:1–2; 32:4–6, 18–20). The people collectively were God’s son, which paved the way for one individual to lead the nation as God’s son.
Deuteronomy 17:14–17 specifically anticipates a future day when God’s people would be led by a king according to the instruction of the Lord:
When you come to the land that the Lord your God is giving you, and you possess it and dwell in it and then say, “I will set a king over me, like all the nations that are around me,” you may indeed set a king over you whom the Lord your God will choose. One from among your brothers you shall set as king over you. You may not put a foreigner over you, who is not your brother. Only he must not acquire many horses for himself or cause the people to return to Egypt in order to acquire many horses, since the Lord has said to you, “You shall never return that way again.” And he shall not acquire many wives for himself, lest his heart turn away, nor shall he acquire for himself excessive silver and gold.
In the future, the Lord would choose a king for God’s people who would rule them according to God’s word, not according to the customs of the nations. This king, as we will see, would be God’s Son and would rule over God’s son (that is, God’s people) collectively. This again reflects the divine royalty of God Himself, for the king of God’s people rules on behalf of God, the Great King. Instead of trusting in chariots or horses, this king over God’s people was to trust in the name of the Lord (see Ps. 20:7–9). He would lead the people in righteousness and protect God’s people from their enemies, allowing them to serve and worship the Lord in the promised land. In the days of Deuteronomy, the people had no earthly king, but this would change in the future.
The book of Judges further underscores why God’s people need a king. Judges recounts cycles of sin and rebellion and how the Lord raised up judges (or warlords) to save His people.3 Yet the deliverance through the judges did not last, and by the end of the book, sin had gotten grossly out of hand. Judges makes clear that the people went their own way because they did not have a king. For example, just before recounting great corruption in Israel, the book of Judges states, “In those days there was no king in Israel” (Judges 18:1). A similar refrain opens chapter 19, just before one of the great atrocities of the Old Testament. The book ends ominously: “In those days there was no king in Israel. Everyone did what was right in his own eyes” (21:25).
The implication of Judges is that God’s people went astray in large measure because they had no king to rule over them in righteousness and provide safety from their enemies. The book of Judges therefore provides dramatic illustrations of why it is good and proper for God’s people to be ruled over by God’s king.
The Kingdom of David
In the days of the prophet Samuel, the people finally got their king. While it is true that Samuel rebuked the people for their reasons for wanting a king—to be like the other nations (1 Sam. 8:4–9)—the appropriateness of a king’s ruling over God’s people was already clear from books such as Deuteronomy and Judges. The first king was Saul, the son of Kish, who was an impressive physical specimen but had the fatal flaw of not trusting in the Lord. Therefore, the Lord rejected him as king, and David was anointed in his place.
David is the most important king in the Old Testament. He was a man after God’s own heart ( 1 Sam. 13:14), and he was the paradigmatic king. Further, and crucial for understanding the kingdom in the New Testament, it was with David that the Lord made a covenant promising an everlasting kingdom. This is recounted in 2 Samuel 7. This divine promise is known as the Davidic covenant. In this covenant, the Lord promises to build David a house—that is, a dynastic kingdom—for his offspring (2 Sam. 7:11–12). The kingdom of David’s offspring would not be temporary but would last forever (vv. 13, 16). The king would be God’s son, ruling over God’s people as God’s chosen representative (v. 14). While David ruled on God’s behalf with great success, David’s greater Son would rule over God’s people forever. The Davidic kingdom would never end. The coming of this Davidic offspring (v. 12) fulfills the Abrahamic promise of an offspring from Abraham (Gen. 15:4) and ultimately fulfills the promise that the offspring of the woman would bruise the head of the devil (3:15).
David plays a key role in establishing the kingdom of God in the Old Testament. But the Davidic covenant looks beyond David to an even greater Son who would rule forever. David was a great king who ruled God’s people well and protected them from their enemies. But he was also a deeply flawed man, and his kingdom tottered in the latter years of his reign.
David’s son Solomon rose to even greater heights than David. Could Solomon perhaps be the promised son who would reign forever? It may have looked that way at first. But Solomon was not the final son to reign forever. Like David, Solomon, as great as he was, turned away from the Lord toward the end of his life (1 Kings 11). The Davidic covenant looked for further fulfillment beyond Solomon. A greater Son of David—greater than Solomon—would one day come and rule forever. It is in such light that the New Testament presents Jesus as greater than David (Matt. 12:1–8) and greater than Solomon (v. 42).
The Failure of the Kingdom
While the kingdom of God is on display in the Davidic covenant and in the Psalms, the historical books of the Old Testament broadly are all about the successes and struggles of various stages of God’s kingdom. In the words of theologian Herman Bavinck, “What Scripture describes in these books … is the progress of the kingdom of God.”4 This history in the remainder of the Old Testament is filled with ups and downs—many downs. After the heights of Solomon’s glorious reign, the kingdom split under his son Rehoboam into the Southern Kingdom of Judah and the Northern Kingdom of Israel. The account of these events and the ensuing years is recorded in 1–2 Kings and 1–2 Chronicles. In the north, idolatry was established early on by Jeroboam, who built a rival place of worship to Jerusalem. We read of a succession of ungodly kings in the north, such as Ahab (and his wife, Jezebel). Ahab worshiped Baal, murdered Naboth, and stole his vineyard, and during his reign the prophets were killed (see 1 Kings 16–22). Such failures of ungodly kingship led to a failure of the kingdom, with the Northern Kingdom eventually falling to the Assyrians in 722 BC.
In the Southern Kingdom things were not quite as bad, but they were bad enough. Some kings, such as Hezekiah, carried David’s mantle admirably (if imperfectly). But the overall trajectory even of the Southern Kingdom was not success but failure. The Southern Kingdom lasted longer, but it, too, fell to foreign enemies, succumbing to the Babylonians by 586 BC.
With the fall of the kingdom and kingship, the people languished. Many were taken into exile and forced into foreign lands. Idolatry ran rampant. The temple at Jerusalem was devastated. There was little peace for God’s people. The lament of Psalm 137 reflects the despondency of God’s people in the absence of their king:
By the waters of Babylon,
there we sat down and wept,
when we remembered Zion. (v. 1)
But the promise of the Davidic covenant was a guarantee that the kingdom would not be permanently cut off.
The Promise of a Restored Kingdom
Thankfully, the failure of the kingdom was not the final word. Even when it might have looked to the naked eye as if the kingdom of God had been shattered beyond repair, the promise of an everlasting kingdom from David’s line was never in doubt—for God had promised. And God’s promises are certain.
The Old Testament prophets often recalled this Davidic covenant in their prophecies of the future restoration of God’s kingdom. This is prominent in Isaiah. Indeed, Isaiah 9:2–7, a familiar Christmas passage, is not just about a child to be born—as wonderful as that is—but about a royal child to be born, the coming Son of David.
The people dwelling in darkness are those suffering the failure of their king and the violent threat of surrounding kingdoms. These are God’s people, who faced the lowest of lows in their forced exile when the kingdom seemed to have disappeared. But in the face of such gloom would come a child to fulfill the Davidic covenant. This child would reign forever; of the increase of His kingdom and of peace there will be no end. As great as David’s rule was, he did not fulfill this prophecy. His dynasty had fallen, but in the future, One would come to restore the fallen dynasty of David (Amos 9:11–12).
These are but a small sampling of the Old Testament expectations of the final fulfillment of the Davidic covenant. We will consider more Old Testament passages in the chapters that follow. These prophecies of a coming king remained unfulfilled in the Old Testament. But they come into spectacular view in the New Testament. It is to this story of the kingdom in the New Testament that we now turn our attention.
See, e.g., Richard L. Pratt Jr., Designed for Dignity: What God Has Made It Possible for You to Be, 2nd ed. (P&R, 2000), 23–38; and G.K. Beale, The Temple and the Church’s Mission: A Biblical Theology of the Dwelling Place of God, New Studies in Biblical Theology 17 (IVP, 2004), 81–87.↩
Ridderbos, The Coming of the Kingdom, trans. H. de Jongste, ed. Raymond O. Zorn (Presbyterian and Reformed, 1962), xii–xxxii.↩
3 On this and the role of the judges, see Bruce K. Waltke with Charles Yu, An Old Testament Theology: An Exegetical Canonical and Thematic Approach (Zondervan, 2007), 588–623.↩
Herman Bavinck, The Wonderful Works of God: Instruction in the Christian Religion According to the Reformed Confession, trans. Henry Zylstra (Westminster Seminary Press, 2019), 74.↩
Ligonier Ministries