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Politicians are fond of repeating certain phrases. There are certain things that almost all of them say. One of the refrains that they tout while on the campaign trail goes like this: “I believe that our best years are just ahead.”
And in saying that they imply that if you vote for them, the nation will begin to flourish.
I don’t want to sound like a politician who makes vain promises. But I do believe that our best years are still ahead. If you are a Christian, that is a promise that you can take to the bank.
The Israelites who were in exile were just as frustrated as you are. They lamented that the kingdom of God was in troubled state. They themselves were pained by sorrows and difficulty. They were people who lamented their present situation.
That’s why this passage of Scripture was written. The passage before us details what may be called the “Golden Years of Israel.” It was a time when God’s kingdom flourished. Under Solomon, the kingdom reached unprecedented levels of prosperity. The kingdom was as expansive in size as it was in economic productivity. You might say that it was a time of lavish glory.
You’ve maybe heard of the roaring 20’s; that time after World War I where there was a sense of optimism. The economy was growing and everyone was enjoying the increasing standards of living that came as a result of the economy booming.
That’s kind of what you can say was happening in Israel under Solomon. Solomon’s wisdom ushered in a golden age in Israel. And the author of this book takes the exiles back to that time. He wanted to remind them of what it was like when God’s covenant people were attentive to God’s covenant law.
All in all, this passage tells us about how the wise king’s rule brought forth the blessings of God’s covenant.
Remember that a covenant is a relationship built on promises where blessings come as a result of obedience and curses come as a result of disobedience. And, under Solomon’s wisdom, the blessings of God’s covenant began to flow in extraordinary proportions.
And that’s what we want to look at this morning. And as we consider the Golden Age of God’s kingdom, I want to do so under three points:
The blessings that were enjoyed
The seeds that were sown
The hope that was created.
I. The blessings that were enjoyed
Let’s just highlight some of the things that characterized this age and see how they connect to what God had promised.
First of all, we can talk about the prosperity of the kingdom. When you read through verses 7-19, you hear about the 12 different officers who were in charge of providing food for the king. Each man had a different district to which he was assigned. And each district had to provide the food for a specific month of the year.
So, basically, this was a tax on the land. Those who worked in the government and were part of Solomon’s administration needed to eat. This is the way they got paid. They got to eat.
But then, you can look down at verses 22-23 and you see what the menu provided. Now, keep in mind, this is the food they needed for one day of the month. They needed 30 Cors of flour and 60 cors of meal.
Now, one cor is about 50 gallons. So that’s 1500 gallons of flour and 3000 gallons of meal. That’s a lot of bread you are making each day.
But then you also have a list of all the different meats. And the protein intake is just as abundant. You have 10 fat oxen, 20 cattle, 100 sheep, and that’s not counting the wild game (deer, gazelles, roebucks, and fowl). And again, that’s just one day. Over the course of a month, you have 300 oxen, 600 cattle, 3000 sheep. That’s an incredible amount of food that you are collecting and consuming each day.
Now, if that’s what is being brought into the king’s court, you have to have a land that is quite productive. If the people are eating and drinking and being happy, you get the idea that the land is flush with economic prosperity.
And, of course, that’s what God had promised. He had promised back in Deuteronomy that they would have the increase of their cattle and herds. Their baskets and kneading bowls would be full. Their crops would not fail. In other words, the land would be blessed and the economy would soar.
That’s what the people are experiencing. They are enjoying the richness of the blessings God had promised in his covenant.
But they not only have economic prosperity, they have domestic security.
In other words, there is peace and safety.
Look at verses 24 and 25. It says that they had peace on all sides around. Judah and Israel lived in safety, from Dan (all the way in the north country) to Beersheba (which is all the way in the southern most part of Israel).
Of course, economic prosperity requires a land that is protected from marauders. If you have war and people constantly invading your territory, your economy cannot grow. And that’s what Israel has during this time. They are not threatened by any enemies. Treaties have been made with these different countries. The land is safe because the nations around them are enjoying the fruitfulness of Israel. No one wants to attack; everyone wants to be Israel’s friend.
And, again, that’s what the Lord had promised. The Lord had promised that Israel would live in the land securely. He promised to give them peace. Everyone would be able to lie down and not be afraid. (Lev. 26:5-6).
And God had told them that their kings were not to accumulate horses and chariots. Why was that? It was because they didn’t need them. God himself would be their protector. He would send them all the peace they needed. And here you see that Israel is enjoying that national serenity. The king’s wisdom had put the enemies to rest and ushered in a glorious time of tranquility. The nation had no fear of enemies so long as God’s covenant was kept. God kept watch.
So, you have economic prosperity and national security. You also had international ascendency.
In other words, Israel as a nation became a superpower.
Notice what it says in verse 21 and 24. In both of these verses it says that Solomon ruled over all of the kingdoms from the Euphrates to the land of the Philistines, all the way down to Egypt.
Essentially, at this point in time (under Solomon) the borders of Israel were at their largest point in their history. They controlled a massive amount of land.
These would have been other kingdoms surrounding Israel that were essentially giving their lands over to Solomon. They would have land annexed or would have been vassal states that paid tribute (and were, thereby, basically owned by Israel).
And this should not surprise us because that’s exactly what God had promised Abraham. In Genesis 15 God promised to give to Abraham all the land from the Euphrates to the Nile. And here in 1 Kings 4 the lord is saying, “I kept my promise. I did exactly what I said I would do.”
There’s one more thing that characterizes the blessings they enjoyed. We can also say that they had philosophical authority.
I’m talking about what we read about at the end of the chapter. Verses 29 and following. Solomon’s wisdom became a global phenomenon. We are told that his wisdom was so vast that he was wiser than all the sages of the world at his time. It was greater than anything you’d find in Babylon or Egypt. He stood head and shoulders about some of the big names of his day: Ethan the Ezrahite, Heman, Calcol. And, of course, we are told that all the kings of the earth heard of his wisdom. They would travel to come and learn from him. They would read his books and meditate on his proverbs.
This is exactly what God had promised to Abraham. God had said to Abraham, “In you all the nations of the earth will be blessed.” This is what is being highlighted when 1 Kings talks about the vastness of Solomon’s wisdom.
But I want you to think of it like this: These nations were being discipled.
Sure, they would learn about trees and plants and animals. But along with that they would be hearing about the Lord. They would be trained in God’s law and be heavily influenced by what we might call a Christian worldview.
You could say that, under Solomon, Israel had a global, gospel influence. We talk a lot about influencers today. Well, Solomon was a global influencer.
Here’s another way to think of it. You probably are not going to read about this in the history books, but the world has been influenced by Solomon’s wisdom. You can think about Babylon, Assyria, Egypt. They came along quite a bit later, but possibly even guys like Plato and Socrates. In some way or another, all the world’s philosophers were likely influenced by the Scriptures. Somewhere in their nation’s history they would have had Solomonic wisdom impinging upon their lives.
Now, what are we doing here? We are simply listing the different ways in which the blessings of the covenant were being evidenced. God had promised that His people would have it all. They would have the best and be the best. And in this golden era we see a radical outpouring of these blessings, at least in some way.
But even as we celebrate the fulfillment of God’s promises and view with wide eyed wonder how great Israel had become, there’s some things in this text that should give us pause. There are some things that are mentioned in the text that make you kind of wonder. If you are an astute student of Scripture, there are a lot of things that make you say “Wow!” But there are some other things that should make you say, “wait a second.”
So as we move into this second point, I want to talk about the seeds that were sown.
II. The seeds that were sown
Perhaps you’ve heard that expression. It’s been said by different people. I’m not sure who quite to attribute it to. But they say that civilizations have the ability to sow the seeds of their own destruction.
Even though this was the golden age of Israel’s history, that doesn’t mean that it didn’t have problems. Solomon’s wisdom was immense and it launched them into new heights, but there were obviously some things that were amiss and the kingdom was by no means perfect.
Let’s take a look.
We can begin back in the first 19 verses of the chapter. Those verses talked about all the food that was provided for Solomon and his officials. We mentioned how food would have been carted in by the truckload every day. There was an immense amount of grain and meat that was being consumed.
Now, that obviously means that there are a lot of mouths to feed, doesn’t it? You get the idea that there is a growing bureaucracy. It’s obvious that Solomon would have needed a good crew of people to help do the work of governance. After all, if you have all these different nations coming in to learn and to trade, you have to have people in place to help host and serve.
We admit that the text doesn’t say anything particular; it does not condemn this, but you get the feeling that the size of the government has begun to burgeon. And the more people you have in government, the more mouths there are to feed. That means that you have to levy more taxes.
Now, back in 1 Samuel, when Israel first asked for a king, Samuel outlined all the problems with their request. At that time, the government was small. God had created a system which was built on a limited government. But Samuel said that a king would take their daughters and their sons. He would take their land and their crops.
In other words, the size of the government would explode and they would lose their freedom. They would, more and more, become slaves of the state.
And that’s what you are seeing here. Solomon may be wise, but his kingdom is starting to become a bureaucratic monstrosity.
So that’s the first red flag. The increasing size of the government is something that stands out as a defiance of God’s intentions. Another way Israel sows the seeds of its own destruction is found in verses 26-27. It’s the militarization of the nation.
Verses 26-27 talk about how many horses and chariots Solomon had. It says that Solomon had 40,000 stalls of horses for his chariots. And he had 12,000 horsemen.
Remember what I said a few minutes ago. Scripture forbade the accumulation of horses and chariots. A king was not to be arming himself and creating an industrial military complex.
As I had said, God was to be Israel’s protector. The blessing of peace was not by means of one’s own strength. It was God’s care that would be the stabilizing force for Israel. They could enjoy God’s favor and the economic ties that God’s blessing afforded would be all that they needed to keep the peace.
So, there’s a sense in which Solomon is putting the emphasis on his own military prowess. He’s relying on himself in that he’s got this elite army.
You might say that the increasing size of the government and the military was a bit of vanity. There is some self glorification as the Kingdom of God is starting to revolve around Solomon.
And of course, these would be some of the things that would eventually lead to Solomon’s undoing. It’s not there just yet. There will be years of immense riches still to come. But it’s already in the background. You can already see some of the things that will eventually cause the collapse of the golden years.
All in all, we can remember the age old expression: Your sins will find you out. The Lord will eventually call them to account.
And this is where I want to transition then to the last point I want to make. We’ve talked about the blessings they enjoyed and the seeds that were sown. I want to end by talking about the hope that is created.
III. The hope that is created
As the first audience reads this, what would be the message that they got out of it. They would be convicted, obviously. They would realize that they don’t have the blessings because they have failed God.
But they would also realize that God is faithful, isn’t he? He’s not one who fails his promises. God has fulfilled his promises in the past, and we can count on him for the future. He was faithful to fulfill his promises in the past, he will be faithful to fulfill his promises in the future. We can trust that the Lord will not forsake us or abandon us.
As the first audience reads this they would say: We tasted what God promised. Yet we did not see it in its entirety. The kingdom was still not everything that it could have been / should have been. God’s promises were fulfilled, but they were not fully fulfilled. This kingdom of Solomon was great, but the golden years did not attain to their fullness. And so we can have hope for what the future holds.
And as we read this, we can see a glimpse of what the Lord will yet do. And we have a hope of what Christ will one day usher in.
It is interesting that the prophets pick up on this text. Hundreds of years later Micah and Zechariah will bring God’s word to the people. And they prophesy about every man sitting under his vine and under his fig tree. They still have a hope for a future golden age. They realized that what God had promised was still yet to come. They will look forward to another time of immense prosperity.
Habakkuk would do the same. He meditated on Solomon’s influence and he realized that there would still be a time where the nations of the earth would be blessed. And by the inspiration of the Spirit he spoke of a day when the earth would be filled with the knowledge of the glory of the Lord as the waters cover the sea.
In various ways the prophets expected that the best years were yet to come. They had an expectation that the Golden Years of immense happiness and peace were yet on the horizon. They knew that the blessing of God would only come when the earth was rid of sin once and for all. The kingdom would flourish only when sin was finally eliminated.
In other words, they knew that Solomon and his kingdom was just a picture of what Christ and his kingdom would be like. They looked forward to a time when they would have a king who would not deviate from God’s law. As a result he would have true and perfect dominion. All the blessings of the covenant would abound because the king would fulfill the covenant law.
And that’s what we see in Jesus.
As he casts out demons, what we see is a king who has the ability to conquer all his enemies. He has the ability to give that peace and security because he is able to defeat the greatest of foes.
As he multiplies bread and hauls in massive quantities of fish from the sea, what we have there is a small demonstration of his covenant blessings. He is the one who rules the earth and is able to bring forth its superabundance.
When Jesus turned the water into wine he expressed something of the elation that characterizes his rule. It’s expressive of everyone sitting under their vine and enjoying the elation associated with it.
Yes, he even leaves us a meal to partake of each Lord’s Day. With it he gives a promise: that he will come again and we will eat it anew with him in his kingdom. He essentially tells us that this kingdom will come. And when it does, it will be characterized by feasting and joy.
And in that meal and in the entire gospel of Christ, we have hope. We are told to look beyond this sin filled world. We are to put our trust in the one who will do away with sin and restore the paradise which was lost in Adam.
My friends, we look forward to a world to come. Whatever our lot is here and now, we have the hopes of so much more.
Even Jesus’ parting words to the thief on the cross may give us assurance and hope: Today you will be with me in Paradise. The grandeur of the covenant blessings are ours in Christ Jesus. We shall see them in their full when our King comes again.
And in saying that they imply that if you vote for them, the nation will begin to flourish.
I don’t want to sound like a politician who makes vain promises. But I do believe that our best years are still ahead. If you are a Christian, that is a promise that you can take to the bank.
The Israelites who were in exile were just as frustrated as you are. They lamented that the kingdom of God was in troubled state. They themselves were pained by sorrows and difficulty. They were people who lamented their present situation.
That’s why this passage of Scripture was written. The passage before us details what may be called the “Golden Years of Israel.” It was a time when God’s kingdom flourished. Under Solomon, the kingdom reached unprecedented levels of prosperity. The kingdom was as expansive in size as it was in economic productivity. You might say that it was a time of lavish glory.
You’ve maybe heard of the roaring 20’s; that time after World War I where there was a sense of optimism. The economy was growing and everyone was enjoying the increasing standards of living that came as a result of the economy booming.
That’s kind of what you can say was happening in Israel under Solomon. Solomon’s wisdom ushered in a golden age in Israel. And the author of this book takes the exiles back to that time. He wanted to remind them of what it was like when God’s covenant people were attentive to God’s covenant law.
All in all, this passage tells us about how the wise king’s rule brought forth the blessings of God’s covenant.
Remember that a covenant is a relationship built on promises where blessings come as a result of obedience and curses come as a result of disobedience. And, under Solomon’s wisdom, the blessings of God’s covenant began to flow in extraordinary proportions.
And that’s what we want to look at this morning. And as we consider the Golden Age of God’s kingdom, I want to do so under three points:
The blessings that were enjoyed
The seeds that were sown
The hope that was created.
I. The blessings that were enjoyed
Let’s just highlight some of the things that characterized this age and see how they connect to what God had promised.
First of all, we can talk about the prosperity of the kingdom. When you read through verses 7-19, you hear about the 12 different officers who were in charge of providing food for the king. Each man had a different district to which he was assigned. And each district had to provide the food for a specific month of the year.
So, basically, this was a tax on the land. Those who worked in the government and were part of Solomon’s administration needed to eat. This is the way they got paid. They got to eat.
But then, you can look down at verses 22-23 and you see what the menu provided. Now, keep in mind, this is the food they needed for one day of the month. They needed 30 Cors of flour and 60 cors of meal.
Now, one cor is about 50 gallons. So that’s 1500 gallons of flour and 3000 gallons of meal. That’s a lot of bread you are making each day.
But then you also have a list of all the different meats. And the protein intake is just as abundant. You have 10 fat oxen, 20 cattle, 100 sheep, and that’s not counting the wild game (deer, gazelles, roebucks, and fowl). And again, that’s just one day. Over the course of a month, you have 300 oxen, 600 cattle, 3000 sheep. That’s an incredible amount of food that you are collecting and consuming each day.
Now, if that’s what is being brought into the king’s court, you have to have a land that is quite productive. If the people are eating and drinking and being happy, you get the idea that the land is flush with economic prosperity.
And, of course, that’s what God had promised. He had promised back in Deuteronomy that they would have the increase of their cattle and herds. Their baskets and kneading bowls would be full. Their crops would not fail. In other words, the land would be blessed and the economy would soar.
That’s what the people are experiencing. They are enjoying the richness of the blessings God had promised in his covenant.
But they not only have economic prosperity, they have domestic security.
In other words, there is peace and safety.
Look at verses 24 and 25. It says that they had peace on all sides around. Judah and Israel lived in safety, from Dan (all the way in the north country) to Beersheba (which is all the way in the southern most part of Israel).
Of course, economic prosperity requires a land that is protected from marauders. If you have war and people constantly invading your territory, your economy cannot grow. And that’s what Israel has during this time. They are not threatened by any enemies. Treaties have been made with these different countries. The land is safe because the nations around them are enjoying the fruitfulness of Israel. No one wants to attack; everyone wants to be Israel’s friend.
And, again, that’s what the Lord had promised. The Lord had promised that Israel would live in the land securely. He promised to give them peace. Everyone would be able to lie down and not be afraid. (Lev. 26:5-6).
And God had told them that their kings were not to accumulate horses and chariots. Why was that? It was because they didn’t need them. God himself would be their protector. He would send them all the peace they needed. And here you see that Israel is enjoying that national serenity. The king’s wisdom had put the enemies to rest and ushered in a glorious time of tranquility. The nation had no fear of enemies so long as God’s covenant was kept. God kept watch.
So, you have economic prosperity and national security. You also had international ascendency.
In other words, Israel as a nation became a superpower.
Notice what it says in verse 21 and 24. In both of these verses it says that Solomon ruled over all of the kingdoms from the Euphrates to the land of the Philistines, all the way down to Egypt.
Essentially, at this point in time (under Solomon) the borders of Israel were at their largest point in their history. They controlled a massive amount of land.
These would have been other kingdoms surrounding Israel that were essentially giving their lands over to Solomon. They would have land annexed or would have been vassal states that paid tribute (and were, thereby, basically owned by Israel).
And this should not surprise us because that’s exactly what God had promised Abraham. In Genesis 15 God promised to give to Abraham all the land from the Euphrates to the Nile. And here in 1 Kings 4 the lord is saying, “I kept my promise. I did exactly what I said I would do.”
There’s one more thing that characterizes the blessings they enjoyed. We can also say that they had philosophical authority.
I’m talking about what we read about at the end of the chapter. Verses 29 and following. Solomon’s wisdom became a global phenomenon. We are told that his wisdom was so vast that he was wiser than all the sages of the world at his time. It was greater than anything you’d find in Babylon or Egypt. He stood head and shoulders about some of the big names of his day: Ethan the Ezrahite, Heman, Calcol. And, of course, we are told that all the kings of the earth heard of his wisdom. They would travel to come and learn from him. They would read his books and meditate on his proverbs.
This is exactly what God had promised to Abraham. God had said to Abraham, “In you all the nations of the earth will be blessed.” This is what is being highlighted when 1 Kings talks about the vastness of Solomon’s wisdom.
But I want you to think of it like this: These nations were being discipled.
Sure, they would learn about trees and plants and animals. But along with that they would be hearing about the Lord. They would be trained in God’s law and be heavily influenced by what we might call a Christian worldview.
You could say that, under Solomon, Israel had a global, gospel influence. We talk a lot about influencers today. Well, Solomon was a global influencer.
Here’s another way to think of it. You probably are not going to read about this in the history books, but the world has been influenced by Solomon’s wisdom. You can think about Babylon, Assyria, Egypt. They came along quite a bit later, but possibly even guys like Plato and Socrates. In some way or another, all the world’s philosophers were likely influenced by the Scriptures. Somewhere in their nation’s history they would have had Solomonic wisdom impinging upon their lives.
Now, what are we doing here? We are simply listing the different ways in which the blessings of the covenant were being evidenced. God had promised that His people would have it all. They would have the best and be the best. And in this golden era we see a radical outpouring of these blessings, at least in some way.
But even as we celebrate the fulfillment of God’s promises and view with wide eyed wonder how great Israel had become, there’s some things in this text that should give us pause. There are some things that are mentioned in the text that make you kind of wonder. If you are an astute student of Scripture, there are a lot of things that make you say “Wow!” But there are some other things that should make you say, “wait a second.”
So as we move into this second point, I want to talk about the seeds that were sown.
II. The seeds that were sown
Perhaps you’ve heard that expression. It’s been said by different people. I’m not sure who quite to attribute it to. But they say that civilizations have the ability to sow the seeds of their own destruction.
Even though this was the golden age of Israel’s history, that doesn’t mean that it didn’t have problems. Solomon’s wisdom was immense and it launched them into new heights, but there were obviously some things that were amiss and the kingdom was by no means perfect.
Let’s take a look.
We can begin back in the first 19 verses of the chapter. Those verses talked about all the food that was provided for Solomon and his officials. We mentioned how food would have been carted in by the truckload every day. There was an immense amount of grain and meat that was being consumed.
Now, that obviously means that there are a lot of mouths to feed, doesn’t it? You get the idea that there is a growing bureaucracy. It’s obvious that Solomon would have needed a good crew of people to help do the work of governance. After all, if you have all these different nations coming in to learn and to trade, you have to have people in place to help host and serve.
We admit that the text doesn’t say anything particular; it does not condemn this, but you get the feeling that the size of the government has begun to burgeon. And the more people you have in government, the more mouths there are to feed. That means that you have to levy more taxes.
Now, back in 1 Samuel, when Israel first asked for a king, Samuel outlined all the problems with their request. At that time, the government was small. God had created a system which was built on a limited government. But Samuel said that a king would take their daughters and their sons. He would take their land and their crops.
In other words, the size of the government would explode and they would lose their freedom. They would, more and more, become slaves of the state.
And that’s what you are seeing here. Solomon may be wise, but his kingdom is starting to become a bureaucratic monstrosity.
So that’s the first red flag. The increasing size of the government is something that stands out as a defiance of God’s intentions. Another way Israel sows the seeds of its own destruction is found in verses 26-27. It’s the militarization of the nation.
Verses 26-27 talk about how many horses and chariots Solomon had. It says that Solomon had 40,000 stalls of horses for his chariots. And he had 12,000 horsemen.
Remember what I said a few minutes ago. Scripture forbade the accumulation of horses and chariots. A king was not to be arming himself and creating an industrial military complex.
As I had said, God was to be Israel’s protector. The blessing of peace was not by means of one’s own strength. It was God’s care that would be the stabilizing force for Israel. They could enjoy God’s favor and the economic ties that God’s blessing afforded would be all that they needed to keep the peace.
So, there’s a sense in which Solomon is putting the emphasis on his own military prowess. He’s relying on himself in that he’s got this elite army.
You might say that the increasing size of the government and the military was a bit of vanity. There is some self glorification as the Kingdom of God is starting to revolve around Solomon.
And of course, these would be some of the things that would eventually lead to Solomon’s undoing. It’s not there just yet. There will be years of immense riches still to come. But it’s already in the background. You can already see some of the things that will eventually cause the collapse of the golden years.
All in all, we can remember the age old expression: Your sins will find you out. The Lord will eventually call them to account.
And this is where I want to transition then to the last point I want to make. We’ve talked about the blessings they enjoyed and the seeds that were sown. I want to end by talking about the hope that is created.
III. The hope that is created
As the first audience reads this, what would be the message that they got out of it. They would be convicted, obviously. They would realize that they don’t have the blessings because they have failed God.
But they would also realize that God is faithful, isn’t he? He’s not one who fails his promises. God has fulfilled his promises in the past, and we can count on him for the future. He was faithful to fulfill his promises in the past, he will be faithful to fulfill his promises in the future. We can trust that the Lord will not forsake us or abandon us.
As the first audience reads this they would say: We tasted what God promised. Yet we did not see it in its entirety. The kingdom was still not everything that it could have been / should have been. God’s promises were fulfilled, but they were not fully fulfilled. This kingdom of Solomon was great, but the golden years did not attain to their fullness. And so we can have hope for what the future holds.
And as we read this, we can see a glimpse of what the Lord will yet do. And we have a hope of what Christ will one day usher in.
It is interesting that the prophets pick up on this text. Hundreds of years later Micah and Zechariah will bring God’s word to the people. And they prophesy about every man sitting under his vine and under his fig tree. They still have a hope for a future golden age. They realized that what God had promised was still yet to come. They will look forward to another time of immense prosperity.
Habakkuk would do the same. He meditated on Solomon’s influence and he realized that there would still be a time where the nations of the earth would be blessed. And by the inspiration of the Spirit he spoke of a day when the earth would be filled with the knowledge of the glory of the Lord as the waters cover the sea.
In various ways the prophets expected that the best years were yet to come. They had an expectation that the Golden Years of immense happiness and peace were yet on the horizon. They knew that the blessing of God would only come when the earth was rid of sin once and for all. The kingdom would flourish only when sin was finally eliminated.
In other words, they knew that Solomon and his kingdom was just a picture of what Christ and his kingdom would be like. They looked forward to a time when they would have a king who would not deviate from God’s law. As a result he would have true and perfect dominion. All the blessings of the covenant would abound because the king would fulfill the covenant law.
And that’s what we see in Jesus.
As he casts out demons, what we see is a king who has the ability to conquer all his enemies. He has the ability to give that peace and security because he is able to defeat the greatest of foes.
As he multiplies bread and hauls in massive quantities of fish from the sea, what we have there is a small demonstration of his covenant blessings. He is the one who rules the earth and is able to bring forth its superabundance.
When Jesus turned the water into wine he expressed something of the elation that characterizes his rule. It’s expressive of everyone sitting under their vine and enjoying the elation associated with it.
Yes, he even leaves us a meal to partake of each Lord’s Day. With it he gives a promise: that he will come again and we will eat it anew with him in his kingdom. He essentially tells us that this kingdom will come. And when it does, it will be characterized by feasting and joy.
And in that meal and in the entire gospel of Christ, we have hope. We are told to look beyond this sin filled world. We are to put our trust in the one who will do away with sin and restore the paradise which was lost in Adam.
My friends, we look forward to a world to come. Whatever our lot is here and now, we have the hopes of so much more.
Even Jesus’ parting words to the thief on the cross may give us assurance and hope: Today you will be with me in Paradise. The grandeur of the covenant blessings are ours in Christ Jesus. We shall see them in their full when our King comes again.