KINGDOM - OLOGY 3

Historical Beginning

The inauguration of the Mediatorial kingdom at Mount Sinai provided a historical beginning on a small scale. This continued until the departure of the Shekinah glory from the temple and the deportation to Babylon.

            This kingdom was essentially a theocracy, with God reigning over the nation of Israel. This is made evident by the organization of the encampment of the tribes. At the center of the encampment was the Tabernacle with the Levites who served the Tabernacle. This was a clear indication that the God of glory who manifested Himself in the Tabernacle was in control. Num. 2 points out the arrangement of the tribes about the Tabernacle. This was the arrangement for travel and rest throughout the forty years of wilderness wanderings. This was the object lesson to the people that God was king in Israel. The people were so completely schooled in this arrangement, that in all their spiritual aberrations they never lost sight of the rites and ceremonies which centered in the Tabernacle and later in the temple.

            The law of this nation was the law of God set forth in the first five books of the Bible. At the center was the moral law of God embodied in the Ten Commandments (Exodus 20). Standing at the center and apex of that law was the first and great commandment: "Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God is one Lord: And thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thine heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy might" (Deut. 6:4-5). "And the second is like unto it, Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself. On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets" (Matt. 22:37-40). But included in the law was the ceremonial arrangement for worship. And then in addition there was the civil law governing the conduct of the people in their daily life. This law marked the fact that God was ruling in the life and experience of His people.

            This theocracy was mediated by a man chosen of God from among the people. He became the voice of God to the people. The first mediator was Moses. "This Moses whom they refused, saying, Who made thee a ruler and a judge? The same did God send to be a ruler and a deliverer by the hand of the angel which appeared to him in the bush" (Acts 7:35). The Lord said, "I have made thee as God to Pharaoh" (Exodus 7:1) and to Aaron and the people Moses stood "instead of God" (Exodus 4:16). To clinch this in the minds of the people when Korah led a rebellion in Israel, God performed a new thing in Israel by sending these men alive into Sheol (Num. 16:28-30 ASV). Judges, Kings, and prophets acted in the capacity of mediators in the long history of Israel. Each exercised the Mediatorial function, some wisely and well and others less so, but each in his place was responsible to God.

            Supernatural wonders were necessary to launch this new form of government. The burning bush was directed toward Moses (Exodus 3:1-10). The shepherd's rod, the leprous hand, and the water turned to blood were for the benefit of the nation of Israel (Exod. 4:1-9). The plagues and the escape through the Red Sea were aimed at Egypt and the surrounding nations (Exod. 7:1-5; 15:14-15). As a result of this supernatural deliverance Moses and the people of Israel sang, "The Lord shall reign for ever and ever" (Exod. 15:18). In his final address to the people of Israel on the plains of Moab, Moses called attention to these supernatural acts of God used in launching the theocratic Mediatorial rule: “Did ever people hear the voice of God speaking out of the midst of the fire, as thou has heard, and live? Or hath God assayed to go and take him a nation, from the midst of another nation, by temptations, by signs, and by wonders, and by war, and by a mighty hand, and by a stretched out arm, and by great terrors, according to all that the Lord your God did for you in Egypt before your eyes? Unto thee it was spewed, that thou mightest know that the Lord he is God; there is none else beside him . . . . Know therefore this day, and consider it in thine heart, that the Lord he is God in heaven above, and upon the earth beneath: there is none else" (Deut. 4:33-35, 39).

            At Mount Sinai the children of Israel were organized into a kingdom, but a kingdom altogether different from all the other kingdoms of earth. Up until this time, they were bound together by family ties, a common culture, mutual experiences, and religion that had not been formalized. But now God manifests Himself to the people in a theophany unprecedented in majesty and splendor. Amidst the thundering’s and lightning’s of Sinai God said to Moses: “Ye have seen what I did unto the Egyptians, and how I bear you on eagles' wings, and brought you unto myself. Now therefore, if ye will obey my voice indeed, and keep my covenant, then ye shall be a peculiar treasure unto me above all people; for all the earth is mine: And ye shall be unto me a kingdom of priests, and an holy nation. These are the words which thou shalt speak unto the children of Israel" (Exodus 19:4-6). The response to this proposition on the part of the people constituted the sealing of a covenant with God. They said, "All that the Lord hath spoken we will do" (Exodus 19:8). This comprised a conditional covenant. God would do certain things in response to which the people were obligated to do certain things. The resulting relation was a kingdom of God in the earth. This was a Kingdom unto God in that God was ruling among and over His people. Other nations were not ignored for all the earth belonged to the Lord. But this nation was a peculiar treasure, holy in nature in that it was set aside to God and from the moral impurities of earth, and was to perform the function of priests in that it would mediate between God and pagan nations of earth.

            A divine lament is voiced to Moses and through him to the people in his final message as recorded in Deuteronomy: "O that there were such an heart in them, that they would fear me, and keep all my commandments always that it might be well with them, and with their children forever" (Deut. 5:28). But their failure to keep this Sinai Covenant does not disannul the promise made to Abraham and his seed. Paul declares in Galatians: “And this I say, that the covenant, that was confirmed before of God in Christ, the law, which was four hundred and thirty years after, cannot disannul, that it should make the promise of none effect” (Gal. 3:17).