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Verse twenty eight: The sons of Abraham, Isaac and Ishmael. Verse thirty four: And Abraham begat Isaac, the sons of Isaac, Esau and Israel. Chapter two: These are the sons of Israel, Reuben, Simeon, Levi, and Judah, Issachar and Zebulun, Dan, Joseph, and Benjamin, Naasseri, Gad, and Asher. The sons of Judah, Er and Onan and Shelah, which three were born unto him of Bashur the Canaanite. And Er, Judah's firstborn, was wicked in the sight of the Lord, and he slew him. And Tamar, his daughter-in-law, bare him Perez and Zerah. All the sons of Judah were five. And then in chapter ten and verse thirteen: So Saul died for his trespass which he committed against the Lord, because of the word of the Lord which he kept not, and also so that he asked counsel of one that had a familiar spirit to inquire thereby, and he inquired not of the Lord. Therefore he slew him and turned the kingdom unto David the son of Jesse. May God give us good understanding of his word. Now we are currently engaged upon a study of the first book of Chronicles under the general title, Man Shall Sit Upon the Throne of the Lord. On Saturday last, we introduced ourselves to this book, and we found that the historian, whoever he was, has written us a history brimful of hope. He's writing in the time after the exile. He has returned to Jerusalem, and we know not exactly at what stage thereafter he wrote his history. His two books, First and Second Chronicles, stand last, we discovered on Saturday, stand last in the Hebrew canon. And therefore the chronicler has the task of summing up almost the whole of Old Testament history. And on Saturday, we positively enjoyed the gusto, the vibrant interest and hope with which he has penned his summary of history. It becomes immediately apparent as soon as you open his pages that he does not belong to that melancholy view of history that is common, for instance, in the great religions of the Far East. Hinduism and other such religions hold, as you know, that human history is simply going round in endless and everlasting circles, getting nowhere in particular, and that it is the wisdom of those who are truly wise that they shall do their utmost to escape from this endless cycle of the material world. They liken human experience to a wheel. We in this world are on its outer rim. Our wisdom would be to try and escape from the outer rim, rim up one of the spokes, it doesn't matter which, until we come to the center where all is rest and peace. So far, Hinduism. And then we notice that modern atheism and humanism have nothing, well, very little better hope. For while they do believe and boast in much human progress in science and biology in particular, yet they hold that this world, being the product of blind, mindless forces, was brought into being without any purpose, without any goal in view. And one day, in spite of all the progress that humankind has made, those same blind, mindless, purposeless forces will destroy our universe and our little planet and hum- and the human race along with it. They too say that ultimately there is no hope for our world. What a refreshingly different aspect it is as we turn to this ancient and inspired chronicler. With enthusiastic joy, he presents the evidence that this world is not purposeless. There has been evidence of a marked progress according to a marked purpose in the affairs of mankind. And he traces Earth's history from its initial moment, the first man Adam, to that glorious point when King Solomon sat, if you please, on the throne of the Lord, and sat there amidst much glory and peace and plenty and prosperity, with such development of the arts and science was was altogether remarkable, and knew the presence of the transcendent Lord dwelling among them in the temple at Jerusalem. Man then sat upon the throne of the Lord, and sat there not in a garden such as Adam was first placed in, but sat upon the throne of the Lord in the city of Jerusalem, if you please. Great mark of the tremendous progress that humankind had made. There is a little ditty that one sometimes hears, uh, spoken, which says that God Almighty planted the country, God made the country, but man made the town. And it expresses the wish that we humans have made a mess of things by creating towns, and that our wisdom would be to go back to the countryside with its daisies and dandelions, you'll say. That is not the biblical view, is it? There was nothing wrong with the Garden of Eden when God first planted it. It was magnificent of its kind, of course, but the very fact that God planted a garden, it says in eastward in Eden, shows that the rest of the world wasn't garden. And Adam was given an example in the Garden of Eden, what could be made of this world. And God set him in the garden to keep it and to till it. And had man not fallen, his the responsibility then to go out and subdue the whole earth and bring the whole earth into meaningful pattern and beauty and glory as the steward of the creator Lord. And though man fell, God has not abrogated the purpose. It was God's original intention that we as human beings should take the planet that he had made and make something of it for God. The Bible is a firm believer in progress, and here in this volume, you will see it, the record of those divinely planned steps of progress that took man from his initial beginning, man in the Garden of Eden, until that hitherto unknown height of progress, man sitting on the throne of the Lord in Jerusalem city. That city marked a high watermark of then of God's great purpose, but forms for us a prototype of what God's eternal purpose is. When at last heaven and earth flee away, and we're treated through the eyes of John a vision of the eternal state, and see the new heavens and new earth, then the vision we are presented with is not simply one almighty garden, says John, I saw the holy city, the new Jerusalem coming down out of heaven from God, adorned as a bride for her husband. From garden to city, that is God's great purpose for mankind. We saw last night that the chronicler, for all his evident joy in marking the past progress of God's purpose for the world, that eventuated in Solomon sitting on the throne of the Lord in Jerusalem, was a realist. He lived in the real world. He would have been the first to admit that that great progress did not last. It lasted, in fact, a miserably short time. And the kings that followed Solomon were lesser men, a few of them good and a lot of them bad. And the whole thing went wrong. And the nation ended in exile in Babylon. The Chronicle will admit that. But then, in all his realism, he not only admits it, but had we time to read his second volume, will analyze for us why it went wrong, and therefore face squarely what things have to be faced and settled before there can be any realistic hope of a paradise to be. And the fact that this is inspired record again fills our hearts with increased hope. God has faced the difficulties, faced the reasons why human history goes so often downhill. His promise that there shall be a glorious age to come is not just fantasizing. It takes full notice of all those bitter lessons that humankind have had to learn in the course of history and are learning still. And the very fact that God has promised to establish a glorious age to come is evidence that God has faced the difficulties and knows what the answers shall be. And then thirdly, we noticed another ground for the chronicler's hope. He was, as I say, this living in the period after the exile and after the return from the exile. And granted, he was living in a period when Judah's fortunes were at a very low ebb. There were only a very few people that had come back from exile, comparatively speaking, and they were only now a small remnant of a nation amidst the gigantic empires of the then world. But that didn't deter the chronicler from his hope, it increased it. For he had read the prophets of Israel, Jeremiah, Isaiah, Ezekiel. He had read in their pages how God, before the exile, had foretold that if Israel went on sinning as they were, God himself would send them into exile to show to the world that Israel were not his spoiled, blue-eyed favorites, charged with the solemn responsibility of bearing testimony for God, the nation through whom the Messiah and the Savior of the world would come, marked out with this special and unique dignity. That did not mean that they were God's spoiled boys who could do what they like and get away with it. If they sinned as sin they did, God warned them to his prophets, he would chastise them more than he chastised the other nations. That too, of course, fills our hearts with hope, doesn't it? These histories are not from the pen of someone who fantasized that his nation was the best nation in the world, like English people have been given to doing, still say. He was a reali- realist. Yes, they were God's chosen people. That meant the solemn burden that when they sinned, God would discipline them more than others. The long rivers of blood and tears down history have even to our modern world bore testimony to that solemn fact. And yet through those same prophets, God had said that they would be in exile for seventy years, and then God would restore them. In spite of Israel's sin, God had not abandoned his promise through them to bring in the Messiah and Savior of the world. And I think I see the chronicler dropping his pen now and again as he writes his story and rubbing his hands with glee and saying to himself, it's happened, you know. Those prophecies have come true. I'm sitting in Jerusalem City. See me now. God's promise that he would restore the nation have been fulfilled. Here we are. And he said he would, uh, have the temple rebuilt, and we've rebuilt it, look. I can tell you the name of the priests who minister in the temple, says the chronicler. A bit of the prophecies come true. And I know we don't as yet have our king restored of the line of David, but he said we have amongst us, and he lists the names of the descendants of the Davidic royal house that survived the exile and were still living in his day. And his hope was well founded. He reasoned thus, if some of the prophecies of the restoration have been fulfilled against all of them, the rest of them will be. And we honor his memory. For now, we who live in our Christian age can see how that hope was well founded and justified. For a few centuries later, there was born into this world, in the city of David, a savior who is Christ the King. God had not abandoned his hope, not abandoned his purpose for this. Though men crucified him, the glorious story is that on the third day he rose again, and on the fortieth he ascended to the very right hand of God. Wonder of wonders. Man, real man, whose hands used on a time to wield the saw and the plane and the screwdriver. In Joseph's builder's yard, a real man sits on the throne of the Lord. Oh, my brother, my sister, shout hallelujah in your heart, even if you're ashamed to let anybody hear you. Man sits on the throne of the Lord. Or you can say, like my Jewish friends say to me, I remember one of them distinctly, a certain John Rayner, now a rabbi in the great synagogue opposite the cricket ground in London. And he and I read Hebrew together, and he said to me, I do remember on one occasion, David, he said, your Jesus can't be the Messiah. I said, how's that, John? Well, he said that, uh, the Old Testament prophets prophesied that when the Messiah came, he would put down evil. And your Jesus hasn't done it, has he? And don't you start inventing the notion that he set up some kind of a spiritual kingdom either. There's nothing about that in the Old Testament, says he, and that kind of notion is something that you Christians invented to cover your disappointment when Jesus Christ turned out not to be the Messiah, and he didn't put down evil. And to cover your disappointment, you invented the idea, ah, well, he set up a spiritual kingdom. That's nonsense, isn't it? The Old Testament said that when the Messiah came, he would put down all evil. So he's not the Messiah. And I was ignorant in those days, even more ignorant than I am now. I wish I had known what the prophets had actually said, and one of them in particular. For according to the prophets, it was never God's intention that Messiah would put down evil immediately upon his enthronement. Psalm one hundred and ten verse one had said, been saying it for centuries. The Lord said unto my Lord, sit at my right hand until I make thine enemies the footstool of thy feet. The Old Testament divine program had written into it that there was to be an interval between our Lord sitting down at the right hand of God and the time when his enemies would be put under his feet. We may base our hope on the same kind of logic as the chronicler based his. If God's purpose and promise has been fulfilled, now man sits on the throne of the Lord, even though all things are not yet put under him, yet the rest of it will be fulfilled one day. For we see not yet all things put under him, but we do see Jesus made a little lower than the angels, for the suffering of death crowned with glory and honor, that he, by the grace of God, should pay his death for everything. So then, the Old Testament chronicler fills our hearts with joy just to witness the man's hope. But there's more to it than that, is there not? For as we suggested to ourselves at the end and the dying moments of our study on Saturday, the history recorded in the Book of Chronicles is not just history, but forms for us a prototype of bigger things. So perhaps we ought to stop a moment and consider what we mean by the term prototype and how we can justify looking at biblical history in this way. So let me turn aside and take a simple example that all of us will immediately recognize. According to Luke, when our Lord Jesus sat down with his apostles in the upper room a few hours before he was crucified, he said to you, I, he said to them, I say unto you, I will not eat of it until it be fulfilled in the kingdom of God. And what was he talking about? Well, he was talking about the Passover. With desire, he said, I have desired to eat this Passover with you before I suffer, for I say unto you, I will not eat it until it be fulfilled in the kingdom of God. Let's puzzle our brains about that for a moment. How could our Lord talk of Passover being fulfilled? After all, Passover wasn't a prediction, was it? The first Passover was an historical event, Passover meal being celebrated on the night that God judged Israel- Egypt and brought Israel out of their house of bondage. It was an historical event, and a very meaningful historical event, and a very potent one at the time it happened. Thereafter, all down the centuries, as Israel celebrated the Passover yearly, that wasn't a prediction either, wasn't it? It was a looking back to the past and a memory of the past. How can our Lord say he's going to fulfill it if it wasn't a prediction? And the answer to that turns on this, that we must get used to this idea of fulfillment in the New Testament. Sometimes fulfillment in the New Testament is the fulfillment of a prediction. For instance, that the Messiah would be born in Bethlehem. That was a prediction. Our Lord's birth in Bethlehem fulfilled the prediction. The Passover wasn't a prediction, historic event. Our Lord fulfilled it. What now do you mean by fulfill? Why this? Though Passover originally was an historical event, there were certain principles at work in that first Passover, by which Israel were redeemed from Egypt, that would one day be repeated at a infinitely higher level, when our Lord Jesus died as the Lamb of God to deliver his people, not from Egypt, but from bondage to the prince of this world. Israel were under the wicked prince Pharaoh, were they not? In Egypt, slave. They were redeemed by the blood of a Passover lamb, first from the wrath of God, and then by God's great power at the Red Sea from Pharaoh and his hosts. That formed a prototype of an infinitely higher deliverance that one day would be enacted. And God, when the people should be under bondage to Satan in this world and be delivered from the wrath of God through the blood of the Lamb that is our Lord Jesus Christ. Be delivered by the power of God from the domination by Satan. The first Passover, a prototype of the bigger thing. And therein we see the wisdom of God, do we not? It had always been God's intention to send the Blessed Lord as the Passover Lamb for the redemption of mankind. But God himself couldn't wait, could he? Before that great deliverance took place, God staged these earlier deliverances at a lower level. The real historical events, they also prepared people's minds and got them used to thinking in these terms, prepared them for the great event that was to come, that was to be the Passover, the fulfillment of all others. And in that spirit, we come to the study of First Chronicles. You'll see First Chronicles is tracing the great, marvelous progress from Adam, the first man, until the time when a man sat on the throne of the Lord in Jerusalem. That was a marvelous piece of progress. But of course, at that stage, sitting on the throne of the Lord in Jerusalem meant perhaps simply that man sat on the throne that God had organized, sat there as God's representative. That was the prototype. But even as we read it, we can see it was a prototype of something bigger. We start again with Adam, but this time we go on and we see the man Jesus seated on the throne of the Father. And then we are entitled to see, of course, in that part of history that led from Adam to Solomon, foreshadowings of that bigger progress that leads from Adam to the second man sitting on the throne of God. Only this time it is not just sitting on a throne, an ivory throne in Jerusalem City on earth, of course. It's man literally seated on the throne of the transcendent Lord, creator of heaven and earth. How did he get there? And by what stages of human history? And what have been the principles at work in the great developing plan of God? We shall see them as we study the first great stage from Adam to Solomon, and shall learn to apply them at the higher level as we proceed. So first, let me ask you to take your Bibles in hand and plot. This will be an easy thing to do. It's just a matter of turning the pages, which will also help to keep us awake. I will plot the stages of man's progress as we see them in the First Book of Chronicles. And the first great stage, beginning in chapter one and verse one with Adam, comes to its end at the end of chapter ten, Where Saul, the first king, dies because of his disobedience, and God turns the kingdom to David, the son of Jesse. For the stages in the progress are going to be marked by this in Chronicles, the stages of the rise to power of God's anointed king. And here he begins. Kingdom turned from Saul to David, son of Jesse. Look, will you, at chapter fourteen. Chapter fourteen and verse one. And Hiram, king of Tyre, sent messengers to David, and cedar trees, and masons and carpenters to build him an house. And David perceived that the Lord had established him king over Israel, for his kingdom was exalted on high for his people, Israel's sake. And you ma- mark the advance, don't you? He's not only king now, but he perceives after some years, he perceives that the Lord has established his kingdom. Now his kingdom is secure, his throne is safe. And being safe, the historian says, he took more wives at Jerusalem. That's the habit of kings in those times. When he felt secure, he took more wives and begat a whole host of sons, because the theory was the more sons the king had, the more secure his royal line would be. Reserve your criticisms for another occasion. Well, fourteen then is, uh, uh, the, uh, kingdom established. Now let's pass on to chapter eighteen, verse fourteen. Chapter eighteen has described in very li- uh, short de- detail, but has described not only David's rise to the throne of Israel and Judah, but the extension of his empire throughout the surrounding nations. And in actual history, by verse thirteen of chapter eighteen, we've come to a point in history where David's kingdom was on the verge of becoming a world empire, like Assyria was to be one day and Babylon in another. It never actually made it, but at this point it was on the very verge of becoming it. So after his conquests abroad and establishment of his empire, now verse fourteen says of chapter eighteen, and David reigned over all Israel, and he executed judgment and justice unto all his people. With the kingdom established, he had now a position to turn his attention to the administration of justice, both at home and abroad. We'll see to it that his empire was established and run on fair and equitable principles. And now, do you notice the little dodge of the historian? In chapter fourteen, he added a list of David's wives and sons. Now here he adds another list, but this time it's David's officers of the realm. Joab, the son of Zeruiah, was over the host, and Jehoshaphat, the son of Ahilud, was the recorder, and so on, and so on. The chronicler is making it easy for us to notice the sectioning of his narrative. Then come to chapter twenty three. The Beginning of this chapter marks another distinct section in David's rule. It says in chapter twenty three verse one: now David was old and full of days, and he made Solomon his son king over Israel. That you will find, as you read further, does not mean that he abdicated completely. He appointed Solomon as his co-regent and left to Solomon, the young and vigorous Solomon, the duties of the day-to-day running of the kingdom, while David, now an old man and fit to come to our meeting on Thursday, uh, gave himself to the thing that was at his heart and had been for years, the preparation of the material for the building of the house of the Lord. And when all the preparation had been made and the time had come for David to say farewell, then they had a great, great ceremony. And in chapter twenty nine verse twenty two it says they made Solomon the son of David king the second time, meaning that now he was given sole powers and became the king absolute. Then Solomon sat on the throne of the Lord. So the book of First Chronicles is thus organized by the historian into those major parts, and they are all of them chiefly concerned with the rise of the king, the man who was to be the secret of a coming age of peace and glory. If one goes rapidly over those five sections of the history book, we shall find that in each one there is one major step of advance. The major step of advance in section one, of course, is the rise of Israel out of the nations. When it looked as if the nations were sunk in impossible and ridiculous idolatry and had lost their way completely, and there could never be a paradise among men, then God showed his hand, and history took an enormous leap forward in the calling of Abraham and the rise of Israel out of the nations. And with the rise of Israel presently, the rise of their p- their great king, David. The first great advance. In the second section, the great advance is, without any doubt, the founding of the city of Jerusalem. Of that we shall be thinking tomorrow. When David became king over all the tribes, not just two of them, but all twelve of them. And one of the first things he did was to get the nation all together, and they went to Jebus, and they stormed and took Jebus, and David set up as his capital city Jerusalem. It was the stroke of a political genius. It welded Israel together and gave them a heart, a center to which all the tribes of Israel might feel they belonged. And so it promoted the unity of Israel. It certainly was a stroke of genius, for Jerusalem City has proved to be the city that bar none, not even London, has had the most profound effect on the whole course of human history since, and will yet have. One of these days, all the nations of the earth, like they were talking about a few months ago when Has- Hasadom Hussein was up to his tricks, all the nations of the world will come against Jerusalem. The city whose name goes beyond the limits of our planet's time, way out into the great eternity, for the name of the city that comes down from heaven is neither New London nor New York. It is the new Jerusalem. It was a gigantic stride forward when David took Jerusalem, pregnant with meaning for all eternity. And then the third great advance in the third section was, without any doubt, the bringing up of the Ark to Jerusalem. They made a false attempt on one occasion, but in the third section of this book it is related how it was done successfully, amidst awe and wonder. And I give you advance notice of how I shall be interpreting that event. We'll say the bringing up of the Ark to Jerusalem has been variously interpreted, hasn't it? But according to my simple mind, believing what scripture literally says, I see it this way. Chronicles describes the Ark as the Ark that is called by the name, the Ark of the Lord, who sits enthroned above the cherubim. For in Israel's spiritual days, when they hadn't descended into superstition, they realized that the ark, the box, and its gold covering were simply symbols. But they believed with all their heart that the ark was a place where the transcendent Lord deigned to enthrone himself. There, according to the promise of Moses, I will meet thee from between the cherubim. Israel believed and said it in their inspired scripture, that the Lord sat enthroned above the cherubim. Can you imagine the scene when David had lined up all the citizenry in the streets of Jerusalem, and there was a welcoming party outside, and suddenly it came into view, the solemn phalanx of the Levites in their white robes, and on their shoulders the ark of the Lord of all the earth. And Israel saw it with their own eyes. The ark is coming. The very throne of God, and God himself seated above the cherubim. No wonder Jerusalem was agog with excitement. The Lord is coming! And they saw the Lord come to Jerusalem. At least that is what they believed. Whether you believe it or not. Oh, you're going to see something bigger than that one day, aren't you? Oh, I shall see him. Oh, what a day it will be when we shall see him, not riding on a donkey, not enthroned above a symbol and otherwise invisible, but coming with the clouds of heaven. Oh, I shall see him descending the sky, coming for me, for me. One day us shall see him, every eye shall see him, and his feet shall stand on the Mount of Olives in that day. The third great burst of progress, the coming of the ark, the coming of the Lord to Jerusalem. Prototype, of course, of the great and glorious coming that is yet to be. Hm. You say, well, well, what was the progress in the fourth division then? Well, the progress in the fourth division can be summed up very easily. It was the putting down of the last enemies. Of course it was. There was old Ammon, age-long enemy and mocker of Israel. There was a tough battle fighting against Ammon, but Ammon at last was destroyed, and they took the crown off the head of Ammon, and they put it on David's head, as one day they shall. Oh, our blessed Lord Jesus shall be crowned with many a diadem, and the very last enemy of all shall be put down. But he must reign, doesn't he? Until he has put down all rule and authority. And Satan's last fling against David that nearly succeeded was eventually overcome. We wait today when our greater than David, who never did and never was in any danger of succumbing to Satan. You'll see to it that Satan himself is bound and cast into the abyss, and finally cast with all his angels into the lake of fire. And the fi- fi- fifth and final bit of progress, the preparations for the building of the temple and the organizing of the people, so that in the age of glory, the temple should be the very center. And through the tribes of Israel, in all their different gifts, the Supreme Lord would make his glory known through the priests and the Levites and the trumpeters and the maker of the showbread, you know, and those that made the incense and the women that washed the veil from time to time. Whoever they were, the glory of the transcendent Lord should be manifest through them. And as they served him with all their variegated gifts, now no longer warring and splitting and dividing and pulling each other's hair, but working as some great orchestra under a skillful conductor, all that activity might stream back to God in worship. Oh, what a lovely sight. David spent his last days preparing for the building of that temple. And we look beyond any millennium that shall be with all its prototypes and figures of bigger things. For the moment we look beyond them to the final reality itself, when the great city comes down from heaven and they cry, the tabernacle of God is with men. All these are lovely prototypes, aren't they? What hope have we of their being fulfilled? They warm your heart, don't they? But then... could it be that this is just a fantasy, and the color and joy of the fantasy tricks us into thinking it's real when it isn't real? Is it real? Has it any hope of being fulfilled? I mean, the early history wasn't very encouraging, was it? God made man to have dominion and put all things under his feet. But of course, before God could allow man to sit upon the throne of his glory, man had to be tested, did he not, as to whether he would be fit for the job. God wasn't going to take man in innocence and put an innocent upon the throne of the universe, and risk his being tempted and falling to disaster from the very throne. So the first man had to be tested, and was allowed to be tested by God's direst enemy, Satan himself. And the first man fell. And went over to the other side. It was obvious that he should not sit upon the throne of the Lord, isn't it? You see, if it be true that this is God's purpose, that man shall sit upon the throne of the Lord, yet we've got to ask some basic questions, haven't we? And the first one is this, by whose authority? If God is going to entrust the throne of the universe to a man, God will insist that the man be worthy and capable of the position. A man whose obedience to the creator is utterly without question and proved beyond all possible doubt, and not till then has he any hope of sitting on the throne of the Lord. God in his mercy persisted with his program in spite of the fact that the first man failed. And God brought up the nation of Israel, and there was Abram, not to speak of Sarah, and Isaac and, and, and, and, and, and Jacob and, and all those great worthies. There was Moses, and they came out of Egypt and were free, and they journeyed to the Promised Land. There was a bit of a hiccup, and the first generation refused to go in, so they wandered in the wilderness, but they got in at last. And there followed those difficult days after Joshua went under the judges, full of hiccups galore. But forget that. It came at last to the point when they got a king. His name was Saul. Of course, he had to be proved too, didn't he? And he failed the examination and failed it disastrously. But God had to put him aside. The search for a king that could turn the vision into reality has not been easy, has it? Ah, but courage. The chronicle says that God slew Saul. He went over to the other side, you know, he not only disobeyed, but started consultant- consulting demonic witches and things. God turned the kingdom to David, the son of Jesse. Of whom, as he said, I found a man after my own heart who shall fulfill all my will. You'll say that was a little exaggeration, wasn't it? Didn't David sin also? I'm afraid he did. But not the kind of sin that Saul got up to. Fell, failed, yielded to temptation, got a bit flabby in middle age, but his heart was true with God. And in those things that mattered in those days, he obeyed the Lord. But, but he wasn't perfect, was he? And the men that followed, some of them were good, but a good many of them weren't. As far as David's succession went, they ended in disaster in Babylon. Oh, my dear friends, if that were the sum total of human history, with what depressed melancholy should we sit here tonight? What hope is there for our poor old world. Find a politician that's a hundred percent honest and not compromised. That could stand the test and come through scape. Ah, but praise God. Ha. God has found his king. Great David, greater son. Though in the form of God, he thought it not thing to be grasped at to be equal with God, but poured himself out and was found in fashion as a servant and became in the likeness of men. Being found in fashion as a man, he humbled himself Himself and and became became ob- obedient unto death, even the death of the cross. Wherefore God has highly exalted him and given him a name that is above every name, and the divine command has bid him come sit upon the very throne of the Lord. That's not fairy tale. Examine the record of this great line of Judah. All other lines of Judah had been tested and miserably failed, as the prophet Ezekiel described it, taken in the nets and caught in the pits and eventually destroyed. But the glorious truth is that which was heralded by the angels in the courtroom of heaven and communicated to John the seer. The lion of the tribe of Judah has prevailed. Not prevailed over other candidates. There were, ladies and gentlemen, no other candidates for the throne of heaven. He prevailed over every temptation that was ever brought his way, be it in the desert, be it in the garden of Gethsemane, be it on Calvary itself, and was found obedient until death. Herein is all our hope, and he now sits on the right hand of the majesty on high. We have hope, but I have something more, more wonderful to tell you. Listen to it now, in the words of the holy apostle Paul. By one man's disobedience, the many were constituted sinners. Woeful story. The many, including us who sit here this evening, all but hear the glorious gospel of Christ. By the obedience of one shall the many be constituted righteous. I would need the powers of description of an archangel to tell you the wonder of that. We poor, broken, straying rebel sinners, not only loved and forgiven and reconciled to God by the death of his son, but by the one great act of his obedience, constituted righteous in the sight of God. And one day we shall reign with him. Man shall sit upon the throne of the Lord. By whose authority? By the authority of the transcendent Lord himself. For all authority in heaven and in earth has now been given to the blessed Lord Jesus, given a name above every name, not only in this age, but in that which is to come. And it's written of us too, that to as many as obey him, he becomes the author of eternal salvation. The terms could not be otherwise, could it? Let me repeat them in your ear. He's won his place by obedience, and by his great sacrifice fitted us to stand before God and to share his throne. But who are the us? The us are people who can be rightly described in these words, to as many as obey him, he has become the author of eternal salvation. You say, what does it mean to obey him? That we shall have to consider, God willing, in our further studies in this series. But enough for tonight. Let's bow our heads in prayer. Our Father, we thank thee for these holy words. And thou who knowest our hearts, see, Lord, in thy gracious pity and mercy and love the way our hearts respond to these glorious visions. We bless thee for these histories that show us that our great salvation is no fantasizing, no recent invention founded on human ingenuity. It bears thy stamp all the way down history. We thank thee for the first runs, runs through the prototypes of old. We bless thee now that we live in this advanced age, when thy purpose is so far fulfilled that the glorious man Jesus sits upon thy throne. And this morning, from hearts that well up with gratitude to thee, we praise thee that we who were once rebels and sinners have, by thine astounding grace, been given a part with him. And the promise is that if we suffer with him, we shall be glorified together, and we shall reign with him. O God, we do praise thee, and pray that thou wilt deign to use even these meager studies to confirm in our hearts and to revive all that we have learned down the years. Grant that the glory of thy word and the glory of thy purpose so shall take hold of our hearts, that we shall rejoice with joy unspeakable and full of glory, and that those eternal glories gleaming afar shall nerve our faint endeavor. So now to work, to watch, to war, and then to rest forever. Be thy blessing upon us and upon thy word, we pray, through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.