Scriptures indicates that God mediates His will on earth through mediators.
At any point of history, beginning in Genesis, God rules His mediator kingdom on earth through appointed agents.
Adam was the first mediator of God’s kingdom on earth.
Messiah will be the final mediator.
God’s purpose for man from the very beginning was that man was destined to rule over creation. Man was to be king of the earth.
With the fall of man, God has been working to restore man as king of the earth.
The ultimate form of man’s rule over the earth will be Messiah’s kingdom.
ADAM
Mediated the theocratic kingdom rule over creation.
Man was to obey God and subdue nature and animal life
NOAH
Mediated the theocratic kingdom through the administration of justice.
Noah instituted capital punishment as a recognition of the sanctity of life.
ABRAHAM
Father of a nation through whom God would one day administer His rule over the world.
Received the Abrahamic covenant which promised: Land, posterity, blessing.
MOSES AND ISRAEL
God’s will be revealed through the Mosaic law.
God was king; Israel the subject; the Mosaic law the constitution of the theocratic kingdom
Israel mediates God’s truth to the nations through Mosaic law.
DAVID
Mediated God’s rule on earth in the Davidic era (1010 – 970 BC)
Received the Davidic Covenant which, in anticipating Messiah’s kingdom, promised: a dynasty, a kingdom, a throne, an everlasting rule.
PROPHETS
When the kings apostatized, God raised up prophets as mediators of His theocratic kingdom.
The prophets had a twofold message: They exhorted the people to obey the Mosaic law in the theocratic kingdom, and they prophesied concerning the final form of the kingdom: Messiah’s millennial rule.
Isaiah saw a suffering Messiah as foundation to the future kingdom reign of Messiah.
Jeremiah announced the new covenant – it is the basis whereby God will bless Israel in the future. The new covenant anticipates Israel as a regenerated people in the future kingdom.
Ezekiel envisioned a restored worship in the future kingdom.
Daniel saw Messiah destroying all earthly kingdoms and establishing the millennial kingdom.
ABRAHAMIC (Land, Seed, Blessing)
Now the Lord said to Abram, “Go from your country,
And from your relatives And from your father’s house, To the land which I will show you; And I will make you into a great nation, And I will bless you, And make your name great; And you shall be a blessing; And I will bless those who bless you, And the one who curses you I will curse. And in you all the families of the earth will be blessed.”
Genesis 12:1-3
God called a man through whom He would provide redemption and blessing.
God began to deal with a special people, Israel.
God promised them a land, a posterity that would issue in Messiah, and a people over whom He would rule, and spiritual blessings that would involve forgiveness.
PALESTINIAN (Land)
Deut 30, Israel, the offspring of Abraham, was promised land wherein God would bless them. However, the blessing will ultimately come through Messiah, a descendant of both Abraham and King David.
DAVIDIC (Seed)
When your days are finished and you lie down with your fathers, I will raise up your descendant after you, who will come from you, and I will establish his kingdom. He shall build a house for My name, and I will establish the throne of his kingdom forever. I will be a father to him and he will be a son to Me; when he does wrong, I will discipline him with a rod of men and with strokes of sons of mankind, but My favor shall not depart from him, as I took it away from Saul, whom I removed from you. Your house and your kingdom shall endure before Me forever; your throne shall be established forever.”
2 Sam 7:12-16
Matt 1:1 The record of the genealogy of Jesus the Messiah, the son of David, the son of Abraham.
God promised David, that David’s greater Son will be the One through whom this future kingdom will be inaugurated.
God promised David that His dynasty, issuing in Messiah, will never be terminated and Messiah’s kingdom rule will be forever.
The blessing will be made possible through regenerated people.
It promised a fellowship with God through forgiveness.
The nations of the world will also enter into blessings
Old Testament theology can be summarized under the central theme of “Kingdom”
From the beginning of history, God worked through appointed mediators in administering kingdom throughout the Old Testament.
All of those administrations anticipated the culminating mediatorial kingdom: the millennium under the rule of Messiah.
The Old Testament unconditional covenants defined the nature of the future millennial kingdom.
Abrahamic covenants, God promise Israel land, seed, blessings.
Throughout the remainder of the Old Testament, God deals with Israel to bring her to a place of spiritual blessing in which she will be the agent for God to bless the nations of the world.
Israel was given the conditional Mosaic Covenant as the demonstration of God’s holiness, which was His standard.
Those who would enter fellowship with a holy God would also have to have His holy standard.
That would be accomplished through forgiveness – promised in the New Covenant.
“Behold, days are coming,” declares the Lord, “when I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and the house of Judah, not like the covenant which I made with their fathers on the day I took them by the hand to bring them out of the land of Egypt, My covenant which they broke, although I was a husband to them,” declares the Lord. “For this is the covenant which I will make with the house of Israel after those days,” declares the Lord: “I will put My law within them and write it on their heart; and I will be their God, and they shall be My people. They will not teach again, each one his neighbor and each one his brother, saying, ‘Know the Lord,’ for they will all know Me, from the least of them to the greatest of them,” declares the Lord, “for I will forgive their wrongdoing, and their sin I will no longer remember.”
Jeremiah 31:31-34
The repetitious theme of the Old Testament is the continuing sin of the human race and the grace of God to restore an errant humanity
Book of Zechariah concludes with an appropriate emphasis:
The holiness of God.
God purpose in wooing sinful people back to fellowship with Himself is to bring glory to His name.
God is holy and all that will enter into fellowship with Him must be holy.
The day when God is worshiped in His holiness by a regenerated people in a restored world will be the millennial kingdom.