What Hath Washington to Do with Jerusalem? Part 2

This is Part 2 of 5. This sermon was preached at Mt. Gilead UMC in Georgetown, KY on Oct 4, 2020. Click here for Part 1 and here for Part 3.

I. Introduction

• If the prophet Daniel was overwhelmed, perplexed, and a little wobbly in the knees after receiving this vision and its interpretation, then perhaps we should also approach it with some humility, fear, and trepidation.
  • But that’s not the approach of many people today.
  • Buy my new book as I reveal how America is in the last days.
  • Even scholars and experts have a hard time interpreting this difficult book and genre.
• Take for example this simple phrase, “the Kingdom of God.”
  • Jesus talked more about it than anything else. So you’d think that we know what it means.
  • There is confusion about it. What exactly is it? Does it mean?
    • Does it equal the church?
    • Can we build the Kingdom?
      • Receive the kingdom
      • Enter the kingdom
      • Seek the kingdom
    • So the kingdom exists and we enter it, receive it like a child, and seek it first.
    • How can we enter, receive, and seek something that we don’t really understand all that well?
  • At its most basic level, it means the dominion, rule, reign of God in the world.
    • God rules. God reigns. God dominates. God is in control and in power.
    • And we know from all throughout Scripture that God does these things very differently than people do.
    • And as we think about again for the second week in a row, “What does Washington have to do with Jerusalem? What does the government and the church have to do with each other? What do politics and theology have in common?” – we come to Daniel 7, which perhaps displays best in the OT how worldly kingdom are different from God’s kingdom.

II. The Four Beastly Kingdoms

• The First (lion) is probably Babylon.
• The Second (bear) is probably Medes-Persians.
• The Third (leopard) is probably Greece.
• The Fourth (different, terrifying, frightening) is probably Rome, and represents the final, end-time Antichrist kingdom.
• Note that they are beastly. Not a compliment.
  • They devour peoples. They are harsh. They scare and terrify. They are arrogant and boastful. Not the kind of things that you want to be known for.
• And in response to these, especially this last, cruel kingdom, the Ancient of Days sits in judgment, and as the boastful horn on the fourth beast kept boasting, it is judged by the Ancient of Days, slain and destroyed and thrown into a blazing fire.
• But that’s not it. God doesn’t just destroy this boastful, abusive kingdom. He replaces it.
  • Verses 13-14.
  • Verse 13 – “One like a son of man…”
    • This was Jesus’ favorite title for himself: he called himself “The Son of Man.” This is the background for Jesus’ ministry as “The Son of Man” and teaching about the Kingdom of God.
  • Verse 14 – all power, authority, glory, and sovereignty were given to him.
    • Does this sound familiar? Last week…
    • All peoples worship him.
    • Everlasting dominion/kingdom – never pass away or be destroyed.
    • This means Messiah! The Davidic King! The eternal kingdom promised to David and his son.
      • “The LORD declares to you that the LORD himself will establish a house for you: When your days are over and you rest with your fathers, I will raise up your offspring to succeed you, who will come from your own body, and I will establish his kingdom. He is the one who will build a house for my Name, and I will establish the throne of his kingdom forever. I will be his father, and he will be my son. When he does wrong, I will punish him with the rod of me, with floggings inflicted by men. But my love will never be taken away from him, as I took it away from Saul, whom I removed from before you. Your house and your kingdom will endure forever before me; your throng will be established forever” (2 Sam 7:11b-16)
    • This is Messiah language here in Daniel. And we Christians bear that name—Christ means Messiah, the anointed one. Christian means people belonging to the Messiah, the Christ.
  • And so God replaces the wretched, beast-like, savage rule of these worldly kingdoms, with his own Anointed One and his people.
• Again, Daniel was troubled and confused by all of this, and he needed someone to explain it to him. So the attendant, probably an angel, tells him what it all means in vv. 15-28. He explains that the beast represent kingdoms and that the fourth one will be the worst, extra bad and awful, and that this fourth one will oppress God’s people harshly for a short time.
• So don’t you see the difference between how God rules and how the world rules?
  • God’s ways and kingdom are the opposite of the world’s. In 1 Cor 1:18-30, Paul talks about how God choose the foolish things of the world to shame the wise, and the weak things of the world to shame the strong. And Jesus said that the last shall be first, and the first last.
  • God does things differently from the world! Amen?
• Speaking of how the world does things, and how worldly kingdoms and politicians do things, did anybody happen to watch the presidential debate on Tuesday?
  • Disgrace. Rude. Insults. Denial. Absolutes. No Christian Character.
  • God’s kingdom isn’t like that. It is a kingdom of grace, respect, forgiveness, gentleness, love; things all but absent from most politicians today.

III. The Saints Will Inherit the Earth

• Verses 26-27. Handed over to whom? The saints, holy ones, people of the Most High.
• There are many, “Do you not know…” questions from Paul in the Bible.
  • Do you not know that your body is the temple of the Holy Spirit? (1 Cor 6:19)
  • Do you not know that evil doers will not inherit the kingdom of God? (1 Cor 6:9)
  • Do you not know that the saints will judge the world?…Do you not know that we will judge angels? (1 Cor 6:2-3)
• That’s you and me.
• Have you ever thought of that before?
• The final destination of you and me, followers of Jesus, is not sitting on a cloud, listening to harps played by winged babies, enjoying sunny skies as celestial ghosts or spirits, and eating Philadelphia cream cheese.
• We are a people called to inherit a kingdom! Us, right here, right now. A spiritual kingdom of love and grace and mercy and forgiveness. And also a physical kingdom of life and resurrection, where “There will be no more death or mourning or crying or pain…” and where God “will wipe away every tear from [our] eyes…” (Rev 21:4). A kingdom that has come down upon earth just as it was in heaven. This is the Kingdom of God! That’s the kind of world that I want to live in. “The kingdoms of this world have become the kingdoms of our Lord and of his Christ!” (Rev 11:15). And Jesus promises this to us who are faithful until the end: “To him who overcomes and does my will to the end, I will give authority over the nations –‘He will rule them with an iron scepter; he will dash them to pieces like poverty’—just as I have received authority from my Father” (Rev 2:26-27). Again, I ask with Paul, “Do you not know that the saints will judge the world?” (1 Cor 6:2). If you didn’t before, you do now.
• So what hath Washington to do with Jerusalem? And the kingdoms of this world to do with the kingdom of God? The same as the four beasts have to do with the everlasting, never-ending, new heavens and new earth, fully renewed and resurrected, no tears, no pain, no death kingdom of God given to the Son of Man and his people, you and me.
• Whom I vote for on Nov 3 is infinitely unimportant compared to whom I love and cherish and serve with my whole heart, soul, mind, and strength today, tomorrow, and forever. Loving God and our neighbors as ourselves is infinitely more important than elected officials and national leaders. America is a wonderful place in the world where we get to live out our Christian faith in freedom, and I’m grateful for that and grateful that we are free to elect who is in office over us. But let us not forget where our true allegiance and citizenship lies, for we are inheriting a kingdom that “can never perish, spoil, or fade” (1 Pet 1:4) and we “have come to Mount Zion, to the heavenly Jerusalem, the city of the living God…to thousands upon thousands of angels in joyful assembly, to the church of the firstborn, whose names are written in heaven…to God, the judge of all men, to the spirits of righteous men made perfect, to Jesus the mediator of a new covenant, and to the sprinkled blood that speaks a better word than the blood of Abel…Therefore, since we are receiving a kingdom that cannot be shaken, let us be thankful, and so worship God acceptably with reverence and awe, for our ‘God is a consuming fire’” (Heb 12:22-24, 28-29).

Click here for Part 3.