Well, take your Bibles, open up with me this morning to Ephesians chapter four. We are looking this morning at God's covenant people, and I will be referencing progressive covenantalism by Stephen Willem and Brent Parker. As we answer the question, who are God's people, God's covenant people? looking specifically in that book at chapter two, the Israel Christ Church Relationship. And that chapter was written by Brent Parker. He begins and he says, the relationship between Israel and the church is of paramount importance for all theological systems. Covenant and dispensational theology still have sharp differences on this hotly debated and contentious subject. One question then is, that I want to answer this morning, what does the Bible say? And I know that sounds simple. And I know that there are people who will argue on both sides of covenant theology and dispensational theology, and will say that they are arguing for what the Bible says. Well, let's pray that the Holy Spirit gives us the ability to make sense of it, just to look at the clear teaching of scripture. The Bible says in Ephesians 4, 4 through 6, There is one body and one spirit, just as you also were called in one hope of your calling, one Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God and father of all who is over all and through all and in all. What I want to demonstrate this morning or try to demonstrate from the scripture this morning is that when we ask who are the God's covenant people, we have to start with the premise, with the presupposition that there is only one people of God, those from the Old and the New Testament that are in Christ. Now, the foundation for this understanding is gonna go back to one of the first or second lessons that we taught, that we looked at in this series on the covenants, that all of the promises are fulfilled in Christ. This is what the Old Testament points to and what the New Testament shows us is fulfilled. Now, as we look at the nature of progressive revelation and we see that there are things in the Old Testament that aren't always clear, the New Testament seeks to clarify that. We see types and shadows in the Old Testament. There are literal people doing literal things. but there is a typology there that's pointing to Christ. And we're gonna look at the many ways that Christ is typified in the Old Testament. But Christ, when he comes is the fulfillment. And we looked at it, Paul wrote in Corinthians, that all the promises in Christ are, yes, he is the fulfillment of all the promises. Now we need to strip back our thinking, especially if like me, you were raised in a church in the early 80s, 70s and 80s, where dispensationalism had really become the rage. And we all knew that Jesus was coming back in 1984. And then he was coming back in 1988. And then he was coming back in 1992. And then he was coming back in 1994. You might've remembered the book, 88 Reasons Jesus is Coming in 88. And I was upset because that meant Jesus was gonna come before I could graduate high school. And I just, you know, just priorities, come on. But then he didn't come. And so then the next book was 89 reasons Jesus is coming in 89. And then there were 90 reasons that Jesus was coming in 90. And we still, people are still predicting dates. Now, eventually somebody is going to get it right because Jesus is going to come back. but we don't need to be working on trying to figure out the day and the time and the hour. We're told we're not going to know. It's going to be like a thief of the night. If you're not expecting it, if you're watching, you're going to be thrilled when you hear that trumpet sound. But as we look at what I was taught in the dispensational school of thought, which is relatively new in church history, it is an idea that there are two peoples of God, that God called Israel, and then put Israel on pause. And the term literally is that now the church age is a parentheses in God's program. And when God is done with the church, he's going to come back to Israel. What I want to try to demonstrate to you this morning is that the church is not a parentheses and there are only One people of God from the Old and the New Testament, those are those who are in Christ. The church redeemed in Christ has been God's plan all along. In Acts 2, when Peter stood to preach the day of Pentecost, he said, Men of Israel, listen to these words. Jesus the Nazarene, a man attested to you by God with miracles and wonders and signs which God did through him in your midst, Just as you yourselves know, this man delivered over by the predetermined plan and foreknowledge of God, you nailed to a cross by the hands of lawless men and put him to death. But God raised him up again, putting an end to the agony of death since it was impossible for him to be held by its power. We've said this before, reiterate this before, continue to repeat this. The cross was not plan B. The cross was plan A. This was God's plan for his creation. Jesus coming and dying was the predetermined plan based on the foreknowledge of God. And we have to understand foreknowledge because there are those that would define foreknowledge as God inhabiting eternity, looking through time and seeing what people would do and reacting in response. God does not look through time and learn anything. He is outside of time and knows it all before it ever happens. He knows every thought we're gonna have before we were ever created. Foreknowledge is not a knowledge of future facts, in our case of time. It's not God looking through the tunnel of time and seeing what is going to happen. The word foreknowledge is a relational term. When God foreknows us, this is the same way that knowledge would be used that Adam knew his wife Eve and she conceived and bore a son. This is an intimate relationship. God knew us intimately before he even created us. by his predetermined course of action in his predestination of us, those whom he foreknew he predestined to be elect. This is the working out of his predetermined plan. So the church is not a pause, a comma, a parentheses, or a break in what God is doing in history. The church being born on the day of Pentecost, Christ coming in the flesh and ushering in the kingdom The Spirit being given in a new way on that day when Peter stood and preached. This was the climax at that point in history for Christ to establish the kingdom and to begin the end times. People ask, when are the last days? We're here. We've been here for 2000 years. Since Christ's first coming, we have been in the last days, anticipating now his return. As we've learned, The biblical covenants of promise ultimately find their fulfillment in Christ. I can't stress that enough. And here is the difficulty. And I want to be clear too, when I'm talking about covenant and dispensational, I don't want to disparage either group because I have disagreements with both. And I want you to understand that good, solid, holy Christian people who walk with God can be covenant theologians and they can be dispensationalists. It is a system. There will be errors in any system. I think that we can find more errors in one than in another as we study scripture. But we have to understand that even as we would confess, there are many Christians in the church who don't believe the doctrines of grace. How could they be saved? And I actually debated a pastor probably, well, it was 2000, 2001, debated a pastor who said that if you did not fully comprehend and agree with all five points of the doctrines of grace, you were not born again. That poor thief on the cross, he didn't know diddly squat, he just knew Jesus. And knew Jesus said, today, you're gonna be with me in paradise. We have to know Christ. And that's why I want to stress The promises ultimately find their fulfillment. Whatever system we use, we need to learn to ditch the system. We need to see that all of the promises find their fulfillment in Christ and those that are joined in union with him by faith. Old Testament Israel's identity and promises find their fulfillment in Jesus and by extension then the church. And the other thing I want to say on the outset is there are those who say when you talk about Israel and the church, there are those who would say that the church is the true Israel or that the church replaced Israel. God had a purpose for national Israel. We're going to look at that. God has a purpose for the church. And we're going to look at that. And the purpose for both culminate in Christ. We're not talking about replacing anybody or anything. We're talking about the one people of God promised through his seed, first to the woman in the garden and then to Abraham in the covenant, who is Christ. So Old Testament Israel's identity and promises find their fulfillment in Jesus and by extension, the church. And here is the point when we talk about the old covenant and when we talk about the promises made to Israel. Jesus was the only perfectly righteous Jew. The only one. He was the promised seed of the woman. He was the promised seed of Abraham. He alone fulfilled and kept all the law and therefore received all the promises of the old covenant. That covenant, which condemns all others, demonstrates his righteousness, which is imputed to his people from all time as they're justified by him, by faith in him. And this is where all of the systems need to agree. Whatever you believe about Israel and Christ and the church, here's the truth. The only way anybody throughout the history of the world since the beginning has ever been justified is by faith alone in Christ alone. It is the same gospel, old and new covenant. The old covenant shows us the gospel but condemns us with the law. The new covenant shows us the law has been kept for us and shows us grace and mercy. One foreshadows and points to Christ who is going to come. The other looks back to Christ who has come. Every facet then of Old Testament life for Israel finds its culmination in the life, the death, the resurrection, and the ascension of Jesus. And here's the point that Spurgeon would make. Whatever text you start with in the Bible, Old or New Testament, even if it's the book of Esther that doesn't even mention God, you realize that? The book of Esther never mentions God. Wherever you start, You take that passage and you make a beeline to the cross. You get to Christ as fast as you can, because Christ is who is being revealed to us in the Old and the New Testament scriptures. The land, the promised land, pointed to Christ and our rest in him in the new heavens and the new earth. All of the law. pointed to a type and a foreshadowing to Christ. Again, 2 Corinthians 1.20, for as many as are the promises of God in him, they are yes. Therefore, also through him is our amen to the glory of God through us. Jesus, therefore, is the true Israel of God. the only righteous Jewish man. He fulfills what the nation typified. He completes the covenants. He inaugurates the anticipated kingdom. He established the promised new covenant with his blood. You see this new covenant that we've been studying indicates a shift in the structure of the covenant community. We saw in 70 AD the destruction of Old Testament Judaism. Christ had come to inaugurate a new kingdom and a new community of faith. And in instituting the church and in coming to build his church, that church is made up now of Jew and Gentile believers in union with Christ. And this is a new redemptive reality that was initiated by the spirit on the day of Pentecost. Jews and Gentiles joined together as if they were one, because in Christ, they are one. With the birth of the New Testament church, we see the creation of a new humanity. Humanity up until the coming of Christ had always been divided between Israel and the nations. The word for nations, ethnos, we translate Gentiles. That's what Gentile means. If you're a Gentile, you're a member of the nations that are not Israel. If you are in Israel, a Jew, a Hebrew, You are not then part of the nations. That was the distinction in the Old Testament. We know it started even with Adam as there was preparation from the beginning to bring about then the promises made to Abraham. And then we see the people carried off under Jacob and Joseph into Egypt. And then we see them freed and delivered under Moses. And all of that we're going to see points us to Christ. In Ephesians 2, starting verse 14, Paul writes, for he himself is our peace, who made both groups one. Who's he talking about? Jews and the nations, Jews and Gentiles. He made both groups one and broke down the dividing wall of the partition by abolishing in his flesh the enmity, the law of commandments contained in ordinances, so that in himself, he might create the two into one new man making peace and might reconcile them both in one body to God through the cross, having in himself put to death the enmity. And he came and preached the good news of peace to you who were far away, that is the nations, and peace to those who you were near, the Jews, near to the promises and the covenants. For through him, we both have access in one spirit to the father. So then, you are no longer strangers and sojourners, but you are also fellow citizens with the saints and are of God's household, having been built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets, Christ Jesus himself being the cornerstone in whom the whole building being joined together is growing into a holy sanctuary in the Lord, in whom you also are being built together into a dwelling of God in the spirit. We understand then why the New Testament can tell us in Christ there is neither Jew nor Greek. Now, this is crucial if we're saying there's only one people of God and it's those Jew or Gentile that are joined by faith to Christ. They comprise the one people of God. That means we cannot say God made promises to Israel and not the church. And he's got a program for Israel and not the church. And the two are separate because then in Christ, you still have Jew and Gentile. And Jesus says there is if there is apostles, there is no Jew or Gentile in Christ. that wall of separation, that ethnicity has been erased. So that now Peter says, we believers, Jew and Gentile alike, in the diaspora that he writes to throughout Asia Minor, we all now are a holy nation. That technically means a sanctified ethnicity. So of the two, he's broken down everything that separates us and made one new holy humanity. the church, his kingdom, comprised of Jews and Gentiles who believe. So we see that the church is really only indirectly linked to Israel through our relationship with Christ. All that Israel had was a foreshadowing and a type to bring about the birth of the Messiah and point to him and to his mission. William Kynes says, the relationship between the church and Israel is neither one of direct succession nor radical disjunction, but one of mediated continuity. One may describe the church as the true Israel, but its continuity with the rejected Israel is found in the representative figure of Jesus, who bridges salvation history even while fulfilling it. So Israel has not been replaced by the church. And that is a crucial distinction to make, because there are those in covenant theology that will say that Israel has been replaced by the church or that the church was the true Israel all along and Israel was never the church, only a remnant of it. Jesus typologically fulfills Old Testament Israel and the church. So here through Christ, all of the promises made to Israel are inherited by Him and those who are in Him. Now to look at typology, we use the word typology. What it means is that the Old Testament gives us all of these types, these shadows of Christ who is the substance. Here's a couple of examples. Some of the types were fulfilled, others were annulled as a result of the coming of Christ. The Old Testament sacrificial system has been rendered obsolete with the sacrifice of Christ. All those sacrifices of the bulls and goats and sheep and everybody, all those sacrifices have been rendered obsolete, unnecessary, because they all pointed to Christ. And once he died, he was the final ultimate sacrifice for sin. There is now, the writer of Hebrews tells us, no more sacrifice for sin. And the more I study this and the more I say this, the more I hear the words coming out of my mouth. We're teaching Hebrews next. When we finish the covenants, we're gonna move on to the book. I might take a break and do a few weeks on prayer. I've got that on my heart too. And then we're gonna look at the book of Hebrews. But we see then the Old Testament sacrificial system has been rendered obsolete with the sacrifice of Christ. That's Hebrews 8 and 9. The tabernacle. And the temple as structures for worship, those are also types fulfilled in Christ. The Old Testament temple has been replaced by the spirit indwelt New Testament people of God. 1 Corinthians 6, 19 tells us, now we are the sanctuary, the temple of the Holy Spirit. It's no longer a building that is the house of God and the place to go to meet with God. Now, he indwells us by his spirit permanently and we are his dwelling place, his temple. When we look then at Christ as the true Israel, Parker writes, Jesus embodies the identity, the vocation, and prophesied roles of corporate Israel. He is the last Adam, the true servant, the true son, the ultimate prophet, the final priest, and the reigning exalted king. Every position that there was to be fulfilled in the life of Israel in their worship of God is fulfilled in Christ. That means it all pointed to him. He is the faithful Israelite in that he fulfills all that God has promised and intended for the nation of Israel. This is another crucial understanding for people on both sides of whatever kind of dispensational covenant argument you're having. There are no unfulfilled promises waiting to be fulfilled to the nation of Israel, other than the promises of the second coming of Christ. There are no unfulfilled promises to the nation of Israel. Joshua 21, 43 says that God gave them and they inherited all of the land. People say, well, there's still land that they didn't take. No, Joshua 21, 43 states otherwise. God tells us in his word, they fulfilled it, they took it, they inherited all of it so that God did not have anything left undone in his promises to them. With the promises in the covenants, However, they rejected the Messiah when he came. And so they were cut off so that wild branches, Gentiles, could be grafted in. This is the amazing picture in the Old Testament in Isaiah, and we've seen it in Jeremiah too, where God says, I prepared a garden, a vineyard, and I planted the best vines, but the grapes were wild. And he's talking about his people, Israel. If it was a choice vine, why did the grapes come out wild? He says, what more could I have done to make my vineyard better? Well, now he says, we, the Gentiles are wild branches and we're being grafted in. There are branches that have been broken off and branches that are grafted in. Now, the question is, what are they being grafted into? The answer for the last 200 years is that we, the Gentiles and the church were being grafted into the root of Israel. No. Who is the root of Israel? Jesus. He is the root. He is the vine. If we are being grafted into something, we are being grafted into Christ by faith. John 15, the parable there of the vineyard abiding in Christ that James has been preaching for us. We were not grafted as the church into physical Israel. Some of the natural branches were broken off of God's people. Others were grafted in, but the root is Christ. Two references there you can look at Matthew 21, 43 and Romans 11, 17 through 24. Jesus is presented in the New Testament as the divine son. You'll remember that God called Israel his son. Well, Jesus now is the divine son. He is the covenantal head of the new humanity, restoring them to dignity and the role for which they were created by his undoing of the curse. I would encourage you there to read Psalm chapter eight and compare that to Hebrews chapter two. And we'll do that when we go through Hebrews. Christ then is the true seed of Abraham, Galatians 3.16. And he is the promised ideal David, Acts 2.24-36. He fulfills the eschatological goals and promises associated with both of these covenant figures. Christ is the son called out of Egypt. Here's another interesting contrast. Look at Hosea 11.1 and Matthew 2.15. When God called Israel out of Egypt, He's calling his son out of Egypt into the wilderness and into the promised land. What happened when Jesus was born? Herod was going to have him killed. And so an angel warned Mary and Joseph, and they got up in the middle of the night and they fled to Egypt. And then when it was safe and Herod had died, they were called to come back. And we're told in Matthew, that is to fulfill the type that was already given with Israel and Egypt, out of Egypt I have called my son. And Hosea in the Old Testament anticipates this, in Hosea 11, verses one through 11. He anticipates that the Messiah will be called out of Egypt, just as Israel was. He saw the type in the foreshadowing and tells us its fulfillment. So Matthew identifies Jesus as God's son who embodies Israel's history. The return from exile promised in Hosea is fulfilled in Christ's return with his parents after fleeing to Egypt to escape Herod. Therefore, the son ushers in a new Exodus after the eschatological Elijah, John the Baptist, prepares the way by preaching about the arrival of the kingdom and the king. We see, if you step back and look at it, And we see through Adam, through Abraham, through Jacob, into Egypt, with Moses out of Egypt, through the wilderness, into the promised land with the conquest under Joshua. And then we get to the King David. All of that. If you were to make a movie of all of that, you're making a movie of the life of Christ. because each one of those points in Old Testament history is pointing to and is fulfilled in specific things that happen in Jesus's life. Jesus identified with his people. He left Egypt. He went through the waters of baptism. as they went through the Red Sea. And he leads his people now into a new creation. Parker goes on and he says, further God's perspective of Jesus in the announcement, this is my beloved son, recalls the sonship of Israel, echoing Exodus 4.22 and Hosea 11.1 and Jeremiah 3.19. It also recalls the messianic enthronement Psalm of a Davidic King in Psalm 2.7. this voice that came from heaven when Jesus was baptized. This is my beloved son in whom I'm well pleased. This confirms Jesus as the unique son of God, as the true Israel, as the true king, summing up all of the previous sons of God. Who are they? Adam, Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, David, et cetera. We can go through the list in Matthew one. All of those anticipated the coming of Jesus. Isaiah 42.1 and Matthew 3.16 then present Jesus as the messianic servant with whom the Father is well pleased. The true servant who accomplishes Israel's salvation and restoration. This is the promise of Isaiah 42, 49, 50, and 52. Therefore, Jesus does not restore the nation of Israel in order to bless the nations in the future. He accomplishes this task in his first coming. The promises to Abraham that through his seed, all the nations of the world would be blessed. We're not waiting for that to be fulfilled in some future kingdom. The kingdom is here. And when Christ came and inaugurated it, all of the nations were blessed because now the kingdom of God had come to earth and missionaries were sent and the gospel was spread. And you realize just with the 12 apostles, just with the 12 apostles. The gospel went as far as India to the east and England, Romania, Britain, Romania to the west. That at that point was the breadth of the known world. From there, then we know the gospel made it to China. Of course, it went with the Ethiopian eunuch down into Africa. It spread worldwide and is still spreading. Christ is also seen as the obedient son in the wilderness. You think about this. The nation wandered around for 40 years because of their doubt and their fear and their lack of faith. They wandered around and complained for 40 years in the wilderness. This is because they were tempted. What were they tempted? To go back to Egypt. We don't want to follow you, Moses. We're hungry. The food was better in Egypt. You were slaves in Egypt. You were suffering. You were crying out to God to save you. And now you want to go back? In that temptation in the wilderness, they failed. They got to the edge of the promised land, ready to cross the river. They sent the 12 spies over, and they came back, and what did they say? 10 said, we can't do this. Just turn around and go back. It's a beautiful land, but there's giants. That'd be like somebody coming to the border of Texas and saying, man, this place is awesome, but they've got cowboys. Let's get out of here. But what did the two say? God said, it's ours. Why can't we go take it? And Caleb and Joshua did. Caleb in his upper eighties at the conquest went and took whole cities by himself because God promised and he knew God would keep his word. So they were tempted in the wilderness and failed and wandered. What happened to Jesus in the wilderness? He was tempted in every way as we are. yet without yielding to that temptation. Now, people have asked the question, if Jesus was God and that means that Jesus could not sin, then how could he be tempted? You understand, you can be tempted to do something that you can't do. That's what most temptation to sin is. The temptation to sin is for you to satisfy yourself by doing something that will not satisfy you. And so what do you do? You give in to the temptation. To say Jesus could be tempted and not sin is not a contradiction. When he was tempted to turn the stone into bread, it's because he'd been fasting for 40 days, and as a human being, he was hungry. All those promises that were made, by the way, God gave to Christ, didn't he? Didn't come from Satan. Jesus withstood the temptation. He did in the wilderness what Israel did not do, and by his obedience, he gained far more than Satan had to offer, because the result then was that all authority in heaven and earth is given to him. The devil said, I'll give you all these kingdoms that you see. He withstood it, and what did God say? The whole world is yours. It's your footstool. All authority in heaven and earth belongs to you. Christ also then is the true vine. In John 15, drawing from Psalm 80, Jesus as the true vine succeeds where Israel as God's vine had failed. Parker says, only those who are organically united with the true vine incorporated as branches bearing fruit are participants in Jesus, the true Israel. We have to be connected and growing and bearing fruit. So through our study then of the covenants, we see that the Israel church relationship is indirect. Israel was a type of Christ. The church and those in him is his new covenant people. The main error then of dispensational theology is that it maintains that there are two distinct people of God with separate promises and separate places within the kingdom of God. And this goes back to a route where classic original dispensationalism taught that there were two ways of salvation, one for the Jews and the other for the Gentiles. And classic dispensationalism, if it's still taught today, teaches that Jews can be saved under the old covenant by obedience to the law. Well, that absolutely contradicts what Paul says. No man is justified by keeping the law because we can't keep the law. That's the point. But if you disjoint the Old and the New Testament that sharply, then you see two covenants, two people, two paths, two promises, and you miss that both covenants are fulfilled in Christ. There are no separate promises. There are no separate places within the kingdom of God. I had a man tell me this one time, just a few years ago, that in the new heavens and the new earth, Christ would rule with Jewish people in charge and the Gentiles would just be servants under the Jews in the kingdom of God. There's neither Jew nor Greek. We're all gonna reign with him. Now, we're all gonna be servants too, by the way. because he is God and we are not. That means that all believers have their identity in Christ, where now there is no Jew or Gentile. All of the promises and the inheritance are theirs through Christ. Christ is the new covenant head of his people, the one who reconstitutes the true people of God through his work on the cross. Hence, his disciples are now identified in Philippians 3.3 as the true circumcision, in Romans 2.28 as inward Jews, in Romans 4 and Galatians 3 as Abraham's seed. That means Parker writes, the church is God's chosen race, royal priesthood, holy nation, special possession, and constituted people through his remarkable mercy. In summary, then, we understand that national Israel was a typological pattern, not unlike other Old Testament persons, institutions, and events. They all foreshadow Christ and find their annulment or fulfillment in him. There is only One people of God, Jew and Gentile alike, joined together in one new covenant people purchased with the blood of Christ. God's covenant people then are those united to Christ by faith because of the grace and mercy of God. And Christ himself is the embodiment of all the promises and inheritance of the kingdom of God and its gospel. Ephesians 1, 22 and 23, Paul writes this. And he put all things in subjection under his feet and gave him as head over all things to the church, which is his body, the fullness of him who fills all in all. What we should find in a study of covenant theology and the covenants of the Bible, what we should find is that we come to the conclusion that Jesus is our all in all. That's it. Now, I just simplified thousands of years of doctrinal debate. Is it that simple? I tend to think so because God tells us that the wisdom of men is foolishness to him. And his wisdom is foolishness to us. And we have a propensity to make things so complicated. You see what we've done in our systems on both sides is we've made it about us. We've either made it about Jews and Gentiles, or we've made it about Israel and the church, or we've made it about old covenant people or new covenant people, and the focus is all on us. Where should the focus be if in him is the fullness, he fills all in all? Where then should the focus be? Christ. If our study of doctrine and theology and systematic theology and biblical theology and covenants and the outworking of God in time and eschatology. If all of this does not point us to Jesus and turns our eyes back instead on us, we're wrong because Christ is all in all. We preach Christ crucified. For all the argument, by the way, over eschatology, John solves it for us in writing the revelation How does he start? What's the beginning of the book? The revelation of Jesus Christ. He's promised he's coming. We can try to figure out the details, but understand he's coming as a thief in the night. No man knows the hour. That means we watch and we wait. That means our attention is focused on who? Jesus. Everybody's watching out for the seal and the mark of the beast and looking out for the antichrist. There are and have been many antichrists. There will continue to be antichrists up until the final antichrist. Quit looking out there when you should be looking up there, expecting Jesus to come again. My prayer is that through the study of scripture, you will come not only to see Christ as everything, but that you can't wait in your time of Bible study to find out in a new passage, in a new verse, in a new place today again, how Jesus is our all in all. Let's pray together. Father, we do thank you for your word and we thank you for the Lord Jesus. How we pray you would fix our eyes upon him, that whatever the study is, remind us that we are foolish and finite, that your wisdom seems foolish to us and what we think is wise is foolish to you because your ways are above our ways, your thoughts are above our thoughts and we cannot shove you into a system and make everything fit. You inhabit eternity, you'll never fit in our creation. You're bigger than it, you consume it, you're omnipresent in it. We thank you for the reminder this morning from your word who Jesus is and what he has accomplished. We thank you for your providence throughout history, for all of these signposts that point to him, through the people, through the places, through the laws, through the buildings, through the nations. All of this we see in the Old Testament is pointing us to Jesus. And so now as he builds his church, as his kingdom has been inaugurated and it continues to grow, now we await the return of the king. We await the Parisian. for Christ to come, for the trumpet to blow, for us to be changed where we stand and to meet him in the air. Even so, come Lord Jesus. We pray these things in Jesus' name.