If we do not give our highest love and adoration to God, we inevitably place something else on the throne of our hearts. There is no neutrality. You will either love God above all, or you will love everything else above Him. Whether it be wealth, power, success, relationships, or fleeting pleasures – whatever supplants God as the object of our most passionate devotion becomes an idol.

You shall have no other gods before Me. – Exodus 20:3

The First Commandment: Have No Other Gods
3500 years ago, the men and women of Judah gathered at the foot of Mount Sinai to receive the Ten Commandments God gave to Moses – which begin with the first and most central command: “You shall have no other gods before me.”
This commandment strikes at the very heart of what it means to worship and adore the one true God. The Hebrew word used here for worship is “ahav,” which means to love fervently and to cherish with passionate devotion. It is the kind of word Solomon uses in the songs of Solomon, describing passionate intimate love between a husband and his wife. It is borderless intimacy, simple affection, a heart consumed with its beloved, and, in this case, love is aimed toward God.
God established His covenant with the Israelites at Mount Sinai as their sovereign Lord and ruler. He had delivered them mightily from slavery in Egypt. And by doing that, God was not only after the fear and gratitude. He certainly was not interested in begrudging obedience. At the heart of God’s actions towards His people was a reciprocity of love. In giving the Ten Commandments, He was making clear that He alone is to be adored and worshiped by them as the one true God. No other gods were, and no other wayward loves were to come into His presence.
The Essence of Idolatry: Misplaced Love and Devotion
And it is here that we learn an astounding truth. To not adore and love God with this vibrant “ahav” kind of devotion is itself an act of idolatry. If we do not give our highest love and adoration to God, we inevitably place something else on the throne of our hearts. There is no neutrality. You will either love God above all, or you will love everything else above Him. Whether it be wealth, power, success, relationships, or fleeting pleasures – whatever supplants God as the object of our most passionate devotion becomes an idol.
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As we feast on the finest provisions, sing historic hymns and spiritual songs, and join our voices in reciting ancient creeds and prayers, we form catechized citizens of a new and heavenly commonwealth. This will bind current and future generations through shared stories, customs, and sanctifying habits. Just as the aroma of lovingly prepared food can unite a family around the table, so the familiar rhythm of our feasting unites us together for the mission Christ has called us to. 

As our local church prepares for our upcoming meal called “Ascension Feast,” where we will celebrate with excellent food, rousing songs, bottles of wine, and rich liturgy focused on Christ’s glorious rise to His heavenly throne, I felt like it would be an opportune time to reflect upon the biblical foundations for corporate feasting. I also thought it would be an opportune occasion to help men and women in Christ’s body understand the importance of why churches should become centers for eating, drinking, fellowshiping, and the spreading of mirth. Why should churches throw lavish feasts? Why should Christians make every effort to participate? To that end, I endeavor.
The Biblical Case for Feasting
Throughout Scripture, God’s people are called to set apart special times and seasons for joyful eating, singing, and common liturgy. The people of God were called to mark significant days and milestones with eager celebration. Far from being empty and lavish indulgences, Biblical feasting with the saints of God serves a profound purpose in the life of the church and our battle to take back culture.
First and foremost, feasting celebrates God’s abundant provision for His people. When the Israelites wandered in the wilderness, God miraculously provided manna and water, and the Feast of Tabernacles (Leviticus 23:40-43) became an annual remembrance of His faithfulness during those years. Today, every morsel of food expresses the Lord’s steadfast love and care over our lives. Feasting allows us to enjoy His gifts and to thank Him with rich displays of gratitude.
Feasting also cultivates the bonds of fellowship within the body of Christ. Acts 2 describes the early church gathering frequently to break bread “with glad and sincere hearts.” Such communal meals build relationships, foster spiritual kinship, increase our collective joy, and unify us around our shared identity and mission in Jesus Christ. When we feast together, we get the opportunity to tangibly live out being one family united by the gospel, and there are few places better fit to celebrate with family than at a food-laden table.
Moreover, the Bible repeatedly uses this metaphor of a grand banquet to depict the eternal fellowship we’ll experience with our God in His kingdom (Matthew 22:1-14). Our earthly feasts offer a foretaste of that heavenly celebration to come. Our feasts also celebrate a God who does not lose and is not leading His church into abject failure. When a triumphant army wins the war, it commences with feasting. Because Christ Jesus won the battle over the cosmos and called His people to spread His victory far and wide, we take great care to stop and feast. We are wise to plan stops away from the hustle and bustle of life to rejoice over shared food and wine. Who has more reason to celebrate and have joy than a Christian? We have been rescued from the throes of death, empowered for a new life in Christ, and are a people awaiting the consummation of all things to come.
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For all of us, our forgetfulness has caused division and separation in our experience of knowing God. This is why we are called to remember His law, obey It, and meditate on it day and night. Because when we remember it, it re-members us to Him. 

You shall have no other gods before Me. – Exodus 20:3

The Law to a Forgetful People
The entire purpose of Biblical law is that God entered into a relationship with forgetful people. The law of God does not exist because human minds are perfectly fixated on the triune God in purity to know Him. If they were, a law would be unnecessary. The law also does not exist because we naturally submit ourselves to systems of morality that flow directly from His character and holiness. We are not adept at living out any code of ethics with consistency, much less something as beautiful and holy as the law of God. No. The law exists to prop up forgetful people who exist in perpetual forgetfulness. We forget who God is. We forget how we are to live in light of who He is. And we need the law of God as a tutor to point us to Christ.
This is why God repeatedly admonishes the people of Israel to remember the law, remember His statutes, remember His precepts, remember His promises. Why? Because if we are not actively being reminded to remember them we will inevitably forget them. That is simply who we are in our character and nature. This is as true to the human condition as a goldfish needing to be submerged in water to breathe or birds needing wings to fly. Without the commandment to remember the law of God, we would always forget His precepts. But it goes even deeper than that.
Forgetfulness and Dismembering
When we forget who God is or what His law says, we are not only having a lapse of the mind but we are being dismembered from the true knowledge of God. If “re”-” membering” is about us being “membered” back again, restored to a former station, then forgetting is akin to kind of “dis”-” membering”.
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Our engagement with the Psalms demands a response. It’s not enough to nod in agreement and carry on as before. If your heart and hymnbook are full of defeat and despair, it’s high time for a reformation. We need to ditch the weak-kneed theology that has infiltrated our ranks and put on the whole armor of God, ready to fight the good fight with the confidence of those already on the winning side.  Remember, the Psalms don’t call us to a passive, defeated life, waiting for the end times. They call us to action, dominion, to take up the mantle of our King and push forward His Kingdom here on earth, as it is in heaven.

If you want to learn what a culture values, and if you’re going to understand the worldview that underpins a nation, then you must look no further than their songs. No matter what the whompyjawed ideologues say behind fake smiles and teleprompters, and no matter what manufactured narratives are peddled by the bobbleheaded pundits in the fake news media, the hopes and dreams of a people will be found most clearly stated in their anthems, ballads, and refrains. If you want to know what a society believes in, where their hopes lie, what they think about the purpose of life, and why we are all here, then pay attention to the lyrics and hymns they produce. It will be telling.
For instance, let’s say that I have been living under a rock for a few decades, and somehow, I end up washing up on the shores of this strange land called the USA. If I wanted to figure out who these people are and what things they value, I might look up their ten most popular songs for that year. If I did that, I would find out that these people believe our purpose in life is to engage in womanizing, emasculation, promiscuous and filthy sex, getting drunk, doing drugs, and being a thoroughgoing moral degenerate. But it’s all good, as long as we have a good time, right? That is the attitude our songs are celebrating. While I wish I could say that I am being hyperbolic, I read through the lyrics of the ten most popular songs right now, and if anything, I am being excessively modest. That is the discordant melody and the seedy song we are singing about who we are. And based on our cultural anthems, we are not only a very sick and disgusting people, but we are unashamedly proud of it.
However, this was not the case in ancient Israel, whose hymn book tells a much different story about who they were and what they valued as a society. Amid the hundred and fifty songs that we have preserved in our canon, we can see themes of trust, praise, and worship of Yahweh, lament, and suffering in times of struggle, repentance and confession, thanksgiving, His love, and covenantal faithfulness to His people, as well as His sovereignty and Kingship over all things. In fact, one of the most prominent themes in the book of Psalms is how God is going to take a sin-laden world that was handed down to us in Adam and, through His Son, establish a Kingdom that fills the world with worshippers, which ties in perfectly with the themes that we have been talking about so far.
If you are new to the party, we are in a series called a practical postmillennialism, where we have been talking about what postmillennialism is. We have been arguing that postmillennialism is the story of how God will fill the world with worshippers before the curtains close on this old world. This is the promise He made to Adam in the garden before He sinned (Genesis 1:28). This is the promise God repeated to Noah after sin (Genesis 9:1). It is the hope that Abraham’s line will bless every family on earth (Genesis 12:3) and every nation on earth (Genesis 18:18). And it is the promise that humans will never be able to do this on their own, because we are all like Adam, so a messianic Shiloh will come and bring obedience and worship to all the nations (Genesis 49:10), filling them with worshippers. We have seen that Jesus will take the promises given to all those men in Genesis and accomplish them as the true and better Adam.
Last week, we saw how those world-filling promises are not only contained within the book of Genesis but spill out into the pages of the Exodus, or in the law found in Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy, or in the conquests narratives of Joshua, and in the lead up to and all throughout the era of the kings from Judges, Ruth, 1 and 2 Samuel, 1 and 2 Kings, and 1 and 2 Chronicles. We saw that these cosmic promises that were given by God would be fulfilled. God would not abandon His plan. And before the last grain of sand falls through the hourglass of time, God will have filled the world with worshippers through His one and only Son, Jesus. These are His promises, and He is going to fulfill them.
Now today, we will see how the book of Psalms takes these glorious themes and sings them back to us, even shouting them at us like a metal concert with loud crashing symbols going off in the background so that we would have to be blind, deaf, and dumb to miss the throbbing chorus. Today, as we move out of the history of Israel’s kings and move into the poetry and songs of Israel, we will see how the hymnbook of God’s people echoes the promise of a better King, a ferocious King, who will put all of His enemies underneath His feet so that He can fill the world with worshippers as God has promised.
A Song of Crushing Enemies
As men have become increasingly emasculated in our culture and radical feminism has run through our societal veins like rat poison, the widespread view of Jesus has shifted away from the warrior priest-king to the humble, loveable wuss. If that stings, it is because it is true. In art and movies, we shamefully depict Him with long flowing hair, soft, supple skin, and longing eyes, looking like a woman with a well-manicured beard. In popular evanjellyfish music, Jesus has become the emotional boyfriend in the sky, to whom we belt out all our emotive mantric babblings, so He will wrap us up in warm worshipful hugs. This is ironic because the songs we see concerning Him in Scripture are masculine and ferocious, and they focus not only on His affections but also His wrath against the wicked.
No matter how sappily evangelicalism has painted the Lion of Judah, and no matter how loud they roar that we lose down here, the softening of this King and the defeat of His people does not work in the Psalms. He is not a mere savior of souls working for a Kingdom filled with harp-playing, toga-wearing cloud riders. This prevailing notion suggests that the church’s role is essentially to crash and burn in this lifetime, to retreat from the world like cowards in anticipation of a heavenly reward, sidelining the Kingdom’s advancement on earth. Many argue that Jesus is not actively building His Kingdom on this earth because He is focused entirely on spiritual things. However, this image starkly contrasts with the robust, authoritative Messiah depicted in the Psalms.
In these God-breathed hymns, Jesus is not depicted as a distant, passive figure; instead, He emerges as a mighty warrior, a king not only concerned with the afterlife but vigorously involved in the here and now, establishing His rule, authority, and dominion across the globe. And there will be setbacks. There will be enemies who rise up and pop off at the mouth. The Scriptures are not silent about those moments. But, they are also not quiet about the Messiah standing as the indomitable General leading the charge against the hordes of hell until every single enemy of God has been crushed under King Jesus’ feet. In that sense, the Psalms aren’t just songs; they are war cries, declarations of victory by a King who will bring utter devastation and ruin upon His enemies.
Take Psalm 2 and Psalm 110 for example. These aren’t gentle whispers of a far-off distant hope; they are booming thunderclaps of God’s immutable promise.
Psalm 2:7-12 says:

“I will surely tell of the decree of the Lord: He said to me, ‘You are my Son, today I have begotten you. Ask of me, and I will surely give the nations as your inheritance, and the very ends of the earth as your possession. You shall break them with a rod of iron; you shall shatter them like earthenware.’ Now therefore, O kings, show discernment; take warning, O judges of the earth. Worship the Lord with reverence and rejoice with trembling. Do homage to the Son, that he not become angry, and you perish in the way, for his wrath may soon be kindled. How blessed are all who take refuge in him!” – Psalm 2:7-12

Although David wrote this song, He is not talking about himself. He is an outsider to this scene. He is nothing more than a privileged spectator who returns and reports all He heard and beheld within the Godhead. He is writing a song about a conversation God the Father and God the Son are having with one another. A song where the Father will bring His Son to this earth as His only begotten Son. A song where the Father will give His Son all of the rebel nations on earth as the inheritance for His obedience. And, after assuming His global dominion (alluded to in Matthew 28:18), He will begin the process of overthrowing all of the sedition on earth, breaking into pieces all of those who are in ongoing insurrection against God.
Because of Jesus’ incarnation, death, resurrection, and ascension, He will rule over the nations of this earth with a rod of iron and shatter all of His Father’s rebels like pottery shards. This is why the world’s kings are told to be wise and take this warning very seriously. They are not told to repent in terror because Jesus is building a Kingdom that loses down here and has no impact down here. No! They should be terrified because if they do not turn from their evil in order to worship the Messiah King on this earth and pay homage to Him in His rule on this planet, then He will overthrow them here, displace them here, and bury them here in His righteous wrath.
God the Father is promising that Jesus will win down here, rule down here, and crush everyone who opposes Him down here. That is a far different tune than what we are used to hearing in modern Christianity. But, alas, there it is in the text. We see that this Messiah doesn’t come as a passive observer of world history but as the relentless conqueror of it. He is the one who claims every inch of this earth as His rightful domain because He won it as His inheritance on the cross.
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Let us immerse ourselves in Scripture, committing it to memory, dwelling on it, and saturating our thoughts with the Word of God. Let us sing the psalms, filling our minds with praise. Let us revisit the weeks, months, years, and decades past, meditating on the countless instances of God’s faithfulness, filling our minds with thanksgiving.

You shall have no other gods before Me. – Exodus 20:3

When the Almighty declares that Israel shall have no other deities before Him, His command transcends the hallowed ground of Sinai, where He descended in awe-inspiring splendor. God is not merely the Lord of lofty peaks but also the Sovereign of the valleys. His dominion extends beyond these sacred walls to permeate every private recess of your existence. Inescapably, you abide in His presence, such that each errant thought, each misguided meditation, becomes an act of setting up profane idols ignorantly before Him.
Last week, we explored the mind’s propensity to enshrine false gods, those insidious deities that plant their banners in the fertile soil of our gray matter, infecting the neural pathways with venomous idolatry repugnant to God. Today, we peel back another layer to examine our meditations.
To the ancient Hebrew mind, thoughts were distinct from chosen meditations. The mind, unanchored, can drift aimlessly into error and heresy. Thus, in repenting for sins of the mind, our most potent defense is to remain tethered, anchored to God and His law, lest our wayward thoughts float adrift.
Biblical meditation, however, demands intentional action. Consider the diligence required to cultivate the finest lawn: weeds must be plucked, roots and all, lest they return. Likewise, we must continually uproot mental idols. Yet, plucking alone is insufficient; we must also sow seeds that nourish lush growth. Both actions – plucking and planting – are essential to achieving our desired ends.
Just as we addressed plucking mental idols last week, today we explore intentionally sowing thoughts that honor the Lord and prevent profane gods from infiltrating our minds. Unlike the empty promises of yoga gurus and new age shamans, Biblical meditation is not about emptying the mind but filling it – so abundantly, in fact, that no idolatrous weeds can take root or occupy sacred space.
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Jesus will be the one who indeed obeys the covenant stipulations of Yahweh and, as Solomon prayed, would bless all the peoples on earth (1 Kings 8:60; 2 Chronicles 6:32-33). He is the one who delivered Hezekiah from Assyria and who will ensure the world will know who God is (2 Kings 19:15, 19). He is the one who, unlike the kings of Judah, will not lead His people into idolatry or fail in righteousness but will establish and uphold justice and righteousness from this time forth and forevermore (Isaiah 9:7).

An Analogy of Relationships
In human romantic relationships, progress is made through promise. When a man enjoys the company of a particular woman, and natural desires begin bubbling up in that man for her, well, he ought to be the one to ask her if she will become his woman. This is not an open-ended promise where he reserves the right to desire and spend affectionate time with a throng of women, but a personal pledge that she will be the lone object of his affection moving forward. His commitment and promise carries with it exclusivity.
When the relationship advances beyond the dating stages, progress is again precipitated by promise. Without new pledges of increased loyalty and commitment, the relationship will stagnate and usually wither into a relational bramble. But after a pledge of lifelong fidelity, the dating couple becomes engaged with a ring of promise, and the engaged couple standing at the altar with rings becomes lawfully wed.
This normative period is filled with promises that progress every relationship from strangers and acquaintances to friends, from pals to dating and betrothal, and eventually into marriage. This period is a finite allotment of time to establish interest, trustworthiness, and commitment before the era of promises is over. And I mean that the era of promises must end because no woman wants to marry a man who continually rattles off guarantees and assurances but never ends up keeping any of them. Once all the promises have been made, and the man and woman say I do, he does not need to go on making oaths and pledges and explaining his intentions. He must transition the relationship from being a promise maker to a promise keeper, or the only progress he will make will be toward separation and divorce. This movement from promise to fulfillment is the most natural step toward maturation for any marriage; it is how trust is baked in time and how marriages become iron-clad centers of love, life, and community for a clan of burgeoning people.
In some ways, we can apply this to what we spoke about last week. We transitioned away from the wrong views of eschatology to the correct view. And we saw how God Himself littered the book of Genesis with monumental promises. He promised to fill the world with worshippers through Adam. He repeated those promises to Noah. He kept those promises during the rocky era of Babel. He made those promises even more explicit and exclusive through Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, and Judah. And like a young man making covenantal promises to the woman that He loves before their wedding day, God in those early years of Genesis was showering His people with all of His promises and was letting her know what He was going to do in covenant union with her and for her. And as we saw last week, the content of those promises was that God Himself would make His people into a fruitful, world-wide, people, who fill the earth with worshippers. Worshippers in the sciences, worshippers in local and national governments, worshippers in technology and engineering firms, worshippers in law practices, libraries, restaurants, public squares, plumbing and electrical businesses, and worshippers in faithful churches. God is going to fill the world, and every sector of this world, with His joyful human worshippers so that everything on this rebel planet will come under His dominion and will.
Yet, in just the same way a man shouldn’t keep making promises with no intention of fulfilling them, God does not go on speaking without a plan for doing. He transitions the relationship from promise maker to promise keeper as we turn the page from Genesis to the book of Exodus. He continues that posture through the conquests and the histories of the people of Israel and Judah. And while Israel and Judah will be unfaithful to her husband and maker (Isaiah 54:5; Hosea 2:2), provoking Him to jealous fury (Deuteronomy 32:21), playing the harlot with the nations instead of bringing them into God’s covenant family (Ezekiel 16:15), causing Him to issue a decree of divorce to the ten northern tribes of Israel (Jeremiah 3:8), God is never once unfaithful to His promises. He will fill the world with worshippers who worship Him in spirit and truth (John 4:23-24). And what we will see in the history of Judah and Israel is textual evidence that this is God’s plan and that God will accomplish it with Israel’s help or not!
In what follows, I would like to sketch out how all of the promises made in the book of Genesis, where the entire world will be filled with worshippers (Genesis 1:28), where all the families on earth will be blessed by the seed of Abraham (Genesis 12:1-3), all the nations on earth will come under God’s blessings through the seed of Jacob (Genesis 28:14) and will obey Yahweh their King through the promises to Shiloh as promised to Judah (Genesis 49:10), are now beginning to come true in the life of Israel. Like an acorn transitioning from seed to sapling, the Exodus, the conquests, and the Kingdom of Israel will show how God is committed to what He initially said and is delivering on those promises in the life of Israel. In the weeks ahead, we will see how those promises are fulfilled ultimately in Jesus, but for now, let’s trace the promises God made for a postmillennial and optimistic future out of the book of Genesis and see how they begin sprouting roots in the nation of Israel.
The Exodus and a World Filled with Worshippers:
After God had given promises to Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, and eventually Jacob’s fourth-born son Judah, the family of a dozen men and their wives and children settled in the land of Goshen, a providence of Egypt. You will remember from the book of Genesis that a massive famine hit the entire region. Yet, God, through wonderful providence, allowed Joseph to be sold into slavery and imprisonment, only to be elevated to the second position in the kingdom of Egypt, perfectly positioned to rescue Jacob’s family (and the future nation that would come from his own body) from starvation and death. That family was reunited in Egypt and began growing in Egypt. For four hundred silent years, where the Bible does not speak, they continued being fruitful and multiplying in that foreign land.
In fact, this is precisely where the book of Exodus begins. God promised Adam and Noah in the earliest parts of Genesis that He would make them fruitful and multiply them. And now, in Egypt, in the earliest parts of the Exodus narrative, God keeps that promise on the ground and in their families. Here is what the text says:
“But the sons of Israel were fruitful and increased greatly, and multiplied, and became exceedingly mighty, so that the land was filled with them. – Exodus 1:7
Do you see how God is fulfilling His promises? Do not overlook the significance of this moment. God created a world in Eden where His covenant people were destined to thrive under His blessings, a key component of which was their call to be fruitful and multiply, to expand and populate all the lands, establishing dominion over them. These events unfold within this passage, though not yet on the universal scale envisioned for the future, but significantly on a local scale within Egypt. The people of Israel proliferated exceedingly, their numbers swelling to such an extent that they filled the land, indicating that God’s hand of blessing was upon them.
In typical fashion, the native occupants, the adversaries of God, perceive this divine favor and are seized by terror at the prospect of losing their sovereignty. Egypt’s apprehension, fearing that Israel’s expansion and dominion will continue to the point of usurping their own, highlights a profound understanding lost on many today. God has not devised a plan destined for His people’s failure but has laid a strategy where the foes of God will be stripped of their places, nations, and statuses. In this divine plan, God’s people are destined to dispossess their lands, thereby extending Yahweh’s dominion far beyond its current boundaries.
The Egyptian Pharoah and his advisors grasped the enormity of God’s plan with all the visceral clarity needed, filling their hearts with dread and spurring them into a dark, desperate strategy of Jewish genocide, which became a futile attempt to thwart God’s holy intentions (Exodus 1:9-10). Yet, as is the inevitable fate of all who dare to challenge the Almighty, their sinister schemes crumbled into dust flakes. Moses recounts with poetic justice that the harsher Egypt’s tyranny became, the more prolifically God’s favor was poured out, blessing His people with unimaginable success and growth (Exodus 1:12). In a twist of irony, when Egypt sought to drown the Hebrew legacy in the Nile, God orchestrated a covert resistance led by fearless midwives. These unsung heroines, under God’s watchful eye, not only safeguarded the lives of countless infants but became unwitting architects of Israel’s burgeoning population, further frustrating Pharaoh’s draconian decrees (Exodus 1:20).
As we saw last week, God will not give up on His plans. He made promises to Adam and Noah. He came and elected a sinner named Abraham. He gave that man children in his old age who would eventually settle down in Egypt. And now, under the mighty hand of God, who is pouring out His blessings and favor upon them, they are doing what Yahweh promised. They are being fruitful, multiplying, spreading out, and threatening the enemies of God’s security and dominion. Sounds a lot like postmillennialism. If you ask me, it sounds like God is ensuring He will extend His dominion globally until the world is filled with worshippers.
This plan, of course, ran afoul of the Egyptians, who whipped the Israelite’s backs a little harder each day, all the while increasing their miseries in labor, that is, until a breaking point occurred. At first, the strapping forty-year-old Moses, whom God miraculously orchestrated by divine providence to grow up in the palaces of Egypt, took matters into his own hands, killing an Egyptian and attempting to work for the freedom of his people by his own strength and Vigor. This was not God’s plan, so God exiled Moses into the wilderness for an entire generation so that he could cool his jets a bit and trust that the Lord would do precisely what he promised.
As an octogenarian, God summons Moses back to Egypt with a mandate to reassure His people that He had not left them to languish in the desert sands, He had not turned His back on them, and He would assuredly rescue them from the shackles of Egyptian servitude with a mighty hand (Exodus 3:7-10). This liberation was aimed not just about freeing them from bondage but at relocating them to a land reminiscent of Eden — a garden land brimming with milk and honey and other beautiful blessings. There, they were to flourish, tend the garden land, extending Yahweh’s sovereignty across its breadth, and transform it into a region where God’s will had come on earth as it always had in heaven (Exodus 3:8). This elaborate plan traces its way all the way back to the pages of Genesis. This was not merely for the benefit of the Israelites alone, but it was being enacted by a God who wanted the entire earth to hear about Him and worship Him because of His awe-inspiring deeds. God had appointed Israel as His emissary to bring His blessings to all the world. And He announced that purpose to the obstinate Pharaoh just before He crushed Him. God says to the Pharaoh in Exodus 9:16:

“But, indeed, for this reason, I have allowed you to remain, in order to show you My power and in order to proclaim My name through all the earth.” – Exodus 9:16

Why would God tell the egotistical Pharaoh that His intention was to fill the earth with His name, stories of His power, and glory if He had no desire to fulfill it? Would God boast in a plan He had no intention of completing? I think not.
God rained down a furious assortment of ten devastating plagues on Egypt, crushing their egotistical pride, crashing their agriculture, farming, shipping industries, and the entire economic system that kept them afloat as an empire, bankrupting them for generations. More importantly, God was laboring to set Israel free so that Yahweh’s name would echo in every hole, hollar, cave, plain, and hilltop on earth. This alone reminds us that God is still committed to His original plan and purpose. He will make His name great by multiplying His worshippers everywhere the sun shines, everywhere the shadow falls, and no one in hell or on earth will stop Him. If you doubt that, ask the Pharaoh of Egypt, who hardened his heart and got the unenviable opportunity to see all the wealth and power that remained within his empire flushed down the Red Sea toilet.
The Law and a World Filled with Worshippers:
From there, God brought this newly freed nation of Jews along with an assortment of Egyptians (Exodus 12:38), consisting of a couple of million people who walked out of Egypt (Exodus 12:37), to the base of Mount Sinai, where He would enter into a covenant relationship with them. Like all covenants, this one would have specific stipulations, rules, and precepts that the people of God were to follow in order to be in a relationship with this holy God. If they followed these stipulations, they would inherit the blessings of the covenant, which God describes in various sections of the Law. For instance, He promised to walk among them as God walked amid Adam and Eve in the garden (Leviticus 26:11-12). He promised they would be fruitful and prosperous in a garden land (Leviticus 26:9). He told them He would give them dominion and authority among the nations on earth (Deuteronomy 28:13). And He told them He would partner with them in filling the world with worshippers, as He had said to Adam before, reminding them: ‘I will be your God and you will be my people’ (Leviticus 26:12).
God also encouraged them that if they were holy (Leviticus 20:26), they would obey His voice (unlike their Father Adam). They would follow His decrees, and He would make them fruitful and multiply them (Leviticus 26:9). He would bless them in the land that He was giving them (Deuteronomy 6:3). He would use them to bring His covenant blessings and extend His royal dominion to all the nations (Exodus 19:5-6). In the Law, God promises to enter into a Genesis 1:28 relationship with Israel and allow them to assist Him in accomplishing His Genesis 1:28 outcome of filling the world with worshippers.
From the outset of national Israel, God invited them into a covenant whereby they could partner with Him – like Adam long before – to bring God’s glory into all the earth (Numbers 14:21). They were commissioned to live such holy and fruitful lives, aided by the Law and sacrificial system, that the nations would see the glories of God and would either stream into Israel to know this benevolent deity (Deuteronomy 4:5-6) or they would tremble in fear of Him and His people (Deuteronomy 28:9-10). Either way, the Lord was committed to His earth-filling promises. As long as Israel was faithful to Him, God would allow them to join Him in that work, using them as a light to the Gentiles (Isaiah 42:6). But, as we know from the story, Israel was regularly unfaithful to the Lord, they refused to be obedient to the terms of the covenant, instead of reaching the nations and filling the nations with the knowledge of God they polluted the land with the idols of demons. Instead of inheriting the covenant blessings, they often languished under the torrent of covenantal cursings (Deuteronomy 28).
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From the verdant gardens of Genesis 1, the mountains of Ararat in Genesis 9, the plains of Shinar in Genesis 11, to the lands of Canaan where God showered His patriarchs (Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, and Judah) with these promises of a future filled with unending blessings, God has been demonstrating His unwavering faithfulness to His promises throughout all generations.

Introduction
If you have been with us over the last 8 weeks, we have been attempting to summarize what a failed eschatology looks like. From the hyper-defeatism of dispensationalism and premillennialism to the subtle apathy for cultural engagement that seeps in through amillennialism and the Radical Two Kingdoms, we have been attempting to show that a wrong view of eschatology will have an impact on how you live in the world. Because let’s face it, if you believe that we lose down here (As John MacArthur famously said), we will not work down here. If we believe the rapture is always moments away, then why waste your time doing the long work of making disciples and transforming culture? If we believe that all of our energy and effort should go into spiritual activities (the Kingdom of God) and that this work does not overlap with the physical world (The Kingdom of Man), then why engage at all? Why obey Jesus’ command to be salt and light in the world if the only aspect we will ever see redeemed is spiritual? Better to spend your time converting souls for a Gnostic utopia than Biblically discipling nations to live with Jesus in the New Heavens and New Earth.
While each of the views we have covered so far has minimal overlap, two things they do have in common are that they are entirely wrong about eschatology and that they have throttled down the church so that she has become a passive-sickly agent in this world. In this series, we have been looking to change that.
And that brings us to our topic for today. How is Postmillennialism the correct view of eschatology? What does it mean? What implications will it have on my life? Can it be demonstrated convincingly from the Scripture?
To that end, let us begin by defining Postmillennialism, and then we will spend the majority of our time today showcasing this view in the pages of Genesis.
What Is Postmillennialism?
Unlike the smorgasbord of major depressive eschatologies, Postmillennialism uniquely grapples with the unstoppable power of God, the awesome glory of Jesus’ Gospel, and how the earth will come under the Lordship of Christ the King before this rodeo is over. Instead of presenting Jesus’ great commission as an absolute failure, Postmillennialism takes seriously how the Gospel will change hearts, the church will disciple societies and nations (Matthew 28:19), and because Satan is bound (Matthew 12:29; Revelation 20:2), and the principalities and powers have been disarmed (Colossians 2:15), Jesus will win back the world and will bring it under His Father’s rule (1 Corinthians 15:24-28).
Central to this perspective is the understanding of what eschatology is. Eschatology is not the poorly written conclusion or the explosive plane crash of an otherwise glorious trip. Eschatology is concerned with how everything that was lost in the first Adam will be restored under the Lordship of the second Adam, Jesus Christ. Eschatology is not the final chapter where everything falls apart; it is the story of how everything comes back together in Jesus. This distinction is crucial.
With that in mind, Postmillennialism acknowledges that everything that fell in the first creation will be healed and restored by Jesus in His new creation, the Kingdom. To clarify, we are saying that this New Creation kingdom began when He ascended into heaven and will not be finished until everything is restored when He makes “His blessings flow far as the curse is found” (Joy to the World; Isaac Watts, 1719).
The postmillennial conviction is that God will do this by filling the world with worshipers who will worship Him in Spirit and Truth (John 4:23-24). Why? Because that is the end for which God designed the world (Genesis 1:28). At the heart of postmillennial thinking is the idea that God is going to redeem all that was lost in Adam, that He will fill the fallen world with worshippers in garden spaces, where He will bring the Kingdom of God across a globe that was under the tyranny of the devil. He will do that through the preaching of the Gospel, the making of disciples, and through the life-changing work of the Holy Spirit. As Christians, we know Christ never fails at anything He sets about to do. Thus, because Christ has endeavored to bring the world under His rule, He will not stop until He has been successful everywhere the curse is found.
According to the postmillennialist, this process of worldwide Kingdom expansion began when Jesus ascended into heaven and sat on His throne to rule, inaugurating a period known as the “Millennium” (Revelation 20), which is not a chronological term but symbolic of this growing epoch when righteousness, peace, and the acknowledgment of God’s sovereignty become pervasive realities. This era will be marked by an unprecedented increase in the number of worshipers who live out and celebrate the truth of God’s Word, culminating in a world saturated with adorations and praise for Yahweh, our King.
Unlike escapist or pessimistic eschatologies, Postmillennialism sees the future as a canvas for God’s redemptive work, transforming not just individuals but whole families, cultures, and nations. This view does not naively ignore the presence of sin and misery in the world but instead acknowledges a substantial decrease in its power and influence by the Risen Lord Jesus. Through this global transformation, which will happen slowly over many generations, the world will experience a foretaste of heaven as more and more people come to know God, are filled with His Spirit, and begin living out Christ-like behaviors and attitudes on earth.
Knowing this, the postmillennial vision compels Christians to engage actively in the world, driven by the certainty that their labor in the Lord is not in vain. Believers are called to spread the aroma of Christ in every sphere of life, laboring in hamlets, highways, high rises, downtowns, white houses, and empires that must be transformed into communities of worshipers before the Lord returns. This eschatological outlook infuses our daily living with purpose and direction, motivating us to partake in the divine mission of filling the earth with the knowledge of God as the waters cover the sea (Habakkuk 2:14).
In sum, Postmillennialism is God’s plan, in Christ, by the power of the Spirit, to fill the world with faithful worshippers. It is not just an eschatological viewpoint but a Biblical vision of the hope and redemption God promised to bring back into this fallen world. It is the only view that shows how everything lost in Adam will be found in the second Adam, Jesus Christ. It opens our eyes to the incredible successes of Christ in church history. It frees us to view the future optimistically even as we labor hard in the present. And in my opinion, it is the only view that accounts for what the Bible promises will happen in Jesus’ Kingdom.
So, with that, let us look at a positive and Biblical case for the doctrine of Postmillennialism from the book of Genesis.
Postmillennialism According To Genesis
A World Filled with Worshippers by Design
God blessed them, and God said to them, “Be fruitful and multiply, and fill the earth, and subdue it; and rule over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the sky and over every living thing that moves on the earth.”Genesis 1:28
To construct a Biblical eschatology, we must begin where the Bible begins. In the first chapter of Genesis, we see God’s plans and purposes for the world. A world made out of nothing. A world constructed without sin. A world in perfect conformity to the will of the Father, such that everything we behold in Genesis 1 pleases Him and is called very good by Him. If there was ever a way to discern the kind of world God would want, we must look no further than the one He made.
In Genesis 1, after constructing heavenly space and earthly space, God made man with a unique and glorious purpose. After filling the cosmos to the brim with lights to rule the day and night, and after filling the skies with all kinds of birds and winged creatures, and after filling the oceans with teeming fish and sea monsters, and after filling the earth with every kind of animal and creeping thing, God also proposed to fill every square inch of this earth with humans, who would worship Him, and would spread His dominion and would rule over His creation to the glory of God. But, instead of beginning, as He did with a fixed and completed assortment of stars or with a fully multiplied ocean overflowing with sea beasts, God decided to begin with just two human bodies, made in His image, made to worship Him, both male and female, with the commission of using those two bodies to fill the four corners of this earth with their offspring (Genesis 1:28). To say that a different way, God Himself multiplied the galaxies and stars, as well as the winged and scaly beasts, but invited humans (the only creature God did this with) to partner with Him in their multiplication. This means God made human beings to become a multiplied species that filled the earth, but He allowed us to participate in our multiplication through monogamous covenant marriage.
Thus, we see the kind of world God wanted to make was a world filled with human worshippers, and by God’s grace, God invited humans to partner with Him in accomplishing that vision. This tells us all we need to know about God’s intention for the world. He created two sexual creatures to be bound in heterosexual covenant monogamy, to propagate the knowledge of God across the face of the earth through child rearing and family worship. This worshiping, fruitful, and multiplying family is what God called very good in Genesis 1, and this is what was so very bad about the fall in Genesis 3.
When sin entered the world, things fell. And by “fell,” I do not mean like a vase falling off a shelf, although as a metaphor that is not far off. What I mean is that everything God designed became broken. It no longer functioned in the way it was intended. And by everything, I mean everything. The earth fell. The land fell. Masculinity, femininity, marriage, and sex all fell. Moral reasoning, spiritual discernment, worship, creativity, and the ability to comprehend the knowledge of God all resoundingly fell. But what did not fall and was not broken was God’s intention to fill the world with worshiping people. This is where Postmillennialism is unique among the eschatological systems.
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Brothers and sisters, as men and women who live in the wealthiest society that has ever been, the Church in America is in the position of being able to do more for the Kingdom than any other generation. Yet, I fear we will go down as one of the stingiest generations in all of church history. The average American lives more lavishly than all the Caesars of Rome and all the Pharaohs of Egypt. Yet the average church in America can barely afford to underpay a single minister. What are we doing?

11 then it shall come about that the place in which the Lord your God will choose for His name to dwell, there you shall bring all that I command you: your burnt offerings and your sacrifices, your tithes and the contribution of your hand, and all your choice votive offerings which you will vow to the Lord. – Deuteronomy. 12:11
As the awful stench of hellish Canaanite sin wafted its way up to the heavens from the land, God was preparing His people on the edge of those borders and teaching them how to live for Him once they occupied it. Of course, they would need good weapons to fight the giants like Og, king of Bashan. They would need armor to withstand the urban warfare in all the various cities. And when they finished taking over and putting to death all those whom God commanded, they would need tools to farm and sew, seeds to plant, wells dug to retrieve water, and all sorts of other things that were essential for them to live. 
Yet, one of the more peculiar things God mentions to them, as being absolutely essential to their life and survival in the land, is tithing. In case we forget where the word “tithe” comes from, it comes from the offering Abraham made to Melchizedek, who was a priest of the LORD, King of Salem, and a pre-incarnate appearance of Jesus Christ. After routing four particularly nasty Canaanite kings, Abraham took the spoils of the victory. He acknowledged that a tenth part of it belonged to God. Then, believing He was standing in the presence of God, he handed the gift over to Melchizedek, who received the offering and blessed him. In doing this, Abraham acknowledges that His victory over the pagans was not due to his military prowess, intelligence in strategy, or the sizable force he mustered… He was announcing that his victory was entirely due to the grace of God, which is why God deserved the spoils. 
Here in Deuteronomy 12, God is reminding His people of the same thing. Like Abraham, they were about to go in and route the Canaanites. And before the swords were drawn, God took a moment to remind them to behave like Abraham and remember the tithe. He told them, when you go in and fight the pagans, do not forget that 10% of what you recover belongs to Me. And not just during the fighting but as a perpetual statute for that generation and their children forever. 
This ongoing commitment to giving 10% to the LORD was a gift to God, acknowledging that man cannot prosper on his own and that Yahweh alone protects us, sustains us, and keeps us. This 10% was an act of obedience from the people to their covenant Suzerain. It was a humble acknowledgment that everything they owned was because Almighty God provided it and graciously allowed them to steward the other 90%. A point we would do well to remember. 
Now, as far as where the contributions were applied, they went to the upkeep of the temple, to fund the ministers who served there (such as the Levites and the Zadokian High Priest), and to make sure that the knowledge of Yahweh would extend throughout all the world (Isaiah 11:9). To say that differently, as the people of Israel conquered one godless nation, God was collecting resources to reach all the godless nations. 
With that, the tithe was a monetary value representing everything the people in the land produced. That means if you were to add up all of the produce, the new livestock, the metal coins procured, and everything else, 1/10th of that yearly income would go directly to God. For example, if they made 100,000 dollars a year, they would set aside 10,000 to the Lord. No questions asked. 
The reason was simple. The Lord Himself commanded that way of living. This was not for His benefit but for their own! When we tithe, we acknowledge that God is sovereign over every facet of reality. There are no hidden parts we get to squirrel away for a rainy day. When we tithe, we take our life into our own hands and commit to trusting God no matter what. We acknowledge that under the administration of God, He can sustain us better with 90% than we could on our own with 100%. 
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Like the Prodigal’s father, our Father felt great compassion on us, and with our True older Brother, welcomed us back into the home at His own expense (Luke 15:20). And that expense would cost our compassionate Father the ultimate expense, the life of His one and only Son in crucifixion (Romans 5:6-8) in order to make us alive together with Him in His resurrection (Ephesians 2:4-5) and to bring us back to the Father we had sinned against totally clean; wholly forgiven (1 Peter 3:18).

One of the questions I have often been asked as a pastor is why God allowed sin and misery into the world. If He is all-knowing and all-wise and even has the ability and power to do all He pleases, then why did it please Him to create a world that would nose-dive so fantastically into the turmoil and futility we experience because of sin? Couldn’t He have done it differently? Wasn’t there a better way? 
These are essential questions that require careful answers. Thankfully, many careful answers have been given throughout church history, which we should borrow from when answering this question. For instance, many have said that God created the world, knowing full well what would happen in it because the story of sin and redemption manifested His glory more excellently than a world without a fall. Think about it this way, in a world without sin, human beings and all of creation could never get to know God in all of His fullness. While sin would not be present on a sterilized earth, there would be aspects of God that we could never understand, such as His mercy, justice, grace, forgiveness, and compassion. Without sin, there is no reason for God to be merciful. Without rebellion, there is no need for grace. This means, at least in part, that God allowed the world to fall into sin and misery so that He could showcase the fullness of His being to lost and lonely sinners, which brings Him unimaginable glory. 
Understanding this, and while I am fully aware that there is more to say in matters of theodicy, we can be grateful to God for our sins. Because my sin put me in a position of need that only God could meet. My sin created a disease that only God could heal. And while we ought never to sin so that grace may abound, my sin introduced me to a savior who has offered me abounding grace that now causes me to hate my sin and pursue Him. Thus, even in the wretchedness of sin, even in our mortification of sin and hatred of sin, there are peculiar comforts and joys available to those who know the compassions of God. 
And that is what I would like to talk about today. If you are new, we are in a little series on the attributes of God, talking about who God is, what He is like, and how we may know Him. Today, we look at His compassion towards sinners. 
God Is Compassionate by Nature
God is compassionate by nature. He does not decide to become compassionate when a situation arises. He is compassionate as a fundamental quality of His being and person. For instance, Paul says that He is the “Father of compassion” and the “God of all comforts” (2 Corinthians 1:3). This requires that He doesn’t just possess these things as if they were commodities, but He is these things in all fullness and perfection. His compassions exist on a level of robust density and purity that they are beyond our ability to comprehend or even withstand without the aid of a mediator. For instance, when the God of perfect compassions passed in front of Moses, letting all His goodness be on display (Exodus 33:19; 34:6), he needed to be hidden in the face of a rock and covered with the Lord’s own hand in order to live and tell the tale. God is so unimaginably good that even His goodness threatens our unmediated flesh. He is merciful and gracious (Psalm 86:15), slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love (Psalm 103:8), but His holiness and justice require that we repent and return to Him because He is compassionate (Psalm 116:5; 119:156; Joel 2:13)
God Is Compassionate to All People
While God’s most extraordinary and intimate affections are reserved for His children, the Lord is kind and compassionate to all people (Psalm 145:8-9). Think about it this way, everyone on earth has sinned and is in rebellion against God (Romans 3:23). And since the wages of sin is death (Romans 6:23), God would be perfectly just and righteous to eliminate the entire human race without so much as batting an eyelash. So, the fact that billions of people loathe God every single day, either in heinous acts of rebellion or in failing to thank Him for every stolen breath of His mercy, has allowed them to live on in morbid ingratitude.
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God is the source of all reason and morality, humans can only go so far afoul of God’s standards before the consequence of His perfect being silences them and squashes them. This makes ultimate ethical standards fixed, not subject to the changing winds of culture, not situational, or an expedient maxim for determining our next selfish impulse. The moral order of the universe is tethered to a perfectly moral God and all ethical understanding bears the imprint of His character. Which means, that if I am going to experience growth in righteousness, sanctification in my behavior, then it can only happen in the pursuit and chase of God. Christians do not improve themselves by working on themselves. They grow in grace and righteousness by drawing closer to the creator, whose spotless morality is a necessary feature of His being.

“The Christian is either strong or weak depending upon how closely he has cultivated the knowledge of God.” – A.W. Tozer

As John Calvin once said in the Institutes, all wisdom comes from the knowledge of God and the knowing of self. Between the two, the most needful knowledge of all is certainly the knowledge of God. Without this knowledge, we cannot even know ourselves. Which means, if we are not familiar with who God is, we cannot know who we are, and we will be doomed to repeat our confusions forever.
This teaches us something very instructive. To know anything rightly at all, anything under the sun, we must know God truly and rightly. We must know Him as He is, which cannot be done exhaustively by any stretch of the imagination. We may try peering down into the celestial caverns of His maximal infinitudes, straining to comprehend increasing degrees of knowledge, but, we will never understand the LORD as He understands Himself. We cannot and will not.
Yet, in spite our limitations, God in His grace has allowed us to understand Him truly. He has allowed us to gain real knowledge, while not omniscient, is true and accurate to who He is. That is what we are aiming at today.
Like all of the attributes of God, we will learn something about Him as we endeavor to study them. Take for instance, God’s holiness. In that great doctrine we learn that God is of such immense purity and otherness, that His presence is dangerous to us (Isaiah 6:5) without the help of a mediator. As we study God’s love, He begin to see the limitless reservoir of His care for His covenant people (1 John 4:16). In His wrath, an oft avoided attribute of God, we see both His holiness and His care wed together in perfect fury against the rebellion of man (Romans 1:18). Quite simply, His attributes teach us who our God is and allows us to behold Him in truth.
This is especially important, when looking at unfamiliar attributes, or the ones we may have trouble understanding, such as the aseity of God. It may not seem essential, however, to the average believer, to study such an ethereal doctrine with such an esoteric title. But to the degree that a Christian understands the aseity of God will be to the degree one may know Him. Thus, as all of His attributes behooves us to study,  today we will narrow our focus onto His Aseity, not to gain more knowledge to store away in the head, but to gain the more of Him. To know Him better, to love Him more passionately, and to serve Him more faithfully.
What is the Aseity of God?
When theologians talk about the Aseity of God, they are speaking about His independence. Unlike every other contingent being who is dependent upon causation to come into existence, God needs none of that. He exists because He determined it to be so. He is in need of no outside force or will to create Him, or sustain Him, He does those things timelessly for Himself, which put Him in a class all by Himself.
This is precisely why the Christian Church may sing on Sunday morning: “there is no one like our God.” Because, when we do, we are acknowledging the clear and obvious fact, that nothing in heaven or on earth can rival Him, nothing is His equal, He has aseity.
This fact alone is enough to make our hearts leap in praise and to sing of His matchless power, which is the goal of all theology. Theology was never intended to produce a class of lifeless nerds who pine away in libraries. Theology was meant to produce musicians, composers, congregations of voices shouting to our God, with pastors at the helm leading the worshippers to Zion. But, there is still so much more!
Five Additional Aspects of Aseity
1) God’s Aseity is Foundational
Among all of God’s attributes, it can be argued that aseity is fundamental. This is because it is the attribute that serves as the cornerstone for understanding all of His other attributes (like His love, mercy, grace, and justice). Think about it this way, if God were a contingent being like you and I, having both an origin and a cause, then all of His attributes would be subject to the same limitations as ours. He would be beholden to space and time and His attributes would have limits placed upon them that could be exhausted, overridden, or resisted. Along with that, a “god” who is subject to limitation – of any kind – is also capable of change, whether that means change in time such as decay or death, or change in space such as changing allegiances, motivations, or goals. With that it is simple, the only way you get a God, who is perfect in love, maximal in mercy, inexhaustible in benevolence, unlimited in kindness, immutable in regard to change, or insatiable in divine fury and justice is if that God has no cause and derives His existence from Himself alone. He must be free of any temporal constructs such as beginnings, middles, and ends. And He must be free of any limitations upon His person and instead able to perfectly and forever sustain Himself from within Himself. To say that differently, your God must have aseity in order to love you perfectly and to save you truly.
Exodus 3:14; Psalm 90:2; John 5:26.
2) God’s Aseity and Necessity
The attribute of aseity not only positions God as self-existent and independent but also reinforces the notion that His existence is essential and necessary.  In philosophical terms, God is not a contingent being (one that might or might not have existed), but a necessary one – His existence is a fundamental aspect of all existence. This means that God is not an optional or accidental being, but rather one whose existence is mandatory for all reality. To say that most simply, He must necessarily exist for anything else to even have the possibility of existing.
This necessity is also crucial in understanding other attributes of God and why we see these attributes alive and manifesting in the world. For instance, His love, justice, and grace are not contingent characteristics that merely result from His will; they are necessary characteristics and essential parts of His nature. God’s love is necessary and eternal, without which there could be no love in the world.
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