Advent 2025, Week 2--The Kingdom from Top to Bottom
A Description of the “Kingdom of Heaven” as it is described to us in the Bible
December 7, 2025
Intro:
Advent Series: “Christmas Carol Theology”…what truths do we sing about at Christmas (in our Christmas carols) that we would like to focus on and explain a little more deeply in our advent sermons? (Fulfilled prophecy, Angels, incarnation, unfulfilled prophecy).
Of the four options, I chose “angels” because I thought that would be interesting and I read book on what the Bible teaches about angels a few months ago.
Very quickly into my preparation for today, I realized the carols are not Biblically accurate when they speak about or describe angels.
Examples:
Angels We Have Heard on High:
V1…Angels we have heard on high, sweetly singing o’er the plains.
V2:…Shepherds why this jubilee?
If it were accurate, would be
V1…Angels we have heard on high, a great multitude of the heavenly host praising God and saying
V2:…Shepherds why this fear
See Raphael’s Sistine Madonna, which he completed in 1514
So many times angels are described as having wings, and some angels do have wings (cherubim…guardian warriors of God’s throne room), but those look less like
As is true of all kingdoms, at the center of this kingdom is a throne. Four people in the Bible describe seeing this throne. Isaiah (Isaiah 6:1), Ezekiel (Ezekiel 1:26), Daniel (Daniel 7), and John in the Revelation that he experienced (Revelation 4 and on).
In the Psalms, King David says that this throne is “established from old” because the one who sits on it is “from everlasting.” Elsewhere he says that this throne is “forever and ever” and the scepter of the one who sits on this throne is a scepter of “uprightness.”
The foundation of this throne is not like the foundation of earthy kingdoms where thrones are secured through deception, wicked schemes made in dark rooms, bribes and acts of treachery or betrayal. The foundation of this throne is the exact opposite of those things. Multiple times we are told that “righteousness and justice” are the foundation of this throne.
Psalm 97:2 says
Clouds and thick darkness are all around him; righteousness and justice are the foundation of his throne.
The foundation of this throne is perfect “righteousness and justice”
And what goes forth from the one who is seated on this throne are not cruel decrees, merciless ruthlessness, or barbaric acts of jealousy…what goes forth from the one who is seated on this throne is “steadfast love and faithfulness”.
True of every throne, the one who sits on it is the KING of the Kingdom. He reigns supreme over everything which his kingdom governs. Ezekiel describes this King as looking like gleaming metal and fire. He wrote,
…I saw as it were the appearance of fire, and there was brightness around him.[h] 28 Like the appearance of the bow that is in the cloud on the day of rain, so was the appearance of the brightness all around. (Ezekiel 1:27b-28a)
John, in his Revelation, says that he saw the King seated on the throne and that this King had the appearance of colorful precious stones like jasper and carnelian. He too saw the colors of a rainbow emanating from this throne, having the appearance of an emerald.
Daniel describes the enthroned King when he saw him as, quote
the Ancient of Days took his seat
his clothing was white as snow,
and the hair of his head like pure wool;
his throne was fiery flames…
10 A stream of fire issued
and came out from before him;
a thousand thousands served him,
and ten thousand times ten thousand stood before him;
And the books were opened.
At the right hand of the King’s throne sits a high priest who intercedes between the King and his subjects.
Hebrews 8:1says
we have such a high priest, one who is seated at the right hand of the throne of the Majesty in heaven,
In Psalm 110, it says that the enthroned King tells this High Priest to sit at his right hand, until he makes the high priest’s enemies a footstool for the high priest.
We find out in Revelation that this High Priest is also granted by the King to sit with the King on the Kingly throne because of something that he has done, something he has conquered.
The High Priest has done something so heroic that the King “highly exalted him” bestowing on him the name that is above every name, so that at the name of this High Priest, every knee will bow down and every tongue that exists in all creation will acknowledge, will say, he is the Lord. Whether or not they love him, or hate him, every tongue will say “This High Priest is the Lord.”
So what did this Priest do to receive this highest position of “pre-eminence” in this Kingdom?
Well…
The King had created two categories of creatures that were capable of experiencing and expressing real love and relationship with the King. Every single one of these creatures was given that divine gift: an ability to truly know the King and His character and his attributes, by experiencing Him in a real, ongoing relationship. NOT a programmed, robotic, AI (artificial intelligence) kind of relationship. But a real intelligence was given to these creatures, a real freedom of will, the true ability to be autonomous and to make decisions and choices for themselves. This divine gift, this opportunity to relate to the King in a way none of the other creatures that the King made could…it also meant the possibility of them choosing to reject the King, to not obey him or love him, to turn away from Him and truly hate him.
The first category of these two creatures are entirely spiritual in nature or essence, just like the King is, in fact. And they are referred to in the Bible as the “sons of God” or Angels. As such, they were created to dwell directly with the King in his castle, or as Isaiah calls it, his temple.
At times, the King will call for a divine council with these beings who then meet in the very throne room of the King to determine how the will of the King will be implemented in his Kingdom. (we see this in 1 Kings 22:19-23 and Job 1)
Some of these purely spiritual creatures were made into elite warrior-guardians of the throne room and of the Kings Temple. These creatures are referred to in the Bible as guardian cherubs or just cherubim. Another category of spirit-creatures that we see in the Bible are pronouncement angels and they bring messages from the King to specific individuals in His Kingdom. Gabriel is the name of one of these angels.
In Hebrews 1:14 we are told that angels are sent by the King as ministering spirits to the sons of men who love the King.
The second category of creatures made by the King are called humans or “sons of men”, these creatures are both spiritual AND physical in nature or essence. The King created an entirely new physical realm for them to inhabit that is distinct from the temple where the King and the first group of creatures dwell. Within that new physical realm, the King created a world where these creatures were intended to express the rule and reign of the King through their proper dominion of it. There was also a very, very special ability given to them that was not given to the first category of creatures. The humans were able to image the King’s unique ability to create new life. And so the King commanded these creatures to procreate, thereby filling the earth with more Kingly image bearers of their kind.
But something tragic happened.
One of those guardian cherub angels mentioned earlier (Ezekiel 28), a particularly beautiful one, who is described by Ezekiel as being the “signet of perfection, full of wisdom and perfect in beauty”
He was sent by the King to that physical world, to guard, as cherubs do, a specific tree in a specific garden so that the first humans would not eat of its fruit until a time that the King appointed. But this cherub became proud because of his beauty and his wisdom was corrupted so that he sought his own splendor over the splendor of the King.
He betrayed the King and instead of guarding that tree, he succeeded in tempting those first two humans to disobey the King by eating the fruit of that tree.
The result? Was a curse.
A curse that immediately infected those two creatures and their world.
When the first humans ate of that fruit, they received what the King promised they would get if they ate it, which was the ability to know right from wrong all on their own, no longer looking to the King to walk with them every day in that garden, instructing and teaching them, like a Father with his children. The King honored their selfish desire to no longer seek his wisdom and relate intimately with Him, And so their spiritual connection with the King died that day.
From now on, their divine task of dominion over the earth would be cursed with thorns and thistles
That uniquely divine gift that was bestowed upon them of being able to create new creatures themselves, that experience would now be filled with pain.
And all future offspring to these first two humans, would be born into this now-cursed physical world where that fallen guardian cherub was banished from heaven to rule and reign over.
But even as this curtain of the curse was being drawn between the Kingdom of Heaven and Earth, the King gave a promise of hope of a future deliverer who will bruise the head of that deceiving guardian Angel and overthrow his worldly reign.
You see, the King has a son. Now don’t be confused about this, remember the King is not physical in nature, so this son was not born to the King at a point in time like every physical son here on earth that we see. No, we are told in Colossians that this son has eternally existed with the King. Everything that was created by the King was created through the working of the son too. As it says in Colossians,
It also says that this son is the exact imprint of the King’s nature, the radiance of his glory. That is, the glory of the Majesty on high.
Being in this unique position of having the exact imprint of the King’s nature while also being distinct from the King himself, a separate person from the person of the King, it’s those two things that gave this only begotten son of the King the unique possibility of rescuing the humans from the curse.
But to do so, he would have to become like them in having a physical body. The King’s son would have to humble himself from being in the very likeness and form of that celestial King, to becoming like those earth creatures that he himself had helped to make. He needed a physical flesh like theirs, so that their physical curse could be placed on him and perhaps, he might possibly overcome and put it to death in his flesh.
And so he set out to do that.
Being in the very form of the King, he did not count equality with the King something to be grasped and never let go of, but instead, he chose to empty himself of that divineness, and he was born in the likeness of men.
The potential savior of the world was born as a helpless human baby. (baby picture)
And so, just like all humans, he grew up.
Isaiah 53 says He grew up before the sight of the enthroned King like a young plant, and like a root out of dry ground;
He had no form of his majesty any longer,
And no beauty that those physical creatures should desire him.
For a little over 30 years he grew up and then, it happened. In a single earthly weekend, it happened. He was despised and rejected by those creatures he had come to save.
He came to his own people and his own people did not receive him.
The light of the very King himself had come into the world through this God-man, but the humans loved the darkness of their curse rather than his light.
And so they killed him. They killed the light of the world. His human flesh which he had humbly put on in order to enter into their curse and save them, they pierced that part of him. And the King placed upon him all of their iniquities.
And he died.
But when he was killed, the curse and sin that was laid upon him, it also died with his body.
And he went to Hades, the realm of the dead, as so many humans before him had gone.
But then something happened to him that was utterly unique. Something that NONE of the creatures, in heaven or on earth, even imagined could happen. None but the King himself knew what would happen if the earthly creatures killed the physical body that his Son had put on.
Acts 2:24 says it was not possible for Hades to hold onto him in death.
He was raised from the dead by the glory of the King.
And he was given a new, physical body, that was free of the curse and could never be infected again. This one is imperishable.
Now that would be remarkable enough to stop there, but it gets even more remarkable.
It’s like the Kings Son had now blazed a trail through those impossibly thick thorns and thistles of the curse that reigned over the rest of the humans.
And after blazing this trail and making it to the other side, he turns around and beckons us to follow him.
John says it this way in John 1:12
To all who receive this son, who believe in his name, he gives the right to also become a child of the King, born not of flesh or of the will of man, but born now of God.
Isiah 9:2
2 [c] The people who walked in darkness
have seen a great light;
those who dwelt in a land of deep darkness,
on them has light [now] shone.
And that is what we celebrate at Christmas.
Please stand as I read you this benediction from Revelation 3:21
(these are the words of Jesus)
The one who conquers, I will grant him to sit with me on my throne, as I also conquered and sat down with my Father on his throne.
Go in peace.