What God Promised Israel and What Jesus Will Fulfill When He Returns

By Jill Szoo Wilson
Writer | Theatre Artist | Educator

This essay is part of One Story. One Covenant. One Messiah., a series on the Tanakh, Israel, and the New Testament.

Forty days after his resurrection, Jesus met with his apostles on the Mount of Olives near Jerusalem. These were the Jewish men he had chosen to learn from him and carry his teaching to others. They had traveled with him during his ministry, heard him teach, and seen him heal the sick. They believed he was the Messiah God had promised their people, Israel. Then he was crucified. Now he had risen from the dead and spent forty days teaching them “about the kingdom of God” (Acts 1:3).

Before Jesus ascended into heaven, they asked him, “Lord, will you at this time restore the kingdom to Israel?” (Acts 1:6). They wanted to know whether he would restore it then, during their own lifetimes. The Messiah was alive. Would he now take the throne and free Israel from foreign rule?

For these Jewish apostles, the question concerned their own people and the promises God had made to them. Israel had once been ruled by kings descended from David. By the apostles’ lifetime, David’s descendants no longer ruled in Jerusalem, and Rome controlled the land. Yet God had promised that David’s throne would be established forever. About seven hundred years before these apostles were born, Isaiah had described nations turning their weapons into farming tools and learning war no more (Isaiah 2:2–4). Later, during the Babylonian exile, Ezekiel had promised that God would gather the scattered people of Israel into their land under one king (Ezekiel 37:21–24).

The apostles were asking whether Jesus would now fulfill these promises by restoring Israel’s kingdom. To understand what that restoration would include, we need to follow the promises from their beginning in Israel’s Scriptures. These Scriptures are known as the Tanakh, which includes the Torah, the Prophets, and the Writings, the books Christians call the Old Testament.

What Did God Promise Israel?

Long before Israel had a human king, its people recognized God as their ruler. After God brought them out of slavery in Egypt and through the Red Sea, Moses and the Israelites celebrated their rescue with a song. “The LORD will reign forever and ever” (Exodus 15:18). Generations before Saul or David ruled Israel, the Israelites were already proclaiming God’s kingship.

Generations later, the Israelites were living in the land God had promised them, but they were suffering attacks from the neighboring Midianites. God chose Gideon to lead an army against them. After Gideon’s victory, the Israelites asked him to become their ruler and establish a family of rulers after him. His son would succeed him, and then his grandson. Gideon refused. “The LORD will rule over you,” he told them (Judges 8:23). They already belonged to a King.

Later, the Israelites approached Samuel, who was serving them as a prophet and judge. As such, he delivered God’s messages, settled disputes, and taught the people to obey God. His position did not pass automatically to his children as a king’s throne would. When Samuel grew old, he appointed his sons as judges, but they accepted bribes and judged dishonestly. Israel’s elders then asked Samuel to appoint a king to govern them like the kings of the surrounding nations (1 Samuel 8:1–5).

God instructed Samuel to appoint Saul as Israel’s first king (1 Samuel 9:15–17). But Saul disobeyed God, and God sent Samuel to anoint David as the future king (1 Samuel 15:22–28; 16:1–13). David did not take the throne immediately. Saul continued to rule until his death. Afterward, David became king, first over Judah and then over all Israel, and he established Jerusalem as his capital (2 Samuel 2:4; 5:1–9).

During David’s reign, God sent the prophet Nathan to him with a promise about what would happen after David died. This promise is known as the Davidic covenant. God would give David a son to succeed him and make that son secure as Israel’s king. That son, Solomon, would also build the temple in Jerusalem (2 Samuel 7:12–13). But God’s promise extended beyond Solomon’s lifetime. “Your throne shall be established forever,” God told David (2 Samuel 7:16). David’s “house” meant his family and descendants. God was promising that the right to rule Israel would remain with David’s family forever.

David’s son Solomon succeeded him and built the temple in Jerusalem. After Solomon’s death, his son Rehoboam became king. When Rehoboam refused the people’s request to ease the heavy labor Solomon had imposed on them, the northern tribes rejected his rule. They chose Jeroboam, a former official under Solomon who had supervised forced labor, as their king. The kingdom split into two. The northern kingdom was called Israel, and the southern kingdom was called Judah. David’s descendants continued to rule Judah from Jerusalem, while Israel had its own kings from other families (1 Kings 11:26–28; 12:1–24). This division matters because the prophets would later promise that God would reunite the two kingdoms under one king (Ezekiel 37:21–22).

Over the following centuries, both kingdoms suffered conquest. Assyria conquered the northern kingdom and deported many of its people (2 Kings 17). Later, Babylon conquered Judah. The Babylonian army destroyed Jerusalem and its temple, removed its king, and carried many of its people away from their homeland (2 Kings 25). The people taken to Babylon were living in exile, far from the land where their families had lived and worshiped.

Some of those exiles eventually returned to Jerusalem and rebuilt the temple. But no descendant of David returned to rule there as king. God had promised David a throne that would last forever, and now Jerusalem had no king from David’s family. What would God do to fulfill his promise?

Ezekiel was a priest and prophet who had been taken from Judah to Babylon with other exiles. While they were living far from home, God gave him a promise concerning both Judah and the northern kingdom of Israel. God would gather their scattered people, bring them back to the land, and reunite them as one nation under one king (Ezekiel 37:21–22). God called this king “my servant David” (Ezekiel 37:24). David had been dead for centuries, but he had ruled Israel before it divided. The promise pointed to a future king from David’s family who would again rule the reunited people, fulfilling God’s covenant with David.

When some Jewish exiles later returned from Babylon and rebuilt the temple in Jerusalem, they fulfilled only part of what Ezekiel had described. The people of the northern kingdom of Israel and the southern kingdom of Judah had not been reunited as one nation under a king from David’s family. They were back in Jerusalem, but they remained under foreign rule. Ezekiel’s promise of a reunited people living in their land under the promised king still awaited fulfillment.

What would Israel’s restoration mean for the nations that had fought against it? More than a century before Babylon destroyed Jerusalem, the prophet Isaiah described a day when people from many nations would travel to that city to worship Israel’s God. They would urge one another to come with them, saying, “that he may teach us his ways and that we may walk in his paths” (Isaiah 2:3). Jerusalem would become the place they sought out for instruction. God would settle disputes between nations, and people would begin turning their weapons into farming tools. Swords would become plowshares, the blades that cut soil for planting. Spears would become pruning hooks, used to tend vines and trees. The metal they had carried into battle would help them grow food, because nations would stop attacking one another and would no longer train for war (Isaiah 2:2–4).

I would pause here for a moment to ask you: does this describe our world today?

During the Babylonian exile, more than a century after Isaiah’s ministry, another Jewish prophet described how God’s kingdom would replace the empires that ruled other peoples. Daniel had been taken from Judah to Babylon, where he served in the court of King Nebuchadnezzar, the ruler whose army would later destroy Jerusalem. In Daniel 2, Nebuchadnezzar has a dream that troubles him. He sees an enormous statue with a head of gold, a chest and arms of silver, a middle and thighs of bronze, legs of iron, and feet made of iron mixed with clay.

God enables Daniel to explain what Nebuchadnezzar has seen. The statue represents a series of kingdoms, beginning with Babylon. Its golden head represents Nebuchadnezzar and the kingdom he rules. The silver, bronze, and iron represent kingdoms that will rise after Babylon. Each will hold power for a time, but none will last forever (Daniel 2:36–43).

Then something happens to the whole statue. A stone, cut without human hands, strikes its feet. The iron, clay, bronze, silver, and gold break into pieces so small that the wind carries them away. The stone grows into a mountain that fills the earth (Daniel 2:34–35). Daniel explains that God himself will establish a kingdom that brings these kingdoms to an end. No later empire will conquer it or take its place. God’s kingdom will stand forever (Daniel 2:44–45).

Consider what this would mean to an Israelite living under Babylonian rule. Babylon had taken people from their homes, carried them into exile, and placed them under a foreign king. Yet its power would end. The God who had promised David an enduring throne would establish a kingdom that no conquering army could overthrow.

Years later, while Babylon still ruled, Daniel received another vision. This time he sees four great beasts rising from the sea. An angel explains that they represent four kings, and the vision describes the violence of the kingdoms they rule (Daniel 7:1–8, 17, 23). Then Daniel sees thrones set in place, and God seated in judgment. The rulers who had exercised such terrible power must answer to him (Daniel 7:9–12).

Into this heavenly court comes someone “like a son of man,” approaching with the clouds of heaven. The phrase describes a human figure, a striking sight after the beasts Daniel has just seen. He comes before God and receives authority to rule. People of every nation and language will serve him, and his kingdom will never be destroyed (Daniel 7:13–14).

Daniel also sees what will happen to God’s people, whom the vision calls “the saints of the Most High.” Here, saints means the people who belong to God. One of the rulers represented in the vision attacks them and is winning the war against them. Then God intervenes. He judges in his people’s favor and ends the ruler’s power over them (Daniel 7:21–22). God’s people will then share in governing the kingdom he establishes. The people who had been conquered and persecuted will rule under God’s authority, and his kingdom will extend throughout the earth (Daniel 7:27).

Taken together, these promises describe what God would do for Israel and what his reign would mean for the world. He would gather Israel’s scattered people into their land and reunite them under a king from David’s family. Nations would come to Jerusalem to learn God’s ways. God would settle their disputes, and they would turn their weapons into farming tools because they would no longer go to war. The empires that had conquered and persecuted God’s people would lose their power. The kingdom God established would endure forever.

Centuries later, these were the promises Jesus’ Jewish apostles knew from their Scriptures. They lived in the land where David had ruled, but a Roman governor ruled Jerusalem. The nations still fought wars, and Israel still awaited its promised king. Now Jesus, whom they believed to be that king, had risen from the dead and spent forty days teaching them about God’s kingdom. When they asked, “Lord, will you at this time restore the kingdom to Israel?” they were asking whether he would now do what God had promised.

Would they see Israel restored and the nations brought under his reign?

Why Did They Expect the Kingdom in Jesus’ Lifetime?

Centuries passed after the Jewish exiles returned from Babylon and rebuilt the temple in Jerusalem. Solomon’s temple had been destroyed, so the rebuilt sanctuary became known as the Second Temple. The years when it stood, from about 516 BC until the Romans destroyed it in AD 70, are called the Second Temple period. Jesus and his apostles lived during this period.

By the time Jesus was born, Rome controlled the Jewish people’s homeland. They could worship at the temple in Jerusalem, but no king from David’s family ruled there. Rebuilding the temple had restored a place of worship. Israel still awaited the promised king who would reunite its people and bring the nations under God’s reign.

Luke begins his account of Jesus’ life with an announcement about that very throne. God sends the angel Gabriel to Nazareth, a town in Galilee, to speak to a young Jewish woman named Mary. She is engaged to Joseph, a descendant of David. Gabriel tells her that she will bear a son and name him Jesus. God will give this child “the throne of his father David,” and he will reign over “the house of Jacob forever” (Luke 1:31–33).

Each part of the announcement connects Mary’s son to promises Israel already knew. “His father David” identifies David as his ancestor. The throne is the kingship God had promised would remain with David’s family. “The house of Jacob” means the people of Israel, whose ancestor Jacob was also called Israel. Gabriel is telling Mary that her son will be the promised king who rules her people forever. The child she will carry is the answer to the promise God made through Nathan centuries earlier.

After Jesus is born, Mary and Joseph bring him to the temple in Jerusalem. There they encounter Anna, an elderly Jewish widow and prophetess who worships at the temple with fasting and prayer. When she sees Jesus, she thanks God and speaks about the child to people who are “waiting for the redemption of Jerusalem” (Luke 2:36–38). These people are waiting for God to rescue and restore their city. Anna tells them about Jesus because she recognizes that this child has a place in the fulfillment they are awaiting.

That expectation helps explain the grief of two of Jesus’ followers after his crucifixion. On the day of his resurrection, they leave Jerusalem and walk toward the village of Emmaus. Jesus joins them on the road, but they do not recognize him. They tell him about Jesus of Nazareth, whom they describe as a prophet powerful in word and deed, and about how their leaders handed him over to be crucified. Then they explain why his death has left them so bewildered. “We had hoped that he was the one to redeem Israel” (Luke 24:19–21).

They had expected Jesus to rescue their people. Instead, he had been executed. They have heard reports that his tomb is empty and that angels have announced he is alive, but they do not yet understand what has happened. Jesus directs them back to their Scriptures. “Was it not necessary that the Christ should suffer these things and enter into his glory?” he asks (Luke 24:26). Christ means Messiah, the title of the king they had hoped Jesus would prove to be. Beginning with Moses and continuing through the Prophets, Jesus explains the passages concerning himself (Luke 24:27). His suffering belongs within the fulfillment of God’s promises. It has not brought those promises to an end.

By the opening of Acts, the apostles know that Jesus has suffered and risen from the dead. He has appeared to them over forty days and taught them about God’s kingdom. They are Jewish men whose Scriptures promise Israel a king from David’s family, and they are standing before the risen Jesus. Their question follows from everything they have learned and witnessed. “Lord, will you at this time restore the kingdom to Israel?” (Acts 1:6). Would Jesus now take the throne promised to him, gather their people, and bring the nations under his rule? Would they live to see the restoration for which generations before them had waited?

What Did Jesus Give Them to Do While They Waited?

Jesus had already answered part of the apostles’ question before he died. On his final journey to Jerusalem, he passed through the city of Jericho, about fifteen miles away. Crowds were following him, and many believed that when he reached Jerusalem, he would take the throne. Luke tells us that Jesus told a parable “because he was near to Jerusalem, and because they supposed that the kingdom of God was to appear immediately” (Luke 19:11). A parable is a short story Jesus used to teach. Its characters and events stand for something larger.

In this parable, a nobleman travels “into a far country to receive for himself a kingdom and then return” (Luke 19:12). Jesus’ listeners would have recognized the situation. Judea’s rulers did not simply claim their thrones. They traveled to Rome to receive their authority from the emperor. When Herod the Great died, his son Archelaus made that journey, and a group of Jewish leaders followed him to Rome to argue against his rule. Jesus includes a similar detail. The nobleman’s own citizens send a message after him: “We do not want this man to reign over us” (Luke 19:14).

Before the nobleman leaves, he gives ten of his servants one mina each, a sum worth about a hundred days’ wages. “Engage in business until I come,” he tells them (Luke 19:13). When he returns, “having received the kingdom,” he calls the servants to account for what they have done with the money (Luke 19:15). The servants who worked faithfully receive authority over cities in his kingdom.

The order of events matters. The nobleman receives his kingdom while he is away. His servants work during his absence. His reign over his own people begins when he returns. The crowd near Jericho expected the kingdom to appear immediately. Jesus told them a story in which the king leaves first and comes back later.

A few days afterward, Jesus ate a final meal with the apostles in Jerusalem. It was the Passover meal, which Jewish families ate each year to remember how God had rescued Israel from slavery in Egypt, the same rescue Moses and the Israelites had celebrated at the Red Sea with the words, “The LORD will reign forever and ever.” At that meal, Jesus told the apostles he would not eat the Passover again “until it is fulfilled in the kingdom of God” (Luke 22:16). Then he took the cup and said, “I will not drink of the fruit of the vine until the kingdom of God comes” (Luke 22:18). On the night before he died, Jesus spoke of the kingdom as something still to come.

Matthew records a promise Jesus made to the apostles about that future kingdom. Peter had asked what they would receive for leaving everything to follow him. Jesus answered that “in the new world, when the Son of Man will sit on his glorious throne,” the apostles would “sit on twelve thrones, judging the twelve tribes of Israel” (Matthew 19:27–28). The twelve tribes were the descendants of Jacob’s twelve sons, the people who had once been divided into two kingdoms and scattered by Assyria and Babylon. Jesus’ promise pictures them together again under the Son of Man’s rule, just as Ezekiel had foreseen. When Jesus uses the title Son of Man, he is pointing to the figure in Daniel’s vision who receives a kingdom from God.

Then comes the day of the apostles’ question in Acts. Jesus answers, “It is not for you to know times or seasons that the Father has fixed by his own authority” (Acts 1:7). He does not tell them their hope is mistaken. He tells them the timing belongs to God. Then he gives them work they can begin right away: “You will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you, and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the end of the earth” (Acts 1:8). A witness tells others what he has seen. The apostles had seen Jesus die and had seen him alive again. Their work would begin in Jerusalem, spread through Judea and through Samaria, the region where the northern kingdom of Israel had once had its capital, and continue outward to the nations.

A few weeks later, Peter is doing that work. At the temple in Jerusalem, Peter and John heal a man who had been unable to walk since birth. A crowd gathers, and Peter tells them about Jesus. He calls them to repent so that God may send Jesus back to them, the one “whom heaven must receive until the time for restoring all the things about which God spoke by the mouth of his holy prophets long ago” (Acts 3:19–21). Peter has seen the risen Jesus. He has watched him ascend. And he still speaks of a restoration that the prophets promised, and that has not yet arrived. Heaven holds the King until that time comes.

If Jesus Reigns Now, What Are We Still Waiting For?

Fifty days after Passover, Jerusalem filled with Jewish pilgrims for the feast of Shavuot, known in Greek as Pentecost. On that day, the Holy Spirit came upon the apostles, and Peter stood up to explain to the crowd what was happening (Acts 2:1–14). Near the end of his message, Peter tells them where Jesus is now. God has raised him from the dead and “exalted” him “at the right hand of God” (Acts 2:32–33).

To support this, Peter quotes Psalm 110, a psalm written by David: “The Lord said to my Lord, ‘Sit at my right hand, until I make your enemies your footstool’” (Acts 2:34–35). In the ancient world, the seat at a king’s right hand was the place of highest honor, given to the one who shared the king’s authority. A footstool was the stool beneath a king’s feet. Conquering kings sometimes placed their feet on the necks of defeated enemies to show that the war was over (Joshua 10:24). David’s psalm pictures God seating the Messiah beside him in honor and authority until his enemies are defeated. Both parts of the picture are significant: the seat and the waiting.

The Letter to the Hebrews, written to early believers who knew Israel’s Scriptures well, returns to the same psalm. After Christ offered himself as a sacrifice for sins, “he sat down at the right hand of God, waiting from that time until his enemies should be made a footstool for his feet” (Hebrews 10:12–13). Jesus already holds the place of honor and authority. The defeat of his enemies is still ahead.

Jesus reigns now at the Father’s right hand. The question is what we mean when we say his kingdom has come. The parable of the nobleman gives us a way to think about it. The nobleman receives the right to rule while he is away. His reign over his people on earth begins when he comes home.

Jesus’ own words press the question further. When he began teaching in Galilee, his first message was, “The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God is at hand; repent and believe in the gospel” (Mark 1:15). The word gospel means good news. “At hand” means the kingdom has drawn near. It is close enough that people need to respond now by turning back to God, but its arrival is still ahead.

Jesus used the same language near the end of his ministry. He described to his followers the signs that would precede his return: signs in the sun, moon, and stars, nations in distress, and finally “the Son of Man coming in a cloud with power and great glory.” Then he told them, “When you see these things taking place, you know that the kingdom of God is near” (Luke 21:25–31). Jesus could speak of the kingdom as near at the beginning of his ministry and still teach his followers to watch for its coming at the end.

Matthew 12 is harder, and it deserves more time. A man who is blind and unable to speak is brought to Jesus. Jesus heals him, and the amazed crowd begins to ask, “Can this be the Son of David?” (Matthew 12:22–23). The crowd is asking whether Jesus might be the promised king. Some Pharisees are listening. The Pharisees were Jewish teachers known for their careful observance of the law of Moses, and many people respected them. They answer the crowd by claiming that Jesus drives out demons by the power of Beelzebul, the ruler of demons (Matthew 12:24). Jesus replies that Satan would not fight against his own kingdom. Then he says, “If it is by the Spirit of God that I cast out demons, then the kingdom of God has come upon you” (Matthew 12:28).

For the man who could now see and speak, the King’s authority was something he had experienced in his own body. Through this healing, the people encounter the power of the kingdom Jesus has announced. The King’s power reached into this man’s life through the Spirit. Hebrews gives us language for an experience like this when it speaks of believers who “have tasted … the powers of the age to come” (Hebrews 6:5). A taste tells you something about the meal because it comes from the meal itself. But it is not yet the meal. The man’s healing shows what happens when Jesus exercises his authority. Isaiah’s plowshares show what we are still waiting for that authority to do among the nations.

Luke 17 brings the King’s presence and his future coming into the same conversation. Some Pharisees ask Jesus when the kingdom of God will come. He answers that it is not coming in a way they can observe and track, because “the kingdom of God is in the midst of you” (Luke 17:20–21). They have asked for a timetable while the King is standing among them. Then Jesus turns to his followers and describes the day of the Son of Man, the title from Daniel’s vision. That day will be like lightning that “lights up the sky from one side to the other” (Luke 17:22–24). No one will need to ask whether it has arrived. In the same conversation, Jesus gives his hearers something to recognize in front of them and something to watch for in the future.

Paul gives us one more passage to consider. Paul was a Jewish teacher who first opposed the followers of Jesus. After the risen Jesus appeared to him, he became an apostle and carried the message about Jesus to the nations (Acts 9:1–20). In a letter to believers in Colossae, a city in what is now Turkey, Paul writes that God “has delivered us from the domain of darkness and transferred us to the kingdom of his beloved Son” (Colossians 1:13). Paul is describing something God has already done for believers. They belong to the Son now and live under his authority.

Paul puts it another way in a letter to believers in Philippi: “Our citizenship is in heaven, and from it we await a Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ” (Philippians 3:20). The believers in Philippi would have understood that picture well. Their city was a Roman colony (Acts 16:12). Many of its residents held Roman citizenship, though they lived hundreds of miles from Rome and might never see the emperor. Paul describes believers as citizens of heaven who are still waiting for Jesus to come from heaven. Read alongside Colossians, this explains their present relationship to the King. God has rescued them from darkness and placed them under his Son’s authority. They belong to him while they await his return and the restoration the prophets promised.

The King is present, and his power is at work, while the kingdom the prophets described, his reign over a reunited Israel and all the nations, has yet to come. We still live in a world where people need swords. The prophets taught us to expect a day when they can turn them into something else.

Your Kingdom Come

Jesus taught his disciples to pray, “Your kingdom come, your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven” (Matthew 6:10). He taught them to ask for God’s kingdom to come here, to earth. Isaiah had described nations learning God’s ways in Jerusalem and turning their swords into plowshares (Isaiah 2:2–4). Ezekiel had described Israel gathered into its land under one king (Ezekiel 37:21–24). Daniel had described a kingdom that would fill the earth and never be destroyed (Daniel 2:35, 44). These promises teach us what to expect when we pray the words Jesus gave us.

Jesus also gave his followers instructions for the waiting. Before ascending, he told the apostles that the Holy Spirit would empower them to be his witnesses, beginning in Jerusalem and continuing to the end of the earth (Acts 1:8). Matthew records his command to make disciples of all nations, baptize them, and teach them to observe everything he had commanded (Matthew 28:19–20). They had work to do even though the Father had not told them when the kingdom would come.

Jesus’ commands tell his followers how to live as they carry out that work. He taught them to love their enemies and pray for those who persecuted them (Matthew 5:44). He taught them to forgive those who sinned against them (Matthew 6:14–15). He taught them to give to the needy without seeking praise (Matthew 6:1–4). Waiting for his return means continuing to do what he said.

Revelation records the announcement toward which these promises point. John hears voices in heaven declare, “The kingdom of the world has become the kingdom of our Lord and of his Christ, and he shall reign forever and ever” (Revelation 11:15). The words recall Israel’s song after crossing the Red Sea. “The LORD will reign forever and ever” (Exodus 15:18).

Scripture reveals one God, one covenantal story, one coming kingdom, and one Messiah. Jesus left the timing with the Father and gave his followers commands they could obey that day. Those commands still give us work to do. Make disciples. Teach what Jesus commanded. Love your enemies, forgive, and give to those in need. And keep asking for his kingdom to come to earth, using the words he gave us. Your kingdom come.

Read More in This Series

The King Has Come. His Kingdom Is Coming. is part of One Story. One Covenant. One Messiah., a series on how the Tanakh shapes every page of the New Testament. You can find every essay in the series, along with a visual overview of God’s covenants and a free Bible study, on the One Story. One Covenant. One Messiah. page.

Sources and Further Reading

Scripture quotations are from the English Standard Version (ESV).

N. T. Wright, Jesus and the Victory of God.

John Bright, The Kingdom of God: The Biblical Concept and Its Meaning for the Church.

Martin Buber, Kingship of God.

John P. Harrigan, The Gospel of Christ Crucified.

George Eldon Ladd, The Presence of the Future: The Eschatology of Biblical Realism.