[T]he point of the psalm [118] quotation [in Mt 21:42] is that rejection of Jesus as the “cornerstone” of the temple (“the stone which the builders rejected”) is equivalent to rejection of Jesus as the true temple (“this became the chief cornerstone”), which is in the process of being built. Whereas the cornerstone in the psalm probably was a metaphor for a king who was seen to be crucial to the existence of the temple, here it is likely more than merely figurative and is an actual reference to Jesus, the king of Israel, becoming the foundation stone of the new temple.

Thus, the transferral of kingdom stewardship also includes transferral of stewardship of the new temple, centered not in an architectural sphere anymore but now in Jesus and all who identify with him. Matthew 21:41, 43 say that this new form of the kingdom (and by implication of the temple) will be the gentiles, though we know from elsewhere that a remnant of ethnic Jewish believers will also identify with Jesus and join with the gentiles as the new form of the kingdom and temple, which is the church. As further explanation of verse 43, Jesus says in verse 44, “And he who falls on this stone will be broken to pieces; but on whomever it falls, it will scatter him like dust.” Some commentators have rightly noticed that this second statement about a stone also has an OT background, this time from Dan. 2:34-35: “A stone was cut out without hands, and it struck the statue…and crushed [it],” and it “became like chaff from the summer threshing floors; and the wind carried them away.” The statue in Daniel represented the evil world empires that oppress God’s people, and the stone symbolized God’s kingdom of Israel that would destroy and judge these unbelieving kingdoms. Now, unbelieving Israel has become identified with pagan kingdoms and is portrayed as being judged along with them by also being “broken to pieces” and “scattered like dust.”

Thus, Jesus sees Israel as becoming indistinguishable from the ungodly nations and accordingly judged in the very same way. That is, Israel as a nation will no longer exist as God’s true covenant people, just as the pagan nations to be judged at the eschaton will no longer exist.

"In both the Nicene and Apostle’s Creeds, it also says that Jesus, through his ascension, was “seated at the right hand of the Father.” In ancient Jewish thought, with echoes of Daniel 7, this could only mean that, from that moment, Jesus was the Father’s right-hand man, in charge of the whole world. But in our own day the “ascension” is just a way of saying that Jesus “went to heaven when he died.” To speak of him “sitting at the Father’s right hand” has become simply a fancy, perhaps even a fanciful, way of saying “he entered into a very splendid and glorious position.” We have been lured, perhaps by our embarrassment at the literalistic sense of Jesus flying up like a spaceman to a “heaven” located a few miles up within our universe, into ignoring the real meaning both of “heaven” (which is not a place within our universe at all, but God’s place, intersecting with our world in all sorts of ways) and of the ascension itself, which is about the sovereignty of Jesus as the Father’s accredited and appointed agent. We have, as a result, understood the ascension in vague terms of supernatural glory, rather than in the precise terms (as in Matt. 28: 18; Acts 1: 6–11) of Jesus’s authority over the world. In fact, the ascension, for many people, implies Jesus’s absence, not his universal presence and sovereign rule. And this time it isn’t only Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John who will raise objections; it’s Paul, Hebrews, and Revelation as well. They all think that Jesus is already in charge of the world. (Check out, for instance, 1 Cor. 15: 20–28; Heb. 2: 5–9; Rev. 5: 6–14). That was what they understood by “God’s kingdom."

Every soul is to be obedient to the higher powers (v. 1). There is no authority except what God has established (v. 1), and this would include Nero, who was the emperor at that time, despite his unbelief and paganism. Paul is arguing that the Roman control of Jerusalem was God-ordained and that those who tried to recruit Christians to join with the Jews in resisting Rome from the “holy city” were actually recruiting them to damnation and judgment (v. 2). Paul then gives his rationale for this, which is that rulers are a terror to evil works, not to good works. If you don’t want to live in fear of those in power, then earn their praise by doing what is good (v. 3).

In this setting, it would be difficult to overemphasize the importance of historical context. Nero had become emperor in AD 54, and his first five years were known as his golden years. So when Paul wrote these words, the apostle was not living in some utopian fantasy land—the rule really was decent. Nero was at that time advised by a man named Burrus and the Roman Stoic philosopher Seneca. That golden period ended in AD 59, when Nero had his mother murdered, an act that appalled pretty much everybody.

Further, this man Seneca had published De Clementia (On Clemency) in AD 55. Interestingly, a commentary on this book was the first book that John Calvin ever had published. And if you compare Romans 13:1–7 and De Clementia 1:1–4, the chances will appear to you outstanding that Paul was acquainted with Seneca’s work and was laboring to have the Christians do their part. Seneca did what he could to keep his foot on the brake, and Paul wanted Christians to be helpful in this. How necessary a foot on the brake was can be seen in the subsequent events. (Incidentally, Seneca was the brother of Gallio, who makes a brief appearance in Acts 18:17.)

Later, when the Jewish revolt broke out, it initially looked like it had a good chance of success. In the middle of that war, in AD 68, there was a coup against Nero, and he was forced to commit suicide. He was replaced by a rapid succession of emperors, each of whom reigned for a matter of mere months. There was to be no real consolidated rule in Rome (in the city where the recipients of this letter were to be living, remember). As you probably know, the temple in Jerusalem was finally burned in AD 70, but this was preceded by the burning of the Temple of Jupiter on the Capitoline Hill in Rome in AD 69 (this mean that AD 69 became known as the year of the four emperors—Galba, Otho, Vitellius and Vespasian).

Vespasian appears to have been the one adult in the lot—and he had to leave the siege of Jerusalem to save Rome, leaving his son Titus to finish up the conquest of the Jews. So the time between Paul’s letter and these events in AD 68 was just over a decade—not a long time at all.

The reason Paul gives for obeying the existing authorities is that rulers punish evil deeds and reward good ones. When he wrote this, it was true. That was what the Roman authorities did.

But everything was about to come unstuck. Consider just one example from these years—what would it mean to subject yourself to the higher powers when Vitellius was (very temporarily) ruling in Rome, and Vespasian was marching on Rome with his legions? And further, let us say that Vitellius had already distinguished himself as a debauched thug, driving the city into economic chaos by means of triumphal parades and three orgiastic banquets a day, and then trying to solve the economic problems by executing anybody who had declared him to be their heir. What about then? If there is a riot in the streets, and somebody clambers up on the courthouse steps with a megaphone, and shouts to everybody that he is the king, do you have to obey him because of Romans 13:1? What about the second guy who shouts that? Just ten minutes of such conditions should show why Paul was as urgent in his exhortation here as he was. In this fallen world, sinful anarchy is far, far worse than a sinful stability.

​This goes back to a foundational principle that Paul set down in the previous chapter—no one should think they are more important than they are (12:3). As the drama unfolds, who are you in that drama? Are you Vitellius or Vespasian? Seneca or Paul? John Knox used the apt illustration of a father who lost his mind and tried to commit mayhem against his family. If a couple of his sons forcibly restrained him until the madness passed, would they be dutiful sons or rebellious sons? If they are one, might someone else say they were being the other? Certainly. So what is our duty? We must be steeped in the Scriptures, and we must not think of ourselves more highly than we ought. How? According to the measure of faith.

But vengeance is still the Lord’s. Remember that this book is written just a few years before a rebellion breaks out against the Romans. The Jews, who would erupt in that rebellion, were under a prophetic statement as old as Moses, a statement that said they would lose this battle and that God would humiliate them through a people of strange language—because vengeance for all their idolatries belonged to Him. The Christians were being instructed here that under no circumstances were they to join this revolt. If God is coming after a people with vengeance in His eye, don’t you jump in between.

From this circumstance, we can and should render to a general principle by induction. After all the Romans and all the Jewish rebels were dead and gone, there were still evildoers in the world who would need to be restrained generally, and they would need to be restrained by force. One of the uses of the law is to give guidance to the magistrate as he considers what to do (1 Tim. 1: 9–11). All we are doing here is distinguishing the first-century application from our own (necessary) applications—to muggers, terrorists, rapists, and so on. We won’t need the sword anymore when we don’t have crime anymore.

The state is God’s deacon (Rom. 13: 4), and God never leaves His deacons without instructions. A deacon is, by definition, under authority. We should measure his appropriations and expenditures over against what he was told to do. When servants use the master’s resources for tasks unassigned by him (Luke 12: 46–47), what is the result? When the Lord comes back to evaluate His deacons in the Congress, what will He do? He will not be indiscriminate; the punishments will fit the crimes. Some He will cut in sunder, and others will simply be beaten with many stripes.

This will not happen because our rulers are not His deacons; rather, it will happen because they are. By definition, the armed deacons in this passage of Romans are under authority. Their authority does not originate with them, as much as they would like it to. Whose authority are they under? God’s. We obey them because God tells us to (for conscience’ sake), and not simply because we fear their punishments for wrongdoing. And if they are levying punishments for righteousness, we are not to fear them at all—and conscience is still operative.

​The Apostle Paul tells the believers of his day that he advises against marriage because of the “present distress” (1 Cor. 7: 26). In a similar way, he is also telling believers here in our text to stand back and let the Romans do to Jerusalem what they are going to do to it (Rom. 12: 19; 13: 1ff). Many believers have abstracted his principle here in the latter instance and applied it to every conceivable situation throughout all time, which they haven’t done to the first passage—which was just as contextually situated. And why is this? We grasp the importance of limiting context in 1 Corinthians because it is fun to get the girl. A lot more fun than, say, standing up to tyrants is.

David’s Lord does not begin his reign only after his enemies become footstools under his feet. His rule from Zion is active ‘in the midst’ of his enemies (Ps. 110:2). He sits on the highest throne in the universe while his enemies continue to resist his kingship. The imperative ‘rule’...loudly echoes the creation mandate (cf. Gen. 1:28). Like Adam, David’s Lord exercises a kind of priestly rule, mediating Yahweh’s justice from the sanctuary of God. He will bring the heavenly realm of Zion to bear on a world that is hostile to God. When the enemies of this priest-king are finally made a footstool for his feet, the will of Yahweh will be done on earth as it is in heaven (Zion). ​

As punishment [after Babel] and to prevent further such evil, God scattered and disinherited the nations. He then immediately, in the narrative of Genesis, began with Abraham to create a nation for Himself, through which He ultimately planned to reconcile all nations to Himself in Christ. In regard to those other nations, however, Deuteronomy 32:8 reflects on what took place. God reckoned to the nations of the world (numbered in Genesis [10] as seventy) their inheritance; to all the sons of Adam, He set their boundaries according to a certain number. Most English translations at this point reflect the medieval Hebrew text and say, “according to the number of the sons of Israel.” In addition to making little to no sense in context, nowhere do the Scriptures number the nations at twelve. The Greek text of Deuteronomy translates an earlier form of the Hebrew, stating that God divided them “according to the number of His angels.” Recently, among the Dead Sea Scrolls, the original Hebrew wording has been recovered, which indicates that they had been divided “according to the sons of God” (4QDeut).

Deuteronomy is here recording that when He distanced Himself from them, God assigned these nations to angelic beings in the divine council. These beings became corrupt, however, and were worshipped by the nations they were to govern. This is why all the gods of the nations are demons (see Deut 32:17; Ps. 96/95:5; 1 Cor. 10:20). This situation is also described in Daniel 10, as Daniel’s angelic visitor describes being delayed by a “Prince of Persia,” against whom he was aided by St. Michael the Archangel (v. 13), and that he is due for further battle alongside St. Michael against both this “Prince of Persia” and the “Prince of Greece” (vv. 20-21). Psalm 82/81, then, describes the judgment God pronounced against these beings, that they shall perish. The final verse of this psalm is sung in the Orthodox Church on Holy Saturday to celebrate the victory of Christ over the dark powers and the beginning of God’s inheritance of all the nations.

​Antichrist is simply any belief system that disputes the fundamental teachings of Christianity, beginning with the person of Christ. These antichrists are “religious” figures. The antichrist, contrary to much present-day speculation, is not a political figure, no matter how anti- (against) Christ he might be. The modern manufactured composite antichrist is not the antichrist of 1 and 2 John: “Putting it all together, we can see that Antichrist is a description of both the system of apostasy and individual apostates. In other words, antichrist was the fulfillment of Jesus’ prophecy that a time of great apostasy would come, when ‘many will fall away and will betray one another and hate one another. And many false prophets will arise, and will mislead many’ (Matt. 24:10-11)” (quoting David Chilton, Paradise Restored, 111).

These false prophets in Matt. 24 were first century false prophets that arose and led people astray before the temple was destroyed in 70 AD.

[W]hether there was to be only one or many antichrists, John made it clear that “it is the last hour” for those who first read his letters (1 John 2:18). How do we know this? John said, “Even now many antichrists have arisen.” And in case you did not get his point, he repeated it: “From this we know that it is the last hour.” John did not describe a period of time thousands of years in the future. It was the “last hour” for his contemporaries. Keep in mind that Jesus had told His disciples years before, John among them, that their generation would see the destruction of the temple and Jerusalem (Matt. 24:1-34). John, writing close to the time when this prophecy was to be fulfilled, described its fulfillment in the rise of “many antichrists,” that is, many who preach and teach a false religious system, the denial that Jesus had come in the flesh (2 John 7). The apostle’s knowledge about coming antichrists was probably taken from Matthew 24:24: “For false Christs and false prophets will arise and will show great signs and wonders, so as to mislead, if possible, even the elect.”

Proverbs 16:8 makes it clear that God cares more about how we make our money than how much money we make. Indeed, God proclaims that it is better to produce a lower return on investment in a righteous manner than to get high-flying profits unjustly. There is nothing wrong with earning high investment returns, but they must never come at the expense of holiness, and they certainly cannot be our primary directive.

Therefore, Christian investors must consider the moral implications of their investments. If a Christian is going to receive any money from Johnson & Johnson, or Netflix, or Target, they have to be able to say that doing so is righteous. But in what sense is it righteous to profit off of abortion drugs? Pornography? Tuck-friendly swimsuits? (p. 43-4)

The point is to avoid sinning ourselves by seeking wealth through unrighteous means. (p. 46)

Does your conscience have a price? In our modern day of finance, where Wall Street calls for high profits and low fees above all else, the Christian investor must seriously consider whether there is a return high enough, or a fee low enough, that would entice him to spurn God’s call to avoid profiting from immorality. (p. 53-4)

As a Christian, wisdom requires you to be a fool – in business, family, investing, and every other area of life. You will be called on by Wisdom to make decisions that seem like folly to bystanders. Onlookers will mock you at best and try to destroy you at worst. They will not understand, accept or even tolerate the path you have chosen. But you will be anchored by the unshakable conviction that your decision is right. (p. 97)

[I]t is Israel’s high priest who bears the biggest burden, whose ministry carries the fate of us all. Once per year, Israel’s high priest representatively carries all humanity into the Most Holy Place, the tabernacle’s inner sanctum where God himself dwells. In so doing, he symbolically effects humanity’s return from exile back into a typological garden of Eden.

Historical optimism about Christ’s kingdom on earth means that we believe—because the child was born two millennia ago—that since that time, the increase of His government and peace has been unceasing. We believe that the government is on His shoulder, not that it should be. Jesus believed the same thing, because when He sent His disciples out, it was with this truth as the basis for the commission. “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me” (Mt. 28:18, NIV). 

“For he must reign, till he hath put all enemies under his feet. The last enemy that shall be destroyed is death.” (1 Cor. 15:25–26) 

In the common assumption shared by many Christians, at the Lord’s return the first enemy to be destroyed is death. But the apostle here says that it is the last enemy to be destroyed. The Lord will rule from heaven, progressively subduing all His enemies through the power of the gospel, brought to the nations by His Church. And then, when it would be easy to believe that it just couldn’t get any better, the Lord will come and deliver the kingdom to His Father, and God will be all in all. 

But there is something else. What will it be like as His kingdom grows and expands? What will happen to our sin-plagued world as His government and peace increases? 

“The wolf also shall dwell with the lamb, and the leopard shall lie down with the kid; and the calf and the young lion and the fatling together; and a little child shall lead them. And the cow and the bear shall feed; their young ones shall lie down together: and the lion shall eat straw like the ox. And the sucking child shall play on the hole of the asp, and the weaned child shall put his hand on the cockatrice’ den. They shall not hurt nor destroy in all my holy mountain: for the earth shall be full of the knowledge of the Lord, as the waters cover the sea. And in that day there shall be a root of Jesse,  which shall stand for an ensign of the people; to it shall the Gentiles seek: and his rest shall be glorious.” (Is. 11:6–10) 

Now this language is admittedly over the top. It is so over the top that most Christians just relegate it to some time after the Lord comes again. That is the only way they can see that a fulfillment could ever be possible. 

But there is a slight problem with this view. The glorious language, the too-good-to-be-true language is in the first half of this passage: predatory beasts become herbivores, and little kids are playing with the cobras. This has to be after the resurrection, right? This has to be after the close of history, doesn’t it? No—because verse 10, the one that begins with the words, “And in that day,” is quoted by the apostle Paul in Romans 15, justifying his mission to the Gentiles two thousand years ago: 

“And again, Esaias saith, There shall be a root of Jesse, and he that shall rise to reign over the Gentiles; in him shall the Gentiles trust.” (Rom. 15:12) 

The great apostle Paul is appealing to Isaiah as a justification for his preaching to the Gentiles. And since then, we have had two thousand years of the Lord’s government and peace increasing.