❓👑❌🧭👑 Our Questions To God Often Reveal Our Lack of Alignment With God

📜 1. Acts 1:6 — "Lord, will you at this time restore the kingdom to Israel?"

🔍 Context:

This moment comes after Jesus’ resurrection but before His ascension. The disciples have just received intense spiritual insight from the risen Christ for 40 days (Acts 1:3), and their question reflects deep yearning and expectation.

🧠 What they were really asking:

• The disciples are asking whether the promises of the Old Testament—particularly national and political restoration—are now going to be fulfilled.
• They expected a Messianic kingdom, centered in Jerusalem, with Israel exalted (cf. Isaiah 2:1–4, Amos 9:11–15, Ezekiel 37:15–28).
• They still envisioned a political restoration, likely including freedom from Roman oppression.

🗨 Jesus' response (Acts 1:7–8):

“It is not for you to know times or seasons that the Father has fixed by His own authority. But you will receive power… and you will be My witnesses…”

📌 Key Implications:

• Jesus does not deny that the kingdom will be restored—He redirects their focus to the mission: spreading the kingdom spiritually first, starting with witness-bearing through the Holy Spirit.
• The restoration will come, but not in the form or timing they expect.

⚔️ 2. Joshua 5:13–15 — Joshua asks the Angel of the LORD: “Are you for us or for our adversaries?”

🧠 Context:

• Israel is about to enter battle to conquer Jericho, the first stronghold in the Promised Land.
• Joshua sees a man with a drawn sword (a Christophany—an appearance of Christ before His incarnation).

🗨 Joshua asks:

“Are you for us, or for our adversaries?”

👑 The answer:

“No; but I am the commander of the army of the Lord. Now I have come.”

📌 Key Implications:

• The answer “No” flips Joshua’s expectation. The question itself assumes a binary alignment: either God is for Israel, or for their enemies.
• But God’s answer reveals: “I have not come to take sides; I have come to take over.”
• The real question isn’t, “Is God on our side?” but “Are we on His side?”
• God’s kingdom is His alone. Israel is invited to participate only by aligning with Him.

👑 3. When God Restores His Kingdom, but Not To Israel (in the way they expected)

🔄 OT Expectation:

• Many prophecies pointed to the restoration of Israel (e.g., Ezekiel 37, Isaiah 11, Jeremiah 31), involving a Davidic king, peace, justice, and a global recognition of Yahweh.

✝️ NT Fulfillment (but reinterpreted):

• Jesus is the Davidic King (Luke 1:32–33; Acts 2:30–36).
• The kingdom is not just for ethnic Israel, but is expanded to include all nations (Acts 15:14–18; Romans 9–11; Galatians 3:28–29).
• The "Israel of God" (Galatians 6:16) is being redefined: not a political nation-state, but a spiritual people, Jew and Gentile, united in Christ (Ephesians 2:11–22).

📖 Kingdom Restored—but Different:

• The kingdom is restored not to a geopolitical Israel, but through the Church, spreading globally through Spirit-filled witnesses.
• In Revelation, the restored kingdom is a new heaven and new earth, not simply a nationalistic revival (Revelation 21–22).

✨ Synthesis

🔁 Application

• God's kingdom is not something we own or control, but something we are invited into by aligning with His purposes.
• Like Joshua, we must take off our shoes (Joshua 5:15) — a sign of reverence, surrender, and realizing we stand on God’s holy ground, where His will is done, not our own ground, where our will is done.
• Like the disciples, we are to wait on the Spirit and become witnesses, not political strategists.