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Let's open this up with a word of prayer, sir. Sir, we thank you for the state that you've given us. We thank you for bringing us together as brothers and sisters in Christ. We look to you to feed us from your word.
We pray that you be with our brother as he opens your word up. And we pray that you bless him as he brings the oracles of God before us. Words of Christ, and we pray, amen.
All right, 2 Samuel, chapter 7, again, and that's all. We're gonna pick up where I left off and read from 12 to the end of the chapter. And I will make an attempt to get to the end of the chapter today.
When your days are complete and you lie down with your fathers, I will raise up your descendant after you who will come forth from you and I will establish his kingdom. He shall build a house for my name and I will establish the throne of his kingdom forever.
I will be a father to him and he will be a son to me. And when he commits iniquity, I will correct him with the rod of men and the strokes of the sons of men. But my loving kindness shall not depart from him as I took it away from Saul, whom I removed from before you.
Your house and your kingdom shall endure before me forever and your throne shall be established forever. In accordance with all these words and all this vision, so Nathan spoke to David. We're in 2 Samuel, chapter 7.
Then David, the king, went and he sat in before the Lord and he said, who am I, O Lord God, and what is my house that you have brought me this far? And yet this was insignificant in your eyes, O Lord God, for you have spoken also of the house of your servant concerning the distant future.
And this is the custom of man, O Lord God. Again, what more can David say to you? For you know your servant, O Lord God, for the sake of your word and according to your own heart, you have done all this greatness to let your servant know.
For this reason you are great, O Lord God, for there is none like you and there is no God beside you according to all that we have heard with our ears. And what one nation on earth is like your people Israel, whom God went to redeem for himself as a people and to make for himself a name and to do great things for you, awesome things for your land, before your people whom you have redeemed for yourself from Egypt, from the nations of their gods.
For you have established for yourself your people Israel as your own people forever. And you, O Lord, have become their God. Now therefore, O Lord, the word that you have spoken concerning your servant and his house, confirm it forever and do as you have spoken, that your name may be magnified forever by saying the Lord of hosts is God over Israel.
And that the house of your servant David may be established before you. For you, O Lord of hosts, the God of Israel, have made a revelation to your servant saying, I will build you a house. Therefore, your servant has found courage to pray this prayer to you.
Now, O Lord God, you are God and your words are the truth and you have promised this thing to your servant. Now therefore, may it please you to bless the house of your servant that it may continue forever before you, for you, O Lord, have spoken.
And with your blessings, may the house of your servant be blessed forever. So last week, we learned there was two houses at stake. God, David wanted to build God a house. And then God said, no, no, no, wait a second, I'm gonna build you a house.
What was the two differences?
Physical house and then a house of like a lineage. A dynasty.
Yep. So why did David want to build God a house? He was living in a nice house. Yeah, so we would say his motive seemed right. Yeah, he seemed curious. Hey, look, look, I've got all this junk, and here it is.
God's been following around with the children of Israel in this tattered old tent, let's build a house for him. And he went and basically sought godly counsel, did he not? Okay, what did the godly counsel say?
Was it godly? No, and just to back up a little bit, just because someone's a godly person does not mean that's godly counsel. And as a person that has counseled many people, that is when last week I said people make life changing decisions based on the words that come out of our mouth.
That's one of those things that go, we have to make sure that whatever we're saying is rooted in God's word and not my opinion or my perception of the situation. Because that godly counsel can only be rooted in the truth of what God's word has already revealed, nothing new.
Now, I can say, hey, if I was in your position, this is how I would do it. But it should always, should always go back to what does God's word say? Hey, and what did Nathan do? He said, go ahead and do it.
And God said, hold up, Jack. He said, sorry, Jack. He said, hold up, we've got to back this up. I've never wanted to have a house for me to be a stationary place. So David's intentions were good. David's intentions were, by all means, pure.
It's just not at the right time. And God had told Nathan to go back and tell him that. So that picks up where we were at, and we'll go back, verse 12. When your days are complete and you lie down with your fathers, I will raise up a descendent after you.
Okay, so he says, all right, you're gonna die, you have David. Who's his successor? So this will be the guy, he says, he's gonna raise up. He says, when you lie down with your fathers, I will raise up your descendent after you, who will come from you, and I will establish his kingdom.
Okay, whose kingdom is he gonna establish? David's kingdom or Solomon's kingdom? Solomon's, yeah. He's gonna establish Solomon's kingdom. And he shall build a house for not my name, and I will establish the throne of his kingdom forever.
All right, so he's saying Solomon's going to build the one, is gonna be the one to build this, what we would say at some point, it would be a temple. It would be the place that would house the Ark of the Covenant.
It would be the place that would be the place of worship. It would be the place where people would come and they would gather to worship God the way God intended and prescribed it to do in the Mosaic law.
Stationary. Stationary. That's huge, because God has never been in a stationary place. That's why he goes on to say, I'm gonna put my people in a place. No longer will they be traveling around, moving around in a tent.
And he says, in verse 14, I'm sorry, he said I will establish the throne of his kingdom forever. That's where it can be difficult, because believe it or not, establishing his kingdom forever is contingent.
We're gonna get to it. What would be contingent on his kingdom lasting? What's that? His obedience. Obedience, yeah. That's exactly what it is. And if you even think, if I remember correctly, if you turn over to those two psalms that speak concerning the Davidic, well, it becomes a covenant at this point, look at 134, sorry, 132.
It's around verse 10, he says, for the sake of your servant David, do not turn away the face of your anointed. For the Lord has sworn to David a truth from which he will not turn back. Of the fruit of his body, I will set up his throne.
If your sons will do what? If your sons will keep my covenant. So, we'll just say, is anybody on the throne in Israel today? No. So was there anybody on the throne after the time of Zedekiah's death? Remember, Zedekiah was the last king to sit on the throne in Israel.
Has anybody sat on the throne in Israel since then? No. So there's the part of it that's contingent if they obey. Now, we do know, ultimately, it would be the Lord Jesus Christ. He would come, he would fulfill that, the greater son of David, and he would fulfill that, and his throne is now, he is exalted as king of kings and lord of lords, and he is sitting as the exalted king at the right hand of the father.
But Solomon is contingent, is contingent, but fulfilled in Christ. Hey, if Solomon does what he's supposed to do, it'll be forever. If he doesn't, then it'll be taken away, he'll be chastised. But God goes on to say, in the book of Samuel as well, that he will continue to go and prosper those descendants because of his covenant.
He says in chapter 23, then we actually see the word covenant or the covenant he made with David. So understand, David's huge. He is huge in a turning point and on how God will conduct himself with his people moving forward as a king, as a kingdom.
And he says in verse 14, I will be a father to him and he will be a son to me. And when he commits iniquity, I will correct him with the rod of men and with the strokes of the sons of men. You see, there it is, the contingency.
When he commits iniquity, I will correct him. So we know this is not talking about the greater son, Jesus Christ, who would come because he ain't gonna sin. He says, and I will stroke him with the sons of men.
If you go in, I think it's Kings, 1 Kings chapter 11. Pretty early on in Solomon's reign, he begins to do his own thing. And God raises up men that chastise him, kings from around. And they, remember, David's at rest.
He ain't fighting really anymore. There's nobody coming. There's nobody coming to fight David. Now, David's making more campaigns this way and this way, but nobody's coming to fight David anymore. Well, God raises up these men because of Solomon's disobedience.
He uses those sons of men to correct and to chastise Solomon. Because of Solomon's disobedience, God came to him and spoke directly to him. He says, you need to turn and change your ways. If not, I'm going to rip the kingdom from you.
Well, when you die, I'm going to take it from your descendant. That's what he said, and he didn't do it. And that's when the kingdom splits again, and we wind up having the northern kingdom and the southern kingdom with Rehoboam and Jeroboam.
It's because of the sins of Solomon. He leads off into idolatry, all these wives that he was told not to take, and they did exactly what they did. He set up high places for them to worship and all of that.
So that's who he's speaking of. He says, I will correct him with the strokes of men, verse 15, but my loving kindness shall not depart from him as I took it away from Saul. God was merciful to Saul until the time that God took the kingdom from him for his disobedience, and God removed his loving kindness.
The mercy that God removed from Saul ended with his life being taken into the plains of Mount Gilboa and his utter destruction. He says, in verse 16, your house and your kingdom shall endure before me forever, and your throne shall be established forever in accordance with all these words and all this vision, so Nathan spoke to David.
So, Nathan's the mouthpiece to David. He goes, this is what God's telling him to do. This is going to be the instructions. This is how it's going to unfold, and then listen to what David does. It says that David the king then went in and sat down before the Lord.
Where would David have gone in to sit and talk to the Lord? What did he just do previous chapter? He set up a tent to put the ark in. So we see right here, he goes to the dwelling place of God, and he sits before the ark, and he prays.
Who am I, oh Lord God, and what is my house that you have brought me this far? And yet, this was insignificant in your eyes, oh Lord God, for you have spoken also to the house of your servant concerning the distant future.
He is saying, look, God, what you're going to do for me is way far out. And you didn't have to tell me this, but you're telling me this because of what you're going to do, because of your faithfulness to me.
Hey, it is interesting that David never one time, even in all of his fighting, he never once takes the credit for anything that he has done, not one time. Even when we read the Psalms, when he went to Gath, and he foaming at the mouth and all of that.
If you read the Psalms that are connected to that, I think it's Psalm 34. He puts it on God that delivered him, not his way to deceive Achish. He says, it was God that delivered me in that time, when I was fearful of Achish, it was God that delivered me.
And then he says, and this is the custom of men, oh Lord. And again, what more can David say to you? For you know your servant, oh Lord God, for the sake of your word and according to your own heart. Hey, why did God choose David?
It says right here, because it was God's heart set on David. Do we not often think, because we go all right, it says that David was a man after God's own heart. A better translation of that is it was according, David was according to God's heart.
And this is the passage I would go to, David's heart wasn't bent towards God. God's heart was bent towards David, because it was God that sought out David when he was in the field chasing sheep. And then God anointed him as a boy or as a teenager to be king over Israel.
And then it was at that point he begins empowered with the Holy Spirit. And then he goes out and he does the great fighting for the Lord. And he says, and again, what more can David say to you? For you know your servant, according to your own heart, you have done all this greatness to your servant.
Once again, David's saying, I didn't do any of this. Everything that happened to David, who did it? God did it. God did it. And we're gonna see it again in just a couple of weeks. And God was with David.
And God preserved David. And God was with David again. That's the constant refrain through the book. He says in verse 22, for this reason you are great, O Lord God, for there is none like you and there is no gods beside you.
According to all that we have heard with our ears, and what one nation of the earth is like your people Israel, whom God went to redeem for himself as a people and to make for himself a name and to do great things for you and awesome things for your land before you and your people whom you have redeemed for yourself from Egypt.
What was significant? He's recalling redemptive history. What was one of the most significant things about the people of God coming out of the land of Egypt? God had never codified a law with his people.
Now, we have the Abrahamic law, the Abrahamic promise, which led to the Abrahamic covenant, which led to the covenant of circumcision. But where in history did God ever put on tablets of stone and laid a physical covenant for them to see before all of the people?
It had never happened before. And God redeemed those people out of Egypt for the purpose of being a holy priesthood, a godly people, to be a separated people. And inside that law had all the rules and regulations of how they should worship him.
God had never done that before to any nation. He said, even David's recalling that. No nation on earth has ever been like this. And has God ever redeemed any country or people from any land? Not until the land of Egypt when he removed the Israelites.
He said, and you did these awesome things before your land and before your people when you redeemed them from Egypt. And in verse 24, he says, for you have established for yourself and your people Israel as your own people forever.
And you, O Lord, have become their God. What was the promise when he brought them out of the land of Egypt?
You will be my people and I will be your God. That's it. And I will dwell in the midst.
And I will dwell in the midst. And remember, David's desire was to bring the ark into the city so that they could not only dwell with God's king and God's city, but with God dwelling in the midst of that city.
And he says in verse 25, now therefore, O God, the word concerning your servant and his house confirm it forever. And do, as you have spoken, that your name may be magnified forever by saying the Lord of hosts is God over Israel.
And may the house of your servant David be established before you. Look, all he is doing is praising and thanking God for what he's already said he was going to do. This is a good way for us to look at how to pray.
So when we pray and we know that God has given us clear promises in Scripture that he is going to hold us fast to the final day of redemption, we should pray and thank God for that. That's the things we already know, but should we not worship and thank God for that?
David, hey, David already knows that God's going to preserve him. He told him that. He says, I'm going to put all your enemies under your footstool. And I'm going to preserve you. And I'm going to, I'm going to make you king.
In verse 27, for you, O Lord, the God of Israel, have made a revelation to your servant saying, I will build you a house. Therefore, your servant has found courage to pray this prayer. Why did David, it says, why David had the courage to pray the prayer?
Because God had promised him a dynasty. So what he is, he is affirming what God has already said. He says, you know how I can pray this? You know how I can come boldly before the throne of God and pray these things?
Because God, this is what you promised. This is what you said you would do. And I'm steadfastly trusting that this is what you're going to do. And in verse 28, now, O Lord God, you are God and your words are truth.
And you have promised this good thing to your servant. Now, therefore, may it please you to bless the house of your servant, that it may continue forever before you. For you, O Lord God, have spoken. And with your blessing, may the house of your servant be blessed forever.
So here it is. David has now ended his prayer, his exaltation, his worship before the ark, the dwelling place of God, affirming that which God had already said he was going to do. God, this is what you said you're going to do.
And I'm trusting in what you say. Now, when we saw the beginning, God said, I will. What is the constant prayer of David? What do you see? This is God talking earlier to Nathan. What does David pray? You have.
God says, He will. And David says, You have. Look how many times you just walk through that. Starting back in verse 18, 19. No, it is 18. You have brought me this far. And yet this is your this is significant in your eyes.
And he says, God, you have spoken your servant. And then he continues on your servant. You have done all these great things for me. You are great. Oh, God, you have set apart this people. Just just the continual reframe of what God has done.
He said, look, you promised this here through your prophet, Nathan, and you've already done it. You've already established it. Now, back to why I say this is not established as a covenant yet. It's because I will and you have.
It's God's promise. And I want you to go back and look at the end. Verse 28. Yeah. Verse 28. It says now, oh, Lord God, you are God and your words are truth. And what does he say? Does everybody say promised?
That's why, OK, my position at this point in redemptive revelation that this is a promise to David. Now, we will get to as it unfolds at some point. David no longer sees this just as a promise. He sees it as a as a covenant.
So what you remember when we when I confused everybody last week, how did we didn't see it running in dispensations? We saw how God unfolded his plan of redemption through promise and covenant. Promise and covenant.
Hey, you read your Bible through it. And that is how it is unfolds from beginning to end. You follow this structure here. That'll be biblical. Now, I know they've got systems and all of that to try to help us understand.
But, hey, this is actually how it unfolds. We don't need to make a line here that says there's a covenant of words and a covenant of grace and all of that. When the Bible doesn't say that, these are actual things that God says, how he will unfold his plan of redemption from beginning to end, whether it was beginning with in the garden when they failed.
And what was the first thing he said he would do? I will send a serpent crusher. That was a promise. I will. Then when he when Noah got off the ark, what did they do? They built an altar, sacrificed. And what did God say he was going to do?
I'll make a covenant with you that I will never destroy the earth again. With water. Yeah, let me clarify. With water. Then we get on down to Abraham. And what does he do with Abraham? He makes him a promise in chapter 12.
Pack your junk, pack all your stuff up and head on out. I'm going to give you a land. It's a promise. What's that? And then in 15, yeah, he made a covenant. And then again, he makes another covenant with them, but which is a contingent covenant.
The first covenant, the Abrahamic covenant, without circumcision was not contingent. Then the covenant of circumcision was contingent because what happened to those that weren't circumcised? They were cut off.
And it depended on 90 of the time in the Old Testament when it talks about somebody being cut off, it actually means to be put to death. And if you remember when Moses was heading back to talk to Pharaoh, you remember what his wife Zipporah did?
She threw the foreskin on him. You remember? He had not yet, sorry, don't laugh, it's funny sounding, but he had not yet circumcised Gershom. And she said, you're a man of blood. And she threw the foreskin on him and says, God has saved your life today.
Why? Because he was not operating his descendants under the Abrahamic covenant of circumcision. So, and we can continue on, we can go all the way through the Bible. And it's promise and covenant, promise and covenant.
Even when you get to when the prophecies that God's going to send a Messiah, those are promises that God's going to, there's going to be a maiden, she's going to be born with, he's going to be born of a virgin.
Those are all promises that then are fulfilled in the covenant of the new covenant. Everything's promise and covenant. And you don't have to get all confused when looking at all those different systems.
So, all that being said, is that this now establishes David as the long reigning king that God had intended for his people to always have. Under the Mosaic legislation, what did it say? When you have a king, this will be the standards.
When you have a king. He never said, don't have a king. These will be the criteria. They cried out for a king. God said, wait a minute to Samuel. And Samuel took an offense to that. And he says, look, they're not rejecting you, they're rejecting me.
And he says, you know what? As an act of judgment, I'm going to give them what they want. And what did he give them? He gave them Saul. And he was just like... The heathen that were around. That's exactly right.
And let's just think about all the things that Saul did. One, we could characterize his reign by one word. You remember that one word was? Take. Take. Samuel said, hey, when this guy comes along, he's going to take your sheep.
He's going to take your vineyards. He's going to take your goats. He's going to take your kids. He's going to take your daughters. He's going to do all that. He's going to take, take, take, take. And he's going to be like the kings around the surrounding area.
He's going to be a sharp, pretty, tall, strapping dude. And that's exactly what he was. But there was times where he was cowardly. And he failed to do what God had commanded the king to do, which was obey him.
Just think about how many times did we see Saul obey God? I can think of one time, just right off rib, when he ran up here and he ran Nahash off. Remember? In chapter 11 of 1 Samuel. That was his first thing that he did.
They were going to come gouge their eyes out. And what did he do? He did stand up for his people. And he did go. But after that, everything he did after that was based on whatever Saul wanted to do. Whatever Saul wanted to do.
It was to make his kingdom, not God's kingdom. What are we seeing about David? He was not a man about taking. He was a man about giving. Remember, every time he went and he did a spoil, what did he do?
He divvied it up. Hey, and we're even going to see in the coming chapters ahead when he goes and he takes Hadasezer and all that stuff. All that bronze and that gold and all that stuff he gets. You know what he does with it?
He dedicates it to the treasury of the place of God. He does not go about being a taker. He sees God's people being persecuted. And what does he do? David is inflamed and he goes and he fights. What did Saul do?
He killed 85 priests and the rest of their family. His own countrymen. So you see now we have God's man in the position that God intended ruling and reigning in a righteous way. Now, we're seeing David do some great stuff.
We go back to when, before David was even king, he dispensed justice on the men that, on the guy that said he killed Saul, right? Is this not how we see David's reign so far? He was a man of justice. I mean, what about the, what did he say when Adner was killed by his own nephews?
He said, I'm going to let these wicked, God's going to take care of these wicked men. I'm not going to do it. I'm going to leave this into God saying he's going to do it. So he is a man that dispensed justice.
He is a, we're going to see that he is a kind man here shortly, very kind. We're going to see that he loves God and God's people. What was one of the most loving things David did to show God's people that he loved them?
In my opinion, okay, when he brought the Ark back. He did what had been gone for at least 67 years. And one of the most loving things he did for God's people was to put God in the midst. I want God in the midst of his people to show that his reign and his rule was going to be for his love for God, okay?
And because of this, God established his rule and reign forever. Now when we get into next week, we're going to get into chapter 8. Chapter 8, 9, and 10. 8, 9, and 10 are going to set up the rest of how faithful David was, okay?
So if you were to, if you were just looking from chapter 1, you're seeing the great character of David. 1, 2, 3, 4, all the way to the end of chapter 10. All of that showing what a great, kind, benevolent, loving king that David was.
And just let you know, that sets up the major failure in chapter 11. So you understand, hey, the narrator of this book is showing how great a man David was. How kind he was. How benevolent he was. His desire to please and to honor God in all that he said and did.
But it's setting up his great failure. What could David, even in everything that he did, could he ever do it perfectly that God required? No, he could not. He was unable to do it perfectly. Which should do what for us?
Pointing to the greater son of David, which would be Christ, His descendant, which would come from the descendant of the line of David, that would actually be the perfect and righteous king, that would rule and reign in righteousness and honor.
Hey, and all these qualities, and we're going to have more that we're going to put up as we go through the next couple of chapters. All of these are qualities of the Lord Jesus Christ. Did Jesus Christ not dispense justice?
Sure he did. What was the best place where he dispensed justice? The cross, where he bore in his own body and in his own soul the sins of his covenant people. Where do we see Christ being a kind king?
Going about doing good. Feeding 5 ,000, 4 ,000. Healing the sick. Preaching the gospel of the kingdom. Being kind. Telling a man, your sins are forgiven, pick up your bed and walk. That was very kind.
Hey, imagine being that guy. Here it is, the Lord Jesus Christ, he gets lowered down through the tiles, and he is told, you know what, your sins are forgiven. I mean, what's better than walking? Your sins are forgiven.
And then Jesus says, well, you know what, go ahead and get up and walk too. Man, he got the double whammy of grace. And what was the greatest show of God's love by Jesus Christ for his people? We just mentioned it a second ago.
He laid down his life. No greater love than this. That a man lay down his life for his friends. And what did Jesus say at that point? And you, that's what Jesus said. Once that goes back to, there is a greater and lesser love.
If Jesus says, hey, there's no greater love than this, than a man lay down his life for his friends, I'm laying down my life for you, then that means there is a type of love that Jesus Christ had for his covenant people that he didn't have for everyone else.
Now, I'm not saying Jesus didn't love everybody. But you understand that there is a specific type of love that God has for his people that he's laid down his life for them. Well, that's where we're at.
And we'll pick up next week in chapter 8. Any questions? Disagreements? Well, I'll pray for us. Father God, thank you for today. Thank you for this opportunity once again to open your Word to see once again how you graciously interact with your creatures, Father, promising things that are not deserved, going into covenants with people that are unworthy to be in a covenant with the King of Kings and the Lord of Lords.
Father, we love you. We thank you for all that you have done. We thank you for redemptive revelation. As we can go and we can study and look back how you consistently have been kind and compassionate to your people.
Father, I pray that as we prepare our hearts for the time of worship, that, Father, you would open our hearts and our minds to hear the Word preached, that we would leave this place loving you more than when we came.
In Christ's name, amen.