October 25 2020
2 Samuel 7:1-17
After I got out of farming I was a custodian for a local Moravian church. The pastor of the church was a real character who I grew to enjoy. He was one of those people that you never were quite sure just what he was going to say or do next. I found this out when in my rounds cleaning the church I would find that some of the furniture and pictures in the church had these little plaques on that stated the families or the person who had donated the item to the church. What you have to remember is that this is a very old church having just celebrated their one hundred and seventy fifth anniversary. So there were a lot of things that have been donated over the years and because of the age of these donations the plaques on them start to come loose. So, when I first started there I wasn’t sure just what I was supposed to do with these plaques that were just hanging there by one screw, the other one lost somewhere along the way. I figured the pastor would have some idea what I should do to fix them so I went and asked him and his answer kind of caught me off guard. He looked at me and said, “Take and see if you can loosen up the remaining screw and when the plaque falls off take and throw it away. And oh, don’t tell anybody that you did it” I thought ok, not what I expected. He went on to justify why he told me to work on getting rid of these name plates telling me that when a person gives something to the church they shouldn’t give to draw attention to themselves but they should give to give honor to God. You know, I think he was on to something because that is a the Christian life in a nutshell isn’t it? Our life is supposed to be a life that has gone from where its all about us to where we are living a life where its all about God. To put it in terms that dovetail with todays scripture this means that life is not about what we can build for God but rather life is supposed to be about what God can build out of our life.
In our scripture story for today we read about king David. The background to what we read is that David has become king over all of Israel and he has made Jerusalem to be the central place of his power. David has just brought the ark of the covenant and the tabernacle up to reside in Jerusalem. Now not only the throne but the tabernacle, the heart of Israel’s worship would be forever connected with Jerusalem.
David has a royal palace built for him and his family in the heart of Jerusalem and one day as he is enjoying the beauty and scent of his cedar paneled home he looks out and sees the tent of the tabernacle. David seems almost embarrassed that here he is living in some pretty rich digs and there is God residing in a tent. So David confers with the prophet Nathan and while David doesn’t come right and out and say that he wants to be a house for God Nathan understands that this is what on David’s mind. So, Nathan tells David to go ahead and do what his heart tells him is the right thing to do because it was obvious to Nathan and everyone else in Jerusalem that God was with David.Well, when Nathan got home that evening God spoke to him and told him that he should go back and speak to David again. God had a message for David which was this : Why would you build me house to dwell in ? I have not lived in a house since I brought the people of Israel from Egypt to this day but I have been moving about in a tent for my dwelling.In all places where I with all the people of Israel, did I speak a word with any of the judges of Israel, whom I commanded to shepherd my people Israel, saying, “Why have you not yet built me a house of cedar?” Now therefore, David, remember how I took you from the pasture, from following the sheep, that you should be prince over my people Israel. I have been with you wherever you went and have cut off your enemies before you. And I will make for you a great name, like the name of the great ones on earth. So, what God tells David is that he never really asked anyone to build him a house which you have to admit is rather curious. I mean in the world which David lived all the nations had their gods and these gods all had temples which were palaces where these gods could be worshipped and sacrificed to. Yet the God of Israel was different having only a tent which would be moved from place to place. As God himself pointed out, he is a God on the move, a God who can be found in Egypt where he rescued his people, a God who was with David there in the pasture field with the sheep as well as the God who was with David there on the battlefield giving David the victory over his enemies. In a way, what God is telling David is that there are dangers with building God a house because then people might come to believe that he is a God of that place instead of being a God of every place. Unlike the gods of other nations the God of Israel was not just the God of the nation of Israel but a God whose ultimate goal was to bless every nation on the earth. This idea too could be lost if Israel were to build a temple just like all the other nations had built their temples.
What is so intriguing about what God has to say to David is that he is not so much interested in what David could build for him but instead what God was interested in is what he could build out of the life of David, First, God tells David that he would take David’s name and make it a great name throughout the earth. This promise of God echoes what God told Abraham found in the twelfth chapter of Genesis where God promised that Abraham would be the beginning of of a great nation and God would bless Abraham and make his name great so that Abraham would be a blessing to others. So this promise to David by God is continuation of the very promise God had made to Abraham. Yet God had much more that he was going to promise to David. God declared that he was going to build out of David a house, a dynasty of kings to govern over Israel. God assures David that it is his kingdom that will be made sure forever and it was the throne of David that would be established. Only when David understood all that God was promising him, only then did God disclose to David that it would be David’s offspring that would build God a house. And further, God tells David that he would be like a father to this offspring of David and his offspring would be to God like a son. This meant that when this offspring of David would commit iniquity, the twisting of the good they should know to do, then God, like a good father will step in and discipline them.
Now, as we read what God is telling David we can’t help but me amazed at just what God is promising to David. God promises David that he would build David’s house, David’s dynasty of ruling Israel. We have to wonder just why would God promise such an outrageous future to David and his descendants? The best reason that is evident throughout the life of David is that David was man after God’s own heart. This doesn’t mean that David was God’s favorite. No, when we think about the heart we remember that the heart is the where the will of a person is found. So, to say that David was a man after God’s own heart meant that David was a man who willed the same things that God willed.In the sixth chapter of Second Samuel we read of how David worshipped before the ark of the Lord and it is recorded that David rejoiced and danced before the Lord with all his might. What this tells us is that when David worshipped God, he worshipped God with no thought of what anyone thought of him; David’s focus was fully on honoring God. This worship of God poured forth from his heart and it was this worship of David that honored God, that pleased God. God in return sought to honor David by promising to build him a house, a dynasty of kingly rule for David’s descendants. What we come to understand then is what is in God’s heart, his will, is that people would live life’s that honor and glorify his name and this is the life that David lived.
Well, sadly the descendants of David would not all be kings that would be people after God’s own heart. Many would lead Israel astray through their worship of idols and unrighteousness behavior. Finally, after years of warning by the prophets God had raised up, God did as he promised to do, he disciplined these kings as God had told David he would do. God used the nation of Babylon to punish the kings and the people of Israel forcing them into exile. The king of Judaea, a descendant of David was hauled off never to be heard of again. So, quite naturally God’s people wondered about the promise God had made to David. They knew God would remain faithful to his promise but they weren’t quite sure just how would God accomplish the fulfillment of this promise. Isaiah in the eleventh chapter, speaks of this hope writing of how out of the stump of Jesse, Jesse being the father of David, it is this house of David, his dynasty that has been cut down. Isaiah though foresaw how out of this tragic situation will come a branch, a life coming out of what all thought was dead. This living shoot would be the fulfillment of the promise God made to David, the beginning of the hope of Israel that one day, out of the house of David, God would anoint a king who would rule over an everlasting kingdom. This is what is behind what we read in the first chapter of Luke, when the angel Gabriel visited the Virgin Mary to announce to her that she was the favored one of God. Gabriel tells her that she would conceive and bear a son whose name would be Jesus. This Jesus will be great and he will be called the son of the Most High. Further, the angel Gabriel tells Mary that this son she will call Jesus, he would be given the throne of his father David and he will reign over the house of Jacob forever and of his kingdom there will be no end. So, here we hear of how the promise of God would indeed hold true even after a thousand years have passed since God first spoke that promise to David.
Jesus would be the fulfillment of God’s promise to David, the true king who like David was a man after God’s own heart. As Jesus says in the fifth chapter of John, “I can do nothing on my own. As I hear, I judge, and my judgment is just , because I seek not my own will but the will of him who sent me.” So, yes, Jesus is a king like David, a man after God’s own heart the kingdom of Jesus was a kingdom which was very different from the kingdom David reigned over. We read of this kingdom in the eighteenth chapter of John where Jesus has a conversation with Pontius Pilate. Pilate asked Jesus, “Your own nation and the chief priest have delivered you over to me. What have you done? Jesus answered, “My kingdom is not of this world. If my kingdom were of this world, my servants would have been fighting, that I might not be delivered over to the Jews. But my kingdom is not from this world. Pilate said to Jesus, “So are you a king? Jesus answers, “You say that I am a king. For this purpose I was born and for this purpose I have come into the world-to bear witness to the truth. Everyone who is of the truth listens to my voice.” Here we discover that Jesus is the king but his is a kingdom unlike any other kingdom on earth. The kingdom of Jesus would come about not by might but by right, the rightness of the truth that he would speak to those who would listen. The power of this kingdom of Jesus is the power of the promise of God. The promise given to David was proven to be true through the life of Jesus and it is this truth, a truth founded on the promises of God, this is what the kingdom of Jesus is all about. Jesus placed his faith in his Heavenly Father, the one who can raise the dead and bring into existence those things which do not exist and he placed no confidence in the flesh as a means to bring about his kingdom. Jesus our king died upon the cross and the worldly kingdoms rejoiced at their apparent victory. But three days later our king arose from the dead victorious over the ultimate enemy, death. The resurrection of Jesus proved the truth of God’s promise that his servant would not see corruption. This is the witness that the resurrection of Jesus bears witness to, the truth his kingdom is built upon.
What is interesting is that Jesus was more than just a king. As we recall, what David desired was to build God a house but God responded to David that he would build David a house, dynasty of kingly rule. Well God’s promise to David was fulfilled in the life of Jesus, he was the king of an everlasting rulership. But it turns out Jesus was not only king he was and is the very temple of God. In the second chapter of John we hear Jesus declare, “Destroy this temple and in there days I will raise it up. The Jews then said, “It has taken forty-six years to build this temple and will you raise it up in three days? But Jesus was speaking about the temple of his body. What David could not possibly have fathomed is that the most glorious place where God desires to dwell is within the life of a person who is fully devoted to doing God’s will, a life anointed not with oil but with the Holy Spirit. This is what Paul writes about in the second chapter of Ephesians, “For through Christ Jesus we both have access in one Spirit to the Father. So then you are no longer strangers and aliens but you are fellow citizens and members of the household of God built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets, Christ Jesus himself being the cornerstone, in whom the whole structure being joined together, grows into a holy temple in the Lord.”The earthly temple David desired to build, the one built by his son Solomon and rebuilt by Herod, that temple was destroyed in 70 AD. But the temple which has as its cornerstone Jesus our king, the fulfillment of Gods’ promise to David, this temple is an everlasting temple to the glory of God. This is the difference between what we attempt to build for God through our efforts and what God can build out of our life, something that is brought about through the promises and power of God. We must never forget that whatever we might think would be something great to build or do for God this is so insignificant compared to what God desires to build out of us.God wants to take us and and have us be built into his holy temple. This is the place where all strangers and aliens are welcomed into the house of God, a house where all are trusting in the promises of God who therefore have no fear but instead experience an abundance of love for all. This is the house that God loves to dwell in not just now but forever. Amen!
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