November 27 2022
2 Samuel 7
One of the aspects of church life that I have always been intrigued by is that every week, all over the world, there are groups of people who get together to praise God and they do so by singing. I mean, have you ever considered that the two most prominent places where people can be found singing together is on a Sunday morning and at concerts. The people in churches that sing together come from very diverse places economically and socially yet when they come and are gathered together those differences disappear as they sing and worship together. It doesn’t matter if the people of God even know how to sing, or are even good singers; when the church gathers, everybody who is there is encouraged to praise God with singing. It’s really kind of amazing when you think about it, isn’t it? In churches, people who wouldn’t think of singing out loud except for perhaps belting out a tune in the shower, these same people have no trouble joining in when surrounded by their brothers and sisters in Christ. So when you stop and think about what becomes so commonplace every Sunday morning it isn’t hard to come to the conclusion that God has made all of us able to sing and he has done so because he enjoys hearing his children sing of their love for him.
I wanted us to pause and consider just how important singing is to our worship of God because as we come to the story of David and God making a great promise to him, what we must remember about David is that he was emphatically, a singing king. Think about the fact that one-half of the Psalms were written by David. The Psalms were and are the songbook for the people of Israel, and out of the one hundred and fifty songs found there, seventy-five of them were written by the hand of King David. Stop and consider what it would be like if a world leader was also known as a song writer say like Chris Tomlin or for the older crowd, Bill Gaither. It’s kind of strange when you think of it that way, isn’t it? Well, not only was King David the writer of songs but the songs he wrote run the gambit of human emotion. David writes of moments of great joy and exuberance and also moments where he found himself in the depths of despair wondering just where God was when he needed him. David also wrote songs revealing the awfulness of his sin and the need he had to be forgiven. It is easy to stand back and see that in the songs David wrote we find a king who not only wrote songs but within these songs he bares his soul being very real and honest about the man he really was. By telling all through the medium of song, David was also making certain that the sum total of his life, the great moments of intimacy with God as well as the moments when he sinned horribly and stood in great need of God’s mercy, all of this became a permanent part of the worship of the people of Israel. Can you imagine people singing about the awfulness of your sin and how you pleaded with God to restore you into a right relationship with him and that people would sing about this possibly forever? In these songs then we find that David opens himself up, he holds nothing back, he harbors no secrets and in doing so, I believe that we are to remember how this same vulnerability is a quality that God had asked of David’s ancestor, Abraham. Do you remember how in the seventeenth chapter of Genesis that Abram was ninety-nine years old when God appeared before Abram and said to him,” I am God Almighty, walk before me and be blameless.” What God was asking of Abram was that Abram be totally honest with God, never hiding any secrets because God, after all, is the searcher of hearts. Abram was to open himself up to God, to be completely vulnerable in the presence of God because this was the only way that Abram could be able to have a vibrant relationship with God. David, most assuredly, also understood this and perhaps this is why God considered David a man after his own heart.
We have to search for reasons as to why God would make such great promises as he makes with David that we find here in the seventh chapter of the second book of Samuel because the life of David has a number of moments that were very grievous to God. Most of us think of the good moments in David’s life, you know, when he slayed the giant Goliath with only a stone and a slingshot. Or the moment when he was caught up in great worship and singing and he danced before the ark of the Lord as it at last came to reside in Jerusalem. Yet we cannot forget that this same David was the man who while he walked upon the upper floor of his palace, gazed upon the neighbor lady taking a bath on the upper floor of her house. It becomes pretty obvious that if someone were to make a series about David it would have to come with a warning that this show contains adult themes. David gets involved with the neighbor lady, and out of this adulterous affair ends up getting her pregnant so he then has to figure out how to get rid of her husband so that said husband doesn’t begin to figure out that the child his wife is carrying can not possibly be his since he was on the battlefield at the time. Yikes! David’s life is pretty far from being some ideal godly life, the kind of life that God would be justified in making promises to the person living such a life. To make matters worse, David doesn’t even consider just how sinful his life had become. It was a prophet named Nathan who had to confront David with the fact that he had committed acts that put David in the crosshairs of God. David’s response to the finding out that he had committed horrible iniquities against God is found in the fifty-first Psalm, where David cries out, “ Have mercy on me, O God, according to your steadfast love, according to your abundant mercy blot out my transgressions. Wash me thoroughly from my iniquity, and cleanse me from my sin! For I know my transgressions, and my sin is ever before me. Against you, you only, have I sinned and done what is evil in your sight so that you may be justified in your words and blameless in your judgment.” When we listen to David sing his confession, we should be in awe that this is the same man who, in our scripture for today, is found to be the man who receives a great promise from God where David will be the one God is going to give a long and enduring legacy.
What should make us wonder as we read of how God is making such an incredible promise to David is why would God do such a thing? How is God justified in choosing one who has such a sordid past, surely there were holier people to choose other than David weren’t there? The answer as to why God chose David is, I believe, found right here in this account of God’s promise to David. We hear God promise to make for David a great name and if we are paying attention, we will remember God doing the same thing to a man called Abram as found in the twelfth chapter of Genesis. God also promises David that he will appoint a place for the people of Israel and God would plant them there so that they may dwell in their own place and be disturbed no more. Are we able to hear in this promise the same promise that God made to Abram in the fifteenth chapter of Genesis, where God ensures Abram that he will give the offspring of Abram the land found from the river of Egypt to the great river Euphrates, the land of the Kenites, the Kenizzites, the Kadomites, the Hittites, the Perizzites, the Rephaim, the Amorites, the Canaanites, the Girgashites and the Jebusites.” What is very interesting is that David did not rest in his conquests until Israel’s boundaries corresponded to what God had promised Abram he would do. What begins to be clear is that David knew the stories of his ancestors, of how God had made great promises to them. It does seem as if David took to heart what is found in the seventeenth chapter of Deuteronomy, where we read that “when the king sits on the throne of his kingdom, he shall write for himself a copy of this law, approved by the Leviticus priests. And it shall be with him, and he shall read it all the days of his life, that he may learn to fear the Lord his God by keeping all the words of this law and these statutes, and doing them so that his heart may not be lifted up above his brothers and so that he might not turn aside from the commandment, either to the right hand or the left, so that they may continue long in his kingdom, he and his children, in Israel.” Listening to these words, it becomes a little clearer as to why God chose David to give his promises to; David appears to know about Abraham and the promises that God made to him. David knew that if God had promised that the descendants would live in the land described by God then, as king, he understood that he had a responsibility to uphold the very reputation of God.
It was David who meditated on the wonder of the God that he loved and worshipped and how it was that who he knew God to be is the very foundation of God’s promise of blessing for not only his people but all the families on the earth as God had promised to Abraham. We hear this in the lyrics of David’s song that we know as the thirty-second Psalm. Listen to how David takes his experience and uses it to understand the promises of blessing that God had made to Abraham, “Blessed is the one whose sins are forgiven, whose sins are covered. Blessed is the man against whom the Lord counts no iniquity, in whose spirit there is no deceit.” David here has defined for us just what God was speaking of when he told Abram that the future he is bringing about is one where all people will be blessed by him. This blessing, as David discovered, is that God forgives our transgressions, our acts which do not reflect that we know a God who has given us life and keeps it safe for all eternity. When Nathan confronted David he reminded David of all the ways that God had given him everything David needed in his life. It was God who had anointed David king; it was God who had delivered David out of the hand of Saul; it was God who had given David his house and his wives. If David had needed anything, God would have given him more. This providence of God is what David forgot; this providence of God is what all of us forget when we sin and fall short of the glory God has for us. It is when we forget that God gives us every good gift for life and we go and take what we desire by force, this is when we ruin the very reputation of God because God is no longer being witnessed as being a God who gives us all we need for life. Yet in spite of the grief that we bring upon God he still holds out the promise of mercy and forgiveness. We have to wonder just why God would do this for us? The answer is that, as we hear again and again in the Psalms, our God is a God of steadfast love. What does this mean for us that the love of God is a love which is steadfast? The answer is that God is loyal to us even when we turn our back on him. God loves us to such a degree that he is unwilling to let us be stuck in the past, dwelling there in anguish as David describes in the rest of the thirty-second Psalm, where he states that when he was silent about his transgressions, when he found himself trapped there in that moment of the past unable to move forward into the present and have a future, David found that it was as if his bones wasted away, the hand of God felt heavy upon him and his strength dried up. This is the way it is when we dwell upon our sin instead of looking to God for his mercy. David discovered that when he confessed his sins, God forgave his iniquity. You see, God desires to have a relationship with us, to enjoy being with us here in the present and for us to be part of the future state of blessing that is coming yet has in some ways already arrived. God’s desire for us to be in a relationship with him is so great that he waits longingly for us to take him up on his offer. The blessing of God’s forgiveness is that it is there, in our confession and the receiving of his mercy, that we experience the depths of God’s steadfast love for us. There we remember once again that God is a loyal God, a God whose love will not let us go. David, further on in the thirty-second Psalm states that “God’s steadfast love surrounds the one who trusts in the Lord.” This is the blessing that is found anytime we confess our sin, let go of that past and take hold of a present and a future with the God who loves us.
We have to understand this blessing found within the forgiveness of God in order to understand the promise of God to David that he would find rest from his enemies. This is kind of a strange term, to rest, especially in the context of having enemies. To grasp what is meant here we again have to turn to a song David wrote, the third Psalm, where we hear David sing to us, “O Lord, how many are my foes! Many are rising against me; many are saying of my soul that there is no salvation for him in God. But you, O Lord, are a shield about me, my glory and the one who lifts up my downcast head. I cried aloud to the Lord and he answered me from his holy hill. I lay down and slept, I woke again, for the Lord sustained me. I will not be afraid of many thousands of people who have set themselves against me all around.” And further in the song David states, “Salvation belongs to the Lord, your blessing be on your people.” You see, this idea of resting in the midst of one’s enemies was a known reality for David. He actually laid down and went to sleep, he rested secure in the middle of enemies all around because he knew that God was a shield about him. Now, if we remember what we learned about Abraham, God told Abraham, as found at the beginning of the fifteenth chapter of Genesis, that he would be a shield for Abraham. So, here in the third Psalm, David is declaring that just as God has been a shield for Abraham, God was his shield as well. It was David’s trust in the faithfulness of God, that he knew God would be a hovering presence over him, a certain salvation under which he was ultimately secure, this is why David could rest in the midst of his enemies. David knew with all of his heart that this salvation of God by his faithful shielding presence is, like God’s surrounding steadfast love, the essence of the blessing God desires every family on earth to experience.
David appears to know of God’s promise that the blessing of God is for everyone because as David replies to God in prayer, he in humble adoration of God’s graciousness toward him wonders why God would choose his house, his family, to be the one who would receive such wondrous promises. Yet as he considers the many kings that will descend from him, David says something that is hard to make sense of when he proclaims that this is instruction for mankind. What David is grasping at is the real power of the kings that will come after him, his legacy. If the descendants of David demonstrated that God had blessed their life, that their’s was a life surrounded by the steadfast love of God, a love which always held out the wondrous hope of forgiveness and if these descendants of David could also live lives which rested under the shielding presence of God, then the people of Israel would witness in their kings a life which could be theirs as well. And then, as the people of the nations witnessed the very people of God living lives transformed by the blessing of God then they too would desire such a life for themselves as well. The blessing of God flowing ever outward into the world fulfilled the hope of David whose prayer was that the name of God, the very reputation of the God who loved him and was ever faithful to him, would be magnified and exalted forever.
Well, as it turns out, the kings that descended from the line of David were the very reason that the people of Israel would be sent into exile by God. It was the kings who by their evil deeds led the people of God to forsake the steadfast love of God and forget his faithfulness. Yet all was not lost for out of the line of David, a legacy which is portrayed in the Scriptures as being nothing more than a cut off stump, came a shoot, a king who at last would reign under the power of God’s blessing. As John wrote in the first chapter of his gospel, grace, God’s steadfast love, and truth, God’s eternal faithfulness, came through Jesus Christ. It was there at the cross, where his blood was shed that we saw the steadfast love of God offering us the forgiveness of our sins. It is the blood of Jesus, shed for us, that assures us of the faithful hovering over of us by God. This is our hope, the very reason why we sing, because Jesus, the one in the line of David, he has brought to us the very blessing of God. May we sing his praises forever! Amen
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