God Has a Son

[0:00] Lord, we come before you tonight not wanting to just hear a bunch of nice words, but Lord, we want to hear about the promise of grace that you have made to us.

[0:28] Lord, tonight as we come to this amazing text, I pray you'd bring your word to life and that you'd speak deeply to us about the promises that you've made.

[0:40] In the strong name of Jesus, amen. Well, the text that we're going to be talking about tonight is potentially the most important text in the book of Samuel.

[0:58] A little bit of pressure there, hey folks? Some people say that it's one of the most important texts in the whole Old Testament and none other than yours truly is going to try to make that apparent that it's important.

[1:18] If by my intellectual frailty tonight or my inability to speak clearly, this text does not hit you like an ice pick between the eyes or does not move you.

[1:30] It is not to the fault of the text. It is to the fault of the messenger. So, tonight we have a great privilege anyways of going into this text.

[1:42] So where are we in the story? What happened two weeks ago when Aaron was speaking in chapter 6? Well, the ark of God made its way into the city of God.

[1:57] So the ark of God is now with God's people. The other thing that's kind of interesting, it happens, and it's an interesting story, is as David's bringing the ark into the city, he's dancing in his underwear, and his wife, Michael, the daughter of Saul, gets a little angry and she blasts him over it.

[2:25] And I think we're supposed to see this as the final attempt of Saul's house to kind of like push back at David.

[2:38] In the last verse of chapter 6, verse 23, I think it's very strategic that it tells us that Michael, Saul's daughter, dies without children.

[2:49] That's kind of like a little cue that the dynasty of Saul is dead. The dynasty of Saul is dead. This is, chapter 7, is kind of like a new era opening before us.

[3:07] And we come to this text and we see that David has entered kind of a time of rest. Things seem sort of peaceful and in my head I get this picture of like Nathan and David sipping on decaffeinated coffee because they don't have to drink the real strong stuff anymore because it seems like there's some relative peace that's come to David after all of this, after all this striving and all this fighting, finally there's a little bit of peace.

[3:42] Then the text tells us that one day Nathan and David are talking and David decides that what would be appropriate now that they've entered this time is that he should build a temple for God.

[3:58] Build a temple for God. And Nathan, his response, it sounds like it happened fairly quickly, he says, you know what David, that sounds like a great idea. Go and do as the Lord has told you.

[4:10] It seems natural, it seems reasonable. David goes, I'm living in this like killer house, I got this like blingin' pad and God is living in a tent.

[4:25] It seems totally normal, totally rational that God should have a better house than me. Nathan gives them the go ahead and they're going to make this thing happen.

[4:37] Man, this thing seems like as natural and as reasonable as like putting cheese and gravy on fries in Quebec.

[4:51] Like this is totally, this is like as reasonable as having pancakes at a pancake breakfast. This is like a no-brainer. This is kind of what we're getting from the text.

[5:02] Like, I'm living in quite a nice place and God's living in a tent. I've got to do something about this. You know, one of the cultural reasons I think this was really reasonable, because in the ancient Near East, if a king wanted to thank his God or in some senses was kind of like, like, secure his favor, what he'd do is he'd build him a temple and that God was kind of sort of, you know, bound to show his favor to the king.

[5:42] Seems to me like culturally this would have made a lot of sense. Well, David, you know what? God's blessed you and you're hoping that he's going to bless you in the future. Build him a temple. The interesting thing though is that in verse 4, the plan gets halted, doesn't it?

[6:01] There's like a, you know, in the words of Bishop Charlie, there's a big but. You know, verse 4, but, as Nathan was sleeping, God comes and speaks to him.

[6:17] God comes to Nathan and this thing that seems so rational and so logical and so reasonable, at this moment, God says, Nathan, this is, you need to go to David and put a halt on this thing right away.

[6:34] You ever had something that you thought you should do? Maybe it was even for God. It seems so rational, rational and so reasonable that it was like, man, I don't even have to pray about this.

[6:47] This is kind of one of those situations and Nathan's sleeping though and he gets interrupted and God speaks to him. It seems that what was right and good in David's eyes was not right and good in God's eyes.

[7:07] When I read this, it kind of like, kind of echoes in my mind of stories that we've heard from past sermons and past messages as we've been going through Samuel.

[7:18] Remember the story of Eli standing there looking at Hannah as she prays and thinking that she was drunk. He assumed that she was drunk but the servant of God was wrong.

[7:34] What about the time that Samuel shows up at David's house and is there to anoint a king and there's some big strapping studly brothers of David's that are all there and Samuel in his head is saying, man, surely this is God's anointed.

[7:54] This is the guy. This is the one. And he's wrong. The one who God wanted, the one who God had chose was not even invited to the party.

[8:06] Samuel is wrong. What about the time that David decides he's going to go and like wipe out Nabal? Man, it seems right and good to him that Nabal's ticked him off and now Nabal's got to die.

[8:23] David was wrong. God stopped him in his tracks. Seems like there's a bit of a theme even through the whole book of Samuel of human frailty, human weakness, and God interrupting things and showing them what's really going on.

[8:40] Human frailty, God's greatness in all these situations. So what's going on here? Why does God stop David?

[8:51] I mean, we know from other texts that there's probably other reasons. You know, there's other texts in Kings that say that David wasn't supposed to build a temple because he had blood on his hands.

[9:03] He was a warrior. To be honest, I'm not exactly sure what that was all about. But it seems to me like what is going on in this particular text is that Yahweh, or God, has interrupted this temple thing to teach David something and to establish something.

[9:29] In this little interruption, Yahweh, God himself, is drawing up some terms for the way that David needs to relate to him.

[9:41] He's determining in this little act who is going to be the initiator and who's going to be the receiver in their relationship.

[9:53] In this interruption, Yahweh is saying to David, listen, David, I know you want to initiate this project. I know you want to do this thing.

[10:04] But in this relationship between you and I, I am going to be the initiator and you're going to be the receiver.

[10:15] I'm going to be the one who speaks and you, as my king, are going to be the one who listens. In essence, verse 4 to 8, we have David wanting to initiate a project and God stopping him.

[10:34] The thing that seemed right and reasonable is being put on halt because God was trying to teach him that he was going to be the initiator and David was going to be the receiver.

[10:46] And in a sense, this idea sets up the next verses too. Verses 4 to 17, it's kind of interesting, but there are 23 verbs and all 23 of those verbs, of course it's a speech that God's giving, but all 23 of those verbs have to do with God's action, not David's.

[11:16] David is meant to hear what Yahweh is speaking. David is meant to hear what Yahweh is doing. He's the receiver of what is going on in this situation.

[11:29] He's clearly in reception mode. We get the sense like God has kind of interrupted David and he's grabbed him by the shoulders and he's sat him down saying, whoa, whoa, whoa, you want to initiate, but listen, I'm going to be the initiator in this relationship.

[11:48] I think in this sense, David's also getting a lesson on what it means to be God's king. David, you're going to take your cues from me. it's not going to be the other way around.

[12:02] So David, David hears the voice of God and then God moves on to say some pretty amazing things.

[12:14] From about, I'm going to give you kind of like the 30,000 feet view, but in verse 8, it says, now therefore, thus you shall say to my servant David, thus says the Lord of hosts, I took you from the pasture, from following the sheep, that you should be prince over my people.

[12:36] So God sits David down and breaks into this homily on what he has done for David in the past.

[12:47] A few things I want to point out here. Look what it says. God calls himself the Lord of hosts. This is interesting because this is kind of like, this is like one of God's like super power names.

[13:02] You know, I've seen those, you ever seen those t-shirts say Jesus is my homeboy? This is like the antithesis for Jesus is my homeboy.

[13:14] This is like, God ain't your homeboy. God is the master of the entire creation. God is the Lord over everything. And what he's about to say, you're going to listen to.

[13:25] This is not buddy God. God comes up, I am the Lord of hosts. I'm the master over everything. I'm the almighty God. God has sat David down saying, I'm the almighty God.

[13:42] What does he do here? God begins to go through and talk to David about where he's brought him from.

[13:54] He says, I took you from the pastor, from following the sheep. I took you from this place of insignificance. I took you from really being nothing.

[14:07] I took you from being the guy that they didn't even invite to the party when it was time to, when I was looking for, when Samuel was looking for a king.

[14:18] Your family considered you totally insignificant. I took you from the pasture. I took you from the place of insignificance.

[14:32] I did that. Where did I take you? I took you from there to being the prince over my people. Verse 9 says, and I've been with you wherever you went and I've cut off your enemies before you.

[14:48] What we have here is God sitting David down and recounting to him past graces that he showed him. Saying, listen David, I have acted in a gracious way towards you.

[15:03] I've done actually what many would perceive to be a miracle. I took a shepherd boy and I made him a prince over my people. I've been with you in everything. You can imagine as David is listening to Nathan give him this message for God, David is recounting all of the moments when his life was kind of hanging in the balance.

[15:24] All of these moments when he thought it was just about over. He's thinking of those moments when he's sitting there in the cave and Saul walks in and he has a decision to make.

[15:37] He's thinking of the moment when he faced Goliath. He's thinking of the past graces that God has shown him. So God begins to recount past grace.

[15:52] And then on the foundation of that past grace he says to him he then turns and he moves on towards a future promise. And this future promise has got a few different components.

[16:08] moments. Firstly God says to him David I'm going to make your name great. He says I'm going to make it great like the great ones of the earth.

[16:23] The great ones of the earth. And then he also tells him that I'm going to bring peace through you David. I'm going to bring peace to my people. He also says to him David I'm going to establish your dynasty your rule I'm going to establish it forever.

[16:51] I'm going to make your name great. I'm going to give my people rest. I'm going to bring them to the place of peace through your rule and I'm going to establish you forever.

[17:03] For those who are feeling quite cluey this might actually sound like another promise we've heard in the Bible. Remember the story of Abraham?

[17:15] Remember that story? Chapter 12 chapter 17 where God comes to Abraham and God makes a promise to him.

[17:27] What was the promise that God was making to Abraham? Well it had to do with making his name great peace. It had to do with creating a people through him and giving these people rest and peace.

[17:43] It had to do with establishing Abraham with a forever lineage. But what was it about even past that? You know what it was about?

[17:55] It was about a gracious God coming to Abraham and giving him his single plan for the redemption of humanity.

[18:07] The world was in chaos. Sin had begun to ravage people. And God decides that what he's going to do is he's going to recreate through Abraham.

[18:23] He's going to create for himself a people. people. And all these stories in between Abraham and David that we hear in the Bible are stories that are part of this larger narrative the salvation of God coming to his people.

[18:41] And when we get to David and we look at the words of the promise that's given to him we hear we can see that God is picking up on the promise that he's made to Abraham and we're seeing this come into the life of David.

[19:00] God's picking up on earlier parts of the story of his people. So I'm going to make your name great I'll bring my people into a land and I'll give them peace and I'm going to establish your lineage forever.

[19:19] This is the promise that God makes to David. It's interesting though that we know because we've read on in the story or maybe you haven't yet but if you read on in the story you'll see that David's sons, his posterity don't exactly always make great decisions do they?

[19:44] If you keep reading on you'll see in about 587 B.C. it seems like the kingdom is smashed. the people of God go into exile.

[19:58] This nation that had these promises finds itself in the place of exile. The sons of David you know the immediate sons of David obviously didn't carry this up.

[20:17] It's interesting in the Old Testament you'll find all kinds of places where where the prophets and even through the intertestamental period between the Old and the New Testament you find all these places where the prophets and different people were hanging on to a promise.

[20:34] The promise made to David that God was going to establish his kingdom forever. He was going to establish a king from his lineage that would cause God's kingdom to go on forever.

[20:49] We see people hanging on to this promise and of course we know today we know what happened with that promise. We know that Jesus Christ was the fulfillment of this promise and he has initiated this forever kingdom.

[21:08] This text is hugely significant for the people of God all through the Bible. When you look in the book of Matthew and you see Jesus referred to as the son of David, we're seeing the connection here between the promise of God given to David in 2 Samuel chapter 7 and the fulfillment of that promise in Jesus that David's kingdom would go on forever.

[21:42] A king did arise from David's line. name was Jesus. A few things I want to just mention about this about the nature of this covenant that God makes with David.

[21:58] First of all, death couldn't annul it. Death couldn't annul it. Number two, sin could not destroy it.

[22:11] Sin could not destroy it. Number three, time could not exhaust it. When Jesus came, he became the fulfillment of this promise that was given to David.

[22:26] This promise that was given to Abraham. And right now we stand in between the moment when Jesus came and fulfilled that promise and the moment when at the end of time that promise will be ultimately fulfilled.

[22:40] God will bring peace and justice and equity to the world that we live in. I think when we think about promises and we think about covenants in the world that we live in, I don't know if we totally have the cultural understanding to see the weight of what was going on in 2 Samuel chapter 7.

[23:10] See, we live in a world where we say things all the time that we don't really mean. We say things all the time that we don't really mean. Like, some of you may have had someone say to you, you know what, you're my best friend.

[23:25] But then on moving day, you know, when you gotta like move house, your best friend is nowhere to be found. All of a sudden your best friend has got the most important appointment of his or her life.

[23:37] And maybe those words, you know, best friend, don't. Accurately describe the relationship that you have with them. We kind of live in a culture, though, where this is kind of one of our issues, though, isn't it?

[23:51] We say things that we don't quite mean. I remember one time I was preaching at a church in Germany. And I stood up in front of this group of people and I said, you know, my name is Ryan, I'm from Canada, and you know what, Canada is a beautiful place, and really, you should really come to Canada sometime, and if you come, you can come stay with me.

[24:14] I'm speaking to like three or four hundred people. So I'm like making this statement, I'm saying something, not really thinking about what I'm saying, and after the service, one of the pastors came over to me and he said, I don't know if that was the best thing for you to say, and I'm kind of like, I was just trying to be friendly, right?

[24:32] I'm a friendly guy. And I found out the weight of my words when six months later I get an email that there's ten German kids coming to stay at my house for three weeks.

[24:48] The email was like, the words that I had given was the invitation and they were binding. But I said them, I just kind of like blurted them out.

[25:00] They just kind of came out. I'm a good example of the negative aspect, this negative aspect of our culture. We don't really get what it means to make a promise.

[25:19] We don't really get the gravity of our words sometimes. You know, this becomes a problem in our culture when somebody says something to you and in the core of your being you can't trust what they said enough to act on it.

[25:41] When they make a promise to you, you go, I'm not sure, and you hesitate acting on what they've said because there's this little bit of distrust inside you.

[25:56] You know, if this comes into our relationship with God, relationship to His promises, this is tragic because the God of the universe is the God of promise.

[26:14] And this God made promises to Abraham, He made promises to Moses, He made promises, the one that we're reading about today, the promise to David.

[26:25] that promise had to do with fixing the world that we live in. That promise had to do with the gospel, the gospel that says that God has done something to reverse the curse of sin and someday He's going to make the world new.

[26:46] He's made a promise to us that death and sin cannot exhaust. He's made a promise to us that He expects us to trust enough to act on.

[27:00] When we look at this promise to David that we see fulfilled in Jesus and will be ultimately fulfilled at the end of time, one of the things that we have to see and that we have to feel is that God's promises are sure.

[27:23] He is not going to fail. He is going to create and build for Himself a people. He is going to reverse the curse of sin.

[27:34] This promise that was made to David is going to last forever. We live in the midst of this and we have to trust it and live in light of it.

[27:49] Can you imagine what it was like to hear for David after going through all the things that he went through to hear this promise given to him?

[28:01] That he was going to be grafted into God's single plan to redeem and save humanity. Can you imagine what it was like to hear that?

[28:13] And I'm not going to go into all the verses or I'm not going to go in deep to verses 18 to 29 but there's one definitely significant thing that I need to make mention of.

[28:27] David hears about this grand promise and how somehow the promises of God have been made to Abraham that have kind of come through to him and that God is narrowing down that he's going to fix the world now through David's line through David's dynasty.

[28:46] He hears about this plan. He hears about the grace of God that's been extended to him. And it says in verse 18 that David upon hearing these things went in to sit before the Lord.

[29:07] I began this talk by talking about how God pushed David back in his chair.

[29:20] He sat him down and wanted him to know that, listen, David, you are going to be the receiver in this relationship.

[29:30] I'm going to be the initiator. I'm the one who speaks and you're the one who listens. It's interesting. There's one commentator said that this act of David sitting may be the most critical act that David ever does.

[29:47] this is the action that puts him out of action. Sitting was an outward expression of David's inward submission and inward thankfulness for God's great promise to do this through him.

[30:07] This is critical because this posture of sitting is the test that qualifies David to be God's king.

[30:21] By sitting David renounces his royal status. He sits back takes himself out of the driver's seat and he deliberately places himself prayerfully before God.

[30:38] You read the words of the of the prayer that David prays the prayer of gratefulness you see the posture that David takes.

[30:49] You get a sense of the overwhelming grace and the goodness of God that God has extended to David. You know David assuming this posture of sitting is doing something exactly opposite from what Saul did.

[31:09] Saul spent his reign initiating and doing what he pleased. Saul always controlled the kingdom. David understands that if he's going to be Yahweh's king he's going to have to surrender his will.

[31:25] He's going to have to let Yahweh be the initiator. Yahweh's going to be the speaker and he's going to be the hearer and the recipient. As we ponder the words of David's prayer and as we ponder the covenant that God made with David that was ultimately fulfilled in Jesus I think we need to reflect and take a good hard look at the goodness and the grace of God shown towards us and we need to in the core of our being trust that what God has promised in David that was fulfilled in Jesus and it will ultimately one day be fully fulfilled God's plan to recreate and fix the world we need to trust that that is going to happen we need to realize that this also is the great act of grace that we still get to experience today let's pray

[32:29] Lord today I pray that you would help us to see the greatness of your grace towards us help us to see the salvation plan began in Abraham promised again to David fulfilled in Jesus the plan that will one day be ultimately fulfilled at the end of time we thank you for the grace that you've shown towards all humanity in deciding to put the world right to flip for the reason to fellowship yourself how Moses wow Rod we gotta therapy oh when you welcome everyone to happy