When God Says 'No'

One day a little boy was on his knees praying beside his bed and his uncle walked down the hall, saw him praying and just stopped to hear what the little boy would pray. And the little boy had prayed and asked God if he could get a bicycle for Christmas. Well, Christmas morning came, there was no bicycle under the tree, and the uncle walked over to the little boy, kind of smiled at him and said, Well, I guess God didn't answer your prayer. Little boy thought for a minute and he said, No, God answered my prayer.

He just said, No. I'm afraid that a lot of us get caught up in that uncle's theology. If God answers us with a yes, we consider it an answer to prayer. If God answers us with a no, we just think that God did not answer. And let me tell you something, folks, that theology is a bad theology, and a lot of people today have that theology. And it's bad because it leaves us with an idea that we know better than God, and that what we really want is not what God wants, not God's answer, but we just want him to grant us our request and give us what we want. That theology is rampant in our society today, and it stinks.

Let me share with you another quick illustration. Back in October of 1988, I was installed as the pastor here at Grace Church. My friend Harry Reader did the installation sermon, and as he was getting started with that sermon, he made a comment that I've thought about many times since then. He said that he had been praying that God would call me to Grace Church. And he said when it all transpired, he was a little bit shocked, for he went on to say that it seems like that God delights in telling me no, Harry said. And we all laughed at that.

I laughed too. But what Harry said, he said not completely in jest. For folks, that is true, that sometimes we have desires and aspirations and visions, and we want to ask God for something, and it seems to be a good request. It seems to be a God-honoring request, and God just says no. If you've been a believer for any length of time, has that ever happened to you?

It happens to me often. I have prayed for people that have cancer, and asked God to deliver that person from cancer and heal that person, and may that cancer go into remission. And as I'm thinking about this, I'm thinking this would honor God if he would heal this person, and this would make that person happy and healthy, and his friends and his loved ones would be overjoyed, and yet the person gets worse, and the person dies. Some of you ladies have prayed for your unbelieving husbands for a long time, and you've asked the Lord to just soften their hearts, and instead of the heart getting softer, it seems like the heart got harder, and that's hard to figure out. Or some of you have had children that were rebellious, and you've asked the Lord to just break that rebellion, and it seems like they just dug their heels in harder in that rebellion. So we look at that situation and we say, wait a minute, I got the exact opposite of what I was praying for. Why did God do it that way?

Especially in light of what Jesus had to say in Luke chapter 11 verses 9 through 13. He said, I tell you, ask, and it will be given to you. Seek, and you will find. Knock, and it will be open to you. For everyone who asks receives, and the one who seeks finds, and to the one who knocks, it will be open. What father among you, if his son asks for a fish, will instead of a fish give him a serpent, or if he asks for an egg, will he give him a scorpion? If you then who are evil know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will the Heavenly Father give the Holy Spirit to those who ask him? As odd as it may seem, there is no contradiction there. The passage in Luke 11 doesn't say that we'll always get what we want. It says that God will always give us what is right. We may not like it. And we may not understand it. And our flesh may not want what God's answer is.

But folks, rest assured of this. When God answers our prayer, whether it be yes or no, it is always for our good and for God's glory. Prayer is not an exercise in manipulating God to get him to give us what he really doesn't want us to have. Prayer is an instrument in God's hand to help us line up our will with what God's will is. Psalm 37 verse 4 says delight yourself in the Lord your God, and he will give you the desires of your heart.

Now, how is that? Well, if you delight yourself in the Lord your God, then you love him with an all-consuming love, then you can be trusted that his desires are going to be your desires that you're going to want what he wants for you. And if God answers a prayer with no, then you'll be able to rejoice in that because you know that this is not something God would have you to have, at least in the present time. I read a statement when I was a young Christian that was written by St. Augustine, then I kind of recoiled at it when I read it way back then, and Augustine said this. He said, love the Lord and then do what you please. And I can remember thinking, oh no, don't tell people that. If you tell people that, then they're going to get all messed up. They'll think that Christianity is a ticket to heaven and a license to sin.

I was wrong. If people truly love the Lord their God with all their heart, mind, soul and strength, then they're going to desire what God desires. So today we're going to be looking at a chapter in the Old Testament that some believe is the most important chapter in the Old Testament.

Why is that? Because it's a chapter that teaches us about the Davidic Covenant. This was a covenant that God entered into with David where God promised David that in his bloodline would be born the Messiah, the King of Kings and Lord of Lords. Four points I want to share with you this morning. Point one is a godly desire. Look with me at verses one and two. Now when the king lived in his house and the Lord had given him rest from all his surrounding enemies, the king said to Nathan the prophet, see now, I dwell in a house of cedar, but the ark of God dwells in a tent.

Now we need to picture this setting in our minds. David has just made Jerusalem the capital of Israel. For seven years, Hebrew had been the capital of Israel, but David had driven out the Jebusites and he had come in, he had rebuilt the city of Jerusalem, made it a beautiful city, it was now the capital of Israel. And David at that point in time defeated all the surrounding enemies and so this was a very exciting time. The people were experiencing great prosperity. And David had a man named Hiram who was a great architect, a great engineer, to come in and build a palace for him and his family.

It was the most beautiful palace on the face of the earth. Now we need to remember that David was not born with a silver spoon in his mouth. He was a shepherd boy when he was young. And so where did he sleep? Most of the time he slept out in the pasture. If it was a clear night, just throw a blanket over himself and sleep under the stars. If it was a rainy night, he'd find a cave to sleep in. But now he's the king. And he is living in luxury and ease and in a beautiful home, like I said, the most beautiful home probably on the face of the earth in this great palace.

I can imagine one day him walking out and goes out on his balcony that's a covered balcony. He looks up on Mount Zion and Mount Zion is where they had built the tabernacle of David. In that tabernacle there is the Ark of the Covenant. And what's going on there? Worship.

24 hours a day, 365 days a year. There are singers that are singing, dancers that are dancing. There are musicians that are playing.

The priests are bowing down before the presence of God in the Ark of the Covenant. And it's just a beautiful thing. But as David is watching, all of a sudden it starts raining. And David is dry.

And he's warm. Everything's fine for David because he's watching from a covered balcony. But he looks at the worshippers and they're getting soaking wet. He looks at the tabernacle that's nothing more than an animal skin tent that's dirty. And he looks at that and he says, wait a minute. He sees the wind flapping up against the tent.

He sees water rushing up against it. And he said, this is not right. He said, look at me.

I'm here experiencing this kind of luxury and ease and just having a great time. And here is the Ark of the Covenant in the tabernacle in a dirty tent. He said, this is hard for me to live with. I feel terribly, terribly, horribly guilty about this. So what am I going to do about it, David says. David says, this is what I'll do. I'll build a temple unto the Lord. I'll build the most beautiful building that has ever been built on the face of this earth. I will build it for God's glory.

I'll build a building so beautiful that it will make my palace look like an absolute shack. David wanted to do that for God's honor. He wanted to do that for God's glory. And Nathan the prophet, who is truly a man of God, agrees with David. This is a great thing to do, David.

This is what you need to do. Let's do it, David. That takes us to point two, the heavenly rejection. Look at verses four through six. But that same night the word of the Lord came to Nathan. Go and tell my servant David, thus says the Lord God, would you build me a house to dwell in?

I have not lived in a house since the day I brought up the people of Israel from Egypt to this day, but I have been moving about in a tent for my dwelling. God spoke to the prophet Nathan and told Nathan emphatically, no. David is not to build the temple of the Lord.

That will be for David's son Solomon, who at this time is not even born. Now I think this caught Nathan by surprise. I think Nathan thought to himself when David talked to him and said, I want to build a temple to the Lord. I want to build this glorious building for him. I think Nathan immediately said, man, that's a great thing. That's exactly what you need to do, David.

I think this is good. And he did not consult the Lord. He did not pray about it.

He just immediately took it for granted that this was a good thing. And he was wrong. He thought he knew what the will of God was, but God told him no. This was not the will of God for David to build the temple.

That was a shock for Nathan, an absolute shock. We have to be very careful, folks. When we claim that we know the will of God, we need to be careful. We need to remember that God's ways are not our ways and God's thoughts are not our thoughts.

For as high as the heavens are above the earth, so are God's ways higher than our ways and his thoughts higher than our thoughts. I get so frustrated sometimes with people telling me, well, I know what God's will is. I'm doing this because God told me to do it.

I'm doing that because God told me to do it. And you look at what they're doing and it's something that's totally in violation of God's Word. Folks, we need to quit getting guidance from our feelings and get our guidance from the Word of God. In Acts chapter 8, Philip the deacon was in a dilemma much like this. Philip was preaching a revival down in Samaria. And I mean the Spirit of God was moving. People were getting saved right and left. Demons were being cast out of people.

People were getting healed of diseases. I mean the Spirit of God was moving. Philip had never seen anything like this before. And then an angel of the Lord came to Philip and said, Philip, God wants you to leave this place. He wants you to go out in the middle of a barren desert and just wait.

And Philip thought to himself, that can't be right. I'm being used of God here. This is an exciting time. God is moving. God is using me.

I don't want to leave this place. But what Philip didn't realize is that God had an appointment set up for him in the middle of that barren desert. There was a man, an Ethiopian eunuch, who was the treasurer of Ethiopia, a very prominent man. He had gone to Jerusalem seeking for God. He didn't find God, but he did get a scroll of Isaiah while he was there.

And he's coming back home. And he's going across this barren desert. He's in his chariot and he opens that scroll up.

He goes down to Isaiah 53. And just at that point in time, Philip sees him. Philip runs over to the chariot. He jumps in the chariot with him. He says, do you understand what you're reading? He says, no, I don't understand what I'm reading.

How can I unless I have someone to teach me? And Philip took the scroll of Isaiah 53 out of his hand. And the scripture says he preached unto him Jesus. And that eunuch right there in that chariot came to know Jesus Christ as his Lord and Savior. Completely turned his life around.

Came to know who the true God really was. And let me tell you, when he went back to Africa, he didn't go back by himself. He took Jesus with him. And he went back preaching the gospel. And much of North Africa, as a result of that, came to a saving knowledge of Jesus Christ.

Let me tell you something, folks. God is sovereign. He knows what he's doing. This is why he said no to Philip, because he had other plans for Philip.

Being obedient to God often means doing that which seems unreasonable and impractical to our human minds. God told David no. David thought he was right.

Nathan thought he was right. If you and I had been right there with him, then we would have thought it was right too. But God said no.

Have you ever been there? Maybe there was a time in your life you wanted to be a missionary. And so you decided, well, you'll just go to Bible school or you'll go on to seminary and you'll get your training and you started putting things into the works and all of a sudden one of your parents got sick. And you were not able to do what you wanted to do. You were not able to go on to seminary. You had to stay there and you had to work and you had to take care of one of your parents. And it just blew your mind.

Why? You wanted to do this. Your intentions were good, but God said no. Sometimes what we think is plainly God's will is not.

That takes us to the third point, a divine comfort. Now this comes from another book in the Bible that gives us detail that helps us to understand what's going on in 1 Samuel chapter 7 and we see this in 2 Chronicles chapter 6 verses 7 through 9. Let's read through the words of King Solomon as he's dedicating the temple of God and pray in that prayer of dedication.

He says this. Now where's the comfort of God for David in this? David wanted to build a temple for the Lord. That was his desire. He wanted to do it for God's glory.

He was all excited about it. But God said no. David, you will not build a temple.

You will not be able to fulfill that dream. So how was David comforted? Listen carefully. God revealed to David that he would judge David not just for his actions, but also for his motives. That when David would stand before the judgment seat of Christ, he would not be judged for not building the temple. He would be judged for wanting to build the temple and trying to build the temple. Listen carefully. When God judges us, he judges us not only for what we do, but for what we would have done if we could have.

Let me give you a few scenarios. A set of parents, godly parents, who want to put their kids in a very godly environment. And so they pray for their kids. They pray with their kids. They plant the word of God into their kids' heart. They're in a church.

It's a Bible-believing church, a church where the kids are going to be under good expositional preaching. They put their children into a Christian school. Now, these are not perfect parents because there are no perfect parents. But these are parents who love the Lord and who desire with all their heart if they might raise their children up in the nurture and admonition of the Lord. But one of their children, when they get to their late teenage years, rebels, and they turn against their family. They turn against the church, and they turn against God. And what goes on in the hearts of those parents, immediately they begin to feel all this terrible guilt. And they say, well, if I could have just done something different, if I could have just done this or if I could have just done that, then things would be different, and everything would be so much better.

And what happens? The parents' hearts are just flooded with guilt. It's okay to evaluate your own life and heart and do some critical evaluation.

Now, let me tell you something. Morbid introspection is used of the devil to destroy us, and we don't need to do that. We need to sometimes be able to trust God's sovereignty. It may be that God's using that situation to break that child completely. We don't know. We need to trust God.

Another scenario. A godly lady is married to an unbeliever. Her husband resents her going to church. He allows her to go on Sunday morning worship, but that's about it. He forbids her to go on Sunday night. He won't let her go to any of the women's meetings.

He won't let her get involved in any service positions in the church whatsoever. So what does the lady do? The lady begins to become a prayer warrior in her home. She finds out people in the church who are going through a difficult time, maybe having lost a loved one, maybe having lost a job, and she sends them notes. She sends them cards and lets them know that she's praying for them and gives them encouraging scripture to read. She goes through her neighborhood finding out those who know the Lord and who don't and giving them gospel tracts. Here's a lady who longs to be in church. She longs to serve others, but at some point, she knows that she can't do it like she wants to. When she stands before God, she'll be like David.

God will judge her not just for what she did, but for what she would have done if she could have. How many do we have sitting in this congregation right now that maybe sometime in your life you felt that God had called you to maybe a pastoral ministry where you would be a preacher or maybe that he had called you to be a missionary, but as you looked at the situation, you realized that you did not have the spiritual gifts to do that, but you have been faithfully giving, tithing, and going over and above the tithe, giving to missions to help missionaries. You have prayed for missionaries. You have prayed for your pastor. You have prayed and moved and done things to help other missionaries as they were coming in.

Maybe they're on furlough. You bring them into your home. You give them a place to stay. Folks, when you stand before the Lord, you will be judged not just for what you did or for what you didn't do, but for what you would have if you could have. Thank God that our Lord is able to read into the depths of our heart and know our motives. Point four, a covenant promise.

I look at verses 12 through 15. God says this to David. When your days are fulfilled and you lie down with your fathers, I will raise up your offspring after you who shall come from your body, 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 to him a father. He shall be to me a son.

When he commits iniquity, I will discipline him with the rod of men, with the stripes of the sons of men, but my steadfast love will not depart from him as I took it from Saul, whom I put away from before you. David says to the Lord, I want to bless you, Lord. I want to build a temple to your glory. I want to build the most beautiful temple in the world. We're going to use the best masonry and the best bricks and the best stones, and we're going to bring in the greatest architects and the greatest engineers, and we're going to build a monument to your glory. We're going to build a building so beautiful that the world has never seen anything like it so that people will know that there is only one God, and you are that one God.

This is what I'm going to do. I'm going to build for you a house, Lord. God says, no, David, you will not build a house for me, but I will build a house for you. I will bless your family with this blessing. Your kingdom will be an everlasting kingdom.

Your throne will be an everlasting throne. What did the Lord mean by that? He meant that the Messiah, the eternal King, the King of Kings and Lord of Lords, would be born into David's bloodline. Now, I think what he's saying to David is this.

David, don't get hung up on the mortar and the bricks, on the signs and the symbols and the pictures and the types. I think God the Father was saying this to David. I give you Jesus.

I give you Jesus. A thousand years later, that prophecy was fulfilled to the letter as the Virgin Mary conceived, and she bore a son, and that son was the Lord Jesus Christ. Both Mary and Joseph were members of the tribe of Judah, and they were direct blood descendants of King David. Now, Jesus was a blood descendant of King David through the bloodline of Mary, and he was a legal descendant of David through the bloodline of his earthly stepfather, who was Joseph.

How important was that? It starts all the way back in Genesis 49, verse 10, as Jacob is given a prophecy to his son Judah, and he says this to Judah. Judah the scepter, the royal scepter, will not depart from you until Shiloh comes, and then shall be the gathering together of his people. In Psalm 89, the Holy Spirit of God is giving David inspiration about the Davidic covenant, and listen to what he says. Once for all I have sworn by my holiness, I will not lie to David. His offspring shall endure forever, his throne as long as the sun before me, like the moon that shall be established forever, a faithful witness in the skies. People, I want you to remember that. The next time you're out on a romantic walk with your wife, and you're walking around a lake perhaps, and all of a sudden you look up and you see this beautiful moon shining down on you, put your arm around your wife's neck and whisper in her ear, look up there at that moon.

What is that? That is God giving us a sign that Jesus Christ is on the throne. The next time you're just out jogging with some buddies, and the sun starts shining down on you and starts perspiring, then look up to that sun, point it out to your friends, and tell them that's a sign that God has given us that Jesus Christ is on the throne.

And brothers and sisters, that's true. The same sign that God gave to David way back 3,000 years ago, that sign that God gave to David, the sign of the sun, the sign of the moon, means the same thing today to us, that Jesus Christ is still on his throne. In Luke chapter 1, when the angel Gabriel came to Mary to tell her that she was going to give birth to the virgin-born son of God, he said this, And behold, you will conceive in your womb and bear a son, and you shall call his name Jesus. He will be great and will be called the Son of the Most High, and the Lord God will give to him the throne of his father, David. Romans chapter 1, verses 1 through 3, Paul starts his letter off this way, Paul, a slave of Christ Jesus, called as an apostle, singled out for God's good news, which he promised long ago through his prophets in the Holy Scriptures, concerning his son Jesus Christ our Lord, who was a descendant of David according to the flesh. In the book of Revelation chapter 22, the next to the last statement that Jesus makes, he said this, He said, I want to close with something Roger Ellsworth said.

I want you to listen carefully to this. David's descendants proved to be so faithless and wicked that the nation finally had to be punished by being sent into captivity in Babylon. But that only constituted an interruption, not an end, of the reign of David's seed.

As the New Testament opens, the people of Israel are back in their land, and a husband and wife are on their way to the village of Bethlehem. There was born the one who fulfilled the promise of permanence to David. He was none other than the Lord Jesus Christ himself. He sprang from David's line, and by virtue of his redeeming work on Calvary's cross, all authority in heaven and earth had been granted to him, and that authority will never be relinquished.

He is reigning now at the right hand of God, and he will continue to reign forever and ever. David was overwhelmed at the goodness and grace of God to him. That grace that offered permanence to David's throne offers a glorious permanence to us as well. It holds the crucified Christ before us and assures us that if we will turn from our sins and embrace him as Lord and Savior, we will dwell in the house of the Lord forever.

Let's pray. Heavenly Father, as we were working our way through this passage, we felt a little sorry for David. He desired to build a temple for your glory. He wanted to honor you.

He wanted to prove to the world that Jehovah is God and deserves the glory. But you told David no. That at first was hard to figure out, but now we know you had something better for David. David said, God, I want to build you a house, but you said, no, David, I will build you a house, a bloodline, a royal bloodline. Lord, you said to David, David the Messiah, the Savior of the world, will be one of your descendants. The brick temple that you want to build would be temporary, but the Messiah is the eternal hope of this world. David offered God something good, and God gave David his best. He assured David that Jesus would have his blood coursing through his veins. Lord, help us to quit doubting you. Help us to trust that you always know and do best, for it is in the precious and holy name of Jesus that we pray. Amen.