God’s Perspective on David’s Proposal (Part 1 of 2)

Welcome to Truth for Life, where today we begin a new study in the Old Testament book of 2 Samuel. We're taking a look at a crucial covenant that God established with King David.

In fact, Alistair Begg teaches us why this particular passage of Scripture opens the door to the meaning of everything. I invite you to turn with me to 2 Samuel and to chapter 7, and I'm going to read from the first verse to the seventeenth verse. 2 Samuel 7, and beginning from verse 1. 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. And Nathan said to the king, Go, do all that is in your heart, for the LORD is with you.

But that same night the word of the LORD came to Nathan. Go, and tell my servant David, Thus says the LORD, 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. In all places where I have moved 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 built me a house of cedar? 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 Israel. And I have been with you wherever you went and have cut off all your enemies from before you. And I will make for you a great name, like the name of the great ones of the earth. And I will appoint a place for my people Israel, and will plant them, so that they may dwell in their own place and be disturbed no more.

And violent men shall afflict them no more as formerly from the time that I appointed judges over my people Israel. And I will give you rest from all your enemies. Moreover, the LORD declares to you that the LORD will make you a house. 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, and he shall be to me a son. When he commits iniquity, I will discipline him with a 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. And your house and your kingdom shall be made sure forever before me.

Your throne shall be established forever." In accordance with all these words and in accordance with all this vision, Nathan spoke to David. This is the word of the Lord. Thanks be to God. Eternal God, we thank you that our prayer has been sung to you. We simply add our amen. May it be so that we hear your voice far beyond the voice of any mere man. For this is our great need, and we pray in Christ's name.

Amen. Well, I wonder if we set ourselves the task of putting together a list—let's say, the top ten list—of what we might regard as the most significant chapters in the Bible. I would imagine that amongst that list—and probably we would have a diversity of lists if we all said about it on our own—but probably we would have in there Genesis chapter 3, the account of the fall of man. We'd probably have in it Isaiah 53, that great prophetic passage on the atoning work of the Son. Some of us, I think, would have John 1. Others would have John chapter 3. Many of us would have Romans chapter 8, which shall separate us from the love of God. Some of us, I think, would include 1 Corinthians 15, the great chapter on the resurrection, and so on. Many, I think, would want also to include Revelation chapter 21, that great and glorious picture of a new heaven and a new earth. But I wonder if any of us would actually have included in our top ten the chapter which we have just begun to read just now—2 Samuel chapter 7. I'm not sure that I would have had it in my list either until I began to study it more seriously, in a more focused way.

I mean, I'm familiar with it, but I have never actually preached on it, and therefore I've never really studied it to the degree that I can. And I've been quite staggered to find out how many people of great significance and worth, both as Bible teachers and as theologians, clearly have 2 Samuel 7 in the very heart of that top ten list. Our friend John Woodhouse says, There are few chapters in the Bible more important and more exciting than 2 Samuel chapter 7.

Now, I read part of it, and you can read the rest of it on your own, and you can conclude, as you choose, whether that is hyperbole or whether it actually is the case. God's promise to David, God's covenant with his servant David, in this chapter—and you may want just to look down again to verse 16, where God says to David, And your house and your kingdom shall be made sure forever before me. Your throne shall be established forever. Now, we've already alluded to this in our singing this morning, where in the opening song we sang there, David's greater Son has fixed his royal throne. So we are already giving indication in our singing of our understanding of the significance of what God promises here to David. In fact, it would be fair to say that what we have here in this chapter is not simply the key to understanding all of 1 and 2 Samuel as it is, but in actual fact, here in this chapter you have a key which unlocks the entire storyline of the Bible—the whole story of the Bible. And insofar as God's promise to Abraham to put together a people of his own, it then finds its focus and its fulfillment and its reinforcement in David and in his kingship, and David in turn points us forward to his greater Son, namely, the Lord Jesus Christ, who is the King who has come and who is the King who is coming. Now, all of that is founded in and focused in this particular chapter. Simon Winchester wrote a very helpful book entitled The Meaning of Everything. He was referring to the creation of the Oxford English Dictionary. But in borrowing from that title, it is fair for us to say that this chapter, 2 Samuel 7, opens the door to the meaning of everything—not just the meaning of everything that is in the Bible but in the meaning of everything in the entire panoramic history of the world.

Now, I can't set it up any better than that. This is a major chapter. And therefore, it is incumbent upon us to take time to study it.

Now, of course, you mustn't take my word for this. You need to examine the text on your own and see if these things are actually so. We won't go further than this seventh verse this morning, and we will look at these first seven verses in two parts. First of all, in verses 1–3, what we refer to as David's Proposal, and then in verses 4–7, God's Perspective. In fact, I gave to our study this morning the title God's Perspective on David's Proposal. Now, you will notice the context is given to us immediately at the top of the chapter. Now, when the king lived in his house and the Lord had given him rest from all his surrounding enemies.

That, then, is the context for all that takes place. If your Bible is open as mine, you will have before you the eleventh verse of chapter 5. When we studied that, we noted that Hyrum, the king of Tyre, sent messengers to David and sent cedar trees and carpenters and masons, and they built a house for David. And it is this house in which David now finds himself living. I think what we're supposed to understand is that at this point in the history of things, David is established. The battles are over, at least for the time being.

The ark, which we have just considered, has made its way now safely and eventually to Jerusalem. And the family feuds, which have cropped up again and again, are behind him for a while. And you will notice that in these first three verses, he is never referred to as David. He's referred to as the king each time. Now, when the king lived in his house, verse 2, and the king said to Nathan, and Nathan said to the king.

So, try and allow this to settle in your mind. The Lord has now given him rest. He is in a secure position. He is, if you like, in a successful spot. He's able to reflect on all that has gone before and to realize all the victories and triumphs that he's enjoyed. And he recognizes—at least the narrator understands—that all of this has happened because of the Lord's goodness to him. And it is his rest, the rest of God, that he enjoys at this point. Which, of course, raises the question, How will he cope with this? How will David do, given that he is no longer doing what he's good at doing?

Because we have observed him, he's good at running, he's good at fighting, he's good at hiding, he's good in battle, and so on. But how about sitting? How about being settled?

How about sitting in his house? How about being able to look out, look back, look around, and say, You know, things are actually pretty good at the moment? Now, is it in that context, given the person that he is, that he finds himself saying, You know, I think I'm gonna have to do something?

If you're an action kind of person, it will be a great challenge to you to learn how to sit. It's one of the reasons some of us don't do so well in retirement. Because now we have been removed from all of the engagement that has given sense and a semblance of order to our very existence. And then, all of a sudden, it becomes somewhat quiet. The battles are o'er.

The children have moved on. And we find ourselves just sitting across the breakfast table from one another, and perhaps at least thinking, if not actually saying, So, what are we going to do now? Now, I take it that David was thinking along those lines. And that is why he decides that he's going to have to do something. Now, again, we just have to let the text say what it says. Because as the story unfolds—and if you know the story, you know this is true—in relatively few verses, we're going to discover, if it's in any doubt here, that David doesn't do well with downtime.

David does not do well sitting on the roof looking around. And few of us do. Now, this is the context. This is the context. And the context gives way to this conversation—a conversation, a dialogue, which takes place between the king and Nathan. And Nathan emerges somewhat abruptly here.

We will see more of him later on. But now, in this conversation, David takes the initiative. And 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, what he apparently is doing is sensing the incongruity of this situation. We know all that has been involved in bringing the ark from the house of Abinadab and so on and into its place in Jerusalem. In the seventeenth verse of chapter 6, we were told there that with the dancing and the leaping having taken place, verse 17, they brought in the ark of the LORD, they said it in its place, inside the tent that David had pitched for it. And there he offered burnt offerings and so on. And David understood what was being done there—that the ark was the symbol of the power and of the presence of God. Through all of the history of the people of God, with the tabernacle and the ark contained and the law of God contained in the ark, all of the people understood what that was about.

And so it is that David, apparently recognizing the disparity between where he's put the ark and where he finds himself, he doesn't actually say, I want to build a house for God. You will notice that. No, but it is clear by way of inference.

And we recognize that in the response of Nathan initially, and then in the clarity of the Word of God, which comes to David through Nathan. Now, it's quite interesting, isn't it? I mean, if you've been to Assisi, you will have been there in that little cave where the little fountain is and the requisite little bird where St. Francis was spending his time. And I thought of St. Francis here when I realized the inference from the text. David says it's somewhat incongruous that I am in this house and the ark of God is in the tent, but he doesn't say, So I think I shall downgrade myself to a tent.

No, he's not planning on a downgrade for himself, but he's planning for an upgrade for the ark. Now, it's not difficult to see the progression here, is it? First of all, the king is in his house, he has rest from his enemies, everything is settled. And yet, David himself is unsettled.

It doesn't really seem right. And in that context, Nathan, picking up on what David is inferring, says to the king, Go and do all that is in your heart, for the LORD is with you. Go for it! You're the man. You're the LORD's man.

The LORD is with you. That phrase, of course, is going to come again in another context later on. Now, we've no reason to doubt that David's desires and his motives are anything other than good. And there is no reason either to assume that Nathan's response is anything other than well-meant, right? Nathan is a good man. He's a prophet of God. And we're going to see later on that he is able to make the tough call, that he is able to take on David. But perhaps in this instance, he's a little too quick to simply affirm the king's proposal.

I'm sitting here, and the ark is over there. He says, Yeah, you're the man. You're the man. Yeah, that's good.

Go for it. Now, I'm indebted to my friend Ralph Davis for a very simple but important observation at this point in his commentary. And he says, Here we ought to acknowledge the limitation of the servants of God. The limitation of the servants of God. That because somebody is the prophet of God, he has limitations. So, for example—we won't go back through the whole of the chapters that we've done—but if you remember Eli way, way back at the beginning of 1 Samuel, in relationship to Hannah—and you remember that Hannah got herself in a dreadful state. She was talking and mumbling and crying, and she was a mess. And Eli got it wrong.

And he assumed that she was drunk. The servant of God got it wrong. Samuel got it wrong when he called for the sons of Jesse and decided, from his own perspective, that Eliab was the obvious choice as the king. He was wrong. David got it wrong, you will remember, when he decided that the best thing he could do would be to take out Nabal and be done with him once and for all. And it falls to Abigail to intervene.

On behalf of the husband that she did, she couldn't really stand. But the point is that in each case, the servants of God got it wrong. Now, there is a salutary warning in this. It is a reminder of what we say to one another regularly—at least, I hope we do—namely, that the best of men are men at best.

The same is true for ladies, for women. Therefore, we better choose our heroes carefully. And we better resist any tendency to deify those whose ministry we appreciate, whose instruction we benefit from, and whose prophetic word we pay attention to. And the reason for that is because if we get that wrong, it will be both harmful to them and of no help to us. In another context, I would give you chapter and verse, I would give you names, and I would give you places. But you will be applying it in your own mind already.

Here's the facts. Nathan's support was well-meaning, but it was missing God's perspective. It is always the perspective of God that we need in relationship to the unfolding of the purposes of God. You're listening to a message titled God's Perspective on David's Proposal. This is Truth for Life with Alistair Begg.

We'll hear the conclusion of the message tomorrow. Today's message focused on a foundational passage of Scripture, and the book we want to recommend to you today focuses on a foundational biblical element, God's covenants. The book is titled Covenant Foundations, Understanding the Promise-Keeping God of the Bible. The book contains teaching from a highly respected author and theologian, the late Alec Matier. If you're a longtime Truth for Life listener, you've probably heard Alistair quote Alec many times.

Alec Matier passed away in 2016, but his son Steve just published this book, which is drawn from Alec's profoundly insightful writings. The book presents an easy-to-understand exploration of the Old Testament covenants between God and his servants. You'll learn how God's promises and his faithfulness to keep his promises are a repeating theme throughout Scripture. As you read your copy, you'll trace the covenant thread from Noah to Abraham, through Moses, David, and the prophets. This is a short book that uses straightforward language to explain the covenants and their signs, like the rainbow God displayed following the Great Flood. It helpfully explains what we learn about God through his promises, and also how we can rest peacefully by fully relying on them. Ask for your copy of the book, Covenant Foundations, when you donate to Truth for Life today. You can use our mobile app or donate online at truthforlife.org slash donate or call us at 888-588-7884. We are glad you've joined us today. Tomorrow we'll hear the conclusion of today's message and learn why it's so important to teach and rely on God's Word, nothing more, nothing less, and nothing else. The Bible teaching of Alistair Begg is furnished by Truth for Life, where the Learning is for Living.