When God promised to establish his kingdom forever through David's descendants, the king responded with a humble prayer of gratitude. Today on Truth for Life, we'll learn how it's possible to respond to God's blessings and promises the way David did. Alistair Begg is teaching from 2 Samuel chapter 7.
We're looking at verses 18 through 22. If you go back to the Goliath scene, you will remember the Goliath system. You come in out to me—do you think I'm a dog?
You come in at me with stones and sticks and things? And remember when he says, I come to you in the name of the living God? That's where his confidence lies. And so we're told that David has become greater and greater because the Lord of hosts was with him. In short order, he is where he is in this house of cedar by divine enabling and not on account of his own genius, or not on account, ultimately, of his own human endeavor.
Now, let's just pause and acknowledge something. Every single one of us in Christ may say the same thing. We are where we are, not as a result of peculiar gifts and worthiness.
That's why we sang the song. My worth is not in what I own. My worth is not in who I am.
My worth is not in me. This, you see, is what David is pointing out. It's quite remarkable, isn't it? I think he'd be perfectly happy to come and join in many of our songs. I imagine him singing with us, Oh, how the grace of God amazes me!
Of course it does. You find the very same thing when you run into the New Testament. And there you will remember how the priests and the Levites came to this strange character, John the Baptist. He was preaching, and many, many people were coming out to him.
He dressed strangely, and he had a rather bizarre diet, as we've noted on previous occasions. And they came to him, and they said, Who are you? And they said, And what do you have to say about yourself? And you remember what he said. Why, thank you for asking.
Why don't you check it out on my Facebook page? No. Do you really think everybody is that interested in us? No, you see, what we do is we magnify ourselves and we diminish God. And when God reveals himself through his Word, he reverses that order. For this is the one to whom I will look, says the Lord God. He or she who is humble in spirit and who trembles at my word. That is why we see David right here, amazed at the privilege of being a servant. Who am I?
Is always and ever the right response, as opposed to, Let me tell you who I am. That's the first word. E for eat, for exclamation.
O for out, for observation. Because he goes on to say in verse 19, And yet … this is a small matter compared to what's coming. And of course, what has happened is that this Word that has come to him through Nathan is making it clear to him that God has even bigger plans for him, bigger plans for his house. For his house.
We're thinking dynasty. Verse 16 again, And your throne, your house, your kingdom shall be made sure forever and ever. And you will notice what he says here. This—verse 19—this was a small thing in your eyes. In your eyes. Now, of course, God doesn't have eyes.
That's a metaphor, isn't it? From the perspective of God. From the perspective of heaven. From the perspective of eternity. You think about all the things that preoccupy us and concern us in the moment, and they're realistic, and they're important. They're vital in the journey of our lives.
But when you stand far enough back from it, if you put it in a long continuum in terms of time, it pales. You see, I think it would be perfectly understandable if David were to have viewed everything that had happened to him to this point as kind of the apex of things—that this was it. You know, after all, from shepherd boy to king of Jerusalem to king of Israel. It must be… There can't be anything more now, is there?
Mm, yeah. This is just the beginning. You will notice again if you… See verse 19 there. You have spoken also of your servant's house—here we go—for a great while to come. Actually, the real wonder is not that David refers to himself as God's servant but that God refers to David as his servant. If you look back up in your text, you will see that in chapter… earlier up in 7, the word that is given to Nathan is to go and tell my servant David. Tell my servant David.
Now, you won't know this unless you've researched it, but I can let you into a secret. For David to be referred to as my servant David takes him into rare company. For to this point, the only other people in Holy Scripture referred to in that way are Abraham, Moses, and Caleb.
So when God speaks to Nathan in this way and he designates David in this way, it is quite dramatic. He is the servant of God. He is only the servant of God.
You see the tension again? What a wonder that we are made the servants of God. Let's not forget that we are only the servants of God. You remember when Jesus is speaking to his followers, and he says, you know, if you have a house and you have a servant, and you come home and you say to your servant, you know, could you please fix me a meal? Would you please dress properly? Would you serve me correctly?
And so on. He says, you don't make a big fuss and bother about it. You're not giving out awards, because after all, he is simply a servant. And then he says to his followers, So you also, when you have done all that you were commanded, you say, We're unworthy servants. We have only done our duty.
It's quite wonderful, isn't it? It's the same thing when Paul writes, and the people in the context of Corinth, understandably, they decide, you know, which preacher do you like the best? Do you like Apollos, or do you like Paul, or whatever it might be?
It's an inevitability. And he says, Well, let's not get hung up on this. He says, What after all is Apollos? What after all is Paul? Only servants through whom you believed.
See it again? The magnificence and the might of God, and the amazing wonder of it, that he sets his love upon the likes of us. Now, here we come to the phrase with which we began. You will notice he goes on to say that this is actually instruction for mankind. You've spoken of your servant's house for a great while still to come, and this is instruction for mankind. In other words, the plan and the prescription for God's kingdom is the plan and prescription through which the whole world is to be blessed. Now, just let that settle in your thinking for a moment or two. God is conferring powers and rights and privileges on David and on the seed of David for the benefit of all mankind—not simply that David will be secure in his kingdom, not simply that Israel will progress as God's people, but this instruction is like a charter for all of humanity.
That's why we began again with Romans 15.4. Because the reaction to that is surely to say, But wait a minute. It's very interesting.
We're in the twenty-first century, and we're considering something that's way, way, way, way back, and we can learn principles from it. No, it's fine. But that's not it. No. This instruction, says David, that has come to me through your prophet Nathan, affects the entire story of the entire world of the entire history of the world. Oh! Oh, you see. Because God's promise to Abraham that through his offspring, all the nations of the earth will be blessed, is a promise that David now realizes is applied to him and to his seed, that God is promising that through the seed of David, God will establish his kingdom forever.
Think about this for a moment or two. There he goes. And David went in, and he sat before the Lord. And he's thinking. And he's giving voice to this. The things that you have said, gracious God, go way beyond me.
I mean, you've given me a place, but who am I? This actually goes to the ends of the earth. How does he get to that? How is it that he is able to respond in this way?
The answer? By faith. By faith. There is no way that David could know how this would be and will be fulfilled. All that is yet to come in the fulfillment of the promise is hidden to him.
It's part of an unknown future. He doesn't know what we are privileged to know, having been the recipients of the record of the gospel. He doesn't know, as he sits in that tent and thinks about these things, that one day an angel is going to come to a virgin girl and say to her something that will be virtually beyond comprehension.
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. And he will reign over the house of Jacob forever. And of his kingdom there will be no end. Do you see? You see, it is as we hear the Word of God that we see things from an entirely different perspective—that the purpose of God from all of eternity is focused on his King.
And that King is the one about whom we've been singing. E for eat, O for out for observation, E for every, or for explanation. So, exclamation, observation, explanation. How is it, as you look at the text, how is it that God has brought about all this greatness? That's the question. You will see that he's dealing with this there. In verse 21, you have brought about all this greatness. How is it that he's brought about all the greatness? What can David say in response to this?
That's what he's asking. Again, a rhetorical question in verse 20. And what more can David say to you? Well, actually, he still has quite a bit more to say.
Otherwise, the chapter would end right there. But you see what he's saying. Really, I'm not sure that I can adequately respond to this.
What can I say? For you know. For you know your servant. It doesn't mean that he knows who he is, or even that he knows what he is, but also that he knows where he is. In other words, God, you and I both know—you and I both know—that all this greatness that you have bestowed and that you are apparently about to bestow has nothing at all to do with my worthiness, has nothing at all to do with my importance, has nothing at all to do with my giftedness. You say, well, how can you say that? Well, because the text says, verse 21, because of your promise. You see again?
It is because you made a promise. That promise that you made, first of all, to Abraham and now to me is the promise that you have spoken. You have spoken. How did he speak? Spoke through his servant Nathan. He told him of those great things that are to come, the instruction for mankind.
And now he says, I understand this. It is because you made a promise. It is because the steadfast love of the Lord never ceases.
His mercy's never come to an end. It is because of the covenant purpose of God to take to himself a people that are his very own and to make those people like the sands of the seashore and as vast as the stars in the sky. Revelation 7, a company that no one can number.
How is there ever going to be a company that no one can number? On accordance with God's promise. He promised. He promised. You see, it's the exact same, whether in the Old Testament or in the New Testament. How did the people in the Old Testament that sang the psalms know they were forgiven? How did they know that God accepted their worship? On the basis of his promise. And so the same here. It's according to your promise, and it is according to your own heart.
You see that? Because of your promise and according to your own heart, you have brought about all this greatness to make your servant know it. Well, of course, this you will remember, some of you, way back into 1 Samuel and chapter 13, when we came on what is one of the most famous verses in the whole of 1 and 2 Samuel, and a verse that we say is most often applied incorrectly. And that verse is where Samuel said of him, Your kingdom won't continue, he says to Saul, but the Lord has sought out a man after his own heart. After his own heart. And I hope you remember then, we said that the significance of this is that he was a man of God's choice, that what is being said there is about the place the man has in the heart of God, not the place that God has in the heart of man.
You see, when you get it the other way around, you immediately run into problems. Oh, he was the man after God's own heart. We're only a couple of chapters away from a disaster zone in the immorality of his life with Bathsheba. So suddenly, we have to readjust our view. What does it really mean to be a man after God's own heart?
We hold him up as the epitome of that. No, the wonder of it is that God's heart was filled with David, not that David's heart was filled with God. And the reason that this is going to happen, he says, is because of the place that I have in your heart, O God. In other words, it is by trusting God's promise and knowing God's heart that the greatness that has been revealed to David will be his to know. Therefore, verse 22—our time is gone.
Let me just give you the last of the four words. D for declaration, verse 22. Next time, we will come back around verse 23.
Verse 22. Therefore you are great, O LORD God, for there is none like you. There is no God besides you, according to all that we have heard with our ears.
You see, the progression from Who am I? to There is none like you. It's amazing how many times we have reason to refer to the prayer of Hannah way back at the beginning of 1 Samuel. 1 Samuel 2 2, and Hannah prays, There is none holy like the Lord, for there is none beside you. There is no rock like our God. Now, notice this as well, that David's ability to declare this—his ability to declare this—the final phrase of verse 22 is according to all that we have heard with our ears. All that we have heard with our ears. What has he heard? God's promise.
What has he listened to? God's Word. Faith comes by hearing, and hearing by the Word of God.
It goes like this—preaching, hearing, believing, living. So we end where we began. All these things have been written in the past for us.
For us. I was rereading this week, Surprised by Joy by C. S. Lewis, and towards the end of his autobiographical piece there, as he recounts his move from atheism to theism and on, he says that he was convicted of what he refers to as chronological snobbery. Chronological snobbery. He says, in other words, the assumption that whatever has gone out of date is on account of the fact discredited and virtually obsolete.
That is standard in our world today. Why would we pay any attention to history at all? Indeed, the best we can do with history is deconstruct it, is rewrite it, is reframe it. And one of the distinguishing features of what it means to be a follower of the Lord Jesus Christ and a believer in the Word of the Bible is actually to have an entirely different view and perspective of history than that which is part and parcel of what we're facing now. After all, we're living in a world that has lost its story.
We're living in a world that is unprepared to pay attention to the greatest story ever told. And if you know that story, then let me encourage you, let us encourage one another to share it widely and kindly and boldly and unashamedly, because this is instruction for mankind. You're listening to Alistair Begg on Truth for Life.
Alistair returns in just a minute to close today's program. You know, as Alistair just taught us, faith comes by hearing the Word of God and our mission at Truth for Life is to share God's truth kindly, boldly, widely, and unashamedly, because this is his instruction for mankind. Over the past 30 years, God has graciously expanded Truth for Life's Bible teaching outreach from a handful of radio stations in the United States to nearly 2,000 radio stations all around the world.
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Now here is Alistair to close today's program. Our God, we thank you that your word is fixed in the heavens. We thank you that it introduces us to the wonder of a promise made, a promise kept, a promise fulfilled. We want to emulate David in this respect. We want to sit in your presence. We want to stand on your promise. Help us for your son's sake. Amen. I'm Bob Lapeen. Thanks for listening today. What do we do when our experiences don't seem to line up with all God has promised? Hear the answer when you join us tomorrow. The Bible teaching of Alistair Begg is furnished by Truth for Life where the Learning is for Living.
