I don't know who said it first, but I've always smiled at the statement that when God shuts a door, he opens a window.
Now the window for David was the opportunity to prepare. He won't be able to dig one footing. He's not going to hammer one nail. He'll never hang one door. By the time you get to 1 Chronicles and David's speech, where he hands over the blueprints to Solomon, and he announces to the nation all that he's prepared, how he's spent the remainder of his life getting ready for this, you would expect to find the shell of an angry old man.
But you don't. David didn't lie in bed every night dreaming of the next giant he would kill, or the next battle he would win. David had a dream to build a temple for God. But God had other plans. Building the temple would be for David's son, not for David. Instead of getting bitter, David got to work in other ways. He made plans that would pave the way for those who would build one day. If you've ever had your dreams or plans changed by God, keep listening, because today on Wisdom for the Heart, Stephen Davies shows you how to respond when God says no.
We're continuing through our series called The Singer with this message when the answer is no. God effectively tells Nathan to go and tell David that he doesn't need a house, and the house that will be built, the temple, won't be built by his hand. In fact, if you look down at verse 12, I read it quickly. David is informed by Nathan that when he lies down with his fathers, that is, when he dies, his descendant will build that temple, that house. Now, in a parallel passage in 2 Chronicles 17, it reads even more clearly, the word of God came to Nathan saying, go and tell David my servant. Thus says the Lord, you shall not build a house for me to dwell in. David, it won't be you, it will be your son, Solomon.
Now, before you rush ahead and say, well, yeah, that's great, saved the family, that'd be wonderful. No, no, no, keep in mind, David has no ulterior motive here. He has no selfish ambition here. He has no desire to make a name for himself.
He's not going to write his name over the front door. He wants to exalt the name of God. Can you imagine wanting to exalt the name of God, wanting to do something glorious for God, have no ulterior motive, have no selfish ambition, God, I want to do this for you, and God says, no.
We're given a little further clarification in the Chronicles that since David spent most of his life at war, God wanted a man of peace to build the temple, and Solomon, whose name is a derivative of Shalom, will be that man of peace. It isn't a matter of David's heart being wrong, it's a matter where God simply said, no. Now, pause for a moment with the difficulty of this in mind for Nathan himself. Imagine a prophet having to do an about-face within 12 hours.
That wouldn't have been easy. David is going to have another appointment the next morning with Nathan, and Nathan is going to have to effectively say, look, David, I got so excited, and I know it's your passion and your desire, and it sounded great, and wouldn't that be wonderful that I said, you know, God would be pleased for you, go for it. God came to me and said, oh yeah, he'll be pleased with the building of his temple, but, that can be such a discouraging word, can't it?
Makes you just want to cry. You had planned to go to college or graduate school, but. You had made plans to get married, but. You were told that you were the person for that job, but. You had planned on having lots of children, but.
You had planned on not having any more children, but. That little conjunction can change everything, can't it? In fact, when you're talking to someone, what they say after they say but, is what really matters, so tune in. Your child's elementary school teacher calls you and says, we really love having the little tornado in the classroom with us, but. The client calls up and says, we've enjoyed doing business with you for years, but.
Maybe you fellas had a girlfriend call you at some point and say, you know, you're a nice guy and I really like spending time with you, but. You know what that means? It means you are now free to move about the country. That's what that means. I'm convinced David was unable to sleep. He was excited. He was dreaming, planning the things he would do for the glory of God, and God said, oh, but I have something else in mind. You know, it strikes me that when we're told that David had a heart after God. A heart after God's own heart.
That's such a big statement, isn't it? You can't attack that in one lesson. A mark of having a heart after God is probably nowhere more revealed than in how someone responds when God's heart says no. Let's go through these next few verses quickly and let me give you five summary words revealed in David's attitude and action. We'll call it five ways to respond when God says no. All right, here we go.
Number one, the first way to respond is with humility. Look at verse 18. The King David went in and sat before the Lord and said, who am I, oh Lord God, and what is my house that you have brought me thus far? He doesn't go into God's presence and I've got a laundry list of why I'm the man for the job.
Why in the world wouldn't you let me do that without any argument, without any protest? David is literally at his best here when he goes into that skin-covered tabernacle and offers up this self-deprecating, self-renunciating, self-denying testimony. Who am I anyway to have received what you've given me already? What do I even have now that isn't a result of your goodness? In other words, dream or no dreams, I am a blessed person, David says. When God says no, respond with humility.
Secondly, respond with gratitude. Look at verse 19, and yet this was a small thing in your eyes, oh Lord God. You've spoken also of your servant's house for a great while to come and you can insert, that was a surprise. What you're doing for me, Lord? He's choosing to focus on what God is going to do rather than what God has chosen not to do.
Gratitude comes when we're willing to view the will of God in a longer term rather than a shorter term. God has something else in mind. In fact, have you ever thought about the fact implied in God's response to David through Nathan that had God allowed David to begin building the temple 20 years earlier when he wanted to, David would more than likely have made it out of cedar. God didn't want it out of cedar. He wanted it out of stone and gold and silver. I read recently about a man who had heard God say no and then God's design was a yes in a different way.
It would involve surprise and disappointment. He and his wife had dedicated their lives to vocational ministry. They were going to Africa to reach an unreached tribe and they raised all their support.
They made it to the field and in the middle of their first term, his wife came down with a serious disease which caused them to have to leave the field and come back to the United States. In order to make a living, he joined his father in his dentistry practice. It was the last thing he wanted to do. They needed to eat. He also had the idea just from understanding a need within the congregation. He was part of a denomination that observed the Lord's table every time they gathered and grape juice didn't have a very long shelf life before it would begin to ferment. So he began to experiment. He experimented with pasteurization so that he could provide unfermented grape juice for their communion.
He figured it out. The young man who had been a missionary whose dream had been dashed along with his wife, his name was Thomas Welch. He went on to produce, quote, unfermented sacramental wine for church.
But it caught on and to this day, in fact within ten years, it was selling around the world along with Welch grape jelly. He would go on to give hundreds of thousands of dollars to the gospel enterprises. God said no to that and a yes to this. Maybe you can't teach but you can pray. Maybe you can't go but you can support. Maybe you can't sing but you can organize.
Maybe you can't run that particular race but you can provide the shoes for the people who can. God says no to that and yes to this. Well, after planning and organizing for 20 years, this temple is going to be absolutely breathtaking and you hear 20 years earlier nothing but gratitude in David's voice as God will begin to unfold an entirely different plan for his life. Respond with humility and gratitude. Thirdly, respond with surrender. These aren't easy words by the way.
These are daily challenges. Respond with surrender. If you look at verse 20, David says, and again what more can David say to you? For you know your servant, oh Lord God. In other words, I'm your servant?
What more can I say? I belong to you and that's good enough. Isn't it interesting that in verse 18 he asks, who am I? And in verse 20 he says, I am your servant. Which provides an interesting principle of surrender and security. It's not so much who you are but whose you are on your timing.
Surrendering, and here's I think the tough part, surrendering to the plan of God means you are surrendering to the pace of God as he directs your steps and that pace never fits ours. And it's never been easy. I can remember years ago driving our twin sons to kindergarten a couple of mornings a week and give Marsha a break and we carpooled with another family. They had a son as well all in kindergarten. I used to drive and they'd be in the back and I'd just listen to their conversations. One sermon illustration after another.
I loved it. For several weeks, I got to tell you, they talked about the latest rage in kindergarten. I mean the latest thing, the big thing, and the latest rage just so happened to be loose teeth. That was the talk.
That was the talk. They knew everybody in class who had a loose tooth by name. And if they lost that tooth, they'd come in the next morning and that would be that that'd be show and tell. Look at the face right there.
In fact, after the first hour, I have three kids that come up and give me a hug. And the one that came up, it was look at this tooth, Pastor. It's loose. And I could wiggle it.
I mean this is just the badge of growing up, right? It's funny, Marsha and I had a little trouble with our twins. Actually, we had a lot of trouble with our twins, but we had a little trouble with this problem. They were born on the same day and they thought in their minds that everything then should happen at the same time.
It just didn't happen that way. I can remember one of my boys announced his tooth was loose and his brother, our twin son, immediately reached for his and it was not loose. It was panic time. In fact, all night long, he worked on that tooth and he came down at breakfast and announced it's loose and it was.
He'd succeeded. Well, one particular Friday afternoon, we're riding along with that little boy, the three of them. That little boy announced there was a girl in kindergarten that had two loose teeth at the same time.
Oh my goodness, how good could life be? He knew her name and then one of our sons just said, that never happens to me. He said, why does everybody have loose teeth except me?
I had to pull over and do emergency counseling right there on the side of the road. I couldn't help but think that we really don't get far past that, do we? The only thing that changes is the object of our discontent. It isn't loose teeth, it's something else. It's things that we can't hammer down.
It's what we'd like to purchase but can't. It's a home, it's a career, it's a relationship. David, in a sense, is echoing the attitude of Paul who writes, I have learned in whatever situation I am in to be content. Philippians 4.11.
Wow. Whether rich or poor, he goes on to explain, whether appreciated or unappreciated, whether in need or in abundance, whether I've got a loose tooth or none of mine are loose, whatever. You say, wow, I just wish I had that gift of contentment.
It's not a gift. Paul said, I have learned. That kind of learning takes place in a classroom with curriculum more than likely entitled, When God Says No.
Trouble is, we don't want to stay in class long enough to learn it. Here's David with great submission and surrender. Lord, I belong to you. I'm going to wait on you. Your purpose, your plan, your pace. You're ordering my steps.
You've ordered my stop here. You've got something else for me to do. Fourth, respond with praise. Look at this response in verse 22. It's hard to imagine this coming on the heels of Nathan revisiting him and saying, God just said no.
Look at this. You are great, O Lord God, for there is none like you and there is no God beside you. Wait, didn't God just say no? Yes, he did. Isn't he great?
Excuse me. Didn't God just take away your dream? Yeah, but he didn't take away my faith.
There's no God like him. But shouldn't you try to force the locks? Maybe you can batter it down.
Maybe knock harder. No, God has closed this door and I'm waiting on his direction to go in a different way. One author provoked my thinking when he said the difference between waiting on God and wrestling with God is worship. The difference between waiting on God and wrestling with God is worshiping God. And from verse 22 to the end of this chapter, you could spend a week just going through David's declaration of the glory and the greatness and the faithfulness and the grace of God. Respond when God says no with humility, surrender, gratitude, praise.
One more, fifth. Respond with readiness. Readiness. I don't know who said it first, but I've always smiled at the statement that when God shuts a door, he opens a window.
So stay alert. Now the window for David was the opportunity to prepare. He won't be able to dig one footing. He's not going to hammer one nail. He'll never hang one door. But he can prepare for that.
What do you think David did for the next 20 years? Oh, I don't get to hang any doors, hammer any nails, dig any footings. Forget it. I don't want to have anything to do with this temple. Sorry I ever thought about it. Oh no. What do you think he dreamed about? You know, beating some more Philistines over the head?
No. Building the temple of God. It's obvious. By the time you get to 1st Chronicles and David's speech, we're not going to study it, but it'd be a great study where he hands over the blueprints to Solomon. And he announces to the nation all that he's prepared, how he spent the remainder of his life getting ready for this.
You would expect to find the shell of an angry old man, but you don't. In fact, just let me read to you as he dedicates this work as it formally begins. He tells the congregation, he informs Solomon that he has, as they prepare not to build, organized and trained 38,000 priests. Their clothing, their courses, their units, what they'll do. He's trained 6,000 officers who will lead them. He's trained 4,000 gatekeepers who will circulate. He's trained 4,000 people to sing and play musical instruments. They'll all have an instrument.
He has overseen the development and the building of 4,000 musical instruments. He says, with great pains, I have provided for the house of the Lord. I love the fact that he said that because God said no to something he really wanted to do and what God said yes to, he said it was painful.
With great pains, with great care, with great difficulty. He says, I have provided 7,500 tons of gold and 75,000 tons of silver, bronze and iron beyond weighing. There's so much of it. Timber and stone I have provided. Solomon, you have an abundance now of workmen, stonecutters, carpenters, all kinds of craftsmen without number, skilled in working gold, silver, bronze and iron. Arise and work. The Lord be with you.
One author estimated that David had saved up in today's economy somewhere around $5 billion worth of gold and silver. There's no shell of a bitter old man. This is an excited, thrilled man who had accepted God's answer and spent his years preparing in whatever way he could for the work. This is like being excited that you spent 20 years to gather seeds so that somebody else can plant an orchard that will bear fruit you will never taste. Get excited about that. This is a spirit of readiness. God said no to that. Yes to this. I'll focus on what I can do even though God has changed everything.
I want to share, I was driven to the airport on this past Friday by a Word of Life student whose job was to drive the speakers to and from. And I said, what are you planning on doing? And he said, well, I'm doing a lot of thinking about that and things have changed. I said, oh, how? He said, well, a month and a half ago, my father was killed.
I said, how so? He said it was a car accident. My father was a pastor driving a group of students on an activity and on the way back a tire blew and the van flipped and rolled. And my father was killed and I said, I heard about that.
That was your dad. He said, yes. He said, I was studying in New York and now my mother lives here in Florida and my siblings and I'm the man of the house and I'm back here praying about what God has next.
And I said, well, what do you think he has? He said, well, I'm fairly convinced that he wants me to go into the ministry now. I said, oh, you know, carry on your dad's legacy. And he said, yeah. I said, well, how do you feel about that?
He said, I'm really excited. Maybe you've come in here today and you've experienced a change, a shift of some sort. Maybe your view of life is, well, there's got to be something different, something better, something faster, something newer, something more exciting. You're waiting. And there's an open window here and over there.
Oh, but I'm waiting on that door. I found it interesting in my research to come across a survey, a secular survey that interviewed 3000 people, adults, asking them the question, what do you have to live for? That's a penetrating question, isn't it? What do you have to live for? And as I read the answers, this pervasive theme that ran through 90% of their answers had the same idea that they were waiting for something to happen they wanted to see happen. They were all waiting for something they didn't have or something they hoped would take place. For instance, a number of them were living for that moment when they were going to be married. What does life mean for you now?
Well, not much, but I'm going to get married. Others were waiting for children to be born. Others were waiting for their children to leave home. Some were waiting for that long dreamed about trip. Most of them were waiting to retire. The tragedy was that all of them were waiting for something to happen in the future and in the meantime, life meant little in the present.
And the survey summarized with these perceptive words, especially from a secular source, they indeed pointed to the truth of God's wisdom. These people were waiting without realizing that all anyone has is today because yesterday is gone and they may not have tomorrow. Are you waiting for God to change his mind? Are you waiting for God to change the locks on the door? Or for God to stamp your dreams with his approval?
Or like David coming and sitting in the tabernacle in the presence of God and saying, Who am I? Who am I but your servant? You've already been so good to me. What could I do to serve you today here and now in the mundane, in the drudgery of perhaps all of it, in the repetitive cycle of it all? How can I bring you glory here in whatever and wherever you have placed me?
You see, if I could summarize those five words, I would put it this way. Let's respond like David with humility for what he has chosen for you. Respond with surrender to what he has chosen to do through you. Respond with gratitude for what he has chosen to give you. Respond with praise for what he has chosen to receive from you. And respond with readiness for how he has chosen his will to be prepared, organized, or supported, or enabled, or interceded by you for his name, for his glory, for his praise. You might be struggling with humility, God don't you know who I am, rather than I'm just your servant. It might be a struggle of surrender for what he's chosen. Maybe it's a struggle of gratitude and praise. Whatever way the Spirit of God has provoked your heart, take just a moment.
Talk back with him. You're not here by coincidence. This text was determined by him a long time ago. God's no is an opportunity for us to find God's yes and learn what he does want from us. I'm glad you joined us today here on Wisdom for the Heart with Stephen Davey. These broadcasts are the core of our ministry, but we have many other resources to help you grow in God's wisdom. Please take the time to explore our website, wisdomonline.org.
You're going to find all of our resources there and I'm convinced that it'll be a blessing to you. One resource you'll find is our magazine. Each month our magazine includes articles written by Stephen to help you dive deeper into specific topics related to the Christian life. The magazine also has a daily devotional guide that you can use to remain rooted in God's word each day. The magazine is called Heart to Heart.
Rather than me tell you about it, we'd like you to actually see it for yourself. We don't offer a subscription to Heart to Heart magazine. It's a gift that we send to all of our wisdom partners, but we'd be happy to send you an issue if you'd like to see it for yourself. You can sign up for it on our website or you can call us today. Our number is 866-48-BIBLE. That's 866-482-4253. Call today and then join us next time for more wisdom for the hearts.
Whisper: medium.en / 2023-06-21 19:41:23 / 2023-06-21 19:51:59 / 11