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A Son to Me
How do you get on God's good side? That is probably the most important question that a human being can ask. How do you get on God's good side? How do you make sure that God likes you, is okay with you, will tolerate you, will be pleased with you? The late writer A.W. Tozer once said that whatever you think of when you think about God is the most important thing about you. And in response to that, C.S. Lewis quipped, actually, what comes into God's mind when he thinks about you is of far more importance. So how do you make sure that when God thinks of you, he thinks happy things, that he's happy and not upset, that he's going to bless you and not crush you? That's an important question for human beings to ask. And it's a question that's addressed by our text here in 2 Samuel today.
First three verses of 2 Samuel 7 read this way. 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, the ark of God dwells in its hands. And Nathan said to the king, Go, do all that is in your heart, for the Lord is with you. And David, he's sitting here in this house. 2 Samuel 5 tells us that Hiram, king of Tyre, had sent men and materials to build David a house. And now David's house is built. He's living in this house of cedar. And he looks out and he sees something that's incongruous. It doesn't make sense. It doesn't fit together. That here he, a human king, is in this beautiful palace. And there, the Ark of God, the symbol of God's presence with his people, is in a tent made out of curtains. How does that make sense?
And David thinks of himself, and he thinks, you know, who am I? I am a man who was just a boy out in a field, and God has brought him from the field, and he took him to the battlefield where he gave him great success, such that the king himself became jealous of David. And then David was on the run, but God delivered him from that and has now made him king and set him up. And it seems, actually, that this story here in 2 Samuel 7 says, takes place after chapter 8, maybe even at chapter 10, which are retellings of David's wars with the Philistines and the Moabites and Hadad-Ezer, the king of Zobah, and then the Ammonites, and on and on. We hear stories of David's battles in later chapters of 2 Samuel. And it seems that what's about to happen here in 2 Samuel 7 is so important that the author has said, I need to tell this story first. Because here David sits and he's got peace on every side. His wars are over. He's already dwelling securely. God has given him rest. And he's like, I'm at rest here in this beautiful house. But God dwells in a tent.
And David has a very human thought process at this point. I think his desire is right. like we should want to honor god more than we honor ourselves right and and so he wants to build god a house that's at least equal to the house that he's in that would make sense there's there's nothing wrong with that desire but it's also incredibly human in his process of how do i make sure god likes me if we look at The history of the ancient Near East, a thousand years before David, the Sumerians had a king who perceived himself to be blessed by his God. And his response to that was to build a temple for the God so that the God would keep liking him, would keep blessing him. A few hundred years before David, two different instances we have of Egyptian pharaohs who felt that they were blessed by their gods, and so they built great temples in hopes that the gods would keep blessing their family, their line of kings. And then a couple hundred years after David, we see the same thing with the Assyrians, where they feel like their god is blessing them, and so they build a temple in response so that their god would keep blessing them.
But here, David says... Man, God is dwelling in a tent, and I'm in a house. And Nathan, the prophet, essentially the voice of God, is right there with him and says, that's right. You know what? Do everything that's in your heart. God is with you. Go and execute this plan. But then Nathan goes home. And that same night, the word of the Lord came to Nathan, verse 4. 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, that I have been moving about in a tent for my dwelling. In all the 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?
David's heart seems to be in the right place. But God says, I didn't ask for a house, David. I didn't give you any instructions to build me a house. God has been content. God has been happy. Ever since the people were wandering in the desert, and then even as they come into the land of promise and their life there is very topsy-turvy, God is happy to have his ark, the representation of his presence, dwell in a tent just like most of the people no matter what they were going through as they moved around and the ark got moved with them god was not upset by that circumstance god was not saying hey why have you not built me a temple yet god was happy to dwell in the midst of his people and it reminds us of of acts where the apostle paul walks into the areopagus and he looks around at all of the statues to the gods, and he sees that they have a statue to the unknown god in their temple. And he says to them, man, I perceive that you're very religious, but I can tell you about this unknown god. I can tell you about this god who made heaven and earth and everything in it And he's a God that doesn't live in temples made by human hands. He's not a God who's served by human beings as though he needed anything. For he gives to all mankind life and breath and everything.
And that same God that Paul was talking about in Acts 17 is the God who... David is interacting with and is speaking now to Nathan to give David this message in 2 Samuel 7. I don't need a temple, David. It's not necessarily a wrong desire on David's part. God's going to eventually say yes, and Solomon, David's son, will build the temple. But if David thinks he's going to curry favor with the Lord or somehow pay God back by building a temple, God doesn't need us to pay him back for anything. Now, one of the ways that people will often think they can put God in their debt or make God like them is, I'll do such and such a thing for you, God. I'll start going to church more, or I'll give X percent of my income, or I'll do this good thing. I'll help out this poorer person than me, and then God will be okay with me. The whole religions are set up around good things that you can do to pay God back for what you've done wrong or to build up an accumulation of merit. But in the Bible, we never actually earn merit before God. God never owes us anything. And so the idea that we can do things that will make him like us more is ridiculous. There's nothing we can do that will make God like us more than he's already shown.
And then we get to verses 8 through 17. And listen to these verses really carefully. So we believe, 2 Timothy 3, that all scripture is breathed out by God and profitable. It's all useful. That's why we read even chapters like Genesis 29. And Andy's going to have a conversation with me later for having Rory read that passage. But there's value in all of God's word. He gave all of his word to us to teach us. But there are passages in scripture which are of extra importance in helping move the storyline, helping along, helping us to understand what God is doing in the world. And 2 Samuel 7, these verses especially, verses 8 through 17, this is one of these passages that is crucial for understanding the whole Bible and how the whole Bible fits together.
So it says this, 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 the rod of men, with the strikes 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.
There's so much happening here. I probably do like a whole sermon series just on those verses. The first thing to see, though, is the contrast. So David has set out, he has in his heart to build a house for God. And God has just corrected him in verses 4 through 7 and said, I didn't ask you to do that. You're not going to build a house for me. But instead, verse 11 says, The Lord declares to you that the Lord will make you a house. David had wanted to build God a house of stone or a house of cedar. But God says, no, I'm going to build you a house. And he doesn't mean a house of stone or cedar. David already has one of those. But he's going to establish a Davidic dynasty that lasts far longer than anything else in the ancient world. Even taking into account the fact that the Israelites get conquered and carried off into captivity in 587, the fact that kings from David's line sat on the throne, literally, in Jerusalem for over 400 years makes everything else in the ancient world pale in comparison. Very rarely did family dynasties and even the great kingdoms of the ancient world last for more than 100 years. The greatest of the pharaohs, their families, lasted for 250 years before they were conquered. Or there was some kind of insurrection that conquered them from inside. And yet David's family lasts for a long time on the throne.
God is going to establish a house for David. Second, though David is not allowed to build his house, God is going to use his son to build the house. When your days are fulfilled, verse 12, and you lie down with your fathers, I will raise up your offspring after you who shall come from your own body, and I will establish his kingdom. He will build a house for my name, and I will establish the throne of his kingdom forever. And when you look over in the book of Chronicles, we find out that part of the reason God didn't allow David to build a house for him specifically was because David was a man of blood. He was a man of war. And though God didn't have a problem with David being that way, God has blessed David in his victories. For some reason that I don't have a total grasp on, God didn't want that kind of a warrior man to be the one who built his house. And so Solomon is given that task instead.
But here in 2 Samuel, that's not the focus. The reasons that David's not allowed to are not the focus. The focus is that God is going to build you a house rather than you building him a house. The focus isn't on David, what can you do for God? The focus is on what God has done and will keep doing for you. The focus is on God's love for and building of the family and dynasty of David. We see this is an important pivot point in Israel's history. So the language that God uses in verse 2, 9. And I will make for you a great name, like the name of the great ones of the earth. That's picking up on language that God had used with Abram in Genesis chapter 12. That he called him out from his nation and sent him to a new land. And he said, I will make of you a great nation. I will make you a great name. And in you, all the families of the earth will be blessed. And that same kind of language is picked up here.
and then when god says that your son verse 14 so this son who comes from david's line from his body i will be to him a father and he shall be to me a son so god had called abram out and and set him apart as his own people and then those people had gone down into or getting close to there in genesis where they're taken down into Egypt and then God brings them out. And the language that God uses there in the time of the Exodus and then in the prophets is that out of Egypt, I called my son. The whole nation of Israel was referred to collectively as the son of God. But here that that gets narrowed down to not just So there was a promise to all of the people of Israel through their father, Abram, and they were called out as the son of God. In Genesis 49, there's a promise that there will be a ruler who comes from Judah, the tribe of Judah. David is of the tribe of Judah. And here, God is saying that a king from David's line in the tribe of Judah will be himself a son of God.
And one of the changes that we see is that the previous leaders of Israel, all through the period of the judges, were basically just a reflection of the people. They were all a mess. God would raise them up to do some mighty task. But if you read through Judges, even the people that we think of as great heroes, Samson, Gideon, not exactly great models of godliness. They are train wrecks. And they just reflect what the people of Israel were like. And... And God is responding in those times. He's punishing and delivering the people in response to the sin and the repentance of the nation as a whole. But then as we move into the books of Kings, which follow directly after Samuel in chronological order, the way that God deals with the whole people is a reflection of the leadership of the kings. And so God will punish the people for the sins of the king, or he will spare the people for the repentance of the king.
You see the specific example of this actually still in 2 Samuel, last chapter. I'm going to preach this at LBC tonight, actually. 2 Samuel 24, David sinfully conducts a census. We don't know specifically what the sin is. There's probably pride. But God kills 70,000 of the people of Israel because of David's sin. And then God stays in the hand of the angel of death in response to David's repentance and pleas for mercy. And what we see with the Davidic covenant is this shift from God responding to the nation as a whole to them being identified with the Davidic king. And where they stood with God was largely, and there was still individual responsibility before God, but the way that the nation was dealt with was through the covenant head of the people. Just as in Adam we all sin, Romans 5 says, that in Adam we're all held guilty.
So now the people of Israel were relating to God largely through the headship of the king. And this becomes very important for us. This isn't just like Will going on a random theology rant about the Old Testament. This is incredibly important for us because when we come to the New Testament, Jesus is identified as the son of David and the son of God. And even in that phrase, son of God, I'd This is one of those things that I read somewhere and I knew, but just thinking about 2 Samuel 7 this week has really just impressed on me, like, wow, this is super important. When Jesus calls himself the Son of God in the New Testament, he is making a claim to divinity, to deity. That's why in John 8 they want to kill him, because he's claiming to be equal with God. But he is also, by saying he is the Son of God, he's claiming to be this greater Son of David, who carries on the tradition of David's line, and he's therefore the king who is legitimate to sit on the throne of Israel. The claim to be the Son of God is the claim to be the Messiah, the Savior that the people are waiting for. This would have been really front and center for the minds of the people of Israel in Jesus' day.
Because God makes this promise to David, he shall build a house for my name, and I will establish the throne of his kingdom forever. Verse 16, and your house and your kingdom shall be made sure forever before me. Your throne shall be established forever. Like I said, David's throne was established in Jerusalem for a long time. 400 years is a really long time, but it's something short of forever, right? 400 years is long, but it's not forever. So for God's promise to the people to come through, somebody from David's line had to come to be a king forever. And this is the promise of the prophets. Isaiah 40-55, the song of the suffering servant, and the servant of the Lord, not just the suffering servant. There's several servant songs there in Isaiah 40-55. But there's a promise that there's one who's coming who is of David's line, who is from the stump of Jesse, who is a shoot from the root of David. And he's going to come and fulfill the promises to David to be a king forever.
The author of the book of Hebrews, when he's talking in chapter 1 about how much superior Jesus is to the angels... For to which of the angels did God ever say, I will be to him a father and he will be to me a son? That's taken straight out of 2 Samuel 7. This promise to David matters because it's only in this Davidic king that salvation can be found. And it's in being identified with him and his right standing with God that that we can be right with God. So what I just had said there a little earlier about God starts relating to the people based on the king's relationship with him. For us, to be right with God is only possible if we are identified with the right king.
When Jesus came as the son of David, the son of Abram, the son of Adam, the son of God... He comes as true God and true man, the representative king over Israel. And Israel was called out among the nations to be the nation that related to God, in a sense, as priests on behalf of the nations to God. And so Jesus, as coming as the true Israelite, is coming as the representative of all humanity. And so when he goes to the cross... We see a fulfillment even here in verse 14. I will be to him a father and he will be to me a son. Now verse 14 says when he commits iniquity, I will discipline him with the rod of men and with the strikes of the sons of men. Jesus didn't ever commit any iniquity, right? He never committed any sin. But as our representative, as our head, He took our iniquity, and he took our sins, and he was beaten not just with the rod of men and the strikes of the sons of men, but he took God's stripes. He took God's punishment for our sin, and as our head, he sucked up all of the wrath and the anger of God against us.
And then verse 15, my steadfast love will not depart from him, as I took it from Saul, whom I put away before you. And David, there's no way David understands all of the implications of this, right? But he seems, as he responds to this message from God, that you're not going to build a house for me, but I'm going to build a house for you, and I'm going to make your son my son. And David recognizes that this isn't something he earned, this isn't something he could do. Seven times in this passage, we'll read through it, but seven times, David says, in the ESV it's translated, O Lord God. In the NIV it's Sovereign Lord. That phrase, it's kind of clunky to get into English. It's Yahweh Adonai. Yahweh is the personal name for God, and normally in our English Bibles it's translated capital L, capital O, capital R, capital D. And then Adonai is the title for Lord or Master or King. And it's normally translated capital L, lowercase, O-R-D. So if they were to stay consistent, it would be Lord, Lord. But that would just confuse us, right? So they use these different phrases, Lord God or sovereign Lord.
But what David is doing is he's relating to God personally. He's calling God by his personal name. But he's also recognizing that I am underneath of you. I am your servant, David. And you are my master, you are my Lord God, and you have made me these promises.
Verse 20, And what more can David say to you? For you know your servant David, O Lord God, because of your promise and according to your own heart. You have brought about all this greatness to make your servant know it. Therefore you are great, O Lord God. There is none like you. There is no God besides you, according to all that we have heard with our ears.
And who is like your people Israel, the one nation on earth whom God went to redeem to be his people, making himself a name and doing for them great and awesome things by driving out before your people whom you redeemed for yourself from Egypt, a nation and its gods. And you established for yourself your people Israel to be your people forever. And you, O Lord, became their God.
And now, O Lord God, confirm forever the word that you have spoken concerning your servant and concerning his house, and do as you have spoken. And your name will be magnified forever, saying, The Lord of hosts is God over Israel, and the house of your servant David will be established before you. For you, O Lord of hosts, the God of Israel, have made this revelation to your servant, saying, I will build you a house. Therefore your servant has found courage to pray this prayer to you.
And now, O Lord God, you are God, and your words are true, and you have promised this good thing to your servant. Now therefore may it please you to bless the house of your servant, so that it may continue forever before you. For you, O Lord God, have spoken, and with your blessing shall the house of your servant be blessed forever.
Now David what he does here is he receives gladly the promise of God and it's interesting then in verse 29 he turns around and he prays that back to God as a prayer you've promised this to me God and I know it's true. Now, please do it. Now, therefore, may it please you to bless the house of your servants so that it may continue forever before you. God's just promised that to him. David's just said, I believe your promise. You are going to do it. But then he requests God, please do what you've said.
And to come back to where we started, how do we make sure we're on the right side with God and make sure that God is pleased with us? Well, we look at what he's already done in showing us his love in Christ. And we receive what he's done as the free gift that it is. And we say, Lord Jesus, thank you for dying for me. Father God, thank you for loving the world, including me, so much that you gave your only son. Thank you, Jesus, that you rule and reign and have authority in heaven and on earth to forgive sins, including my sins.
And then we turn around and we take that gift that we've received, that promise from God, and we pray it back to him. And we can pray, like 1 John 1 says, We can know we have right standing with God, not because of anything in us, but because we are identified with the greater son of David. We are identified with the son of God. And for all of those who trust in him, John 1.12 says, he gives the right, the right, the power, the authority to be children of God.
We can know that we are gods, that we are loved by him, that we are treasured by him. If we cling to Christ and put our hope fully in him. And we just, when we doubt, we take that back to God and say, Lord, I know what you have promised. And I know that Jesus has the power to deliver on that promise. Help me to trust and keep me. Keep me yours until the end.
Would you pray? Father God, we thank you that you are God forever. Because you are God forever, we can trust you forever. There's no limit to what you can do. There's no limit to how much sin you can forgive. There's no limit to how great your mercy and your grace are. In the words of the song that we often sing, your... Our sins are many. Your mercy is more. Marvelous grace of our loving Lord. Grace that exceeds our sin and our guilt.
Father, help us to cling to Christ who is the author and the finisher of our faith. The son of David who sits with all power in heaven and on earth right now at your right hand and will come again one day to rule and to reign and to judge. Thank you that for all of those who are in Christ, there's no condemnation because we are in the safe grasp of his hand and our sins are covered by his blood and we have victory in him. We pray these things in Jesus' name. Amen.
