Listen or read the following transcript as D. A. Carson speaks on the topic of Redemptive History from 2 Samuel 7
My brief this weekend is to talk about certain turning points in redemptive history. There are so many of them. In many ways, it would be nice to have about 14 addresses rather than four. I didn’t say anything about creation; I started with the fall. Then one really needs to say something about the flood and certainly about the call of Abraham and then the particular appointment of Joseph to become prime minister of Egypt and all that that entails.
Certainly the rise of Moses, the exodus, the giving of the Law at Sinai, entrance into the Promised Land, and so forth. Many of these are highly significant turning points in the entire history of redemption, all of which contribute to our understanding of what God’s purposes are in bringing us finally to Jesus Christ.
With only four sessions, I want to choose four that are of extraordinary importance, and this certainly would fall into that category. It’s important to locate ourselves now. Creation, fall, and then catastrophic judgment at the flood. With the race multiplying again, God intervenes with one man and his family to create a new race, the race of Israel. So Abraham, the patriarchs.
Then sinking into slavery in Egypt. Then God calls forth his people and gives them the Law, enters into a massive covenant with them that introduces them to a systematic priesthood, a systematic sacrificial system, a systematic worship system that brings the people together for the high festivals of the year that teach them something about sacrifice, the need for mediation, to be restored to fellowship with this God, the seriousness of sin inevitably issuing in death.
Yet at the same time, the people themselves cycle down in the Promised Land in perverse circles of rebellion until God sends forth a judge and restores them again and they cycle down again and then they’re restored again. That is where we are just a few decades before these chapters. The people inevitably, sooner or later, cry out for some form of stable government.
After all, God had already promised that sooner or later they would have a king. He had done so in Deuteronomy. Now when they want a king, they want a king not so they can really be faithful to God. They want a king so they can be like the pagan nations all around them, which have kings. God gives them a king.
On the surface, this looks like a strapping good choice, but we all know what happens to Saul. Then God in his mercy takes the initiative and gives another king, a man after God’s own heart. He’s on the run for quite a few years, but eventually he is crowned by the people in the south, in Judah. He reigns in Hebron in the south and in due course, the entire nation comes under his rule.
Two chapters back, he had taken Jerusalem, which still belonged to the Jebusites, some of the local Canaanites, and then finally the ark of the covenant. Thus in principle, the tabernacle itself was brought into Jerusalem, which then became, in effect, the capital city. That is all recorded in chapter 6, the city of the king, the city of the tabernacle.
That’s the background that brings us to this place. In some ways, that is already very significant. For the first time, we are beginning to meld together two streams that finally issue in Jesus Christ: the priestly sacrificial stream and the kingly stream. Eventually we discover that Jesus is the sacrifice and he’s the priest and he’s the temple and he’s the king and he’s the prophet.
Already some of these streams begin to meld together in Old Testament history. Here is the first bringing together of king and tabernacle and temple. Perhaps we may most profitably grasp the significance of this chapter, 2 Samuel 7, if we trace out to the thought in three points.
1. A king with religious initiatives restrained.
Verses 1–7. There is something initially attractive about David’s suggestion in verses 1 and 2. “After the king was settled in his palace and the Lord had given him rest from all his enemies around him, he said to Nathan the prophet, ‘Here I am, living in a palace of cedar, while the ark of God remains in a tent.’ ”
David was doubtless an active, energetic man. He knew that his enemies were largely subdued and he looked around for new things to do. Thematically, verses 1 and 2 clearly follow on chapter 6. The ark has been brought up to Jerusalem. Now David wants to provide appropriate accommodation for it. Moreover, this is entirely in line with antecedent Scripture. Deuteronomy 12:10 and 11 envisages a central sanctuary someday.
Moses addressing the people of God before they enter into the Promised Land says, “But you will cross the Jordan and settle in the land the Lord your God is giving you as an inheritance, and he will give you rest from all your enemies around you so that you will live in safety. Then to the place the Lord your God will choose as a dwelling for his Name—there you are to bring everything I command you.” That is, all the prescribed sanctuaries. God goes on in verses 13 and 14 of Deuteronomy 12:
“Be careful not to sacrifice your burnt offerings anywhere you please. Offer them only at the place the Lord will choose.” So there is sanction already from Scripture in a central site. David may even have thought that by building this temple he would be helping to establish a steady, central site that couldn’t be moved about like the tabernacle, which had seen its share of misfortunes and mobility in the previous chapters.
Moreover, David’s reasoning in verse 2 has something noble about it. “Here I am living in a wonderful place, a palace, and the ark of God, the place where God manifests his great glory when the high priest enters in once a year to offer blood … It’s in a small tent. There’s something wrong with that.”
His reasoning is not cast as empire building as in many ancient Near-Eastern rulers who wanted to build huge temples for their gods so they could not be judged culturally inferior and so that their own dynasties would be preserved. There is a lot of ancient literature along those lines, but David is not in that camp.
No, David thinks there is something ignoble about comfort and pomposity for himself while the Lord’s manifest presence is in nothing more than a tent. Moreover, David is willing to pour some money into this project, we’re told. Rich people who are stingy and tight with their purse strings when it comes to any Christian project will not find David among them.
Moreover, Nathan the prophet agrees. Verse 3: “Nathan replied to the king, ‘Whatever you have in mind, go ahead and do it, for the Lord is with you.’ ” As far as Nathan is concerned, he doesn’t even have to consult the Almighty on this one. Probably Nathan is some sort of court prophet, but yet with enough independence that he can turn around and rebuke the king, as he does some chapters later.
Here he blessed the project without consulting the Almighty, probably because the project is transparently good. David himself was transparently under the blessing of God. Then the Lord intervenes. “That night, the Word of the Lord came to Nathan.” Nathan, it transpires, had been a mite hasty. What does God say?
“Go and tell my servant David, ‘This is what the Lord says: Are you the one to build me a house to dwell in? I have not dwelt in a house from the day I brought the Israelites up out of Egypt to this day. I have been moving from place to place with a tent as my dwelling. Wherever I have moved with all the Israelites, did I ever say to any of their rulers whom I commanded to shepherd my people Israel, “Why have you not built me a house of cedar?” ’ ”
So permission to build the proposed temple is denied. Denied, at least, to David. We’re told that God Almighty doesn’t need such a shelter. That he hadn’t used one up to this point. Moreover, it transpires that there is still more settling of the restless tribes all around them. There is still some more rest to be gained from the enemies in 11a.
Elsewhere, we’re told further that David is a man of war. He’s not the one who should build this temple. In short, this wasn’t the time. David wasn’t the man. Above all, the drumming overtone of this passage is that God alone prescribes what is rightful worship. God alone prescribes when the temple will be built, where it will be built, by what it will be built, and by whom it will be built.
If the temple is to be built, God will disclose the how and the when and the where and the by whom. There are two applications that we should absorb immediately. The first one is the easier one, although the second one is the more important. The easy one is this: at the personal level, it is very important for Christians, not least Christian leaders, many of whom are here, not to think of the Lord’s work as something about thinking up great, glorious plans of conquest.
It doesn’t mean that we’re supposed to think small. That’s not the point. It does mean that you don’t enter the Lord’s service by saying, “You know what? I’m going to be the next George Whitefield. I’m going to be the next Billy Graham. I’m going to build the world’s greatest seminary. I’m going to build a wonderful convention.”
Almost all who try, fail. What you learn to do in Christian service is to be faithful in small matters, keep thinking at the basics, and trying to be faithful, and then some works the Lord blesses abundantly. I was recently in another country that shall remain nameless to protect the guilty. This is a country where evangelicalism, gospel-centeredness, is pretty weak.
Almost everywhere it’s suffused with a kind of sentimental glow that has no biblical faithfulness to it. Lots of warmth and enthusiasm but no stamina. In the university circles where I was doing some work, you couldn’t get the university students in any of the campuses to actually invite people to meetings or share their faith.
They were happy to come together for a Bible conference and sing a lot of choruses and be very happy together and pious, but they couldn’t rub two theological thoughts together and they certainly couldn’t witness to any of their friends. They weren’t sure they wanted to. It was one of the most depressing situations I’ve been in for a long time.
The IFES worker who’s responsible for all of this work across the nation with a variety of staff people was tearing out his hair. He didn’t have a clue what to do with this. It had taken him about 10 years to figure out there was a problem, but now that he had seen the problem, he really didn’t know what to do. “How am I going to turn this thing around?”
I confess I said to him, “You don’t even try. What you do is you start with one campus. You teach the gospel faithfully there. You beg the Lord for some solid conversions there. You ignore all the rest. Let them go and clap their hands. You get on with winning some men and women to Jesus Christ and train them to think biblically and love God massively and obey without question.
As you train a small group, you bring some of the leaders of that group with you. Let them watch you. After a couple of times, you let them do it and you watch them. It might take you three or four years to get seven or eight people like this. Then you keep letting it grow and letting it grow and move from campus to campus. In 20 years, God bless you, you will see this thing transformed.”
There is a great deal in Christian witness that begins with the basics faithfully, honestly, compassionately, lovingly done rather than with a big scheme to turn everything around. That’s very important. But there’s something far more important going on here. At the level of God’s purposes in the entire history of redemption, where did human beings ever take the initiative?
In the garden, did the human beings start saying, “Well, now we’ve made such a mess of it, I think this is the plan that we’ll follow to get ourselves out.” Then after the flood when there’s rising sin everywhere, does Abraham volunteer and say, “Well God, if you’d like the head of a whole new race so that we can have a new covenantal people, I’ll volunteer.”
Is that what happens? Then eventually the people fall into slavery in Egypt. Moses is upset, so he thinks he will take the initiative. We all know what happened to that. God won’t have it. He won’t have that kind of “I’ll take charge” sort of attitude amongst his would-be leaders. He’s banished to the back side of the desert where he learns to be a shepherd.
Then when God is ready to use him, Moses isn’t quite sure he wants to be used. Then when the time comes for God to raise up a king, does a great hero come forward and volunteer? No, God chooses a shepherd boy who’s out in the fields watching the sheep. Then later on when Jerusalem is about to fall and Ezekiel out in captivity already in exile is pulling out his hair in despair wondering how God will ever keep his promises about Jerusalem and about the Davidic line …
“If this city falls, if this line falls, what’s the hope for the future?” God says, “Ezekiel, you don’t understand. Jerusalem is so wicked. The people are so evil, worse than all the nations around them. Judgment is pronounced upon them. It will fall. They will be destroyed. That’s the end of it. Don’t argue with me. The real remnant is with you, Ezekiel. It’s with you. I’ll bring back some of them.”
At every major point in redemptive history, God does what nobody expects. When some people try to take the initiative and take hold, the way Moses does, God won’t have it. When you come to the book of Acts, do you find a committee sitting down this side of the resurrection and Pentecost saying, “Well, now, you know we’ve got this Great Commission. First of all Jerusalem, then Judea, then Samaria, then the ends of the earth. Step one: Select a committee. Better do some Bible translation.”
It just doesn’t work like that. It’s not as if there’s no consciousness of the commission that’s drumming in the background. The various apostles can on occasion speak of the love of God compelling us, for we thus judge that if one died for all, then all are dead. There is an urgency to evangelism. Yet it is not riding on the back of some glorious machination.
Somebody has well said that the book the Acts of the Apostles would be better named the Acts of the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit goes ahead of the people again and again and again, takes turns and twists and opens up doors and transforms lives at just the right moment. Do you find Peter saying, “Boy, oh boy, I’ve got to find me a few Gentiles here?”
No, you find him up on the top of a roof having to have several visions before he’s even going to have a meal with one of them. There again it is God who is breaking down the barriers, dragging along his people in God’s massive purposes of redemptive history. So also here. It’s not as if all of David’s instincts are bad. That’s not it.
But God will not share his glory with another. God alone is God, and in the great purposes of redemptive history at every single, solitary point, God takes the initiative. It is God’s plan. Sometimes massively surprising, but always it is God’s plan, God’s effect, God’s intervention, God’s instruction, God’s design, God’s perfect plan, until we finally come to Jesus Christ.
2. A dynasty with unending promise disclosed.
Verses 8–17. If God has squashed David’s proposal, and he has, the least that must be said is that God lets David down very gently. More precisely, he counters David’s plan with a magnificent plan of his own. Verse 8: “Now then, tell my servant David, ‘This is what the Lord Almighty says: I took you from the pasture and from following the flock to be ruler over my people Israel.
I have been with you wherever you have gone, and I have cut off all your enemies from before you. Now I will make your name great, like the names of the greatest men of the earth. And I will provide a place for my people Israel and will plant them so that they can have a home of their own and no longer be disturbed.
Wicked people will not oppress them anymore, as they did at the beginning and have done ever since the time I appointed leaders over my people Israel. I will also give you rest from all your enemies. The Lord declares to you that the Lord himself will establish a house for you.’ ” Of course, the argument turns in part on the ambivalent word house.
David wants to build a house; that is, a temple, a structure, a building. But the word house can mean household; that is, a dynasty. So that although David wants to build a house for God, God says, “No, not you. In fact, it’s just the reverse. I’m going to build a house for you, a dynasty.” He says some very important things in this respect.
Verse 9. He will give him a great name, like the names of the very greatest. Almost certainly the allusion is to Abraham in Genesis, chapter 12, verse 2, where God promises to give him a great name, for in him all the nations of the earth will be blessed. David will have that kind of name. That has already come to pass, for we serve great David’s greater son.
Moreover, he promises that there will be more struggles as more of the tribes are put to rest. Eventually, God also will give his people rest from all their enemies, at the end of 11a. This too picks up a massive theme that comes rolling through the Scriptures. God had promised his people in ancient times a land of rest, a land of milk and honey.
In due course, Joshua led the people into the land of rest. Still there are some skirmishes and David has to quell the remaining foes. God says that there is more rest that they are to secure. Then later on God says, in Psalm 95, “Do not turn away from me as your forefathers did when they first entered the Promised Land. (Or they first tried to.) No, no, no. Today do not harden your heart, and I will give you rest.”
He says this to the Jews who are already in the land, which suddenly means entering into the Promised Land wasn’t the ultimate rest. If God is still promising rest to the Jews that were already in the land of rest, then entering into the land of rest isn’t the ultimate rest. Entering into the land of rest is only a marker of the ultimate rest. It’s an anticipation of the ultimate rest.
That observation, the writer to the Hebrews makes in chapters 3 and 4 of Hebrews. “If God is still promising rest after the people have got into the Promised Land, then the Promised Land was not the ultimate rest.” Then Jesus comes along and says, “Take my yoke and learn of me. I will give you rest.” Uh-huh.
“There remains, therefore, a rest for the people of God,” the writer to the Hebrews says. “A rest in which we rest from our labors, a rest in which we enter into the rest of God, a rest that is enjoyed by Christians even now and yet is climaxed only in the new heaven and the new earth.” Already there are overtones.
“Wicked people will not oppress them anymore, as they did at the beginning and have done ever since the time I appointed leaders over my people Israel. I will also give you rest from all your enemies.” Above all, the Lord will build a house for David, a dynasty. That’s the main theme of this massive oracle.
Verse 12: “When your days are over and you rest with your fathers …” There is an individual rest even in death. “… I will raise up your offspring to succeed you, who will come from your own body, and I will establish his kingdom. He is the one who will build a house for my Name, and I will establish the throne of his kingdom forever. I will be his father, and he will be my son.”
Is this a reference to Jesus? Well, hang on. “When he does wrong, I will punish him with a rod of men, with floggings inflicted by men.” The immediate referent here is clearly Solomon. What David remembers is that the king just before him was Saul. Saul’s dynasty lasted precisely one generation.
That wasn’t all that uncommon in ancient times. You would get some kind of dynasty that would last one generation, two generations, three generations, and then the local military hero would take over, bump you off, put his own people in charge, and he would start up a new dynasty. In fact, once the kingdom of Israel was divided, in the south the Davidic dynasty kept on going, but in the north they had assassination after assassination after assassination.
There were many different dynasties set up in the north. It was a perilous burden to be progeny of a king in the ancient world. But God says, “Unlike what happened to Saul, my love will never be taken away from your son as I took it away from Saul, whom I removed from before you. No, no,” God says. Verse 14: “I will be his father, and he will be my son.”
We need to think about that. Son very often in Scripture is a functional category. It is not describing the kind of sonship in the genetic sense that we speak of it today but in a more functional sense. We see that, for example, in the Beatitudes of Jesus. “Blessed are the peacemakers for they shall be called sons of God.”
What that means is God is the supreme peacemaker, and insofar as we make peace as well, we’re acting like God so we must be sons of God. The metaphor derives from the fact that in the ancient world most daughters did what their mothers did and most sons ended up doing what their fathers did.
If your father’s a baker, you become a baker. Your father’s a violin maker; you become a violin maker. Your father’s a farmer; you become a farmer. That’s the way it is. We’ve forgotten how universal that was in the independence we have gained in an industrialized world. But because of that obvious fact of life in an ancient agrarian and handcraft society, you could say, “Like father, like son.”
Similarly, in the divine realm. If God’s a peacemaker and you start making peace, then clearly in this respect you’re like God. So already in Exodus 4, God says, “Israel is my firstborn son.” He says to Pharaoh, “And I say, ‘Let my son go, that he might worship me.’ ” For Israel is to be like God, not in every respect, but holy as God is holy, honoring him, obeying his precepts and commands, showing what a holy God is like to the nations.
He is to be God’s son. Ultimately, the king was to be God’s son. God’s son in a narrower sense yet, more tightly tied to God. When God says, “Today I have begotten you,” or “Today I have become your father,” that is the point where the king is elevated to the throne. It was an enthronement statement. At this point the king is to be under God’s sovereignty, God’s vassal-king to rule over his people, God’s son to reflect God to the people.
That is, in very large part, what Psalm 2 is about. We’ll come back to it later. Let me read you a few verses. “Why do the nations conspire and the peoples plot in vain? The kings of the earth take their stand and the rulers gather together against the Lord and against his Anointed One …” That is his Messiah, his King.
“ ‘Let us break their chains,’ they say, ‘and throw off their fetters.’ The One enthroned in heaven laughs; the Lord scoffs at them. Then he rebukes them in his anger and terrifies them in his wrath, saying, ‘I have installed my King on Zion, my holy hill.’ ” Now the king speaks. “I will proclaim the decree of the Lord: He said to me, ‘You are my Son; today I have become your Father.’ ” Thus the installation of the son as king in Zion is the installation of the king on Zion. The begetting of the son is the installation of the king.
This figure now is to represent God, to show what God is like. So now with respect to the Davidic dynasty, God says, “David, your dynasty is not just going to fade away the way Saul’s did. No, the one who comes from your own body, I will establish the throne of his kingdom. I will be his father. He will be my son. Moreover, when he does do something wrong, I will punish him. I will punish him with the rod of men, with floggings inflicted by men, but my love will never be taken away from him.”
His promise is unconditional. God will keep the dynasty going. What a relief that must’ve been to David. How long will it keep going? Ahh. Now you have a difference from all other ancient Near Eastern religions where their gods often promise dynastic continuity of some sort to their kings. What does God say in verse 16?
“Your house and your kingdom will endure forever before me; your throne will be established forever.” If you take this language seriously, it can mean only one of two things: either one king succeeds another that succeeds another that succeeds another and there’s no end to such succession or eventually there is a king who lasts forever, who rules forever.
Now you can understand why some of the rulers at the time when Jerusalem was encircled by the Babylonian hordes somehow thought that they were immune from destruction. God had promised the Davidic line would not be destroyed. Even though God was now saying, “This line is coming down. It’s coming off the throne. Jerusalem will be destroyed. The temple will be razed.”
Some of them said, “Oh yes, yes, yes. But we believe the Bible, and God says in the Bible the Davidic line will be continued.” Yet there is still a grander horizon to remind ourselves of in the Bible. After this point, there are many passages where God promises ultimately a Messiah from David’s line, many, many passages.
But there are also passages in which God himself comes down and promises to bare his arm and rescue the people immediately. “I will rend the heavens and come down. I will rescue my people.” In a few passages, those two themes come together. The ultimate hope is God himself. The ultimate hope is a King in David’s line.
Then at Christmas we read the words, “For to us a child is born, to us a son is given. The government will be on his shoulder.” On the one hand we are told, “He will reign on the throne of his father David.” On the other hand we are told, “He shall be called Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace.” These two great streams of promise begin to come together.
Or again in Ezekiel 34, God says, berating the false religious leaders of the day, “They’re merely false shepherds who want to fleece the flock. They’re not interested in the sheep, not really. So I will come and I will be a shepherd to these sheep. I will nurture them. I will lead them out into good pastureland. I will water them. I will lead them into safe pasturage. I will even discern between good sheep and bad sheep. I will be the shepherd of these people.”
About 25 times in about 20 verses God says that sort of thing. He gets to the very end of it and he says, “I will send forth my servant David to be the shepherd of the people.” Here is a dynasty then with unending promise, a dynasty whose significance becomes clearer and clearer as you work through the Old Testament, with God himself bound up in it and yet still from David’s line.
You can understand why there were so many shattered hopes when suddenly there was no longer after 587 BC a king on the throne. The people were scattered. Then after the years of exile, the people came back and there was still no king on the throne. None. There were various petty governors. There were various priests.
War between the Seleucids in the north and the Ptolemies in the South. Struggle going back and forth. Guerrilla fighters in the hills. Eventually the Romans in the middle of the century before Christ, they took over and still there is no Davidic king, though the records were still kept. The records were still kept in the temple.
People knew who descended from what line. Nowadays it would be impossible to prove that any Jew descended from the line of David. There are too many breaks in the records. Impossible to prove anywhere. You could guess that someone with the name of Cohen, for example, came from the line of Levi, for kohen means priest in Hebrew, but you couldn’t prove today that somebody came from the line of David.
In the first century, you still could. The first-century historian Josephus talks about the careful records maintained in the temple. Still the people saw no king. Then Jesus comes, very God of very God and in the line of David. Now it is very important that we pause for a moment here and think a bit about kingship for us to feel the impact of this.
I’m a Canadian. Now I live in the US, a kind of missionary to the Yanks. In America, part of American mythology … It’s different from both Canadian mythology and Australian mythology. American mythology is heavily bound up with the Pilgrim fathers wanting religious freedom. So they moved to the Promised Land, in effect.
Eventually, they built a constitution where they established a republic and a democracy. When you read the Federalist Papers, which were the discussion papers around the Founding Fathers as they tried to think through what a democracy should look like, they did not say, “What we need is a democracy because the opinion of the people is right.”
They didn’t say that. The Founding Fathers were afraid of too much populist opinion. They restricted the vote to men, to property owners, because they had an investment in the community. Certainly no blacks, no slaves. Moreover, they wanted congress and they wanted those who voted for the president to be a little distant from the actual voters, because voters could be turned on by a flash argument or turned off by a flash argument.
They wanted something a little more stable than that. They didn’t think that the people were always wise or right. They merely wanted a mechanism somehow that was responsible to all the people and not to some arbitrary king like George III sitting in England insisting on taxes on their tea. All of that has changed in the contemporary notion of democracy.
In the contemporary notion of democracy, whether in Australia or in Canada or in Britain or in America, there is scarcely a major politician who does not appeal to the wisdom of the people. When the vote goes the other way, “The people have spoken.” While they’re building up toward the election, “Well the Australian people think that …” Similarly in America.
Now we’re getting set in another year and a half for another presidential race. It goes on and on and on and on like the babbling brook. “For men may come and men may go. But I go on for ever.” Now we’ll hear both sides saying, “Well the American people think … We appeal to the American people and the wisdom of the American people.”
That’s not what the populists thought, that’s not what the leaders thought with the Federalist Papers. They were afraid of the people. They merely wanted some sort of mechanism for turfing the blighters out every few years. They were afraid of too much power in any sector. Somehow in the Western world we have gradually absorbed a notion that there is more wisdom if you have a lot of people voting.
You might just get more selfishness or the loudest voice. The squeaky wheel gets the grease, the most influential lobby. It doesn’t guarantee righteousness or integrity. America’s very suspicious of kings. So is Australia, but for slightly different reasons. Your mythology is not bound up with religious liberty, but it’s scarcely bound up with a massive love of kings, either.
So when we do think of kings today … You in the Commonwealth, I in the Commonwealth. I don’t know how long either of us will be in the Commonwealth, but at the moment in the Commonwealth, sharing a common monarch, Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II. We don’t think of a monarch as having great influence and power over our lives.
We think of a constitutional monarch: nicely limited, very good at pomp and ceremony, but with relatively little influence beyond that. Over against constitutional monarchy, we set democracy. When we come to a passage like this about God setting up a king, there’s nothing that resonates within us saying, “Yes, yes, that’s what we want!” Have I misread you?
What we need to see is that the reason why kings are so bad in history so often is because dear old Lord Acton in the nineteenth century was right. All power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely. Even good kings so often turn out to be bad kings. If not, their kids do. If not, their grandkids do. We want some other means, some way of turfing blighters out.
We don’t want anybody to have too much power. Tyranny rules otherwise. But suppose you could have God as King. Suppose the King knew everything. Suppose the King were perfectly just. Suppose every action the King took was right. Suppose this King could never be deceived. Suppose this King transformed men and women by his grace.
Suppose this King established righteousness. Suppose this King punished all unrighteousness. Would you not want this king? Now you understand what is being meant at the end of the book of Judges. “Again and again and again everyone did that which was right in their own eyes. There was no king in Israel. Oh God, give us a king.”
Except the whole kingly dynasty went corrupt. The king wasn’t good enough, until we come to Jesus, this King who rules with all of his perfections and adds to all of his kingly authority his own heart of a servant that leads him to the cross. Do you not want to say then with the people of God, “Oh God, give us a king. Be our king.”
3. A king with spectacular privileges humbled.
Verses 18–29: “Then King David went in and sat before the Lord …” Presumably in the tent shrine that David had made for the ark in 6:17, “… and he said: ‘Who am I, O Sovereign Lord, and what is my family, that you have brought me this far? And as if this were not enough in your sight, O Sovereign Lord, you have also spoken about the future of the house of your servant. Is this your usual way of dealing with man, O Sovereign Lord?’ ”
That last sentence is rendered in a variety of ways in our English translation, but I do think this is right. David is in massive awe. His response is lovely. David moreover sees this gift is all from grace. Verses 20 and 21. “What more can David say to you? For you know your servant, O Sovereign Lord.” If it’s not from me, where’s it from? What’s it for? “For the sake of your word and according to your will, you have done this great thing and made it known to your servant.”
If it is not according to David’s merit, why then it must be for the sake of God’s word and according to God’s will. Listen carefully to this strange wording in verse 21. It does not say, “For by your word and according to your will, you have done this great thing.” That would suggest that God’s word was the agent by which it came to pass.
God said that a certain thing would be and it was. There are lots of passages that talk like that. But this passage does not say, “For by your word and according to your will, you have done this great thing,” but rather, “For the sake of your word and according to your will, you have done this great thing.”
It’s as if David is wise enough to grasp that God has done it this way so that when the temple is built and when the Davidic line goes on, men and women will see that it is the Word of God that has established it. It is for the sake of God’s own Word, for the sake of the manifestation of God’s own effective action that it is done this way. According to God’s will, but for the sake of God’s word, so that no glory can go back to David or to David’s spontaneous desire to build a house.
No, for the sake of God’s Word. That God’s Word will be honored. That God’s Word will be worshipped. That God’s word will be appreciated. David understands. This issues in a great confession of monotheism in verse 22, for only a monotheistic God could guarantee the continuity of the line.
“How great you are, O Sovereign Lord! There is no one like you, and there is no God but you, as we have heard with our own ears.” Then this leads naturally to a reflection then on the people of God, the covenant community. “And who is like your people Israel—the one nation on earth that God went out to redeem as a people for himself, and to make a name for himself, and to perform great and awesome wonders by driving out nations and their gods from before your people, whom you redeemed from Egypt?”
Again, no honor to the people whom God redeemed with powerful hands to make a name for himself. “You have established your people Israel as your very own forever, and you, O Lord, have become their God.” In the light of this, David prays in line with God’s promises. Since God has promised all this, David now prays in line with those promises in verses 25 and 26.
“And now, Lord God, keep forever the promise you have made concerning your servant and his house. Do as you promised, so that your name will be great forever. Then men will say, ‘The Lord Almighty is God over Israel!’ And the house of your servant David will be established before you.”
Indeed, it is the word of God, it is the promise of God that has called forth this prayer from David. David says in the closing verses, 27–29, he couldn’t have prayed like this if it had not been for God’s word. “O Lord Almighty, God of Israel, you have revealed this to your servant, saying, ‘I will build a house for you.’
So your servant has found courage to offer you this prayer. O Sovereign Lord, you are God! Your words are trustworthy, and you have promised these good things to your servant. Now be pleased to keep your promise.” Do you see how profoundly biblical David is? How absolutely his confidence turns on the words of God and his prayers are aligned with what God has himself promised in Scripture?
I want to conclude with three reflections of fundamental importance.
1. All of this dramatic revelation to David is preparation for great David’s greater Son.
This is very important. The New Testament writers understand this. Thus, Peter preaching on the day of Pentecost. He’s actually quoting from one of David’s psalms, Psalm 16. He says, “David was a prophet who knew that God had promised him on oath that he would place one of his descendents on his throne.”
Why does Matthew begin with a genealogy? That’s not how I would begin a biography. Genealogies are boring. You might slip it in an appendix somewhere, but not Matthew. The whole first book of the New Testament as printed before us begins with a genealogy. All those begats. Why? Because it is essential to prove that Jesus really did follow the line of David.
In fact in some passages, this lies at the heart of how a lot of the Bible fits together. If you’re tired now and you don’t want to think hard, this is a good time to snooze for about four minutes. Then I’ll tell you when you can come back. All right? This bit is a little harder, but it’s just so important, I can’t resist putting it in.
Look at Hebrews, chapter 1, verse 5. This is in the context of the superiority of the Son Jesus Christ over all of the angels. Here in verse 5 there are two Old Testament passages cited. This is part of the long-sustained argument that Jesus is better than the angels. “For to which of the angels did God ever say …” And now he quotes Psalm 2. “ ‘You are my Son; today I have become your Father?’ Or again, ‘I will be his Father, and he will be my Son’?” That’s quoting the passage we just read. 2 Samuel 7:14.
You ask, “How does either of those prove that this Son is better than the angels? How does it prove anything?” I wish I had time to unpack this one at length, but let me say this. As a general rule in Scripture, in the New Testament, Christology, the doctrine of Christ, falls into one of two patterns.
In one pattern, he begins up here then comes down here and goes back up here. He is preexistent, then he takes on human flesh, dies, rises again, and ascends to the glory he had with the Father before the world began. That’s the way it’s structured, for example, in Philippians, chapter 2.
“Though he enjoyed equality with God, he did not think equality with God was something to be exploited, but he emptied himself and made himself a nobody. He was found in human form. Indeed, he emptied himself and died on the cross an ignominious and odious and horrible death. Wherefore God has exalted him and raised him and given him the name that is above every name, that is the name of Jesus every knee should bow.”
From here, down to here, and back up again. There are many passages in the New Testament that treats Jesus Christ in precisely that way, but there are other passages that sort of start from the bottom. They just don’t worry about this half. It’s not that they’re denying it; they just don’t worry about it. They just look at Jesus. They look at his ministry. They look at his words.
Then he dies in horrible shame, taking on our curse and guilt, wherefore God highly exalts him and promotes him to the highest order. That, in the New Testament, is bound up with Jesus’ enthronement. He sits on the right hand of the Majesty on high. He shares the throne as it were with God.
According to 1 Corinthians 15, all of God’s authority is now mediated through the Son. He has been exalted from this lowly position, in fact from the position of death. He has been not only resurrected but exalted to the Father’s right hand. Within that framework then, this is the Son’s exaltation. This is the Son’s enthronement.
Now in Psalm 2, which I read earlier, you can read it just at the level of a king like David. “I have installed my King on Zion, my holy hill.” Therefore, the surrounding nations jolly well be careful. David says, “I will proclaim the decree of the Lord. He said to me, ‘You are my son; today I have become your father.’ ” That’s his enthronement.
“Ask of me, and I will make the nations your inheritance, the ends of the earth your possession. You will rule them with an iron scepter; you will dash them to pieces like pottery.” Well, the nations … The ends of the earth is stretching it a bit. “Therefore, you kings, be wise; be warned, you rulers of the earth. Serve the Lord with fear and rejoice with trembling. Kiss the son, lest he be angry.” Along comes Jesus.
He insists not only that he is the King from the line of David, with the genealogy to back it up, but that he is the Son par excellence. You and I may be sons in the sense that we’re peacemakers. We may be sons in the sense that we imitate God in some respect or another. But in John’s gospel, especially, John presents himself as the perfect son, because whatever the Father does, this son also does. He’s the perfect Son.
I’ve never created a universe, but the perfect son has. Whatever the Father does, the Son also does. He is the perfect king. What this then means is that all of these images of kingship, all of these images of sonship, they point forward, they point forward, they anticipate. So often we want our prophecy to be in words, propositions.
“I predict something will happen,” and then the thing happens. Prophecy, prediction. There are a lot of prophecies like that in the Bible. There are perhaps even more that don’t work like that. They work rather in terms of models, institutions, structures that anticipate, point forward, anticipate, point forward.
You want to know what a son looks like? It looks like this. You want to know what a king looks like? It looks like this. You want to know what a priest looks like? It looks like this. You want to know what a temple looks like? It looks like this. Do you want to know what a sacrifice looks like? It looks like this. You want to know what a lamb looks like? It looks like this.
This is what you need. This is what you need. This is what you need. You start crying out to God, “Yes, but these aren’t working. These aren’t working. These aren’t working. We need something more than that. We need the thing, the Son, the priest, the temple, the sacrifice.” Then came Jesus. He is the Son, exalted not as David was to a kingship in Israel, a small little parcel of ground at the eastern end of the Mediterranean.
He sits on the throne of his father David because he comes from David’s line, but he is exalted to God’s right hand. He sits on the throne above all thrones. He is God’s Son. “Ask of me, and I will give you the heathen for your inheritance.” All those ancient words that at one level applied quite nicely to David now take on a new list as we see this King par excellence, this Son par excellence, and David’s dynasty will never, ever be destroyed.
2. The more we approach the goodness of God, the grace of God, the more we are to be humbled.
That was clearly David’s response here. Ingratitude is not only a mark of discourtesy and a want of trust; it reflects a want of humility. I have never yet met a humble ungrateful person. That’s why murmuring in the Old Testament is treated with such harshness.
Murmuring in the Old Testament treats God as if he’s not there, as if he can’t trust him. Nothing to be grateful for. I stand in judgment of God. “Why is he doing this to me? I don’t like this!” Whereas gratitude really is a response of faith to a God who’s in charge and full of love and faithfulness and courtesy. How dare I be ungrateful before him?
I was pastor of a church in Vancouver 20-odd years ago where there was one particular woman who was well known for her enthusiastic complaining, shall we say. One day I came up and sidled beside her and said, “My dear So-and-so (I’ll protect her name too for fear of maligning the guilty), I have a word from the Lord for you.”
“You do?”
“Yes, I know what the Lord’s will is for you.”
“What is it?”
“This is the will of God for you, I quoted: that you be thankful.” She didn’t speak to me for three weeks, but even that was an improvement.
3. This principle, the more we approach the goodness of God, the grace of God, the more we are humbled, is supremely true with respect to the privileges of new covenant believers.
The New Testament writers are full of this theme.
For example, in Peter chapter 1, he says, “Concerning this salvation, the prophets, who spoke of the grace that was to come to you, searched intently with the greatest care, trying to find out the time and circumstances to which the Spirit of Christ in them was pointing when he predicted the sufferings of Christ and the glories that would follow.
It was revealed to them that they were not serving themselves but you, when they spoke of the things that now have been told you by those who have preached the gospel to you by the Holy Spirit sent from heaven. Even angels long to look into these things.” I don’t know you, most of you. Some of you may have been through brutal things.
You may have come through a broken marriage. You may be spending nights in tears because of your children or your parents. You may have lost your job. You may have crushingly bad health. Maybe you’ve just lost a mortgage. Maybe, maybe you now have a terminal disease and you have about seven months left to live. Maybe you just have a bad cold and feel grumpy.
In every case, without for a moment wanting to deny the horribleness of sin in this world, we know the living God. My ultimate prospect is not a hole in the ground but resurrection glory. I have been forgiven. Indeed all things work together for good for those who love God, for those who have been called according to his purposes.
I can’t see very clearly, but I trust him. And so help me God, I will be grateful. There is a wonderful passage, with this I close, in Matthew chapter 11. There Jesus insists that John the Baptist is the greatest man born of women. “I tell you the truth: Of all born of women, John the Baptist is the greatest.”
That means John the Baptist is greater than King David. John the Baptist is greater than Solomon. John the Baptist is greater than Abraham. John the Baptist is greater than Isaiah. He’s greater than all of them. In the context, when you follow the argument through, Jesus tells us why he’s the greatest born of women.
It turns out that he’s the greatest born of women because he fulfills a certain prophecy in Malachi, according to Matthew, chapter 11, verse 10. He fulfills a prophecy in Malachi that says that on John the Baptist’s shoulders would fall this particular fulfillment. He would be the Elijah that was to come who would actually point out who Jesus is and say, “There! That’s the one!”
In the fullness of time, although Jeremiah pointed to Jesus in some sense and Isaiah pointed to Jesus in some sense and David pointed to Jesus in some sense, there was only one man on whom it fell to say, “There, that’s the one. I am not worthy to unloose the straps of his sandals.” That’s what made him the greatest man born of women.
Then Jesus says, “But I tell you the truth, the least in the kingdom is greater than he.” That, brother and sister in Christ, means you and me. That means you and I on this axis are greater than John the Baptist, who is greater than King David. That means you and I on this axis are greater than Solomon, greater than Isaiah, greater than Moses, greater than Abraham.
Which axis? We’re not greater in terms of military prowess or in terms of wisdom or prophetic words, but on this axis, the same axis on which John the Baptist’s greatness is measured. John the Baptist was the greatest because he was the one who pointed out Jesus most immediately and directly. Of all who would ever come before, he was the one who pointed out Jesus most immediately and directly.
You know what? The least in the kingdom can point out who Jesus is more immediately and directly than that. If you’re a Christian today at all, you know that this King went to the cross. You know the he rose again. You know what happened at Pentecost. You can identify Jesus and point him out more fully and in a more balanced way, more completely than John the Baptist could.
We live this side of these great, momentous events. John the Baptist died before them. Shall we be ungrateful? Even to live this side of these great turning points, to speak the truth of the gospel, to bear witness to him, what an immense privilege! Christians do not, first and foremost, bear witness out of a sense of shamed guilt that they have to obey the Great Commission yet once again.
First and foremost, they do it out of sheer enthusiastic gratitude for the one who loved them and gave himself for them. We serve the King, the son of David, the Son of God, the suffering servant, the King. We serve the King. We confess him as Lord. Out of humbleness of mind and gratitude, we find our place in redemptive history to be one of great privilege indeed. Amen.
