1 Samuel Lesson 55
David and the
We are continuing the first section of 2 Samuel. From 2-7 this book is talking about the base
of David’s kingdom. All the elements that
you find in chapters 2-7 have in some way to do with establishing a strong,
vibrant, political base. Without these
elements there cannot be any political stability in the nation
To understand this chapter requires a tremendous background and tonight
I have chosen to do the first three verses and then cover the great background
that is necessary to understand verses 4-17, the oracle of Nathan. In other words, verses 1-3 are the introduction
of the chapter; then verses 4-17 is the so-called oracle of Nathan. Nathan is the prophet in David’s court. Nathan is the main prophet, he is the
king-maker, he is the man who directs the king; he takes over from the prophet
Gad. Nathan is a reminder to us that
under
Here we have the culmination of faith, so the first three verses are
going to give us the background, it’s going to give us the vocabulary to
understand what’s happening. Then on top
of this comes God’s oracle; we say oracle of Nathan, actually it’s the oracle
of God through Nathan and God is going to give a tremendous blessing to
David. At this point David can hold the
all time title to the most graced out believer of history. There has never been a believer operating
under the Old Testament economy that had more grace given to him than David.
David was blessed in every area; he was blessed physically, he was blessed in
his marriages, up until the point of Bathsheba, he was blessed politically, he
was blessed economically, he was blessed militarily. Now a lot of other men of the Old Testament
could argue that they were blessed in certain areas; Moses was blessed in
certain areas but Moses never was blessed in all the areas like David. David, then, becomes the most graced believer
of all time, again considering the Old Testament economy.
In verse 1 there is a certain vocabulary that must be understood to
understand the thought pattern behind what’s going to happen. So what we say tonight and next week are part
of the same thing. It’s too long to
cover in one evening. Therefore I’ve
broken it up into two parts; I’ll give the first three verses and the background
for verses 4-17 tonight and next week we’ll deal verse by verse with verse
4-17. There’s no way I can tie it all
together and it’s hard to teach it when it’s split up like this, but I see no
other option.
Verse 1, “And it came to pass, when the king sat in his house, and the
LORD had given him rest round about from all his enemies, [2] That the king
said unto Nathan, the prophet, See, now, I dwell in an house of cedar, but the
ark of God dwells within curtains. [3] And Nathan said to the king, Go, do all
that is in thine heart; for the LORD is with you.” The key word to establish the basis for this
whole chapter is the word “rest” in verse 1, the Lord gave him rest from all
his enemies. It is a word that is used
synonymously with the word to sit. Rest
and sit; sitting on his throne he rests from his enemies. Now this rest has to be defined because later
on it’s going to become a model for something in the Christian life, but you’re
going to misinterpret the model in the Christian life if you don’t see what it
meant in the Old Testament first. So
let’s study the word “rest” and all that has to do with that word, then,
knowing that, we can come up to Hebrews 4 and understand it what is the rest
for which the Christian strives.
In verse 1 when it says “rest” the first notice you, the first notice
you see is He gave “him rest round about from all his enemies.” Who is it that is given rest? The king, the head of the nation. So we go back, since this is a national
office, to the covenant of all covenants, the Abrahamic Covenant, Genesis
12:2. Everything goes back to the Abrahamic
Covenant. This is the great election,
the choosing of God in history, why did He choose the Jew? No reason that He has ever given us; the only
reason that He has ever given us as to why He chooses the Jew is because I’ve
chosen the Jew. Nowhere does the Bible
tell us why beyond that reason; we’re to believe that God had a reason for
choosing the Jew but He hasn’t told us the reason.
In Genesis 12:2 among the great blessings that were given, the Abrahamic
Covenant being a blessing basically of land, a worldwide blessing to the world,
throughout all the world, and then the survival of the people. Those are the three great terms of the
Abrahamic Covenant. Now it is this covenant
that should prove beyond all discussion that you cannot say, as they do in high
school history books, that monotheism gradually evolved out of polytheism and
didn’t become established until the time of Solomon. The reason you can’t is
because if there are many different gods, such as polytheism, if there are many
different gods what good would this kind of a covenant be. Would one god among many be able to pull off
what he had promised? This covenant
would be absolutely meaningless if Abraham really believed in many gods. So whether the Bible says there’s only one
God or not, at this point it’s irrelevant to the discussion. The discussion
centers on the Abrahamic Covenant and the whole thing goes right in the
wastebasket if there is no monotheism in
Someone from high school was upset about what evidences are there for
monotheism before Solomon. There’s quite a few, like the whole Bible; you can
go from Psalm 96, from the Mosaic Law, you can go back to Genesis, you can go
to Leviticus, you can go to the institutions set up in the book of Judges, to
the way Joshua conducted his war through the land of Canaan, you can argue
monotheism from a whole bunch of stuff, you don’t have to go from the time of
Solomon, but this is what happens when we allow the Bible as literature in a
(quote) “neutral” (end quote) public discussion; there is no neutrality when it
comes to Scripture, the Bible doesn’t permit us to be neutral. We either say
what it says or we say what it doesn’t say, either/or but not both/and.
In Genesis 12:2 the Abrahamic Covenant is going to promise a worldwide
blessing; it is going to promise the survival of the people, but it’s not going
to be a people that are dispersed throughout all areas of the world. It is going to be fulfilled when they become
a great nation. So there’s got to be
something happen in history that makes them into a great nation. Now what do you need to have a great
nation. Obviously you need people with
character; so you first have to have a people and it takes time for one family
to become a nation, but they do; they do become a nation, that’s one of the
arguments, incidentally, for why the human race has not existed for millions of
years; it goes back to the Abrahamic Covenant.
If in the year 2000 BC you start with Abraham and Sarah, and you proceed
to the year 1973 AD and attain the known Jewish population, and we know they
all came from one family in 2000 BC, it’s a simple problem of geometric ratios
to discover population growth. So we
have an idea of how fast the world’s population is growing, and you compute it
from the Jew because you know his starting point and you know the final value.
And he is a good way to compute how fast the populations of the earth is
growing because the Jew has been more subject to destruction than other races. So whatever population growth rate from this
computation is going to be conservative.
Actually Gentiles probably grow faster than this, but the Jew grows, in
spite of the six million killed in Germany and so forth, the Jew is growing at
a certain rate and we know that rate and you can figure that rate.
Now taking the same population growth rate, and working off the total world
population today backwards, you come out with a figure of about 3000 BC as the
starting point for the present human race.
And of course that fits, that fits exactly what the Bible’s been trying
to tell us for centuries, that the human race has not been around for millions
of years, that if the human race were really around for millions of years you’d
be standing on top of one another, because the population growth rate would
have completely enveloped the planet earth, so it’s simply false to say that
the population growth rate of the world shows anything but a very short time
span. Now you can argue, well isn’t it
true that there may have been disasters, great physical catastrophes that wiped
parts of the human race off the map. No
known catastrophe to humans, whether it’s the black plague, whether it’s
nuclear warfare, say Hiroshima, whether it’s any kind of physical catastrophe,
if you study population growth statistics, makes a dent. There’s been no major war that’s even made a
dent in the population growth, no major catastrophe and no major disease. The human population growth is a pretty
constant rate, regardless of wars, diseases, catastrophes. This is a very powerful evidence of why the
human race is only thousands of years old; the population growth rate.
Now from this point in 2000 BC when Abraham began, he had to grow enough so
that you would have a number of people to form a nation. So to get this national promise you have to
have an adequate number of people. You
have to also have an adequate land; you have to have resources for that. So you have to have a number of things to
make the Abrahamic Covenant fulfilled.
But the Abrahamic Covenant is the root, the foundation of everything
you’re going to see in 2 Samuel 7, it all comes by election. The Abrahamic Covenant is an expression of
God’s sovereignty. God chose the Jew for
a destiny, therefore the Jew will fulfill his destiny. The Jew may not like his destiny, the Jew may
not want to fulfill his destiny, but he’s going to, because God has decreed he
will. And this means that no matter what
attempts are made by way of anti-Semitism, no matter what role or what fantastic
disguise it has, anti-Semitism will always fail, and by verse 3 in Genesis 12
will always earn upon the group that is anti-Semitic God’s cursing. So the fastest way for a national entity to
go down is to become anti-Semitic.
Now the anti-Semitic tendencies have been obvious down through
history. When you study European history
you understand how the Jew financed Columbus, the Jew was responsible. When Columbus came to America he didn’t take
Catholic priests, he took rabbis aboard the three boats. Columbus was financed from the start to the
finish by Jews; it was a Jewish attempt to find the western hemisphere. It was all Jewish money that led to it and
Jewish rabbis officiated on board. So
the Jews are behind the discovery of America. And when Spain, who had borrowed
and borrowed and borrowed money from the Jews, began to start in league with
certain Catholic priests in what became known as The Inquisition, then you have
the destruction of Spain. You have the
destruction of Germany; and as Arnold Fruchtenbaum pointed out earlier, when he
had come here as a Hebrew Christian, isn’t it ironic that the Nazi’s wherever
they went would construct walls in the Jewish ghettos, to wall the Jewish
ghetto away from the Gentiles. And what
has happened to Germany’s own capital? The wall through Berlin. Always this thing happens in history. The nation that becomes anti-Semitic will
always receive God’s cursing.
Now it’s fortunate for us because we are one of the few nations that
been anti-Semitic. And the energy crisis
is a very good test of American character as to whether we’re going to become
anti-Semitic and blame the Jew for the oil problem. What has hurt the conservative movement
politically in the United States is anti-Semitism. What’s hurting Russia today is
anti-Semitism. Clap when you see the
Russians going anti-Semitic because they’re just pulling down God’s cursing
upon themselves. Whenever you have a
group who go anti-Semitic you are going to watch sooner or later that group is
going to decay and die away and be disciplined.
It has to, because this promise in verse 3 is meant to be taken
literally. Some of you are in Christian
political organizations that are anti-Semitic and you wonder why you never have
any success; the reason is because it’s anti-Semitic.
After the Abrahamic Covenant was given God began to spell out certain
things by way of sanctification. In
order to develop a nation you have to have people with character. That means that God, somehow, to bring the
Abrahamic Covenant to pass, must impose a system of training upon these people,
to fashion a tough character, and the way that God did it was impose a second
covenant, called the Mosaic Covenant.
The Mosaic Covenant defines the content of laws of God. The first and great commandment is: Thou
shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy mind, with all thy heart, with all thy
soul, with all thy strength. That
commandment, that’s the essence of the Law.
The Mosaic details, the details of life has everything to do with how
you love the Lord thy God, not abstractly, you love the Lord thy God concretely
in the details of life. And therefore
Leviticus spelled out in great detail, for example, in the area of sex, how to
love the Lord thy God and to avoid those details was to the Jew operating under
the Mosaic Covenant a violation of sanctification; it was putting him in
rebellion against God, to forsake God’s laws in these areas. Loving God, as Jesus pointed out, is keeping
His commandments. This is not
sanctification by works, but I’m warning some because I think some of you
misunderstand grace to mean that you can just go out and raise hell without
paying some sort of price. Now God is
very, very gracious; if He wasn’t gracious none of us would be sitting
here. God has a relaxed nature because
of His grace, but don’t ever, ever, ever misinterpret His grace. The surest way to get in trouble is to
presume on His grace in the sense that you assume because you are forgiven,
because you get away with something, therefore next time you do it you’re going
to get away in the same way, without any damage. Not true, not true at all.
So the Mosaic Covenant then, is going to define the Jewish character,
and the Mosaic Covenant defines certain things that must occur before the
Abrahamic Covenant can come to pass. It
is not only going to define individual character, but the Mosaic Covenant is
going to define national character. Now
the Mosaic Covenant is given in around 1440 BC, the passage in 2 Samuel 7 is
written about 1040 BC, so you have about four hundred years between the two;
four centuries of time to prepare the nation for this high point. Does this tell us something? Yes, it tells us that character is only
developed over time; you have got to give sanctification time. This is why Christian organizations that run
around trying to get somebody fresh out of college with no training, go on
staff and think they’re going to evangelize are completely out of it. God never makes His imminent coming an issue
when it comes to “hurry up, do the will of God.” You can’t find that in the New
Testament. When Christ’s imminent coming
is presented and the time problem is there it’s always this: just do what He
has told you, so that when He comes you’ll be found doing what He told
you. That’s all he asks. Nowhere do you
read do you read you’ve got to hurry up and do what He told you because He’s
coming; that is not in Scripture, that is the product of the scare tactics of
certain religious people, but that isn’t in God’s Word. God’s Word does not
approach it that way.
So the Mosaic Covenant is going to develop and define character; it is a
system of musar, it is a system of
saying these are God’s standards in every sphere of life and you as a believer,
He’s addressing Israel, you as a believer to submit and love Me in this area,
in this area, in this area, and this area, and I’m not going to buy this
sentimentalism. Nowhere do you read that
in the Old Testament. Do you read Yahweh, how we feel how we love you? Is that in the Old Testament? No.
What does God look at when He looks down from heaven at the nation
Israel? Are they or are they not
submitting to His Law. That’s the issue
that He’s looking at, emotions are not part of the issue. Some people have emotions in one direction,
some people have emotions in another direction, but emotions per se are never
viewed in God’s word in the sense of being evaluated. So God is interested in our response to His
law, whether we submit or whether we don’t.
Now when the Mosaic Covenant was made, and when the Mosaic Covenant
started to define character it made certain predictions, and we want to look at
some of these predictions. The first
one, Deuteronomy 3:20, it made certain predictions about a future rest. What does the Mosaic Law do to the Abrahamic
Covenant? We could diagram it, here’s
what happens. The Abrahamic Covenant
hops over and looks at the future goal; the Mosaic Covenant stands in the way
of getting there. In other words, the
Abrahamic Covenant says this is going to happen, but the Mosaic Covenant says
yes, but on the way to that point you’re going to have to go through this
school. In other words, the Abrahamic
Covenant is not going to come to pass without the character taught under the
Law. When Israel is put back into her
prior position as a priestly nation over this planet, when Jesus Christ comes
again, those of you who are Christians are going to see this, it’s something to
look forward to in your life, when the rapture occurs you’ll be with the Lord but
you can watch this, we’ll have a front side seat to the whole thing, and during
the millennium you will be able to see this, and you’ll be able to watch the
nation Israel, and then you will see the nation function as she should, you
will find her observing God’s Law in every area. You’ll find her wanting to do it like she
didn’t want to in the Old Testament, but nevertheless, spirituality comes by
fulfilling the Law.
Now this is again not sanctification by works. I don’t want you to misinterpret what I’m
saying: I’m guarding my words as carefully as I can, but the filling of the
Holy Spirit under grace still is going to be measured by a yardstick. The filling of the Holy Spirit, for example,
tells you nothing about what to do. So
all this “deeper life” business, everyone trots out to hear some speaker on
deeper life. Do you know what deeper
life conferences testify to ? Lousy
Bible teaching in the local churches.
Where the evangelism is clear and where Bible teaching is consistent
there is no need for “deeper life” conferences.
What is wrong that we suddenly need deeper life conferences? Because we’ve lost this character, the Mosaic
Covenant spells out the deeper life and it spells it out in terms of overt
activities.
Now let’s look at the prophecies of the rest and notice had the Mosaic
Covenant talks about this rest.
Deuteronomy 3:20, he’s talking about the tribes of Transjordania, and
Moses instructs them that you will stay fighting “Until the LORD has given rest
unto your brethren, as well as unto you, and until they also possess the land
which the LORD your God has given them beyond Jordan; and then shall you return
every man unto his possession which I have given you.” What does verse 20 start to teach about
rest? Before the rest can occur you have
got to have the believers possessing what God has given to them. You’ve got to have them enjoying the
blessing. So the first characteristic we learn about rest in the Old Testament
is there’s a state in which believers are moment by moment enjoying the
provisions that God has given to them.
That is the characteristic of rest; they are not fighting to gain them,
they are enjoying them.
Now the application to the Christian life will be brought out later but notice
something; the rest is not just legally owning the possession because at this
point, Israel, in Deuteronomy 3, owned the land, but she did not enjoy the
land. There’s a difference. Here God says when you enjoy the land, when
you actually empirically historically literally deal with the land, that’s the
rest, right there, so that’s the characteristic of rest; it means actually
enjoying the provisions of God.
Let’s look further, in Deuteronomy 12:10, again the topic of rest comes
up; let’s look at the characteristics of this rest. Notice the Mosaic Law puts
the rest after the fight, you fight to attain the rest; the rest is not given
to the believer at first; never has, never will. You must fight and work to enter the rest. “But when you go over the Jordan, and well in
the land which the LORD your God gives you to inherit, and when He gives you
rest from all your enemies round about, so that you dwell in safety.” Second characteristic of rest is not just the
enjoyment of the land, the land enjoyed but there is military safety. Second characteristic of rest, an actual
military safety; now in Joshua God said positionally they were safe, but this
is actually safe, when they’re actually safe.
Then, verse 11, it goes on to describe the rest further. “Then there shall be a place where the LORD
your God shall choose to cause His name to dwell there; there shall you bring
all that I command you: your burnt offerings, your sacrifices, your tithes, and
the heave offering of your hand, and all your choice vows which you vow unto
the LORD. [12] And you shall rejoice before the LORD your God, you, and your
sons and your daughters, and your menservants, and your maidservants, and the
Levite who is within your gates, forasmuch as he has no part nor inheritance
with you. [13] Take heed to thyself that thou offer not thy burnt offerings in
every place that you see; [14] But in the place which the LORD shall choose in
one of thy tribes, there thou shall offer your burnt offerings, and there you
shall do all that I command you.”
So a third characteristic of the rest is a place of worship, which we
have previously called in the Old Testament, a new vocabulary word, the
cultists. This is another feature of the
rest, there will be a national cultist, a national location in space, some
point geographically where they can come and worship God, and you notice the
intolerance of verse 13? No other place,
only here! This is the “I am the way,
the truth and the life” kind of thing again; only at this place. Why?
Because verse 11 says God has chosen, sovereignly, He has elected that
His name is going to be there, that is His presence. You say but isn’t God omnipresent, can’t we
meet God everywhere. Yes, God is
omnipresent, but don’t draw the wrong conclusion, you can’t meet Him
everywhere. You meet God on His terms,
you don’t dictate the place where God meets you; God dictates the place where
He meets us. And the place today is the
Word of God. That’s the place, not in
the area of emotions, holding hands in some little cozy meeting somewhere, the
place where you meet God is in His Word; that’s the place and that is the only
place. 1 John 1:1-3, you have fellowship
with God’s Word before you can have fellowship with Jesus Christ. We must meet the apostle’s literal word
teaching before you can come to Jesus Christ.
So we meet God at the place of His choosing, nor out choosing.
Deuteronomy 25:19, another characteristic of the rest looked forward to
in the Old Testament. This is an
expansion of one of the previous conditions, “Therefore it shall be, when the
LORD thy God has given thee rest from all thine enemies round about, in the
land which the LORD thy God gives thee for an inheritance, to possess it, that
thou shalt blot out the remembrance of Amalek from under heaven,” and then he says don’t forget
to do that, “thou shalt not forget it.”
That means that Amalek, who is the key, who is the enemy par excellence
will be destroyed. Now this has certain
repercussions because Amalek, typologically, is used in the same way the sin
nature is used spiritually. Amalek
performs a function very much like our flesh performs. So this is another key to what the
application of this rest is; Amalek must be destroyed. Keep this in mind before we make the New
Testament application of this truth.
Now the theme of the rest is carried at several points in the Old
Testament. The place where it is
partially fulfilled begins at Joshua 21:43, here’s where that rest… remember
the Abrahamic Covenant predicts an event, the final destiny, the means by which
that would come to pass. In other words,
you can stop the development of the oncoming rest by the fulfilling of the
Mosaic Covenant conditions. “And the
LORD gave unto Israel all the land which He swore to give to their fathers, and
they possessed it, and dwelt therein.
[44’ And the LORD gave them rest round about, according to all that he
swore unto their fathers; and there stood not a man of all their enemies before
them. The LORD delivered al their enemies into their hand. [45] There failed
nothing of any good thing which the LORD had spoken unto the house of Israel;
all came to pass.”
Yet, if you turn to Joshua 23:11, you notice there’s a slight bit of
fine print involved. “Take good heed, therefore, unto yourselves, that ye love the LORD your God.” Now remember love is a non-sentimental thing
in the Old Testament; it means to submit to what He tells you to do. Verse 12, “Else if you do in any way go back
and cling to the remnant of these nations, even these who remain among you, and
shall make marriages with them, and go in unto them, and they to you, [13],
Know for a certainty that the LORD your God will no more drive out any of these
nations from before you,” now how are you going to mix Joshua 23:11-13 with the
passage you just read in Joshua 21:43-45?
Somehow we have got to explain how these two passages can coexist and
yet not be in conflict. One says God has
given them rest from all their enemies, and the next one says but don’t be over
confident because if you do, you’re going to lose.
The only way we can handle this is to say that this is a partial
fulfillment of the rest promise. In
other words, the rest promise has a ultimate fulfillment, and these partial
fulfillments along the way. And that is
very important for certain applications that are going to come up in your
Christian life. There can be times of
partial rest, when victories have been won and the blessings of God enjoyed,
and yet you haven’t reached the ultimate sanctification. So you haven’t reached the ultimate rest but
here you have reached, at least, a breathing spell. The nation has reached a point where at least
the major nations have been vanquished. There are other nations there, the
Philistines are there, the Moabites are still there, a lot of enemies are still
there but the main thrust has been won, the initiative is now in the hands of
Israel. At this point, then, they rest.
So Joshua gives us a partial rest.
But there is another interesting thing in the chapter between these two,
in Joshua 22:11, a little incident that shows you this theme of the rest
again. Let’s go back and look at those
three characteristics, the land was to be enjoyed, there was to be military
safety and there was to be on place of worship.
In Joshua 22:11 you have a group of tribes, “And the children of Israel
were told, Behold, the children of Reuben and the children of Gad and the half
tribe of Manasseh have built an altar at the frontier of the land of Canaan, in
the borders of the Jordan, on the side belonging to the children of Israel.” In other words, a second cultists was being
built on the other side of Jordan. See,
there was one cultist up to the west of Jordan, and that was the authorized
placed where you to worship; that was the place of the ark, the place of the
tabernacle. But now these tribes, living
over here in some ranch land, spread out, they decided it’s be a shorter drive
on Sunday if we set up a little church building over here and so they set up a
place to the east of Jordan, and it almost touched off a national war. So between chapter 21 and chapter 23, when
the covenant is renewed, this second cultist is eliminated, which enforces a
condition of the rest. You must have one
authorized point of meeting with God; not many, only one. It must be done in subordination to the authority
of God’s Word.
Now to Judges 2, here’s the passage that proves that the promise of the
Abrahamic Covenant was never fulfilled in Israel’s history. Certainly by now you see that Joshua’s day,
the promise of the rest was never given.
Judges 2 is one of the most important passages to show premillennialism;
premillennialism is that the rest promise is yet to be fulfilled. There is another position, far more common in
most churches today, amillennialism, which says that the millennial promises,
all this rest business, and all the rest of it has been fulfilled in the Old
Testament. No it hasn’t, it wasn’t
fulfilled in Joshua’s day and here is the doom sentence. Verses 22-23, “I also will not henceforth
drive out any from before them of the nations which Joshua left when he died,”
now that proves that the millennium must be future, that it has never been yet
fulfilled because God says He’s not doing it.
He’s going to, but it’s not going to be by means of Israel. So therefore, every single rest of the Old
Testament, whether it is the rest of Joshua, whether it is the rest of David,
whatever rest you’re talking about must only be a partial rest. When David, in
1 Samuel 7, is going to set up the temple, he has not done verse 21; David has
not driven out all the enemies. He’s
defeated them but David and Solomon never actually physically drove the people
out; they subordinated the people, they forced them into labor, they dominated
them politically but David and Solomon never did what Joshua did; it’s another
ball game. Joshua went in and physically
annihilated people, just slaughtered them, holy way. David did not conduct that kind of war. David
went in and captured them but he never annihilated them, and the reason he
didn’t is given here. God keeps them
around as perpetual thorns in the side for Israel.
Now we come to David’s rest.
First let’s look at 1 Samuel 30:17, a passage we’ve already studied but
in light of these conditions of for the rest notice how it all fits
together. The Bible fits together in all
its details. To me, this is another
argument for inspiration, and unfortunately for most of us this kind of an
argument for inspiration is only visible to those who study the Word, and
skeptics say oh you just see that in the Bible; well, it’s because they don’t
look at the Bible. The more you study
these details the more it all fits together, and has an internal logical
consistency to it.
In 1 Samuel 30:17 what did David do, and this obviously occurred before
2 Samuel 7, who did he fight with in particular. [“And David smote them from the twilight even
unto the evening of the next day; and there escaped not a man of them, save
four hundred young men, who rode upon camels and fled. [18] And David recovered
all that the Amalekites had carried away…”] What particular battle does the
Holy Spirit record in the pages of Scripture.
The battle with Amalek. That’s
not an accident; why did the Holy Spirit, of all of David’s battles, record
this one? Because the conditions of that
blessing, again going back, part of military safety was the blotting out of
Amalek. So David must operate in the
stream of history, whether he’s conscious of this is not the question; I don’t
know whether David said I’ve got to kill Amalek in order to bring about the
rest; probably he didn’t, probable he wasn’t even thinking of it, it was just
that the opportunity arose and he did it.
But under the sovereignty of God David had to do this, at some point in
his life he had to overcome Amalek, which he did at this point.
Now a second interesting note, turn to 2 Samuel 5:17, and who is he
fighting with twice here? [“But when the
Philistines heard that they had anointed David King over Israel, all the
Philistines came up to seek David; and David heard of it, and went down to the
stronghold.”] The Philistines, so again
we have the condition of establishing military safety for the nation,
annihilation of the enemies of the country.
Now out of this, we might pause for a little application to kind of
straighten up our divine viewpoint as Christian citizens, and this should tell
you something. To me this speaks loud
and clear, you cannot have political freedom without military superiority. You have got to defeat your enemies by force
if a national entity is to survive. There is no ifs, ands or buts; the United
States has remained free because in the past, not now but in the past, we have
always either been isolated from foreign powers or if and when they messed
around we gave them a bloody nose. Today
we are pursing policies that are designed to do exactly the opposite; we send
grain to our enemies, we appease our enemies, we disarm in the face of our
enemies. So don’t fall for the line
today that somebody that wants a strong military is a militarist; or that
they’re some sort of a gruel that just enjoys blood. That is not true. Before you have rest you have to have
military safety; David had to militarily defeat his opponents. And then he enjoyed the blessings of
God.
In 2 Samuel 6 another element of the rest comes about, and this rest is
the establishment of a central cultist, a central place where worship can
occur, that is, the ark. The land has
already been secured, 2 Samuel 2-5, so you’ve got these three conditions for at
least a partial rest… a partial national prosperity. And this is the background.
Now to get the New Testament commentary turn to Hebrews 4:7-9, the author if
Hebrews is well aware of the doctrine of rest, so he says, “Again, he limits a
certain day, saying in David, Today, after so long a time, as it is said, Today
if you will hear his voice, harden not your hearts. [8] For if Jesus” and it
should be Joshua, “For if Joshua had given them rest, then would he not
afterward have spoken of another day. [8] There remains, therefore, a rest to
the people of God.” “There remains a
rest, it has not yet occurred, it is still future.
Now we have to tie it in to the New Testament a little bit and look at
the Old Testament and New Testament and see how this is going to work
together. Under the Old Testament you
have a partial rest under David. That is
2 Samuel 7; the partial rest under David is a time of tremendous national
blessing… tremendous national blessing.
You have the cultivation of a lot of national art, the writing of the
book of Psalms, writing of Proverbs is going to begin, you have the beginnings
of what’s going to become philosophy and the wisdom literature, all of this,
the arts now flourish, but there had to be freedom first before there could be
culture, and this illustrates another principle, this partial rest under
David. Not only must you have military
victory, but you also must have national character before you can produce great
art.
That is why, I see it far more clearly having studied this not, it’s
always been a puzzle to me, I could never understand why it is that America, in
our present time, the 20th century, we’ve never come up with great
artists and we have no great musicians.
That is debatable, I grant you.
Why do we have this? Because we have no character, and there is going to
come no great art out of this country, no great Christian art out of
evangelical circles until we develop powerful Bible-believing Christians, and
by powerful, I mean of strong character, people that have been tested under the
trials of life, in many different areas of life. Some of the greatest pieces of art in
literature, music, etc. have come out of men who have suffered, and out of it
have come strong character and then they express this artistically.
Israel took four hundred years to get to David’s point; it took them
four centuries of development of spiritual character before they could produce
art. Fundamentalism hopefully will get
to that point; don’t any of you knock art itself; art is a godly thing, music
is a godly thing, if it wasn’t how are you going to explain Psalms, how are you
going to explain David, one of the greatest believers of all times, had to
express his faith artistically, under every way he could. David was an
architect, he made sure he got the best architects; Solomon, his son, followed
in his stead; he made sure he had the best musicians. These men were concerned with art, but they
were concerned with it after they had gotten into a state of rest. Fundamentalism in our time has not, we’re
still fighting the upward battle, and this is why we cannot look forward to
great art yet, until we make an ideological triumph over enough people and have
enough men in various spheres devoting their lives to Jesus Christ so
passionately that the Word of God is being applied here, there, and in all
areas. Then we will see the development of the great art.
Now that’s the Old Testament, that’s the partial rest of David. Now we come to the New Testament counterpart;
what is the New Testament counterpart to this doctrine of rest. The doctrine of rest refers to a certain area
of Christian life. From the time you
become a Christian until the time you die, during this period of time you have your
ups and your downs; you’re going along, this is the curve of sanctification,
and that expresses your relative victory over various things in your life. That line is not a smooth upward
progression. If you’ve studied your life
and the lives of others you know that just doesn’t work in the Christian life,
you advance very rapidly in some places, then you kind of plateau off for a
while, then you move on. And if you’ll
look at the times when you’ve made your greatest progress it has usually been
times when you suffered the most. And if
you look again at your Christian life the times you haven’t progressed have
been actually the times when you’ve been blessed, because blessing in the
fallen world causes us to get lazy. When
we should have been appropriating what God allowed us to enjoy, instead we just
goofed off.
So this is why oftentimes in the Christian life God can’t give you a
rest because the moment He does we let up.
God wants us, most of all, because He’s going to bless you for all
eternity, you’re going to have a chance for your rest for eternity, of enjoying
the things that God has given to you, so God is not primarily interested in
blessing in the sense of giving us a rest right now. His prime concern is to force us to grow
spiritually, to put us in a place of pressure, of testing, where pride is going
to be destroyed, where grace is going to be appropriated and we can move. And so we have cursing, and we have blessing
and God says all right, this person has had blessing for, say two years, I
haven’t brought any major trial in their life, they’ve been relatively free
from satanic attacks and they haven’t grown at all; in fact, they’ve begun to
retrogress, so I guess what we’ll have to do is jack them up a few notches and
bring some suffering in their life and so now we have a period of cursing, and
the cursing Satan loves because he wants to bring that curve down.
So you see, this is an expression of the frustration of Satan because he
wants to attack us to bring the curve down, but usually under the times of
pressure the curve goes up. So then
Satan gets tired of it after a while, he says the more I hit this person the
faster they grow, I don’t like that. So
Satan backs off and God lets us goof off for a while and so on. So there are these plateaus in your Christian
life, that can be times of growth. That
doesn’t have to happen; you could have a relatively steady growth through times
of cursing, through times of blessing, it could go like that. But in practice we know it generally doesn’t
go like that. But it is could, and there
is no Biblical reason why you can’t enjoy a rest period given to you by God.
Now what is a Christian rest period? A
Christian rest period can occur in a certain condition; a Christian rest period
can occur on a small scale in the middle of pressure; when for example your
faith… faith has a resting and a doing side, and so you may be looking for a
job, as an illustration, the doing would be putting out the contacts, etc.
there’s nothing wrong that as long as it’s done as unto the Lord, and so you by
various means seek out a job; that’s your doing. You do it in faith, in faith that God has a
job out there to find. And yet while
you’re doing the doing, simultaneous with that there should be a resting. Now what is the difference, where is the
boundary? Basically it’s this: God expects you to do what you can do. And what you can’t do you are to leave in His
hands, and not try to do what you can’t do.
So therefore there are going to be areas where you cannot do a
thing. For example, supposed a loved one
in your family gets run over with a car, you are not a skilled surgeon, you
can’t help them out, and so you sit outside the waiting room while they’re in
the emergency room, being operated on, and during that time you can fall apart,
you can worry, you can fret, worry about this loved person that’s lying in a
critical condition in a hospital. You
are sitting outside and can’t do a thing; you feel helpless, knowing that
there’s nothing you can do, absolutely nothing.
That is a position of rest, that is one opportunity where you have to rest,
and we call that a small scale rest because that is a rest under a condition of
suffering.
When you are placed in a position where you can’t do anything, God says
for you at that point to rest, to relax in His promises, and to abide with His
promise that He will take care of your every need, “All things work together
for good to them that love God, to them that are the called according to His
purpose.” “Casting all your care upon
Him for He cares for you.” That is how
to rest in those periods of time. God has put you in a position where you can’t
do anything. So what usually happens is
you sit there and worry. And worry
doesn’t do anything; do you know what worry is? That’s your body gearing up to
do something, that’s what gives you that emotion of worry, that’s what gives
you the ulcers, actually your adrenalin is pumping into the system, you’re
floating full of juices. Why? Because
your body is saying get ready, get ready, get ready… to do what? Sit.
And that is worry. This is why
you’ll find that one of the things that you get immediate benefit from chronic
worry is regular exercise, because you burn up all these hormones and so on
that are constantly squirted out in your system to do something, do something,
etc. In this case you have to rest
because God has placed you there.
Now there’s a larger scale rest that you can observe in your Christian
life, we’ll call this rest one and rest two; the second category of rest is
actually when God gives you a breather, where He allows you freedom from the
every day pressure. God does give rest
periods to those whom He can trust to deal with it appropriately. Do you want to get more rest periods; make
use of the ones He gives you, maybe you can convince Him to give you some more,
you’re so productive in those rest periods that He might be persuaded that it’s
a good thing for you to give you rest.
A rest period can be a time when you could bypass several weeks when
there’s no major trial, no major pressure, and during that period it just seems
like you have blessing on top of blessing and you’re enjoying yourself. Don’t misinterpret this because what happens
is that sometimes it’s the calm before the storm. God is giving you a period of rest so you can
strengthen yourself spiritually to get ready for the next round, because the
next round is going to come because we’re not in phase three yet, we’re not
face to face with the Lord. There’s always more to come, just like there was
more to come after David’s day in the nation Israel. Israel had more lessons to learn but for a
temporary period there was a rest, and she should have enjoyed that. Learn to enjoy the rest but beware; don’t set
the rest up as a model of spirituality.
Now here’s where you can misinterpret your Christian experience; here’s
what goes on time and time again. During a rest period you have so thoroughly
enjoyed yourself, it has been such a time of invigoration that you deduce that
that should be normative, and you come to the conclusion that is real
spirituality, I had this great relief and I was blessed and all the rest of it
and now I’m back down in the dumps. So
when the heat gets on, instead of rising to meet the occasion you fall. And this is a satanic trick to make you feel
guilty for the next round of pressure, because when the pressure starts you
think oh-oh, it’s discipline. Not
necessarily, there are many categories of suffering, and so because he gets us
feeling guilty, then what do we do? We get out of fellowship, then we start to
spiral down. So you can misinterpret the rest.
That’s probably why God doesn’t give us very many, they are too
dangerous, at least this side of phase three.
Now we are in a state where we can understand what’s going to happen
when David tries to build God’s tent.
Notice 2 Samuel 7:3, Nathan agrees to it. This is when Nathan opened his mouth too
soon, because Nathan said oh, this is a good period, God’s given David rest,
and now David, it would be very, very appropriate for you to build God something. And here is when he was way off base, and
Nathan is going to go to bed, and while he sleeps God is going to jack him up a
little bit and straighten him out, and give Nathan one of the most fantastic
messages that has ever been given any political figure in all time. With our heads bowed…..