2 Samuel Lesson 56
Doctrine of rest (continued); Nathan’s oracle -
2 Samuel 7:4-17
We will get to what is known as the oracle of Nathan. 2 Samuel 7 is one of the highlights of the
Old Testament. It’s a very important concept,
it is the basis of the office of Messiah.
Chapters 2-
7 have dealt with the basis of David’s kingdom, so that by this chapter
he has a unified people; he has a land, he has the presence of God in the ark,
and now he has an eternally decreed prosperity.
Any politician would settle for the first three points, that you have to
have a unified people, you obviously have to have a place and you have to have
something, speaking of the religious unity of the people, in this case the
presence of God, but to have a decree that your administration and its later
descendants will be eternally prosperous is an unheard of thing in the
political sphere. It is that degree,
that sovereign decree of God behind the Davidic Covenant that is now the basis
of everything that’s going to follow in this book. God nails Himself down to specifics and
therefore you have again the orientation of divine viewpoint toward the
future.
Now there is only one movement in the world today that comes close to
Christianity in its future orientation.
That’s communism, and the reason it does is because Karl Marx borrowed
the concept of future victory from some medieval premillennialists, plus what
he obtained about the book of Daniel through Hegel. So communism actually is a Christian heresy.
Whatever is true in communism in the sense that there is a purpose to history,
has been stolen from the pages of the Old Testament and New Testament. Now it’s interesting that communism has only
been stopped, temporarily, by those areas strongest in the Christian
faith. For example, the area strongest
in
Now the reason this is so because Christianity alone has the answer to
communism; Christianity alone has a sovereign decree over all history; nothing
stops God’s decree. And once believers
latch onto the concept of God’s sovereign program, that is irresistible, then
victory lies very close at here door.
But until we stop worrying about chance and about all the other things,
and defeatism and pessimism, and go over to the optimistic sovereign decree of
God, we will continue to be perpetual losers.
Now in 2 Samuel 7 David has entered into what is called the rest. And there are five points that you want to
understand about the concept of rest in the Old Testament, because it is this
concept that is later brought out in Hebrews 4 and used very effectively by
that author to point out certain things about the Christian. The first thing you want to see about rest is
very simple, very obvious, and that is that the rest, the model of it is the
seventh day, the Sabbath rest in creation.
The seven literal days of Genesis 1; and don’t bother to take the days
of ages as ages; people have tried that for four hundred years and it just
doesn’t work. The language argues
against you. You cannot sustain that
interpretation. The days of Genesis are literal 24 hour days. So we have these six days in which God does
his working, and the seventh day He rests.
Why does He rest? Very
simple. His work’s done. So if Genesis 1 gives the first view of rests
it sets up for us throughout the rest of the Bible the connotation of
rest. It’s not just resting, it’s not
just resting without further qualifications.
Some Christians have taken this to mean that you just kind of go passive
and let the world go by and you don’t do anything, you just sit down. That can’t be what is meant because what had
God done before He rested? He built the
universe. Why did He rest? Because He
finished His work. The rest, then, in
the Bible is not just rest, it is rest after the job has been finished. And so from the very first, the very first
illustration, the creation rest goes back and underscores that the “rest” of
the Bible comes after the job is finished.
You don’t rest until the job is complete.
The second illustration in the Bible of historic type of the rest is
Joshua’s rest, and again it shows you the same thing; the main work of conquest
had been finished under Joshua. The main
job had been done and therefore Joshua could rest. He just didn’t rest before he hit
The third illustration of the rest in the Old Testament is the one we
have before us, David’s rest. Why is David resting? Because much of his job has
been done, is finished. David has secured the control of at least the central
highlands. His job, then, has been
completed, at least most of his job. And
so now David rests.
A fourth illustration biblically of rest is the millennial kingdom,
predicted by Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, the book of Revelation, and again the
millennial rest is not just a rest, it’s a rest after Satan and his forces have
been removed. And there’s been a lot of
activity in the tribulation to get rid of Satan and the demon forces, and after
the job is finished, then the rest. So
the millennial kingdom is a rest, yes, after the job is finished.
And finally, the fifth illustration of rest in the Bible is the eternal
rest in the last chapter of the Bible, the eternal rest of Revelation 22. And this rest, like the first one, shows us
something very critical. The first rest,
the creation rest, taught us that rest occurs after the job is finished; the
last rest, the eternal rest, teaches us that the rest itself has content, it’s
not just taking an eternal snooze. The
eternal rest means then the creature has time praise God in all the manifold
ways, without resistance, without constantly having to fight, fight, fight. All
of that’s over, so now you have a full blossoming of the creature relaxing in
God’s presence and worshipping. So
another connotation of the word “rest” is worship.
Now there are certain applications that we can make of the doctrine of
rest. Those were five illustrations in
the Bible of rest. Now let’s take three
applications of rest; make sure we’ve got the concept. One application of the rest would be the
The second thing that would have to occur if we were to use the first
five Biblical norms as examples for the United States would be we would have to
have God raise up wise leaders, men who have a divine viewpoint framework and
have the guts to carry it out in every area.
Leaders, and the Bible also says leaders are God’s gift to a
nation. A nation doesn’t make it
leaders, a nation only destroys them. In
God’s Word, God gives the leaders. And
in Isaiah there’s a prophecy that says when God disciplines a nation He makes
sure the nation has no leaders capable in the crisis hour; that’s one of the
ways He has of destroying a nation, simply remove its leaders.
Then, besides these first two things, before the nation can enjoy a
rest, you must have the national repentance, you must have godly leaders raised
up by God, who have chokmah, and you
must have policies, both in the foreign and domestic areas that are compatible
with the Word of God. And after that,
after all those are put into practice, the military is once again strong, and
America’s foes are challenged and defeated if necessary, then we have military
victory and then we have national freedom, then the nation will be up to a
rest.
That’s one application of the doctrine of rest to the nation. Let’s take another application of the concept
of rest, to the individual believer’s life.
As we said last time, your life can be diagramed in the line of sanctification,
from the time that you are born again, until the time that you arrive in the
state that God has predestined you to arrive in, predestined to be conformed to
the image of Christ, your growth line is not a constant, in case you haven’t
discovered. There will be times when you
will grow very rapidly, oftentimes under great adversity. And then you’ll peak out, God will bless you,
and then you kind of get sloppy because although He intended the rest period to
be a time when you could enjoy Him, we always interpret the rest period as a time
to relax and goof off spiritually. Fallen
creatures in a fallen universe can never relax; we are always, because of the
curse, descending from order to chaos; always the drag downward. You never can rest in that sense. But, the rest in the believer’s life will be
those periods in your life when God minimizes the adversities and the pressures
and so on and you have a time to breathe.
Many of you have a time to breathe right now; many of you have areas of
life where you are, at least for a while, free of any major catastrophes. That’s not always going to hold. The way the economy is going a lot of men are
going to lose their jobs. There’s going
to be a lot of suffering in this country because we have failed to follow the
Biblical norms of the Word of God. And
you can’t break God’s laws; God’s laws break man every time. And we’re about to learn that; people don’t
learn it the easy way so we’re going to have to learn it the hard way. There are times coming when you’re not going
to have it so easy to get the Word of God.
This is not fear-mongering, this is just a statement of the facts. Take advantage of the Word of God while you
have an opportunity, because God doesn’t allow rest periods to continue
indefinitely this side of eternity.
Another area of rest, a third area of application besides an application
to the nation, application to individual believers, you have an application to
the concept of faith itself; the very concept of faith means that I must come
to a point where I trust God to provide what I can’t provide. That’s what communion is all about. Whether you knew it or not, when you consume
those elements, you were stating a fact, and you were stating the fact that you
personally believe that what those elements stood for, salvation in Jesus
Christ, is unattainable on any other basis than by faith. Faith alone, the Reformers said, and it
struck terror to the heart of religionists everywhere, it always does. Legalist can’t stand faith alone, that is
only by faith, by faith alone, plus nothing, that salvation is secured.
Those are three areas of application of the concept of rest. Now we are prepared to study 2 Samuel 4. The first three verses are an introduction.
The first three verses are an introduction.
From verse 4-17 we have what is known as Nathan’s oracle. “And it came
to pass that night, that the word of the LORD came unto Nathan, saying,” now
verse 4 is the result of what Nathan had said in verse 3. Remember, after David said, you know, God has
given me a rest period, God has subdued my enemies, I’d like to something for
God, and so David has on his mind in verse 2, it would be fine to build a
temple for God. So Nathan says go ahead
David, build one. Now in verse 4 God’s
Word comes to the prophet to cut off this attempt by David to build a temple.
Now we’re going to have to do a little background study to understand
why God is so anxious to stop this little project of David’s. There is a lot of theology and doctrine
behind this, and it goes back to the Ancient Near East. In the Ancient Near East it was customary
that when a king was prospered and he attributed that prosperity to his gods,
or god, he would then go around building temples to that God. Now the reason he built the temples to the
gods wasn’t just to thank the god, the reason he built the temples to his god was to secure
something for his reign. It was to
secure his reign from its political foes.
The making of the temple of the god was actually a salvation by works
process, in which the king would thereby try to put the cement together that
would hold his administration together.
And not only did the human viewpoint religion of the Ancient East focus
on this temple and its affect on the king’s political reign, it also focused on
the realm of nature, so that when the king made his temple he would make the
temple not only for his administration but on a wider circle he would make it
to guarantee nature. Now why would the
king be interested in guaranteeing the processes of nature. Simple; where would
the country’s economy come from but agriculture. So therefore it’s very
critical that the king do what he could to maintain nature. And so I’m going to read a section of one of
the Ugaritic texts that was dug up around World War II, these texts have come
to archeologist’s attention. And here is
a text that was dug up that talks about the building of a house to Baal. The Canaanites, of course, are the people in
the land, and this text clearly shows you the reason for a temple. Listen.
“Let a house be built for Baal like the other gods, and a court like the
children of Asherah,” that’s the virgin of the ancient world, Lady Asherah of
the Sea, you often hear our lady of this and our lady of that, which has come
to us through Romanism, actually that goes further back than Christianity, it
goes all the way back into the paganism of the ancient world. “Lady Asherah of the Sea, our great indeed, O
El and wise,” and she talks to El, which was the high God of this pantheon, you
had El, the old man, he’s apparently a remnant of Elohim, and then you have
Baal and his girlfriends, and Baal is going to have a temple built to
himself. And after the temple is
contemplated, there’s a couple of breaks in the text, we get this line: “Now
too, the seasons of his reign will Baal observe; the seasons of his snow will
he observe. He will peal his thunder in
the clouds, flashing his lightenings to the earth, the house of cedar, let him
build it, the house of brick, let it be constructed.”
So you can obviously see the connotation, the building of the temple to
the deity was a salvation by works proclamation where by the king of the realm
would try to secure his realm. This is
why 2 Samuel 7 proceeds the way it does.
If you ever want to read something like this, we have this Ancient Near
Eastern text in our library, it’s got translations of all these text in
it. You ought to read some of them just
to get exposure on Biblical backgrounds.
But keeping all that in mind, now read 2 Samuel 7 and see if you don’t
get something different out of it than you usually get out of it.
Verse 4, “And it came to pass that night, that the word of the LORD came
unto Nathan, saying, [5] Go and tell My servant, David,” notice, David is
classified as the servant of Jehovah. He’s the highest civil authority, but he
is under Jehovah. The chain of command
is first, Jehovah or Yahweh, then the prophet, then the king. Israel is the only nation in the history of
mankind that has ever had a prophet or a prophetic order over the king. The king is always the first one in every
other nation; not in Israel. The king of
Israel was the most impotent king of all the ancient nations. Why? Because
the prophet being over the king said in effect, king there is a standard above
you; man is not his own standard, God’s Word is the standard. So the prophet
stands over and against the king, and this reminds us that in divine viewpoint
politics the state does not legislate morality.
Moral standards are not what the 51% say; if you watch programs on what
people think, it’s fashionable on some of these documentaries to canvas people
and say what do you think about this, the right to die or the energy problem,
and we secure opinions. Now opinions in
Scripture are never considered. Isn’t it
interesting that David didn’t conduct a survey to find out what he should
do. He was informed by a prophet with
the Word of God what he should do. Not
51% of the people make the rules; God makes the rules. If 1% wish to join Him, that’s the majority.
So the standard always must be the Word of God.
Now in verse 5, when God told David this message, in the original
language, He says it so that it carries a certain force of prohibition. In verse 5 in the King James it reads, “To
and tell My servant, David, Thus saith the LORD,” when you see the “Thus saith
the LORD,” that is the signal that the prophet is to repeat verbatim what God
said. He is not to add, he is not to
subtract; he has got a message from God and whether people like it, whether
people don’t like it, whether it’s going to cost him his life or it doesn’t, he
is to say this message. Jeremiah said if
I am not loyal to God when He says, “Thus saith the LORD,” my bones burn within
me. A prophet is a man who a lot of
people would like to be, but if you read carefully the biographies of the great
prophets, like Isaiah and Jeremiah, they all didn’t want to be them. They
didn’t want that calling, because all they had as a result of this calling was
trouble, all their life. They didn’t
relish that calling but God gave them the calling.
And so Nathan has the calling to go and “tell My servant, David,”
something. And I can imagine as Nathan
received this he was a little nervous because this is phrased in a tremendous
sarcasm and Nathan is going to have to convey this sarcasm straight face to
face to the king. And the sarcasm, the
only way to get it across in the English would be to read it this way: “You,
David, are going to build a house for Me?” The emphasis is on the “you” and the
“Me.” In other words, who do you think
you are David? You don’t build Me
houses, you are a little pipsqueak and you don’t build houses for the infinite
God. And so the whole thrust of verse 5
is that David, you do not build Me a house; yes the King of Tyre builds one for
his little Baal, or the kings of Philistia build them for their Dagons, but the
King of Israel doesn’t build them for Jehovah; Jehovah is not sold and bought
as these gods. And you’re not going to
secure blessing for your kingdom, David, because you build Me a house; you’re
not going to secure climatic blessing for your farmers and your agricultural
industry because you build me a house; we don’t buy salvation by works her in
Israel, David, so you are not going to build me a house.
Now it’s phrased as a question in verse 5, [“Shalt thou build Me an
house for Me to dwell in?”] but the question goes back to something that is
going to undercut the foundation of Ancient Near Eastern thought. To get across the point, let’s contrast
divine viewpoint and human viewpoint at a number of points here. Divine viewpoint has a certain concept of
God; human viewpoint always has another concept of God. God, on a human viewpoint basis always winds
up to be an impersonal process… always winds up to be the impersonal
process. Even though you have deities
and so on, ultimately God is just a process.
God here is an infinite person, there’s a complete difference. The two words, if you want a vocabulary, how
to increase your word power theologically, the word that we’re looking at is
transcendent, the God of the Bible is transcendent, it means He is over His
creation. The gods of all the other
religions are imminent, that means they are inside the creation, they are part
of the creation. And this is where God
could not afford to have His essence marred by some building program of
David. God wanted David’s reign to be
totally different from the reigns of the other kings. One king would do this, David would have to do
the opposite.
Now God would allow certain things, like He allowed David to get the
craftsmen from the city of Tyre up to build a cedar palace; these things were
allowable because they involved simple chokmah,
but when it came to anything with a highly religious flavor to it, no; David
had to be completely separated from the other kings of the world. So David’s building program is vetoed right
here. It was vetoed because for David to
engage in this building program, even though David himself might have
understood the issue, it was too much like what I read out of that Ancient Near
Eastern text, too much like Baal, you’ll build a house and nature will be
secure and my administration will be prosperous; it smacks too much of that, so
God would not permit David to do this.
Now there are some applications that we can see in this, in the
Christian way of life and the Christian church today, and that is that we all
have had people come up and say when are you going to build your new
building. Now we are not going to build
a new building until we have need of one and we don’t have need of one, because
in my book it’s the Sunday night and Wednesday evening crowd that are the true
measure of the interested people, not the Sunday morning crowd. If the Sunday morning crowd wants to sit out
in the middle of the street they’re free to do so, but the people that I cater
to are those who are serious enough to study the Word of God systematically
through the week. We therefore do not have need of a building. And secondly, we build a building when we have
built first the core of the local church; when we have the church built then we
build the churches building, but the church is not the building. Spiritual priorities are always first.
Let’s look at what else God told David.
Verse 6, “Whereas I have not dwelt in any house since the time that I
brought up the children of Israel out of Egypt, even to this day, but have
walked about,” it’s the hiphil stem of a Hebrew verb, it means I walk about, “I
walk about in a tent and in a tabernacle.”
This is a picture of mobility, it’s a picture of impermanence, God is
not settling down, and as long as God is walking in a tent, as long as God is
moving about in a tabernacle, no administration is secure. See David wants God, so to speak, to be
pinned down in history, because David knows that unless God is pinned down in
history, David is insecure, because David is located right at that point. So if David is going to be secure, God must
be pinned down. And God says I haven’t been pinned down yet.
Verse 7, “In all the places wherein I have walked with all the children
of Israel, did I ever speak a word with any of the tribes of Israel, whom I
commanded to feed My people, Israel, saying,” and the word “feed” means
pasture, the tribes here in verse 7, some people like to spot a contradiction
between verse 7 and 1 Chronicles 17:6 where the word “judges” is used. There’s no contradiction, the word “tribes”
in verse 7 is the tribes from which the judge was called, it’s talking about
the period of the Judges, after the Exodus, go back in history. At 1440 BC you have the Exodus, we’re talking
now about 1050 BC, and from 1440, for about a hundred years you had conquest
and so on, you had the forty years training, the musar in the wilderness, and then you had Joshua’s conquest of the
land. Finally you had a period of
Judges, about 300 years, actually about 315 when you compute it from Samuel, so
the Judges were a period of three centuries, in which you had defeat, victory;
defeat, victory; defeat, victory, over and over and over and over again. The nation was never secure because of the
nation’s carnality. And God always let
them be judged; and then when He went to the point of delivering he would
always raise up from one of the tribes a judge.
He raised up people like Samson, like Gideon, like Barak and Deborah, He
raised up these people to act to free, to provide the leadership, to secure
military victories.
And so, did I ever during all this time, God says, for these three and
four hundred years, have I ever at any time, asked you people to build Me a
thing? See, God is in the grace
business, He’s going the giving, He’s not asking these people to build Him some
fancy castle some place. I’ve never
asked you to do this. Baal does his
followers, Dagon does his followers, but Yahweh God of Israel doesn’t. Absolutely different. “Why build ye not Me an
house of cedar?” The word “house of
cedar,” you remember in the Baal text I just read is just a word that means a
house that’s very costly and very permanent, as contrasted to a nomadic tent.
Now verse 8, there’s a dramatic shift in Nathan’s oracle here, indicated
by a Hebrew word, hatah, with a hard
“h” and when this occurs, usually in the Psalms you have a shifting from a
lament to a happy condition, or from a happy condition to a lament. There’s always a shift in mood. Now the shift in mood very dramatically takes
place at the beginning of verse 8. And
again, if you keep in mind what I read from that Baal text; what would happen
if the king made a temple to his god? He
would secure nature, and having secured nature would then secure the prosperity
of his realm. What was the motivation
behind building the temple?
Security. Now isn’t it
interesting that God sees David has a need for security, so now God is going to
bless him in a most fantastic way; God is going to give David what he wants,
but he’s not going to permit David to ever think that He’s going to get it the
way the pagans get their security. God
is going to give him outright a security that no pagan deity ever has or ever
can give a politician. Here’s why;
Israel is monotheistic, one God. If you
have a monotheism you have one God ONLY who decrees, no competing gods, one
God, His decree forever. So therefore,
Yahweh, the God of Israel, can make a decree to David and He can say David, you
will be secure for eternity. But take
polytheism; take the religion round about Israel. What would happen here; one deity tries to
make a promise, but then tomorrow which deity is going to reign. In Greek mythology first you had Cronus, then
you had Zeus, then you had Mars and you have a whole bunch of gods, so you had
different gods that assumed prominence in the pantheon so it’s foolish under a
polytheistic system to ever have an eternal decree; you can’t get it. Only in monotheism do you get this.
Therefore, the God of Israel is going to, beginning in verse 8, give
David something that David wanted but it’s going to be given to him in a divine
viewpoint way, not a human viewpoint way.
“Now, therefore, so shalt thou say unto my servant, David,” and he
reviews something. Before He lets David in on his present, this is David’s
Christmas present, and before He gives David his Christmas present He’s going
to remind David of a few things, so he could appreciate the gift. He says first, “I took you from the
sheepcote, from following the sheep, to be ruler over My people, over
Israel.” That’s a reminder that the
stability of David’s reign to begin with didn’t depend on David. David, where
do you think you’re going to secure blessing for your reign by building Me a
house; your very existence as a king didn’t depend on anything you did, you
were out there with the smelly sheep.
How come you got to be king, when all your brothers, from the human
point of view were better looking than you were, had better educations, had
more experience. They qualified over you
in every area, but David, remember the day that Samuel walked into your
father’s house and Samuel refused to sit down until you had been brought in. When all the sons were standing around hoping
they would be picked, I had My prophet sit there until you came in. David, you
didn’t get to be king because of anything you did, you got to be king because I
called you to that office. So don’t
change horses in midstream, if you started your reign by grace, finish it by
grace. If your reign began by My
sovereign initiative, it’s going to be secure eternally by My sovereign
initiative. It’s not going to be any
other way; don’t change, you started with grace, don’t end with works.
And then he says, verse 9, he reviews more of David’s history, “And I
was with you wherever you went, and have cut off all thine enemies out of your
sight,” and having been through the David series, let’s think of a few times,
and probably as David hears this he could kind of have some thought going
through his mind, what David must have thought as Nathan repeated these
words. And David knew very well, there
wasn’t any hesitancy in David that this wasn’t just coming from Nathan, it was
coming from God. When he heard those words
coming out of Nathan’s mouth to him, David, I raised you up from the sheepcote,
and I was with you wherever you went, what do you supposed remembered. Do you suppose he might have remembered the
two toulies trips he had down in Gath, when he was down there, showed up in
Goliath’s home town with Goliath’s sword, trying to be obscure, and remember
how the Lord Jesus Christ personally taught him how to survive in a POW
situation, how you feign insanity, which is one of the modern escape techniques
still used in the military. Remember
that great Psalm that David wrote, Psalm 34, that he used to train his
soldiers, in the middle of the Psalm he said, “The Lord always camps around
them that fear Him,” you remember that you men; remember how he taught his soldiers
that. Where did he learn that? When he was out of it in Gath. Remember the second time he trotted down to
Gath to work out a political gimmick with Achish, wound up in such a fouled up
situation he almost had to start killing his fellow countrymen because Achish
was going to put him in the lead battalion and he got out of that by God’s
sovereignty.
David knows, wherever he goes Yahweh was with him. When he screwed up, Yahweh was with him; when
he was being blessed Yahweh was with him.
That’s just a little reminder to David that again, not only did he not
get elevated to the office of king by God’s sovereign grace to begin with, but
he would have gotten tubed out way, way long ago if it hadn’t been for God
sustaining him by His sovereign grace in case after case after case, through
the whole book, the last part of 1 Samuel and the first part of 2 Samuel. What
sustained David all this time; “I was with you,” David, your security doesn’t
depend on something you’ve done. If it
depended on what you’d done, you’d have gotten tubed out in Gath; and if not
the first time certainly the second time.
David, you’ve had an attempt against your life seven times by Saul; who
got you out of all those attempted assassinations? I was with you wherever you went? Now David, is your security really with you,
or is with Me?
And then God says, I “have made thee a great name,” now at this point
the translations differ, it’s a very difficult section grammatically beginning
at this point, in the middle of verse 9, with the verb “I made,” some of your
translations will read this as a present or a past tense; I am taking it as a
future tense; the great Hebrew grammarians of this century and the last have
all taken this in the future tense; it was the normal way the grammar would go,
there are just some application problems if you take in the future, but
grammatically all the syntax, the rules of syntax, would say this verb is
future and since they do, we’ll go with that, and not say this is an exception
to the syntax. “…and I will make thee
great name, like unto the name of the great men who are in the earth.” That means the kings of all history. Now why is the future tense in verse 9? To get continuity, see, God has said now
David, listen to Me, I got you the first place, out of that sheepcote, I put
you into the office, I kept you in the office and I’m not through yet, I’m
going to perfect your office and make your reputation fantastic in
history. Now David, don’t panic, just
let Me finish what I’m trying to do with you.
So here God is saying that I am not yet finished, so David don’t
interpret your present rest as the final one, it’s only a temporary stopping
place in the road.
Verse 10, another future tense, “Moreover, I will appoint a place for My
people, Israel, and I will plant them, that they may dwell in a place of their
own and move no more,” and the word “move” is a tip off as to the fulfillment
of verse 10. Verse 10 has to be future;
verse 10 has never historically been fulfilled yet, because the word “move no
more” is ragaz, ragaz is a word that
is used in passages like Deuteronomy 28 to refer to the fifth degree of
discipline. It refers particularly to
the psychological tremors of the heart, when the people are so discouraged,
they go into the diasporas, and so forth, so verse 10 has never yet been
fulfilled. “I will appoint a place for
My people, Israel, and I will plant them, that they no more be moved.” Now that hasn’t been fulfilled yet, so it’s
future, even to our day. “…neither shall
the children of wickedness afflict them any more….” And the word “afflict” is interesting, this
is the word that is usually associated with Exodus and the affliction of the
Egyptians, and it means in bondage to satanic domination. So it’s a prediction not only that David’s
career is not yet finished, in verse 9, Israel’s career is not yet finished in
verse 10. God has a historic program for
Israel. This is why, for example in
verse 8, when he said I raised you up David, to be a ruler, a ruler just for
David’s sake? No! A ruler for his nation’s sake, see what it
says, “to be ruler over My people,” in other words, God is going back to the
Abrahamic Covenant of Genesis 12, Genesis 15, Genesis 17. The Abrahamic Covenant was three points; the
seed, the land and the worldwide blessing.
The Abrahamic Covenant is the basis of God’s sovereign program in
history and on that basis He has chosen a people; David doesn’t add to the
Abrahamic Covenant, he fits into the Abrahamic Covenant, he’s part of it, he
just continues with it. So the covenant
that we have in this chapter, the Davidic Covenant, is nothing more than a
detail of the Abrahamic Covenant. The
Abrahamic Covenant gives you the big picture, the Davidic Covenant develops
part of that picture, the part that has to do with the leadership of the
nation.
“…as before time,” the word “before time” in verse 10 refers to the time
in Egypt. Verse 11, “And as since the
time that I commanded judges to be over My people, Israel,” in other words, God
is saying look, this nation has suffered and suffered and suffered, it suffered
way back, from beginning in 1800 BC when the nation went down into Egypt, it
was removed in 1400 BC but after that you have the period of the judges and
they suffered during the period of the judges also. All during this time suffering, suffering,
suffering, suffering, suffering, over and over and over again. Now look at the next clause, it’s future,
should be a future tense, “and I will cause you [thee] to rest from all your
enemies.” Now this sets up for the
fantastic promise that’s coming The word
“thee” or you refers not just to David, but refers to the nation. You see, David was introduced in verse 9; the
nation was introduced in verse 10. And
so “you” refers corporately, both to David and to the nation, “and I will cause
you to rest from all your enemies.”
Now it can’t be in David’s time. The rest of verse 11 must be the
millennial rest; it can’t be David’s rest because in 586 BC the nation fell,
and they certainly weren’t resting then.
So David’s rest came to an end; Joshua’s rest came to and end; all the
previous rests came to an end. So by a
process of elimination of those first five rests I gave you when we started,
the next one up is the millennial rest.
So “I will cause you to rest from your enemies,” that refers to the
future millennium. “And the LORD tells
you,” now Nathan adds at this point the frosting on the cake. God has first reminded David, look David,
don’t sweat the works program, it’s all grace, I got you in the office, I
sustained you. Furthermore David, I want
you to remember that this whole thing is one coordinated master plan of
history, it’s not just you I’m dealing with David, I’m dealing through you with
the whole nation, and through that nation with the whole world; David, you have
a cosmic purpose.
Now with that as the groundwork, Nathan says, “..and the LORD tells you that He
will build you an house,” and this is a little… again, it’s kind of sarcastic,
because David has told the Lord, Lord, I’m going to build you a temple, just
like all the other kings do, and here’s where God says David, I’m going to
build you a temple. The word “house,” beth is the same word used for temple;
it’s used for dynasty, it’s a pun on the word.
David’s thinking of a building, I’m going to build you a temple, and God
says I’m going to build you a temple.
Now you see why 2 Samuel 7 hits like a bombshell against all Ancient
Near Eastern religions, all the religions of man, all the other religions of
the world, human viewpoint based, man secures his security by his own
works. Built a temple for Baal, and then
nature will bless you and then your administration will be successful. Here God says no David, forget it, if there’s
any temple-building going on, I’m the One that’s doing the building, not
you. God does, man receives, that’s
grace. When God starts receiving and man
starts doing, that’s works. So here we have
grace, more grace and more grace.
“I am going to make you a beth,”
“I’m going to make you a temple,” now the way He says it right here you can’t
tell what the word beth means, you
see, it’s a play on the words; beth,
you’ve heard of Bethlehem, ever realize that the word Bethlehem, lechem is the word bread, beth is the word house, the city of
Bethlehem is called the house of bread.
Now beth is going to be used
in several ways and it’s a play on the word as we go through here. It starts off being used for a building; now
God says I’m going to build you a beth. What do you mean a beth? Well, now we’re going
to have all sorts of things come out what He means when He says I’m going to
build you a building.
Verse 12, “And when your days be fulfilled, and you shall sleep with
your fathers, I will set up thy seed after you, which shall proceed out of your
bowels [thine own body], and I will establish his kingdom.” Notice how literal the seed, he’s talking
here, the word “seed” means the sperm, and the Hebrew didn’t have any mythical
connotation or abstract philosophic reflection on this thing, they viewed it as
the literal sperm. And so he says, “I
will set up your sperm after you,” the same word used, “that shall proceed out
of your own loins, and I will establish his kingdom.” Now that looks, the way it reads in verse 12,
that it just refers to Solomon, because Solomon did come from David. You have David and you have one son, Solomon;
it says it shall be immediate, it shall come out of it. Now 2 Samuel 7 was written before subsequent
history occurred. It was written as what
God said, God literally said this. But
as Nathan was speaking it he phrased it in certain words that would have been
understood in this way at that time in history.
But further history shows that the promise isn’t just to Solomon because
the dynasty continued.
So turn to the parallel passage, 1 Chronicles 17:11, remember Chronicles
parallels Samuel here but Chronicles was written after 516 BC; Chronicles was
written late and therefore when the Holy Spirit enscripturates Chronicles 17:11
he makes a slight change in the text.
“And it shall come to pass when thy days are ended, that you must go to
be with thy fathers, that I will raise up your sperm after you, who shall be
out of your sons;” plural “and I will establish his kingdom,” singular. The “his” then is now interpreted by the
author of Chronicles to refer to the seed, collective; collective noun with a
singular pronoun, “his seed.” But
Chronicles tells us that the Holy Spirit, in its full development, intended the
prophecy not just to be for Solomon, it meant the whole Davidic dynasty.
Now back to 2 Samuel 7, this is why we say, incidentally, that David was
the most graced out believer who ever lived.
Verse 13, “He,” that is the seed, “shall build a base for My name, and I
will establish the throne of his kingdom forever.” Now here’s where this word play on beth occurs; again, beth, beth can mean a literal physical temple; David intended it to
be that, and Solomon certainly did build a literal physical temple. But, beth
also includes another one of David’s sons, the Lord Jesus Christ, and when
Jesus Christ used the word for temple, He meant the body that is the Church, in
Ephesians 2. Now that’s not seen in the
Old Testament, but it turns out historically that the Church was included here
though it was not seen as such. The beth, [13] “He will build an house for
my name, and I will establish the throne of his kingdom forever.” Now the word holem in verse 13, forever, this word often just means for a long
time. In this case it doesn’t mean just
for a long time; in this case holem
means for eternity. Let me prove it;
turn to Psalm 89:30. Psalm 89 is the
musical rendition of 2 Samuel 7.
Now there are two Psalms that are renditions of 2 Samuel 7, Psalm 2 and
Psalm 89. In Psalm 89:30, we’ll start in
verse 28 for the context, “My mercy will I keep for him for evermore, and My
covenant shall stand fast with him. [29]
His seed also will I make to endure forever,” forever is the word holem, and you could say okay, it just
means for a long time; huh-un, because the next phrase is appositional with it,
“and his throne as the days of heaven.” And the “days of heaven” are always
used for eternity in the Old Testament.
So this defines how holem is
meant to be in 2 Samuel 7. The verse, 2
Samuel 7:13, “I will the throne of his kingdom holem,” “I will establish the throne of his kingdom for
eternity.”
Then verse 14 another slap at Ancient Near Eastern religion, if you feel
that Christianity makes you persona non
grata, join the crowd, because I hope, I’ve tried every place I’ve had time
and opportunity to show you how the saints of the Old Testament just collided
head on with everything in the ancient world; they didn’t agree with anybody on
anything, Israel; they were always looked upon as religious bigots, and we are
heirs to that great title of religious bigot, because in the eyes of God that
is a good name to be called.
Verse 14, “I will be his father, and he shall be my son. If he commit iniquity, I will chasten him
with the rod of men, and with the stripes of the children of men.” Now how does this clash with the Ancient
East? The king in the Ancient East was
always looked upon as a god, and when it says in this verse that I am going to
discipline him, it says two things; it’s possible for the king to have moral
imperfections, and two, if he does have moral imperfections, I’m going to take
care of it. So it subordinated the king
under the gods. Now to get a contrast
between what the Bible does and what ancient religion does, here’s a picture on
an archeological temple of Pharaoh, Ramesses II, now you see three figures in
that drawing, the one in the middle is Ramesses, the one on the left is the god
Horus, it’s the falcon-headed god. And
the god on the right is Nom. Now the way
they emphasized importance wasn’t by perspective, they didn’t know perspective,
so the Egyptian artist would always indicate rank by size of figures. Applying that artistic canon to that drawing,
what is that drawing telling you? That
Pharaoh is equal to the gods, he is in the company of the gods. You don’t have to read anything in Egyptian,
you don’t even have to know hieroglyphics, you can just look at the art and you
know immediately what the Egyptian is saying; he’s saying Pharaoh with fellow
gods; that’s what that picture means.
Now to show the blasphemy even further, here is a temple post, a
mortuary temple, and on this post in the mortuary temple is a set of
hieroglyphics with his name; off to the side of that name there are two
straight lines, those are called [can’t understand word] scepters and it means
that the king, the [same word] means the power that mediates, and the this
symbol up here, that small circle is the symbol of heaven, and the symbol down
here is the symbol of earth, and what that post is proclaiming is that King
[can’t understand name] is the mediator, the divine mediator between heaven and
earth. Now that is how the ancient world
looked on their kings. You’ve got to
understand that or you don’t see what force 2 Samuel has. In the pagan world the king was not what we call
a top politician today, he was always looked upon as partaking of powers of
divinity, or at least one very intimate with the deity. So if that’s the case, then when you read in
verse 14, “I will be his father, and he shall be my son,” that’s a rather
radical statement, and that’s why scholars have always pointed out, Israel’s
king was the weakest king of all the nations of the whole entire ancient
world. He was given less power, he was
under more condemnation, he was placed lower down on the totem pole than any
other group. Why? God’s will is that the political realm be
subordinate to His Word, not the other way around. The political realm doesn’t grant the Word of
God freedom; the Word of God sustains whatever political realm there is, it’s
precisely reversed.
And then finally the conclusion in verse 15, he says, “But my mercy,” my
chesed, there’s our word for loyal
love, “My chesed shall never be
removed, as I took it from Saul, whom I put away before thee.” The removal of
the chesed would mean he’d be removed
from being king. Now if that’s the case, verse 15 is a very, very important
statement. There, for those of you who
are troubled about eternal security, verse 15 is your proof that eternal
security is embedded solemnly in the flow of the entire Bible. The Davidic Covenant is a covenant that
spells eternal security. No matter what
would happen, David’s dynasty would be eternally secure forever. So the concept of eternal security is not
something cranked out by John Calvin in Geneva; it is something that God spoke
right here to David. Eternal security is
the parcel, the basis for all these covenants.
Verse 16, “And thy house and thy kingdom,” “thy house” means dynasty,
the “kingdom” the geopolitical location, and “thy throne,” the position of
power “shall be established for eternity.
So obviously, how is that going to come about? Not too much thought would show you. It’s got to come about by somebody who is
human, because he’s got to be of the seed of David, he’s got to have the genes
of David, so whoever is going to fulfill this has to have the genes of
David. Yet on the other hand, he has to
reign forever and ever and ever and ever and ever, which means he must have the
attribute of eternality, which therefore means that the fulfillment of the
Davidic Covenant has to be in a God-man.
That’s why this covenant defines the person of Jesus Christ. And that’s why the Church has always
confessed, undiminished deity and true humanity, united without confusion in
one person forever; Jesus Christ, God-man, the fulfiller of this. David’s kingdom, then, has now had its base
provided. Chapter 7 is the basis, the
end, the terminal base of David’s kingdom; David’s kingdom is secure, not
because David is going to built a temple to Yahweh; David’s kingdom is secure
because God has chosen it and God has decreed it. That is sufficient.
With our heads bowed…