Lesson 10
A Foreview of Israel’s destiny – Deut. 4:25-40
The doctrine of eternal security is the cornerstone of every major
unconditional covenant in the Old Testament.
Without these you have no eternal security. These covenants are very obvious, known to
any person who studies the Word in any detail, eternity security should be very
obvious. It should be very obvious but
it’s not, so we’re going to take the Davidic Covenant, this time from another
angle. We’re going to show how the
doctrine of eternal security is clearly taught in the Davidic Covenant. So let’s go back to 2 Sam. 7 and locate where
we are before we get into the details.
The first thing you want to remember is going back in history. We started this series back in Gen. 12;
time—about 2000 BC. Then we went to
Genesis and showed why
You remember the basic points of the Law. The Law was a promise of blessing for
obedience. We could divide the blessing
of the Law into four parts. We could say
first that the Law promised that they would have military victory, i.e. these
are from Lev. 26; Deut. 28, these are the blessings and the cursing sections of
the Law. If this nation kept faithful
then they would experience military victory.
Please notice, it is not a function of how well they are militarily
prepared. It is a function of their
spiritual state. You can have the best military organization and have the worst
spiritual condition and have a disaster.
Today we don’t have to worry about having the best military machine. The
The second thing by way of going back to the basis of the blessings in
the Law is that they would occupy the land.
The land was theirs by ownership, but it would be theirs by actual
physical occupation as long as they were faithful to God’s Word. The first thing was that this nation would
experience prosperity. As long as they
were faithful there would be no problem about loss of jobs, there would be no
problem about unemployment, no problem about lack of law and order, no problem
about inflation, no problem about any of the usual economic ills that strike a
nation. Why? Because God made this contract under the Law
and He would take care of those things.
Fourthly, they would be a testimony to the world. If this nation refused to go along with the
system, wanted to buck God’s Word, wanted to give God a hard time, then He
would give them a hard time. So He had a system of discipline. The system of discipline, explained in Lev.
26, Deut. 28, consisted of seven spankings.
He would spank them once and say all right, does that hurt. They’d say yes and He’d say fine, now why
don’t you get back to the Word, why don’t you move along in your spiritual
relationship, apply the Word in your life individually and nationally. And they’d say we don’t feel like it. So He’d say that’s fine, I’ll spank you seven
times more, see how you like that. Then
He’d say did that hurt, and they’d say yes.
Well then are you going to repent, are you going to change your attitude
toward the Word. No! Okay, then we’ll heat it up some more, let’s
do it seven times seven, forty-nine times, see how you like that. So God would do this and apply discipline of
increasing pressure in a step function here.
And then the ultimate disaster would be this, a carbon copy of the
blessing in reverse. First, instead of
military victory they would experience military defeat. Instead of occupying the land they would
experience the dispersion, they would be thrown out of the land. Instead of prosperity they would experience
calamity. Instead of being a testimony
they’d be a reproach to the world.
That’s the either/or condition of the Law. You either get with it and have the blessing
or you fight the system and get the cursing.
That’s the way God structured history; this is the way God forever
indebted the nation
And you have to know the book of Revelation to know where history is
going. Everyone says you learn prophecy
out of the book of Revelation. The book
of Revelation is just a review, all that has been taught before with the
possibility of one or two additions. All
of the basic prophecies, the whole outline of history is given in these
covenants. So it’s really very simple,
all you have to do is learn these various covenants and you have an automatic
outline of history.
Then we come down to the point in time where this Law [can’t understand
word] operate in the following way. God
was the King; God was the King, not a man.
He ruled through His Law. This Law was interpreted to the nation, the
twelve tribes, and God put certain individuals with various spiritual gifts in
between the Law and the nation to interpret the Law to the nation. We call these people prophets and
priests. These people were mediators of
the Law. They brought the Law to the nation, they taught the nation, etc. God had a perfect system of freedom operating.
Do you remember the system of judges; every town would have a judicial
system. If you had four towns each town
would have their court system; you wouldn’t have to wait ten years to get on
trial, your trial would be done within a matter of hours. Justice was immediate, justice was perfect
and this system of government that God had originally established was perfect
in its political freedom. Its citizens
were free. They didn’t have religious
freedom like we have; freedom to believe or not to believe. You either accepted the Word of you bucked
the system and was just thrown out. So
they did not have religious freedom but they did have political freedom. They didn’t have any cumbersome central
government. They had perfect, a perfect
system of government on earth and it was all established by the Law.
Then we studied 1 Sam. 8 which is very crucial; it deals with a problem
that we face today and every country has faced it and that is the problem, what
do you do when you find yourselves declining, and we find ourselves weakening,
then what’s the obvious human solution.
1 Sam. 8 was the human solution in Israel. They started going downhill. By the way, why did they go downhill? Under the discipline of the Law; here’s this
Law operating. The Law said if you as a
nation don’t get with the Word of God you’re going to start sliding, so they
started sliding. Now it would have been
very obvious had they known the Word to say all right, we’re sliding, this is
God’s discipline, let’s solve the problem; let’s not deal with the symptoms,
let get at the cause. The cause is our
own negative attitude toward God’s Word so let’s examine our own hearts and
let’s have a national reexamination on this issue. But no, they didn’t want to. So therefore they said we’ll patch this
up. So you substitute human viewpoint
for divine viewpoint and the human viewpoint patch work for this thing was to
establish a massive centralized government called the monarchy. There’s nothing wrong with the monarchy as
such. Jesus Christ is going to rule, not
in a republic, not in a democracy, not in some other form of government. When Christ comes again to rule it is going
to be an absolute monarchy, that is the divinely established system. It does not mean right now that it’s the established
system but when Christ comes it will be a monarchy.
Therefore the system of government called monarchy is not necessarily
bad. The bad thing in 1 Sam. 8 was the
substitution of a human king for God. Again
let’s go back to the diagram. Here’s Jehovah, He is King, and the Law is under
Him. And under Him are the mediators, the prophets and the priests. Now what happens? You had a human being set up as king. And he was, by the way, underneath, the king
was below the priests and the prophets.
Imagine that, you normally think of a king as the highest, he’s the top
dog. But in Israel he was to be the
bottom dog; he was to be the lowest person and any prophet had priority over
the king. Any prophet could come and
tell us [can’t understand word/s] and they did.
If you study through some of these prophecies you will read how these
prophets walk up into that court and ream the king out, hour after hour. Some of these sermons took a whole day and
they’d just rip that king up one side and down the other.
Some of the kings got tired of this; after a person chews you out for
three or four hours you get a little tired of that activity, so the kings had a
way of dealing with the prophets. They
just threw them in jail. After a while the kings got tired of listening to
these prophets come and complain and actually the prophets weren’t complaining,
they were simply trying to point the king to the Law. The king said bury the whole system and I’ll
just come on up here and forget about the prophets. And that’s the way the monarchy finally wound
up in Israel. If you want an excellent
commentary on the dangers of centralized power in any form of government read
very thoroughly 1 Sam. 8. It will tell
you exactly what to expect; it will show you that any time you centralize your
power in a national entity it will produce massive taxation, it will take away
jobs, it will cause economic upheaval and it will ultimately destroy the
people. This is the way we’re going in this
country, bigger and bigger government means less and less freedom. The example
is taught in 1 Sam. 8 very clearly.
In 2 Samuel we come to how God’s grace is going to operate in spite of
it. These people made a mistake; they
have said we want a king, and God said all right, permissive will, I’ll let you
have a king, but… and God had a few “but” clauses, He had a little fine print
on this deal and so He set up His own king. The first King was Saul. Saul really wasn’t too much of a king in the
sense that he had a great establishment, and that’s very interesting to watch
because you take the three men who were the first kings of Israel and think
through their life and what do you notice.
First you have Saul, then you have David, and then you have Solomon, all
in one generation. What had happened to
the government of Israel from the point of Saul to the point of Solomon? Do you recognize when Solomon was king there
was a massive, massive governmental structure.
All of this mushroomed within one generation simply because of this king
and it finally got out of hand.
Saul was very simple; he banded some of the tribes together and had a
rather loose form of government. David
came along and strengthened the system.
And then Solomon, David’s son came along and he really strengthened the
system and built an entire monarchy that was so famous throughout the ancient
world that the Queen of Sheba could come. We don’t really historically know who
this Queen of Sheba was; it could very be if certain radical scholars are
correct, that this Queen of Sheba was one of the queens of Egypt, and she, out
of an empire that was known in history for its wealth, this queen of Sheba went
on a little vacation one day to the northeast because she heard about this man,
Solomon. And the Queen of Sheba walked
into his court and was amazed, and she says in Scripture that we in Egypt
didn’t even hear of half of this; the grandeur of Solomon.
Even today archeologists are still uncovering the industries of
Solomon. Down in the Gulf of Aqaba
there’s a place, [can’t understand word/s], we don’t know exactly what this
particular place was, we don’t exactly know where it was, but Solomon evidently
had a tremendous port here that he built, private yacht club that he built on
the Gulf of Aqaba. Now archeologists are
just beginning to discover this. It’s
immense and you can go for acres and acres and acres and find all of the
tremendous buildings that Solomon built.
That one installation alone archeologists estimate cost about three to
four million dollars. That was just one
of Solomon’s enterprises. Solomon had
tremendous horses, in violation of the Word of God. Solomon had a lot of other things. So you can imagine the tremendous wealth of
this man Solomon. That is what has happened to this whole system of centralized
government.
Now if we come back and look at David because this man was a faithful
man as unto the Lord and he did many wonderful things even though he was a
victim of the whole system. We get to
the Davidic Covenant. This Davidic
Covenant in 2 Sam 7 is going to define history from this point on. What was said in this chapter automatically
destined Joseph and Mary; it automatically sets up the birth of Jesus Christ;
it automatically outlines the future history of the nation. Certain provisions we covered; we’ll just
briefly review them.
In verse 12, this is a future section of the Davidic Covenant. “And when thy days be fulfilled, and thou
shalt sleep with thy fathers, I will set up thy seed after thee, which shall
proceed out of thine own body, and I will establish his kingdom.” That’s provision number one of the Davidic
Covenant, the seed out of David. The
seed out of David immediately is Solomon.
Solomon will stand for the rest of the dynasty. Saul’s son never could sit on the throne and
now do you see why; all of the adventures between Jonathan and David, and why
Jonathan loved David. Do you see why that story is so fantastic, because
Jonathan would have had the right to the throne and yet he knew he’d never get
a chance to sit on his father’s throne.
He knew God had chosen David so therefore he loved David. That’s the story of why Jonathan loved David;
it’s a tremendous story because it shows you the grace of this man Jonathan.
But David would have his son and his son, unlike Jonathan, would sit on
the throne, Solomon. And then Solomon had a son, Rehoboam, and Rehoboam was a
jerk. He ascended the throne as a
teenager and didn’t know anything; this does not mean all teenagers don’t know
anything, it’s just that Rehoboam thought he knew something when he didn’t know
anything. It would have been all right
if he had at least recognized that he didn’t know anything but he didn’t know
that until he got a lot of his play boys together and they decided they were
going to run the nation and they sent the nation into civil war, just because
he wouldn’t listen to some of his father’s advisors.
So you have Solomon, Rehoboam and king after king, on down through
history; all of these kings are of the seed of David, no matter how rotten they
may be, no matter how much of a monster these people may be on that throne, no
matter how many sins they commit, they are still going to be David’s seed and
they will still be eternally secure on their throne, no matter how much they
sin. If you’re weak on eternal security,
how do you like that? No matter how much
these kings sinned, no matter how terrible they are, no matter how much of a
monster they are, God guarantees that they will sit on the throne. That is an unconditional covenant.
Therefore, Solomon on down is going to set up a king. This is bad in
some sense, it’s going to hurt the nation, but nevertheless it’s good in the
sense that many of these were good.
Jehoshaphat, Josiah, Hezekiah, many kings were very good. These kings, potentially mentioned in verse
12, “I will set up thy seed after thee, who will proceed out of thine own body,
and I will establish his kingdom.” The
primary fulfillment is looking at Solomon as the first of this line. “And I will establish his kingdom,” I will
set up his kingdom for him, and God did.
Verse 13, “He shall build an house for my name,” that’s the Temple,
Solomon’s Temple, “and I will establish the throne of his kingdom
forever.” Keep verse 13 on your mind and
watch down in verse 16, “And your house,” this is back to David, “your house
and your kingdom shall be established forever before you: your throne will be
established forever.” You see three
parts there; there are three words and they mean three different things. “Thy kingdom,” that’s one word, and it’s very
obvious what that means. “Thy throne” is
something else; “And thine house.” All
of these as far as David is concerned are going to be established forever. David…
as far as David is concerned, not Solomon, David. Verse 16 has to do with David, not
Solomon.
Go back to verse 13, verse 13 applies to Solomon. Do you see the
difference? Verse 13 only has one of
these three words. What’s the word in
verse 13? “Throne and you only see the
word “throne” in verse 13. The throne of
Solomon would be established but not his kingdom forever, and not his house or
his lineage or his dynasty forever.
There’s a difference and you want to catch that. Verse 16 gives you what was promised to
David. You’ve got to read the fine print
because something is going to happen in history that looks as though it’s going
to foul this up forever.
You’ve got to look at the fine print. Here it is; here’s David. Here’s the secret, David, besides marrying a
lot of women had a lot of children and he had his family out here. One of his
children was Solomon; another of his children was a man by the name of Nathan
and he had some other children. David
had all these sons. Now, to David in
verse 16 is promised those three things.
To Solomon in verse 13 is promised one thing.
What’s going to happen? Suppose
you had verse 16 apply to Solomon.
Suppose God told Solomon look, I am going to establish your house
forever, I am going to establish your kingdom forever. Do you know what that would mean? That would mean that God violated His Word in
586 BC because in 586 BC God destroyed the house. He destroyed their house by pronouncing a
king childless. Jechoniah, Coniah as
he’s known in other places in Scripture, this house was destroyed. I want you to notice these details, I’m not
trying to be a nitpicker on details, I just want you to notice these details so
you can appreciate how God works. It’s
only as you examine the details that you are going to see the grace of God in
action. If you have a fuzzy picture of
this you’re going to have a fuzzy picture of how God works.
Let’s be exact and you will see some of the most fantastic things as to
how accurately, how perfectly God controls history. Go destroyed the house of Solomon in 586 BC when
he pronounced Jechoniah childless. Now
you read in that Scripture, sure enough, Jechoniah had a son, and you say what
do you mean, I thought God pronounced Jechoniah childless. See, Jechoniah was the end of the line. You had Solomon, you had Rehoboam, you had on
down to the last king, his name was Jechoniah.
It gets down to the end of the house of Solomon and in Jer. 22:30, God
pronounced this man childless. But the
man had a child, therefore we conclude from this pronouncement in Jeremiah that
this childlessness is written childlessness.
In other words, God says write this man childless, not make him
childless. As far as divine viewpoint
is concerned this man doesn’t have a child; that’s what that verse is
saying. As far as I’m concerned, God
says, I don’t care how many children he has, not one of those men is ever going
to sit on this throne as long as I’m God of this universe. So this man has just shot the word and he
just totaled the whole house and it came tumbling down and Humpty Dumpty and
all the king’s men aren’t going to put it back together again. There is only one person that’s going to put
this back together again and that’s Jesus Christ.
But you see what happened in Jer. 22:30; it told the whole thing, the
house is destroyed. What else is
destroyed? The kingdom is
destroyed. The kingdom that Solomon and
his successors had built up was destroyed forever. That kingdom never existed in history
again. Do you remember in the book of
Daniel the four visions of Daniel, the four images? Why are those images there in the book of
Daniel? Why is the image of the beast
there in Daniel? Simply because from 586
BC onward who is going to be the rulers of the world? The Gentiles.
This is why in the book of Daniel you have those four kingdoms. God’s kingdom has gone out in history and
will never return until the time the fourth kingdom is destroyed.
This is why in the book of Daniel you go from the Babylonian kingdom,
you go through the Medo-Persian kingdom, you go to the Greek kingdom, you go to
the Roman Empire; you have those four kingdoms, what’s that in there? That is to show that this kingdom has been
destroyed in history, this house has been destroyed from history and Solomon’s
line will never again rule but God said I will establish the throne of his
kingdom and the throne of his kingdom means that out of this line will come the
legal right to reign. Although they will
never actually physically sit, out of Solomon’s line will come the legal right
to reign. This legal right to reign is
declared in the word “I will preserve the throne of his kingdom forever.”
Now if the legal right to reign is to come from a Solomon descendant,
the legal right has to come from him.
What does this mean? It means that
the Messiah’s father has to be of the lineage of Solomon. He can’t be out of Nathan, going back to
David. David had many children, one was Nathan, one was Solomon. Messiah’s father has to be of the Solomon
line to inherit the legal right. That’s
why Jesus Christ’s earthly father, not His actual physical father but His legal
father has to be a man out of Solomon’s lineage to answer the Davidic
Covenant.
What else does this tell us? It
tells us that since those three promises of verse 16 apply to David, not
Solomon, we could go back to any one of David’s other children to pick up the
needed physical genes to authorize the King.
In other words, Messiah has to have the physical genes from David but He
doesn’t have to get those physical genes through Solomon. In fact, He can’t, if He does He’s
disqualified. So here’s the trick. If you’re the engineer of history how are you
going to work this one out? You promised
that the Messiah is going to have his legal right from David through Solomon
but you’ve also said that the man, his descendant who has the genes of Solomon,
cannot sit on the throne. How are you
going to figure that one out? That’s
your problem, you made the promise, how are you going to work history out so
that here’s the Messiah and here’s the genetic structure. On one side He’s going to have to have the
genes from David; He’s going to have the genetic structure from David; He’s
going to have to be in the Davidic line.
He’s got to to answer verse 16; verse 16 says so, the throne is going to
be established forever. In other words,
the ultimate ruler is going to have to be of David.
But on the other hand he can’t have any genes from Solomon. So what’s going to be the solution? God solved the problem in history by the
virgin birth. This is why Mary and her
genealogy is given is in Luke 3; Mary’s genealogy goes back to David but it
goes through, not Solomon, it goes through Nathan and that is why Mary can be
Jesus mother because she has the genes from David and she’s gotten her physical
genes from David apart from Solomon.
Look at Joseph, the husband. His
genealogy is given in Matt. 1 and if you compare those two lists you’ll find a
difference. If you look very carefully
you’ll see that Matt. 1 lists the genealogy back to Solomon. This is why Jesus Christ could never have
been born by Joseph. These could not
have had their sexual union producing a child because if they had they would
have violated, Joseph would have violated the whole thing. Jesus Christ would have been disqualified at
that point from ever sitting on the throne of David. This is one reason why you have to either
have some system of adoption or the virgin birth to solve the problem.
This is why the virgin birth of Jesus Christ is not some little doctrine
back over in Isaiah 7:14 somewhere, it’s all through the Scripture. If you drop the virgin birth in Scripture you
torpedo the whole structure of prophecy.
It’s not just one verse we’re quibbling about, we’re quibbling about the
entire structure of prophecy of the Old Testament. So you see how tremendously God works in
history and how when Joseph was dating Mary and how Joseph would go around with
Mary, as part of that courtship in the background lay the tremendous issues of
eternity because out from this marriage would come the Messiah. Yet out from this marriage could not come as
a result of natural physical union the Messiah.
All of these details had to be worked out by God and that is how exact
and faithful God is to His Word. It is
fantastic to see how this is worked out in history, perfectly, no
mistakes! No missing of the genes,
nothing, perfectly worked out. That is
how God works in history and that is an illustration of how He is faithful to
His promises.
2 Samuel 7 is an illustration of this promise and how it works out. Now let’s look at verse 14 for here we have
very good insight into the doctrine of eternal security and an illustration of
how Jesus got his name. “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 why pick
out the father-son relationship? This is
the first time in Scripture where God actually enters into a father-son
relationship with a human being. At
other times it’s true, the children of Israel are called the children of God,
etc. but here is where it’s really personal.
Understand this and get this because what are we? Gal. 6, Gal. 3, we are the sons of God by
faith in Christ Jesus, therefore this father-son relationship back here in 2
Samuel 7 sets up the kind of relationship we are going to be in, father-son
relationship.
In verse 14, “I will be his father, and he shall be my son.” One of the great scholars of the Old
Testament, Delitzsch points out that this Father-Son relationship in the Old
Testament denotes the deepest intimacy of love and love is perfected in the
unity of nature and in communication of the Son of all the Father is. There is a unity here between the Father and
the Son. This verse, if you’ve ever
wondered, this verse is where we ultimately get our reason for calling Jesus
Christ the Son of God. This relationship
in 2 Sam. 7 sets up the father-son relationship that applies not only to the
believer in this generation but also applies to the Father-Son relationship
within the Trinity.
If you turn to Psalm 2 you see how this emerges later on as the
father-son relationship is amplified and explained by other Scripture. [Blank
spot] If you’ve ever sung Handel’s Messiah you’ve no doubt sung these many
verses. I need but read the first verse
and you’ll realize, “Why do the heathen rage, and the people imagine a vain
thing? [2] The kings of the earth set themselves, and the rulers take counsel
together, against the LORD, and against his anointed, saying,” anointed one
means Christ. [3] “Let us break their
bands asunder, and cast away their cords from us. [4] He who sitteth in the
heavens shall laugh; the Lord shall have them in derision. [5] Then shell he speak
unto them in his wrath, and vex them in his sore displeasure.” Now look carefully at the words of verses
6-8, “Yet have I set my king upon my holy hill of Zion. [7] I will declare the
decree:” now this is the king speaking in verse 7, remember king, king speaking
in verse 7, “The LORD said unto me, Thou art my Son; this day have I begotten
thee.”
Let’s ask a question, was the King born when He said verse 7? This begetting here, “this day have you
begotten me” does not refer to physical birth. The begetting of the King refers
to the adoption. In other words at this
point in time, suppose this king goes along, he’s a young teenager, he grows
up, say at age 20 he assumes the throne of Israel, at that point they have a
ceremony. We would call it a
coronation. During that coronation
either a prophet or a priest or someone comes up to him and hands him a copy of
the Law. And when he hands him a copy of
the Law he pronounces the words “This day have I begotten thee.” And this decree that is pronounced over the
King installs him as king. So from that
point in his life to the time that he sits on this throne, the king sits on
this throne until the time he dies he is now in a father-son relationship. The beginning does not indicate the beginning
of his physical life; the beginning indicates the beginning of the father-son
relationship which starts when he ascends the throne.
Now catch the imagery. The
Father-Son relationship is the relationship between God the Father and His King
over the world, which He calls His Son.
And this relationship begins when that Son begins to rule. Turn to Heb. 1 and you’ll see how Psalm 2 is
applied to Jesus Christ. Of course Jesus
Christ’s sonship is eternal but it is revealed progressively throughout
history. And there’s a great climactic
point in Jesus Christ’s life, in fact, the greatest moment of suspense in
Christ’s life occurred not in the Garden of Gethsemane, when He prayed, “let
this cup pass from Me, nevertheless, not My will but Thine,” the greatest
moment of suspense in Christ’ life came after He died, He was buried, He rose
again from the dead, He ascended and went into the throne room. When Jesus Christ in His resurrection body
walked into that throne room the issue was will the Father accept the Son to sit
on the throne? That’s the issue.
And Jesus Christ was accepted and Jesus Christ sat down on the Father’s
throne. And at that point we have the
evidence and what is the historical proof that Christ made it to the throne
room? Pentecost because when Christ got
to sit on the throne the first act that He did was to send the Holy Spirit, so
therefore the pouring out of the Holy Spirit in Acts 2 is proof that Christ
reached the throne room. Christ is now
seated at the Father’s right hand because He has dispensed the Spirit. That was
the first act He did as King.
Now in Heb. 1:4, Jesus Christ “Being made so much better than the
angels, as He hath by inheritance obtained a more excellent name than they, [5]
For unto which of the angels said he at any time, Thou art my Son, this day I
have begotten thee? And gain, I will be
to Him a Father, and He shall be to Me a Son?”
Do those words sound familiar?
Those words are prophesies of this great time when Christ would sit down
at the Father’s right hand. Now He was
Son all along but it became very obvious at that point that He was Son because
it was revealed in all its splendor and all His glory the Lord Jesus Christ sat
and reigned.
If you want to see a picture of what Jesus Christ looks like today, just turn
to Rev. 1 for that’s a picture that’s depicted there, that is a living picture
of what Christ looks like today. We
don’t have any little meek and mild Savior holding a few sheep and a few babies
in His arm out in some pasture like all the Sunday school literature shows. We
have a glorified risen God-man Savior sitting at the Father’s right hand.
That’s what Jesus Christ looks like today and you will only get that picture in
the Bible. You won’t get it in religious
literature because religious literature usually does everything it can not to reflect
the Word of God. So Rev. 1 is your true
picture of what Christ looks like today.
Now therefore, since this is the ultimate fulfillment of this thing back
in 2 Sam. 7 let’s go back to the father-son relationship again as it was first
defined. This is the first revelation of
it in history, in 2 Sam. 7. So turn back
to 2 Sam. 7 and pick up the chain of thought again. An important clause is attached to this. Verse 14, “If he commit iniquity, I will
chasten him with the rod of men,” what does that say? That says that this father-son relationship
which will be typified by every king of Israel will have a little catch to it,
and this is why the doctrine of eternal security must always be taught in
conjunction with the doctrine of discipline.
This is why a lot of people don’t like the doctrine of eternal
security. Oh, you mean once saved always
saved, that means I can go out and raise hell.
That’s what they say and that gives you license to do anything you want
to. You’re free to try it but there’s
another little catch on the doctrine of eternal security called discipline and
if you try it you are going to be so sorry that you ever even dared to try that
kind of thing. You are going to be
miserable from this day forward until you get straightened out. This is why Christians are so miserable today
because they’re under discipline and don’t know it.
The doctrine of eternal security has two sides. Eternal security means you’re locked into
this father-son relationship forever, you can’t get out. In a moment of time, when you accept Jesus
Christ, this relationship hardens and you can’t get out of it. You can say you mean to tell me I can commit
some horrible sin, think of the worst possible thing you could ever commit, and
you say you mean to tell me that if I went out and committed that sin I would
still be in this relationship? That’s
exactly what I’m telling you. We have
people that don’t like this. They say oh
certainly if I committed that sin… do you mean to tell me that if I commit that
sin that this relationship goes on?
That’s exactly correct. If you
are so pigheaded to think that you, by committing sin, are going to undo the
work of God, you are blasphemous.
Do you see what I’m saying? If
you deny eternal security you are simply saying that when God does something
for you you can undo it; and that is what every person who disbelieves in
eternal security is saying, that God has put me into union with Christ, God has
put me into a father-son relationship and I am so great and I have so much
power by my own volition that I can break out, I can undo the work of God. Do you see the claim? Every person that denies eternal security has
to say this at one point or another, that I am destroying the work of God. You can’t destroy the work of God, you may
think you can, but you don’t. God’s work
may destroy you but you don’t destroy His work.
So the doctrine of eternal security is taught in principle by this
father-sons relationship. Get me clear;
I’m not saying that every king that sat on Israel’s throne was saved. I’m simply saying that he was in a special
relationship that shows the principle of eternal security. “I will be his father, and he will be my son.” That is true of every king. Let’s take the worst king that ever sat on Israel’s
throne, let’s take Manasseh; Manasseh got mad at Isaiah. Isaiah wrote a lot, he wrote a whole bunch of
stuff. In fact the liberals think he
wrote so much that one man couldn’t have written it, they’ve invented 1st
Isaiah, 2nd Isaiah and 3rd Isaiah to try to explain the
book of Isaiah. What’s the problem? A
liberal who disbelieves supernaturalism always has problems with a
miracle. So Isaiah wrote a lot and some
people that write a lot get on other people’s nerves. Every once in a while a President doesn’t
like some editorial and they’ll say the White House isn’t going to subscribe to
this magazine any more, etc.
We have situations where the rulers don’t like to be told off, they
don’t like for someone to come up to them and tell them frankly and very
bluntly what the Word of God has to say.
Manasseh didn’t particularly appreciate Isaiah, so he had his boys and
he said listen, I’m fed up with this guy, he’s always mouthing off the Word,
and always witnessing and always teaching the Word of God, you know I can’t
stand it. I’m so tired of this Isaiah
coming around here, let’s dispense with this man. So he sent his boys out, according to
tradition, and they got hold of Isaiah and they sawed him in half. A couple of them got one end of Isaiah, a
couple on the other and somebody got a saw and they went to work, sawed him in
half; that’s the death of Isaiah, that’s what he got for teaching the Word of
God. That’s what happens when you fight
the establishment.
Isaiah was the kind of person that was faithful to the Word of God and
met a horrible end by Manasseh. So you
get the picture that Manasseh probably wasn’t a very nice man. Manasseh wasn’t what you would call a
gentleman. So Manasseh was an example I
like to use because it illustrates the father-son relationship. Do you know that Manasseh, when he sawed
Isaiah in half was still God’s son in this context? Nothing God could do could
undo this because God said, you are my son and you have the right to sit on
that throne and you can be a clod and you still can sit on that throne. So this is Manasseh’s story; he cut Isaiah in
half, that’s how he treats the prophets of God and yet God says you are My son
and you have the right to sit on that throne.
But notice the “if” clause in verse 14, and here’s the catch; “If he
commit iniquity, I will chasten him with the rod of men,” and as we go from
chapter to chapter you are going to see how this rod of men operates. God says you’re going to be My son, but do
you know what that means? That means I
have paddle and anybody in My family that gets out of line I have ways of
straightening him out. Therefore the father-son relationship, true it is never
dissolved, but it means that there’s a little thing called discipline attached
to the progress.
Let’s apply this principle to the Christian life; let’s look at the plan
of God for a moment. Here’s the point
where you accepted Jesus Christ, it may have been when you were a child, it may
be recent. At the point that you
believed you are entered into a father-son relationship with the Savior; you
are now in a father-son relationship according to Gal. 3. This relationship goes on until you die or
the rapture. And all during this time,
no matter how many sins you commit you are still a son, but there’s a little
chapter in Heb. 12 that tells you about a few things that may happen if you
decide to play around. Heb. 12 says
you’re going to be disciplined. 1 Cor.
11 says that some of this discipline takes the form of sickness. It doesn’t mean that all sickness comes from
discipline, obviously it doesn’t.
Some sickness can be due to discipline.
In Corinth, we use this every communion service, I love to use
this. First of all it shows you what
kind of elements they used in the early church.
These people were coming and getting stone drunk and they would come to
Corinth, imagine the communion service and half the people are inebriated, can
you imagine how you could ever conduct a service. In some churches today people are inebriated;
it’s not through liquor it’s through speaking in tongues or some other
phenomenon. But in Corinth they had
another problem, they not only had the tongues problem, they had liquor
problems. So these people would come
there inebriated and Paul said did it ever occur to you gentlemen in Corinth
that the reason why some of you are sick is because God might be disciplining
you. Has it ever occurred to you that
those of you ulcers in Corinth and high blood pressure and hardening of arteries,
has it ever occurred to you that that might possibly be due to discipline.
He gently suggests the reason in 1 Cor. 11 and then he goes on and he
makes another assertion which wouldn’t be too popular but it would be very
popular with all the funeral directors and that is that some of you are even
dead, some of you have died. Has it ever occurred to you to link your physical
death with the fact that you are out of fellowship with God and God the Father
was disciplining you? I know the funeral
directors would love this, they’d make a lot of money, so they’d love nothing
better than for the whole church of Corinth to get out of fellowship and
die. These people were under discipline.
This is the corollary to eternal security, discipline. This does not mean that God removes your
salvation; it just means that you are going to go through life and be
miserable, that’s all. He may terminate
your life. Ananias and Sapphira had a
little [can’t understand words/], they were the kind of people that liked to
impress people. Everyone was giving
their property, they said oh great, I can get a few points with the guy next
door because I’m going to give my property too. So they walk in and put down
some property. What they don’t tell
everybody is that half the property is made out to someone else; they’ve got
two accounts, one for themselves and one for the Lord. So they say oh Lord, we’ve given you
everything. There’s only one little
problem that disturbed their plan; the Holy Spirit gets hold of Peter and says
do you see this lady here, do you see this man, they’re lying and they’re lying
to me, so Peter, I want you to take care of them.
So Peter tells them off and they drop dead right in front of Peter. This is the way God disciplines; they were
still saved, they went immediately into the Father’s presence, but you see, the
tragedy. All during their life they
never had an opportunity to be fruitful; all during their life they never had
an opportunity to apply the promises of God. All during their life, and throughout
all eternity they never will have the opportunity to actually enjoy God’s plan
in phase two.
This is the tragedy of discipline, it takes you out of this life, makes
you feel miserable, unhappy, horrible, and you can’t stand the Christian life
and the worst thing you want to do is come to church, listen to the Bible,
etc. This is why you’re miserable,
because people are under discipline.
Therefore we have the corollary to eternal security, which is
discipline, given in verse 14. Please
notice this sets up the father-son relationship. This is the first time you read it in
Scripture and do you see that it’s unconditional. It’s clearly taught, it’s unconditional all
throughout Scripture and all you have to do, so many of these debated points in
Bible Christianity is just go back in the Old Testament, see how the thing
starts, that’s all. Just trace it
through and you’ll see how it builds itself.
Verse 15, “But my mercy shall not depart away from him, as I took it
from Saul, whom I put away before me.”
Look at that, God would never withhold His mercy from Manasseh. Do you know what that mercy means? That means the right to sit on the
throne. God would never remove that from
Manasseh and here Manasseh would [can’t understand word] Isaiah. Isaiah probably had a few words to say while
he was being sawed in half. I
would. So while Isaiah was stretched out
and a couple of boys on one end, a couple of boys on the other, somebody with a
saw in the middle, and they were sawing Isaiah up so that you had 1st
and 2nd Isaiah according to liberals, you had Isaiah sawed in half,
and Manasseh sitting there was still just as much king after as he was
before. Imagine that. Can’t you just see someone sitting there, well,
I don’t think that’s fair of God, look at that nasty man sitting on the throne,
do you mean to tell me he’s still God’s king?
Yes, Davidic Covenant.
Verse 16-17, “And thine house” which is a future condition of the
Davidic Covenant, “and thy kingdom” David, “shall be established forever before
thee; thy throne shall be established forever. [17] According to all these
words, and according to all this vision, so did Nathan speak to David.”
Next time beginning in verse 18 we will have the most fantastic praise
out of the mouth of David. When he was given this revelation, David turned
around and expressed the most tremendous prayer of thanksgiving you’ll ever
read. We’ll study that next time.