“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; That the king said unto Nathan the prophet, See now, I dwell in an house of cedar, but the ark of God dwelleth within curtains. And Nathan said to the king, Go, do all that is in thine heart; for the Lord is with thee.” 2 Samuel 7:1-3

In 2 Samuel, chapter 7 David is dwelling in a nice house. This tells us this is a time of peace. It hasn’t been that way for David, but now things have settled down a bit. We have David in a time in which the enemies have been settled down. There’s going to be more conflicts that will come in the future, but for now things are quiet enough that David can think about his vision for Jerusalem.

He’s having a conversation with Nathan the prophet pointing out, “I dwell in this nice house of Cedar, but the Ark of God is behind tent curtains.” This is the first time we’ve heard of Nathan. You know the story of David, you know that it won’t be the last time. Nathan is that prophet who in the most poignant moment of all, probably in David’s career, said to David, “thou art the man.” Nathan is going to have an ongoing significance, but we don’t really know where he came from.

We are given any genealogy of the fellow. He just shows up and obviously has some kind of access to the david, the king. This conversation is going on and David remarks to Nathan, “I’m living in a nice house. It’s a house of Cedar.” In the ancient world, it took a few years to build a house of Cedar.

This was a rather unusual structure. The wood had to be shipped in from Phoenicia up to the north. It was expensive. It probably took several years to build. David was anointed king when he was 30 years old and that means he’s probably now 35 or 36. Maybe as many as five or six years have passed since that time. David’s house would have been quite a spectacle in ancient Jerusalem at that moment.

Most people in Israel were still living in fairly rude structures, not tents, but not necessarily anything quite as fancy as a Cedar House. David uses that as a justification to draw this remarkable contrast between the nice house that he’s living in and the rather humble abode in which God is still residing. The ark is in a little tent in the middle of Jerusalem. It seems pretty obvious that there’s something out of order in this particular arrangement.

Nathan sees the obvious point, and without really questioning too much his judgment, he simply says, go and do all the design. Your heart for the Lord is with you.

It’s a little too rash. We can’t really fault Nathan too much at this point because why would he suspect that this wasn’t exactly the next thing that should happen? As we read the rest of chapter 7, we discover that it didn’t turn out to be that way. Nathan goes home and is interrupted his good night’s sleep by presumably a vision or a word from the Lord that corrects his initial impression and says that it’s a different plan that’s going to apply it with David.

A little word of warning for all of us. Sometimes the obviously right thing to do isn’t. We should always be bathing our decisions with prayerful review before the throne of God, before we just jump right in, assuming that we’ve got a good angle on what’s supposed to be done.

Nathan doesn’t try to cover up this little foible, this little miscalculation. He immediately goes back to David, corrects his earlier advice to him and thus give some evidence that even though he’d miss guided David once, he was nevertheless truly a prophet from God. So the message is given to Nathan who is going to deliver it to David. It’s a lengthy message. It begins right here. It’s sometimes called the “Davidic Covenant.” It’s the promise that God makes to David.

It comes to us in three paragraphs, the first one, highlighting the past. So the focus here is God’s dealings with Israel from the inception of the nation, the exodus, and highlighting that from that time God had been with his people on the move. He could have gone back to Abraham, because really the whole history of God’s dealings with his people has shown how God goes with them. But especially in the Exodus account, and especially as God’s people are in the wilderness and God is tabernacled among them, we have this sense that God is moving along with them in their presence there and they in his.

Then the second paragraph focuses on David and again, the emphasis is how God has been with David as it were on the move. So when David was running from Saul and the Judean wilderness, when David was in the land of the Philistines, all that time, God was with him.

David didn’t quite know that. At some points, David had questions about whether God could be accessed when he’s in the land of the Philistines, but eventually was able to get that clear. And so once again we’re going to see a little hint of the future in which God will again be on the move with his people.

This is the critical part of this whole prophecy. Even though Israel is going be stabilized and not moving around so much, all of that is conceived of as a preparation in which eventually the temple, will again be on the move. A greater temple, a living organic temple, of which Christ is the cornerstone. We are living stones in it and in a sense what’s happening now. In the meantime, his preparation is being made for that coming Messiah, that coming son of David.

And so the third part of this, which is really the guts of this whole prophecy to David, is again going to emphasize finally in a subtle sort of way, God on the move. And here God is with us and over the whole planet we find God is with his people going into all the world making disciples of the nations.

So this is really a critical moment in the Old Testament story of David. And it begins, as I say, with a highlight on the past. “I have not dwelt in a house since the time that I brought the children of Israel from Egypt, even to this day, but have moved about in a tent in a tabernacle.” So this idea that God has been in motion with his people, the most seat of frequently cited incident of Israel’s history is the Exodus.

“Go and tell my servant David, Thus saith the Lord, Shalt thou build me an house for me to dwell in? 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 in a tent and in a tabernacle.In all the places wherein I have walked with all the children of Israel spake I a word with any of the tribes of Israel, whom I commanded to feed my people Israel, saying, Why build ye not me an house of cedar?” 1 Samuel 7:5-7

The Exodus is referred to more than any other single event in the history of Israel in the Old Testament because it’s the defining moment in which God creates a nation. Baptizes them as it were in the Red Sea, takes them out in the wilderness and from that point on lives with them as a nomad.

For 40 years in the wilderness, they’re moving from here to there, constantly shuffling around, putting up tents, setting up the camp. In the beginning, the ark is with them outside the camp in what is called the tent of meeting, but eventually we have the tabernacle of Yahweh in the camp, in the very middle of it. All of the tribes are arranged, more or less orbiting around this central tabernacle. It’s quite a remarkable idea.

It’s a rather stunning idea that God is moving around with his people. Even when they enter the promised land under Joshua, God is still transitioning around in a sort of semipermanent structure. In the book of Samuel at Shiloh, Eli presides over the Tabernacle and the worship that’s conducted there.

God is always on the move. And this is the agenda under this little story. It’s a subtle point to Christ, because in a sense, even though we have a stationary temple for a time, not long, a thousand years or so. David’s living about the year 1000 BC. Solomon’s temple is destroyed and rebuilt. Then that temple is torn down, in 70 AD, because Christ tells us, we are the temple.

And once again, the temple is rolling out of town on wheels going into the world. And once again in a consummate expression of a mobile deity, we are the very vehicle’s of God’s presence in this world. So the temple was kind of a little pause in this motif of God being on the move.

God dwelling in a tent certainly suggests that God was on the move, having a throne on wheels. If you’ve read the first few chapters of Ezekial, you remember that remarkable image of a great throne on wheels that was known as a battle throne. It was the throne by which a king would go into battle. And that’s the imagery Ezekiel wants to invoke as we think of God having a ministry to his exiled people in Babylon. God is there, his throne is on wheels. He isn’t locked in Jerusalem. He’s with them there. That’s the whole point Ezekiel is making.

It’s good to build centers of worship, but caution must always be exercised that we avoid settling down in such a place. It should be viewed more as an upper room from which we proceed to go forth doing God’s work in the world. And in many ways, the story of David and this encounter with him is intended to highlight that. So that’s the first little paragraph, God being on the move with his people going clear back to the Exodus and before verse eight.

The second paragraph. “Now therefore so shalt thou say unto my servant David, Thus saith the Lord of hosts, I took thee from the sheepcote, from following the sheep, to be ruler over my people, over Israel: And I was with thee whithersoever thou wentest, and have cut off all thine enemies out of thy sight, and have made thee a great name, like unto the name of the great men that are in the earth.” 1 Samuel 7:8-9

A shepherd is on the move. He’s the one that leads the sheep around and that’s where David started out his career, being a shepherd over God’s people. A thousand years later, the shepherd King Christ calls himself the Good Shepherd. He’s a king who has that same kind of image associated with him. And again, God emphasizes to David, “I’ve been on the move with you, David, I’ve been you with you wherever you have gone and you and I’ve cut off your enemies from before you and have made you a great name, like the name of the great men who are on the earth.” So just as Yahweh had been on the move with his people, God has been on the move with David.

That’s the second paragraph. God has been with his people, Israel. He’s been with David. And now we come to the heart of the matter. This third paragraph in which Nathan has told to Tell David, “Moreover I will appoint a place for my people Israel, and will plant them, that they may dwell in a place of their own, and move no more; neither shall the children of wickedness afflict them any more, as beforetime, And as since the time that I commanded judges to be over my people Israel, and have caused thee to rest from all thine enemies. Also the Lord telleth thee that he will make thee an house.” v. 10-11

So we have a little change here. The whole emphasis has been God on the move. And now all of a sudden, a momentary pause. Where is this place? At the crossroads of the ancient world, right in the middle of the Fertile Crescent, a heavily used transit point. A trade route at the east side of the Mediterranean. And there God says, “I’m going to plant them. I’m going to provide a temporary but necessary stability in preparation for what is coming.”

So something more is going to happen in the future and to prepare for that. Now, a little pause from all this moving around. This pause won’t last forever. The exile moved the people of Israel out of their land. That took place only 500 years after David, and they were on the move from that point on. Most Jewish people living outside of Israel and the diaspora population. But at least for a time here, we have God’s people in a kind of staging area, in preparation for the moment when Messiah would come and say, “the kingdom has now arrived.The kingdom is here”

This is now a different moment of all of human history. So rest from his enemies, rest to allow for a preparation for the coming Messiah. That’s Israel’s chief purpose in the rest of the Old Testament. Preparing for the coming of Messiah, preparing poetically in the psalms, preparing in literary ways, preparing prophetically with the great pronouncements of the prophets, Isaiah, Ezekiel, Daniel, all of the prophets, even the minor prophets. Every one of them make some allusion to the coming Messiah, to the coming kingdom. It’s all forward looking. They may get on Israel’s case about present disobedience, but there’s always that little word of hope, that the days are coming when God is going to do something new.

All that preparatory information is provided. The punchline of this paragraph is of course, the last line David had said to Nathan, “I want to build a house for God,” and God comes back and says, “nope, sorry, I’m going to build a house for you.” And that’s exactly what God is going to do. It’s a little pun on the word house. David said, “I’m going to build a house, a temple,” but the word can mean a dynasty and that’s the way it comes back to David.

God promises, “I’m going to build you a dynasty, a house in the sense of something that is going to continue well beyond your life, well beyond your immediate ability to construct or do. David, when your days are fulfilled and you rest with your fathers, I will set up your seed after you who will come from your body and I will establish his kingdom.”

Now, this reference to David’s seed is part of what’s called by some “the seed motif” of the Old Testament. What’s happening here is David does have a son, his seed as it were, and our first instinct would be to read this and assume it’s referring to Solomon. If we didn’t have more information at our disposal. That’s what we would assume. And in some ways that’s correct, but the seed idea goes way back. The Protoevangelium, way back in Genesis 3:15, when Adam and Eve sinned and the serpent is being judged by God. God pronounces against the serpent a judgment, a condemnation, referring to what you might call the seed of the human race of Adam and Eve. “I will put enmity between you and the woman between your seed and her seed. He shall bruise your head, crush your head while you bruise his heel”

And now it narrows even further. The fourth occasion of this seed idea being invoked because now within the human race, within the land of Israel, within the tribe of Judah is a particular person and it’s that man’s seed who is in fact highlighted. So the verse before it says, I will set up your seed after you. And that becomes thematic.

We have that very cryptic and anticipated work of Christ. But that would become more clear when the seed of the human race now becomes the seed of a particular nation of the human race. Abraham’s nation, the seed of the nation of Israel. So Abraham is told, “And in thy seed shall all the nations of the earth be blessed; because thou hast obeyed my voice.” (Genesis 22:18)

The first thought you would have would be that this would refer to Solomon, as indeed it does. So Solomon was the one initially to build this temple. The message to David continues. He’ll build a house for my name, referring at least in the first instance to Solomon. I will establish the throne of his kingdom within something that probably took David’s breath away a little bit. I’ll establish the throne of his kingdom forever.

The seed of Abraham becomes the seed of a particular tribe in Abraham’s lineage, the nation of Israel With Jacob, we have God pronouncing blessings on the 12 patriarchs. He comes to Judah and of Judah, God promises, “The sceptre shall not depart from Judah, nor a lawgiver from between his feet, until Shiloh come; and unto him shall the gathering of the people be.” (Genesis 49:10)

So Solomon would indeed build a great temple within that temple would be the throne to the Jewish understanding. The true place of rule in this world was the ark and the one who ruled was on that so called mercy seat, which was also could have been a judgment seat, but it was certainly a throne between the Cherubim. And this is the place from which not just Israel, but the entire world was ruled. And many of the Psalms of David celebrate that this temple is a house of prayer for the nations. The idea that this would be the place, the central locus of authority of God in this world for the coming generations, but then we have this final comment that it will be the case that this rule will be there for ever.

“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.” (2 Samuel 7:14) This is the first time now that we have a reference to a particular person being the son of God. Up until now, the term has been used somewhat loosely to refer to the nation of Israel. When Moses went before Pharaoh, he said to Pharaoh, “Israel is my son, so I’ll let my people go.” You know that term was used, but this is the first time in the Old Testament that a particular person is identified by the designation son of God. That becomes very important. Of course in the New Testament, some of the sons of David, including Solomon, disobeyed, and they were therefore chastened experiencing the natural consequences of their disobedience. It became so bad that even the dynasty of David eventually fell and the throne was no longer occupied in Israel.

So Amos says in Amos 9:11 “In that day will I raise up the tabernacle of David that is fallen, and close up the breaches thereof; and I will raise up his ruins, and I will build it as in the days of old.” The house of David fell, but the promise of Amos was that some day it would be rebuilt. In Acts Chapter 15:1,17, James ties the work of Christ to that prediction of Amos. “After this I will return, and will build again the tabernacle of David, which is fallen down; and I will build again the ruins thereof, and I will set it up: That the residue of men might seek after the Lord, and all the Gentiles, upon whom my name is called, saith the Lord, who doeth all these things.”

“But my mercy shall not depart away from him, as I took it from Saul, whom I put away before thee. And thine house and thy kingdom shall be established for ever before thee: thy throne shall be established for ever.” (2 Samuel 7:15,16)

This is why we like this chapter, because we as New Testament Christians look to that promise made to David a thousand years before the birth of Christ and say, “That was predicting the one in whom we’ve placed our confidence and our faith and everything that was promised to David has been realized in him and we in many ways are the beneficiaries of promises that were made here.”

Saul had been removed, but now David’s kingdom would be established from this point on. The Old Testament is replete with reiterations of this promise. “They shall not hurt nor destroy in all my holy mountain: for the earth shall be full of the knowledge of the LORD, as the waters cover the sea.” (Isaiah 11:9) And we have this great promise that through Messiah, the rule of God would be carried to the world. The good news of Messiah would be carried here and there to every nation on the planet until the time would come when virtually the entire planet would be awash with the knowledge of God. We haven’t reached that point yet. There is a little more work to do, at the moment it’s a work in progress. Every time we pray in the Lord’s prayer, “thy kingdom come,” we’re praying for a continued expansion of this rule of Messiah and he must reign until he has put every enemy under his feet. So this is a prediction of something that I think we see in our own lives and see and the testimony of history.

From this point on the seed of David, this branch of Jesse as it’s sometimes referred to, expresses an ongoing anticipation of one who would be the son of David. For example, in Psalm 89:3-4, “I have made a covenant with my chosen, I have sworn unto David my servant, Thy seed will I establish for ever, and build up thy throne to all generations.” This one who has now been identified as the seed of David.

Jesus first sermon when he shows up in the narrative of the new testament is a very short sermon, “From that time Jesus began to preach, and to say, Repent: for the kingdom of heaven is at hand.” (Matthew 4:17)

“Repent and get ready because the kingdom that you’ve been waiting for, the kingdom that has been anticipated and all the prophetic announcements down through hundreds of years has, it’s here! The train just rolled into the station. So wake up. This is it. Repent for the Kingdom of Heaven has arrived.”

It’s a kingdom that came to Israel because where else could it come? That is where that great sanctuary had been built, but he didn’t stay there. Jerusalem was dismantled in 70 AD. Not one stone was left upon another of that physical temple because it was always only scaffolding. Preparing for the true temple. And the New Testament repeatedly and emphatically tells us we are the temple. Don’t you know you are the temple? And that makes us now the realization in some ways of all that had been predicted by God to David.

Nathan jotted that down and ran right over to see David. Nathan spoke to David, who I imagine listened with stunned astonishment. The first half of Second Samuel, Chapter Seven is God’s Word to David. The last half you might say was David’s word to God and so now we see the flip side of it as David expresses his response to this remarkable prediction.

Then King David went in and sat before the Lord and he said, “Who am I, O Lord God? and what is my house, that thou hast brought me hitherto?” (2 Samuel 7:18)

He begins by saying, “Who am I? Who in the world am I that you have done even what you’ve done for me so far. And yet what you’ve done is relatively small compared to what you’re proposing to do in this great future.” And David then acknowledges, (verse 20), that God knows this unworthy servant. God knows David doesn’t warrant by personal virtue or any kind great sterling character on his part. That kind of blessing that’s being described, you can only attribute all of this blessing to the fundamental integrity and goodness and grace of God himself.

So David has disclaimed personal virtue. He’s insisted rather that this is all God’s goodness.

“And what one nation in the earth is like thy people, even like Israel, whom God went to redeem for a people to himself, and to make him a name, and to do for you great things and terrible, for thy land, before thy people, which thou redeemedst to thee from Egypt, from the nations and their gods? For thou hast confirmed to thyself thy people Israel to be a people unto thee for ever: and thou, Lord, art become their God.” (2 Samuel 7:23-24) As God called to himself Israel, so now he calls all men to him to create a people unique unto him.

We’re reminded in the Old Testament, the blessing on Israel had nothing to do with the virtue of Israel. It was again, the unmitigated determination of God to bless them, not the fact that their behavior often warranted that blessing. The question, who is like your peoples? What he’s responding to. It’s a fair question abundantly sustained by the facts of history. What other nation on earth is like your people Israel, he continues. The record can be explained only on the score that God went to redeem for himself, a people bereft of all outward material characteristics by which we commonly judge a nation to be great. Things like political unity, economic security, military power. They were possessed of no independence, sovereignty for thousands of years, let alone empire. Yet Israel was the repository and channel for the loftiest revelations of God’s nature and purpose.

This people that stands out in a unique status in the ancient world preparing the way as God had promised David that they would for the coming of Messiah. I need to remind you as well, that the New Testament emphatically declares that the true Israel are those who are of faith in Christ. He is not a Jew, Paul says, who is simply born a Jew, a true Jew, a true member of Israel is one who has faith in Christ, who has been baptized into Christ, clothed himself with Christ.

As Paul says explicitly in Galatians chapter three, “Even as Abraham believed God, and it was accounted to him for righteousness. Know ye therefore that they which are of faith, the same are the children of Abraham. And the scripture, foreseeing that God would justify the heathen through faith, preached before the gospel unto Abraham, saying, In thee shall all nations be blessed.” (Galatians 3:6-7)

So this is something God has done. It’s his sovereign work.

The chapter ends with these words: “And now, O Lord God, the word that thou hast spoken concerning thy servant, and concerning his house, establish it for ever, and do as thou hast said. And let thy name be magnified for ever, saying, The Lord of hosts is the God over Israel: and let the house of thy servant David be established before thee. For thou, O Lord of hosts, God of Israel, hast revealed to thy servant, saying, I will build thee an house: therefore hath thy servant found in his heart to pray this prayer unto thee. And now, O Lord God, thou art that God, and thy words be true, and thou hast promised this goodness unto thy servant: herefore now let it please thee to bless the house of thy servant, that it may continue for ever before thee: for thou, O Lord God, hast spoken it: and with thy blessing let the house of thy servant be blessed for ever.” (2 Samuel 7:25-29)

David had desired to advance the cause of the true religion by building a structure, a temple, but the text generally stands as a warning that structure, institutions, ceremony, external ritual can all become an end in themselves depriving the worshiper of the true aim of religious observance.

Certainly that temple became a magnificent locus venue for worship, but we know that by the time Christ arrived, it had become thoroughly corrupted. Jesus could address himself to the very leaders of the religious institutions associated with that temple and call them “a den of vipers” because they had drifted so far from the actual vision of what true worship was supposed to be.

And there is a little bit of a warning already implied in what we hear at this point. Here is the ideal prayer of a father for his children: “I pray that my kids go to church. I pray that they participate in the church, but more than all of that, I pray that they will be people that have genuine faith.” Now I think a person of genuine faith goes to church. Don’t get me wrong, but at the heart of the matter, just going to church, just singing hymns, just saying a prayer without faith is as Paul says, useless, worthless.

David had a remarkable destiny that was revealed to him, the outlines of it that was staggering to him. Each of us has a destiny, a future known only to God, of the influence a faithful life will have on generations to come, such that we live for the benefit of seed we’ve never met.