Thursday, September 7, 2017

2 Samuel 7: David's Kayak.

Presented to 614 Warehouse Mission 2:30pm service, 
10 September 2017.

This has been a weird summer for us. We didn't have any real family vacations. The older girls were both working. Rebecca was working out of town at Jacksons and Sarah-Grace was working at day camps; so we mostly just had Heather who we tried to keep busy through some great summer camps and lessons. We did try to make to most of our time together. The older girls and I went down to Buffalo to see G'n'R and Live in concert and just the other weekend we saw Alice Cooper and Deep Purple here in Toronto.  Susan, the younger two girls and I went to see the Martyr's Shrine where Father Brebeuf and the others were martyred. That was really interesting. Sarah-Grace and I were going to go to an Argos game and Heather and I did go to a Blue Jays game. It was actually quite a full and busy summer on top of Karaoke nights and the rest of things around here.

There were a couple of big corps events as well. Yesterday was the Cabbage Town festival here and Friday we went to see the Niagara Falls and early in the summer we went to see Howard fall out of a kayak. It is a good thing we weren't anywhere near the falls when Howard falls into the water. I may share about this story a little more in a little bit but I should probably get onto today's topic.

Today we are chatting a little bit about covenant. Covenant is a topic that I know a little bit about with my book and a number of articles that have been published on this topic.[1] However, I must confess that, like the Apostle Paul, I have spent much more time looking at God's covenant with Abraham than I have His covenant with David.[2] Today we are going to look God's covenant with David. Who can tell me what is a covenant? And what does the word 'berit[h]' (covenant) literally mean? (bound).[3] In our passage here today God binds David, Jacob, and all of humanity to Himself in an important covenant.[4] Bruce Birch writes that "this chapter is the most important theological text in the books of Samuel and perhaps the entire Deuteronomistic History.'[5] Let's take a look at how that works.

First it is very interesting: When the chapter opens, we have the king sitting in a palace of some sort. He must be a little board. It says he has a rest from his enemies and later we read about some of the other stuff he does when he is board but today he starts off pretty good. He must have been thinking about the Lord as, Verse 2, 'he said to Nathan the prophet, “Here I am, living in a house of cedar, while the ark of God remains in a tent.”
           3 Nathan replied to the king, “Whatever you have in mind, go ahead and do it, for the LORD is with you.”

Have you ever had a moment when you say or do something without thinking and then, oh oh...? Have we ever just answered someone quickly without thinking about it or - worse - has anyone ever involved someone else without checking first. Think of the stereotypical husband in the old days before cell phones who invites his friends over for dinner without checking with his wife first. Think about the wife who lets the kids or someone else borrow a tool or something else of dad's without checking with him. Have we ever been in a spot where we answer someone quickly without checking or without thinking. This is what the Lord's prophet does here when, verse 3, 'Nathan replied to the king, “Whatever you have in mind, go ahead and do it, for the LORD is with you.”

Verse 4 records that that night the Word of the Lord comes to Nathan and says, basically, 'why didn't you check with me first!?' and then He opens up on Nathan like a steadfast wife; He says, you tell  David this and you tell David that and then tell David one more thing. You ask David this and you tell David the other thing.  You ask David, Verse 7, ' Wherever I have moved with all the Israelites, did I ever say to any of their rulers whom I commanded to shepherd my people Israel, “Why have you not built me a house of cedar?”’ The Lord then talks about all the things He has done for David and all the things He has done for Israel. He doesn’t need David to build Him a house. God makes that abundantly clear and God doesn’t want David to build Him a house and Nathan should just march right back there and let David know that. God has been fine without a house until now and he will continue to be fine without a house.

Nathan before God here must feel a little like Howard on our kayaking trip this summer. No sooner had we gotten on the river, out of sight of the kayak rental place and all their equipment when ‘snap’ Howard’s paddle breaks in two. That cannot be a good omen. If this were a Shakespeare play you would know that something bad was going to happen to poor Howard before the trip was done – and you wouldn’t be wrong. We set up Howard as best we could but he was an inexperienced kayaker in the current; he really was up the creek without half a paddle. More about this later. But in the end God took care of Howard and God took care of Nathan. (And God took care of David)

After God finishes the exchange with Nathan about all of this, God has one more thing to tell him. The one more thing He has to tell Nathan is that God is going to build a dynasty for David and this is interesting – in the Hebrew there is a play on words that actually exists in the English translations as well. The word ‘house’ can mean a building or a dynasty: for instance, our current monarchy is from the House of Windsor, formerly the House of Hanover, meaning the family dynasty of Windsor. It is the same in Hebrew: David says he is going to build a house (a temple) for God but God says no, He is going to build a house (a dynasty) for David. This part actually reads a little bit like a love letter between two young people.[6] I don’t know if any of you have managed to keep any old love letters from years gone by or if you have even just noticed young love in action. I think we have all seen young people just in a new relationship, right? This exchange reminds me a little bit about that: 'No you’re the cutest and I am going to build you a big house of love'.
                  'No you’re the cutest and I am going to build you a big house of love'.
                  'No, no, no, you are… '
David wants to build a house, a palace for God but God will not except it from David. Instead God is going to build a house, a dynasty from David that will last forever.[7]

God loves David. David, after all, as 1 Samuel 13:14 and Acts 13:22 say, David is ‘a man after God’s own heart’. Now, you may stop me at this point and say, ‘hold on there, Captain! It’s all fine and dandy to say David is a man after God’s own heart but we’ve skipped ahead in 2 Samuel and we’ve been reading about him over the past few weeks and David doesn’t always sound like a great guy. He’s a horrible father! His kids seem to hate him. He commits adultery with Bathsheba, murders her husband and then has her come live with him and his other wives and their kids. He seems to treat a lot of people poorly and after his own son tries to overthrow him it seems that it is only by the grace of God through the (maybe even deplorable) actions of his nephew Joab that he and his house even exist at all. And I remember we read the other week that God said about David, 2 Samuel 12:9-10, “Why did you despise the word of the Lord by doing what is evil in his eyes? … Now, therefore, the sword will never depart from your house, because you despised me and took the wife of Uriah the Hittite to be your own.’ David is a man who got into all kinds of trouble; so how can this be the same man who loves God and who God loves in this way? Good question. Let me try to explain it this way…

Going back to the kayaking trip, after Howard’s paddle breaks and things are looking a little shakey for the trip, we set up Howard as best we can but he is an inexperienced kayaker in the current and, in reality, he is up the creak without half a paddle. He makes it for a while then he hits a rock in the fast moving current. He capsizes and his boat fills up with water very rapidly and drifts downstream as it begins sinking quickly. Howard doesn’t know what he is doing and most of the people on our trip don’t know what they are doing either. I am the only experienced kayaker there and we are all floating downstream very quickly as Howard crashes on the rocks and abandons ship as his craft begins to sink. I send Rob back to keep him company while I try to empty the kayak of water mid-stream with Sam as the two of us are being carried downstream farther and farther from Howard. I can’t empty his kayak in the water. It is too full. Sam and I guide the boat to the river bank whereby I get out of my kayak, then lift Howard’s water-filled kayak over my head and dump it out. I’m exhausted. This is a lot of work. Then Sam and I have to paddle upstream, against the current to try to get the kayak back to Howard so that we can try to put him back in his boat. And...until now Howard has been sitting nicely on a rock by Rob who has been keeping him company. All we need to do is pull Howard’s kayak up to the rock and he can climb in easily. I’m exhausted and I am just thinking that it is great that we can just load Howard in his boat from a rock rather than –in our exhausted state- drag Howard up out of the water when Howard decides to jump into to water  and swim to us! We do eventually get him out and no one is the worse for wear and we have a great story and a lot we have learned from this experience.

This is like David. His staying home when kings go off to work was when his paddle broke. He made subsequent choices and experienced the consequences of those choices that must have exhausted him and those around him but God like Rob, Sam, and I did not give up on him. God metaphorically paddled all the way upstream; even though David must have seemed like he was exhausting God by jumping in the current of sin. God never gave up on David. David’s actions had some serious consequences and he broke more than just a paddle but God loved him all the same and God fought against the current to be faithful to His covenant - in spite of all the strange moves David made. This is very important. The scriptures, Romans 3:3-4, ask us, “What if some were unfaithful? Will their unfaithfulness nullify God’s faithfulness?” The answer is of course not. Once God commits to a covenant He will be faithful even if we are faithless. This is the whole point of covenants and this is how God saves us through them. God will never abandon a covenant before it has been completed. He is faithful even when we are faithless.[8]

And this is good news. Anything less would be a works-based salvation, salvation achieved by our own merit, skill, and ability, and as the Apostle Paul points out that is an impossibility. None of us can achieve salvation on our own. We need God to save us. None of us can pull ourselves from the fast moving current by ourselves; we all need Jesus to do it for us – and he has through the cross and the empty tomb. God promised David that He would build an everlasting dynasty through him and He does. Jesus is the heir to David’s dynasty and Jesus reigns forever; so no matter how many times the devil may tempt David or you or I to sin that will not nullify the Word of God.[9] There is nothing that will ever cause God to break His promise of salvation for any of us – the only question is whether we will avail ourselves of that salvation or not, whether we will be pulled back into the kayak of salvation or whether we will choose to drown in our sins. And no matter what sins we have committed in our lives, make no mistake, it is not too much or too late, while we still have breath in our body we can still let Jesus lift us into that kayak of eternal salvation.

This is what the passage we are looking at today is talking about. God is faithful to his covenant (and still offers each of us the opportunity for eternal salvation) even when David is not; God is faithful to his covenant (and still offers each of us the opportunity for eternal salvation) even when Israel is not; God is faithful to his covenant (and still offers each of us the opportunity for eternal salvation) even when we are not. No matter what we have done, God has his arms out ready to accept us into His salvation.

In our passage today, it introduces us to everlasting life by saying that the Lord’s kingdom will last forever, and it will be ruled by David’s successor, Jesus, for all time and nothing can change that. The only question for us today is, do you and I choose to drown in the quickly moving current of all the temptations and sins of our world or do we accept the eternal joy of that salvation by riding peacefully down the river of eternal life in the kayak of Christ? It is my hope that each of us will choose Christ.
  

Questions for further exploration listed below.
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[1] Captain Michael Ramsay. Praise The Lord For Covenants: Old Testament wisdom for our world today. Vancouver, BC: Credo Press, 2010. (c) The Salvation Army. For more info: http://www.facebook.com/#!/pages/Praise-The-Lord-For-Covenants/155941614427110?v=info
[2] Cf. Michael Ramsay, 'Covenant: When God is Bound...a look at Genesis 15:7-21'. Journal of Aggressive Christianity, Issue 52, December 2007 – January 2008, p 5. On-line at http://www.armybarmy.com/pdf/JAC_Issue_052.pdf
[3] G.E. Mendenhall. "Covenant." In The Interpreter’s Dictionary of the Bible, edited by George Arthur Buttrick. (Nashville, Tennessee: Abingdon Press, 1962), 715. Cf. also M. Weinfeld. "berith." In Theological Dictionary of the Old Testament, edited by G. Johannes Botterweck. (Stuttgart, W.Germany: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Co., 1975), 253.
[4] Cf. Michael Ramsay, "Berit[h]" Journal of Aggressive Christianity, Issue 40, December 2005 – January 2006 pp 16-17.
[5] Bruce C. Birch, 'The First and Second Books of Samuel' in New Interpreter’s Bible, Vol. 2, ed. Leander E. Keck, et el. (Nashville, TN: Abingdon Press, 1998), 1254.
[6] Cf. Gbile Akanni and Nupanga Weanzana, Africa Bible Commentary, (Nairobi, Kenya: Word Alive Publishers, 2010), '2 Samuel 7:5-15:Nathan's Prophetic Declaration', 387
[7] Cf. Bruce C. Birch, 'The First and Second Books of Samuel' in New Interpreter’s Bible, Vol. 2, ed. Leander E. Keck, et el. (Nashville, TN: Abingdon Press, 1998), 1255 and Gbile Akanni and Nupanga Weanzana, Africa Bible Commentary, (Nairobi, Kenya: Word Alive Publishers, 2010), '2 Samuel 7:5-15:Nathan's Prophetic Declaration', 388
[8] Captain Michael Ramsay. Praise The Lord For Covenants: Old Testament wisdom for our world today. Vancouver, BC: Credo Press, 2010. (c) The Salvation Army. This is the thesis statement of PTL4C: http://www.facebook.com/#!/pages/Praise-The-Lord-For-Covenants/155941614427110?v=info 
[9] Cf. Gbile Akanni and Nupanga Weanzana, Africa Bible Commentary, (Nairobi, Kenya: Word Alive Publishers, 2010), '2 Samuel 7:1-17:The Promise of a Dynasty', 387

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Questions for further exploration

       I.            Life

1.      What is something you noticed about God this week?

    II.            Text

2 Samuel 7

Leader's note:
·         This passage is the record of the Davidic Covenant. It, along with the Abrahamic Covenant, points to the Good News of Salvation through Jesus Christ. Jesus, descended from David's line (house) will rule eternally.
·         There is an interesting play on words both in HB and in English in this chapter. The word for 'house' can mean 'building' or 'dynasty' / 'family line'. Ie: the house of Windsor (formerly Hanover) is our current Canadian Monarchy. In this passage then David wants to build a house (building) for God but God says instead He will build a house (dynasty) through David.

1.      What happened in this story?



2.      Re-read 2 Samuel 7:1-4:The king lets Nathan know what he intends to do, 7:1-2, (presumably for either feedback or approval); Nathan replies, 7:3, 'Whatever you have in mind, go ahead and do it, for the LORD is with you.' That night, 7:4ff, the Word of LORD says something very different.

a. Do we ever speak without thinking and then afterwards have to back track?

b. Nathan is a prophet of God; David is God's annointed king. They both made an error here: what was it? How could it be avoided?

c. David seems to have been led astray by good intentions; what were his good intentions? Do we ever fail to consult God because our intentions are good and are plans seem good - like here building a temple/house for God?

d. Nathan made the assumption that because 'the LORD is with David' that whatever he had in mind was good; do we ever blindly accept or reject things because of where/who they come from?

e. Even when we have good plans, they may be wrong; even when others have good plans they may be wrong; how can we be sure that what we are doing is what God wants us to do?

f. Give an example of when you listened to and obeyed God.


3.      God has done a lot for David, 7:5-7; God has done a lot for Israel, 7:8-11. List some of those things from the text. God has done a lot for us; what are some of the things God has done for you?


4.      2 Samuel 7:11-16 (along with Genesis 12:1-3) is one of the most important pericopes in the Old Testament.

a.  what strikes you about these verses?

b. Verse 16 states that "your house and your kingdom will endure forever before me; your throne will be established forever" Who is the member of David's house (dynasty; his ancestors) who will sit on the throne forever?

c. Do you serve Jesus who is the ruler who rules forever? Are you a citizen of the Nation/Country/Kingdom of God? Do you want to be?

If you have never prayed to dedicate your life to God and to serve Jesus forever, you are welcome to pray: Lord Jesus please accept my life in service to You. Please forgive my sins and please come into my heart for now and forever more. In Jesus' Name, amen.