Keyser, Keith: Meeting At Kenilworth NJ-2009 ~ The Davidic Covenant-2 Samuel 7

Good morning. I've had more graceful entrances. Please turn in the Word of God to second Samuel seven. Second Samuel chapter seven. We are delighted to be back among you today. My wife Naomi is with me, and we have a fourteen-month-old daughter, which we didn't have the last time we were here. The last time we were here, we were newlyweds, and we ducked out of here quickly last time to play tourist in New York, and we have the same plan today. I was thinking, as I was listening to our brother recount the ministry of the Gideons, I have a Gideon testament in my pocket today. I so appreciate the ministry they do, and the size of those New Testaments are just ideal for fitting in your pocket, and I've used them for years, ever since I was in high school, and uh, used them in Spanish in Spain and used them in English over here. So that is indeed a good work. We praise the Lord for those who have a burden for disseminating his word. Let's read in that word in two Samuel chapter seven. and I want to begin reading in verse eight. two Samuel seven verse eight. Now, therefore, thus you shall say to my servant David, thus says the Lord of hosts, I took you from the sheepfold, from following the sheep, to be ruler over my people, over Israel. And I have been with you wherever you have gone, and have cut off all your enemies from before you, and have made you a great name, like the name of the great men who are on the earth. 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. Nor shall the sons of wickedness oppress them anymore as previously, since the time that I commanded judges to be over my people Israel, and have caused you to rest from all your enemies. Also, the Lord tells you that he will make you a house. And 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. He shall build a house for my name, and I will establish the throne of his kingdom forever. And I will be his father, and he shall be my son. If he commits iniquity, I will chastise him with the rod of men and with the blows of the sons of men. But my mercy shall not depart from him, as I took it from Saul, whom I removed from before you. And your house and your kingdom shall be established forever before you. Your throne shall be established forever. According to all these words and according to all this vision, so Nathan spoke to David. Well, the context of what we've just read is that King David gets to a point in his reign where now he's not running in fear for his life, as so much of his young adulthood was spent fleeing, dodging the javelins that King Saul, his predecessor, would throw at him, and hiding out in the wilderness, and eventually being brought and made king in Hebron, and seven years later made king over all of Israel in Jerusalem. Now there is a measure of rest here for King David, not that there won't be warfare and struggles ahead. And David begins to look around, as sometimes people do when they come to a settled point in life, and he takes stock of his situation, and he looks at himself and he says, my, my, my, look at how nicely the Lord has blessed me. Here I was out there running around in the deserts and in caves and sleeping under the stars and who knows where, and now the Lord has given me a wonderful house. You should see it. It's all paneled nicely with cedar, and we've got a hot tub in the back, and you'd love what my wives have done with the shrubbery and all that kind of thing, he could say. Here I am at rest in my own house. But wait a minute, said David. The Ark of the Lord is in a tent. There's this tent that we often call in English by a technical term, the tabernacle, and that is still where God's ark was dwelling. The place, this ark was a box, as you know, that contained in it the Ten Commandments and a little pot of manna and Aaron's rod that budded. We won't go into the significance of all those things, but suffice it to say it was a box made of acacia wood, which the Septuagint, the ancient Greek translation of the scriptures, calls the incorruptible wood, and it was overlaid, it was covered with pure gold. And on top of this box, there was a lid that they called the mercy seat, because it was there once a year, Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement, according to Leviticus sixteen, that the high priest, only him, that the high priest would go in by himself with blood and would sprinkle on that mercy seat. And that place became known as the throne of God. The Psalms repeatedly speak about the one who is enthroned between the cherubim. There were two angelic type, uh, creatures that were carved on top of that mercy seat, and that was seen to be the throne of the Lord, because after all, in the time of Moses, his glory would come down, a pillar of cloud by day, a pillar of fire by night. And that's where the glory and the presence of God was manifested among the people. And so, to David's credit, when things started to go well for him, and the investments were going well, so to speak, and he had this nice house to live in, and he was comfortable, his thoughts inevitably turned to the Lord's and to the Lord's house. And he said, you know what would be a nice thing to do? Here, the Lord has blessed me so much, and I'm living at ease, as it were, in my split-level pad, and wouldn't it be nice to build a house for the Lord, to build him some kind of a temple where we could put the Ark of the Covenant and and the other things God has given us for worshiping him in some kind of permanent dwelling, not in some kind of tent. He had a good intention, didn't he? And first of all, I would like to say that it is praiseworthy to see David's interest in the house of God. Now, times change, but the big issues of life stay the same. Today, the house of God is not a particular building in a particular country. The temple that eventually David's son Solomon would build was later destroyed in five eighty BC under the Babylonians. It was rebuilt later, uh, through the energies and in the time of Ezra and Nehemiah and Zerubbabel and those folks. It was re- rebuilt a few centuries later. Then it was refurbished and extended, coming right up to the days of our Lord Jesus Christ in the first century. But then again, that te- temple, what we'll call Herod's temple, that was destroyed by the Romans in AD seventy. There's no temple of God standing. All you have left there is the retaining wall that was around the platform that the temple sat upon in Jerusalem, and it's the most holy place in Jewish thinking. Even today, if you go to Jerusalem, you'll see that's where observant Jews congregate to pray at what is known as the Western Wall, or some Westerners call it the Wailing Wall. Suffice it to say, there's no building, cathedral, temple, mosque, synagogue, you name it, today that God calls his house. When we come to the New Testament, to First Peter chapter two, for example, we are told that God is building a building made up of spiritual stones, living stones, Peter calls them. If you compare Ephesians chapter two, he is building up believers, Jews and Gentiles, to be a habitation of God in the spirit. In other words, when we come to the New Testament, the house of God isn't a place of brick and stone and mortar, it's a place composed of people. It is, if we may quote our Lord's words from the Gospel of Matthew, the place where two or three are gathered together in his name, where he is in the midst. It is his church, another shorthand way of saying it, and you'll know that the church isn't this building we're sitting in. The church is the people that are redeemed, that know the Lord Jesus Christ is their Savior. Perhaps you're in the church today. Perhaps you're sitting here and you're not yet in the church because you haven't come to know the Lord Jesus Christ as your Savior. I don't know. Suffice it to say that in every age, it is beautiful to see when men and women have a passion for the house of God. When they start to care more about the things of the Lord, in other words, than they care about their own things. And here was a man, King David, who had everything going for him, a palace and a kingdom and an army and wives and friends and, and all kinds of things going on. But he turned and said, you know what I'm really concerned about? I'm concerned about the Lord and his house. I'm concerned about the Lord's glory. I want to build God a house. And the prophet Nathan was standing nearby, listening to His Majesty go on about this dream of building God a house, and you know how prophets are, he was all for that. Oh, that's a wonderful idea, Your Majesty. Go and do all that is in your heart. Only problem was Nathan hadn't prayed about it before he made that remark. He wasn't speaking for God when he said that. That was his own opinion. To Nathan, it sounded like a great idea. But God had to appear to Nathan and say, now listen, Nathan, uh, you go and tell David this, that from the time I brought the children of Israel out of Egypt, I've been very content having my presence among the people meet in that tabernacle in the tents. And in all the time preceding David, in all of these centuries, and now it's been about four hundred years from the Exodus when we come to the time of David, in all of these years, I haven't asked anyone to build a house for me. And you know what? I'm not going to have David build a house for me either. Instead, his son is going to build a house for me. And just to show you that you can't outgive God and can't outbless God, he says, by the way, speaking of houses, I'm going to build you one, David. Not one with four walls and bricks and stones and mortars, another way we use the word house. A dynasty. When you think about royal families, even today in Great Britain, and I know perilously little about royalty, and I don't pay attention to the tabloids that always seem to have Prince William or this or that person in them. Uh, so I don't know much about royalty, but I know even today they speak about the House of Windsor when they talk about the royal family, don't they? That term house is used to describe a dynasty, and God says, David, I'm going to give you a special seed, a a son who's going to build me the temple, and I'm going to have a unique relationship with him. I'm going to be his father, he's going to be my son, and like a good, caring father, I'm going to discipline my son. Now, I'm a son, and thanks be to God, I have a good father. I can tell you, this will come as a shock to you, no doubt, but I can tell you that growing up, I wasn't always a little angel. Far from it. From time to time, I would do things that would, uh, not only merit, but act- absolutely scream for punishment. And my father was very faithful. Indeed, one might say zealous on certain occasions in punishing me. At the time, as his son, I thought he was a hopelessly hard father, that he was a difficult man, and just harsh, and punishing me like that, you know, and disciplining me, and what kind of a father is it that does it to his son anyway? I'll tell you what kind of a father it is. I've, I've come to see it now that I've attained some age of maturity, and now that I'm a father myself, what I can see is he was a loving father. Because if a father doesn't love their child, well, they don't care much about what happens to them. They don't care about their character. They don't care about whether they do good or evil, or whether they learn the right way of truth. If they don't love their child, no, they don't bother to discipline them. But if a father loves his child, the scripture is quite clear. Whom a father loves, says Proverbs, and Hebrews twelve quotes it, he chastens or disciplines, we would say today. Whom a father loves, in other words, he intervenes when we get off the rails, when we get off the track, when we start doing something we shouldn't. Why? Because he has a plan and a purpose for us, that he wants us to grow up knowing right from wrong, good and evil, because there are consequences to the things we do. And if we don't learn that as children, we're going to have to spend the rest of our lives, if not the rest of eternity, learning that there are very serious consequences to the things we do and to the evil things we do, very painful consequences. So says God to David, I'll give you a son, and I'll be a father to him. And if he departs from me, if he starts doing what he shouldn't, I'm going to chasten him. I'm going to discipline him. I will correct him, says God. But what I won't do is cast him off. I won't throw him out and say, you've been too bad to keep the kingdom and the crown. You know, that wasn't a remote possibility because David's predecessor, Saul, had been quite a rascal. Not everything he did was wrong, and indeed, com- compared to some of the kings that would later come about, he might seem, uh, positively, uh, just wonderful. But when you come down to it, if you look at Saul's life, he's a man who basically didn't care what God thought, and a man whose life was characterized by disobedience to the Lord. And so the Lord rejected Saul, whom the people loved. When God first gave them King Saul, they said, oh, look at him, he's a big, tall man, bigger than everybody else. That's just our idea of what a king should be. He should be the biggest man. After all, you know, when you want someone sitting up there on the throne, you want them to look the part of regality, and one of the jobs a king had in those days was leading the army, and you can think how it would give the enemies of Israel pause when they saw a great big tall King Saul coming out leading the army, right? Yes, until one day the enemy army showed up with a bigger man, a fellow you may have heard of called Goliath, but that's another sermon. Now, Saul had been the people's choice. God gave them what their heart wanted to their misery. And when God replaced him, he said, you know what I'm going to choose? I'm going to choose a man after my own heart. Not a perfect man, not a man who wouldn't sin. The Bible is very candid in recording for us the failures of King David. It's one of the evidences of the authenticity of the scriptures, that they are indeed the word of God, because it paints the heroes, warts and all. It tells us about God's people, the good, the bad, and the ugly, so to speak. And when God chose David, he said, now I'm choosing David, and I'm going to use him because basically David's heart is one that he wants to please me. And so, David, if your son gets off track, says God, I'm going to correct him, but I will not cast him off forever. And then, do you know what's more, David? Let's look down through the centuries, way beyond your son. Of your house, of your family, I'm going to make a dynasty. You're never going to lack a man to sit upon the throne of Israel. What tremendous promises that were. You can think about people that have ruled for a long time on the earth. You can look through history and you can see dynasties in some cases, that lasted for centuries. For hundreds of years, people from one family ruling over a country, but you know, inevitably they fall. Inevitably they come to an end. What God was promising here to David was something exceptional, something that doesn't happen very often. You say, well, what's that have to do with us in Kenilworth, New Jersey, anyway? I mean, that's a wonderful story. I'm very happy for King David, and it's nice of God to make him these kind of promises, but what's that have to do with me? After all, look at the calendar, you say, Mr. Preacher, you may be a bit off with daylight savings time and all that kind of thing, spring ahead, fall back, who knows what one was supposed to do this morning. You may have forgotten that this is two thousand and eight, not one thousand BC. So what's this have to do with us, you say? Well, it's a very good question. But you know something, one thing the Bible says about God is that he is a faithful God, a God who makes covenants. A covenant is a contractual agreement, a promise, if you will. He makes promises. And if God doesn't keep his promises to David, for example, then how can he be trusted to keep any promises to us? After all, God has made promises to you this morning, hasn't he? If you know the Lord Jesus Christ as your Savior, certainly he has promised to come again and receive you unto myself. That's what the Lord Jesus said in John fourteen. I'm going away, but I'm going to come again and receive you unto myself. That promise is reiterated in First Thessalonians chapter four. that the Lord himself shall descend from heaven with a shout, with the voice of the archangel, with the trump of God sounding, and the dead in Christ shall rise first, and we who are alive and remain shall be caught up to be with the Lord, and so shall we ever be with the Lord. Well, it's been almost two thousand years since the Lord Jesus made that promise, and he hasn't come yet. And don't listen to these people that set dates, because the Lord Jesus was quite explicit that we wouldn't know the day or the hour. Instead, the Lord Jesus commanded us to occupy till he comes, to get busy for him in his absence, and to keep awake, to be alert and sober, as First Thessalonians five would enjoin us, while we wait for the Lord. But somebody might say, after all, two millennia is two millennia. Is he really coming? The thought of his second coming to earth a little later in the purposes of God is enough to give certain skeptics a lot of glee today. A lot of people could just as well echo the words of second Peter three and say, where is the promise of his coming? All things continue just as they were since the fathers fell asleep. In other words, things have continued, the world still marches on, it's still the same as it ever was, and he hasn't intervened in history yet. He hasn't come back yet, has he? Well, says Peter, God is not slack as some men count slackness. He's faithful. The reason he hasn't come back yet, says Peter, is he's long suffering, not willing that any should perish. In other words, the Lord Jesus Christ hasn't come back for his own yet, who day and night pray Maranatha, even so come, Lord Jesus. He hasn't come back because there are some people in this very neighborhood, if not this room, that haven't trusted him yet. There are some people in our community and in our state and in the United States and in our world today, many people, multitudes of them, probably by the billions, that have never come before God and grappled with the issue of their sin. And the Lord makes promises in the gospel. He says, for example, whosoever comes unto me, I will in no wise cast out. In other words, if you come to the Lord Jesus as a repentant sinner, you say, Lord, I see myself as you see me, as a sinner lost, deserving hell, deserving to be cut off from you for eternity because I have disobeyed you, I've broken your law, I've not done the good that I should have done. I've done the evil that I should not have done. Lord, I need a savior, and I believe you're the savior because, after all, Lord, you came and died on the cross of Calvary and took my sins on yourself and bore my punishment that I might be given eternal life. God makes that offer to people. He says whoever takes him up on that offer, he'll save, and save to the uttermost. It doesn't matter what color you are, what your IQ is, how much money you have in the bank, what neighborhood you belong to, what clubs you belong to or don't belong to, what your level of education is, anything like that. The Bible ends in the twenty second chapter of Revelation with the Lord saying, whosoever will, let him come and drink of the water of life freely. And what will happen if they come and drink of that life freely? They'll be forgiven of their sins. They will be given eternal life. They will be liberated from slavery to sin. They'll become part of God's family, being born again by his spirit and word, and made children of God. They'll be declared not only children, but sons. And as sons, they'll be co-heirs with the Lord Jesus Christ himself, whose inheritance encompasses all things, according to Hebrews chapter one. All of that is promise. None of that has been realized yet in our lives. The New Testament word to describe it is hope. Not a hope which is uncertain, but a hope which is a certain expectancy of an event that hasn't transpired yet. In other words, Christians base their lives and bank their eternal destinies on events that have not yet happened, for the most part. The only events we can look back to, thank God, are the death of Christ, his resurrection, and ascension back to heaven. As for everything else he promises, it's still to come. So this matter of David's promises, the promises that God gave to David, that is to say, is very important. Because if God doesn't keep his promises to David, I say it reverently, how can he be trusted to keep his promises to us? I can tell you with great confidence this morning that he can be trusted to keep his promises to us because he keeps his promises to David. And before I show you that from multiple scriptures, I just want to take note of David's reaction to this. After God talks about building him a house and him never lacking a man to sit on the throne, David goes in and sits before the Lord. Verse eighteen: He went in and sat before the Lord and said, Who am I, O Lord God, and what is my house that you've brought me thus far? And yet this was a small thing in your sight, O Lord God, and you have also spoken of your servant's house for a great while to come. Is this the manner of man, O Lord God? Now, what more can David say to you? For you, Lord God, know your servant for your word's sake, and according to your heart, you've done all these great things to make your servant know them. Therefore, you are great, O Lord God, for there is none like you, nor is there any God beside you, according to all that we've heard with our ears, and who is like your people, like Israel? Uh, sometime for a little diversion, it would be very edifying. In fact, today would be a good time to do it before you forget. When the meeting's over and you have a little free time this afternoon, maybe at halftime on the next basketball game, I don't know exactly what's on television today, but uh, get this chapter out and go down through David's prayer to the Lord and look at how many times he addresses God and talks about you. The entire prayer is focused on the Lord and what he has done, and when he focuses on himself at all, it's to say what the Lord's done for him and what he is in relation to the Lord. You say, well, what's the big deal about that? Well, just this, we're living in a day and age when the focus is being shifted onto human beings. And people say the key things in life are what makes you happy. And the key things in life, it's all about you. You ought to be satisfied. And God says in his word, and the godly of every age have always understood this. No, it's not about us. It's about God, first and foremost. And David gives him his portion in thanksgiving and says, it's you, God. There's nobody else like you. You only could do these things. And he ends the prayer very interestingly. Look at what he says. He says here in this prayer, verse twenty six, so let your name be magnified forever, saying, the Lord of hosts is the God over Israel, and let the house of your servant David be established before you. For you, O Lord of hosts, God of Israel, have revealed this to your servant, saying, I will build you a house. Therefore, your servant has found it in his heart to pray to you. And now, O Lord God, you are God, and your words are true, and you've promised this goodness to your servant. Now, therefore, let it please you to bless the house of your servant, that it may continue before you forever. For you, O Lord God, have spoken it, and with your blessing, let the house of your servant be blessed forever. Do you know what he prays for? He prays for God to do exactly what he's promised. I don't know about you, but I catch myself sometimes praying to God and telling God what to do. Well, God, here's what's happened. Uh, my good friend is sick, and it's a very serious illness, and Lord, you're all powerful, you can heal any sickness, so Lord, go ahead and heal my friend, in Jesus' name. Well, there's nothing wrong with praying for healing, certainly, but we always have to remember that key phrase, if it is thy will. Or to put it another way, positively, thy will be done. That's the important thing in prayer. Prayer is about us getting into agreement with God's will. Because, you know, sometimes it's better for the person that God doesn't heal them from an eternal point of view. And sometimes it's better for the glory of God that God leaves things just as they are, even though we may not like the circumstances personally. David teaches us a lot in this passage. We have to move on now. Our time is nearly finished. I've been given a grace period, okay, of twelve oh five is my cutoff. So just so you're aware, the trap door is not going to open till twelve oh five. But there's a commentary on this covenant over in Psalm eighty nine. Let's go over there a moment. I just want to refer to it briefly. Psalm eighty nine, You'll see the title is A Contemplation of Ethan the Ezrahite. Psalm eighty nine verse one says, I will sing of the mercies of the Lord forever. With my mouth will I make known your faithfulness to all generations. So he starts out singing, Lord, you're a faithful God. Ah, do you have any evidence for that, please? Yes, I do. Because verse three, quoting what God had said, I have made a covenant with my chosen. I have sworn to my servant David, your seed I will establish forever and build up your throne to all generations. So here the psalmist is writing, and he says, Lord, I'm going to talk about your faithfulness. Case in point, this covenant that you made with your servant David. You made promises to him about his seed and about his dynasty, and he waxes eloquent and goes on wonderfully for thirty seven verses about the faithfulness of God, and in particular, how you can see God's faithfulness in his promises to David and his family. But take note of verse thirty eight. But you have cast off and abhorred. You've been furious with your anointed. You have renounced the covenant of your servant. You've profaned his crown by casting it to the ground. Now, you know, at certain points in Israel's history, I'm sure it felt that way. It seemed like God had forgotten all about what he had promised to David, because a lot of the people that came through the line of David were anything but godly. Do you know the interesting thing? Second Chronicles twenty one verse six talks about an exceedingly bad king, one Jehoram, whom the Lord eventually slew for his wickedness, but it makes a statement there in Second Chronicles twenty one six. nevertheless, God would not utterly destroy the house of David because of the promises he made to them. You know, you can read the book of Isaiah, for example, and you can hear the prophet thundering away more than seven hundred years before the time of the Lord Jesus Christ, talking about the tremendous sin and iniquity of Israel and how bad they were. If you read just the first chapter of Isaiah and see God picturing them as a sick man, not just any sick man, but a body that is filled from head to toe with sores and oozing ugliness, that's how God describes their sin. And he goes on like that for many a page in the book of Isaiah. But do you know, when you come to Isaiah chapter fifty five, God again refers to the covenant he made with David, and he talks about the sure mercies of David, which shall not be removed. Now, in seven twenty one or seven twenty two, according to some historians, BC, the Assyrians came and took away the northern ten tribes of Israel. I've mentioned it already, later Nebuchadnezzar took away the southern two tribes and a remnant of people from other tribes in five eighty BC. They were eventually restored to the land, but as the years rolled by, and we come to the first century AD, when our Lord Jesus Christ lived, you find then that David's house was no longer calling the shots in Israel, that Israel was just one of many Roman provinces, that they were a nation under domination. And you might think, well, that's it for the promises God made to David. Not so. The angel appears, Gabriel, to Mary in Luke chapter one, and in verse thirty three there, the angel tells her about her son, that that holy one who was going to be born of her would be conceived of the Holy Spirit, and that he was going to sit on the throne of his father David and rule over Israel. After all these centuries, after all of Israel's unfaithfulness, after all of the crazy things that had happened in politics, even after the nation ceased from being independent, God says, I still haven't forgotten my covenant to David. Peter would refer to it again in Acts two, and he would say, you've remembered your promises to David, and he would quote from the Davidic covenant, and he would say, you are going to fulfill those promises. How could they ever be fulfilled? With so many of David's descendants being wayward, with them even being taken away from ruling over the nation, how could God ever fulfill his promises? He says, well, you see, ultimately the focal point of how these promises are to be fulfilled centers in one person, the Lord Jesus Christ. He is the one, one of his titles in the New Testament is the son of David. Romans chapter one begins that way. And he is the one who is yet one day going to sit on the throne of his father David and fulfill all the promises that God made to Israel. Now, lest you think I'm making that up, and again, our time is gone, I would point you to Romans chapters nine, ten, and eleven, which at great length tell us again about the wisdom and the faithfulness of God. How that although every these things seem to be contrary to it, there seem to be so many Jews that disbelieved in the claims of Jesus, that don't acknowledge him as Ha-Mashiach, the Messiah. But Paul says, no, that's all part of God's plan and purpose too. He foresaw this. In fact, he's going to use their unbelief. While there are very few Jews getting saved today, Paul could say, just a remnant according to the election of grace, God's going to turn and use it as an opportunity to extend his mercy to the Gentiles and save many of them. But lest the Gentiles get too proud and think they're something special. Romans chapter eleven says, God hasn't cast off Israel whom he foreknew. He is going to fulfill his promises to them. How, Lord? Because a deliverer will come out of Zion, even the Lord Jesus Christ himself. And these promises made to David almost two millennia ago now, or about two millennia ago now, are going to be literally fulfilled one day when the Lord Jesus comes to rule and to reign over Israel. Anti-Semitism will be a thing of the past. He's going to defend them from all their enemies, and things are going to be different. They're going to know the Lord intimately and personally. Well, I look forward to that future day, though I'm but a, a wee, insignificant Gentile in many respects, because second Timothy two says that if I suffer with him, I shall also reign with him. I'm intending to be there in Israel with the Lord Jesus, reigning in a future day, in what Revelation twenty calls the millennium, the thousand-year reign of the Lord Jesus Christ. I hope you'll be there too. If you're saved in the Lord Jesus Christ, you have that opportunity. Father, we thank thee this morning for thy faithfulness to David, which is also thy faithfulness to us. We thank thee for working out thy plans and purposes to him. We thank thee for working it out to us too, that we can trust thee this morning. Thou art a God who keeps his promises, and Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, today, and forever. He's faithful. We thank thee and praise thee in the Lord Jesus' name. Amen.