Our Sermons

Bible Passage: 2 Samuel 7:8-16
Pastor: Pastor Schlicht
Sermon Date:  December 20, 2020

You can almost see King David and the prophet Nathan enjoying an after-dinner conversation on the roof of the palace. The military situation is stable, but something’s bothering David: he lives in a paneled palace built of Lebanese cedars while the Ark of the Covenant—God’s dwelling place—remains in a tent. Now that he had time to think about it, David felt something was wrong about a human king living in a luxurious palace while God’s presence resided among curtains and rods. And so David asks Nathan about building a temple to the Lord and Nathan agrees. I mean as a pastor, if I were in Nathan’s shoes and someone asked me what I thought about building a brand new church I’d say the same thing, “The Lord is with you!” But Nathan had spoken a bit too soon. The Lord was with David, more than he knew, but it was not the Lord’s will that David should build him a temple.

That very night, God spoke to Nathan and told him to go back and tell David what he really wanted: This is what the Lord says: Are you the one to build me a house to dwell in? 6 I have not dwelt in a house from the day I brought the Israelites up out of Egypt to this day. I have been moving from place to place with a tent as my dwelling. 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?…This is what the Lord of Armies says. I took you from the pasture, from following sheep, to be ruler over my people, over Israel. 9 I have been with you wherever you went. I have cut off all your enemies from before you…The Lord also declares to you that the Lord himself will make a house for you. 12 When your days are complete and you rest with your fathers, I will raise up after you your seed, who will come from your own body. I will establish his kingdom. 13 He will build a house for my name, and I will establish the throne of his kingdom forever.

The Lord, true to form, promises grace on top of grace. This future grace, however, is not in response to David’s building a house or temple for him, but simply because our Lord is a God of grace, a God who defines himself as loving to the undeserving. Look at the gracious counterpunch of God here: v. 5 Are you the one to build me a house to dwell in? v. 11 The Lord himself will make a house for you. David is not to be an active initiator but a passive recipient. And the LORD puts a spin on the term ‘house’ which can mean a place with walls and a roof (in the case of a deity=temple) or a collection of people as a family or household. In the case of a king like David this is a promise for his dynasty. The Lord graciously flips the script: He will be the builder and the house will be David’s, not the other way around.

This is the opposite of how things usually happened. It was common in the ancient Near East, that a king would build or restore a god’s temple in order to receive a promise regarding his reign. The Gudea Cylinders are a pair of terracotta cylinders dating around 2125 B.C. on which are written in cuneiform the Sumerian tale of the god Enlil and the king of Sumer, Ur-Nammu. Ur-Nammu rebuilt his temple for which Enlil decreed a great future for Ur-Nammu. “When you really set to work for me on my house…I will call up to heaven for humid winds so that plenty comes down to you from heaven and the land will thrive under your reign in abundance. Laying the foundations of my temple will bring immediate abundance: the great fields will grow rich for you, the levees and ditches will be full to the brim for you, the water will rise for you to heights never reached by the water before. Under you more oil than ever will be poured and more wool than ever weighed in Sumer.” (Gudea Cylinders, 277-293.) The pattern is similar in the case of Yahdun-Lim, a 19th century B.C. King of Mari, an ancient city in the Mesopotamian region, and his god, Shamash. In the 14 and 15th centuries B.C. we see the same pattern in Egypt with the Thut-mose III and Amen-hotep III, who built great temples for their God Amon-Re. In the 7th century B.C. Esarhaddon of Assyria rebuilt the temple of Asshur in expectation of great blessing. Now these examples from ancient sources took place both before and after the time of David in the same region of the world. And yet it seems to me that the mind-set they reflect is the direct opposite of what we find in 2 Samuel 7. I’ll summarize it like this: 

Ancient Pagan Sources: 

1. Favor granted by a god 
2. (In response) Temple-building by king 
3. (In response) Future favor from a god

2 Samuel 7: 

1. Previous grace from the LORD 
2. Future grace from the LORD
3. Temple-building delayed
   

No one can place a claim on the Lord’s grace by giving to him. No one can say that God owes them. He is the God of grace. He took David from the pasture, the 8th child of Jesse, the little runt of the lot, and he made him King of Israel. He fought for him against the lion, and the bear, against Goliath and Saul, and all the armies of the Philistines, Moabites, Edomites, Amalekites, and Ammonites. God reviews his past grace and then tells David to expect more grace, and puts his own house, the temple, on the backburner. No other God would do that. But there is no other God of grace.

For as long as you live, you are going to have to resist the assumption of your human nature that God is preoccupied with fairness. On earth people are preoccupied with fairness. If they pay good money, they want good service. If they do hard work, they deserve pay. And if someone scratches your back, you should scratch theirs. And this works well in many cases when it comes to earthly matters. But this cannot be applied spiritually. 

In Latin they called it the opinio legis  or the “opinion of the law,” that by doing what is right we can earn our salvation. The Augsburg Apology, one of our Lutheran Confessions, puts it so well: “Works are recognizable among human beings. Human reason naturally admires these. Reason sees only works and does not understand or consider faith. Therefore, it dreams accordingly that these works merit forgiveness of sins and justify. This opinion of the Law (opinio legis) inheres by nature in our minds. I cannot be driven out unless we are divinely taught. The mind must be continually recalled from such earthly opinions to the Word of God.” (Art.III.144.)

Did you catch what it said? This thinking inheres (not adheres) as part of our sinful nature in our minds. So often we think that God has blessed us, he has saved us even, but now we need to gain his favor by being good. We know God has been gracious to us in the past but we naturally assume that if he is to be gracious in the future it depends on our behavior. My friends, even as a pastor, this sticks to me. When you guys give me compliments on a sermon, naturally I feel like God must be pleased with me, as if the blood of his Son shed for me was not as precious before the service started. And often it happens to us in a negative sense. Something bad happens to us, a cross is given for you to bear, and then you wonder, not how is God blessing me through this, or how will his grace be reflected in me. But “God, why? Haven’t I been good to you?”  This sticks to us, it inheres by nature in our minds and cannot be driven out unless we are recalled, continually recalled from such earthly opinions to the Word of God. Continually recalled, at least once a week, or if you’re like me, maybe once every hour. We are by nature preoccupied with fairness, but our God is preoccupied with grace. And this is only revealed in the Word. 

This is why Christianity is different from every other religion. When you boil them down, every other religion is about what we do for a god, only Christianity is about what God has done for us. Every other religion is about you being pure and holy enough to merit nirvana, or virtuous enough to get to Valhalla, or obedient enough to make it to the paradise of Islam, you name. it. Every other religion is about working your way to the top of the mountain. Only in Christianity does God come down from the top of mountain and carry us to the top. 

And that beautiful picture of love in condescension is so clear here in God’s promise to David. God wasn’t concerned about living in a house, he wanted to give David a house. You think about the very fact that God traveled with his unfaithful people in a tent all those years. This is the God of grace who will not rest until he gives his people rest, the God who stoops down to share the hardships of his people, the God who is not ashamed to say that he has been travelling around in a tent with them. It reminds me of another time God came down to be with us. In John 1, he speaks about Jesus as the Word of God and he says, in verse 14, “The Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us…” The word for dwelling here is literally translated “to put down tent stakes”. It is an allusion to the tabernacle! And isn’t this what we celebrate at Christmas? That Jesus defined himself as the God of all grace, when we became one of us. When he took on flesh and tabernacled among us, just as in ages past. It reminds me of Philippians 2:6-8. Though he [Christ] was by nature God, he did not consider equality with God as a prize to be displayed, 7 but he emptied himself by taking the nature of a servant. When he was born in human likeness, and his appearance was like that of any other man, 8 he humbled himself and became obedient to the point of death—even death on a cross. If you’ve really paid attention to 2 Samuel 7 you are not surprised at Philippians 2. Actually you may have expected as much. 

The beautiful truth, to which the Holy Spirit must continually recall our minds, is that when it comes to our God, we should always expect more grace! God promised David an eternal kingdom, a house forever. And in Christ, our eternal king, we know that promise was fulfilled. Expect more grace! A son of David was born in the town of David, and he has now ascended to heaven, where he rules forever. If you believe this, you should always expect more grace from God! He will not give you what you deserve, he will give you grace. He will not repay you, he will bless you freely. He will not stop loving you when you sin, he is always pointing to the cross in forgiveness. He is always willing to live with you, to set up a tent with you in your earthly pilgrimage. 

If you learn to expect more grace, than you can expect more from Christmas. You know there’s often a lot of obligation when it comes to gifts, isn’t there? I know someone who doesn’t want to get anything, just because they will feel like they need to give them something back! Remember that isn’t how it works with God. And apply that to your thinking.  It doesn’t matter what gifts you receive or don’t receive, because you are expecting more grace from your eternal king. You know what David ended up donating to the future temple building fund?  In today’s money it would equal 5 billion dollars. And he gave it from his personal treasury. Even though David would never live to see his son Solomon break ground building the Temple, King David gave generously because he expected God’s grace. He knew his dynasty would last forever, and in response he just wanted to say thank you. May our gifts to others and may our gifts to God’s work, reflect the fact that we expect more grace as well. 

Even in times of hardship, expect more grace. Expect that the God who has given you a cross to bear will give you the strength to bear it. And, in even more grace, he will use it to conform you to the likeness of your Savior who first bore a cross. Even if the Lord would use your suffering to call you home to see your eternal King Jesus, you should still expect more grace in eternity. In every situation, expect more grace from your eternal King.

Amen.