2 Samuel 7: 8-17
Dr. John Claypool said that a mentor of his became quite depressed. He was looking at some roses that he had planted in a more hopeful time in his life and he said it suddenly dawned on him that the roses grew out of horse manure. The loveliest and most fragrant of flowers comes out of the most despicable dimension of what we humans don't like and it snapped him out of his depression. We cannot see through God’s eyes to know the total picture of our lives, but we can trust God’s promises that God has our best interest at heart. Often we remain stuck in what we want rather than trusting God to provide what is best for us.
Vision of a New House
How often have we determined that we know exactly what course to take only to find our efforts thwarted? Although we can discern God’s vision in varied ways, often it comes through one of God’s servants. God used Nathan to explain that David’s dream of building a great edifice was not what God had in mind. God’s reality for David and the community of faith was for David to build a different kind of house. He and his descendants were established as the royal heirs to the throne of the nation of Israel (2 Samuel; 7:12-13). This covenant reached its fulfillment when Jesus, the Son of God an also a descendant of the line of David, was born in Bethlehem. The gospel of Matthew starts off by showing Christ was "the Son of David" (Matthew 1:1), and thus He had the right to rule over God's people. Peter preached that Jesus Christ was a fulfillment of God's promise to David (Acts 2:29-36).
God said, “I will stay in charge. I will decide when and how and by whom my temple will be built. And I will decide your future as well.” In the introduction to I Kings in The Message translation, Eugene Peterson says, “Sovereignty, God’s sovereignty, is one of the most difficult things for people of faith to live our in everyday routines. But we have not choice. God is Sovereign. God rules. Not only in our person affairs, but in the cosmos. Not only in our times and places of worship, but in office buildings, political affairs…even behind the scenes in saloons and rock concerts. It’s a wild and extravagant notion…but nothing in our Scriptures is attested to more emphatically.
We may try, but we cannot limit God’s vision for us and for the church. We may decide that what God is calling us to do is too hard or too large or too demanding. But all things are possible with God and we need never forget that promise.
Moving On
God’s people had been a wandering lot since Abraham left Ur. David was making the assumption that God needed a place to reside. Instead God’s home was a different concept. In the Gospel of John, Jesus said, “I go to prepare a place for you that where I am there you may be also.” Our abiding place is with God. We do not have the wisdom to know all that means, but we can trust that the God who created us and continues to love us will provide.
In the contemporary Christian song, Better Is One Day, Matt Redman writes, “How lovely is Your dwelling place, Oh Lord Almighty/ My soul longs and even faints for You. For here my heart is satisfied, within Your presence I sing beneath the shadow of Your wings. Better is one day in Your courts than thousands elsewhere .”
In the fifteenth century, Juliana of Norwich England, prayed, “God, of your goodness give me yourself; for you are sufficient for me. I cannot properly ask anything less, to be worthy of you. If I were to ask less, I should always be in want. In you alone do I have all.”
God Will Not Stop Loving Us
We have the presumption that if we do evil God will stop loving us. However, God’s reality is that God’s grace and God’s love are steadfast.
St Augustine wrote, “The whole doctrine of justification by faith hinges, for me, upon my painfully reluctant realization that my Father is not going to be more pleased with me when I am good than when I am bad. He accepts me and delights in me as I am. It is ridiculous of him, but that is how it is between us.”
We cannot predict what the Lord wants us to do nor how God will direct our lives, but we can be confident that God will guide us. God loves you in exactly the same way that God loves every human being that God has called out of nothing into being. You already are the beloved child of God, not by virtue of what you have made of yourself, but by virtue of what God has made of you out of pure and amazing grace.
“In every time and season out of love’s abundant store, God sustains the whole creation fount of life forever more, we who share earth and air, count on God’s unfailing care.” #132 UMH.