The Promised King

Welcome to our women's Bible study on 2 Samuel called the reigning king today We're gonna cover chapters 7 through 10 chapter 7 is my favorite from this study it's almost one of my favorite chapters in all of the Old Testament because I Love to hear God just lavish his blessings on his people I love to hear God lavish his blessings on David It's very personal, but there's more than a personal aspect. There's also a Biblical reason that I love this and that is because it's another place where we arrive at one of God's covenants understanding God's covenants is very Important for us to be able to understand our Bible So I like things that help us to understand our Bible in the introduction to 2nd Samuel I said that the central figure of this book is David and the central concept is Covenant God's covenant God's blessing. This is the lesson where we hit that we hit the covenant So I want to take a few minutes before we even start reading in 2nd Samuel to talk about God's Covenants a covenant is basically a contract if you have a mortgage you make a covenant you do this I'll do this. It is a promise for something and so from Creation up to now in the Bible in our women of the word studies from divine design up until here We have now hit the final Covenant in the Old Testament. There are four in the Old Testament I'm gonna there are five of God's covenants that I want to highlight and I'm gonna put them on the screen for you And we're gonna take a few minutes to go through these because they really are important to help us understand God's unfolding plan of redemption So we'll leave it up there for a long time. The first one we see here is the no Hayek Covenant, do you see the word Noah in there in? Genesis 9 God spoke to Noah and he promised Noah and his descendants that he would never again flood the world Destroy the world with the flood There was no condition to this covenant. No, it didn't have to do anything. It was a complete promise of God There was a sign of the covenant and the sign of the covenant was the bow in the sky what we call the rainbow today All right then the next covenant that we reached in the Bible is in Genesis 15 and 17 the Abrahamic Covenant and now we find that God gives promises to Abraham God promised Abraham Many descendants. In fact, he told him that he would make him the father of many nations God promised Abraham a specific land in which to live what we call the promised land and God promised Abraham that he would bless him and in fact that all the people of the world would be blessed through him That's basically the Abrahamic Covenant There was no condition on Abraham's part. He didn't have to do anything. It was a complete promise of God the sign of the covenant was circumcision See if you understand this then you get even if you get to the New Testament you you're reading your little what is the big? Deal all this ink about circumcision. Well, it helps us understand when we see the covenants of God This was the sign of the covenant. The next one is the mosaic covenant Do you see Moses in there in Exodus 19 and in 24 God further? Established his covenant with Moses at Mount Sinai once he had delivered the people of Israel out of Egypt and he promised to bless them to make them his treasured possession a kingdom of priests and He promised to dwell among them Now with this covenant there was a condition in Exodus 19 5 if you will obey my voice and keep my covenant This was a conditional covenant Moses and the children of Israel needed to do something in order to receive what God had promised and all of Deuteronomy 28 and 29 it outlines obedience Blessings for obedience and curses for disobedience the sign of this covenant The requirement of the contract was the law that was given to them The law that was given in fact in Exodus 24 7 it's even referred to as the book of the covenant Okay, and the purpose of the law was to reveal God's character. So they knew what he was like To give them to govern God's people to say this is how you will Operate in life and to distinguish them from the nations around them So it's important for us to understand the Mosaic Covenant Otherwise in a few more Bible studies when we get to the exile We wouldn't understand that if we don't understand that the Mosaic Covenant is conditional and that Israel did not hold up their end Of the bargain. It's also very critical for us to understand as New Testament women This is not the covenant that we live under. This is what we call the old covenant We do not live in this way before God as if you do this, then I will do this This was for Israel. And again, it's what it's called the old covenant so The next one that we're coming to now in the Old Testament. So this finishes This is our lesson is the Davidic covenant what God promised to David in fact, I called this lesson God's covenant with David and This is where God promises that a descendant of David will reign on the throne Will reign on the throne of God's people. It's one of the reasons I titled this entire Bible study the reigning king Because even after David is done reigning one of his descendants will reign in his place for a long time to come and This perpetuated Israel's hope in a future Messiah that would reign over God's perfect Kingdom now there was technically no condition to this covenant with David although in our reading to this week, we realized that There's a promise for discipline for future Descendants of David who do not choose to obey God there will be discipline on them Now there's one more covenant in the Bible. That's very important because I just told you you're not under the Mosaic Covenant So what are you under in terms of God? You are under the new covenant and God even in the Old Testament time said this would be coming So I want to put on the screen what God said to Jeremiah

Even in the Old Testament times God said another covenant is coming So now I want us to fast forward to the Last Supper. I'm gonna draw this from Luke

this helps us with the understanding of knowing that this is a new thing The Covenant here is new in many ways for one thing This is just this isn't only to the children of Israel This is opened up to the whole world. This is even for Gentiles But it is conditional The New Covenant is conditional. It must be accepted by us Okay, and we were just in church on Sunday. We were just in John chapter 6 where Jesus said whoever comes to me Shall not hunger and whoever believes in me shall never thirst What is the condition of the New Covenant? faith The condition is faith. It is belief in Jesus Christ that he is indeed the Messiah with the power to forgive sins What is the sign of this covenant? the sign of this covenant is The fact that the Holy Spirit comes to indwell us and live within us We are marked in a similar way. Maybe you can say as the children of Israel were marked with circumcision We are marked with the Holy Spirit. It is the sign of The covenant so I wanted to review the covenants in the Bible to help us understand the Bible and I also wanted a baseline on that before we start reading 2nd Samuel chapter 7 Which we are ready to do open your Bibles if you're not there This is David's covenant or excuse me God's covenant with David.

Now, it's noteworthy here that Nathan, being a prophet and all, may have had a tough time coming back to David after he said, Good idea, go do it. Now he's got to come back the next day and say, Never mind. I was wrong. God said no. And it's a good reminder for us. Look, he's a prophet. Okay, he even had to say, I need to backstep a little bit on this. And it's a foolish leader who will dig in their heels and said, I already said it. That's what it is. It's a foolish mother who won't change her mind and say, I have new information. We're going to go a different way. And so we need to see in this the humility to be able to say, I was wrong. And keep walking life. All right, verse eight. The message continues. I want you to look at, I'm going to accent the building words here that God is speaking to David.

And that is what this is about. It's about God's promise to David, not David's work for God. Okay, the Lord wants to make David a house, a dynasty, if you will. You know how we call things in the house of the house of David, the house of Windsor. Okay. So this is that's what he's talking about.

Here's the promise to David in a nutshell.

Very sweet, very tender, very impactful. Now the near fulfillment of that is that indeed David's next descendant Solomon and on and on down the line did actually reign on the throne over God's people. But the perfect fulfillment of it is that David's son, David's descendant, the Messiah, Jesus Christ, who came from his line, perfectly fulfilled this and reigns on God's throne forever. And so this brings us clarity and joy when we open the New Testament. The first words we find in the New Testament, Matthew 1, 1. Take a look at them.

Jesus is not only the son of Abraham fulfilling the Abrahamic covenant that we talked about, that all the earth will be blessed through them, all the nations, all the peoples will be blessed. But Jesus also is the son of David fulfilling the Davidic covenant that one of his descendants would reign on his throne. Really sweet. Now the rest of this chapter shows us how David responds to the Lord. To me, this part is very tender. It's very important. I think it's very precious that we get a peek into this.

Again, what precious insights. I didn't want to miss one of those words because it's just such an impactful response on David's part. But I do want to just draw three observations from this. And the first one is that David responded to the Lord in humility, in awe, and in reverence. When he says, who am I and what is my house that you have brought me this far? It's a heart of humility. Next, David did not overlook what God had already done before he even came on the scene. He says, you established for yourself your people Israel to be your people forever. God was at work before David was even thought of, and he mentions that to God. And that's part of the unfolding story of redemption. God has been working at work in my life way before I came on the scene. I can see it. The Bible helps me to understand it. And thirdly, God, or excuse me, David personally then accepted and affirmed what God promised to him. He accepted it. He said, your words are true. You've promised this good thing. May it please you and bless you and that my house would continue forever. This is a more mature David than we saw in last week's lesson. We saw that impetuous, I have an idea. I'm going to take 30,000 men and run over and get the ark and I'm going to use the world's methods to do it and to bring it back here. This is a much more mellowed and matured and humble David that we see. And I love that. But the one thing I love the most about this particular passage is that to me, it gives me an opportunity to copy him to do the exact same thing. How long has it been since you've gone in somewhere and sat with the Lord? So, of course, I had to do this this week so that I could say these words. And you kind of find sometimes we hit portions in scripture and you realize, yeah, I've been on fast speed. And how wonderful it is to go. So I went up into my loft and I just sat and I did this. I just sat and I didn't say words right away. I didn't open my Bible right away. I just invited the presence of the Lord. And I sat with the Lord. And I think that this is an invitation for us this weekend to do this, to sit in humility, to process and think through what God has done. What has he lined up before I even came on the scene that I benefit from? And what has he promised to me? And then pray it back to him. That's what David is doing in this chapter. He's praying back to God what God said to him. Of course, we have a whole Bible worth of things we can pray back to God. Now, if you are a woman who has really good time management skills and you have a clock that's going in your head, your anxiety level has been going up because we're covering chapters 7 to 10. And I've done one chapter. And you're already getting hungry for lunch. Because you're. But I want to remind you that in the introduction, I told you that this is a verse-by-verse study for you. I am going to truncate quite a bit of it from time to time so that we can spend more time on things like God's covenants. So chapter 8 is all about David was about the work that God gave him to do. He was not to build the house. What he was to do was to subdue God's enemies. He was diligent to serve God in this way. In chapters 9 and 10, the author wants us now to hone in on some specific relationships. And so we find two stories that highlight David's compassion. In both of them, David reaches out to a son who has lost his father, who was a king or grandfather. Don't you find in life that sometimes when we experience something, we see that in other people? Now, Saul was not David's father. But in many ways, he was a father figure to David. And so David knows that feeling. We read David's lament over Saul and Jonathan. He knows that feeling to lose. And so now he reaches out to two men who have lost in the same way that he has. The first story ends well. The second story ends badly. The first story is Mephibosheth, chapter 9. And David said, is there anyone left to the house of Saul that I may show him kindness for Jonathan's sake? And he asked this of the servant of the house of Saul, whose name was Ziba. The middle of verse 3, Ziba told him, well, there is still a son of Jonathan. He's crippled in his feet. And the king said, well, where is he? And Ziba said, he's in the house of Maker, the son of Amiel at Lodabar. And then King David sent and brought him. Now, there's some interesting things here that we should ponder. The fact that Ziba was able, after all these years, to continue working the fields of Saul, who was the king who had died, is a testimony to David's kindness. Because David let them continue to have those fields. He didn't absorb them all for himself. The fact that Ziba wanted David to know immediately that the one descendant was crippled in his feet is interesting. And the fact that Mephibosheth is way far away. If you looked on your map, it's across the Jordan at Lodabar. And it's also interesting. We wonder what Mephibosheth was thinking on that long journey. The king wants to see you. What in the world was he thinking? Well, verse 6, Mephibosheth, the son of Jonathan, son of Saul, came to David and fell on his face and paid homage. David said to him, do not fear, for I will show you kindness for the sake of your father, Jonathan. I will restore to you all the land of Saul, your father, and you shall eat at my table always. And he paid homage and said, don't you see an echo here of what David just said? What is your servant that you should show regard to a dead dog such as I? And the king called Ziba and said to him, listen, all that belong to Saul in this house I've given to your master's grandson. You and your sons and your servants shall till the land for him and shall bring in the produce that your master's grandson may have bread to eat. But Mephibosheth shall always eat at my table. Now Ziba had 15 sons and 20 servants. And so we wonder, as well, how in the world a servant like that to Saul could get so many servants himself. We just wonder. And we also wonder, what has he been doing with the produce all this time? It's been a long time. He's been working the fields. What's he been doing with it? Just things that make us wonder. Verse 11, Ziba said to the king, according to all that my lord the king commands his servants, so will your servant do. So Mephibosheth ate at David's table like one of the king's sons. And Mephibosheth had a young son whose name was Micah. And all who lived in Ziba's house became Mephibosheth's servants. So Mephibosheth lived in Jerusalem, for he ate always at the king's table. Now he was lame in both feet. This is the third time in 2 Samuel that we are told this information. Clearly, the writer wants us to fix this in our minds. And it will come into play in coming chapters. Now the second story where David shows compassion, again, to someone who has lost the king father, starts in chapter 10. After this, the king of the Ammonites died. And Hanun, his son, reigned in his place. And David said, I will deal loyally with Hanun, the son of Nahash, as his father dealt loyally with me. So David sent by his servants to console him concerning his father. But the princes of the Ammonites said to Hanun, their lord, do you think because David has sent comforters to you that he's honoring your father? Has not David sent his servants to you to search the city, to spy it out, to overthrow it? So Hanun took David's servants, shaved off half of their beard, cut their garments in the middle of the hips, and sent them away. And when it was told David, he sent to meet them, for the men were greatly ashamed. And the king said, remain at Jericho until your beards have grown, and then return. David intended to show kindness to Hanun, but because his advances of kindness were rejected by Hanun, he took that and he just put it over his own servants. We're reminded here that a suspicious nature can get us into trouble sometimes. And we can all agree that we do not want to be this guy in verse six that became a stench to David. That is not what you want to happen right now. And so as the narrative goes, they realized they had become a stench to David. They hired mercenaries to help them build a big army. Joab and Abishai routed most of the army, but once they regrouped, David himself came with reinforcements and he helped finish off the battle. And that gives us one more example of David doing what David was supposed to be doing, subduing his enemies. And so we get to verse 19. And when all the kings who were servants of Hadadezer saw that they had been defeated by Israel, they made peace with Israel and they became subject to them. All right, I like to tie this up in a bow somehow. So standing back and viewing these chapters, I can't help but see a triplet that takes form. Three times kindness is shown to someone, extended to someone. And three times a response is made to that kindness. And we're able to witness this. The first time is God himself shows his kindness to David, offering him a place in his kingdom, a forever perpetual place in his kingdom. And David's response was to completely embrace in humility what God offered him and said, yes, I want that, let's do that. Then next, David shows a similar kindness to Mephibosheth, offering him a place in his kingdom to eat at his table. And we see Mephibosheth responds to David in humility and he says, yes, I want to do that. This is a good idea. I would love to be part of your kingdom. In the third part of the triplet, we see that David showed great kindness to Hunan, offering to deal loyally with him. But what was Hunan's response? He rejected that. He rejected David's kindness. And he moved forward as though he didn't need David. He moved forward in life as though David's kindness was something he didn't even need in his life. I can't help but hear the gospel story in this as well. Almost like the parable of the seeds, because God extends his kindness to us in the same way. Offers us a place in his kingdom and waits for the response. And what will our response be? Will it be like Hunan that listens to the people around him and basically is suspicious of God? I don't know what he wants of me anyway. Rejects his kindness, it will not go well. But if our response is similar to David and to Mephibosheth, then we receive from the Lord exactly what he promised. Grace, peace, comfort, home. That's what this covenant is about, it's about home, and that is what the Lord is going about offering to us. I want to build a home for you. Isn't that precious? Father, thank you for these words, these stories that are given to us, that we can see in here the precious message of the gospel. And Lord, I pray that each one of us would really process and understand that all we need to do is receive with humility what you have offered, what you have promised, Lord. And we pray that back to you, and we thank you, Lord God, for everything that you have done before we were on the scene, and what you will do for us in the future, Lord. We pray these things in Jesus' name, amen.