I Will Build a House For You
Last Sunday, I announced that I was going to leave immediately after the service to go to a party in South Bend, which, in fact, I did. We noted that parties are important for us, even for pastors. We need a periodic break from the drudgery of our routines to unwind, recharge, reconnect with old friends, and have fun. But after the fun, there is exhaustion. I am an introvert. And my fellow introverts will relate to how tired we get after prolonged human interaction. After the party, I stayed up to talk with the hosts, whom I haven’t seen in a year. Suffice it to say, I did not sleep very much Sunday night. I spent most of Monday not doing very much of anything at all. But that’s okay, because after celebration, there is rest. That’s what we expect, and that’s what we find today. There’s been a celebration. To be more precise, there’s been a great procession led by David celebrating the victories that God gave him. By bringing up the ark of the covenant, David made God the theme of the celebration. How could David not make God the theme? God has been faithful to him through all kinds of situations. God rescued him from his enemies. God answered him in the days of trouble. And now God has given him rest. David has come a long way. He has risen from the pastures in Bethlehem to the courts of the Jerusalem, which he has made the capital of a united Israel. After slaying Goliath, eluding Saul, conquering Ish-bosheth’s kingdom, and defeating the Philistines, David is now settled in his own house. Now that he’s at rest, his thoughts turn to God. Just as he learned to listen to God to strategize in a time of war, so now he turns to God in a time of peace to worship. There’s a time for everything under the sun. A time for work and a time for rest. That’s how God designed it. God tells God’s people in the fourth commandment that in six days they are to do all their work, and to rest on the seventh day. The sabbath is a day set apart from our normal, everyday routine to enjoy God. God gives himself to God’s people to be enjoyed. This, in fact, is foundational to Presbyterian spirituality. Consider, for example, the first question and answer of the Westminster Shorter Catechism: “What is the chief end of man?” And the answer: “Man’s chief end is to glorify God and to enjoy him forever.” We have a foretaste of this joy in our worship. In setting apart one day in the week for worship, we challenge the empty, homogenous time of a post-Christian world, in which one day blurs into the next. Sunday gives us a weekly rhythm. In worship, we pause to remember with praise and thanksgiving God’s foundational acts of creation and redemption. In worship, we gather the stresses and failings, the joys and successes of the past week into our confession, assurance of pardon, offering and communion. Our worship reorients us and commissions us and points us towards the final Sabbath, which we await with all creation. All this happens here at church, which my dad used to call “God’s house.” It’s David’s ardent desire to build a house for God. He’s brought up the ark of the covenant into the new capital city of Jerusalem. He wants to make Jerusalem the dwelling place of God, where God can be worshiped in a special house built for him called a temple. David’s goal is to create a place where God’s people can live in peace, their lives centered around the worship of God in Jerusalem. David confides this desire to the prophet Nathan (who is introduced for the first time here). At first Nathan encourages David to do this great thing for God, but later withdraws his support. God had spoken to Nathan that very night to tell him that David’s building plan is not in accord with the divine will. David is not the one to build a house for God. At first glance, this seems strange, doesn’t it? Who better to carry out this project than David? Who has more zeal, who has more dedication than David? God has blessed all that David has done. How much more would he bless David in a task so noble as building a house for him? Our lesson is silent, but when we turn to 1 Chronicles 22:8, we find an interesting explanation. There the word of the Lord came to David himself, saying: “You have shed much blood and have waged great wars; you shall not build a house to my name, because you have shed so much blood in my sight on the earth.” This text is fascinating, not least because it appears to contradict the idea, so common today, that the God of the Old Testament is violent and bloodthirsty. To be sure, God raised up David to fight against the enemies of Israel, but it does not necessarily follow that God was pleased with all of David’s wars. Who knows? Perhaps he was not pleased with any of them. At the very least, God did not want a man of blood to be the one to build a temple. Think about it. What does violence and bloodshed have to do with a place of worship? Recall that the central act of Christian worship is Holy Communion. Our fellowship around the table is a portrayal of our peace with God and with one another. In this light, we see that violence and worship have nothing to do with each other. They cannot be farther apart from each other. But perhaps there is another important reason. To build a house for God is David’s own idea. To be sure, it’s a good idea, but it’s nonetheless his own idea. There is no evidence to suggest that he went to God first to ask whether it was God’s will for him. At his best, David always asked God for guidance before he undertook any project. Here he seems to take matters into his own hands. There’s something here for us to think about. There are times when God’s people undertake a project that obviously contradicts God’s will. Then we have to retrace our steps, and rethink our course. But there are other times when our course seems to us, as well as to others, to be good and pleasing to God. Our plan may be noble and praiseworthy, so much so as to have endorsement of family and friends. But that doesn’t necessarily mean that it’s in line with God’s plan. As author Joseph Campbell has commented: “many people have climbed to the top of the ladder only to find out that it’s leaning up against the wrong wall.” The fact that David is compelled to surrender his plan to God’s greater plan illustrates a truth that we have always to remember: Our lives are not ultimately about us. We do not make our plans, put God’s rubber stamp on them, and presto they become God’s plans. That’s not how it works. We ask God about his plans for us. That is implied every time we pray in the Lord’s Prayer: “Thy kingdom come, thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven.” That is hard to pray and mean. Our hearts resist it. But God’s plans for us are always “greater, more expansive, and more life-giving than our plans for ourselves” (Robert Barron). In the life we live as God’s people, it is God who initiates, we are the ones who follow; it is God who calls, we are the ones who respond. Grace comes first and shapes our response every step of the way. This in fact is what God emphasizes in the message that he has Nathan give to the king: “I took you from the pasture, from following the sheep to be prince over my people Israel; and I have been with you wherever you went, and have cut off all your enemies from before you; and I will make for you a great name, like the name of the great ones of the earth.” Note God is the active subject of all the verbs here (“I took you…I have cut off your enemies…I will make your name great.") God acts through grace and David responds—in that order. When this order prevails, God’s blessing follows. “And I will appoint a place for my people Israel and will plant them, so that they may live in their own place, and be disturbed no more; and evildoers shall afflict them no more as formerly, from the time that I appointed judges over my people Israel” (2 Sam. 7:10–11). What follow is a promise that is at the heart of this lesson. Indeed, it is at the heart of the Old Testament. Its meaning is revealed only in the New Testament. The promise is that the “Lord himself will establish a house for you.” This is a striking reversal. It turns out that it is not David who will build God a house; rather, it is God who will build David a house. There is a play on words here. House is used both in the sense of a physical dwelling and of a dynasty, that is, offspring that will continue David’s line. The immediate reference here is to Solomon, the Son of David, who succeeds him. And it is Solomon who builds the literal house, the temple named after him. But there is something far greater in view here. The royal line, which begins with Solomon, will last forever. In Psalm 89, God vows that David’s line will continue forever, and his throne as long as the heavens endure. And God’s steadfast love will rest on him, and his covenant with him will stand firm forever. What could all this mean? Let us turn to our gospel lesson to help us in our search for an answer. There Jesus and his disciples take a voyage to a secluded area. Just as David before him, Jesus too wants to give them rest. But as soon as they arrive, crowds begin to come to him from everywhere. Mark tells us something about Jesus’ reaction that is revealing. Jesus saw the crowds, and he had compassion on them. For to him they were like sheep without a shepherd. In Israel, the king is like a shepherd, as we have seen before. That David was taken from the pasture, from following the sheep around—that is not accidental to his office as king of Israel. The manner in which the king was to exercise his rule over his people is like that in which the shepherd tends his sheep. The king was to shepherd God’s people Israel. This means, among other things, that he was to protect them and care for them. The shepherd goes after strays. He binds up the injured. He leads them to running water. He brings them to rich pasture. Jesus called himself the good shepherd. What doesn’t occur to us whenever we think about this familiar image is that it is a royal one. For Jesus to call himself the good shepherd means to call himself the good king. Now when we return to our Old Testament lesson, we understand its significance. Nathan’s prophecy is ultimately about Jesus Christ. When the first Christian preachers and missionaries tried to make sense of Jesus as the Christ, as the Messiah, they turned, among other places, to this lesson and to the promise that God made to David through Nathan the prophet: Jesus is the last and greatest king of David’s dynasty. That is why he is called the Son of David, whose throne God has established forever. We have entered into election season. The Republican National Convention ended last Thursday. There was a rally for Donald Trump in Grand Rapids last night. The Democratic National Convention will take place next month. In the meanwhile, the political campaigning of office-seekers will ramp up. We expect all this to provoke people. They will argue passionately about what is right and just for this group or that, and will tell us how the opposing party is ruinous to our country. These people are in our churches too. We have all seen how party politics shapes and even supersedes our theology. Christians are not only divided over social and political issues; they have also made them ultimate. Arguably, it is precisely because they have made these issues ultimate that they are so divided against each other. But on this Lord’s Day, there is a message that we all have to take to heart. There is one house, one leader, and one kingdom that will outlast and overrule them all. It is the promise of God that determines history, not the power of political leaders and the ideologies they represent. That’s why the Psalmist warns God’s people not to put their trust in princes, in mere mortals, who cannot save. When their spirit departs, they return to the ground, and on that very day their plans come to nothing (146:3-4). When we give our ultimate allegiance to the last and greatest king of David’s dynasty, Jesus Christ, where it ought to be, then we will have the right perspective. We will see things in their proper place and know how to distinguish the important from the less important and the trivial. We will be less concerned about who is in office than about the One who is on the throne. We will be less concerned about our neighbor’s political affiliation than about their relationship with God. We will be less beholden to cable news than to the gospel of Jesus Christ. When the people came to Jesus like stray sheep without a shepherd, they were certainly seeking healing, but they were also looking for proper leadership. That is why he began to teach them many things. Is it not the same today? Obviously it is. Let us seek to renew our allegiance to Jesus the king, especially now during election season. Let us be sure that we are not giving our ultimate allegiance to mere men, who are dust and return to dust. That is not only foolish; it also makes us out to be traitors. Amen. |