Evening folks, good to see you, good to be here as we continue on in First Chronicles. So if you’ve got your Bible handy, please turn to First Chronicles chapter 17. You’ll find that on page 420 of the Church Bibles.
And we’re going to read from verse 1 down to verse 15. So we’re just going to look at the first half of this chapter this evening. let’s hear God’s words. First Chronicles 17 verse 1. After David was settled in his palace, he said to Nathan the prophet, “Here I am, living in a house of cedar, while the ark of the covenant of the Lord is under a tent.”
Nathan replied to David, “Whatever you have in mind, do it, for God is with you.”
But that night the word of God came to Nathan, saying: Go and tell my servant David, this is what the Lord says.
You are not the one to build a house to dwell in, to build me a house to dwell in. I have not dwelt in a house from the day I brought Israel up out of Egypt to this day. I have moved from one tent site to another, from one dwelling place to another.
Wherever I have moved with all the Israelites, did I ever say to any of their leaders whom I commanded to shepherd my people, why have you not built me a house of cedar? Now then, tell my servant David, this is what the Lord Almighty says. I took you from the pasture, from tending the flock, and appointed you ruler over my people Israel. I’ve been with you wherever you have gone, and I’ve cut off all your enemies from before you.
Now I will make your name like the names of the greatest men on earth, and I will provide a place for my people Israel, and will plant them so that they can have a home of their own and no longer be disturbed. Wicked people will not oppress them anymore as they did at the beginning and have done ever since the time I appointed leaders over my people Israel. I will also subdue all your enemies.
I declare to you that the Lord will build a house for you. When your days are over and you go to be with your ancestors, I will raise up your offspring to succeed you, one of your own sons, and I will establish his kingdom. He is the one who will build a house for me, and I will establish his throne forever.
I will be his father, and he will be my son. I will never take my love away from him as I took it away from your predecessor. I will set him over my house and my kingdom forever.
(3:00 – 3:14)
His throne will be established forever. Nathan reported to David all the words of this entire revelation. May God bless to us this reading of his precious and inspired words.
(3:20 – 8:21)
The wonderful thing about the Bible is that it comes to us and it meets us at a whole range of levels. It’s firstly, of course, the grand narrative, the great explanation of everything, why we exist, why we struggle, why we die, but also why we can nonetheless have hope, the story of creation, fall, and redemption. Of course, within that great story are many sub-stories that echo the great story.
In those smaller stories are real men and women experiencing life in the great story, the lived reality of joy, sorrow, sin, death, temptation, pilgrimage, waiting, trusting, and so on. First Chronicles as a book within scripture is no different. It’s part of the great story of God working to recover paradise lost, but it’s also the sub-story of Israel.
Within that great story, the rise and the falls of the nation of Israel, and within Israel are individuals, Moses, Ruth, Saul, David, and God working in them individually. Throughout the Bible, God is working at every level to fill the big hole that we thought of that runs through the world, through the nations, and through every human heart. As we move into chapter 17 this evening, we’re going to see all those layers starting with David himself.
David, of course, as we have observed, is the model king, the greatest of all the kings in Israel’s Old Testament history. He’s the gold standard and the template for all other kings, supremely, of course, in his devotion to God, but he’s also a real human being. David was a man of flesh and blood, made of the same stuff as you and me.
He was a man of like passions. Some of those are vividly highlighted back in 1 and 2 Samuel. Even though in Chronicles, the focus is on the greatness and the best of David, Chronicles isn’t putting all its hopes in David, but rather who David represents and who David points us to.
And so when we come to the start of chapter 17, we see David, who after a very long and turbulent process of conflict and ups and downs, has established his rule in Israel. He’s united the nation under him. He subdued Israel’s enemies, and last week we saw how he brought the ark, symbolising the presence of God, back to the centre of the nation there in that new capital, Jerusalem.
And at the end of chapter 16, verse 43, it kind of sums up where we are after all that activity. It says, then all the people left, each for their own home, and David returned home to bless his family. It’s a wonderful little kind of encapsulation of the feel, the state of the nation at this point.
Everybody’s able to go home, but like Christmas, it’s a picture of peace and rest and blessedness. It’s almost a little mini-fulfilment of those words in Micah 4, where the prophecy is, the promise is, that everyone will sit under their own vine and under their own fig tree, and no one will make them afraid. And at the start of chapter 17, David is settled in his palace.
But there’s something on his heart, and he wants to share it with Nathan, the prophet. And what’s on his heart is a nagging doubt, I guess, that here he is sitting in his palace of cedar, cedar representing wealth and comfort and luxury. All the while, the ark, which symbolises the presence of God, is down the road in a tent, just doesn’t feel right.
It’s a bit like I’ve booked myself into the Ritz, and my parents are in the travel lodge across the road. So although it’s not spelled out in verses 1 and 2, David’s thinking clearly is, as we’ll see, I should build a permanent, suitably grand building for the ark, for God’s dwelling place. To which Nathan, in verse 2, perhaps somewhat glibly replies, sounds good, you should definitely go ahead and do that.
(8:21 – 10:01)
It’s a good thought, good desire, good plan, what’s not to like? But that night, God speaks in verse 3, go and tell David, you are not the one to do that, verse 4. Now we’ll see as we go on how God will turn this initial rebuff into something much more glorious, but let’s just pause for a moment on God saying no to a good desire, because this was a good desire, it was a noble desire. There’s no real criticism, I think, of David in this passage that he felt that way, would wanted to have done something like that. But what do we make of those situations in life where good desires are met, it seems, with a no from God, especially when, unlike David, we don’t have Nathan the prophet on hand to give us an immediate explanation of why not, or indeed the knowledge that something far better is on the way.
Well, I guess if nothing else, this passage tells us that not getting something doesn’t automatically mean it’s not a good thing for you to desire. Prayers for relationships, for family, for ministry, for health, for work are not bad desires. So don’t think that such longings or ambitions, particularly if God doesn’t seem to be granting them, must in some way be suspect or perhaps a bit selfish.
(10:03 – 10:27)
I’ve been very helped and reassured in this area recently reading a book, A Praying Life by Paul Miller. I never gave you my PowerPoint, did I? After all that, there you go. So it won’t be on the screen, but there’s a book called A Praying Life by Paul Miller, which by way of just a little application I would recommend you might want to get, if that would be of interest to you.
(10:27 – 10:43)
I found it very readable, very helpful. And in that book, Paul Miller notes four things right at the start, always to remember in our lives and in our prayer life. Firstly, God is sovereign.
(10:44 – 10:52)
God is sovereign. He is in control over every detail of my life. Never doubt that’s the case.
(10:53 – 11:03)
Secondly, God is loving. His concern, his heart is always for your good. Never doubt that.
(11:04 – 11:29)
Thirdly, God is wise. So he’s not going to do everything the way we would do it, because he knows better. And fourthly, God is patient.
He’s going to take exactly the right amount of time needed to get it right for us. He’s not going to be rushed. God is sovereign.
(11:30 – 16:41)
God is loving. God is wise. And God is patient.
Obvious points, nothing that we don’t know there, but points that we need to hold together in our prayer lives. It’s like the thought exercise, isn’t it? I’ve done this before, but you think of a time in your life, you look back to a time where you really, really wanted something so desperately, and you prayed and you prayed for it and you didn’t get it. And now years and years later, perhaps decades later, you look back and you say, thank you, Lord, that you didn’t grant that prayer.
I can see how that might not have been the best way forward for me. And looking back at your faithfulness since where I am now, I’m actually glad you didn’t answer that prayer. And then we might think ahead to the future and we think like, if there was a time in the future where I wanted something really desperately, but it wasn’t the best thing for me, it wasn’t going to keep me close to the Lord, would I want God to say no? And I think most Christians, all Christians presumably would say, please say no in that situation if that was going to be the case.
You see, we can cope with the past and the future Nos. It’s the ones now that hurt, but never forget that God is sovereign, God is loving, God is wise, and God is patient. But in his no to David, God wants to bring David into a deeper understanding of his relationship to God.
Now, it’s obvious, I think, from the accounts of David’s life that David, the man, was a man of action. He was brave. He fought lions with his bare hands.
He was skilful, great musician and songwriter. He was charismatic. He drew people to him who were hugely loyal and admired him.
He was visionary. He built Jerusalem. He was a doer.
And as someone devoted to God, he wanted to do things for God. That would have been his nature. So Lord, I’ll build you a house.
Well, you can almost kind of sense the divine smile, can’t you? Thank you, David, but I don’t actually need a house. Verse five, all the years going all the way back to Egypt, it’s not been a problem. If I had wanted such a house, I could have asked for it at any time, verse six.
And again, it’s just a reminder here that there is no neediness with God. He always has been, always will be, always is self-sufficient in himself. We can never add to him or enhance him or heaven forbid, flatter him.
God is just as glorious, just as powerful, just as loving, just as faithful in a tent as in a temple. What matters is his presence, not the wrapper. I can appreciate going to a cathedral on holiday as much as the next person.
You go in and you’re full of admiration for the architecture and the grandeur. We all had that little tingle down our back as we’ve looked up into a vast ornate vaulted roof. But the tingle isn’t God.
He’s not more present in a basilica than he is in a brethren hall. We need the eye of faith to see God, whether in a tent or in a carpenter. As Solomon will later say when he dedicates the later temple building, even the highest heavens can’t contain God.
And of course, as Jesus will later tell the woman at the well, the day was coming when all temples would be redundant. That’s not to say that the subsequent temple that would be built by Solomon was wrong or unimportant. Many ways it made good practical sense to do that, just as a nomadic people needed a portable temple one they could take down and move and set up again later.
So a people established and settled in their own land would be better served by having a permanent building. But the key is that the temple isn’t God’s need, it’s the people’s. So God’s got no neediness, doesn’t need somebody to build him a temple.
But secondly, the word comes to David, it’s nice, David. It’s great that you want to look after me in this way. But of course, David, the reality is I’m the one who looks after you.
(16:42 – 23:03)
Verse seven, who’s always looked after you. From the start, verse seven, when you were just a farmhand, I appointed you. I was the one who sent Samuel to pick out the youngest boy from that family of farmers.
All the battles, all the successes, your fame, the security of my people, verses eight to ten. It’s all my work, David. Remember many years ago, being the home of a relative, they had a very nice large house and somebody in that gathering said to the relative, you’re very lucky to have a house like this.
And they got quite indignant. I’ve worked every day of my life since I was 16. I’ve earned every penny I’ve ever had.
The implication being there’s no luck about this. This house is mine. I earned it.
Now of course, had they been lazy and irresponsible, chances are they probably wouldn’t have had a big house. But of course, there are so many variables in life that people have no control over. The natural abilities they’re born with, their health as life develops, all those random encounters and meetings and opportunities, the economy.
See it wasn’t that David wasn’t godly and brave and skilful, but ultimately that wasn’t a guarantee of a success. There were doubtless other brave godly and skilful men and women who perished in those years. Just a reminder to David and to us that whatever we have, whatever our abilities, whatever our circumstances, be humble.
Very tempting when success comes to let it go to our heads. By that I don’t mean that if you’ve worked hard and been rewarded that there’s not a satisfaction you can take in that. But resist in those situations starting to feel a little bit superior to other people.
Or if it’s Christian success, ministry success, your particular activity, your thing takes off and goes well, to resist that temptation that maybe I’m just a little bit special, a bit extra favoured by God rather than just being humbled and grateful as David will be in his prayer of response. Robert Murray McShane, famous for his ministry in Dundee and the revival there. An interesting story if you read his biography.
He initially, after being kind of ordained down in Annan, went and served for three years in St Peter’s in Dundee. And by all accounts it was a good, solid, albeit fairly standard, unremarkable ministry. And then in 1839 because of poor health, remember this was a man who died ultimately quite young, but because of ill health he was sent on a trip or given the opportunity to go on a trip to Palestine to go and visit some mission outposts there.
But also they thought it would help him to recover with the warmer Mediterranean air. And when he was away, revival broke out in St Peter’s under the pulpit supply of W.C. Burns and few people remember William Burns today. Now when McShane came back, that movement of God continued and because of his writings, his famous Bible reading plan of course, and particularly the biography that was written about him by Andrew Boner, we remember him.
He is still one of these massive church figures today. But I always thought that must have been a difficult moment for Robert Murray McShane. You know you minister away for three years in a church, you go off sick and then revival breaks out under the temp.
But I guess God was maybe making a point. It wasn’t that McShane wasn’t godly, he clearly was. But however godly Robert Murray McShane was, God was not dependent on him to do his work.
Revival hadn’t broken out because McShane had some special powers or William Burns for that matter, but rather God’s work is always God’s work. As the Apostle Paul put it, who makes you different from anyone else? What do you have that you did not receive? And if you did receive it, why do you boast as though you did not? Be humble, be grateful. It’s God who’s looking after us.
Everything in our lives is a gift enabled and given by God. So David, don’t forget these things. But these are reminders rather than rebukes, because God now wants David to see the next stage of God’s provision for him.
And not just for David, but for the nation. Verse 10, David you want to build me a house, but actually I’m going to build you a house. And just to note if it’s not obvious that the word house has a range of meanings.
It’s true both in Hebrew and in English. So sometimes house can mean a physical building, a dwelling place. But other times it can refer to a family or a dynasty, the house of Windsor or the house of Soud.
And it’s in that latter sense that God is speaking about. God is going to build David a royal line of succession. And that takes us on to the next level, to the story of Israel.
God’s promise to David and his provision for Israel is that David’s descendants, verse 11, are going to reign and continue to reign over the nation. The Davidic throne, verse 14, will be established forever. And that’s great news for Israel.
(23:03 – 24:15)
Never again need there be a bloody power struggle as there had been with the house of Saul or civil war. No more switching between rival claimants, stability and permanence, peace and security. And I mean you can’t get a better guarantee than forever.
This is God’s promise, his covenant to David and to the nation. And of course its immediate fulfilment would come with Solomon, David’s immediate successor. Solomon who would take Israel to the very apex of its power and kind of territorial expansion.
Solomon who would build a physical temple for the Ark in Jerusalem. But how quickly after Solomon that forever dynasty starts to lose its shine. It’s assaulted from all sides.
Solomon’s son sees the breakup of the kingdom. The ten tribes in the north break away. So the Davidic throne at this point is just sitting over Judah and little Benjamin.
(24:16 – 25:12)
At other times in that history of Judah, that southern kingdom, the Davidic dynasty seems to hang by a thread. One point the last survivor, the last link in the chain at that point has to be hidden in a storeroom to prevent the line being wiped out. Eventually Jehoiachin, the last king to sit publicly on David’s throne is carted off to Babylon and the dynasty just disappears out of sight.
Not exactly what David and Israel probably imagined when Nathan spoke these words to David on that occasion. I mean you can imagine the awkwardness, can’t you, in the third century BC when the Baal’s witnesses knock on your door. They get out their Bible and they say, now it says in your Bible that David’s throne was going to be established forever.
(25:12 – 25:35)
Don’t we have some Egyptian guy ruling us just now? Well of course one mistake was to think that because I can’t see it, it can’t be. But the other mistake was actually to have too small a view of that promise. Because of course like many biblical promises, that promise has layers within it.
(25:36 – 26:34)
Often, and we know this, there is an immediate fulfilment to biblical promise or prophecy and there’s also a longer term ultimate fulfilment to a promise or prophecy. So Isaiah can prophesy about the destruction of Babylon, the literal city empire of Babylon, which happens of course in the centuries after Isaiah. But the New Testament picks up that prophecy and sees it as referring to the final destruction and overthrow of all worldly godliness, of all the systems that oppose the people of God and want themselves against the Almighty.
So look again at these promises in verses 11 and 13. One of your offspring, I will establish his kingdom. He will build a house for me.
(26:34 – 27:27)
I will be his father and he will be my son. Who could this be? Well yes of course in the immediate sense, Solomon. But by the time of 1 Chronicles, never mind today, he’s long gone along with all the others who followed him.
Because of course there is only one descendant of David who could ever really, truly, fully, ultimately, lastingly fulfil this prophecy. Who after that royal line had weaved its way through all the ups and downs of Israel’s history and then it disappeared underground for 400 years. The one who in the time had fully come 28 generations later.
(27:28 – 29:08)
Matthew could sit down and write, this is the genealogy of Jesus the Messiah, the son of David. One of your offspring, Romans chapter 1, the son who as to his earthly life was a descendant of David. I will establish his kingdom.
Revelation 11, and there were loud voices in heaven which said the kingdom of the world has become the kingdom of our Lord and of his Messiah and he will reign forever and ever. He will build a house for me. Hebrews 3, Christ is faithful as the Son over God’s house and we are his house if indeed we hold firmly to our confidence and the hope in which we glory.
I will be his father and he will be my son. Matthew 17, while he was still speaking a bright cloud covered them and a voice from the cloud said this is my son whom I love with him I am well pleased. Listen to him.
This is David’s hope. This was Israel’s hope. This is the world’s hope.
This is our hope. A king who will reign in righteousness forever. And because Jesus is that king, God’s covenant with David in 1 Chronicles 17 gives us hope.
(29:11 – 30:54)
Important to think of that, that this idea of Jesus as king is incredibly hopeful. If Jesus was only saviour, and I use the word only advisedly, but if he was only saviour, it would reduce the gospel to really just being a kind of personal thing. It would save me from the consequences of my sins.
It would rescue me from judgement and praise God for that. But if he’s also Lord, if he’s also king, the king whose kingdom will one day fill the earth, that it’s not just my personal rescue, but I can look forward to the end of all evil, all injustice, and all sorrow. To a time when peace and righteousness and justice will cover the earth even as the waters cover the sea.
Look forward to a renewed world. No more crime, no more rotten diseases, no more pain, no more death. Psalm 72, and we’ll finish with these words.
Great prophetic Psalm looking forward to the king of kings. Endow the king with your justice, O God, the royal son with your righteousness. May he judge your people in righteousness, your afflicted ones with justice.
May the mountains bring prosperity to the people, the hills the fruit of righteousness. May he defend the afflicted among the people and save the children of the needy. May he crush the oppressor.
(30:55 – 31:18)
May he endure as long as the sun, as long as the moon through all generations. May he be like rain falling on a mown field, like showers watering the earth. In his days may the righteous flourish and prosperity abound till the moon is no more.
May God bless these thoughts from his word.