A sermon based on 2 Samuel 7: 1-14
Dr. Charles J. Tomlin
Flat Rock-Zion Baptist Partnership
Hope
springs eternal in the human breast; Man never Is, but always To be blest:
The
soul, uneasy and confin'd from home, Rests and expatiates in a life to come.
---From
Essay of Man by Alexander Pope
I realize that poetry does not go over
well these days. Listening to a sermon
is hard enough. But this line from
British poet Alexander Pope’s most famous poem expresses the core truth of today’s
text from 2 Samuel 7, where God promises that David’s kingdom will endure
forever.
Notice in 2 Samuel 7: 16, how through
the prophet Nathan, God promises King David: “Your house and your kingdom will endure forever before me; your throne
will be established forever” (NIV). This
is a very powerful and promising declaration, but it does not happen in any
literal, historical way as we might think. The newer translations adjust the
text a little saying that the promise stands “before me” (God) (NIV, NRSV), meaning it stands as God see it rather
than “before thee” (KJV), as David
or we might see it. Thus, the King
James Bible makes the promise even more difficult. It translates: “Your house and your kingdom will endure before thee….” This is exactly what does not happen. David’s royal Kingdom or line does not stand
in any earthly way, shape or form that David could see, if he were alive, or we
can see today.
If you research modern Israel today and
the 1948 declaration of the Israel’s statehood (Israel still has no
constitution) you will find no mention of the royal lineage of David. To this day there are still no archeological
findings that have yet to substantiate the ancient city of David. While only a few historical scholars would
doubt David’s dynasty was real, but even as we read the Bible’s internal
history, David’s royal house came to an abrupt end when Babylonians destroyed
Jerusalem in 587 BC. Everything was destroyed with no trace
left. Since then, there has been no
Davidic throne, no royal line that endures, and there have been no monarchs ruling
over Israel. If the Davidic throne still
exists at all it must be “before God” as only memory.
HOPE
IS NOT AUTOMATIC
This is troubling to people who try to
make faith and hope as easy as 1, 2, 3 or as clear as “black and white”. But in the real world of infinite numbers
and multiple realities painted in “shades of gray”, most of us deal with life
that hardly ever goes as planned. Life is full of surprises and seldom turns out
as we hope or expected. A case in point
is what happened to my dream of making a big splash when I finally got to speak
in one of those large Lutheran churches in Germany. If I made any splash at all, it was a
“splashdown”. It happened right after
Christmas and we were having a special ecumenical religious service and the
Lutheran pastor asked me to speak. Of
course this message was to be in German.
I was getting used to preaching in German, but this was my chance to
speak in to a large group in a 700 year old church. It was large, historical sanctuary which had
been destroyed during WWII and was now reopened.
I prepared my message and stood up at
the appointed moment. The feeling was
exhilarating. It was January and
Christmas decorations were still hanging.
The pulpit was not yet finished, so I was standing behind a lectern
beside of the Christmas tree. I began
my speech reading my well-rehearsed German with my American accent. Then, suddenly, without warning, the lights
go out. I didn’t know if it was a power
failure or something else. But I knew
what it meant. I could no longer read my
manuscript. Fortunately, the Christmas
tree was lit with real candles. I was
able to move closer to the tree and finish by reading read with
candlelight. But it was humbling and a
great struggle for me and for those who listened. I had to give up my dream of being a dynamic
American Baptist missionary preacher making a great impression.
It some way or other, we’ve all had to
give up a dream, a hope or an expectation of what might have been. It’s never easy to let go of a dream. It is especially hard when it comes to having
to let go of someone we love, through death, divorce or some other tragic
event. If you’ve not had to give up a
dream, a person, or give up on a promise, you will. Dreams have a tendency to fly out the window
and the saying has a ring of truth: “if you want to see God laugh, tell him
your plans.” The most stable, prepared
life can suddenly become unpredictable when and “out of the blue” things fall
apart.
It is one thing for humans to deal with
the unpredictable nature of life, but what it is much more challenging is to think
about how God deals with it. What does
God do when the world does not go as God wills?
This is a truth from Scripture that most want to overlook or ignore. We humans
are “meaning makers”. We tend to
believe that there is a “reason for everything” and that God is always in absolute
control. Perhaps we can come to grips
that we don’t have everything figured out, but we want to trust in a God who does. We want to believe that no matter what
happens, life goes just as God has planned. Especially when life is pandemonium for us, or
when tragedy happens, it is somehow sadistically comforting for some to believe
that everything is already programmed from heaven and that life always goes as
God has planned all along.
Isn’t this what the defendant in Florida
named George Zimmerman stated this week in his first national interview? Even
though he regretted what happened to Trayvon Martin, he said he is “not a
racist” nor “ a murderer” and he adds, in very bold words that regarding the
shooting of Trayvon Martin, “I believe it was all part of God’s plan.” As you
might imagine, this statement of his faith in God’s plan didn’t go over well
with Trayvon’s parents. When Trayvon’s
Father was asked how he felt about it he answered to the contrary, “We must
worship a different God because there is no way that my God would have wanted
George Zimmerman to kill my teenage son.” (From www.thesource.com) And how do we think about the recent
shootings at the movie theater in Colorado?
Do we say that God had this all this planned out too?
All of us have our own personal views of
what God knows, does or doesn’t do. We can understand that humans often “make God
in our own image” or the image we want to believe. George Zimmerman will not be the last person
trying to be rescued by the God he believes controls everything. And the Trayvon Martin family will not be the
last brokenhearted people confronting a terrible loss, wanting to believe that God
did not do this to their child. In these
very up-to-date human dramas unfolding before us, and perhaps even unfolding in
our own lives, we all can see our own struggles to keep hope alive. If you really
think about it, people who don’t believe in God have much less to deal with
when they face the unpredictability of life.
People of faith have much more to think about. We who believe that “God is love” have to not
only deal with ‘what’ has happened, but we also must deal with “why?” For the faithful life raises the same kind of
question in us that it raised in Jesus when he cried out on the cross: “My God,
why?” When life turns tragic, hope is not
easy nor automatic. It can be much easier
to become an unbeliever. Many do.
HOPE
IS SOMETHING WE HAVE TO WORK AT
If we want to keep our faith when life
does not go as planned or hoped, our view of God and our view of hope must grow
larger. If we ask ourselves: Does life
always turn out as God promises and plans?
When we are really honest, we have to answer, No! Things do not always happen as God plans---things
like murder, a tragic death, an accident, or an act of nature or even a
terrible act of human nature---God permits or allows such things, we say, for
the sake of freedom and for the sake of human responsibility and growth, but
these things do not always happen “in the perfect will of God”. In this text, the endurance of David’s
kingdom is promised, but it does not endure as God promises, as God hopes nor
as God plans; at least it doesn’t if we take this text literally. The biblical word from this text reveals
just how complicated and unpredictable life can get for us and for God. So, what hope is there is this?
Before we take this further, there is
another amazing passage of Scripture about how God deals with the unpredictable
in Genesis 6:5, where God suddenly realizes just how bad the world had
become. It tells us: “The Lord saw how great man’s wickedness on
the earth had become…that every inclination of the thoughts of the heart was
only evil all the time.” This God who looks deep into the human
heart seems very surprised, saddened, vulnerable, hurt and grieved that the
world he has created is not working out like he had planned. The King James Bible uses powerful language
to say that God did not plan life to happen this way and it dramatically
expresses how humans, not God, are responsible.
“The Lord was grieved that he
made humans”, but then the KJV says, “And
it repented the Lord that he made man on the earth.” “Repented”
is a very strong word to use for God. But
Scripture wants us to know that the evil going on in the world is not what God wanted
nor planned. It has surprised God so
much that he had to change his mind about almost everything. He must start almost everything all over
again.
When you read a text like Genesis 6, you
quickly realize that the God of the Bible is not the generic, comfortable, popular
idol-god most carry around in their pockets or in mind. Most people are more likely to imagine a god
who floats around on a cloud controlling everything, who already has everything
figured out, even before it happens. But
the biblical God is a very vulnerable God.
He is suffering love. He gets
jealous. He hurts and feels pain. Most of all, God grieves over how bad things
are and because of how we get and how life gets, he has to make adjustments to
his plans. Bible scholars call this divine
attribute found in Scripture, “changeable
faithfulness.” To be faithful God will do things differently. God is still the almighty, but he is also the
God who brings strength through weakness.
God has plans for us, but he is the also the God who works his will
through and not around human freedom. God’s
love is abiding and constant, but God will do “a new thing in Israel” to “take out
the stony heart of flesh” and put in “a new heart and a new spirit”.
Remember that text in Philippians which
says, “Work out your own salvation with
fear and trembling; for it is God who is at work in you, enabling you both to
will and to work for his good pleasure.”
(Phi 2:12-13 NRS). The “fear and
trembling” comes because God’s salvation depends at much on our work in God as
it depends on God’s work in us. We can’t
earn salvation. That was finished on the
cross. But we must receive and keep the
faith, because God still at work and is not still finished with us yet. God’s word and God’s promises can get
complicated, but it is not because God does not want to keep his promise. On the contrary, the great prophets of the
Hebrew Bible revealed that things did not go as God promised because Israel broke
their promise to God. In the Bible, even
the unconditional love of God has its conditions.
In the story of Israel’s royal history
we know how it happened. David’s Son
Solomon overtaxed the people for his building programs and perhaps, even to keep
up his harem. Solomon was indeed a wise
man in some ways, but he was very unwise in other ways. After
Solomon’s death, his son’s split the kingdom into two kingdoms and it never
recovered its former glory. Wicked and
corrupt king after king are the rule with only a couple of exceptions. Finally the kingdom and house of David
crumbles. The Hebrew prophets even
declare that the end came about at the hand of God himself. The
kingdom fell, not because God broke his promise, but because people broke their
promise with God. Because of Israel’s
unfaithfulness, God changed his mind about the kingdom, just as he once changed
his mind about the human race. God does not
give up on his people, but has had to start over. When Jerusalem burned it was fourth down and
God punted. God could not keep the
promises which Israel had broken.
This reminds us again that hope does not
just happen. Hope is not automatic. Hope takes work—hard work. It takes hard work on our part just and it
takes hard work on God’s part. God’s does
his work through us and not around us. This
is why God has to deal with all kinds of stuff too, just as we do. When
life is both promising and unpredictable, we need a bigger understanding of God. And if we are going to have hope in a world
like ours, we going to have even work even harder for it.
HOPE MEANS BELIEVING GOD NO
MATTER WHAT
When God gave up on humanity the first time; he saved Noah to save the
world. When God gave up on Israel and David’s
kingdom, he gave his savior Jesus, who came preaching the everlasting kingdom
of God. Just because God could not keep his promise to
David does not mean, that God gave up on the promise altogether.
Perhaps even more enlightening is that the people of Israel did not
give up on the promise either. When the book of Samuel was put in final form it
was already after the exile, after Israel and David’s throne was long
gone. But why didn’t the editor of 2
Samuel just cut all this unrealized promise out and move on? Why didn’t he just simplify matters by
saying that God’s promise was too big, too grand and didn’t work out? Why not throw it out like a bad check?
No one knows exactly why the people of God held on to this promise. No one knows why they kept reading and
singing about it in worship, or why they kept on celebrating and reading
Psalms, like the 89th Psalm, which declares: “I will declare that your love stands firm forever, that you have
established your faithfulness in heaven itself.
You said, "I have made a covenant with my chosen one, I have sworn
to David my servant, 'I will establish
your line forever and make your throne firm through all generations.'"(Psa
89:2-4 NIV).
Why didn’t they just drop the whole thing? Even today, Biblical scholars are perplexed
by Israel’s persistent faith. It was a
faith that, in spite of everything, kept on hoping for a King that would make
God’s rule just as real “on earth as it is in heaven?” Israel centered her worship and her hopes,
not on how things were, but in how things would be, when God’s new “David”
would come. They called this new David the
‘anointed one’, interpreted by us as Messiah or the Christ. Today,
we know all these hopes as Messianic prophecies, but they once Israel’s stubborn
and resilient faith and her hopes that God’s promise would somehow come true,
in spite of everything. As Isaiah wrote, “The days are surely coming, says the
LORD, when I will raise up for David a righteous branch, and he shall reign as
king and deal wisely, and shall execute justice and righteousness in the land
(Isa. 23:3). Israel did not know for
sure “how” or “who” this new King would be, but Israel knew that they had to
keep believing God and that they had to keep hope alive. Even when there were bad kings, good kings,
puppet kings and pretender kings, Israel kept God’s promise close to heart, and
Israel never stopped hoping, never stopped believing, and never stopped
remembering or believing the promise, no matter what.
In the movie, Secondhand Lions, an irresponsible woman can’t be
troubled by raising her own son, so she drops him off with her two eccentric
uncles played by Michael Cain and Robert Duvall. They don’t want the boy, and the boy doesn’t
want to be there, but these things have a way of working out. Hub, the Duvall character, teaches the boy
some wisdom needed to be human and hopeful.
He tells the boy, “Sometimes the things that may or may not be true are
the things a man needs to believe in most.
That people are basically good; that honor, courage, and virtue mean
everything; that power and money, money and power mean nothing; that good
always triumphs over evil; and I want you to remember this, that love…true love
never dies. You remember that, boy…..
“A boy should believe in those things,” Hub says, because, as Patrick
Wilson has rightly said, “human beings are constructed by the things we believe
in, not the simple, shallow thin things easily measured and calculated and
subject to verification without any cost or risk, but the deep, weighty things
that cannot be checked or determined but whose truth is known only by the
diving into the deep and surrendering your life to it.
Did the promise come true as Israel hoped? No, and I’m glad it didn’t. It is exactly because the promise God made to
David did not come true like David, or everyone in Israel expected that we now
have Jesus. In Jesus Christ, the
crucified and resurrected, God brings the promise of David’s kingdom to a whole
new level, not just as a hope for Israel, but as a hope for the whole world. Aren’t you glad that when God can’t keep his
promise, when has to change his plans, that he is able to make us and even bigger
and better ones? When you understand Jesus, it’s almost seems as
if God had it all planned all along. And
maybe he did, if you will always remember that the man with the plan is unfailing
love. Amen.
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