From Eden to the New Heavens and Earth: The Unfolding of Redemption in the Bible: 1 and 2 Samuel


Sermon by Nate Shurden on February 3, 2010

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Wednesday Evening Prayer Meeting

February 3, 2010

The Reverend Mr. Nate Shurden

If you have your Bibles, would you turn with me to 2 Samuel?
2 Samuel — we’re going to read a section from this beloved book tonight
and I’m probably more surprised than most of you that we’re turning to 1 and 2
Samuel tonight. It seems as if, and
I had mistakenly put on my calendar that we would be studying 1 and 2 Kings
tonight. This dawned on me this
afternoon as I went down to proof the prayer reminder that you’ve been using
tonight and Marie Phillips graciously says, “Nate, are you ready for tonight?”
I said, “Oh, we’re getting there.
We will be by six-thirty for sure.”
And I looked it over and I said, “1 and 2 Samuel.”
She said, “Yes.” I said, “So
all this preparation I’ve given the last hour or two to 1 and 2 Kings is not
going to come in very handy tonight, is it?”
She said, “I’m afraid not.”
And as I thought back, I thought, “Yes, it was right — Joshua, Judges, Ruth —
that’s where we were last week — 1 and 2 Samuel.”
So some how or another I missed it.
So this of course is my explanation on the front end for why we’ll have
such little material tonight to work with, but I am confident that God will
continue to teach us from His Word, regardless of the preparation of this man,
that God will speak by His Word and will come sovereignly and teach us what we
need to know from these precious books, these precious books, 1 and 2 Samuel.

Now we’re going to focus on a section that is probably one of the highest points
in the book of 1 and 2 Samuel — 2 Samuel chapter 7.
This is God’s covenant with David.
We’re going to look at just a few of these verses tonight.
Now the goal of this section, as we survey these two magnificent books,
the goal is as we read this section to look at the promises and the blessings
that are to be extended to David and through David to the people of
Israel
by this covenant. That’s what I
want you to listen for, that’s what I want you to look for, as we read this
passage tonight. Our goal will not
be to deeply dig into this passage as using it as a launching pad from which to
survey these two books so that we can have a better grasp of why 1 and 2 Samuel
are in the canon of Scripture and their role in the unfolding of God’s plan of
redemption.

So before we read 2 Samuel chapter 7 – we’ll begin reading in verse 8 and
read down to verse 17 – but before we do let’s pray once again and ask for God’s
blessing.

Our Father in heaven, we have before us Your Word. It is more important and more
necessary than the food that we have just consumed.
You tell us that man does not live by bread alone but by every word that
proceeds out of the mouth of God, that these are Your words.
Our souls hunger for them.
Indeed our souls starve without them.
And so we ask that by Your grace You would send to us the Spirit to
illumine our hearts and our minds that we might receive the exact word that You
have planned for us this night, and that it would go forth in power and
accomplish all that You have determined.
For the glory of Christ do this we pray.
Amen.

2 Samuel chapter 7 verse 8 — this is God’s Word:

“Now, therefore, thus you shall say to my servant David, (this is God speaking
to prophet, Nathan, who is going to speak these words to David) ‘Thus says the
Lord of hosts, ‘I took you from the pasture, from following the sheep, that you
should 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.
And I will appoint a place for My people Israel and I will plant them, so
that they may dwell in their own place and be disturbed no more.
And violent men shall afflict them no more, as formerly, from the time
that I appointed the judges over My people Israel.
And I will give you rest from all of your enemies.
Moreover, the Lord declares to you that the Lord will make you a house.
When your days are fulfilled and you lie down with your fathers, I will
raise up your offspring after you, who shall come from your body, and I will
establish his kingdom. He shall
build a house for My name, and I will establish the throne of his kingdom
forever. I will be to him a father,
and he shall be to Me a son. When
he commits iniquity, I will discipline him with the rod of men, with the stripes
of the sons of men, but My steadfast love will not depart from him, as I took it
from Saul, whom I put away from before you.
And your house and your kingdom shall be made sure forever before me.
Your throne shall be established forever.’’
In accordance with all these words, and in accordance with all this
vision, Nathan spoke to David.”

Amen, and thus far the reading of God’s holy Word.

In what or in whom do you place your trust?
It’s an important question, isn’t it?
In a time where we have just seen across the headlines of the news, we
have just prayed for the people of Haiti, that I tend to have a lot of hope in,
moved, and it shook a people to a core, and made them ask I’m sure, “What can we
hope in if the very ground beneath our feet is something we can’t be sure is not
going to be shaken, in what or in whom can we have hope?”
Now I’d like to suggest to you that question is the driving point in the
books of 1 and 2 Samuel. Where is the
hope of God’s people? We’ve just
come from books, Ruth and Judges, that have in many ways cast a bit of a vision
of a hope for a future. You’ll
remember the refrain in the book of Judges — right at the end of the book of
Judges we’re reminded this in verse 25 of chapter 21 of the book of Judges, a
foreboding note as that book closes — “In those days there was no king in Israel.
Everyone did what was right in his own eyes.”
Now you might take from the end of the book of Judges that if there was a
king in Israel people would quite doing what
was right in their own eyes. We
could draw that interpretive conclusion from the end of the book of Judges —
that if the people of God just had a king, a whom to hope in, that all would be
well.

We get to the end of the book of Ruth and as Billy explained to us so clearly
and eloquently last time as we gathered together in this room to study God’s
Word, the end of the book of Ruth reads like this — “Now these are the
generations of Perez: Perez
fathered Hezron, Hezron fathered Ram, Ram fathered Amminadab, Amminadab fathered
Nahshon, Nahshon fathered Salmon, Salmon fathered Boaz, Boaz fathered Obed, Obed
fathered Jesse, and Jesse fathered David.”
Jess fathered David — David.
If there was just a king of
Israel
the people would quit doing what was right in their own eyes.
And at the end of the book of Ruth we hear the son of Jesse, David, and
we know the story. This is the man
after God’s own heart, the man of God’s own choosing, the man in whom the people
of God can hope — right? And thus
we enter 1 and 2 Samuel; thus we enter these two books.

Now what’s fascinating about these two books is maybe what is beginning to be
longed for in such deep fashion in Judges and what is being introduced to us at
the end of the book of Ruth, now will come to fulfillment in 1 and 2 Samuel.
The people’s desire will be had.
A king will enter the land.
The hope and the expectation of what the people believe that they need to have a
strong front against the Philistines, Assyria, and
Babylon
and other nations which are surrounding them, this strong sure front to be like
all the other nations. “If we could
just have a king we know we would be okay.”
Here we have it, 1 and 2 Samuel, the hope.
Now what’s fascinating is that the tragedy that we saw in Judges is just
as prevalent in 1 and 2 Samuel as it was in Judges, as we enter into the season
of the kings. And so we see this
good and bad, this hopeful expectation, and this fleeing from the tragedy of a
season of poor leaders in the Judges, the people of God believe they will find
in the person of the king. And 1
and 2 Samuel gives us a very mixed report about how much hope that we can put
into a king. And what do you hope
or in whom?

Now as the book of 1 and 2 Samuel begin — and these books, we treat them often
separately in our reading of them now.
They once were collectively one book and read as one central and
significant message, one voice in the Old Testament canon.
As we enter the book of 1 and 2 Samuel we find Samuel.
We find that son of Hannah who is the last of the judges of Israel, the one who is a
transitional figure to move us from beyond this one age of redemptive history
into the new one, the passing of the judges into the kings.
He paves the way for us as an establishment of the monarchy.
What has been this longing and expected hope of the people of Israel.

And as we look at 1 and 2 Samuel, we see that this Old Testament book is
different and it is similar to some of the books that have come before.
It’s different at least in this way that 1 and 2 Samuel does not cover
long stretches of material of time in the way that say, Judges did, or in the
way that 1 and 2 Kings does where we see hundreds of years of history actually
unfold. It’s actually a fairly
short period of time that focuses on three particular people — Samuel, Saul, and
David. We could call 1 Samuel, the
first half of this two part book, we could call it a tale of three men — Samuel
and Saul and David. Now some of the
books of the Bible are deeply plot driven and some of the books of the Bible are
deeply character driven. Now of
course there’s a plot in all of the books of the Bible stemming from Genesis
chapter 3. As Derek has preached
and as Jeremy has reminded us regularly, when the seed of the serpent goes to
war against the seed of the woman and when the seed of the woman is at enmity
with the seed of the serpent we have a plot line that lays before us, a crisis
that will need a kind of resolution.
Well that plot line, that seed of the woman and that seed of the serpent,
plays itself out for sure in 1 and 2 Samuel, the unfolding of redemption.
But it plays itself out in the lives and the characters of Samuel and
Saul and David. It’s within these
men and within this narrative that we begin to see a new phase in redemptive
history.

Now there are three other prominent figures besides these three men — Samuel and
Saul and David. You can actually
chart the unfolding of 1 Samuel with those three characters.
But we also see Hannah, who plays a very significant role right at the
beginning, Eli, who’s also at the beginning of 1 Samuel, and then as we’ve been
actually hearing preached to us on Sunday night very recently, the character of
Jonathan. Now these three, we might
call them supportive cast. These
three play an important role in transitioning us — Eli to Samuel and Hannah to
Samuel and from Saul, Jonathan his son, to David.
These three supporting cast members are part of God’s means of
highlighting and developing His plan of redemption through the lives of these
three significant, significant men of redemptive history.

Now that teaches us a quick lesson about the way God works in life and time and
history, is that there are always prominent men that God uses to advance the
church from one age to the next, to become voices, to become a loud clarion
cause of the Gospel of which God anoints and blesses the work of their hands.
But behind them and between then are all sorts of supportive casts, all
sorts of fathers and mothers and brothers and sisters and uncles and aunts and
cousins and church members who have played a significant role and will play a
significant role in the unfolding of how God will use them to advance His
kingdom. Sometimes we find
ourselves in the background of redemptive history playing a behind the scenes
role and sometimes we find ourselves thrust to the forefront of redemptive
history. David, a shepherd boy with
seemingly no future from which the course of human events of history would be
changed — a shepherd boy who wasn’t even invited to the table when Samuel comes
to anoint — is the one who God pushes to the forefront.
But the one in whom Jonathan, one would expect to be in the forefront of
God’s plan of redemption, the son of the king, the rightful heir to the throne,
blends into the background and becomes the supportive cast for another twist in
the plot of redemptive history. It
teaches us something very important about how God uses all people within His
kingdom to accomplish His ends.

Now as we look at the rise of this kingdom and the kingship of the people of Israel, it’s
important that we see throughout 1 Samuel that there are two significant
contrasts that are being set up for us.
There’s always a rise to a point, usually in one of the lives of the
characters, and then there’s always a character who’s declining to a point.
So we open up the book of 1 Samuel and we see that Eli is right there in
the first chapter. Eli’s been a
faithful servant of the Lord but Eli has wicked sons, sons whom God is not going
to use to carry on the legacy of Samuel into the next phase of redemptive
history. But God has chosen
Hannah’s son to be the one who will succeed Samuel and his work in the temple.
As Eli and his sons begin to decline, we see the rise of Samuel as he
lays in his bed at night hearing the voice of the Lord call him, though he was
at first unaware — that this young boy who, from all recognition at the
beginning of 1 Samuel, would probably not exist.
A son that Hannah had prayed for for years, that seemingly God was not
going to give this obscure one, this long awaited one who Hannah had finally
given up hope would ever show up, came and he would be the one whom God rises to
the occasion to be used for this next phase of redemptive history.

Now as that plays out with Eli and Samuel at the beginning of 1 Samuel we see
the same thing happening between Saul and David, do we not?
Saul was the one in the forefront of the picture in most of 1 Samuel.
He’s the one who is shoulders and a head taller than everyone, the one
who is obviously God’s choice to lead the people of Israel.
As Saul is elected to this role, he immediately becomes a miserable
failure. His days are numbered
right from the beginning because he decides that not God’s “plan A” but his own
ingenious “plan B” would be the way that he would accomplish the rise of the
people of Israel and he would be disobedient to the covenant, to the obligations
to the responsibilities, which God had laid before him as the king.
As Saul begins his steady decline, as we see the Spirit of God removed
from him and then we have seen him tortured in soul as has been preached on
Sunday night, we can see that the kingdom is being taken from him and it’s being
given to this little shepherd boy who pastures a few sheep.
This is who the Lord has decreed will be the next leader of the people of
Israel.
These two contrasts as it were, were playing out throughout the entire
narrative of 1 Samuel. There is
someone on the decline; there is someone on the incline.
And who do we know which is which and for what reason?

And the clue to that is actually a book we haven’t studied quite yet.
We started in the book of Joshua — we didn’t start in the book of
Deuteronomy — but Deuteronomy as it were overshadows this whole section of
redemptive history. You’ll remember
quite well the covenant renewal ceremony in the book of Deuteronomy, in
Deuteronomy 29 at Moab, where the people of God committed once again, renewed
their covenant that they had made with the Lord at Horeb in Exodus chapter 20,
that they would be God’s people and that He would be their God and that if they
were obedient to the obligations of the covenant, to all of the laws which Moses
has given to them, then surely blessing will follow them.
This was the promise of God.
But if they were disobedient to the covenant obligations and neglected the law
of God, cursing, cursing would be their end.
Do we not see in the life of Eli and Eli’s sons a resistance to the
covenant obligations and the obedience which God has called His people and a
decline? And do we not see in the
life of Saul a neglect of what God had called him to do and thus a decline and a
wrenching from him of the kingdom and the call which he was originally given?
Disobedience gives birth to cursing.
Obedience gives rise to blessing.

The book of Deuteronomy is overshadowing this theological interpretation that is
being given to us here. Do you see
that it’s not men and nations, it’s not chariots and armaments that makes a
country strong, that makes the people of God sure and founded, it’s their
commitment to keep covenant with their God, to lay hold by faith in the promises
and to submit to God’s direction?
You see the writer of 1 and 2 Samuel knows that and as he writes this he is
interested in highlighting righteousness and sin, covenant faithfulness and
covenant disobedience, for upon this is the health and the livelihood of the
nation.

Now as we move into 2 Samuel we narrow our focus a bit.
Three characters of Samuel and Saul and David give way to that one final
character and all of the book of 2 Samuel is really devoted to David.
We could call it David’s biography.
It’s in this particular book of 2 Samuel where all of the hopes and the
dreams and the fulfillments of what God has already promised to the people back
through Moses and again at the covenant renewal service in Deuteronomy, that all
of the anticipations of this king and this kingdom begin to come to fruition.
David has more power than he could ever dreamed could be imagined.
He has more wealth, he has more wisdom — it seems as if nothing can stop
him. The whole first section of 2
Samuel reads like a hero epic. Here
is the one that no one could restrain from rising to the top.
It seemed as if this was his destiny to do so, and indeed according to
God’s providence it was. But as we
read the court history of David, all his exploits and his achievements, all that
he is able to accomplish under His hand, the writer of 2 Samuel pulls back the
curtain. What looks to be healthy
in the king’s court, what looks to be great accomplishment, is a man who in his
own personal life and family has one significant crisis after another.

It’s in that dramatic turning point in 2 Samuel chapter 11 where David goes out
and looks across the balcony and he sees Bathsheba and it becomes the point of
his fall — that he lusts and he commits adultery and then to cover up his sin he
commits another sin of murder, of having the life of Uriah, Bathsheba’s husband,
taken. It’s right smack dab in the
middle of 2 Samuel. Twenty four
chapters — chapters 11 and 12 have the unfolding of this tragic choice of a man
who has been described as “one after God’s own heart.”
Here is the hope of Israel.
Here is the foundation on which the people of
Israel had laid their trust
into the king of Israel.
Surely he will make them like all other nations.
Oh, indeed. He will make
them like all other nations.

In reading the book of 2 Samuel you can feel in the sense of the narrative in
chapters 11 and 12, a shift, that what was the golden age of the people of Israel has now
crested and we have begun our descent.
In the way Eli rose and fell, how Samuel rose and gave way to Saul, how
Saul rose and fell and gave way to David, as David has risen and there seems to
be no other figure greater than David — oh how the mighty have fallen.
2 Samuel 12 reminds us that David, thought God’s man, though used to
accomplish great things in the kingdom of God, he is still a man.
He is a mirror man.

Now the question becomes I think, crying out to us at the end of 1 and 2 Samuel,
is — Are we doomed to this kind of cycle forever?
Are we doomed to just one great man after another with hopeful
expectation who will eventually let us down?
One more ruler, one more elected president, one more man in the White
House, one more prime minister — “In what or whom do you trust?” seems to be
screaming by the end of 2 Samuel.
As we see after Ammon and Tamar’s wicked sinfulness and Absolom’s rebellion
against his father David, and as David takes the census in the last chapter of 2
Samuel and he sees his sin before Almighty God and he’s building and altar and
is desirous of keeping the plague from destroying God’s people because of
David’s own sin — is this the hope of Israel?
Now I think the altar at the end of 2 Samuel teaches us more than the
rest of 1 and 2 Samuel together because it teaches us that we need something
greater than David, something greater than a mere man, someone who will submit
to the obligations of the covenant that the people of God submitted to in
Deuteronomy, but will not fall into disobedience and thus will not fall into
cursing, but will be that long hoped for hero.

The end of 2 Samuel introduces us to the One who will crush that head of the
serpent, that there must be an altar and there must be a bloodshed and the
spotlessness of that sacrifice must cover all of the sin and the cursings of
every previous generation of faithlessness among even the most choicest of God’s
servants, David himself. Who in
here would say, “Well, I am greater than David”?
None of us I pray would say such, which means that we of all people need
that bloodshed on the threshing floor at the end of 2 Samuel, someone who will
fulfill the obligations of a covenant that we cannot fulfill, and for us, will
take upon Himself the punishment that we justly deserve.
It’s why at the beginning of the book of Luke which Ligon preached just a
few weeks back — Luke 2 — as we read the narrative of Mary and Joseph going to
Bethlehem from Nazareth, because He was of the house and the lineage of David
and why we read in just the chapter earlier in Luke 1 as the angel comes, that
the One who Mary has in her womb is unlike any other ruler for His ruler-ship
will last forever. It will never be
compromised by sin or by covenant unfaithfulness, but it will reign in pristine
glory. From the moment He lays His
head in the manger for all eternity, as we gather as a remnant, a piece of this
kingdom which God is building in Christ tonight, 1 and 2 Samuel call us to
despair of our own righteousness tonight.
As good as God has made us by His grace, to see our need for that blood
which covers all of our sins and then in Christ washes us white as snow, it is
in that hope I pray you gather tonight, for it is the only hope that we have.

Let’s thank the Lord for it.

Our Father in heaven, it takes our breath away that You, through Your servants
the prophets, men carried along by the Holy Spirit, communicate in the Old
Testament the crystal clear truths of the Gospel that we have embraced in Christ
in the New Testament. Indeed You
have one and enduring thing to say to us, Your people, and it is the Gospel.
Would You Father tonight lead us to repentance where we have sinned and
in our righteousness would You help us to despair and glean only to the
righteousness of Christ. For it
alone is fitting. And make in our
hearts a hunger, a hunger to see You in Your full and abiding holiness, for that
is our end. Come quickly Lord Jesus
we ask. Amen.

Please stand for the Lord’s blessing.

May the grace of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ be with your spirit.
Amen.

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