1 Samuel 13

Chapter 13. God’s CompensationsI had it in my heart to build a house as a place of rest for the ark of the covenant of the Lord, for the footstool of our God, and I made plans to build it. But God said to me, “You are not to build a house for my Name, because you are a warrior and have shed blood.” … He said to me: “Solomon your son is the one who will build my house and my courts, for I have chosen him to be my son, and I will be his father.” (1 Chronicles 28:2-3, 1 Chronicles 28:6; compare with 2 Samuel 7:1-29)There could be no stronger evidence of David’s perfect loyalty to Jehovah as the theocratic king of Israel and of his true conception of his high calling as the representative of a divine sovereignty than the fact that as soon as he was established upon his throne his very first thought was to prepare for the removal of the ark to Jerusalem, and a little later for the erection of a splendid house for this sacred memorial of Jehovah’s presence and covenant. Feeling quite ashamed of his own palatial residence while the ark of God remained under the shelter of curtain and tent poles, he sent for Nathan, the prophet, and announced to him his high purpose to build a temple for Jehovah, a house for the ark of the covenant. Nathan’s first impulse was to encourage the king in his lofty intention, and he quickly answered without having consulted God, “Whatever you have in mind, go ahead and do it, for the Lord is with you” (2 Samuel 7:3). But a little later, when he had time to listen to Jehovah’s counsel, the message was entirely changed and he was sent to David with instructions to say to him that he could not be permitted to build the temple which he had proposed, because his reign had been one of conflict and bloodshed. God accepted the will for the deed and announced to him that his favorite son, Solomon, whose name and reign were to be significant of peace, should be chosen for this high service, and that God would give to David, in compensation for the rejection of his proffered service, a covenant of blessing for the ages to come, and would build him a house and make him the ancestor of a greater Son, who should inherit his throne and become at once his offspring and his Lord. At the same time David was to be permitted to cooperate in this great enterprise and work with all his heart to provide the means and resources for its successful accomplishment afterwards by Solomon, his son. All this is finely illustrative of several important principles in God’s dealings with His people and several striking features in the character of David, and the whole incident is fraught with most important and spiritual lessons for us in our Christian life and service. A High and Holy Purpose “Here I am,” exclaims David, “living in a palace of cedar, while the ark of God remains in a tent” (2 Samuel 7:2). How much this reveals of the deepest heart of the man of God. How natural it is for us to think of our own houses and dwell either upon their lack or upon their luxury. But David felt quite ashamed to be so comfortably situated while the cause of his Lord seemed exposed to humiliation and reproach, and he longed to do something for the honor of God and for the extension of His kingdom. God did not lay this upon David by an express command. He loves to have us think about His cause and plan for His glory and honor. How often do we think as David did? What proportion do our personal and family expenses bear to our sacrifices to the cause of our Redeemer? Could we but realize, as we sit surrounded by comforts and luxuries, the condition of the famishing millions for whom Christ poured out His richest blood and for whom our affluence and extravagance would purchase eternal salvation! How much ought we to realize the injustice and selfishness of our conduct and the light in which some day we will look upon our misspent lives? What must heaven think of the spectacle of this one city in a Christian land spending more in a single summer for pleasure yachts than all the missionary societies in the world will spend in two years to evangelize the heathen! The surplus and waste which professing Christians are expending in absolutely needless indulgence, in extra buttons on their gloves, extra furniture in their homes, extra splendor in their equipage, extra houses for their residence in town and country, extra decorations on their churches, extra music in their choirs, these useless, wasteful things alone would be sufficient, if given to God, to evangelize the entire world in a decade of years. This single question which David asked himself if pressed home to a hundred thousand consciences in Christian America would revolutionize our social life and our aggressive work for the salvation of men. It was the same question that Haggai asked the people of a later age, Is it a time for you yourselves to be living in your paneled houses, while this house remains a ruin? Now this is what the Lord Almighty says: “Give careful thought to your ways…. You expected much, but see, it turned out to be little. What you brought home, I blew away. Why?” declares the Lord Almighty. “Because of my house, which remains a ruin, while each of you is busy with his own house.” (Haggai 1:4-5, Haggai 1:9) May not this be as truly said today as in the days of Haggai because of our financial panics and commercial depression, but when God does bless His people they spend it for themselves and care not for His suffering cause and the trust which He has committed to their hands to give the gospel to all mankind? Is God first in all our expenditures and all our thoughts? You may have many debts, but is your first debt always paid and are you careful to see that God gets His part no matter what else may fail? This is the test of loyalty, and this is the secret of prosperity and blessing. A Keen Disappointment God declined David’s proffered service. Lovingly and unreservedly was it offered, but God could not accept it, and He sent His servant Nathan to say, “Are you the one to build me a house to dwell in?” (2 Samuel 7:5). He said it very tenderly and with many promises of blessing and assurances of appreciation, but David had to relinquish his purpose and give up the task on which he had set his loving heart. And so God sometimes declines our service and refuses the gift which we have proffered. Perhaps you offered your life for missionary service and He has not opened your way. Perhaps you have laid your child upon the altar of the Lord and He has not accepted your gift. Perhaps you have thought of some great project of beneficence or religion and God has held you back. Perhaps you planned some mighty work and threw all the strength of your being into it and God has not prospered it. Your plans have failed, your efforts have come to naught and you can see that it was not of God. This is a very keen and painful experience, but it is an experience that is essential for the disciple of Christ to thoroughly learn. It is not enough that we are willing and eager to work for God, but the work itself must be of God. It must be God’s man, in God’s way, at God’s time and according to God’s plan. This is one of the deepest deaths that Christians are often called to die. Indeed, our work is unacceptable to God and useless to ourselves and others until it first has been bathed in the blood of Calvary and touched with the sign of Crucifixion. It must cease to be our work and thus become His and His alone. We must learn to acquiesce in God’s refusals and to believe where we cannot see that He has something better for us than the work we chose. To do this without losing time and becoming discouraged and morbid requires the very highest manifestation of the grace of God and the Spirit of Christ. To learn to wait without fretting, without petulance, without haste, is the perfection of discipline and the best preparation for effectual work. The order of service is first tarry, then do. A Gracious Compensation While God declined David’s service, He gave him the grandest compensation. “You will not build Me a house, but the Lord will build you a house.” He turned the tables upon him effectually by saying, “You thought to do something for Me, but, instead, you must consent that I shall do something greater for you. I am the Sovereign of all worlds and the Lord of all resources. I need not your gifts, but I need those who can accept My gifts and receive My blessings in the magnanimous spirit in which I bestow.” And so God proceeded to give to David a series of covenant promises covering all the future and reaching down to the very throne of His glorious Seed—the great Messiah, who was to be the Son of David, the King of Israel. The most critical examination of this prophetic chapter (2 Samuel 7) leaves no doubt that while immediately it refers to Solomon yet ultimately it reaches forward to the Lord Jesus Christ Himself. “He is the one who will build a house for my Name, and I will establish the throne of his kingdom forever. I will be his father and he will be my son” (2 Samuel 7:13-14). This cannot refer to Solomon primarily because his kingdom was not established forever, but ended in failure. In Hebrews 1:5 it is directly quoted as a Messianic prophecy relating to the Lord Jesus Christ exclusively. But how can the words in 2 Samuel 7:14 be consistently applied to Christ? “When he does wrong, I will punish him with the rod of men, with floggings inflicted by men. But my love will never be taken away from him” (2 Samuel 7:14-15). A critical study of this passage has furnished the answer and shown that it may be correctly translated, “If iniquity be imputed to him,” and we know that iniquity was imputed to the Lord Jesus Christ, for “God made him who had no sin to be sin for us” (2 Corinthians 5:21), and when so imputed to Him He was “punish [ed] with the rod of men and with floggings inflicted by men,” for “it was the Lord’s will to crush him” (Isaiah 53:10), “and by his wounds we are healed” (Isaiah 53:5). Still later in the story we reach even a higher point of Messianic fulfillment. In responding to this great promise of the Coming One, David answers, “Who am I, O Lord God, and what is my family, that you have brought me this far? And if this were not enough in your sight, O God, you have spoken about the future of the house of your servant. You have looked on me as though I were the most exalted of men, O Lord God” (1 Chronicles 17:16-17), “and of a Man of great estate,” as the last clause of this verse may be more correctly interpreted. This “Man of great estate” of whom God has spoken was no other than the Lord Jesus Christ. And so we see for our comfort and instruction that, when God refuses our proffered service or our earnest prayer, He has for us a compensation as precious as that which He gave to David. In the first place it is a compensation through Christ. It is something in Him which He gives us. It is some deeper revelation, some fuller experience of His grace and love, which is worth all that we could ask or the world could give. Did He keep you back from some cherished plan or take from you some treasure of your affection? Beloved, it was that He might give you Jesus through it in some deeper way, and make up to you with heavenly solace for the loss of earthly blessing. Then, as in David’s case, He gives you something “about the future” (1 Chronicles 17:17). He may refuse you some present gratification, but He lays up in store for you some eternal heritage of glory. Oh, if we could extend our vision and take in the far perspective, we might be laying up every day some “treasures in heaven, where moth and rust do not destroy” (Matthew 6:20), and out of life’s disappointments we might be forging eternal gains. Do men wrong us? Let us look up and say, “Lord, lay up for me some word of commendation at the throne.” Do earthly fortunes fail us? Let us by the wand of faith transform the curse into a blessing, and take instead the mansions and the thrones which He has promised us by and by. Sometimes I have seen His children fail to receive even their believing prayers just now, but I have felt that God had answered these very prayers in some substantial form which was to meet them on the other side. God’s bonds are long-time ones, and they all accumulate compound interest, and when the day of maturity comes we shall weep with wonder to see the meaning of His hundredfold. A Wise Substitution While God refused the service that David proffered, He appointed his son, Solomon, to perform the task. At the same time He gave a reason for this substitution which is deeply significant. He told David it was not fit for him to build the temple because his reign was associated with conflict and blood, and that the temple was a symbol of the condition of peace and triumph where the battle was already fought and the throne of peace established forever. The symbol of David’s reign was the shifting tabernacle of the wilderness, suggestive of change, conflict and trial. The temple, however, was significant of that future age when Christ shall reign in His millennial glory, and sway the scepter of a peaceful empire for a thousand years. Now, Solomon was a true type of all this, and therefore it was his part to build that temple. This will explain why God often refuses to accept some of our services or to bless some of our plans. We are trying to build a temple here and accomplish a work which belongs only to the millennium. When we set out to have a perfect church and an ideal society, when we expect to close all the saloons, convert all the heathen, put down all the wickedness and have some Utopia of perfect blessedness, we are anticipating the age, we are ahead of the times, we are trying to translate a season of conflict, sin and temptation into a millennium that has not yet dawned. And God will not bless these plans. Many of us have tried them and failed and come back to the realization that we are not building temples here or accomplishing any form of perfect work. We are simply quarrying stones out in the mountains and hewing timbers for a building that will be erected by and by when Christ Himself shall come and rear a temple for the millennial age. Let us be content to work at the rough materials, to see our ambitions dissolved and fail, and look forward to the “future” (1 Chronicles 17:17) which David saw, when all our hopes will be fulfilled and we shall dwell in a “city with foundations, whose architect and builder is God” (Hebrews 11:10). There was another reason suggested for God’s refusal of David’s proffered service. He intimated that He did not care very much about temples anyhow, and had been perfectly content to wander through the wilderness in shifting tents. What God wants is not splendid architectural palaces, but living temples of holy hearts in which He can dwell and rule. I do not believe a song would cease in heaven if all the splendid gothic cathedrals in the world would be shaken to pieces by an earthquake tomorrow. God would let them all go rather than have a single saint defile the living temple of the Holy Spirit. Beautiful Acquiescence and Cooperation in God’s Plan David not only acquiesced in the divine message, but went to work with all his might to help to accomplish it, and labored as unselfishly for the temple that Solomon should build as if he himself had been entrusted with the entire task. During the remaining years of his reign he collected the prodigious sum of $3 billion in money and materials, and gave himself, of his own personal wealth, the magnificent contribution of over $80 million for this work. Further, he devoted himself to prepare a service and ritual for the house of God that should be built with 24 corps of ministering priests, 288 leaders of song, a choir of 4,000 voices, 4,000 porters and 24,000 Levites for the other offices of the service of the Lord. All this he left in perfect order for Solomon’s administration, and he himself lent his splendid genius and inspired gift of poetry and music, leading sometimes the choral service with his own harp and voice with divine enthusiasm. Beloved, have we learned to take as much delight in God’s work through the hand of another as when it bears the impress of our own personality? The only way to do this is by seeing no man in it, but recognizing it wholly as the work of God, remembering that the workers are His instruments subject to His authority, summoned and prepared at His sovereign will. No man is ready to say, “Here am I. Send me” (Isaiah 6:8) until he has first learned to say, “Lord, send who you want to send.” Finally, let us learn from the spirit of David the spirit of large-heartedness and magnanimity in the work of God. What a splendid spectacle! A king and a whole kingdom laying themselves out with all their resources to honor God and build a monument for His glory may well put to shame our pretensions of being a loyal Christian nation or even an honest church of Christ, while we are putting our billions into the enterprises of commerce and the armaments of war, and our paltry pennies are deemed sufficient to supply the resources for the evangelization of the world and the bringing in of the kingdom of the Lord Jesus Christ. Oh, how small, how shameful, how unworthy the spirit of modern Christianity! God forgive us and lift up some voice that can penetrate to the selfish ear of trade and strike some blow that will shatter the coffers of religious selfishness and consecrate their treasures to build, not a temple of material masonry, but a house of spiritual stones of saved and sanctified men and women, a work which will fulfill the loving purpose for which He died, and give the knowledge of salvation to all the world that so He Himself may come and build that greater temple of the new Jerusalem of which Solomon’s splendid edifice was only a transient type.