The Church Gathered

Okay, friends, if you are able to grab a Bible and open with me to 2 Samuel, chapter 7. We are making our way through the storyline of redemptive history. We started with Adam in the garden and the covenant of works that God made with Adam that Adam failed to maintain. And God came to Adam and to Eve and said, I will.

I will cover you with animal skins and I will give you the beauty of the promise of grace that there will be one who comes to crush the head of the serpent, though the serpent will strike his heel in Genesis 3, 15. And then we looked at the story of Abraham and how God made a covenant with Abraham many years later and said, I will make your name great.

I will bless you and you will be a blessing to the world. I will give you a land. I will give you a people who will come after you and. I will make you a blessing to the nations. After Abraham, many years later, Israel went into slavery under Pharaoh of Egypt, and God raised up a liberator. A Redeemer by the name of Moses.

And God spoke to Moses through the burning bush in Exodus chapter 3. And He said, Moses, I want you to go back and I want you to tell Pharaoh to let my people go. And Moses leads Israel through the Red Sea on dry land into the land of Canaan out of slavery. And God makes a covenant with Moses to give them a civil way of life called law, the Ten Commandments.

And many years later. Israel experienced the up and downs of covenant life with Yahweh, the one true God, the covenant keeping God. And by the time that we come to 2 Samuel chapter 7, we have seen Israel time and time again hear God's Word and strive to obey it and fall again and again. And God says, I will be faithful to my covenant and I will not break it.

I will not neglect my name, and for my glory's sake, I will be faithful to you. Israel wants to be like the other nations in the book of Judges. They want a king, and God says, I am your king. But God has mercy on Israel and allows them to raise up a king. And so they raise up a king named King Saul, who was everything that God asked them not to choose in a king.

And then God raises up King David, a young shepherd boy, the son of Jesse, youngest of his sons. I And when you get to chapter 7 of 2 Samuel, you read this amazing, amazing promise that God says to David, You want to build me a house? Well, I'm going to turn the tables on you. I'm going to give you a dynasty, a legacy.

I'm going to put someone on your throne who will reign forever and ever. And you heard John and Adrian read from 2 Samuel chapter 7, 1 through 17 earlier. But what I want us to catch this morning is that God's church will be gathered under a king who will reign forever. And the story of King David is just the beginning of that truth.

That God's people will be gathered together under a king who will reign forever. And that news is so overwhelming to David that he goes to the Lord in a prayer. Which is what we're about to read. And so if you're willing, would you stand with me as we read from 2 Samuel 7, beginning at verse 18. We'll go down to verse 29.

This is the word of the Lord. Give our attention to it. It's given to you in love. Then King David went in and sat before the Lord and said, Who am I, O Lord God, and what is my house that you have brought me thus far? And yet this was a small thing in your eyes, O Lord God. You have spoken also of your servant's house for a great while to come, and this is instruction for mankind, O Lord God.

And what more can David say to you? For you know your servant, O Lord God, because of your promise and according to your own heart, you have brought about all this greatness to make your servant know it. Therefore, you are great. Oh Lord God, for there is none like you and there is no God besides you according to all that we have heard with our ears.

And who is like your people Israel, the one nation on earth whom God went to redeem to be his people, making himself a name and doing for them great and awesome things by driving out before your people whom you redeemed for yourself from Egypt. A nation and its gods and you establish for yourself your people Israel to be your people forever and you, oh, Lord, became their God and now, oh, Lord, God confirmed forever the word that you have spoken concerning your servant and concerning his house and do as you have spoken and your name will be magnified forever saying the Lord of hosts is God over Israel and the house of your servant, David, will be established before you for you.

Oh, Lord of hosts, the God of Israel, have made this revelation to your servant, saying, I will build you a house. Therefore your servant has found courage to pray this prayer to you. And now, oh Lord God, you are God, and your words are true, and you have promised this good thing to your servant. Now therefore, may it please you to bless the house of your servant so that it may continue forever before you.

For you, O Lord God, have spoken, and with your blessing shall the house of your servant be blessed forever. The grass withers, but the flowers fade, but God's Word stands forever. This is the Word of the Lord. Thanks be to God. You may be seated. Father, would you open our hearts to give heed to your word.

Would you change us by it, and may the words of my mouth and the meditations of my heart be pleasing and acceptable to your sight. Oh, Lord, our rock and our redeemer. We pray these things in your name. Amen.

Hanging above our doorway in our kitchen, if you've ever been to our house, you may have seen it, is one of our favorite lines from Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings. It's a poem that Frodo receives from the Hand of Gandalf. It's a poem written by Bilbo. And if you know the Lord of the Rings, I think it's in chapter 10 of the Fellowship of the Ring.

And the poem goes like this, All that is gold does not glitter, not all those who wander are lost. The old that is strong does not wither, and deep roots are not reached by the frost.

From the ashes of fire shall be woken, a light from the shadows shall spring, and renewed shall be blade that was broken and crownless. Again, shall be king. And Frodo reads this at the Prancing Pony, and he's thinking about this one, this Strider, this suspicious looking, dark, rugged in appearance man. And Gandalf is trying to communicate to Frodo that there's more to Strider than meets the eye.

Strider's true appearance, true identity, true reality is that he is actually Aragorn. He is the son and heir of the throne of Gondor. He is the true and everlasting king. I wonder if you recognize him, Frodo. And we don't see the poetry in 2 Samuel chapter 7, but nevertheless, we do see something very similar.

That there is a story of hidden royalty and future restoration. When you come to read of the Davidic Covenant, as theologians call it in 2 Samuel chapter 7. Aragorn in the Lord of the Rings, mirrors David, God's covenant servant. The one that God sets his affection upon and says to him, there will be a kingdom that will come from you that will have no end.

And much like Aragon, David's kingdom would go through periods where it seemed to broken and it seemed scattered and it may seem in the church today like we're undergoing the shadow out of which we know a light will one day spring of eternal glory and beauty and holiness when all of God's people are gathered together.

And 2 Samuel chapter 7 points us through the narrative of King David who ruled from 970 to 1010 BC. The story of King David is the story of a hope longed for, and a hope delivered through his leadership, hidden, clad in a ruddy appearance, and missed by the nations of the world. And the point of 2 Samuel chapter 7 is that God's church will be gathered under a king who reigns forever.

Now, if you know your biblical history, you know that King David ruled. As I said, from 1010 B. C. to 970 B. C. When you talk about before Christ came, the order is reversed. So you start with the bigger number first. 1010 to 970 B. C., kiddos. Let's do some quick math. How long is that? How many years? 40 years.

When, after King Saul died, David became king in a place called Hebron, and he ruled the southern kingdom of Judah. And one of Saul's sons, his youngest son, Ish bosheth, ruled the northern kingdom of Israel. And for three years, David ruled from a place called Hebron. And after three years and a civil war in Israel, all the kingdom was united under David.

And he moved his capital from Hebron down to Jerusalem. And he brought the Ark of the Covenant to Jerusalem, so that Jerusalem might be the center of both of political and of spiritual, the capital in every way for God's people.

And when we see that God made a promise to David in 2 Samuel chapter 7, David was at peace with his enemies. And God said, before you make good plans, your plans, big plans, David, to build me a house. I want you to know that I'm going to build you a house. I'm going to make a covenant with you. Just like I made a covenant with Abraham.

Just like I made a covenant with Moses. I'm going to make a covenant with you. That there is going to be one who comes from you who will rule forever, whose rule is eternal. And David and his response to this covenant is just amazing. And we have a lot to learn from it. So I want you to learn two things from verses 18 to 29 of 2 Samuel chapter 7.

Because it's David's response to God's covenant promises that I think is what we as a church need to hear and believe and claim and own. Because it's one thing to hear the promises of God in Scripture. And many of you who've grown up in the church have heard God's promises for perhaps as long as you can remember.

But I wonder how you respond to them.

No doubt many of your friends respond to them with a yawn, because they're not in church anymore. They don't long for the truth of God's Word. But when David comes before the Lord and he hears this from his friend Nathan, David immediately does what? He goes and he sits before the Lord in prayer. And we have two things to learn because our response to God's Word is a sign of our trust in Him.

What's your response? The first thing we learn from David is that David responds first by recognizing his smallness And his brevity, his smallness and his brevity. Children, brevity is just a word that means brief or quick. Our life in the context of eternity is just a vapor. And those of us who are older in the room recognize that metaphor more and more because it just seems like it went by in a snap.

First, David recognizes his smallness and his brevity. Notice what the text says. David is the king. He's the ruler of the kingdom. He has everything that there is to have. And yet David It says, Who am I? Which is remarkable because David's the most powerful person in the world at the time. Who am I, O Lord?

And David knows he's small compared to the Lord God. Do you see those two words together? Lord is Adonai. It means master. And God, capitalized, is the covenant name for God, Yahweh. And whenever Adonai and Yahweh come together back to back, the ESV translators have moved the word Yahweh from being capitalized Lord, L O R D.

God, capitalized G O D, because it would be a little weird in English to say Lord, Lord, and so they say Lord, God. But it is the word Adonai, which means Master, Lord of my life, and Covenant keeping God. It's as though David were to say, Who am I, O Master of my life, O Covenant keeping God. And think about you and your little kingdoms.

The anxieties that you've worn this week. Do you respond in the same way to God's Word? Do you respond even now as you're listening and straining to listen just as much as I am striving to preach? That your Father in Heaven is the Lord God. He is not just some God of many gods. He is the one true God who put the world together by the power of His Word.

And He knit you together in your mother's womb. He knows every anxiety of your week. And are you able to say to him, Lord, who am I? You are my master and my Lord. David goes on in verse 18. What is my house that you have brought me thus far? He's the king and he calls himself God's servant. Who is like your people Israel?

Verse 23 goes on. The one nation on earth whom you have redeemed. You have redeemed to be your people. He is the redeemer. He's the king. And yet David recognizes, no, God is the true redeemer. And therefore your servant, David's not the servant to anyone, but he knows he's the servant to the king. And therefore your servant has found courage.

The one who fought Goliath. David says, I have found courage to pray this prayer to you. David's response to God's covenant with him. Is that he recognizes his smallness And his brevity there's a great book that I would commend to your community groups by ed welch The biblical counselor called when people are big and god is small and in this book ed welch writes that we replace god with people Are you with me now instead of biblically?

guided by the fear of the lord we fear others or We fear, the fear of man goes by many names. He says in your 20s, it's called peer pressure. When it's older, it's called people pleasing. The word you hear these days, he says, is called codependency.

In book 3 of chapter 8 of Mere Christianity, Lewis talks of the great sin. He says it's a sin which everyone in the world loathes when he sees it in someone else, and which hardly any people ever imagine being guilty of themselves. What's the sin? Pride. It's the err in our error. It's not that we are rich, or famous, or well known, or good looking.

Lewis says it's that we are richer. We are better looking. We are more famous. We are more powerful. The sin of pride is the sin of comparison. It's the sin, it is the It is when we stack ourself up by comparatives. Lewis goes on to write, he says, Do not imagine if you meet a humble man, that he will be what most people call humble nowadays.

He will not be the sort of greasy, swarmy person who's always telling you that, of course, he's a nobody. Probably all of you will think of him That he was rather cheerful. He was an intelligent chap who took a real interest in what you said to him. If you dislike him, it will be because you feel a little envious of anyone who seems to enjoy life so easily.

He will not be thinking about humility. He'll be thinking about you. He won't be thinking about himself at all. And from this line, you often hear that Christians will say that true humility is not thinking less of yourself. It's just thinking about yourself less. Paul encourages Christians to live quiet lives, to work diligently, To recognize in the midst of his word that we are to respond with recognizing our smallness and our brevity.

Paul says in Second Thessalonians chapter four, and we aspire to live quiet lives and mind our own affairs and to work with our hands as we instructed you, so that we may walk properly before outsiders and be dependent upon no one and one Timothy chapter two. Paul says, first of all, I urge you that all your prayers and intercessions and thanksgiving we made for all people, for kings and those who were in high positions, that we may lead a peaceful and quiet life, godly and dignified in every way.

Do you hear Paul commending to us to live small in order to recognize God's grace and grandeur? Oh, Christian, you already live big. You already have the name Christian given to you with a righteousness that is not your own. Credited to your account through the work of Jesus. And so you can live small.

You can live in such a way as the most important person in your life in any given moment is the person talking to you. So that you're really listening for them. Not just trying to arm yourself with what you're going to say next to look good in front of them.

In 2 Thessalonians chapter 3, Paul rebukes busybodies who actually live lives of laziness. He says, we fear that some of you have walked in laziness, not busy at work, but busybodies. Now such persons we command and encourage in the Lord Jesus Christ to do their work, work quietly and to earn their own living.

The problem of pride seems to ooze out of almost every poor in our life. And when God brings us his word, our first response, Oh Trinity, I pray, is that a profound humility of recognizing our smallness and the brevity of life that we are to lead. Lewis goes on to say, if God In God, if you come up against something which, in every way, when you see him, it is immeasurably superior to yourself.

And unless you know God as that, and therefore know yourself as nothing to it, you do not yet.

Our pride shows up. In our days, in the way that we view our politics, or the way that we view economics, the way that we view family, even the way that some of us view youth sports. Can I get an amen? There are a lot of books that have been written recently about the way that politics have shaped our world, especially the evangelical church.

How politics have turned into a source of false power, and they have veiled the church's true spiritual mission by dividing people in the pews. As the decades passed, researchers write, many evangelicals have begun to make a fateful miscalculation. They came to believe that their power, their very survival, was dependent upon electing the right person to office, advancing the right policies, and winning the right culture wars.

And they began to look at politics as a vehicle for cultural change, rather than as a reflection.

The church should be the vehicle for cultural change in the proclamation of the gospel. Amen? Politics should be a reflection of that.

Or in economics, John Brueggemann wrote a book called Rich, Free, and Miserable. When I was a campus minister, many, many of the students in the Northeast where I ministered had to read that book for one of their economics classes. The Failure of Success in America is the byline of the title. And he reflects on the modern paradox of wealth and its inability to bring true fulfillment.

He argues that we are awash in wealth, but we are drowning in despair. And the pursuit of success, as it's commonly called, oh students, please hear me, on the verge of establishing your own career, have left many people hollow and grasping at the for meaning amidst a sea of material abundance. We see it in politics.

We see it in our pursuit of security and economics. We see it in families. David Brooks has written in the second mountain. He's argued that our frenzied culture as we rush kids to and fro to various events, our families have often sacrificed the very things that build lasting community and relationships.

The shared meal around the dinner table. Unstructured time and the freedom to just be together.

Let me put my finger on a nerve. How about youth sports?

Mark Hyman has written a book called Until It Hurts, America's Obsession with Youth Sports and How It Harms Our Kids. And he explores the pressure, the immense pressure that we put on our kids to succeed athletically in youth sports. Youth sports has become a high stakes game, high pressure activity for millions and millions of families in our country.

And the demand on children's time and their energy to push them toward more practices, more games, more competition often comes at the cost of their emotional well being. It's not, of course, that sports are bad in and of themselves, Hyman writes. The problem is not simply that parents push their children too hard.

It's that they push them in the wrong direction toward specialization, toward private lessons, toward year round competition, and toward the dream of a professional career. And the result is a generation of kids who are physically and emotionally burned out, who don't experience the joy of playing sports.

Just for the fun of it. The point is that when we hear the greatest news in all the world, that God has made a covenant with us, and He has asked us to live small lives, recognizing the brevity of our life, faithful to His covenant promises to us, we throw ourselves at so many lesser gods, like politics or economics, or the view of the family that exalts it to be an idol of our heart, or even youth sports, as we live our lives out through our kids.

And guys, it's incredibly tempting.

What would it be like if we responded with humility and joy at recognizing that we have faith in the Lord Jesus Christ? And He has given us an amazing gift in the church gathered, in the faces and the people in this room. And He has asked us to live life in community together. Of course it's hard. We are spread out.

But He's asked us to bear burdens together. Some of us only see each other once a week, and that's okay. But we are knit together. In the new building, you'll see that around the wainscoting, the wood on the walls is a vine. And that vine is a reminder to all of us that we are grafted into Jesus who is the true vine.

He gets His arms around us and He says, when you come in this space, you are mine. You are brought together, grafted in. You have your own individual family stories, but we come under Christ, who is our head, and we find ourselves with this amazing resource. The church has everything that you have ever wanted in the one place you'd never look, because it points you to the gospel.

And it reminds you of your new identity in Christ. It's not in how successful you are in your career, oh, young dads who are striving so hard. It is not in how well mannered your kids are, though we want our kids to be well mannered, Mom. It is not in our performance. It is in the finished work of Jesus.

And we enjoy all of His good gifts in light of that great truth. But lay your deadly doings down, friends, down at Jesus feet and trust in Him and Him alone. Gloriously complete. He has given you a promise. He gave it to Abraham. It also includes you, O church. He gave it to Moses. It also includes you, O church.

I wonder if you know it. He's given a promise to David that one day there will be a king who will gather his people and he will rule the land. The first thing you see is that David recognized that he was small and his life was brief in comparison to his great God. The second thing that we see is that David responds by recognizing God's greatness and God's covenant faithfulness.

God makes something great in the eyes of the world seem very small. Notice David's prayer in verse 17. He takes David, Jesse's youngest son, the shepherd of Israel, And he makes him king. And that is a monumental task. And yet David said, And yet this was a small thing in your eyes, O Lord. David goes on. For you know your servant, O Lord God.

Nothing is hidden from you. Verse 21. Because of your promise and according to your own heart, you have brought about all this greatness. Verse 22. Do you see it? Therefore, you are great. David recognizes God's greatness. You are great, O Lord God. There is no God besides you according to all that we have heard with our ears.

You are making yourself a name. David is the king of Israel, and yet David recognizes that God is making a name for himself through David's reign.

And you've done all these great and awesome things by driving out the evil. A nation and it's God before your people, verse 24. And you have established for yourself a people Israel to be your people forever. And you, O Lord God, have become our

All the ancient gods of the world. The gods of the Egyptians, the gods of the Canaanites, the gods of the Hivites, Jebusites, Amalekites. All the ites. David says the one true God is the one who has ruled them all. And later in Nehemiah, when they come back from the land and they're rebuilding the wall and they're rebuilding the temple that Solomon built.

Nehemiah says, therefore, our God, the great, the mighty, and the awesome God who keeps his covenant of steadfast love. Let not all this hardship seem little to you that has come upon us, upon our kings, our princes, our priests, our prophets, our fathers, and all of our people since the time of the kings of Assyria.

Until this day, you have been righteous in all that has come upon us because you have dealt faithfully with us. Though we have acted wickedly. God is faithful, despite however inconsistent we are. David links God's greatness to his covenantal faithfulness. And he recognizes that God's greatness Is linked with how faithful he is to his covenant.

A good and wise king is a great strategist in war, and a brave king goes into battle with his people. A great king will fight with his people even unto his death, but an ultimate king is a good strategist, is great in war, goes into battle, leads his people even unto death, even death on a cross. And when Mark is writing in his gospel reflecting upon Jesus, it's as though Mark almost writes the entire gospel through the narrative of the Davidic covenant.

The reign of the servant king. Jesus says, I came not to be served, but to serve and to give my life as a ransom for many. Jesus first sermon was, repent for the kingdom of God is at hand. In Mark chapter 10, Jesus says, I, the true king, have come to give my life as a ransom for many. A few verses later, blind Bartimaeus calls out, and Mark is sure to note that blind Bartimaeus says, Son of David, have mercy upon me, a sinner, knowing that Jesus is the fulfillment of that Davidic covenant, that Jesus is the one true David whose reign will have no end.

In Mark chapter 15, when Pilate confronts Jesus at his trial, what does Pilate ask Jesus? He says, Are you the king of the Jews? Pilate knows he has royal authority, and Jesus says, you have said so. And what does the Roman centurion say to Jesus after he dies? The Roman centurion, a secular man who did not believe in the one true God, perhaps even came to faith at that moment when he looked at Jesus and said, surely this was the Son of God, which is a royal tribute.

To our dying Savior who rose again for us. And friends, the beauty of the church is that God gathers us under that great promise. That we are the fruit because Christ is our head of the Davidic Covenant. And we are to respond with the same kind of humility, recognizing our smallness and the brevity of our life.

And recognizing God's greatness and His covenant faithfulness to us. And when you begin to understand that, you're able to navigate the politics, and the economics, and the family life, and the youth sports, and the thousands of other things that we are called to navigate, because you navigate them as Christian.

I saw one of your houses this week, and you have in your front yard, you have the, you have Christian, American, and then you have your political party. I thought that was a pretty nice sign. The order is right. You have the name of the one true king. Not only do you have his name, but you have his righteousness, if you believe.

This is the beauty of the church, because all that appears golden to the world does not glitter. And not all those who wander are lost. And the church goes through years of plenty and years of want. And the strong will not wither, and deep roots of the gospel are not reached by the frost. And from the ashes a fire shall be woken, and light from the shadows shall spring.

In the chairs that the ministers sit in in the new church, there is a Latin phrase, post tenebros lux, after darkness, light, which is the call of the Reformation. From ashes a fire shall spring. From the shadows, a light shall emerge,

and crownless again shall be king. Hallelujah. Let's come to the supper and enjoy together. Father, would you strengthen us to recognize our brevity, our smallness amidst your infinite holiness and grandeur and goodness. And Lord, would you help us, like fine wine, To drink in your gospel, and to find ourselves overwhelmed with deep joy.

And I pray, Lord, that you would help those of us who are still working our self saving strategies to lay them at the foot of the cross, even this morning as they come to the table. And Jesus, that you are the true fulfillment of the covenant that your Father made with King David, and that we are the fruit of that.

Amen. People indwelt by your spirit, gathered week after week as your church, visible in this room, one day, fully sanctified, your invisible church will enjoy you forever. In the midst of the renewed heavens and earth and paradise, as a renewed people, made holy by the blood of the Lamb, and in your presence forevermore.

Strengthen us in this great story, that we may find our hope in you. And we pray these things in Jesus name. Amen. Let us give generously of our tithes and offerings unto the Lord.