Wise David, Who Gives Up His Own Will
1When the king lived in his house, and Yahweh had given him rest from all his enemies all around, 2the king said to Nathan the prophet, “See now, I dwell in a house of cedar, but God’s ark dwells within curtains.” 3Nathan said to the king, “Go, do all that is in your heart; for Yahweh is with you.” 4That same night, Yahweh’s word came to Nathan, saying, 5“Go and tell my servant David, ‘Yahweh says, “Should you build me a house for me to dwell in? 6For I have not lived in a house since the day that I brought the children of Israel up out of Egypt, even to this day, but have moved around in a tent and in a tabernacle. 7In all places in which I have walked with all the children of Israel, did I say a word to any of the tribes of Israel, whom I commanded to be shepherd of my people Israel, saying, ‘Why have you not built me a house of cedar?’”’ 8Now therefore tell my servant David this, ‘Yahweh of Armies says, “I took you from the sheep pen, from following the sheep, to be prince over my people, over Israel. 9I have been with you wherever you went, and have cut off all your enemies from before you. I will make you a great name, like the name of the great ones who are in the earth. 10I will appoint a place for my people Israel, and will plant them, that they may dwell in their own place, and be moved no more. The children of wickedness will not afflict them any more, as at the first, 11and as from the day that I commanded judges to be over my people Israel. I will cause you to rest from all your enemies. Moreover Yahweh tells you that Yahweh will make you a house. 12When your days are fulfilled, and you sleep with your fathers, I will set up your offspring after you, who will proceed out of your body, and I will establish his kingdom. 13He will build a house for my name, and I will establish the throne of his kingdom forever. 14I will be his father, and he will be my son. If he commits iniquity, I will chasten him with the rod of men, and with the stripes of the children of men; 15but my loving kindness will not depart from him, as I took it from Saul, whom I put away before you. 16Your house and your kingdom will be made sure forever before you. Your throne will be established forever.”’” 17Nathan spoke to David all these words, and according to all this vision.
Wanting to bring the ark of God to David’s city, David had prepared a new cart, but he ended up causing a grievous event: the death of Uzzah. He had gone ahead with his own plan, but because it was not God’s will, he was severely rebuked; then he showed the wisdom of repenting with all his heart. With the help of the Levite leaders, he was able to bring the ark safely into David’s city. David did not set out to move the ark in order to show off his royal power, but there was human zeal in it. Had he prayed and prepared with care, he could have known God’s mind; but every plan not carried out according to God’s law came to nothing.
David felt sorry that he lived in comfort in a house of cedar while the ark of God stayed in a humble tent. So he told Nathan that he wanted to build a temple for God and bring the ark into it. Up to this point, David’s plan seems to have nothing wrong with it. Knowing that David loved God, Nathan the prophet thought the plan was a good one. Because he trusted David, Nathan approved so weighty a matter outright, without praying to God about it.
When prophets are bound by their own thinking, they weigh things without regard to God’s will, and because of that they can easily fall into sin. Even prophets who hear God’s voice make this kind of mistake if they do not pray. If even a prophet can err this way, then for us not to pray is sin. David’s plan to build the temple looked to everyone as if it would display God’s glory, which is why Nathan thought God would be pleased as well. We must be on our guard, since when Satan deceives us, we make the mistake of concluding that our own thinking is God’s will.
You too, as you have walked with God, have probably made this mistake. When something seems fitting to us and appears to raise no problem, we decide that God will like the plan too, and like Nathan we act on it without hesitation. But we must ask whether we have truly judged and decided by God’s law, because God’s will and human thinking are entirely different. I hope you will pray always, even over small matters, act according to God’s will in all things, and not make the mistake Nathan made.
David must have been troubled by the ark sitting in a humble tent while he alone seemed to live in comfort. Because God knew this heart of his, he did not rebuke him; instead he made his will known in detail through Nathan.
2 Samuel 7:5
5“Go and tell my servant David, ‘Yahweh says, “Should you build me a house for me to dwell in?
God does not dwell in a house that people have built. Thinking that God dwelt in the tent of meeting, David reasoned that if the ark were moved to a splendid palace, God would receive more glory. But the almighty God does not stay within a space that people have marked out.
In 1 Chronicles 17:4, God told David firmly, “You shall not build me a house to dwell in.” He went on to say that from the day he brought the children of Israel up out of Egypt until that day, he had not lived in a house but had moved around in a tent and in a tabernacle. God had the tabernacle made as a model of heaven, to show that he dwells with his people and is their ruler, that is, their King. The tabernacle is a model of the true heaven and a pattern that reveals Jesus Christ, and it is also a symbol showing that the Holy Spirit is with his people.
However grand and splendid David might make the temple, that would not make it a dwelling place for God. God receives glory through Jesus Christ alone. So we must abandon the thought that he receives glory through human devotion. The reason David could not build the temple is recorded in 1 Chronicles 22:8: “Because you have made great wars and shed blood abundantly, you shall not build a house to my name.” Whatever the reason David shed that blood, when God says not to build the temple, that is the law.
David might have wanted to tell God that he had had no choice but to shed blood, since he had to fight wars in order to live alongside his people. Even so, when God tells us not to build a house to his name, we must obey. Shedding blood, whether he wanted to or not, meant taking the lives of others, and that made him unfit to build God’s holy temple.
1 Chronicles 22:9
9Behold, a son shall be born to you, who shall be a man of peace. I will give him rest from all his enemies all around; for his name shall be Solomon, and I will give peace and quietness to Israel in his days.
To David, who longed so deeply to build the temple, God gave the command that his son Solomon, the man of peace, should build it. David had meant to build the temple with fervent zeal, so God’s command not to build it likely came as a shock. All his life, apart from the matter of Uriah, David served God faithfully with all his heart. When God turns down even a heart like David’s, it shows how hard it is for anyone to live according to God’s will.
To persuade God, David could have protested that he had no choice, since Saul had hunted him, or he could have asked whether he was supposed to stand by while his people were attacked. Yet when God commanded Solomon, who had not shed blood, to build the temple, David obeyed at once, without excuse or complaint. Life is like this: we cannot do only what we like. There are times, as David found, when we must do what we would rather not. David had tried to do what was good even in the midst of war, and still God kept him from building the temple; we realize from this how hard it is to live as someone after God’s own heart.
Solomon’s name means peace, and he foreshadows Christ, the Prince of Peace. God commanded that the house be built by Solomon, who had both the strength to subdue his enemies and a gentle nature that loved the people. Let us look closely at what kind of person God chooses. As his death drew near, David left Solomon this charge: keep the instruction of Yahweh your God, walk in his ways, and keep his statutes, his commandments, his ordinances, and his testimonies, as written in the law of Moses, and you will prosper in all that you do and wherever you turn.
David took the trouble to say this to his son before he died because only by living this way can anyone walk with God. This was the formula by which David had worked through countless problems in his own life, and it is easy to imagine how fervently he passed it on. Solomon heard the promise that God would keep him if only he served Yahweh God with all his heart and all his soul, yet he ended up turning away from God. In his splendid palace, surrounded by a thousand wives and their children and by nations that bowed before him, he came to trust in his own strength and fell.
God forgave the fallen Solomon to the end because of his promise to David that there would not fail him a man on the throne of Israel. It was by no means because of David’s faith that God forgave him. Though Solomon fell, God did not take his loving kindness from him as he took it from Saul, and he kept his promise that David’s house and kingdom would be made sure before him forever. Neither Solomon nor we have held on to such absolute love. God also gave the blessing concerning the Messiah: your throne will be established forever. The promise that eternal blessing would continue through Christ, who would come as David’s descendant, is one that not only the Jews but we ourselves now enjoy.
When Nathan brought him God’s word that he was not to build the temple, David came to see that his wish to build it was his own selfish desire. He realized that a person’s thoughts and zeal for God are not always right. In Psalm 22 David foretells precisely how Christ would bear the cross to accomplish the work of redemption; seeing this, it seems that David, being a prophet, met the Christ who would come as his descendant, just as God had promised. Even after hearing that God had refused his wish and that Solomon would build the temple, David gave thanks rather than grieve. He believed that when God refuses, he has a reason for refusing.
It seems that people whom God approves think differently from the start. Ordinary people would have complained, asking why God was stopping them from building when they had worked hard to remain faithful and wanted to glorify him with a temple. They can be this proud because they insist on their own thinking. After all, they were not asking God for the materials to build the temple; they offered to build it only because they felt sorry to be living in comfort in a splendid palace alone. They would have lost heart, unable to understand why God refused. But David was a wise man who understood God’s true heart.
We must never be the first to complain, whatever the circumstances; we must make every effort to understand God’s will. Yet we, while working hard at God’s work, drop all of it the moment a small problem arises or a disagreement breaks out. Without considering how different our own thinking is from the faith God has in mind, we abandon God on the spot. But no one, however wise, can understand all of God’s deep wisdom. The David who lived wholly by God’s will even in suffering and the David who decided everything by his own judgment are entirely different people.
Since the way we look at a problem has already gone bad, even a decision made for God is not for God at all but for our own satisfaction. Thankfully, though, where proud people leave God when they do not get an answer that satisfies them, David repented with all his heart. Satan darkens the spiritual eyes of God’s people and makes them decide differently from God. Then, even when God’s will is made known to them, he makes them hold to their own thinking to the end. This is the most perilous moment in the life of faith: because they are firmly convinced that they are good, they will not admit they have fallen for Satan’s schemes. They cling, then, to what is wrong and refuse to turn back.
Seen in this light, David was a big-hearted man indeed. As soon as he heard Nathan’s words, he offered Yahweh a prayer of thanks. Although it was through a prophet that he heard God’s word, he bent his own will and showed a faith that offered thanks and praise. Such humility does not come easily to a king. If David the king had insisted that building the temple was a way of giving God glory, he could have built it as he pleased. But David knew the deep purpose of the all-knowing, almighty God, and so he laid down his deepest hope, his plans, and his zeal, and obeyed the word.
2 Samuel 7:19
19This was yet a small thing in your eyes, Lord Yahweh; but you have spoken also of your servant’s house for a great while to come; and this among men, Lord Yahweh!
Knowing well how great and wonderful the love and blessing he had received from God were, David obeyed without condition. He knew it was God’s power that had raised a shepherd boy to be king, protected him from an enemy as strong as King Saul, and made him king over God’s people, and he gave heartfelt thanks. Even after becoming king he always felt how much he fell short, and because of that, though God rebuked him, he could still give thanks from his heart. God had forgiven a man as lacking as he was and led him into a mature faith; that is why he confessed, “You are great, Yahweh God. There is no one like you, neither is there any God besides you.”
You, too, have likely prayed with tears and heartfelt thanks when you were filled, asking how God could ever save a sinner like you. Others may not know it, but you know how thankful you are for the grace of God, who saved a sinner who had done nothing at all. In the same spirit David sang his praise, asking what nation could become the people of the almighty God, and what people had ever been redeemed out of Egypt, from the nations and their gods. David gave thanks that grace was overflowing: God had refused his wish to build the temple, yet he had promised blessing on his descendants. Only those who know how to be grateful for the grace they have received can offer such a prayer.
Then do you know the grace of God? If you have met the God who has worked in every area of your life, then a faith that gives thanks to him must now show itself in your life as well. Human nature is never satisfied, because however much it receives, it wants still more, and it longs to enjoy far more than it already enjoys. We must keep firmly in mind that when we fail to give thanks for the grace we have received, we end up living Saul’s life.
God’s grace was so great that David could find no way to express his gratitude. When Jesus asked Peter three times, “Do you love me?” Peter could find no way to put his heart into words, and he answered that the Lord knew he loved him. David’s heart was probably much the same. Anyone watching David rejoice and praise might think God had given him permission to build the temple. But if they knew he was praising God because he was glad God had turned his plan down, they would be dumbfounded.
Yet whether God refuses my prayer or grants it, the confession that his will is right without condition is a beautiful faith that no one can offer without absolute trust. We must build our trust in God on such a faith. If we believe and depend on him with a trusting heart, we will not stumble. David did not rejoice because his son Solomon would get to build the temple. He did not think it was all right to be refused because his own son would build it instead. He gave thanks because he knew that God does his work at God’s own time, through the person God wants.
A faith that believes nothing can be done without me is clearly flawed. To think that whatever the task, I must be the one to do it and it must go as I planned is mere human stubbornness and self-will. David rejoiced and praised God simply because, even if he was not the one, he could prepare the materials for the one who would build the temple. That is the faith that wins God’s praise.
David prepared everything Solomon would need to build the temple. Though he could not build it himself, he could give himself to the task with joy, since preparing all the materials was also God’s work. When David gave up his plan to build the temple, God, amazingly, showed him a great and far-reaching plan to bless his descendants. This is what faithfulness is: asking God’s will, coming to understand it, and doing as the word says.
2 Samuel 7:6
6For I have not lived in a house since the day that I brought the children of Israel up out of Egypt, even to this day, but have moved around in a tent and in a tabernacle.
David understood that however grand and splendid a temple he built, it would be worthless if God did not dwell in it. When he came to see that God is always with the people of Israel, he gladly gave up building the temple. Heaven is God’s throne and the earth his footstool, so even if David built a temple, God is not one who could be contained there. He is the almighty King who, from the day he brought a nation out of Egypt to be its King until now, has not dwelt in a house made by human hands. While the people lived in the wilderness, he met them in a tent and in a tabernacle, and in their midst he protected them with the pillar of fire and the pillar of cloud, showing them where he was.
Now all God’s people are his temple, and so he walks with us. That means we have no need to search for where God is. Yet David had wanted to build a temple so that this God might rest at ease in a luxurious house like his own. We can imagine his shame at how little he had known God. When he came to see that God, for whom a thousand years are like a day, is the eternal King who would rule Israel even after David had left this world, he realized how childish his idea of building a temple had been.
So David laid aside every selfish desire and, with a humble heart, prayed, entrusting his house and Israel to God. He knew for certain that without God’s protection, even his life and his future would vanish like mist.
As you look at this faith of David, what do you think? If God tells you something is not his will, could you give up any plan at all? Or, when things do not go as you planned, would you grow angry, lose heart when no answer comes, and close your heart to God, to the church, and to your brothers and sisters in faith? When Nathan the prophet told David God’s will, he at once laid down his own will and rejoiced. My hope is that you will look back and ask whether you, unlike him, have stood on your pride and stopped serving because you felt your opinion had been rejected.
Even when it differs from your own will, may you agree wholeheartedly with God’s word and join in God’s will, which is deeper and greater than your wisdom. Even if, like David, you have every ability to build the temple, when God commands you not to, you must have the wisdom, faith, and generosity to prepare what the next person will need to carry out God’s will. As he always had, David gave thanks and praise to the God who pointed out his wrongs, and in this way he grew in maturity of character. This is why God, to keep his promise to David, gave Solomon a chance to be forgiven even when he fell, and kept that promise until Christ came as David’s descendant.
Even when the plans and service you have given your best to are turned down as not being God’s will, I hope you will give heartfelt thanks and praise to God, who never stops giving you another chance. If you have such faith, you will be people who remain in God’s heart. Let us not complain but give thanks, and remain by God’s side in faith.