The King of the Endless Now
Notes
Transcript
Prophets don’t know everything. Our Old Testament lesson opens with David wanting to build God a house, and Nathan telling him that sounded grand, only for God to make it clear that he didn’t want David to build him a house.
It is our natural tendency to want to do religion, to do things for God. We instinctively think that God wants us to do things for him, but that inclination is generally wrong. Rather, it is God who wants to do things for us.
Let us pray… Amen.
Grace to you and peace from him who is and who was and who is to come, and from the seven spirits who are before his throne, and from Jesus Christ the faithful witness, the firstborn of the dead, and the ruler of kings on earth.
To him who loves us and has freed us from our sins by his blood and made us a kingdom, priests to his God and Father, to him be glory and dominion forever and ever. Amen
For millennia, people have wanted to feed the gods, to offer them sacrifices. Now, to be sure, there was sacrifice in Jewish worship, but it wasn’t to feed God. It was to show them that even though they offered their very best to God, he would still feed them and take care of them. It was to teach them faith. In fact, the sacrifices not only did not feed God, God used those sacrifices to feed the priests.
We also want to do things to cause our salvation. We want to be good, moral, sinless, or when we sin, offer things that will satisfy God and make him favor us. But God doesn’t want us to save ourselves, nor can we, because he is also the doer of salvation; God desires to save us, and so, it is the only way we can be saved.
In David’s story, our Old Testament lesson today, King David wants to build God a house, a temple. God makes it clear through Nathan, the prophet, that he doesn’t need a contractor. God can and will build his own house. In the verses left out of our first reading today, in fact, left out of the three-year Sunday preaching calendar altogether, verses 12 through 15, God tells Nathan and David that he will use David’s offspring to build him a house. I think David, and especially Solomon, and nearly all the rest of the Jews and Christians through these thousands of years have misunderstood what is meant in verses 12 and 13. “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.”[1]
So what happened when King David died? Solomon, his son, his offspring built a temple. And a glorious temple it was, but is that what God meant when he said that David’s offspring would build him a house? I don’t think so. If anything, Solomon’s splendid temple was a mere shadow of the house God would build through his own Son, who is David’s offspring. God would establish his kingdom, and build his throne for all generations—and for ever. That changes everything.
Now, I think we understand this somehow; we know that finally, this is really about the Messiah. But in the mix, we get things a bit confused by imagining there is still something we must do. Let me be clear; let God be clear too. There isn’t. There is nothing we must do, nothing we can do, nothing God wants us to do that will effect our salvation or establish the kingdom of God. If we consult God’s Word, we will discover all that he wants us to do for him. We do not need to invent things along the way. We will do well to let God do things his way. Indeed, we may find that this is only logical. How can we build a temple that will last forever? Will wood and stone and gem outlast the fiery judgment of all creation that is coming?[2] If we are awaiting new heavens and a new earth,[3] a brand new creation, what will happen to the things of this creation? What will befall Solomon’s temple, or any temple made with human hands for however noble a purpose. Burned. Dissolved.
But what will happen to God’s temple? It is established forever. Don’t you know that you are God’s temple? You are where God’s Spirit dwells, for he lives in the midst of his people.[4] The house of God that God is building, that temple which can never be destroyed, that is established forever throughout eternity, is you. “The Word became flesh and dwelt among us.”[5]
This is the mystery made clear to us in the New Testament. It was often fuzzy to the patriarchs and prophets. They did not have the fuller revelation of God’s Word. Nonetheless, the same obedience of faith was expected of David as was asked of Mary and is demanded of us. We must hear God’s message and believe. David had to do the same. His nature said, Build God a house. But the prophetic word came back to him through Nathan. I will build you a house. An obedience of faith was required. This is difficult for us. We want to do something, but must instead, trust God to do something better. That is faith. It is obedience.
We would build a house of the here and now, a house that will be destroyed by the natural causes of war, disuse, natural disaster, or just the desire to remodel or altogether rebuild—or finally, be destroyed in God’s judgment. But God would build a forever house, eternal as his kingdom. I ask you: Which is better: Our temple or God’s? If you would choose God’s house, if you would say with Mary, “Let it be to me according to your word,”[6] then it requires obedience, a fear, love, and trust in God—an “obedience of faith.”[7] This “may it be to me according to your word” is the faith necessary for God to dwell in the midst of his people, thus making them an eternal house of living stones[8], a kingdom forever.
We believe what Jesus declared: “Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up”[9] because “Christ is faithful over God’s house as a son. And we are his house, if indeed we hold fast our confidence and our boasting in our hope.”[10] Our obedience of faith is displayed in a confident hope in Christ that he really has prepared a forever home for us[11] with him, with his Father and his Spirit.
Now, you may think that this all sounds too good to be true because you are no good, nothing special, not possibly one to be favored by God. You may think that you must first do some great religious thing, or somehow become holy. This kind of thinking is only natural and human. So, consider Mary, a “favored one.”[12] The Lord was with her[13] but what had she built for God? What holy works had she done? Nothing was nothing so great that there is a record of it. Yet she, one without religious merit, was favored by God. And that troubled her[14] just as it troubles us. God has favored each and every one of us, sinners with no merit. He would come and dwell among us, within us, no less so than he did Mary. And the very idea of it troubles us.
There must be something we should do. Yet all God asks of us is that we take him at his word. Believe. What more is asked in this season of Advent waiting than trust? What holy response could be expected in the nearby season of Christmas than belief? What was expected of Mary? What can be asked of you and me but the obedient faith of believing God’s word to us, for us? There is nothing else asked because God will do it all.
God will establish a place for his Son, for himself, to dwell among us. It will be a place of grace, a kingdom of unmerited favor, and so, a place where “righteousness dwells”[15] because that righteousness will not be our own, a religious self-righteousness, but instead, his righteous given to us. That is the only way we will ever come to dwell with the King of heaven.
Advent does not wait for an earthly king like Judas and others wanted.[16] We await the King of Christmas, the King of eternity, the Ruler of “an endless now.”[17] We await the King of kings. Again, this is not a king over other earthly kings but rather, the King over righteous kings, those who believed in him, not with religious obedience but with the obedience of faith. He is the King of those who will reign with him in eternity,[18] those who will reign in a house God built in the glory of an endless now because they endured through faith in Christ in this life. We are those kings over whom he is King of kings.
“To him who loved us, and washed us from our sins in his own blood, and has made us kings and priests to God and his Father—to him be glory and dominion for ever and ever. Amen.”[19]
[1] The Holy Bible: English Standard Version (Wheaton, IL: Crossway Bibles, 2016), 2 Sa 7:12–13.
[2] 2 Pe 3:10
[3] 2 Pe 3:13
[4] 1 Co 3:16
[5] The Holy Bible: English Standard Version (Wheaton, IL: Crossway Bibles, 2016), Jn 1:14.
[6] The Holy Bible: English Standard Version (Wheaton, IL: Crossway Bibles, 2016), Lk 1:38.
[7] The Holy Bible: English Standard Version (Wheaton, IL: Crossway Bibles, 2016), Ro 16:26.
[8] 1 Pe 2:5
[9] The Holy Bible: English Standard Version (Wheaton, IL: Crossway Bibles, 2016), Jn 2:19.
[10] The Holy Bible: English Standard Version (Wheaton, IL: Crossway Bibles, 2016), Heb 3:6.
[11] Jn 14:2
[12] The Holy Bible: English Standard Version (Wheaton, IL: Crossway Bibles, 2016), Lk 1:27–28.
[13] Ibid.
[14] Lk 1:29
[15] The Holy Bible: English Standard Version (Wheaton, IL: Crossway Bibles, 2016), 2 Pe 3:13.
[16] Jn 6:15
[17] R. C. H. Lenski, The Interpretation of St. Luke’s Gospel (Minneapolis, MN: Augsburg Publishing House, 1961), 68.
[18] 1 Ti 2:12
[19] The Holy Bible: King James Version, Electronic Edition of the 1900 Authorized Version. (Bellingham, WA: Logos Research Systems, Inc., 2009), Re 1:5–6.