Reader’s Guide: “The Word for Today” Saturday, November 10, 2012 Read – 2 Samuel 7 & 8 The seventh chapter of 2 Samuel is the most important chapter in the long history of God’s people told in the books of Samuel and Kings. It is also one of the most important chapters in the whole Old Testament. In this chapter God makes a great promise to David and his descendants that will lead forward to the time of Jesus as the Messiah. The story begins with David, now secure in this kingship, proposing the idea that a “house” be built for God – a place for the Ark of the Covenant to dwell and for people to come and worship God. David knows that he has been blessed by God and seeks to do something great for God in return. One of the interesting things about this story is that at first God rejects the idea of anyone building a “house” for God. This story is a lot like the earlier story when God rejects the request of the people that God give them a king. David wants to build a “house” for God. God has other ideas. And God’s plan of action is huge and powerful for the whole story of the relationship between God and the people of God. The story makes use of a play on the word “house.” God’s plan is to build a “house” out of David that will last forever and through which God will reign among his people. We have heard the idea before of the “anointed one” with regard both to Saul and to David. In one way this is a simple and ordinary event. Samuel anoints Saul with oil to identify that he is the one chosen to be king – even though God does not really want to do this. And Samuel anoints David to become the new king after Saul is rejected by God. This anointing is simply the ordinary process of pouring oil on the head of the designated king. What is really important for us to think about now is how that whole idea that had ordinary beginnings takes on a whole new meaning as time goes by. The Hebrew word that we translate as “anointed” is “messiah” – its Greek equivalent is “christ”. The two words had an ordinary meaning and were used in common settings for a long time. Eventually the words “anointed, messiah, christ” will take on a powerful new meaning for God’s people. The root of that change in meaning happens here where God declares that he will make a “house” out of David. David the “anointed one” is the root of the concept of “messiah” which will eventually be applied to Jesus, the “Son of David” in the New Testament. God’s promise is bold and powerful. David and his descendants will reign forever as God’s “Messiah.” As we consider the story we have been reading, this is the place where God embraces the concept of the “messiah/king” – a human request God had first rejected. God does not embrace this idea in quite the way human beings had envisioned. God’s Messiah will not conquer every human enemy by force. In fact, God’s Messiah will suffer and be crucified and raised from death. In fact, God will take on human flesh and blood in Jesus and become the Messiah for his people – but that is way into the future. The concept of the Messiah is important here because of the bold promise God makes to David – David’s kingdom will last forever! And in this story David accepts God’s promise and so do the people of God. God’s people will hold God to this promise as years go by. And sometimes it will be hard for them to do that. One of the most challenging chapters in the Bible is Psalm 89. In the end of that Psalm, the psalmist will accuse God of going back on this very promise God made to David. The kingdom of David was destroyed by the Babylonians, and it appeared that God had not kept his promise. Yet, the promise continues and grows into the longing of God’s people for the coming of “The Messiah!” And God does keep his promise. As Christians, our confession is that Jesus is the long awaited Messiah. One more thing about the “house” David desires to build for God. Eventually God will accept this human idea too and Solomon will build the Temple David envisioned. But that “house” will not be without its problems. By the time of Jeremiah, that very “house” had become the thing that prevented the people of Jeremiah’s day to hear the Word of God and repent. They had begun to think that because they “had God securely in God’s house” they would never be destroyed no matter what they did. They put God in a box. And that’s probably why God was not so keen on David’s idea. But God lets human beings have their way – even using their ideas to further God’s own plans. Certainly God used the Temple over the course of time – but the Temple was not without its dangers. At the time of Jesus, the Temple had once again become a great obstacle to God’s work and needed to be destroyed. Jesus’ cleansing of the Temple and prediction that the day would come when not one stone would rest upon another in the Temple, bring the Temple finally to an end. The Jewish War of 66-70 AD brought Jesus’ words to fulfillment, and the Temple was finally destroyed once and for all in 70 AD. If chapter 7 is a great and powerful chapter in the story of Samuel and Kings, chapter 8 is a great disappointment. One can only wonder what to think of David making Moabites lie down on the ground and measuring them off with a cord with two executed for each one spared. This sounds like something out of the Holocaust – lining up prisoners at open ditches and mowing them down with machine guns. The chapter does not get much better. David is pictured as a brutal warrior. It is chapters like this one that gives the Old Testament such a bad name and puts a bad taste in the mouth of readers. The chapter does claim that it is God who is giving David the victories; but, in light of Jesus who we meet later in the Sermon on the Mount and other places, one can’t help but wonder what God is really thinking of all of this. History has been marked with many who have committed atrocities in the name of God – all of them very sure that this is God’s doing. I’m not so sure that we shouldn’t hear all of this in that light. Of course we can’t know for sure what God was thinking about all of this. But we should not step back from wondering – again in light of Jesus who was bold to say, “You have heard it said by those of old, ‘an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth’ but I say to you, love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you.” It is hard to imagine Jesus endorsing all these action of David. Again asking these questions and thinking in this way makes reading the Bible more complex and ambiguous. The writers most likely describe what really happened, but that does not mean that everything unfolds like God would want it too.