Sermon Tone Analysis

In Hawaii, because of the time difference with the continental U.S., the NFL Monday Night Football game is played in mid-afternoon, so the local TV station delays its telecast until 6:30 in the evening.

When your favorite team plays, some are too excited to wait for television, so they will listen to the game on the radio, which broadcasts it live.

Then, because its their favorite team, they’ll watch the game on television, too.

Now if I know my team has won the game, it influences how I watch it on television.

If my team fumbles the ball or throws an interception, it's not a problem.

I think, That's bad, but it's okay.

In the end, I know we will win!

When going through trouble, knowing the final outcome makes all the difference…right?

Yes we declare that we have the victory is Jesus.

We know that we will be victorious in the end we will get it all.

But for many of us, we do not walk in light of this truth.

We walk around defeated and lost.

Its almost like in our lives, we don’t know that we will win in the end.

We struggle because we either want the benefits now or its not the kind of benefits we really want.

Yes we want success… we live in a society that lives and breathes success.

Success gets you anything in all areas and we have all bought into it hook line and sinker.

But the victories and rewards can be out of place.

Success can and does cause damage to the kingdom of heaven and damage to its citizens.

Here is the key… The victories we want are the ones that come from the Lord.

The rewards we want are the ones we give back to the Lord.

We will see this truth in our passage today.

Last week we witnessed the prayer of a man after God’s own heart.

We saw how it was a great example as to how we should approach the Lord in our daily times in prayer.

The Lord had made a promise to bring David a prosperous kingdom and one that will last for all eternity with one of his descendants on the throne… an eternal dynasty.

What we will see today are the promises of God starting to become a reality.

David defeats the Philistines in Gath, the city of Goliath.

Interestingly, David destroys Moab.

David was part Moabite a descendant of the Moabite Ruth.

Why would he do this?

Especially since he received refuge for his parents in Moab while he fled from Saul.

A Jewish tradition says that it was because the Moabites killed his parents.

It was a disturbing picture of execution.

And the Moabites paid him tribute money.

He destroyed the forces of Hadadezair.

The Arameans from Damascus came to help and David slaughtered 22,000 of them.

The Arameans paid David tribute money.

And here is the Key Verse.

And the Lord made David victorious wherever he went.

David was congratulated by the king of Toi and since the king of Toi was an enemy of Hadadezair he gave David many gifts.

David then dedicated all of the gifts, spoils, and rewards to the Lord.

The chapter now returns to the victories given to David by God.

He defeated the Edomites and they became the subjects of David as well paying tribute.

Again the key verse… In fact, the Lord made David victorious wherever he went.

And David was surrounded by men of strength, skill, stature and wisdom.

The passage shows the reality of the promises made by the Lord and the reality of its fulfillment.

2 Samuel 8:

The grass withers, the flower fades, but the word of our God stands forever.

Victories

Rewards

The Kingdom of God

The first think we will explore is the start of the fulfillment of the promises of God to David and how the victories we must hold onto are the victories that come from the Lord.

The second thing are the rewards that the Lord gives are we prepared to give them back?

Finally, we will see how our Lord rejected the kingdoms of the world for the beauty of the kingdom of God.

Thesis: The world and sin cause us to doubt the promises of God and his kingdom, because of blindness to the truth of the Lord, but it is Christ that will open to us the light of truth and that the power of the Holy Spirit will hold us fast to the Lord always as citizens of the kingdom of heaven.

Rewards

The Kingdom of God

I.

The Victories

- We are witnessing the fulfillment of God’s promises to David.

A. The text is pretty clear.

Victories upon victories.

We see here a common theme … the Hebrew Naw kaw “conquered destroyed, smite or strike down.”

Appears… v. 1,2,3,5,9,10,13.

The author is making it very clear that David was clearly unbeatable.

B. We see the reason here as to why…

2 Samuel

C. The author is showing us… well… we are watching the promise of God being fulfilled.

We are seeing the early preliminary fulfillments of the Davidic covenant that we understand to be foundational to understanding the New Testament.

D. This is important because we know that what we will see here is the picture of the kingdom of heaven with our king Jesus who sits at the right hand of the Father.

E. The victories over David’s enemies was of course given to him by the Lord.

This is the theme...

F. The Lord gave David victory over his enemies just like the Father will give the son victory.

One of the most important passages concerning the Davidic covenant.

I.

The Victories

- We are witnessing the fulfillment of God’s promises to David.

G.

I will come back to this later… but let’s deal with some issues here.

H. Number 1.

I know that much of what we uncover here seems pretty brutal.

I mean the severity of what David does could be considered war crimes today.

How is this possible?

Many of us have difficulty reading passages like this and trying to understand why stuff like this happens.

Let us not forget a common mistake we make today when reading and understanding the Bible.

I. We must do all that we can to refrain from evaluating the acts of war here by today’s standards.

This was a time and place that is not like todays western culture.

And so we must understand that we should not be distracted and disgusted by the events here, but understand the point being made.

God caused David to be victorious.

God fulfilled the promise that he made to David in such a way that the victories were of no doubt.

J. Just like we see in the NT as to how God will fulfill his promise to Christ.

Like I said many times I believe that the book of Revelation is the fulfilling of the promise to make all of Christ’s enemies His footstool.

That is what we read about… God’s enemies will be destroyed violently and harshly with cosmic force.

With astounding and baffling power that we could not nor cannot imagine.

This is the future of what we eagerly await.

The final and eternal fulfillment of the promise of God to establish David’s kingdom in Christ forever.

We are seeing the beginnings of it all here.

K. The second thing.

We have got to keep in check imposing our western individualistic and consumeristic societies ideologies on this text and its theme verse.

Again, V.14 In fact, the Lord made David victorious wherever he went.

The temptation is to see this verse as foundational to what some biblical scholars call success theology.