Sermon Tone Analysis

WHEN GOD BREAKS YOUR DREAM (II Samuel 7)

I believe it was Walter Cronkite who reported on an interview with Anwar Sadat who had said in the interview that he hoped to retire next year, to be able to step down as President of Egypt and that there would be pceace- i the Middle East.

He so longingly wanted to see peace in that war-torn part of the world.

But this week, we watched with dismay and grief as another man of peace was stricken down by the bullets of assassins.

It makes you wonder what kind of world we live in, when seemingly those who want peace the most are taken out by war-like methods.

I looked at Anwar'spicture and heard of his personal dream to someday see peace, and I realized that his dream was shattered in that burst of gunfire and grenades at a parade.

Have you ever had a broken dream?

Napoleon had one.

He wanted to conquer the world, and as he neared the end of his life he said, "My dreams are broken.

It seems," he said, "that great men have only one destiny and that's to burn out or be consumed, and my life is a dying light in time."

Captain Scott, writing in his diary at the North Pole, said, "This is the end of the dream."

How many times have men and women come to the end of what they thought was a dream?

How many times have we, in our conquests in trying to succeed in life, come to the point where we knew God wanted a certain thing for us, and then, suddenly, like somebody taking a pin to a balloon, the dream was broken.

You may have a son or daughter that you just knew God had this plan for--but they went another direction.

Or you felt that God was calling you into a ministry, maybe to preach or be a missionary, or something like that, and something came along and the dream burst, and there you were with an empty dream.

Maybe it was a romance.

You just knew God had put His hand on it and said, "This is the one for your life."

Everything seemed so right and sure and good and then those words came to you that said, "No.

It's over."

Or maybe death entered, at a most unexpected time.

And the dream was broken. 2 In all of those circumstances, as you looked at them, you had done everything you knew to do and you felt that God surely was in it.

Your life was in tune with God; everything seemed to be right and you could not understand why God would say no to your dream.

I think all of us have experienced that.

Well, David had a dream broken and in II Samuel, chapter 7, I want us to see how God brought it about and dealt with him in it.

I. THE PEACE THAT PROVOKED A DREAM II Samuel 7:1-3: Now it came about when the king lived in his house, and the Lord had given him rest on every side from all his enemies...

You see, there had been war and he'd been fighting for a long time.

And now for the first time in years, apparently, there was peace.

David had yearned for peace and now he had it.

It was one of those rare interludes in his life.

There was national and international peace.

The Lord had given him rest and he stopped to think about it.

I don't know where he was meditating, but the Bible says, in verse 2: ...that the king said to Nathan the prophet, "See now, I dwell in a house of cedar, but the ark of God dwells within tent curtains.1

In this time of peace in his life, he is musing before a fire perhaps; maybe it's raining outside.

He has a beautiful new house that another man had built for him.

He is sitting there, listening to the pitter-patter of rain and then he remembers, "Hey, the tabernacle of God's out there in the rain!

That holy place that means so much to us, the wind is driving the flaps around it and it's raining on it, and here I am. in a nice palace, and God's tabernacle is out there in the rain in a very bad place.

Something ought to be done about it!"

If you'll turn to the Book of Exodus, chapter 25, verse 1, I believe you'll get a little idea of what he wants to do, because all of this fits together when we see that he doesn't get to do it.

It will also help us to understand about this tabernacle.

Then the Lord spoke to Moses saying, "Tell the sons of Israel to raise a contribution for Me; from every man whose heart moves him you shall raise My contribu- tion.

"1And this is the contribution which you are to raise from them: gold, silver and bronze, blue, purple and scarlet material, fine linen, goat hair, rams' skins dyed red, porpoise skins, acacia wood, oil for lighting, spices for the anointing oil and for the fragrant incense, onyx stones and setting stones, for the ephod and for the breastpiece.

"And let them construct a sanctuary for Me, (or a holy place) that I may dwell among them.

3 According to all that I am going to show you, as the pattern of the tabernacle and the pattern of all its furniture, just so you shall construct it.

And in verse 10 is given the size of the tabernacle.

This may surprise you.

Here it is.

"And they shall construct an ark of acacia wood two and a half cubits long, (a cubit is about 18 inches on our measuring scale) and one and a half cubits wide, and one and a half cubits high.

"And you shall overlay it with pure gold, inside and out you shall overlay it, and you shall make the gold molding around it.

That was the tabernacle.

Very small, really, wasn't it?

As I have said, it would just fit on this side of this pulpit area.

It wasn't very large.

Paul Berleson describes the arrangement of the tabernacle: The tabernacle itself was made of three compartments.

Outer Court, Holy Place, and the Holy of Holies.

The Outer Court was 75 by 150 feet (which would be pretty close to the size of this worship center.

Not quite as wide, but probably a little bit longer.)

It contained two pieces of furniture, the bronze altar and the bronze laver.

The Holy Place was 30 by 15 by 15 feet.

It contained a candlestick, table of shewbread, as well as the gold altar of incense.

The Holy of Holies was a perfect cube, 15 by 15 by 15 feet.

It contained the ark of the Covenant (that little two and a half feet by one and a half by one and a half instrument).

And in that, the mercy seat.

The Holy of Holies was separated from the Holy Place by the inner veil.

There was only one entrance into the tabernacle and that was by the gate on the east.

It is important to note that there was only oone door into the presence of God.

The gate on the east was the only entrance into the tabernacle.

That's the reason Jesus later said, "I am the door."

Later, we'll dig into a study of that tabernacle, because everything in it has a deeper meaning.

There are fifty chapters in the Bible written about the tabernacle and only three chapters about creation.

We spend more time on the creation than we do on the tabernacle, but it's such a magnificent picture of Jesus Christ and the atonement.

We'll dig into it later.

But for now, I want you to get the picture: David's sitting there and this ark, this small piece of furniture is out there in this larger kind of tent -- 150 by 75 feets an& it's possibly raining and cold.

Here he is in a nice place and he says, "God ought to have a nice place for His tabernacle."

So David calls his friend Nathan, his confidant, in verse 2. Nathan is his buddy, his preacher-friend who later has to come to him and confront him, face-to-face 4 about his sin.

And he says to him, "I want to build a place for God."

That's a good thing to want to do, isn't it?

but the ark of God dwells within tent curtains."

And Nathan (like a good friend) said to the king, "Go, do all that is in your mind, for the Lord is with you."

What an encouraging friend.

Nathan, the encourager said, "Go to it, David.

That's a good thing."

David had a good dream and a good resolve.

There's nothing wrong with that.

He wanted to do something for God.

That was his dream.

He was in a time of peace and musing, and he had a great resolve to do something big for God.

That's why it's so important to have a "quiet time."

Have you ever been to a camp or a retreat where they have that "quiet time?"

You go out alone by the lake, and you have that fireside service, and they ask you to be quiet and listen for a while.

Or you go out under a tree and think, or you go climb a mountain.

No one else is around.

You may go to the beach and listen to the waves.

You experience those quiet times of life and you know, some of our greatest resolves for God are made in those quiet times.

Sometimes God moves in the quietest times of our services.

In the quiet place of your heart, God does business.

I remember when I knew God had called me to preach.

I came to that conclusion after struggling for years, in a very simple, quiet moment.

There wasn't anyone around.

It wasn't at church.

I wasn't at a campfire.