Sermon Tone Analysis

Daily Discipleship Guide ESV, Unit 11, Session 3

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Edited by Rev. Lex DeLong, M.A., Aug. 2022.

There are six main covenants in the Bible:

++Noahic

++Abrahamic

++Mosaic

++Palestinian (Land)

++Davidic

++New

A Covenant is an agreement between 2 parties that consists of (Davidic Covenant elements):

++A NAMING a great name (9)

++A SIGN rest (11) — cut off all your enemies...” (9)

++A DURATION “forever” — descendants to rule a kingdom (11) and a “seed” who’s rule God will establish forever (12, 13, 16)

++THE SCOPE a new Father-son relationship with the sons of David, God as their Father (14)

++THE COMMANDS individual responsibility to and accountability for compliance to obedience (14-15; 2 Chron.

7:17-22).

[No 2nd party, so unilateral]

++THE PROMISE the words “house,” “kingdom,” “throne,” and “forever” (16) [the heart of this covenant]

Two types of Covenants in the Bible (and ANE culture):

++BILATERAL: conditional on both parties, that is that both parties have responsibilities in it to fulfill it — both man and God.

++Of those six covenants named in the Bible, only one is bilateral, the Mosaic Covenant (Exodus 19-34).

++GRANT: unconditional, that is that only one party has responsibilities in it and the power to fulfill it — God

++All the other 5 covenants named in the Bible are unilateral.

Christianity is not the compiling and maintaining of a doctrinal corpus, but rather the exercising of a personal relationship with the one and only living and loving God who created you.

So you might ask, “Then what does all of this have to do with us?

Let me suggest the following.

The Bilateral Mosaic Covenant demonstrated clearly that we were powerless to fulfill that doctrinal corpus and were fully dependent upon God to establish and fulfill that which we couldn’t; hence, the Grant Covenants in the Bible.

The Mosaic Covenant was to prove our futility, the Grant Covenants were to prove His Sovereignty.

The Mosaic Covenant was for us to surrender self-sufficiency, the Grant Covenants were for us to accept God-dependency.

The Mosaic Covenant was to demonstrate God’s incommunicable attributes, the Grant Covenants were to manifest God’s communicable attributes.

The Davidic Covenant is a grant-type covenant (2 Sam.

7:9-16).

Ask:

Based on what we just discussed, what is the underlying purpose for us to understand about the Davidic covenant, aside from its specific implications for Israel?

(it is futile for us to live up to God’s standard and need Him to intervene in His Sovereignty, etc.)

Like each of the Grant Covenants, The Davidic Covenant continues to build on the previous covenants (Abrahamic and Land [except for the Bilateral Mosaic]) but does not nullify them.

Note the presence of the Land grant in the body of this covenant with David (vs.

10).

Individual blessings were able to be forfeited from disobedience, but not the eternal promise to David’s kingly line or throne (Psalm 89:20-37; Jer.

33:14-26).

Although David was prevented from building a “house” for the Lord, God would make of David a “house” (11), a royal dynasty.

Note: Any view of eschatology has difficulty fitting the eternal nature of the Davidic dynasty into their view of the timing of Christ’s return, and the nature of the king and his rule over an earthly kingdom, other than the Premillennial view, at least when interpreting the above passages literally and normative in historical context.

End of personal worksheet

Outline:

++God promises to give His people eternal rest from their enemies (2 Sam.

7:8-11a, spiritual and eternal rest can only be found from God, God’s way).

++God promises to establish an eternal kingdom (2 Sam.

7:11b-13, belonging with God is defined and accomplished by God, alone).

++God promises to provide an eternally beloved son (2 Sam.

7:14-16, put your trust in God who provides eternally).

Session in a Sentence: God promised that He would give His people the true King they needed and fulfilled that promise in Jesus.

++Put your trust in God alone in order to find spiritual and eternal rest and a belonging with God that is defined and accomplished by Him Alone.

Main Passage: 2 Samuel 7:8-16

On July 4, 1952, Florence Chadwick, age 34, stepped into the cold waters of the Pacific Ocean off Catalina Island to go swimming.

This was not a recreational swim but a challenge swim: She wanted to be the first woman to swim the twenty-one mile channel between Catalina Island and the California coastline.

The physical challenge was daunting.

The visible and invisible sea creatures, including the sharks circling her, were intimidating.

But the fog hemmed her in.

She could hardly see her support boats that carried her mother, her trainer, and her support staff, and though they encouraged her to keep going, the fog ended her challenge.

After swimming 15 hours and 55 minutes, exhausted, she asked to be taken out of the water.

Sitting in the boat, she found out she only had a half-mile left to reach her destination.

Later she told a reporter: “Look, I’m not excusing myself, but if I could have seen land I know I could have made it.”

1

Sometimes our biggest struggle is not our own inability but our lack of trust in the process, God’s process.

We train, we plan, we start, but we cannot see how closely God’s provision is tracking with us, just ahead of us as He clears our path.

Ask:

Why might it be difficult to fix our eyes on eternal things instead of what is immediately before us?

Point 1: God promises to give His people eternal rest from their enemies (2 Sam.

7:8-11a, spiritual and eternal rest can only be found from God, God’s way).

David brought the ark of the covenant into Jerusalem, but it remained in a tent.

David wanted to build a house for the Lord (2 Sam.

7:1-2), but the Lord said no on account of his years as a warrior-king (1 Kings 5:3-5) and because the Lord had not commanded that to be done (2 Sam.

7:4-7).

Yet the Lord had more to say, so through the prophet Nathan, God said He would make a house—a dynasty for David.

The foundation of this house was God’s promise to give Israel what she had longed for—rest.

8 Now, therefore, thus you shall say to my servant David, ‘Thus says the Lord of hosts, I took you from the pasture, from following the sheep, that you should be prince over my people Israel.

9 And I have been with you wherever you went and have cut off all your enemies from before you.

And I will make for you a great name, like the name of the great ones of the earth.

10 And I will appoint a place for my people Israel and will plant them, so that they may dwell in their own place and be disturbed no more.

And violent men shall afflict them no more, as formerly, 11a from the time that I appointed judges over my people Israel.

And I will give you rest from all your enemies.

When the Israelites were slaves in Egypt centuries before, God promised that He would take them out of a land of slavery to a land that had rest on every side.

Now, generations later, the Lord brought rest to the battle-scarred, blood-soaked land through King David (v. 1).

But as we see in God’s promise to David, God had something much more profound in mind for His people.

The rest that they were experiencing was incomplete.

It was a shadow of the substance that was yet to come.

The rest was found in their context, but not spiritually in their hearts.

The work of completing His rest in their hearts was still left to be accomplished over time.

Through Moses, God’s people were brought out of slavery, but they had not yet entered their promised rest.

So the promise was reiterated time and again for forty years (e.g.

Deut.

12:8-14).

Through Joshua, God brought His people into the land and gave them victory over their enemies, leading to a limited rest in the land (Josh.

11:23; 23:1), but the Lord allowed some nations to remain to test them, tests that they failed (Judg.

2:20-23).

Through the judges, God preserved His people and disciplined them so that they might turn from their evil ways and pursue Him alone (2:11-19).

God had shown them partial rest in their context, but had not yet taught them spiritual rest in their hearts.

Ask:

How can we be at rest physically but still spiritually restless?

(we can enjoy being in our sin; we can settle for satisfaction and fulfillment in anything other than God; we can find ourselves coasting through life without regard for spiritual matters)

Taking God’s promises to David here as a whole, otherwise known as the Davidic covenant, we see that rest would come through someone in David’s lineage, but supplied by God Himself.

This “rest” would begin in this life and reverberate into the next (2 Sam.

7:13).

We know that the descendant who would provide this rest is Jesus Christ, the son of David (Matt.

1:1), the one to reign physically over His earthly kingdom and after — for eternity.

And we know that Jesus did not come just to provide this rest for the nation of Israel but for all who trust in Him as Savior and King.

• Jesus referred to Himself as the Lord of the Sabbath (Luke 6:1-5), the day of the Lord’s rest in creation, and in doing so, He declared that the rest that God promised, the rest that we need, is found in Him.

• As the Lord of all rest, Jesus provided the rest that we long for and need by dying in our place to redeem us from all that enslaves us in this world.