Covenant King

2 Samuel 7 is a passage we hear frequently. It is an important passage because it is God’s establishment of His covenant with David. The chapter is divided into two sections. The first section starts with the king sitting in his house and goes through the vision that God gives to Nathan the prophet. Yahweh had given David rest from all his enemies, so David decided to build a house for God. Yahweh came to Nathan that night and told him that He would build a house for David; that He would establish David’s son after him as king over His people forever and that the house of David and his kingdom would be made sure forever.

The second section opens with King David sitting before the ark of Yahweh. This is the only time in scripture that sitting is described as a posture of prayer, but it is fitting. This is David’s coronation prayer as the enthroned Servant-King. He prays in response to the word that God had given and is staggered that God would choose him and his house. He says, “You have spoken also of your servant’s house for a great while to come, and this is instruction for mankind, O Lord Yahweh!” God had already shown throughout Israel’s history that He is God and there is no other; that He both shatters nations and raises up a people for His own name. When He establishes His King and His Kingdom forever, it means that all kings and nations must bow to Him. “Kiss the son lest he be angry, and you perish in the way, for his wrath is quickly kindled. Blessed are all who take refuge in him.”

God’s promise to David that his offspring would be established after him included Solomon, who built the temple, the house of God. It included the whole Davidic line of kings, some of whom were great and godly men, and others who were scoundrels that Yahweh disciplined with the rod. The promise finds its apex in Jesus Christ, of whom, even before His conception, it was said that “He will be great and will be called the Son of the Most High. And the Lord God will give to him the throne of his father David, and he will reign over the house of Jacob forever, and of his kingdom there will be no end.”

But it doesn’t end with Jesus receiving the kingdom alone. We are also included as heirs in this promise. In 2 Corinthians 6, Paul quotes from the Davidic covenant, but includes all of us in it, saying, “as God said… “I will be a father to you, and you shall be sons and daughters to me.” This is true of all the promises that God established with His people; what is true of Jesus is true of His bride. As Paul points out in Galatians 3, because Jesus is the singular seed of Abraham, we are all seeds of Abraham. Jesus is raised from the dead, so we have a sure hope that we will be raised with Him (1 Cor 15). Jesus is seated at the right hand of the Father, and we are seated at the right hand of the Father in Christ (Eph 2). Jesus is king and priest, so we are a nation of kings and priests (Rev 1). Jesus has all authority in heaven and on earth, and He sets us about the business of discipling the nations in His name (Mat 28). All things are His and He freely gives us all that He has (Rom 8).


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