The Promise Driven Life
2 Samuel 17:1-17
In the late 1990’s, Kaing Guek Eav served with World Vision in western Cambodia. Several years prior, he had made a profession of faith and was baptized by a local pastor. The man who hired Eav described him as “a very, very nice man”. He was known around the World Vision ministry as “gentle Christian teacher who walked around with a Bible and helped hungry refugee children.”[1] In 1999, Eav’s quiet life came to a screeching halt when his true identity was discovered. Prior to his conversion, Eav was known as Comrade Duch, one of the leaders in the communist group known as Khmer Rouge, those responsible for the killing fields of Cambodia where they slaughtered 1.7 million of their own people. Eav admits that he was personally responsible for somewhere between 12,000 -14,000 murders. More amazing still is the fact that the man who hired Eav lost two brothers to communist executioners and the pastor who baptized him lost both parents and two siblings.
You can imagine the shock and anger of the pastor who baptized Eav. But Eav’s profession of faith seemed truly genuine. This same pastor reflected on Eav’s life. “It’s amazing. It’s a miracle. If Jesus can change Eav, he can change anyone.”[2] But can a man like this who committed such atrocities actually be a true Christian? Can God possibly forgive such a man? I love this story because in so many ways, Eav is the ideal poster boy for the Christian faith. If God cannot forgive a man like Eav, then he cannot forgive you and I. But this is the very opposite of how many perceive Christianity. God may be able to forgive our lying, stealing and numerous unloving acts, but surely the Hitlers, Husseins an Eavs of this world are outside the realm of God’s forgiveness. Many arrive at this conclusion because they assume that a person must in some sense earn their forgiveness and/or atone for their sins. Yes, God forgives, but there must be some conditions attached to his forgiveness. God will forgive you if you promise to live a better life. This understanding of forgiveness results in prayers that sound like this: “God, if you can forgive me, I promise to do better next time. I will change my ways.” If such a person lives a good life, God’s forgiveness will remain, but if this same person continues to stumble and fail, God may remove his act of forgiveness. In other words, there is a condition of obedience attached to God’s grace and forgiveness. If I obey, God will forgive. If I don’t obey he will remove his forgiveness.
Many of you have a similar view of Christianity and may not even be aware of it. It is possible to pick up this understanding from Scripture, because there are times when God did lay out conditional promises. God’s covenant promise with Moses would be called a conditional covenant or a conditional promise. A promise and a covenant are basically the same thing. Here is an example of the Mosaic covenant. If you follow my decrees and are careful to obey my commands, I will send you rain in its season, and the ground will yield its crops and the trees of the field their fruit. Your threshing will continue until grape harvest and the grape harvest will continue until planting, and you will eat all the food you want and live in safety in your land. (Lev. 26:3-5) The passage goes on to detail even more examples of the prosperity that comes with obedience. The condition for prosperity was dependent upon obedient living. And as it is with every conditional covenant, a lack of obedience brings punishment. But if you will not listen to me and carry out all these commands, and if you reject my decrees and abhor my laws and fail to carry out all my commands and so violate my covenant, then I will do this to you: I will bring upon you sudden terror, wasting diseases and fever that will destroy your sight and drain away your life. You will plant seed in vain, because your enemies will eat it. I will set my face against you so that you will be defeated by your enemies; those who hate you will rule over you, and you will flee even when no one is pursuing you. (Lev. 26:14-17) The Mosaic covenant was a conditional covenant. Favor and forgiveness from God was conditioned upon obedience to his commands and if you ever stopped obeying, God would remove his forgiveness.
Contrast the covenant with Moses with God’s covenant with Noah. God’s covenant with Noah was an unconditional covenant. And God said, “This is the sign of the covenant I am making between me and you and every living creature with you, a covenant for all generations to come: I have set my rainbow in the clouds, and it will be the sign of the covenant between me and the earth. Whenever I bring clouds over the earth and the rainbow appears in the clouds, I will remember my covenant between me and you and all living creatures of every kind. Never again will the waters become a flood to destroy all life. (Gen. 9:11-15) While we were in Ohio last week, we came out of a building after a rainstorm and were greeted by a beautiful full rainbow. We could see from one end to the other. One end of the rainbow terminated in a group of trees and it looked like the trees were softly painted with a paintbrush of light. There was a double rainbow, but part of it was obscured by the clouds. It was my sister who commented on this promise to Noah, saying how we take it for granted that this is none other than God’s duly ordained sign in the heavens. God’s promise to never again destroy the world by water is a promise that is not conditioned upon our obedience. This is especially true because the promise was also made to the animals as well as to humans. God did not come down and visit the squirrel saying, “Look here, Mr. Squirrel. If you can be the best squirrel you can be, I will not destroy you with a flood. If you stop stealing the other squirrel’s nuts and if you promise not to bother the bird feeders—that is when Noah’s descendants finally get around to inventing bird feeders—I promise not to annihilate you with water. Deal?” Actually, maybe it would have been better if God had made a conditional promise to the animals. It certainly would eliminate all kinds of problems around the house, wouldn’t it? If those pesky rabbits tried to eat your lush vegetable garden, God would see their iniquity and destroy them with a mini-flood. There wouldn’t be a single raccoon left on the planet because they would have been destroyed long ago for the unforgivable sin of breaking into garbage cans.J But we would not have wanted a conditional promise to Noah because we would be the first to be annihilated. But as it stands, God has promised never again to destroy the earth with a flood due to anything we have or have not done.
Similarly, God made an unconditional covenant with David. If you recall, David had planned to build a temple for the Lord. This was David’s plan but it was not God’s, so the Lord sent a message to David through Nathan. Verse eleven: The Lord declares to you that the Lord himself will establish a house for you. This was an intentional play on words. David had wanted to build a “house,” meaning a temple, for the Lord, but instead, the Lord planned to build a “house,” meaning a kingdom, for David. This kingdom would be built through David’s son Solomon. When your days are over and you rest with your fathers, I will raise up your offspring to succeed you, who will come from your own body, and I will establish his kingdom. 13 He is the one who will build a house for my Name, and I will establish the throne of his kingdom forever. 14 I will be his father, and he will be my son. As I mentioned two weeks ago, David’s dynasty of successive kings lasted for 410 years, yet God promised that David’s kingdom would be an eternal kingdom. How could this kingdom last for 410 years but also for all eternity? As was so common with prophetic messages, this promise had a double fulfillment. David would have a son who would indeed build a temple for the Lord. The Lord’s promise was literally fulfilled through Solomon and the successive reign of Israelite kings, but this promise also pointed forward to the eternal kingdom of Jesus Christ.
David probably did not fully grasp what the Lord meant by an eternal kingdom, but in case there is any question, the writer of Hebrews makes this plain. The Son is the radiance of God’s glory and the exact representation of his being, sustaining all things by his powerful word. After he had provided purification for sins, he sat down at the right hand of the Majesty in heaven. So he became as much superior to the angels as the name he has inherited is superior to theirs. For to which of the angels did God ever say, “You are my Son; today I have become your Father”? Or again, “I will be his Father, and he will be my Son”? Verse fourteen of 2 Samuel 7 clearly applies to King Solomon, but the writer of Hebrews wants us to understand that it also applies to King Jesus.
So here is what we have in this passage. We have an unconditional promise that cannot be earned culminating in the eternal kingdom of Jesus Christ and all David has to do is believe the promise. Do you see what this is? This is the gospel being preached to David. The Lord preached the gospel to David through the prophet Nathan. But some of you might be thinking, “How is this possible? How could the gospel have been preached to David in the Old Testament?” We have this distorted understanding of the Bible where we build this impenetrable wall between the Old Testament and the New Testament. The God of the O.T. is all abut rules and wrath. The God of the O.T. is a bloody God who wipes out people with floods, fire and earthquakes. The God of the O.T. required perfect obedience to his commands under the law or else people would not be acceptable in his sight. But in the N.T. we have Jesus who paid for our sins on the cross. The N.T. contains the good news of the gospel but the O.T. only has the bad news of the law. The O.T. shows the holiness and wrath of God and the N.T. shows the mercy and forgiveness of God. This is a very common view of the Bible—and it is horribly wrong. Some people read the O.T. as if Jesus were almost an afterthought in God’s plan. At the very least most believers understand that the coming of Jesus was predicted by the prophets, but what they fail to see that it is not merely the coming of Jesus that is taught in the O.T., but that we also see the preaching of the gospel.
The gospel was preached under the Davidic covenant just as it was preached under the Abrahamic covenant. This is explained in Galatians 3. Consider Abraham: “He believed God, and it was credited to him as righteousness.” Understand, then, that those who believe are children of Abraham. The Scripture foresaw that God would justify the Gentiles by faith, and announced the gospel in advance to Abraham: “All nations will be blessed through you.” So those who have faith are blessed along with Abraham, the man of faith. (Gal. 3:6-9)
The gospel is not an afterthought that God decided to add at the last moment. God has always dealt with his people in the exactly same way—by faith in his promises. What did Abraham do to earn this promise from God? Abraham did not do anything to earn it. God offered it to him free of conditions. What did David do to earn God’s promise that he would be given an eternal kingdom? David didn’t do anything to earn this promise. Two weeks ago I made mention of David’s faithfulness in the sheep pen before God chose to him to be the shepherd of his people. David was a faithful shepherd, but no amount of human faithfulness could ever earn this staggering promise from God. This was grace. This was the gospel—and David knew it was free
Notice how David responded in prayer. Then King David went in and sat before the Lord, and he said: “Who am I, O Sovereign Lord, and what is my family, that you have brought me this far? 19 And as if this were not enough in your sight, O Sovereign Lord, you have also spoken about the future of the house of your servant. Is this your usual way of dealing with man, O Sovereign Lord? David knew that being chosen as a king was an incredible privilege, but he also knew that being chosen as a king of Israel paled in comparison to being chosen as the first king in an eternal kingdom.
Abraham did not earn his salvation, he merely believed God’s promises. David did not earn his salvation, he merely believed God’s promises. Now we get back to Kaing Guek Eav. How can a mass murderer like him hope to earn any bit of forgiveness from God? Of course the answer is that he cannot earn it. He is standing trial for his horrific crimes and he will no doubt receive a harsh punishment. He knows that most people will not be able to forgive his crimes, saying, “I don’t know if my brothers and sisters can forgive the sins I’ve committed against the people.” But he also said, “Thank God that the Lord forgives me.” Is Eav acting presumptuously by believing that God will forgive him? I would say that he is. In fact, that is one way to define faith—that we presume upon God’s promises. This is one area where presumption is not only allowed, but it is necessary.
What if I knocked on your door about 5 pm one evening, and when you opened the door, I walked into the kitchen, sat down at your table and announced, “Hey, what’s for dinner?” Would that be presumptuous? That would be rude and crude, wouldn’t it? If it’s wrong to presume that you will feed me dinner at a moment’s notice, then how can it be alright to presume upon God’s infinite grace of forgiveness? It doesn’t make sense when we put it this way, but this is precisely what God wants us to do. He wants us to presume upon his promise of forgiveness. What if David had answered God’s covenant in this way? “Lord, I really appreciate your offer to build me a house, but you don’t understand—I want to build you a house. I want to do this for you, so please just keep your little gift and allow me to build you a temple.”
No! That would be utter foolishness. If you really understand the gift of salvation, you would respond like David did. Who am I, O Sovereign Lord…? If you could truly grasp the lavish grace of God, it would most definitely feel like you were presuming upon God’s goodness. But that’s OK—it’s supposed to feel that way. When you presume upon God’s grace you assume that he will keep his promise. That is all you are doing—assuming that when God makes a promise he intends to keep it. This is the essence of a promise driven life. You presume that when God offers forgiveness, he will fulfill his promise. You presume that if God can forgive a man who murdered ten thousand people, he can forgive you as well, because here is the key to this forgiveness—it doesn’t depend on you and me. The promise of God to forgive a mass murderer is the same promise from God to forgive me, because I cannot earn this forgiveness any more than a mass murderer can earn it. It doesn’t depend on me. It is an unconditional promise that depends on God’s saving work not on your effort.
How do you know if you are living a promise driven life? I can give you a quick way to know if you are not living a promise driven life—guilt. If you walk around carrying a burden of guilt and condemnation, then you are not living a promise driven life. A person with guilt and condemnation is refusing to believe that God will fulfill his promise. It is as simple as that. If you carry guilt and condemnation, it’s like you have said to God, “Lord, thanks for you offer to build me a house, but I would rather build you a house. Thanks for your offer of forgiveness, but I would rather work out this guilt on my own.” When you carry guilt and condemnation it’s because you are trying to save yourself. You are trying to atone for your own sins. You are not just working out your salvation, you are working on your salvation.
You might think it is presumptuous to believe this lavish grace, but in reality just the opposite is true—it is presumptuous not to believe what God has said. When God promised Abraham that all nations on earth would be blessed through him, he presumed that God would keep his promise. When God promised David that he would establish an eternal kingdom through David, David believed his promise. When God promises you total and complete forgiveness based on the saving work of Christ, just believe his promise. Presume that God will keep his promise.
I think it is wonderful that God gave this promise to David when he did, because David’s greatest failures were still to come. David would need this promise because his dalliance with Bathsheba was just around the corner. David would soon have that pesky little problem of adultery and murder to deal with, and if he had not been living a promise driven life, he would not have had the courage to repent when he was confronted with his sin. David needed this lavish grace, just as you and I need this lavish grace, because we not only have the failures of our past to deal with, but many years or decades of failures in the future.
Rich Maurer
June 8, 2008