God's Covenant with David was Unconditional (3), 2 Samuel 7:18-29

Let us continue to consider God’s unconditional covenant with David by seeing how David himself understood the covenant.

·        7:18-22: David acknowledged that God did not make this covenant with him based on his goodness or works.  His response is to ask, “Who am I” that you have done the good things for me up to this point, much less the good thing you promise to do after I am gone. 

·        7:23-24: David recognizes that God’s covenant with him and his house is just what God said it was: the means of faithfully carrying out His promises to Israel.  The Abrahamic Covenant is bigger than the Davidic Covenant; the latter is God’s plan in fulfilling the former.

·        7:25-26: David accepts God’s word to him by faith, acknowledging that what it does is to magnify God.  You can say that at this point David asks God to establish his house; but it is a typical prayer, asking God to do what He has said He would do.  Our prayers should be the same: praying for God’s will!

·        7:27-29: After God had referred to David as His servant (v5,8) David refers to himself by the same title ten times (v19-21,25-29).  David is saying that this is something God has determined to do of His own will as his Lord.  David’s response is not to glory in his greatness but to vow to continue to be God’s servant.

Consider the words of David in 7:20: For You, Lord God, know Your servant.  God knows David.  In making a covenant forever God knows what David will do in the matter of Uriah the Hittite (his immoral relationship with Bathsheba) as well as his self-honoring census of Israel near the end of his life.  God knows the sins of David’s descendants.  Yet God makes a covenant forever.  God knows that the fulfillment of this covenant will involve His Son, Jesus Christ, born of the seed of David according to the flesh (Luke 1:32-33; Rom. 1:3; 2 Tim. 2:8).  

Consider something else.  God knows that this imperfect man will become one of the grandest types/pictures of the Messiah in all of Scripture.  Isaac and Joseph (the son of Jacob) and Joshua are all powerful pictures of the Messiah.  But when we read the Psalms we cannot miss that God’s revelation of His Son is most powerfully portrayed through King David, the man after God’s own heart.  

Now let us learn what it means for God to make an unconditional covenant.  God does the work; men believe and receive.  This is the picture we have of Abraham in Gen. 15 where he slept through the entire ceremony.  It is the picture we have of David.  And it is the reality of the New Covenant where God again made one I will after another (Jer. 31:31-34). Let us glory in the grace of God and live under this grace.  Let us be strong in the grace that is in Christ Jesus.