Brooks, Leonard: The Shepherd ~ 2 Samuel 7

Second Samuel, chapter seven this morning. If you're using your Pew- a Pew Bible, it's page two hundred and fifty five. Second Samuel, chapter seven, and we'll read the first seventeen verses. Second Samuel seven verse one. Now it came to pass when the king was dwelling in his house, and the Lord had given him rest from all his enemies and all around. The king said to Nathan the prophet, see now, I dwell in a house of cedar, but the ark of God dwells inside tent curtains. Then Nathan said to the king, go do all that is in your heart, for the Lord is with you. But it happened that night that the word of the Lord came to Nathan, saying, go and tell my servant David, thus says the Lord, what you, would you build a house for me to dwell in? For I have not dwelt in houses since the time that I brought the children of Israel from Egypt, even to this day, but have moved about in a tent and in a tabernacle. Wherever I have moved about with all the children of Israel, have I ever spoken a word to anyone from the tribes of Israel, whom I commanded to shepherd my people Israel, saying, why have you not built me a house of cedar? Now for th- th- now therefore, thus said you, thus shall you say to my servant David, thus saith the Lord of hosts, I took you from the shepherd sheepfold, from following the sheep to be ruler over my people Israel. And I have been with you what e- wherever you have gone, and have cut off all your enemies from before you, and have made you a great name, like the name of the great men who are in the, on the earth. Moreover, I will appoint a place for my people Israel, and will plant them that they may dwell in a place of their own and move no more, nor shall the sons of wickedness oppress them anymore as previously. Since the time that I commanded judges to be over my people Israel and have caused you to rest from all your enemies, also the Lord tells you that he will make you a house. When your days are fulfilled and you rest with your fathers, I will set up your seed after you who shall come from your body, and I will establish his kingdom. He shall build a house for my name, and I will establish the throne of his kingdom forever. I will be his father, and I shall be my, and he shall be my son. If he commits iniquity, I will chase- chastise him with the rod of men and with the blows of the sons of men. But my mercy shall not depart from him, as I took it from Saul, whom I removed from before you. And your house and your kingdom shall be established forever before you. Your throne shall be everlast established forever, according to all the words and according to all this vision. So Naaman spoke to David. You're probably wondering, what's he doing? Where's this guy going? This is Christmas. You'll see before I'm done, I trust. Let me read you something that I read the other day. Have you ever wondered why God announced the greatest birth in human history to a handful of shepherds on a hillside and to three wise men from the east. Perhaps it was because they were quiet enough to listen. Perhaps it was because they were eager enough to know and available to follow. That's why he announced it to them. Our focus at this time of the year is on Jesus, the babe, but his full name is Jesus Christ the Lord, and Christ is the theme of our thoughts during this time of the year, Messiah in the Old Testament. Now, last spring I spoke on the windows. There's another window here that I never spoke on before, right back up here. It's the monogram or symbol for Christ, consist- sisting of a superimposed Greek letters, chi, which is X, and rho, which is P. These two letters are the Greek Christos, or Christ, and it's often embroidered on altar cloths and investments. He's the one that we're thinking of. Last week, Peter, uh, brought you to the fact of where we are, the Advent season, which includes not only the Advent, but Christmas, and goes on through to the first part of January, Epiphany. He also suggested that there's another great Advent or season, which is the Lent and Holy Week, including Easter, Easter. We talk a lot about the advents of the Lord, two of them. The first advent, of course, is his coming as a babe in Bethlehem. His second advent is that which we're looking forward to, reminding ourselves constantly that he's coming back again to take us to be with himself. We live in a society that's so noisy and so fast that they really haven't got time to hear so much noise around them. That's why sometimes it's necessary for take a little time off to listen. We live in a society that's so much in a hurry, uh, and too busy, and not the least bit interested in getting to know him. So without that, is it any wonder that there's nobody following him? That's why he needs to set aside some time. We need these few weeks, these, this Advent season to stop and speculate, stop and meditate. I'm glad Peter pa- passed out that devotional sheet that is in your bulletin, and I really trust that we will not just put it on the shelf and leave it there. It will take time each day to look at that. My message this morning is taken from one of those advents. It's not in your sheet. I told him which one I was going to use, so he left that one off. But I, it's not going to take very long, but just stop and think on those devotionals. There are three hundred and thirty three, and I haven't counted them, friends. I'm just taking somebody else's word for it. There are three hundred and thirty three predictions of our Lord's coming between Genesis and Malachi. It details the birth of our Lord Jesus Christ, how he was to be born, when he was to be born, when, uh, where he was to be born. All of that is detailed in these prophecies we have in the Old Testament. It also gives us a lot of his life, his death, his burial, his resurrection, and all through his life. All these prophecies are there, and many of them have already been fulfilled. And then not only do- does that, the prophecies give us something of the character and what he is going to be like. He's going to be a prophet, he's going to be a priest, he's going to be a king, he's going to be a shepherd. That's what we're going to concentrate on this morning, is the fact of the shepherd, because if you look at these verses and other verses in connection with David, he was called to be a shepherd. Look at verse eight of our chapter, eh, where the Lord says, and I have been with you wherever you, uh, know. Now therefore, thus shall you say to my servant David, thus saith the Lord of hosts, I took you from the sheepfold, from following the sheep, to be ruler over my people, over Israel. I have called you, the Lord said to David, to be the shepherd of my people. And you've learned a lot in being a shepherd, and you need a lot of that, and we'll see some of that as we look at David's life. You'll need a lot of that to take care of these wayward sheep of mine, Israel. And so we're thinking of the fact of the shepherd. So what I'd like to do this morning is, first of all, think of the life of David, what he was like and, uh, where he came from and what he did. Not going to cover everything, we're just going to hit the highlights. Next week, we're going to look at the prophecy that was given to Zechariah in Luke chapter one, the first part of Luke chapter one. The following week, we'll look at the prophecy that came to Mary in Luke chapter one. and then, uh, finally, we will look at the nativity scene on the twenty fourth, the day before Christmas. The Nativity, what are we going to, uh, do? We review the life of this shepherd as we go through it and think of the prophet giving to the prophecy of the Lord Jesus Christ coming and the covenant that he made with David and our shepherd. Prophecy to David was in verse eight and verse sixteen, because you'll notice in verse sixteen uh that the Lord said to David, your throne shall be established forever. Now we know right well that David couldn't live forever. So he had to be thinking of somebody beyond that person, uh, David, some person beyond that. And of course, we know as we study through the word of God that that person is Jesus Christ. So let's look at David's life. What was he like? Well, we're first introduced to him in First Samuel chapter sixteen. In First Samuel chapter sixteen, uh, Saul has disobeyed God, and the Lord said to Samuel, look, I've given up on Saul, he's done. And verse, chapter sixteen, he says, now I want you to go and anoint a new king. You're going to Bethlehem, and you're going to find this king in one of the children of Jesse. Jesse had seven sons. And we know what happens as they, they went, and uh, Samuel sees the one coming and uh, looks at him and thinks about him and thinks how wonderful he is. And uh, notice a thought that we find, and a striking thought, in First Samuel sixteen and verse seven. Because here comes this, I picture in my mind the first son, the oldest son, a big strapping fella, uh, not only tall but good looking, and Samuel looks, boy, this is, this is him, no question, this is the guy. The Lord says, no, it's not him. So he brings the next one in. And Samuel looks at him, said, well, maybe second choice, but he'll do. No, not him. He goes down all through the six of them and they gets the same answer, not him. And then no- notice what he says in verse seven. But the Lord said to Samuel, do not look at his appearance or at his physical stature, because I've refused him. For the Lord does not see as man sees, for man looks at the outward appearance, but the Lord looks at the heart. How true. We're looking at people, and we judge the person by their looks. They're good looking, big strapping fella, great. But what's inside? We don't know. We can't see it. The Lord says, that's what I'm looking at. And all of these six, they may look wonderful to you, Samuel, but they haven't got it. There's only one that's got it. Go get him. And, uh, so they come and bring, uh, little David. He's been out in the fields. And Samuel says, we're not going to sit down to this feast until this thing is all settled, so bring that young fella in. Verse eleven and twelve describes what him he fa- saw. And Samuel said to Jesse, are all the young men here? Then he said, there remains yet the youngest, and there he, and there he is keeping the sheep. And Samuel said to Jesse, send and bring him, for we will not sit down till he comes here. So he sent and brought him in. Now he was ruddy, with bright eyes, good looking, and the Lord said, arise, anoint him, for this is the one. So he wasn't necessarily the ugliest of the seven. He says he's good looking. Uh, ruddy, he'd been out there in the fields, so he was probably well tanned. So he wasn't too bad looking. But you see, not only was the outside what was appealing, as far as Samuel could see, but the inside is what the Lord saw, and he was appealing to the Lord. Now, when we come to David, we think of the all the genealogies. David, of course, uh, is in given in genealogies, a number of them, Matthew chapter one verses three to six, second Chronicles two verse eleven to fifteen. And I was struck as I went through these to try and figure out that where David in the line comes, you know, and you got these genealogies where you find that his great, great grandmother was Rahab the harlot. Oh. His grandmother was Ruth. No, his great-grandmother was Ruth. Think of them. And when you come to Matthew, you will find that they're named there, and it's the only genealogy in the Bible where women are named, and there are four of them, and all four of them are Gentiles in a Jewish genealogy. Very interesting study, but that's not what we're looking at this morning. But someone has said this when you think of the genealogies. Scholars have studied these genealogical tables in the Bible, have noted that not all the ancestors or descendants are included. Apparently, the purpose of the biblical writers who compiled genealogies was to establish the broad line of descent without including all the details. And it's interesting because as you go through these, you kind of think it runs right after the other, but it's not necessarily true as you go through. There's a short genealogy given in the, in the last book, uh, chapter of the Book of Ruth, where we find a few names given to us. And Mr. Van Ryan says this, and I was struck with this because this is what he says about that little genealogy. The cha- the cha- the chapter and the book closes with a list of names in which wh- whole generations are omitted. For instance, there is an interval of over four hundred and fifty years between Solomon, who was Rahab's husband, and David, yet only four genealogies are mentioned for that length of time. He says the purpose must have been to present spiritual truths as suggested to us by the names that are recorded, rather than present mere chronological data. And that is the purpose of the Word of God. You see, there's so many things we would like to know in the Word of God that we don't know, and we say, well, why didn't he tell us? Well, it wasn't his purpose. He didn't need to tell us. We didn't need to know, so he didn't tell us. What was pertinent and what was necessary, he told us. And this is why these genealogies have so many gaps in them. David was anointed. The next big thing in David's life was, of course, uh, after he'd gone back to sheep, ca- caring for sheep, was his destruction of Goliath and killing Goliath. We've heard that for years, and then he's co- brought into the courts of Saul. Saul hates him because he realizes, uh, finds out that this is the next king, and I'm already been thrown out, and uh, he runs from Saul, and we read about the great love between uh, David and Jonathan. Jonathan knowing that he was going to be superseded, he was not going to be the next king. And why all of this? We ask ourselves, how long was this going on? Well, we don't know how old David was when he was anointed. Uh, scholars guess that he may have been in the late teens or early twenties. He was thirty two when he was anointed as, or when he took over as king after Saul and Jonathan were killed in battle. So there's at least ten or twelve years or more between the time he was anointed and the time he became king. And he's running, and he's, uh, being pursued by, uh, Saul and all the rest of it. What's all this going on? Why, why all of this? And it was, it's interesting because God was preparing Da- David for a job that he had. We read of David's life after he became king and the victories he had, his defeats, and, uh, we know, I don't think anybody, as soon as you mention David, it doesn't come to mind the, the sin with Bathsheba. That's prominent. The world knows all about it. And yet we find the Lord, as he looks at David, with all of this that's gone on, Dav- the Lord saying about David, he's a man after mine own heart. Isn't that encouraging? Isn't that tremendous? Uh, we're human beings, friends, and we will fail. We will fall. We can't help it because we're human beings. David was no different. He was a human being, and he fell. But the wonderful thing that you fi- find recorded for us in the fact of David is the fact that as soon as he was confronted with his sin, he confessed his sin and admitted the fact that he had sinned. So many people, when they're confronted with their sin, all kinds of excuses, all kinds of way to cover it all up, see? But not David. David admitted and c- and were b- brought back into fellowship with God. And then God made a covenant with David, and we find that he wanted to build a temple. God said to him, no, you're not going to. I'm leaving that to your son. But then in the same thing in the covenant, he gives us the fact that somebody else is coming who is greater than David, who is going to shepherd my people. And I want us to think for a little while this morning of the fact of our shepherd. And we have a number of incidents and a number of things in the, in the Word of God about the sh- our shepherd. But I want to concentrate this morning on the Psalms, and if you want to turn to it, we'll be re- referring to a few verses in Psalm twenty two, twenty three, and twenty four, because there we have the three parts of the shepherd being presented to us. I'm just giving you some care- comparisons of these psalms as we start out. Number one, uh, as a shepherd, we find him is the good shepherd who gave his life for the sheep in Psalm twenty two. He's the great shepherd who, uh, is teaching his sheep and tending his sheep in Psalm twenty three. He's the chief shepherd who's coming in Psalm twenty four, before whom all will bow down and give way. In First Corinthians chapter thirteen, it's the love chapter. The last verse in that chapter reads this way: And now abide faith, hope, love, these three, but the greatest of these is love. Lo- uh, faith, hope, and love. Who's the object of our faith? The Lord Jesus Christ presented to us in Psalm twenty two. The object of our love presented to us in Psalm twenty three. The object of our hope in Psalm twenty four. It's interesting also to notice that the hands of the Lord Jesus Christ are porfraid- portrayed for us in these three psalms. In Psalm twenty two, his hands are pierced and nailed to the cross. In Psalm twenty three, those hands are leading us and guiding us and helping us as his people. In Psalm twenty four, he enters the holy place with clean hands, and we will enter with him. Psalm twenty two is Christ has done for us. Psalm twenty is what Christ is doing for us today. In Psalm twenty four, what Christ will do for us in the future. What we need, we need, first of all, pardon, and that's procured for us by the blood of the Lord Jesus Christ, Psalm um twenty two. We need peace, that's provided for us by the ever-present shepherd in Psalm twenty three. And then we need power, that's personified for us in the glorified Christ in Psalm twenty four. So as we look at Psalm twenty three, the Good Shepherd, the incarnation is be- portrayed for us in the fact that the Christmas story is seen as we think of him becoming man. An amazing fact that God contained himself in human form. We, we say it, we sing it, we talk about it every year, but we don't really comprehend the full step that he took. The one who made the world, the one who upholds the universe, in a babe in Bethlehem. Amazing. Amazing fact. He became man. Now, why did he become man? Well, the only region way he could reach you and me as men and women is he had to become a man. He had to be a perfect man too, if he was going to reach us in our need. And he is the perfect man. And, uh, as you think of this one who came as the perfect man to reach me because he loved me. What about his life as we think of the Lord Jesus Christ here upon earth? Well, we turn to Nazareth, and we see him growing up in the home. We could spend quite a bit of time thinking of... We don't have much record of it, but we could, we can surmise, we can guess. Glenn Brooks is good at doing that. He likes to guess at it, see what it's like. To think of a home with the boys that are there, four or five of them, and the girls. The oldest boy, number one, is Jesus. But you got James and Jude and Simon, and they all call him Jesus. None of them recognize him as God. The only thing they know about him is the fact that he never makes a mistake and he never does anything that against mother, and when mother says do something, he does it immediately, and they hate him for it, like every human being would. If you had a family and you had one child that never made a mistake, of course, that's an impossibility, but if you did, the rest of them would hate him, right? That's the kind of home that we think of as we think of the home in Bethlehem. He grew up just as a normal boy. He went to school, a synagogue school. He was taught by the teachers in the synagogue school. He was one who, uh, his father taught him prayers that his father was necessary for him to do. That was all part of the life. And so this is all fitting in. When that boy became twelve, what happens in the Jewish family when a boy becomes twelve? He has his bar mitzvah, he's becomes... at at the right of age. Where was Jesus at the age of twelve? Had his bar mitzvah in the temple. And you remember the story of how the parents left him there and had to go back and pick him up. But that was part of Jewish life. He was growing up. Jewish life, go- you go on, and when the cha- uh, age of a boy of thirty, he comes- becomes mature. And the Lord Jesus Christ, at the age of thirty started his ministry. So you see the development, human being, perfect development as a human being, again, without sin. His ministry for three years. We really don't want to get in, we haven't got time to get into all the ministry of the three years, but think of the end of his life, and that's what you find portrayed for you in Psalm twenty two. In verses six to twelve, the pictures us, uh, for us of the Lord Jesus Christ on the cross. Again, I'm not going to read through it. You know the whole suffering that he went through, and it's really portrayed very vividly for us in these verses in Psalm twenty two. Prior to that, we find the Lord Jesus Christ suffer- suffering in the Garden of Gethsemane in anticipation of what was coming. But verse one of Psalm twenty two is the final cry. We find this suffering in anticipation, we find the suffering of the physical suffering, and when we read about it, and I don't know, I went to see the Passion of the Chri- uh, Christ, and it was horrible. And, you know, I, he didn't exaggerate a thing. Nothing was exaggerated in that, because all you have to do is go back to the scriptures and see how he was beaten and what all the rest of it. And by the time it was all over, that physical suffering of our Lord Jesus Christ was tremendous. But that is nothing compared to that cry in those hours of darkness. My God, my God, why have you forsaken me? Why? Because here's the perfect one. Here's the spotless one being made sin for me, taking my place as the sinner. I can't begin to understand that because I am not, I'm human, and I'm not s- not perfect. And to think that that one who knew no sin was made sin for me. That's the suffering. That's the cry. He took my place. He became my savior. So the Good Shepherd and all that he's done for us as the Good Shepherd. But then we look at Psalm twenty three and we're brought before us is the Great Shepherd as he leads us in verses one to three today. Verses uh verse one, of course, is nothing more than a declaration. The Lord is my shepherd, and it's positive. And I trust that each one of us this morning can read those words positively for ourselves. He's my shepherd. I may be a wayward sheep, I may be an a disobedient sheep, but he's still my shepherd, and that never changes. It's interesting when you think of sheep and shepherds, because the shepherds, as they thought of their sheep, they were theirs, and they never, they did everything they could to keep them and protect them and care for them. And that's true of our shepherd. Uh, he leads me to all the nourishment. Notice in verse two. He makes me to lie down in green pastures. He leads me to by the still waters. He leads, and that's an interesting concept when you start to think of she- shepherds and sheep. The shepherd always leads his sheep. He always go before them. They follow. Uh, a traveler, a tourist was traveling through Palestine one time, and as the bus was going along down the road, they saw a man, uh, beating and, uh, pushing a sheep in front of him, and, uh, the guide had told them before they started out on the thing that the shepherd always leads his sheep, and he said, look at this. They stopped the bus and got out, and the guide said to him, shepherd, what are you doing? He says, I'm not a shepherd, I'm a butcher. You know who drives you? The butcher. You know who the butcher is, don't you? See, he leads, and it's my responsibility to follow. He's got everything for me. All I have to do is follow. And a sheep knows that and understands that. They are pretty dumb. They say the sheep is the dumbest animal out, so being compared to a sheep is no compliment, friends. But they do have one thing that nobody else really does have, is that is acute hearing. They can't hear well, they can't see very well. Uh, they, eyesight is terrible, but when it comes to hearing, they have very acute hearing. I wonder how often my hearing is impaired. Do I hear him? But the problem is, of course, as I suggested before, there's so much noise in the world, we don't hear the voice. It's overrun with all the noise around us. In verse three, he suggests to us, he store- restores my soul, he leads me in the paths of righteousness for his name's sake. And those paths are not always going to be smooth, friends. He's got the paths all set up for us, but we're not necessarily going to have smooth paths. We'd love to have that, but they don't always that. But, you know, I'm struck with this over and over again. The paths that he leads me into, he has already gone ahead of me. He's right there. He's gone through it. And so if that pathway becomes rough and and not quite as what I'd like, and I find it difficult. He's there. He's gone that path. He's passed that path. And so he leads us. He guides us as a, as a shepherd. Verse four, Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil, for you are with me. Your rod and your staff, they comfort me. And so we have nothing to fear because he's there. But notice there's two things there that he's using. He's using a rod, and he's using a staff. The rod is a two-foot-long long instrument, and it's rounded at the end, and it's studded with nails. It's used for a number of purposes, and for one thing, it shows the authority of the she- of the shepherd, and the sheep know that he is, he has the authority. What's the authority that we depend on, the word of God. Authority that's there. And this is one of the problems that we're facing in our world today, is the fact that we are not standing true on the word of God. Christian community, church at large, has done away with it. Uh, those of you who get World Magazine probably read that article that they had in last week's World Magazine on feminism. Wow, it was powerful. We have neglected the word of God, and we are allowing feminism to take over in the church today. Ladies, you have a, a, a, a tremendous role as far as the word of God is concerned, but it's not leadership. And as soon as we put that in, we're in trouble. And we're in trouble, friends. We're heading for trouble because the community of the church today is allowing that. What leads to the next thing? Homosexuality and all the rest of it, see. You break down one place, you break down every place else. The home is r- is ruined. The man is the head of the home. The word of God says so. We've abdicated that. So we rec- rec- recognize the word of God as our symbol of power. And then it's also the instrument of protection. And, uh, it's also used by the shepherd to count the sheep when they come in at night, and, uh, so on. The staff is a symbol of compassion. The rod is emblematic of the word of God. The staff is emblematic of the spirit of God. The staff is used to guide the sheep. Now, u- usually when we have Christmas programs, what we see is not the rod, we see the staff because that's the one with the big hook on it, see? And that's what he uses to guide the sheep with. And not only that, but he's got a c- a hook on the end of it because that's what he uses to grab the sheep when they go over the cliff and pull them back up again. Mm, might hurt. It does when the shepherd uses it. And then, of course, helping in verses five to six, uh, first part of verse six, and the fact that the table before me in the presence of my enemies, what he does to me, cups run over, surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life here upon earth. But look at this last phrase, and I shall dwell in the house of the Lord forever. That's the chief shepherd portrayed for us in the twenty fourth chapter of the fact of that chief shepherd coming back for us and taking us to be with himself. Uh, I was down in Silverton this last month, and we were looking at some of the mystery doctrines of the Bible, and we were thinking of the, of the sh- rapture and the Lord coming back for us last Sunday. I was interested because as I studied through this, I was looking at the wedding performance in the Jewish economy. The bridegroom goes and chooses his wa- uh, bride and pays for her. Our bridegroom did exactly that. He has chosen us, and he's paid for us. And then they go back for a year, and the bridegroom prepares a home for the family. John chapter fourteen. I'm preparing a place for you, that where I am, there you may be also. And when the time comes, the bridegroom goes and gets his bride. But with the interesting thing that I found is, it's the father who tells the bridegroom to go. You remember in the scriptures it says nobody knows the time of his coming except the father? It's the father that sends the son to get his bride. And one of these days, the father's going to say to the bridegroom, Lord Jesus Christ, it's ready, go get him. And you and I will be called up to be with him. Psalm 24. Our good shepherd has given his life for us. Our chief shepherd is guiding us, our, our, our great shepherd is guiding us, and our chief shepherd is coming back for us. Shall we pray? Our blessed God and our Heavenly Father, as we bow in thy presence this morning, we thank you for what you've given to us in your word. We're looking forward to this special occasion when we think of the birth of the Lord Jesus Christ, but Father, there's so much contained in the fact that he came to this scene to bring us salvation, and today he's just seated at thy right hand, interceding for us, and we know, because he's promised to come back, that he will come back and take us to be with himself. We thank you for all that you have for us in our Savior, in his precious name. Amen.