ANNOUNCER: Today we are looking at 2 Samuel and answering questions about the Davidic covenant. What is the Davidic covenant all about? Is it past, present, future? When will it be realized? Thank you, friend, for joining us today. We are always glad when you do. Grace in Focus is a ministry of the Grace Evangelical Society. You can find us at faithalone.org, and when you come to our site, you will find a number of things. First of all, many articles which have been written over the years about theology and things related to our Free Grace position. Great for study and research; you can find just about anything you want to find there. And also, we have our blogs available to you. We love for you to subscribe to them and like them. They come out regularly. And we have a free subscription magazine, also called Grace in Focus, get details at our website about that. And keep updated on all our events. It’s all at faithalone.org. 

Now with today’s discussion, here are Bob Wilkin and Philippe Sterling. 

BOB: So what’s on tap for today, Philippe? 

PHILIPPE: Well, we have talked a little bit about David, how he was God’s anointed. And then, of course, we know that God made a special covenant promise to him that his throne will be established forever. 

BOB: Right now, that’s in 2 Samuel which you wrote the commentary on 2 Samuel that we’re working on. Chapter seven, right, 2 Samuel seven? And it’s called the Davidic covenant. And so, what can we learn from this Davidic covenant? Maybe we can go first of all to 2 Samuel chapter seven, what verses? 

PHILIPPE: Verse 16, especially is the promise. “His throne shall be established forever.” Now, the setting of all of this is that David intended to build a temple for the Lord, but it was not for him to do it, it was to be for his son. 

BOB: Because he was a man of bloodshed. And so, as a result, Solomon is going to be building. So we ought to probably start at verse 12, right, 2 Samuel 7:12?

PHILIPPE: Yes. This is the prophetic word that he’s given to David, “When your days are fulfilled and you rest with your fathers, I will set up your seed after you, who will come from your body, and I will establish his kingdom.” So here, first of all, this is seed of Solomon, but there’s a greater seed to come. But concerning Solomon, “He shall build a house for My name and I will establish the throne of his kingdom forever. I will be his Father, he shall be My son.” 

BOB: Notice that that’s a lowercase S, because Solomon, although he was God’s son, he was not the son of God, he was a son of God. He was one of the Messianic kings, one of the Judean kings, but he was not the ultimate one. I remember Zane Hodges at Victor Street Bible Chapel, teaching through first and 2 Samuel, and he kept talking about David’s greater son, David’s greater son, David’s greater son, and he kept saying that 1 and 2 Samuel anticipate the coming of David’s greater son, anticipate the coming of Messiah. 

We’ve already talked about this that David wouldn’t kill Saul because he recognized he was the anointed one, and even though he wasn’t in the line of Christ, he was the anointed one, and David ultimately was learning here that he’s in the line of Messiah, and that his seed, Solomon, would be God’s son. In other words, God’s representative on earth, not that he would be God, he’s not the God-man that the Lord Jesus Christ is, but yet he is God’s representative. 

PHILIPPE: Yeah, he is God’s, to use a theological word, theocratic representative.

BOB: That’s what Saul means, he’s right. So he says, he shall be my son. 

PHILIPPE: “I will be His father, he shall be My son. If he commits iniquity, I will chasten him, but my mercy shall not depart from him, as I took it from Saul, whom I removed from before you.” 

BOB: In other words, even though Solomon may fail, which he did in the 1 Kings 11, he turns to idolatry because of his many foreign wives, and he built them pagan temples, and he actually worshiped with his wives in these pagan temples. But even if that’s the case, he’s not taking the kingdom from Solomon. 

PHILIPPE: No, his son, Rehoboam, will rule after him. And Rehoboam was not all that great in the end either, but he still retained the throne over Judah. And then verse 16, “And your house and your kingdom,” this is speaking to David, “shall be established forever before you. Your throne shall be established forever.” 

BOB: So now this contradicts replacement theology, the idea that God has put aside Israel requires you to ignore all of the teaching about Israel and all the promises made to Israel. And this promise, which you pointed out before we started this session, this isn’t actually called a covenant here. It’s more like a promise. But later on in the book, he does call it a covenant.

PHILIPPE: He’ll call it an everlasting covenant. And we can talk about that. I’ll be in chapter 23 of 2nd Samuel. But verse 17 says, “According to all these words, and according to all this vision, so Nathan spoke to David.” And David recognized this was a tremendous thing because he goes in, in awe. He says he goes in and sits before Yahweh, before the Lord and says, who am I, O Yahweh Elohim? O Yahweh Adonai, actually, Lord God. This would be “Lord, Lord,” but the New King James uses capital G, capital O, capital O, D because it doesn’t want to say “Lord, Lord,” but “Lord God.” “And what is my house that you have brought me this far? And yet this was a small thing in Your sight, O Lord God; and you have spoken of your servant’s house for a great while to come. What more can your servant say?

So David is in awe. He recognizes that this is something that will endure forever. And now we know until the millennial earth and I think into the new earth and Ezekiel 37 calls David the prince who will rule over Israel in the kingdom. 

BOB: Right, there’ll be different kinds of rulers. Like we know the 12 apostles are going to set on 12 thrones and rule over the 12 tribes, but evidently above them is David, right? Because David is over the entire country. 

PHILIPPE: But Christ is over the whole earth, but he has His throne in Jerusalem, but David is the prince over Israel. 

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BOB: And when we think of rulership, we need to recognize that it’s not going to just be okay, if you rule, everybody rules over the same amount of territory. Some people are going to rule over more and some over less. Like we know from the parable of the minas, some will rule over 10 cities and some over five cities, but David is ruling over all the cities of Israel, right? 

PHILIPPE: And so David in spite of all his failings, he is a ruler. 

BOB: A lot of people say that the Old Testament had no concept of everlasting life or eternal security. That’s nuts. How could you read this and not realize that David knows he’s going to be part of this eternal kingdom? He knows Messiah is coming. Messiah is going to rule and reign. He’s going to be the son of David and he will rule and reign forever. And David will be in that kingdom. David doesn’t think, oh man, I hope I make it. David knows, right? And if you read Hebrews chapter 11, it tells us about how Old Testament saints not only knew about the coming kingdom, they knew about eternal rewards too. 

PHILIPPE: Yes. But Moses thought that the reproaches of Egypt were not worth to be compared to what he would receive by following the Messiah. And certainly Abraham looking for, he was just a sojourner on this earth, but he was looking for this eternal city.

BOB: So now you said there’s also a comment about this in chapter 23? 

PHILIPPE: Which are the last words of David as a number of matters of doctrine and theology in just a few verses that we can see.

BOB: Oh yeah, it says in verse one, now these are the last words of David. 

PHILIPPE: Yes, “Thus says David, the son of Jesse; thus says the man raised up on high. The anointed of the God of Jacob, and the sweet psalmist of Israel. The Spirit of the Lord spoke by me, and His word was on my tongue.” So David clearly knew that he was an inspired writer of Scripture and he knew, because he was the anointed of God, the Spirit of the Lord spoke by him. And verse five is the one that connects to the Davidic covenant, I think. He says, “Although my house is not so with God, yet He has made with me an everlasting covenant,” there it is, “ordered in all things and secure. For this is all my salvation and all my desire.” 

BOB: Notice salvation here is not everlasting life. Salvation is some sort of deliverance and the ultimate deliverance I think he’s seeing here, is the prospect that he will be in this kingdom forever, right? 

PHILIPPE: Yes. And he says, “will he not make it increase?” And so even the word increase here is anticipating that his kingdom will forever increase. Like Isaiah 9 concerning, we see Christ, of his government there shall be no end and the increase of it all. So these few, the last words of David, concerns the inspiration of the psalms and the matter of the everlasting covenant and the increase of the government. Even that will occur there. 

BOB: Yeah. So we shouldn’t think of the writers of Scripture as being people who were totally ignorant of what they were writing. We don’t know if they understood everything they wrote. For example, when David writes about “they pierced my hands and my feet,” did he know that he was writing about the crucifixion and the crosswind? crucifixion didn’t exist 1000 B.C. But did he know, he may well have? We don’t know for sure. But we do know from here that he knew he was writing by the work of the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit was speaking through him. And I think in many cases, the Old Testament writers understood a lot more than we give them credit. 

PHILIPPE: Yes. I think so. I think that Yahweh at various times opened their vision. What was to come and they clearly understood many things more than we give credit for. 

BOB: Yeah. And maybe more than many people during the church age, because a lot of people in the church age aren’t anticipating a literal kingdom. They’re anticipating some sort of heavenly clouds or something. 

PHILIPPE: And then concerning Enoch, he knew about the Second Coming. 

BOB: Right. That’s from Jude. 

PHILIPPE: And that’s antediluvian, before the flood. 

BOB: Yeah, exactly. Well, thanks so much, Philippe. And thank you all. I really enjoy this. And I think we’ve got a little bit more to go in 2 Samuel. Even though we’ve come to the end here, we’re going to go back, aren’t we, and look at a little bit more, because 2 Samuel, the second half of the book is remarkable. Because after he commits adultery with Bathsheba and has her husband killed, which I think we can look at in the next one, he experiences lots of problems in the second half of the book. We’ll look then at David and Bathsheba in the next episode. 

But in the meantime, let’s keep grace and focus. 

ANNOUNCER: Be sure to check out our daily blogs at faithalone.org. They are short and full of great teaching, just like what you’ve heard today. Find them at faithalone.org/resources/blog. We would love to hear from you. Maybe you’ve got a question, comment, or some feedback. If you do, please don’t hesitate to send us a message. Here’s our email address. It’s radio@faithalone.org. That’s radio@faithalone.org.

On our next episode: the story of the missing shower curtain. Please join us again. And in the meantime, let’s keep grace and focus.