What to Do When You've "Arrived" - 3/29/2026

In the "Forged by Fire" series, we follow David through the ultimate crucible: the transition from a hunted fugitive in the wilderness of 1 Samuel to the established King of Israel in 2 Samuel. These messages explore how God uses seasons of intense pressure, betrayal, and waiting to refine the character of His people. From the caves of Engedi to the heights of the Davidic Covenant in 2nd Samuel 7, we see that God’s primary work isn't just changing our circumstances, but shaping our hearts. Join us as we learn how the "fire" of life’s trials is designed not to consume us, but to forge a faith that lasts.

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:01

Welcome to the Alderwood Community Church Sermon Podcast. Join us as we are in the second movement of our David series called Forged by Fire. In these chapters, David is shaped not in the comfort of success, but through adversity. Through friendship, patience, worship, and deep dependence, David learns what it means to trust God when nothing makes sense. Let's jump in.

SPEAKER_01 0:33

Nice to see you guys. We're continuing in our series Life of David. We've been going through the books of 1st and 2nd Samuel. And I mean, it really is an amazing story, right? I don't know how many of you have been following it. Like Amazon Prime TV just dropped their second season of the show, Life of David. Like this story is really gripping 3,000 years later, because here's this obscure shepherd, you know, that God calls to like the highest, most powerful place in Israel. This nobody becomes a huge somebody, and he, of course, has this meteoric rise after he slays the giant Goliath. You know the story. We also went through a really long stretch where it was pretty rough, right? Wandering in the desert, uh, some maybe of David's not finest moments. Does anybody have stretches of your life where it wasn't your finest moments? You know, like so that there's a lot of killing, there's a lot of deception, some whining, some complaining, and who can forget the part where like David goes to the hometown of Goliath, whom he killed, and pretends to be a crazy man, so he's like ranting, and it says he's scratching the doorposts and foaming at the mouth. Great moment. Reminds me of raising kids. No, actually, actually, it reminds me of a road trip. How many of you have been on a road trip in a car with kids? You guys know what I'm talking about, foaming at the mouth. I mean, like the constant, when are we gonna get there? She's pinching me, he's on my side, fighting over happy meal toys, you know, you know the whole bit. Comedian Jim Gaffigan has this great line. He's like, Have you ever noticed that when parents arrive after a road trip with their kids, they look like they lost a bet. Like they were in a hostage situation, right? And so this morning we get to see David, all that's behind us, Wyatt's been talking about this is the good old days for David, and he's arrived. Like things are good for David. And I just want to point out one lesson before we jump in the text that I bet you've seen, I'm sure David has seen. God is not in a hurry. Like that was probably 20 years or so from the time David heard the promise that God is gonna make you king until the time he's actually, as we find him here, sitting in his palace. And maybe like me, you have had stretches in your life where you're just wondering why is God taking so long to do, fill in the blank. God is so often not in a hurry. We can't necessarily say the same about ourselves. So we are in chapter 7 of 2 Samuel today, and we pick it up in verse 1, just with the first clause of verse 1. It says, When the king had settled into his palace, and the Lord had given him rest on every side from all his enemies. So there's that word settled. He's arrived. He's sitting in a cedar palace, everything is going amazingly. Like, go buy a lottery ticket, David, because everything is going your way. But the word I really want us to focus on is that word rest. God had given him rest, and it's a hugely important word in David's story. Honestly, it's an important word in our story because it's an important word in God's story. A couple years ago, we went through a series, we called it God's grand story, this huge, like zooming out picture of what the Bible is all about. And this word rest takes us back to the very beginning of that story in Genesis, where we see God on the seventh day, He's created everything around us, this glorious, amazing, beautiful world. And it says on day seven, God rested. God's God. Like God is not taking a nap after a long, hard week. That's not what's going on. God has looked at everything he's made, and even in a fallen world today, we can look around us and see why he said what he said. This is good. It's very good. And not only that, it was complete. That's what rest means. God was surveying, kind of like David was surveying, all the good things around him. It's a place of rest and peace and thriving and joy and hope. And God created humanity, created us to enjoy that with him. And one of the things I want you to think about when you think of rest is God has been on this long-term project to invite us into his rest, to enjoy his perfect, completed work. And if you know your Bible, you know that we didn't hang on to that for very long. We said, no, we as human beings want to run the show. We can find rest on our own, thank you. Even if you don't know the Bible, you know life. And we don't feel like life is full of rest most of the time. Our big idea, that the thought I want to share with you today, and I want us to kind of trace through this passage, is simply this. Rest means confidence in what God does for me and not what I do for him. We can have rest. We can taste rest even in this life before we have ultimate rest in Christ. And we're gonna see that here in this story. So let's pick up in verse 2. David, the king, said to the prophet Nathan, look, I am living in a cedar house while the ark of God sits inside tent curtains. It's like out there in a field, in a pasture. So Nathan told the king, Go and do all that is in your mind, for the Lord is with you. David has been given rest, but you might notice he seems surprisingly restless here at this particular moment. Like, we apparently aren't very good at this rest thing. This David doesn't sit still for long. He turns to his pastor, Nathan, and he says, as we're gonna see more clearly as we go through the passage, I've got this great idea. Like, God, the ark, God in the box, is out in a pasture. I'm looking down at him right now from the roof of my beautiful, glorious cedar palace. I need to do something for God. God's living under a Costco easy up, and this is not right. I need to make things right. Do you know this instinct? Like maybe some of you are like this, not everyone is, but that sort of we've got to do something, I've got to do something. Like, we always think we've got to do something. I had a friend uh I worked with years ago to church, his name is Gary Verrill. Gary was an incredible human being. At one time he held the record for riding a bicycle across the continental US, west to east, in six and a half days on a bicycle. Gary was incredible. Gary played for the Steve Miller band back in the day. He just had all these stories, and Gary used to tell me these great stories about growing up, and him and his dad. And his dad would always say to him, Gary, we've got to do something. So the two stand out in my mind. 1963, assassination of JFK, President Kennedy, and Gary's dad looks at him, and Gary's like nine years old, and he's like, Gary, we gotta do something. And nine-year-old Gary's like, okay. So what do they do? They drive to the Capitol, and they were at the Capitol. Like, I mean, they they saw part of the memorial and everything, but what does this mean to do something? Another story, 1969, we sent our first, you know, spaceship, manned spaceship to the moon. Gary and his dad are watching like the preparations for this, and Gary's dad turns to him and says, Gary, we've got to do something. So they drive to Florida and they're there. I mean, like they don't do anything, right? So often when we think we're doing something, we're really not doing a whole lot of anything, but it seems to be this human instinct. Another thing I want you to notice about David here, and this might stand out especially as you think about what we've seen in David and the story and the narrative up to this point. Usually when David makes a decision, he prays first. But in this particular instance, David and frankly, the prophet Nathan, neither one of them prays. It's almost like they're thinking, like, circumstances are so clear, like everything's going so well, my motives must be pure, this idea must be perfect. God must love this idea. And so let's build a temple. Well, what happens next? Picking it up in verse four. But that night the word of the Lord came to Nathan. Go to my servant David and say, This is what the Lord says. Are you to build me a house to dwell in? And there's more. Are you to build me a house? From the time I brought the Israelites out of Egypt until today, I have not dwelt in a house. Instead, I have been moving around with a tent as my dwelling. In all my journeys with all the Israelites, have I ever spoken a word to one of the tribal leaders of Israel whom I commanded to shepherd my people Israel, asking, Why haven't you built me a house of cedar? So what's going on here? David's building permit has been rejected. Right? The answer is no. At least for right now, the answer is no. And maybe God has said no to you before. Maybe some of your prayerless plans, or maybe even plans you've prayed for, God says, no, no, not now, not yet, not you. And usually the thing that pops into our head is why? And I'm pretty sure that's a question that David asked. Well, aside from the fact that it was prayerless, it was just David coming up with an idea on his own. One of the answers is pretty clear right here. God says, I never asked, did I? I I never asked. And he's not scolding David. I want- I want you to hear that. In the book of 1 Kings, reflecting back on this, we find out that God later said to David, it was a good desire you had, David. He's not scolding him. So what's going on? He says, I never asked. Have you ever had an idea where you didn't ask and you just went ahead anyway? Husbands raised your hand. Okay, let me tell you a story. Many years ago, my wife went on a weekend, like women's retreat, and she's gonna be gone like Friday night, all day Saturday, coming back Sunday, and I got a really good idea. It's like I'm going to put in under cabinet lighting. And this was before like the little remote control battery. Like, I'm running wire, I'm going through walls, I'm drilling holes in cabinets and the whole thing. And she comes back and she walks through the door, and I'm like kind of giddy, like standing there, and I walk over and I watch this. I flip on the light. Immediately I could tell I had made a mistake. Because her first thought was, oh, this is before I knew about like warm color light and like cool light. Apparently, I did the cool light. She's like, it kind of looks like an operating room. I'm like, like, what? You cut meat in here and stuff. Like, I that should be okay. And and then um I not only drilled some holes in the wall, I might have accidentally drilled a hole through the floor, which she noticed too. So I didn't ask for this, is what she told me, and that didn't go fantastic. Um God didn't ask. And that kind of reflects back to David's not asking God about what God had in mind. But there's a bigger thing here I want you to see in this passage. We've already learned the lesson that God is not in a hurry. God is a humble God. I've said this to people before, and I often get kind of a quizzical look because like the Bible never describes God in the exact term humble. Of course, the Bible never uses the word Bible either, or missions, or trinity, or incarnation. Lots of words we use. And I'm not trying to be cute here. I here's what I see. There's a huge lesson about who God is. And when I say God is humble, I mean that he is God no matter what. And I want to say this really clearly. Whether God is living in a two-car garage, in a tent, or a temple, he is still God. God is who God is no matter where God is. That's humility. I am who I am no matter where I am. And in effect, God is saying to David, David, you are who you are because I am who I am, and I make you who you are. And my plans are good, David. And you need to understand that building a temple won't change anything about who I am, or frankly, anything about who you are. God will have his temple. It's really interesting in the Old Testament. If you track it, the temple was always for us. Like in the prophets, when the temple, he's predicting that the temple is gonna be torn down and burned down and raised to the ground, which ends up happening by the Assyrians and the Babylonians coming in. He always says, You're gonna be devastated when this happens. He never says, I'm devastated when this happens. He doesn't need a temple, we need a temple. There's a great statement of this in the book of Acts. The Apostle Paul says it so well. Thousand years later, he's in Athens speaking to the crowd of philosophers, and in Acts 17, verse 24, he says to them, This is what God is like. The God who made the world and everything in it is the Lord of heaven and earth, and does not live in temples made by human hands. And he is not served by human hands as if he needed anything. For he himself gives everyone life and breath and everything else. Here's the thing: only humble people can rest. You'll never be at rest until you can be a humble person. I'll never be at rest until I can be a humble person because proud people are always worried about themselves. They're always worried about how they look, about what they're doing, what they have done, and what other people think of what they have done. But humble people, humble people can rest because humble people know who they are, and they know who they are because they know who God is. They're confident in what God has done, what God is doing, and what God will do. So Pastor Nathan continues. Let's pick it up in verse 8. Nathan, speaking for God, says, So now this is what you are to say to my servant David. This is what the Lord of armies says. I took you from the pasture, from tending the flock to be ruler over my people Israel. I have been with you wherever you have gone, and I have destroyed all your enemies before you. I will make a great name for you, like that of the greatest on the earth. Look at that. Look at all that God has done for David. And you get a little bit of the sense that maybe the specific things God is choosing to point out there are things that David was kind of thinking he was doing for God. God's out in a pasture right now in the ark under a Coleman tent. And David thinks he's bringing God in from the pasture, but God brought him from the pasture. God already rules over his people, Israel. David, you're not bringing me to be with you. I'm already with you. You don't need to make my name great, David. My name is great. Frankly, God isn't the project. David's the project. We're the project. David thinks he's launching Project David, but God has a much bigger, better project in mind. And God did all this not because David deserves any of it. Have you ever sat back and just looked at your life and thought about all the good God has done in your life? I know many of us have been through hard things, tragic things, but have you ever just sat back and reflected on all the undeserved goodness that God has given you? About all the good things you might have right now and how you would never have those things if it weren't for God giving you that job, that family, that moment, that break. It's all from God. This is one of the reasons parenthetical advertisement here. I love to keep a journal. You've heard me say it before. I just think it's so valuable to keep track of where God shows up in our lives, especially in the good things, because so much is good that he gives, even in the painful times, and we forget it, don't we? We really, really quickly forget it. And so David gets a reminder here. And God is giving David a reminder that he is a God of grace. He's not in a hurry. He's a humble God and he is a gracious God. And here's the thing: you never graduate from grace. You never finish needing God's grace just like you never finish needing oxygen to breathe. We live in God's grace, and we can't ever forget it. He doesn't need our projects, especially our prayerless projects. He doesn't need us to work for him, but God absolutely delights and loves it when we work with him. That's rest. That is where we find rest. And grace gives us that confidence, that confidence because we can trust God in what he's done and what he's doing, and in what he will do. Nathan's gonna go on and talk a little bit about what God is doing, and God is establishing his people, Israel. He hasn't just planned to establish David as their leader. He says, David, I've put you there to serve my people. I didn't put you there as king so you could live high in the hog. Like me, God is saying, You're there to serve and to love and to lovingly lead my people. So that's what God's doing. We're gonna skip ahead to what God is going to do, and this is where the story gets really, really good. Second half of verse 11. The Lord declares to you, David, the Lord Himself will make a house for you. When your time comes and you rest with your ancestors, I will raise up after you your descendant, who will come from your body, and I will establish his kingdom. He is the one who will build a house for my name, and I will establish the throne of his kingdom forever. This is such an incredibly rich couple of verses. We actually refer to this as the Davidic covenant. This is God making a new covenant with David. And again, we we did this a few years ago in God's grand story. We looked at this story. You know, your Bible's this thick. If you've ever seen the book, you know, some of us actually have the book somewhere. It's not just on our phones, right? It's a big book, it's a big story. But there's, at times we get lost, but there's a very clear, unified thread, as the tagline we used then said, it's one story that leads to Jesus. And this should be proof text number one. But there's so much going on here. One word that we have to take a close look at is the Lord's gonna make a house for you. So in answer to David's big idea that I'm going to build a house for God, God says, nope. Hold your role. I'm gonna build you a house, David. And it becomes very evident that he's not talking about a physical building, he's not talking about a place, he's talking about people. And for God, it's actually always about people. For us, actually, it's not always, always about people, right? We have our projects, we have our big plans, but God's always about how people can thrive and enter rest. And he says, David, I'm gonna build your house, i.e., your legacy, i.e. your descendants. I'm building a dynasty of people. And then he says something really interesting that you might have missed. David didn't miss it, but we might. When your time comes and you rest with your ancestors, I will raise up after you your descendant or offspring who will come from your body. This is another one of those hyperlinks, and it takes us way back into the story of Genesis when God appeared in Genesis chapter 12 to a guy named Abraham that you might have heard of. The father of the nation of Israel, the father of faith, and God said that exact thing to Abraham. He said, I will raise up after you your descendant who will come from your body. That's David, and that's Jesus. And we see this like it's kind of like an hourglass, or actually, better still, you know those crime shows where they're like trying to trace a phone call, and like it starts with the big Google map that they might show to you, and it's the continent or the you know, the United States, and then it's Massachusetts, and then it's this county, and then it's this city, and then it's this house. That's kind of what the covenants do in the Old Testament. We find out that this promised one who will restore. All things who will bring ultimate rest comes through Abraham, the children of Israel. Then Jacob says the line of Judah, then part of the line of Judah, we land at David. And then 400 years later, we come to not kings and royalty like David is no doubt picturing. We come to a couple people you might have heard of. Their names are Mary and Joseph. And they're also of the line of David. And through them, through two humble, faithful people, God is going to bring this Messiah who restores all things. God goes on and says this in verse 14 I will be his father, and he will be my son. When he does wrong, I will discipline him with a rod of men and blows from mortals. But my faithful love will never leave him as it did when I removed it from Saul, whom I removed from before you. David, your house, not Saul's house, your house and kingdom will endure before me forever, and your throne will be established forever. Folks, there it is. There's the gospel. Did you see it? It's a tricky passage a little bit, and you know, David is, again, probably thinking about his immediate descendants. We know one of those is named Solomon. He's gonna come up real soon here, and he is gonna be the one to build the temple, the earthly temple, the physical temple. And David's going, wow, this is amazing. Like my lineage, people with my name are gonna be a part of this royal kingdom that ushers in the kingdom of God. In a couple chapters, David himself is gonna have like his big Bathsheba fall. So it doesn't take long for things to start falling apart. And Solomon, as impressive as he is, and Solomon is impressive. Like when you get to Solomon, this is how Solomon's reign is described. It's kind of a fantastic thing. It says, during the days of Solomon, silver was as common as stones, and cedar was like the sycamore. Like everybody's doing well by the time of Solomon, everyone's thriving, and then it all falls apart. The wheels come off because Solomon marries 700 foreign wives who lead his heart astray, and he's worshiping gods to the point that he's actually, like the nations removed before them, sacrificing his infants to these gods. It goes sideways really quick. And if we think about this in just historic terms, how can it be that God is going to restore through this house, through this line, through this dynasty? It's ugly. In fact, in about five or six hundred years after Assyria and Babylon come in, the line is no more. At least not traceably, until we get to Mary and Joseph. And we find out who this is really about. Because God will preserve the line of David, He will discipline them, He will keep His promise. And this is the gospel too, right? I will never leave. It doesn't depend on you. This isn't Project David, this is Project Jesus. And that's where we want to get today. We want to see that all the things, all the things that are so hard to wait for, well, we sit in the back seat and kick the mom's seat from behind because she's so annoying. And we want her to know that we're annoyed. We're kicking God's seat. We're arguing with our brothers and sisters, we're complaining, we're fussing. God still has this big, beautiful plan, and it's called Project Jesus. It's called the Gospel, and He's going to get us there. And you might think, like, what is all this ancient like zoning meeting HOA thing and like royal lines and all this stuff that seems so far removed from us, what does it have to do with me today? And we land in a place in the New Testament like 1 Corinthians, or sorry, 2 Corinthians 6, where Paul takes this very promise, I will be a father, and he says this. He says, For we, we are the temple of the living God. As God said, I will dwell and walk among them and be their God, and they will be my people, and I will be a father to you, and you will be sons and daughters to me, says the Lord Almighty. You're a son, you're a daughter. You and I don't have to prove anything. We don't have to complete the task. Jesus did it. Jesus came into this world. The Bible says he tabernacled, he tempted among us. He was content to take on our suffering and our pain, and even more importantly, he took on our sin and the punishment that goes with that. And he completed the work so that we are the temple of the living God. When we say, God, do what you promised in the Old Testament, take this heart of stone and give me a heart of flesh. You come live inside me because I'm a mess. I am a restless, prayerless mess. And I desperately, desperately need you. He does it. And he's making something beautiful, not just out of your life, my life, but this temple of people. It has nothing to do with the place. It has to do with the king living here and working here, broken and restless as we are. And so here's how I want to land the plane. I want to land the plane, the way the passage lands the plane. I wish we had time to read the whole prayer, but the whole second half of this chapter is David's prayer, David's response. And just notice how we remember we pointed out, he started without prayer, but he lands on prayer. And I want all of us, the first one to sign up for this, to learn to pray like David prays. Not my frantic, restless prayers. Not like, oh, I have to pray again. Not make prayer a project, because prayer can become a project too, right? Like so many of our projects. Okay, I'm gonna pray. By the end of this year, I'll be praying one hour a day. And we're so proud of ourselves for praying one hour a day, we don't need God anymore. Right? Like, don't make prayer a project. I want you to pray like Jesus or like David prays. And here's how it reads. In verse 18, it says, Then King David went in, sat in the Lord's presence, and said, Who am I, Lord God? And what is my house that you have brought me this far? What you have done so far was a little thing to you, Lord God. For you have also spoken about your servant's house in the distant future, and this is a revelation for mankind, for all humanity. When's the last time you went and just sat in the presence of God? Not because you had to pull out this long list of things to share, although God always welcomes and invites that. He says, Pour out your heart to me, cast your cares on me, bring your requests to me. God's open for all that. But real rest is found when we can just rest in God's presence and what he's done and what he's doing and what he will do. And there's two things I know about what God's done, doing, and will do. He's gonna make us like his son Jesus, and it might take some painful discipline along the way, and we might think, why are you taking so long? Have you seen me? I'm a mess. Maybe that's why it takes so long. And, and here's the best part, and here's what I want you to sing and celebrate and rest in this week as you spend some time in prayer with God. Jesus is coming back. The kingdom will be fully restored. Everything will be made new. We won't have to wait any longer. Jesus will be here, and we'll see him, and the Bible says it multiple places, and I have a hard time saying it without ever getting choked up. You'll see him face to face. You will know as you are known. And that is going to happen. It's as good as done, it's complete. So can we rest in that? Can we celebrate that today? Would you pray with me, Lord? We have so much to be thankful for. And I know there are many in this room who are hurting, who are wondering, when are you gonna show up, God? But I know there are some too, Lord, who, like myself, at times have thought, we need to do something for you. We got to do something. And Lord, wherever we're at today, help us to slow down and to rest and to remember all you've done for us through your son, Jesus, all you're doing in us, making us into the temple of God, and all you have in store when your son comes and restores perfect rest when we see you face to face. We pray this in Jesus' name. Amen.

SPEAKER_00 31:33

Thanks for listening to the Alderwood Community Church Sermon Podcast. As we witness David, we're reminded that God uses both triumphs and trials to shape us into people who trust him fully. To learn more about Alderwood or catch past sermons, visit alderwood.cc