What is God Building in 2 Samuel 7:5?

    The Bible says that David was a man according to God's heart. It wasn't just that David was a godly king, but that his heart matched God's heart.  I learned from the Life-Study of 1 & 2 Samuel that  the main reason why he was called that was because he wanted God to have a permanent dwelling place on earth.

    Before this time God just had the tabernacle.  When the Israelites entered the land of Canaan, they set the tabernacle up in Shiloh, and it was there for around 300 years. But when David became king, he was troubled that although he lived in a house of wood, God still dwelt in the tabernacle of curtains. So he talked to Nathan about it, and this conversation is recorded in the Bible giving us a window into the desire of God's heart. 

  Go and say to My servant David, Thus says Jehovah, Is it you who will build Me a house for Me to dwell in?...Moreover Jehovah declares to you that Jehovah will make you a house. 2 Samuel 7:5, 11B

    I wouldn't have understood the significance of this conversation without chapter 23 of this Life-Study; this excerpt is from page 154-155:

When a sinner turns to God and believes in Christ, he may then have the heart to do something for God. However, to such a person God would say, "Do you intend to do something for Me? You have a great need for Me to do something for you. What I want to do for you is to constitute My Son into your being to be your treasure. Unless I do this for you, you will never have the capacity to do anything for Me"....In 2 Samuel 7:12 God was actually telling David that instead of building something for God, he needed God to build His Son into him...The genuine and intrinsic gospel is that God intends to work Himself in Christ into us (Lee, Witness. Life-Study of 1 & 2 Samuel.  Anaheim: Living Stream Ministry, 1994, Print).

    When I was in college, I read a book this author wrote called The Vision of God's Building, and in this book he traces the line of God's building throughout Scripture. But this building isn't according to our natural thought; it's not like the Sistine Chapel. Although believers do gather in a place of worship, the New Testament tells us clearly that the believers are God's actual dwelling place (Ephesians 2:22). 

    So two things stood out to me in this chapter--Today God is building Himself into our hearts for His spiritual dwelling place.  And the other is that David stopped.  He realized that only God could initiate the building of His house.  I'm sure it's a lot more challenging for God to build Himself into our souls than it is to build a temple of stone and wood!  I'm glad God's not afraid of that kind of challenge!!

 You can listen to excerpts of Witness Lee's speaking on the books of Samuel on the  Life Study of the Bible  with Witness Lee.   You can also read the online Life-Study of 1 & 2 Samuel and check out other resources available to enhance your study of the Bible on Living Stream Ministry's website.

Other Posts on 1 & 2 Samuel:

What We Can Learn From Hannah in Her Prayer in 1 Samuel 1
How God Used Samuel at a Degraded Time in Israel's History
Taking a Closer Look at David in 1 & 2 Samuel

How God Used Samuel at a Degraded Time in Israel's History

    God needed Samuel at a very critical time in Israel's history.  When Samuel was weaned, Hannah brought him to the tabernacle and entrusted him to Eli the high priest.  Although Eli trained Samuel how to serve God as a priest, he didn't stop his own sons from committing gross sins against God and the people. 

A beautiful Nov. 3 sunset

     In such a degraded situation, the person God chose to talk to about that priesthood was not Eli but Samuel. The story of God coming to this young boy at night is a story most children know and love.  Samuel thinking that Eli was calling him one night ran to his bed.  After several times, Eli realized that God was calling him. 

    So Eli told him that the next time God called him to answer back, "Speak, Lord, for Your servant is listening"  I'm sure Samuel was sad to hear God's word of judgment against Eli and his sons.  The next day Eli asked Samuel to tell him everything God had spoken.   

       After this event, the Bible says that Israel knew that Samuel was a prophet (1 Samuel 3:20). Not long after this happened, the Philistines came to fight against Israel, and God carried out His judgment against Eli's family. The Israelites did something foolish when they took the ark into that battle. After the Philistines had the ark for seven months, it was returned.  But sadly the Israelites did not bring the ark back to the tabernacle for another 20 years (1 Sam. 7:1-2)! 

    The Bible tells us that during his life Samuel served as their last judge (1 Sam. 7:15). But when Samuel's sons weren't judging fairly, the Israelites asked that he would give them a king like the other nations. 

In chapter 5 of the Life-Study of 1 & 2 Samuel Witness Lee explains that as a man of God Samuel had five statuses.  Through his godly service in all of these capacities, he turned the age from the judges to the kings as these excerpts from pages 28-33 show:

"Samuel, who was by nature a Levite born of one of the descendants of the great rebel Korah (1 Chron.  6:33-38)...ministered in five statuses.  First, Samuel ministered as a Nazarite consecrated to God absolutely for God's fulfillment of His economy....Samuel was a priest, not by birth but by God raising him up particularly....In the degradation of the priesthood,  God's speaking was almost lost. Thus, God needed to raise up a living person, a prophet, to speak for Him, and this is what He did with Samuel. In God's ordination, Samuel is counted as the first prophet....Fourth, Samuel minister as a judge....Samuel stood on the earth to be the acting God--the one representing God and acting for Him--in his priesthood, prophethood, and judgeship....Fifth, Samuel was a man of prayer"(Lee. Witness. Life-Study of 1 & 2 Samuel. Anaheim: Living Stream Ministry, 1993, Print).

Samuel was pivotal in cooperating with God so that His kingdom could come to the earth through David. More on that in the next post.

Here's a beautiful song on Samuel  and others who stood against the tide of their age to be for God.  It's on a  New York  City Young People's CD called In This Godless Age       

Other Posts on 1 & 2 Samuel:

 You can listen to excerpts of Witness Lee's speaking on the books of Samuel on the  Life Study of the Bible  with Witness Lee.   You can also read the online Life-Study of 1 & 2 Samuel and check out other resources available to enhance your study of the Bible on Living Stream Ministry's website.

What We Can Learn From Hannah in Her Prayer in 1 Samuel 1
How God Used Samuel at a Degraded Time in Israel's History
Taking a Closer Look at David in 1 & 2 Samuel

What is God's Building in 2 Samuel 7:5?