Year 1, Day 325: 2 Samuel 8

2 Samuel 8 is a pretty tough passage for me to write about today.  I’ll be honest and confess that I am having a tough time pulling something out of the text.  So if any of you readers have some insight, this is a great day to share!

God Fulfills His Promises

However, I don’t want anyone to go away without some kind of spiritual food, so I’ll talk generically here about God’s ability to fulfill promises.  God has told David that his offspring will rule.  In order for David’s offspring to rule, the nation must continue to exist.  This chapter shows us that not only did the united Israel continue to exist but it prospered underneath David.  The boarders expanded.  Generational enemies became subservient to David and the Hebrew people.  God was gracious.

In fact, what this chapter begins is a three chapter description of the expansion of the kingdom to fulfill God’s promise to the Hebrew people.  By the time we are done, David’s kingdom will have expanded tenfold over Saul’s kingdom.  Quite literally, David’s Kingdom runs to the border of Egypt in the south to the border with Syria in the north.  It is under David that the kingdom becomes a major player in the Middle East to be compared to the kingdom of the Egyptians, the Babylonians, and the Assyrians.

God’s Promises on God’s Timing

This chapter speaks to God’s ability to bring about His promise.  However, this chapter also speaks to God’s ability to bring about His promise on His own timing and when He believes it is a good thing.  There is no doubt that everyone who lived prior to David wondered when it would be that God would fulfill His promises and make them a united nation – His people – in a political sense.  Many faithful people no doubt waited for God to act.  It speaks to the point that we need to be patient with God and understand that sometimes God brings about the kingdom after we are no longer around to see it.

This has led me down a rabbit trail, but I think that it’s okay with this chapter today.  It leads me thinking about spiritual maturity and spiritual perspective.  As a person, I want to know that God is working with me and going to bring about great things in my life.  But isn’t that really a telling perspective from a human mindset?  Should I not be far more interested in playing the role that God wants me to play – settling not for the results occurring in my lifetime but rather settling for the knowledge that I did what God asked and He will bring about His results on His timing?

I’ll put all the chips on the table.  As a pastor, it’s easy for me to dream about establishing a church that is determined to be disciple-makers, not tradition worshippers.  Perhaps that is God’s plan for, but perhaps not.  Perhaps God has me to be the foundation builder.  Perhaps God has me as the ground-work layer:  the one who clears the land, prepares the ground, digs up the earth and gets the scene ready for the spiritual stone-masons to come in and build.  Now I’m not saying either picture is right or wrong.  But what I am saying is that is much easier for me to fall in love with the job of finishing the work than it is to fall in love with the job of preparing the work and then hand it off to someone else to finish.  And from a spiritual perspective, it shouldn’t be that way.  I should be willing to fall in love with whatever work God has planned for me.

I think of Jesus and John the Baptist here.  John the Baptizer was the ground-breaker.  He was the ground-leveler.  He was the preparation for Jesus to come and build the glorious kingdom.  John’s work was necessary and hard, and lacking in glory.  But John did it, and did it well.  Spiritually, John was mature in that he saw God’s plan, knew his role, and strove to work towards it.

Many Hebrew people before David wondered when God would fulfill the promise.  David saw it fulfilled.  Many prophets wondered when the Messiah would come and fulfill that promise.  Jesus’ disciples saw it fulfilled.  Many good people do good work in preparation for God to fulfill His promise.  I should count myself lucky and blessed simply to be numbered among them – whether or not I actually got to see the fulfillment of the promise!

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