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However frequent and unheeded a similar contrast may be in our days between the
things of God and of man, David too vividly apprehended spiritual realities to
remain contented under it. Without venturing to express a wish which might have
seemed presumptuous, he told his feelings on this subject to his trusted friend and
adviser, the prophet Nathan.^284
As might have been expected, Nathan responded by a full approval of the king's
unspoken purpose, which seemed so accordant with the glory of God. But Nathan
had spoken - as ancient writers note - from his own, though pious, impulse, and not
by direction of the Lord. Oftentimes our thoughts, although springing from motives
of real religion, are not God's thoughts; and the lesson here conveyed is most
important of not taking our own impressions, however earnestly and piously derived,
as necessarily in accordance with the will of God, but testing them by His revealed
word, - in short, of making our test in each case not subjective feeling, but objective
revelation.
That night, as Nathan was busy with thoughts of the great future which the king's
purpose seemed to open, God spake to him in vision, forbidding the undertaking; or
rather, while approving the motive, delaying its execution. All this time, since He
had brought them up out of Egypt, God's Presence had been really among Israel; He
had walked about with them in all their wanderings and state of unsettledness. Thus
far, then, the building of an house could not be essential to God's Presence, while the
"walking about in tent and dwelling" had corresponded to Israel's condition. Another
period had now arrived. Jehovah Zevaoth^285 had chosen David, and established his
kingdom.
And in connection with it as concerned Israel (ver. 10) and David (ver. 11): "And I
have appointed a place for My people Israel, and have planted it that it may abide in
its place, and no more tremble; and that the children of wickedness" (malice) "may
no more oppress it as at the first, and from the day when I appointed judges over My
people Israel.^286 And I give thee rest from all thine enemies, and Jehovah intimates
to thee that a house will Jehovah make to thee."
Thus much for the present. As for the future, it was to be as always in the Divine
arrangement. For God must build us a house before we can build one to Him. It was
not that David was first to rear a house for God, but that God would rear one for
David. Only afterwards, when all Israel's wanderings and unrest were past, and He
had established the house of His servant, would the son of that servant, no longer a
man of war (1 Chronicles 20:8; 28:3), but a man of peace, "Solomon," build the
house of peace. There was inward and even outward congruity in this: a kingdom
which was peace; a king the type of the Prince of peace; and a temple the abode of
(^)