SERIES: David: A Person After God’s Heart
When God Says “No”
SPEAKER: Michael P. Andrus
Introduction: Does God answer prayer? Probably every one of you would answer, “Yes, of course!” But what percentage of the time do you get what you ask for? Forty percent, sixty percent, eighty percent? Does that bother you? Have you ever wondered if an atheist’s wishes are fulfilled any less often than a believer’s prayers?
The problem of unanswered prayer (or receiving an answer that is “no”) is one that every believer struggles with at one time or another. It is obvious that prayer is not a magic lamp which one can rub to have a genie pop out and grant our desire, nor do we expect it to be. We all know times when we have been selfish in our requests, and we are not too surprised when God declines those requests. However, when we unselfishly ask God for something that we have every reason to believe is good and proper, and even then, we do not receive an answer (or get a negative answer), that can be disturbing indeed.
But it’s not a new phenomenon and it’s not necessarily due to spiritual problems on our part. It is somewhat comforting to me that even David, a man after God’s heart, received a negative answer to a good and noble prayer. May we learn from both his struggle and from his response.
Let’s begin by reading the opening verses of 2 Samuel 7:
After the king was settled in his palace and the LORD had given him rest from all his enemies around him, he said to Nathan the prophet, “Here I am, living in a palace of cedar, while the ark of God remains in a tent.”
Nathan replied to the king, “Whatever you have in mind, go ahead and do it, for the LORD is with you.”
The first scene in this drama is this:
David seeks a lofty goal with a noble motive. (1-3)
Last week we discovered that David, after one tragic attempt and failure, finally realizes his dream of bringing the Ark of the Covenant to Jerusalem, his new capitol city, and places it in a tent. David’s goal, not specifically stated yet but clearly implied, is to build a temple to the Lord His God, a place where the Ark can be permanently housed, and the people can come regularly to worship God. His motive, clearly established in the rest of the story, is that God might be honored, and the world might see that Israel’s God is worthy of all honor. But why does this project surface just now?
David has accomplished the task with which he was charged. (1) He had been given the responsibility of consolidating the kingdom and subduing the enemies around them. This he has done, defeating not only the Jebusites in Jerusalem, but the Philistines as well, who still inhabited large portions of Palestine. As chapter 5:10 summarizes the events, David “became more and more powerful, because the Lord God Almighty was with him.” The question is, now that God has given him victory and rest, what is he going to do with it?
Sometimes true character shows up more in leisure than in work. Some people are able to generate the adrenalin and drive to accomplish significant things for God, but when they get away from the battle, they find it difficult to discipline their personal lives. David here wisely uses this period of rest to do some personal spiritual evaluation. (Would that he had done this consistently, for we’re going to see in chapter 11 that David makes the greatest mistake of his life during another period of inactivity!).
He senses incongruity between his personal residence and God’s house of worship. (2) David goes to Nathan the prophet and pours out his heart to him saying essentially, “Here I am, living in a palace, in comfortable luxury, and the Ark of the Covenant is sitting in a tent. I just must do something about that.” I can empathize with David’s conscience on this. I had some of those same thoughts during our early years in St. Louis. We rented a house for the first nine months after moving there in 1984, and then we bought a nice, comfortable four-bedroom home. But the church plant I pastored met in the cafeteria of a business college. We sat in cheap metal chairs, the floors were sticky, there was no air-conditioning, we were over-crowded, and the parking was inadequate. And I felt guilty.
Was this legitimate guilt or phony guilt? The answer I get from Scripture is a clear, “maybe; it all depends.” There is an interesting passage in the book of Haggai (1:3-9. Listen to these words:
The word of the Lord came through the prophet Haggai: “Is it a time for you yourselves to be living in your paneled houses, while this house remains a ruin?”….
This is what the LORD Almighty says: “Give careful thought to your ways. Go up into the mountains and bring down timber and build the house, so that I may take pleasure in it and be honored,” says the LORD. “You expected much, but see, it turned out to be little. What you brought home, I blew away. Why?” declares the LORD Almighty. “Because of my house, which remains a ruin, while each of you is busy with his own house.”
Here it is clear that God’s people were culpable in that they were living in fine homes while the temple lay in ruins. But the principal reason they are rebuked is that God had given then a specific command to return following the Babylonian Captivity to rebuild the temple, but they hadn’t done it. They had put themselves first. So legitimate guilt can be earned when the house of the Lord is neglected in lieu of selfish consumption.
But that’s not what we find in 2 Samuel. God had not told David to build a temple and He didn’t want one–yet. We’ll come back to God’s response in a few minutes.
He resolves to rectify the situation and receives preliminary approval to do so. (3) David’s desire to build a temple is shared with Nathan, who believes the idea has great merit and encourages him to go ahead. I love the way Eugene Peterson describes this scene:
He talked it over with his pastor, Nathan. Nathan was enthusiastic: “Go, do all that is in your heart; for the LORD is with you” (2 Sam.7:3).
Pastors love moments like these–turning-point moments when a person moves from receiving to giving. Nathan, like most pastors, must have spent much of his life being approached by people who were after something from God and wanted his assistance in getting it. Pastors and priests and prophets are supposed to know how to go about getting things people want from God. “Nathan, pray for me. My spouse is impossible; … my kids won’t behave; … my job is at a dead end; … my nerves are frazzled; (etc., etc., etc.). Nathan, pray for me.” ….
Men and women in Nathan’s position are used to being partners to asking God for help, and rejoicing in the help God gives. They aren’t used to having someone show up offering to do something for God. It’s so unusual that when it does happen, prophetic and pastoral affirmation is unqualified. It feels like such a breath of fresh air! Enthusiasm is immediate and uncritical. Nathan endorsed David’s proposal wholeheartedly, unthinkingly. What was there to think about? What grounds were there for suspicion? A house for God–what could be better?[i]
Go for it, David! It’s a no-brainer!
I suspect both David and Nathan went to bed that night dreaming about architects and plans and fund-raising. However, I suspect both are surprised when…,
God denies David’s request. (4-17)
He does so in a revelation to the prophet:
That night the word of the LORD came to Nathan, saying: “Go and tell my servant David, “This is what the LORD says: Are you the one to build me a house to dwell in? I have not dwelt in a house from the day I brought the Israelites up out of Egypt to this day. I have been moving from place to place with a tent as my dwelling. Wherever I have moved with all the Israelites, did I ever say to any of their rulers whom I commanded to shepherd my people Israel, ‘Why have you not built me a house of Cedar?’” (2 Samuel 7:4-7)
So. Nathan must go and withdraw the building permit. Before examining the specifics of God’s denial of David’s request, I want us to examine the whole issue of unanswered prayer. I grant that technically David’s desire is not expressed in prayer but in a conversation with the prophet. But it is clearly a desire of his heart, and whether spoken to God or to Nathan, it is tantamount to a prayer: “Lord, this is what I desire to do.”
A theology of unanswered prayer
Sometimes God does not answer prayer. And let me share with you two categories of people who should expect to have their prayers go unanswered.
1. God does not (ordinarily) answer the prayer of an unbeliever. (Eph. 3:12) Some of you may remember an incident about twenty years ago in which the President of the Southern Baptist Convention got into very hot water with the media for a statement to the effect that “God does not answer the prayer of a Jew.” That was not smart, especially considering the heightened sensitivity there is in our country to anything that smacks of anti-Semitism. What he should have said is that God is not obligated to hear the prayer of anyone, whether Jewish, Hindu, Mormon, or even Baptist, who does not come to Him through Jesus Christ. And that is true, because not everyone has equal access to God. Access must be purchased. You and I cannot purchase it, but Jesus has, through His sacrifice on the Cross. In Ephesians 3:12 we read, “In Christ and through faith in him we may approach God with freedom and confidence.” If the Bible teaches anything clearly, it is that Jesus is the Way, and no one can come to the Father except through Him.
Think of the implications of this. Think of the millions upon millions of prayers that are offered up to various gods every day by avid worshipers! In most cases I suspect the result is not very different from the experience of the prophets of Baal on Mt. Carmel, who prayed and begged and danced and even slashed themselves with swords and spears until their blood flowed–and continued to do so for a full day. Here’s what the Scripture says it all produced: “But there was no response, no one answered, no one paid attention.” (1 Kings 18:29)
I’m not saying God never answers the prayers of unbelievers, because God can do anything He wants, and sometimes He may answer their prayers as a means to draw them to Himself. But unbelievers have no claim, no guarantee that God will hear their prayers, other than a sinner’s prayer, which God will answer from anyone, freely and graciously.
2. God at times does not answer the prayer of even a believer. For example, when sin is being nurtured in one’s heart. This means that if you are engaging in an adulterous affair, or cheating on your taxes, or harboring a grudge against a brother in Christ, you may well find that God is ignoring your prayers. Isaiah knew this when he wrote to the Israelites (Isaiah 59:1-2), “Surely the arm of the Lord is not too short to save, nor his ear too dull to hear. But your iniquities have separated you from your God; your sins have hidden his face from you, so that He will not hear.” Psalm 66:18 adds, “If I regard iniquity in my heart, the Lord will not hear me.” And the Apostle Peter really goes to meddling when he tells us men that if we do not live with our wives in an understanding and respectful way, our prayers may be hindered (1 Peter 3:7).
Another time when God does not answer the prayer of a believer is when the request is selfish or foolish. James says (in 4:3), “When you ask, you do not receive, because you ask with wrong motives, that you may spend what you get on your pleasures.” Consider this for a moment: if you were God, would you be moved to answer a prayer for healing, if you knew that the person praying was going to get out of the sick bed and go immediately back to breaking his neck to get rich and continue to neglect his wife and kids? Would you answer a prayer for wealth if you knew the person asking for it planned to buy a vacation home and spend all his weekends there while neglecting worship? No, you wouldn’t answer such prayers–not out of spite but simply because you know it would be detrimental to the person praying that way.
Sometimes God answers prayer but says “no.” Why might that be the case?
1. There may be lessons that cannot be learned in any other way. (8-11) For example, David learned through God’s “no” that he was not as necessary to God as he might have been tempted to think. He was, in fact, not essential at all! Listen to what God says to the prophet Nathan, and watch for the use of the personal pronoun by God (verse 8 of 2 Samuel 7):
Now then, tell my servant David, “This is what the Lord Almighty says: I took you from the pasture and from following the flock to be a ruler over my people Israel. I have been with you wherever you have gone, and I have cut off all your enemies from before you. Now I will make your name great, like the names of the greatest men of the earth. And I will provide a place for my people Israel and will plant them so that they can have a home of their own and no longer be disturbed. Wicked people will not oppress them anymore, as they did at the beginning and have done ever since the time I appointed leaders over my people Israel. I will also give you rest from all your enemies.”
I gather from this emphasis by God on what He has done for David that buried beneath the surface of David’s desire to build a Temple is perhaps a touch of pride in all he has accomplished in a short time. David seems to be saying. “Lord, I’ve defeated all my enemies, established my kingdom and built me a palace. Now, Lord, I want to do something for You, something that no one before me has ever been able to do since no one has ever accomplished as much as I have. I want to build a house for my God.” I wouldn’t even be surprised if he has already ordered a bronze plaque to be hung near the door: “Dedicated to the Lord God Almighty, Built by his humble servant David, Yom Kippur, 1023 B.C.”
If subtle pride is present (and I suspect it is usually more of a subconscious thing), God deals with it forcefully and yet gently by telling him, “David, you were just a shepherd when I found you. You didn’t win all those battles in your own strength—I did it for you. And I will do more than that. But lest you become as proud in your spiritual accomplishments as you seem to be in your military ones, I am not going to allow you to build the temple which you have dreamed about.”[ii]
This lesson is something we all need to learn. God can do whatever He wants to do without us. But somehow, when we are successful in ministry, we begin to wonder how the Lord could possibly manage without us. We all need a strong dose of Acts 17 from time to time. Speaking before the proud Athenians on Mars Hill, the very epitome of Greek culture and intelligence, Paul said, “The God who made the world and everything in it is the Lord of heaven and earth and does not live in temples built by hands. And he is not served by human hands, as if he needed anything, because he himself gives all men life and breath and everything else.” (Acts 17:24-25)
We need to dispossess ourselves, once and for all, of the notion that God needs us to hold His game plan together and accomplish His purposes on earth. He doesn’t. He doesn’t need us and He doesn’t even need our money. Now that may not be a very politically wise thing for a pastor to say, but it’s true. God is the sovereign ruler of the universe, and He can get along without you or me or our resources.
But of course, this needs to be balanced by the glorious truth that the God who doesn’t need us has invited us to serve Him and to share in the greatness of His cause. That’s what gives us worth and value–not the thought that God needs us but that even though He doesn’t need us, He wants us. If we choose not to respond positively to God’s call for our service and our resources, He’s perfectly able to find someone who will, but it is we who will lose out, not He.
Have there been times in your life when God has said “no” because you needed to learn a lesson like the one He teaches David here? Sometimes He can teach us more from His denials or His delays than from His permissions.
2. God may have something better to offer. (11,16) This, too, is evident in our text for today. Look at 2 Sam. 7:11b: “The Lord declares to you that the Lord himself will establish a house for you.” Instead of allowing David to build a house for Him the Lord is going to build a house for David!
Now the house that the Lord is going to build for David is not a literal one out of stones and cedar. The succeeding verses indicate that what God is talking about is a permanent dynasty. Verse 12: “When your days are over and you rest with your fathers, I will raise up your offspring to succeed you, who will come from your own body, and I will establish his kingdom. . .” Skip down to verse 16: “Your house and your kingdom will endure forever before me; your throne will be established forever.” This is the great Davidic Covenant that promises a perpetual kingdom to David’s progeny and eventually culminates in King Jesus. But my point here is that God had something much better in mind when He said “no” to David’s desire to build a temple.
Country music star Garth Brooks wrote a song called “Unanswered Prayers.” I’m not going to sing it, but I thought I would read a few of the words:
Just the other night at a hometown football game
My wife and I ran into my old high school flame
And as I introduced them the past came back to me
And I couldn’t help but think of the way things used to be
She was the one that I’d wanted for all times
And each night I’d spend prayin’ that God would make her mine
And if he’d only grant me this wish I wished back then
I’d never ask for anything again.
Sometimes I thank God for unanswered prayers
Remember when you’re talkin’ to the Man upstairs
That just because he doesn’t answer doesn’t mean he don’t care
Some of God’s greatest gifts are unanswered prayers.
Now I don’t care for Garth’s reference to God as “the man upstairs,” but I think there’s some solid truth in those last two lines. I suspect many of us have similar unanswered prayers we are grateful for.
I thought I would share a personal experience from my own life of how God said “no” to one thing to say “yes” to something better. I am one of the few people who never wondered what I was going to be when I grew up. From my earliest remembrance I wanted to be a college professor. Not only did I know what I wanted to do; I also knew where I wanted to do it–at Calvary Bible College. My Dad was president of the college, and during his 28 years with that school it became an integral part of my life. After some nine years of college and graduate school, three degrees, and several years of part-time teaching at Dallas County Junior College, my dream was finally realized in 1972 as I stood before my first class at CBC. I thought I had died and gone to heaven.
But the dream faded quickly. Before that year was out my father had resigned due to heart surgery, and a new president was elected, a very insecure man who saw me, the previous president’s son, as a threat. Furthermore, he was a fundamentalist Baptist who viewed me, and many of my colleagues, as a heretic. Within months I was informed that my contract would not be renewed.
I prayed. Boy, did I pray! I couldn’t believe that my dream which had started in the second grade was going to be dashed so soon after it was realized. But God had something better to offer me. It was through that traumatic experience that I was challenged for the first time in my life to consider being a pastor. When I realized that I didn’t have to stop being a teacher in order to be a pastor, I said, “Why not try it?”, and so for going on four decades now I have been serving in the local church. I believe today with all my heart that the local church is the hope of the world.
There is perhaps someone here who purposed and planned and dreamed of going to the mission field, but God said no. Someone else may have dreamed of marriage, but God said no. Someone else may have dreamed of children but God said no. Someone else may have dreamed of success in business but God said no. Whatever your dreams and plans and goals, if you are a believer living godly and praying unselfishly, if God has said no, it may be because He has something better for you.
3. God may choose to grant the request to someone else. (12-13) A classic case in point here is the proverbial Sunday School teacher praying for a sunny day for a picnic while the Christian farmer is praying for rain for his crops. God may say no to the Sunday School teacher, not because of sin in his life or because her request is selfish, or because she has some lesson she needs to learn, nor even because He has something better to offer. Rather He may say “no” because He desires this time to grant the weather request to the farmer.
Now that may sound like a silly example, but in a sense that same thing is going on here in our text. God says “no” to David so that He can say “yes” to Solomon. Look at verses 12 and 13: “When your days are over and you rest with your fathers, I will raise up your offspring to succeed you, who will come from your own body, and I will establish his kingdom. He is the one who will build a house for my Name.”[iii]
4. God may simply choose not to reveal His reason. It is essential for us to realize that God is under no obligation to tell us why He sometimes says “no.” Consider Job, who went through some of the greatest suffering known to man. He prayed about it, he confessed sin, both known and suspected. He begged for answers, but God said “no” to Job’s prayers, but for a reason Job apparently never learned. There was a spiritual battle going on in the very heart of heaven. We are told about, but Job was not. Still, he trusted God, and because of that trust he has served as a noble example to believers for 4000 years!
Now with that theology of unanswered prayer, I want us to return to the second scene in the drama unfolding here in 2 Samuel 7 and think a little further about two reasons God says “no.”
God denies David’s request because He doesn’t need a house. (7:6-7) It seems to me that God is saying, “I don’t need a house, David, and you need to learn that I am not limited by the lack of a house. I am bigger than any house you could build anyway.” Of course, God did order that a temple be built by David’s son, Solomon, but then it was in accord with His timing and after He had taught His people the lessons they needed to learn.
Many of you have heard about Saddleback Community Church in southern California. It’s one of the largest churches in the U.S. and is pastored by Rick Warren, the author of The Purpose Driven Church and The Purpose Driven Life. If I remember correctly that church met for about 15 years in over 70 different rented facilities before they finally broke down and built their own. They grew to something like 10,000 in rented quarters, demonstrating that facilities do not make a house of God–people do.
But I think many churches today are suffering from a bad case of “the edifice complex.” The amount of money that is being poured into bricks and mortar is sometimes scandalous. If you start here with First Free and work your way just a couple of miles east to Eastminster and Central Christian and Messiah and Mary Magdalen and Holy Cross, you probably have in that corridor $50,000,000 or more of investment of kingdom funds in church buildings. Is that wise? I don’t know. I really don’t. But I have my suspicions that if we really sought God about our building plans, He might respond like this:
“Children, I am pleased that you want to worship me with your best, sacrificially and lovingly. But have you thought about what your plans will do to you once they are complete? How will this building affect your internal community, your relationship with unbelievers, your attitude toward me and the Gospel? What will it cost spiritually, and will you still love me the way you did when you had only folding chairs? I want the best for you, so before I answer, please ponder these things.”
I’m not opposed to expansion when a church runs out of room, but I think we must give more careful thought to what we build and why.
God denies David’s request because He wants to build a house for David. (7:11b) There are times when our grand human plans to do something for God are seen, after a night of prayer, to be a huge human distraction from what God is doing for us. God, in effect, tells David through Nathan, “The kingdom that I’m shaping here isn’t what you do for me but what I do through you. I’m doing the building here, not you.” I’m reminded of the good advice of a modern-day prophet, Henry Blackaby, who has urged us not to ask God to bless what we’re doing but rather to find out what God’s already blessing and get on board!
David responds to God’s “no” wisely. (7:18-29)
He accepts God’s decision. (18-29) David prays a beautiful prayer beginning in verse 18 of 2 Samuel 7. I think we should read it in its entirety and then I would like to make a few brief comments.
Then King David went in and sat before the LORD, and he said: “Who am I, O Sovereign LORD, and what is my family, that you have brought me this far? And as if this were not enough in your sight, O Sovereign LORD, you have also spoken about the future of the house of your servant. Is this your usual way of dealing with man, O Sovereign LORD?
“What more can David say to you? For you know your servant, O Sovereign LORD. For the sake of your word and according to your will, you have done this great thing and made it known to your servant.
“How great you are, O Sovereign LORD! There is no one like you, and there is no God but you, as we have heard with our own ears. And who is like your people Israel-the one nation on earth that God went out to redeem as a people for himself, and to make a name for himself, and to perform great and awesome wonders by driving out nations and their gods from before your people, whom you redeemed from Egypt? You have established your people Israel as your very own forever, and you, O LORD, have become their God.
“And now, LORD God, keep forever the promise you have made concerning your servant and his house. Do as you promised, so that your name will be great forever. Then men will say, ‘The LORD Almighty is God over Israel!’ And the house of your servant David will be established before you.
“O LORD Almighty, God of Israel, you have revealed this to your servant, saying, ‘I will build a house for you.’ So your servant has found courage to offer you this prayer. O Sovereign LORD, you are God! Your words are trustworthy, and you have promised these good things to your servant. Now be pleased to bless the house of your servant, that it may continue forever in your sight; for you, O Sovereign LORD, have spoken, and with your blessing the house of your servant will be blessed forever.”
Notice please that there is not a word of objection to the “no” that God has given to David’s desire. He accepts it completely.
He claims God’s promises. (25ff) Instead of focusing upon what God has said “no” to, he claims what God has said “yes” to. Several times in this prayer he thanks God for His promises and prays for their fulfillment.
He praises God’s character. (22ff) He extols His name more than a dozen times and uses pronouns to refer to Him more than 40 times!
He helps someone else achieve his goal. (1 Chronicles 22:5) I love the words of 1 Chronicles 22:5, where we read, “David said, ‘My son Solomon is young and inexperienced, and the house to be built for the Lord should be of great magnificence and fame and splendor in the sight of all the nations. Therefore I will make preparations for it.’ So David made extensive preparations before his death.”[iv]
David, who has been denied the fulfillment of his vision and prayer, instead of sulking about it, gives himself completely to the task in the best way he knows how, preparing for that which he himself would never be able to complete. If you cannot build, you can gather the materials. If you cannot go, you can send somebody else. If you have no children, you can become a big brother or sister to a child that has only one parent. The vision need never have been in vain, even though it remains unfulfilled.
Conclusion: Has God said “no” to you? Then, before you turn away, and before you allow resentment and bitterness to creep into your life, just sit down before the Lord, as David did, and think about the blessings He has given you. Though by nature we are sinful and deserve only His judgment, yet God cared enough to give His Son to die for us. He gave us the capacity to know Him personally, and what dignity that gives to our lives!
All of us have had broken dreams. We need to release those dreams to Him by trusting in His timing and not stifle new dreams because of past disappointments. God cares, really cares, about our dreams, and He won’t abandon us. When God says “no” it should not be taken as rejection but redirection. When God says “no” it is because He has a better way.
Tags:
Prayer
Prayer, unanswered
[i] Eugene Peterson, Leap Over a Wall, 158-160.
[ii] This reminds me of the census David took (2 Samuel 24), where there is much clearer evidence of pride at work. There he is not just rebuked by God but punished severely.
[iii] This was not a capricious choice on God’s part. There was a reason why God wanted Solomon to build the temple rather than David, but it wasn’t because of sin in David’s life. The reason is given in 1 Chronicles 22:6, where David. quite old now, speaks to his son:
Then he called for his son Solomon and charged him to build a house for the Lord, the God of Israel. David said to Solomon: “My son, I had it in my heart to build a house for the Name of the Lord my God. But this word of the Lord came to me: ‘You have shed much blood and have fought many wars. You are not to build a house for my Name, because you have shed much blood on the earth in my sight. But you will have a son who will be a man of peace and rest, and I will give him rest from all his enemies on very side. His name will be Solomon, and I will grant Israel peace and quiet during his reign. He is the one who will build a house for my Name.”
This does not mean David was wrong to lead Israel in battle. As a matter of fact, God had specifically directed him to conduct most of these wars. Nonetheless, war and bloodshed, even when necessary, fall short of God’s ideal. God wants His temple built by a man of peace.
DATE: January 30, 2005
[iv] In chapter 29 of 1 Chronicles we read more detail about David’s effort to help, though he is not to be the builder:
“With all my resources I have provided for the temple of my God–gold for the gold work, silver for the silver, bronze for the bronze, iron for the iron and wood for the wood, as well as onyx for the settings, turquoise, stones of various colors, and all kinds of fine stone and marble–all of these in large quantities. Besides, in my devotion to the temple of my God I now give my personal treasures of gold and silver for the temple of my God, over and above everything I have provided for this holy temple.”