2 Samuel 5:1-10
A few years ago I was at a conference where we saw a young man who had been deaf from birth healed, he was brought all the way from the Netherlands by his parents to come to this conference expectant that the Lord would do something for them. He was being prayed for by a group of the prayer ministry team and suddenly his ears just opened. I have never seen a 17 year old guy go through so many emotions in a matter of seconds. The whole place was rocking with some awesome worship already as ministry was taking place down at the front, when suddenly this shriek of sheer joy went up from this crowd of people and you could see this young man in the middle go through some amazing emotions and then just break down crying. Moments later he was up on stage with his mum as she recounted their story to the now hushed congregation. As the story unfolded we heard how this woman had been prophesied over when her son was about 7 or 8 that God would open his ears. Over the years she had tried to keep this promise in her mind believing that God would do the impossible but found it difficult to cling on to as the years ticked by and nothing seemed to change. But now her son could completely hear, at this you can imagine that the place went wild, as people’s faith was expanded and hope was raised.
How do we feel when we have unfulfilled promises knocking around us. I know that I have a list as long as my arm of things to do around the house and for Annie, I am very careful about using the words that I promise to do something specific because when I promise to do something I take it very seriously and I hate not being able to fulfil those words.
As a society we have become a bit sceptical about what is promised to us. Often we are amazed when a product does what it says it will in an advert, we accept a fair bit of discrepancy. We certainly take a large pinch of salt when we hear our politicians promise that they will do something, not very honouring of those who rule over us but sadly it has become the norm that we are sceptical about what comes out a politician’s mouth.
The thing is that this scepticism rolls out into our faith, we read promises in scripture and we think ah but can we really trust them or we have words spoken over us and we have a predisposition to think that’ll be nice I’ll wait and see if that comes to pass and then I will embrace it, instead of accepting it as a gift from God and then watching it unfold in our lives.
But thankfully this is not the example that we find in today’s reading. What we actually find is another example of a God who always fulfils his promises, who is ever faithful and who holds true to his word. What we find today is the continued fulfilment of the covenant promise, not just with David, but also the earlier covenants with Moses, Jacob and Abraham. That Israel would have a specific land, that from that place they would be a people of promise, an example to the nations in order to shine light to the gentile nations around them, an example of what it means to follow and be in relationship with YHWH.
When Israel came into the land to take possession of it we read in Joshua and Judges that although they take possession of the land they don’t quite manage to empty it of all its inhabitants and secure all the strong holds. You see the scepticism and doubt that we suffer from in this generation is not a new thing, humans have always have had problems accepting the outlandish and scandalous goodness of the Father. So when we see obstacles in the way we stop believing God for the possible, despite all that He has done in the past to prove not only his power but also his faithfulness.
This is the situation that we find the nation of Israel in this reading. As a nation they have seen YHWH move mightily and powerfully. They’ve seen the walls of Jericho crumble, they’ve seen Gideon route a whole army with a mere 300 hundred men, they have a corporate memory of the exodus, the plagues on the Egyptians, the escape from Israel, the parting of the red sea, being guided through the wilderness and miraculous provision of water, manna and quails. But even so we find that there are significant moments of doubt in Israel’s journey and as we track the conquering of the land we notice the certain fortified places are left as enclaves in this new nation and the promised land.
So we find the Jebusites camped behind the high walls of a fortified city called Jerusalem taunting their Jewish neighbours going where they want because they had a military advantage and generally being a pain to the new nation of Israel. In Joshua 15 we see a one line remark about the failure of Judah to drive out the Jebusites and this city remains a thorn in the side of Israel, making her borders insecure and basically harassing them from the middle.
Enter king David, a man with a mission and a man who has made a promise, a promise to care for God’s people, to be their leader.
And the first thing that he chooses to do after being anointed king is to take control of the fortified city of Jerusalem. You see he knows how much of an offence Jerusalem being in the hands of the Jebusites is, how it is a failure to secure the legacy that God has proclaimed over their nation.
Sometimes we may find ourselves in the same situation, with a promise or situation in our lives that has gone unfulfilled or only partially fulfilled. This can lead to frustration that things are not right, it can lead to doubt and apathy and it can lead to a lack of trust.
At these times we have a choice we can either settle for the status quo or we can choose to walk in our inheritance, walk in who God says that we are. What gave David confidence is the promises that he had received from God. Have you ever wondered what gave David the confidence to go and fight Goliath? It wasn’t some sort of bigheadedness thinking that he was this amazing warrior but simply he knew who God had said he was. He was going to be king. When he went to fight Goliath, he wasn’t king and so he believed that God would bring him through that battle because God’s promises never fail. Same reason why when Saul was trying to kill David and David had the opportunity to murder Saul in the cave as Saul was going for a wee, David choose not to, not because he was scared but because he knew that YHWH was going to fulfil his promises to him and to the nation and he didn’t need to take matters into his own hands to bring about the destiny that God had ordained.
So David has it in his mind to take control of Jerusalem, it is what he has been ordained to do, to complete what YHWH has spoken down through the generations – to take the city of God and make it his capital in order to unify the tribes and fulfil the covenant which God has established.
But there is a problem, the problem is that Jerusalem is still a fortress city, its still a domineering and challenging place to attack and the Jebusites know it. So the Jebusites mock David and his men, we don’t need to defend our walls with soldiers we’ll put the blind and the lame on our walls.
You see the Jebusites knew that there was no earthly way that David was going to overpower the walls, they had stood the test throughout the generations and it was the walls that gave the Jebusites their power and security. But what they didn’t count on was that David had seen the weakness of the city and knew that with God all things are possible. David through a word of knowledge tells his soldiers to attack the city by using the water tunnels, how can we be sure that it was a word of knowledge. Well because those tunnels would not have been a new thing suddenly built ready for an enemy to take advantage of, it would have been an incredibly risky and dangerous path to take, probably meaning that the attackers were only able to go into the city in single file meaning that any defenders could easily deal with them. It would have taken a word from the Lord to have given David the confidence to send his men into the city in this manner.
The key thing about David is because he walked in his identity he had possessed a defiant courage. Because he knew that he walked in the power and presence of God, because he was sure of YHWH’s covenant with him, he knew that when God told him to do something NOTHING was going to stop him from succeeding. Even when others were telling him that it was not possible and mocking him David did not lose heart, he stuck to the promises that God had spoken over him. And the same applies to us.
So what are some of the promises that we can walk in that enable us to have that same defiant courage that David had.
Luke 15 tells us everything that the Father has is ours. Lets think about that for a moment, we have a father in heaven who wants to give us everything that he has. To put it another way, the creator of the universe, the King of kings and Lord of Lords, the Alpha and the Omega, the Great I AM. Everything that he has, we have access to, there is no resource that we are lacking because there is nothing that wasn’t the Lords in the first place.
Matthew 18 tells us that everything we bind on earth is bound in heaven and everything that we loose on earth is released in heaven. This means that when we pray and we release blessing on a situation then that blessing is released in the heavenlies, when we pray to defeat things like illnesses or injustice then those things are also bound in the heavenlies, the thing is that we don’t always see it like this on either side because we don’t walk in the authority that is ours by right following our rebirth.
Luke 10 tells us that we have authority to overcome all the power of the enemy, why because we are children of the Lord most high.
That’s just three promises that are ours to possess, there are loads and loads more, when we listen to what Holy Spirit speaks over us, what Gods promises are for us then we’ll walk in that same defiant courage that David did. This will enable us to take control of those fortresses that we as a church have been circumventing for years, it will mean that we will be a blessing to the town not just because we do stuff but because we defy the powers and principalities of darkness – fyi doing stuff is also important.
We want to pray release into all our lives, we want to stand on some of those promises and pray them into each other’s lives.
