THE VALUE OF THE PROPHETIC WORD

J. Wright

1 Samuel 22: 5; 2 Samuel 7: 4–18; 11: 27; 12: 1–9, 24, 25; 1 Kings 1: 11–15, 22–28; 1 Chronicles 21: 7–13, 18, 19; 22: 1

What was on my heart, beloved brethren, was to speak of the way the prophet, or the prophetic word, helped David, particularly on the line of sonship. Sonship is God’s greatest thought for us. We should not only have the light of it, but we should have some experience of what sonship really is. David never dismissed the prophet, he always took account of what the prophet said and was governed by it and got help by it. However much it hurt David, however much it cost him, however much it affected His conscience, David valued the prophetic word. We should value prophetic ministry and see the importance of it. It is an exercise that what we say may be the word of God, and that it might be His current word for us. It is comparatively easy to speak of a subject with the knowledge we have of the truth, but it is an exercise that it might be from God, that it might be His word for the moment. His word always bears on the current need and current state, but it also has in mind that God’s thoughts should be furthered with us, and that we should answer to them. Not only should the current need be met, but we should be helped in a moral and spiritual way to enter into God’s thoughts in a fuller way and be formed by them.

On the other hand it is an exercise to receive the prophetic word. As I say, David never dismissed the prophet. There was a king in Israel, Ahab, who said of Micah that he hated him (1 Kings 22: 8); but he spoke the truth to him, and if the word is from God it will be the truth.

Not only what is true is said in the way of doctrine, but it would be the truth of God. That would bring its own searching character but it will also build us

up. At the end of 1 Corinthians 14 Paul speaks of the importance of prophecy, and one of the great points in prophecy is that it is for the edification of the saints. It is a great thing to desire to prophesy. Paul encourages the desire to prophesy. You may say it is an exercising matter, and it is exercising to speak God’s word, to get a word from God. Surely if we get a word from God it will exercise us; before we can speak of it effectively, it must have its own weight and effect with the one who speaks. The word of God is a sharp two-edged sword and it searches. But having said that I want to go over these scriptures to see the way that David was helped through the prophetic word.

In 1 Samuel 22 David acquires a prophet. We know that at this point in David’s history he was acquiring things; he acquired a priest, he acquired the ephod and he acquired Goliath’s sword. He also acquired a prophet, Gad. Later, Gad is said to be David’s seer. We know that a seer is one who sees things as they are before God; that is a great thing to see things as they are before God, not as they are in the eyes of men. Gad was a seer and he was also a prophet.

It is one thing to see a thing, another thing to be able to convey it and bring it home. So that the prophet Gad said to David, “Abide not in the stronghold; depart, and go into the land of Judah”. It was right that they should come to David at this point, in the stronghold in the cave. Those that were in debt, those that were of embittered spirit, they came to David because they needed him, and, beloved brethren, we come to Christ because we need Him.

David is in rejection here, he is in reproach; he is typical of the Lord as rejected. The cave of Adullam was not a very attractive place outwardly, but it was the place where David was. For us it is to be where Christ is, wherever that might be. Publicly it is a position of reproach which is despised. The Lord Jesus, when here, was despised and left alone of men, and they did not esteem Him. To be with Christ, you come into a sphere where He is, and it is of that character. But then there

was a move forward from this. They were not to stay there. The great thing in Christianity is to move forward. So he says, “go into the land of Judah”. Judah speaks of God’s sovereign choice, what God has chosen for Himself. We need to have before us God’s purpose, and get it early in our histories. As coming to Christ we need to get the sense of God’s purpose. He has taken us up for a purpose and He would not be deflected from His purpose. Judah represents God’s sovereign right to do as He will and choose whom He will. Then if we think of God’s sovereignty, we think of His sovereign mercy. If we have come to Christ in our need it is because God has shown us mercy. From this point he was to go forward into divine things.

When we come to 2 Samuel 7, David is thinking of God, he is thinking of a house for God, a place where God can dwell. That was a right thought. Nathan says to him, “Go, do all that is in thy heart; for Jehovah is with thee” (2 Samuel 7: 3), but Nathan was too quick in answering. He did not have God’s mind, he had not enquired as to what God’s thought was.

You might say, Well that was a good word from Nathan. But it was not God’s thought for the time, it was not the mind of God for David. David himself would be caused to be in exercise about God’s sovereignty. God’s sovereignty enters into what we do, whether God has fitted us for it, whether God has chosen us for it. Service is the Lord’s sovereign matter. He chooses whom He will. God chooses whom He will for service and He fits the person for service.

Jehovah is saying to David, You are not the one I have chosen for this. David had been a man of war. God had something else in mind, and David has to be adjusted. Nathan has to be adjusted and David has to be adjusted in relation to God’s sovereignty. There is a limitation put upon David. Was that because God was not pleased with David? It is not that at all. God was pleased with him. But God had something in mind to work out in David, and the word to David here is from God through the prophet; it brings out God’s interest in David and the way God had

taken up David and what God had done for David. We have to stop and think sometimes, and contemplate what God has done; what He has done for us, but what He has done for His own pleasure too. Then he speaks of God’s people, what they were and what God would do for His people. How great the people of God are!

Then he goes on to speak of Solomon. Solomon is not named here, but God brings the light of sonship into David’s soul. The light of sonship is for our contemplation; we are to think of the glory of sonship. Sonship is greater than any service we could render. God has taken us up for sonship, that we might be in the joy and gain of sonship for His own pleasure. That is a greater thing, beloved brethren, than any service. Every believer is a son, we are all God’s sons by faith in Christ Jesus, and because we are sons God has sent out the Spirit of His Son into our hearts, crying, Abba, Father (Galatians 4: 6). It is a great thing to contemplate sonship in Christ. John says at the beginning of his gospel, “we have contemplated his glory, a glory as of an only-begotten with a father”, John 1: 14. It was that character of glory they saw in Christ. Then it says He is “the only-begotten Son who is in the bosom of the Father”

(John 1: 18). The line of sonship is to affect us. How did it affect David here? Was there any resentment that He was not able to go on with what he had in mind? None whatsoever. He was fully adjusted and went into the presence of God and sat before Jehovah. He was in the liberty of sonship typically in doing that. The priests in the Old Testament stood, but David sat in the liberty of sonship. It is a great thing to be able to do that, to go into God’s presence conscious of what God’s thoughts are for us and sit there in the liberty and the dignity of a son. How great is the utterance of David. How well he speaks of God, how he is able to speak of God, how great He is. How great our God and Father is, the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. The “one God and Father of all, who is over all, and through all, and in us all”, Ephesians 4: 6. How great God is. David sat in the

presence of Jehovah. The prophetic word came to him, he was adjusted by it, and sat in the presence of God. The following chapters show how much David was helped after this. God had service in mind for him; he continued in his battles for Jehovah, and he was helped; he was helped too in the expression of grace towards Mephibosheth and grace even towards those who did not appreciate it.

In chapter 11 David fails. You wonder why in scripture so much is said of David’s failures. It is not to expose David but it is to help us. I think from one point of view David speaks of something wider. What David went through would speak to us of what is happening in a wider way in the church publicly and in the responsible element in the church publicly, the failure that has come in. But David fails here in not going out to the war, “at the return of the year, at the time when kings go forth, that David sent Joab, and his servants with him”, 2

Samuel 11: 1. David was not there, when he should have gone forth; instead of that he was taking things easy. It is a test if we get any measure of God’s help and prosperity, whether we take things easy, whether we indulge the flesh in some way. If we get material gain, what will we do with it? If we have some more time on our hands, what are we going to do with it? Are we going to indulge the flesh? You see what it led David into. It led him into covetousness, and it led him into murder. You say, I would not do that. Would you not? Would I not do it?

What is exposed here is the wickedness of David’s heart. Other scriptures bring out the weakness of it, but we have to come to know the wickedness of our hearts. We are no better than David. I wonder if we have come to that in some way, what the wickedness of our heart is?

David was too valuable a man to be let off. God does not let us off. If He loves us, and is working out something with us, He will not let us off if we sin. We know that, if a believer sins, we have an advocate with

the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous (1 John 2: 1). The advocacy of Christ gets to work when a believer sins, although David had not got that here. But I think we can look at it in the light of the New Testament, in that God sent a prophet to David. I think we could say that the advocacy of Christ was working typically in that way for David to help him, in that the prophet comes. What David did was evil, it says, “the thing that David had done was evil in the sight of Jehovah”. But David was too valuable a man to lose, and the prophet with his skill brings in a word so that David is made to condemn himself before he knows he is condemning himself. David did not get a sense that the prophet was getting at him but David pronounces his own judgment against himself. There was what was of God in David, and that is what God would appeal to in the prophetic word, the work of God in the saints, and He would get at the conscience where it is necessary, when sin comes in. It is no kindness to anyone to let them off. God would not act that way to let us off, because He cannot proceed in His thoughts for us if we go on in sin. He wanted to get David to judge the sin and judge himself; David did that and he did it thoroughly. Psalm 51 brings that out.

The skill of the prophet brings the word home to David and causes him to say, “the man that path done this thing is worthy of death”. Then the prophet says, “Thou art the man!” David had said that he is worthy of death, and the prophet says, “Thou art the man!” We come to that, that we are worthy of death. The wickedness of our hearts is that we are worthy of death.

David’s sin was put away. How thankful we can be that sin is put away, it says, “If we confess our sins, he is faithful and righteous to forgive us our sins, and cleanse us from all unrighteousness”, 1 John 1: 9. God is able to do that. There was, of course, the government of God here, and that goes on; because David had made the enemies of Jehovah blaspheme there was the government of God in his household. In a public way David was not the same again after this, but he was forgiven and it was

a full forgiveness.

What I want to come on to is in connection with Solomon, the fruit of this is the introduction of Solomon. He can be viewed as an extension of David. Something is being worked out.

Solomon was David’s son. It says, “David comforted Bathsheba his wife, and went in to her and lay with her; and she bore a son, and he called his name Solomon”; that means ‘peaceful’. How David needed that at that time, a sense of peace. Solomon represented that to him; but then it says, “And he sent by the hand of Nathan the prophet; and he called his name Jedidiah, for Jehovah’s sake”. That is what God loved, God loved Jedidiah, God loves sonship. He loves it in Christ, it was there seen in its perfection. We need to get our eye on Christ, and see what God finds in His own beloved Son, how delightful He is to Him. God was going to work out something in David on the line of sonship.

When we come to the scripture in Kings, David is weak. That side is not presented in Chronicles but it is presented in Kings. David was weak and inactive. He had not done things rightly in his household, he had not corrected Adonijah. You see it worked out in the books of Samuel, how David was weak in his household, he was not exercising authority in his household. David should have been exercising authority here, but he was weak and inactive.

In that sense he would represent, not the authority of Christ personally, but the authority of Christ in those whom God has raised up to express it. David was weak here and Adonijah takes advantage of the weakness of David. The enemy would take advantage of weakness when things are not attended to, when things are not maintained in our households and in the assembly, when there is not right government and rule. David should have been ruling here, but he lets things go. And Adonijah says, “I will be king” (1 Kings 1: 5), he raises himself up.

He is an opportunist. How was this situation to be met? Are God’s thoughts as to Solomon

going to fail?

The prophetic word comes and it arouses Bathsheba to action. It arouses David to action and he does things rightly. It is not that Adonijah is slain. That is not the way it is met. The way it is met here is by the assertion that Solomon must reign; typifying that Christ must reign, that He must have the rightful place. That is the assertion here. Help comes through the prophetic word, and the result is that Adonijah and all those with him in his conspiracy are overthrown, and Solomon has his rightful place. Things cannot proceed according to God unless Christ has His rightful place, so they said, “Long live king Solomon!” (1 Kings 1: 34). So Christ must reign. He must have the rightful place. God sees to it that through the prophetic word He gets Bathsheba to work, and He gets David to work, to exercise the authority of Christ in that typical way. That is a, needed thing, I believe. It is not for anybody to do as they will and rise up like Adonijah. Christ is to have His place.

I refer now to the scripture in Chronicles. The things I have read are not in chronological order, but I wanted to end on a high note. David again fails. No doubt there was pride with David. It is a thing that is not foreign to us, pride. Satan operates here. In Samuel it is God that moves David to number Israel, but in Chronicles, it is Satan who does it, If God moved David against Israel, He would have in mind the state of the people, but here it was Satan doing it. Chronicles brings out what the saints are to God, they are God’s inheritance. Paul brings that in in Ephesians, God’s inheritance in the saints. Satan getting at David would be getting at God’s inheritance, he would be getting at the saints. I think God allows this to bring out what David was abstractly.

But David sinned, and again, God does not let him off. The prophet comes to him, but the prophetic word shows God’s consideration for him in that He lets him choose. God lets David choose, and David says, Let me fall into the hands of God. It brings out how David knew God. He puts himself into God’s hands. In 2 Samuel 24: 18, what the prophet says is, “that David should go up and rear an altar to Jehovah in the threshing-floor of Oman the Jebusite”. God was working out something in David’s soul; the threshing-floor would involve what God is working out in the souls of His people through these exercises, separating the chaff from the wheat, that the wheat might be preserved, and the wheat might come into evidence. David in numbering the people is thinking of numbers, but God is thinking of quality. What God has in mind at the end is to arrive at quality.

David purchases this threshing-floor at great cost and he rears up an altar to Jehovah. Then David said, “This is the house of Jehovah Elohim, and this is the altar of burnt-offering”. He is arriving at God’s thoughts as to the house. It has not yet been built, but this is the spot for the house, if David had built a house earlier, would he have known where to build it? But God shows him the spot and David arrives at it, saying, “This is the house of Jehovah Elohim”. He is a man who is under God’s discipline. Jacob is the first man in scripture to be spoken of in connection with God’s house; he went through discipline, but as a result of that he went to Bethel and dwelt there. David here laid hold of the thought of God’s house. God’s dwelling, he had arrived at some refinement. Holiness marks God’s house. You see the refinement that marked David here. In the following verses in chapter 22 he goes over how he had desired to build a house, yet God had said that Solomon should build it.

I just thought of the importance of the prophetic word; how it helps us in our state, and how it helps us too in relation to the things of God, so that we might be in the liberty of sonship.

That is what is in mind here, that Solomon should come into evidence and that Solomon should build the house. It is the son who builds

the house. May the Lord help us in it, in His name.

Address at Dundee
13 June 1998