Thank you. During a time of peace throughout the kingdom, King David grew restless and proposed building a house for God.

Today, on Truth for Life, we'll hear how God responded, and we'll learn why it's so important to teach and rely on God's word, nothing more and nothing less.

Alastairbeg is teaching from the opening verses in 2 Samuel, Chapter 7.

Nathan's support was well-meaning, but it was missing God's perspective. It is always the perspective of God that we need in relationship to the unfolding of the purposes of God.

So let's spend the balance of our time then. There, if the proposal is, as we've outlined it,

what is God's perspective? Well, we come to this in light of all that we've known before.

You remember, God says, on that occasion when Samuel got it wrong,

the Lord sees, not as man sees. And, of course, that was the difficulty there with Samuel. He looked at it,

and he said, well, it makes perfect sense. He's tall. He's the biggest. He's the oldest and so on.

And therefore, it just seems perfectly reasonable that that would be the case.

And God says, no, no, you've got it wrong.

Now, as the prophet of God, which is what Nathan is, as the prophet of God, he is responsible to understand God's perspective and then convey it to David.

And of course, God is concerned, and you will notice verse 4, but that same night. In other words,

immediately, the word of the Lord came to Nathan. God has already intervened in the way in which the Ark was going to be

brought up to Jerusalem. We saw that last time, didn't we? I'll just put it on a cart. We'll be able

to move along directly. God intervenes. The whole operation is shut down for three months,

in order that the perspective of God might be clearly discovered.

Now, I can just imagine, and approach you can to, that same night the Word of the Lord came to Nathan.

Don't you find that when the events of the day have begun to dim, you reflect on things. Now, it says down in verse 17 that

it was in the context of a vision, and therefore we understand that. But in whatever framework

it took place, Nathan became aware of the fact that he was actually pretty quick to affirm David

in what seemed like an okay plan. You've got to be careful again. When people want to get on your side,

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