The Lord’s Covenant with David

BY Vina Mogg

Recently we moved away from our family home where we raised our four children. This was the home where I hoped to welcome grandbabies crawling on the floor and tinkering on the piano keys where the sounds of their parents’ former melodies still linger. I hoped to read Goodnight Moon and others from our library when I snuggled them on my lap in the rocking chair where I nursed my babies.

We are in a different home now, one half the size but much newer. I wonder how our adult children will react when they walk through the front door that is different from the one that backdropped their first day of school photos every year?

New memories will be built in this house. Although I miss our dwelling place of twenty years, it was only a frame of stucco and wood that housed our family. Our family continues to live on, apart from every wall and detail that made our home.

God was not limited by the temple that David’s son Solomon was ordained to build. Before that commission, He lived from tent to tent and dwelling to dwelling (1Chronicles 17:5). God was not contained in the ark or the glorious details of the tabernacle His artisans designed and created.  

God’s throne was not established by the priceless cedars that framed his temple but by the wooden timbers that built the cross. For it was the moment that Jesus, a Son of David, took on death and sin for us on the cross that He opened the door for His Spirit to live in us. We became His dwelling place.

We became His temple that frames His power, love, and glory and bears the image of His kingdom to others. When we abide and dwell in Him, His kingdom abides and dwells in us.

Let your name be confirmed and magnified forever in the saying, “The LORD of armies, the God of Israel, is over Israel.” May the house of your servant David be established before you.
—1 Chronicles 17:24 

The framework of two timbers in the shape of a cross established the house of God on this earth. Through these timbers, the kingdom of God will reign forever, and through the death and resurrection of His Son, Jesus, His kingdom dwells within us.

This is God’s promise, His covenant (Romans 1:3). 

The establishment of His house means we are His dwelling place. Unlike the presence of God in the ark moving from place to place, from tent to tent, from dwelling to dwelling as He did throughout the Old Testament, the two timbers of the cross were what was needed to establish Jesus alone as our dwelling place.

The word dwell is closely related to the idea of abiding. We abide by taking refuge and shelter in Him because of the timbers of the cross and the nails driven into His hands to house our pain. Our sorrow. Our sin.