I used to go on a lot of Habitat for Humanity trips, especially during college, and I frequently ended up on job sites where we had to build a house from the ground up. We framed walls, put trusses up, put the roof decking up, and shingled the roof. Over the years, I would learn a little more about building a house. Building a house is really tricky. If you are a half inch off on a line it could wreck the whole job. For a guy like me, a half inch does not seem like a whole lot, but in the building trade it can equate to disaster. I remember on one trip, we were following the directions of a volunteer on how to build the framing for the house and the gentlemen supervising the job did not really know what he was doing. We put in a half day of work on it and the real site supervisor came on the scene and told us to rip everything out! We were off two inches! Ahhhh! Needless to say, that guy was not directing anymore work for the rest of the week.
David, in 2 Samuel 7:1-14, thought he knew what he was doing when he tried to build a house for God. God had been “dwelling” in a tent while the Israelites were in the wilderness. This was a great set up for God’s people because where ever they went they had a portable church that they could set up. After David builds a great house for himself, he thinks that God requires a better house than a tent! David might have been feeling guilty about how he was in a palace and God was in a ratty old tent. David tells Nathan that God deserves a house (temple) and David was going to build it. Great idea, huh? Wrong. God tells Nathan that if God wanted a house he would build one. Nathan passes this message along to David with additional information: David’s descendants (Solomon) would build God’s temple, not David.
