Jehovah declared to David that He would make him a house (v. 11b). When we love the Lord, we may feel that we should do something for Him. However, when we resolve to do something for the Lord, we may have the sense deep within us that we need the Lord to do more for us. As we will see, we are short of Christ and we need more of Christ.
God said to David, "I will raise up your seed after you, which will come forth from your body, and I will establish his kingdom" (v. 12). Here "your seed" refers to Christ and "his kingdom" refers to Christ's kingdom. In His response to David's desire to build God a house, God in a sense came in to stop David by indicating that before David could do something for God, he needed God to do something for him.
Whenever we would think to do something for God, God within us would tell us that we are short of something. Our shortage is Christ. We all need Christ. At this point I would ask you to consider some lines from a hymn that speaks of how much we need Christ (Hymns, #1024):
You need Jesus! You need Jesus!
Men and women all need Him!
For redemption you need Him,
For salvation you need Him!
And for everlasting life,
Yes, you need Jesus!
We need more and more of Jesus; we can never get enough of Him. We are short of Christ, God's Son. We need God to make His Son our seed; that is, we need Christ as our heritage and our treasure.
When a sinner turns to God and believes in Christ, he may then have the heart to do something for God. However, to such a person God would say, "Do you intend to do something for Me? You have a great need for Me to do something for you. What I want to do for you is to constitute My Son into your being to be your treasure. Unless I do this for you, you will never have the capacity to do anything for Me."
The Christ whom God desires to constitute into us is not only our treasure—He is also our home. Where do we live today? We live in Christ. Before Christ the Son of God was wrought into our being, we were homeless. To be homeless is to be Christless. Without Christ, we do not have a home. Likewise, without Christ we do not have righteousness, justification, or satisfaction. We need God to build Christ into our being to be our righteousness, justification, food and drink, clothing, satisfaction, dwelling place, and home. In order for this to happen, God has put us into Christ (1 Cor. 1:30), and now Christ is becoming everything to us.