Sermons

David presses ahead with a census. Joab, who had so often tried to hold him back, now stands in his way once more and warns him not to sin against God.

Grown proud, David wanted to display his own strength and fell for Satan’s scheme. Joab spoke rightly, yet he himself did not repent; he went no further than rebuking David. In the end David chose the pestilence from the three judgments God set before him and repented earnestly, while Joab, never having looked at his own sin, was later put to death.

Two people may commit the same sin and still walk very different roads: one repents, the other only judges others. David paid the full price for Araunah’s threshing floor, offered sacrifices there and was forgiven, and that ground later became the site of the temple. David went on to be an ancestor of Jesus Christ; Joab died by Solomon’s sword.

At the end of his life, David describes himself as the man anointed by the God of Jacob, the sweet psalmist of Israel. As grace came to him again and again, he began to take it for granted, and through that opening he fell into sin, taking Bathsheba and having Uriah killed. Only with death before him did he understand how empty human desire and the glory of a king really are, and he saw afresh the God who had been with him at every moment of his life.

In the middle of a war, David remarked without thinking that he longed for water from the well of his hometown, and three mighty men risked their lives to break through the Philistine camp and draw that water for him. He could not bring himself to drink it. Instead he poured it out before God in repentance, saying that this was not water but the blood of his men. In that moment David came to see that a single careless word from a leader can cost the blood of those who stand beside him.

To take God’s grace for granted is to slip into sin, but to turn back at once when the Holy Spirit brings conviction is the mark of a true Christian. Those who live for themselves wait only for cool water, even while someone at their side is bleeding. Anyone who would stand unashamed before the face of God must examine their words and actions now and live a life of repentance.

Pursued by Saul, David finds himself hemmed in on every side by the waves of death. There, with nowhere left to run, he begins to praise God.

What brought David through Saul’s relentless persecution was not his own will or effort; it was God, who protected him to the very end. Saul, by contrast, having gained absolute power, began to look down at the tops of his people’s heads rather than into their faces, and the pride that took hold of his heart led him to ruin.

The temple can fall and rank can crumble, but God’s mercy and judgment see exactly what lies in a person’s heart. David did not come before God to have his wishes granted; he stood before him without condition, because God is his Father. The task of the life that remains is to give thanks in every moment, so that at the last one’s place may be with God.

Even now God is gathering the evidence of sin by which he will judge the world. Sins committed in darkness will on that day be laid bare as in broad daylight, and no one will be able to offer an excuse.

In David’s time a famine lasted three years, and its cause was Saul’s sin in killing the Gibeonites, who lived under protection given in God’s name. God did not repay it at once but bore with it long; once David became king, however, God had that sin answered for by the handing over of seven of Saul’s descendants, and only then did the famine end.

Neither temple nor throne, but the sin of breaking God’s covenant and harming his people is what calls down judgment. The day of judgment will certainly come, yet the faithful who shelter beneath his wings are God’s children, who enjoy peace untouched by that judgment. Therefore even the appearance of sin must be put away, and the turning back must happen now, in this present moment while life remains.

David returns to his palace once the war with Absalom is over. Israel and Judah quarrel over which of them was first to welcome the king back, and a man named Sheba rises up and turns Israel away from David. David gives orders for Sheba to be captured, but Joab kills Amasa, the man appointed to replace him, and takes command of the army once again.

Around David stand both those who choose betrayal even after being forgiven and those who choose to serve to the very end. Joab was capable, but because he had never been born again, he went on heaping up the sin of betraying God and David. David did not cut him off at once; he made use of him for the sake of the kingdom and left judgment to God’s appointed time. The wise woman of Abel saved many lives, not by the power of the world but by the wisdom of the Word.

Those who hold an office in the church and give themselves to its work still remain chaff rather than wheat if they cannot tell God’s will apart from human greed. Like David, God’s people must wait patiently and trust the God who uses evil for good, and like the woman of Abel, they need to seek the wisdom to live holding fast to the Word.

When word comes that Absalom is dead, David grieves deeply, though Absalom was the son who had rebelled against him. Joab rebukes him for it and even threatens him, insisting that he go out and encourage his men. As the king returns to his palace, two men come out to meet him: Shimei, begging for his life, and Barzillai, who in his old age had served David.

David had shown Joab forgiveness and given him chance after chance, yet Joab never turned from his ways, and in the end David set him aside and appointed Amasa in his place. Shimei, too, only pretended to seek pardon because he was overpowered; his heart remained unchanged, and later he came under judgment. Barzillai, by contrast, stood faithfully by David both when the king was brought low and when his power was restored, and he declined the riches of the palace in Jerusalem, choosing to remain in his own town.

Those who do not forget the grace they have received and repay it with thanksgiving bear different fruit from those who are forgiven and still do not turn. Barzillai carried good seed and bore the fruit of eternal life; Shimei carried evil seed and bore the fruit of death. A life that keeps God at its heart and serves him in humility is, in the end, the blessed life of faith.

Caught in a tree and left hanging there, helpless, Absalom dies pierced by Joab’s spear. David had pleaded earnestly for his life, yet Joab defied the king’s command and killed him, whereas one young man had refused the order, saying that not even a thousand pieces of silver would make him lay a hand on the king’s son.

His name meant ‘God the Father is peace’, but Absalom did not live up to it. From the moment he chose to avenge his sister himself instead of bringing his wounded heart before God, his judgment slowly gave way, until he went as far as rebellion and the sin of lying with his father’s concubines. The monument he raised in his lifetime to preserve his own name became, in the end, a marker proclaiming his shame and his death.

No one collapses in a single moment; the heart darkens little by little, and so it is in the spaces in between that a person must seek God in order to return to the light. David too reproached himself for his failings, yet to be alive means that there is still a chance to turn back. Living this one day by faith is what determines one’s own future and that of one’s descendants.

Ahithophel, Absalom’s counsellor, devises a plan to strike David, but Absalom listens to Hushai and changes his mind. When Ahithophel sees that his counsel has come to nothing, he returns to his home town and takes his own life.

God did not thwart the plan of the wicked at the outset; he kept David safe by never letting it be carried out. When those who have received wisdom and gifts do not credit them to God but treat them as their own, God does not take that wisdom and those gifts away. Were they removed, such people would sin no further; but because God leaves them in place, they go on using them for evil and fall into greater sin.

Absalom was granted the privilege of being born David’s son, yet he was cast aside because of his thirst for revenge and his greed. Ahithophel, trapped in his hatred of David, died without ever returning to God. By contrast, wherever David went, there were people who helped him without asking anything in return. We must look not to people but to the God who was helping him.

As David fled from Absalom, two men came to meet him. Saul’s servant Ziba arrived with donkeys laden with provisions and won David over, then, by the lie that the lame Mephibosheth was rejoicing at his family’s restoration, took for himself everything Mephibosheth owned. Shimei, a kinsman of Saul, threw stones and hurled curses, taking pleasure in David’s misfortune.

Because Ziba lacked good character, he saw another man’s hardship not as a chance to share but as something to exploit, and David, blinded by a bribe, judged without checking the facts and fell into error. Shimei had not dared to say a word while David held power, yet once the king had fallen he followed after him with mockery; David accepted even that cursing as something God had permitted, and held Abishai back from taking revenge. The desire to make another’s misfortune a stepping stone springs from the same root as Cain’s hatred of Abel and Esau’s hatred of Jacob.

Ziba and Shimei alike later reaped what they had sown, while David entrusted the wrong done to him to God and rose again. Those who seek to profit from another’s misfortune will in the end suffer that misfortune themselves. Before God, who looks on people not by their circumstances or possessions but by their faith, the way of the faithful is to lay down their pride and not give way to anger, even when wronged.

Driven out by his son, David leaves the palace. Absalom had come home after three years with his mother’s family, yet for more than two years he could not see his father, and that hurt grew into rebellion. Ahithophel took revenge for the grudge he had held over the matter of his granddaughter Bathsheba, and David, sending the ark of the covenant back to the palace, flees with nothing.

Absalom’s rebellion began when he stole the hearts of the people with lies about David. As it turned out, the one who stood by David was a foreigner like Ittai, while those who brought him down were his own son and a servant who bore a grudge. David did not cling to the ark because he knew that, even with the ark, he could not return to the palace unless his sin was settled before God.

Knowing that this suffering had come from his own sin, David blamed no one. Rather than finding fault with others, he examined himself, and there he came to see that God is his refuge. Once humility and obedience were restored in him, he returned to the throne.

Absalom kills his brother Amnon and flees to his mother’s family, where he stays for three years. Longing for his son, David calls him home, yet it is a decision he was pushed into by the words of the woman Joab sent, and he neither rebukes the sin nor forgives it. So another two years slip by, with David still refusing to see him.

Once David drew away from God after the matter of Bathsheba, the wise judgment he had once shown grew clouded as well. He would neither deal firmly with Absalom’s sin nor take him to his heart and bring him to repentance, and so resentment was left to build; through that gap a man like Joab, hiding behind a woman, pressed his own will through. Admired only for his outward appearance, Absalom never repented of that sin and ended as a rebel, and David’s indecision was powerless to prevent Absalom’s death or the rebellion of Adonijah that followed.

Only through repentance is sin forgiven and a new beginning made possible. Those filled with the Holy Spirit can discern people who mean to deceive them, but once they grow spiritually dull they cannot even judge whom to keep beside them. Whoever comes to understand the will of God and strives to turn back will not face the same struggle with sin a second time.

Amnon, the son of David, covets his half-sister Tamar out of lust rather than love. Through Jonadab’s cunning scheme he gets her alone and forces himself on her, and once he has had what he wanted, he calls her “this woman” and throws her out. While their father does nothing, Absalom kills his brother Amnon, and David’s household is torn apart by adultery, rape and murder.

David sinned with Bathsheba only once, yet God did not reckon that sin by number. Lust led David to push God off the throne, and the sin passed down to his children, just as God’s word had declared that the sword which struck down Uriah would never depart from his house. When parents grow spiritually dull, they lose the wisdom to protect their children, and Satan knows exactly where that gap lies and strikes there.

Even the appearance of sin must be put away. When the relationship with God falls into disarray, decisions are made in the dark, and the sin of a single day brings ruin not only on oneself but on the lives of one’s children. When a family lives in constant prayer with the Word at its heart, Satan can never deceive that home.