Sermons

David sends a letter to Joab and kills Uriah. It could happen because his fear of God was gone. When the prophet Nathan comes to him and tells the parable of the rich man and the poor man’s ewe lamb, David is furious and declares that the rich man deserves to die, not knowing that he himself is that sinner.

People judge the wrongs of others with precision while committing the same sins themselves. Just as David could not see the beam in his own eye and saw only the speck in another’s, despising God shows itself where faith is filled with worldly lusts and where greed leads to harming good people. Nathan told David that God had given him everything and asked how he could despise it, and that rebuke carried grief and compassion for David more than anger.

God fulfilled the promise he had made with David without leaving out a single part of it. The sword did not depart from his house, his son lay with his wives in broad daylight, and the son Bathsheba bore died. While the child was alive, David fasted and pleaded with God, but after the child died he promptly got up and worshiped God. God did not hate David but hated his sin, and he brought suffering on David in order to forgive that sin.

David stayed in bed until evening, and from the roof he saw a woman bathing. Though told that she was another man’s wife, he had her brought to him, and as a result she conceived a child.

While his soldiers were risking their lives on the battlefield, David remained behind in the palace. Sin has already begun the moment it is harbored in the heart; the more one tries to hide it, the more lies it breeds, and those lies end at last in the taking of a life. David summoned the woman’s husband and tried to send him home, but when the man refused to rest in comfort while his comrades were still in the field, David went on to arrange his death in battle.

The ease that followed victory and peace caused David’s heart to forget God, and into that empty place sin entered. What David had done was evil in the sight of God; he accomplished his human plans, yet before God he fell. The moment ease comes without hardship is the moment that calls for the greatest care, and it must be taken to heart that even in the very act of sinning, people do not recognize how far wrong they have gone.

When Hanun comes to the throne, David sends his servants to offer him heartfelt congratulations, wishing to repay the kindness he had received from Hanun’s father, Nahash. But Hanun listens only to his scheming officials and humiliates the envoys as though they were slaves, shaving off half of each man’s beard and cutting away their garments up to the buttocks.

This was to treat David and Israel with contempt, and it amounted to a declaration of war. Because he did not know how to receive as grace a grace given without condition, and because there was no wise counsel at his side, Hanun could not judge rightly. In the end he hired the Aramean army with money to stand against David, but he could not overcome the army of David, who had relied on God from the very beginning.

Mephibosheth knew how much he had to be thankful for in the grace he had received, and so he served David with his whole heart, and David in turn cared for him to the end. Hanun, by contrast, took grace for granted and lost a good relationship, and with it the lives of many people. When a person has the character to know grace freely received for what it is, and to repay it with thanksgiving, God makes that life beautiful and glorious.

Jonathan, who had protected David in every crisis, asked him to spare his descendants once he became king, and David promised that he would without fail. Even after Jonathan fell on the battlefield, David kept his word and sought out Jonathan’s son Mephibosheth. Mephibosheth was lame, and as Saul’s grandson he was afraid of David, but David restored to him the land of his grandfather and had him eat at the king’s table continually.

David kept this promise alone, with no one there to witness it. Character shows itself not when others are watching, but when there is no one to reproach. The grace Mephibosheth received came not from any merit of his own but from the sacrifice of his father Jonathan, and he humbled himself, calling himself no better than a dead dog.

If grace is treated as something owed and turns to pride, it can be taken away again. Those who have received grace must therefore remain humble to the last, and keep to the end the promise they have made with Christ.

David prayed that he might build a temple, but God refused him. A man who had killed many and shed so much blood, God said, was not fit for the task. David did not grow angry; instead he gave thanks that God had kept him from falling into greater sin.

He could respond this way because he believed his own judgment could never come before God’s. In place of the temple, he turned his prayer to a blessing on his descendants, and set aside gold and silver in advance for Solomon, who had not yet been born. In the years that followed David won battle after battle and took great plunder, yet he did not keep it as his own but offered it back to God.

Where there is faith that God will lead along a good path, there is no need to lose heart, even when an earnest desire is refused. Making Joab, who had betrayed him, commander of the army and leaving judgment in God’s hands was a decision born of the same faith. In the end, God’s work is God’s own doing.

David hurried to bring the ark of God up to the City of David, and Uzzah died along the way. Only after repenting with his whole heart did he move it again, this time safely, by the hands of the Levites. Later, comparing his own splendid palace with the humble tent, he resolved to build a temple, but through Nathan God plainly stopped him: “You are not to build it.”

The desire to build a temple looked good, yet it was human zeal that had not sought God’s will in prayer. God is not one to be confined within a house made by human hands, and because David had shed much blood, the work was left for his son Solomon. Faced with this refusal, David neither made excuses nor nursed a grievance; instead he gave thanks and praised God.

However good a person’s own will may seem, wisdom lies in setting it aside when God says no. When an answer comes as a refusal and the believer still trusts that a greater plan of God lies within it and gives thanks, it becomes possible to walk with God, like David, who rejoiced even when he was not allowed to build the temple.

David defeats the Philistines and rules his kingdom in peace. Once peace has come, he resolves to bring the ark of God to the City of David. The Levites were commanded to carry it on their shoulders, but David ignores this and has the ark set on a new cart. At the threshing floor of Nacon the oxen stumble and the ark is shaken. Uzzah reaches out and takes hold of it, and God strikes him dead on the spot.

The fault was not Uzzah’s alone. David had made a wrong plan from the start, and in God’s sight he and all the people gathered there were sinners who deserved to die. David believed that human devotion and zeal would please God. In truth he had mistaken his own ideas for God’s will. When no answer came, he turned his anger on God and called the place Perez-uzzah.

Afraid, David sent the ark away to the house of Obed-edom, and it was that household which was blessed. Later he summoned the leaders of the Levites, had the ark carried as the law required, and repented. Faithfulness lies only in doing what God’s word commands. However great human zeal may be, it is not in itself acceptable to him.

Hunted by Saul and driven to the very edge of endurance, David held fast to God alone. Years went by, and when Saul died, the elders of Israel came of their own accord and made David king; and by way of the Jebusites’ water shaft he took Jerusalem, a city that had been thought impregnable.

What David gained was not won by his own strength. He had endured long years of refining and striven not to hate his enemy, and there God added a city, authority, and even peace with the neighboring nations. Yet even after he came to power, David inquired of God before every battle, and God himself went ahead of him and scattered his enemies.

The time of blessing is the most dangerous time of all. Those who forget the grace that led them and grow proud lose even the blessings they have received, but those who give thanks and humbly keep the statutes go on enjoying them. For those who, like David, live as dead to the world and keep God’s law with their very lives, that blessing is not reserved for a special few; it is open to everyone, even now.

When word came that Abner was dead, Ish-bosheth lost heart, and Baanah and Rechab, the men who were meant to protect him, waited until the king lay asleep at midday, killed him, and hurried to David with his head. They expected a reward, but David rebuked them sternly and had them put to death.

They assumed David would be glad of Ish-bosheth’s death, yet what David wanted was not an enemy’s head but a living man who still had the chance to turn back. Because they had dressed up a deed born of their own greed as though it were done for God, they were judged for the evil in their hearts, even though the outcome served David well. More than once David saw his enemies collapse of their own accord, but each time he mourned, and he never took revenge with his own hand.

God looks less at the outcome than at the heart of the one who brings it about, and at the way it is done. David waited patiently because he believed that God alone is the Lord of life and the one who would one day repay on his behalf; seeing that faith, God judged the house of Saul and granted David a united kingdom. In the end, the different fates of Saul and David were the fruit of the choices each had made.

Joab, the commander of David’s army, lost his brother Asahel in the fighting against Abner. Without David’s permission, he called Abner back as he was returning home and killed him. David mourned and had the people walk behind the bier, yet he did not call Joab to account for his sin and left the judgment to God.

Joab had rendered David great service, but he grew proud, crediting what he had achieved to his own strength. Abner, too, made much of his part in setting Ish-bosheth on the throne, went so far as to threaten the king, and in the end was killed by Joab. Both men knew the will of God, yet went against it for the sake of their own selfish desires.

God used even Joab’s flawed abilities for David’s sake, but because Joab never repented, judgment came upon him in later years. David, by contrast, had the power to avenge himself, yet he obeyed and entrusted vengeance to God, and as a result he was established as king over a united kingdom. Wisdom lies in not treating God’s grace as one’s own, and in trusting God whatever may come.

When Peter heard Jesus foretell the cross and his resurrection, he held on to him and protested instead, and Jesus rebuked him, calling him Satan. Joab, too, had once served David at the risk of his own life, yet when his brother Asahel was killed by Abner, he was consumed by the desire for revenge and crossed over into betraying David.

Peter’s error lay in setting his mind not on the things of God but on the things of men. Joab, likewise, fell into the pride of believing that his own victories in battle had set David on the throne, and little by little he slid from an obedient servant into a man who put his own judgment first. Betrayal does not happen in a single moment; it is a slow corruption of exactly this kind.

The service and loyalty of God’s people are not for the sake of God and the church but for their own salvation, and so there is no reason for pride in them. Those who, like Joab, cannot let go of the urge to display their own righteousness will in the end forsake grace and bring about their own downfall. Only by repenting each day and obeying the Word can Christians enjoy the peace and blessing that no one can take away.

David asks Yahweh whether he may go up to Judah. Even after Saul’s death, he does not decide on his own, and he goes up only after receiving the answer to go to Hebron. The men of Judah welcome him and anoint him king.

There was a time when David, afraid of Saul, disobeyed the word telling him to go to Judah, and as a result he suffered the humiliation of having his family and his people taken from him. Without obedience, one takes a longer road around and in the end comes back to the same place. Even after becoming king, he praises the people of Jabesh Gilead, who took up Saul’s body, for repaying kindness, and he does not rejoice even when he sees his enemy’s suffering. In this his maturity is revealed.

Obeying and being faithful even in small things is the condition for reward. Obedience itself, more than the outcome, is gain, and the one who, like David, endures and leaves judgment to God is the one who is used in the end. God knows everything, even the sincerity that is hidden, and he makes such a person a child like ice-cold water on the day of harvest.