Sermons

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.

The Apostle Paul warns against believing every spirit, and calls for discernment as to whether each one belongs to God. The spirit that confesses that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh is from God; any spirit that does not is the spirit of the antichrist.

The world is now drawing together, its currencies and nations merging into one, and the day when the antichrist will be revealed is not far off. Yet those who believe in the coming of Jesus Christ, his resurrection and his return will be caught up before the great tribulation arrives. Just as the disciples saw Jesus, touched him and watched him ascend, we who are their descendants have as good as seen it all ourselves.

Heaven is a place with no tears, no evil and no falsehood, and the opportunity to enter it is given only now, while we live in the body. Even in times of discouragement and weariness, God’s people must cling to him to the very end if they are to rest in his embrace. When parents teach their children the faith and pray that they will go up together, not one of those prayers is cast aside; each becomes grace stored up for their children.

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.

Paul writes to the believers of the church at Philippi. While he was with them they had stood firm in the faith, but once they were left on their own they began competing to rise above one another, and in their pride they expected to be served by their brothers. Paul urges them to turn back without delay and to work out their salvation with fear and trembling.

To work out one’s salvation is not to be saved all over again; it is to hold fast to the grace already received. When the fear of God fades, worship turns into a burden and the Word that pierces the heart grows uncomfortable, until at last people walk out of salvation of their own accord. Like the disciples who fled even though Jesus had told them beforehand of the betrayal, a heart that has heard the warning and still grown dull stands in the most dangerous place of all.

Paul tells them that their growing well in the faith is his boast and his fruit, and confesses that for their sake he would gladly die. What believers must do is nothing grand. Before the salvation Jesus has already accomplished, they are to let their faith be seen wherever they are, like a lamp lit in each place, and to serve one another in humility. That is the life of working out salvation with fear and trembling.

At Easter, Jesus Christ, who had died, appeared in person to Cephas, to the twelve disciples, and then to more than five hundred brothers. This was not a forced claim; he made them see it with their own eyes. Unlike the leaders of other religions, he left an empty tomb, and it is presented as evidence that he truly rose again.

Those who believe in this resurrection live on in soul even though the body dies, and the power of death and sin can no longer hold them. People worry and grow anxious every day because they try to keep control of their own lives in their own hands, and that is exactly how Satan shakes faith.

In combat, it was the pilot holding the control stick who kept things steady. In the same way, peace comes when people entrust control of their lives to God, not when they hold on to it. Paul could always rejoice, even when he was beaten and his body was broken, because he had entrusted his life to God and had seen heaven. Those in the church, too, must lay their worries and anxieties down at the foot of the cross, do their best in the place given to them, and prepare to meet Christ.

As Jesus enters Jerusalem, the crowds welcome him with palm branches and cries of “Hosanna!” The King riding on a donkey already knows the way of the cross that lies beyond their acclaim, and he walks it without a word.

This suffering was not forced upon him by anyone. Jesus planned it and carried it through himself. Judas Iscariot’s betrayal, Peter’s anger and the disciples’ quarrels over who would be greatest counted for nothing before God’s plan of the cross. Jesus was in anguish as he gave even the one who would betray him a chance to turn back, right to the end.

He cleared the temple and refused the Pharisees’ demand to silence the crowd, because this way is nothing to be ashamed of. It is a sign that proclaims God’s power and love. Without the cross there is no resurrection, and without the resurrection there is neither the Second Coming nor eternal life. The message is that, just as Jesus chose that way of his own accord, we too are to follow it in faith and without fear.

The sermon calls to mind the bread and the cup that Jesus shared with his disciples on the night he was arrested. As he broke the bread, he showed beforehand the body that would be torn, and as he took the cup, the blood that would be shed; and he declared that this cup was the new covenant.

The Jews believed they were saved by the blood of the Passover lamb, but Jesus told them to remember that salvation had been accomplished through his own sacrifice. The Lord’s Supper is where his death, his resurrection and his return are recalled together, and the sermon teaches that, depending on the heart with which one comes to the table, it may become grace or it may become sin.

Those who take Communion must look back on their unbelief, on the contempt they have shown their brothers and sisters, and on the wrong of having lived the life of faith for their own sake. When they partake with thanksgiving, sharing in his sufferings in heart, they come to enjoy peace and rest in the Lord.

Each year, as Lent comes round, a dispute arises between churches that hold special dawn prayer meetings through the season and churches that do not. This sermon traces the history of when and how the season came to be fixed at forty days.

At first there was no set length. What began as an observance of a few days, based on the time the Lord lay in the tomb, lengthened over the centuries until it was finally fixed at forty days under Gregory I. As the Roman church went on adding forms and rituals to the season, Reformed theologians rose in opposition, objecting that it bound people to a feast Scripture nowhere prescribes.

Whether or not to keep the season is not something to quarrel over. Every day must be one of remembering Christ’s suffering, death and resurrection. The question that needs asking is not whether the forms are in place, but whether that faith is genuine and whether life is truly being changed.

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.