Show Notes
2 Samuel 1:1-16
Pastor Christopher Chelpka
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Episode Transcript
[00:00:01] Our Heavenly Father, we pray to you this morning as your children and ask that you would speak to us through your word and by the power of your spirit. We ask that you would reveal to us your holy will, that it would be done on earth as it is in heaven. We pray, O Lord, that you would help us to hear your Word, to be attentive to it, to be interested in it, and curious about it, that you would help us to remember what we hear and to apply it to our lives.
[00:00:31] Lord, we thank you for the way in which you, through your Word, shine a light to our paths, correct us, encourage us, and draw us closer and closer to you. We pray these things in Jesus name. Amen.
[00:00:49] Let's remain standing and turn to God's word in two Samuel and Chapter one.
[00:01:12] If you have been following along and walking through us, through First Samuel with us, you'll see that there is no giant break here, no big huge transition. There is a significant moment that happened at the end of First Samuel. Of course, the death of Saul.
[00:01:30] There is big shifts that are happening in the kingdom of Israel, but it seamlessly flows from one book to the next, and we'll think about some of those things and focusing on the particular details that we have here.
[00:01:47] So second Samuel, verses 1 through 16 this morning, after the death of Saul, when David had returned from striking down the Amalekites, David remained two days in Ziklag.
[00:01:59] On the third day, behold, a man came from Saul's camp with his clothes torn and dirt on his head.
[00:02:05] And when he came to David, he fell to the ground and paid homage.
[00:02:09] David said to him, where do you come from?
[00:02:13] He said to him, I have escaped from the camp of Israel. And David said to him, how did it go? Tell me. And he answered, the people fled from the battle, and also many of the people have fallen and are dead. And Saul and his son Jonathan are also dead.
[00:02:29] Then David said to the young man who told him, how do you know that Saul and his son Jonathan are dead? And the young man who told him said, by chance, I happened to be on Mount Gilboa, and there was Saul leaning on his spear, and behold, the chariots and the horsemen were close upon him. And when he looked behind him, he saw me and called to me.
[00:02:52] And I answered, here I am.
[00:02:55] And he said to me, who are you? I answered to him, I am an Amalekite. And he said to me, stand beside me and kill me, for anguish has seized me, and yet my life still lingers.
[00:03:07] So I stood beside him and killed him Because I was sure that he could not live after he had fallen.
[00:03:14] And I took the crown that was on his head and the armlet that was on his arm, and I have brought them here to my Lord.
[00:03:22] Then David took hold of his clothes and tore them, and so did all the men who were with him. And they mourned and wept and fasted until evening for Saul and for Jonathan his son, and for the people of the Lord, and. And for the house of Israel, because they had fallen by the sword.
[00:03:38] And David said to the young man who told him, where do you come from?
[00:03:43] And David said to the young man who told him, where do you come from? And he answered, I am the son of a sojourner and Amalekite. David said to him, how is it you are not afraid to put out your hand to destroy the Lord's anointed?
[00:03:56] Then David called one of the young men and said, go execute him.
[00:04:01] And he struck him down so that he died. And David said to him, your blood be on your head, for your own mouth has testified against you, saying, I have killed the Lord's anointed.
[00:04:14] You may be seated.
[00:04:35] If your memory is a little bit fuzzy about what happened in the previous chapter, and then you hear this chapter, you might find yourself feeling a little confused, because in the previous chapter we read that as the Philistines were attacking Saul, as the Philistines were coming down hard upon him, arrows hit Saul, and he was dying. And he turns to his armor bearer and he says, kill me.
[00:05:07] Similar to what this man says here happened, but not exactly the same. He says, kill me. His armor bearer says, no way.
[00:05:15] And Saul takes his own life. And then his armor bearer takes his life.
[00:05:20] He commits suicide. They commit suicide there on the battlefield, and all Israel flees.
[00:05:29] This man here, though, is saying something a little different.
[00:05:32] He's saying that he comes and he just happens to be on the battlefield.
[00:05:39] Saul was already in the pains of death. Saul calls out to him and says, put. Put me to death.
[00:05:47] And the Amalekite does so as an act of mercy, puts to death Saul and then takes his crown, his armlet, and comes to tell David these things.
[00:06:01] Well, we know which is the true story, even though they're very similar, and it matters.
[00:06:07] The true story is the one we heard previously because it's recorded by the narrator of First Samuel. It's recorded for us. We. We can say by the Holy Spirit, God tells us what happened on that field. And so we can hear these words of this man coming to David. And we know that he's lying.
[00:06:28] Subtle lies, careful lies, very close to the truth, but not quite.
[00:06:35] And we have to ask ourselves, why is he lying? What is he not doing? And I think some of that's fairly obvious, but there's a larger lesson in it.
[00:06:46] He is trying to obtain connection and a place in the kingdom of God. Good. Right. He's promising allegiance to David. He's calling him his lord.
[00:07:00] Good, good, good.
[00:07:02] Right. But he's doing it in totally the wrong way.
[00:07:06] He's misunderstanding the nature of the king.
[00:07:10] He's misunderstanding the nature of the kingdom.
[00:07:15] And in many ways, he's upholding the very things that have brought all these problems to bear in the first place. And we're going to think about that today.
[00:07:30] So what happens here?
[00:07:33] We've talked about this Amalekite who comes and tells David this thing. Where was David in the midst of all of this? Remember, David was not on the battlefield. Remember, David was not fighting Saul. David was living in Ziklag, as it says here, among the Philistines. Previously, David had escaped out of the land of Israel. He's living among the Philistines, and it's there that he almost went out to battle to fight against Saul. Remember that? And then the kings are saying, the kings of the Philistines say, no, that's not happening. Get back home. He goes back home, quotation marks there, to Ziklag, this Philistine city.
[00:08:09] And he's there, right? When he gets there, he finds that the city has been burned and destroyed. By who? By the Amalekites.
[00:08:19] Right. Not the Philistines whom he was living among, but the Amalekites. And you'll have to go back and look at that, to hear that long history and all that happens there. David pursues those Amalekites, and David and his people destroy the Amalekites. It says, except for, I think the number was 400 men who escaped on camels and got out of that battle before all was done.
[00:08:42] David goes back to Ziklag. And then meanwhile, on the battlefield, Saul dies. We've talked about that.
[00:08:50] Then this Amalekite, perhaps one of those young men who fled, comes back.
[00:08:56] He does have Saul's crown, seemingly. He has Saul's armband. And he comes, he. Presumably he found these on the battlefield, and he sees an opportunity for himself.
[00:09:10] He is an enemy of David. He knows Saul has been an enemy in some ways of David, particularly through Saul's own actions to pursuing David, trying to kill David, destroy David.
[00:09:24] And he comes up with a plan.
[00:09:27] He says, he sees Saul dead. He says, I'll take the crown, I'll take the armband, and I'll make it seem that I killed him. But not in a bad way, in an act of mercy.
[00:09:42] This is in many ways a perfect lie.
[00:09:45] So many things are good. We can not. You know what I mean, about this lie? Effective notice. First of all, he just happens to be there. He's not causing any problems. He's not attacking Israel. He's not a part of the Philistines.
[00:10:01] He's. He is.
[00:10:05] He just happens to be there. He says. He says by chance, he comes to David and reports what happens, right? He's being.
[00:10:13] He's honoring David. He pledges his allegiance. He calls him my Lord. The whole thing begins as the Amalekite bows himself down before David, right?
[00:10:24] He confesses. He gives him this news and he tells him, he. That this act of killing Saul was done and not an act of battle, but as an act of mercy. And now he comes to David to report. Report these things.
[00:10:43] I think the Amalekites seize an opportunity. He sees the kingdom of Saul crumbling. He sees Saul dead. He sees David's ascendancy. David has just defeated his own people. There's a power vacuum in Israel.
[00:10:59] Who are you going to attach yourself to? Well, David, obviously. David is winning. David's the one in power. David is quickly going to become the king of Israel. As this Amalekite sees things, he's going to take advantage of that.
[00:11:14] He has an opportunity, right? He has an opportunity to ingratiate himself to David. And he probably expects that David is going to say, yes, Saul is dead.
[00:11:26] You kind of helped with this. Thank you for being here. Come into my kingdom, be a part of my corps, be a trusted who knows? But he's hoping for some good things.
[00:11:38] He's hoping for some good things, and instead he ends up dead.
[00:11:43] It's pretty striking, isn't it?
[00:11:46] He says how David's perspective on this is recorded in verse 14.
[00:11:51] How is it that you are not afraid to put your hand to destroy? The Lord's anointed as the armor bearer was.
[00:11:59] Then David called one of the young men, said, go execute him. He struck him down so that he died. And David said, you blood be on your head for your own mouth testified against you. I have killed the Lord's anointed.
[00:12:12] All of a sudden, this lie that seems so clever and so helpful and was going to cause him to raise up in the kingdom of God to become one of the great ones, or at least one of the at least a citizen of and a part of this kingdom, one loyal to David.
[00:12:29] Now he's dead because of the very thing that he spoke. I have killed the Lord's anointed.
[00:12:40] This is a reminder to us that there are a couple ways into the kingdom of God.
[00:12:48] A true way and a false way.
[00:12:51] Jesus talks about this, about people entering into the sheep pen through the door.
[00:12:56] Remember this in John 10, people coming through the door, which is him, and then others, thieves and robbers, climbing over the wall.
[00:13:03] There's a way to sort of falsely enter into God's people, God's plan, God's kingdom.
[00:13:12] But ultimately one will not find safety, but rejection, execution, a judgment. That's what happens to this young man. And it's a warning to us.
[00:13:25] When we think about the kingdom of God manifested in our own day, and particularly in the church and the confessing bodies of Jesus Christ throughout the world, there are people who want to adjoin themselves unto that kingdom.
[00:13:42] And for some good reasons, perhaps they see the blessings in it. Perhaps they see the power of it. Perhaps they see the goodness of it at a very low level. You might see somebody who says, Christians are really good people.
[00:14:00] They raise their children well, nice communities. We're too alone in our society these days. I'm going to join a church.
[00:14:08] It's not an unreasonable thing to say. It's not an unreasonable thing to think. Those things are all true. And it certainly would be a blessing to be a part of that.
[00:14:18] But this is not how we come to enter into the kingdom of God. Not truly, not by recognizing the goodness of it and then saying, well, I want to be good, and so therefore I will enter into this. When we come with that attitude, what tends to happen?
[00:14:35] Well, one thing is we tend to hide who we are because we want to be accepted.
[00:14:41] We think, well, these are good people and I want to belong to good people. I'll be rejected if I'm not good. And so I'm going to put on this, this front, this face, this exterior, to prove that I too belong, because I too am a good person.
[00:14:58] We hide who we are. We try to look good on the outside.
[00:15:03] A lot of times, what will happen too, with people who try to enter into the church this way is they want God's blessings. They want various things that are connected, both external and internal, spiritual, temporal, eternal, all that. But they don't really want it in terms of a life with God.
[00:15:22] They just want it.
[00:15:24] They want community, they want friendship, they want a happiness. Maybe they even want something as great as Eternal life. But they don't really want it from God.
[00:15:34] They don't really want it in connection with God. And how do you know that?
[00:15:38] Because they don't care about him. They don't obey him. They don't submit to Him. They don't seek to follow his will. They don't trust him. They are not honest with him about who they are. Instead, they lie their way into the kingdom. They hide who they are.
[00:15:54] They say, I am really a good person. I am really on your side. Now give to me these benefits, even though they are not really a part of these things.
[00:16:05] That's what this Amalekite does.
[00:16:09] Here's another way to understand this, an interesting way, I think, to ask, what should the Amalekite have said?
[00:16:18] How might have this speech have sounded differently if he were truly giving himself over to the Lord? If David was truly going to be his Lord as Yahweh's anointed one, as this, as God's Messiah, what would that have sounded like?
[00:16:40] Well, it might have sounded in part like Rahab's speech when she says she has seen the mighty works of the Lord and so she's not going to fight against it. This Amalekite could have come to David and he could have said, o great David, O great King and Son of the Most High.
[00:17:00] Not in a divine sense, right. But in the sense of God's king. He could have said, o great King of Israel, the Lord's anointed one.
[00:17:10] I have seen your mighty works on the battlefield and the great God Almighty who works in you.
[00:17:17] I've seen the work of Yahweh, the King of Israel, and he is the great king above all kings, the Lord above all lords.
[00:17:24] You defeated me on the battlefield. You defeated us. You've defeated the Philistines. No one can stand before you and your God.
[00:17:36] He could have confessed not just the power of a man, but the power of God.
[00:17:42] This is what we do in our membership vows, right? They begin by confessing that there is one true living God revealed in the Scriptures, revealed in His Word. We say, we hear that we recognize it. God has spoken, and he is the one true living God.
[00:18:03] We also confess that he has worked through his Messiah king, through Jesus Christ, through whom alone there is salvation.
[00:18:12] And then in our third membership vow, we say, I abhor and humble myself because of my sinfulness.
[00:18:19] The Amalekite could have said that instead of pretending who he was or hiding that or downplaying it or these kind of things. He could have said, I Am an Amalekite, your enemy. An enemy of God. An enemy of you, the king. I confess before you that me and my people have fought against you for generations.
[00:18:40] I abhor and humble myself before you, David, and before your God.
[00:18:45] And I beg of your mercy.
[00:18:48] Right?
[00:18:50] He could have confessed his sin. He could have repented. Now, part of you, part of me says in the back of my head, well, if he had done that, he would have ended up dead, right?
[00:19:02] He would have died because David would have said, well, you're my enemy and therefore I'll kill you.
[00:19:07] The problem with that is we're forgetting that the kingdom of God is different.
[00:19:12] And we see many instances throughout Scripture of the enemies of the Lord. People from Syria, people from Canaan, and then people now in these times when the kingdom was localized in this place, coming from different places and confessing.
[00:19:31] Remember when Jonah even went to the Ninevites and called to them and said, repent, because God is going to destroy your city. And the king repented and he said, let's repent. And all the people repented, hoping that God would be merciful. And he was.
[00:19:51] There's a part of us that worries that if we expose ourselves before the Lord, he'll reject us because we are rejectable in the things that we've done.
[00:20:04] If I am an enemy of God, then I deserve the wrath of God. So clearly the thing I need to do is hide that, downplay it, ignore it. Right?
[00:20:15] Well, wrong.
[00:20:17] That's why I say the Amalekite misunderstands the nature of the kingdom of God.
[00:20:23] He thinks the way to gain position, to gain a place of safety, a place of protection, is by posturing himself, lying, hiding and entering, not honestly through the door, but unrighteously through lies. Instead of honest confession, disobedience and not speaking the truth, what if instead he had confessed the name of the Lord, confessed his work in David, confessed his own sin and his sinfulness, promised allegiance to the Lord. That's our fourth membership vow. And his people, the fifth one.
[00:21:16] And then just put himself before God and say, I am worthy of death if you should so put me to death, this would be your righteous and holy judgment. But I know that the Lord is gracious. I know that the Lord is merciful. I know that the Lord is powerful to save.
[00:21:36] What would have happened then?
[00:21:39] Well, we can't say, you know, we don't know exactly what David's actions, but we do know from the principles of the kingdom testified throughout the Old Testament and especially in the New, that God's kingdom is a kingdom of grace.
[00:21:54] It's a kingdom of forgiveness.
[00:21:57] He thinks he's attaching to himself to someone who is powerful, to someone who is ascendant, to someone who's going to rule. But he forgets that David was plucked out of the field.
[00:22:09] He forgets that it's God who put David in this position. It's God who's won victory after victory after victory. It's God who himself has disciplined David. It's God who is ruling over all these things. This Amalekite is forgetting all of that.
[00:22:27] He's seeing everything through a very worldly perspective. And so he attacks that, this problem that he's having through these worldly means.
[00:22:39] But the Scriptures point us to another thing.
[00:22:46] The Scriptures point us to humble confession, to honesty before the Lord and seeking his grace. And the Scriptures, God's own word, promises us that when we come to him in that way, we don't climb up and obtain the kingdom of God, but we receive it just as a gift. He gives it to us. It's so hard to believe, right? We think that we have to lie and manipulate our way into God's favor, but we don't.
[00:23:15] We think we have to cover our sins. We think we have to protect ourselves, but we don't.
[00:23:20] We need to uncover ourselves.
[00:23:23] We need to be honest before him. And he promises that he will forgive us.
[00:23:29] We know that he will because this is what Jesus said over and over.
[00:23:34] This is what his apostles said over and over.
[00:23:36] And we know this is what happened because Jesus, our King, David's greater son, gave his very life to die. And he died in a state of humiliation and died in a state of much sadness and weakness, poverty. And he did that for us.
[00:24:00] When we look to the cross, we are reminded of these things.
[00:24:05] The world looks at the cross and says, that is not an ascendant man.
[00:24:11] That is not someone who is coming to great power. That is someone who is dead and who has died and has been put to death by the powers of the world. The world looks at that and wants to quickly align itself with all kinds of people and other things of this world.
[00:24:27] But you know the truth.
[00:24:29] You know that Jesus was put to death not because he was so. So weak, but because he chose weakness so that we might have strength.
[00:24:39] He chose the weak path so that the power of God might be evident when he rose from the dead, which he did, and which he ascended into heaven, which he did.
[00:24:49] And so when we suffer and when we find ourselves in positions of weakness, when we See our own sins and the way these things weigh on us. The answer, beloved, is not to run away and hide from the King or to pretend we're allegiant to him when we're really not. But it's to confess him as the One true Lord and to receive the gifts of his kingdom as gifts of grace, not as gifts or not as the rewards of our sneakiness.
[00:25:19] We're not going to pull a fast one on God.
[00:25:22] It didn't happen for this Amalekite. It won't happen for. For you.
[00:25:26] My encouragement to you, though, is you don't need to pull a fast one on God.
[00:25:32] You can simply give yourself to him and he will give you all things freely and forever.
[00:25:40] Let's pray.
[00:25:42] Our Heavenly Father, we ask that you would help us not to be afraid of you through the forgetfulness of. Of your gracious promises.
[00:25:55] Lord, we see the victory of Jesus Christ so clearly. We know it.
[00:26:00] He who conquered sin and death and the devil. He truly is the great king above all kings, the one, the Son of God and the Son of Man, who rules over all heaven and earth, over his people, over the Church, with such power and such glory.
[00:26:22] Lord, we know in our heart of hearts that belonging to him and his kingdom of righteousness is not something we deserve.
[00:26:34] We recognize this and we are tempted, Lord, to hide that from you. Although nothing can be hidden from your sight.
[00:26:43] And we find ourselves getting mixed up in our own heads, twisted in our hearts, trying to climb over the wall and belong to something so good and beautiful.
[00:26:58] We ask, O Lord, that you would remind us this morning that there's no need to climb over the wall.
[00:27:05] There's no need to pretend, there's no need to hide, but that we can come freely before you and speak the truth about our sin, about our sinfulness, about the family of wrath and suffering into which we were born, about the trials and tribulations that are in our hearts, about the flesh, that wages war against your spirit, about all these things, Lord, we ask that you would help us to be honest to you who already know them, so that we might not put our trust in them or in our own power, or in our own stratagems to get out of a sorrowful and miserable life.
[00:27:52] We ask, Lord, we beg, O Lord, that you would teach us of your grace, the power of your grace and the power of the gospel, which is unto salvation.
[00:28:05] Lord, you tell us that all who come to you, all who are heavy laden, all who are sinful, all who are burdened, can receive rest and forgiveness. And hope and life.
[00:28:20] Help us to know this, Lord, and to not hide and to not lie, but to enjoy our place in the Kingdom of God. Through Jesus Christ, let us enter through him the true door, the way, the truth, and the life.
[00:28:39] We thank you, Lord, for your gracious work through Him. We thank you for the mighty works that he did that we might be saved.
[00:28:48] And we ask, Lord, that you would help us as we come to understand these things, to share this same love with others, to let others know that they can also belong, that they can also know that they can also have.
[00:29:04] Through Jesus, let us not put up barriers and walls. Help us not to put up obstacles that are contrary to these things, but instead to welcome all as we ourselves have been welcomed through Jesus Christ, our Savior, in whose name we pray. Amen.
