Show Notes
2 Samuel 1:17-27
Pastor Christopher Chelpka
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Episode Transcript
[00:00:03] And our Heavenly Father.
[00:00:13] We believe that if we wait to come to Jesus until we're all better, that we won't come at all.
[00:00:22] Because there's no true healing except in Him.
[00:00:28] We need his word. We need the word that you have sent into the world. We need your spirit to be at work within us, that we might receive it, hear it, obey it, follow it.
[00:00:41] Lord, we need you to be at work. And so we come to you now and we pray and ask that you would give to us your word that in the reading and preaching of your Word we would come to better understand our world, our lives, you, and how we ought to respond in light of you, in light of the things that you're doing and have done.
[00:01:07] Lord, we pray that we might see Jesus more clearly as we hear your word, that we might believe him more and more strengthen our faith in Him.
[00:01:16] We also pray for other churches here in our city, also throughout the world.
[00:01:21] We pray for our mission works in Arizona and in other countries.
[00:01:28] Lord, we ask that you would strengthen the gospel as it goes forth, that you would provide places for your people to worship, ministers and elders and deacons to watch over, oversee the flock and meet the needs of the people.
[00:01:48] That you would strengthen your church and help us all over the world to shine brightly for your name, reflecting the light of our Creator and Redeemer, our King. We pray this in Jesus name. Amen.
[00:02:10] Let's turn our attention to second Samuel chapter one.
[00:02:14] Remain standing if you're able to.
[00:02:17] 2 Samuel chapter one, verses 17 through 27.
[00:02:42] Some people argue persuasively, I think that you could very easily divide first and Second Samuel here at the end of Samuel chapter one.
[00:02:57] This beautiful heart aching lament and grief in many ways corresponds with the way First Samuel began with Hannah and her grieving and her sorrow, and the song that she and the poetry that we have there early on in that book. There's many parallels between these two and other portions of Scripture, the song of Deborah, other places. We won't be able to explore all of that today, but I suggest it to you as opportunities for further reading and reflection, to think about what we have here in light of what we've heard and of course in light of what comes in particular the good news about Jesus Christ, David's greater son and our king.
[00:03:45] 1st Samuel 1:17 or sorry, 2nd Samuel 1:17 27.
[00:03:53] And David lamented with this lamentation over Saul and Jonathan his son, and he said it should be taught to the people of Judah. Behold, it is written in the book of Joshua he said, your glory, O Israel, is slain on your high places.
[00:04:12] How the mighty have fallen.
[00:04:14] Tell it not in Gath. Publish it not in the streets of Ashkelon, lest the daughters of the Philistines rejoice.
[00:04:21] Lest the daughters of the uncircumcised. Exultation, you mountains of Gilboa, let there be no dew or rain upon you nor fields of offerings.
[00:04:32] For there the shield of the mighty was defiled, the shield of Saul not anointed with oil from the blood of the slain, from the fat of the mighty. The bow of Jonathan turned not back, and the sword of Saul returned not empty. Saul and Jonathan, beloved and lovely in life and in death. They were not divided.
[00:04:52] They were swifter than eagles. They were stronger than lions.
[00:04:57] You daughters of Israel, weep over Saul, who clothed you luxuriously in scarlet, who put ornaments of gold on your apparel.
[00:05:09] How the mighty have fallen. In the midst of battle, Jonathan lies slain on your high places. I am distressed for you, my brother Jonathan. Very pleasant have you been to me. Your love to me was extraordinary, surpassing the love of women.
[00:05:26] How the mighty have fallen and the weapons of war perished.
[00:05:34] You may be seated.
[00:05:59] This week I had the pleasure and sorrow of conducting a memorial service for my friend's father, a man who's visited our church.
[00:06:10] His father has visited our church a few times over the years.
[00:06:17] That made me think about grief and loss as these things do more publicly. The assassination of Charlie Kirk and the various reactions to that give us more room to think about grief and sorrow.
[00:06:36] There have been other reasons in my mind to be thinking about grief and sorrow, perhaps in yours as well.
[00:06:44] The more I've been thinking about this theme, the more, for me, anyway, I've been seeing it everywhere. This is kind of like when you buy a new car, and then all of a sudden everybody has that car, right?
[00:06:56] It's always been around.
[00:07:00] But as I've been meditating on grief, loss, sorrow, I have been surprised, for whatever that's worth, about how much there is.
[00:07:17] Why didn't I see it sooner?
[00:07:21] Grief.
[00:07:24] Some psychologists put it this way. I think this is helpful, the normal expression of sorrow over the loss of good things.
[00:07:35] It's something we see in Scripture. It's something David does here, something we see Jesus doing over the death of Lazarus, for example, over Jerusalem that will one day fall.
[00:07:51] And even with as he sympathizes with our own griefs and sorrows, we see God grieving.
[00:07:57] Grief is a normal response of sorrow to the loss of good things.
[00:08:07] But we don't always do it very well, we struggle to deal with these feelings, and there's a lot of messages in our culture that are not helpful.
[00:08:19] Messages which encourage us to move on and ignore it, messages which encourage us to get stuck in it and live in it.
[00:08:29] It's all over the map. And I'm not going to spend too much time talking about all the ways we fail at this. And there are many, and it would be helpful, but we have a limited amount of time this morning.
[00:08:40] I want to look with you at this passage and think a little bit about grief and the way that David leads here in this lamentation, and the way he deals with the grief, not just personally, but as a king, as a leader over his people, and as one who's pointing the way forward to Jesus, our king.
[00:09:05] We live in a world where grief is often avoided, pushed down, moved past, or turned into unhealthy expressions, like I said, getting stuck in it, or bitterness or triumphalism, something David could have expressed here.
[00:09:24] I often find it helpful. And as we've done this from time to time, as we've gone through these passages, to think about what alternative reactions might have looked like, think about that here with David, pursued doggedly by this man wanting to take his life.
[00:09:42] Trying unsuccessfully but many, many times, has caused all kinds of heartache, grief, brokenheartedness, sorrow has made David miss out and be taken away from all kinds of good things.
[00:10:00] Refusing to listen to God, refusing to lead Israel. Well.
[00:10:06] And one could say, finally, he's dead, he's gone.
[00:10:14] God took him out, as God said he would.
[00:10:18] Finally, David could have risen up with great shouts and cheers. He could have taken his men and the big parade, gone into Judah or into Benjamin, back into Israel, out of the Philistines.
[00:10:36] He could have had a party with the Philistines, but it would have been another alternative with whom he's living among. Wrongly, I would say he could have had a party with them, gone back as they come back from battle and reminded them how allied he is with them, how they've got each other's backs, how, good job, guys, you defeated Israel. He could have done that.
[00:10:59] All kinds of things he could have done. And he didn't do those things. He did this, David lamented, with this lamentation.
[00:11:08] He lamented a lament.
[00:11:10] It's a way, it's a Hebrew way of emphasizing what's the action that is here. And it's over Jonathan, over Saul and his son Jonathan.
[00:11:23] And he not only laments, we see this is not just a personal expression of his feelings. It is that.
[00:11:31] But it's more than that. He says it needs to be taught to the people of Judah. And then it's written in this book that we no longer have the book of the upright, the book of Joshua.
[00:11:42] Not only do we see that he says it should be taught to the people, but he speaks to them in verse 19. Your glory, O Israel, is slain on the high places.
[00:11:55] How the mighty have fallen.
[00:11:57] And right there, from that very first verse, we have this contrast.
[00:12:02] The glory. I'll come back to that word in a second. Is slain on the high places. High is the key word to focus on here. How the mighty have fallen high and fall high and low.
[00:12:18] The glory of Israel. The high places, Right. When you look out at the. At a landscape and the mountains and the hills, these are the glory of a place or the glory of our place.
[00:12:29] Right. When we marvel at the beauty of Tucson, it's not usually some little arroyo. It's creeping through the desert, Right. It's the catalinas or the other mountains that surround us, these magnificent, magnificent mountains.
[00:12:47] We also know that from a military standpoint, it's the high ground that you usually want to have. It's a place of security, a place of power.
[00:12:55] It's a place of glory.
[00:12:57] High places are often turned into places, wrongly, of worship, of idolatry and various kinds of temples and things like that as a place of getting closer to God, as. As a glorious place.
[00:13:14] All that to say as David considers what has happened both figuratively and literally, and symbolically and literally, Saul and his sons, Jonathan in particular, is David's focus.
[00:13:31] They have been slain in the midst of their glory.
[00:13:36] They've been slain on Mount Gilboa, slain in Israel, slain while fighting the Philistines, people that they should have defeated and had defeated in the past, as we read in verse 22, the blood of the slain and from the fat of the mighty, the bow of Jonathan turned not back. The sword of Saul returned not empty. They had been victorious before. They should have been victorious if Saul's faith and trust had been in the Lord.
[00:14:08] But that's not what happened this time. Instead, the glory of Israel or the word there, interesting, is gazelle or ornament or splendor.
[00:14:22] Your gazelle, your splendor is slain on your high places. How the mighty have fallen.
[00:14:30] This refers both to Saul and Jonathan, but extra refers to, If I could put it that way, to Jonathan.
[00:14:39] As verse 25 picks up, or. I'm sorry, yeah, the end of verse 25, it identifies that.
[00:14:48] That gazelle, that splendor, that ornament Jonathan lies slain on the high places.
[00:15:00] Things are tragic, right? The mighty are not those who are supposed to fall. That's why this is a lament. That's why this is grief. A grief. Grief. A lamentation is the expression, the emotional expression of the loss of something good.
[00:15:18] And the good thing. Here, one of the many good things David points out is the might and the glory and the splendor of. Of Israel in Saul, and in some ways even more so in Jonathan.
[00:15:32] And for this reason, in verses 20 and 21, he announces some prohibitions.
[00:15:39] Tell it not in Gath. Publish it not in the streets of Ashkelon, lest the daughters of the Philistines rejoice, lest the daughters of the uncircumcised exaltation.
[00:15:52] Now, of course, they know this has happened.
[00:15:57] The cities of the Philistines know this has happened, because the Philistines not only killed Saul and his son, but beheaded Saul, nailed him to a wall, put him up on a wall, and put them in their temples and displayed them, and they know.
[00:16:16] So this is not David creating some law. This is David expressing his heart about. About how bad it is for the Philistines to rejoice over this thing.
[00:16:31] And he brings up the women here. This is the first of several references to women in this lament.
[00:16:37] And in some ways this is the flip side of what happened when in Gath, or when Goliath of Gath was defeated and the women of Israel celebrated the victory of Saul and of David in defeating not only Goliath, but the Philistines. Remember how Saul has killed his thousands, David has killed his ten thousands. The women went out and rejoiced and exalted over the victories of the Philistines. That's what happened previously.
[00:17:13] This is what David does not want to have happen with regard to the death of Saul.
[00:17:21] And so he gives this prohibition in the same way that he speaks to this third party that's not really listening.
[00:17:30] He also speaks in verse 21.
[00:17:35] He talks to the mountains, you mountains of Gilboa, let there be no dew or rain upon you, nor fields for offerings of offerings. For there the shield of the mighty was defiled, the shield of Saul not anointed with oil.
[00:17:54] Here the shield stands in for that power of Saul, the might of Saul, the defense of Saul, the weapons of Saul, and likely a leather shield anointed with oil to protect that leather, anointed with oil to make the shield more useful. But instead of being anointed with oil, it's anointed with blood and Dirt. And all the things of the battlefield defiled, not being carried by Saul.
[00:18:28] As the shield lies useless, unanointed.
[00:18:34] Saul lies dead, useless, unanointed.
[00:18:41] David's heart is breaking. This is not how things are supposed to be. This is not how the anointed one of God with his power and his might is supposed to be dead on the battlefield.
[00:18:55] And so, as Saul's shield was not anointed, David says, to the hills of Gilboa, may you not be anointed with dew.
[00:19:06] And then in verses 22 and 23, he reflects again on the goodness that has been lost, the power of Saul, the power of Jonathan. In verse 23, he pulls them together, and he says that they were beloved and lovely in life and death. They were not separated. They were swifter than eagles. They were stronger than lions.
[00:19:29] This is what we do in grief to bring us back to that original thought.
[00:19:35] We express the good things that we've lost.
[00:19:40] We talk about, for example, when our loved ones die.
[00:19:45] We talk about the things that we miss, want to touch them, hear their voice, go on that walk. We used to walk, drink that coffee. We used to drink, hear that phrase, play that game.
[00:20:00] Ugh.
[00:20:01] These things hurt.
[00:20:03] They hurt because they're deep, deep losses of good things, even of people that were very difficult, even of quote, unquote, loved ones, family members that were extremely difficult and hard to deal with and frustrating. And there's still things in us that recognize the loss of good things or the loss of hope, of good things, potential fences that might have been mended, relationships that might have been reconciled, words that might have been spoken, things that you wish you would have done or tried to do and couldn't quite ever make happen or didn't make happen, or things that you wish had been differently.
[00:20:53] Even in the most difficult of relationships, we find that there are good things, like hope for a better future, that are no longer accessible.
[00:21:02] They're gone.
[00:21:05] Sorrow, grief.
[00:21:08] And that's what David is expressing here. He looks at this situation. He says, they were together, they were mighty, they were strong, they were powerful in Israel.
[00:21:18] And he's not saying they were perfect. In fact, much of 1st Samuel describes the imperfections, the disunity, the brokenness, the failures of Saul in particular.
[00:21:31] And those are there for a particular reason, to help us to understand things. Scripture is never Pollyannaish about things.
[00:21:38] Scripture never glosses over all of the, you know, not so nice things for the sake of just putting on a happy face.
[00:21:47] But David knows how to lament as well.
[00:21:50] He knows how to Express the losses of good things, to put them into words and to do it together. One of the myths that we're often told is that grieving needs to happen alone, get yourself together, then come back and join us. This kind of thing.
[00:22:07] David's doing the opposite here.
[00:22:10] There's a time to be alone, of course, but he's calling all of Israel to lament with him, to hear this lamentation, to express it, to learn it, that it would be taught to the people of Judah, probably for their own expression of grief, but also so that the theology and the operating principles and the things that are in David's heart and are aligned with God's word would also be known more and more.
[00:22:39] We'll think about those in a moment. But continuing on here, after speaking of these good things that have been lost, giving expression and very beautiful poetic expression, he turns to the women of Israel now, in particular, not the women of the Philistines. And he says, you, daughters of Israel, weep over Saul.
[00:22:59] Here's what you need to do.
[00:23:02] You need to weep over Saul. He doesn't say, rally to me and let's all celebrate. I am the one who killed more. I am the one who was before, victorious in battle. I am the one who has been persecuted. David doesn't say any of that. He says, weep over Saul. We've lost something great.
[00:23:23] And he talks about the particular benefit to them and Saul's kingliness and his majesty. They were clothed luxuriously in scarlet, who put ornaments of gold on your apparel.
[00:23:39] These parallels clothed in apparel mark a lot of other parallels we see in this poem, in this lamentation.
[00:23:50] We also see here in this verse an important theological connection or principle in operation, and that is a connection between the king and the people.
[00:24:01] As the king is beautiful and splendid, so are the people.
[00:24:06] As the king falls in battle, so do the people, and they have. They've scattered. We read previously about this battle.
[00:24:16] The unity between the king and the people is something that David is operating on and helpfully leading his people. Now, there's hope for us in this lamentation and these actions as we see, yes, the fallen king, the fallen anointed one, this fallen Messiah, this anointed one of God.
[00:24:40] And yet there's hope in that. This new king, this one that God has put in place, this one that God has determined to rule, he is standing up, he's rising up, he's not fleeing, he's not aligning with the Philistines, and he's not being vindictive, he's not being terrible in all Kinds of ways he could be terrible. Instead, he's leading his people, teaching them, explaining to them, instructing them and grieving with them.
[00:25:12] David's being a very, very good king right now, pointing us, as we'll see, to our great king.
[00:25:21] So he tells the daughters to continue on with our exposition here. He tells the daughters of Israel to weep over Saul, how the mighty have fallen in the midst of battle. Verse 25 says, Jonathan lies on your high places.
[00:25:37] And then as he spoke to the hills, as he spoke to the people in general and the daughters of the Philistines, or rather about the daughters of the Philistines. Now he speaks to Jonathan, right? He's not praying to Jonathan.
[00:25:55] Jonathan is dead.
[00:25:57] Jonathan can't hear him. He's doing what literary scholars will call apostrophe or apostrophe.
[00:26:10] It's speaking to a third party that can't really hear.
[00:26:14] It's a literary thing that happens all the time. We see it in the Psalms. We see it here.
[00:26:19] The point, he's not speaking to Jonathan. Who's he speaking to?
[00:26:24] Israel and us.
[00:26:27] By the Holy Spirit speaking to us.
[00:26:31] So the literary scholars say, talk about this as a figure of speech. The psychologists talk about this as helpful.
[00:26:40] And we'll recommend that people in their grieving sometimes write letters to the dead.
[00:26:46] Not for the intention of praying to them or with the expectation that they are actually hearing, but as a helpful thing to express our sorrow, to say the things that we feel are unsaid, to grieve, in other words. It's an aspect of grief. And that's what David doing here.
[00:27:07] He expresses his grief.
[00:27:10] The people can express their grief together, as they say, I am distressed for you, my brother Jonathan.
[00:27:17] Very pleasant you have been to me. Your love to me was extraordinary, surpassing the love of women.
[00:27:28] The love of women is well known, right? The love of a mother for her child, love of a wife for her husband.
[00:27:41] We could think about it from this general way, a kind of known thing in the world.
[00:27:48] But we can also think about it in the context of this particular passage, right? Women have come up several times, particularly with the exalting and the rejoicing that happens in connection between the king and the people.
[00:28:06] In a way, David is saying, more than the accolades and more than the praise and more than the glory of the people or the women in particular of Israel, more than the beauty which I can bestow upon them as king, and more than the love that they can return to me as their king.
[00:28:33] Jonathan, my heart, my friend.
[00:28:39] And notice how he doesn't so much express his love for Jonathan, although that would be fine. And of course we sense that here.
[00:28:47] But he expresses Jonathan's love for him.
[00:28:50] As I've been saying, this is a lamentation. He's talking about the good things that have been lost.
[00:28:58] And what has he lost?
[00:29:01] His love.
[00:29:03] Love here marked particularly as steadfast love, which Jonathan gave in spades not only to David but also to his father.
[00:29:16] An amazing thing, the story of Jonathan. If you haven't reflected on it in a little while, go back and read through 1 Samuel.
[00:29:24] This man, an amazing man, amazing leader in an extremely difficult situation.
[00:29:33] We're focused on David for good reason. But if you go back and think about Jonathan's life, the decisions Jonathan had to make, the conundrums that he had to, that he was in, in trying to figure out how to honor his father and his king while also being loyal to the Lord's anointed in David and his friend and his brother in some ways through marriage.
[00:30:01] In a complicated and weird thing from early on in 1st Samuel, and in a brotherly spirit, Saul, for example, in one place calls David his son.
[00:30:13] Not his son, but his son in affection, son in loyalty to these kinds of things.
[00:30:20] And then of course, they are both, you know, sons of Abraham. They are part of the same family of Israel, the same group, the same people.
[00:30:29] Many ways in which Jonathan and David are brothers, many ways in which Jonathan expressed and lived that out in such a faithful and God honoring way.
[00:30:43] It's worthy of our reflection, it's worthy of honor, and it's also worthy of sorrow.
[00:30:51] When it's lost.
[00:30:53] David's lost his friend, David's lost his brother.
[00:30:58] David's lost his fellow soldier, a brother in arms, a fellow ruler at so many levels.
[00:31:09] Who cares about the women singing in the streets. When you've lost your friend, how the mighty have fallen, David concludes, and the weapons of war have perished.
[00:31:22] And this is of course, a very personal note for David, but it's also for the people of Israel.
[00:31:30] They've lost the prince, they've lost a mighty one, they've lost a powerful warrior, they have lost the reign of Saul and his sons.
[00:31:46] And so what we see throughout this lamentation is David doing what we ought to do when we grieve in godly ways, naming our sorrows, expressing our sorrows, talking sometimes publicly or privately with friends and family about the things that we've lost, the things that we're grieving over.
[00:32:15] But it's not just venting, which is something else. The world will Tell us.
[00:32:21] What David does here is grounded in a particular view of life, in a particular theology about who God is and about that world.
[00:32:34] We've seen it in different ways. We see it in the expression of Jonathan as his brother. We see it in his honoring of Saul as the Anointed One. We see it in his identification of the Philistines as enemies.
[00:32:47] We see it as in his recognition of Saul's kingship.
[00:32:51] And we see it also in David's integrity.
[00:32:56] There are ways in which you can read this lamentation and think.
[00:33:01] I think, wrongly, you could think this guy David, he is the most cunning political operator I have ever seen.
[00:33:13] What he does here we can, I think, rightly say is smart politics.
[00:33:20] Right? There's ways in which he. You could say, oh, look, he's gathering together the love of the people.
[00:33:25] He's making sure that he's identified with the past while also recognizing that he's the leader now. Right? You can kind of analyze this. For those of you who like politics. You can think about this and think about the ways in which David is being smart.
[00:33:41] Smart. Here.
[00:33:43] Here's the thing, though.
[00:33:45] David is not being smart. This is not smart politics because he's clever and doing something that's disingenuous.
[00:33:55] In other words, he's not putting on a show and giving a certain amount of rhetoric for the sake of establishing his power.
[00:34:03] How do we know that?
[00:34:05] How do we know that David is being smart? Because David is being right.
[00:34:10] David is doing the right things because he's doing the right things.
[00:34:16] I think there's two things, at least I'll point to two.
[00:34:20] Number one is that David doesn't trust in power.
[00:34:25] He doesn't trust in weapons.
[00:34:28] Saw it all the way from the beginning with Goliath and his defeat over them.
[00:34:33] We've seen it in various other ways throughout his life. And even here in this lamentation, on the one hand, he's able to confess and talk about the real power of notice shields. And what are the other weapons we have? We also have the swifter than eagles, stronger than lions, the sword, the bow. Right? These are powerful. They have slain enemies. They have exercised that might.
[00:35:05] He knows that. He recognizes it. He sees power as power. But he also sees that worldly earthly power. Whether it's acclaim from the people, whether it's the might of a sword, whether it's unity in battle.
[00:35:24] None of these are ultimately to be trusted in.
[00:35:28] We see that in his own psalm or the own lamentation as he expresses the. The strength of these things. And yet how the mighty have fallen. He knows this is true. The second reason we know that David is not just doing a rhetorical move for the sake of gaining power is his integrity.
[00:35:49] These are the same.
[00:35:51] This is coming out of the same thoughts and the same words and the same heart that has been going all the way along in quiet places, in places where nobody was known, nobody knew, nobody saw in. He operated out of these principles and the same publicly.
[00:36:11] Even when he. Even in the previous verses, when the Amalekite comes to him and stands before him and says, I killed Saul and is expecting these acclamations, David doesn't buy it. David doesn't give himself over to flattery there in that moment. He doesn't do it in his court. He doesn't do it here and in many other places. He. He doesn't do it.
[00:36:32] We read it in his words, we see it in his actions. We know David's character.
[00:36:38] Not perfect.
[00:36:40] Think of Nabal and other things that have happened in First Samuel, but a man who has been worked in by the Lord and has acted consistently in this way.
[00:36:52] David's not just doing a smart political move for the sake of gaining power. He. He's expressing his heart.
[00:37:01] And it happens to be the right thing to do, too.
[00:37:05] The smart thing to do, the wise thing to do.
[00:37:09] When all of these things.
[00:37:12] We see David's godly leadership here. We see David's godly grief. And it foreshadows for us, our king, our King Jesus, and who the Messiah would be.
[00:37:25] Jesus also grieves in God honoring ways as we, as I mentioned, in a couple other places, with Lazarus and with Jerusalem and other places.
[00:37:36] But Jesus does more than grieve.
[00:37:39] He does more than sorrow over things that are lost. He does more than weep. And he does all those things. He gives expression to these emotions of sorrow and sadness. He.
[00:37:52] He sympathizes with others in their sorrow and their sadness. But he does something more than that, something which no one other than him would be able to do or did.
[00:38:05] And we read about that in Isaiah 53. I want you to turn with me there.
[00:38:10] We'll conclude with a few thoughts on Isaiah 53.
[00:38:23] It is a blessing and a grace of God that he sympathizes with our weaknesses, that he knows our griefs, that he knows our sorrows, that he himself has experienced those things and has gone through them.
[00:38:41] But as I say, he did more than that.
[00:38:46] Isaiah 53, verse 3, prophesying of our Savior. We read, he was despised and rejected by men, a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief.
[00:39:02] And as one from whom men hide their faces. He was despised and we esteemed him not.
[00:39:09] Surely he has borne our griefs and carried our sorrows.
[00:39:15] Yet we esteemed him stricken, smitten by God and afflicted.
[00:39:22] But he was pierced for our transgressions.
[00:39:28] He was crushed for our iniquities.
[00:39:33] Upon him was the chastisement that brought us peace. And with his wounds we are healed all. We, like sheep, have gone astray. We have turned everyone to his own way. And the Lord has laid on him the iniquity of us all.
[00:39:52] We are like Saul's army in some ways, scattering, running away.
[00:40:02] But in Jesus, the Lord lays our iniquity, our weakness, our unfaithfulness, our sins that bring us so much sorrow, that bring us so much grief. The sins of us and the sins of man that lead to death and all the sorrow and trouble that comes from that. He lays it on his eternally begotten Son.
[00:40:30] Jesus not only sympathizes with our grief, understands our grief, bears our grief, but he did something in his life by being pierced for our transgressions, the grief causers of this world, to create an effect of healing, to take wounds and sorrows and dejections in his own soul, in his own body, to be this kind of sorrowing creature, so that there might not be sorrow anymore, so that one day there will be no more need to grieve, no more need to sorrow.
[00:41:18] For we will have every good thing that we could possibly ever want.
[00:41:25] In Revelation.
[00:41:28] In Revelation, the apostle John, he writes about the new heavens and the new earth which the Lord wipes away every tear from our eye.
[00:41:40] That's possible. Not just because he's so loving and wonderful and compassionate, but because he solved the problems, the problem of sin that causes all the grief, that causes all the sorrow that ejected us from the Garden of Eden and takes away every other good thing that is in our lives.
[00:42:06] He has borne our griefs and carried our sorrows. He was pierced for our transgressions. He was crushed for our iniquities, not his.
[00:42:16] But upon him was the chastisement that brought us peace.
[00:42:23] And so at the cross, grief was not just moved past, erased, but it was redeemed, it was changed. And God gives to us a blessed hope, a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ, that we might not grieve as the world does.
[00:42:45] We still grieve. We still lose things that are good. We still lose opportunities and hopes and people and things that break our hearts, hearts. But we grieve differently as those who have hope because of the Messiah who came to sit on David's throne forever.
[00:43:13] Jesus died in the place of the skull on Golgotha.
[00:43:19] He was crushed by his enemies. He was defeated, conquered by death, but not in any kind of final way.
[00:43:29] He rose from the dead. He rose victorious. He rose, we call it the resurrection to a life that we now live in him.
[00:43:42] And because of him, and the hope that God put into the world leading up to him, through men like David, we can thank God for the hope that we have. And when we sorrow and when we grieve, we can grieve as those who have hope for Jesus, who takes away our grief, who takes away our sorrow and binds up our broken hearts.
[00:44:11] Let's pray.
[00:44:18] O Lord God, we confess our sin against you.
[00:44:26] We confess the sin that separates us from you, the sin that causes others so much sorrow and grief, the sin that brings so much sorrow, so much grief on our own heads. We confess the sins that both exhibit and lead to all kinds of brokenness and misery.
[00:44:46] We confess the sin and we abhor the sin that we were born into and the specific sins that we commit throughout our lives, even the sins we've committed this week.
[00:44:59] O Lord, take away our sin, heal our hearts, bring us peace.
[00:45:07] May our transgressions be removed from us as far as the east is from the West.
[00:45:15] And may you teach us, Lord, in the hope that we have in Christ, to learn how to grieve in ways that honor you, in ways that align with the things that you've taught us, the words that you've spoken, the God that you are.
[00:45:34] Teach us to grieve in a way that does not give up and give in a way that does not pretend and hide, a way that does not leave to ourselves revenge, vindication, anger, self pity.
[00:45:57] But Lord, give us grief that allows us to express the truth, the truth of loss and the truth of good things to come.
[00:46:14] Lord, we thank you for your word and for the word of our salvation that we have through Jesus.
[00:46:22] We ask us to live all things, live our lives in all ways, according to his name, in the fear of God and in the comfort of the Holy Spirit.
[00:46:38] Amen.
