Dr. Howard Batson First Baptist Church Amarillo, Texas July 31, 2016

Transcription

1 DAVID RESPONDS TO DEATH 2 Samuel 1:24-27 (additional resources: Eugene Peterson, Leap over a Wall, chapter 11; Charles Swindoll, David; Walter Brueggemann, Commentary on 1 and 2 Samuel) Dr. Howard Batson First Baptist Church Amarillo, Texas July 31, 2016 In our sermon series from 1 Samuel, just a few weeks ago Saul, the very one who had outlawed all the spiritual mediums the witches from the land, so that the people would only worship the one true God, Yahweh, finds himself in a predicament. God is now silent. He won t speak to Saul through the prophets. Samuel, the main prophet, is dead anyway. His dreams are no longer a voice from God. So he doesn t know Should I fight against the Philistines, or should I not? He disguises himself. See him now, going under cloak and cover a desperate man going to see a medium, showing his moral exhaustion, his despairing faith. and his failed life. He goes to the shady side of town seeking a witch who can conjure up for him a word from the powers, a word from the dead. Please, he inquires of the woman, conjure up for me, please bring up for me whom I shall name to you. Don t you know, the woman says, afraid it might be a trap, that King Saul (she doesn t know that it is Saul) has cut off those who are mediums and spiritists from the land? Why are you trying to get me in trouble? Are you trying to bring about my death? Don t be afraid. Just tell me, who do you see? I see a divine being coming up out of the earth. And what is its form? An old man coming up. Why, he is wrapped in a robe. Saul knew, right then and there, that it was Samuel. He bowed his face to the ground and did homage, paid his respects. Samuel said to Saul, Why have you disturbed me by bringing me up? Even in death, Samuel now dominates the narrative. Samuel is, and continues to be, the most awesome figure in Israel since Moses. Samuel painstakingly reviewed the record all the failures of Saul, when he d been disobedient to God and then he says, Yahweh has torn your kingdom away and given it to your neighbor of course, meaning David. God is not giving you guidance. I won t either. Why have you come to me?

2 In the midst of the conversation, Samuel, now dead himself, says to Saul, The Lord will also give over Israel along with you into the hands of the Philistines, therefore to morrow you and your sons will be with me (1 Samuel 28:19). Right then and there, the one thing about the future that Samuel can say with certainty is that Saul will be on the other side, the side of the dead, this time tomorrow both Saul and his sons. Our sermon today picks up on the morrow, when both Saul and his sons have been slain on Mt. Gilboa. Listen to the words from 2 Samuel 1:19. Your beauty, O Israel, is slain on your high places! How have the mighty fallen! Tell it not in Gath, Proclaim it not in the streets of Ashkelon, Lest the daughters of the Philistines rejoice, Lest the daughters of the uncircumcised exult. O mountains of Gilboa, Let not dew or rain be on you, nor fields of offerings; 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 did not turn back, And the sword of Saul did not return empty. Saul and Jonathan, beloved and pleasant in their life, And in their death they were not parted; They were swifter than eagles, They were stronger than lions. O daughters of Israel, weep over Saul, Who clothed you luxuriously in scarlet, Who put ornaments of gold on your apparel. How have the mighty fallen in the midst of the battle! Jonathan is slain on your high places. I am distressed for you, my brother Jonathan; You have been very pleasant to me. Your love to me was more wonderful Than the love of women. How have the mighty fallen, And the weapons of war perished! How have the mighty fallen! Three times we hear the powerful phrase in this, David s dirge upon the death of Saul and Jonathan. Saul had been so terrible to David so many years of running in the wilderness. Yet, Saul is God s anointed, and in some ironic way David was devoted to Saul not controlled with bitterness, but, rather, casting all that aside. He was always pulling for Saul.

3 And Jonathan. Had there ever been a friend in David s life, before or after, like that of Jonathan? Jonathan, who had given his seat at the right hand of the king to David. Jonathan, who had sworn his love, his friendship, to David. Jonathan, who had, even behind his father s back, made a pact a covenant of friendship with the renegade warrior David. How have the mighty fallen! How have the mighty fallen! How have the mighty fallen! says David in this moment of despair. Though Saul had hated David, David would not be controlled by Saul s hatred. Saul made life difficult for David, but he didn t destroy him. If David had allowed Saul s hate to determine his life, he would have been destroyed he would have been damned, reduced, trampled, and constricted by vengeance. But instead, David allowed Saul s hate for him to allow him to grow. It had been terrible. It s the scene of battle at the end of 1 Samuel a scene of massacre, a place of unimaginable horror. Look now look on the hill as the bodies of the Israelites litter the ground. Here come the Philistines to mop up, to finish the job. During the battle, Saul and his men were on the defensive, the complete defensive. I can t help but wonder if he d kept the warrior David by his side the one who could slay tens of thousands if it might have turned out differently. But instead, he had alienated and chased off his chief warrior. See Saul now. The battle is heavy. The archer hits him. The Latin Vulgate says, He was wounded in the abdomen. It was a mortal wound. He s seen his sons die before his eyes, his three boys Jonathan, Abinadab, and now Malchishua. After you see your sons die, you re ready to die yourself. Perhaps he even welcomed the arrow. But he didn t want those bloody Philistines to make sport with him in death. Come, he said to his armor bearer, run me through with your sword, lest these uncircumcised come and pierce me through and make sport of me. But the armor bearer would not, for he was greatly afraid. So Saul took his sword and fell on it. Look at 1 Samuel 31:6 Thus Saul died with his three sons, his armor bearer, and all his men on that day together. As the Philistines mop up the bloody scene, they strip the Israelite men. They even remove the head from Saul. They take his weapons and put them in the temple of the Ashtaroth. They fasten his headless body to the wall of Beth-shan. And they throw a party over the death of the king of the Israelites. Alfred Edersheim, in his historical writings, has a unique way of expressing in a few eloquent words the truth of scenes like this. He writes: And now it was night, and the headless bodies of Saul and his sons, deserted by all, swung in the wind on the walls of Beth-shan, amid the hoarse music of vultures and jackals.

4 What a horrible, tragic scene. How does David respond to the death of God s anointed, Saul? How does David respond to the death of his very best friend, his bosom brother, Jonathan? I. The first thing I want us to notice is that David acknowledges his grief. David acknowledges the loss. David lamented because he cared. As Eugene Peterson has said, it seems even contradictory but in order to live totally we must face death totally. David, who lived so exuberantly, also lamented fiercely. Life matters. It matters that Saul is dead. It matters that Jonathan is dead. Do you realize the majority of the songs of David are laments? David prayed out his sorrow and his grief and his loss before God laments like this one in the book of 2 Samuel, that s what the book of Psalms is. David faced loss and disappointment and death. But he didn t avoid it. He didn t deny it. He didn t soft-pedal it. Rather, he faced everything, and he prayed everything. He went to God in prayer and shared his every emotion. David acknowledges the loss. He calls all of Israel to realize the enormity of the loss. Look at verse 19 Your beauty, O Israel, is slain on your high places! How have the mighty fallen! Despite the fact that David was going to experience personal gain and obtain the throne of Saul, he was not exuberant. He was not joyful. He was sorrowful. Only Israel could know what this loss means. Don t tell it in Gath. Don t let the Philistines hear you, he says in verse 20. Don t tell it in the streets of Ashkelon, lest the daughters of the Philistines rejoice, and lest the daughters of the uncircumcised exult. Then, in verse 21, he even curses the mountains upon which Saul and Jonathan have been slain. The mountain itself, for just being there, is held accountable for the death. The death of Yahweh s anointed had cursed Gilboa. No rain. No dew. But don t think they went down easy, he seems to be saying in verses Don t think they were easy prey. Jonathan didn t turn back with his bow, and the sword of Saul brought its own blood from the enemy. They cut the fat of the Philistines. Saul and Jonathan beloved and pleasant in life. And they died together. They are swifter than eagles. They are stronger than lions. Weep, weep daughters of Israel. Saul took care of you. He clothed you luxuriously. Then Jonathan. I am distressed for you, my brother Jonathan; you have been very pleasant to me. Your love to me was more wonderful than the love of women. David and Jonathan had that one-of-a-kind friendship. C. S. Lewis in his brilliant exposition of friendship, The Four Loves, remarks, Our ancestors regarded friendship as something

5 that raised us almost above humanity. This love, free from instinct, free from all duties but those which love has freely assumed, almost wholly free from jealousy, and free without qualification from the need to be needed, is inwardly spiritual. It s the sort of love that one can imagine between angels. The death of Jonathan penetrates David s soul. I ve never loved anyone like I loved you, Jonathan. Yes, you need to hear first of all that throughout his whole life, David, when confronted by grief, acknowledged it. He acknowledged the loss, the reality of what had been taken from him. And in acknowledging this loss, there is a real way in which he lost control. It never fails at a funeral when someone is expressing their grief, they often find the need to apologize. I m sorry. I didn t plan to cry. I thought I would be in control. In control? Why would you be in control? Acknowledge the loss and lose control. Often, especially after a barrage of deaths and a barrage of funerals, someone will make the comment, I don t know how you do it. I don t know how you stand up and talk to families about the loss and the death of their loved one. How do you stay in control? I m able to stay in control because, first of all, I have already lost control. I can t tell you how many times the night before I do a funeral for one of our families I read the funeral and weep all the way through. I hurt with you when you hurt. Over your loss, I, too, in the privacy of my own home, have been on the floor. I ve cast myself upon the bed, like David did in his laments, and I have cried to God and assaulted His throne with questions over why. David is grieving with ancient Israel. Israel, don t you understand? Your wonderful Saul and Jonathan, beloved and pleasant in their life, are gone. II. The second thing I want you to see in David s experience of grief is that if he did admit the loss, what he didn t do was denial, distraction or drugs. We become something less than human when we constantly deny the losses we experience when those around us die, when destruction comes to our life. Somehow we are robbed of a bit of our humanity every time we don t stop and grieve every time we deny every time we, in our own stoic way, try to rise above the loss before us every time we try to distract ourselves with busyness every time we numb our bodies with drugs drugs that will always eventually let us down to face the grief in a much more difficult way other than head on. No denial. No distraction. No drugs. The failure to lament, the failure to cry, the process of numbing ourselves is a failure to connect.

6 We live in a society, in a culture so full of depression. And that depression is so often little more than the cumulative effect of the years of minimizing the realities of loss and death, failure and disappointment. Somehow it leaves us unresponsive to all reality. III. A third thing I want you to see in David s lament is a call to remember. Funerals are a time to remember a time to remember the uniqueness of the one we love, a time to remember what they have done in our life, a time to remember serious things and silly things, a time to remember who they were who they were in our life, who they were to all of us. David calls for us to remember. Remember Saul and Jonathan (verse 23). They were beloved and pleasant in life. Remember they were swifter than eagles. Remember they were stronger than lions. Remember Saul, who clothed you luxuriously in scarlet and put ornaments of gold on your apparel. Remember Jonathan. Remember how I loved him and how he loved me. Don t ever forget those who have died those that you ve shared life with, those that you ve loved. Always remember. Remember his smile. Remember her perfume. Remember that look on their face that characterized them and set them apart from everybody else. Remember their favorite foods. Remember their birthday parties. Remember vacations. Remember. IV. There is a another thing I want us to see about David David, who was willing to acknowledge the loss, David, who was willing to lose control, David, who was willing to remember. Fourth and finally, David is ready to move on. Some of you are so paralyzed in your grief that after death you just can t move on. You can t move on because you haven t stopped, like David did, to grieve. You haven t rolled on the floor. You haven t lost control. You ve just delayed the inevitable. So you can t move on. But look what happened to David in 2 Samuel 2. Then it came about afterwards that David inquired of the Lord, saying, Shall I go up to one of the cities of Judah? And the Lord said to him, Go up. So David said, Where shall I go up? And He said, To Hebron. So David went up there, and his two wives also. After David has properly and genuinely grieved at the end of the life of Saul and Jonathan, the story the saga, the narrative abruptly changes to the future. We can t help put be struck by the abruptness, the whiplash-nature of verse 1. Immediately after the funeral, David is prepared to act. He is still in his private refuge, his private city of Ziklag. But now he is ready to go back to the territory of Israel. Saul is dead. David is ready to move on. To move on doesn t mean you forget. To move on doesn t mean that you can t remember. But to move on means that you re willing to talk about the future. You re willing to look for a new day. You re willing to look for a new way. To move on means that you have honored the

7 person that you love by grieving for them, and now in the greatest respect and in the most powerful memories you re willing to press forward. To grieve and to go forth. Some of you this morning have had death visit your family in recent days. I want to urge you to grieve. I want to urge you to lose control. I want to urge you to remember. And I want to urge you as time presses on for you to press on, too. Of course, we are the people of the living Lord. His tomb was empty. We don t have to be afraid of death. O death, where is your sting? Jesus himself said in John s gospel, I am the resurrection and the life. And he who believes in Me shall live even if he dies, and everyone who lives and believes in Me shall never die. Do you believe this?