Category: Band

Why did Jesus perform miracles? Why did he show himself able to command the wind and the waves, to walk on water, to drive out demons, or to heal people of their sickness?

He was showing by his actions that the words that he was speaking came directly from God.

If he was able to perform actions that only God could perform, then it is reasonable to believe that his words also were the words that God intended for him to speak.

In Jesus’s case, he was not only speaking words from God, he also claimed that he himself was God, and so the miracles that he performed were also intended to confirm that he, as God, was there in Israel in the form of a human being and in the person of Jesus, and the words that he was speaking as he claimed to be God were also true.

In the case of Elijah, God had told him to go to live with a woman and her son in the town of Zarephath. In that place, he had the woman make him bread from the very last of the flour and olive oil that they owned. There was a severe famine in the area as a result of rain being withheld for several years and so the woman and her son had come to the point where they believed that they were about to die. They had come to the end of their resources, the end of what they had. Elijah, though, told them that God had said that their flour and oil would not run out while he was there with them, until the day that the rains would return.

The woman, though, seems to have remained unsure. It wasn’t until her son became sick and eventually died, only to be resurrected by Elijah’s prayers over the boy that she fully believed Elijah’s words came from God:

The LORD heard Elijah’s cry, and the boy’s life returned to him, and he lived. Elijah picked up the child and carried him down from the room into the house. He gave him to his mother and said, “Look, your son is alive!”

Then the woman said to Elijah, “Now I know that you are a man of God and that the word of the LORD from your mouth is the truth.”

1 Kings 17:22-24

In several cases, I have heard people in the church speak of the “authority” that they have over spirits, demons, sicknesses, and other types of difficult situations. Yet at the same time, they also speak of God in ways that run contrary to who he is and what we have already been told in the word of God. In these cases, I’m reminded that we often like the idea of seeing God give us power, and being able to exercise that power, without really knowing God or understanding his character. In other words, we like the power that God can give to us because we like to demonstrate in front of others that we have some special ability, but we do not necessarily like him for who he is, his true self.

In short, in those cases, our interest is in impressing man and being known as a type of godly person as a result of some special power, not in impressing God by living for him. In those cases, we want the glory to come to us, not to go to him.

Obviously this is a problem.

The purpose of a miracle, or some type of action that only God can perform, is to confirm the words that are being spoken. The confirmation in the form of a miracle is that those words that the person is speaking have come from God.

But our role is not to desire the miracles nor the power, but instead to know, to love, and to obey what God has told us. In this way, God receives the glory for what he has done, not us. If God decides to do a miracle, then great. He should receive glory for what he has done! He is showing his power and confirming his word. This has both happened to me and has happened through me, and I can confirm that it is possible. But the power is not ours to give. It is the Lord’s power to distribute when he is ready and to whom that he desires, so as to confirm what he has said.

Ahijah gave Jeroboam a prophecy that God had torn the kingdom of Israel away from Rehoboam and given Jeroboam the greatest part of the kingdom. But Jeroboam was an evil king, leading the people to worship the gods of the people who surrounded the people of Israel, even setting up golden calves, altars on the high places of the land, and fake religious festivals to lead people away from remembering the festivals that God had commanded.

There came a time that Jeroboam’s son was sick, so Jeroboam sent his wife to Ahijah, the same prophet that had given Jeroboam the news that he would rule over the northern tribes of Israel. Her task was to see if their son would live.

Ahijah gave a terrible response to Jeroboam’s wife. Not only would the boy die, but it would be the most merciful thing that God would do within Jeroboam’s house as a result of his wickedness:

Because of this, I am going to bring disaster on the house of Jeroboam. I will cut off from Jeroboam every last male in Israel—slave or free. I will burn up the house of Jeroboam as one burns dung, until it is all gone. Dogs will eat those belonging to Jeroboam who die in the city, and the birds will feed on those who die in the country. The LORD has spoken!

As for you, go back home. When you set foot in your city, the boy will die. All Israel will mourn for him and bury him. He is the only one belonging to Jeroboam who will be buried, because he is the only one in the house of Jeroboam in whom the LORD, the God of Israel, has found anything good.

1 Kings 14:10-13

Jeroboam’s son would die, but he would, at least, be buried. All of the rest would die and their bodies experience incredible indignities, becoming a warning for all of Israel and all of the peoples who surround them.

Why would they be a warning? Because they rejected God as their God and instead followed the evils of the gods of the other nations while even doing religious activities that had the pretense of being like those that God had commanded.

God completely destroyed Jeroboam and the people of his royal house. And in many ways, what happened to them is very similar to the description and imagery that we see the scriptures speak of Jesus’s return. There will be wrath and there will be justice, not only for disobedience against God, but most of all, for rebellion in placing ourselves in the place of God. When we choose to do what we believe is right based on our own ideas, based on our own plans, believing that we know what is right and what is wrong, we replace God and his sovereignty over our lives with our own plan. We become our own gods and we worship ourselves. We see this throughout our societies and across the earth even today, just as man has done from the beginning.

The wrath that God will one day bring upon us will have been of our own making, just as the wrath that Jeroboam brought upon himself was also of his own making. Yet there is good news that is available. When we say that we are “saved” by Christ, it means that we are saved from this wrath that will come. If we will repent from this sin of rebellion and turn back to God, placing our faith in Jesus’s sacrifice, we also can be saved from the wrath that is coming from God. We can instead live with him.

But it also means that we acknowledge him, Jesus himself, as king over all. Jesus is the king in the kingdom of God. We are no longer our own kings, but we are his people. We must look to him so that we will be saved from the coming wrath that will wipe away every evil until it is all gone.

As Solomon came to power as the king over Israel, one of the main things for which he is credited is for having asked God for wisdom. God, in fact, commends Solomon for not asking for riches or for long life, but instead for insight on how to be a good king, how to govern his people well.

Before he asked to have wisdom, though, we could also ask: where did Solomon obtain the wisdom to ask for wisdom? What was the primary motivating force for him to ask for this instead of riches? Or instead of fame or for power?

Solomon’s primary motivation, his reason to ask for wisdom, was his sense of humility as he took the throne over Israel. Solomon’s humility in recognizing that he doesn’t know how to rule his people well caused him to ask for wisdom. He asked God for wisdom and insight because he wanted to do the job well that he had been called to do.

Now, LORD my God, you have made your servant king in place of my father David. But I am only a little child and do not know how to carry out my duties. Your servant is here among the people you have chosen, a great people, too numerous to count or number.

1 Kings 3:7-8

Making good decisions starts with a posture of humility. It starts with truly recognizing that we do not know everything. It starts with understanding that even if you have some knowledge, you may not have the experience to know the right steps to take. You may not have the understanding to know the right direction in which you are to go.

And we should, of course, consider how different this is from the world’s typical way of leading. How often do we, as people who know little, try to make others think that we know exactly what should happen next? We realize and feel within us that we know nothing, but before others, we try to make a good impression and make them think that we know what we are doing.

I believe that this is at the core of the reason that Jesus came preaching that we must repent and believe. Repentance begins with a humble heart. It begins with a deep understanding that we have been wrong and we do not know the steps that we should take forward. Repentance sheds our pride and instead places our dependency on God.

This is what Solomon was doing. Not necessarily repenting, but fully recognizing his need for God. He recognized that he had been given a responsibility that he didn’t know how to fulfill. He needed God’s wisdom and his guidance. This is what we also need. We need God’s wisdom. We need his guidance, shedding our pride and recognizing that all that we have and all that we need comes from him.

Solomon was able to see clearly that it was God’s hand that had placed him on David’s throne. Adonijah, another son of David and Solomon’s half-brother, had attempted to rally a group of leaders around him so as to make a show of taking power as the next king over Israel. But it wasn’t real. It was a fake kingship. It was fake leadership.

But Solomon knew that God himself had placed him on the throne. He had been rightfully named by David to be the successor, to be the next king.

And yet Solomon was still merciful. He allowed Adonijah to live. If Adonijah would be loyal to the king, to Solomon, he would be allowed to stay and live in the kingdom. If not, however, it would be Adonijah’s end.

Adonijah just couldn’t get the idea of being the king out of his head. He kept thinking of ways that he could wiggle his way into the palace, to find his way to the front of the line. He made a request to Solomon through Bathsheba, Solomon’s own mother, that Solomon would allow him to have Abishag as his wife.

But Solomon saw through the request. He knew that this wasn’t just a request from Adonijah because he loved Abishag. No, this was a power play.

Abishag, despite not having sex with the king, had been chosen as a type of concubine for king David to lay with him and keep him warm in the days and weeks leading up to his death. In that time of ancient Israel, taking the king’s concubines was a sign of power, of taking the throne from the current king, just as Absalom had done with David’s concubines when he took control of the palace. As David left Jerusalem, he left behind his concubines and as Absalom came to take the throne, one of the first things that he did was to sleep with each of David’s concubines in a tent before all of Jerusalem.

But Solomon understood what Adonijah was doing, so despite the mercy that he had shown to Adonijah previously, giving him a chance to remain loyal to him as king, Solomon now acted decisively. He acted with moral clarity. He knew that God had given him the throne and the role that he should have as the king to establish peace in Israel:

And now, as surely as the LORD lives—he who has established me securely on the throne of my father David and has founded a dynasty for me as he promised —Adonijah shall be put to death today!

1 Kings 2:24

Personally, I have struggled to understand what was happening to David in his latter years as king over Israel. Previously, before he decided to let his armies go to war without him and instead decided to stay in Jerusalem where he would take Uriah’s wife Bathsheba and then subsequently kill Uriah, he seemed to speak and act with a confidence that I believe we could only say was given to him by God. However, after his fall in sleeping with Bathsheba and murdering Uriah, David seems to lose his clarity of thought. He no longer has a clear vision of what God has called him to do as he leads Israel. He can no longer objectively see what he should do.

As a result, the child who was born from him having slept with Bathsheba died.

As a result, David doesn’t rebuke or punish Amnon for raping his sister Tamar.

As a result, Absalom kills Amnon and sets his sights on becoming king over David.

As a result, David leaves his throne and the city of Jerusalem so that Absalom can enter.

As a result, David’s kingdom ends up in war, yet David doesn’t want Absalom, who is in rebellion to the true owner of the throne over Israel, to be killed.

And finally, as a result, Adonijah also believes that he can take the throne as king and further divides the kingdom, subsequently causing more death and destruction.

All of this resulted from David’s disconnection from God and his willingness to do whatever it was that he wanted to do. He slept with whom he wanted. He killed whom he wanted to cover up for his sexual sins.

My inclination has been to try to see David in the light of God saying that he was a man after God’s own heart. He was supposed to be one of the good guys. And I believe that was true. He was one of the good guys. At one time, one of the best. Prior to him deciding to live based on his own prestige, based on his own power, he definitely did act in this way. He was a man that acted with the heart of God. So my desire has been to try to see his lack of rebuke of Amnon and his love for Absalom in this light as well.

But now, understanding the clarity with which Solomon acts, the clear vision with which he sees the reality of the situation and takes action upon Adonijah as well as the others who had aligned themselves with Adonijah, I think I am now fully persuaded that David had truly lost his way. Solomon sees the hand of God, the will of God, in the way that he was given the throne over Israel and so he speaks and acts with a similar clarity with which David spoke prior to the turning point of his sin with Bathsheba and Uriah. Solomon, at this time, has not yet been lured away into his own self-absorbed, self-exalted stupor caused by his view of himself through riches and power, so he still sees with the clarity that God gives him. He still is able to understand clearly God’s intention that he would be king over Israel, so he makes decisions and acts within that clarity.

The roots of sin can be, at times, a difficult thing to fully nail down to understand completely. In David’s case, I believe that David’s sin was actually not just the fact that he slept with Bathsheba and killed Uriah. Yes, these were egregious sins and certainly seemed to mark David’s downfall, but these were the outward symptoms of an inward reality of what was happening within of David. At some point along the way, David’s pride began to allow him to think that it would be OK to call Bathsheba to him and sleep with her. David’s pride allowed him to think it would be OK to send Uriah to his death, intentionally murdering him, even causing the death of others.

This is the same type of deception that happened to Adam and Eve in Garden of Eden. It seemed that they were being punished because they ate a piece of fruit. But what was really happening? They believed that they would be like God, themselves having the “knowledge” of good and evil. In other words, they could decide for themselves what was right and wrong. They would have this knowledge. So, as a result of their pride and desire to no longer be ruled by God, no longer need to listen to him, they ate the fruit and their eyes were opened.

This is the pride by which David was deceived, and this is the same pride by which we must also remember that we must not be deceived. We must understand the lessons of pride and desire to be our own “gods”, making our own decisions about right and wrong in our own way. We may not be kings, but in the influence of our own world, we can make similar pride-filled decisions that take us far from God’s plan for our lives.

Instead, I pray that, for myself, I will be able to remain connected to the vine, as Jesus says in John 15. I pray that I will remain connected to him, the true source of life. I pray that I will be able to truly understand my relationship to him, that he is God, the one and true God over all people and all things. I pray that my life will continue to glorify him, not choosing for myself what is right and what is wrong, but instead living for him above all and in this way, I will have a guide for my life, as both David and Solomon did before their pride led them away from God’s plan for their lives.

Nathan had come to David and prophecied to him following David’s sin with Bathsheba and his subsequent murder of Uriah. He told him that from David’s own household, God would bring calamity. In fact, we find that calamity comes upon David but also extends to the rest of his family and even extends out to the rest of Israel. The consequences of David’s sin truly radiated out and were not just for him, but for all of those over whom he had influence.

Absalom was David’s son. He had killed his brother Amnon, avenging what Amnon had done when he raped his sister Tamar. But David never took a side. He never brought justice upon Amnon nor, subsequently, Absalom for killing his brother. So the calamity didn’t just end with Amnon’s rape of Tamar, but continued with Absalom killing Amnon and even going on believe that David could be replaced because of the impotent leadership that he saw in his father. Absalom saw himself growing within Judah and could even imagine himself replacing his father as the king over all of Israel.

Absalom began to act upon this vision of himself and began to proclaim himself king. He was extremely presumptuous, of course, but David allowed it! In fact, as Absalom began to grow in power with additional followers, David even moved out of his palace, making way for Absalom to enter. As the king, David had completely lost his way. He no longer was the man that had been called to be king. His life no longer looked like the one that he had previously led, worshiping God before all of the people, praising the Lord for what he had done. Instead, he had fallen a long way, leaving behind the identity that God had bestowed upon him as the leader over Israel.

David did finally go to war with Absalom but gave his army instructions to bring Absalom back safe. Think of that… David’s instructions were to go to war against those had betrayed him, the king, but not to kill the one that was leading the betrayal. Keep safe the one that is leading the revolution.

The army doesn’t do this, of course. They can see clearly what is happening in the kingdom, the revolt that is happening. So when Joab, the leader of David’s armies, sees his chance to kill Absalom, he takes it, and he makes sure that Absalom is dead, that the threat was removed. From Joab’s perspective, he wanted to make sure that there would no longer be a threat to David’s reign. He had already seen his king remove himself from his own palace, giving up his own throne. He wouldn’t stand this any longer, and so he ran Absalom through with his own spear and those of his armor-bearers.

But as Joab returns to the king, instead of finding David rejoicing and celebrating his army’s victory, he finds David weeping over Absalom’s death. And the result is that the army must slip under the cover of night back into the city. The army must return in shame because David, the leader of the kingdom had lost his way, had lost all of his clarity related to his identity, who God had called him to be, and what he had called him to do. He was no longer leading his kingdom but was weeping instead for those who betrayed him.

So Joab responded to David:

Today you have humiliated all your men, who have just saved your life and the lives of your sons and daughters and the lives of your wives and concubines. You love those who hate you and hate those who love you. You have made it clear today that the commanders and their men mean nothing to you. I see that you would be pleased if Absalom were alive today and all of us were dead. Now go out and encourage your men. I swear by the LORD that if you don’t go out, not a man will be left with you by nightfall. This will be worse for you than all the calamities that have come on you from your youth till now.

2 Samuel 19:5-7

It is an extremely sad story to see David’s downfall, to see him experience one problem after the next, to see him lose his way, to see him lose his identity. As a result of his sin, he can no longer see who he has been made to be, so instead of looking up to the Lord to find his identity, to find his strength as he once did, he now judges that which he should do by using his own reasoning. He makes decisions based on his own ideas, using his own moral compass. He is no longer truly acting as a king over a kingdom, but instead as a man thinking only of the internal politics of his own fractured family.

Reading this story this morning and considering David’s life as a potential metaphor, I have to say that it made me think of the Church in some ways. I will admit that the comparison that I am about to make could be a stretch and is based on some recent events that I have personally experienced so there could be emotions attached to my connection of David’s downfall to what I see in the challenges that Church today is facing, but I want to relate this story as one to at least consider.

I recently led a group through a training lesson related to baptism. As a team, we regularly lead new believers through a series of lessons related to some of the fundamental teachings of Christ, teaching these new believers to follow Jesus based on what he told us to do. Jesus told his disciples that if they loved him, they will obey his commands, so we take that seriously. The first and most important command is to love God with all of our heart, soul, mind, and strength, so if Jesus says that if we love him, we must obey him, and so then the first thing that we should do with new believers is to teach them to do what he said to do.

In teaching this group, I explained that there are a series of lessons that we want to take new believers through when we are teaching them to follow Jesus. They are these:

• Repent and believe
• Baptism
• Love (love God, love your neighbor as yourself)
• Abide in Christ
• Make disciples
• Prayer
• The Lord’s Supper

Of course these aren’t all of the lessons that we must learn and put into practice to be able to learn to follow Christ. There are many, many more, but these are some points from which we can begin. This is the start. They are the first steps, and by doing these things, we can gather believers into churches based on a common set of understanding of who Jesus is, a gathering that will allow them to grow in Christ, helping one another to follow him all the more.

From this list of lessons, I chose the baptism lesson as an example to use in our discussion. I know that this lesson has the possibility to truly challenge those who are participating, and to be honest, my hope is to challenge people’s thinking a little bit.

Why?

Because here we have a command from Jesus:

All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Therefore go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you. And surely I am with you always, to the very end of the age.

Matthew 28:18-20

Jesus never gives a command to anyone that they should be baptized, but interestingly, we see that he does actually give his disciples a command to baptize other people. Of course, that naturally implies that we must also be baptized, but if we are being completely clear about what Jesus says, he is telling his disciples to baptize other people. That is one of the first steps to becoming a disciple of Jesus.

However, it isn’t the last step. In fact, Jesus goes on to say that we must teach them to obey everything that he has commanded. As people who are following Jesus, we are to make disciples. And what is the definition of making a disciple? According to Jesus, I would read it this way:

First, baptize them in the name of the Father, Son, and the Holy Spirit.

Then, teach them to obey everything that he has commanded.

Yet one of the very things that he has commanded us to do, directly within this passage, is to baptize other people. He just said it! So what does that mean? It means that we not only should be baptized, but we should also baptize other people.

If you are part of a more traditional church or have some background within a more traditional church, you may already understand why this lesson could be challenging for believers within similar types of churches. We can sum it up with this question: How often are we taught to obey the command of Jesus to baptize other people?

Almost never, if ever.

In fact, in the group that I was facilitating, I asked if anyone had ever been taught to baptize another person. One hand amongst the group. OK, great, no problem… at least for right now. Let’s learn to do it.

Remember… “Teach them to obey everything I commanded you…”, Jesus said.

So we are going to teach them to obey. We are going to learn to baptize other people.

The way we do that, therefore, is to practice. In the lesson, we’ve learned what baptism is. We’ve learned who should be baptized. We’ve learned why they should be baptized, and how they should be baptized. So now, we want to apply what we have learned and actually role play a baptism in advance of heading to the water so that we know what to expect and how it will work. We have found that this is good both for the person who will be baptized as well as for a new person who will be baptizing another person. To do that, we place someone in a chair sideways and one person practices baptizing the other person.

“Teach them to obey everything I commanded you…”.

However, when we reached this part of practicing baptism, there were three of the people who decided that they didn’t want to do this. They said they weren’t sure how they felt about it. They wanted to take a higher view of baptism, they said.

Now, I’m going to stop here and say that I don’t necessarily want to heap blame on the people that were there that day. Instead, my concern, and therefore my question, is this: Why is this the first time that any of these long-time Christians learned to baptize? Why would this seem strange to any of them? Why would they question it?

I believe the answer to this question is that we have created a tradition that places leaders in a position within our churches that removes, or at the least, neuters the identity of others that are within the church. What does that mean? It means that, instead of equipping and empowering the people within the church to fully becoming the disciples of Christ that they were intended to be, we have instead taken away or reserved certain religious “rites” from believers, which prevents the believers from actually fulfilling Christ’s commands.

Let me say that again:

…which prevents the believers from fulfilling Christ’s commands.

Although there are many other examples, one example is this question of baptism. As one African man once asked me repeatedly after I gave him this lesson: Who can baptize another person?!? You’re saying I can baptize? No way… I need to call my pastor so that he can baptize this person.

And where was his pastor? Back in Africa.

And where was he? Thousands of miles away in Europe.

What had this man learned in his church? Whether through direct teaching or by inference from the practice and lack of teaching to follow the commands that Jesus had given his disciples, he had come to the conclusion that he could not baptize another person. No, instead, he needed to take those people to his pastor.

He refused to follow the command of Jesus to baptize other people because the tradition and practice of his church was that the pastor, and only the pastor, could teach someone else about Jesus or could baptize another person.

I routinely receive the same pushback with regard to the Lord’s Supper, and in fact, one of the people that refused to learn to put baptism into practice that day said the same thing: I think the same about the Lord’s Supper. I don’t want to have a low view of the Lord’s Supper.

To respond, I and our team have an extremely high view of baptism and the Lord’s Supper. So high, in fact, that we believe it is important that every disciple is equipped to do it because Jesus has called us to do it.

Reading about David this morning and realizing how far he had fallen, as well as the effects that we see from his sin ripple out to the rest of both his family and the rest of Israel, I couldn’t help but to draw a connection in my mind to the state of the Church in which we live today. The scriptures teach that there is one Head for the Church, and that is Jesus himself. And the Head of the Church has taught what we, all of us, should be doing to love him. And that is, we should all be obeying him, doing what he has called us to do.

Yet what have we done instead? We have created several layers of headship before we can reach the actual Head. We frequently create titular heads in our churches. We then have layers of oversight within our denominations. And we have denominations with boards and presidents that lead various districts and regions of churches. Furthermore, we have schools to which we send those who will be the leaders, qualifying them and granting them, and frequently only them, authority with a certificate based on the time that they spent in that institution.

In many ways, I can understand the organizational levels as the denominations seek to support the individual local churches. However, we should ask ourselves… What is the fruit? If we can judge the outcomes as Jesus said – You will know them by their fruit – the question is this: Are we producing disciples that follow Jesus fully, as he said, or are we producing fruit that primarily follows our traditions? Are we reinforcing the fact that Jesus is the Head of the church and that we are each – all of us – a part of his body? Or are we enforcing the organizational structure that we have created?

David fell a long way because of his sin, and as a result, he strayed far from the identity that God bestowed upon him and calamity came upon him from within his family. David should have recognized his sin and continuously repented and turned his heart back to God.

In a similar way, in the Church today, each and every one of us, must leave behind our own kingdoms, our ideas that our identity comes from anyone aside from Christ himself and instead look to God and our one, single king. The Head over the church: Jesus himself. The authorities are simple: We hear from Christ only through the word of God and the Holy Spirit.

If we will each do that, we should begin to teach and equip disciples from within our churches who are able to take the Gospel of the kingdom to all nations, just as Jesus said would happen before the end would come. But without this equipping, without leaders who are willing to teach the people within their churches to fully obey everything that Jesus taught us, we will languish where we are today, continuing to see calamity come from within our own family, just as we see happening in many different ways through the broader body of Christ even today.

May Christ have mercy on us all and teach us through his word and through the Holy Spirit to help others fully follow Jesus, putting into practice everything that he has commanded us to do.

There are consequences to our sin, and understanding those consequences help us to even understand the situation of the world that we find ourselves in today. The story of David shows us a microcosm, an example of the consequences of our sin as those consequences just continue to roll forward through the story of time.

First, following the sin of sleeping with Bathsheba and sending Uriah to his death, Nathan relays the words of God to David that his downfall will continue, even directly from within David’s own house:

This is what the LORD says: ‘Out of your own household I am going to bring calamity on you. Before your very eyes I will take your wives and give them to one who is close to you, and he will sleep with your wives in broad daylight. You did it in secret, but I will do this thing in broad daylight before all Israel.’

2 Samuel 12:11-12

God forgives David, but the consequences of his sin remain. David’s son, born to him from Bathsheba soon dies, but the calamity does not end there. Instead, Amnon, David’s first-born son and heir to the throne, rapes his half-sister Tamar shortly thereafter. David hesitates and doesn’t punish Amnon as the law called for him to do, so Absalom, another one of David’s sons and full sister to Tamar, takes vengeance upon Amnon based on David’s inaction, having Amnon struck down and killed by his servants in front of David’s other sons.

Absalom then flees to Geshur, in what is today the Golan Heights, for three years to escape his father’s justice. Yet David still continues in his inaction until Joab sends a woman to convince David to allow Absalom to return. But still, despite Absalom being back in Jerusalem, David will not allow him to come to him and be reconciled to him and this will soon allow the destructive cycle to continue as David’s family destroys itself from within from its very dysfunction caused as consequences of David’s sin.

David had previously acted as a man who had God’s own heart. As he grew into the king that God had planned for him to be, we previously saw wisdom. We saw bravery. We saw David have a desire to truly honor God and worship him before all of the people of Israel. David was a king but he was a king leading the Israelites under the authority of God.

But now, David has turned a corner and has become like every other king. His desire to rule and reign without regard and the fear of the Lord causes him instead to fall away from the Lord and his authority. David seems to revert to his desire to rule and reign based on his own rules, based on his own whims and desires, and that shift causes him to both directly sin with Bathsheba and Uriah as well as experience the downfall of his household as it begins to consume and destroy itself from within.

There are natural consequences to our sin that we must recognize and acknowledge. God is a gracious and merciful God, full of love for his people and patient so that we will come to him through Jesus.

However, at the same time, each action that we take has consequences, whether for us, for someone else, or for both. God gives us his Spirit so that we can act based on the best that he can give to us. Actions based on love, for him and for others. Actions that are joyful or that are peaceful. These are a few of the fruits of the Spirit.

Yet when we sin, we walk outside of the best that God has for us. We fall short, yes for us, but also in our opportunity to glorify God, and so those actions will have consequences, both in the short term of time as well as over the longer period of our lives. The responsibility and the consequences for those actions, despite the mercy and grace of God, still come upon us and can often also radiate out from us. Let us, therefore, walk by the Spirit of God, not walking away to choose for ourselves what is right or wrong, what is good or evil. Instead, let us look to him and what he has to say and to teach us as the consequences that are produced based on those actions will be both for our good as well as for God’s glory.

How often do we end up outraged at other people when we, ourselves, do the same or similar things? The sins of others are frequently on our lips while those that we ourselves commit are rarely admitted, let alone repented from.

David had taken Uriah’s wife, impregnanted her, and then subsequently sent Uriah to war so that he would be killed and his sin would be covered. Yet as Nathan came to David to confront him about what he had done, David becomes outraged at the rich man in Nathan’s fictional story who had taken the poor man’s lamb to feed a passing traveler.

David burned with anger against the man and said to Nathan, “As surely as the LORD lives, the man who did this must die!

2 Samuel 12:5

David’s anger burned against this fictional rich man. He was outraged at the sin of another person, even while at the same time he had not only taken the “lamb” – the woman, Bathsheba – but also even the life of Uriah himself.

All of this to say that we must learn, first and foremost, to examine ourselves. Instead of looking to the other person as the one committing all of the sins and being the one to blame, let us begin ourselves in humility and repentance.

David and Jonathan had a deep and long-standing friendship that contained an oath that each would be loyal to the other, despite the fact that their kingdoms were at odds. Saul, Jonathan’s father, was the first king over Israel while David would be the second. God had chosen David as a king that would carry with him God’s own heart for his people.

Despite the fact that David carried with him the victories over his enemies and had solidly established his kingdom over Israel, he hadn’t forgotten his oath to Jonathan. David remained loyal to the house of Saul because of his relationship with Jonathan, so in inquiring about those that remained, well after Saul and Jonathan, along with his other brothers, had died in battle, David still remembered his oath to Jonathan.

David asked, “Is there anyone still left of the house of Saul to whom I can show kindness for Jonathan’s sake?”

2 Samuel 9:1

David learned that, in fact, there was still one person, a son of Jonathan, who was living in a small town. He was lame in both feet and unable to walk. His family had been destroyed and disgraced and he had been left behind. Yet David called him, restored him to the king’s table at a place of honor, and was given all of the land that was originally apportioned to his family in the kingdom of Saul.

David’s grace, mercy, and loyalty are astounding. He was the king and his kingdom was well-established, but yet he was not only exhibiting grace to the family of the former king, but even lifting Mephibosheth’s status in inviting him to the royal table. Mephibosheth had nothing to offer David. He couldn’t even walk. But David lifted him up and honored him as a result of his friendship nonetheless.

This is one of the evidences that God said David was a man after his own heart. Normal men who think of themselves first, and typically think of themselves only, would attempt to completely destroy their enemies. Kings do not offer grace to other kings, and they want to make sure that their reign is secure, so they will wipe out any evidence of other kings that had come before them. But David does not do that. He, instead, honors his oath of loyalty and lives by what he has said that he would do.

In a similar way, God does the same thing for each of us. We are all, in one way or another, like Mephibosheth. Spiritually speaking, we are lame. We are not able to walk. Before God, we cannot stand. Instead, we have been hobbled by our own sin.

Yet God calls us also to his banquet table. Jesus says that we will one day eat with him at that table as people who have been remembered, who have been given grace and mercy. God remains loyal to his covenant, the new covenant signed by the blood of Christ: He is our God and we are his people, and like Mephibosheth in David’s kingdom, we also have been invited into the kingdom of God.

Saul’s reign over Israel was one of contradictions. He would go to carry out God’s commands, but he just wouldn’t quite get the whole job done. He wouldn’t quite fulfill the totality of what God had told him to do. This became his downfall and the reason that God would remove his presence from Saul, giving the kingdom instead to David who would give his whole heart to the Lord.

An example of this was toward the end of Saul’s reign. We are told that he had driven out all of the mediums and spiritists from the land of Israel. This was good because the people of Israel were told that they should not engage in these evil spiritual practices as all of the other nations around them had done. The other peoples would go to these mediums and would even sacrifice their children to these “gods” of the other nations in order to try to curry favor with the them. But the people of Israel were commanded to be a people set apart for God, serving him only and not following these same practices.

Yet when God did not respond to Saul as the Philistines were amassing to attack Israel, what did Saul do? He sought out a medium who would let him talk to Samuel! The very thing that he not only knew not to do, and even had rightly acted upon as king, he himself went to do.

Saul was rejected by God because of his half measures. God had previously given Saul, as the king of Israel, the job of completely destroying the Amalekites, but he didn’t do this either. He allowed the king of the Amalekites and all of the best animals live, the animals supposedly for sacrifice. Samuel the prophet, though, asked an important question: Is it not better to obey the Lord than to offer him sacrifices?

Saul served God half-heartedly. He would receive God’s instruction, but he would fulfill the instruction in a way that he preferred. He did not serve God fully, doing all that God had told him to do. He did not completely give himself to the Lord as God required. Just as Samuel told Saul when he was consulted through the medium:

The LORD has done what he predicted through me. The LORD has torn the kingdom out of your hands and given it to one of your neighbors—to David. Because you did not obey the LORD or carry out his fierce wrath against the Amalekites, the LORD has done this to you today. The LORD will deliver both Israel and you into the hands of the Philistines, and tomorrow you and your sons will be with me. The LORD will also give the army of Israel into the hands of the Philistines.”

1 Samuel 28:17-19

God would take the kingdom from Saul and give it to David. God would allow the army of Israel to be defeated by the Philistines, Saul would be defeated, and both he and his sons would be killed. Just as the Lord had said would happen, it did. Now, Saul was learning that he would be killed within the next 24 hours, and that is, in fact, what happened.

God wants our whole hearts. God desires that we give all of ourselves to him. This is why, for example, Jesus told the rich young ruler to go and sell all of his possessions, give them to the poor, and come to follow him. Without giving him our whole heart, we cannot inherit eternal life. Without giving him our whole heart, we cannot truly know him. That is the lesson that Saul learned. It is the same lesson that the rich young ruler learned. And it is the same lesson that we must learn as well. God wants all of us. Without exception and without reserve, without anything held back. May God help us and teach us to give our whole lives, our whole selves, to him.

Saul continued to pursue David, despite having asked for forgiveness for his previous attempts to find and kill David. David had been anointed to be the next king of Israel, but Saul was not ready to give up his throne and preferred to remove all of the oncoming threats to his rule and reign over Israel.

David had found Saul encamped on the side of hill along with three thousand of his selected men, the “special forces” of the Israelite army. Saul was once again in pursuit of David, still looking to kill him, to remove the threat that David represented to his kingdom.

This time, as a warning to Saul and all of his men who were supposed to be protecting him, David had taken Saul’s spear and water jug in the middle of the night while Saul and all of his men slept. Then, after calling to Saul and his men from a distant hill, Saul responded in supposed repentance:

Then Saul said, “I have sinned. Come back, David my son. Because you considered my life precious today, I will not try to harm you again. Surely I have acted like a fool and have been terribly wrong.”

1 Samuel 26:21

I say that Saul responded in “supposed” repentance because Saul had now tried to kill David several times. Saul called David to come back to him, to embrace him, to return to the kingdom, but David was wiser than to just take Saul at his word. If Saul was truly repentant, he would have called off the search. He would have returned back to rule his kingdom. He would have left David alone. David had shown Saul kindness, having twice respected the fact that he was God’s anointed, the appointed king of Israel, and he did not kill him when he had the opportunity.

But that wasn’t what Saul did. He used words of repentance, but he didn’t display it with his actions. Nothing really changed. His repentance was hollow. If he could have killed him, he would have. In fact, Saul only stopped seeking to kill David when David went to live amongst the Philistines, amongst the people who were the sworn enemies of the Israelites.

David didn’t fall for the trap that Saul laid out for him. He gave back the spear and water jug, but he didn’t return to Saul. He didn’t embrance Saul. David was wise enough to see through hollow repentance and so he didn’t reorient his life each time that Saul said that he was sorry for what he had done. David waited to see the “fruit” of Saul’s repentance, a true outcome, but it was an outcome that never came. Saul never actually came back to David in true repentance, and while this did have an effect on David and his life, David didn’t become a fool. He didn’t believe the lie that Saul was sorry for what he had done, and so he didn’t return, allowing Saul to destroy him even further.

As the people of God, we are called to offer forgiveness when it is requested. At the same time, we should also be wise and not foolish in the way that we offer ourselves to those that are requesting forgiveness. We don’t know, but David may have forgiven Saul. However, he certainly didn’t offer himself back to Saul as Saul asked him to do. He didn’t return to Saul because he hadn’t yet seen the true fruit of the repentance. This is a lesson for us as well, that we must be wise, hearing not only words, but also seeing actions to back up the words that have been spoken.