We're moving on in our look at Samuel. We really just about come to the end of it. I think there are two more sessions on Samuel. This is the second period on Samuel that we've had since I've been here. We would have covered the whole of the first book of Samuel and the first three chapters of the second book of Samuel. What we'll have done is to take it right from the beginning of the kingdom you remember and Saul and the anointing of Saul, Samuel and the anointing of Saul right away through to the point where we actually see it last, King David, on the throne in Israel. But today we come to the second book of Samuel, chapter 1. I wonder how many of us have had the sort of feelings about people that we know to be wrong, but we just can't seem to do away with. Perhaps someone particularly annoys you and you'd love to shout at them. That's putting it mildly. Maybe you'd like to do something else to them. Perhaps someone speaks about us behind our backs. Or gossip, or even spread false rumors. And we want to be able to speak out and defend ourselves and set the record straight and perhaps get back at them, get even. And then we realize that it wouldn't actually achieve anything. And we'd be involved in the sin of taking vengeance. I'm sure that David must have felt those thoughts, those feelings, for years and years as he waited for Saul to die. But David had learned through his life the most amazing teaching that would leave a lot of people today feeling far less stressed if we were able to apply it to whatever business situation we found ourselves in. David had learned to be able to leave things in God's hands. He was prepared to trust in the Lord's will. He was prepared to commit himself entirely to that perfect will that God had for him. That God had for his country and that God had for his kingdom. I wonder whether he ever had the sort of feelings that probably some of you have had here from time to time, the sort of feeling of being passed over for promotion. I wonder whether he felt a bit like that during those long years. Remember, he'd had oil put on him years before that he was going to be king. And in fact, he'd ended up being chased around the wilderness by Saul. Perhaps there were times when he thought, I must have failed God's test. Why else should God be taking so long about getting me where he told me I was going to go? Perhaps there were times when he felt like speeding up the whole process to get his kingdom and simply knocking off Saul whenever he could. When the old man Saul lay on his bed and threw a spear at David to kill him, I wonder whether David had been tempted to pick up that spear and throw it back rather more accurately and quickly. After all, it would have done God's job for him rather quickly, wouldn't it? Of course, we don't know what was going on in David's mind, do we? But if we read some of the Psalms, we find very quickly that David is a sensitive person. We can begin to learn how he probably did react in these situations. He was sensitive to apparent persecution. He was sensitive to feeling that others were getting benefits when he thought he should have. He was sensitive to feeling that God sometimes seemed just miles away and nowhere near him. Look at Psalm 69 and the first four verses there. See if this isn't from a sensitive man, perhaps a man who is overreacting in his depression. Maybe some of us can identify with this. Save me, O God, for the waters have come up to my neck. I sink in the deep mire where there is no foothold. I've come into deep waters and the flood sweeps over me. I'm weary with my crying, my throat is parched, my eyes grow dim with waiting for my God. More in number than the hairs of my head are those who hate me without cause. See a certain amount of exaggeration coming in there, probably. But the source of exaggeration that we're all prone to when we get depressed about the situation, isn't it? We tend to think of things as much worse, like Elijah. Do you remember Elijah? Nobody God is left to worship you at all in this country and then God shows in there are 7,000 other people that he just hadn't noticed them along the way. He felt so depressed, he felt God had left him somewhere, God was miles away. I wonder whether you've ever felt like that. Maybe you've struggled to see how God could possibly have a plan in your life after all God doesn't even seem to be close to you. Perhaps it's particularly difficult when we have no idea what that plan is. Have a look at Psalm 57. Similar sort of situation, slightly different response here. Be merciful to me, O God, be merciful to me, for indeed my soul takes refuge in the shadow of thy wings I will take refuge till the storms of destruction pass by. I cry to God most high, to God who fulfills his purpose for me. He will send from heaven and save me, he will put to shame those who trample upon me. God will send forth his steadfast love and his faithfulness. Traditionally it's believed that David wrote that Psalm at the point where he refused to kill Saul. You remember when he had that opportunity to kill Saul in the cave and he refused and he wrote this. And he says, God will put to shame those who trample upon me. God will send forth his steadfast love and his faithfulness. And we could go through Psalm after Psalm and see what I like to call the real David. David was a great man of God, a friend of God he's described at, but he was also as human as you and I are. Like us, he could be hurt, like us, he could sin, but he also had a tremendous trust you see in the sovereign covenant, faithfulness and love of God. A trust that the Lord would carry out his plans and the Lord's plans were always the best plans. As he saw last week Saul, the king who had made himself David's enemy in a most unjust and completely unnecessary way, did at last die. His going was not one of the great moments of Israelite history. In fact, in most of the other religions of this world such stories would nicely be forgotten, but our Bible gives us the humanity of the heroes of the Bible as well and their sinfulness. In 2 Samuel 1 we read of how that message of Saul's death came to David and we learn again of this real David. A messenger came and we read about it earlier told David and his men that Saul and Jonathan were dead, but this messenger who was an amalachite hoping to find favor with the one he knew would be the next king of Israel told a direct lie. The amalachite, verse 9, if you have a look at the passage, verse 9 of 2 Samuel 1, the amalachite told David that Saul had asked him to kill him. The amalachite then claimed he had killed Saul thus making it out as if he had done a favor to David. Notice in verse 10 how the amalachite clearly thought he would be well praised for bringing David to crown and the armlet of the king, the symbols of his office of kingship. Now David must have been very tempted, mustn't he? To be grateful that Saul was at last dead, he got his come upances. And he must have been grateful perhaps or tempted even to be grateful to the Lord. Thank you Lord, at last it's happened, but not so. In this passage we find straight away that David's reaction was not at all what we might have expected. He was not happy. He didn't gloat. He didn't immediately put on the crown and say, at last I'm king, everybody come and worship me or bow down to me. And this evening as we look at this reaction in this passage this chapter, the reaction of David, one thing surely hits us more than anything else. And that is David's great sadness at the death of Saul and Jonathan. First we find in this passage of course that he was sad for Jonathan and the loss of his closest friend. Now that ought not to surprise us. We would all be sad at losing a very, very close friend even if he did have a rotten father. So the sadness that we find here expressed about Jonathan is to be expected. Look at the text, we learn just how much David's friendship with Jonathan really meant, verse 25 halfway through that verse. Jonathan lies slain upon thy high places. I'm distressed for you, my brother Jonathan. Very pleasant you have been to me. Your love to me was wonderful, passing the love of women. Tremendously close friendship there. David calls him elsewhere his brother on several occasions. It's like two terribly close brothers who've been wrenched apart by death. And you can imagine how sad David would have been at that. Earlier on we find in verse 11, verse 12 that they mourned and wet and fasted until evening for Saul and for Jonathan his son. Jonathan deserves that weeping, that crying for he was a good friend. But then secondly and quite surprisingly surely he seems to have been genuinely sad in this passage for Saul. David doesn't just remember Jonathan, but in several places in this passage he mentions Saul. Look at his praise of Saul, for example, at the end of verse 23 and into 24. Start at the beginning of verse 23. Saul and Jonathan, beloved and lovely. In life and in death they were not divided. They were swifter than eagles. They were stronger than lions. Your daughters of Israel weep over Saul, who closed you daintily in scarlet, who put ornaments of gold upon your apparel. David is lamenting the passing of Saul. Would you have lamented the passing of Saul? I'm sure that most of us would not. I'm sure most of us would have been rather happy. Actually that the man who's been trying to kill us for a number of years was finally dead. David laments the passing of Saul. And then thirdly and most importantly, and this links up with that second point, he was sad. He was even distraught in this song that he writes, in this song that he writes here. He was destroyed and distraught about what the death of Saul meant in the Lord's work. David had quite deliberately avoided taking vengeance on Saul himself. You remember several incidents where he had the chance and he refused it and he said no is in the Lord's hands. He was prepared to leave things you see completely in the Lord's hands. Remember that Psalm 57 verse two that we've just read written on one of those occasions. I cry to God most high, to God who fulfills his purpose for me. This is the God that David turns to. The God David trusts him. But now Saul is dead. And of course David is amazed. But distraught, not perhaps the reaction we were expecting. He was distraught that anyone should have killed the Lord's anointed king. Of course David was not to know at that point that in fact Saul had committed suicide. But David's righteousness, David's covenant loyalty to God is so clearly seen here. Whenever problems he may have had with Saul, he knew that Saul had been appointed king by the Lord himself. And David had just returned in fact from killing the Amalekites who were invading areas owned by the Israelites. And now along comes this Amalekite and says he's killed the king of Israel. And David's passion to defend his God here, his righteous anger is amazing to behold.
He would not humanly speaking, surely, have been angry with this man, with someone who after all had done his dirty work for him. But David is moved by the spirit of God in this, verse 14. He says, how is it, he asks, that you were not afraid to put forth your hand to destroy the Lord's anointed? And remember that the word anointed here is the word that gives us our word Messiah. This was the king of Israel, the Messiah of Israel, the anointed one of God, head over Israel. This was the one that this Amalekite had felt proud to kill, even if he was lying about it. And David's concern here is for God, for the nation of Israel, and for the apparent triumph of evil. This is what worries him. And this surely is the deepest side to David's sadness. This is what makes him genuinely and righteously angry in his distress. Look at verse 19. Thy glorio Israel is slain upon thy high places. What is Israel's glory? It is the anointed king. Thy glorio Israel is slain upon thy high places. How are the mighty fallen, tell it not in gaff, publish it not in the streets of Ashkel unless the daughters of the Philistines rejoice. He doesn't want others in surrounding nations to see the humiliation of God's own people and the destruction of God's own king. And it's in this context then that David gives us that wonderful line of poetry that has stuck with us down through the ages. That many people use even these days even though they have no idea where it comes from. But it's not a gloating line of poetry as it is sometimes today when it's used. Rather it is spoken from the depths of agony that David feels. Agony that God's own people and God's own leaders have been put down by unbelievers. It comes up three times here, verse 19. How are the mighty fallen? Verse 25. How are the mighty fallen in the midst of the battle? And verse 27. How are the mighty fallen? This then is David. Here is the one who's been waiting for years and years and years for Saul to pass on. And who must have dispared on occasion of God's ever-acting? Perhaps he thought on occasion, God you've deserted me. Look, here I am in the wilderness in Israel. Here I am in a tent. I've got Saul chasing after me. I've got navel and people like him wanting to kill me because they don't like me. And what is it all about? And now he's confronted with Saul and Jonathan's death. And the first thing surely grabs our attention is just how sad and distraught he is when we might have expected something else. But we've found that it's not just the loss of a friend that bothered him. It was something much deeper than that. Because he was concerned that the Lord's purposes not be thwarted. How many others look around these days and look at our own lives and are tempted to say that the Lord has left us? Or perhaps we're concerned that we're in a situation where the Lord cannot possibly be sovereign. I mean, things are just so bad with us, how could he possibly be sovereign through all of this? It's just too difficult to imagine how God could ever use anything so difficult as we are now going through. This is how we feel, isn't it, from time to time? It's impossible to imagine that God could ever use anything so dreadful that we could really say he's sovereign in this situation. But David's sadness shows us that first and foremost, you see, he was concerned to see the will of God done. Next week, we'll see that David's second reaction was to go back to the Lord and say, well, Lord, what now? That's at the beginning of chapter 2. Okay, so it's happened. What now? And we find that the Lord really does work and bring all things together for good to those who love God according to his purpose. For David is told to go back to the very area from which he had taken his wife Abigail, go back to Hebron, and there he has made king. But I wonder how we would have behaved through all this? How do we think? The Americans have that lovely word which you'll hear me use from time to time, mind-set. It's very descriptive. You have to use about three sentences to explain it in English. How do we think about the whole way of life that we're involved in? What is our mindset? For this is the real question, surely, that confronts us as we look at David this evening. David's emotions, even his emotion of sadness, was dedicated to the Lord's glory. It wasn't selfish. He was worried and concerned and sad and overtaken with grief because he felt that the Lord's name may have been dishonored. Humanly speaking, he must have been able to see that now was the window of opportunity. Now is the chance he'd been waiting for for him to take over. But his concern first is that his friends are dead and that the Lord's name has been brought into disrepute and will be laughed at. This is a serious and a sad time for David. And yet it shows David surely it is very best, doesn't it? This is David at his very best. It shows him seeking to honour God and turn to God on every occasion. It shows that his whole mind-set is framed with this understanding that he's going to do God's will. He wants to follow God's purposes for his life. Even if it means sitting out in the wilderness for years and years. David was not self-seeking. He was not proud. He did not gloat over Saul's death. He did not see Saul as an enemy. But as another of God's people, one who had been disgraced by non-believers. King David was a godly and a true believer. And he sexes surely a fine example of dependence upon the covenant God. But he was sinful at times as well. We know that he sinned like we do. But this message also points us forward, doesn't it? To the greatest King David, to King Jesus, our perfect example. Jesus, son of David, Jesus, infrowned forever. You remember suffered terrible torment at the hands of human beings, and yet he was prepared to die for such people. He could weep over such people even when they were putting him to death. Jesus, the one who even when going to the cross, so believed in the absolute authority of the Father God. But even though he didn't want to go to the cross, Father, take this cup from me. Don't let me go through with this. Nevertheless, not my will but thine, because what? Because God's purpose is first in Jesus. David set us one example. Jesus sexes the perfect example, an example of complete commitment to the purposes of God. One of the most practical and joyful doctrines in the Bible is surely this one of the sovereignty of God. You've heard me mention it. I should think this hardly a sermon that goes by when we don't mention at some point the sovereignty of God. Why? Well, because it's on every page of the Bible anyway. But also because it is really the most joyful of all the doctrines we have in Scripture, I believe. The sovereignty of God, after all, gives us all the other doctrines. It's the sovereignty of God that so purposes things that you and I can be saved through the blood of Jesus on the cross. But this wonderful doctrine, and yet it's also one of the hardest for us to put into practice in our lives, isn't it? See, I can go to people and speak to people who are going through a terrible time in their lives. And as a minister, you often have to face that with people. And they are real, converted, convicted, committed Christians. And they know this doctrine. And they know it, and they will have told other people about this doctrine. The sovereignty of God, he's in control. Leave it to God, and yet putting it into practice is one of the hardest things there is for us to do as Christians. We're tempted to take things into our own hands. We're tempted to rush on. If we don't immediately feel God with us, or we're tempted to do what David said and say, well, God, where are you? I've lost you. You seem to be gone. If he isn't immediately there, taking care of us. I fancy that many of us would have dispaired of King David as a leader a long time ago. A leader who couldn't even take what seemed to be a God given opportunity to kill Saul. That wasn't it, wasn't it? David waited for the Lord's time, and we too have to learn to rely on the Lord in this practical way. We will know whether this is just another doctrine we talk about, or whether it is the source of peace and love in our lives by our behavior. Can we wait for the Lord's time? Can we think with a God-like mindset about our day-to-day lives? Now tell me, that's not difficult, isn't it? How difficult to get that mindset that affects our practical day-to-day walk with the Lord, knowing he is sovereign? Perhaps when Saul was finally put to death, we would have rejoiced. Or are we able to be so committed to Christ that our first concern is what David's first concern was? Is it the Lord's will? And secondly, is the Lord honored in this? Last week I was back at a church that I attended for seven years, as we attended as a family, for seven years before coming here to Hartford. And I met one of my former students who had had a dreadfully hard four years now, really tough time. He'd had the sort of time that would leave most of his gasping, and most of the problems that he'd had to face were direct challenges to his calling. Now I don't know about you, but if somebody challenges you at the point of what you are doing and you feel God has called you to do, that's a very sensitive area in which to be challenged. That's the area you most hate to be challenged in. It hits it right where you are, it hurts. And he had been through this and has been through it. He felt God had called him to be a minister, and so did most of the others around him. But even after giving up a very lucrative, top job in IBM in London, and going to college for three years at his own expense and having a wife and two children to take through all of this with him, two years on, he is still not quite sure, two years on from the end of this course, he's still not quite sure when or how he will be ordained or where. And just now things are beginning to come together for him in his life. There are only beginning two. Lots of things could still step in and stop and send him back to square one. But I rejoiced at what he said to me at the church door last Sunday, because I remember having spoken to students all the way down the years saying remember, God has a plan, the plan for your life, and he would not be God if he had to choose a second best plan or a third best plan. How could he be God if he had to choose second or third best? Think about it a moment. And this man stood at the door and he said this. He said Paul, it's been difficult. But I'm beginning to see that this was all God's plan for me and my family. Now I know he said that God never has a second best plan for us. He always implements his best plan. Sometimes it's only possible really to see the truth of that in retrospect. But that is the truth. David knew that through all the difficulties and terrors of his life before he was made king. He trusted God so much that he could weep and mourn for a person who a few days earlier had been wanting to kill him. Christ, the greatest example, did just the same as he went to death on the cross. He wept over Jerusalem and the people who were to kill him and he didn't want to die. But he followed and trusted in God's best plan. The only plan, the clear plan, the plan that nobody else around could ever have dreamed of being right. How could the Messiah be put on the cross? How could that be the right plan? The best plan. But of course it was. And you and I need to be very thankful for that. For God sent Jesus to die for us and without that best plan there would be no salvation for us sitting here today. If you love God today then let me say this and I don't say it likely because I know many of you personally. And I know what I've been through and what our family has been through from time to time. So believe me I don't say it likely. But it is true, no matter what your circumstances, God will and does work out his best plan for your life. If you know and love him, that's an awesome thought. The practical Christianity says, can I be like David? Can I trust as much as that so that it makes a difference to how I respond in my day to day situation. It made a difference to how David responded. He did not kill Saul when he had the opportunity. He was prepared to be turned back by a woman from killing Navel. He was prepared now to look to see whether really this was God's will. If with Christ's help we can do all do that then we shall find more and more peace and we shall find more and more evidence of the sovereign work of the Spirit of God in our lives. Let us pray. Oh God the source of all good desires, all right judgments and all just works. Give to your servants that peace which the world cannot give. That our hearts may be set to obey your commands and that freed from fear of our enemies we may pass our time in rest and quietness through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.