Happy Mother's Day ladies! May God bless you today as you celebrate with your families and the whole year through as you continue your work as a kingdom builder!
Today's OT passage starts with David getting the news of the deaths of King Saul, Jonathan and his other sons.
King Saul had relentlessly pursed David with the intent of killing him, despite David serving the king faithfully. Saul's own disobedience to God was the cause of David's annointing by Samuel under God's direction. Saul's only motive was envy. David had done nothing wrong, nothing deserving death.
Now, I don't know about you, but if I was David, my reaction would've been one of relief that my rival and enemy was dead, that I was now safe, and joy that I was soon to be publicly annointed king (well, queen in my case ;)
But that is not David's reaction. David's reaction is one of grief. And it was genuine. What a stand up character! Now, granted - I'm sure a good portion of that grief was for his friend Jonathan, but the Word is clear....
Then David and all the men with him took hold of their clothes and tore them. They mourned and wept and fasted till evening for Saul and his son Jonathan, and for the army of the Lord and the house of Israel, because they had fallen by the sword. 2 Samual 1:11-12 (emphasis mine)
I find it incredible that not only David, but all the men with him, mourned in this way for the death of King Saul. What an incredible leader he already was!
(This reminds me a bit of the whole Osama bin Laden situation this past week, but maybe we shouldn't get into that right now, this is betting long enough as is!)
The man claiming to be an Amalekite certainly underestimated David. In fact, he thought he would be rewarded if he claimed to have killed Saul. He was gravely mistaken, and that lie cost him his life.
Another thing jumped out at me. After Saul's death David knew he would become king and the obvious move would be for him to move back to Judah, the home territory of his tribe. But David didn't just go ahead with what he thought was the obvious move - he stopped and asked God, recognizing that He alone knows the best timing.
Oh that I would do the same!
This has gotten long enough so I won't get into the Luke passage. But I highly recommend MacArthur's sermon on this passage titled The Great Commission: Preaching Forgiveness to the World, the first of a 2 part series.
Tomorrow's passage: 2 Samuel 3-5, John 1:1-28
4 comments:
Happy Mother's Day!
I find it amazing that David mourned the death of someone who had been trying to kill him. And yet, David always took very seriously the fact that Saul had been anointed as king by God. He made that clear several times. Maybe he also mourned what Saul could have been had he been obedient to God. Just speculating here. It's so hard sometimes to look at things from a Biblical or godly perspective when we're so very human.
Happy Mothers Day! I appreciate the point you made about David AND HIS MEN mourning Saul. So true that David was already demonstrating solid leadership.
Happy Mother's Day!
Thanks for making it clear about the man claiming to be an Amalekite, I wasn't sure about that part of the passage today.
How great to see that David showed his obedience of loving his enemy by grieving his death [although David was more Saul's enemy than vice versa] who tried so many times to kill him...
I was amazed too at David's response to the news. I wondered too about the messenger who probably thought that his news would be more well received. Maybe he hoped that David would celebrate him too because he was the one who "finished Saul off" and instead he was punished with his life for killing God's chosen one. I admire David's ability to wait patiently for God's timing-something I struggle with terribly.
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