The last time I preached, I began my sermon on 1 Samuel 27-31 with a reference to Rocky IV. You may be thinking, “There is no way he could start another sermon with a Rocky IV reference,” but you would be wrong about that. Did you know that Rocky IV was originally released in 1985, but Sylvester Stallone went back to work on the movie during the 2020 pandemic and released a director’s cut in 2021? He didn’t film any new scenes, but he added in footage that didn’t make it into the original release, took out some scenes, and re-edited several parts of the movie to produce a new film that was the same storyline, but with some different emphases. For example, the original release, being a 1980’s movie, highlights very strongly the theme of the USA vs. the Soviet Union. The director’s cut, released at a time when the Cold War had long been over, has considerably less emphasis on that theme and draws out the story’s conflict mainly in other ways.
Comparing two versions of the same story can provide a lot of insight into what the author of each version wanted to communicate. And that is the case here with the story of David’s rise to the throne of Israel. You might get the impression that, once King Saul died, David would have taken the throne of Israel immediately. You even get that impression when you read the account of Saul’s death and David’s rise to the throne in the parallel passage in 1 Chronicles 10-11. But in reality, the transition between Saul’s death and David’s assumption of the throne over Israel was a process that took over seven years. And the author of 1-2 Samuel gives us a snapshot of three stories about David that occurred during that seven-year period of time. He doesn’t give us a whole history of those seven years, but he definitely wants to show us something important by narrating these three stories. What is it the author wants us to see? And how does that speak to our own lives as those who seek to live by the teaching of the Word of God? Those are the two questions that I hope to answer today. To answer the first, we will walk through these three stories about David, and then to answer the second we will pull back and reflect on what this text means for our own faith and obedience to the Lord.
There are three stories about David in these chapters, followed by a concluding account of his assumption of the throne of Israel. The first story is about David and an Amalekite. The second is about David and Abner, who had been the commander of Saul’s army. The third is about David and two assassins. Let’s walk through these stories and see what the author wants us to notice about David and what the Holy Spirit is teaching us through his example.
The first story is that of
You may recall that at the end of 1 Samuel, Saul and his sons were killed on Mount Gilboa in battle with the Philistines, and David, who had been living among the Philistines in a town called Ziklag, had just taken his men on a successful mission to rescue their wives, children, and goods from a group of Amalekites who had raided Ziklag while they had been away. After this successful mission, David returned to Ziklag, and on his third day back a man showed up who had torn clothes and dust on his head, a sign of mourning and distress. This man came to David and fell to the ground, paying homage to him, and David asked him where he came from. He answered that he had come from the camp of Israel, the site of battle against the Philistines. Let’s pick up reading in verse 4: “And David said to him, ‘How did it go? Tell me. And he answered, ‘The people fled from the battle, and also many of the people have fallen and are dead, and Saul and his son Jonathan are also dead.’ Then David said to the young man who told him, ‘How do you know that Saul and his son Jonathan are dead?’ And the young man who told him said, ‘By chance I happened to be on Mount Gilboa, and there was Saul leaning on his spear, and behold, the chariots and the horsemen were close upon him. And when he looked behind him, he saw me and called to me. And I answered, ‘Here I am.’ And he said to me, ‘Who are you?’ I answered him, ‘I am an Amalekite.’ And he said to me, ‘Stand beside me and kill me, for anguish has seized me, and yet my life still lingers.’ So I stood beside him and killed him, because I was sure that he could not live after he had fallen. And I took the crown that was on his head and the armlet that was on his arm, and I have brought them here to my lord.’”
When I read this account, one of the questions that comes to mind is whether or not it is true. After all, the narrative in 1 Samuel 31 about Saul’s death does not mention this man. In addition, the man says that he saw Saul leaning on his spear, but 1 Samuel 31 tells us that Saul fell on his sword. But I don’t think those two factors are decisive. There are many examples of a biblical narrative leaving out certain details in order to streamline the account. And the fact that the man mentions Saul’s spear instead of his sword may simply be a misstatement on his part, not necessarily a lie. It seems like a detail he could have remembered incorrectly. On the evidence in favor of this man’s testimony, we know he was at the scene because he brought Saul’s crown and armlet with him to give to David. In addition, the fact that he is an Amalekite, and that he revealed that information to Saul just before Saul asked him to kill him, is a profound irony that has a ring of truth about it. Do you recall why Saul was rejected as king by the Lord? It was because he failed to obey the Lord’s command to wipe out the Amalekites. And now here he is on Mount Gilboa, begging an Amalekite, of all people, to put him out of his misery. This story makes sense to me; I don’t see any decisive reason to conclude that he was lying.
So now David hears the news that Saul, his greatest enemy, the man who wielded all his royal power in repeated attempts to murder him, is dead. How will David respond? Will he pop the champagne? Hold a feast of celebration? Dance a jig? Look at verses 11-12: “Then David took hold of his clothes and tore them, and so did all the men who were with him. And they mourned and wept and fasted until evening for Saul and for Jonathan his son and for the people of the LORD and for the house of Israel, because they had fallen by the sword.” David and his men mourned. They wept for the disgrace that had come upon Israel. Even though this event was good for David personally and politically, David has no joy for his own advancement that comes with this terrible blow to his people, the people of the Lord. Then David turns his attention to the Amalekite in front of him. Verses 14-16 read, “David said to him, ‘How is it you were not afraid to put out your hand to destroy the LORD’s anointed? Then David called one of the young men and said, ‘Go, execute him.’ And he struck him down so that he died. And David said to him, ‘Your blood be on your head, for your own mouth has testified against you, saying, ‘I have killed the LORD’s anointed.’” Was this a harsh overreaction? After all, the Amalekite simply acted to alleviate Saul’s suffering. No, it’s not an overreaction. Euthanasia, the act of putting to death someone who wants to die, is not an ethical practice. It usurps God’s authority over life and death. And in this case, it is particularly egregious, because Saul was not an ordinary man. He was the Lord’s anointed one, and the Amalekite had no business taking Saul’s life in his own hands.
So David clearly had in front of him a man whose support he could count on. This man had given homage to David and had brought him a crown and armlet from the former king. Nothing says, “I support your rule,” more than that. But David acted with impartial justice to give this man the sentence he deserved. And then we see David’s heart on display at the end of chapter 1 in the moving tribute of lament he wrote for Saul, for his dear friend Jonathan, and for the people of Israel on this sad occasion. We are starting to get a picture of what kind of king David will be.
That’s the first story. The second story concerns
In the aftermath of learning of Saul’s death, David inquired of the Lord to see if he should leave the realm of the Philistines and return to Judah. And the Lord told him to return and go to the city of Hebron. So David, his wives, and his army went up to Hebron, where the elders of Judah anointed him king over the tribe of Judah. David now has royal authority over one tribe of Israel, but not yet the whole kingdom.
One of his first acts as king of Judah was to send a message of commendation to the people of Jabesh-gilead who had acted heroically to retrieve the bodies of Saul and Jonathan from the wall of the Philistine city of Beth-shan. And in sending this message, David sought to extend his influence outside of Judah and invite others to come under his authority. Yet at some point after David’s rise to power, Abner the son of Ner, the commander of Saul’s army set up a son of Saul named Ish-bosheth as king of the other tribes of Israel. Even though Abner was not king, he was clearly the real power behind the throne, and his act of setting up a rival kingdom to David’s was one of pure rebellion against what even king Saul had known to be true: that David had been chosen by the Lord to be the next king. Abner knew that. He will even say so in 3:9-10 and 18. But instead of submitting to the will of God, Abner obstinately rebels, showing how irrational sin is.
The bulk of chapter 2 (vv. 12-32) tells the story of the battle of Gibeon. Abner led his forces in an aggressive action of invasion into David’s territory, where they met David’s resistance forces under the command of Joab, David’s nephew, who was there with his two brothers Abishai and Asahel. When Abner saw that his advance could not proceed without some kind of engagement, he proposed a twelve-on-twelve contest between the two sides. Tragically, that contest resulted in all 24 warriors falling to mortal wounds. And then a full-scale battle broke out between the two armies. In the midst of the battle, Asahel, the brother of Joab, began to chase after Abner. Asahel apparently had no shield and was lightly armored so that he could move faster, and he set his sights on bringing down the commander of the Israelite forces. Abner ran from him and warned him to back off, but when Asahel would not be deterred and came within striking distance, Abner plunged the butt of his spear into Asahel’s stomach and killed him on the spot. The reason that story is told in such detail is because it explains the grudge that Joab and Abishai held against Abner from that day forward. Eventually, the battle came to an end, and while David’s men had suffered a few casualties, Abner’s men had suffered far more. This was the beginning of a war between the house of David and the house of Saul, in which David grew stronger and stronger and his rival Ish-bosheth became weaker and weaker.
And then chapter 3 tells of a turning point in the story of Abner. King Ish-bosheth accused Abner of lying with one of Saul’s concubines named Rizpah. The reason that charge was so serious was not merely for the sexual element to it, but because the act of lying with the concubine of a deceased king would have been making a huge political statement. It would have constituted a claim to be the one who is really in charge in of the kingdom. I’m not sure if the accusation was true or not. Abner seems like the kind of man who would do such a thing, but on the other hand, it may have been paranoia on the part of King Ish-bosheth. Either way, it created a rift between these two men and led Abner to defect. He sent word to David that he now wanted to serve David’s political interests by brokering David’s relationship to the other tribes of Israel. David told him to come to Hebron, and they would enter into a covenant, but first Abner had to bring with him David’s wife Michal, the daughter of Saul. After David had fled from the king, Saul had given Michal to another man, and David wanted her back, probably for political reasons. He knew that if he had sons by her, he could bring the house of Saul into his own dynasty and strengthen his political position. So Abner did what David asked, and then he went to the elders of Israel to promote David among them. He singled out for special attention the elders of the tribe of Benjamin, the tribe from which Saul had come. And then he made his way to Hebron to meet with David, where David had a feast waiting for him. David and Abner made a covenant, solidifying Abner’s loyalty to David, and then David sent him off with safe conduct to gather the tribes of Israel so that they could formally bring their support to David. It seems like everything is coming together to bring David to the throne of Israel.
But do you remember that grudge between Joab and Abner? When Joab came back to Hebron after leading a raid, he heard the news about Abner changing sides, and he was enraged. Not only was Abner the man who killed his brother, but Abner would now represent the greatest threat to Joab’s own position within David’s service. So Joab sent messengers to Abner without David’s knowledge to ask him to come back to Hebron. Abner probably assumed that David wanted to speak with him further, so he came back to the city, and while he was there Joab took him aside and stabbed him in the stomach, taking vengeance for Abner’s prior act of killing Joab’s brother Asahel in battle.
Once again, we wonder: how will David respond? According to the text, David went to great lengths to show that he had nothing to do with this act of wickedness. He called down a curse upon the house of Joab. He ordered Joab and all the people with him to mourn Abner. And he gave Abner an honorable funeral and burial, even singing a lament for him. Then David, in his act of mourning, even refused to eat. Verses 36-37 give us the main point of this story: “And all the people took notice of it, and it pleased them, as everything that the king did pleased all the people. So all the people and all Israel understood that day that it had not been the king’s will to put to death Abner the son of Ner.” In the dirty business of politics, David has remained clean.
And then we come to a third story:
When news came back to Saul’s son Ish-bosheth that Abner was dead, his courage failed. The man who had been the real power of his kingdom was now gone for good. His kingdom had become so weak that others close to him were starting to see the handwriting on the wall. Among them were two captains of raiding bands: Baanah and Rechab, two brothers. Often what happens when it becomes clear that a ship is going down, people will scramble to save themselves at the expense of others. So one day Baanah and Rechab decided that they needed to secure their own positions in service to David, because the house of Saul was coming to an end. So they entered Ish-bosheth’s residence one afternoon while he was napping. They acted like they were heading to an interior storeroom to gather wheat, but instead they made their way to his bedroom and stabbed him to death in his sleep. Then they cut off his head and brought it to David.
Notice how these assassins frame their action for king David in the middle of verse 8: “And they said to the king, ‘Here is the head of Ish-bosheth, the son of Saul, your enemy, who sought your life. The LORD has avenged my lord the king this day on Saul and on his offspring.” They seek to cloak their wicked deed in the garment of God’s approval, no doubt hoping that David would honor them with high positions in his kingdom. And so now for the third time, David is confronted with news of a murder, and once again, we ask, “How will he respond?” Verses 9-12 tell us: “But David answered Rechab and Baanah his brother, the sons of Rimmon the Beerothite, ‘As the LORD lives, who has redeemed my life out of every adversity, when one told me, ‘Behold, Saul is dead,’ and thought he was bringing good news, I seized him and killed him at Ziklag, which was the reward I gave him for his news. How much more, when wicked men have killed a righteous man in his own house on his bed, shall I not now require his blood at your hand and destroy you from the earth?’ And David commanded his young men, and they killed them and cut off their hands and feet and hanged them beside the pool at Hebron. But they took the head of Ish-bosheth and buried it in the tomb of Abner at Hebron.” David took dramatic action, not only to enact justice, but also to make it very clear and very public that he had nothing to do with the assassination of Saul’s son.
David’s action here was important, not only in giving just retribution to two men who murdered a king in his sleep, but also in providing the other tribes of Israel with the confidence to recognize him as king over the whole nation in the aftermath of Ish-bosheth’s death. And thus the concluding section of our text today (5:1-5) shows that after seven years of reigning over Judah, David became king over all Israel. What the prophet Samuel foretold at David’s anointing in 1 Samuel 16 has now become a reality.
So what does the author of 1-2 Samuel want to bring out in these four chapters that the author of 1 Chronicles, in telling the same story, felt freedom to skip over? It seems that David has been confronted three times with murderous acts, and all three times David has disavowed them, even when they are to his own advantage politically. In other words, David shows repeatedly in this period of his rise to the throne that he will not be seduced by the lure of power at any cost. He will not try to seize the kingdom by ungodly means. Instead, he will seek to trust and obey the Lord, waiting upon the Lord to give him power in the time and manner of his own choosing. And in this we have an important principle of biblical wisdom that I want to share with you as an application to our lives: We must never try to be wiser than God as we seek his blessings.
We are often subject to the temptation that we can be wiser than God, and if we are motivated to attain something that is good in itself, we may have to resort to methods of pursuit that are contrary to what God has commanded. When Abraham and Sarah grew impatient with God’s promise that they would have a son, they came up with an idea to help God achieve his purpose: Sarah gave her Egyptian maidservant Hagar to Abraham as a wife, and he impregnated her. That was a faithless act in which Abraham and Sarah thought they could be wiser than God. And the child born to Hagar—Ishmael—was not the child of the promise.
Single women, I know many of you want to be married in the future. I also know that we live in a culture that has been overrun by the sexual revolution, leaving you without cultural assumptions that used to provide some protection for you and your virtue. In former generations it was widely assumed that a man should not expect that he could go to bed with a woman until he manned up and married her. That cultural assumption has a way of motivating men to man up. And now it’s gone. Now instead we have a culture in which a woman can feel pressured to go to bed with a man in hopes of winning him over to a commitment and then eventually to marriage. So single women, you may face the thought that if you’re not willing to go to bed with a man, you will lose the competition for marriage to other women who are willing. And thus you may be tempted to pursue something good—marriage—by sinful means. Learn from the example of David here: you cannot be wiser than God. You must not pursue God’s blessings by sinful means. Trust the Lord to provide you a husband who won’t require you to sin in order to get him to marry you, and then obey the Lord.
Or maybe you have found yourself in a challenging economic situation, and an opportunity comes up for you to earn good money, but it requires you to give up Sundays to your employer. You know that if you take this job, it will pull you away from corporate worship with the gathered church. It is a good thing to advance yourself economically. But there is something wrong with ordering your life as though work takes priority over worship. You cannot fulfill the commands that Christ has given us if you do not build gathering with the church into your life as a first priority. Don’t try to be wiser than God. Don’t pursue economic provision by sinful means.
Perhaps the day will come when your employer requires that you give homage in some way to the LGBTQ movement in order to keep your job. It may come in the form of displaying a rainbow symbol at your desk during the month of June, or mandatory attendance at a company “Pride” event, or mandatory use of certain pronouns for certain employees. And you may think to yourself, “I want to keep this job. I need the money, and I want to continue to have opportunities to share the gospel with coworkers. So maybe it’s okay to compromise here or there because I’m ultimately aiming at a good thing.” Yes, you are ultimately aiming at a good thing. But you cannot be wiser than God, and you cannot advance his purposes by sinful means. It seems very plausible to me that when Peter withdrew from eating with Gentile believers at Antioch, as related by Paul in Galatians 2, his motive was good. Peter was primarily called to preach the gospel to Jews. So he felt freedom to eat with Gentile believers when more conservative Jews were not around. However, when certain Jewish believers from Jerusalem showed up at Antioch, Peter withdrew from the Gentiles, fearing that if he got a reputation among Jews in Jerusalem that he ate with Gentiles, he might compromise his witness. It was almost certainly a good motive. And it was most certainly a sinful decision, because Paul confronted him over it. You can’t advance the gospel by compromising the gospel. You must not advance God’s purposes by sinful means.
Congress has recently taken up the so-called “Respect for Marriage Act” in an attempt to codify same-sex marriage into federal law. If this bill passes, it remains unclear at this point what the ramifications would be for religious liberty. But it’s not unimaginable that at some point we as a church could face pressure to open our building to same-sex weddings, or in other ways be pressured to soften our stance on biblical teaching, or else face the loss of our tax exempt status. And when that day comes, it will be tempting for us to think that we can be wiser than God by changing our practices, or softening our doctrine, in order to avoid unpleasant consequences. We could even cloak such a move in the garment of protecting our mission. Christian institutions constantly face the temptation of mission compromise for the sake of earthly gain. It’s easy to think we can be wiser than God as we seek to serve God.
What would I say in each of these cases and thousands of others like them? I would say trust the Lord, obey him, and wait upon him. If you want to be married, if you want to advance yourself economically, if you want to have influence for the sake of the gospel, pursue these things his way, not your own way. You cannot be wiser than God. David knew that, and David provides for us an example of faith and obedience that received the Lord’s blessing at the right time and in the right way. May the story of David’s rise to the throne remind us that our responsibility is faithfulness to the Lord, not managing consequences of our actions. Let God take care of the consequences. Your job is to trust him and obey him.
And while David is not a perfect example to us, he is in these chapters a model of a righteous king who navigates the chaos of sin, dirty politics, and bloodshed while holding on to his integrity. As a righteous king, David points forward to his greater Son, our Lord Jesus Christ, who never tried to be wiser than his Father. Even when the devil offered him all the kingdoms of the world for a compromise, Jesus did not budge. He was perfect in obedience to the Father unto death, and as a result, he was raised to life, where he received from the Father everything the devil had offered and more. Jesus Christ navigated the chaos to establish the kingdom of God, the order of justice, peace, and blessing that God had decreed for this world. And the decision for each one of us is whether we will align ourselves with Christ or with the chaos. There is no middle ground. As we come to the Lord’s table again today, let us, in faith, say once more that our allegiance is to Jesus of Nazareth, the Son of David. Amen.