1 Samuel Lesson 26
Doctrine of Killing – 17:48-18:4
We are continuing our study of the second historical confirmation of
David to the office of king. This second
confirmation extends from 17:1 to 18:4 and during this time we have a perfect
trial with perfect timing with perfect training. We finished the five trials of David as he
was authenticated. David recognized as
we recognize from the study of the text, that the Lord had worked in his life
in a significant way long before he ever put the stone in the slingshot that
killed Goliath. And these ways are very
important ways for you to understand how David was able to be the spiritual
giant that he was. But David became a
national hero by killing the enemy, and because I know just as soon as this
topic is brought up there are always a few Christians around who still are not
straightened out on the Christian and killing.
Therefore before we continue we are going to make four points about the
doctrine of killing, the divine viewpoint of killing and killing as unto the
Lord.
The first thing about it is that killing is authorized since the
institution of the fourth divine institution.
Since the time of the Noahic Covenant God has authorized men to take
other men’s lives. And any person who is
against capital punishment is against the institution of God because capital
punishment was instituted by God on earth, not because He liked to. It goes back to the various areas of the
spheres of influence in creation. We are
talking about the fourth divine institution; it is a post-fall
institution. The first three
institutions all occur at the point of creation; the fourth and fifth
institutions occurred after creation.
And since they occurred after creation they must deal with evil, and so
when God delegates the responsibility to kill to men He is doing that in
already fallen creation.
You have to understand capital punishment came in because man fell and
if man had not fallen then we would have no capital punishment. Capital punishment or authorized killing has
come into history because of God’s response to our own fall. This fourth divine institution of justice,
law and punishment, including capital punishment, authorized in Genesis 9 is
not done away with in the New Testament because of Romans 13:1-4. Those verses are important because every once
in a while you’ll deal with some character who says the New Testament does away
with that, the Sermon on the Mount does away with killing, governmental killing
in judgment. If you will read the
context of Romans 13 you’ll see how very wrong that view is because in Romans
12, just before the passage, Paul has stated that the reason you can turn the
other cheek is because the government sword stands ready to defend you while
you’re turning the other cheek, and it’s precisely because of capital
punishment that the Sermon on the Mount is a pragmatic possibility. So therefore the Sermon on the Mount, far
from nullifying capital punishment, is predicated upon the basis of capital
punishment.
That’s the first point to remember, that killing is authorized with the
fourth divine institution. It’s the
basis of all governmental power. Up
until the fourth divine institution you had paternal power, you had the
authority of the patriarch, you had the authority of Adam over his family, it
was, what we will call paternal, paternal authority in the home and in the
family is not judicial authority.
Paternal authority was given under the third divine institution; as the
man is the head of the home and it’s his authority that controls that
home. And that’s the basis of
authority. The man should have power;
power is always the means for exercising authority; without power authority is
meaningless. The book of Proverbs says
the parent can implement authority with power.
And that involves corporeal punishment!
So corporeal punishment is authorized by the book of Proverbs as an
extension of the paternal authority.
However, we then have the introduction of judicial authority which up
until the time of Noah was reserved for God Himself. For example, when Cain murdered, Adam could
not capitally punish Cain. Therefore we
find operating in history and throughout the whole antediluvian period a lack
of judicial authority. However,
beginning with the Noahic Covenant we now have judicial authority, capital
punishment, invested in the institution of government. Power to exercise that authority comes from
police, and the court system. That is
where the power is manifested; the policeman, the ability to arrest, the
ability to destroy the criminal element is the power of government.
Now under the fifth divine institution we have government fragmented,
again because of rejection, we get into the fifth divine institution which is
tribal diversity, so you have various governments. Government number one, government number two,
government number three, and you will
have various groups of people that will from time to time in history fight each
other with war. And during these wars
the government is authorized to protect its citizens by killing the enemy. So therefore you have killing going on under
the fifth divine institution under the doctrine of just war.
Now this institution of killing in war is developed in many verses of
Scripture. We’ll take three passages
tonight. The first one is found in
Nehemiah 4:14. Nehemiah gives the reason
for war and the motivation for just war.
And these are the reasons why young men who are believers are authorized
to kill the enemy. Look at the reasons
given for authorized killing in war.
This is not holy war here, this is normal just war. “And I looked, and rose up, and said unto the
nobles, and to the rulers, and to the rest of the people, Be not ye afraid of
them. Remember the Lord, who is great
and terrible [awe-inspiring], and fight for your brethren, you sons, and your
daughters, your wives, and your houses.”
Now these are all divine institutions; “your houses” represent economic
holdings or private property under the first divine institution. So the first thing for fighting and killing
in war is to protect the first divine institution, including the right to
private property. This is why no
Christian can be a communist, in spite of what the National and World Council
of Church says, because communism, as well as extreme forms of socialism,
destroy the first divine institution and destroy private property. The Bible is pro-capitalist; during the
millennium there will be private property; Isaiah looks for it to one of the
blessings. The laborer will produce and
he will enjoy the fruits of his labor... what is that but private property;
there’s no welfarism in the millennium.
There’s no communism in the millennium.
The millennium is free of all the screwed up human viewpoint of the
human race, which means there will be no socialism, no welfarism and no
communism.
So the first thing of why we fight and why we kill in war is because we
destroy the enemy who wants to destroy the first divine institution.
The second reason for destroying the enemy is your wife; it is to
protect the second divine institution or marriage. That’s who you’re fighting for also. And later on in 1 Samuel you are going to see
the response of the women of
This was the second reason for killing in war is to protect wives. Then further in Nehemiah 4:14, “your sons,
and your daughters,” that’s the third divine institution, family. There’s another reason for fighting and
killing the enemy in war, is to protect the third divine institution. And finally, “your brethren,” the fourth and
fifth divine institution you are fighting for, because you protect justice and
you protect your country.
So there are five reasons the Bible gives why you should kill the enemy,
and this is not holy war... this is not
holy war here, this is normal war under the times of the Gentiles. And so we have here five bona fide Biblical reasons for killing the enemy.
Now if you turn to Matthew 24:6; this teaches that there must always be
a strong military. “And you shall hear
of wars and rumors of wars;” this is the prediction of Jesus Christ. And this is a prediction that holds until His
return. “You will hear of wars and
rumors of wars, see that ye be not troubled; for all these things must come to
pass, the “wars” are hot wars, the “rumors of wars” are cold wars. And that teaches that any politician who has chokmah, who has wisdom, who therefore
goes along with the structure and the fabric of history as God has created it
will recognize a nation must be militarily prepared at all times, because until
Christ returns there will be no peace.
None!
Acts 17:26 deals with the ulterior motive behind wars in history, that
although the men and the politicians who get involved in wars, we could say are
the ones who start it, their various plots to start and end wars, the various
things in the field of economics, banking, arms, manufacturing and so on that
enter into any conflict. But the Bible
says that beyond all human factors in touching off wars, there are divine
factors over and above man that are involved.
In Acts 17:26-27 we have the Biblical philosophy of competing powers
throughout history. God “has made of one
blood all nations of men to dwell on all the face of the earth, and has
determined the times before appointed, and the bounds of their habitation.” “Determined the times before appointed” are
the eras of history, that’s the nation’s dimension in time. Example: the United States, 1776-1973, that’s
the time in history. Then the next
phrase, “and the bounds of their habitation,” that’s their space. So you have the time and spatial dimensions
of nations. Notice they are “made of one
blood” because we all come from the Noahic family.
Verse 27 is the purpose clause, “That they” that is the nations, “should
seek the Lord, if perhaps they might feel after him, and find him, though he is
not far from every one of us.” So here
we have various nations across the face of the earth. And these nations are petitioned off by
tribes. So you have various nations and
they are on various degrees of positive and negative volition. So you may have a nation here that’s on
negative volition. You may have a nation
here that’s on double negative volition that has been on negative volition so
long that the social institutions of that culture are becoming very rotten, so
that you have a country that is beginning to engage in all forms of idolatry
and human viewpoint, and are in danger of exporting this pollution into the
surrounding nations in the international fabric of nations.
And so therefore what God is saying is that He will not permit a culture
to become totally apostate but will, in the course of various things, a war
will begun, say with another nation over here that isn’t necessarily on very
strong positive volition but happens to be very strong, because when a culture
goes on negative volition for any length of time it always weakens the
structure of that nation; the country inevitably becomes soft and weak, and so
after an extended period of negative volition on the part of the nation you
have weakness develop. And so you can
have another nation that may be on a slight degree of negative volition but not
like this, and not for so long, who then becomes militarily superior to this
nation and you begin to have a war start between them, and finally this nation
conquers and destroys this country. And
everybody says oh, isn’t that horrible and so on. No it isn’t, it’s just getting rid of corrupt
civilization. And this is the way it is
until the return of Christ. There’s a
balance of power going on, constantly shifting from one nation to the other to
eliminate corruption and rottenness.
So when the communists, for example, took over Tibet, it wasn’t a great
loss. Tibet was a center of demonism;
Tibet was the center of the famous red-hooded Monks and communism is on
negative volition too, but the communists less so than the Tibetans, and so
therefore in the power plays of the international structure of nations the
Chinese communists came in and cleaned out this false idolatrous religion and
actually did Christianity a great favor.
So this is a second point that I want to make about killing; the first
one was that it is authorized by the fourth divine institution; the second one
is that wars exist until Christ returns, to test the nations. Wars continue until Christ returns to test
the strength of nations. War is simply a contest of power and the most powerful
nations win. This is not Machiavellian;
this is just simply saying that the most powerful nations generally are the
nations that have spiritual strength too.
The third point about killing the enemy is the fact that Jesus Christ is
the perfect killer. Jesus Christ, as the
commander of the armies of Israel, was a killer from Jericho forward. He personally designed the execution of
thousands and thousands of Canaanites.
Jesus Christ, when He was met by Joshua, remember He was a soldier, He
appeared in military garb, and He was a perfect killer; Jesus Christ pulled one
of the greatest battles ever done and this battle is recorded from the other
side in history through the Assyrian annuls.
It is the story of the death of 185,000 officers in the army of
Sennacherib. The Assyrians had come up
to Jerusalem, Hezekiah was king of Judah and he fortified himself inside and
prepared for a long siege; the Assyrians completely enveloped the city of Jerusalem
and inside was Hezekiah and one man, Isaiah, the great Bible teacher, who had
taught the people, who had prepared the people day after day, week after week,
month after month, Isaiah had taught the Word, taught the Word, taught the
Word, taught the Word, and so the people in Hezekiah’s time had a tremendous
amount of faith.
And whereas every other ancient Near Eastern nation had become victims
of Sennacherib and his great army, they camped outside the city of Jerusalem,
and vowed they were going to destroy Hezekiah and his God. And that, like Goliath, was a mistake because
they defied Christ, and the next morning when they got up to take roll call,
they found that all the officers had died during the night; none of the
enlisted men, just all the officers, 185,000 of them in fact. And Sennacherib tells us what happens and he
retreats back and we have confirmation of this from extra Biblical sources,
that he lost the battle and moved back.
It’s one of the rare times an Assyrian general admits defeat and pulls
back his soldiers. Something happens,
Sennacherib doesn’t go into all the details but you can tell from the way he
writes that his army was just completely destroyed and mauled. And do you know who did that? Jesus Christ.
So Jesus Christ is the perfect killer in this situation.
The final image we have of Christ coming again, and this winds up the
third point, is that in Revelation 19 when Christ comes again His garments are
covered with blood, and that blood is not His blood from the cross, the blood
is the blood of the slaughter of the people He is going to kill. So when Jesus Christ returns He is going to
kill one-third of the earth’s population.
You haven’t seen anything yet; when you see the carnage and the
slaughter that is going to be left after Christ comes back, He is going to kill
more people than any other person in history.
So the soldier who wants to be Christ-like kills the enemy, and that is
being perfectly Christ-like, and that is the perfect answer to some idiot that
says I don’t see how a Christian could be in the service. Why not?
Christ was and Christ killed, and I follow Jesus.
Let’s go to 1 Samuel and see David who was an archetype of Christ. Tonight Goliath actually gets killed. Remember what has happened, the armies of
Israel are on one side of the valley of Elah; the Philistine army is on the
south side of the valley of Elah.
Goliath, for forty days has come down to the valley of Elah, to the wadi
there, and has yelled across, I want a champion to come out and fight, after
good Greek Homeric tradition he did this.
And for forty days Saul sent no one.
And for forty days the Israelite army was sitting in an embarrassing
situation, until the forty-first day when a young man by the name of David came
along. David came up to visit his
brothers at exactly the right time to hear loudmouth trot out, except
loudmouth, on the forty-first day, instead of stopping at the wadi came across,
and when the Israelites saw that the giant was coming across the wadi they
decided to do a one-eighty and start to move back.
And David was sitting there watching this humiliation go on, and he kind
of got sick and tired of it and so he decided he was going to do something
about it. And he started out, and he
moved down, he rejected the human good of Saul, he rejected the armor which
wouldn’t have fit him anyway, and as he moved toward the wadi he had no
weapons. He had a slingshot, and he had
the stick that he used to hit the lion and the bear with and he was going to
hit Goliath with it too, and Goliath knew it.
But he started down toward the wadi and he had no stones for his sling,
and he goes down there and picked up five stones, one for each one, you can
just see him down there, not only am I going to level you Goliath, I’m going to
take care of your four brothers. So David had a very aggressive mental
attitude.
Notice he started walking toward this and by the time we left him last
week he had already crossed the wadi and he was carrying the battle to the
enemy’s grounds. Something Christians
have never learned, we’re always fighting defensive battles; don’t worry about
defensive battles, go drop the bomb in the enemy yard, if you’re going to have
a debate don’t debate on Christian grounds, go to the unbeliever’s house and debate
over there, on his grounds; always carry the battle over to the enemy’s
position.
Now in verse 48, notice the aggressiveness of David. “And it came to pass, when the Philistine
arose, and came and drew near to meet David, that David hastened, and ran
toward the army to meet the Philistine.”
You see the aggressiveness of David.
The giant is slowly moving out and he has an armor-bearer. It’s really comical if you can visualize this
thing. Here’s this nine foot six inch
hunk moving out like a tank, real slow and steady, and ahead of him is his
armor bearing carrying his tremendous shield, it must have been at least six or
seven feet tall, and the armor-bearer is walking out ahead of him. So here comes the shield and here comes
Goliath, and here comes a little shepherd boy, not little but little by
comparison, who has no armor. And this
is the first thing that got Goliath hacked, because he was thinking when I kill
this kid I won’t even get armor off of him.
So this is a gyp, I’m getting gypped.
And Goliath made a very, very nasty error when he, in verse 43 cursed
David by Elohim, and this guaranteed David... this is just exactly what David
wanted, to stimulate Goliath to curse and to bring judgment upon himself. Then after testifying in verses 46-47, two
points, that there is a God in Israel, a testimony to unbelievers; and verse
47, “that the LORD saves not with sword and spear,” testimony to believers,
then David ran to meet the giant.
Now the thing about this is, you don’t appreciate it unless you know
something about the weapons that they used.
This is a picture I showed last week of an Assyrian slinger, and in most
engagements in the ancient world for which we have pictures, the slingers are
always behind the lines; they’re not in the front of the lines, they’re behind
the lines slinging the rocks over the hand-to-hand combatants. They are never in the front, you couldn’t
really aim these things, they weren’t too reliable in that sense, so not only is
David dealing with a weapon that’s difficult to aim, but he’s under a situation
which any normal human being would be tremendously nervous. And when you’re nervous you can’t get your
timing and his timing can’t be off because this guy has a kind of minor
telephone called a spear that he is going to heave in David’s direction. So David only has one shot; so it shows you
the fantastic stability of David, how stable he was that he not only stood at
the wadi, that would have been enough, to stay on the giant’s ground and just
start whirling that sling to get the distance and the timing and so forth. But what does David do? He is so confident that he’s going to hit the
man he starts running toward him.
So in verse 48 we see David on the run.
Verse 49, “And David put his hand in his bag,” and the point is, while
he’s running he’s doing this; he’s reaching into the bag for the rock, while he
is still running, “and took a stone, and slung it, and smote the Philistine in
his forehead, that the stone sank into his forehead; and he fell upon his face
to the earth.” Notice he fell on his
face, not on his back, which apparently shows you that at this time, if we can
visualize the armor-bearer who had the shield in front of Goliath, which would
have intercepted the rock, that apparently what Goliath did at this point,
which was again a very stupid thing, but he saw this kid running toward him and
he must have gotten out from behind his shield to look to see what is going on,
and he did, it came close so he could see very well what was going on. And he probably had a few seconds where he
could see what was going on and then he fell forward upon his face; he must
have been moving forward because normally the momentum of the rock would have
carried the body backward, but Goliath fell forward, which shows you he
probably was moving forward, the momentum of his body must have been superior
to the momentum of the rock and the only way you could have this would be the
fact that Goliath was in full motion at this point.
Apparently the rock did not kill goliath, however, it did sink into his
head and probably would cause a mortal wound, but in verse 50, “So David
prevailed over the Philistine with a sling and with a stone, and smote the
Philistine, and slew him,” now that is a summary statement. But the next part of verse 50 adds the
conclusion, “there was no sword in the hand of David.” And of course the point there was that David
was going to kill him, and the way to kill him is to cut off his head, not just
rely on a stone, he could be stunned. So
David is going to make sure he kills his enemy.
And guess what? He was filled
with the Holy Spirit when he chopped the giant’s head off, and he did it as
unto the Lord, Jesus Christ. Now how
does that grab some of you; he can be filled with the Spirit and perform a little surgery here.
So in verse 51, “Therefore David ran, and stood upon the Philistine, and
took his sword, and drew it out of its sheath, and slew him, and cut off his
head with it.” This is very interesting,
“And when the Philistines saw their champion was dead, they fled.” So the whole forty days, forty-one days of
siege is broken; all the bully-boys in the Philistine army that were so proud,
and all the cowards in the Israelite army that were so afraid, suddenly it’s
reversed, the cowards become heroes and the heroes become cowards. Think of it, a whole set of two armies change
their mental attitude because one believer, just one believer, knew the Word,
had practice in using the faith technique, was trained, and when the
opportunity was dropped in his lap he moved in, quick. David probably had no more than ten or
fifteen minutes to do this whole thing, and in ten or fifteen minutes a
well-trained believer changed the entire tide of battle. That’s all it took. It took ten years of training to prepare him
for it, but when the opportunity came David was successful.
And you notice the tremendous difference in verse 52, “And the men of
Israel and of Judah arose, and shouted, and pursued the Philistines, until they
come to the valley, and to the gates of Ekron.
And the wounded of the Philistines fell down by the way to Shaaraim,
even unto Gath, and unto Ekron.” So you
have a tremendous slaughter here, the Philistines have not been pushed back
this far; Gath and Ekron are part of the Philistine pentapolis in the
southwestern portion of Palestine. These
are coastal cities; you can see them on any Bible atlas map, and through
David’s action the armies of Israel pushed the Philistine perimeter back down
to the pentapolis. Now they’ve never
been pushed back there since the revival under Samuel in 1 Samuel 7. All this time the Philistines have had
tremendous control of the highland area, and David has broken it with one
act. This is a tremendous testimony to
this thing.
But there’s something else that I want you to notice about verse 52,
it’s the strange way in which the nation is divided. Notice it says “the men of Israel and of
Judah,” now obviously verse 52 has been written after 930 BC. What happened in 930 BC? The civil war, the division between the two
kingdoms. That war had not occurred at
this time. We’re looking at an event
about 1000 BC; the book of Samuel was put together later on from various
diaries. But in 930 BC we have a civil war and the point of
the nation in verse 52 of both Israel and Judah separately is to tell the
people in a later day, after the civil war, see, the nation was united under
David. We’ll see this “Israel and Judah”
repeated several times here and it’s just a signal, look, the nation was united
under David.
Verse 53, “And the children of Israel returned from chasing after the
Philistines, and they spoiled their tents [plundered their camp].” In other words they came back to the area
where the conflict originally began and they took all of their various spoils,
which included armor and other trophies.
Now verse 54 is a summary of what David did. “And David took the head of the Philistine,
and brought it to Jerusalem; but he put his armor in his tent.” Now David had various trophies and one of the
trophies was the head of Goliath. And
David was quite proud of this trophy and he carried it all around to show
people. And meanwhile, the headless body
of Goliath was doing what David said it would do in verse 46, stinking up the
place and providing a great meal for all the dogs and the various scavengers
and so on, pick, pick, chomp, chomp, chomp.
And that was the end of Goliath’s headless body. But Goliath’s head was preserved and David
carried it around to show everybody how he killed the Philistine. Now of course David didn’t have the cumbrance
of present day believers, “oh David, don’t show that to me” kind of thing. David thought it was pretty good and he’d
just go around very proudly showing the head, hey look what I did, look at
this, he’d just carry this thing all over the place to show people the head
that he’d cut off the giant.
Now the last part of this, “he put his armor in his tent,” now this is a
problem as to what the tent is. The great
classical warriors after killing their opponent would strip them of their
armor, and bring the armor back to the tent, their own tent. However, in the Hebrew it’s not clear whether
this is David’s tent of Jehovah’s tent.
I am interpreting the tent in verse 52 as the tabernacle and that “his”
refers not to David’s, but to Jehovah.
The reason I’m doing this is because we know later that part of
Goliath’s armor is placed in the tabernacle.
Turn to 1 Samuel 21; in verse 1 when David is being pursued by Saul he
comes to a place called Nob; now Jerusalem was a complicated situation at this
time, the Jebusites hold part of the city and the Jews held another part of the
city, but the word “Jerusalem” can mean Jerusalem at its environs, and one of
the environs of Jerusalem is Nob, and at Nob you have the tabernacle in verse
1, “Then came David to Nob to Ahimelech, the priest; and Ahimelech was afraid
at the meeting of David, and said unto him, Why are you alone,” and so on. So we know the tabernacle is there at
Nob.
In verse 8, “And David said unto Ahimelech, And is there not here under
thine hand spear or sword?” See David’s
being chased and he needs a weapon, “For I have neither brought my sword nor my
weapons with me, because the king’s business required haste. [9] And the priest said, The sword of
Goliath, the Philistine, whom thou slewest in the valley of Elah, behold, it is
here wrapped in a cloth behind the ephod.
If you will take that, take it; for there is no other except that. And
David said, There is none like that; give it to me.”
So here we have evidence that the armor of Goliath was eventually
deposited in the tabernacle of Jehovah. Now why is this? We have further evidence of a custom in the
east, if you’ll turn to 1 Samuel 31; finally when Saul is killed, the
Philistines are eventually going to kill Saul and carry out God’s sovereign
sentence upon him, and in 1 Samuel 31:10 you’ll notice what they do to the
armor of Saul.. Here’s when the tables reversed,
instead of the Israelites killing the Philistines the Philistines have killed
the Israelites and have killed their king.
So in verse 10, “And they put his,” Saul’s, “armor in the house of
Ashtaroth; and they fastened his body to the wall of Beth-shan.” So the armor of Saul gets deposited in the
temple of the god of the victorious nation.
So what David is doing, unlike the classical Greeks, he is not taking
credit for himself; when he stripped the man who was beaten in combat, he does
not take the armor to his own tent as a trophy to what he has done, David with
a full heart toward the Lord, takes the trophy to the One who was the One who
gave him the victory, Jehovah. This is
David’s way of giving thanks. Now I’m
sure if we passed the collection plate and you dropped the head of somebody
that you’d chopped off it would cause a little consternation in the ranks of
the ushers, but this was an offering that David gave to his God. And this shows you the heart of the man.
Remember, going back to 1 Samuel 17, what did he say to us in verse 47
before he entered the battle. He said
“The LORD saves not with the sword and spear; for the battle is the LORD’s, and
He sill give you into our hands.” So
when Goliath was given into David’s hand, what did David do. Ht turned around and took the head, and took
the armor into the tent of God. I
imagine the priest saying David, do you want to pollute the area by putting that in here? And David says sure, the Lord gave me the
victory, the Lord gets the credit. And
you see the mental attitude here of David toward the Lord when he takes the
armor back and puts it in God’s tent.
1 Samuel 17:54 is a summary statement, and now we have from 17:55 to
18:4 a parenthesis. This is a
parenthesis of what happened before verse 54.
What you are seeing happen in verse 55-18:4 happened between verse 53
and 54. In other words, time out for a
recapitulation, as so often the Hebrew narrative does. Incidentally, it’s failure to notice this
that causes people to say, oh, there are contradictions in the Bible. There are no contradictions in God’s Word, if
there are it’s not God’s Word and we can just toss it. But in verse 55 we have a flashback to a
little incident that happened.
Now this incident is a famous tent meeting; this is not something the
circuit riders held, this is a tent meeting between three people. The destiny of the nation is going to fall on
what happens inside the tent. And so we
are now introduced to a famous smoke-filled room meeting between Saul, Jonathan
and David. Three men walk into the
meeting and three men walk out of the meeting changed because the men that walk
out of the meeting have changed and have chosen their commitment, which way
they are going to go. And so the destiny
of the nation is now going to be worked out from the meeting in the tent.
It starts in verse 55, “And when Saul saw David go forth against the
Philistine, he said to Abner, the captain of the hose, Abner, whose son is this
youth? And Abner said, As thy soul
liveth, O king, I cannot tell.” Well,
the first thing to notice about verse 55 is David going forth. David going forth is yatsah, and yatsah here
is a participle, which means that it is continuous action, which means
therefore that the viewpoint of the author of verse 55 is that it’s saying Saul
is watching David lead the ranks.
Keep in mind the picture now, see the army of Israel is here, and David
is walking out this way, and Saul is here and Abner is here, they’re probably
standing next to each other, and they’re probably saying their prayers for all
they know this little kid is going to get his head chopped off in about two
minutes. So Saul notices how bravely
David goes, because he is in the process of going forward. And you’ve already seen how he went forward;
remember how aggressive he was, he went right down, very deliberately, picked
up very deliberately, very calculatingly, five stones from the wadi, picked
them up and began to run toward Goliath.
Well Saul is watching all of this go on, and while he sees this he kind
of nudges Abner. Now Abner is the
commanding officer of the army and he says, Abner, whose son is this young man.
Now that has given rise to liberal critics who say aha, here we have two
accounts of the meeting of Saul and David.
Critics would argue see, this shows that Saul really didn’t know who
David was because he asked who was his father.
But that’s not the point at all.
We know that David commuted back and forth, remember 17:15, how he would
commute back and forth between playing the harp for Saul, then he’d go take care
of his sheep, then he’d come back to the court, then go take care of the sheep,
back and forth. So Saul knew who David
was. But then why do we have this
question, why does Saul seem to recognize who David is? Well he knows who David is but he wants to
know the lineage of David. In other
words, this is not a question: hey, who’s that kid? That’s not what Saul is asking. What Saul is saying, so who is David’s
father? What’s his lineage? And the reason for this is many fold, one of
the reasons you can gather from Homeric writings, how when the soldiers would
be ... [tape turns]
... Iliad goes into battle, or some of the other heroes, and as they go
into battle they always say I am the son of so and so, the son of so and so,
the son of so and so, the son of so and so, they would give their lineage. This was customary in the ancient world
because it was family against family.
And at one point the Greek Diomed meets Glaucus the Trojan and he meets
this person and he doesn’t know his lineage, and so the Greek responds to the
Trojan warrior with this response: “Who
are you among men?” Now he’s not asking
the identity, he knows Glaucus’s name, he’s not asking for his name. He says “Who are you among men, I have never
seen you in battle before, but you are daring beyond all others if you abide in
my presence. Woe to those fathers whose
sons face my might.” Notice the
statement, “woe to the fathers whose sons face my might” he is saying. All right, the concept of the sons was very
critical in the ancient world. The
warrior had to be of a prominent family.
Now there’s another reason why Saul asks this. Remember back in verse 25, what was it that
Saul promised to the man who won? “And
the men of Israel said, Have ye seen this man who is come up? Surely to defy Israel is he come up; and it
shall be, that the man who kills him, the king will enrich him with great
riches, and will give him his daughter,” there is your answer. And here you see Mr. Human Good at work
again. Here you see Saul, he watches the
whole battle going on, and instead of asking himself, which Abner was
apparently was doing, what makes this kid tick, we’ve got thousands of soldiers
back here and they’re all cowards, this kid is going out there by himself. Instead of asking that Saul is really saying
to himself, my God, he might win and I’d have to give my daughter away, who’s
his father. And this shows you how
ridiculous human good people are. Here you
have the battle of the nation and he’s worried about who David’s father is because
his daughter might have the wrong father-in-law. Saul was very concerned for all the social
details, things that are absolutely trivial, as people who are soaked in human
good always are. They just love to major
in the trivia. Who cares what David’s
father is. He’s a national hero, one who
trusts the Lord more than anybody else, doesn’t that qualify him? No, I have to know who’s his father.
But there is an even more ironic note.
Nobody can do a human good believer in like another human good believer,
and the other man that we have is Jesse, David’s father. Every time we’ve met Jesse what has he been
doing so far? Every time we have met
Jesse he’s been sending presents to influential people. The first time we met him he was sending
presents to Saul to impress Saul; hey look, this is David Ben-Jesse, he’s my
son. See all the program to impress
Saul. And then when we meet David again,
he comes with more gifts from Jesse to impress Eliab’s commanding officer, this
is my son. So Jesse has been working for
months trying to get his name noticed in all the ranks of the army of
Israel. And he’s got all the human good
gimmicks, he looked up in Emily Post and it said when your son is in battle
what you do is send cheese and wine to his commanding officer and that
guarantees that your name will be remembered by his commanding officer. And so Jesse said Emily Post said it so I
must do it, and so he went through all of these things and notice what has
happened? Is Saul impressed? Now what’s that father that sent me all that
cheese and stuff, what was his name? He
doesn’t remember who Jesse is. Human
good doesn’t cut it.
Now this is a very sarcastic reference here to the fact that... what
he’s really saying is who is the son, he hasn’t got a father that I know in
Israel, he must come from some little hick town up the road somewhere. That’s what’s the significance of this “who
is his father” business. He’s not asking
for the identity, he’s saying what little farm house does this kid come
from? So it’s really an insult to Jesse
and it just goes to show you where most human viewpoint winds up, people don’t
remember it, it’s forgotten. All the
hours that believers put in human good, do you think you’re going to be
remembered for it? You will not. The only thing you’re going to be remembered
for are the significant things you do as unto the Lord. And you’ll be remembered for that for
eternity, so why waste your time fiddling around in all sorts of secondary
issues when local churches need male leadership, and the ministry of the Word
is being hindered because we don’t have them, yet I notice Little League
doesn’t seem to be hindered from male leadership. It shows you where people put the emphasis. Same old story! When you get to heaven you won’t be
remembered for how many people you struck out in Little League; you’re going to
be remembered for the things you did as unto the Lord. So that’s where human good winds up and it’s
a most interesting and very educational statement that Saul makes.
So he says, “Whose son is this young man?” And by the way, the word “youth” here is a
word which shows you he definitely has marriage on the mind, this means a man
of marriageable age, so you can tell he’s interested in who is going to get my
daughter now. Next week we’ll study what
kind of a gift he gave David, the daughter was worse than her father was. But Michal was full of human viewpoint, she
is a model of the wrong woman and David got stuck with the wrong woman, so this
is going to be a real great gift to David.
But nevertheless, Saul is interested in it.
And notice “Abner said, As thy soul lives.” Now that’s not what “as thy soul lives”
means, this is one of those phrases that’s very, very strong in Scripture and
the only way I can get across to you is just simply say what it means, “I’ll be
damned if I know who it is,” and that’s just exactly the thrust of the original
language, “I’ll be damned if I know.”
And it’s spoken with derision.
What Abner is saying is Saul, I don’t care who his father is, why am I
interested in his father, he’s out there winning a battle for me, I don’t care
who his father is. So there’s
impatience, there’s petulance in this reply, “as my soul lives.” Well, it sounds good anyway. “...I cannot tell,” and the whole thrust of
it is I don’t care and I could care less, it’s not an issue with me. See, the only people who are interested in
trivial issues are human good negative volition believers; they are always
interested in details. They’re
interested in how many people we have in church on Sunday morning or
something.
Verse 56, “And the king said, Inquire thou whose son the stripling is.”
I want you to run a G2 on this guy and find out who he is, you check him
out. So here he’s telling the commander,
mind you now, what Abner has on his mind, what Abner is trying to think up now
is how is he gong to follow up and exploit this battle, in other words, when
David finally kills the Philistine, Abner knows what’s going to happen, he’s
enough of a military man to know that those ranks across the valley are going
to break and I want to get my men over this wadi as fast as I can. So Abner has all these tactics on his mind
and what is Saul worried about? Could
you please find out his father’s name?
And Abner is very impatient at this point.
Verse 57, “And as David returned from the slaughter of the Philistine,
Abner took him, and brought him before Saul, with the head of the Philistine in
his hand.” See, David had to show it to
everybody and here it was dripping and so on, and he plopped it down before
Saul. Verse 58, “And so Saul said to
him, Whose son are you, young man?” The
first question, not how did you do it?
Not, David that was a fantastic victory, because you remember what was
Saul’s last words to David, remember those pious words, “The Lord be with you,”
David should have said “and with thy spirit,” but he didn’t. But what he says now is just... “whose your
father? Just look at the
trivialness. This is how we all look
when we’re operating on human good, super trivial, worried about who cuts their
hair to the right length or some other ridiculous issue, or how many
pornographic theaters there are in the city, don’t worry about pornographic
theaters or anything else, it’s how many believers that are on positive
volition that’s the issue. How many
drinks are they serving in the restaurant?
I don’t care how many drinks they’re serving in the restaurant? Are they going to have X-rated movies on
TV.... so turn the TV off if you don’t like it.
All this trivial garbage, and yet when it comes to teaching the Word of
God where is everyone.
So “David answered” and said, “I am the son of thy servant Jesse, the
Bethlehemite.” Notice the tremendous
respect for authority that David has, “son of thy servant,” see, he’s
respecting the authority.
And then in 18:1, “And it came to pass,” and here we have one of the
meetings that it is so tempting in Scripture, we’re just never told what went
on in this tent meeting, but something fantastic went on as we’re going to see. “And it came to pass, when he had made and
end of [ceased] speaking unto Saul, that the soul of Jonathan was knit with the
soul of David, and Jonathan loved him as his own soul. [2] And Saul took him
that day, and would let him go nor more home to his father’s house. [3] Then
Jonathan and David made a covenant, because he loved him as his own soul. [4]
And Jonathan stripped himself of the robe that was upon him, and gave it to
David, and his garments, even to his sword, and to his bow, and to his girdle
[belt].”
What is the meaning of this passage?
First the phrase, “he made an end of speaking,” apparently this was a
long conference that went on and on and on.
Now in this conference enough was said so that Jonathan began to get the
picture real fast. It goes back to
Saul’s three failures. Remember Saul
made a failure back here when he allowed the army to get loose, and at that
time, remember Jonathan was knocked out of being king, Jonathan lost
there. And the result of that failure
was that Saul was going to be limited in his kingdom, and finally the third
failure, Saul himself would be knocked out of office. Now remember back here we made the point how
there’s a strange relationship between Saul and Jonathan going on, the
father/son relationship is very poor and this father/son relationship is
fragmented because his father is on negative volition and the son is on
positive volition. And Jonathan has very
poor communication with his father.
Jonathan started a whole battle and his father didn’t know about
it. His father issued an order that
condemned his son and the only reason why Jonathan was alive was because a mob
saved him. And Saul, the father bowed to
the mob. And you remember the rather
strong words Jonathan had for his father, my father is damning this nation, my
father is sending this nation to hell.
And those are the exact translation of the words that Jonathan spoke of
his father, very strong language.
Well these three men now are here.
And what’s happening, obviously Saul is emphasizing all of the trivial
things, oh David, what clothes does your father wear, what is your father’s
gross income, do you have many sheep, and all this. And Jonathan is sitting there and noticing
that David is taking it all in, he’s being respectful of his father’s
authority, but the thing that must have impressed Jonathan was David’s
performance that day. Someone asked
after last week why Jonathan didn’t come forward during those forty-one days? If Jonathan was a great hero, why didn’t he
come forward? The only explanation we
can come up with is that Jonathan had been canned by his father. In other words, his father had said after the
last encounter that son, you defied my authority, you’re out. So Jonathan was out of the battle and his
father would never have given him permission.
So Jonathan is very much interested in this other young man who comes,
they’re about the same age.
And so after the conference, “the soul of Jonathan was knit with the
soul of David.” Now this is not talking
about homosexuality. So don’t get that
on your mind. This is talking about a
tremendously strong relationship that developed between these two men because
they had respect for each other’s positive volition. This was a brotherly love; this is an
adumbration of the love that is going to be shown between Christ and His
believers and His sheep in the New Testament.
Jonathan and David grow together, why?
Because they like each other’s personality? No!
Because they like each other’s strengths? No!
What is it that knits these two men together in a very powerful alliance
which we’re going to see undoes the power of Saul. What links them together is their respect for
the Lord Jesus Christ. These are two
tremendous believers and they love one another because of their faith in Jesus
Christ. Each recognizes in the other a
tremendous loyalty and a daring and a courage, and they love one another;
that’s the kind of love that is mentioned here.
Now verse 2, “And Saul took him,” that’s David, “that day, and would let
him go nor more home to his father’s house,” in other words, the meeting is
over because Saul recognized now, since David had confirmed his ability through
music, that was chapter 16, now he confirmed his ability as a military man,
Saul decided to bring David officially into the army. We’ll see more about that next week. He brings him into the army but the
interesting thing is, verse 1 and 2 are very similar but very different. And out of this we come to the great division
that occurs in the book of Samuel. Two
men walk out of that tent besides David.
One is Saul, the other is Jonathan.
Both of those men come from the same family; both of those men have
heard the same boy make the same speech.
Both of those men have watched David do what he did and both of those
men walk out in completely different ways.
Saul walks out and he says I have to have David in my camp; Saul is on
negative volition. Jonathan is on
positive volition. Saul’s soul on
negative volition, the light has become darkness, he’s still full of human
viewpoint and he’s hating God. We’ll see
next week how he goes further. But
that’s Saul’s soul as of the moment. His
son’s soul is positive volition, he is receiving the enlightening work of the
Holy Spirit, he’d just seen it in the tent, he’s full of divine viewpoint and
he’s full of love; he can respond to other believers.
Notice this, there’s another lesson here, Christian fellowship. Do you see what Saul is doing here? He is tolerating other believers, he has a
sweet smile on his face, yeah, yeah, yeah, you can come here, I’d like to have
you around, but we’re going to find out that Saul tries to assassinate David,
Saul hates David. And this is the story
of Christian fellowship and I’m warning some of you because some of you are so
naive that you think every believer is going to be the most wonderful friend
you ever had. I am here to tell you that
that’s completely wrong, and you’d better prepare yourself for some shocks. The worst enemies you will ever have are
believers who are out of it. And here
you are going to see two believers, father and son, and they’re reacting toward
David, and here you have David sitting here, David represents divine good,
David represents the principle that when you trust the Lord He comes through,
and when you refuse all the armor and all the human viewpoint gimmicks, God
always comes through and wins for you.
David is a living rebuke to human good.
All right, down here you’ve got a human viewpoint believer, he operates
on human good, he rejects grace, he’s anti-grace all the way. Now in that situation what is Saul going to
do? He cannot stand that believer. There’s tremendous animosity. Next week we’re going to see the tremendous
jealousy that breaks out here and yet over here we have another believer on
positive volition, on divine good and he loves him.
Now don’t you see the difference; all three of these men are
believers. Saul is not unsaved; Saul has
had the indwelling Holy Spirit and he’s as much a believer as David or
Jonathan. All three men are believers
and yet look at the animosity that’s developing here, a tremendous animosity
and a hatred. Why is that animosity
developing? Let’s look again at Saul’s
soul and let’s enlarge it to the point when hate begins. When hate starts in the soul hate basically
is hate toward God. You can stop this
kind of satanic hatred because it’s usually blaming God for something in your
life, not being thankful, oh it’s God’s fault.
I’ve got two warts on my big toe, that’s God’s fault or something like
this. Or, I’m not as smart as my sister
or brother, that’s God’s fault. It’s
always God’s fault. And so here we have
hatred and hatred basically is directed toward God.
Now what happens is that hatred, because it’s directed toward God is
directed toward those who are identified with God. Now you see what’s happening in Saul’s
head. Here’s Saul, he hates God, he
hates God because God is disciplining him at this point and so in his animosity
toward God, David is identified with God in Saul’s sight and so the hatred
extends from God to those identified with him.
That is why you will experience two kinds of hate in your life and you
might as well learn how to respond and learn about it. The first kind will be from out of fellowship
carnal believers. You’ve been out of
fellowship enough times that you realize the situation. But if you can imagine a person who’s been
out of fellowship for some time and in compound carnality, then you can see
what’s happening. You will see a
believer who just can’t stand you. Every
time you try to share the Word, every time you do something for the Lord, even
though it’s quiet and you don’t brag about it, this hate develops. You say well what the heck am I doing? Nothing, you’re just living for the Lord and
you’re identified with Him and so you’re going to receive the hate.
Now the other thing you want to learn is that unbelievers are going to
do the same thing to you. Unbelievers
are going to knife you in the back. Why?
Anything personal? No, it’s not personal
at all, it’s just the fact that they have a hatred toward God and somewhere on
the job or in the school classroom you have identified yourself with God, and
you’re going to pick up the flack. So
just reconcile yourself to the fact that you’re gong to have a large amount of
hate directed toward you as a believer and if you’re going to fall apart the
first time somebody says boo to you, you’re a very weak person and you’ve got a
lot of misery ahead.
So just learn from the David, Saul, Jonathan episode that you will have
believers who hate your guts if you are operating on the grace principle; don’t
worry about it. Here we have how
Jonathan, and this is another illustration, another tremendous illustration of
God’s grace. David picks up one of the
most hateful enemies in his whole life, a man who is going to try to kill
him. But don’t you see God’s grace? What does God provide with the enemy? A friend.
And so at the very same moment that David picks up a man who is going to
try to kill him he picks up the man who is the man’s son, and Jonathan
eventually is going to trip up his father and this is why David is able to
escape from his father’s clutches. You
see, that’s 1 Cor. 10:13 operating, “No testing has taken you but such as is
common to man,” God will not ever allow you “to be tested above that which you
are able, but will with the testing always make a way of escape that you may be
able to bear it.”
Isn’t God making a way of escape that David may be able to bear
this? David is placed in a fantastic
position; David has no friend in Saul’s camp.
Here is Saul, Saul has absolute authority and poor David is underneath
and David is at the total mercy of Saul.
What better friend could you have than the son of the king? It wouldn’t even count if you knew Abner
well, but the father is always confiding in Jonathan. There may not be good communication but it
appears from later chapters that Saul was just [can’t understand words] in the
presence of his son and Jonathan knew exactly what his father was doing. So you see God’s grace providing here. Here David has picked up a tremendous enemy;
you may think of some obstacle in your job, in the classroom, or something and
you pick up some person like this that just hates your guts, look around a
little bit and open your eyes, there’s a Jonathan around somewhere too. And just as a “Saul” can come into your life,
so at the same moment the “Jonathan’s” will too.
Learn to find the Jonathans, and you’ll notice, as in verses 3-4 and the
conclusion of this passage: “Then Jonathan and David made a covenant,” it’s no
accident that these two men made a covenant, they know what’s coming. They can read the handwriting on the wall;
they know what Saul is going to do to them.
“...because he loved him as his own soul. [4] And Jonathan stripped
himself of the robe that was upon him,” the stripping of the robe is again
something that can be understood by referring to things in the ancient
world. In Book 6 of The Iliad we find, a
warrior and a Trojan warrior actually come to fight each other, and they
recognize each other, and instead of fighting they take off their armor and
exchange it, and so they say to each other, “we too will exchange our armor
that all present may know of the old ties that subsist between us.” And it was a custom of exchanging armor.
The beautiful thing about it is, putting yourself in David’s position,
David didn’t have any armor to give Jonathan, so here was a perfect friend, a
friend who would protect him, a friend who would love him, a friend who would
cause him to be able to survive, and a friend who gave him armor and he never
even had any armor to give back. See,
that’s grace, grace all the way again.
And you find God doing this over and over. “...and gave it to David, and his garments,
even his sword, and to his bow, and to his girdle,” a complete set of
armor. So whose armor does David wind up
with? Not Saul’s, remember he was
offered Saul’s armor and it didn’t fit, but he’s offered the armor of the grace
believer and he accepted. Shall we bow
for prayer.