Galen Call's Sermon Library
"The King Is Dead" - January 20, 1985
You don't have never sung that before, to your knowledge. Just lift your hand. I thought it's-- a lot of you have not sung those songs. We know. I can remember, though, as a youngster, singing that in our little church in Kansas. It's called "Blessed Quietness." But we didn't sing it quietly. Back then, we had no air conditioning, and the windows were open in the summer. And you hoped for a little breeze. And as we sang that song, I think it must have gone over half of the town. We had a real singing church. And we enjoyed singing "Blessed Quietness." Well, my goodness, I find myself reminiscing. That's a sign I'm getting older. I find myself reminiscing the warm around John. So I don't know. There must be something to that. Well, let's open our Bibles now before John gets too old over there and turn to 2 Samuel chapter 1. If there is a payday someday, I probably will get paid. That's what I figured. Second Samuel, now it came about after the death of Saul when David had returned from the slaughter of the Amalekites that David remained two days in ziklag. And it happened on the third day that behold a man came out of the camp from Saul with his clothes torn and dust on his head. And it came about when he came to David that he fell to the ground and prostrated himself. David said to him, "From where do you come?" And he said to him, "I have escaped from the camp of Israel." And David said to him, "How did things go? Please tell me." And he said, "The people have fled from the battle." And also, many of the people have fallen and are dead. And Saul and Jonathan, his son, are dead also. I suppose that all of us here tonight who rolled enough to remember the incident, remember when President Kennedy was assassinated. We can remember the time. We can remember the place. We can even perhaps remember the person that told us the tragic news of the death of the leader. David learns in ziklag that the king is dead. And suddenly, his whole future is immediately before him. When up to this point, it had seemed so distant. Perhaps it would be good for us to back up just a little bit and to remember what happened. The Philistines you recall had moved north along the coastline, apparently, to position themselves for battle at the Valley of Megiddo, the Valley of Jezreel, it is also called. They wanted to fight Israel in that large, immense valley so that they would have the advantage with the particular weapons of warfare that they had perfected at that time. Saul and his men gathered for battle as well, and Saul was absolutely terrified because he knew that the weapons that Israel had could not match what the Philistines had available. The Lord did not answer Saul when he sought the Lord, trying to decide what to do. Because Saul had been rejected, and now the time of his judgment had come. Therefore, he said something that I suppose earlier in his life he thought he would never have done. You know, thus it is with the backslider, the one who is disobedient to the Lord over an extended period of time. Things happen in the life that earlier would have been thought impossible. In Saul's case, he asked where he might find a witch, or more literally, a spirit medium, someone who had contact with evil spirits so that he might know what the outcome of the battle would be. You see, there is an example of what we talked about this morning. He thought it would be better off if he could know what the future held. He felt that that was how he could find out. Earlier, Saul had removed all of such people from the land of Israel. But there was one woman who apparently escaped that dragnet. She lived at Endor, and so Saul and some of his other leaders went to Endor to meet with her one night. He disguised himself so that she would not know who he was. And he went in and asked her to bring up whomever he wished. And she said, who do you wish? He said, Samuel. The text seems to indicate that almost immediately Samuel appeared. Now Samuel had died, of course, previously. And he was the one who had talked with Saul. He was the one who had anointed Saul. He was the one that Saul had heard the bad news from, that he had been rejected as king and someone else. His neighbor would replace him. But he wanted to talk to Samuel. Now when Samuel appeared, there was no one more frightened than the spirit medium. She was terrified. She cried out in fear. She was expecting that there might come, as had apparently often happened, an evil spirit who would impersonate the dead person. By the way, that's the only thing that mediums can do. It is impossible for them to make contact with the dead. It is impossible for them to do that. But what they can do, in addition to using a lot of trickery, which many of them do, some of them can make contact with evil spirits, with demons, who impersonate people who have died. And of course, they know things that no one else would know, except the one who is trying to contact the dead person. And they can easily deceive that person who is there trying to find out some information from the dead. This is called necromancy. While Samuel appeared, she was terrified. And Saul said, "What does he look like?" And she said, "Thus and thus." And he fell in his face, knowing that it was, in fact, Samuel. Samuel said, "Why have you brought me up? Why have you disturbed my rest?" And Saul said, "Well, this and this and this has happened. And I want to know what's going to occur." And so Samuel, in an extended speech, recorded back in 1 Samuel, explains what had taken place, reviews it with Saul, and finally announces to him that he and his sons would die the next day in battle with the Philistines. And that was the end of the conversation. Samuel went back to his place. And Saul said he was not going to eat. He began to mourn, to grieve over what was going to take place. But he finally got him to eat. And he left, went out into the night, and how dark was that night. And the next day he entered into battle. They were fighting at Mount Gilboa, which is a mountain some 1,700 feet high on the south and east side of the valley of Megiddo. And it was there that his three sons were first killed in battle. And then there was an archer for the Philistines who drew his bow and let the arrow fly. And it hit Saul in a vital spot. The Latin Vulgate translation of the Old Testament says that it hit him in the abdomen, although I don't think the Hebrew text is quite that clear. Nonetheless, it was a mortal wound. But Saul was not dying quickly. He did not want to be captured by the Philistines, lest they would somehow make mockery of him or torture him. And so he asked his bodyguard, his swordbearer, to kill him. And the man refused to do it. And so Saul positioned the sword somehow and leaned into it, fell upon it, so that he killed himself. And then his bodyguard, seeing what had happened, killed himself. And thus the king died, a terrible death. For a man who had such great possibility, a man who had so many natural abilities that could have been used for the glory of God, but he wasted them because of his disobedience, or another way to put it, because of his incomplete obedience. He did part of what the Lord said, but not all of it. And that equals disobedience, doesn't it? And so the king died. Now David here in this conversation with the man who came from the camp says to him in verse 5, "How do you know that Saul and his son Jonathan are dead?" And the young man who told him said, "By chance, I happen to be on Mount Gilboa." And behold Saul was leaning on his spear, and behold the chariots and the horsemen pursued him closely. And when he looked behind him, he saw me and called to me, and I said, "Here I am," and he said to me, "Who are you?" And I answered, "I am in a malachite." And he said to me, "Please stand beside me and kill me for agony has seized me because my life still lingers in me." So, says the young man, "I stood beside him and killed him because I knew that he could not live after he had fallen. And I took the crown which was on his head and the bracelet which was on his arm, and I brought them here to my Lord." Well, now there's a different story, isn't there? From the lips of this malachite, he says that he killed Saul. He says he came upon Saul, mortally wounded, and at Saul's request, he did him in. And he had the crown and the bracelet from Saul's arm there as proof that his story was correct. Now, critics of the Bible argue here as an example of the inconsistency of the Bible. One of the many examples they say where the Bible is in historical error. That is simply not so. You can do one of two things without doing harm to Scripture. You can correlate the two stories, put them together, and usually that's done by saying that Saul leaned upon his sword and the bodyguard thought he was dead and killed himself and this young man came and Saul was not quite dead so he did him in. I personally don't think that's what happened. I think the young man is lying. That's what I think is happening. You say, well, why does the Bible record that? Because the Bible records what happened. It doesn't mean what the man said that is. It doesn't mean that all of this actually happened that the young man said. The Bible truly records here, I think, a lie. What I want to talk about tonight is three responses to the king's death. We'll see these in chapter one in the first four verses of chapter two. We come now to the first response to the king's death, a story is fabricated. There is a lying messenger who was, in fact, an Amalekite. By the way, these were the very people that Saul did not completely destroy and disobedience and why he lost the kingdom back in 1 Samuel 15. What apparently was the truth was that this Amalekite was there on the mountains for some reason and looted the body of Saul before the Philistines got to it. So he got the crown, he got the bracelet, and then he ran. And he happened upon David and his party and concocted this story so that he would ingratiate David to himself, seeking somehow to gain favor with David, you see, and receive a reward, perhaps, for what he had done on David's behalf. But he didn't realize how David would respond. You remember that David had been playing a certain role up to this point. We talked about that last week. But David's true heart comes out here, says David took hold of his clothes, he tore them, and so also did all the men who were with him. And they mourned and wept and fasted until evening for Saul and his son Jonathan and for the people of the Lord and the house of Israel because they had fallen with a sword. And David said to the young man who told him, "Where are you from?" And he answered, "I am the son of an alien in Amalekite." David said to him, "How is it that you were not afraid to stretch out your hand to destroy the Lord's anointed?" Now remember David had at least two opportunities to do that himself. And he refused to do it. Out of fear of the Lord, he would not touch the Lord's anointed. And David called one of the young men and said, "Go, cut him down." And so the man went and killed him with the sword. And so the Amalekite got what he deserved. He was killed because of his lie. Now David, of course, did not know it was a lie at this point. He took the man at his word, and undoubtedly later found out the truth. But the young man by his lying tongue brought up on himself just judgment. If there's anything to be learned from this, it is. May God deliver us from lying tongues. May God help us from fabricating stories that we think will gain us in advantage with someone else. May God help us from taking some of the truth, perhaps, and then turning it just a little bit and adding a color here or there so that we create a picture, which is to our favor, but which does not accurately represent what happened. Over and over again in both the Proverbs and in the Psalms, there is the danger of the lying tongue pointed out. And even prayers that God would deliver from the lying tongue and would set his seal up on the lips. But tonight, as the people of God, as those who have followed the one who said, "I am the truth," let's be people of truth. Let's stop lying to one another if, in fact, we are, by lip or by life. And let's be truthful. Let's be honest. There is a second response to the death of the king that is worth noting, and that is the morning of David. A song is composed. First, a story is fabricated. That's dealt with. But then a song is composed. It is a dirge, a lamentation written by David. It says that he chanted with lament over Saul and Jonathan, his son, and he told them to teach the sons of Judah, the song of the bull. Behold, it is written in the book of Joshua. The book of Joshua is not an inspired book. It is mentioned here. It is mentioned also at its earliest occasion in the book of Joshua. What it seems to have been was a record of some of the historical happenings in Israel. It was a piece of literature in ancient Israel. And the writer of this book, a second Samuel, whoever he was, inspired by God, drew upon that book of Joshua to write down what was recorded from David's lament. It's called the Song of the Bull. And as I say, it became a part of the national literature of Israel. In verse 19 we find the theme, "Oh, your beauty, oh Israel, is slain on your high places. How have the mighty fallen?" That is what David is going to talk about or sing about as he writes this lamentation. He says in verse 20, "Tell it not in gath, proclaim it not in the streets of Ashgolan. Let the daughters of the Philistines," he says, "less the daughters of the Philistines rejoice, lest the daughters of the uncircumcised exalt." So David in his mind's eye sees the news getting back to Philistia regarding Saul's death, and he says, "Let them not rejoice." He says, "Don't tell the news in gath." Now where was gath? Well that's where he had spent some time, remember, on a couple of occasions. That's where the mighty champion of the Philistine army, Goliath, was from. And so he says, "Don't let the news get down there." Of course it did, the fact is that the Philistines found the bodies of Saul and his sons on Mount Goboa. They cut off the head of Saul. They took the bodies of the four men and they hung them or nailed them onto the wall of one of their cities there to make sport of them. It was a disgraceful action on their part as they mutilated the bodies of these men. There were some brave men, as we'll talk about next week, who were from J. Besh Gilead. They were neither Philistines nor Israelites. They were kind of in a neutral zone. And they heard about what was happening to the bodies of the men, so they went down there and stole away those bodies and burned them. And that is one of the few instances you see in the Word of God regarding cremation. The Jews do not practice that. They buried bodies. But apparently these bodies were so badly mutilated and some time had passed since their death that they felt that the most prudent thing to do was to burn their bodies and they did, but they took the bones and buried those. Now David in his mind's eye sees Philistia exulting, dancing in the streets over the death of King Saul. In verse 21 he looks to the mountains of Gilboa and he says, "Let not do or reign beyond you nor feels of offerings. For there the shield of the mighty was defiled and it was in gore and in dust." He says, "The shield of Saul not anointed with oil. Normally after a battle a shield was polished with oil and was put in its proper place, but in this case the shield of Saul was covered with his own blood in the dust of the battle and it was discarded. When we were in Israel several years ago we stood on mount on the mound called Megiddo where Solomon's stables have been excavated and looked out over the plane of Jez Reel, this valley of Megiddo that's mentioned here and off in the distance some 10-12 miles we could see Mount Gilboa. And our guide pointed out to us that the mountain was bare. I don't know whether this is accurate or whether this is a nice story for the tourists after a while you begin to wonder from some of the things you hear over there. But he did point out that it was barren and he related that to what David said on this occasion when he cursed Mount Gilboa and said, "But nothing grow on it." And so the guide said, "You'll see that the curse was fulfilled." From the blood of the slain from the fat of the mighty the bow of Jonathan did not turn back on the sword of Saul did not return empty. Here he is recounting the previous victories of these two mighty warriors. They had never turned back from from the battle before. "Saul and Jonathan," he says, "beloved and pleasant in their life and in their death they were not parted. They were swifter than eagles. They were stronger than lions." And so poetically he describes these two men. Will you notice here that David not only talks about Jonathan who was his dearest friend? But he talks about Saul who had made himself his bitterest enemy. There is no resentment. There is no bitterness on the part of David toward the king who is now dead. But rather we see here only respect. He describes him in these glowing terms as lions and eagles. In verse 24 he invites Israel to join him in mourning. He says, "Oh, daughters of Israel weep, weep over Saul, who clothed you luxuriously in scarlet, who put ornaments of gold on your apparel." And then in verses 25 through 27 he gives a special tribute to Jonathan. Now you put yourself back there and listen to David say these words, will you? They ring with grief. You can see the tears come down the face of David across his beard and dripping down. He says, "How have the mighty fallen in the midst of the battle? Jonathan is slain on your high places. I am distressed for you, my brother Jonathan. You have been very pleasant to me. Your love to me was more wonderful than the love of women." And what he means by that is that the kind of relationship that he enjoyed with Jonathan was as far as he concerned more fulfilling than the normal kind of romantic love with his wives. He is not talking about anything here that is in the least way unchaste or impure. He is simply expressing the depth of his heart's love for Jonathan, the love that they shared together for each other. And he says, "How have the mighty fallen and the weapons of war perished?" There's nothing improper about mourning your people. God made us with tear ducts. God made us so that we feel we grieve. Don't ever be ashamed when you sorrow. That is a part of human experience. It's a natural expression of the human emotions that God has built into us. I have seen occasions when people have lost loved ones who were believers. I mean both of them were believers and the person held up well all during those first days of shock and decision-making and through the funeral. And everyone marveled at what was taking place of the grace of God. Indeed it was the grace of God. But later there came the breaking of the emotions, the loneliness, the sense of loss began to set in. Did that person become unspiritual? Did the grace of God somehow ultimately fail that person after the funeral was done? No, not at all. Not at all. It was simply the healthy release of emotion. Some way those emotions have to come out. If they don't come out then they will come out later in the life in some way. I have found that true in my life as I have related to some of you before. In the death of my father as a child I did not understand what was taking place at eight years of age. And it took me 20 years, 20 years before I began to be able to express my grief, my anger, and to feel all the emotions that I really should have felt back then, but as a child did not. It may be that there are some of you here tonight that have been trying to hold and hold back and suppress feelings of grief. That is not a healthy thing to do, allow them to be released. But remember this, that though we sorrow, that as believers in Jesus Christ we do not sorrow as those who have no hope. We shed tears because we are human beings but our tears are undergirded within with a sense of the hope that God is placed within us because of Jesus Christ. We sorrow but we do not sorrow as those who have no hope as Paul says in 1 Corinthians 4-13. David hears sorrows, he weeps, he laments the death of his beloved spiritual brother, Jonathan, but he does not despair, he does not weep to the point of having no hope, that is not a part of this. So that is the second reaction to the death of the king. The first was a story as fabricated, now a song is composed, but finally we see in our text that a sovereign is anointed. Now once before David was anointed, it was private, it was just with his family back in Bethlehem, before this whole thing with with Saul even began. It was back when he was still shepherding sheep, it was before Goliath was killed. When he was a kid, just a teenager, back some 14 years ago, perhaps 15 years ago from this time that we're looking at in 2 Samuel. But it says it came about afterwards that David inquired of the Lord saying, "Shall I go up to one of the cities of Judah?" And the Lord said to him, "Go up." David said, "Where shall I go up?" And he said to Hebran. So David went up there and his two wives also, Hinnanon, the Jesableitis, Nabagal, the wife, the widow, rather, of naval the Carmelite. And David brought up his men who were with him, each with his household, and they lived in the cities of Hebran. And the men of Judah came and they're anointed David king over the house of Judah. So this is when David was 30 years of age, as you can read a few verses later on here in the text. At this time, he was anointed king over Judah, not over the whole nation of Israel, but just over Judah. And it happened in the city of Hebran. And from that city for the next seven and a half years, he reigned as king of the people. Imagine the kind of change that took place in his life. One night, he's a criminal. The next day, he's the king of the nation. For more than 10 years, he had been a fugitive, running from Saul, from cave to Philistine city, out into the wilderness, trying to keep his life together. And now suddenly, instead of being a fugitive, he is the sovereign of the people. Quite a change for this man. The sovereign is anointed. And here it is a public anointing, setting him apart. Now David could have pressed the issue at this point and demanded to be the king of all the people and have a public anointed for anointing for all the tribes of Israel. But there's a problem, as we shall see on another week, for there was still a son of Saul who lived. And rather than force the issue at this time and perhaps create civil war, David waited upon God for God's timing. I'm impressed by the fact that this man who just before this had been living a lie down in Philistia, living in Zichlag, you remember, and who then turned to the Lord begins to inquire of the Lord. You notice that in verse 1? He said, "Lord shall I go up to Judah?" Yes. "Where shall I go to Hebron?" Hebron was a city, it is a city, located some 20 or 25 miles south of Jerusalem. So the Lord said, "Go up there." So we see David again living in dependence upon God, humbling himself before the Lord, being willing to wait upon God for his timing. What a good lesson that is for you and me. You and I are called by the Lord to reign in life with Jesus Christ, to reign in life, Romans chapter 5. What a great thought that is. We are to be kings in life in this world. Not the kings who force their opinions on others and make demands of servants, but kings who reign in humility with Jesus Christ, and who know the anointing of God upon the life because they're willing to wait upon him. If you would reign in life as a sovereign with Jesus Christ, the new and I must do what David did. We must learn to inquire of the Lord in his word and learn to wait patiently upon him for his time, his way. So often we do it otherwise. We say, "Now Lord, here's the goal and here's how we're going to get there now blessed." Don't we do that? We give God our plans and say, "Now God, you surely have to bless this, don't you?" And of course the answer is, "No he doesn't." He doesn't have to bless that. Nothing wrong with sitting objectives out there and having goals, but they must always be with the understanding of, "Lord, if there's something here that doesn't please you or if we've messed this up in some way, you correct it." As you and I learn to live humbly that way, and to be the sovereigns, God has called us to be, but to be the kind of sovereigns that inquire of him and wait upon him for his timing and his way in our lives, then we will know the anointing of God as David knew it in his day. Let's be that kind of people. Well the third reaction to the death of the king was that a sovereign is anointed. God's purpose goes on. And this is somewhat a parallel to the Lord Jesus Christ. Remember David had been privately anointed before this. God had established him as the king, and yet it was not something that was publicly recognized until this point when he was 30 years of age, maybe 15 years later. God's time had to be observed. And God's time was when Saul had died. Saul was the people's king. David was the Lord's king. There will come a day when the people's king will reign in this world. His spirit has been around for 2,000 years. It's called in the Bible the spirit of Antichrist. That spirit of Antichrist will someday be personified in a person who will bear that name, the Antichrist. The Bible seems to indicate that he is going to reign over the western culture, western society, the revived Roman Empire, over Europe, and those associated with Europe, probably the United States too. Antichrist will be man's king. When man's king is dealt with, as he will be, then God is going to establish his son and publicly anoint him. Now he's already been anointed privately, so to speak, as the king, as the Lord says back in Psalm 2, "I have set my king upon my holy hill of Zion." Jesus has already privately, so to speak, been anointed to be the king. Publicly he will be proclaimed anointed king after man's king has been dealt with. A parallel here to the Lord Jesus Christ. Well, may these instructions from God's word give us direction for this week and guidance in our lives as we walk with God. Remember that David was not a perfect man by any means. We see him lying, we see him involved in things that he should not have been involved in times. In that respect he was no different than you and I are today. But David was a man who learned his lessons and he was a man who, when he fell and sinned, repented and came back to the Lord and then walked with God. He was a man who, with his whole heart, inquired after the Lord and sought him and who in humility trusted the Lord. Therefore he was a man after God's own heart and I trust that that is the position that we're in, that we are men and women after the Lord's heart. Let's pray. Lord, I know that there are many of us tonight who share that desire. We want to be a people after your own heart. A people who like David would be anointed in life. Because we know what it is to inquire of you and to wait upon you. Lord, make that a reality. Take that from the desire shelf in our lives and get it down where we live. And this week as we live before people who do not know you, I pray that they will be able to sense that there's something different about us, that we are in truth a people who know the Lord and walk with him. As people around us observe us, being able to reign in life, I ask that you will give to them a heart's desire to know what it is that gives our life direction and purpose. And establish this week for many of us, contacts with people who need Jesus. And enable us, I pray, to build a bridge into their lives that we might share him with them. To that end and to the end that we may walk with you as a people after your own heart, we ask your blessing upon us as we go tonight in Jesus' name, amen. Well, dear people, thank you for being here coming out on this winter evening. God bless you for that. Let's pray for one another this week and gather for a marvelous prayer meeting on Friday night. Mask. Transform is being changed from the inside out. Conformed is external, transformed is internal with an external result. The word is metamorphomy and you may remember an English word that is a direct transliteration of that, namely, and I've seen it on several of your lips already, metamorphosis. Metamorphosis. And I remember one of the books that my oldest kids read when they were very small children. It was a book entitled Metamorphosis and it was the story of Sid. Sid was a worm, an ugly little caterpillar. And it said that one day Sid got a great idea. As he was groveling along in the dirt, he went on up this plant that he came to and he went out on a branch here and he secreted a kind of translucent fluid on that branch and he made a kind of a sticky button there and he turned his posterior anatomy around and hooked it on that button and then he shaped himself into a jay like this and he proceeded to build a house around himself as he wove those threads of the house and finally completely incarcerated himself inside of that building that he had made and everything was very, very still and you would have thought that Sid had worked himself to death but not really. Something was going on on the inside and after a period of time Sid let you know what was going on because he raised the blinds on his house and you could look through these translucent windows and you could see beautiful colors in there and then all of a sudden one day a tremendous eruption took place in Sid's house and it just jerked all over that branch and finally out of one side came this great big beautiful multicolored wing that he stretched out and then from the other side came another one just like it and then Sid began to wiggle and try to get the rest of it off now you don't want to interrupt him in the process because if you interrupt that process and you pull it off you will maim him for life because there is a process of metamorphosis through which he must go and after he has gone through the process and he has shaken off the rest of that then he stretches his wings out and he becomes aware of a new power that he has that he never had before when he crawled up that limb and this is flight power and so now instead of crawling down that branch and groveling back in the dirt again he takes off with flight power and he flits from flower to flower enjoying the sweet nectar of God's great big wonderful creation and that is precisely what Paul says happens to a believer that will do what he is talking about here if any man be in Christ be hold a new creation all things have become new to that one but we all with unveiled face steadfastly looking at beholding as in a mirror the glory of the Lord in Jesus Christ our being transformed our being metamorphosed from glory to glory and you could add in 10,000 more glories there he gave you enough to make you find out it doesn't happen like that it's from glory to glory to glory to glory to glory and what's the end goal Christ likeness into the same image as that which I look at [BLANK_AUDIO]