“Is The Young Man Safe?” 2 Samuel 18.31–33, Easter 7C, June ‘19

1.                Grace, mercy, and peace to you from God our Heavenly Father and our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.  The message from God’s Word this morning is taken from 2 Samuel 18:31-33 (READ TEXT).  It’s entitled, “Is the Young Man Safe?” Dear brothers and sisters in Christ.

2.                Graduation season has come. At one Christian college, the president had a standard line written into the script for commencement exercises every spring. He would thank the graduates for letting that college be a part of their pursuit of their educational goals. He was acknowledging what the students had given the college, but he didn’t mention what the college had given to the students. This is a pretty weak statement to make to the graduating class at any school. At a Christian college, the statement stands out as horribly weak. Something is missing.

3.                Speaking of something missing, look at Absalom. He was one of King David’s many sons. Absalom was handsome, capable, smart, a charismatic type of guy, a born leader, the kind who could easily get people to follow him—much too easily, as it turned out. Absalom had a lot going for him. But, something was horribly missing. When his half- brother Amnon raped his sister, Absalom was so filled with rage that he started plotting revenge on Amnon. Absalom let things brew for two years before he killed Amnon. Later, he schemed for four years before he launched a carefully-planned rebellion against David, who was both his father and his king. There was something tragically missing from Absalom, all right.

4.                One high school religion teacher used to ask his classes whether they thought a physical assault by one person against another person could bring about something as big as a full-scale war. Usually the pupils would say no. They found it possible to imagine that a single case of assault might lead to hurt feelings or anger, even violence on a relatively small scale. But they didn’t think it would start a whole war. The teacher would then point them to this story, and show them how the seeds of Absalom’s huge rebellion were sown in one act of assault. Even secular history tells us that the massive powder keg of World War I had been lit by a one-on-one attack. If secular history is all we have to go on, though, something is missing. 

5.                Look at King David, against whom Absalom launched his rebellion. Remember David’s adultery and murder? The Lord forgave David, but still David had to bear certain consequences. Absalom’s rebellion was exactly the kind of consequence the Lord had predicted. There would be evil for David from out of his own house, as someone close to the king would make a usurper’s claim to kingship. (See 2 Samuel 12:10–12.) David had brought this rebellion upon himself. After Absalom had killed Amnon and went away to lay low for three years, David finally brought Absalom back to Jerusalem . . . but then refused to see him for another two years. There had been something significantly missing from David during that time. A Pastor once preached this story as a Father’s Day message, but with all the names removed so people wouldn’t catch on right away that he was telling them this Bible story. He pointed out how badly David had turned his back on Absalom, and what consequences ensue when fathers don’t extend themselves to their children in love, compassion, and mercy. While David was keeping his distance that Absalom’s thoughts turned to staging a rebellion. 

6.                What’s missing when a father who has himself been forgiven for murder won’t turn around and share the Lord’s forgiveness with his own son? What’s missing from a son who takes it upon himself to exact revenge, not once but twice, a son who finds it imperative to get what he wants—no matter what or who stands in his way? Or what’s missing when we go to school and get an education for our purposes, to fulfill our own educational goals? In all these cases the answer is the same. What’s missing can be faith in the Lord Jesus Christ and love resulting from that faith.  Once upon a time, a sea horse swimming through the ocean happened upon an eel. The eel asked where the sea horse was going. “I’m going to seek my fortune,” said the sea horse. The eel told him, “Here, take this flipper and you’ll be able to go faster.” So, the sea horse paid the eel some money and swam off with his new flipper.  Next, he encountered a sponge, who also asked where he was going. “I’m going to seek my fortune,” the sea horse replied. The sponge said, “But you are going much too slowly with that flipper. I’ll let you have this scooter for a small fee, and then you will go much faster.” The sea horse bought the scooter, and went zooming.  Then the sea horse met a shark. “Where are you going?”, the shark wanted to know. “I’m going to seek my fortune,” the sea horse said again. “You’re in luck,” the shark replied. Opening his mouth, the shark continued: “Take this short cut!” In the sea horse went, but he never came out.

The message of this little fable is: when you don’t know where you’re going, you are liable to end up elsewhere—without even realizing it. 

7.                Why do we go to school? Why do parents tell their children that they should go to school? To learn enough to get a good job? Why? To make lots of money. Why? To have nice things and gadgets and fun? If this is as far as it goes, something massive is missing.  When was the last time any of us considered the thought that we go to school so we can learn something that will enable us to glorify God and serve our neighbor? Maybe it will be in church work, but Christians can glorify God and serve their neighbors in any honorable vocation. Why don’t Christian parents put it this way to their kids? The answer may well be: the parents know that if someone had said it this way to them years ago, the words might have rolled off their backs like water off a duck.  

8.                See? Something is missing, dreadfully missing. What’s missing is the Lord himself. “In all your ways acknowledge him,” the Bible says, “and he will make straight your paths” (Proverbs 3:6). That is what we are really talking about here, lives that acknowledge the Lord instead of resolving around self. It might surprise some people to hear this, but the Bible never tells people to fulfill their dreams. The Bible tells us to acknowledge the Lord and to serve him where he has put us. Our very shock to this fact shows how deep idolatry goes within us, and our need to repent. 

9.                David was calling upon the Lord, too, and the Lord didn’t forsake David when Absalom rebelled. On the contrary, God got David through. The rebellion of Absalom was by no means the only crisis that came upon Israel while David was king. It wasn’t even the only rebellion. (See 2 Samuel 20.) Still, this crisis weighed more heavily on David than any of the others. The king was worried about his family. He was concerned about the kingdom. But, I’m sure he couldn’t help think about the line of descent for the Messiah, which by God’s promise was to go through his household. Yet the Lord’s faithfulness came through. In this way also, David was saved by Christ. 

10.             The king had hit rock-bottom when he had to flee from his son Absalom. He went up the Mount of Olives, weeping, praying that the Lord would confound Absalom’s plans. (See 2 Samuel 15:30–31.) Bear in mind that our Lord Jesus Christ ascended on the Mount of Olives. In fact, Jesus ascended clear off that mountain. When Jesus did this he wasn’t weeping, but victorious. This ascended Christ intercedes for us before the throne of God, praying that all his enemies—and ours—be finally overcome. 

11.             That’s not all. While David was still trying to get away from Absalom’s rebellion, he came upon a relative of the previous king, Saul. This man threw rocks and dust at David, and he hurled a few choice insults and curses at him too. One of David’s army commanders volunteered to take the guy’s head off, but David said no. This was the worst humiliation of his life, but David accepted it, as a chastisement from God himself. David realized that he had to go through this humiliation if he was to be exalted again as undisputed king. He couldn’t go around it; he had to go through it. 

12.             Think of what Jesus went through in his humiliation. For he had all kinds of insults heaped upon him for things he hadn’t done. The worst of those curses came from God himself. Christ endured it all because he knew that for the sake of our salvation he couldn’t go around his humiliation unto death, even death on a cross. He had to go through it. And at the end of that humiliation he was exalted. He rose from the dead and ascended into heaven to sit at God’s right hand as our King and Champion. 

13.             This point in David’s life, when he was struggling against Absalom’s revolt, is when he looked the most like Christ. Like Jesus, David loved the unlovable. Despite everything Absalom had done, David didn’t want him harmed on the field of battle. David loved his rebellious son. Soldiers at length disobeyed the king’s order and killed Absalom. When the reports came in from the front, David urgently wanted to know whether his son was safe. Absalom stood out as uppermost on David’s mind. Yes, Absalom. When David learned that Absalom had died, he broke out in bitter weeping and said, “Would I had died instead of you, O Absalom my son, my son.” 

14.             What David wanted to do for his rebellious son is what Jesus did for all. Christ died for undeserving sinners like you and me. Because he loved us with a love much more intense than the love that moved David to say, “Absalom, my son, my son,” Christ the eternal Son of God was willing to be cut off from his Father and to cry out to him, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” Such was his love for the unlovable. Such is his love for you and me. He rose from the dead to provide through his Word what otherwise would be missing from our lives. 

15.             Is the young man or the young woman safe? We might ask about those young men and women now graduating from high school or college. Are they safe? There is safety only with the crucified, risen, and ascended Christ. The story of Absalom shows that all the ambition and all the learning in this world can’t keep us safe. In fact, smarts can be put to terrible uses apart from the Lord. In the pursuit of the wrong goals, they can turn disastrous. 

16.             We can be safe only with Christ. He died for us and rose. He ascended and intercedes for us before the throne of grace and he will someday take us to be with him in heaven. Safe on account of Christ, we live in faith and love in our various callings. When we’re preparing for his coming again by remaining in his Word all through our lives, never graduating, then we are safe.  Amen.  Now the peace of God that passes all understanding guard your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus until life everlasting.  Amen.

“I’m Forgiven. Now What? Pray.” 2 Samuel 12.13–25, Easter 6 C, May ‘19

1.                Please pray with me.  May the words of my mouth and the meditation of our hearts be pleasing in Your sight, O Lord, our Rock, and our Redeemer.  Amen.  The message from God’s Word is taken from 2 Samuel 12:13-25 (READ TEXT), it’s entitled, “I’m Forgiven.  Now What? Pray.”  Dear brothers and sisters in Christ.

2.                I’m forgiven. Now what? Christians sometimes ask this question. Maybe you’ve asked it too.  The story of David and Bathsheba strikes us as so intense and relevant that it remains a favorite to this day. We can identify with David, both when God told him through the prophet Nathan “you are the man” who sinned, and also when Nathan brought him the word of forgiveness from the Lord. Unfortunately, we often stop following the story at that point, even though it goes on in the Bible. David was forgiven. Now what? What happens next?

3.                If the story of David provides us a clue to our own Christians lives, and it does, what happens next is prayer. We don’t pray in order to win God’s forgiveness. Instead, one of the reasons why we pray is that we already have his forgiveness. In prayer, faith cries out to God. This faith is called into being by God’s forgiving Word. We also pray because we run up against many hard things in this world. These things remind us how very much we need the Lord. 

4.                David was running into a very hard thing. Although he was forgiven, the Lord said that David’s son was going to die. This was the son conceived in David’s scorn of God, when he committed adultery with another man’s wife and then murdered her husband. Now this child would die. In earlier sermons, we’ve noted that forgiveness from God doesn’t necessarily remove negative consequences springing from sin in this world. A criminal may receive God’s forgiveness, but still have to serve out his jail sentence, for example. God forgave Moses and others in the “exodus generation” for sinning against him in the wilderness, but he told them all the same that they would not enter the Promised Land. Just so, David’s son became gravely ill. The Lord had decreed that this child would die. 

5.                Next came prayer. For a week “David fasted and went in and lay all night on the ground” (2 Samuel 12:16). He wouldn’t get up, nor would he eat. He was praying for his sick son, pleading for the boy’s life. It is good for us, too, to “form the habit of daily commending ourselves to God [Psalm 31:5], with soul and body, wife, children, servants, and all that we have, against every need that may arise.” In faith, David was turning right away to the One who really could help. 

6.                You and I can learn something here. When we run into hard things in life, we often tell friends, co-workers, family members, neighbors, and all sorts of other people about them. Finally, after telling everyone else, it might occur to us to mention these matters to the Lord. In other words, we turn to God out of desperation (“I’ve tried everything else!”) or resignation (“I guess prayer couldn’t hurt!”). Either way, in such prayer faith is not crying out. No, unbelief is whimpering along. We don’t go to God promptly with our needs because we don’t trust him as we should.

7.                “I know there are certain things God has promised,” someone might say. “I should definitely pray for those blessings.” But sooner or later, all Christians find themselves praying about other things, don’t we? To those prayers we should add, ‘Thy will be done.’ Right?” Yes, that’s right. In the text, David was engaged in what might be called “heroic prayer.” He was going out on a limb in prayer. He wasn’t talking to God about some subject on which God himself had been silent. David was prevailing upon God to relent over something he had already declared. The king was pleading for the Lord to spare his son’s life. 

8.                Of course, God had been prevailed upon before, as when Abraham had prayed that Sodom and Gomorrah be spared if as few as ten righteous people were found there. David knew this account. It was probably on his mind as he begged the Lord to let his son live.  This time, however, God wasn’t going to relent. He said “no” to David’s prayers. The child died. What impact was this death going to have upon David? How would it have affected you?  Would David lash out in anger at the God who had killed his son? Would he be driven to despair, doubting whether God had truly forgiven him since his child now lay dead? Or would David become mentally unbalanced? His servants especially worried about that last prospect. They saw the king’s reaction to the news that the baby was sick. How, they were wondering, can we break it to him that the child has died? Well, they didn’t have to break it to him. David guessed why they were whispering among themselves. Then he did something remarkable. He got up off the ground, washed up, changed clothes, went to the tabernacle to worship, and made his way home for a nice meal. 

9.                This turn of events resulted in confusion for the servants. Maybe they had been tempted to think that David had shirking his royal duties for the past few days, getting none of his kingly work done as he fasted and groveled on the ground. But now that the child had died, not only was David not going through the customary rituals of mourning; he was acting like he was actually happy. Of course, the servants did not know the contents of David’s prayers. 

10.             Ask yourself this question: “Have my prayers ever led me to do things that those around me thought downright strange?” Prayer to the Lord will do that.  In faith, David had a much better grasp of the situation than his servants had. He had not lost his marbles. David was neither rebelling against the Lord nor doubting his forgiveness. The king knew he had gone out on a limb with his prayer, but he also knew that the Lord wasn’t sawing off that limb. The king was acting as a forgiven man. 

11.             David was forgiven for the same reason that you or I, or anyone and everyone in the world is forgiven: on account of Christ. In David’s case, as in ours, “we could never grasp the knowledge of the Father’s grace and favor except through the Lord Christ. Jesus is a mirror of the fatherly heart [John 14:9; Colossians 1:15; Hebrews 1:3], outside of whom we see nothing but an angry and terrible Judge.” David wasn’t viewing events like the recent death of his son as God’s judgment. He was seeing everything in light of the coming Christ, his own Son and Lord, the One who forgives by bearing the punishment for the sins of all men. 

12.             Therefore, David knew he was in so solid with God that he could go out on that limb. He could pray that the Lord change his mind and cancel a consequence he had already announced. A child makes this kind of request of his father, knowing that even if the request isn’t granted, he will not be rebuffed or disowned for making it. Jesus our Savior gives us the confidence to approach God and call him “Father.” Since Christ is our Brother, we’ve been adopted as children of our heavenly Father. Our prayers rise to the throne of God standing on our Lord Jesus and what he has done for us by his life, death, and resurrection. On this sixth Sunday of Easter, the Sunday before Ascension Day, the Church has traditionally emphasized prayer. 

13.             David told his servants what had been going on: “While the child was still alive, I fasted and wept, for I said, ‘Who knows whether the LORD will be gracious to me, that the child may live?’ But now he is dead. Why should I fast? Can I bring him back again? I shall go to him, but he will not return to me” (2 Samuel 12:22–23). Here David was confessing his faith that the dead child was really alive with the Lord. He said he was looking forward to being reunited with this son. The king believed in the resurrection of the body and the life everlasting. No matter what happened in this world, David knew that his fondest desires in prayer would be more than answered in eternity. 

14.             By the power of the Holy Spirit working through the Gospel, David took a “no” from God with confidence, hope, even joy. God said no, yet David didn’t lose his faith. So, it was with St. Paul when the Lord said he would not remove that pesky thorn from Paul’s flesh. For beneath this “no” lay something even better: “My grace is sufficient for you,” the Lord told Paul. His power was made perfect in Paul’s weakness (2 Corinthians 12:9).  We pray because we know God’s heart toward us in Christ. We know he wants nothing but the best for us. So, we ask for things in prayer. Praying is asking. God has everything.  We need so much, starting with forgiveness of our sins. The Lord’s Prayer, then, isn’t teaching Christians to be selfish when it offers one petition after another. With such prayer we recognize that God is God. 

15.             Of course, in the Lord’s Prayer we ask for things that we know God wants us to have. As noted earlier, though, in our prayers we also end up asking for things that God has not specifically promised. We go out on a limb, maybe praying for a new car, a promotion at work, or an improvement in health, even though God’s Word doesn’t specifically tell us whether he wants us to have these things. 

16.             Our text suggests a few lessons about such prayers. First, don’t hesitate to pray them. Our heavenly Father wants to hear from his children. Second, if you don’t get what you were asking for in the way you were asking for it, don’t get angry at God or conclude that he is angry with you. David didn’t.  This leads to a third and final point: like David, focus on what is firm and sure. Dwell on what God has promised, starting with the forgiveness of sins. When we go out on a limb and pray about the things that God hasn’t specifically promised, it’s a good idea to pray for them in keeping with what we know God wants us to have. If you are praying for a new car, ask that it in no way keep God’s Name from being made holy in your life. Pray for the promotion, and pray that it would help God’s kingdom to come more and more to you and to others through you. Or pray that with better health, God’s will would be done more and more in your life. Making these connections in our prayers helps us to see things in much better perspective. It may also help us to see how God’s strength is being shown in our lives if he says no to the new car, the promotion, or whatever. In other words, when you go out on a limb in prayer, see that the limb is well-connected to the Tree of Life.

17.             You’re forgiven. What happens next? Prayer happens next, as you and I go back again and again in faith to the Lord Who sent his Son Jesus to save us. We pray not because of the things we might or might not get, but because of the gifts that the Lord definitely gives.  Amen.  Now the peace of God that passes all understanding guard your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus until life everlasting.  Amen.