The Lord’s Day Evening
October 3, 2010
2 Samuel 4:1-12
“Murder Most Foul!”
Dr. Derek W. H. Thomas
Turn with me to 2 Samuel chapter 4.
2 Samuel chapter 4 – we’re going to read about
Ish-bosheth, the only
remaining son of Saul who’s been put on the throne in the northern kingdom, but
as we shall see, his reign is short lived.
Before we read the passage together, let’s look to God in prayer.
Father, we thank You for the
Scriptures. They are able to make us
wise unto salvation through faith which is in Jesus Christ our Lord.
We ask now for Your blessing, the outpouring of Your Spirit.
We pray that we might be enabled to read, mark, learn, and inwardly
digest, and all for Jesus’ sake.
Amen.
This is God’s holy and inerrant Word:
“When Ish-bosheth,
Saul’s son, heard that Abner had died at
Jonathan, the son of
Saul, had a son who was crippled in his feet.
He was five years old when the news about Saul and Jonathan came from
Jezreel, and his nurse took him up and fled, and as she fled in her haste, he
fell and became lame. And his name
was Mephilbosheth.
Now the sons of
Rimmon the Berrothite, Rechab and Baanah, set out, and about the heat of the day
they came to the house of Ish-bosheth as he was taking his noonday rest.
And they came into the midst of the house as if to get wheat, and they
stabbed him in the stomach. Then
Rechab and Baanah his brother escaped.
When they came into the house, as he lay on his bed in his bedroom, they
struck him and put him to death and beheaded him.
They took his head and went by the way of Arabah all night, and brought
the head of Ish-bosheth to David at
Well, thus far, God’s holy, inerrant Word.
What a pleasant story!
You know, as I was thinking about this passage – and you’ve got to believe I was
thinking about it most of this week – having the heebie-jeebies when I saw the
first and second grade choirs singing in the evening service.
Where is Jesus in this text?
Indeed, where is Jesus in this text?
And I think that perhaps this is another occasion where the better question
might be, “What is Jesus teaching us in this text?”
Let us not forget this is part of
Jesus’ story.
This is part of the fulfillment of a promise that the Son of David will
one day come and rule and reign.
Didn’t I hear the little angels sing, “Jesus shall reign” just a few minutes
ago? Well, the lineage of that Jesus
lies here in this gruesome, awful tale.
I want to look at it tonight from two perspectives, from, first of all,
the perspective of the north – that is, Ish-bosheth and
Ish-bosheth – I have to say I was reminded, just briefly, of Thomas Gray’s poem
that I once was forced to learn in school, “Elegy in a Country Churchyard” – not
one of your favorite poems, I’m sure.
It’s about a man contemplating as the sun goes down.
He’s in a country churchyard and he’s contemplating the graves and the
names of those written on the graves and they are nobodies.
Who knows who they are?
Nobody remembers them. They’re not
some of the great and notorious people of history; they’re just forgotten.
And that’s Ish-bosheth. He’s
been made king, do you see, by Abner.
Saul and his three sons were killed on
You remember Abner had inadvertently killed Joab’s brother, Asahel with a blunt
end of his spear. It was probably
accidental. It wasn’t murder with
intent. But Joab, Asahel’s brother –
Joab is one of the chief men in David’s camp – had been angry with David for
receiving Abner, and remember, had asked Abner to come to the city gates of
Sometimes life isn’t fair. Sometimes
life isn’t fair. He’s a puppet-king.
He’s put in power by others.
He doesn’t want to be in this situation and life isn’t fair.
He’s not Oliver Cromwell.
He’s Richard Cromwell. Richard
Cromwell, Oliver Cromwell’s son, lasted nine months.
He was so bad,
Ish-bosheth. You know, you wouldn’t
even know about him if he wasn’t here in this chapter.
You know, nobody’s saying here tonight, “You know, you’re saying, I want
to be like David.” Some of you
military types are enamored of the figures of Joab and Abner.
You know, they’re men.
They’re real men. They’re soldiers,
anywhere there was to fight. But no
one’s saying here, “I want to be Ish-bosheth.
You know I really want to be Ish-bosheth.”
No, you feel sorry for him.
He’s the wrong man in the wrong place at the wrong time.
He’s weak. He’s weak.
He’s a patsy. He’s a man
under the control of others.
And now two would-be young pretenders, who can probably read what’s going to
happen – the downfall of the northern kingdom – thinking that they might
ingratiate themselves to David and have plum government jobs with a pension and
health benefits, they kill him. Oh,
brave young men, they kill him while he’s asleep in his bed, like
Can you identify a little with him, perhaps?
Life isn’t fair. Your husband
is cheating on you. You don’t deserve that.
Life isn’t fair. You have
ambitions for your children – some of you have too many ambitions for your
children; ambitions that are not good for you or them.
But perhaps for some of you, you look at your children and you think,
“Why can’t I have other people’s children?”
Life isn’t fair. Some of
you know all too well what it is to be stabbed in the back by someone at work
who’s climbing the corporate ladder and you thought they were friends.
And when the moment of opportunity came, they stabbed you in the back.
Life isn’t fair. “I’m doing
my job. I’m trying my best.”
That’s what I think about Ish-bosheth and life isn’t fair.
There’s no one, there’s no one here tonight who’s saying, “I want to be
like
Ish-bosheth.” He’s dead.
He’s murdered. He’s beheaded
by two young pretenders who take his head down to
Now, let’s move away from that grizzly story.
Let’s go south. Let’s go to
David’s camp –probably a two day journey.
Rechab and Baanah – now notice in verse 8, notice that when you think you
want something you can put theological language to justify it.
So they come to David and they’re holding the head of Ish-bosheth, two
days now, decomposing in their hands – “The son of Saul, your enemy, who sought
your life. The Lord” - now notice
this theological, heavyweight explanation of what it is that they’ve done –“The
Lord has avenged my lord the king this day on Saul and on his offspring.”
Well, let’s think about that for a minute, this piece of theological
self-justification – what they were doing was avenging the attempts of Saul to
kill David. I mean, hadn’t God
promised that David would rule over a
So, doesn’t the end justify the
means?
I mean, this brought about the end of Saul’s kingdom.
There was only one other left, Mephibosheth, and he was a cripple.
His nurse had dropped him, fleeing when she heard of the death of his
father, Jonathan. The northern
kingdom is over. David is now going
to be the united king of a united north and south, and they had just
accomplished the wiping out of every obstacle in that path to glory.
Doesn’t the end justify the means?
It’s called in ethics, consequentialism.
I was in Atlanta airport, as I often am, a couple of weeks ago, a couple of
Saturdays ago, and I began a conversation with a lady – we had just flow to
Meridian and then flown back again; some mechanical problem which was never
explained – and I was explaining to her what Delta actually meant:
Delays Expected When Leaving Through Atlanta.
(laughter) This lady traveled
the world. She went all over the
world – something to do with heart transplant technology.
It was way above my understanding.
And she began to talk about stem-cell research and what great advances
were being made in
That’s what these two are saying to David.
“Look, we’ve advanced the
Now, David has his young men take these two young want-a-be pretenders, their
hands and feet are severed, and they’re hung like an advertisement from a
billboard on I-55, only it’s
But you see, the question I want to ask tonight is this – what kind of kingdom,
what kind of kingdom does David want to bring in?
What kind of kingdom will David
rule over? Will it be a kingdom
governed by the ethics of consequentialism, that the end justifies the means?
No.
It will be a kingdom governed by
justice and righteousness.
These two young men that committed murder, murder most foul, the murder
of a king while he’s sleeping in his bed – this was a murder with intent.
They got what the Law, what the Torah had prescribed.
That’s all that happened to them.
You see, let me put it this way tonight.
If we have, if we have a low view of justice, if we have a low view of
justice, we read this passage and we “tut-tut” at it.
How dare David do this? What
kind of uncivilized society is this, to put murderers to death?
What kind of uncivilized society is that?
It’s a society governed by the Law of Moses, that’s what it is.
We are so far away from that we find it almost disgusting.
But there is nothing here in what David did that was anything other than
what was right and prescribed in the Law of Moses.
You see, let me put it this way – if we
have a low view of justice, we’ll have a low view of the Gospel.
And you say, you say, “How can that possibly be?”
Because, my friends, the Gospel is actually built on the foundations of
justice.
Do you remember when Paul says in Romans 8, “He that did not spare His own Son”?
He didn’t spare Him. The
innocent, perfect, Lamb of God, He didn’t spare Him.
You see, here’s the thing – Jesus had asked to be spared.
In the
David is bringing in the kingdom that is built on the foundations of
righteousness and justice, not the end justifying the means.
Now David will forget, because power corrupts and absolute power corrupts
absolutely, for human beings anyway.
Within a few chapters we’ll see David behave like a
Do you remember what Paul says in the opening chapter of Romans when he says,
“I’m not ashamed of the Gospel. I’m
not ashamed of the Gospel because therein is the forgiveness of God revealed”?
No, that’s not what it says.
You might think that’s what it says, you might have thought in a quiz that’s
what Paul said – that’s why he’s not ashamed of the Gospel because in the Gospel
there is forgiveness – but that’s not what he said.
“I’m not ashamed of the Gospel because the righteousness of God is
revealed in it.”
You know, when Luther read that, he said at one point, as he tells us in his
introduction to his commentary on Romans, he says that when he first read that
and he thought about it, he hated God and he hated God’s righteousness.
How can the righteousness, the justice of God, be something in which
he rejoice? Because as he came
on to see, that righteousness is revealed from faith to faith.
It’s a righteousness that we receive by faith alone, in Jesus Christ alone.
“He was made sin for us who knew no sin that we might be reckoned the
righteousness of God in Him.” I’m
not ashamed of the Gospel because it’s about righteousness.
It’s about being right with God.
It’s about integrity. But
it’s a rightness and an integrity that I received by faith in Jesus Christ.
That’s
the Gospel my friends.
That’s what’s at the heart of the Gospel.
David is introducing a kingdom. He’s
ushering in a kingdom. He’s on the
very threshold of that kingdom. Now
in the next few chapters, he’s going to be crowned in a great pomp and ceremony
in
Now David isn’t Jesus.
He sometimes acts as a type of Jesus, but
David could never save us.
Only Jesus can save
us. Only the righteous one.
Only the just one. Only the
perfect one.
So right here, in a chapter that is – you know it’s like a murder mystery that I
think goes on TV tonight, on public television on I think one of those programs
where it’s all about murder and there’s usually two or three of them – and
you’ve got it here. Three people are
dead in this small chapter. And God
in His indescribable, inexplicable providence, is working out His purposes.
God, yes
“God moves in a mysterious way, His
wonders to perform;
He plants His footsteps in the sea and rides upon the storm.
Deep in unfathomable mines of never-failing skill,
He treasures up His bright designs and works His sovereign will.
Blind unbelief is sure to err and scan His work in vain.
God is His own interpreter and He will make it plain.”
Yes, this sad, awful, wretched story is
one of the pillars that leads eventually to the edifice, which is Christ
Himself, the only true and just and righteous King.
May God bless His Word to us. Let’s
pray.
Father, we stand amazed as we
read these Old Testament stories and as we are traveling through the books of
Samuel, sometimes we feel glad that we’re not there, that we live in what we
sometimes fool ourselves into thinking are more enlightened times.
We thank You, O Lord, for the ways in which these passages beg for us to
call out for a righteous King and how we have seen that righteous King in the
face of Jesus Christ, our Lord and our Savior.
How sweet the name of Jesus sounds in a believer’s ear, calms his
sorrows, heals his wounds, and drives away his fear.
We thank You that for those who feel like Ish-bosheth tonight, victims of
circumstances that outwardly appear to be unfair, that only in Jesus Christ can
peace and resolution and contentment come.
So to those of our brothers and sisters tonight, who perhaps secretly and
quietly have identified with Ish-bosheth, may that peace that passes all
understanding that garrisons the heart be theirs tonight.
For Jesus’ sake we ask it.
Amen.
Please stand and receive the Lord’s benediction.
Grace, mercy, and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ, be with
you all.
© First Presbyterian Church,
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