2 Samuel 5:1-16 King and City

Of Recast Church in Matawan, Michigan. This week, Pastor Don Filsak is preaching from his series, The Warrior Poet King, Study of Second Samuel. Let's listen in.

The Church as a Community of Shared Faith and Mission

Good morning to everybody. I'm Don Filsak, I'm the lead pastor here. And I'm really glad that we can gather together in the name of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ today. How many of you would just acknowledge that it's easy to kind of feel isolated in our world today?

Anybody feeling just mildly isolated? I believe that part of the reason that God has given us church and church gathering is for the purpose of routine grounding in community worship. Our gathering does a couple of important things for our hearts and for our souls.

It reminds us that our faith is not merely, it's not merely our faith. It's a shared faith. We are gathered, and when we gather, we are reminded that our faith must be lived out in relationship to others.

There are others around us. Us sharpening them, them sharpening us. And that's a big component of what God desires for us together in community. It's a big desire of our growth in faith comes from sharpening one another and running into each other and encouraging one another and building each other up and helping each other to recognize that we need to be following Christ in all areas of our lives.

That's what's building us up. But also in the gathering, we get the simple reminder that we are not alone in this faith in another direction, in another way. I encourage you right now, just look around, church.

Look around. There are others who love Jesus. Amen? There are others who love Jesus. There are others who are called to be his ambassadors to a dark and hopeless world. You're not alone in that calling.

You're not alone in that calling. You're not alone in that challenge of trying to bring the light of Christ to a dark world. It's not just on your shoulders. How many are glad to hear that this morning?

It's not just on your shoulders.

It's on ours.

It's together that we're called to be ambassadors. We're called to be light. There are others who are seeking after the king just like you. There are others who have their hope placed not in the city of this world, but in the city that is to come.

Our text this morning is gonna be framed by two movements in the life of King David that reflect the hope we have in a king, a king that is greater than David. Now, we see through the story of the life of David reflections and images and kind of a point through the stories of his life to a greater king that is coming.

This morning is David's coronation day, a day that's been long anticipated, a day that's been long awaited in the text of scripture all throughout 1 Samuel. Through the bulk of 1 Samuel, it is predicted but not fulfilled, and then all the way up until chapter five of 2 Samuel, a building tension in his life about God's promises to him in his youth.

And what we're seeing when we see David coronated, we need to understand what we're looking at today. We are seeing Israel get the best fallen king she will ever have. The best fallen king she will ever have.

He's a sinner, but he's a sinner who loves God. He is nowhere near perfect, but he knows it. And God uses this man and his rule and his reign to forward his promises that a future king from the line of King David will come and establish a forever kingdom.

So David will reign from the city of Jerusalem, the glorious city on a hill, the glorious city of peace that has never known peace, and so too will Jesus one day reign from the new Jerusalem. What we see in our text is king and city, city and king, king and city.

Our hope is wrapped up in those two realities. King coming to establish his rule and reign in a city. Our text this morning is like a collage of events from the life of King David. As a matter of fact, all of chapter five, we're only taking half of it, all of chapter five is like a collage, like a bunch of different disparate stories from the life of King David.

It's not chronological. Really, it's gonna cover an era from his coronation all the way to the building of a palace. Now, we know that by time in history, we know that the building of his palace took place in the last 10 years, the final 10 years of his reign.

It's gonna spell out the birth of many of his children, and we know that that had to span years of his life as well. So let's open our Bibles to 2 Samuel chapter five, verses one through six. If you've got a device, you can navigate in that.

If you have one of those scripture journals, you can check that out. And consider what success looks like for King David throughout this text. God is faithful. As I read, I want you to think about God's faithfulness to keep his promises.

He promised to David and his youth that he would one day be king over all Israel, and then we come to 2 Samuel chapter five. So let's listen in. Then all the tribes of Israel came to David at Hebron and said, behold, we are your bone and flesh.

In times past, when Saul was king over us, it was you who led out and brought in Israel. And the Lord said to you, you shall be shepherd of my people Israel, and you shall be prince over Israel. So all the elders of Israel came to the king at Hebron, and King David made a covenant with them at Hebron before the Lord, and they anointed David king over Israel.

David was 30 years old when he began to reign, and he reigned 40 years. At Hebron, he reigned over Judah seven years and six months, and at Jerusalem, he reigned over all Israel and Judah 33 years. And the king and his men went to Jerusalem against the Jebusites, the inhabitants of the land, who said to David, you will not come in here, but the blind and the lame will ward you off, thinking David cannot come in here.

Nevertheless, David took the stronghold of Zion, that is, the city of David. And David said on that day, whoever would strike the Jebusites, let him get up the water shaft to attack the lame and the blind, who are hated by David's soul.

Therefore it is said the blind and the lame shall not come into the house. And David lived in the stronghold and called it the city of David, and David built the city all around from the mill out inward.

And David became greater and greater, for the Lord, the God of hosts, was with him. And Hiram, king of Tyre, sent messengers to David and cedar trees and carpenters and masons who built David a house.

And David knew that the Lord had established him king over Israel, and that he had exalted his kingdom for the sake of his people Israel. And David took more concubines and wives from Jerusalem after he came from Hebron, and more sons and daughters were born to David.

And these are the names of those who were born to him in Jerusalem. Shemua, Shobab, Nathan, Solomon, Ibhar, Elishua, Nepheg, Japhia, Elishamah, Eliadah, and Eliphelet. Let's pray. Father, I thank you for this gathering this morning.

It is for our encouragement, it is for our edification, it is for our growth in faith that you have brought each one here today. And I don't know where everybody is. I don't even know if we have in our own hearts a right understanding of where we're at.

We've had busy weeks and a lot of different things going on, and we can be just even confused in our own hearts and own minds about how we're doing with you. So Father, I pray that you would calm our hearts and calm our souls and draw down into our attention the ability to take in your word, to remove all distractions from this past week and we would be able to lift our voices together in worship of you.

But that we would also be able to take in your word as worship to you, recognizing what you desire from us is an increased faith to know you better, to trust you more, and to live more closely with you.

I pray that those things would become a reality that we would know you in a way that also bubbles out to others to make you known to the world around us. Not just known for our own sake, not just glutted with information, not just a historical account and a really interesting lesson from your word, but Father, a word that changes us and transforms us from the inside out so that we are propelled on mission for you.

I pray that that would be a reality.

Of what you do here in our midst this morning, and even now as we sing songs to you, I pray that you would allow our voices to mingle together in a recognition that we are not alone as other voices around us lift up and praise you.

I pray that you would receive the honor and the glory and that we would be built up and strengthened together this morning in Jesus' name.

Amen.

I encourage you to get comfortable, keep your Bibles open, your devices, whatever, to 2 Samuel chapter five, verses one through 16.

We read it earlier.

That's gonna be our passage. If at any time, I know that some of you, this is your first time here. The others of you are totally tuned out right now because I say this every week, but if at any time during the message you need to get up and get more coffee or water back there, you're not gonna distract me if you need to do so.

And then also, restrooms are out the double doors down the hallway on the left-hand side if you need those at any time as well. But for the rest of our time, as much as possible, to try to keep our attention and focus on God's word, so that's why I ask you to open it up so that you can see.

We're gonna walk through that passage.

And I wanna start off with a question. Sometimes it's good to just get your minds thinking, what are you waiting for? What are you waiting for? Are you waiting for a raise? You're waiting for a move? Some of us are, by now, waiting for spring?

Heh. Return to normal? We're in a church, so I hope that at least some spiritual notion crosses your mind when your pastor asks you, what are you waiting for? I hope there's some kind of spiritual notion in there.

How many of you are waiting for the return of your king? You're waiting for the return of your king? How many of you are looking forward to and awaiting that final city of peace? Amen. Looking forward to the place where the gates are never closed in fear, and Jesus, our king, will rule and reign in the midst of his people.

That's us, church, in the midst of his people with gladness and joy. As I said in the introduction, king and city. King and city, that's our hope. The activities of King David in our text this morning point towards that future king and the future city from which he will reign.

Both a good king who is coming for us, who solves our problems, and will reign from the new Jerusalem. And here's the outline for our text this morning, thinking about the life of David, the events that we're gonna be taking on.

I mentioned it's a little bit of a collage. It's kind of a hodgepodge of different things, not necessarily chronological, but just demonstrating that God was with David. God was in this whole thing. The first is verses one through three, the coronation of the king.

Verses one through three. Verses four through five is the chronology of the kingdom. Verses six through nine is the conquest of the city. Verses 10 through 12 is the confirmation of the king. And then verses 13 through 16 is the continuation of the king's sin.

We're gonna end a little bit on a downer, but we'll see that there's a lot of glory in the midst of this, despite the fact that we all know that we also have to deal with sin. So let's start in with verse one, the coronation of the king.

Yes, I did alliterate that. It didn't take a lot of work, just so that, you know, I didn't spend a lot of time on that, because it's not super helpful. You're probably not gonna remember all those five points, but my hope is that in the midst of talking about this hodgepodge of things in David's life, that something here lodges in you, that the Spirit takes something from this text, and from the understanding of this text, and puts it into practice in your life.

So we're gonna see a lot of different things here, but hopefully something sticks for you. The coronation of the king, we see in verses one through three, the 11 northern tribes of Israel have been following King Ish-bosheth, the youngest son of King Saul, and they've been following him as their king for a few years now, as of the start of chapter five.

But he died, and he died last week in the message in the previous chapter. He died a gruesome death, and we talked about that. The 12 tribes of Israel are now ready to be united under one king. So they all came together and made their following case for David to be the one, and so they're basically saying, we need some justification for making David our king, and so they give three reasons here in verses one and two.

You might not necessarily see them, because they're not numbered in the Bible,.

But they're there.

The first is, he's a kinsman. He is of our blood and of our bones. David is related to all Jews, and that his lineage is from the tribe of Judah, and that lineage ties him back to the great ancestor Jacob, whose name was changed to Israel by God.

Therefore, it was said in the Old Testament law that the ruler among God's people was to be an Israelite. They were not to take some foreigner or somebody that didn't have Jewish blood and set him up as their king.

He is qualified by his ancestry to reign over the Jews. That's the first qualification that they state for him. The second is they appeal to his experience. Under King Saul, he spent years as a commander in Saul's army, bringing Israel into the city and out of the city.

What that means is he led the parades in and out of the city of military power when they left for war, when they returned victorious. He's experienced, he's tried and true, and they're appealing to his experience here.

Now lastly, and what I think is most important, and unfortunately third in the text, really they didn't need the first two qualifications, so it kind of demonstrates to some degree a little bit of backwardness on the people already.

We're beginning to see signs of where the history of Israel is going just by the fact that they put this last. They acknowledge that God had promised to David through the prophets, really through the prophet Samuel, that he would be shepherd of the people and be the ruler over them.

How many of you think that that should've been enough for them? God spoke through the prophet, this is the king,.

And they're like, yeah, well, let's think.

About his qualifications, let's go to an interview, let's kind of think through our options and all of that stuff, and instead God said it, and that's the way they should go. Now I wanna camp on that final point here for a moment because I think it's really vital to understand that the promise of God is still intact here.

After years and years and years in the life of David, he's 30 before he becomes king. Some say probably 37 and a half years old by the time that this is happening because he rules and reigns, we're gonna see here in a minute, he rules and reigns from Hebron over Judah for seven and a half years before he assumes this, and we don't have an exact and perfect chronology here, but it seems like he's probably 37 and some change when he gets to this place.

And the promise of God is still intact, it's weathered opposition from the threats from King Saul who desired to kill David. It's weathered even David's seasons of folly when he was living among the Philistines and he was trying to save his own skin.

It's weathered a northern rebellion under Abner and the puppet king Ish-bosheth. And here it is, ready to be fulfilled by the God who keeps his promises. The God who keeps his promises. Church, I want you to camp on this for a minute.

His promises are the most durable thing you will ever encounter. Longer lasting than gold or silver or the hardest and most precious of diamonds. His promise is the most durable thing you will ever encounter.

David was of course a very experienced shepherd in his youth and he has now been raised up to be a shepherd of his people. That young boy sitting under the stars writing songs to God. That young boy who it's said of him that by his own testimony that a bear would come along and take one of the sheep and he would track it down and beat it to death and take the sheep back.

I mean a pretty tough kid but nonetheless a shepherd. I mean when it came to his anointing when he was a youth his dad didn't even consider him. The prophet Samuel says bring out all your sons because one of your sons is supposed to be the king.

And his dad didn't even include him. Like I mean how many of you would be a little offended if your dad was told to bring out your sons and you weren't even brought. Like he's like somebody's gotta take care of the sheep so you stay out there.

We're gonna have a coronation in here. And the prophet Samuel goes down the line and says not him, not him, not him. You've made a mistake there must be one more son because these aren't it.

So but oh yeah that's right David.

That's right David he's out in the field. Some of you felt that way in your families. I know the feeling a little bit. Like I mean you get left at Walmart.

And they have to come back for you or something.

I don't know. That's not personal experience.

But it's someone's experience. I know it happens.

But and if that happened to you your parents didn't mean it.

I don't think.

I can't speak for them.

David experienced that shepherding as a youth all of God's providence and work in his life and he is heading toward the crown. God's ideal king is one who cares for shepherds the people. His ideal king is not a tyrant and just like David who studied to be a shepherd Jesus is the good shepherd and yet he is also our very good king.

So with these three reasons in mind the elders of the tribes of Israel come together at Hebron in verse three and they made a covenant together with David. That would be both sides covenanting David to lead well in godliness them to follow well in godliness.

We don't have the verbiage of that covenant but we have some indications of what it probably would have been. They anointed him as their king and this is the third and final time that David is anointed.

I just kind of spelled out that first time in his youth when Samuel told his dad go get the other one and he anointed him there. Then he was anointed back in chapter two over just Judah one of the 12 tribes and here he was anointed over all of Israel and this would be his coronation day.

He is now king. And this all happens in the text before the Lord. This is not some contractual arrangement going on between some tribal leaders in the ancient world. It happens before the Lord the God of Israel as part of this anointing the great King David.

He is in this. And the second point of the text once we've got the setting out of the way is the chronology of the kingdom. It really only takes up two verses but it shows us the extent and scope of the kingdom of David.

He became king in Judah at the age of 30. He reigned over Judah at Hebron for seven and a half years and then he reigned over Judah for 33 years rounding out the total years of being king in Israel about 40 years.

And the only thing I want to point out about this chronology and the text telling us the extent of his reign and the duration and where he reigned from is that we all know that there are limitations to human kings, do we not?

He reigned for how long in the text? How long does the text say?

How long did he reign?

40 years. They all die. They all die, every ruler. They all die, they're all fairly local. They're all fairly sinful. And they actually range from fairly sinful to wickedly corrupt and evil. Even the best of human rulers are capable of deep sin and corruption, did you already know that?

How many of you kind of knew that already? Just point this out to say his limitations demonstrate to us the need for a better king. We need a better king. We need a sinless ruler. We need a permanent king whose reign doesn't end at 40 or 40 years.

We need a king who can solve the deepest problems that face us day in and day out. A king who can conquer big problems like sin, big problems like death. Well, I'll leave that there and move on to the third point in the text that is the conquest of the city verses six through nine.

In this collage of significant events over the course of David's reign and over the course of his life, the conquest of Jerusalem is perhaps meant to be highlighted as the most significant of his achievements.

The city of Jerusalem. Jerusalem meaning the city of peace, a city that has known almost virtually no peace over the course of human history. It's mentioned over 800 times in the Bible. 800 times Jerusalem is mentioned in the text of scripture.

It becomes the center, of course, of Jewish worship, the place of the temple of God. It becomes the center of hope for the Messiah. It becomes the place where Jesus comes to play, the eternal one in flesh there teaching the scribes and the Pharisees in the temple at 12 years old and they are marveling at his wisdom and his ability to teach.

It's, of course, where he will make his final sacrifice for sins once for all, even us as the beneficiaries of what happened there in Jerusalem. And further, Jerusalem becomes wrapped up in the final end times, big word, eschatological hope for our future, the end times hope as our final destination is called the new what?

The new Jerusalem, a city that God is preparing for his redeemed people, a city that he is preparing now but will come down out of heaven, an eternal abode for his children. Historically, before David, Jerusalem was part of the land that was promised to Abraham.

I mean, we're going back ancient now. Like as far back from David is Abraham as we are from David now, like it's way, way back there. A part of the land that Moses led the people of Israel to in the Exodus, the promised land, was Jerusalem.

And part of the land that Joshua was given and instructed to conquer was Jerusalem. And yet the people in disobedience never conquered it. Why in the world does David have to conquer Jerusalem here?

A few generations removed from Joshua.

Why didn't the people take it when God told them to? And so in the text, the Jebusites, when we get to chapter five of 2 Samuel, the Jebusites, a group of Canaanite peoples, have possessed the city of Jerusalem for centuries as an outpost in the middle, smack dab in the middle of Israel.

And it stands there as a blight on their obedience to God. They refused to take it. It was a small village, it wasn't a huge place, and so why in the world didn't they conquer it? Well, it had a substantial fortress on a hill called Zion.

The name of the fortress is Zion. Stands on a high point, and in historical combat, high points are easy to defend, much easier to defend, not as easy to defend now with satellite imagery and missiles.

But in ancient warfare, it worked well to be on a hill. Nowadays, you wanna be undercover. So different scenario, different story. David sets his sights on it as the ideal place to establish his throne.

Where's he gonna rule from? He can't rule from Hebron. Hebron is way, way south in Israel. It's in Judah, the southernmost tribe. He's not gonna be very centrally located there. It's not a great location for his rule and reign.

But Jerusalem is. Jerusalem is very centrally located in Israel. It doesn't require him to take any city for himself from among the 12 tribes. He doesn't have to go and say, I'm gonna take your city, that's gonna be mine now.

So it fulfills a conquest also that Israel was called to complete centuries before. So it's kind of win, win, win for him to conquer Jerusalem and rule from there. And we get very little of the battle over Jerusalem.

And there's a little bit of detail there in verses six and seven, but not a ton, just enough to kind of pique our interest and then it's over. The battle goes like this. The Jebusites taunt David. David defeats them.

Like that's kind of how the battle goes. Does that sound familiar? Any of you ever heard of a story about a little guy named David and a big guy named Goliath? What did Goliath come out and do? Taunts David and his God.

Where does Goliath end up? Down, right? So I mean, taunt, stone sling forehead. Taunt, city conquered. Like how many of you would just be like, I'm not gonna taunt David. Just not gonna do that, not gonna go there with David.

I'd recommend that for longevity's sake, if you want your life, don't taunt David. But the taunt serves to show us the misplaced confidence of the Jebusites here in this context. Even the blind and lame, they say, even blind and lame people could defend this city from you.

There's no way you're getting in here. We don't even need to muster our troops to the wall. Anybody could stop you from getting in here. They thought that the fortress was impregnable. Nobody was getting into the fortress of Zion.

So David found a weakness in their defenses and challenged his men to utilize a water shaft. Now interestingly, under the old city of Jerusalem, that water shaft has been discovered. It's now known by the guy who, the archeologist who found it, it's called the Warren Shaft.

And you can go there and see it today. Like this is an actual location, historically, under the old city where there's a water aquifer that runs through and a shaft that leads up into the city. And in the account of 1 Chronicles, sometimes we get parallel accounts.

So in 1 Chronicles, it tells this identical same story, but there it fills out the detail a little bit more for us. The chronicler was more interested in some of the details. So David offered a reward of the chief position in his military to the first one up the water shaft.

And so Joab scrambles on top of everybody else and shimmies up that shaft to maintain his position as the commander of David's army. That's a little unclear. How many of you are just gonna go in like, did they mount an assault through a water shaft?

Like, and where does it end up? Like, did they come up through the plumbing? Are they now in the toilets? Where does it end up, and how in the world do you assault an entire city and take it, or a fortress, through the water shaft?

Well, maybe, just maybe, in the middle of the night, Joab goes up, unlocks the gate, and voila, army's in. We don't know all the details. It doesn't tell us how going up that water shaft was used to their advantage.

We just know that it was. And it ended up producing a proverbial statement there. Entire taunt to David produced a proverbial statement that most commentaries that I read, actually, no commentary wanted to touch it with a 10-foot pole, not for fear of offending blind and lame people, but due to a lack of context.

It's unclear how that proverbial statement was used in their context. The blind and the lame are not allowed, can't get into the house, or something like that. So it's just unclear how it would have been used.

How many of you just know that, like, if you go to another culture, you don't understand their proverbs very well? They don't mesh with our culture very well. So in verse nine, we see that David made the stronghold his own.

He even named it after himself, which was a common custom. It's not that he's just arrogant or egotistical. The one who is in charge of the army that conquers a city gets to name it. And so he does so, and he calls it the City of David.

And he expands it and builds out its walls, and the village itself begins to grow under David's rule. But before we move on to the next point, I wanna highlight a word that I really like in this text.

It's found at the start of verse seven, and I wanna camp there for just a second, because it just impacted me this week, as I thought about it. The Jebusites mocked and taunted David, saying, David can't get in this city.

There's no way David can get in this city. And the word at the start of verse seven is, in the ESV, nevertheless. Nevertheless. I love the word nevertheless. Nevertheless, David took the city. They taunt, they say, there's no way you're coming in the city.

Nevertheless, David took it. Do you see how the word nevertheless applies in that text? With God, our enemies get to face a bunch of neverthelesses. We don't get credit for creating the nevertheless, but God does.

And our job is to applaud with awe and wonder and joy as God devastates our enemies with nevertheless, after nevertheless, after nevertheless. Give you some examples. Adam and Eve ate of the forbidden fruit and plunged the world into sin.

Nevertheless, God promised an offspring to the woman who would crush the serpent's head. In the days of Noah, the thoughts of mankind were only ever to do evil. Nevertheless, God saved Noah's family in the ark through the flood.

Abraham was raised in a pagan idol-worshiping family in Ur. Nevertheless, God called him and promised to bless all the world through his offspring. The world was in dark bondage to sin, hopeless and helpless.

Nevertheless, God sent forth his son. We crucified the Lord of life and put him to death. Nevertheless, he rose on the third day and has ascended as our mighty king. We wait in days of increasing darkness.

Do we not?

Do you feel it? Do you sense it around you? Days of increasing darkness. Nevertheless, the Lord will return to finish this history he started, and he will come and establish his eternal kingdom. The enemy has his taunts, and the Lord has his neverthelesses.

The King Confirmed by Blessing and the Purpose of Leadership

Our fourth point is the confirmation of the king in verses 10 through 12. David became greater in verse 10 because the Lord chose to bless him. And it's kind of interesting that we can get some things convoluted in scripture.

We can begin to read passages like this and go, okay, if God is with you, then you get stuff, then you become greater, then you're going to be blessed and everything's gonna go great. But I wanna be clear that God is not a vending machine.

God is not a vending machine, folks. Is that an outdated, I was thinking about that earlier. Is that an outdated metaphor? Does everybody in here know what, raise your hand if you know what a vending machine is.

Oh yeah, we still at least get pop out of those, right? I guess there's some that have like snacks in them or whatever. God is not a vending machine where you put in an input and get out identical output.

Where you put in prayer and you get out what you asked for. Where you put in money given to the church or to non-profits and you get something out for it. Where you put in your time ministering or doing his work so then you get something out for it.

Are you getting what I'm saying?

We can think of him that way and begin in our minds to even look at passages like this. But here's what you need to understand that's really revolutionized my thoughts about how we view God in terms of what he does and doesn't do.

He's personal. He makes choices. He decides who to bless and who not to bless. Do you hear the difference in that? A vending machine that decides,.

It's more like you put in and you put in and he decides what comes out.

It's like a vending machine that just decides whether you're gonna have the Twinkie or whether you're gonna have the barbecued potato chips. It just puts out what it wants to. And more than that, obviously, he's personal and he's good.