2 Samuel 1:17-27 The Power of Lament

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. Well, welcome everybody.

Welcome to Recast Church. As Dave said, I'm Don Filsak. I'm the lead pastor here. And I do want to catch those of you that aren't familiar up to speed. We do have an app here. That's a primary way of communicating with everybody.

So if you can download the app, you should have received a little, like kind of worship folder when you walked in that has a QR code. You can scan that and jump on that. And that's the way we kind of keep people informed.

And then you received a connection card when you walked in. If this is your first or second or maybe third or fourth time with us, but you've never filled one of those out, then fill it out, turn it into the person that's standing out here at the table in the entryway.

And they would love to give you a free t-shirt in exchange for your information. We don't spam. Give us your email. You're not going to spam that, but we do send out a weekly email called the eCast that just catches you up on different things there too.

And then we don't pass an offering plate, but if you would choose to give this morning, you can put any money in the envelope that you received and then put that in the welcome slot out there. Otherwise, there's a place to recycle that envelope out there too.

We don't want to put any pressure on anybody to give, but we want that to be between you and God in relationship to him. It is an act of, I want to point out, it is an act of worship, but that's between you and your heavenly father.

The Church as a Gathering of God's People

So I want to make sure that you all understand how glad I am for this church gathering in the last year. How many of you are grateful for the gathering of God's people? Amen. Are you excited about that?

Are you glad for that? God is so faithful to draw us together into the assembly of his people. The New Testament word for church simply means gathering. It means getting together. It means hanging out together, spending time together.

God has made us in such a way that we are to grow in faith, grow in community, and grow in service. And those are vital parts of what it means to be in relationship with God. We need relationships with others.

And those three areas, faith, community, and service, are the areas where we're woven together in true life. We grow best in our faith in the crucible of real community. And what I'm getting at is that we don't all think exactly alike.

We don't all have the same lens on the world around us, but we have Christ in common, and we have in common the calling to love one another, and that requires us to encourage one another, to bear with one another.

I love the phrase in the New Testament, bear with one another, because what it really amounts to is put up with one another. How many of you know that there have been seasons, and there have been times as a church where we have the best that could be said about some of the relationships in this congregation is that we bear with one another.

And yet, that's a command from God, so that's a glorious thing. We love one another. We patiently serve one another. I have seen that grow in the past couple of years. I commend you for that, and I'm encouraged by it, and I take solace from it, and I take strength from it as your pastor.

The word church has been so dumbed down from what it's meant to be that when the pandemic hit, and I'm kind of reflecting a little bit on my own thoughts here, but when the pandemic hit, many Christians had little to no working definition of it beyond a building or a Sunday morning program.

It wasn't something that a lot of people, a lot of church attenders were really connecting with one another in relationship, and without that, we've missed fundamentally what it means to be a church, but we are an outpost of heaven, recast, an outpost of heaven in a place of confusion, in a place of division.

We are a colony of light in the midst of the darkness. Amen? That's what we're called to be. Not because we're amazing, but because Jesus Christ is the light in our midst. He is the one that we are spotlighting.

He is the one that is shining. He is the one whose hope we are proclaiming, and so we hold him high. He's the greater descendant of King David, who we're gonna be talking about this morning in 2 Samuel.

He is the one who has redeemed us. He is the one who has called us together to gather together. So this morning, as we take in the lament of David over King Saul and his son, Jonathan, we should set this all against the backdrop of future events that make sense of this history that we're reading.

A fundamental question that we ought to ask here as we go through 2 Samuel is why work through a book about a king and a kingdom in ancient times? Why talk about this? Isn't this 2022 now? Aren't we way past these ancient kingdoms and all of that?

And why is there value in understanding this history? And it's because God will one day send forth his eternal king from the line of this King David. And then another question, why is it so important that David did not take the kingdom by force?

An entire chapter of the Bible dedicated to this concept and this idea that he didn't take it by force, it was given to him. The crown was given to him. He didn't kill the previous king. Rather, the previous king died in battle, took his own life, and so therefore David came into the crown.

And it's because Jesus Christ himself also will come in humility, will not steal it, but will be given the throne by his father. So this morning, we're gonna see David begin the steps towards his kingdom.

And really, he starts in an interesting place. His first steps towards being king over Israel is to demonstrate grief and sorrow. Now, I don't wanna stretch the parallel too far in this message, but I wanna point out that sorrow is a significant part of our human life.

So go ahead and raise your hand if you've experienced something in life that you would categorize by the word sorrow. You think sorrow fits as a word, and so you would raise your hand and say, I have experienced sorrow.

And of course, we're not talking about, I don't think when we raised our hands, we were talking about a hangnail, not a bump on your shin by your car door. How many of you have ever inflicted one of those on yourself?

And it's just, there's a lot of nerve endings in your shin. Anybody notice that? So, but I'm not talking about that kind of thing, but a deep and abiding loss that's still with you. It's still with you.

That loss is still ready to rear its ugly head in a moment's notice. And I think that's all of us. Even those of you who didn't raise your hands, I think you're just too tired, or you just didn't wanna comply.

You're like, he asked me to raise my hand, so I'm not. I don't know what it is for you, but my hunch is that everybody in this room, to some degree, has experienced a level of sorrow. And Jesus Christ, our Lord, wept over the death of his friend, Lazarus.

He experienced sorrow. Our Lord and Savior, the Master, the King, the God in flesh experienced sorrow. And that death is not the way that it's meant to be. And we see David in our text lamenting over death.

Death is not our friend, but consistently spoken of in scripture as our great enemy. We really have two great enemies, church. As humans, we have two great enemies. The two greatest enemies are sin and death.

Of course, they were brought by the enemy, Satan himself, but through the deception that he gave to us, we accepted sin and death, and those are the consequences of our sin against God. Death factors into the world through the punishment given by God to humanity in our fall in the garden.

And now it's the great equalizer of human existence, right? How many of you know that CEOs die? It's an equal opportunity prospect for all of us, right? White collar, blue collar, no collar, all collar.

I don't know. All of us are on our way out. All will face death and we will lose those that we love. I hate to be the bearer of bad news this morning, but we will lose those that we love with pace. It will increase.

The cadence will pick up, folks. So how are we gonna prepare our hearts for the pace of loss in our lives? My wife's grandfather on her mom's side once said in my presence, he wasn't saying it directly to me, but he was saying it to another relative.

I was sitting in the room. He said, I have outlived my immediate family. It's true. I have outlived my friends. I have outlived my coworkers. And then he tacked on the end, I've even outlived my doctor.

He's an old man. So why preach on this kind of darkness? Like, oh, oh, this got heavy, right? This gets dark, it gets real. Because God does not want us to go through life unprepared for the inevitable.

God is faithful to prepare us for that which is coming. He wants us to exercise our faith now in the good years, preparing for game day. He wants us to be exercising for game day. It is when we are pressed down deep and when the loss hits us most that the truths that we have stored up in our own hearts about God will come out to play.

You know what I'm talking about? It's not gonna be time that day when you get the phone call that somebody that you love has lost, now I'll take my faith seriously. How many of you know that's too late?

You gotta be connecting with God now to have strength in that day. God is preparing us for that. David was ready to grieve. He was prepared to mourn. And I'm gonna come up just short of saying that what David does here is a blueprint for exactly how you should grieve loss, but there's a lot to glean in it.

The way that he grieves, the way that he laments, what he writes down and records in his moment of loss is valuable for us to take on and look at. And although your circumstances might not line up exactly like David's, there are things I'm confident here in this text for all of us.

So if you're not already there, open your Bibles to your Bible's devices, scripture journals to 2 Samuel 1, verses 17 through 27. You guys, this is God's holy and precious word. We get the privilege of reading it together.

I don't think we realize and really wrap our minds around what a privilege it is that we have access to the very words of our God. 2 Samuel 1, 17 through 27. And David lamented with this lamentation over Saul and Jonathan, his son.

And he said, it should be taught to the people of Judah, behold, it is written in the book of Jasher. He said, your glory, O Israel, is slain on your heights, on your high places, how the mighty have fallen.

Tell it not in Gath, publish it not in the streets of Ashkelon, lest the daughters of the Philistines rejoice, lest the daughters of the uncircumcised exalt. You mountains of Gilboa, let there be no dew or rain upon you nor fields of offerings.

For there the shield of the mighty was defiled, the shield of Saul not anointed with oil. From the blood of the slain, from the fat of the mighty, the bow of Jonathan turned not back, and the sword of Saul returned not empty.

Saul and Jonathan, beloved and lovely, in life and in death, they were not divided. They were swifter than eagles. They were stronger than lions. You daughters of Israel, weep over Saul who clothed you luxuriously in scarlet and put ornaments of gold on your apparel.

How the mighty have fallen in the midst of battle. Jonathan lies slain on your high places. I'm distressed for you, my brother Jonathan, for very pleasant have you been to me. Your love to me was extraordinary, surpassing the love of women.

How the mighty have fallen and the weapons of war perished. Let's pray. Father, I thank you that you meet us in all of our circumstances. You are not just here in the good times and in the celebrations, but you are here in the darkness as well.

When we go through pain, when we go through suffering, when we go through hardship, you give us opportunities at thoughtful grief. Father, I pray that you would allow this word to seep into the pores of our soul, that you would allow it to enter into us in a way that transforms us and changes us, that gives us the freedom to talk to you in the same way David does.

Sometimes we have a reverence or a certain way of speaking to you that this doesn't really reflect our real life and the real things that are going on in our hearts. So Father, I pray that you would allow this to release even some people here who maybe are clinging to a certain way of communication with you.

Father, I pray that you would meet us where we're at. We thank you for the grace that we have through Christ, that we know that death is not the final thing. And so we mourn, but we don't mourn like the hopeless ones in the world.

But Father, I pray that if there are unresolved griefs in hearts here today, which I'm confident there are, that you would meet people in that place and give them a commitment to work through that in thoughtful reflections of grief toward you.

David's Lament Over Saul and Jonathan

We ask this in Jesus' name, amen. David has been informed by a messenger from battle that King Saul is dead. King Saul is dead. That's where we ended. That's the very end of 1 Samuel. So 1 Samuel 31 is all about the death of King Saul.

He was the very first king over a united Israel and he has died in battle. And his son Jonathan perished with him. The crown prince, so to speak, has died with him. And nothing is really told to us about the end of Jonathan.

How he died in battle is pretty unclear, but for him to be taken in battle would be no small feat from what we do know of Jonathan. He was heroic in a sense. He was a man of God. He was brave. He was valiant in battle.

He was battle-hardened. And just as he and his armor bearer earlier in 1 Samuel, the two of them alone took on a whole garrison of the Philistines. Now, of course, that was with the Lord's help and with the Lord's guidance, but they still had a sword in their hand on that battle day.

So, I mean, this is a mighty man who has fallen in battle. Saul, a mighty man. It's spoken of him that he was a full head taller than anyone else in Israel. This was a substantially sized individual with muscle and everybody thought he was very kingly and robust in battle.

And so that is what we're dealing with today. These guys are dead on the battlefield. And our text this morning is a lamentation that David wrote over the loss of Saul and Jonathan, these mighty men. The significance of this is that David is deeply moved in his heart over this loss and he laments and he shows us how he laments.

But it's also significant in that he wants to bring the people of Israel along with him in this sense of mourning. He wants the entire nation to be sorrowful over this. We have some unifying things that have happened in our history that we have collectively mourned over.

In our generation, in my generation, we can think of the explosion of the space shuttle. That was a time of collective mourning as a nation. We can think of September 11th. Some of you that are older remember JFK and his assassination, in which case that obviously was a significant time of mourning, very similar to this, over the loss of a leader.

And so that's exactly what's going on here. He's trying to bring the nation into mourning and I think when we think about the word lament, you'll see that right off the bat in verse 17 that he laments with this lamentation.

I love Dale Davis in his commentary. His definition of lament is helpful for our understanding of the text and what is it exactly that we're looking at this morning. He defines lament as an expression of thoughtful grief.

An expression of thoughtful grief. If you're taking notes, I encourage you to write that definition down for the word lament. An expression of thoughtful grief. In this sense, lament is not the first scream or cry of grief that comes from us when we experience loss.

Now that's a form of grieving, but that is not what lament is. When we talk about lament, it has more force to it. It is subsequent to those first initial reactions. It comes only after some reflection.

It takes time. And I would suggest to you this, that for those who love God and know him and are genuinely in a relationship with him, any lament that we would offer would be flavored by what is true in our hearts regarding our relationship with God in the midst of darkness, in the midst of suffering.

So that a lament for a believer would look different than a cry or a scream of anguish from somebody who does not have God to speak with about these things. The definition doesn't require us to be at peace.

I wanna be clear here at the start. It does not require us to be at peace with what has happened. To lament doesn't mean that everything is okay and you're finally able to smile at everybody and you're finally able to go along your merry way and you got a little skip in your step and everything is feeling great.

But to offer a genuine lament always requires time and intentional reflection on what this circumstance has brought to your life, and then a reflection back to God on that. Sections of scripture like this one in many of the Psalms, of course many written by David, are recorded for us to learn how to offer lament.

What are some examples of that and how can that look in our lives and what kind of language is appropriate to speak to God? And although this is the lament, kind of more like an elegy or a eulogy for somebody who has died, it still is declared to be a lament.

And the first observation, we're gonna have six observations this morning, the first of the six observations about this lament of David is found in verses 17 and 18. And it's just simply this, it's pretty clear.

David wrote it down and taught it to others. That's our first point. David wrote it down and taught it to others, verses 17 and 18. Now this was a very personal exercise for David. He is grieving, he is mourning, but it was not merely personal.

It was shared with the nation. Now not many of us lead a nation and so he obviously is going to become king over Israel shortly after these events and it's gonna be a little bit of a tumultuous, you'll see in the coming chapters, a tumultuous rise to the kingdom even despite the fact that nobody else should be there to take it.

He's already been anointed by the prophet Samuel and all of those circumstances, but he is going to lead the nation. And so of course for this leader to mourn and to bring the nation in makes sense. Now it needs to set a little context because what has just happened is not just Saul and Jonathan died, but half of the kingdom has been severed by the Philistines.

Half of the nation has been chunked off and the entire north has fallen off. I mean if you can imagine everything west of the Mississippi just goes away and it's no longer a part of your country and enemies have come in and taken it over, something to that effect.

Don't anybody celebrate about that by the way. But you can just imagine like, I mean if our nation was divided and some foreign occupier came in and occupied part of our country, how many of you would just be like, that would be something in itself to mourn.

That in itself would be something devastating and difficult for us to work through. And that's what's happened here in this context. Saul and Jonathan died in battles. Certainly the king, the crown prince, died on the hill of Mount Gilboa on the slopes there with the Philistines.

And for several years the north will be under the control of the Philistines, even under David's reign. He will have to set up in Hebron in the south as his capital as we'll see here in the coming chapters.

But this lament was taught by David to the people. Songs of people unite them. How many of you think that little boys and girls singing this lament over the death of their king and the crown prince at the hands of the Philistines, how many of you think that that might impact another generation?

Especially regarding the loss that they've experienced. The songs of a people unite them. And I would suggest to you that when we think about lamenting songs, Christian music has grown. I think Christian music has improved in the recent years about lament.

But I would suggest to you at least my personal experience is that for generations it was hard to find anyone willing to communicate sorrow or even beyond that a deep need for God to help us and to intervene in our songs.

What I mean by that, and I don't wanna be too scathing, but I believe we're recipients of a Christianity that taught us to put on our Sunday best, put on our Sunday smiles, and sing cheery, upbeat songs.

But if my understanding of scripture is right, then all of life is to be turned to God in worship. Do you see that? All of life turned to God in worship. I hope you agree with me on that. And the last time I checked, my life includes good and bad.

My life includes dark and light. It includes life and death and war and peace. And occasionally, my life has included the loss of someone that I deeply love. Have you been there? Have you felt that? How do we talk to God in those moments that we wish we didn't have to face?

How do we talk to our God in those moments? How can we turn our thoughts and our feelings and our angst and our frustration and that feeling in the pit of your stomach like you just wanna vomit and it never goes away and it's not going away and you can't picture the end of this dark tunnel that you're in?

How do we talk to God? And I would suggest to you that maybe lament is a practical application for some of you here today. Matter of fact, I'm confident that it is something that you must take on today.

Maybe you've never spent any time in thoughtful grief. Remember the definition. Maybe you've never sat down with a pen in your hand, if that's a way you can process things, sat down with a pen in your hand and express thoughtful grief to God over some sorrow that you've experienced.

And so let me encourage you right here at the outset that maybe this first one is the primary application for many of us. Write out your thoughts and your griefs to God. Pick something that you haven't processed and work through it with God even this week.

And maybe God would even move you to share that as David did. David shared it with a nation. Maybe you find a friend. Maybe you have somebody close to you that you could share that with. And maybe you would actually just find that the person that you share it with benefits greatly from your reflections during a time of sorrow and grief.

You don't have to write poetry, by the way. It might be intimidating to read that David, David was cut from different cloth, right? Renaissance man. Like sword in one hand, lyre in the other, harp in the other.

You know, just singing songs and wrestling bears in his youth. And I mean, a rough and tumble guy who had a poetic side as well. And maybe you just write it down how you're feeling. You just put it into sentences.

David wrote it down, and I'm sure over the years, the song of lament over the death of Saul and Jonathan served the people well. I believe it served as a rallying point as the song was sung among the people and especially among the youth.

It impacted a generation. The second characteristic of this lament is found scattered throughout, but we see the refrain repeated enough to make it a main point. It's found in verses 19, verse 25, and verse 27.

All the same phrase, oh, how the mighty have fallen. What is David doing when he is speaking that phrase multiple times in this text? He's declaring the loss he experienced. He's putting it into his lament.

This is what I've lost. This is what has happened to my nation. This is what has happened to my people. This is what has happened in my heart. I've lost. Israel has lost its mighty ones. He was specific despite being poetic.

What exactly is it that he's grieving? And I'd encourage you as you wrestle and you think through, I had many of you raise your hands earlier to identify that you have experienced sorrow. Name it. What is it that you've lost?

What exactly was it that David was grieving? He's grieving the fall of the mighty of Israel. Oh, how the mighty have fallen. The death of Saul and Jonathan is set in the context of the love that David has for the people of Israel.

Israel has lost beauty according to verse 19. The phrase your glory could also be translated your beauty. Saul and Jonathan were like decorations of honor on Israel that have been removed. Think about like, how many of you still have your Christmas tree up?

How many of you took your Christmas tree down? Raise your hand if you took your Christmas tree down. How many of you removed some ornaments from that thing? It's like he's saying here, the ornaments have been removed.

It's just, I mean, the needles have fallen. Everything is gone off this tree. Its beauty is no more. That's what he's saying about Israel here, that phrase your glory. By the way, I don't prefer the English Standard Version because often the only appropriate thing to say is the glory of Israel is her God.

The better translation of this is your beauty. And it's, I think that ESV misses it a little bit on this one. It should be your beauty, oh Israel, has fallen. But your glory hasn't. The glory of Israel is still there.

How many, amen? The glory of Israel still resides. He is still on his throne. But Saul and Jonathan were like that decoration that's been removed. Whether it was, what is it in your life that you have lost?

Where has the decoration in your life, the spice in your life fallen? Whether it's the loss of a loved one or the loss of a dream or the loss of a job or whatever sorrow it is that you have had to face, it is good and lament that we declare to God what we have lost.

David also spotlights Jonathan, of course, his best friend in verse 25 specifically. Jonathan was the oldest son of King Saul. Again, I like to call him the crown prince, the one who should have been in line to take the throne.

Except that God had revealed through the prophet Samuel that it would not be Jonathan who would take the throne. Twist, but that it would be David, not Jonathan, who would sit on the throne of Israel after King Saul.

And Jonathan was good with this. Why don't you just pause for just a second and say, that's a little strange. Like a guy who is willing to let another guy take the throne, no, you first, you can have the throne.

I'm not gonna take that authority. Why would Jonathan be okay with David having the throne? It's because he loved and honored God. Yeah, he loved and honored God, straight up. So back in 1 Samuel chapter 23, verses 17 and 18, you don't need to turn back there, but it's a pretty vital passage to understanding the relationship between Jonathan and David.

We see Jonathan say this to his best friend David. They're best friends by this point, and it's been made clear that David is the one who God is calling to take the throne, not Jonathan. And so Jonathan says these words to David, do not fear, for the hand of Saul, my father, shall not find you.

You shall be king over Israel, and I, basically he says, I shall be next to you. I will be second, is what he's saying here. Saul, my father, still quoting him. Saul, my father, also knows this. And then the text goes on to say in verse 18, and the two of them made a covenant before the Lord.

What kind of covenant? Jonathan saying, I'm not gonna get in your way. I'm gonna let God have his way, and his way is that you will be king, and I will not. Jonathan was a man of deep honor and deep respect for God and for David.

David was his anointed, and he knew that. Jonathan covenanted with David to step aside and allow him to take the throne. That's the kind of relationship we're talking about here. And let me just point out that this caliber of person is very, very, very rare.

Just to clarify it and to end the thought, how many of you at your workplace have somebody at your workplace that would surrender their promotion to you? No, no, you take it. You take the raise, you take the responsibility, it's on you.

Does that snap it into focus a little bit? How many of you have people clamoring to give you their promotion? Anybody, go ahead and raise your hand. I want you to raise your hand. It's not the way it works, right?

That's not life. This is what David, this kind of relationship, this kind of loyalty, this kind of fealty, if I can use an old kind of Middle Ages kind of word, like where you pledge your allegiance to a king, like a knight would kneel before the king and he would knight him, and then that was a pledge of I will be always at your back protecting you kind of loyalty, that's what David has lost here on this day, that kind of loyal friendship.

So when he states what he has lost in verse 25, he says, how the mighty have fallen in the midst of battle, Jonathan lies slain on your high places. Do not imagine that David is writing this with an objective mind to detail.

Oh, it was on the mountain, yeah, it was up on the hillside and that's where it happened. Imagine him writing it through snot bubbles. He is deeply sorrowful, but he is thoughtful in his grief, he is intentional in his grief.

Be willing to tell God what you have lost. Now, how many of you know he already knows? Some of you are more technical in your mind and you're already going, well, if he already knows, what's the bother in telling him?

Why even get his attention for that? But it is good for you to write it to him, to talk with him, to say it to him in relationship. Let him know the hopes and dreams that are no longer because of your loss.

David recognized that there were ripples of this loss that went out beyond his mere personal pain, and so in verses 20 through 22, the third thing that we see here is that David grieved the consequences.

David grieved the consequences in verses 20 through 22. David lived among the Philistines, he knew their character, he knew their hatred for Israel. He knows that a logical consequence of this loss of Saul and Jonathan is that the enemies of God are going to rejoice.

When they catch word of this, when they hear that Saul and Jonathan have been killed by the Philistines, they are going to exult, they are gonna rejoice, they're gonna play songs like that, they're gonna, you know, it's gonna be all kinds of stuff.

There's gonna be phone calls to each other, you know, saying, hey, you know, hey, did you hear about this, yay, he's dead, all that kind of stuff. I'm sure that's what that phone call's about. But, okay.

He doesn't want that. I don't even think that makes logical sense. He doesn't want that kind of, he doesn't want that kind of celebration going on in the streets of Ashkelon and Gath, those are the two of the five main capitals of the Philistine territory.

And he calls the Philistines here by a technical term that needs some explanation, because we kind of tend to want to skip over some words because they make us uncomfortable or whatever, but he calls them here in this verse uncircumcised, and that's not a slang insult, it's intentional, it's with purpose that he refers to this.

It's a technical description. They are not a people in covenant with God like Israel. They have no loyalty to God, God has no loyalty to them, and circumcision was a sign of the covenant given to Abraham for all of the men of Israel to remind them on a very personal appendage that they belong body and soul to Yahweh.

That's what that purpose was. And he says they're not of that stripe, they don't have that kind of relationship with our God. He does not want these people who are outside of the covenant to have a cause to mock, to ridicule, or to laugh at God.

How many of you see some people in our culture, in our time, in our era, laughing and ridiculing and mocking God? One of the consequences David despised first and foremost was the rejoicing and exalting of the Philistines over the God of Israel.

He imagined celebrations where they're praising Dagon, their half-man, half-fish God, saying, look, he has granted us victory. In a practical sense, I think we can take away something fairly contemporary from this text.