Hilton Head Island, SC - January 1, 2023
First Presbyterian Church
I Samuel 16:1,14-19; II Samuel 1:17-27
A Sermon by John M. Miller
Text - "How the mighty have fallen! Tell it not in Gath, proclaim it not in the streets of Ashkelon; or the daughters of the Philistines will rejoice, the daughters of the uncircumcised will exult." II Sam. 1:19-20(RSV)
This morning I am beginning a series of sermons on one of the greatest figures of the Bible: David, the king of Israel. You will see as we go along that "great" is a word which has to be understood in context. David's greatness can be perceived only in the midst of his traumas, and of those there are many. There are more skeletons in David's closet than there are in Gray’s Anatomy.
However, in defense of David -- and I suspect I will be defending him a fair amount over the next several weeks -- he probably made no more mistakes and brought no more troubles upon himself than any of the other kings of Israel or Judah. The only difference is that we know more about his problems. In fact, we know more historically about David than about any other person in the Bible except Jesus and Moses. The story of his life is found in most of I and II Samuel, and I Chronicles, and there is even a little about him in I Kings. Not only that, but he is referred to on many occasions in other parts of the Bible. However, not all of that history is truly historical. Nevertheless, the story of David is highly instructive for all of us anyway.
When we talk about David, we are looking at a giant of scripture. He was almost a larger-than-life character, a Rameses II or Alexander or Julius Caesar or Genghis Khan or Michaelangelo or Martin Luther or Napoleon. But above all, from the standpoint of the Israelites, David was by far the greatest of all the monarchs they ever had. And above everything else, above all his flaws and faults and failings, David was considered so outstanding by his people because he was so single-mindedly devoted to God. Tradition says he wrote half the Psalms. Despite his sins, of which there were many, and his gaffes, of which there were legion, the Bible declares that he was the most loyal to God among the dozens of the monarchs of the Israelite people. And from the Bible's standpoint -- and it should be from our standpoint as well -- that is what counts. It isn't our blemishes by which ultimately we shall be judged; it is by our fidelity to the purposes and plans of Almighty God that we shall be held accountable, both in this life and in the life to come. Whenever you do something really stupid and sinful, remember that. You don't get judged in the kingdom of God by your sins; you get judged by your ultimate faithfulness to God.
We first hear about David in the middle of the book of I Samuel. Samuel had anointed Saul as king of Israel after the people put up a great fuss before God about wanting a king. God had told them that He was their king, but they insisted that they wanted a human ruler. Everybody else had a king, so they wanted one too. Therefore God reluctantly designated Saul as king.
At first Saul did a good job. He was brave, he was decisive, and most of all, he was an effective warrior. He and his son Jonathan defeated the Philistines in several conflicts, and that was amazing, because the Philistines had iron weapons, including iron wheels on their chariots, and the Israelites were still living in what we now call the Bronze Age. But it was by God's hand that victory came, the Bible says, and it is always by God's hand that all good comes.
Nevertheless, Saul was not gracious in victory, and he did not ascribe his triumphs to God; he said that he did it on his own. Saul began to do what he wanted to do, and not what God through Samuel told him to do. So, in that wonderfully Hebraic term, the text tells us that God "repented that He had made Saul king over Israel," and He set about to get Himself a more suitable and stable monarch.
Samuel was instructed by God to go to the village of Bethlehem, there to visit a man named Jesse. Jesse had a number of sons, and God would tell Samuel which of the boys was to be the new king. Well, seven sons of Jesse passed by Samuel, and Samuel knew that none of them was the right one. So Samuel asked if there were any more sons, and without wnthusiasm Jesse told him about his youngest, who, of course, was David. The Bible has such a terrific sense of drama! It looks like all is lost, but at the very last moment, when there appears to be no hope, Jesse trots out the youngest boy, who, we are told, was "ruddy, and had beautiful eyes, and was handsome" (I Sam. 16:12). He was still short, and young, and far from full-grown, but in him Samuel --- and God! --- saw the makings of a superb king, and on the spot Samuel anointed David as the new king.
Saul, however, didn't know about this, because Samuel and everyone else deliberately kept the knowledge from him. Then Saul decided he needed a court musician, and he was told there was a son of Jesse in Bethlehem, David by name, who played the harp wonderfully well. So David, having secretly been anointed king, moved into the royal palace. And there he became the best of friends with Saul's son, Jonathan, and that was going to create very big troubles for both David and Jonathan. But for a time everything went alright.
Then there appeared on the scene a giant Philistine, somebody everybody knows, a huge hulk by the name of Goliath. Remember him? Everybody remembers him, and everybody remembers what David did to him. Nobody had courage to fight this gargantuan gladiator, but David, the shepherd boy who had nothing more than a sling, went out against the giant of Gath. He took one of the five smooth stones from his leather bag, placed it carefully in his sling, hurled it around himself several times to give it added torque, and then he let it fly. The stone struck Goliath in his forehead directly between his eyes, and the champion of the Philistines fell mortally wounded. Then the mere boy, who had killed lions and bears with his slings to protect his father's sheep, took Goliath's sword, and in a glorious moment of biblical gore, lopped off his head.
Not even Hollywood could come up with a script like that! You want drama? In David you have drama! From beginning to end, from the unlikely start to the unpredictable finish, there is drama by the truckload! A teenage Israelite smites the biggest member of the Philistine army, and then he dismembers him! What a marvelous God is God, says I Samuel! What a fearless young man is David!
Ah, but then is when David's troubles begin, for then the women go around singing, "Saul has killed his thousands, and David his tens of thousands!" In reality David has killed only one, Goliath. He's a big one, to be sure, a very dangerous one, but only one. Nonetheless Saul, who from now on is going to become terribly paranoid, literally out of his mind, fears that everyone is out to get him. And the one he most fears is the boy-king, the secretly anointed by Samuel, the young Turk whom everyone acclaims and who lives in Saul's own court as his musician, champion, and confidant, David, the son of Jesse.
And now there is a marked shift in the story. From now on the narrative gives us an adversarial story, and the adversaries are the king, Saul, and the king's son, Jonathan, and his best friend, David. Jonathan knows his father to be unreliable because of his mental illness, and he feels he must take sides with the one he sees as the future king. A number of times Saul tries to kill David, and each time David escapes, often because of Jonathan's overt or covert assistance. David has to flee for his life, and he goes off to fight the Amalekites.
And then there follows another battle with the Philistines. Saul and Jonathan and the army of Israel go out to meet the Greeks (for that is what the Philistines were) on the summit of Mt. Gilboa, and the Israelite army is cut down like ripened wheat. It is a terrible rout, and both Saul and Jonathan are slain. The Philistines behead them, and they take their bodies and hang them on the walls of Beth-Shean, a city near Mt. Gilboa.
Here is where our text encounters David, for he returns from his wars with the Amalekites, and he hears the dreadful news. He is in shock; he is thunderstruck; he is absolutely heartbroken. His best friend, the best friend he shall ever have, has been chopped up by the most feared enemies of Israel, the Philistines. His best friend's father, the king, the man who has been trying to kill David because in his madness he imagines that David is trying to seize his throne from him, which David is not trying to do, has also been killed, and Saul’s mutilated body has been nailed to the walls of a Philistine fortress.
David is beside himself. Never has anything like this happened in his lifetime! Not only have the hopes of his nation been obliterated, but his own personal hopes have been destroyed! He has envisioned a time when Saul shall be gone in which he shall rule the land in peace and security, and his right-hand man Jonathan shall then be at his side. But now it is all over, his visions are blotted out, and there is only darkness, a profound, limitless, spiritually lethal darkness, and the sweet singer of Israel, the man who is to become the greatest of all the kings, cries out, in one of the most poignant poetic passages in all of scripture,
"Thy glory, O Israel, lies slain upon the high places!
How the mighty have fallen!
Tell it not in Gath, proclaim it not in the streets of Ashkelon.
The daughters of the Philistines will rejoice, the daughters of the uncircumcised will exult....
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.
O daughters of Israel, weep over Saul,
Who clothed you with crimson in luxury,
Who put ornaments of gold on your apparel.
How the mighty have fallen in the midst of battle!
Jonathan lies slain upon your high places.
I am distressed for you, my brother Jonathan;
Greatly beloved were you to me;
Your love to me was wonderful, passing the love of women.
How the mighty have fallen, and the weapons of war perished!
David is so stunned he cannot believe it. "Shaul, Shaul, you were our king! Crazy as you were, mistaken as you were, paranoid as you may have been, you were ours! And now they have killed you, they, the Goyim, the others, our enemies! And Yo-natan, Yo-natan, Yo-natan! You were more a brother to me than any of my brothers, more a friend than any of my friends! You can never be replaced! My life is dreadfully diminished by your death! How shall I ever, ever, ever get over this?"
In the musical Les Miserables, there is a scene just after the climactic battle between the government troops and the students who seek to bring a revolution of freedom to the tyrannized cities and streets of France. The young hero Marius comes to the cafe he and his friends used to frequent, and he sings, "There's a grief that can't be spoken, there's a pain goes on and on/ Empty chairs and empty tables, all my friends are dead and gone."
Today we are talking about the meaning of grief. It's a subject with which we must all come to terms, for grief shall surely make its entrance into our lives, sometimes in brief flurries, usually with a force which leaves us breathless and speechless, perhaps even hopeless.
Fortunately, most of the time, grief does not overpower us. The moments of clear triumph may be few and far between, but thankfully the moments of profound grief and sorrow are relatively rare. The fathers go off to the hospital, the mothers become gravely ill, the husbands die, the wives perish, the soldiers march off to war, the good guys never come back, but life does return to normal.
In war movies there is always glory, but not so in war; in war there is only pain and agony and death, and tears of sorrow are shed so freely there is no room for tears of joy. David weeps for Saul and Jonathan far more than later he laughs when the Philistines fall victim to his military stratagems. Deaths in wartime bring an added dimension to grief.
Even if the mighty do not fall in battle, they all fall some other way; everyone falls; we all shall die, and in the death of those closest to us do we discover the meaning of grief. Grief is the awareness which seizes us, usually suddenly because of a death but sometimes slowly because of the knowledge of a situation which causes a sense of loss -- a failed marriage, a child irreparably estranged, a business gone bad, a home no longer affordable -- and when grief comes, we can do nothing productive about it other than to grieve. We may try to avoid it, or ward it off, or pretend that it is isn't there, but when grief hits, we must allow its painful waves to purge us of the sorrow we feel, lest fleeing our grief which has come to us only at great price, our loss is never resolved.
Grief assaults us, but it also sustains us, for it tries its best to convince us that what we don't want to be is, that what we would give anything not to have we have. God does not cause to happen what causes us our grief, but He is there to uphold us when grief threatens to sink us. The grieving David is gently lifted by the hands of God to go on to become the giant of Israel. Grief can't be avoided, but it can be overcome.
We shall all come to grief. And when we do, let grief do its necessary work. For if we don't, we will never again function properly. Not really.