40 Minutes In The Old Testament - 2 Samuel 1:1-16 (Episode 258)

Episode Date: March 15, 2021

Chad and Daniel begin the book of 2nd Samuel. Saul is dead and a rouge Amalekite takes credit for his death to David and his men. David's response is remarkable and nothing like what this Amalekite is expecting. Have a listen! 1517 Podcast Network HWSS Northwest Arkansas 1517 YouTube Donate

Welcome to another episode of 40 Minutes in the Old Testament. 40 Minutes in the Old Testament is a 1517 Podcast Network podcast. You can go to 1517.org slash podcast. Check out all the other podcasts that are living over there And while you're over there Check out the events page Now I don't know By the time we're recording this

I mean I don't know if there's going to be any tickets left To this Northwest Arkansas event But maybe there are If you were wanting to go You better check right now And make sure that you got a ticket Because Chad There are very few tickets left to this thing

And you want to come And hang out with Chad And me And a whole bunch of other people As we talk about the gospel April 16th and 17th see if you can make it chad we're uh we're starting a new book but this one feels different than any other new book that we've started you know we've we've moved from you know genesis to

exodus and exodus to leviticus and we've done all of this sort of thing and some of those books like kind of seem like you know they're continuing of the story and stuff but none of them like this where it's literally a book where you're you're getting the sequel to it it's so connected to the the prior book that they just have to give it the same name yeah we're beginning a new book but it's a little antic anticlimactic yeah it really it just kind of feels like you're uh turning the page to the next chapter so uh but i mean there um i will say this that i mean there are this is a this is a definite point where you would want to divide the books put it that way uh for for numerous reasons for the first reason of course the most obvious reason as we talked

about in the last episode is that Saul has just died. And first Samuel, as we've discussed many times, was not so much about Samuel as it was about Saul and David. So we have, this is a transition chapter. We're officially leaving Saul behind. There will be more talk of his death in this chapter, as well as a very moving lament that David writes and sings. So we'll talk more about Saul in this chapter, but really is the transition chapter to move beyond him, beyond the Saul-David story to just the David story, even though even in that story we still have about seven and a half years of waiting before David is the king of all of Israel. One thing I noticed just today that sets this particular chapter apart and connects it with some other pretty pivotal

historical changes, is that the way this book begins, the way that 2 Samuel chapter 1 begins is like this, after the death of Saul, or as a New American standard has it, now it came about after the death of Saul. So that is, that particular phraseology is the beginning of three biblical books. That's the way that Joshua begins, after the death of Moses. That's the way that Judges begins after the death of Joshua, and then that's the way, of course, that 2 Samuel is going to begin after the death of Saul. Just out of curiosity, I did a search on that Hebrew phrase, which is vahiyi achremot, so after the death of so-and-so, and pretty fascinating. So that occurs in those three passages I just cited, Joshua 1.1, Judges 1.1, and now 2 Samuel 1.1, and it also

occurs in Genesis 25, 11, which is after the death of Abraham. So what's fascinating about all four of those occurrences is that we have a marker, a historical marker, that points us to the passing of a highly significant person. So after the death of Abraham, Moses, Joshua, and Saul. I mean, it's pretty hard to find four names that are bigger than those four guys. so for that reason alone it's a it is a great place to kind of divide the the story of samuel even though we're not completely finished with with saul it was uh it was a good place to make this transition so anyway uh in the last episode in the last chapter of first samuel we talked about the occasion of saul's death and not just saul but of course his sons as well as a whole lot

of other Israelites as you had this devastating defeat of the Israelites by the Philistines there at Mount Gilboa. And David, of course, is at the opposite end geographically from where this place is. He's way down south. He's in Ziklag. You remember that he had to go and rescue his people and in the process destroy a bunch of the enemy who had come and raided his village while he was gone. So he's far removed from this and was, of course, unaware, completely unaware of the death of Saul. He didn't have any idea what was going on. I think it's a little bit hard for us in a modern setting to appreciate the fact that up until recently, some major events could have gone down, I mean, in our own country, and it took us a little while for us to find out.

I mean, we were so, I'm 50 years old, so it wasn't like I grew up with the internet. But even now, I'm so accustomed to, with a few clicks on my phone to find out what's happening anywhere, that it's kind of hard to, I have to remind myself on an ongoing basis that this is weird and strange and radically modern. and then before this you know you find out things when you found them out you know we the back of the in the uh the newspaper age or the telegraph age or the letter age uh whatever whatever it might have been well now of course in second samuel the only way they're going to find out something is by word of mouth by a messenger bringing this news yeah this is this is very recent that we were able to have it be any other way than just waiting to hear from somebody i just so happen to live uh in a civil war town you know there's a right next to a national park military park and you go there and learn about the battle that took place there and everything one of the

things you'll find is that one of the sides of the the battle is waiting for their supply lines to get there they're just waiting uh they're supposed to get they're supposed to be there they're supposed to come they do not come because they got attacked you know 50 miles from it from where they're supposed to be you have no way of knowing this you have no way of finding this out like it just it doesn't show up i mean eventually you find out but there's there's just you're just trusting that well they should be here when they should be here at this time and when they don't get there then you're just in big huge trouble because you don't have the stuff you need and uh yeah i mean and that was like 150 years ago yeah yeah i mean hugely significant events could happen

in your near vicinity that that really directly affected you and it could be days weeks possible even months before you actually find out what what happened and that's the case here with david i mean could there be any more significant event in the life of david than the death of saul the guy who who was king and who now because he's dead can no longer be king and the next in line the one that has already been anointed as king and chosen by God is David, but David has no clue that this has happened. But we find out in chapter one how David does discover this, and it's a fascinating story because of everything that we know about kind of the details of how this happens and the guy that brings the news, and we'll see how David reacts to him and talk about

how he could have reacted had he chosen to and why it's important that he acted the way that he did. Okay, so here's how it starts out. So after the death of Saul, David had returned from the slaughter of the Amalekites. Keep this in mind, he's just got back from wiping out these Amalekites, All right, that's going to become important when we find out who this messenger is. And David stayed there in his kind of borrowed town of Ziklag, where he's been staying with his men for a little over a year, this Philistine city. On the third day, this has been back a couple of days, third day, typical, by the way, of the Bible to locate big events or important events on the third day. I mean, when you read in the New Testament that Paul says that Christ was raised on the third day according to the Scriptures, just keep that in mind. There is no very explicit prophecy in the Old Testament that Christ would be raised on the third day.

I mean, you're not going to find that in Isaiah 53 or Psalm 22 or anything like that. What you will find, according to the scriptures, is over and over and over again, significant, highly important events happen on the third day. You can even say that Jesus being raised on the third day is generous. Yeah. I mean, it was not even quite two days if you're going by hours. Yeah, you definitely cannot—don't count out the hours and expect that to happen on the third day. No, no, it doesn't work. It does not work like that.

But it's, you know, Friday, Saturday, Friday night to, you know, Sunday morning. I guess that's three days if you look at it just right. But the reason I think that Jesus says it, the reason that Paul says it, is because of this. This is a very, it's to unify the scriptures, right? Yeah, just if you have any kind of Bible app or Logos or whatever you might have, just do a search sometime. search for three days or third day and look at the context see what's happening and it'll become pretty clear what paul means when he says according to the scriptures meaning he didn't have to cite some particular chapter and verse uh because it's all over the place so anyway that's that's kind of

the background here of this happening on the third day so on this third day uh this guy shows up he comes out of the camp from Saul, and it's pretty obvious that he's in bad shape or that he's mourning or that he just came from battle or something because his clothes are torn. He's got dust on his head. That, by the way, would be typical signs in the biblical world of someone who's in a state of grief or mourning. We have multiple occasions in the Bible where somebody to hear some bad news, and they tear their garments, or they put dust on their head. So whether he was doing this out of mourning, or maybe he looked just bedraggled, like he was obviously come from the battle, or whatever the case was, this is the way he looks. So he comes

to David, and he falls on the ground before him, prostrates himself before David. So David says to him uh where'd you come from and he says i have escaped from the camp of israel and we got to keep in mind through this whole kind of dialogue that uh you know at this point we don't know anything about this guy so if you know the story uh just assume you don't know the story just kind of go with the flow of the story so all we know now is this guy shows up he's obvious in bad shape He falls down before David, so he knows who David is, obviously. And he says, I've escaped from the camp of Israel. So what's your first assumption?

Well, he's an Israelite, probably a soldier who has fled from the battle. So David says to him, well, how did things go? Please tell me. So, you know, he's looking for news. And the guy says, the people have fled from the battle. And also, many of the people have fallen and are dead. and then of course he saves the most important for for last he says and saul and jonathan his son are dead also so if you're david and you're you're hearing this you're i mean your heart's

gonna skip a beat no doubt uh for different reasons with regard to saul and jonathan but still Well, David's going to, David, though, is, he wants to know for sure, right? This guy could just be making this up. So he says to him, how do you know that Saul and his son Jonathan are dead? And this is the story the guy tells. He says, by chance, I happen to be on Mount Gilboa. And behold, Saul was leaning on his spear, and the chariots and the horsemen pursued him closely.

And when he looked behind him, he saw me and called to me. And I said, here I am. And he said to me, so Saul said to this guy, who are you? And I answered him, I am an Amalekite. Right away, our ears should perk up when we hear that word. So this is what the guy supposedly said to Saul. So, verse 9, he said to me, please stand beside me and kill me, for agony has seized me, because my life still lingers in me.

So, I stood beside him and killed him, because I knew that he could not live after he had fallen. And I took the crown, which was on his head, and the bracelet, which was on his arm, and I brought them here to my Lord. Now, let me see if I can interpret what I... I'm going to give you what I think actually happened here. You let me know what you think. We have not talked about this.

We'll see if our ideas line up. Yeah. This is not true. Okay, we're in agreement so far. This is not true. We are fully agreement on that. So this is not how we... This is not how it was told to us at the end of 1 Samuel.

This is not how Saul died. It seems to me what you have here is a guy who has bought David's ruse so much and believes that David really, really doesn't like Saul, really hates Saul. It seems that it is possible that this is a guy who came upon the body of Saul, stole stuff off of it, left it there, went and found David with this stuff, told him this story thinking that David would think that, oh good this is the guy who killed my arch nemesis the person i hate most in the world saul this guy has a plan to sort of win over the favor of david this is the only explanation i can come

up with so maybe you have a better one uh chad but this is what it seems like and by the way this is a huge miscalculation on this guy's part yeah yeah as well as we'll see as the story goes on he could not possibly have been more mistaken with regard to how david's going to respond to this but yeah we uh uh we are in full agreement okay there you go i think that's exactly exactly what happened now you'll uh if you read i don't know if this is so much believed anymore or not by kind of some of the more uh left-leaning uh critics of the scriptures they'll claim this is These are two conflicting accounts of what really happened. Well, yeah, they are conflicting accounts,

but they're conflicting because one of them is true and one of them is told by a liar. That's why you have a conflict. One of them is told in the voice of the narrator. Yes. The other is out the mouth of some guy in the story who, if you have just read, if you just read 1 Samuel

it seems to me that you're supposed to pick up that this is not what happened yeah oh yeah to me it's pretty obvious that especially when you consider who this guy is this is not an Israelite this is an Amalekite

and as I mentioned a few minutes ago how does the chapter begin David had just returned from the slaughter of the Amalekites number one of course this guy doesn't know that maybe he doesn't really know what david thinks of the amalekites uh so he's not aware of that well you've not given any good things to think about the amalekites thus far in 40 minutes and he'll does that right and i yeah uh and there's uh well i'll get to it in a minute about

some of the irony here of of his identity but yeah i to go back to what you think happened i yeah i think that's fully what happened i think this guy's a scavenger yep so first of all how do you by chance happen upon a battle come on you could you could hear the battle probably for miles you're not gonna accidentally happen upon mount Gilboa and just to see Saul leaning on his spear and then Saul say to you after you after I keep this in mind so so according to this story after this guy identifies himself as an Amalekite, Saul asks him to kill him. I mean, come on. Is there anyone worse to kill Saul than Amalekite from Saul's perspective? I mean, it was the Amalekites that led to his downfall because he didn't slaughter the Amalekites,

didn't carry out what Samuel told him to do. That's the reason he was removed from being king or told that he would be removed from being king. Yeah. I mean, it's one thing to ask your armor bearer who you assume is also your friend it's over for me dude do me the biggest favor ever and i and and kill me it's very different i mean you could you could imagine you might be able to place yourself in that situation where you you would maybe put that request forward to your friend yeah the last person though i don't care like how hurt you are you're not gonna let your enemy do it no especially in amalekite that's not how this works you don't you don't ask your enemy to put you out of your misery like that's something you ask your friend to do so that

your enemy doesn't yeah this is this is this is a a story always to remember about the danger of concocting a lie because this guy has this guy has has come up with what he thinks is a believable story which is just full of lies with you know a few scattered elements of truth but he didn't do a very good job he needed to do a bit more background before he concocted this lie because it's going to blow up blow up in his face well he's also just he's just miscalculated how david feels about saul which is sort of understandable i guess you you probably think that any a lesser man than david would hate saul i mean this guy has every reason to think surely that's surely david hates all yeah and the and there's also this element uh which

just gives even kind of more weight to this whole story he shows up not just with the message oh by the way uh just you know thought i'll let you know saul's dead he shows up with the crown so here's an amalekite holding a crown as well as probably what was like a regal bracelet uh had you know some sort of regal insignia on it perhaps but he's got the crown he's got the bracelet so he's more or less put himself in a position where he, an Amalekite who claims to have killed the king of Israel, is now handing the royal insignia to the next king. It seems to me that there's a chance that this guy is some kind of an Amalekite deserter, like maybe his own people aren't too fond of him, maybe he's not, maybe he got left, maybe he's on the run, and he has decided

that you know what i could do i could get in good with the future king of israel and then maybe i could be something so if you're the guy that brings us up you know if if david is does indeed hate saul maybe you're like well you're my man forever now you brought me these things i'm going to take care of you you're going to maybe you're going to have the job as armor bearer going forward you know and perhaps that's what's going on i don't you don't know why this guy would be all by himself what's this guy even doing there this seems like a dude that uh is is making a play here to get something, and he's going to get something. Yeah, yeah, he is, he is, and I think we'll have a hint of what he's looking for as we hear a little bit more about who he is.

We'll get to that in just a second. So between verse 10 and 11, between the closing words that he speaks and David's response, you kind of got to pause and ask yourself, okay, you know, what's going to happen? What's David going to say? How's he going to react? Is he going to say, thank God my enemy's dead? Is he going to do the exact opposite? Is it going to be some combination of the two? Well, we find out that there's no doubt whatsoever how David feels about this because verse 11 begins this way. David took hold of his clothes and tore them. And so also did all the men who were with him. So this is this rending of garments that I mentioned earlier. And they didn't just do that.

They didn't just kind of visually and physically express their grief. They mourned and wept and fasted until evening for Saul and his son Jonathan and for the people of the Lord and the house of Israel, because they had fallen by the sword. Now, I have to assume that this guy, as these hours, I assume this is hours are going by, and these people are ripping their clothes and they're weeping they're not eating but this guy is just there so this is a lot of time for you for it to sink in

that you have miscalculated what you have just done this is this is uh this has got to be an intense couple hours for this guy that he's got to be thinking so far this has not gone exactly the way i was thinking of it that's one thing that's going on this guy's not all of a sudden disappeared uh he's still around the other thing is that this reaction i think is even i mean it's i'm sure it's shocking to this amalek i got it this is this is how they're reacting and for good reason because we've just went through an entire book 30 chapters uh the bulk of which were saul pursuing hunting trying to get david uh david being on the run saul being driven by madness and jealousy and all the, all this stuff. And one of the things that does sort of make David just

different than, than other people is, is things like this, where his response to hearing that all of that's over, he's, he doesn't have to be on the run like this anymore. That his, his pursuer is gone. He's living in, David doesn't want to be living in the, in the land of the Philistines. I mean, he hasn't said as much. He's going to get to go home. He's going get to go back into israel you have no nothing in the text makes you think that there was like a big sigh of relief from david none like david is crushed hearing this news which just tells you something about david that is just different yeah absolutely i mean i put myself in this situation and a situation that i've never even remotely been close to being in

no one has ever, at least to my knowledge, I've been seeking my life. You know, I've had plenty of people who don't like me. Uh, but as far as I know, no one was actually out to kill me, but suppose that did happen. Oh, I can definitely imagine at least, at least breathing a sigh of relief. Yeah. Yeah. Thank God that's over. I might not rejoice at their death. Probably wouldn't fast, but i certainly wouldn't be tearing my clothes and and mourning and composing and sitting down to compose a hymn of lament over the death of this person so that does it really does set it does set david apart and um you know we've talked about i mean chad people i like have died and i haven't done those things it's true right yeah yeah exactly so imagine our response the typical

human response to to this i mean it it does show you the uh i don't know what words to choose uh deep just doesn't sound like it's a strong enough word but the the incredibly deep respect that david has for the office of the lord's anointed and this this of course uh was reflecting on this this morning when i was going over this text just takes us forward all the way to to the messiah and just the uh the way that david thinks about the small m messiah saul that is the anointed saul and then how he regards his own office when he becomes king uh informs us just i mean if so if you take that and you just elevate it as much as you can to the the office of the capital m messiah it just shows you what a gift he is to not just of course to israel but to to the new

israel to the church to to the people of god this is the one that the lord has anointed to be king and at the same time then that also underscores just what it's a gift that the messiah was crucified of course but at the same time it really underscores the horror of it as well because if David wouldn't so much as touch the Lord's anointed, even though that particular anointed wanted him dead, we'll then just take that and apply that to the death of the anointed one, the Messiah. And you get the perspective. Yeah, I mean, I'm sure some would say,

well, yeah, I remember, I mean, Jonathan's like his best friend, and he has also heard that Jonathan's dead as well. And this is certainly part of it. I'm sure this is part of the grieving process. But as we continue, you will see that it's not only that. uh and it might not even be that might be deep that might hurt very that no doubt that is that that is a deep hurt that david is experiencing but it is not the primary thing in this morning that's going on and it's not the primary thing that he's going to say next uh he's not he doesn't

he's going to he'll bring up jonathan in this lament but when he when he turns back to address this Amalekite. This is all about Saul. Yeah. Yeah. So verse 13, we'll pick up this engagement between David and the young man. David says to him, where are you from? Of course, he's already asked him that. Well, he asked him, who are you? This time he asked him, where are you from? And he answers, I'm the son of an alien or a sojourner. It can be translated either way, an Amalekite. Now, this is why, this is, I mentioned earlier, I think this is part of his his motivation. So he is a sojourner and a sojourner has really no rights in the land of Israel. So I think what he's going for here is to maybe he wants some land from David. Maybe he

wants a position. He's looking for something that's going to give him more financial life kind of security than a sojourner typically has. So that's probably the reason he describes himself this way. But David says to him, how is it you were not afraid to stretch out your hand to destroy the Lord's anointed? And David called one of the young men and said, go cut him down. So he struck him and he died. And then David said, your blood is on your head for your mouth has testified against you saying i have killed the lord's anointed so this guy basically pronounced his own death sentence when he said to david what he did the the biblical language of your blood is on your own head is found all over the place we we saw it in the case of the two spies when they went

to to rahab and jericho we'll even hear this again in the gospels when the people say of christ his blood be on us and on our children so blood being on us or blood being on our heads is the biblical idiom meaning let the responsibility for this be on us so david is saying the responsibility the blood is on this guy's own head he's the one responsible for his for his own death this this phrase too i mean this this guy says you know here's who i am and here's where i'm from david just hate it how is it that you were not afraid to do this and you have to remember this is coming from the lips of somebody who had opportunity and reason to do this and did not yeah wouldn't he's how how is it that you were not afraid to do this i was afraid to do this uh his saul's armor bearer

was afraid to do this and now of course we know this guy didn't do this but the fact that this guy apparently would have or david and david doesn't know that he didn't and he has pronounced that he did david cannot understand uh how how it is that you could that you would have the the hubris to do such a thing you how how i mean that's this question is it's just an interesting phrasing of a question like how is it that you were not afraid you should have been afraid and because you weren't afraid you're gonna have to die yeah i think it it also shows the the huge difference between an Amalekite's perspective on a king, and then David, and hopefully most Israelites' perspective on a king. In other words, this isn't just someone who seized the throne,

it's someone who happened to inherit the throne, or got there any other way. Rather, they are anointed, that is to say, God put them there. So how is it that you could stretch out your hand against the one whom God himself has chosen and placed into this particular office? Because in so doing, you have stretched out your hand against God himself by striking down. Even, and keep in mind, this wasn't like the Amalekites said, hey, I saw Saul in the field. I figured you wanted him dead. We had this, you know, this great sword fight. And I got the upper hand and I pierced him through.

No, I mean, this was a killing that this Amalekite claims to have done when Saul actually asked him to do it. So that heightens the fact that for no reason whatsoever should anyone ever put out their hand to strike the Lord's anointing. It seems to me that maybe the reason that he's also saying that, one, is maybe just to say, hey, I didn't actually kill him, kill him. I just put him out of his misery. But also, if you come across his body and you're stealing stuff on it and it looks evident to you that this was a suicide

Or, you know, this was not He did not die I mean, he was wounded But the death blow was self-inflicted Or at least passively Inflicted And you're thinking, well, I probably need to Try to make my story match

What this body looks like Because obviously he didn't take the body Now that happened later, I assume After he came upon the body Other people came upon the body and took it But he doesn't really need to get back into Israel with David If his plan works and have people say Well, I don't know, when we found the body

this it looked a whole lot like it didn't look like he had been in a sword fight uh died that way you know so he's he's kind of going along he's he is he's weaving his story to go along with what he thinks the evidence is going to imply i think yeah he was he was a good enough liar to get himself into some serious trouble yeah let's put it that way okay so that that's the first 16 verses, and that wraps up the basic story of this encounter. The rest of the chapter, which is 17 through 27, is this famous lament that David sings over both Saul as well as his friend, his close friend, Jonathan. Keep in mind that this kind of structurally in first and second Samuel, that this is an echo of how Samuel began. Remember, we had the song of Hannah toward the

beginning of the story. Now in the middle, we have the song of David, which by the way, is the very first recorded psalm of David. I'm not saying it's the first one he wrote, but it's the first one that's actually given to us that's recorded in the life of David. We know that he was a skilled musician. And based on that, we assume he also wrote songs, but this is the first one that is actually recorded in his life story. And then we'll have another one in 1 Samuel 22 and 23. So the whole structure of first and second Samuel is built around these these songs so David chanted with his lament over Saul chanted this lament over Saul and Jonathan his son and he told them to teach the sons of Judah the song of the bow that's translated different ways

by various versions ESV follows the the Greek translation the Septuagint there it's a little bit unclear in the Hebrew how to translate it. It doesn't really matter, but you'll encounter different translations there. But what is interesting about it, what seems to be implied here, is that David wants this lament that he's about to give to be taught to the people. And so this isn't just something that David feels, but he thinks that all of Israel should feel this way. Yeah, and I think it's significant for a couple different reasons. First of all, uh remember that uh Saul died by his own hand he fell in he fell in his sword and David David's response of course we've seen so far he rips his clothes he uh he fast he's he's mourning but he's

also going to chant this lament over over Saul so he does not treat his death as somehow a kind of a shameful act. Instead, he treats his death as that which is to not only be lamented, but publicly, verbally lamented, and as you point out, even to be chanted by the people of Israel. So his response to Saul's death is that which laments the death, not the means by which he died. Yeah, I think one of these is striking is that, you know, someone like David, again, a lesser man, may be like, okay, Saul's dead. Even if you're upset about this because this was the Lord's anointed and theologically you have reasons to say this is a bad thing and, okay, we got to kill this guy. You still, what you don't have to do is write a song that you say needs to be taught to other people. I mean, part of this seems to be David desiring that people not forget Saul and Jonathan, that David wants the people of Israel to remember them, and to remember them as we get into the lament, which will be next week, to remember them in a positive way.

Yeah, in fact, some of the language that he uses here is, when you first read it, if you're not kind of familiar with the typical hyperbole that you'll find in Hebrew poetry, you might read it and you'll think, nah, that doesn't really sound like the Saul and Jonathan that I knew. it talks about how they were beloved and pleasant you know in life and death they were not parted and you might like whoa i i remember back in first samuel where saul was throwing his spirit jonathan what are you talking about but this is uh this is a this is a typical poetic hyperbolic way of hebrew poetry to speak and i think it's worth noting this is another thing that just struck me this morning. What happens when people die that are close to us that we are grieving for some reason? Well, we tend to do what? Do we tend to focus upon maybe some negative things that we remember? Well, no. I mean, you go to any funeral, almost any funeral, and you're going to hear

a lot of praise of the person, either on the pulpit or at least in conversations. People are reflecting upon positive things about them. They're remembering that which is good. They're not focusing upon whatever might have been negative. Instead, they're highlighting how these people, in one way or another, were God's gift to others. I think that's not only what's going on here, but I think it's very instructive for us to make it practical. It really gets under my skin when someone will die today, some public figure who is controversial for some reason, and people begin to not people who are kind of on the opposite side of that person either theologically or politically or whatever the reason might be when people will begin to rejoice

over their death well i i think it's helpful to remember how david responded to the death of saul he lamented over this he certainly never came close to rejoicing over it yeah i mean i mean david david really lionizes saul in the in this uh lament and uh i think it i think it's uh you can look at it and realize that david is is choosing to remember saul in a certain way uh in his death and and you know as uh when david was had one of his last conversations with saul And he said, may God treat me the way that I've treated you, right? And if we see David treating Saul again, I think in the way that David wants to be treated by God, probably in his death. And this is the way that the son of David treats us in our death, that he doesn't bring up.

You don't die and then go stand before God and he brings up all the horrible things you did and all your flaws and all your sin. No, he said you get a well done, good and faithful servant. I mean, this lament is as much of a well-done, good and faithful servant on the lips of the first David that you can get, right? For a man who is obviously a sinner. Yeah, and what a great way to wrap up this episode. This is how you want the son of David to speak to you, and how he will. Yeah, that's it. All right, well, next week we'll get into it.

We'll get into David's Lament The first song that we have recorded from him There's a lot to go over there So, Chad, I'll see you next week Alright, see you then Thank you.