Introduction
Remember that the book of Samuel is all one book, and we stopped in the middle of it (at our conventional break between first and second Samuel) simply for the sake of convenience. The same great narrative continues, as God establishes His kind of rule, and does so in His way.
 
The Text:
“Now it came to pass after the death of Saul, when David was returned from the slaughter of the Amalekites, and David had abode two days in Ziklag; It came even to pass on the third day, that, behold, a man came out of the camp from Saul with his clothes rent, and earth upon his head: and so it was, when he came to David, that he fell to the earth, and did obeisance . . .” (2 Sam. 1:1-27).
 
Summary of the Text:
While the battle was going on at Gilboa, David was fighting the Amalekites and, after his victory, he had been back in Ziklag for two days (v. 1). On the third day, a messenger arrived from Saul’s battlefield (v. 2). He reported that he had escaped from the camp of Israel (v. 3). When asked, he said that many were dead, as were Saul and Jonathan (v. 4). How do you know this? (v. 5). The young man then spins a story which the reader knows to be false (vv. 6-10; 1 Sam. 31:4-7). He claims to have killed Saul at Saul’s request, and he brought the crown and bracelet to David. David, and all the men with him, tore their clothes and wept for Saul and Jonathan (and for Israel) until that evening (v. 12). David then inquired further of the messenger (v. 13), and asked how he dared to lift up his hand against God’s anointed (v. 14). He then turned and commanded one of his soldiers to execute him (v. 15). David pronounced him condemned by his own testimony (v. 16).

David then composed a lament to be included in the Book of Jasher (the Book of the Upright), called the Song of the Bow (vv. 17-18). The gazelle of Israel is slain in the high places (v. 19). Don’t tell the Philistines about this (v. 20). Mount Gilboa is told to wither up and go dry (v. 21). Saul and Jonathan are then praised highly (vv. 22-23). The daughters of Israel are then commanded to lament (v. 24). The gazelle from earlier is now identified as Jonathan (v. 25), and we come to the center of David’s lament (v. 26). The mighty have indeed fallen (v. 27).

Some Striking Figures:
Saul lost his kingship because he plundered the Amalekites, and here an Amalekite plunders him . . . and loses his life for it. David has just finished wiping out the Amalekites, and then here comes another one. When David asks what happened? he uses the same phrase that Eli spoke to his messenger from the battlefield. This is the next iteration of Hannah’s great vision of the collapse of the corrupt elites, and their replacement by faithful outsiders. Only this time the words are spoken by the one who will replace, not the one to be replaced.

One of the central things we are called to remember in this Supper is the fact that God has brought us to one another, and not just to Himself. Now He has brought us into fellowship with Him, and we rejoice in it, but He never does this in isolation. “The Lord gave the word: Great was the company of those that published it” (Ps. 68:11).

One of our responsibilities in the Supper thereof, is to see one another, to look at one another. This is a participation together.

Try to avoid looking just to the front of the church, as though all the action were down here, or on this Table. No, your love for one another is a great part of what we are enacting. So look around—this is not a lecture hall, or a concert. This is a great company, and we are called to love one another. We are called to be aware of our presence together. Feel free to speak to one another as we commune.

This is Ascension Sunday, the day on which we mark the ascension of the Lord Jesus to the right hand of the Ancient of Days. We confess explicitly on this day what we affirm on every day, which is that the Lord Jesus has been given universal authority over every nation.

As a consequence—because we have been purchased with His blood—we do not have the right to ignore Him, or to pretend that His authority is irrelevant to us. Secularism is a doctrine that denies the power of the blood of Jesus Christ to purchase. God has given Him universal authority over all nations, and we have no right to reject this commission without a better argument than the one presented by the blood of Jesus.

In order for secularism to be true, Jesus would have had to shed His blood in vain, and the Ancient of Days would have had to refuse to grant Him the nations of men as His birthright. But this is not what happened at all. Ask of me, the Father said, and I will give You the ends of the earth as Your inheritance.

"If Bill had been a local potentate centuries before, and his city was under siege, and he had been told by the randy and imperious besieger to 'Surrender all your gold, and let us ravish all your women,' Bill would have appeared above the city gates to say something along the lines of 'Okay!'" (Evangellyfish, p. 146).

"Once a man has come to Jesus in order to be put to death, he may then (after the fact) do as he pleases. But unless he has died, nothing he does (however technically correct) will be right" (For a Glory and a Covering, p. 80).

"A preacher of the gospel has certainly no business preaching morality apart from the gospel . . . He must first call men, as an ambassador for Christ, to be reconciled to God, must insist upon the indispensible need of regeneration through the Holy Spirit. Then, speaking to those who are looked upon as regenerate, he must, with all his might, urge them to true and high morality, not only on all other grounds, but as a solemn duty to God their Saviour" (Broadus, Preparation and Delivery, p. 98).

"His moral authority was apparently stuck, like an oil-soaked T-shirt down in the sump pump, and this made it hard to control the flooding in this elder-meeting basement of his" (Evangellyfish, p. 145).

"The problem is not that right-handed, straight-line authority is evil -- it is most necessary for Congress, judges, soldiers, policemen, and parents teaching toddlers. But it is not the most mature expression of authority, and to believe that it is the only kind of authority for both mature and immature means that one is a totalitarian. Maturity requrest that we grow up into the kind of authority that gives itself away. Jesus did this, and He summons His followers to do this as well" (For a Glory and a Covering, p. 80).

[Speaking of certain errors] "Slight and hasty refutation is often worse than none" (Broadus, Preparation and Delivery, p. 97)

"At thy right hand there are pleasures for evermore" (Ps. 16: 11)

The Basket Case Chronicles #115

“What say I then? that the idol is any thing, or that which is offered in sacrifice to idols is any thing? But I say, that the things which the Gentiles sacrifice, they sacrifice to devils, and not to God: and I would not that ye should have fellowship with devils” (1 Cor. 10:19-20).

Paul insists that, on one level, nothing is happening in idol worship. On another level, a great deal is happening—devil worship is happening. Ancient paganism was not simple superstition at the center. In other words, there were spiritual realities at the center—diabolical, but real for all that. What the ancients called gods and goddesses, the Bible called devils. As we saw a few chapters prior to this, Paul does acknowledge the existence of “gods many and lords many” (1 Cor. 8:5). But their existence was not at the top of some pantheon. There is only one Creator God, and all other beings are on this side of the Creator/creature divide.

This is clearly seen in the episode at Philippi, where Paul cast out a fortune-telling demon from a girl (Acts 16:18). Literally she had what Luke called the spirit of a python, which meant that she was a devotee of the god Apollo. What the pagans saw as “a god” the believers saw as a devil. Neither of them saw it as empty tomfoolery.