Peter Barnes | 2 Samuel 13:20-39
SERMON NOTES
IF NO JUSTICE, THEN REVENGE
2 Samuel 13:20-39
– Ps.94:1-12. Then justice and mercy will be seen together, but here David flounders.
1. Ineffectual justice makes for more injustice.
– 13:21; Lev.20:17; Eccles.8:11.
– also 13:30-39.
Why was David so ineffectual?
(a) his own consciousness of guilt would have stifled him. He had been guilty of such similar sins: adultery and murder.
(b) David was an over-indulgent father – 1 Kings 1:5-6; Prov.13:24. Love and discipline go together; they ought not to be separated.
Isaac Barrow on sin: ‘First we learn to bear it; then we come to like it; by and by we negotiate a friendship with it; then we dote on it; at last we become enslaved to it in a bondage, which we shall hardly be able, or willing, to shake off.’
2. Do not let the sun go down on your anger.
– 13:22. Dale Ralph Davis calls Absalom ‘a seething vigilante’. Absalom was a great actor before David – 13:25.
– Eph.4:26; do not let it all hang out and do not bottle it up.
3. Ineffectual justice makes for ineffectual love.
– Life is interconnected, and one sin opens up another, and they all have consequences.