David and the Kingly Line of the Messiah – If No Justice, Then Revenge

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.