(119:145) “I cried with my whole heart; hear me, O LORD: …”
(119:169) “Let my cry come near before thee, O LORD:…”
(120:1) “In my distress I cried unto the LORD, and he heard me.”
(130:1) “Out of the depths have I cried unto thee, O LORD.”
(141:1) “ LORD, I cry unto thee: make haste unto me; give ear unto my voice, when I cry unto thee.”
(142:1) “I cried unto the LORD with my voice;
(2) I poured out my complaint before him; I showed before him my trouble. (5) I cried unto thee, O LORD: I said, Thou art my refuge and my portion in the land of the living.
(142:6) “Attend unto my cry; …”
Heartache upon heartache. His son is dead. Heartache it was. Yet, as you read through this great man’s life, you find that through it all, as we read and pay attention to David’s life, he experienced a walk with the LORD that included some very rough days.
And he’s weeping, which is natural. No matter how difficult the relationship between David and Absalom had been, David loved his son. And he now weeps for him.
But there may be another side to grief. True grief produces something. It leads somewhere. One great servant of the LORD and wonderful Bible expositor, Pastor Alexander MacClaren said this about King David’s grief.
“But there is another side to this grief. It witnesses to the depth and self-sacrificing energy of a father’s love. The dead son’s faults are all forgotten and obliterated by death’s ‘effacing fingers.’ The head-strong, thankless rebel is, in David’s mind, a child again, and the happy old days of his innocence and love are all that remain in memory. The prodigal is still a son. The father’s love is immortal, and cannot be turned away by any faults. The father is willing to die for the disobedient child. Such purity and depth of affection lives in human hearts. So self-forgetting and incapable of being provoked is an earthly father’s love. May we not see in this disclosure of David’s paternal love, stripping it of its faults and excesses, some dim shadow of the greater love of God for His prodigals,—a love which cannot be dammed back or turned away by any sin, and which has found a way to fulfil David’s impossible wish, in that it has given Jesus Christ to die for His rebellious children, and so made them sharers of His own kingdom?” [Alexander MacClaren “II Samuel Commentaries” Found on www.preceptaustin.org].
And another of God’s Bible teachers puts it this way. "So in the cry of David, we actually hear the cry of God, for His lost children. His desire to restore, His desire to forgive." (Smith)
Once many, many years ago, I had the opportun-ity to minister to a family that appeared to have all made all the wrong decisions. They were at war with each other. Some of them lived on the same stretch of highway and could see each other plowing their fields each spring and then doing their haying in the summer. And some of the sons were close to their dad while some of them were despised by him. So, these brothers did not get along at all and often had issues between themselves. Now, you can imagine what all this looked like. Well, at that time I was the Pastor of a small country Church which included at least some of these folks and their families. And while I was there, one of the sons died. Go on to page three
(119:169) “Let my cry come near before thee, O LORD:…”
(120:1) “In my distress I cried unto the LORD, and he heard me.”
(130:1) “Out of the depths have I cried unto thee, O LORD.”
(141:1) “ LORD, I cry unto thee: make haste unto me; give ear unto my voice, when I cry unto thee.”
(142:1) “I cried unto the LORD with my voice;
(2) I poured out my complaint before him; I showed before him my trouble. (5) I cried unto thee, O LORD: I said, Thou art my refuge and my portion in the land of the living.
(142:6) “Attend unto my cry; …”
Heartache upon heartache. His son is dead. Heartache it was. Yet, as you read through this great man’s life, you find that through it all, as we read and pay attention to David’s life, he experienced a walk with the LORD that included some very rough days.
And he’s weeping, which is natural. No matter how difficult the relationship between David and Absalom had been, David loved his son. And he now weeps for him.
But there may be another side to grief. True grief produces something. It leads somewhere. One great servant of the LORD and wonderful Bible expositor, Pastor Alexander MacClaren said this about King David’s grief.
“But there is another side to this grief. It witnesses to the depth and self-sacrificing energy of a father’s love. The dead son’s faults are all forgotten and obliterated by death’s ‘effacing fingers.’ The head-strong, thankless rebel is, in David’s mind, a child again, and the happy old days of his innocence and love are all that remain in memory. The prodigal is still a son. The father’s love is immortal, and cannot be turned away by any faults. The father is willing to die for the disobedient child. Such purity and depth of affection lives in human hearts. So self-forgetting and incapable of being provoked is an earthly father’s love. May we not see in this disclosure of David’s paternal love, stripping it of its faults and excesses, some dim shadow of the greater love of God for His prodigals,—a love which cannot be dammed back or turned away by any sin, and which has found a way to fulfil David’s impossible wish, in that it has given Jesus Christ to die for His rebellious children, and so made them sharers of His own kingdom?” [Alexander MacClaren “II Samuel Commentaries” Found on www.preceptaustin.org].
And another of God’s Bible teachers puts it this way. "So in the cry of David, we actually hear the cry of God, for His lost children. His desire to restore, His desire to forgive." (Smith)
Once many, many years ago, I had the opportun-ity to minister to a family that appeared to have all made all the wrong decisions. They were at war with each other. Some of them lived on the same stretch of highway and could see each other plowing their fields each spring and then doing their haying in the summer. And some of the sons were close to their dad while some of them were despised by him. So, these brothers did not get along at all and often had issues between themselves. Now, you can imagine what all this looked like. Well, at that time I was the Pastor of a small country Church which included at least some of these folks and their families. And while I was there, one of the sons died. Go on to page three