2 SAMUEL 17 AND 19 (NOTES OF AN ADDRESS)

^[p. 48] 2 SAMUEL 17 AND 19 (NOTES OF AN ADDRESS)

2 Samuel 17: 27 - 29; 2 Samuel 19: 31 - 43; Philippians 3: 7 - 13; Habakkuk 3: 17 - 19

It is of all importance that we should take account of the close of our journey here, and I desire to present to you what a spiritual finish is. We are very near now to seeing the Lord’s face, and we ought to speak together in this hope. The Holy Spirit is giving to the saints today a sense of the expectation of it: we shall see Him come into all His rights, but I am thinking more of the blessedness of His very presence, surrounded with delight by all His own.

Paul writes to the Thessalonians in a different way from what he does to any other assembly. They had just recently been gathered to the Lord’s name. Paul writes, not ‘to the assembly at Thessalonica’, but “to the assembly of Thessalonians in God the Father and the Lord Jesus Christ”, 1 Thessalonians 1: 1. I suppose they were very young, and, as just gathered to the Lord’s name, had not been formed in assembly truth and principles, and he writes to them in that simple way. He presents the Lord and the Lord’s coming in such a way as to set their hearts right, not only in relation to the testimony, but in the knowledge of divine Persons. He presents not only the public appearing of the Lord Jesus, but also the way we shall meet Him in the air.

In 2 Thessalonians 2: 1 Paul beseeches them “by the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ and our gathering together to him”. It is an expression of peculiar sweetness — think of all saints gathering together to Him — not to His name, but to Himself, and as 1 Thessalonians 5: 10 says,

“^[p. 49] that ... we may live together with him”. That is our eternity, our full portion with Christ. We are not only to be together but we are to live together with Him. This is really what is to touch our hearts and fill them with that expectancy of love that regards the Lord’s coming with supreme anticipation of pleasure.

After presenting the hope of the Lord’s coming in the first epistle, the apostle in chapters 1 and 2 of the second epistle gives words of consolation and instruction in view of the coming apostasy: then he says “But our Lord Jesus Christ himself, and our God and Father, who has loved us, and given us eternal consolation and good hope by grace, encourage your hearts, and establish you in every good work and word”, 2 Thessalonians 2: 16, 17. Nothing, not even the thickness of tissue paper, is to come between the Lord and our hearts; then we should have the enjoyment of our relationship with the Lord Jesus and with our God in service and in suffering for the testimony. It is the consciousness of the immediate support and love of the heart of Christ and the place we have eternally in our Father’s heart and purpose that is our proper start: if we are to continue and to finish well we must make this beginning.

Now in speaking of Barzillai, I wish to draw attention to this very serious consideration, that a person may have a good start and make progress, and then go back, the Lord having lost in the heart the place He had at first. There is nothing more sad than departure from the Lord Himself, and I suppose the history of Barzillai has been given to us in Scripture so that we should be able to take account of the sadness of spiritual enfeeblement. Barzillai and his companions met David when he was in reproach, bringing the very best they had, and no mean provision it was. The Spirit of God gives us a list of what they brought, “beds, and basons, and earthen vessels, and wheat, and barley, and flour, and parched corn, and beans, and lentils, and ^[p. 50] parched pulse, and honey, and cream, and sheep, and cheese of kine”. The Lord does not forget our work of faith and labour of love, and if He has enlarged us and blessed us so that we have been able to minister to Him and to His own, He never forgets it! But how sad if the freshness that prompted it has declined in our souls!

Now in chapter 19, David returns to Jerusalem and Mephibosheth is there to greet him. Mephibosheth’s affection has been sustained; he has been feeling the absence of David and the falling away from David of many in Jerusalem and through the testing time of David’s absence he has ever remembered him with affectionate regard for his person and rights: his happiness is bound up with God’s beloved. David mentions the inheritance, but Mephibosheth replies, ‘It is not that I am thinking of. I am not troubled about the inheritance, everything to me is that you have come back’. What a comfort to the heart of David! — a welcome from a heart that had never declined but had beaten true in his absence. But it is otherwise with Barzillai; he meets the king and follows him over Jordan. David makes a proposition to Barzillai, ‘Come up to Jerusalem and I will feed you. I do not forget that when in adversity you fed me, and now I want you to be my guest in Jerusalem, I want to maintain and feed you there’. What an invitation! The Lord proposes an advancement spiritually for us — that we should go right up into the heart of blessing, where Christ is supreme, that we should dwell with Him in His Jerusalem. We should enjoy now what we are to enjoy eternally with Christ. The Lord finds pleasure in our willing response to that. Although the Lord regards with delight every bit of service towards Himself as it comes out in relation to His people — caring for them, feeding them, serving Him in His interests here, just as Barzillai and his associates cared for David and his followers — yet more deeply valued still by the Lord Jesus is the ^[p. 51] devoted affection that will follow Him up to Jerusalem where He may share in grace all He possesses with us there, and serve us that we may fully enjoy it all. “He will gird himself and make them recline at table, and coming up will serve them”, Luke 12: 37. Our being occupied with His interests here is one thing, but it is another His welcoming us into heavenly scenes even now in spirit, to share the fulness of what His ascending there has secured. It is blessed, but if it is to be responded to, it calls for personal spiritual energy. It takes vigour of soul to pass up from Jordan to Jerusalem, and it is just the lack of that which comes out typically in Barzillai’s case. David had lost in Barzillai’s heart the place he once had. If you watch Barzillai’s feet you know where his heart is. He says, ‘I am not as young as I was once nor as able to go about: I am superannuated: it is time I retired from the conflict; I will go over Jordan a little today’. It is very good to cross Jordan even for a visit, but David’s proposal was that he should go up and reside with him; he said, ‘I will maintain thee’. Does your heart incline to follow the Lord over Jordan into the sphere where He is owned as the risen One? If you do, that is well, but He wants you further, He wants to lead your heart up to heaven, that you may know and enjoy heavenly things.

The Lord attracts us over Jordan that He may set our minds on heavenly things. It may be only a visit at the start, but you cannot cross very often without feeling it would be good to follow the Lord up to Jerusalem and remain with Him where He is supreme and where He maintains all. We may come down to this side to serve His interests here, but our centre and home is with Him there.

Barzillai says, ‘I am to old, I will go a little way’. Do you think a saint in spiritual energy would speak like that? Remember the walk Enoch took with God — it was as “the ^[p. 52] path of the righteous ... as the shining light, going on and brightening until the day be fully come”, Proverbs 4: 18. Do any of us feel old spiritually? That once there was a discernment of divine things and an appetite for the things of Christ, and now one is at a loss when one hears others speak of things that one is unable to discern? You have grey hairs and you know it not: age has crept on and you did not observe it, affection for Christ has waned, and the heart has turned to something else, and the Lord Jesus is accorded a second place where once He was first. It is very serious if one is beginning to find a lack of edge in one’s taste for divine things. Barzillai said “Can I hear any more the voice of singing men and singing women?” It is important to see that spiritual things are sustained in deep spiritual joy, and saints who are going on spiritually are bound to sing. Wherever saints are sustained in spiritual affection for Christ and for His interests they are bound to sing. When David is having His place in Jerusalem there is bound to be singing there. We should be at liberty, not only to hear the saints sing, but to sing with them. David said, “This man was born there” — Zion. “Jehovah will count, when he inscribeth the peoples, This man was born there”, Psalm 87: 6. Christ is the Man who was born there; Jerusalem is His city, and this Psalm speaks of the singers and dancers being there. It is the place God loves, He loves “the gates of Zion more than all the habitations of Jacob”. Now the men and women singing tell of the intelligent and affectionate interest of the saints in everything being established in Christ, and that He fills the heart of God and His people so that God should find His pleasure in a company of saints who sing to Him. There is a reference in Job 38: 7 to the morning stars singing together and all the sons of God shouting for joy. They saw what God had before Him and delighted in sympathy. What a poor estimate of the heart of David Barzillai had — “Why should ^[p. 53] thy servant be yet a burden to my lord the king?” Affection for Christ would cast you entirely upon all that He gives — the care and support that would love to carry you across Jordan and up to Jerusalem and set you down amongst His happy company so that you should partake of all the good of the best things in Jerusalem. One feels that unconsciously there was with Barzillai a doubt of the affections of David. Barzillai says, “Behold thy servant Chimham: let him go”: Chimham means ‘longing’ . David must have felt ‘Ah, Barzillai, I have lost my supreme place in your affections’. Chimham gets all that Barzillai misses.

I have read the scripture in Habakkuk to illustrate what it is to have a good spiritual finish, what it is to sing in spiritual energy at the close. His day was like the day in which we live; He took account of things as they were among the people of God publicly, and it broke his heart. Habakkuk is a heart-broken man because of the testimony. There had been departure from the Lord: there was no course for him, devoted man that he was, but to stand upon the watch-tower and pray. A broken heart in relation to the testimony first of all isolates you, puts you in a separate path, and there you get a divine start. He is praying and soon light as to the whole mind of God comes before him; he sees that the issue of it is that the Lord will come out in His power and rid the scene of all desolation, and that the whole earth will be filled with His glory. What view have you got from your watch-tower? Habakkuk had a view of things as God had secured them for His own pleasure: “For though the fig-tree shall not blossom, Neither shall fruit be in the vines; The labour of the olive-tree shall fail” — although desolation shall mark the whole scene before me — “Yet I will rejoice in Jehovah, I will joy in the God of my salvation”. Then he says, “He maketh my feet like hinds’ feet, And he will make me to walk upon my high places”. What a bright contrast to ^[p. 54] what we have been regarding! Here we have spiritual energy, no old age, and a man able to rise to high places. There are for us all the blessed privileges peculiar to the assembly in our high places but it needs hinds’ feet, spiritual vigour, to rise to them. Now Habakkuk can sing “To the chief Musician. On my stringed instruments”! That is the end of a man’s path who through exercise rose to the possibilities of the day in which he lived. A spiritual man ends with hinds’ feet, high places and stringed instruments. You have them all in Philippians 3 in our apostle, and how exhilarating it is to hear his call to us! There is no idea of retiring from the race here, and no note of depression. Instead of decline there is increase — “But surely I count also all things to be loss”; his taste is with him; there are no grey hairs, no waning of affection or enfeebled vision; he sees clearly. And it is all Christ and Christ in heaven, and so Paul is full of joy. He rejoices in the Lord.

May the Lord encourage us to follow Himself to where He is, and be thus kept amid the ruin of the moment in affection for Himself, and appreciation of heavenly things, with hinds’ feet, on high places, and among the singing men and women with stringed instruments.