STUDIES IN SAMUEL No. 53

2 Samuel 12:15-31

January 6, 2001

Text Comment

v.18 The Hebrew literally reads "he may do harm." They may well have been worried more about their own welfare - the king might fly off the handle and vent his anger at those nearest him - than about David's own welfare.

v.19 You will notice that the narrator has contrived to use the word "dead" five times and the verb "die" once in just two verses. He is hammering home the death that was the punishment for David's sin of murder.

v.20 Ordinarily a period of seven days of mourning was observed after the death of a loved one. Bathsheba had observed such a mourning period after the death of her husband, as we read in 11:26-27. But David has already observed the seven days of mourning. At least his behavior during that time had the appearance of mourning. So, now, just when the mourning period might be expected to begin, David behaves as if it had just ended. [Gordon, Com, 259]

v.23 A short sermon on the futility of prayers for the dead! Here, for the first time, we find David not the confident wielder of power, but vulnerable, overcome by a sense of his own moral nakedness and powerlessness. It is this David that we will observe throughout the rest of the history of his reign. [Alter, Com, 262] There is a sense, of course, in which a conviction of our own existential moral nakedness and brokenness is a good thing. But only to the extent that it leads to true humility and new and vigorous obedience. Moral brokenness, which as here in David's case, was a punishment inflicted upon David for his sin, can also amount to an incapacity for direct and fruitful action and, in that sense, it is a very bad thing. God wants us, of course, to know our sinfulness and our debt to his grace. He wants us to know our limitations and our dependence upon him. He does not want us to be overwhelmed by our failure to the point that we are not effective in serving him and confident in standing on his promises and living accordingly.

Now, I want to pause here and deal with a question raised by this text and, concerning which, this statement of David's is a locus classicus. (A locus classicus, literally "the standard or classic place" refers to a text of Scripture that is traditionally used as the first or primary proof of some biblical doctrine. When talking about that biblical teaching, one refers to this text first. That's the idea.) Well, if not the it is definitely a locus classicus on the doctrine of the salvation of infants who die in infancy. Here David seems to say that, though the child will not return to him, when he dies he will go to the child. Is that not a statement of his faith that the child was in heaven and he would someday meet him there?

Well, some have argued not. They say that all that can be said for sure of David's statement is that he knows the child is dead and not coming back and that someday he will die as well. Usually people who reduce the statement to that rather dismal and empty truism do so because they maintain that believers in the OT had only a vague and ill-defined idea of the afterlife or of what happened to the soul at death. This is a very common prejudice that people have against the OT. It is based largely on the general assumption that OT faith must have been inferior in important ways to NT faith. I won't take the time now to disprove it, but it is a canard. The believers of the ancient epoch knew very well that, when they died, their souls went alive to God. And they knew that heaven awaited them in its fullness at the consummation of history. We are assured of this at length in Hebrews 11. They may well have had vague ideas about what that life of the soul after death, the soul apart from the body is precisely, but we hardly know any more than they did about precisely what it will be like to be souls without bodies in heaven after we die.

Once one admits that David could not have thought otherwise than that his death would usher him into eternal life, his statement that he would go to his infant son who had died cannot mean otherwise than that his son also had entered eternal life. If he was going to meet his child, then his child had to be in heaven with the Lord. That inexorable logic is what makes David's statement a locus classicus for the doctrine of the salvation of covenant infants dying in infancy.

Now, there are other arguments for this confidence on the part of devout Christian parents whose children die young. God has promised himself to us and to our children, to be our God and their God - which is to say, to be our savior and their savior. If our children who die in infancy are not saved, that fact would empty the Lord's promise of all meaning. It is only what God's own words lead us to believe: that the infant son or daughter of a faithful parent or of faithful parents would certainly go to heaven should he or she die, in the same way that we would take comfort if a new convert suddenly died. And, in fact, this has long been the teaching of our church. Here is the statement of the Canons of Dordt from the early 17th century.

"Since we ought to judge the will of God from his own Word, which declares that the children of the faithful are holy, not indeed by nature, but by the blessing of the covenant of grace, in which they are embraced with their parents, godly parents ought not to doubt concerning the election and the salvation of their children whom God calls from this life in infancy." [Chapter I, Art. xvii]

We have, on our day, to remember that, even though infant death is by no means unheard of in our day, it was widespread in the history of the world up to the present generation, as it is still today in many parts of the world. Indeed, in many places and times more children died young than survived even to adolescence, much less to adulthood. Susannah Wesley bore 19 children in 19 years, but 9 of them died in infancy. Thomas Boston lost six of his children in infancy. And their lot was typical of parents in most of human history. Many of these great men of the church, in the midst of their anguish at the death of their little children, spoke and wrote very poignantly and beautifully of their confidence in the salvation of their children.

Here, for example, is Samuel Rutherford, writing to a bereaved parent:

"I believe that Christ hath taught you…not to sorrow because he died. All the knot must be, 'He died too soon, he died too young, he died in the morning of his life.' This is all; but sovereignty must silence your thoughts. I was in your condition; I had but two children, and both are dead…. The supreme and absolute Former of all things giveth not an account of any of His matters. The good Husbandman may pluck his roses, and gather in his lilies at mid-summer, and, for aught I dare say, in the beginning of the first summer month; and He may transplant young trees out of the lower ground to the higher, where they may have more of the sun, and a more free air, at any season of the year. What is that to you or me? The goods are his own. The Creator of time and winds did a merciful injury (if I dare borrow the word) to nature, in landing the passenger so early. They love the sea too well who complain of a fair wind, and a desirable tide, and a speedy coming ashore, especially a coming ashore in that land where all the inhabitants have everlasting joy upon their heads. He cannot be too early in heaven. His twelve hours were not short hours. And withal if ye consider this: had ye been at his bed-side, and should have seen Christ coming to him, ye would not, ye could not, have adjourned Christ's free love, who would [do without] him no longer." [Letters, cccx, 621-622]

And, then, there are the Christian poets.

Oh, when a mother meets on high

The babe she lost in infancy,

Hath she not then for pains and fears,

    The day of woe, the watchful night,

For all her sorrows, all her tears,

    An overpayment of delight?

            [Cited in Bannerman, The Church of Christ, ii, 121]

 

Babes, caught away from womb and breast,

Have cause to sing above the rest;

For they have found that happy shore

They neither saw nor sought before.

            [Ralph Erskine]

And here is one from the vantage point of the child.

Where God has stamp'd his image upon a mite,

'Tis meet that God should have his right:

After a few years past, a wearied breath

I have exchanged for a happy death.

Short was my life, the longer is my rest;

God takes them soonest whom he loveth best.

She that is born today, and dies to-morrow,

Loses some hours of joy, but years of sorrow;

 

Other diseases often come to grieve us,

Death strikes but once, and that stroke relieves us:

Therefore (my parents dear), take heed of weeping cross,

And mind my happiness more than your own great loss.

This is all I'll say to make the reckoning even,

Your dearest mercy is not too good for heaven.

Hasten to me, where now I am possess'd

With joys eternal, in Christ my only rest.

            [Cited in Brooks, Works, i, lxxi]

Now, it is true that some in our tradition have held that all infants, dying in infancy, are saved; that dying in infancy is a sign of election. Charles Hodge, Charles Spurgeon, and Benjamin Warfield, among others, held that view. However, when one takes the time to consult their arguments for this view, one is less impressed. The fact is, the Bible says nothing directly one way or another concerning the death of the infant children of unbelievers.

Calvin's conclusion is wisest.

"Scripture is the school of the Holy Spirit, in which, as nothing is omitted that is both necessary and useful to know, so nothing is taught but what is expedient to know…. Let us, I say, permit the Christian man to open his mind and ears to every utterance of God directed to him, provided it be with such restraint that when the Lord closes his holy lips, he also shall at once close the way to inquiry. The best limit of sobriety for us will be not only to follow God's lead always in learning but, when he sets an end to teaching, to stop trying to be wise." [Calvin, Institutes, III, xxi, 3]

On the pastoral question of what does a minister say at the funeral of a baby whose parents were not Christians, J.C. Ryle, the Anglican bishop, said simply that "he had nothing to read." He used "read" because the Anglican priest typically reads his funeral service from a book. He meant that, as a Christian minister, he had something to say only to the extent that God had told him what to say. When God has stopped speaking the minister must stop as well. "He had nothing to read" over the grave of a baby whose parents were unbelievers because God had given him nothing to read.

v.25 Now Bathsheba is identified as David's wife and the Lord's special affection for Solomon is noted. Jedidiah means "loved by the Lord." Solomon is already being marked out as David's eventual successor.

v.28 Remember, Jerusalem became known as "David's city" after David led the army in taking it. This is the means by which David was brought back into the field at the head of his army where, had he been all along, the disaster would not have happened.

v.30 The crown weighed approximately 65 pounds. David did not wear it as an everyday hat! It was placed on his head symbolically.

v.31 The Lord was still with David to give him total victory over his enemies.

I want to make a simple point, but an important point from our text this evening. It has to do with the life of faith and what it often, or at least sometimes means in the real world to live by faith. It is a lesson illustrated for us in David's honest acknowledgement of his situation in v. 23.

And the lesson is this: faith is sometimes expressed best by resignation. I mean resignation in the sense of the acceptance of things that you wish very much were different but you know will not be changed. It is acceptance, in faith, that is in the awareness that this circumstance that must be accepted is from the Lord.

There are many times when we are under no such obligation to accept a state of affairs as from the Lord. Remember how the Lord teaches us the obligation of perseverance in our prayers with his parable of the widow and the unrighteous judge. She pestered him until finally he gave her justice just to get her off his back. And Luke tells us that the point of that parable is precisely that we should keep praying and not give up. There is much in life that we are not to resign ourselves to but are to keep seeking to change: the conversion of some unbeliever we know, the poor health of some friend or Christian brother or sister, some sinful behavior within ourselves, and so on - no matter how long these conditions may have existed to this point.

Some of you know Hosanna Tamminga, sister of Micah, who went with my daughter, Bryonie, to France some years ago. She was married just a little more than two weeks ago to Nate Lovgren, whom many of you have met. Nate loved Hosanna for years! Many who spoke at the wedding reception spoke of how long and how hard Nate had loved Hosanna, even though his love had been through the years largely unrequited. But finally his love prevailed and Hosanna loved him back and they are now husband and wife. And that is a wonderful thing and a great picture of what should be true in certain ways in our lives. A refusal to take no for an answer in this way or that.

But one does not demonstrate faith - though it is often claimed that this is what faith does - when one refuses to take "no" for an answer when God was himself the one who said "No!"

1. I have had some experience personally of Christian folk who simply refused to accept that God had said "no" to their recovery from disease and continued to behave as if healing were right around the corner when everyone could tell that the end was near, that God had spoken, and that there was to be no healing. Faith properly exercised should have led them to take David's line in v. 23: The Lord has decreed that I should die. The Lord has given and the Lord has taken away. May the name of the Lord be praised." Instead, what seemed to be expressed was an unwillingness to submit to God's will. That may not have been their intention, I'm sure it was not, but that is what their actions suggested.

2. I have had some experience as well with Christian folk who seem not to be willing to accept that a loved one has died, at least, unlike David they seem unwilling to get up, wash their faces, eat, and get on with life. Rather they pine and they grieve as if God simply did not know what he was doing when he took their loved one away.

3. But the same failure to live by faith when that faith requires resignation to God's will, unwelcome as that will may have been to us, can be found in other places than at the point of death. I have seen the same failure to resign oneself to God's will in ministers who are unwilling to give up their charges even when Presbyteries tell them that they must and who, in consequence, do untold, sometimes fatal harm to the congregations as they try to hold on to them. They claim it is faith that is keeping them at their post, but to wise observers, it is faith, it is precisely faith, that is lacking. If they had faith they would leave quietly, cheerfully, and make easier the way for the man who would come after them.

4. I have seen the same failure to resign oneself to God's will in the matter of one's vocation: a man or woman continuing to seek a living in an occupation for which he or she is ill-suited and has often enough been shown to be ill-suited.

5. I have seen this failure of faithful resignation at many points in regard to something that a person desperately wants but which God has not provided. Unwilling to admit that God does not seem disposed to grant their desires, they chafe, or complain, or blame others, or take steps to achieve what God has not given that are frankly forbidden to a Christian.

You see, this is a very practical matter. It concerns real life issues that touch our hearts. It concerns matters upon which we often think are suspended our happiness and sense of fulfillment in life and satisfaction. Many things happen in life that we cannot help but wish had not happened and many things never happen that we fondly wished would happen.

As Christians we must confess that our disappointments are also from our heavenly Father's hand. We cannot say otherwise. And knowing that, we must live accordingly. We must recognize God's hand, honor him as our sovereign and our Father, and accept his will as good and right. But because we are human beings, because we are made in the image of a loving and sympathetic God, God does not require us to accept a very hard thing - a hard thing that is final and cannot be changed - as if it were an easy thing, to lose a loved one as if it didn't matter to us. That is why faith, in this case, takes on the character of resignation, of a willing but hardly cheerful acceptance of our heavenly Father's will and a studied acknowledgement that the Judge of all the earth does right even though we cannot see or sense the right of it.

Is this not, really, faith in its highest form. When Job says, "yet though he slay me, I will trust in him," or when he says, "the Lord has given and the Lord has taken away, blessed be the name of the Lord," do we not hear the bell of faith ringing with its clearest, most unmistakable tone.

As C.S. Lewis has the demon uncle Screwtape say to his demon nephew Wormwood in The Screwtape Letters, "Do not be deceived, Wormwood. Our cause is never more in danger than when a human, no longer desiring, but still intending, to do our enemy's will, looks round upon a universe from which every trace of him seems to have vanished, and asks why he has been forsaken, and still obeys."

As John Newton wrote in one of his beautiful letters, "[the Christian] knows he has no right to complain of anything, because he is a sinner; and he has no reason, because he is sure the Lord does all things well. Therefore, his submission is not forced, but is an act of trust." [Letters, pb ed., 155]

Sometimes, by the grace of God, this resignation takes on the character of a pure and complete acceptance, embraced with the emotions of the heart. The story is told of a friend of the Scot, James Wodrow, visiting him shortly after the death of that good man's son, at just 18 years of age. The friend asked Wodrow what he had been doing, as there were tears in his eyes. "I have been adoring holy, spotless, and absolute sovereignty," Wodrow replied. [In Smellie, Men of the Covenant, 250]

Sometimes the saints cannot rise so high and are more as David here: this is as it must be; the Lord has spoken. Now, it is for me to get up and go on with my life and serve the Lord through the years that are yet appointed for me. Perhaps this is the best we are likely to do when the particular resignation required of us is to some unhappiness that we have brought about by our own sin, as, of course, it was in David's case.

But televangelists notwithstanding, faith is shown not only in the confidence that what we have not yet received will soon be ours because God has promised it, not only in the assurance that we have received things that cannot be seen - such as the forgiveness of our sins - or that certain things are true that cannot be seen - such as the presence of the Holy Spirit - but faith is shown also and perhaps even more perfectly in submission to unwelcome developments as also from God's hand. It is our way to confess that we trust the Lord to do what is right and that we believe his ways to be far above our ways and past finding out. And it is purer faith because it is exercised in defiance of bad news and disappointment. He does not believe simply out of wishful thinking, he believes - and acts on his belief - in defiance of his disappointment. And that is faith indeed!

On his deathbed, Isaac Watts said to his friend Augustus Toplady,

"The business of a Christian is to bear the will of God, as well as to do it. If I were in health, I could only be doing that; and that I may do now."

Well, believe me, brothers and sisters, you are always called to do God's will, but you will often enough be called to bear it. And that is faith also and so also the victory that overcomes the world.