Will you please turn to the second book of Samuel?
The second book of Samuel, firstly in Chapter 5.
Then came all the tribes of Israel to David unto Hebron, and spake, saying,
Behold, we are thy bone and thy flesh.
In times past, when Saul was king over us, it was thou that leddest out Israel, and broughtest in Israel:
And the Lord said to thee, Thou shalt be shepherd of My people Israel, and thou shalt be prince over Israel.
So all the elders of Israel came to the king to Hebron;
And King David made a covenant with them in Hebron before the Lord:
And they anointed David king over Israel.— 2 Samuel 5:1-3
Chapter 19, and verse 10—the second part of verse 8.
Now Israel had fled every man to his tent.
And all the people were at strife throughout all the tribes of Israel, saying, The king saved us out of the hand of our enemies, and he delivered us out of the hand of the Philistines; and now he is fled out of the land from Absalom.
And Absalom, whom we anointed over us, is dead in battle: now therefore why speak ye not a word of bringing the king back?And King David sent to Zadok and to Abiathar the priests, saying, Speak unto the elders of Judah, saying, Why are ye the last to bring the king back to his house, seeing the speech of all Israel is come to the king, to bring him to his house?
Ye are my brethren, ye are my bone and my flesh: wherefore then are ye the last to bring back the king?And say ye to Amasa, Art thou not my bone and my flesh? God do so to me, and more also, if thou be not captain of the host before me continually in the room of Joab.
And he bowed the heart of all the men of Judah, even as the heart of one man; so that they sent unto the king, saying, Return thou, and all thy servants.
So the king returned, and came to the Jordan.— 2 Samuel 19:8-15
Having spent this day in the second chapter of the book of Acts, I think we can say that the thing which has been uppermost in our consideration, as the preeminent work of the Holy Spirit on His coming, was the proclamation—the demonstration of the fact—that the King was in His place and that the kingdom was come.
We can say, I think quite truly, that the book of Acts is the account of how things are when the King is in His place.
We so often hark back to those times, those days. We so often crave that it might be like that again, and we certainly deplore the fact that it is not so with the church today as it was then.
The terrible, emphatic change and difference now from what it was at that time brings, I am going to suggest to you, this conclusion: the painful and grievous change is due to one thing. There came a point when, so far as the church on the earth was concerned, the King lost His place—the place that He had had.
And all the trouble of these centuries, and today the weakness that we deplore, and many other conditions over which we grieve, may be due—very likely are due—to this one thing. If we think about it enough, we shall go beyond that and say, “Yes, it is due to this one thing: the Lord Jesus has not His place that He had at the beginning.”
That means that the Holy Spirit has, in some ways, been interrupted in His great work of making known what it means, and what things are like, when the Lord Jesus really has His place.
That is the thing. That is the issue upon which any season or gathering like this should really end. I can conceive of nothing more important, more vital, more appropriate, than that the last note should be the lordship of Jesus Christ. Everything must head up to that and issue in that.
Now, we have read from the Old Testament, in this one book—the second book of Samuel—of two occasions when the king was not in his place.
The king, of course, in this case, being David. In the book of representations, figures, and types of heavenly things in the New Testament, here we have these two accounts of the two occasions when David, the anointed of the Lord, was not in his place.
If you read probably a chapter that you do not read—the first chapter of the Gospel by Matthew—that is all of it, you have that long, long list of people who form the links in the chain of the ages, from the beginning right up to Christ. And there are forty-two generations.
And if you look through that list, you will not find in the list any mention of Saul or Absalom. Saul and Absalom were not in the divine line of divine choice and appointment for the position that they came to take.
Neither Saul nor Absalom is mentioned in the long chain. They came in: one by man’s choice, the other by his own personal ambition.
And they represent two factors, two principles if you like, two elements, that not only have no place in the divine course of things, but get in the way of the divine. And, as they did, bring about a great deal of confusion and chaos and suffering and loss.
In the case of Saul, it was the principle of worldliness brought into the realm of the kingdom of God.
“Make us a king like unto the nations,” said the people. “Give us that which corresponds to what the world does and how the world does it. Give us that which the world chooses and favours for doing its work. Make us a king like unto the nations.”
The worldly idea and conception of government: prominent names, the ideas of men, the things made by men, machinery constructed by men to run the things of God. That is a large subject, and embraces a very great deal and covers a lot of painful history.
But that is a principle and a force, a mentality, which displaces the true Anointed One, the true God-chosen King. And we who know anything about church history can put our fingers fairly accurately upon the point where that again came in, in the church’s history.
When, from Holy Spirit order and government—the absolute lordship of Jesus Christ—institutions and many other things were introduced to govern the things of the church and the kingdom, that was a very, very big move.
And Isaiah again—it is very impressive—when the Lord Jesus had spent all that time instructing His disciples about the new era that was coming with the Holy Spirit, a long discourse from the table to the place of prayer, between John 13 and John 17 inclusive, speaking of that coming day, His departure, and the coming of the Holy Spirit.
It is impressive that, having said it all, He turned to prayer. He recognized that the chief enemy of it all was the world: “They are not of the world, even as I am not of the world.” How often that word occurs in that prayer.
Yes, worldliness—in its spirit and its mind, its methods and its principles—is a great enemy to the throne of the Lord Jesus, to His kingship.
It is a matter, dear friends, about which we, the people of God, need all the time to be very watchful. The apostle beseeches, “Be not conformed to this world.” Do not take the form of this world. Be ye transformed by the renewing of your mind.
There is a kingdom-mindedness that is to indwell us. Saul is the embodiment of a worldly principle in the kingdom of God. And look at the result: not only is the truly anointed King forced out, and driven away and persecuted, but, as we shall see in a moment, the consequences were very deplorable.
In the case of Absalom, here we have personal ambition and pride forcing itself into the realm of the anointing.
Much is said about the personality of this young man: the subtlety of his attractiveness, his manner, and how he sat in the gate and ingratiated himself with all who came in and went out, and stole their hearts by fair words.
A fair presence with fair words, deceiving and stealing the heart. Pride, demands, ambitions in man.
I am not dwelling a lot upon that this evening, although there is a lot of history there: man, in his own self-importance, getting in the way of the Anointed One.
Now, the strange thing, the mysterious thing—the thing that is to us such a problem—is that the Lord allowed it. The Lord allowed it. He is the Lord, high over all. Everything is under His power and in His knowledge, and He allowed it.
We might even say, so far as Saul was concerned, He seemed to be a party to it. He allowed the tragic and disastrous things that happened in both instances.
And therein lies a lesson that we do well to learn. It is a very painful thing, this permission of God. Why does the Lord allow things like this to happen? We have not only these cases, but again and again He allows that sort of thing to happen.
We have very often tried Him with that question: “Why have You allowed this? Why did You not prevent it?” You see, that question could apply to the whole state of this world. But there it is: God’s allowing, His permission.
Just for this: that it is necessary, both to God and to the people concerned, to prove, to demonstrate, the disaster that comes from His King not being given His place, or being put out of His place.
It is useless to theorize about this matter. Indeed, it is vain even to teach it. We might here stand behind this table year after year, conference after conference, and week after week, and say these things with very, very little effect.
The Lord finds it His grievous necessity to let people prove that, when His appointment in His Son Jesus Christ is violated, the most grievous consequences follow. And that is the way in which we learn most things, is it not? By painful experience, because we do not learn them in any other way, really.
We see the Lord allow Saul to get in the way of David for a considerable period. But, my word, the ultimate reaction secured something and established something stronger than there was before.
The Lord allowed that scoundrel—for a man who will take it upon him to kill his own father is nothing less—but the Lord allowed him to do it. And we have read what the people said in the long run.
You know, it is Saul. The Lord said to Samuel, “They have rejected Me from being king.” They have rejected Me.
Of Absalom, we read the people said, “The man whom we anointed over us is dead.” Not the man whom God anointed. You can never say that.
Therefore, in those cases the responsibility lay at the door of the people, and they had to learn by grievous experience. And in the end: “The man that we anointed is dead, and the man who really did the work of our salvation has been driven out.”
It is terrible, but here it is. What were the results? God’s anointed man—the type of the Lord Jesus; we are keeping our eyes on the Lord Jesus—the results of God’s Anointed being out of His place.
Well, it seems for a time to go on all right. You know, the devil is as clever as men, and the devil can be subtle. And so he gave, in both cases, for a time, for a period, an apparent success and prosperity.
So that the people began to congratulate themselves. They were very pleased with what they had done, with what they were doing. Saul seemed to be the man; things were going all right. Absalom? Well, yes, it was all right.
An apparent and illusory success—for a little while, a little while. Perpetrators congratulating themselves. That is a build-up, the overthrow of which is going to make the ignominy all the greater.
The Lord will not do that. So let it go. Let it seem to prosper. Let it seem to be successful, that its greater doom in the long run, the disillusionment, will be the more terrible than if God had stepped right in and cut it off from the beginning.
So, prosperity; and then, at a point—we are not able to put our finger upon it exactly, but it is here in the record—at a point, an awakening awareness that things were fundamentally doubtful.
A sense creeping in and growing: somewhere, somehow, things had gone wrong. An apprehension, a consciousness that things were not as right as was thought, as good as was imagined.
And you find David out there in the cave of Adullam. There is a healthy secession. Day by day, it says, day by day they went out to him—those who were discontented and in debt.
Disappointed and disillusioned, because this thing was not putting them in a position to meet their obligations. This thing was hollow.
So they went out; the number increased. And I would like to have heard what they said when they got there. I do not think we would be far from the truth if, in their grumbling, we heard them saying, “Look here, we backed the wrong horse.” May I use that term? “We made a great mistake.”
“We have discovered that what we thought was the way, the right thing, the thing that was going to bring about what we wanted, was the wrong road. Something about it is all wrong.”
You know, in the end, when the real crisis came, the verdict came out in full: “It was thou, even in those days when Saul was king, it was thou. It was thou the Lord appointed, saying, ‘Thou shalt be leader of My people.’” What a confession. What a realization.
See, in both cases it amounted to this: man’s way, man’s worldly way, man’s fleshly way. The whole principle of spiritual authority was lost.
And when that goes, there will most surely soon set in disintegration, confusion, frustration, doubts and fears, and growing acknowledgements: “Something is wrong. Something is wrong.”
Oh, I say that that is true of a very great deal of Christian realization and confession in our day. Things are not right. There is something wrong. We have lost something. We are all at sixes and sevens.
That really does explain Christianity in a very large measure today, and can be true of the individual life. It can be true of any company of the Lord’s people, just like this.
But what is the remedy? How shall this whole thing be put right? On a single issue.
I like to think there is always one key to many doors. There is one answer to many questions. There is one issue to a large and many-sided situation. It is usually like that. When the Holy Spirit just puts His finger upon a single point, very often a whole lot of things collapse.
And the one remedy for all loss of cohesion, power, and testimony—for the loss of those conditions which we read of in the book of Acts—is: bring back the King.
Bring back the King. That is the answer here. And when the King came back into his place, the situation very quickly changed. It very quickly changed.
It is almost thrilling to see the change—all the changes: the renewed national unity, the renewed national ascendancy. Read the story, the context.
Why, David is hardly anointed, as we have read, in Hebron before the Philistines know all about it. The Philistines know all about it. That menace to the kingdom, that long-drawn-out menace to the kingdom, knows all about it.
David is in his place, the place to which he was anointed. The forces of evil will know all about it when Jesus is in His place. They will.
But we are struggling and wrestling, and too often defeated by these evil forces, making little or no headway against them, and they are just playing with us. We need Somebody right at the heart, in control, with absolute authority. The only One appointed for that is the Lord Jesus.
Not in His place, dear friends—not in His place. Maybe He is not in His place in your life. Therefore yours is a life of disintegration, scatteredness, divisions; a life of defeat and weakness; a life in which the great enemy is having far, far too much of his own way.
It may be true in some company of the Lord’s people. As it is true, so very largely—without embarking upon unhappy criticism; it is so easy, so easy, to criticize and judge Christianity—yet we all have to recognize that the church of God is not that force to be reckoned with in this world that it was at the beginning.
These conditions do obtain. The answer: bring back the King.
Now you can see that this has two applications. It has a spiritual one for the present.
There needs to be a real reinstating of the Lord Jesus in His absolute authority in the life of the Christian, in the life of the local company of Christians, and in the church of God at large.
I do not think there is any question that, when that is so, we shall see mighty things happen. We shall again see something that corresponds to this book when that is so.
Well, then, we might say the great need of our time is, if we use a word concerning a thing, authority enthroned. But what we mean by authority is Jesus Christ, in the power of the Holy Spirit, Lord over all, high over all: bringing back the King now in a spiritual way.
But, of course, it has its dispensational application.
Nothing will be wholly right till He comes, Whose right it is. Nothing will be just as it should be in the purpose of God until the King returns.
In this, we know it is true: the answer, fully and finally, is the coming again of the Lord. The whole creation groans; the whole world is in unrest, waiting His coming.
God will bring Him back. Well, you see, if you look at these accounts again, you will find three things that result in the return of the King.
One: they truly learned their lesson. The Lord never, never moves until that is the case.
It may take a long time. It may be a long-drawn-out, miserable history. It has got to be never so long, but the Lord will not move until the lesson is learned.
The one thing that this world has got to learn, and the one thing that the church has got to learn, and the one thing that we have got to learn, is that it is a most disastrous thing for God’s anointed King not to be in His place.
And we have got to come to the place where we say and know that the only thing—the only thing—is not this and that as a remedy. The only thing is the Lord Himself being where He ought to be, and what He ought to be.
We have learned that through painful experience. They learned their lesson. It is quite evident, is it not? In both cases, they were quite intelligent as to why it was so, the reason for their state.
The second thing was their confession, which included repentance. Confession is a very big factor, perhaps, in the Lord’s new movement.
Being quite ready to go right down and acknowledge the failure: the fact of the failure, the cause of the failure, the thing itself.
Not just the consequences being felt badly and wanting to get out of them. No, no: this is wrong before God—before God, before Him, wrong. All wrong when Jesus has not His full place anywhere and everywhere. All wrong.
Repentance, confession.
And finally, the quest. It is this grand movement, is it not? When they, from their side, sent to David: “You are bone of our bone, flesh of our flesh. But all our trouble is because you are not in your place. Come back. We need you. We must have you. We cannot get on without you.”
That is what it amounts to. Our very life and future hangs upon your being where God appointed you to be. That is the Lord Jesus.
And there must be this quest, this heartfelt quest.
Dear friends, if what I am saying does not come home to you because you feel that this is not true of you—that you have not so behaved toward Him, and that in your case there has been no driving Him out—will you join the quest for His church? Will you join in the quest for others, for His people?
Will you be the representative of a nation like Judah, who took the initiative in this matter? For others, for the churches, whether local or universal, will you be drawn out in this matter for a new reinstating of the Lord Jesus?
If you do that, there is the only solution.
But then, as to the dispensational application, there is something to be done to bring back the King.
Although God may have His fixed time for the next intervention in this world’s history—the times and seasons which are in His own keeping—there is another side to it.
“Shall not God avenge His elect, which cry unto Him day and night?” That is a side.
There is an earnest looking for and hastening of the day of the Lord Jesus. There is work to be done. There is a testimony to go into the nations. There is a preparation: “Every one that hath this hope in Him purifieth himself, even as He is pure.”
There is all that which the Lord must find in us when He comes, and not finding it may delay His coming. I do not know whether it is dispensational truth or not, but I believe it is spiritual truth.
The Lord, on one side, waits for His people to be those who are on the stretch for His coming; and, being on the stretch, are active, occupying till He comes, and doing everything possible to prepare the way of His coming.
This is the Holy Spirit’s work: to put the King in His place, to restore the King if He is not in His kingdom, and to energize us all in this matter of bringing back the King.
“Why speak ye not a word of bringing back the king?” The answer is because you do not realize that this is the cause of all the trouble: that He is not where He ought to be. Or you have settled down to wait for something to happen.
Oh, no. The exercise, the quest, the heart-cry: He has got to be brought back. That is the point—brought back.
You say, “He is coming.” Yes, He is coming. He will come in His own time. But I say He is to be brought back. And when I say that, I believe that is what the Word of God says: something is to be done to bring Him there.
Only may we be found in that prayer of the church, the Spirit and the Bride in combination, saying, “Come.” And, “Come, Lord. Come quickly.”
In both these senses: now, spiritually, and then literally.