1-2 Samuel Week Fifty-Two: 2 Samuel 23:1-39

¹ Now these are the last words of David.

David the son of Jesse declares,
The man who was raised on high declares,
The anointed of the God of Jacob,
And the sweet psalmist of Israel,
² “The Spirit of the Lord spoke by me,
And His word was on my tongue.
³ “The God of Israel said,
The Rock of Israel spoke to me,
‘He who rules over men righteously,
Who rules in the fear of God,
⁴ Is as the light of the morning when the sun rises,
A morning without clouds,
When the tender grass springs out of the earth,
Through sunshine after rain.’
⁵ “Truly is not my house so with God?
For He has made an everlasting covenant with me,
Ordered in all things, and secured;
For all my salvation and all my desire,
Will He not indeed make it grow?
⁶ “But the worthless, every one of them will be thrust away like thorns,
Because they cannot be taken in hand;
⁷ But the man who touches them
Must be armed with iron and the shaft of a spear,
And they will be completely burned with fire in their place.”

⁸ These are the names of the mighty men whom David had: Josheb-basshebeth a Tahchemonite, chief of the captains, he was called Adino the Eznite, because of eight hundred slain by him at one time; ⁹ and after him was Eleazar the son of Dodo the Ahohite, one of the three mighty men with David when they defied the Philistines who were gathered there to battle and the men of Israel had withdrawn. ¹⁰ He arose and struck the Philistines until his hand was weary and clung to the sword, and the Lord brought about a great victory that day; and the people returned after him only to strip the slain.

¹¹ Now after him was Shammah the son of Agee a Hararite. And the Philistines were gathered into a troop where there was a plot of ground full of lentils, and the people fled from the Philistines. ¹² But he took his stand in the midst of the plot, defended it and struck the Philistines; and the Lord brought about a great victory.

¹³ Then three of the thirty chief men went down and came to David in the harvest time to the cave of Adullam, while the troop of the Philistines was camping in the valley of Rephaim. ¹⁴ David was then in the stronghold, while the garrison of the Philistines was then in Bethlehem. ¹⁵ David had a craving and said, “Oh that someone would give me water to drink from the well of Bethlehem which is by the gate!” ¹⁶ So the three mighty men broke through the camp of the Philistines, and drew water from the well of Bethlehem which was by the gate, and took it and brought it to David. Nevertheless he would not drink it, but poured it out to the Lord; ¹⁷ and he said, “Be it far from me, O Lord, that I should do this. Shall I drink the blood of the men who went in jeopardy of their lives?” Therefore he would not drink it. These things the three mighty men did.

¹⁸ Abishai, the brother of Joab, the son of Zeruiah, was chief of the thirty. And he swung his spear against three hundred and killed them, and had a name as well as the three. ¹⁹ He was most honored of the thirty, therefore he became their commander; however, he did not attain to the three.

²⁰ Then Benaiah the son of Jehoiada, the son of a valiant man of Kabzeel, who had done mighty deeds, killed the two sons of Ariel of Moab. He also went down and killed a lion in the middle of a pit on a snowy day. ²¹ He killed an Egyptian, an impressive man. Now the Egyptian had a spear in his hand, but he went down to him with a club and snatched the spear from the Egyptian’s hand and killed him with his own spear. ²² These things Benaiah the son of Jehoiada did, and had a name as well as the three mighty men. ²³ He was honored among the thirty, but he did not attain to the three. And David appointed him over his guard.

²⁴ Asahel the brother of Joab was among the thirty; Elhanan the son of Dodo of Bethlehem, ²⁵ Shammah the Harodite, Elika the Harodite, ²⁶ Helez the Paltite, Ira the son of Ikkesh the Tekoite, ²⁷ Abiezer the Anathothite, Mebunnai the Hushathite, ²⁸ Zalmon the Ahohite, Maharai the Netophathite, ²⁹ Heleb the son of Baanah the Netophathite, Ittai the son of Ribai of Gibeah of the sons of Benjamin, ³⁰ Benaiah a Pirathonite, Hiddai of the brooks of Gaash, ³¹ Abi-albon the Arbathite, Azmaveth the Barhumite, ³² Eliahba the Shaalbonite, the sons of Jashen, Jonathan, ³³ Shammah the Hararite, Ahiam the son of Sharar the Ararite, ³⁴ Eliphelet the son of Ahasbai, the son of the Maacathite, Eliam the son of Ahithophel the Gilonite, ³⁵ Hezro the Carmelite, Paarai the Arbite, ³⁶ Igal the son of Nathan of Zobah, Bani the Gadite, ³⁷ Zelek the Ammonite, Naharai the Beerothite, armor bearers of Joab the son of Zeruiah, ³⁸ Ira the Ithrite, Gareb the Ithrite, ³⁹ Uriah the Hittite; thirty-seven in all.

—2 Samuel 23:1-39

Sermon Outline

1. The (MULTILINE)
2. The (MULTILINE)
3. The (MULTILINE)

References

Weekly Study Guide

Have you ever taken a sneak peek at the last chapter of a book you’d just begun? While some people just can’t wait for the resolution of all of the storylines and tension that a good book provides, reading the end first doesn’t ever fully make sense; you must first learn what’s at stake before the resolution can be understood. Without knowing it, we often do this same thing when reading scripture. Many of us stick to reading only the New Testament and, in so doing, are exposed to the resolution to the sin problem that Messiah brings, without first understanding the story that leads up to this ending. The covenants are the beginning of the story. That is why we have explored all of the other covenants first; and now that the story makes more sense, we finally get to examine the New Covenant.

In the final of the eight covenants that God enters into in scripture, we see the culmination of all of the other covenants. The New Covenant brings into existence the actual forgiveness of sins that God’s people had been waiting for. It is an unconditional covenant made between God and Israel that provides for their future regeneration in preparation for the Millennial Kingdom. It also tears down the dividing wall between Jews and Gentiles, thereby allowing Gentiles access to God’s family without having to first become Jews. It is seen in many passages in scripture: (Deut 29:4, 30:6; Isa 59:20-21, 61:8-9; Jer 31:31-40, 32:37-40, 50:4-5, Ezek 11:19-20, 16:60-63, 34:25-26, 36:24-32, 37:21-28; Zech 9:11, 12:10-14; Heb 8:1-13, 10:15-18). Notice how many of these passages appear in the Old Testament.

So, what is this New Covenant all about? What are its various provisions and why, exactly, is it so important? We will touch on many aspects of this covenant, but the high point of the New Covenant is that it provides salvation, focusing first on Israel’s national regeneration, but also including personal salvation for all who would believe. The Abrahamic Covenant promised this salvation, and the New Covenant delivers it. The New Covenant will do precisely what the Mosaic Covenant could not do. The Mosaic Covenant could not forgive sins; it was only designed to temporarily cover over sins until the ultimate sin sacrifice would come. But with the New Covenant, sins are actually taken away.

One of the most important—and most overlooked—aspects of these God-given covenants is that God not only lays out His grand overarching plan of salvation but also provides within them the instruction manual for living. Merely understanding our theological relationship with God wouldn’t do us much good if we didn’t also know how to put it into practice. Thus, God gives His people administrative (or housekeeping) covenants that lay out those instructions. The Mosaic Covenant was the housekeeping covenant for God’s people who lived prior to Messiah, and the New Covenant is the housekeeping covenant for those who live after Messiah. The key to understanding these housekeeping covenants is that they are designed with specific life situations in mind. In other words, certain rules would only apply in certain specific circumstances or eras.

We discussed last time that God regulated the obedience of the people of Israel by giving them the Mosaic Law. This was God basically saying, “I promised you unfathomable blessings through my covenant with Abraham. But if you want to know how to participate in that blessing, then you need to follow these rules and laws I am giving you through Moses.” This is what we are calling an ‘administrative covenant’. We also saw that when Messiah finally arrived—for whom they had been waiting for so long—the need for the Law of Moses had come to an end. The purpose of the Law, after all, was to point them to Christ. When He arrived and became the ultimate sin sacrifice, the Law was complete. The exciting part is that it was time for a new law—but this new law would be better. We have somehow inherited from our Christian tradition, a negative view of “law”—whereas Israel properly and gratefully understood the idea of “law” as a revelation of who God is and what He desires of us. Psalm 119 gushes with appreciation and love for the Law.

We discussed how God began to promise through the Prophets that a New Covenant was on its way. Once again, God always prepares us for what is to come, and He was giving His people Israel the “heads-up” that this current system would come to an end, and would soon be replaced by a new system. This new system was the New Covenant. We discussed how the New Covenant serves the same purpose as the Mosaic Covenant. It helps the people of God who came after Messiah know how to live lives pleasing to God. It, too, regulates obedience. The New Covenant is just as much “law” as the Mosaic Covenant was. The New Testament calls it “the Law of Christ” in Galatians 6:2, “the perfect law” and “the law of liberty” in James 1:25, and “the law of the Spirit of life” in Romans 8:2. This Law of Messiah contains all the individual commandments from Christ and the Apostles that apply to a New Testament believer. The New Covenant—while replacing the Mosaic Covenant as the administrative covenant for the people of God—had a very similar purpose as the Mosaic Covenant. It was to bring the blessing of the Abrahamic covenant back into the present experience of a generation or generations of God’s people. This is why we can so strongly affirm that the Old Testament was not the time for the Law, with the New Testament being the time for grace. No, the New Testament is full of law as well—because it is in “law” that God provides for us instructions for living.

As Arnold Fruchtenbaum points out, the believer’s rule of life in the Old Testament was the Mosaic Law. The believer’s rule of life today is the Law of Messiah. But we also live under eternal principles that were revealed in the Old Testament. He highlights the fact that while some people say we no longer have any obligation to the Old Testament, that is only true insofar as the Law of Moses is concerned. But the Old Testament contains much more than just the Law of Moses. We have already covered the contents of the Adamic Covenant, the Noahic Covenant, and the Abrahamic Covenant—all of which come before the Mosaic Law—and all of which apply to all of mankind. One example of an eternal principle that we still live under is the principle that God punishes sin. That is an eternal truth that falls outside of any particular dispensation. So, the Old Testament is still very relevant to us today, we just need to be clear and precise that the Mosaic Law was for Israel, not for the church.

Fruchtenbaum goes on to say that there are many areas that the law of Messiah covers as our rule of life today: our relationship to human government, our relationship to courts of law, the relationship between masters and servants, what kind of work ethic we should possess, the relationship between husband and wife as well as parent and child, our relationship to how the church operates, and much more. Again, these housekeeping administrative covenants regulate life and obedience. They are manuals for living.

One reason the New Covenant is superior to the Mosaic Covenant is that it provides a divine enablement for actually being able to live out God’s commands. In the New Covenant, we are given a new obedience, empowered by the indwelling Holy Spirit. The reason Israel failed to keep the Law under the Mosaic Covenant is that the people lacked the power to comply with the righteous standards of God. The Mosaic Covenant did not provide the indwelling Holy Spirit—it could not, because the sin issue had not yet been dealt with at the cross, and the people’s hearts were still ruled by sin. But that was not its purpose. In the New Covenant, as we have read, the law was now no longer an external prompting to obedience, written on tablets of stone. It is an internal prompting written on our hearts.

So, putting all of this together—the key components of the New Covenant include:

1) A new heart indwelt by God’s Spirit. God removes the heart of stone and replaces it with a heart of flesh, upon which He writes His law. Darrell Bock says it is “a unilateral act of God which will render the recipient faithfully devoted to God and obedient to His law. It makes the law of God an internal principle of the life and conduct of His people.”

2) Forgiveness and cleansing from sin. According to scholar Dr. Robert Saucy: “The salvation of God that flows from the cross is given to all mankind through the New Covenant. In both the Old and New Testaments, it is the provisions of the New Covenant that ultimately provide the solution to the human problem of sin and bring those in the covenant into a final perfect fellowship with God as His sons and daughters.”

The sacrifices of the Mosaic covenant were just a foreshadowing of the ultimate sacrifice that would not just temporarily cover over sins, but would once and for all remove them. The coming of Messiah and His death—and then the giving of the Holy Spirit—is the essence of the New Covenant. This covenant inaugurated a new age in which God could actually now dwell within His people—something He could not do before because Christ had not yet died for our sins.

This New Covenant is the heart of the New Testament salvation we have all been taught. But its roots are in the Old Testament. Despite Israel’s rejection of Him, the New Covenant that God promised to them was initially inaugurated at Pentecost when God sent the Holy Spirit to live in the hearts of His people. Jesus came to fulfill the Law, live a perfect life, and thus not deserve the punishment of death that the law prescribed. So, when He died, He wasn’t dying for Himself. Because of His sinless life, He was qualified to be the perfect sin sacrifice on our behalf. Sin was finally paid for. When we accept that payment for our sins, God cleanses our hearts and that is what enables the Holy Spirit to come dwell within us.

A stumbling block for the Jewish Christians in the New Testament was that Gentiles now had access to God without first becoming Jews. Before this time, God worked in the world through the Jews only, but now, unrestricted access was made possible to Jews and Gentiles alike by the sacrifice of Jesus, a change which was symbolized by the veil being torn from top to bottom at the crucifixion. Whereas God originally dwelt among men in a temple or Tabernacle, He now dwells in our brand-new hearts. The New Covenant was the promise of the restoration and renewal of Israel as well as the promise that would provide salvation and the renewal of all things.

3) The New Covenant also offers the ultimate blessing, promising resurrection from the dead (Ezek 37:12). The indwelling Holy Spirit is the down payment, guaranteeing that this resurrection will happen.

4) There were also material blessings that accompanied the spiritual blessings. Those material blessings we have covered in length earlier, apply to Israel, while Gentiles are able to partake in the spiritual blessings.

Just as the Mosaic Covenant sought to preserve and protect the people of Israel for their inheritance, so too, the New Covenant seeks to secure the kind of obedience necessary to ensure the eternal relationship of God’s people today to our promised inheritance. They both serve as terms of obedience that enable God’s people to experience God’s promised blessing.

Seeing the similarities between the Mosaic Covenant and the New Covenant highlights a concept known as the “continuity between the ages”. Some try to paint a hard and fast break in between the Old and New Testaments when in reality, there is not nearly as much discontinuity between them as you might have previously thought. The New Covenant was simply the natural progression—the next natural step in the outworking of God’s plan of redemption; as the sin question had finally been dealt with by the coming of Messiah, and as the nature of the people of God changed, it had also become necessary to change the way in which they were administered.

It is in seeing the continuity between the ages in the plan of God—namely, that the Mosaic Covenant was administrative for the people of God in that era, and that the New Covenant is administrative for the people of God following the coming of Messiah—that allows us to recognize that the Mosaic era was not just the era of Law—with this present era being the age of grace. That was not the era for the Jews, with this being the era for the Gentiles. The church did not replace Israel just because the Mosaic Law was fulfilled (Rom 4:13). The church does not intercept the blessings promised to Israel. The church does, however, participate in the blessings of the New Covenant (a covenant made with Israel) in that she was grafted into the same vine alongside Israel.

How might we summarize the big picture of what we have seen in these covenants? We have God promising blessing to the world in the Abrahamic covenant. We understand that initially as a blessed life here on earth and then ultimately the joys of heaven. God then gives the terms by which His people, Israel, would be able to experience that blessing—that is through the Mosaic law, given in the Mosaic Covenant. As the human-king form of the nation began, God then clarified through David the promise made to Abraham, giving the people a better understanding of what the coming Kingdom was all about. Then, through the prophets, God promises a new administrative covenant, one which would, once and for all take care of the problem of sin and enable His people to obey the law of God and would enable God’s Spirit to actually dwell within them. This New Covenant would be initially fulfilled for the Gentiles at Pentecost, and then for the Jews as a whole at the second coming when He finally restores them to their place of prominence, just as He promised all throughout the Old Testament. The Kingdom will finally be established with Messiah on David’s throne in Jerusalem ruling the world with a rod of iron for a thousand glorious years. That is God’s plan for the ages, as revealed through the redemptive covenants, expressed in one small paragraph.

(MULTILINE)

Discussion Questions

1. What do you consider to be one of your greatest accomplishments? (MULTILINE)
2. What do you think made David’s mighty men so mighty? Was it more than just the ability to fight? How do you think David’s top three felt when he refused to drink the water they risked their lives to get? Why do you think David did this? What made David’s men so loyal to him? Why would this listing of David’s mighty men be included here at the end of his life? (MULTILINE)
3. What do we learn about David’s relationship with God from his last words? What phrases are used of David here? Describe the covenant David points to in this song. Why is this covenant so important in salvation history? Revisit 2 Samuel 7:14-16. How do you see these ideas represented in this final song of David? What does David say here in this song about leadership? Why do you think David includes mention of the fate of the wicked? What attributes of God are on display in this song? (MULTILINE)
4. Where do we see the values of loyalty, courage, and integrity, as seen in David and his mighty men, in today’s society? What implicit lessons about leadership can today’s leaders take from this chapter? What do you think “success” meant to David? What do you think success means to most people today? What do you think us being successful means to God? (MULTILINE)
5. What would be the equivalent today of David’s mighty men? What are marks of greatness that you consider to be important? What are some of the areas God has given you leadership and authority in this world? How does this chapter help you to understand the impact of your own actions and the legacy you might leave? What are some of the most important things we can do to leave a legacy? What is one thing you can do this week to focus your attention on not only your earthly legacy, but your eternal legacy? (MULTILINE)

Going Deeper

1. David makes a significant statement here when he says “the Lord spoke through me.” This prompts a question for us to grapple with: how does God speak through human men to produce scripture? How do God’s words become human words? Is it through mechanical dictation—where God utters words and men write them down? Is it through “automatic writing” where God literally moves the hands of the penman outside of their control? Read 2 Timothy 3:16 and 2 Peter 1:21 and discuss what these verses mean in light of this question. Then perhaps look up “verbal, plenary inspiration” and discuss how scholars have come to describe this process. (MULTILINE)
2. Where do we see both mortality and eternity on display in this chapter? It has been said that as a person gets older, they focus more on who they are rather than on what they have done. Do you think this is true? Do you think this is profitable? Why or why not? Where do you see David doing this? What themes from the life of David do you see coming to fruition in this chapter? (MULTILINE)

Transformational Activity

Prayer

As David approached the end of his life, he wrote a song that captured his thoughts and feelings about God’s working in his life. This prayer of thanksgiving and worship puts God on display in beautiful ways. If you had the opportunity to write a prayer of praise and thanksgiving for all that God has done in and through you, what would it say? Perhaps take a few minutes this week and write out some thoughts, trying to capture in the form of a prayer where God has brought you from and to at this point in your life. Then at the end include, where you would like to see God take you from here.