Murderous Rebuke

2 Samuel 19:1, 7 ESV

It was told Joab, “Behold the king is weeping and mourning for Absalom.” … “Now therefore arise, go out and speak kindly to your servants, for I swear by the LORD, if you do not go, not a man will stay with you this night, and this will be worse for you than all the evil that has come upon you from your youth until now.”

Joab is a hard man. He is David’s nephew and early on joined David. He would persist by David’s side through thick and thin. Yet David was not so foolish as to be lured into Nepotism. He made Joab earn his position as commander of the Army. He would scale the shaft protecting Jerusalem that the fortress might be captured. Twice David relieved him of his position as commander, only to have Joab murder the new commanders through deceit and David would not punish him for those actions. We are never told why David commanded Solomon to judge Joab, even when David would not do so himself. This hard, dangerous man, has just murdered David’s treacherous son Absalom, while he was hanging incapacitated from a tree, and now he lectures David on how he should be acting. And he was right.

Later he would lecture David on the foolishness of a census. After he was unable to persuade David he simply did such a poor job it was grossly inaccurate. In both these cases Joab was right. In judging David’s success by the hand of God not by the size of David’s army he was more theologically astute than David and yet he was a ruthless, ambitious, murderer.

Coming into the holiday season you may wonder why focus on such a man. Going down the street at night seeing the lights, and thinking about how they are to signify the light of the world coming into it two thousand years ago. The Nativities, the family gatherings, any number of things, if you wanted to focus on a murderer why not go for Herod? Coming to Joab I am struck by God’s use of sinful and wicked men to fulfill his ends. In this particular case to rebuke and correct men much wiser and more righteous than themselves.

This time of the year it is easy to get lost in the nostalgia of the moment. Memories of childhood and yesteryear combine at home and at church. Our homes are filled with old and new decorations. Some of the ornaments I decorated as a preschooler at First Baptist Church of Abilene, KS hang on my tree. Sparking memories thirty-five years old. Advent readings and candles push me back to moments in time when my parents read the familiar readings and I longingly wished for my moment to light the candles. Carols that everyone knows ring loud from the organ, and every voice sings, as the church slowly fills more and more every week as Christmas Sunday approaches.

At this moment it is very easy to fall into the trap David fell into. As the Christmas and Easter Crowd makes their bi-annual pilgrimage to the holy sights it is easy to be broken for them, to mourn for the faithless who will not love enough to spare EVERY Sunday for worship with us. To grow distracted from the great victory God has wrought in the incarnation of Christ on earth. Distracted from the miraculous by mourning for the faithless.

Joab’s rebuke of David in both these events is taken to heart. Too often I mourn for the faithless at the peril of the faithful and too often I trust in earthly means rather than the God of my strength. Join me this season by continuing to fix our hearts and eyes on the blessings of 2020.

CORAM DEO