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2 Samuel 13
Our first
reading was a while back in the service.
Let me give you the highlights.
Boy loves
girl.
Boy wants
girl.
Boy can’t
have girl.
It’s the
stuff of holiday novels and Hollywood.
Except that this story shines a spotlight into some far darker
places.
You see it starts:
Boy ‘loves’
girl.
Boy wants
girl.
Boy can’t
have girl.
But then,
Friend
advises boy.
Boy tricks
girl.
Boy grabs
girl,
Boy rapes
girl.
And then…
Boy hates
girl.
Boy silences
girl.
Boy discards
girl.
It’s not
Hollywood. This is reality.
This week I
read an estimate that 1 in 3 women in their lifetime will face sexual
abuse, broadly defined. 1 in 3
women. 1 in 4 men will face
sexual abuse, broadly defined.
And 2 Samuel
13 does not flinch from revealing life as it is. This morning we’re not going to turn
away either. We know that here
this morning there will be people who know Tamar’s pain first hand. And we grieve with you. We’re going to look at this chapter,
not with detached interest but with a heavy heart. Not to stir up pain but to acknowledge
the existence of such evil. One
of the greatest abuses which Tamar suffered was the abuse of being
silenced. But this morning we
will not silence Tamar, we will not brush her under the carpet as many do
in this chapter. Instead we will
grieve with her and acknowledge the evil which she suffered.
Because this
is not an isolated evil.
We cannot hold 2 Samuel 13 at arms length, because here is an evil
that is as old as Adam.
Ever since
Genesis chapter 3…
[SLIDE:
Genesis 3]
… the
wickedness of the human heart has played itself out in terms of:
[SLIDES x 4:
Desire, Deception, Unlawful Taking, Death]
Desire,
Deception, Unlawful taking and Death.
Adam and Eve were forbidden just one fruit. But the serpent deceived them. He cultivated their desire for the
forbidden fruit. They desired, so
they took unlawfully. And death
and chaos was the result.
[SLIDE:
Chaos]
2 Samuel
chapter 11 showed a very similar pattern.
[SLIDE:
David and Bathsheba]
Just two
chapters prieviously we’ve seen David desiring Bathsheba – another man’s
wife. He took her
unlawfully. He deceived Uriah and
when the deception didn’t work, he killed him. Desire, deception, unlawful taking and death. And from this event in 2 Samuel
11, chaos broke out. David’s
kingdom, from this point on, becomes not the mirror of Christ’s
Kingdom which it was meant to be.
Instead it becomes a broken mirror, reflecting not Christ’s
Kingdom but the wicked kingdoms of this world. The chapter in front of us is part of that fall-out.
Desire,
Deception, Unlawful taking and Death.
[SLIDE:
Sermon on the Mount]
Jesus, in
the sermon on the mount, as He described our chaos put His finger
especially on two sins: lust and murder. We all lust in our hearts, which makes
us adulterers. And we’re all
angry in our hearts which makes us murderers.
How does
that play out? Let me give you
one more Scripture.
[SLIDE:
James 4]
James, which
has many links with the sermon on the mount, says this.
[SLIDE:
verses]
He looks on the chaos of the world and he gives this diagnosis:
What causes fights and
quarrels among you? Don't they come from your desires [lusts] that battle
within you? You want something but don't get it. You kill and covet, but
you cannot have what you want. You quarrel and fight.
Do you see
the picture here? I desire
something. I lust after it. And when I cannot have it, I
kill. I murder those who get in
the way. I cheat and I steal and
I quarrel and I fight until I get what I want. I am lustful (I want things) and I am angry (if you block
me from getting what I want, watch out!)
I am an adulterer and a murderer.
And so are you.
[SLIDE: 2
Samuel 13]
So as we
look at 2 Samuel 13, we see this same spiral of desire, deception,
violent taking and murder. It’s
the problems of the whole world boiled down to a kingdom – in fact boiled
down to a family. 2 Samuel 13 is
not a distant tragedy. We live in
the chaos generated by just these problems. And we are, all of us victims of this chaos. And we are, all ouf us, perpetrators
of this chaos. We are all Tamar
but we are also Amnon and we are Jonadab, we are Absalom and we are
David.
This morning
we’re just going to look at the victim and the perpetrators in this
tragedy. The victim is Tamar and
the perpetrators are the four men: Amnon, Jonadab, Absalom and
David. Between them they make up
a perverse household, indeed a perverse kingdom. Then, once we’ve seen the chaos, we’ll
finish by thinking about the hope of Christmas. What does Christmas have to say to Tamar?
But first let’s look at the
characters. And here’s the victim
in this tragedy. Tamar. What do we learn?
Verse
1. She is beautiful. Her name means palm tree, which
according to Song of Solomon is a very desirable thing to be like. It makes you think tall and
fruitful. In fact she is so
beautiful that she makes the crown prince of Israel literally
love-sick.
But she is
also skillful, industrious and caring.
Verses 8 and 9 go into great detail about how she made all this food
for Amnon herself. Beautiful,
skillful, industrious, caring.
And virtuous. Nobody in
this chapter speaks any kind of godly wisdom, except Tamar. Look at verses 12 and 13:
12 "Don't, my brother!" she said to
him. "Don't force me. Such a thing should not be done in Israel!
Don't do this wicked thing. 13 What about me? Where could I
get rid of my disgrace? And what about you? You would be like one of the
wicked fools in Israel. Please speak to the king; he will not keep me
from being married to you."
Tamar makes 6 pleas to Amnon, any one of which
should have stopped him in his tracks.
First she says ‘Don’t’. That’s it. Don’t. That should
have been the end of the matter.
But it wasn’t, so secondly she calls him ‘my brother.’ She reminds Amnon – they are related,
they have the same father.
Leviticus 18 should have been resounding in his ears at this
point. “Do
not have sexual relations with your sister, either your father's daughter
or your mother's daughter.” (Lev 18:9).
But the law of God won’t stop Amnon’s lust. So thirdly, she appeals to his sense
of dignity. Here is the crown
prince, the heir to the throne, doing something that no member of God’s
people should do. Fourthly, she
asks him to pity her. If he loved
her as he said, then shouldn’t he care for her disgrace? Fifthly, Tamar appeals to his own
sense of shame. Amnon would
become a wicked, contemptible fool if he went any further. And sixthly, here is the last resort,
if you’re that determined Amnon, let’s marry. Tamar is a desperate woman, but she is a voice of reason
and great integrity.
Nonetheless Tamar is silenced.
And humiliated, abused and disgraced. Yet even after Amnon rapes
her, she is still the only voice of reason in the chapter. Verse 16 she pleads with Amnon to let
her stay. Perhaps they could
still marry and save face. But
she is thrown out, and the door is bolted after her. That’s a harrowing detail for me. Amnon has dragged her into his bed,
he’s come crashing into her world against every barricade she could
possibly erect. But now, she is
turfed out by Amnon and the door is bolted.
No wonder, v19, she tears the royal robe of a virgin princess, she
puts ashes on her head and weeps aloud.
She acts just like David acts in v31 when he thinks all his sons are
dead. She is in mourning. This has been a death. And, v20, she lives out her days in
Absalom’s house as a ‘desolate woman.’
The word for ‘desolate’ here certainly means she remained single
and childless. But more than
this, the word is a violent word.
It’s the word used for a body ravaged with tumours, it’s the word
used for a whole family killed in disaster. It’s used of war-torn lands, of famine for the crops and of
the desecrated temple. Tamar,
whose name means tall, fruitful palm tree, has withered and died.
Tamar begins
[SLIDE:
Tamar]
Desired (v1)
Deceived (v11)
Disgraced (v14)
Despised (v15)
Discarded (v17)
Distraught
(v19)
Dismissed (v20a)
Destroyed (v20b)
In the hands of this kingdom, run by these men, the
virgin princess has been thoroughly defiled, dismissed and
destroyed.
Let’s look at her abusers.
[SLIDE – Amnon]
Amnon. The
heir to the throne of Israel. He
is the firstborn son of David about whom there must have been high
hopes. His name means faithful. Here is a faithful ruler. And he is a lover, v1. In fact he is literally love-sick for
Tamar. Amnon is depressed, he’s
losing weight, (v4) he’s become haggard with desire for Tamar.
But look at what lies behind these feelings. See the last half of v2. It does not read: “It seemed impossible for Amnon to do anything for
her.” That would be love. Love in the Bible means service, it
means sacrifice – putting yourself out for the other. But Amnon’s love was a love that
wanted to do something ‘to’ Tamar.
And what happened once Amnon does what he wanted to do to Tamar? Verse 15:
15 Then Amnon hated her with intense hatred. In
fact, he hated her more than he had loved her.
Amnon’s love really is hatred. And it probably always has been hatred
– really. You see, a desire to do
something ‘to’ another person is not love in any biblical
sense. It might qualify as love
in today’s pop songs, it might qualify as love in films, but it’s not
biblical love. The feelings that
Amnon had nursed for Tamar actually find their fulfillment in violent
sexual abuse. Amnon’s ‘love’,
which had made him ill with longing, was a love that found its
consummation in rape. I wonder
how many love songs betray Amnon’s love.
A desire to do something to her. I wonder how many of our romantic desires are actually like
Amnon’s love.
And when Amnon’s so called love is
consummated in rape, then the façade of love can no longer be
maintained. Now he feels a
hatred greater than his prior feelings of ‘love’. But really I think this is the
hatred that drove him throughout.
This is Amnon: the faithful lover. In
this kingdom he is anything but.
Then Jonadab:
[SLIDE: Jonadab]
Here is a wise counsellor. Verse 3 calls him literally ‘a very
wise man.’ Yet Jonadab is really
cast as the serpent of this piece and we remember that the serpent of
Genesis 3 was also wise and ‘crafty.’
Now it’s important to remember that without Jonadab, Amnon would
simply be left in his love-sick depression. There would be no rape
without Jonadab. His ‘wisdom’ is
cunning and deceit. Here is a
political animal who knows how to get what you want. If you have desires that you want to
pursue, Jonadab can help you lie, cheat and steal to get them. His ‘wisdom’ makes him very dangerous.
Jonadab: he appears wise, but he is a dangerous schemer.
There’s Absalom:
[SLIDE: Absalom]
Tamar’s brother. He is cast as an avenger, a rescuer. But look at his words to Tamar in
verse 20:
"Has that
Amnon, your brother, been with you? Be quiet now, my sister; he is your
brother. Don't take this thing to heart."
Notice how Absalom talks around the
subject. The narrator says it was
rape. Jonadab in v32 says it was
rape. Absalom speaks of ‘being with’
Amnon her brother. Here he
diminishes her ordeal and fails to face facts.
And notice how he tries to calm Tamar by
calling Amnon ‘her brother’.
It’s fascinating to see in this chapter how
people play the family card. Amnon
plays the family card in order to get into bed with Tamar. In v11 he says “Come to bed with me my
sister.” Now that’s no way to
play the family card. Being
brother and sister means they shouldn’t do this. Tamar plays the family card correctly,
v12: “Don’t my brother.”
But now in v20, how does Absalom play the
family card? Just like Amnon
did. Not to prevent but to
justify abuse. “Be quiet
now, my sister, he is your brother.”
Here is a family using family relations to
abuse and re-abuse each other. Of
course Absalom hates Amnon, of course he doesn’t want to be
anything like Amnon. But he plays
the family card to silence and repress.
Just like with Amnon.
In fact Absalom uses the family card three
times in this verse. Twice he
uses it to downplay the rape – don’t worry, he’s only your brother. And once he uses it to silence his
sister: ‘Be quiet now my sister.’
Absalom basically says ‘If you’re any kind of sister to Amnon you
won’t make a fuss and if you’re any kind of sister to me you won’t make a
fuss.’ Put yourself in Tamar’s
shoes if you can. At that point
you either scream or you shut down completely. Well Tamar has already shut down and Absalom just drives
another nail into the coffin with those six words: “Don’t take this thing
to heart.” Here is a woman destroyed, disgraced and in mourning, she’s
told not to take it to heart.
Christmas is a time when families get closer
together. It’s no wonder that
Christmas can be so hard. I heard
yesterday that more people file for divorce in January than any other time. Families coming together is not the
joy it should be. The family card
so often justifies abuse and then so often covers up abuse.
Now Absalom loved his sister. Later, Absalom even calls one of his
own daughters ‘Tamar’ in his sister’s honour. But he is too much of a coward to face this event as it is. And so two years after this event,
Absalom exacts vigilante justice.
Real justice should be swift and proportionate. It’s revenge that is served cold. And this killing of Amnon is
definitely revenge rather than justice.
Verse 28 is so ironic, Absalom gets his servants
to kill Amnon and he tells them: ‘Be strong, be brave.’ Absalom is anything but. Absalom never faces the issue. He silences Tamar immediately. He silences himself immediately. He does not go to David his
father. He does not face Amnon
his brother. Instead he let’s his
anger brood and even at the point when he exacts revenge he cannot face
it. His servants have to be brave
and strong for him.
Absalom may appear to be the heroic rescuer,
the defender of Tamar’s honour.
But he isn’t. He silences
her just as Amnon did and then brings about, not justice, but only a
cowardly revenge.
Finally, David.
[SLIDE: David]
Tamar’s father. Israel’s king. What
would he do to protect his beautiful princess? Verse 20:
When King David
heard all this, he was furious.
Good.
He ought to have been. But
verse 20 should not stop there.
We should read about David’s righteous anger leading to action. Here is the king. Here is her dad. He ought to have gone to his daughter
and spoken words of comfort. He
ought to have done all he could to restore her dignity and her
reputation. He ought to have
brought Amnon to account. Tamar
was right, such things should not happen in Israel. So what is the king going to do about
this? David does nothing. And the kingdom spirals down into
greater and greater chaos.
Because David does nothing, Absalom takes matters into his own
hands. He kills the heir to the
throne and then, as Absalom goes on the run he becomes a contender for
the crown. If David had only
acted here in chapter 13, then the turbulence and blood-shed of the next
5 chapters would not have happened.
But David, the Almighty King, simply wrings his hands. His daughter and his kingdom needed
him to act but he does nothing.
So there we have it – the fallen house of
David. One righteous woman
destroyed. Four unrighteous men
who between them allow and perpetrate horrendous evil. And this is what our fallen
houses look like. This is what
our fallen families look like.
This is what the fallen kingdom of the world looks like. We are, all of us, to one extent or
another victims and perpetrators in a fallen house. All of us are part Tamar and part
Amnon. We are part Jonadab, part
Absalom and part David too. Life
in this fallen house looks like 2 Samuel 13 and it is unutterably tragic.
This doesn’t sound like a Christmas message
does it? Well. I don’t know. Because it’s precisely this situation
that the Christmas story speaks into.
Turn to Isaiah 9 our second reading.
Here in verse 2 we see where Christmas always
begins. Christmas begins in
darkness:
2 The people walking in darkness have seen a great light; on those
living in the land of the shadow of death a light has dawned.
Now we from the southern hemisphere boast about
going for a swim on Christmas day, but Christmas is not meant to be a
summer celebration. Christmas
ought to be celebrated in the dead of winter. Christmas begins in darkness. Because, perhaps the most basic message of Christmas is
that God meets us in the dark, God meets us in the mess. He meets us on our level. On that first Christmas Herod was
killing babies all around them.
Rome was butchering the people of God left, right and centre. And right in the midst of that, is a
baby who is called Immanuel: which means ‘God WITH us.’ Christ the LORD enters, He draws
alongside, He is born into our troubles. And as a shining light, He comes
to transform our darkness. Look
at verse 6:
6 For to us a child is born, to us a son is given, and the government
will be on His shoulders. And He will be called Wonderful Counsellor,
Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace. 7 Of the
increase of His government and peace there will be no end. He will reign
on David's throne and over his kingdom, establishing and upholding it
with justice and righteousness from that time on and for ever.
Having seen
2 Samuel 13 don’t we long for those words. ‘Justice’ and ‘Righteousness’. We have seen those who supposedly ruled the house of David
and we are sick to the stomach to even look at them. Now comes the Mighty God Himself. And He will reign on David’s
throne. God moves into the
house. That’s the meaning of
Christmas, God Himself moves in.
And He establishes and upholds the Kingdom in righteousness,
justice and peace.
And what
kind of King is Jesus? Look at
His four names. He is the
Wonderful Counsellor.
[SLIDE –
Wonderful Counsellor]
Not like
Jonadab – the scheming adviser.
Here is a truly wise Counsellor.
And He’s the
Mighty God.
[SLIDE –
Mighty God]
Not like
David the impotent, hand-ringing king.
Here is a God who will use all of His might to be God to His
people.
He is also
the Everlasting Father.
[SLIDE –
Everlasting Father]
Amnon’s
so-called love was so changeable.
It quickly turned to hate. Yet here is One with an eternal and
dependable love.
And finally
Christ is the Prince of Peace.
[SLIDE –
Prince of Peace]
Not like
Absalom. He’s neither a coward
nor a vigilante but One who rules to uphold Peace.
2 Samuel 13
showed us four parodies of men.
The lover, the counsellor, the rescuer and the king – all of them
perverted by sin. How wonderful
it would have been if they were genuinely lovers, counsellors, rescuers
and kings. Well such a kingdom
exists, not because we have made the house of David into the house
of the LORD. No it exists because
at Christmas, the house of the LORD entered into the house of David. There in the manger God has entered
the house to transform it the way light transforms darkness. Mary’s child established and upheld
this kingdom and now sits enthroned – the government on His shoulders.
All we are
asked to do is receive the king.
To us a child is born. To
us a Son is given. Here is the
ultimate Christmas present.
Addressed to us. To we who
are walking in darkness. We who
are victims and perpetrators in this fallen house of the world.
Each of us
need to come to Christ for healing and we need to come to Christ for
forgiveness. Come before Christ
and tell Him all the ways that you have been like Tamar, and tell Him all
the ways you been like Amnon, Jonadab, Absalom and David. Come before Christ and pray through
what it means for Him to be your Wonderful Counsellor, your Mighty God,
your Everlasting Father, your Prince of Peace.
Let’s be
quiet.
Lord we often find ourselves as Tamar:
Desired, Deceived, Disgraced, Despised, Discarded, Distraught, Dismissed, Destroyed.
Lord bring us wholeness
and hope.
Lord we often find ourselves as
Amnon – a lover who turns to
lust and hate.
Jonadab – a schemer and deceiver
Absalom – a coward driven by fear
and hate
David – hand-ringing impotence
Lord forgive us and change
us.
And help us to see Christ
again as our Wonderful Counsellor… Our Mighty God…
Our Everlasting Father…
Our Prince of Peace.
Amen
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