Fighting, Forgiveness and Victory
Text 1 Chronicles 20 Time 24 02 21 Place Childs Hill Baptist Church (Zoom)
I'd like us to look this evening at 1 Chronicles 20, the next chapter in the book. You will notice that the chapter is very short - only 8 verses. When you look at the parallel passage in 2 Samuel the same material is covered in two chapters and 58 verses. In fact there are several chapters in 2 Samuel after this that are simply not replicated in 1 Chronicles. There are reasons for this and there are lessons to learn even from what is missing.
As we have often said, we who are believers today are in a battle, a war, a spiritual one. It lacks the physical dimension that we see here but it means to say that there are lessons for us to learn from passages like this one about the spiritual battle that we face.
There are three things to say, firstly in connection with the first three verses and the defeat of the Ammonites and then, thirdly, in connection with the other five verses and what is said of the defeat of these Philistine giants.
1. Learn from what is said here of David's defeat of the Ammonites
Firstly, we read that (1) In the spring, at the time when kings go off to war, Joab led out the armed forces. We are told how He laid waste the land of the Ammonites and went to Rabbah and besieged it, but David remained in Jerusalem. Joab attacked Rabbah and left it in ruins. Ammon was to the east of the Jordan just north of Moab. Relations were always quite fractious. This current spat you remember had arisen when David tried to show kindness to the Ammonite king Hanun, following the death of his father Nahash. David's sincerity had been doubted and it had led to a major diplomatic incident and eventually a war in which Ammon was roundly defeated. Here we learn that the Ammonite capital Rabbah was taken in this war.
It reminds us of the victories over sin that we know in our lives from time to time. In verse 2 we read how David took the crown from the head of their king - or perhaps their idol - its weight was found to be a talent of gold, (over 100 lbs or 50 k) and it was set with precious stones - and it was placed on David's head. David points forward to Christ and this is a reminder that every time we experience victory over sin, Christ is exalted and he gains a crown as it were.
We also read that He took a great quantity of plunder from the city and brought out the people who were there, consigning them to labour with saws and with iron picks and axes. David did this to all the Ammonite towns. Then David and his entire army returned to Jerusalem. This is a reminder of Christ's advancing kingdom and the way that when he is victorious, sin is defeated and we begin to live as we should in his service.
2. Learn from what is not said here of David's defeat of the Ammonites
In the music hall era at the beginning of the 20th century there was a performer called Marie Lloyd who was always being complained about by respectable people for what she sang. The thing with Marie Lloyd is that when people tried to examine her songs for scandal, it was hard to find it. It was not so much what she sang as the way she sang it, or, as someone once put it, it was not what she left in but what she left out that made the difference. What you leave out can be as important as what you put in.
Or to give another illustration, Claude Debussy the French composer famously said of music that it is not the notes but the silence between the notes that makes it. And, of course, it is true that the space between notes, the intervals, is almost as important as the notes themselves.
I say this because the difference between 2 Samuel and 1 Chronicles here is that in 2 Samuel we have the sordid tale of how because David remained in Jerusalem instead of going out to battle, as it says here, he fell into adultery with Bathsheba and when he tried to cover up his sin, he made things worse by having her husband murdered.
We can learn from the way the writer handles things a number of things.
1. Generally speaking, the Bible is very frank about the sins of the saints. It lets us know that Noah got drunk, Abraham told lies, Moses was a murderer, Paul and Barnabas argued after Mark let them down and David was an adulterer and a murderer. We too ought to acknowledge that the best men fall. None are perfect.
2. However, there is a reticence about speaking of such sins. It would have been perfectly fair for the writer to have mentioned David's adultery and his other sins at this time but he does not. He draws a veil over it. That same sort of reticence is found in other places. Take Mary Magdalene for example who I think it is clear was a prostitute before her conversion and was the same person as the Mary of Mary and Martha and Lazarus. However, it is not spelled out too clearly. We have to piece it together. We should show the same reticence in speaking about the sins of others.
3. Beyond that there is surely something even greater and that is to do with what happens to our sins after we have confessed them to God and forsaken them. I think we can be pretty confident that they will never be mentioned again.
In Isaiah 43:25 God says to his people I, even I, am he who blots out your transgressions, for my own sake, and remembers your sins no more.
Jeremiah 31:34 No longer will they teach their neighbour, or say to one another, 'Know the LORD,' because they will all know me, from the least of them to the greatest," declares the LORD. "For I will forgive their wickedness and will remember their sins no more."
Do you remember ever as a child doing wrong and being told that you would be punished but then not being punished because your mam or dad forgot? Sometimes you thought they had forgotten but then they remembered but rarely they really had forgotten. Well, here God deliberately forgets!
Do you know that children's song?
Gone, Gone, Gone, Gone! Yes, my sins are gone.
Now my soul is free, and in my heart's a song;
Buried in the deepest sea;
Yes, that's good enough for me.
I shall live eternally,
Praise God! My sins are GONE!
No man can forgive you though some priests may claim they can. Only God can do it and he will if you look to him.
3. Learn from what is said here of victories over Philistine giants
The third and final thing I want to say concerns the three giant Philistines mentioned in verses 4-8. There we learn of war with the Philistines and three particular situations. In each case we are told of a Philistine (Sippai, Lahmi brother of Goliath and an unnamed giant) and the person who killed the giant (Sibbekai the Hushathite, Elhanan son of Jair and Jonathan son of Shimea, David's brother). There are some other details too and it is noted that these men descended from Rapha. So
Verses 4-8
In the course of time, war broke out with the Philistines, at Gezer. At that time Sibbekai the Hushathite killed Sippai, one of the descendants of the Rephaites, and the Philistines were subjugated.
In another battle with the Philistines, Elhanan son of Jair killed Lahmi the brother of Goliath the Gittite, who had a spear with a shaft like a weaver's rod.
In still another battle, which took place at Gath, there was a huge man with six fingers on each hand and six toes on each foot - twenty-four in all. He also was descended from Rapha. When he taunted Israel, Jonathan son of Shimea, David's brother, killed him. These were descendants of Rapha in Gath, and they fell at the hands of David and his men.
The tallest family in the world at the moment measures an average of 201.18 cm (6 ft 7.20 in), achieved by Sjoerd Zegwaard, Janneke van Loo and their children Dirk, Rinze and Sjoerd H (all from the Netherlands) as verified in Weesp, Netherlands, on 13 October 2019.
Polydactyly is apparently
- Most often in the right hand and left foot
- Most often in hand over feet
- Twice as common among men
- It the USA it occurs today in 1 in 1000 births in the general population
- Among African Americans it occurs 1 in 150 births
- There was a report of a family called Da Costa and all 15 had 24 digits.
It is interesting that though we read of giants on the Philistine side, we learn of none on Israel's side. Nevertheless, these giants were defeated and they were defeated by ordinary men, trusting in the Lord. That is the way for us to be victorious too.
Matthew Henry comments "In the conflicts between grace and corruption there are some sins which, like these giants, keep their ground a great while and are not mastered without much difficulty and a long struggle: but judgment will be brought forth unto victory at last."
One of these giants taunted Israel but he was defeated in the end. God's enemies cannot stand. When their time comes they will fall.
