14 December 

King David: 2 Samuel 5, 7 

I’m definitely no scholar and so when reading 2 Samuel 5, there was a lot of drama I wasn’t quite understanding. Thankfully I looked up commentaries and would seriously encourage those that don’t understand the Bible to just look up some explanations. In some ways it’s a much faster way of reading the Bible as you’ll likely understand it first time.

 

The chapter starts talking about how all the tribes of Israel came to him to support David. What we miss from this chapter is that in the previous chapters, all the tribes apart from one, supported one of Saul’s sons Ishbosheth. Ishbosheth was then killed and so the tribes had no choice apart from David.

 

What I took from this was that it’s sad that the tribes only turned to David when their last choice was taken away. Continuing the same idea, it’s sad when Christians only really recognize Jesus as their King when other choices fail us. We should choose Jesus as our first choice, not just when other options fail.

 

The story continues to talk about how he captures the difficult stronghold that was Jerusalem. David then creates a “city of David”. By this point he’s a pretty big deal and he knows it. He had a palace made for him but made some mistakes with women along the way.

 

The Philistines, who are an old enemy of the Israelites, recognised David’s influence and were planning to take him down. David at this point had made some very big decisions on his own and yet when it comes to this – he turns to God to ask if he should go up against these Philistines and if so, will God give them over to him?

 

What I find so encouraging about this is that David shows that it doesn’t matter how big we think we get, there are times we must humble ourselves and earnestly seek God’s blessing and help in our lives.

 

Prayer

Lord I pray you’d forgive us and humble our hearts for those moments we’ve tried do this life without you. We’re sorry we’ve forgotten all the times you’ve stepped into our lives and helped us. We now thank you for those moments and pray that you use them to grow our hope and faith in you.

 

Lord we also pray that we wouldn’t leave you as a last resort but instead that you’d be our first option knowing that only you can truly satisfy us. Amen!

 

Daniel Evans

If you’d like to receive an advent blog every day by email, follow this link.