Well, baptismal services are always special.
The Baptistery was warm tonight, let me tell you.
I feel like a boiled lobster.
I hope that you're planning to stay after the service tonight if your last name begins
with letters A through E. And all of our guests this evening, we would love to have the opportunity
to visit with you and get to know you a little better.
So feel free to stay a few minutes after the service downstairs in the fellowship hall.
There will be some light refreshments and time to meet you personally.
We're going to turn this evening in our Bibles to 2 Samuel chapter 2 to begin.
The passing of the torch of leadership is often precarious.
That is true in a local church, for example, when a new pastor comes in for the transfer
of the loyalty and the trust and the love to take place, there is time required.
It is a precarious time in a local church.
It is true in a home when there is a remarriage that occurs.
I know in my childhood, as I've shared with you before, my father died.
When I was in my mid-teens, my mother remarried, and there had to be developed for my stepfather
a new loyalty, a love and trust in him.
And although that came rather naturally, it was still a bit of a struggle as well.
It took some time for that to develop.
And I can remember thinking that he favored my little brother who had the same first name
that he had and all of these more noble thoughts.
I'm sure it was tough on him because he was a bachelor and at 39 inherited not only a
wife but four kids.
But God has blessed him, and they are going to celebrate 25 years this year.
It's a difficult time in government, too.
We had just gone through an election, and had there been a change of administrations
in particular and a change of the one who was going to sit in the Oval Office, there
would have been a period of two and a half months or so when the new administration would
be getting things in order.
And then it would take several months after that for all of the appointments to be made
and so on.
And so the change of leadership is often a precarious thing.
But David became king overnight.
I mean, one night he was a fugitive, the next night he's the king of the nation.
There was no time for him to break into this thing, although God had in His own way been
preparing him.
There was no opportunity to learn the ropes in Israel.
There was no opportunity to get all of the people united or the armies even united under
him.
He just became king like that when Saul and three of his sons were slain by the Philistines.
Now we read in 2 Samuel chapter 2 beginning in verse 1 that after the memorial service
for the slain king Saul and his son Jonathan, it came about that David inquired of the Lord
saying, shall I go up to one of the cities of Judah?
And the Lord said to him, go up.
So David said, where shall I go up?
And he said to Hebron.
So David went up there and his two wives also, Hinoam the Jezreelitus and Abigail the widow
of Nabal the Carmelite.
And David brought up his men who were with him, each with his household, and they lived
in the cities of Hebron.
Then the men of Judah came and there anointed David king over the house of Judah.
If you're familiar with a map of Israel at this time, you will remember that the land
was apportioned to the tribes.
And the tribe of Judah had a rather large portion about 12 miles or so inland from the
Dead Sea and a large area surrounding that.
They had several tribes to the north of them and none to the south.
From the south there were the Philistines and there was a little buffer zone in between
Judah and the Philistines.
David at this time was living down there in that buffer zone in the city of Ziklag.
And God said, now go up to Hebron.
Hebron was in the tribal territory of Judah.
And it was from there that he reigned for seven and a half years.
As we see in verse 11 of this chapter, the time that David was king in Hebron over the
house of Judah or the tribe of Judah was seven years and six months.
Seven and a half years it took for David to become the king of the full nation.
After that seven and a half years, as we will see a little bit later, he became king of
not only Judah but all of the tribes of Israel.
And he moved his capital up to Jerusalem, to Zion, seven and a half years of transition.
That was an important time in David's life, chapters 2, 3, 4, and 5 of 2 Samuel deal with
those years.
There's an awful lot that's recorded that happens around David.
He had some rascals who were his partners, his generals and soldiers, and they made some
terrible mistakes and David let them get away with it.
During this period of transition, there were three things that basically took place in
David's life.
Going to condense those three things into three simple words, the first one, waiting.
Those seven and a half years were a time of waiting for David.
Now he had the right, because God had appointed him to be king, he had the right to insist
that all of the tribes follow him as king.
The nation was overrun with Philistines at this point.
Those northern tribes really had no central government.
He knew he was God's man to be the king.
So there were a lot of reasons why he should have forced the issue from the human standpoint.
But David rather waited upon God.
We see him here returning to his former attitude of waiting upon the Lord.
We can observe David during this time waiting upon God's time.
While he could have forced the events and been king of the whole nation much sooner,
he knew that God had a time for that.
The words, my times are in thy hand, reflect his thinking at this point.
God knew when the other tribes would be ready to give allegiance, and so God had his time
set aside, and David was willing to wait for God's time.
And he was willing to wait for God's way.
David could have fought, but there was a better way for the nation to be united under his
leadership, for all of them to be willing to do so.
Man's way would have been again to fight and to coerce those tribes in the north to
follow him.
But David was willing to wait for God's way.
The Lord reminds us through Isaiah the prophet, neither are your ways my ways, says the Lord.
And then David was willing to wait on God's purpose.
David may not have understood why he had to wait seven and a half years, but he was willing
to wait for God to show him the reason why.
And so the first word that kind of summarizes what took place in David's life in the seven
and a half years is this word waiting.
He was waiting for God's purpose, which ultimately was for him to be the great king.
He was waiting for God's way for him to be king, which was for all of the elders of the
tribes to willingly unite in anointing him to his king.
He was willing to wait for God's time even though it was a long seven and a half years.
I think the words in Psalm 37 pretty accurately reflect David's attitude during this time.
These may be words that some of us this evening need to remember.
David wrote these words.
He said, do not fret because of evildoers.
Be not envious toward wrongdoers, for they will wither quickly like the grass and fade
like the green herb.
Rest in the Lord and do good, dwell in the land, and cultivate faithfulness.
Delight yourself in the Lord, and he will give you the desires of your heart.
Commit your way to the Lord, trust also in him, and he will do it.
And he will bring forth your righteousness as the light and your judgment as the noonday.
Rest in the Lord and wait patiently for him.
Do not fret because of him who prospers in his way, because of the man who carries out
wicked schemes.
Face from anger, forsake wrath, do not fret, it only leads to evildoing.
Evildoers will be cut off, but those who wait for the Lord, they will inherit the land.
W-A-I-T, one of David's favorite words, and he uses that again and again in the Psalms.
I can remember a time when I was late in my high school years and eager to have a decision
made regarding my future.
And one night as I was frustrated about this, I was reading my Bible, and the verse that
God pointed out to me said, wait on the Lord, wait on the Lord.
And that word wait that evening struck me like a sword in my heart, and I realized that
I was trying to push and move ahead out of God's time.
God reminded me to wait, and I did.
There may be someone here tonight who's eager, pushing, wanting to know the answer.
God is saying to you, this is a time of transition in your life.
Wait on the Lord.
The second word that I think describes these seven and a half years in David's life is
the word receiving.
We see him, for example, in the verse we read, verse 4, chapter 2, receiving a fresh anointing
for service as king.
David had already been anointed.
Why another anointing?
Well, you may recall the first one took place with just his family present in Bethlehem.
It occurred more than 10 years before this.
David is 30 at this point.
It was back when he was a teenager that he was anointed privately by Samuel the prophet
to be the next king.
Now it was important for that anointing to be public, for there to be more than just
his family, but many, many people there to witness the fact that God had anointed him
to be the great king.
But I think it was important for David personally too, as well as for the nation.
For David had been through a lot of experiences during the last 12, 13 years of his life,
and he needed a reminder himself that God had anointed him to be the king.
Somehow that needed to be impressed afresh upon his own heart.
And so he was anointed there by the rulers, but the leaders, rather, of Judah as king
over them in Hebron.
He received a fresh anointing from God.
And then during this period of time, he as well received gradually a growing loyalty
from all of the people because of the wise way in which he lived.
This is summarized for us in chapter 3 and verse 36.
It says there, now all the people took note of it, the way David was behaving, and it
pleased them just as everything the king did pleased all the people.
Abraham Lincoln notwithstanding, David pleased everybody all the time, at least at this point.
So he was receiving from the Lord a growing loyalty, a growing love from the hearts of
his people.
It was a time of receiving.
And then thirdly, it was a time of increasing.
Notice what it says in the beginning of chapter 3.
Now there was long war between the house of Saul and the house of David, and David grew
steadily stronger, but the house of Saul grew weaker continually.
So the house of Saul was in decline, and the house of David was growing, increasing for
these seven and one-half years.
And so it was a joyous time, and yet it was mingled with trouble and tragedy for David.
One example of that is found in chapter 2, David's cousin Abner, the son of Ner.
I don't know about you, but when I hear his father's name, I think there can't be a whole
lot about him that was commendable, the son of Ner.
Now Abner being David's cousin was obviously a very powerful man, and he was in certain
respects a gifted general of the armies of Israel, or the army of David, rather.
Now Abner was a rival, excuse me, when I said he was a cousin of David, I didn't mean David,
I meant Saul.
He was a cousin of Saul, and he was the head of the armies of Israel.
He was a rival of a man by the name of Joab, who was a nephew of David.
So these two men were basically equals at this point, and they had it in for each other.
In chapter 2, they gathered some armies together and met and decided they would have a representative
combat.
And so they each chose 12 men, and they allowed them to fight it out, but all 24 men were
killed.
The battle was indecisive.
It was severe.
And Abner then left with his men.
But there was another nephew of David, a brother of Joab by the name of Asahel.
Asahel was a track runner.
He was swift like a gazelle, it says.
And he ran after Abner.
He wanted to get Abner.
He wanted to finish him off.
So he followed Abner's chariot, mile after mile after mile.
Abner turned around and said, get lost.
I don't want to hurt you.
Turn back.
Go to the left.
Go to the right.
Just get lost.
Asahel would have none of that.
He was after Abner.
And finally Abner took his spear and thrust it back, not with the metal or the stone part
of it, but rather with the pointed end.
They would sharpen both ends, and the other end, the wooden end, was sharp so they could
stick it in the ground.
He just took the butt of the spear and shoved it back toward Asahel, who was following him,
and killed him.
He fell dead.
That was Joab's brother.
Well, that didn't increase the love between Joab and Abner, to say the least.
Now this was a tragedy for David.
Asahel was killed.
Asahel was his nephew.
And even though the battle did not proceed, at that point there was bad blood between
Abner, who was of the household of Saul, and Joab, who was of David's household.
After that, one of Saul's sons, who happened to be living, and his name was Ishbechef,
remember three of them were killed with him down the hills, but Ishbechef lived.
He did not ever rule the kingdom.
He was their king in name only.
He depended a great deal upon Abner, who was the general, the powerful general.
In fact, he was afraid of Abner.
Well, on one occasion, Ishbechef accused Abner of an impropriety, and Abner was so angry
at that weak king, the son of Saul, that he said, I am going to turn against you and bring
the armies of Israel to David, so that they will follow him.
He made an approach to David.
They met together, unknown to Joab, David's general.
When the meeting was over, Abner went on his way, and Joab and his men got back in camp.
Somebody said, hey Joab, you know Abner was here?
And David let him go in peace.
Joab was furious at David, and so he sent after him and tricked Abner and killed him.
And so there was a second death.
David did not approve of this in the slightest.
He mourned for Abner, called a great funeral for him, and called him a prince and a great
man who had fallen in Israel.
And he said regarding Joab, he said, may the Lord repay the evildoer according to his evil.
By the way, later on, though he was David's own flesh and blood, he told Solomon, you
better get rid of Joab, and that was one of the things that Solomon did when he became
king.
He killed Joab because he knew he couldn't trust him.
That left Ishbechef, Saul's son, in a very precarious position because his whole reign,
as weak as it was, depended upon Abner, and now Abner was dead.
And there were two of his commanders who took advantage of the situation and found Ishbechef
resting at midday and killed him.
And so Saul's son was dead.
Those two men, by the way, went to David and said, hey, we've killed your enemy, Ishbechef.
And David, rather than being glad about that, was grieved, and he commanded that both of
them be killed, he cut off their hands and their feet and hung them up beside the pool
in Hebron.
As a testimony to everybody what happens to people guilty of treason like that.
Well, that was the end of any kind of Saul's reign in the north when Ishbechef died.
And David was enthroned then in chapter 5 over all of the tribes of Israel.
It goes like this beginning in verse 1.
All the tribes of Israel came to David at Hebron and said, behold, we are your bone
and your flesh.
Previously, when Saul was king over us, you were the one who led Israel out and in.
And the Lord said to you, you will shepherd my people Israel, and you will be a ruler
over Israel.
And so all the elders of Israel came to the king at Hebron, and King David made a covenant
with them before the Lord at Hebron.
And they anointed David king over Israel.
So this is the third time now, the final time, when he is anointed the king.
And David was 30 years old when he became king, and he reigned for 40 years.
At Hebron he reigned over Judah seven years and six months, and in Jerusalem he reigned
33 years over all Israel and Judah.
And we learn next about how they got Judah, and we will save that for another evening.
This is a time of increase for David, though it was mingled with tragedies and sorrow.
And by the way, during this period of time that David was increasing under God's blessing,
we nonetheless see some flaws in David, which later came to be real problems for him.
David had a hard time with self-discipline, a very hard time with that.
He was apparently a man who had a great deal of passion, and during this time he took to
himself multiple wives.
He had two when he moved to Hebron, but during these years, these seven and a half years,
he increased in wives too.
And that caused a multiplication of children, and later that created all kinds of family
problems and tensions because of all of these children who were vying for the throne.
We'll get into some of that in weeks ahead.
Furthermore, David had a hard time discipling those children.
He allowed them to do basically whatever they wanted to do.
That created problems.
And he had a hard time discipling his army.
Actually he should have slain, he should have executed Joab because Joab had killed Abner,
who was really an innocent man.
And he did it in the city of Refuge, by the way.
I didn't point that out as we went through, but a place where he should have had sanctuary.
Nonetheless, it was there that Joab killed Abner.
David should have dealt with his general, but he was not strong enough somehow in his
character to deal with him, and left it to his son Solomon to care for it.
Those are the negatives.
The positive is that during this time David was increasing.
Now, in certain respects, I think that this transition period in David's life can be
likened to the period that you and I are in.
For we too are in a transition period in this world.
By the grace of God, we have been saved from our sin.
We have been cleansed in the blood of the Lord Jesus Christ.
We have been anointed by the presence of the Holy Spirit in our lives and appointed to
reign with Jesus Christ.
We are right now in transition to that reign.
We are, as it were, in preparation for that time when we will share the throne with our
Lord Jesus Christ.
So what is this transition time to us?
What are these years between the time that we were saved and the time that we will reign
with Christ?
Well, they are in the first place years of waiting.
We are learning to wait upon the Lord for His time and His way and His purpose in our
lives.
Our faith is being stretched.
We are learning that it's by trusting Him, not ourselves, that we make progress.
We're learning to wait upon the Lord and to know that He is God.
And as we learn to wait upon Him, we are receiving.
What are we receiving?
We are receiving spiritual blessings.
All of them are given to us positionally in Christ.
But during this period of time, we are learning to appropriate those blessings.
All that we need for life and godliness has been given to us in Jesus Christ.
Now during this transitional period, from the time we're saved until the time that
we reign with Christ, we are learning what it means to get a hold of those resources,
to possess our possessions, so to speak.
We are receiving from the Lord His grace, His peace, His love.
We're learning how to appropriate those, make those real in our lives.
So we wait and because we wait, we receive, and because we receive, we increase.
We are growing in the grace and knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ.
We are growing up into maturity.
We are expanding and increasing so that we will be prepared to reign with Him on the
throne.
Recognize that what you are going through right now is God's way of schooling you,
of tutoring you, so that you will be prepared to reign with Jesus Christ.
What takes place in your life now is purpose to that end.
You are destined for the throne of Jesus Christ, to reign with Him.
And now as you wait upon Him, you receive from Him, and as you receive, you increase.
And all of that is a part of God's plan for us during this time of transition.
God is teaching us to trust and obey and to walk with Him.
And as we do that, we not only please Him now, but we're being prepared for what's
coming.
These were years of transition.
David was anointed.
He was to be anointed again as he reigned over the whole nation.
You and I have been anointed by the presence of the Spirit of God in our lives the moment
we were saved, but there will come a day when we will be coronated with Him and set apart
to reign with Him on His throne.
Right now we're in the period of transition.
Let's make the most of it.
Like David, we have our failures.
Like David, there are mistakes that we make.
But let's ask God to give us victory over those so that we will be adequately prepared
when the time comes to stand with Him and be seated with Him upon His throne of glory.
Let's pray together.
Lord I pray that this quick lesson tonight from the life of David may find application
in our hearts and that you would there cause it to take root to encourage us.
Lord help us to see the destiny, the destiny that you have appointed for all of those who
love and trust your Son.
And in light of that glorious purpose that you have in mind for people like us, then
teach us what it is to wait, to appropriate, to increase so that we will be prepared and
adequate to reign with your Son, be joint heirs of all things.
And we pray this in Jesus' name, amen.