2 Samuel 13 -- Reaping What We Sow

My commentary said that in chapters 1-10, God empowered David to defeat his enemies.  But after his sins of adultery, murder, and deception in chapters 11-12, the rest of 2^nd Samuel describes him wrestling with problems caused by his own children.  Despite these problems, he still depended on God:  “What life does to us depends on what life finds in us, and in David was a muscular faith in the living God.”

 

“God had forgiven  David’s sins, but David was discovering that the consequences of forgiven sin are very painful.  God had blessed David with many sons, but now the Lord would turn some of those blessings into curses.”

 

His son Amnon developed an unnatural desire for his half-sister, Tamar.  Rather than quashing those thoughts and directing them elsewhere, he let a sense of entitlement feed them, making it worse each day.  Thoughts will eventually become actions if we continue to feed them.  Amnon even confided in his cousin about his sinful desires, bringing them out into the open.  His cousin encouraged him and even schemed to help him!  “Anybody in our lives who makes it easy for us to sin is certainly not much of a friend,” my commentary said.

 

Amnon’s lust grew and what he thought was love quickly turned to hate after he raped his sister.  “Sexual sins usually produce that kind of emotional damage.  When you treat other people like things to be used, you end up throwing them aside like broken toys or old clothes,” my commentary noted.

 

Tamar’s full brother Absalom schemed for two years and saw his chance to avenge his sister’s rape and subsequent disgrace, ordering his servants to kill Amnon, in a repeat of what his father David had done to Uriah!  It would be 5 years before Absalom and David would see each other face to face again, for Absalom fled the country to his grandparents’ home after the murder.

 

Father, it’s tragic to watch how sin is conceived with what Amnon probably believed to be harmless thoughts, and the way a family was destroyed by the actions which eventually resulted from those thoughts.  Please help my boys and me to understand the vital importance of taking each thought captive and wrestling the bad ones out of our minds rather than nursing them to eventual fruition.  Let us never believe that we are entitled to them.

 

Your Brother In Christ,

Gary Ford