2 Samuel 22:40-43 - Yo armed me with strength

22:40

God armed David with strength for the battle, and humbled his adversaries. God gives us the wherewithal to win the battle. We often think that we are not able to win the battle, but this is a lie from the enemy. However, it is one that we find very difficult to overcome. We need to get the truth of God’s word into our hearts. We need to be transformed by the renewal of our minds.

22:41

“You made ...” Throughout this Psalm we see an interplay between God doing things and David doing things. God intends us to be part of what He is doing. God puts our enemies to flight. James 4:7 says “resist the devil and he will flee”. It is the devil who does the fleeing, not us.

22:42,43

The victory was complete. They cried for help but no one came. We should not compromise with sin. The Lord did not answer the cries of the enemy. Then we have “I beat them ...” So again we see God doing stuff and David doing stuff. David completely defeated his enemies, because of what God was doing. We need to understand that our enemies will be utterly defeated.

Mark 8:30,31 - The Son of Man must suffer many things

8:30

“Jesus warned them not to tell anyone about Him”. Prior to the cross people would have had a completely wrong understanding of what this meant. We all first need to recognise that our number one problem is our sin. The general picture was of a messiah who would set them free from Roman occupation. They needed to be confronted with their own sin before they would be ready to truly see who Jesus was. The reality of the cross, of what they had done to the Messiah would do this. Of course, the disciples had a long way to go as well.

8:31

It is from this point that Jesus “began to teach them that the Son of Man must suffer many things”. Although the disciples had recognised that Jesus was the Messiah, they did not know what the full implications of that were.  It is also noteworthy that Jesus uses the term “Son of Man”. The disciples, along with most of the Jews, had a preconceived idea of what Messiah meant, namely political freedom. The term “Son of Man” did not have this “problem”. The phrase “son of man” occurs frequently in Ezekiel, used by God of Ezekiel, and is a reference to his humanity, “Son of Man” used in a messianic sense is found in Daniel 7:13. Jesus tells them that He must be rejected by the religious leaders. Rejected means counted as worthless. He would then be killed, and would rise again after three days.

2 Samuel 22:38,39 - I pursued my enemies

22:38

We then get the outcome of all this. “I pursued my enemies and crushed them, I did not turn back till they were destroyed”. The grace of God enables us to do things that we should never be able to do. In teaching His disciples in the Upper Room Jesus was preparing them for the further advance of the gospel. God has not saved us to be a passive people.

22:39

“I crushed them completely ...” We find aspects of the Old Testament hard to handle, particularly when it comes to military conquest. Part of this is understandable, and the gospel does present a different perspective, but part of it is also unrealism on our part, failing to face up to the realities of war. We see this in a lot of the commentary on the Middle East conflict. However, we are not meant to go around slaughtering people, but we should have this attitude towards sin.

Mark 8:28,29 - Who do you say I am?

8:28

A variety of answers are given, which are pretty much the same as given in Mark 6:14-16. Every so often we hear the results of opinion polls asking people what they think about certain things, including sometimes religious questions. We should be aware that while these might be interesting in revealing what people think, they are pretty useless in terms of determining the truth! The reason for the John the Baptist answer is given in Mark 6:14-16. Mal 4:5 says that an Elijah type prophet will appear in the last days. “One of the prophets” is a more general; answer.

8:29

“Who do you say I am?” This is the question beloved of evangelists.It is the most important question.First, the answer is highly relevant to my own salvation. Secondly, it is crucial to my usefulness to Christ and His mission. If I don’t know who Jesus is, then there is not a lot that I can do. Conversely, if I know Jesus properly, then I can be extremely effective. Peter answers that Jesus is the Messiah. We will very soon see that Peter still had a long way to go in his understanding of Jesus.

2 Samuel 22:36,37 - You make your saving help my shield

22:36

When we face situations that go beyond our natural ability to handle, we feel very vulnerable. In these circumstances God’s “saving help” is our shield. God designed us to work together with Him, His plans are predicated on our receiving help from Him. It is God’s help that makes us great. We cannot be great on our own. It is the Lord alone who grants us success.

22:37

“You provide a broad path for my feet”. The way ahead can seem very murky and dangerous, but God provides a clear path for us, one that requires us to put our trust in Him. “So that my ankles do not give way”. Humanly speaking the path may seem treacherous, just look at the lives of David, Paul and Jesus Himself. But when we walk in faith in the Lord things are different, the treacherous path becomes navigable.

Mark 8:25-27 - His eyes were opened

8:25,26

Jesus then puts His hands on the man’s eyes again. This time the man’s sight is completely restored and he can see everything clearly. There are all sorts of ways in which we can spiritualise this, One is that the disciples had some understanding of Jesus, but that it was far from complete. It was only after the resurrection that they saw clearly. This may well be the case, though we should note that the text does  not draw any great significance from the two stage healing. Jesus tells the man to “not even go into the village”. No reason is given for this command, though there are some manuscripts that add “don’t tell anyone”.

8:27

 We now get one of the most famous incidents in Mark, and one beloved in evangelical talks. Jesus and the disciples were now travelling around the villages of Caesarea Philippi.  Jesus asked His disciples who people thought He was. Why does He ask this? Presumably it was part of His lead up to His asking the disciples themselves. It may also be to contrast the truth and what people are thinking.

2 Samuel 22:34,35 - He makes my feet like the feet of a deer

22:34

When under pressure, or really struggling, we can feel that we are dominated by circumstances, by the opposition. But with God He enables us “to stand on the heights”.To be the head and not the tail. There are times when this can seem impossible, but when we are feeling under it, we should ask God to enable us to rise above the situation.

22:35

“He trains my hands for battle”. We are not passive in the help that God gives us, rather He enables us and prepares us to do battle, to be overcomers. A “bow of bronze” would be extremely difficult to bend, but God enables David to do this (though the language is probably figurative). He enables us to deal with situations that would otherwise be way beyond our capabilities.

Mark 8:22-24 - Do you see anything?

8:22

The commentary I am using sees this as the start of the “second part” of Mark. The first part has been focused on the fact that Jesus teaches, His miracles and His authority. The second part is on the conflict with the religious leaders, His teaching, and, of course, the cross and resurrection. There are only three healing miracles recorded in this part, two involving blindness, and the third the deliverance of a boy from a demon. So far there have been no accounts of the blind being healed, though since Jesus has healed many from all sorts of diseases it would seem probable that some blind people had been healed. Whatever the case, some people bring a blind man to Jesus.

8:23,24

Jesus led the blind man outside the village in order to carry out the healing. We are not told why Jesus did this. Jesus spat on the man’s eyes. This is the second time in Mark that saliva has been used with regard to healing (Mark 7:33). Jesus then asks the man if he could see anything.  The man says that he can see people, and that they look like trees walking around. This is generally taken as indicating a partial healing.

2 Samuel 22:32,33 - Who is God besides the Lord?

22:32

The Lord is the only God. He is not one God among many, but the only living Lord. He alone is the Rock, the sure foundation upon which any wise man or woman will build their life. Deciding who is God is a crucial question. Many in the west decide that we are our own God, that we can decide what is right and wrong, and that we can provide all our needs. But such a decision is foolishness, and that is why our societies suffer many of the ills that we do suffer.

22:33

But while God is our shield, we are not passive in this. God did not create us in order to be passive, rather He created us to do stuff. So it is God who arms us with strength. And it is He who makes our way secure. There are two wrong ways of approaching life. One is to imagine that we can handle everything in our own wisdom and strength; events will very quickly demonstrate that this is not so. The other is to think that God will do everything and we have no part to play. The wise way is to do things with God, to walk in step with the Spirit, confident that He will provide the wherewithal.

Mark 8:17-21 - Are your hearts hardened?

8:17

Why had Jesus raised the yeast of the Pharisees question? I suspect that He knew what the disciples were thinking, and knew that they needed to learn. So Jesus asks them why they are wittering on about having no bread, having recently witnessed two feeding miracles which demonstrated that no bread was no great problem? “Are your hearts hardened?” What was the difference between the disciples and the Pharisees? Their level of spiritual awareness was roughly the same! The difference was that the disciples were willing to learn from Jesus.

8:18-21

Jesus challenges them, and then asks them questions about what had happened in the two feeding miracles. They had experienced the two miracles, had even taken part in them. Yet they had learnt nothing, or so it seemed. We can be the same. When we experience God’s help in a situation we should not simply accept it and move on, we need to consider what it tells us about God, how we can know Him better. We should reassess how we think in the light of God’s actions.

“Do you still not understand?” Jesus acts in our lives, and through us, not just to achieve the immediate aim, but also to teach us.

2 Samuel 22:29-31 - You, Lord, are my lamp

22:29,30

So instead of relying on our “wisdom”, or the ways of the world, we rely on the word of the Lord. He is the lamp that guides our way. He turns our darkness into light. So when it seems that we are stumbling in the dark, if we stick to God’s ways then the darkness will turn into light, all will become clear. But we are not just passive in all this. God enables us to fight and win.

22:31

David has looked at how God deals with Him, now he turns to the fundamentalism characteristics of the Lord. His way is perfect. There are many times when we don’t or can’t understand what He is doing, but we can be confident that His plans are perfect. His word is flawless, it provides sure guidance and assurance. So God “shields all who take refuge in Him”. We are wise to seek refuge in Him when we are in trouble, for then God actively shields us.

Mark 8:14-16 - Watch out for the yeast

8:14,15

The disciples were perhaps a bit feckless, for they only had one loaf of bread with them. Jesus said to them “Be careful. Watch out for the yeast of the Pharisees and that of Herod.” (NIV). The word NIV (and others) have translated “yeast” is actually “leaven”, as ESV and others. Yeast (or leaven) is usually used in a negative sense, as here, is sometimes used in a positive sense. The key feature is that a small amount works its way through the whole batch. The attitudes of the Pharisees and the Herodians could have a very negative and destructive effect. The Pharisees and Herod were very different, but were equally dangerous.

8:16

The disciples demonstrated their lack of spiritual awareness, thinking Jesus was scolding them for not having enough bread. When we feel guilty, as the disciples did for having failed to buy some bread, then it skews our thinking. We think that everything is aimed at the thing we feel guilty about. It can lead to irrational thinking.

2 Samuel 22:27,28 - To the pure

22:27

God is pure. We have all had experiences of dealing with people who are not pure, are not trustworthy. Again, God has the last word. Moreover, God shows Himself shrewd to the devious. There are those who are devious and use all sorts of tricks to get their own way. It may seem that they are very clever, too clever to be caught out, but God is wiser than all, and all the evil ones will ultimately be caught out.

22:28

There can be a temptation to want to be like the devious, like the liars. Or thinking that we need to adopt similar tactics in order to overcome them. This is not true. God saves the humble, not the devious. Note that God is active. It is not simply that the humble are saved, but that |God saves the humble. Likewise, God’s eyes are on the haughty. He knows what is going on.

Mark 8:9-13 - The people ate and were satisfied

8:9,10

There were about four thousand present. Matthew 15:29-39 gives more details than Mark. He tells us that there were four thousand men, plus women and children. After feeding them, Jesus dismissed the crowds. Jesus got into a boat with His disciples and went to Dalmanutha. This was on the west coast of the sea of Galilee.

8:11-13

The Pharisees, as per usual, came to investigate and to test Jesus. They demanded a sign. Now this seems a bit ridiculous to us, as Jesus has healed so many people. How many signs do they want? Indeed, this seems to have been Jesus#’ attitude as well. It is likely that they wanted some sort of cosmic sign. In one sense they were right to want some sort of assurance of the Biblical authenticity of what Jesus was doing, but they were ignoring what they were plainly seeing, and the content of Jesus’ teaching.  So Jesus refused to give them the sign that they were looking for.

2 Samuel 22:25,26 - The Lord has rewarded me

22:25

Jesus was rewarded according to His righteousness. He was raised from the dead, and has been given all power and authority, in heaven and on earth. We will be rewarded according to Christ’s righteousness. This most definitely does not mean that how we live does not matter, quite the opposite.

22:26

While Jesus is the only one who is without sin, we should still seek to live faithful and blameless lives. Even when we do that there will be times when we suffer because of our faithfulness, or are accused even though we are blameless. But the one with the final say is the Lord, and He will always prove to be faithful and blameless, and it is His righteousness that has the last word on our lives.

Mark 8:5-8 - How many loaves do you have?

8:5

Jesus takes the matter in hand, starting by asking how much food they actually have. This turns out to be seven loaves of bread and a few fish. So they actually had a little more than in the previous case, and fewer people to feed. Though the quantity of food was nowhere near enough to feed the crowd.

8:6-8

Jesus then follows a similar pattern as He did in the feeding of the five thousand. He gives thanks and the disciples distribute the food among the people. Fewer details are given this time, probably because the details were very similar. Afterwards seven baskets of leftovers were picked up. There are some who try to argue that the two feeding incidents are actually just a single incident. Such suggestions are utter nonsense. The two incidents are clearly presented as separate, see also 8:17-19. There are no grounds whatsoever for thinking these are a single incident.

2 Samuel 22:22-24 - I have kept the ways of the Lord

22:22

This verse is undoubtedly true of Jesus. Jesus kept God’s commands. Even under the greatest pressure, He remained committed to the Father, as Gethsemane shows. So do these verses have any relevance to us? Yes they do. The Holy Spirit leads us in the ways of Christ. While we are never perfect this side of eternity, we do become more obedient. And there can be times when we are under great pressure, but remain committed to Christ.

22:23,24

Jesus lived a life of perfect obedience to all of the Father’s wishes. This is also how we should seek to live. We should love God’s commands. Sin in us causes us to seek to justify or excuse sin, to seek to say that God’s commands do not say what they actually say. The most obvious examples of this come in the area of sexual morality, where whole denominations undermine God’s word, but the principle exists in all of us. We should always seek for the Holy Spirit to enable and teach us to love and do God’s word perfectly.

Mark 8:1-4 - I have compassion

8:1-3

Here we have the second feeding miracle. If “during those days” is taken to mean the time Jesus spent in the Decapolis, then this second feeding miracle occurred in a largely Gentile region. As per usual, a large crowd had gathered. Jesus had compassion on the crowd, and this was for very practical grounds. They had been with Jesus for three days, with no additional food. So there was a danger that some would collapse on the way home. A couple of points to note. One is that they must have been captivated by Jesus. Matthew tells us that Jesus healed many people. Given His usual practice, Jesus almost certainly taught many of them as well. Secondly, Jesus is concerned for the practical necessities of life. God’s attitude towards our practical requirements is not that they don’t matter, but that we have a right order of priorities (Matt 6:25-34).

8:4

The disciples don’t think that there is anything much that can be done. One might think that after the feeding of the five thousand they would have learnt that Jesus can supply food, but the later incident (8:17-19) shows that they had not learnt much. Alternatively, they may have been afraid to ask Jesus to do another feeding miracle.

2 Samuel 22:20,21 - He brought me into a spacious place

22:20

“He brought me out into a spacious place”. This was literally true of David. We can feel hemmed in by all the difficulties we face, it can seem as if we have no room for manoeuvre.  The Lord can dramatically change our circumstances. “He rescued me because He delighted in me”. God does not rescue us reluctantly, He does not need to be persuaded (but we are told to be persistent in prayer). God actually delights in us, we are His treasured creation.

22:21

In one sense 22:21-25 are problematic, for David most definitely was not righteous on his own merits. He had infamously committed adultery and murder, there were also other instances when his behaviour was less than perfect. Even if we take this as referring to his earlier years, David was not perfect. Indeed the Psalms make it clear that David was aware of his sinfulness. The commentary I am using talks about it in terms of full commitment to the Lord, but even that does not solve the “problem”, for David was not always absolutely committed, as his disobedience shows. There is one of whom these verses are true, and that, of course, is Jesus Christ. So it can be viewed as being messianic. And Christ’s righteousness is given to us, and God treats us according to Christ’s righteousness. This does not mean that He ignores our sin, for He disciplines us as sons.

Mark 7:33-37 - People were overwhelmed with amazement

7:33-35

Jesus took the man aside, away from the crowds. Jesus put His fingers in the man’s ears, and then spat and touched the man;s tongue. Why did He do this? Presumably to indicate that He was healing the man’s hearing and speaking. The man could not hear, so this was the only way to communicate with him. Saliva had a common link with healing. The man;s ears were opened, and he could speak plainly. He was healed!

7:36,37

As He had done on a number of occasions, Jesus commanded them not to tell anyone. It is rather difficult to imagine how they could have obeyed this command, and, of course, they did not do so. The people were amazed at what Jesus did. This current healing was a fulfilment of Is 35:5,6. We should note that Jesus was very willing to heal people, and that He often told those healed not to tell others. Today we tend to make a big thing of healings. Perhaps the lesson we should learn is that we should not have “healing meetings”, but focus on the preaching and teaching, but that lots of healings should occur? Just a thought.

2 Samuel 22:18,19 - He rescued me

22:18

David’s enemies were powerful, and were too strong for him. We can look at the problems we face and think they are too much for us to handle, and this may well be the case. But our future does not just depend upon us, it depends upon the Lord as well, and no enemies are too strong for Him. We are meant to live life in partnership with the Lord.

22:19

“They confronted me in the day of my disaster”. We should appreciate how David felt. It looked like a day of disaster, and his enemies confronted him. The feelings of imminent defeat can loom large, they can be very real, but that does not mean that we are defeated. “But the Lord was ny support”. We should look to God for strength, and we should expect to receive strength from Him.

Mark 7:28-32 - Even the dogs eat the crumbs

7:28

The woman replies “even the dogs under the table eat the children’s crumbs”. She is saying that even accepting that Jesus’ mission was first to the Jews, that did not preclude her getting something from Jesus. 

7:29,30

Jesus is impressed with her answer. Jesus was and is always looking for faith. We often think of reasons why God will not answer our request, but this woman gave a reason why He should grant her request. Maybe there is a lesson there for us in our prayers? Jesus tells her that the demon has left her daughter. She goes home and finds that that was indeed the case.

7:31,32

The chapter finishes with another miracle carried out in a Gentile region. The Decapolis was a region of ten cities, with Gentiles being the majority population, though there were Jews there as well. Jesus seems to have taken a rather circuitous route there from Tyre. Jesus was known for His healing powers, and some people brought a man who was deaf and could hardly talk. They knew that Jesus had healed people by laying hands on them, so they begged Him to lay hands on the man. Note that it is almost certain that many other people came for healing, but only one case is mentioned here. Moreover, Mark is the only one to describe this case.

2 Samuel 22:11-17 - He mounted the cherubim

22:11-16

Prayer is not just a pious act, but an act that initiates a very real response from the Lord. That is why we are urged by Jesus to have faith. It is why David uses such dramatic language to describe the response. God acted against David’s enemies, scattering them. God’s actions also had an effect on the earth itself.

22:17

The Lord “reached down from on high and took hold of me”. David’s help came from the Lord, it came from the throne room of heaven. Again, it was personal, God cares for each of us personally. We find it hard to comprehend how this can be, but it is true. Jesus confirmed this when He said that even the hairs on our head are counted (Lk 12:7). “He drew me out of deep waters”. David wasn’t just in a little bit of trouble, was in a lot of trouble. The Lord is able to save us from deep trouble.

Mark 7:25-27 - Let the children eat

7:25,26

One of the people who came to him was a woman whose daughter was possessed by a demon. The woman fell at Jesus’ feet and begged Jesus to drive the demon out of her little daughter. The woman was Greek, born in Syrian Phoenicia. In saying she was Greek, Mark may simply mean that she spoke Greek and was culturally Greek. The key point is that she was not Jewish.

7:27

How we interpret Jesus’ words seems to depend very much on our presuppositions. If one wants to take a hostile approach, one can take them as being harsh and dismissive. But one can take a different approach and assume that Jesus is drawing faith out of the woman. We must also remember that the cultural situation was very different. The phrase “toss it to the dogs” is using a derogatory phrase and some today would accuse Jesus of hate speech! However, there are ways in which our society has lost its marbles. Jesus is saying that His mission was first to Israel. Note that “first” does imply that there is a “second”! The woman would know that “dogs” was a way in which Jews sometimes referred to Gentiles. 

2 Samuel 22:8-10 - The earth trembled

22:8

We now get the response of the Lord to David’s requests or cries. The text describes in poetic language the effect of David’s prayers. So we read that the foundations of the heavens shook. Note that David’s prayers reached up to heaven, and the effect, the response, began in heaven, in God’s dwelling place. The Lord was angry at what was happening on earth.

22:9

In Is 6 a burning coal took away Isaiah’s sin, here they are an expression of God’s anger. There is a personal response from God to David’s prayers. When we pray our prayers reach up to the heavens, and there is a personal response from the Lord.

22:10

There was not just a personal response, there is a direct response from the Lord. God parted the heavens and came down to earth. There is a Nick Cave song that begins with the line “I don’t believe in an interventionist God”, that is a deeply unbiblical thought. Our God is forever intervening, supremely, of course, in sending His Son into the world to die and rise again. God doesn’t always intervene in the way we would like, or when we would like, but it is a fundamental tenet of the Bible that God most certainly does intervene.

Mark 7:20-24 - It is from within

7:20-23

What demonstrates that we have a problem is what comes out of us, what comes out of our hearts. These are evil thoughts and evil actions. Jesus then gives a sin list, or a vice list. There are one or two of these in the New Testament. The first few items in the list mirror the ten commandments, and then the second half expands on it. Man’s fundamental problem is that we are sinners. The religious types sought to remedy this problem by focusing on outward ritual. The Law did have a number of ritual requirements, but the religious leaders greatly expanded on them, and gave them an importance way beyond what the Law gave them. We have a tendency to do this because it puts us in control, it pretends that we are able to make ourselves good. The problem of sin is one that we cannot deal with ourselves, only the blood of Jesus can make us clean.

7:24

Jesus now goes into a non-Jewish area, though there would be some Jews there. He went to the “vicinity of Tyre”. Evidently some people from this area had gone to see Jesus in Galilee, for presumably He was invited, or at least welcome, in the house he went to. As often happened, He was hoping to find some peace and quiet, but failed to do so.

2 Samuel 22:4-7 - I called to the Lord

22:4-6

“I called to the Lord, who is worthy of praise, and have been saved from my enemies”. Experiencing the deliverance of the Lord is a key part of our relationship with Him. “The waves of death swirled about me; the torrents of destruction   overwhelmed me”. Note that David really felt the threat. See 2 Cor 1:9 where Paul says he felt the sentence of death on him. “The snares of death confronted me”.

22:7

“In my distress I called to the Lord”. There are a number of times in the Psalms where it says this, or something similar. We may feel that we don’t have enough faith because we are in distress. Actually the key question is to whom do we call when we are in distress. “From His temple He heard my voice”. God hears us in His temple, our cries for help go up to the throne room of heaven.

Mark 7:14-19 - Listen to me

7:14-16

Having spoken to the Pharisees, Jesus now turns his attention to the crowd. The Pharisees were fundamentally misleading the people, with their great emphasis on outward actions. They taught people that observing all these washing rules and food laws was essential in order to avoid defilement. This was not true, and was not getting to the heart of the matter, not getting to the real root of the problem. What shows that we are defiled is the stuff that comes out of us. There is an implication in this in how we interpret the food laws etc from the Law. Their purpose was not to make or keep a person clean. 

Most versions will not have verse 16, KJV and NKJV will have, where the text of Mark 4:23 is added here.

7:17-19

Jesus, apparently, said little else to the crowd, but His disciples did not fully understand what Jesus was teaching. The high importance of ritual cleanliness was so ingrained in Jewish culture that the concept of anything else could not be easily understood. Jesus rebukes them for being so dull, it should have been obvious that stuff that enters the body from the outside cannot make a person clean or unclean. We should draw a distinction between what enters the body and what enters the mind. Dwelling on pornography, or evil ideas, or gossip or lies etc does not do a person any good. Food just goes in and comes out again. Wrong thoughts go in and can take root like an infection.

2 Samuel 22:1-3 - David sang to the Lord

22:1

We now get a song that essentially covers God’s involvement in David’s life, and David’s experience of the Lord. This song is almost (but not quite) identical to Psalm 18. Note that David sang to the Lord, there was a personal relationship between David and the Lord, and this very clearly comes out in the Psalms of David. It is also worth noting that David makes the emphasis on the Lord having “delivered him from the hand of all his enemies”. We all face difficulties in life, indeed life can seem to be one difficulty after another! Normal Biblical experience is one of experiencing the Lord delivering us from a series of difficulties! Note also that it is through this that we develop an ever closer relationship with the Lord. One final point on this verse, note that David never saw Saul as his enemy. He knew full well that Saul caused him many problems, and much danger. But David always saw Saul as “the Lord’s anointed”, and David knew that God had delivered him “from the hand of Saul”.

22:2,3

“The Lord is my rock, my fortress and my deliverer ...” When facing trouble David looked to the Lord. Sadly, this was not often the case with the nation of Israel as a whole. A key failing of the nation was that when faced with danger they would turn to other nations or to idols for help, and this never ended well. David sought the Lord, and saw the Lord as his refuge, his rock.  And the dangers that David faced were real physical dangers.

Mark 7:11-13 - You nullify the word of God

7:11

So how did they set the commandment aside? They had a system of “Corban”, which was a vow. So if someone had vowed to give some money to God, but then it transpired that the money was needed to help their parents, the rabbis did not allow them to be released from the vow, and the money could be used to help their parents. Now look at this more closely. The Law did have rules on the seriousness of vows, and “devoted to God” sounds like a good thing, indeed is a good thing, but the rabbis ruling set aside the fifth commandment. Today a similar situation arises with regard to sexuality, especially homosexuality. Proponents in the church of allowing, even blessing, homosexual relationships, cite many good virtues, such as loving people, being compassionate etc, in favour of their position. But they are then clearly riding roughshod over the Bible’ clear teaching on marriage.

7:12,13

So the rabbis actually stopped people from obeying the fifth commandment. They nullified the word of God. This is also a demonstration that rules alone can never enable us to please God, we need to have the heart of God as well. The Corban example was only one example among many, the practices of the religious leaders were littered with many such cases.

2 Samuel 21:15-22 - They fell at the hands of David and his men

21:15

We now see further evidence of decline in David. We see this in two ways. First there is war between the Philistines and Israel, and then there is the physical decline in David. David no longer has the authority that he once had. We see this in all sorts of human rulers,  there is almost always a decline in authority and competence in their closing years. David went to fight with his men, but became exhausted.

21:16,17

The situation was so bad that David was in danger of being killed. Abishai, a son of Zeruiah, as was Joab, came to David’s rescue. The sons of Zeruiah were both a thorn in David’s side, and a source of salvation. God sometimes uses people we get on well with to help us, and that is great. But at other times He uses people who we find it difficult to get on with to help us. We need to have a gracious attitude. David’s men greatly respected him and saw him as the “light of Israel”, so they insisted that he no longer went out to battle.

21:18-22

We then get a brief record of four other battles with David no longer on “active service”. In each of these the Philistines were defeated, and a particular man is named in defeating the Philistines. Also it is highlighted that the brother of Goliath is defeated. While David is now failing, we see the value of his having attracted loyalty and admiration from men. While he was in his prime they admired David. Now he was weakening, they were able to do the work that he once did, winning battles. There is a key lesson in leadership here. We must act honourably and earn the respect and loyalty of people while we are at the peak of our abilities. We are then in a position to let others do the work as we get older, and we must be prepared to let go, rather than doggedly holding on, pretending we are as able as we always were.

Mark 7:9,10 - You set aside the commands of God

7:9

Having made the general accusation that they set aside God’s commandments for human traditions, Jesus now gives them a specific example of how they do this.  What they do is elevate one of their own traditions, a rule that they have made up, above the clear commandment of God. This is something that we are all in danger of doing, whatever denomination or branch of the church we are in.

7:10

Jesus now names the commandment that they set aside, and it is the fifth commandment, instructing us to honour our father and mother (Ex 20:12; Deut 5:16), and then reminding them of the command that anyone who curses their father or mother is to be put to death (Ex 21:17; Lev 20:9), this meant that one should take care of parents in their old age. It is also significant that Jesus says “Moses said”. The Pharisees liked to claim that they observed the Law of Moses, clearly they did not.

2 Samuel 21:7-14 - They were put to death

21:7-9

While he was happy to hand over seven descendents of Saul, David did spare Mephibosheth because of the promise he had made to Jonathan. The Gibeonites killed the seven men whom David did hand over. Their bodies were exposed on a hill before the Lord. We are given a fairly precise time for when the seven were killed. There is little that is glorious about the closing days of David’s reign. 

21:10-14

We now see why the harvest was mentioned. Since it was harvest time the birds were about looking for pickings, and would have scavenged on the dead bodies, given the chance. However, Rizpah took sackcloth to protect the bodies from birds or wild animals. Once again, we find a woman bringing a little dignity to an otherwise very bad situation. Her actions seem to have pricked David’s conscience. So he goes to collect the bones of Saul and Jonathan from Jabesh Gilead. Their bones had been lost in a previous defeat, and nothing had since been done to rectify the situation. Now this was put right. The bones of Saul and Jonathan and the seven were given a proper burial. “After that, God answered prayer on behalf of the land.” This could be taken as implying that God approved of all David’s actions, or it could be taken as God overlooking the evil way in which the situation had been addressed.

Mark 7:6-8 - Isaiah was right

7:6,7

Jesus responds by quoting from Is 29:13. It is the Septuagint, the Greek translation or LXX, that is given here. The Greek translation was the commonly used version. There God, throughIsaiah, says that the people honoured God with their lips, but their hearts were far from Him. And so their worship was in vain, they were merely following human rules, rather than following God. Jesus bluntly calls the Pharisees hypocrites.

7:8

The Pharisees had swapped the commands of God for the traditions of men. Note that Jesus does not beat about the bush, but goes right to the heart of the matter. We need to understand that the conflict between Jesus and the Pharisees is not a debate between two equal parties, but between God and man. As the church we can be too accommodating when “debating” with the world. Now we do need to be careful, as we are sinful men and women, and can sometimes be wrong. However, when it comes to the person of Jesus Christ, and the word of God, matters are not up for debate.