There are many ethical considerations in this passage. Abner has come to promise David that the
people will all accept him as their king but it sets up Abner as kingmaker in
much the same way he had done with Ish-bosheth.
Joab, the commander of David’s armies while Abner, recall, was the
commander of Saul’s armies, distrusts Abner’s intentions vis a vis David. Perhaps, however, we could suggest that two
other motives might be at play in this matter, one is jealousy for his own
position and the second, that Joab had put Abner’s brother to death in battle. Joab’s murder of Abner is ostensibly for the
second reason, to avenge his brother’s death in battle but that won’t fly under
the Law, there is a distinction between killing someone in battle and the
murder which Joab has committed. David
mourns Abner and commands Joab to mourn as well, thus averting the potentially
disastrous perception that David himself was responsible for the murder of
Abner. Not only did he command Joab to
mourn, David also cursed his family, “may the house of Joab never be without one
who has a discharge or who is leprous or who holds a spindle or who falls by
the sword or who lacks bread!” The holding of the spindle implies blindness,
the leaning on a staff. I don’t suggest that David is cynical and calculating
only in his actions, only that these things all served to pull the kingdom back
together under his leadership.
Mark says that when He was walking on the water, “He meant
to pass by them…” Why? Did Jesus not care, was He not coming to help
them in their difficulty? Jesus was
giving them a revelation of Himself. If
you think of the creation, the Spirit of God hovered over the face of the deep,
the chaos. Now, we see Jesus as Lord
over the sea as well, walking on the water.
It is a call to faith for the disciples, something they have to process
about Him. His purpose is to meet the
deeper need they have, the need to understand and know who He is, but how
Jesus’ heart must have leapt when they saw Him in the midst of that storm and
cried out to Him. We sometimes get
overwhelmed by our own activity in the midst of struggles and forget we are not
alone, now matter how impossible it seems that anyone could find us or help
us. In the midst of their storm, without
Jesus, and no human possibility of Him being there, suddenly there He was,
ready first to calm their fears and then to calm the seas. The only ones who knew or cared how Jesus had
gotten to the shore were the disciples, everyone else just saw the miracles of
healing.
A girl with a spirit of divination tells the people that
Paul and Silas are servants of the most high God. Isn’t that a good thing? Luke tells us she did this for many days
before Paul did anything to stop her.
The spirit drew attention to itself as a prophetic spirit and I have
certainly seen people who have prophetic gifts turning those gifts to their own
glorification. Paul finally rebukes the
spirit, showing its true source and the power of the Holy Spirit over that
spirit. Her owners were damaged
financially by this and, not surprisingly, weren’t happy about that
reality. Here we see what will become
something of a trend in some places, Paul’s activity disrupts some commercial
enterprise of the Gentiles and that cannot be tolerated so persecution has to
be the answer in order to stop it. Our
kingdom is threatened by God’s kingdom and we won’t have it. How much better to
bow the knee rather than kick against the goads.
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