The time was now come for the just place of the king. “Then came all the tribes of Israel to David unto Hebron, and spake, saying, Behold, we are thy bone and thy flesh. Also in time past, when Saul was king over us, thou wast he that leddest out and broughtest in Israel: and Jehovah said to thee, Thou shalt feed My people Israel, and thou shalt be a captain over Israel” (2 Samuel 5). Nevertheless it is solemn enough to observe that these men had known it all the time. It is not want of knowledge that hinders souls from acting according to God: I speak now of the general rule. But want of faith dulls the force of what we know, and makes it as if we knew it not. As long as there were those who acted on their nature, as long as it was a king of their own choice, or any one belonging to his family that seemed to have the smallest shadow of a title to the throne, their feelings wrought; their prejudices proved strong; their prepossessions were so deeply engaged that they forgot the word of the Lord. But now the Lord had put aside these different hindrances manifestly by His judgment, and had done it so much the more solidly for David as it was not by David. For David's hand was never lifted up against. Saul or Jonathan; David's hand never got rid of Abner nor of Ish-bosheth. But now, whether by wicked men with David, or by wicked men against him, or by the open enemies of the Lord, in all these various ways God had wrought and disposed of the different men who laid claim to the throne one after another; and lo! the confession comes out, which must have been as true of the dead as of the living, that all through they knew well enough what the will of Jehovah was.
And so do we find now constantly. When souls are brought out of hindrances, when they are brought out of a false position, there is many a confession made which shows that the truth had pierced their consciences long before: only will, the world, the difficulties of family connection, a thousand snares, hindered fidelity to the Lord.
But in truth, my brethren, we are entirely dependent on God Himself to give force to His own truth. Power is not in the truth simply. It is still less in a position, true as it may be. The grace of God alone gives the truth power. It is this that really works so as to deliver from hindrances, and therefore it is of such importance to our souls that the affections should be strong and rightly set. If the affections are kept vigorous and pure on the object of God, then the truth is seen in its real beauty and brightness; whereas if the affections are weak, or wandering after false objects, we may have all the truth in the Bible before us, but it makes little or no impression—This we see in the unconverted man fully; but the very same thing that ends in the ruin of the unconverted operates, if allowed, and in the degree it is allowed, to the hindrance and injury of those born of God.
At last, then, all the tribes of Israel come and make their common acknowledgment to the king (2 Samuel 5). Now they could see that they are his bone and his flesh. Had they not been so before? Now they could remember how he led them in olden time. Was this again something new? Now they could remember that Jehovah said, “Thou shalt feed My people.” Had this too only just then burst on them for the first time? “So all the elders of Israel came to the king to Hebron; and King David made a league with them in Hebron before Jehovah: and they anointed David king over Israel.” Was there a reproach from David? I venture to answer there was not. No; there was a heart that loved them better than they loved him: there was one that sought Jehovah's glory for them, and who valued the throne because it was Jehovah's gift. I do not mean to say that he did not value it in itself, but I do affirm that it never entered the heart of David to seek the throne for himself. The first conception of it, the first presentation of the thought, was produced by God's own deed and gift. It was in no way the fruit of vaulting pride in the spirit of David. But God's call made it a duty to obey on his part as on Israel's. He consequently was the one who could use that throne in his measure for Jehovah's glory.
But if David and his men come to Jerusalem, the stronghold of Zion was still in the hand of the enemy, as it had hitherto been. Whatever might be the conquests of Joshua, whatever might have been achieved afterward, in the very middle of the land, in the center of Jerusalem itself, there frowned this stronghold held by the Jebusites. The time was come to mark a most important change. It was impossible that the kingdom could be according to God unless Zion were wrested for the king from the enemy who had thus daringly defied His people; and David felt this in all its force. He was keenly alive to the dishonor that was done to God by the very heart and citadel of the kingdom belonging to an accursed race of Canaan.. There they proudly and at ease, by long possession in their fortress, laughed all assailants to scorn. Hence, when David comes before it, they say to him, “Except thou take away the blind and the lame, thou shalt not come in hither.” A most stinging taunt to the warrior king The blind and the lame were sufficient to keep the stronghold against David and his men. That is, the place was so excessively strong by nature, perhaps also so fortified by the men of Jebus, that they had conceived it to be impregnable, “Nevertheless David,” as the Spirit of God says so calmly, “Nevertheless David took the stronghold of Zion the same is the city of David. And David said on that day, Whosoever getteth up to the gutter, and smiteth the Jebusites, and the lame and the blind, that are hated of David's soul, he shall be chief and captain.” David was not only too sensitive to the taunt, but could not rise above it. All flesh is grass, and its glory as its flower. Generous as David was, he was wounded and resented the insult on those innocent of it. “Wherefore this day the blind and the lame shall not come into the house.” We know how the grace of the Lord Jesus reversed this. The blind and the lame were just the people that did come into the house when He was there. But David was not Jesus. The king felt things after a too human sort. The Lord Jesus only and always went or came in a way perfectly suitable to God and His grace.
“So David dwelt in the fort, and called it the city of David.” This, though it be so briefly named by the Spirit, becomes ever afterward an epoch and turning-point in the history of Israel. I do not know anything more striking in Scripture, or a more remarkable characteristic of it, than such a fact as this, slight as some may count it—the quietness with which the Holy Spirit notices the completeness of the blow that was struck in the heart of the land at that which had been a constant challenge and triumph over all the efforts of Israel to that day. Now that David had wrested it from the Jebusites, this becomes the great fact that afterward stamps its character upon Israel. Zion, in short, becomes a new name of the deepest moment—the sign of divine grace in royalty—the grace that took up the people in their lowest condition, and by that man whom God employed raised them up step by step to such a place of power and blessing and glory as never was before and never can be again till Jesus come and make this very Zion the center of His earthly government with the blessing and glory due to His name.
Hence it is referred to in Hebrews strikingly, where it is said, “We are come to mount Zion.” It is indeed the most characteristic spot in the whole earth as the sign of grace. Why should it be so? Why should it not be so? There are two mountains that have a place proper to them—the mount of law and the mount of grace. Sinai, I need scarcely say, is the one, as Zion is the other. Sinai came into view when Israel were tried under law and all was favorable, the people having been brought out by the mighty power of God in the freshness of their youth. It was the beginning of their history, when all looked fair. They had entered upon it by a victory over the proudest king of the earth in that day; and what did they come to? Ruin, ever worse and worse, as each means successively tried proved the hopeless evil of man when fairly and fully put to the test by God.
But now what a contrast begins to dawn, though only in type! They were taken up from the depth of ruin, and after that estate Zion was won. Thus it is the kingdom established in power after the people had been utterly ruined—after they had gone through every phase of change calculated to help, yet every experiment only sinking them deeper into the dust. After all this was Zion won, and not till then. Now there is nothing that so beautifully shows grace; for it is not only great activity of goodness, but also perfect goodness displayed after all had been lost. This is grace, and such is precisely therefore the picture of the stage at which Zion comes before us in Jewish history. Therefore it is that in the epistle to the Hebrews, where the apostle is contrasting all that flesh boasted of in Israel—Sinai and its ordinances, he takes up that name of Zion which they little felt and little thought of, giving it its real prominence and most striking superiority. The moment that it is named thus, how the heart recalls and turns over all the glorious things spoken of the mountain of grace, and remembers that Zion too was chosen by God for His holy hill—that not only was David an object of divine choice, but withal Zion! Nor need we wonder, because God in this too was thinking of Christ as King. There had He anointed His Son. It He desired for Jehovah's habitation. “This,” said He, “is my rest forever; here will I dwell: for I have desired it.” “There brake he the arrows of the bow, the shield, and the sword, and the battle.” “Jehovah loveth the gates of Zion more than all the dwellings of Jacob.” We shall see perhaps a little more as we go on.
Again, we hear next how David was owned by the Gentiles gradually. “And Hiram king of Tire sent messengers to David, and cedar trees, and carpenters, and masons: and they built David an house. And David perceived that Jehovah had established him king over Israel, and that he had exalted his kingdom for his people Israel's sake.” All this flowed in on the king after Zion was won.
But I am far from saying that we have more than a pledge as yet of good things to come, checkered alas! by the too evident fact that the first man is not the second. Thus “David took him more concubines and wives out of Jerusalem, after he was come from Hebron: and there were yet sons and daughters born to David. And these be the names of those that were born unto him in Jerusalem; Shammuah, and Shobab, and Nathan, and Solomon, Ibhar also, and Elishua, and Nepheg, and Japhia, and Elishama, and Eliada, and Eliphalet.” The law made nothing perfect. Christ, the true light, was not come; nor was even the believer, though born of God, the new creation yet, so as to say, “old things are passed away: behold, all things are become new.”
Moreover we find, when the Philistines who heard of it came up, that David was still as dependent on God when on the throne as he had been whilst in the place of suffering. He “inquired of Jehovah, saying, Shall I go up to the Philistines?” There was no confidence in his own powers, no presuming on past victories—as easy a thing to slip into as it is dangerous. “And Jehovah said unto David, Go up: for I will doubtless deliver the Philistines into thine hand.” And so he smote them; “and there they left their images, and David and his men burned them. And the Philistines came up yet again.” David does not even then act, because he had before beaten them; nor does he satisfy himself for the fresh need with the answer God had given him for their former attack. He inquires again; and Jehovah exercises his obedience by an altogether new command: “Thou shalt not go up; but fetch a compass behind them, and come upon them over against the mulberry trees. And let it be, when thou hearest the sound of a going in the tops of the mulberry trees, that then thou shalt bestir thyself: for then shall Jehovah go out before thee, to smite the host of the Philistines. And David did so, as Jehovah had commanded him; and smote the Philistines from Geba until thou come to Gazer.”