David and His Friends

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2 Sam. 17:27-29
What solemn changes in all within and around does sin work, what new relationships to places and persons it forces us to take!
This is sorrowfully experienced by David. Nathan, the prophet, had in earlier days been sent to David with words of approval and encouragement and all was in honor between them. But when David had sinned, the same Nathan is sent to him with words of terrible rebuke and conviction. (2 Sam. 7; 12)
So again, in other days David listens to the reproaches of a profane one of the house of Saul, but he could answer such reproaches with holy boldness. But after his sin, he is scorned and insulted again by the profane of the house of Saul, but the spirit of holy boldness has departed from him. He cannot reply to Shimei as he had replied to Michal.1 (2 Sam. 6; 16)
Another illustration of this is seen in David's connection with the house of Machir of Lo-debar. In the day of his integrity David sends to Machir for Mephibosheth the son of Jonathan, who had been long and graciously entertained there. With noble heart David then brings the son of his bosom-friend home to him to Jerusalem, and makes him to eat continually at his own table. But afterward, in the time when his sin had found him out, Machir supplies David with the commonest necessaries. (2 Sam. 9; 17)
What bitter changes for the heart were all these! The more vain and proud the nature is, the more would all this be felt; in some cases the trial would be all but intolerable. It would be then “the sorrow of the world which worketh death.” With David however it was otherwise. It became “godly sorrow that worketh repentance unto salvation not to be repented of.” David did not feel the sorrow as the “sorrow of the world,” sinking under it, as in the sight of men. But he bowed his head under the punishment of sin as in the fear of God, and then, as “godly sorrow,” nothing less than “salvation” was the end of it.
How beautiful, how precious with God when in circumstances like this the “sorrow of the world” is prevailed over in the soul by “godly sorrow;” when all this is taken up in reference to the Lord, and not to man! That is the difference. But how difficult!
Moral mischief however not only worked all this change in David's own relationships to the scene around him, but it tested others also. This is exhibited in the history. There are three distinguished personages who stand this testing and have their grace and virtues variously but sweetly exercised: Shobi the Ammonite, Machir of Lo-debar, and Barzillai the Gileadite of Rogelim.2 Shobi was the younger brother of Haman the king of the Ammonites, who had treated David's courtesy at the time of the death of his father with such slight and insult. And, I doubt not, that on this occasion Shobi had deprecated his elder brother's way, and been attracted by the grace and nobleness of David; so that, in the subsequent day of David's guilt and degradation, Shobi has a right mind still, though in changed circumstances. He joins other worthy ones in comforting the poor exiled king of Israel. (See 2 Sam. 10; 17)
Machir was the Son of Ammiel of Lo-debar, a man, we may presume, of note and station, in the half tribe of Manasseh beyond Jordan. In earlier days he had received into his house the lame child of that worthy son of Israel, Jonathan the son of king Saul, and had been a comfort to him in the day of the national trouble when the house of Saul and Jonathan his father was sinking. And so, when David is sinking, and he is suffering the grievous visitation of his terrible iniquity, the same right mind appears again in this true man of God, and he likewise joins in comforting David. David was as in prison, and he visits him. (See 2 Sam. 9; 17)
Barzillai was a great man, a man of note and substance in the land of Gilead, beyond the Jordan. But he never appears in the history till David is distressed; and he is willing to disappear as soon as that distress is over. He was the friend in need. But though unknown before, his mind had been that of a man of God, in secret, like many in every day of Israel's or the church's history; for he takes the path of the Spirit in a moment when nature in even some of its refined and moral judgments would have gone astray. He treats David's sorrow as a sacred thing, and adds not to the grief of him whom God in holy gracious discipline is wounding. He heartily joins Machir and Shobi in sending to David in his hunger and thirst and nakedness. (See 2 Sam. 17; 19)
We may say, in the review of all this, what a chapter in 2 Samuel is chapter 11! How the whole book morally turns on that, the complexion of David's history thus awfully changing with his conduct!
 
1. So, as to the ark. With joy at first he brought it to the place he had prepared for it; but after his sin he sent it back—its presence was too much for him. (2 Sam. 6; 15)
2. Ittai the Gittite might be named as standing in like manner the testing of these days. The scene between him and David in 2 Sam. 15 is full of touching beauty.