Sermon Tone Analysis

*29.*

*Atrocities Strike Family*

2 Samuel 13

 

The bitter fruits of David’s adulterous sin now begin to multiply for him with a series of atrocities striking hard upon his family.

In the previous chapter of Scripture was recorded the loss of the child conceived by adultery.

But that great sorrow was only the beginning of the sorrowful tragedies which were going to plague David the remainder of his days.

New and much greater tragedies were going to enter David’s life as the rod of Divine chastisement comes down heavily upon him in punishment for his gross iniquity.

The atrocities recorded in our text which strike David’s family revolve around the incestuous rape by David’s son Amnon of David’s daughter Tamar a half-sister of Amnon.

This most shameful and repulsive sin led to other gross sins in David’s family.

David would certainly like to blot out from the Divine account of his life this chapter along with the two previous chapters in Scripture.

One can imagine that David would quickly trade his royalty, prestige, fortune, and fame, with all the stains of sin that had recently began to accompany these privileges, for the position of a lowly shepherd who did not have all those shameful stains upon his or his family’s record.

The pain of the atrocities recorded in this chapter of Scripture was greatly increased for David by the fact that they plainly mirrored some of David’s sins regarding Bathsheba and Uriah.

The sins David had brought into his home were now being reproduced by his children.

In our study of these atrocities, we will note some of the significant ways in which they replayed before David’s eyes his own iniquity.

God mirrored David’s sin repeatedly in chastening David.

This was done in order that David might “see that it is an evil thing and bitter, that thou hast forsaken the Lord thy God” (Jeremiah 2:19) in his gross evils with Bathsheba and Uriah.

To study the atrocities which came into David’s family that revolved around an incident of rape, we will examine the record of the rape (vv.

1–14), the reaction to the rape (vv.

15–23), and the revenge for the rape (vv.

23–29).

*A.

THE RECORD OF THE RAPE*

 

Rape is a big problem in our society.

But this shameful problem is not unique to our society.

It has been a problem in every age, and it became a problem in David’s family.

To look into the Bible’s record of the rape in David’s household, we will note the perpetrator of the rape, the promoters of the rape, the person who was raped, and the portrayal in the rape.

*1.

The Perpetrator of the Rape*

A festering moral sore abode in David’s family in the person of his son Amnon.

This sore spread its deadly infection throughout the royal family when it perpetrated the terrible crime of raping Tamar, another member of the royal family.

“In Scripture some men have very short biographies; Amnon is one of these.

And, like Cain, all that is recorded of him has a mark of infamy” (Blaikie).

To further examine Amnon and his evil conduct of rape, we note the advantages of Amnon, the attitudes of Amnon, and the attack by Amnon.

/The advantages of Amnon.//

/Amnon had many advantages in life.

He was not only a “son of David” (v.

1), but he was the eldest son of David (2 Samuel 3:2).

That meant he was in line for the throne.

He was the one designated by his birth to follow David as king.

Being the son of royalty and heir to the throne, Amnon had his own “house” (v.

8) and many other amenities which would accompany his high royal position.

But his royal position and its accompanying affluence did not keep him from evil.

In spite of the advantages incumbent upon royal position, Amnon still sinned in a terrible way by raping his half-sister.

Amnon’s failure in spite of his great earthly advantages strongly emphasizes the fact that what men need to improve their behavior is not a new/ berth/ but a new/ birth/.

Our world, however, has no regard for such a conclusion.

Rather, they are completely taken up with the idea that to change bad behavior to good behavior we need more money, better housing, better clothes, better paying jobs, and more parks for recreation and pleasure.

They ignore the fact that Adam and Eve lived in a perfect environment but still sinned.

And they are at a loss to describe the deviant behavior of an Amnon who had everything the world thinks is necessary to behave rightly.

But behavior problems are a result of one’s heart not of one’s house or other material situations.

We have slums because we have slummy people.

Build new and well furnished apartments for them and they will in quick order make slums out of them.

We need to get the slums out of people more than we need to get people out of the slums.

The new birth program of the Gospel has this emphasis, for it gets the slums out of the people.

When you get the slums out of the people, they will change their slummy living situation into a better place.

Amnon had a slummy heart.

Putting him in a royal house only resulted in putting slummy behavior in a royal house.

He made a moral pig pen out of it.

He made it a moral ghetto.

Like his father David, earthly advantages only aggravated his sin; it did not arrest and stop his sin.

Amnon, like many wealthy folk, could not handle a life of plenty.

For one thing he let his life of plenty keep him from “the wholesome necessity of denying himself” (Blaikie).

So when a illicit desire came for his half-sister Tamar, he would not deny himself of her but had to have her regardless.

/The attitudes of Amnon/.

Scripture details some of the sordid attitudes of Amnon which laid the foundation for his vile conduct with Tamar.

These vile attitudes of Amnon include his passion, ponderings, problem, pining, and proclaiming.

First, his /passion/ “Absalom the son of David had a fair sister, whose name was Tamar; and Amnon the son of David loved her” (v. 1).

Amnon had great love for Tamar, but it was not holy love!

She was his sister, so it was forbidden love (Leviticus 18:9,11).

Hence, there was no character in his passion.

It reeked of the stench of immorality.

It was not a love that sought honorable marriage but a love that sought gratification of physical lusts outside of marriage (v.

11).

“His love sought gratification at the expense of the honor, the interest, the happiness of the object beloved; and it trampled under foot every law whether human or divine” (Simeon).

Such is not true love.

Amnon’s passion for Tamar was sinful passion.

Sometimes we hear of couples who claim they were so much in love that they ended up being immoral with each other.

That is a bunch of nonsense!

True love does not so shamefully and injuriously defile the one they love.

If their love was true love, they would not have committed immoral acts and thereby dirtied each other’s character.

Today, however, the idea of love is so perverted that immoral lust is called love.

That is Hollywood’s version of love, but it is not the Bible’s version of love.

The Bible says some very plain and significant things about true love which describes it of a far different character than that of immorality.

The Bible says love is /“kind”/ (1 Corinthians 13:4).

Immorality, however, is not kind.

It is cruel not only to the those whose virtue is destroyed, but also to countless others who are affected by the foul deed.

Amnon’s foul deed was great cruelty to Tamar and her family (David’s household), and David’s immorality resulted in the murder of Uriah.

The Bible says love /“doth not behave itself/ /unseemly”/ (1 Corinthians 13:5), but immorality is indeed most unseemly behavior.

Amnon’s conduct with Tamar was about as unseemly as it could be.

The Bible says love /“seeketh not her own”/ (Ibid.),

but immorality is a selfish gratification of one’s fleshly appetites.

Amnon was extremely selfish in his action towards Tamar.

He thought not one bit about her welfare or about the scandalous dishonor it would bring to the palace.

The Bible says, love /“thinketh no evil”/ (Ibid.),

but immorality is the result of evil thoughts and promotes evil thoughts.

We will see next that Amnon was obsessed with evil thoughts.

If you want a true definition of love, get into the Bible.

The world knows little of true love, but God’s Word defines it well.

Second, his /ponderings/.

“Amnon thought it hard for him to do any thing to her” (v.

2).

Amnon’s “thought” life was focused on Tamar and in an immoral way, for “do any thing to her” refers to having sexual relations with her.

As we will see in our next point, the “hard” problem did not have to do with virtue but with the difficulty of getting Tamar into a situation where he could have sexual relations with her.

Amnon had royal blood in his veins, but he did not have royal thoughts in his heart.

Amnon’s ponderings were very polluted, and this led him downward morally to the destruction of his body, soul, and character.

We noted in David’s evil with Bathsheba that we are the product of our thoughts.