David The Judge: Justice In A Messy World Series

We’re coming towards the end of our series, ‘Learning from David’.

Last week, we looked at David the king. We saw that in the Bible, the foundation of God’s throne is righteousness and justice. I suggested that if righteousness and justice are the foundation of GOD’S throne – the key requirements for God’s kingship – then they are the key requirements for ANY throne – for any kingship. We looked at how David was committed to those qualities, and the Bible testifies that David displayed them. We also looked at how the Bible looks forward to Jesus and declares that Jesus will display those qualities. One of our famous Christmas verses is Isaiah’s prophecy about Jesus:

‘Of the increase of his government and of peace there will be no end, on the throne of David and over his kingdom, to establish it and to uphold it with JUSTICE and with RIGHTEOUSNESS from this time forth and for evermore’ [Isaiah 9:7].

When Jesus lived in Judea two thousand years ago, he didn’t act as judge. But when he comes again, he will.

Today, we’re moving on to David the judge.

Before we look at David as judge, I’d like to talk a little about judging in general.

There are at least three areas where the Bible teaches about judging.

One is the area of personal judgements. We look at people around us and think, ‘Look at how much money he’s got. He’s successful!’ ‘My boss constantly nitpicks.’ ‘The maintenance man is slow and careless.’

A second area of judgement is judgement at church.

A third area is formal judgement, judgement that typically takes place in a court with a judge. We can call this judiciary justice.

The Bible has a lot to say about personal judgements. Basically, it says, ‘Don’t.’ The Bible has quite a bit to say about judgements in church. Basically, it says, ‘Do.’ And the Bible has a lot to say about judiciary justice. Basically, it says, ‘Do.’

It would be great to talk about personal judgement and judgement in church. They’re important subjects. But they aren’t our subject today. Our subject today is judiciary justice. Mostly, we’ll be looking at how David did it. But I’d like to say one big, important general thing about judiciary justice before we do.

At one point, Moses gives instructions to the ancient Israelites about judiciary justice. For example, they have to appoint judges. They mustn’t accept bribes. Moses concludes by telling the people, ‘Justice, and only justice, you shall follow’ [Deuteronomy 16:18-20]. In other words, justice is really important. The people of Israel needed to pursue justice with a laser-like focus.

Let’s turn now to David the judge. You may well say to me, ‘We don’t have anything to do with judiciary justice!’ I have two answers to that.

If you study accountancy, your accountancy course will cover tax accounting and charity accounting and lots of other areas of accountancy. If you want to be an accountant, YOU HAVE TO LEARN these things. It’s part of the training. You might need to know about them. In the same way, God wants us to know about judiciary justice. It’s part of the training. We need to know about it.

Second, many of us can be involved in judiciary justice, if we choose to be. I’ll come back to that.

Let’s turn to David as judge. We’re now looking at the time in David’s life when he was king. This was when he formally had the role of judge. This is mostly covered in the Bible in the book of 2 Samuel. 2 Samuel is 24 chapters long. In other words, the Bible tells us quite a bit about the time David was king. I’m not sure what words you might think of to describe this period. A word that comes to my mind is ‘messy.’

I recently read a review of a movie. The reviewer wrote, ‘This fascinating story is superficially told through saccharine clichés.’ I don’t think the reviewer would write that about how 2 Samuel tells the story of David as king. The writer of 2 Samuel doesn’t tell the story of David as king in a superficial way. We get a lot of detail. The bad news for us is that we have to do some work to take in what’s going on.

David is king. As king, it’s his job to judge. In some cases, the cases he has to deal with are clearcut.

For example, David learns that two men have murdered Saul’s son and successor Ish-bosheth. He has them both executed.

As another example, David learns that in the process of him becoming king, Saul’s grandson Mephibosheth had lost some property that should properly have been his. David promises to restore it.

So, some of the cases David had to deal with were clearcut. But there were other cases which David had to judge which were not at all clearcut.