Bringing back the banished
Several years ago, I traveled to eastern Europe with a U.S.-based ministry that partners with Christian universities in that region. One of my roles during the trip was to interview administrators, teachers, and students at one of those universities, asking them about their faith stories in the midst of persecution. (Read more about their stories here)
As I prepared to do the interviews, I decided to ask each interviewee (all done through interpreters) what their favorite Bible verse was. As we gathered together in a room to hear the stories, some of my team members began guessing what some of those favorite Scriptures would be. We expected to hear John 3:16 and other well-known verses. One of the team members joked that it was doubtful we would hear someone say a verse from some unlikely book like 1 or 2 Kings.
Right after that, in walked a teacher who proceeded to share about her work with students in the field of social work. Her favorite verse ended up being in 2 Samuel in our Bibles – which in the Russian Bible is 1 or 2 Kings (they have four books of Kings, rather than a 1 and 2 Samuel)!
She quoted it to us: “We must all die; we are like water spilled on the ground, which cannot be gathered up. But God will not take away a life; he will devise plans so as not to keep an outcast banished forever from his presence.” (2 Samuel 14:14)
I have read through the Bible many times, but it took this insightful, compassionate woman of God to make me see the beauty of this verse in ways I had never considered before.
First, the context of the verse: Absalom, son of King David, had fled to a distant land after murdering his brother Amnon for raping his sister, Tamar. If Absalom would have returned to Jerusalem, it is likely that he would have been put to death for his crime. King David mourned for his son Amnon, but then also began mourning for his son Absalom (2 Samuel 13:39). As king, he had the power to acquit Absalom and allow him to return to the capital city, but he remained distant. Even though the public, also, seemed to have desired to see Absalom restored to his crown prince status, David did nothing to restore the relationship. We are not told why, but if we look at the previous chapters we see that David’s wisdom when it came to his family was wanting, to say the least. He was unable to control them, likely stemming from the judgment upon his own sin with Bathsheba, when the prophet Nathan told him, “Now therefore the sword shall never depart from your house, for you have despised me, and have taken the wife of Uriah the Hittite to be your wife.” (2 Samuel 12:10). David’s story is a potent reminder that our actions have consequences.
Seeing David’s desire to restore his relationship with Absalom, the army commander, Joab, hired a wise woman from Tekoa to appear before David with a made-up story. She would tell him that she was a widow, and that she had two sons who fought with each other. One of the sons killed the other, and now the rest of the family, seeking justice for the dead son, were set on killing the other, thus leaving her childless. The king, sensing the woman’s tragic plight, promised he would keep those avengers from harming any hair on her living son’s head (2 Samuel 14:11).
Immediately, the woman pointed out that David was willing to do for her and her son what he was unwilling to do for his own.
“Why then have you planned such a thing against the people of God? For in giving this decision the king convicts himself, inasmuch as the king does not bring his banished one home again.” (2 Samuel 14:13).
Then, in her wisdom, the woman further drove home her point by comparing David’s actions to God’s. In verse 14, she says that every one of us will die. In powerful imagery, she describes us as water that is spilled on the ground that cannot be gathered up. Once water is spilled onto the ground, it is soaked into the soil and is gone forever.
David would one day die, and Absalom would one day die, and the opportunity to restore that relationship would be lost forever.
As the divinely-chosen king of Israel, David needed to model his leadership after God Himself. God, she told him, seeks to bring one who has been cast out of His presence, back again.
God is merciful. So too must be those He appoints to oversee His kingdom on earth.
The greatest model of this divinely-rooted grace and mercy was shown in Jesus Christ. God came in the form of a man to take the punishment of sin upon Himself, so that we - the banished ones - could be restored once again in relationship with Him.
When we come to know Christ as our Savior, and He lives in us, we also become ministers of this reconciliation (see 2 Corinthians 5:11-21). We reach out to those who are far from God, suffering and lost, and show them how to be restored in right relationship with our merciful Creator. It is this wonderful gift of grace that we receive as believers that leads us to also treat others with that same grace that now flows from our transformed spirit:
“Put away from you all bitterness and wrath and anger and wrangling and slander, together with all malice, and be kind to one another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, as God in Christ has forgiven you.” (Ephesians 4:31-32).
As that teacher in eastern Europe reminded us so effectively, we as followers of Christ must also be the hands and feet of Christ in this world. We must help to pull people out of the pit of despair, where they are so distant from the King, and lead them to the place of redemption and restoration, no matter how far away they are.