Well, it's been a few weeks, but we are back this morning in 2 Samuel. And I hope you don't mind me taking time to tell you about the bombardier beetle. Only Christ is worthy to sit on the throne of your life. Only Christ is worthy to sit on the throne of your life. And He is the only one who can meet the need of your heart. He's the only one who can govern your life, who can rule over your affairs with wisdom that is infinite, eternal, and unchangeable. We all suffer from bad government. I'm not talking about the United States government, though I'm sure some of you are suffering, if not all of us, suffering from some bad government there as well. But I'm talking about the bad government of our own foolish and sinful decisions, right? Most of our suffering is self-inflicted. And so I ask you that question, who runs the government of your life? Who draws the blueprint? for how things are handled, for your relationships? Who sets your priorities for your daily pursuits? Who gives you the wisdom to manage your time? Who sets on the throne of your heart ruling your attitudes, your responses? your desires, yes, your emotions and your decisions. And I want to tell you this morning that Christ is King and His kingdom, His reign is characterized by order and beauty. And we're going to see that in this paragraph, the closing paragraph of chapter 8 in 2 Samuel, verses 15 through 18. So I'll read this for us. So David reigned over all Israel and David administered justice and equity to all his people. Joab the son of Zeruah was over the army and Jehoshaphat the son of Hilud was recorder, and Zadok the son of Ahithub, and Ahimelech the son of Abathar were priest, and Sariah was secretary, and Benaniah the son of Jehoiada was over the Carithites and the Pelethites, and David's sons were priest." Why did you choose that paragraph to preach on? It's important. So let's think about David's reign. David is God's king over God's people. And this verse, we're going to just kind of take it apart here. The first thing it presents to us is that he administers his government. with justice and equity for all the people. His rule is characterized by these twin attributes of justice and righteousness. So we could translate verse 15, and David continually did justice and righteousness for all his people. The grammar is significant because it suggests that this was David's habitual practice. His practice, the practice of his government was justice and righteousness. And those nouns are often paired together, justice and righteousness. And they are spoken of as the character of God's throne, God's kingdom, God's reign. When it speaks of the Messiah's rule, it speaks of His rule as being one of justice and righteousness. I'll give you one example, Deuteronomy 32, 4. The rock, speaking of the Lord, the rock, His work is perfect, for all His ways are justice. A God of faithfulness, without iniquity, just and upright is He, Deuteronomy 32, 4. Where did David get these ideas of justice and righteousness? Well, they are the attributes of God. David's reign is informed by the nature of God. They are the attributes of God expressed in His law. When we speak about an attribute of God, Eder Bethoser would say that an attribute of God is something that God is. It is not something that He has that He could lose. It is something that is true about Him. And in fact, as you and I worship, what we recognize is that the beauty of the Lord is his attributes, his perfections, right? And here this beauty is being reflected in the government of David as God's king, God's representative of the kingdom of God, God's ruler. His reign reflects the beauty and order of God. Now God's Word reveals who God is. In fact, I said that the attributes of God are expressed in his law. And so what this means when it says that he reigned and that he exercised, practiced justice and righteousness for all the people, what this means is that David judged and punished transgressors and he vindicated and rewarded those who were in the right. It implies that David both condemned sin and he saved his people from sin. David fulfills the very purpose of civil government that is written in Scripture, one of the great passages in Romans 13. I just will mention a number of things. I'll paraphrase here. For rulers are not a terror to good conduct, but to bad. Do what is good and you will receive his approval. For government officials are the servants of God, an avenger who carries out God's wrath on the wrongdoer. So this passage in Romans 13 actually teaches us that those who are magistrates, those who are governors and presidents and representatives and senators, all people who have those offices, those who are in offices in the county, and they may be the clerk or they may handle records or whatever it may be, all of the police officers, whether in the county or the city, All officers are the ministers of God and they're accountable to carry out their duties in such a way that it reflects the glory of God. They may be unbelievers, they may not know that, but nevertheless it is true and this is why God instituted human government. Now I want to mention here too that God's attributes, His justice and His righteousness are especially revealed in the cross, in the message of the gospel. For it is there that we see justice and righteousness meeting because our sins were imputed to Christ. He took the guilt of our sins. This is amazing work of justice, that He would bear the penalty of our sins and pay the entire price, and that His righteousness would be imputed to us as sinners, that God would count us righteous because of Christ, that He counted our sins against Christ and He absorbed the wrath of God in our behalf. And God reigns over us through Christ by the cross in which he has accomplished the work of making us into a people who can reflect his justice and righteousness and the beauty, the beauty of all of his perfections. And so God put his attributes on display in the cross so that you, your life, could put God's beauty on display as well. David declares this principle of his government in 2 Samuel 22-23. Listen to what he says. This is the last words of David in this chapter, 2 Samuel 22-23. For all his rules were before me, and from his statues I did not turn aside. I'll read it again. This is the principle of David's government. Why does the record the nature of his government as characterized by justice and righteousness? Second Samuel 22, 23, for all his rules were before me and from his statutes I did not turn aside. Now, brothers and sisters, I think we are aware that there is a major crisis in government, in leadership, whether it's of nations or cities or families, and that is an ignorance of God, that we do not know about the attributes of God. Otherwise, we would be in awe of Him. We would be in fear of Him if we knew and understood these beauties and glories of our Savior. We are ignorant of God's nature because we are ignorant of God's Word. The more that you are into reading and meditating on the Word of God, listening to the Word of God being read, the more that you're meditating on the things of God, the more glorious God is before you, and the more you are able to worship Him and delight in Him, and the more that you're able to reflect His wisdom and glory, His justice and righteousness, in everything that you do. So when we fell in Adam, we lost the knowledge of God. We lost objective truth. We lost absolute categories of right and wrong rooted in the nature of God. David understood this. Let me give you two verses from Psalm 119. Verse 127, David extols, he says, righteous are you, O Lord, and right are your rules. And a few verses later, he says, your righteousness is righteous forever, and your law is true. Now, everybody talks about right and wrong, right? Isn't it true as you listen to television and you hear people, they say, that's not right, this is wrong. People make moral judgments all the time. But their categories for right and wrong usually are rooted in the culture, which is often the opinion, the popular opinion of social media. That is not where we get our categories of right and wrong. If we want categories, if we want to understand and discern the actual distinction between right and wrong, it comes from knowing God through his word. And David knew the Lord. Righteous are you, O Lord, and right are your rules. Your righteousness is righteous forever. Your law is true. Even David's imprecatory prayers, you know what the imprecatory prayers are, right? David, in the Psalms, they kind of scare you. Break out their teeth, O God. Right? That's an imprecatory prayer. Let not the wicked be written in your book. You know, those are imprecatory prayers. But David prays. This is not some sort of personal vendetta that he has against people. He is praying as God's king, as God's representative, as the one who who exercises the justice of God. And he is passionate about the issues of transgression of God's justice and the iniquity, the evil, the inequity that is there. He is passionate about it. That's why he prays that way. But in our world, consciences are misguided because they are not bound to the word of God. In fact, you yourself, me as well, right? I know that it takes time as we grow as a Christian, but often our conscience is bound to a rule that is not actually in the Bible. And we may even think that it's in the Bible, but we need to calibrate carefully our conscience with what God actually says. And often that makes us censorious. It makes us condemning of others because they don't keep our rules, right? And so, but are your rules God's rules? So those are the ones we need to be passionate about as we love and help others. The sense of right or wrong in the world is a confused category and it will be without the knowledge of God. And it shouldn't surprise us because this world has rejected Jesus Christ as King. He came into His own. He came into the world. The world received Him not. He came into His own and His own would not receive Him. Rejected Him. They knew Him not. David's government was great because he punished the guilty and rescued the innocent. And you may remember in 1 Samuel chapter 8 that when Samuel got old he appointed his sons, he had two sons, and he appointed them as judges over Israel. Their names were Joel and Abijah. but they were not they did not walk in the ways of Samuel and in fact this is what the scripture says for Samuel 8 his sons did not walk in his ways but turned aside after gain they took bribes and perverted justice and it was it was that that was the catalyst for the elders to come to Samuel and say appoint us a king like the other nations it was actually that corrupt government by Samuel's sons that initiated this. But of course the Lord was over it all. Government requires leaders who serve with integrity. We should pray for our government, for our officials, our president. I almost always pray for government, our government officials and our country in my pastoral prayer. I neglected to, but I'm exhorting us to now, right? That we need to pray because we want government to act with integrity. We want God to restrain even their unbelievers. We want to restrain their sinfulness and incline them to do what is right. The heart of a king is in the hand of the Lord like a river. He can turn it wheresoever he wills. So we pray to the king of kings. But David's government is one that is established on justice and righteousness. And he has officials who, for the most part, are people of integrity. There are situations that take place, which we'll get to in another time. But government requires leaders with integrity. So notice these individuals. And as you notice them, they tell you something about what was important to David and what actually are important concepts in leadership, in government, whether it's in the family or whether it's in the church. These are important concepts, the values of godly government, government and leadership that reflects the beauty and order of our God. First of all, you have Joab, David's nephew. Ah, that nepotism, right? Well, he was also a really amazing commander, and there were definitely problems with Joab, but he was over the army, and he was responsible for national security. Israel had enemies, but under David's leadership, people felt safe. because he had an army and they were able to go about their lives and flourish in their lives, their families, and their businesses because they were protected by a well-trained, massive fighting force. And King David valued security. The next name is Jehoshaphat. He was the recorder The word recorder actually comes from the Hebrew verb for remember. He was in charge of remembering. He was the historian, the royal historian who kept the records of the events in David's reign. King David valued the history of God's providence because the story of the kingdom was the story, was God's story. And then you have Zadok and Ahimelech, and these were high priests, so unusual time in that you had two high priests serving together, but they were high priests. They were responsible for the purity of Israel's worship, and they were responsible for the spiritual well-being. And David was very involved with these men in leading the worship of God's people. He valued public worship and the care of souls. I don't think there's anything that affects a family more than if you do not set a high value on gathering with the saints to worship the Lord. You want to see how problems will develop, neglect the gatherings of God's people. That is so dangerous. We need worship. It centers us, right? It shows us the real world. It corrects our misperceptions. It shows us again that God is God and we're exhorted to let God be God and stop trying to be God ourselves. So King David valued public worship. Sariah was the secretary or the royal scribe. He would have taken care of royal correspondence, kept He would have written the royal decrees. And it is likely, as a scribe, that he was also a theologian, that he knew the word of God and provided theological counsel for the king. So David valued counsel. He valued the wisdom of others in order to rule. Benaiah was over the Carathites and the Pelathites. Now these men, the only thing I can say, this is SEAL Team Six and Delta Force rolled into one. These guys are Philistines, that's right. You remember that David went down to Ziklag, he moved out of Israel's borders because Saul was chasing him everywhere and he thought the only place he's not going to chase me is if I go live with the Philistines. So he goes and he takes his family, all his men, they go down, they live with the Philistines. And he asked for a separate city, and they live in Ziklag. And Ziklag became the property of the kings of Judah from that day on. And so while they're living there, though, David's influence caused many of these Philistines to believe in the God of Israel. caused them to be converted. There's an example of it even when David is fleeing Jerusalem and when Absalom has committed treason and there's a conspiracy against him. Here someone shows up with, you know, 600 people from Philistia who is swearing loyalty to David. They recognized that David was God's king and they wanted a king like David. That's what they wanted. We need a king like David. We need to follow, right? And what they were seeing in David was that he reflected the beauty and glory and order of our God. He reflected the goodness of God, the truth of God. And they said, we want a king like that. Of course, who were they longing for? They were longing for King Jesus. Because David is a reflection, he's a foreshadowing of the Messiah, the King of Kings, the Son of David. Christ is the Son of Adam. He's the Son of Abraham. He is the Son of David. He is the Son of God. And his glory is amazing. He is the fulfillment of all God's promises. All God's promises are yes and amen in him. And when they saw David, they saw God's promises. They saw God's covenant of love and goodness, his righteousness and truth. And they were converted. And Ben-Aniah, most loyal, served Solomon after David had died. And this guy was a killer. Let me tell you, he could do the job. But he did it, he did it in service to the righteousness and justice of God as it was exercised through David the king. And you can read the story. He's one of David's mighty men. These were elite warriors. They were David's personal bodyguards. Man, we could talk about that more, right? It's amazing. And then it says that David's sons were priests. There's a parallel passage in 1 Chronicles 18-17 that says David's sons were chief officials at the hand of the king. Some have tried to correct the Hebrew text here, changing the word. They see it as a corruption priest. The Lord gave David many sons and in fact we know of 19. He probably had many more. But we know of 19 that are named. That's 19 named. We know also of perhaps two sons who died in infancy as well. And so David had many sons. And he entrusted to them leadership, responsibility, care of souls. He entrusted to them spiritual responsibility. He trained his sons in leadership. Men, are we doing that, right? Are we training our sons to be sacrificial in their love for their wife, to be edifying in their life, their love for their wife, to train their children, to disciple their children, to serve their church. David was training his children in this way. I know we'll only go a few chapters and we've got total breakdown and failure in David. But in this instance, he is for us an example of what leadership should look like when it reflects the glory of God. So let me just make a couple applications here. And I'll try to be brief. Try, fail, it's often the case, I told Mark recently that I said I'm trying to preach a little shorter. He said, oh Bob, worry about that. He knows I'm going to be mean no matter what I try to do. But let me just give you a couple applications. As a principle, the kingdom reflects the king. The kingdom reflects the king as a principle. So our church, because our church is an outpost of the kingdom of God, our church should reflect the beauty, goodness, and truth of our king. It should reflect the values of Christ. What is important to Christ? Your values are what's important to you. I saw in passing this week, and maybe it was a joke, I don't know. I saw in passing that they sold a banana taped to a board for $6 million. Did somebody else see that? Yeah, yeah. Did that really happen? Have people lost their minds or what? Hey, I got a banana I can tape to a board if you'll give me $6 million for it. Easiest six million ever made, right? But here's the thing, is that it communicates what is important. And it communicates the loss in our culture, the loss in our society of understanding true beauty, right? Because true beauty leads us to think of God. And so that's lost. But in our lives, in our church, We should conduct ourselves in such a way that we are a demonstration of what is important to Christ. The values of Christ should be reflected in our lives. In fact, the character of Christ's kingdom, when he comes and he rules, Psalm 99, 4 and 5 says, the king in his might loves justice. You have established equity. You have executed justice and righteousness in Jacob. Exalt the Lord our God. Worship at his footstool. Holy is he. So David understood that the role of authority in God's kingdom was to protect and to provide for God's people. And listen, every role of leadership among God's people should stand for truth and goodness. And whether you are an elder in this congregation, a deacon, a mother, a father, you're an older brother or sister, you are a teacher, you're a supervisor at work, any role of leadership should reflect the beauty of God's love and righteousness. Now when we read the story of King Saul, for the most part, right, Saul exercised leadership for his own advantage. How could he build his own kingdom? But David is about building the kingdom of God. And David's last words, once more, this is from 2 Samuel 23 again, he says, a godly king is to be like the sun shining on a cloudless morning and the rain that makes the grass spring up from the earth. He says that good leadership is like the sun on a cloudless morning shining and like the rain and the dew that falls on the grass and it makes things grow. He said that is good leadership. Good leadership makes the family, makes the church, makes the Bible study, makes the class. It makes all of these things to prosper. And good leadership is leadership that reflects the attributes of God, the beauty of our God. May the beauty of the Lord rest upon us. We know that David was passionate for justice and righteousness because when Nathan wanted to talk to him and show him his sin, when Joab wanted to show him that he was doing something wrong. Both of them approached it in the same way. Nathan tells him a story in 2 Samuel chapter 12. He tells him a story about a man who had a little sheep. David was a shepherd, and this little lamb was a pet, and he ate food at their table, at the family's table, this poor man, and he slept with them at night. I mean, they loved this little lamb. And there was a rich man, a neighbor, who had visitors that came, and he didn't want to take one of his own lambs to kill to feed the visitors that had come, so he took the poor man's lamb and killed killed that lamb and fed it to his visitors. And David is enraged. You remember the story? He is enraged. Well, see, that's because David's conscience was bound to justice and righteousness. And when he heard that story, he says, he's going to restore fourfold, you know. He's going to pay the price for what he has done. He was angry. Then, of course, Nathan turned the tables. This is good preaching, David. He said, you are the man. All of a sudden David realized that he had killed Uriah. He had taken his one little lamb Bathsheba. He had all these wives and he took this man's wife and killed him and he said, I have sinned. It was what, but it was that story that stirred up, that's why we know that he was passionate about those things. Later, Joab will do a similar thing. He'll send a woman, a wise woman of Tekoa. Apparently Tekoa was a place where you could find wise women. And I'm not kidding, it had a theme like that. And he instructed her to go and tell the story to David. And the same thing, because he wanted him to understand that he was doing wrong by Absalom. And this is the way they did it. They stirred up David with these stories in order to teach him about himself. There's a lesson there for how to teach our children, right? You can tell them a story, an analogy, that will let them understand. Even when you are in a situation where you're in conflict and you can't seem to, a person doesn't understand you. If you could tell them a story, that shows them what you're trying to get across that is analogous to this situation, then it is powerful in helping us to understand one another. And so this is a great training tool that can be used by parents and pastors and others as well. But here's the point, is that everything we do in this church should reflect the beauty and glory of Christ our King. All our ministries, formal and informal, the lives of our family, the hospitality, our service, in every way, we need to reflect the beauty, the goodness, the truth of our God. The second application is that the reign of Christ is the answer to our troubled lives. Our lives certainly are troubled. We live in, from our perspective, right, we live in a chaotic world. Sin, sorrow is everywhere. The political problems of the nations, the suffering of individuals, the conflicts that issue from warfare, terrorism, the hatred cruelty, abuse, violence, hunger, disease, addiction, and the reality of death that beats us all at the end. All of this sorrow and suffering comes from human rebellion. What is the answer to our troubled lives? What's the answer to our sin and our sorrow and our suffering? And it's the rule of Christ, the reign of Christ in our lives. The only answer The Lordship of Christ gives order and beauty to those who submit themselves to Him. the reign of Christ, the lordship of Christ. And when a person becomes a Christian, that is what they do. They confess that Jesus Christ is Lord to the glory of God the Father. And when we confess that Jesus Christ is Lord and we believe that He died for our sins and that Christ rose from the dead, then we are brought into the kingdom of God. We are transferred from the kingdom of darkness into the kingdom of His dear Son. And under His rule, as we hear His word, as we submit our lives in every area to Him, we begin to experience the blessings of His reign. I have so much that I'd like to say about this, but I would just say that We need to hold a coronation service in our heart. Take the crown off our own head because we've messed it up. I remember that Tozer told a story in one of his sermons about a man who had a business that had prospered, but bad decisions, it went into bankruptcy, it had to be sold, and then the new owner bought it. But when he arrived the next day to go into the office, there was the old owner sitting there still in the chair like he was going to run the company. He'd been running it so long that he was still in that place. He didn't know another way to act. And the new owner said, get out. You're not running this anymore. You bankrupted this. You made terrible decisions. Brothers and sisters, we need to say, God, I have made terrible decisions. I have bankrupted my life. There's so many ruinous things that have come about because of my decisions. my choices and my rule and I am turning over the rule of my life to you and I set this crown on the head of my Savior Jesus Christ and whatever you say Lord that will I do. The one who loved you, died for you, and rose again to forgive you of sins, he will guide your life and your life will be blessed because of the blessed Savior who rules and reigns. Praise Father, Son, and Holy Ghost.