Noticing The King (2 Samuel 3:36)

 


Monday, July 21, 2025


Psalm 50

2 Samuel 3:20-39

John 6:52-71


Noticing The King (2 Samuel 3:36)


And all the people took notice of it, and it pleased them, as everything that the king did pleased all the people.


I have noticed a certain trend (and because I am a clergyman, trends only come to my attention years after they have passed) where men will use the title “king” to affectionately describe a fellow man who does something they respect. As one who, as a child, got to wear a cardboard crown on my birthday at a certain American fast-food burger chain, I find something whimsically delightful about this. Not to mention the influence of Narnia – the idea that we boys and girls are kings and queens walking about God’s green earth as benevolent rulers, guided by our Biblically-inspired noblesse oblige.


The reason I have the term “king” on the brain is because of how our two-volume book of Samuel has started changing the way it refers to David. Did you notice it? Up until now, he has just been David. But now, at the funeral of Abner, son of Ner, he becomes King David. There must be a good reason for this. There must be something about the way he treated Abner both before and after his murder that makes David worthy of the title “King”.


The king was gracious to Abner in life. Abner, caught up in the politics and scheming of the Northern rebellion, came to David in order to find out how he could play his part in settling the matter peacefully. And as king, David took him on in good faith, and sent him in peace. This is the behaviour of a King.


Later, after Abner was murdered in cold blood, David further behaved like a King by acting justly, with poise and dignity. And the thing about all this is that the people took notice of it, and it pleased them.


Kings – people who act like King David on one of his good days – are noticed. (This isn’t gender specific, either; just have a think about some of our own famous Queens, and how they also behaved in a similar way, and gained the same recognition from their people.) Our Great Monarch, the King of Kings, Jesus Christ, always acts like a King. He doesn’t have off days, like David, or any of the others. And if we are to follow him, as he asks us, then who knows what sort of influence we will have on the people around us.


How does the term “king” or “queen” sit with you as a Christian? What might your role and responsibilities be to the people around you?


Christ our Lord, who builds up and casts down according to the purposes of your eternal kingdom: grant us the spirit of the great rulers of the Bible, that we may be merciful and gracious in all that we do, and so cause people to take notice of you, our King of kings.

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