When a King Falls

5 And when his armor-bearer saw that Saul was dead, he also fell upon his sword and died. 6 Thus Saul died; he and his three sons and all his house died together. 7 And when all the men of Israel who were in the valley saw that the army had fled and that Saul and his sons were dead, they abandoned their cities and fled, and the Philistines came and lived in them. 8 The next day, when the Philistines came to strip the slain, they found Saul and his sons fallen on Mount Gilboa. 9 And they stripped him and took his head and his armor, and sent messengers throughout the land of the Philistines to carry the good news to their idols and to the people.

The Philistines are sending out the gospel, the good news announcement of their victory over Israel — and in their context, over Israel's God. So they carry the news to their idols and to the people.

10 And they put his armor in the temple of their gods and fastened his head in the temple of Dagon. 11 But when all Jabesh-gilead heard all that the Philistines had done to Saul, 12 all the valiant men arose and took away the body of Saul and the bodies of his sons and brought them to Jabesh. And they buried their bones under the oak in Jabesh and fasted seven days.

So the chronicler just gives it to us rapid fire, twelve verses to summarize the fall of the first king of Israel. And then it gives us the verdict, the explanation, the theological commentary. It says this: Saul died for his breach of faith. His breach of faith — the Hebrew here is ma'al. It's not a word that describes one isolated incident or a bad choice. It's a word that describes a pattern of behavior, a lifestyle. Let me say it this way this morning: a way of seeing, a way of looking.

13 So Saul died for his breach of faith. He broke faith with the Lord in that he did not keep the command of the Lord, and also consulted a medium, seeking guidance.

Chosen and anointed king of God — he did not look to God. He did not seek God. And it's kind of epitomized by this moment when he seeks out the witch at Endor to consult the spirit of Samuel, who has died. And so it says he sought the guidance of the medium, but

14 He did not seek guidance from the Lord. Therefore the Lord put him to death and turned the kingdom over to David the son of Jesse.

So the chronicler is telling us that Saul's heart, his gaze, was directed everywhere but God. He was consistently, willfully, stubbornly rebellious. And before we all jump on the "I'm glad I'm not like Saul" train, I'm not so sure we aren't. I want you to ask yourself this morning — really ask yourself, not the first time I've asked this question — but where does your gaze go when you need help? What do you look to for comfort, for a sense of peace and well-being, for security, for hope? I think we'd love to say that we automatically and always look to God, but I think our addictions and our patterns of behavior show us that's actually not how we live most of the time.

There's an interesting thing here to think about. See, Saul never denied God. Saul didn't disavow God. Saul wasn't an atheist. If you talked to Saul, he would say, "Oh yeah, yeah, I'm Yahweh's, and I'm following Him." And yet he wasn't. He didn't look to God. Though he claimed allegiance verbally, the way he lived showed that God didn't have his heart or his allegiance. So Saul reaped the consequences of his choices. When you read through First Samuel again, you see that God is actually pretty patient with him. He calls him. He calls him to repent. He calls him to do right. And yet Saul chooses over and over and over again, and so he reaps the consequences of his choices. And the kingdom is then handed to the new king, David, the son of Jesse.

So that's how Chronicles tells the story — blunt, decisive. Let's see how Samuel handles it. 2 Samuel chapter 1, verse one.

1 After the death of Saul, when David had returned from striking down the Amalekites, David remained two days in Ziklag.

I don't want to go too deep in the weeds here, but this verse is actually saying a lot. There's a really interesting, beautiful irony to me. While Saul is dying on Mount Gilboa, David is striking down the Amalekites. In 1 Samuel 15, Saul goes to battle against the Amalekites, and he refuses to do what God told him to do. He keeps some of them. He doesn't honor God. He tries to blame it on others. And this is the chapter where Samuel comes to him and tears his robe and says, "The kingdom is torn from you." So I want you to think about this: Saul — the final straw in Saul losing his kingship, being rejected by God as king — was his refusal to deal with the Amalekites. And at the very moment Saul is dying for that, David has just defeated the Amalekites. There's something beautiful and full about that.

Verse two says,

2 And on the third day, behold, a man came from Saul’s camp, with his clothes torn and dirt on his head. And when he came to David, he fell to the ground and paid homage.

Now, I think we might tend to read that from our cultural context and go, "Oh, well, he's coming from the battle. He's dirty. Maybe he's been injured." But this is an ancient Near Eastern document, written in an ancient Near Eastern culture. And in that culture, the two things that are listed here — that he has torn clothes and dirt on his head — are the two primary ways that mourning and grief are expressed in that culture. So what the text is setting up for us when it says he comes with torn clothes and dirt on his head is that he's coming in a posture of mourning. And so he comes to David, he falls to the ground, and pays homage.

And verse three, it says,

3 David said to him, “Where do you come from?” And he said to him, “I have escaped from the camp of Israel.”

which is an interesting way to phrase it. Just let that sink in. Then David said to him, "How did it go? Tell me." Now, David has no idea. He wasn't in the battle with the Philistines — he was kicked out, and he had to go fight the Amalekites. So he wants to know what happened.

4 And David said to him, “How did it go? Tell me.” And he answered, “The people fled from the battle, and also many of the people have fallen and are dead, and Saul and his son Jonathan are also dead.”

David hears this and immediately demands an explanation. David says,

5 Then David said to the young man who told him, “How do you know that Saul and his son Jonathan are dead?” 6 And the young man who told him said, “By chance I happened to be on Mount Gilboa, and there was Saul leaning on his spear, and behold, the chariots and the horsemen were close upon him. 7 And when he looked behind him, he saw me, and called to me. And I answered, ‘Here I am.’ 8 And he said to me, ‘Who are you?’ I answered him, ‘I am an Amalekite.’ 9 And he said to me, ‘Stand beside me and kill me, for anguish has seized me, and yet my life still lingers.’ 10 So I stood beside him and killed him, because I was sure that he could not live after he had fallen. And I took the crown that was on his head and the armlet that was on his arm, and I have brought them here to my lord.”

And the way this is written is interesting, because we already looked in 1 Chronicles 10, and 1 Samuel 31 tells a different story about how Saul died. Now, there might be some ways to harmonize these two accounts, but I think the way this is written, we get a picture: this guy just happens to come across the dead king, take his crown and his armlets — take the proof of his death and the signs of his authority — and then he just happens to stumble upon David, dozens of miles away if not hundreds, and then just happens to find him and come and announce to him that Saul and David's best friend, Jonathan, are dead, and he just happens to bring him the signs of it. And that may not make a lot of sense to us, but in the ancient Near East, kings rose and fell all the time, and whenever there was a transition in kingship, there was opportunity. There was opportunity. And so it would be very, very common for somebody to try to take advantage. This man had been in Israel's camp. He wasn't an Israelite — he was an Amalekite. That's important. He'd been in the camp. He knows all about the strife between Saul and David. He knows about how Jonathan has been on David's side, even against his father. He knows all the stuff that's going on. So when he sees Saul and Jonathan fall, he doesn't grieve it — he sees it as an opportunity to enrich and empower himself. If I take the crown, if I take the armband, and I bring it to David — surely David's going to be excited that Saul is dead. Saul's been trying to kill him for ten years. Of course David is going to rejoice that the king who has been trying to kill him is dead, and that now his path to the throne is wide open. He must have been incredibly surprised at David's response.

11 Then David took hold of his clothes and tore them, and so did all the men who were with him.

See, this is the sign of grief, the tearing. He takes it. And all the men who were with him did.

12 And they mourned and wept and fasted until evening for Saul and for Jonathan his son and for the people of the Lord and for the house of Israel, because they had fallen by the sword.

Because they had fallen — that's the key word in this chapter, fallen. We already saw it earlier in verse four. We see it now. It's going to be the refrain of the poem that David is going to compose. It's the Hebrew nafal — it means to be cast down or to die violently. And David's response, and the response of the men that David is leading, when they hear that their enemy — the one who has been trying to kill them, the one who has made their life a literal hell for a decade — when they hear that he has died, they don't rejoice. They mourn. They weep. They grieve. They mourn not just for the death of Saul and Jonathan — it says they mourn for the people of the Lord and for the house of Israel.

Now let's be honest — if someone tried to kill you once, and the tables got turned and something happened to them, how would you feel? If somebody tries to kill you multiple times, threatens you, demotes you, chases you from your home and through the wilderness for ten years — how would you feel when they died? Be honest. I think David's response gives us some really clear insight into why God called David a man after His own heart, because David's response is not what my response would have been. I don't think it's the common response. See, Saul considered David his enemy, but David wouldn't return the favor. For David, the death of Saul was nothing to rejoice over, because that wasn't the conclusion that he was looking for, hoping for, praying for. If you remember, on two occasions David could have easily taken Saul's life himself, but he refused. He refused to raise his hand against the Lord's anointed. This was his rationale: Saul may be acting crazy and rebelliously and sinfully, and he may be doing evil and wicked things to me, and yet God has still anointed him as king, and I'm not going to go against him, because to go against him is to go against God. I'm not going to do it. He refuses to rejoice at the death of his enemies.

I spent a lot of time thinking about that this week. I wish we as a culture didn't rejoice at the death of our enemies, but we do. I think there have been two significant moments in the last couple of years where we saw this — where people on different sides of an issue saw someone brutally murdered. Take Charlie Kirk, take the CEO of the health industry — there are multiple examples where somebody is brutally killed, and the response has been shocking to many. Some grieve, but the shocking thing is how many people rejoiced at the murder, at the death of their enemy. There's something about this — as I started really meditating and thinking about it — I'm not thinking about them out there. I'm thinking about this guy in here. I'm thinking about the movies that I love, and the stories that I love, and how deep this thread runs through the narrative of our culture. We love it when the bad guy gets it. We love that. We rejoice. We spontaneously react in the theaters, or at home on the couch, and we love this feeling of "oh, they got it."

Well, that's not who David was. His response to Saul's death was actually God's response to Saul's death. There's a little verse in Ezekiel 33 where God is crying out to Israel to stop being so stubborn, to stop sinning, and to return and repent to Him. But He says this — say to them, "Say this: As I live, declares the Lord" — that's a strong statement, as I live, by the nature of my life, on the basis —

11 Say to them, As I live, declares the Lord God, I have no pleasure in the death of the wicked, but that the wicked turn from his way and live; turn back, turn back from your evil ways, for why will you die, O house of Israel?

I read that again this week, and I was like, I want to be like God. I want to have a heart like God. And I can't say that. There have been way too many times that I've felt pleasure in what I've considered the death of the wicked. But God's not like that. I hope you can hear this morning that that is not the heart of God. He's not petty. He's not spiteful. He's not vindictive. He's not a tyrant. God doesn't delight in the death of the wicked. But this is what He'd rather have — that the wicked would turn from his way and live. This is what God wants. I don't want to destroy you. God didn't want to have to destroy Saul. When you read through the story, you see that consistently. But at some point, God gives Saul what he wants. David's response here is the appropriate response, because it mirrors and models the heart of God.

And my mind immediately went to Jesus in the days before Holy Week, as He's going to Jerusalem to enter as the king and then to die as the Savior. And Luke tells us in chapter 19 this —

41 And when he drew near and saw the city, he wept over it,

He wept over the people that He knew were going to kill Him. He wept over the ones who were going to lie about Him. He wept over the ones who would say, "Give us Barabbas instead of Him." He weeps over them, saying —

42 saying, “Would that you, even you, had known on this day the things that make for peace! But now they are hidden from your eyes.

Why is Jesus weeping? Because the coming judgment upon the city of Jerusalem is exactly like Saul's. They've been seeking the wrong thing so long that when the One who was promised shows up, they don't recognize Him and they reject Him. He weeps. And this is what makes Jesus so amazing — He weeps not just from a distance. He weeps, and then He descends into the city that He weeps over. He grieves the fall, and then He takes the punishment and the weight of that fall upon Himself. Oh, how great Jesus is.

Back to David. When his initial grief had subsided, he returns to question the young man.

13 And David said to the young man who told him, “Where do you come from?” And he answered, “I am the son of a sojourner, an Amalekite.”

"Where do you come from?" He's not asking about geography or his travel plans — he's asking about identity: who are you? Why were you in the camp of Israel? What's going on? And so he reveals that his father was an Amalekite and had come to sojourn among the people of Israel. And so he had grown up there, but that's who he is. And so, though he has come from the Israelite camp, he doesn't identify himself as a part of the covenant community — he identifies himself as one of the Amalekites. The enmity between the Amalekites and the nation of Israel is hundreds of years old at this point. So this is how he identifies. And what that tells you right now, as he does this, is that a foreigner, an enemy of God, has raised his hand and struck down God's chosen king.

So in verse 14,

14 David said to him, “How is it you were not afraid to put out your hand to destroy the Lord’s anointed?”

I really like that. He doesn't ask, "Why did you kill him?" He asks, "How dare you do this?" Because David had had that opportunity twice, right — he'd had his hand with the knife right over Saul, but he couldn't do it. Why? Because his fear of God wouldn't allow him to do it. And he looks at him: you've grown up here, you've been here, you know who God is, you know what He does. How could you not be afraid to raise your hand against the Lord and His anointed? Anointed — the last two weeks we've hit that word hard. It's the Hebrew mashiach. It's the word that means Messiah. It's the word that is translated into Greek as Christos, which means the king, the savior, the redeeming one. How could you raise your hand against the one that God has chosen to be His representative?

Verse 15,

15 Then David called one of the young men and said, “Go, execute him.” And he struck him down so that he died.

If you think that's harsh, or that it escalated quickly —

16 And David said to him, “Your blood be on your head, for your own mouth has testified against you, saying, ‘I have killed the Lord’s anointed.’ ”

This wasn't David acting out of his grief. He doesn't do it himself. He executes judgment and justice according to the law. David's already starting to act and lead as a king. The man was right — this Amalekite messenger was right about the opportunity. He was just dead wrong about the man that he brought it to.

The text then returns to David's grief. It says this:

17 And David lamented with this lamentation over Saul and Jonathan his son,

David doesn't just feel his grief — he composes it and he shares it. Lamentation, qinah in the Hebrew, it's a specific type of poetry — it's a funeral dirge. David takes his grief and he doesn't bottle it up. He doesn't distract himself with pleasures. He doesn't pretend that it didn't happen. He sits in it, and he feels it, and he composes with it, and then he shares it.

Verse 18,

18 and he said it should be taught to the people of Judah; behold, it is written in the Book of Jashar. He said:

What I want you to see is that already David is directing the gaze of the people to God. We've been talking for the last several months that we become what we behold — that what we look to shapes us, that what we look to, we serve. As we walk through 2 Samuel, I want to show you what a king beholds, a nation will behold, a people will behold. And we saw that negatively in Saul. We're going to get to see it positively, and a little bit negatively, in David. But right from the beginning, David is showing the people the right response, the right way to grieve. He's leading the nation to see as God sees.

Verse 19,

19 “Your glory, O Israel, is slain on your high places! How the mighty have fallen!

So this is poetry, and it's beautiful. That opening phrase, "your glory, O Lord" — it's not the common Hebrew word for glory that we're used to seeing. It's a secondary word that means beauty — it's actually a word that means a gazelle. The glory of the swift and beautiful gazelle has fallen on the high places. The gazelle that can go in places that humans can't walk — the grace, the beauty, the power has fallen. And so then we get this refrain, "how the mighty have fallen." How the mighty have fallen — three times he's going to say this in the closing verses of this poetry. How the mighty have fallen. "Tell it not in Gath" — that's one of the primary Philistine cities.

20 Tell it not in Gath, publish it not in the streets of Ashkelon, lest the daughters of the Philistines rejoice, lest the daughters of the uncircumcised exult.

So as David is processing his grief over the death of Saul and of Jonathan, and the implications of what that means for the nation of Israel and for the reverence and glory of God, as he's doing this, he's like, we can't let this become a tool that the enemy uses to exalt themselves over God. He knows that they were indeed celebrating. We know, right — 1 Samuel 31:8-10.

8 The next day, when the Philistines came to strip the slain, they found Saul and his three sons fallen on Mount Gilboa. 9 So they cut off his head and stripped off his armor and sent messengers throughout the land of the Philistines, to carry the good news to the house of their idols and to the people. 10 They put his armor in the temple of Ashtaroth, and they fastened his body to the wall of Beth-shan.

This is exactly what the Philistines are doing — they're rejoicing. So David cries, "Oh God, don't let this go out." He's not simply mourning the fall of Saul and Jonathan and Saul's other sons, but because Saul represented God, Saul's fall was a direct attack on the image and the glory and the reputation of God — down to the Philistines taking his armor and putting it in the temple to their god Dagon. Is this celebration signifying "Dagon's better than Israel's God, Dagon's stronger than Israel's God"? And all of that has come to pass, not because Dagon is stronger than Israel's God, but because Saul, as God's representative, made some really bad choices. And those choices not only affected him and his family and his people, but the very nature and identity of God.

So he continues in verse 21, and this is interesting to me. He says,

21 “You mountains of Gilboa, let there be no dew or rain upon you, nor fields of offerings! For there the shield of the mighty was defiled, the shield of Saul, not anointed with oil.

So Mount Gilboa was where the battle was fought, and where Saul fell. So you might notice, as I did, a biblical pattern here — there is a fall, and then the ground is cursed. That's not unintentional. So David sees the fall of God's anointed one, and because of that fall he curses the ground. And then he says, "For there the shield of the mighty was defiled" — the shield of Saul, not anointed with oil. Saul's shield, representing his strength — now it's not anointed. The anointing has been removed. This fall has been mighty, and what a fall it was.

And what David does in these next couple of verses might seem strange, because Saul had been trying to kill him through all of their history, but David doesn't simply remember Saul by the things that he did poorly. Listen to what he mourns. He says, "from the blood of the slain, from the fat of the mighty" — we've talked about this, like in our culture being called fat isn't much of a compliment, but in that culture, being called fat meant you're doing well. So he says,

22 “From the blood of the slain, from the fat of the mighty, the bow of Jonathan turned not back, and the sword of Saul returned not empty.

A bow that never missed, a sword that never came back less than victorious. He says, strong —

23 “Saul and Jonathan, beloved and lovely! In life and in death they were not divided; they were swifter than eagles; they were stronger than lions.

And then he says, "You daughters of Israel" — remember, he just said, "Let not the daughters of the Philistines rejoice." He says, now you,

24 “You daughters of Israel, weep over Saul, who clothed you luxuriously in scarlet, who put ornaments of gold on your apparel.

Two completely different responses to the same act. David is leading and teaching Israel to grieve as God grieves. And then we get the refrain,

25 “How the mighty have fallen in the midst of the battle! “Jonathan lies slain on your high places.

How the mighty have fallen. And then we get an even deeper part of David's grief — "Jonathan lies slain on your high places." David genuinely grieved the fall of Saul, but he grieved the fall of Jonathan in a completely different way, because of the nature of their relationship.

Now verse 26 says,

26 I am distressed for you, my brother Jonathan; very pleasant have you been to me; your love to me was extraordinary, surpassing the love of women.

Now this verse, in so many ways, can be taken in some strange directions and is easy to misunderstand. So if you get your theology from TikTok or Instagram — which, by the way, stop it — you're going to hear people say, "See, Jonathan and David had this romantic, homosexual relationship." And that just tells you more about our culture than it does about the text. That's not what the text is saying at all. This is covenantal language — it's covenant language. And you've got to remember the story in 1 Samuel 18 and 20. So after Saul is rejected, and Samuel announces that David is going to be the king — that's really bad news for Jonathan, right? Jonathan's the heir apparent — he's going to be the next king. But now he's heard he's not going to be the next king. I think this story could have gone a different way very easily. Jonathan could have hated David, could have envied David, could have acted against David, could have joined his father Saul in trying to kill David. But Jonathan goes a different way, because Jonathan fears God. Jonathan loves God, and Jonathan is willing to accept that God is the One who's going to choose the king.

So as his father starts to turn against David and try to kill him, Jonathan comes and rescues David. And if you remember the story — go back and look, it's in 1 Samuel — they covenant with each other, to take care of each other, to warn each other, to guard each other's families over the generations. They enter into this covenant. And so as David is reflecting on his friendship, his covenant, his relationship with Jonathan, he's overwhelmed. He's like, I don't have anything to compare it to. So he says, the way that you've been in covenant to me, the way that you've been faithful and treated me, it's even greater than my marriages.

Now, David had some feet of clay, and marriage was one of them — already at this point he has several wives. But I think there's something interesting here to think about. One of David's wives was the daughter of Saul, Michal. And when David first fled, Saul, in a very petty act, took back his daughter and gave her in marriage to another man. I've got to imagine that in David's heart, as he's reflecting on Jonathan — even in all this, you never abandoned me, you never forsook me, you never rejected me — I'm not blaming the daughter, she was used as a pawn and as a tool by Saul — but even in that, the daughter of Saul, in essence, is forced to abandon him. But Jonathan never abandoned him. Man, may God give us grace to find a Jonathan relationship in our lives.

So I want to think here for a moment with you about an uncomfortable truth that comes out of this text. In our culture, we tend to think of sin as an individualistic reality, because we think of everything through an individualistic lens. The Bible, though, is consistent and clear that there are consequences to our choices, and that there are consequences to sin, and that those consequences — as much as we would like them to be — are not limited just to us. We hear this argument, like, "Why should you care what I do in the privacy of my own home? Why should you care? Why is it anybody's business what I do?" And the Bible's answer to that is: because we were never made to be individualistic. Yes, we're individuals, and we're responsible — we have free will, we have all that sort of stuff. But we were made for interdependence. We weren't made for isolation. We were made by design for community. So you can try to tell yourself that you're an island, that you stand on your own, that what you do only affects you, but all that is delusion. Reality is something else.

So if the consequence of sin is always death, as the scripture says — whatever shape death may come, I mean in Saul's case it's literal death, but the fruit of our sin is always death, and it never just affects us — this story is this harsh, in-your-face example of this. The judgment that brought Saul's death also resulted in the death of Jonathan and his two other brothers and a multitude of the army of Israel — not to mention the dishonor done to God. What we have to wrestle with is that that's true for me and for you — that our sin isn't privatized, and the consequences of our sin isn't privatized. It ripples, and it shapes. It shapes marriages and families. It shapes our children. It shapes our neighborhood. It shapes our culture. We might try to tell ourselves that we're this private, isolated entity, but we're not. And what we do matters not just to us, but to those around us.

The psalm ends — the lament ends — with the refrain one last time.

27 “How the mighty have fallen, and the weapons of war perished!”

And it just ends. There's no bow on it, no resolution, no moral to take — just grief, unresolved grief. How the mighty have fallen. I think that in itself is the lesson. I think we're so quick to try to move past grief that we end up damaging ourselves in the process. We're pragmatic people, aren't we? So we encounter our grief, and we think: what's the lesson I need to learn? What's the principle to take out? How do I move forward? How do I wrap this up? We skip over the grief. I think we're much more like the author of Chronicles than the author of 2 Samuel. We're like, "Saul died because he did the wrong thing" — boom. And David just goes, "The mighty have fallen." He shows us how to grieve. He shows us how to endure hardship and loss. It's undignified. It's unhurried. It's unhidden. He doesn't keep his grief to himself. Part of this is because he's the king, and he wants to lead and show the people how to bring their grief to God. And that's what this is, at the end of the day.

Oh God, how the mighty have fallen. I hear so much in that refrain. How the mighty have fallen. Oh God, help us. How the mighty have fallen. Oh God, if they can fall, what am I going to do? Oh God, how the mighty have fallen. Oh, this world doesn't make sense. Let's refrain: how the mighty have fallen. Every single one of us cries out this refrain at some point in our life. We may not use those exact words, but listen — the greatest and last enemy of mankind is death. It's not just when kings die. It's when fathers die. It's when friends die, cherished loved ones. When young men and women are snatched up, when they're just starting their lives, and we look at the reality of death and go, "No, that's not — how the mighty have fallen." Everybody before David, and everybody after David, who encounters death is in some way, shape, or form going, "How the mighty have fallen." And we're essentially saying, "God, what's up?"

David's cry, "How the mighty have fallen," is an unanswered cry — until Jesus shows up and answers it. I want to close this morning by reading a rather lengthy passage from Acts chapter 2. It's Luke's record of really the first sermon preached in the early church — the first declaration of who Jesus is and what Jesus has done. I want to read through the length of it, because it's going to tie together the last two Psalms that we looked at — Psalm 2, Psalm 110 — because they're both quoted in it. And it answers David's lament, "How the mighty have fallen."

22 “Men of Israel, hear these words: Jesus of Nazareth, a man attested to you by God with mighty works and wonders and signs that God did through him in your midst, as you yourselves know— 23 this Jesus, delivered up according to the definite plan and foreknowledge of God, you crucified and killed by the hands of lawless men.

But God raised Him up, loosing the pains of death. How the mighty have fallen.

24 God raised him up, loosing the pangs of death, because it was not possible for him to be held by it. 25 For David says concerning him, “ ‘I saw the Lord always before me, for he is at my right hand that I may not be shaken; 26 therefore my heart was glad, and my tongue rejoiced; my flesh also will dwell in hope. 27 For you will not abandon my soul to Hades, or let your Holy One see corruption. 28 You have made known to me the paths of life; you will make me full of gladness with your presence.’ 29 “Brothers, I may say to you with confidence about the patriarch David that he both died and was buried, and his tomb is with us to this day. 30 Being therefore a prophet, and knowing that God had sworn with an oath to him that he would set one of his descendants on his throne, 31 he foresaw and spoke about the resurrection of the Christ, that he was not abandoned to Hades, nor did his flesh see corruption.

Anointed — the Christos, the Messiah. This Jesus God raised up. How the mighty have fallen.

32 This Jesus God raised up, and of that we all are witnesses. 33 Being therefore exalted at the right hand of God, and having received from the Father the promise of the Holy Spirit, he has poured out this that you yourselves are seeing and hearing. 34 For David did not ascend into the heavens, but he himself says, “ ‘The Lord said to my Lord, “Sit at my right hand, 35 until I make your enemies your footstool.” ’ 36 Let all the house of Israel therefore know for certain that God has made him both Lord and Christ, this Jesus whom you crucified.” 37 Now when they heard this they were cut to the heart, and said to Peter and the rest of the apostles, “Brothers, what shall we do?” 38 And Peter said to them, “Repent and be baptized every one of you in the name of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of your sins, and you will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit. 39 For the promise is for you and for your children and for all who are far off, everyone whom the Lord our God calls to himself.”

That's not bad for a first sermon. That's not bad for us today. The death of Jesus is not the point — it's the process. The resurrection of Jesus, the exaltation — there has never been a more true expression of the refrain, "how the mighty have fallen," than when Jesus gave up His spirit, breathed His last, and died.

27 “How the mighty have fallen, and the weapons of war perished!”

For the first time, not the last time — but for the first time, the refrain "how the mighty have fallen" was answered. His death couldn't hold Him, and He rose victorious. It is the first time, because that's our hope. That's our promise. This is what gives us the ability to hope and endure and persevere in the midst of living in a world still plagued by the reality of death — that what God has done for Jesus, God will do for those who are in Jesus. And so Jesus is the firstfruit. He's the first resurrection from the dead. And our hope is that those we have lost who are in Christ will be restored to us just as Jesus was. See, the inevitability and the finality of death from the human perspective is nothing from the divine perspective. "How the mighty have fallen" has been answered finally and fully, once and for all, in the resurrection of Jesus from the dead.

And I think that invitation — that invitation that Peter gives — what must we do? They say, well, you've got to look to Him. You've got to give allegiance to Him. You've got to trust in Him. You've got to receive from Him the gift that He is offering — the covenant that He has made in His broken body and His shed blood — the gift of life, the gift of adoption, the gift of hope. If you're here this morning and you need some hope, turn to Jesus. Because yes, the mighty fell, but the grave couldn't keep Him. And He is alive forever and ever. Amen.