24th June 2026

24th June 2026


Pray (ACts)


Read (2 Samuel 2:1-11 focus v2-4a)


Message (Alan Burke)


The view from the top of the Colosseum in Rome is amazing. It is a monument to the height of the Roman Empire that has since gone the way of the Dodo. Yet all of history’s every part of it is being played out according to God’s plan of salvation; every event is part of a divine purpose leading to redemption and reconciliation with humanity. This plan is rooted in God’s hesed love. He has been working out the promise of salvation that was first declared to Adam and Eve in the midst of the fall, of one who would come and crush the head of the serpent and ultimately restore creation to redeem sinners and bring them to salvation. Today we focus on another step in the fulfilment of his gracious plan to redeem sinners. David sought the LORD and, in obedience to the LORD’s will, David, his men, and their families went, and there in Hebron the men of Judah came and anointed David king over the house of Judah. 


While David had been anointed by Samuel (1 Sam 16:1-13), he is now publicly anointed and recognised by the men of Judah as their king. The king has come, and the count of David begins to move from the promise to the fulfilment of that promise. Things were far from plain sailing for David in what lay ahead, but the LORD was indeed fulfilling his promises, not only to David but to Abraham. It is easy to miss in all of this that this was the LORD fulfilling his promises to Abraham all those years before. For it is not to Jerusalem that David was enthroned; it was Hebron. At this stage in salvation history, Jerusalem was inhabited by the Jebusites, who were a Canaanite tribe; it is not until chapter 5 and 6 that David establishes Jerusalem as the seat of his throne and the capital of Israel (2 Sam 5:6). Hebron was hugely significant in the history of salvation. 


After Abraham was given the promises of God in Genesis 12, he went off to Egypt, but he returned, and in Chapter 13 we have Abram at that stage, before he was named Abraham, and we are told in Genesis 13:18, “So Abram moved his tent and came to settle near the Oaks of Mamre at Hebron, where he built an altar to the LORD.” Then in Genesis 18, there at the Oaks of Mamre at Hebron, the LORD appeared in what is known as a theophany, a visible manifestation of God to Abraham while he was sitting at the entrance of his tent in the heat of the day ( 18:1). The LORD reveals that Sarah around this time next year would have a son, Isaac, the one through whom the covenant promises given to Abraham would continue. It is where Sarah died and was buried (Gen 23:1,19), it is where Abraham was buried along with Sarah (Gen 25:8-9). 


Hebron became a symbol of God's covenant promises to the patriarchs. This made Hebron the birthplace of David's royal rule and an important step in the establishment of the Davidic kingdom. This was another step in the fulfilment of the promises of God that were given to Abraham, for the LORD had promised to Abraham, “I will make you very fruitful; I will make nations of you, and kings will come from you” (Gen 17:6). As Matthew 1 opens, it says: A record of the genealogy of Jesus Christ, the son of David, the son of Abraham: (Mt 1:1). All that was unfolding here was part of the unfolding of the covenant of grace, God’s plan of redemption that he would send his son to establish an eternal kingdom, fulfilling the promises to Abraham, that all the earth would be blessed through the one who would come, Jesus Christ. The Colosseum, as wonderful as it is, is now nothing more than a monument to a failed empire. An empty cross is the symbol of God’s faithfulness that will ultimately see a restored creation as sinners are redeemed and brought into a new creation.


Pray (acTS)


Sing


WSC
Q102 What do we pray for in the second petition?
A. In the second petition, which is, Thy kingdom come,” we pray, that Satan’s kingdom may be destroyed; and that the kingdom of grace may be advanced, ourselves and others brought into it, and kept in it; and that the kingdom of glory may be hastened.
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