2 Samuel 14:14

"... yet doth He devise means, that His banished be not expelled from Him."

Two of King David's sons had a squabble. Amnon desired his stepsister, Tamar, and conspired to take advantage of her. After having carried out his plan, he hated her, and chased her away. Tamar's full brother, Absalom, hated Amnon because he had forced his sister. A space of two years passed from the awful incident to when Absalom saw an opportunity to take revenge on his stepbrother. He devised his own plan which resulted in Amnon being killed. After having accomplished this, Absalom left the country of Israel for another country, where he stayed for three years. At that time, Joab, who was a general in King David's army, decided that he should arrange to have Absalom return to Israel. So, he conspired with a woman who went to King David to appeal to him for the return of Absalom. In her appeal she makes the above statement. She tells David that God Himself would make a way for the banished to be restored and so rhetorically appeals to David to be of a like mind.

In her statement she underlined an important truth about the LORD God Almighty; God Himself is interested in restoring those that have been banished. Some erroneously think that God is looking for opportunities to strike us for our sin. But He is really looking for opportunities to reconcile us to Himself. Adam and Eve had offended God in the simplest of commands. In the abundance of the Garden of Eden He commanded them to not eat from one of the trees. We cannot imagine the beauty of that Garden. But we can be sure that the God of the Universe supplied abundantly all that Adam and Eve could ever want. His ban was not on any of it except for one solitary tree. They showed their colors when they decided to go ahead and eat from that tree, too. God's command was of no consequence to them. They had daily contact with God. They knew Him as well as any human could know Him. In the midst of the beautiful Garden, with a glorious friendship with the God who had created them, they rebelled against His simple command. Because of their disobedience, God graciously banished them from the Garden. Genesis 3 tells us that He had to banish them because otherwise they might eat from the tree of life, and live forever. Living forever in rebellion is worse than death. God had another plan that He had devised before He even created the world. To put it in the terms above, before He created one thing He had devised a means that His banished would not be expelled from Him. To be expelled from the living God is an awful thing. It is in the place called Hell. There is no contact with Him, or anyone in that place. It is a place of awful torment and loneliness for all eternity. This is God's rightful judgment against rebellion. It is He against Whom we have rebelled. He set the creation in place, and established the rules by which it should run. He certainly has the right to decide what is to be the punishment for rebellion.

Some might say that God knows how we are, and so He should overlook our indiscretions. All of this is true (except the indiscretions part. What we attempt to soft-pedal, God calls by its true name, sin (rebellion)). But God has done something better than just overlook our rebellion. He devised a means by which His banished should not be expelled from Him. In carrying out His plan, He punished someone else for our rebellion. Someone who Himself had never rebelled, but "always did the things that please the Father." While we can overlook sin, God cannot. Sin MUST be punished. His plan, His solution, His means was to inflict our punishment for our rebellion on His dear Son, the LORD Jesus Christ. He who knew no sin was made sin for us. As a result of that event, God's justice was satisfied. He does not need to overlook our sin (which He couldn't do anyway). He has poured out His wrath against it on the person of His Son. What is left for us is to either take the sacrifice of His Son or leave it. If we leave it, then we face the punishment we deserve for rejecting God's breathtaking plan of redemption. If we take it, then we are counted as righteous in God's sight, and are assured of eternity in His presence.

God has devised means that His banished be not expelled from Him. Praise His name!

HJK