2 Samuel 15:19-21

A SPECIMEN OF NOBLENESS

‘Then said the king to Ittai the Gittite, Wherefore goest thou also with us? return to thy place, and abide with the king; for thou art a stranger, and also an exile,’ etc.

2 Samuel 15:19

I. We have in this passage a remarkable instance of the spirit of true patriotism, all the more remarkable because, in one sense, patriotism is not quite the word to apply to Ittai, for he was a stranger and an alien, though a naturalised Israelite. In him we have a singular instance of that devotion to a person which will always be the leading characteristic of the Christian life. The legalist may be devoted to a system; the moralist may be devoted to an idea; the real Christian will be devoted to a Person, to the person of a living Christ.

II. Ittai was the kind of man that David wanted, and he is the kind of man that Christ wants now. There are many people ready enough to make the Lord Jesus Christ a kind of stepping-stone to help them into heaven. If they can make a convenience of Him, and He can serve their purpose in a dying hour, it is all very well. It is not such as these the Lord wants. The ‘citizens of heaven’ are men who are partakers of their Master’s nobility.

III. It was the fact that David had received him as an exile that first bound Ittai’s heart to him. We also are strangers and exiles. Christ gives us a home. Our adoption into His family should be a motive power which will bear us through all the shocks of the battle of life, and make us ‘more than conquerors through Him that loved us.’

—Canon Hay Aitken.

Illustrations

(1) ‘Ittai’s devotion is such as I should show towards Jesus Christ. Think of His purity, His sympathy, His sacrifice, and you will discover how worthy He is of limitless devotion. This devotion will involve, like Ittai’s, decision, confession, enlistment, and lifelong service. Christ will accept such devotion as David did that of Ittai. And the object of devotion is the discriminating and deciding test for life. The ignoble life is that which has something other and less than the highest object of devotion.’

(2) ‘For what were we saved, for what have we been redeemed by the precious blood of Christ? for what has the heavenly vision, of which we have heard, been given? Is it that a man is simply to be glad, as Saul of Tarsus was glad, to hear that Christ Jesus had paid his debt? “I will show unto him how much he must suffer for My sake,” said the Lord. And the man who dares to take the gift of eternal life, and then play the coward, play the worldling for self-seeking, play the determined rejecter of Christ’s claims for self-sacrifice, altogether misunderstands the magnificence of the Gospel wherewith Christ Jesus the Lord has endowed the soul.’

(3) ‘The heroism of the world should put to shame the cowardice and selfishness of the Church. Contrast the depth of affection for your household with the tepidity of your love for your Saviour.… Remember that your power of loving is the measure of your obligation to love your Lord, and that if you are all frost to Him and all fervour to them, then in a very solemn sense “a man’s foes shall be they of his own household.” ’