And Tamar put ashes on her head and tore the long robe that she wore. And she laid her hand on her head and went away, crying aloud as she went.
– 2 Samuel 13:19
Oh, this is such a sad chapter in Scripture. So we’ve seen David’s sin against God in the couple of chapters before this, and now we see the effects of sin spreading throughout his family in such horrible ways. What happens to Tamar in 2 Samuel 13 at the hands of her brother is just horrible in ways that lead her to weep in shame over how she had been hurt.
2 Samuel 13:19 shows how sin’s impact extends beyond us.
And as I read this, I just think about the seriousness of sin not only in our lives and our relationship with God. So 2 Samuel 11, we prayed based on that picture, but here in 2 Samuel 13, we see the disastrous effects of our sin in others’ lives and the hurt our sin brings.
And I want to be careful here. I think about a conversation I had recently with someone whose sin had just destroyed a relationship he was in, and he has been repentant of that sin. He’s turned from that sin. And at the same time, there’s consequence from that sin that he still feels today. And I don’t want to encourage people just to continually beat yourself up, so to speak, over sin from your past.
At the same time, the consequences of sin in our lives and others’ lives should be, in our lives, a deterrent to future sin. We should hate sin because of its effect on our lives and our relationship with God, and we should hate sin because of its effect on others’ lives. And I just want to pray for us that God would open our eyes to see how our sin doesn’t just affect us, how our sin affects others in ways that lead us to turn from sin and run from it, to stop rationalizing it and run from it.
2 Samuel 13:19 teaches us to run from sin.
I think about there’s so many examples, obviously, we could talk about at this point, but I just think about the plague of pornography among so many men and women and this sin that is not only destroying the lives of those who engage in it, but is destroying so many other lives in the process. It should be overwhelming to us in ways that lead us to say, “No, I want to run that. I don’t want to rationalize that. Or justify that.
I want to run from it with everything in me. I want to run to Jesus and get people to help me run to Jesus and run from this sin and to do everything that’s needed.” I want a Jesus-teaching kind of way in Mark 9, not literally gouge out your eye, but take extreme measures. Get rid of the phone or whatever it takes because our sin is ruining our lives and it’s ruining others’ lives. So that’s just one example. There are so many others.
This verse challenges us to love others by pursuing holiness.
I just think about my life as a husband, as a dad, as a pastor. My sin doesn’t just affect me. It affects my wife, my kids. It affects the people around me. So, God, please help us to hate sin for its effect in our lives, for its effect as we prayed about in 2 Samuel 11, just on our relationship with you. And God, we pray that you’d help us to hate to sin because of its effect in others’ lives. God, we pray that you’d help us to be pure and holy in our thoughts and our words and our actions and desires and everything we do for our good, for your glory, and for others’ good. Lord, help us to love others enough to turn from sin in our lives.
God, we lament in a 2 Samuel 13 kind of way over the hurt in others’ lives that is caused by sin in even our sin. And we pray, oh God, for healing, for healing that your grace and your gospel and your Spirit alone can bring. We pray for that and we pray that you would help us to turn from sin all day today, in every way, and to run from it. Keep us from rationalizing. Help us to run from it to you all day long today and tomorrow and the next and the next, that you might be glorified, that we might experience our good and that others might experience good.
Prayer for the Sisodia Rajput People
And God, as we pray for unreached people today, we pray for the Sisodia Rajput people of India, for 130,000 of them who have little to no knowledge of the gospel surely because we have not been obedient to your command to spread the gospel to all the nations. And so, God, we pray you help us to live with radical obedience to your command, to make disciples of all the nations, to play the part you’re calling each of us to play, and to spread the gospel to the ends of the Earth so that they might be saved.
God, the thought that there are hundreds of thousands, not just of Sisodia Rajput people in India, but millions and billions of people who have little to no knowledge of the gospel because we are not getting the gospel to them. Lord, help us to repent of this and to live for their good.
God, we pray that you would deliver us from sin and our lives that’s keeping them from hearing the gospel. Oh God, we pray all of this in light of your grace, in total dependence upon your grace, Jesus, according to your Word, in 2 Samuel 13:19. We pray in Jesus’ name, amen.
David Platt serves as a Lead Pastor for McLean Bible Church. He is also the Founder of Radical, an organization that makes Jesus known among the nations.
David received his B.A. from the University of Georgia and M.Div., Th.M., and Ph.D. from New Orleans Baptist Theological Seminary. Some of his published works include Radical, Radical Together, Follow Me, Counter Culture, Something Needs to Change, Don’t Hold Back, and How to Read the Bible.
He lives in the Washington, D.C. metro area with his wife and children.
