2 Samuel 13:1-17 – Amnon: Passion Without Love
Amnon is David’s firstborn son. But this chapter is the only record we have of what Amnon actually does with his life. It’s a record of sin and death. Amnon is clearly a man driven by his passions. He’s not particularly gifted in the brains department. For that he relies on his scheming cousin Jonadab. Instead, he’s driven by lust.
Amnon is a terrible and vivid picture of what longing for something God hasn’t given will do to us and to those around us. This could be something good in and of itself. But though God in his wisdom gives it to others – he hasn’t given it to us. Maybe it’s someone else’s salary, someone else’s house, someone else’s family, someone else’s job, someone else’s influence. We can be so convinced that we need something that someone else has that we just torment ourselves. Amnon was so tormented that he made himself ill.
What is tormenting him? It’s something that’s doubly wrong. Firstly it’s lust, and secondly it’s lust for his sister or, at least, his half-sister. Amnon and Tamar both had the same father, but different mothers. For the two of them to marry would have been forbidden by God’s law, as set out in Leviticus chapter 18. While Amnon might think that what he feels is love – it’s actually lust. That lust is eating away at him. It’s destroying him. Look at how Amnon is described by his cousin in v14: ‘O son of the King’. He was King David’s oldest son. By rights he should have been next in line to the throne. But lust destroys him. How many men, how many Christian men, does lust destroy? Men who are meant to live as sons of the King, but instead are consumed by lust. They don’t kill that sin, instead it kills them, and takes away any usefulness they might have had in the kingdom of God.
What is love? Love is patient, love is kind. According to 1st Corinthians 13 love does not insist on its own way. But here Amnon does insist on his own way. He ignores Tamar’s pleas. He is determined to have her. So he forces himself on her. Once he’s used her, he throws her aside.
Question
- Why is it so important to kill sinful desires?
Prayer Points
- Pray that we would be ‘killing sin before it kills us’.
- Use prayer points from your congregation.
- Pray for family matters.