2 Samuel 18:1-19:8

So we study through books of the Bible here at the village chapel, and uh we have extra copies if you didn't bring one.

You'd like one to follow along, just raise your hand up real high, and uh we'll make sure that somebody gets one to your row, your aisle.

This would be a good day, a really good day, to have the text in front of you because we're gonna cover a good bit of text.

I've uh we've probably all been in churches before where you know a pastor will take.

I grew up in a church actually where the pastor took like five years to go through one book of the Bible, you know.

It's like because he was so good at parsing words, he could take each syllable of each word and turn it into a whole sermon.

Um I will not be doing that today.

Um of you can give thanks and rejoice right now.

Um, but we are gonna take chapter, let me see if I can get this here uh onto this uh message.

Here we go.

I'm starting to learn how to work these machines.

So we're in 2 Samuel.

There's a Wi-Fi password if you need it.

And there, my friends, will be the verses that we'll take a look at.

Uh 3,000 years ago, that's how far back we're reaching.

So we expect to have some cultural hurdles to jump, some spiritual hurdles to jump, some you know, just some stuff that'll sound weird to us once in a while.

And um, as somebody said to me at the other campus earlier uh this morning, this book has been nothing but action-packed and overflowing with timeless truths.

And I think that's very much the case.

We're picking up in a storyline where King David uh has left Jerusalem because his son Absalom, his third son, has come into Jerusalem with a force of people that he's sort of marshaled this uh uh military force together, and they're gonna come and they want to take the throne away from David.

Rather than see all the bloodshed and all the conflict and all that happen, David decided to pull out.

He's headed uh to the east, a little bit north, to uh where he's now held holed up at a place called Mahanem.

The story of Absalom has sort of been at the center uh ever really since uh chapter 12 or 13, right in there all the way up through here.

His name is mentioned 90 sometimes.

So he's really very much central.

But you'll notice in the passage we read today that he actually doesn't say a word.

He's central, but he's silent.

And this is the sad story of the sort of demise or the end of Absalom, and all of his greed and all of his uh entitlement thinking, all of his demanding his own way, and all of his wanting to usurp his father and take the throne away.

Um that all comes to an end now because God, in his ultimate plan and purposes, has planned that through the line of David, Messiah will come.

Jesus.

Uh, a thousand years after the time of David, Jesus will be born indeed through the line of David.

But we're picking up right in the middle of that story, and it's a it's a story that undulates.

It goes up and down.

There's there's some highlights and there's some low moments and all of that, and that's been good, I think, for all of us, because as we've looked back and considered some of the personalities that we've uh studied in this text, uh, we can identify with some of their predicaments, some of the struggles, as well as some of the great joys uh that they've had as well.

And all along the way, uh, the backdrop for David is that he's still writing psalms during this time.

There are several psalms that are attributed to the time frame when he was running from Absalom.

And so we're in that time frame right now.

David numbered the people who were with him, verse one says, and set over them commanders of thousands, commanders of hundreds.

So he left Jerusalem, probably with about 600 people along the way, headed east, up into an area that he actually has been in.

He's got some friends.

They've come to help him.

Some of them aren't even Jews, the friends that have come to help him with food and supplies and all that sort of thing.

But he's collected some additional um uh folks who will stand with him uh over and against Absalom and the and the army that is that is following from Jerusalem in pursuit of David.

David sent the people out, one third under the command of Joab, one third under the command of Abishai, son of Zeruiah, Joab's brother, and one third under the command of Ittai the Gittite.

And Ittai is one of those interesting fellows because he's not a Jew.

Uh, he's actually a Philistine.

He's from uh when David was living in Ziklag in the Philistine territory, he be Ittai the Gittite becomes one of the men that follows David and becomes loyal to David, and he's actually from the town of Gath, which is the same place that Goliath was from.

Uh so it's a there's there's irony throughout this chapter, you'll see as we uh unpack it along the way.

Well, the king says to the people, I myself will surely go out with you.

He wants to go to battle uh this time.

But the people said, they responded to him, You should not go out, for if we indeed flee, they will not care about us.

Even if half of us die, they will not care about us.

But you are worth ten thousand of us.

Therefore, now it's better that you be ready to help us from the city.

Well, the king said to them, Whatever seems best to you, I will do.

So the king stood beside the gate, and all the people went out by hundreds and thousands.

You have to understand uh how important it was for them to see him standing by the gate.

Um, but inside his own heart, I'm sure he's wrestling with all kinds of thoughts and feelings.

How important it would be for me to go with you.

How all of this unfolded because so many chapters ago when we read about him uh falling uh to the sin of lust and with uh Bathsheba back in chapter eleven, it was we were told back then that it was the springtime when the the time when kings went to war, but David remained in the palace.

And now he's replaying all those kinds of thoughts in his head.

And he's concerned, you know, about his son Absalom, believe it or not.

Uh that's irony right there, that the one that he's concerned about is the one that's seeking to kill him right now.

And um, so as they march, you know, out of the city of Mahanem there, by the hundreds and by the thousands, there's David, their king, watching them go and feeling a little bit helpless, a little bit frustrated, a little bit fading, if you will, concerned as a father, concerned as a king as well.

Um and they're uh the the people want him to stay there.

He's a high-value target, and they feel that if he got captured or killed, then the whole thing would just implode and blow up.

High value targets are that way.

One time we were in uh when we were in Israel, as a matter of fact, our our tour guide, who had been a former um Israeli Defense Forces commander, uh, he had to actually get off of our bus when we went into one uh area of of a holy land over there because he was a high value target.

If he had been taken, uh it would have turned into all kinds of political fiasco and all that sort of thing.

So here's David.

They say you're a high value target, you should stay here.

And then all of the hundreds and thousands of people are passing by.

Verse 5, the king charged Joab and Abishai and Itai, saying, Deal gently for my sake with the young man Absalom.

And all the people, the her, the narrator wants us to know this.

All the people heard when the king charged all the commanders concerning Absalom.

It's important to whoever wrote this part of 2 Samuel that we all know that they all heard David say, Deal gently with Absalom.

Because of the way the story unfolds, you'll see why that's important.

The people went out into the field against Israel, meaning Absalom and his armies.

And the battle took place in the forest of Ephraim.

It's to the east of Ephraim itself, the territory of Ephraim, the tribe, the tribal territory.

Uh, but perhaps this particular forest is simply named after it.

I don't know exactly how that happens, but we are to the east of the Jordan.

Ephraim indeed is to the west of Jordan.

Um, but it it's quite possible that they had named a forest after them.

People of Israel were defeated there before the servants of David, and the slaughter there that day was great.

Twenty thousand men.

And we're just given the facts there.

We're not, it's uh it's not told us much about how it happened.

There's not a lot of detail about the the the horrific side of this.

Um the battle there was spread over the whole countryside.

Verse 8 says, the forest devoured more people than that day than the sword devoured.

What does that mean?

Um not 100% sure.

Read nine or ten commentaries on it.

Um they didn't all agree, of course, uh as they're speculating, just like we would be.

But it's quite possible that David and his men, very skillful, mighty men, very skillful warriors, were using the props of the forest itself as a way to treat this like guerrilla warfare instead of open field marching in battle.

And so they were clever and smart, perhaps outnumbered, but using the barriers of trees and thickets and things like that to be able to uh uh take their enemies that they might not normally have been able to take.

They're just being shrewd.

Absalom happened to meet the servants of David, then verse 9 tells us, for Absalom was riding on his mule, and the mule went under the thick branches of a great oak, or a terebinth, some of your translations might say.

And in other words, a low-hanging tree, and he was caught fast in the oak, so he was left hanging between heaven and earth, while the mule that was under him kept going.

Um this is not a good thing if the mule underneath you keeps going and you're caught in the Now what was he doing?

Was he looking behind him because the servants of David were in pursuit of him?

Perhaps that's what happened.

Perhaps he just didn't see the low-hanging branch coming, and perhaps some fork in the branch is where he literally got caught.

Uh some translations will say it's his neck or his head, some will say his hair.

Certainly his hair was what he was known for.

We already read about that in the previous chapter, how he just shaved it, cut his hair once a year, got five pounds of hair out of it.

He was known to be the most handsome man in all of Israel because of his beautiful locks of hair.

And here is the irony that that's what sort of is is part of the way that he's taken out.

Um he's dangling there in this tree, either by his head or his neck or whatever it might be, because he's been caught up along with that beautiful hair.

Well, certain men saw it, verse 10 says, and told Joab, This man will remain nameless, but he tells Joab, who's one of the commanders, and he said, Behold, I saw Absalom hanging in an oak.

Joab said to the man who had told him, Now, behold, you saw him.

Why then did you not strike him there to the ground?

I would have given you ten pieces of silver and a belt.

And when I read that, I went, A belt?

But like, you know, because again, we're leaping over 3,000 years, and some of the things that there are great value back then might not have been so much the value to us.

But Joab is basically saying, you should have killed him in that moment if you saw him.

And this is contra, this is against David's command to everybody that everybody heard.

Remember, the narrator made sure we knew about it too, right?

I would have given you ten pieces of silver and a belt.

Well, the man responds to Joab and says, Even if I should receive a thousand pieces of silver in my hand, I would not put out my hand against the king's son.

For in our hearing the king charged you, he's pointing to Joab and Abishai and Ittai, saying, Protect from me the young man Absalom.

Otherwise, if I had dealt treacherously against his life, and there is nothing hidden from the king, then you yourself would have stood aloof.

In other words, you, Joab, would not have backed me up.

Now we know Joab a little bit, don't we?

He's somewhat impulsive, he's somewhat manipulative, he sometimes takes matters into his own hands.

Whether he's right or not in his decision to do that could be argued for days and years, and much ink has been spent on these sorts of uh things.

But in this particular moment, what this guy is saying is, if I had killed him, David would have been so upset that and you would you would not have come to my rescue at all.

You would have stood aloof.

Joab then says to him, I will not waste time here with you.

So he took three spears in his hand, thrust them into the heart of Absalom, so he finds out where Absalom is.

He takes three spears and hits him with it while he was yet alive in the midst of the oak.

So he's evidently still hanging in there and he's still screaming and trying to get himself free.

And Joab comes along and mercilessly takes him out with these, or partially takes him out with these three spear jabs.

Ten young men who carried Joab's armor gathered around and struck Absalom as well, and they killed him, all of them together.

The eleven of them killed him somehow.

That's how it's summarized anyway.

Joab blew the trumpet, and the people of uh uh that were with him returned from pursuing Israel.

Joab restrained the people.

These are the folks that have been following David.

They took Absalom and cast him into a deep pit in the forest and um erected over him a very great heap of stones, and all Israel fled, each to his tent.

Now, I don't know if when you were in Sunday school you heard this story or not.

I did, and this is about all I heard, but I never heard the next part.

I never heard verse 18 and all.

Absalom in his lifetime had taken and set up for himself a pillar, which was in the king's valley, for he said, I have no son to preserve my name.

So he named the pillar after his own name, and it is called Absalom's monument to this day.

And so we get another insight into the character, the nature, the things that Absalom valued.

Wanted to build a name for himself.

Ever since he's been back in Jerusalem, he's been building a name for himself.

He had hired fifty men to run alongside his chariot and make him look like a king.

He went out to the city gate and began to give away advice and said, If I was king, you'd all have all the advice you need.

And everything would be fair, and you'd get everything you want.

Just sounds like a politician making all kinds of promises, right?

And that's what he wanted to be.

He wanted the power.

He wanted to usurp his own father.

And so even the irony between verses 17 and 18.

Then in verse 18, we're told by the narrator, who wants to make sure we know this, that Absalom had already gone to the trouble of building a monument for himself.

And yet what he ends up, you know, of stones.

And what ends up happening to though is he gets tossed in a pit and he's buried, covered over in stones.

Much like they would have done in that time, whenever they uh assaulted a city, dragged out their king, they would throw him in a pit and bury him in stones.

It was a very uh shameful way to die.

Uh when the when the army that was against you could do that kind of thing.

Uh mutilate your body, throw you in a pit, and cover it with stone.

So the contrast between 17 and 18, what Absalom hoped was that that memorial to him with his name on it would be how people remember him.

But that's not at all what's going to happen because of verse 17.

Now, Ahimaaz, and this is a little bit of a uh a change in scene, if you will, we're back with Joab and uh Ahimaaz, who is the son of Zadok, the priest.

Now, this guy's a PK, alright?

He's a priest kid, and he's he's basically he's a good guy.

I think we have about 60 PKs in this church, by the way.

So y'all just be real careful, okay?

Me, I have to sleep with one eye open.

I'm not sure why they're all here.

But we're really glad you're here.

If you're a PK.

Raise your hand.

Anybody, PK?

Raise your hand.

PKs?

Two?

Okay?

Across the across the five services.

There's I've I've counted as many as 50 or 60, so it's a lot.

But this guy's a PK, him as he's the son of Zadok, and he is on David's side.

And he says to Joab, please let me run and bring news to the king that the Lord has freed him from the hand of his enemies.

And the Lord is mentioned just four times in the passage that we're studying today.

I like to point that out occasionally, because early on in the story and life of David, all we get is he inquired of the Lord.

All we get is he, you know, so much of that.

And there's so little of that here, and so little of that, of course, when talking about Absalom at all.

But this guy, Ahima, says, Let me run and bring news to David that the Lord has freed him from the hand of his enemies.

Joab said to him, You are not the man to carry news this day, but you shall carry news another day.

However, you shall carry no news today, because the king's son is dead.

Joab's essentially saying, Um, I'm still trying to figure out how I'm going to spin this with David.

I haven't quite got that figured out yet, Ahimaaz, so don't go running with this news just yet.

Joab decides then in verse 21, and he says to a Kushite who is there.

This is a fellow who probably has uh roots in uh North Africa, and he happens to have joined them.

Remember, there's Philistines that have that have been that have joined up Itai the Gittite, like I said.

So there's there's other folks who have joined in with uh with David.

There's a Cushite there, and Joab says to this Cushite, go tell the king what you have seen.

Now that's interesting.

What did the Cushite see?

We don't really know.

We're not really told.

There's some gaps here.

Maybe Joab is clever enough to say, let me pick that guy over there, that Cushite guy, because David won't even recognize him.

And he didn't see me put three spear strokes into Absalom, nor did he see, you know, he was on the fringes somewhere over there.

And so he's going to send him with the news, basically.

So the Kushite bowed to Joab and he ran.

And Himaaz, the son of Zadok, said once more to Joab, but whatever happens, please let me also run after the Cushite.

And Joab said, Why would you run, my son, since you will have no reward for going?

And you see Joab's crafty little manipulative little mind, you know, at work here trying to find a way to keep the news the way he wants it to be when it gets to David, and uh to preserve the fact that he's actually, Joab has actually defied the king and killed Absalom himself.

Why would you run after him, my son?

You have no reward for going.

Verse 23, whatever happens, he said, I will run.

So Joab finally says, Well, then run.

So Ahimaz uh ran by way of the plain, and evidently the Cushite was not going by way of the plain.

He was going over a mountain, and uh evidently, and because there's both in that region.

And what Ahimaz did was he went the long way round, but he passed the Cushite.

So he's fast, you know, speedy uh in his running.

And David, it's the lens goes now to Mahanem, the city there where David is, verse 24.

David was sitting between the two gates, and the watchman went up to the roof of the gate by the wall.

They raised, uh the guy raised his eyes and looked, and behold, a man was running by himself.

And the watchman called and told the king, and the king said, If he is by himself, there is good news in his mouth.

And he came nearer and nearer.

Then the watchman said, Another man is running.

And the watchman called to the gatekeeper and said, Behold, another man is running by himself.

You know, so they passed that news along down the chain.

And the king says, This one also is bringing good news.

And David is just hoping it's all good news.

Hoping against hope it's good news.

The watchman said, I think the running of the first one is like the running of Ahimaaz, the son of Zadok.

Well, that just means that evidently everybody knew what the gate of Ahimaaz looked like when he ran.

Or was he ya?

You know, I mean, you all run, and and somebody might be able to recognize the way you run.

Some of you have children, and you go, oh, yeah, that's child number two that's running there, because you can just tell the way they're running.

And so Ahimaaz must have some kind of identifiable signature to his running, and that's who this person is is recognizing, that it's Ahimaz.

And um, and and of course they're right.

So the king says, This is a good man, and he comes with good news.

He's just hoping again.

Ahimaz called and said to the king, All is well.

And he prostrated himself before the king with his face to the ground, and he said, Blessed is the Lord your God, who is delivered of the men who lifted their hands against my Lord the king.

And the king said, Is it well with the young man Absalom?

He wants to get very specific now.

And Ahimaaz answered, When Joab sent the king's servant and your servant, I saw a great tumult, but I did not know what it was.

And I don't do is he lying here?

Is he does he know what happened?

Well, Joab had said to him, For the king's son is dead.

So Ahimaaz in this particular moment doesn't want to be the one to tell David his son is dead.

It's clearly what's on David's mind.

Um and so he's he's just kind of I saw a great tumult, there was lots of dust, and I just don't know what happened.

Verse 30, the king said, Turn aside and stand here.

So he turned aside and he stood still.

The behold, the Cushite arrived.

And the Kushite said, Let my lord the king receive good news, for the Lord has freed you this day from the hand of those who rose up against you.

And the king said to the Cushite, Is it well with a young man, Absalom?

And the Cushite answered, Let the enemies of my Lord the king and all who rise up against you for evil be as that young man.

And this Cushite, you know, may not have known much about David, may not have known that this was so important to David.

I don't know.

But the king was deeply moved, and he went up to the chamber over the gate and he wept.

And thus he said as he walked, and look at this.

Set your eyes on this part of the page here.

Verse 33.

Oh, my son, Absalom, my son, my son, Absalom.

Would that I had died instead of you, oh Absalom, my son.

My son five times.

My son.

My son.

My son.

Here's the grieving father.

Grieving for so many reasons.

I mean, I mean we could we could argue that there's just a contacte of reasons here.

There are many and varied uh reasons, but it gets down to relationship at some point.

And he is So brokenhearted over all of this.

Well, it was told to Joab, Behold, the king is weeping and mourns for Absalom.

The victory that day was turned to mourning for all the people.

The people heard it said that day.

The king is grieved for his son.

And so the people, these are the folks that were out there who had gone to battle, whom David had said, Take care, friends, take care, friends, and to the commanders, go easy on my son Absalom.

And as they're all leaving, and this king fading in age, fading in relevance, perhaps, thinking, they told me I'm a high value target.

Maybe I'm not really.

Maybe they just need to go do this themselves.

Thinking so many things, you know.

And here he is with this broken heart, grieving for his son.

And so the people that are returning from that battle catch this news somehow, and as they come back in, they are humiliated and they steal away when they flee in battle, like people who would who had been beaten in battle.

And they they by stealth they come back into the city, verse 3 tells us.

No ticker tape parade, no band cheering, no, no confetti flowing, nothing.

But they slink back into Mahanem.

And David is wailing and crying.

And the king covered his face and cried with a loud voice.

I mean, just you can you can see that, how that happened.

Oh, my son, Absalom, Absalom, my son, my son, three more times.

And you know how you get sometimes when you're grieving, when you just can't believe something's happened.

And you don't know what to say.

And you just keep saying the same thing over and over and over again.

And because it's just a gut punch, and you got you don't have words.

There aren't words.

And so here he is grieving like this.

Joab said, um, Joab came into the house, and this is quite odd, and this is one of the reasons I wanted to include this, because it's a part of the whole thing.

Joab comes into the house to the king, and he says, So he's come back from the field as well, with these soldiers stealth-like into the city, not celebrated for their victory.

Today you've covered with shame the faces of all your servants, who today have saved your life and the lives of your sons and daughters, the lives of your wives, and the lives of your concubines, by loving those who hate you, and by hating those who love you.

That's how you've shamed us.

You've loved those who hate you, Absalom, and you've hated those who love you, all of us that went to battle for you.

You've shown today that princes and servants are nothing to you.

For I know this day that Absalom were alive and all of us were dead today, then you would be pleased.

Wow.

Now therefore, arise, go out and speak kindly to your servants, for I swear by the Lord, if you do not go out, surely not a man will pass the night with you.

And this will be worse for you than all the evil that has come upon you from your youth until now.

So the king rose, and he sat in the gate.

And when when he when they told all the people, saying, Behold, the king is sitting in the gate, then all the people came before the king and will stop there.

The idea there is that with the king sitting in the gate, things are getting back to normal.

The king would would be the judge of cases that were brought before him.

The king would sit in the gate to do that very thing.

It's as if he went back to work, if you will.

But Joab coming and confronting him like that is just a shocking kind of little thing.

So there's a lot of action here, there's a lot of irony here, and there's a lot of stuff that's kind of upside down as we begin to understand some of what happened back in that day.

Absalom, the aggressive, self-obsessed, but ultimately silenced in this particular story.

It's a sad story of a person who had so much going for him physically, but so little going for him spiritually and morally.

We do the same thing in our own day and time.

We're so much more about style than we are about substance.

That's just a broad, you know, uh stroke critique of our culture, but I include myself in that as well.

I can be beguiled into thinking that if I only had that thing, or if this only went this way for me or whatever, that then somehow or another my life could be flourishing in a way that I would find fulfilling ultimately.

And that's just not always true, is it?

He was the son of the king, Absalom.

He had unusually beautiful, long, flowing hair, handsome poster boy throughout Israel.

But after killing his own brother Amnon, he ran away into exile a few years later.

David brought him back to Jerusalem.

Uh and by the way, Joab's the one that arranged that.

Do you remember that?

Joab is the one who seems to be behind the scenes, constantly trying to get David to do things that maybe David doesn't really want to do, or doing things that David doesn't want Joab to do.

Well, a few years later, when David brought him back into Jerusalem, Absalom didn't take long before he set out to take the throne from his father, believing that he should be the king, he deserved to be king.

And, you know, instead of over time finding some way to reconcile with his father, he just couldn't quite do all of that.

And Absalom serves as an example to us.

We must see that Absalom's end, Dale Ralph Davis said, is a microcosm.

His death as a man under a curse is typical of what will be the lot of all who at any time set themselves against God's kingdom, his chosen king, and on the ground in history, that was David at the time, but Jesus, the ultimate chosen king, Messiah King, or those who set themselves at odds with God and his people.

This is a somber truth, Dale, Ralph says, but Yahweh's subjects have no hope unless it is true.

In other words, our hope is that there is a God whose good name he will preserve, he will protect, his promises, his plan, his purposes.

He superintends all of that.

And because he's sovereign, he can do that, even though enemies may arise from time to time.

This is an important principle for us to understand about a sovereign God.

Joab was independent, calculating, manipulative, and defiant.

He was a man of action, which is good, but he was a true warrior, a successful military man, that's right.

But his actions could sometimes be tainted by mixed motives and manipulation.

He probably judged, like I said, that Absalom was too far gone and was just never gonna ever come back.

Was Joab right?

I don't think we'll ever know until we get home.

I think we have to read this and still be a little bit puzzled about Joab, about Joab's motives and all of that.

But we can learn this.

Sometimes I think we can genuinely think we're doing right when we're actually doing wrong.

And you're going, well, how would I ever know if I'm doing right or wrong then?

Well, this is dynamic.

And I think that's the point I'm trying to make.

This is dynamic.

I'm always engaged with God's word so that I can learn God's ways and God's will for my life.

I'm always engaged with God's Word and God's Holy Spirit so that I can hear from the Spirit, so the Spirit can lead me into the truth, as Jesus promised the Holy Spirit would do.

I don't look to Hollywood, I don't look to mere creation to find out who God is.

The creation declares his glory, that's true, but it doesn't define for me whether something is right or something is wrong.

So I go to God, I go to his word, I hear from him, I submit myself to him and to his word.

So we'll never know a lot about some of Joab's motives and all that sort of thing, and when he was doing right and when he was doing wrong.

He does seem to be faithfully committed to David, even if he takes matters into his own hands.

What drove him, it seems to be, you could speculate, it seems to be that he was interested in trying to preserve David as king, which was part of God's plan indeed.

Alan Redpath is an interesting book on all of this called The Making of a Man of God.

He says the Ba the uh the Bible never flatters its heroes, so David, Joab, whoever.

It tells us the truth about each one of them in order that against the background of human breakdown and failure, we may magnify the grace of God and recognize that it is the delight of the Spirit of God to work upon the platform of human impossibilities.

Somebody say amen.

Yeah.

I'm glad that that's the kind of God we worship and serve.

That He can look down upon me, He can look down upon all of us and understand that in spite of all of our foibles, in spite of our weaknesses, in spite of our not having it all figured out, not having it all sorted out as a church or as an individual in a church or as a pastor of a church, he, God, still is sovereign.

I still look to him, I still submit myself to his word.

We still do that as a church and will continue to do that because he's so gracious.

And so many times, even in the rearview mirror, when we see, oh, we shouldn't have done it that way, you know, or oh, I shouldn't have said that, whatever.

Still, we find this God who's eager to redeem his people, eager and holding us fast all along the way.

David, the other principal character here anyway, reminds us that though he's conflicted with his earthly role of father and king here, yet he's still fulfilling his heavenly purpose of foreshadowing King Jesus.

Um and how you say, and we've been trying to draw those connections all along the way, Eugene Peterson and his uh commentary on 1 and 2 Samuel, which is very poetic and very much a pastoral uh approach to commentary.

I think it's pretty good.

He says, both David and the son of David, meaning Jesus, are rejected and leave Jerusalem, accompanied by both friends who help and foes who mock.

At the darkest place, both utter cries of dereliction.

Yeah.

The rejection of each David is a revolt against God's anointed leader, and the rejections in both instances are unsuccessful.

David is returned to Jerusalem to resume his rule, and Jesus, raised from the dead, ascends to the right hand of the Father to rule forever.

That's a great way of connecting, showing us the way David foreshadows Jesus in all of this.

So just quickly, and I'll run through this quite a bit, and you the slides will be online.

You can download them if you like if you're a note taker.

But chaos and collateral damage are often the wages of unbridled indulgence.

Ruin, regret, and remorse follow in the wake of ignored consciences.

Whether you're David, whether you're Joab, or whether you're Absalom at this particular moment or in any given situation in your life, whether you're like one of them in some way.

It's good for us to understand the wisdom of God and the wisdom of God's ways.

And we can even see that as we look at the foolishness of our own ways and we look at the collateral damage or the chaos that we've caused.

Now, if I were to ask you to raise your hand if you've caused chaos or collateral damage in your life, I hope everybody would raise their hand and be brave enough to do that, and humble enough and honest enough to do that.

But you might be sitting next to somebody that you caused chaos in their life, so I'm not going to do that.

But it's important for us to at least acknowledge that ruin, regret, and remorse sometimes will follow in the wake of our ignored conscience.

There are no private sins, folks.

Sin always casts a long shadow.

Okay?

And most of us don't realize just how long that shadow is in the lives of others.

None of us is ultimately sovereign.

I think that's important for us to know.

None of us can control every outcome.

Joab seemed to be the guy that wanted to manipulate every outcome.

David, too.

How is it with Absalom?

I want to make sure it's okay with Absalom.

I'll send this whole army out to fight.

They're going to fight that whole other army.

And I'm just hoping that that one guy will come back alive.

He can't control the outcomes like that.

It's so frustrating for us when we think that we can control all the outcomes.

It's so frustrating that we find ourselves getting angry at other people all the time when we can't control the outcomes.

We find ourselves sometimes getting angry at God when we can't control the outcomes.

Because really, we prayed, we said, Lord, do it this way.

We kind of gave God our advice, didn't we?

As if the God of the entire universe who holds the universe together, with just the power of his word, needs my advice on anything.

You know?

But I'm trying to control the outcomes when I do that.

And we need to understand a sovereign God is the one who can control the outcomes.

None of us can do that.

Suffering and grief can serve to make us more human, more prayerful, more compassionate.

You look at David grieving here.

My son, my son, my son.

And I'm torn as I read this chapter and studied it all week long.

I mean, looking at him, and you know, is he is he grieving because of his sin, or is he grieving because it's his son?

Yes, both.

And you parents know this better than anyone.

When when your children go through difficult times because they've made bad, either made bad choices, didn't listen to you, didn't obey you, or couldn't understand what you're trying to tell you, whatever it might be.

But you're frustrated because you want them to do what's right, and you've communicated that, they don't seem to get it.

It's hard.

Here's David.

He's just like that as he looks at his son Absalom, but he's grieving so hard.

His heart is so broken.

What could I have done?

What did I do wrong?

And he did do some things wrong, that's true.

He wasn't perfect.

He can't control the outcomes.

It's important for us to note that, I think, and recognize it.

And fourthly, because God is God, we can trust that justice, righteousness, and the end of all evil are all inevitable.

Now I look at this as a snapshot into the redemption history story of the entire scripture.

And this is why it's so important for us to keep the grand narrative of Scripture in mind.

As dark, as sad, as broken as we might feel when we read pages like the ones we've read today, what we still understand and still know above and beyond it all is that God is ultimately in charge.

And that even David still foreshadows Jesus, who has come the greater son, the greater king, the greater anointed one, and who has brought us hope of redemption.

And he's led us to the Father that never lets us down.

And he's the older brother that never lets us down.

And uh that's really a great comfort and a great hope for a lot of us.

Three thousand years ago, the life of David foreshadowed his greater son, God's Messiah, Jesus, another suffering king.

He was called a man of sorrows, wasn't he?

Here as we read David wailing, just can't even catch his breath.

And it reminds me of what Isaiah said.

Surely he took, and this is Isaiah, who a couple hundred years later, a few hundred years later, after the time of David, is saying this about Jesus the Messiah.

Surely he took up our infirmities, carried our sorrows.

Yet we considered him stricken by God, smitten by him and afflicted.

He was pierced for our transgressions and crushed for our iniquities.

This is really powerful.

The punishment that brought us peace was upon him.

And by his wounds we are healed.

We all like sheep have gone astray.

Each of us has turned to his own way.

Each of us has had the Absalom moments, haven't we?

And the Lord has laid on him Jesus, the iniquity of us all.

Wow.

That's the kind of God I can bow down before.

That's the kind of God I will worship, who has paid the price for my foolishness, my sin, my selfishness loves me that much.

I have I'm not we're not done.

We have a few more chapters, but I've really loved 2 Samuel.

Um I I've loved the way it shreds us and then and then makes us look forward to Jesus and points us forward to our need for Messiah, our need for God's redemption.

Um we have a few more weeks in 2 Samuel, then we'll get to Palm Sunday and Easter, and then I'm really excited about studying the book of Revelation with you starting the Sunday after Easter.

So as a little preview, I just couldn't resist this, okay?

Um as you go, as you go to the toward the end of Revelation, perhaps this will whet your appetite, okay?

You see this king again, this image of this king, Jesus, who's the king we've always wanted, the king we always needed, and you hear this loud voice from the throne saying, Now the dwelling of God is with men, and he will live with them.

They will be his people, and God himself will be with them, and be their God, and he will wipe away every tear from their eyes.

There'll be no more death, no more twenty thousand slain, you know.

No more mourning or crying or pain, for the old order of things has passed away.

He who was seated on the throne said, This, I am making everything new.

And then he said, Write this down, for these words are trustworthy and true.

And I say, Amen and amen.

Okay, yes.

And see, it's not just because um it's not we're not just ginning up emotions here at all.

We believe that one day all of this stuff is gonna be set right.

All that's broken, all that's broken in here, all that's broken in your hearts and mine, it's gonna be set right.

Why?

Because Christ has already made that possible and in rising from the dead, he has actually proven in space-time history that he can do it.

And so we believe him, we trust in him, we hope in him, and we look forward to his return and uh to being able to study all that together.

Let's let's pray, Lord, thank you for 2 Samuel, and we continue to ask you to open our eyes to not only our great need of you, uh, but uh of how beautiful you are and how wonderful you have been uh in coming in the person and work of Jesus to save us, to uh to set us free from um our waywardness, our sinfulness, our foolishness, our self-delusion, our self-obsession, all of that, Lord.

I pray that you'd continue to do that good work of turning us inside out and making us new creations in Christ, uh, and that we would continue uh to yield to you, to look to you, to trust and hope in you.

We pray this in your precious name, amen and amen.