BOLD Daily Devotional: When the Sword Enters the House

Amen.

Well, this evening we're going to gather around 2 Samuel chapter 13.

2 Samuel 13 · chapter mention

And I've entitled this teaching, When the Sword Enters the House.

So I'm going to break this down in a couple of sections so we can see how it's related and we can understand how this story goes.

So the first part of this is called the warning.

Now in 2 Samuel 12 and 10 is where we're going to go for just a second.

So before we ever get to Amnon, excuse me, Tamar and Absalom in 2 Samuel 13, God has already spoken a warning to David, and we know that.

He arranged the death of her husband Uriah.

Nathan confronts David.

David acknowledges his sin and God did forgive him because he's a good God.

But forgiveness does not mean that all the consequences of the sin disappeared, right?

David was forgiven, but his actions still had consequences.

Nathan tells David, now therefore, this is 2 Samuel 12 and 10.

He says, Now therefore, the sword shall never depart from thine house.

So I want you to focus in on that word house.

Don't miss that.

David's sin had involved people outside his immediate family, but Nathan tells him that some of the consequences are going to reach down deep inside his own house.

And then we kind of fast forward a little bit to 2 Samuel 13.

The sword actually enters, and I mean metaphorically, enters David's house.

Now, when God tells David that the sword will not depart from his house, we need to understand what we're about to see in this chapter, right?

The sword represents more than a weapon.

We're about to see violence, broken relationships, retaliation, grief, and division, and all these things begin to move through David's family.

So, and we reach chapter 13.

As I said, the sword has then come, come home, so to speak, to David's house.

So I'm going to give you a short summary of 2 Samuel 13 just to make sure we're all on the same page.

So David's son, Amnon, develops an obsessive desire for his half-sister Tamar.

Through deception, he gets Tamar alone and then he sexually violates her.

Afterwards, he rejects her.

Now David hears about what happens and he becomes very angry, but the scripture does not record anything that indicates that David took action against Amnon.

Tamar's brother, on the other hand, Absalom, hates Amnon because of what he has done to his sister.

Absalom, however, remains silent.

And get this, he waits for a period of two years.

And eventually he arranges to have Amnon killed, and then he flees, right?

By the end of the chapter, then Tamar is devastated.

Amnon is dead.

Absalom is a murderer and a fugitive.

And David's family then is impacted and fractured.

Nathan again told him, the sword shall never depart from thine house.

And again, that's 2 Samuel 12 and 10.

So now we're beginning to see what that looks like, if you will.

The next piece is the pattern.

And we're going to take a look at 2 Samuel 11 and 2 Samuel 13.

So there's a bit of an uncomfortable pattern between what happens with David in chapter 11 and what happens with his son Amnon in chapter 13.

Now, in chapter 13, 11, excuse me, we know the story.

David sees Bathsheba, he desires her, and he uses his position and authority to take what he wants.

Then we fast forward a little bit to chapter 13.

Amnon desires Tamar.

He creates circumstances that will give him access to her.

And ultimately, he uses his strength to take what he wants from her.

Amnon is completely responsible for Amnon's sin, right?

David did not make Amnon do what he did, but the scripture places these stories close enough close enough for us to begin to recognize a bit of a pattern here.

David allowed desire to overcome righteousness or override righteousness, if you will.

And now we see a similar situation or misuse of desire and power emerging within his own house.

That pattern that appeared in the father is now beginning to appear in the family.

So I have a question for you.

What are the people watching our lives learning that we never intended to teach them?

Because the people that we influence don't only learn from what we say, they also learn from what we model.

The next part is the progression.

So we're actually in 2 Samuel 13 at this point.

So this sword that David was told about, never departing from his house, didn't arrive all at once, right?

We're gonna kind of take a little trip here and watch how it moves through the chapter.

It begins with desire.

Amnon wants Tamar.

Deception then, or desire becomes deception.

Amnon pretends to be sick so that Tamar will be sent to him.

Deception creates opportunity and isolation.

Amnon gets Tamar alone.

Then comes the violation.

Amnon refuses to listen to Tamar and he overpowers her, right?

Violation is followed by rejection.

The same woman that Amnon claimed he was so in love with, he now hates and he puts her outside of his house.

Then comes silence.

David hears about what happened and he becomes angry, but again, he doesn't do anything about it.

At least the scripture doesn't record any action against Amnon.

Absalom, on the other hand, also becomes silence.

Excuse me, isn't peace.

Underneath that silence, he has resentment that's been growing, and he allows it to grow and to fester over a two-year period of time.

And eventually that resentment becomes vengeance.

And Absalom has Amnon killed two years later, and then he flees.

So the sword starts with desire, it moves to deception, it moves to violation, then on to silence, then on to resentment, then on to vengeance, and ultimately division.

So it didn't arrive as one dramatic event, right?

It moved through the relationships in the house.

Something to consider.

Some things grow because nobody stops them while they're still small.

You know how we say you got to nip that thing in the bud before it gets out of hand?

I had to do that just recently.

It's funny how God will, you know, take whatever we're studying about and you have a similar situation, maybe right before it, during it, or right after.

But I had to nip something in the bud just yesterday.

And one of the comments that I made was, we cannot afford to let this get out of hand because it'll be far reaching.

Okay, now we're going to talk about David's silence.

This is 2 Samuel 13 and 21.

All right.

This might be a little troubling, at least it would be me, if the father, the king, knows and he doesn't say anything.

So David finds out what Amnon has done.

The scripture tells us that when David, King David, excuse me, heard of all these things, he was very wroth or he was very angry.

But then the text just proceeds, it just moves on.

We don't see David, once again, confronting Amnon at all.

We don't see him disciplining his son.

We don't see David seeking justice for Tamar.

You know, and sometimes when we don't say anything, I think we think that it'll blow over and things will work themselves out.

I guess sometimes they do, but sometimes they don't.

We still see anger on David's part without recorded action.

And anger at what is wrong is not the same as taking responsibility to make it right.

So David's silence did not preserve the peace, it left room for that wound to deepen.

Consider this.

Could David's own moral failure have complicated his ability to confront a similar brokenness in his son?

Scripture does not tell us that this was David's reason, but it's something that we might want to consider.

And it doesn't, it does raise an important consideration for us in that sometimes our resolved, unresolved shame about where we failed can make us hesitant to confront what is wrong in others that we may be leading.

But having failed ourselves does not eliminate our responsibility to lead rightly in the aftermath.

While David did nothing that scripture records, Absalom was carrying something for two whole years.

Amen.

Silence as negligence or agreement.

Amen.

Eventually, David, what David failed to address, became something that Absalom decided to handle himself, took matters into his own hands, right?

But he didn't pursue justice, he pursued vengeance.

And now the sword cuts again.

Amnon violated Tamar, Absalom murdered Amnon, and David's house continued to be broken up and fractured.

David could not undo 2 Samuel and 11, but when he reached 2 Samuel 13, he could have responded differently.

Last piece, our responsibility.

And this is where we can use David's example to examine our own lives.

There are things from yesterday that you and I cannot undo.

I was thinking about that earlier last week or late last week when we were talking about 2 Samuel, right?

There may be decisions that we regret.

There may be consequences that we still have to live with.

There may even be patterns that we now recognize that we didn't recognize before.

Thank God.

But here's the good news yesterday's failure does not negate the opportunity to act responsibly today, right?

We can still do what's right.

David couldn't go back and rewrite 2 Samuel 11, but he still had choices to make in 2 Samuel 13.

And so do we.

When God allows us to recognize something destructive in our lives or our families, ministries, relationships, or leadership, we can't simply be angry about it.

And that's where it begins in hands, right?

We have to ask ourselves, what is our responsibility now?

Repentance acknowledges yesterday.

Wisdom changes how we respond today.

Leadership refuses to let yesterday's failure become tomorrow's pattern.

Nathan's warning was the sword will never depart from thine house.

And 2 Samuel 13 shows us the sword beginning to move through David's family.

But perhaps the question for us isn't simply how did the sword get into David's house?

Perhaps the more important question is what has God shown you and me that we can no longer afford to leave unaddressed?

And with that, I will yield.