2 Samuel Lesson 67
Absalom begins revolt – 15:1-12
We continue our study on David’s life and as we go into the second phase
of his experience in the last part of the book of Samuel it will be helpful to
review some principles that we’re going to go over again and again and again in
this text. This text will teach certain
ultimate principles that apply to the believer today. David got completely out of it for a year and
a half or two years, and then we know from certain Psalms, 32, 38, and 51 that
David confessed his sin and was restored back into fellowship with God. But David had a problem and this problem
plagues believers today, and that is that you can be restored after confession,
by grace, instantly, no problem. But
after you are restored there is oftentimes one or two problems, sometimes both
together. One you recall from our study
of Psalm 51 is this kiss and makeup syndrome that happens, that a person will
get out of fellowship over a certain issue, they will get back in fellowship,
back out, in, out, in, out, in, out, in, out, over and over and over and over.
That’s one pattern that appears to negate the effects of true confession.
The other experience is what we have termed residual guilt and this too
appears at first glance to negate the effectiveness of instant confession, but
these two problems only appear to negate confession. The two problems appear because God the Holy
Spirit, at the moment we are restored to fellowship begins a work which is
either ignored or dealt with. So David,
when he confessed, was restored to fellowship but David had a –R learned
behavior pattern. He had many but one in
particular that God the Holy Spirit placed upon his conscience so that it became
a matter of conscience to deal with this.
Now that principle in outline form explains why some of you have the
experience you often do at the point of confession, when confession doesn’t
seem to bring relief and you wonder why doesn’t confession seem to bring
relief. It seems to not deal at all with
the problem of guilt, it seems to be there just as much after confession as
before.
What is the problem? The problem
is –R learned behavior pattern that got you in trouble to begin with. In other words, a habit pattern that causes
individual acts of sin. And so, say, the
last time you were in trouble you confessed the sin, confessing that sin was
the grace basis of restoration, and you were truly restored to fellowship with
God completely, but then once restored God the Holy Spirit says say, let’s
start working on the pattern so you won’t have to go through this operation
again. And this is the dynamic ministry
of the Holy Spirit in the soul by bringing to conscience, to the attention of
our mind, patterns that must be rooted out and decisively dealt with.
David had a particular kind of pattern in which he despised God’s
provisions for his needs. God’s
provisions were not sufficient in David’s thinking to fully cope and enjoyably
cope with his needs, his needs being namely two-fold, sexual and security. David’s sexual deeds, he thought, could not
be dealt with, according to God. And
this is why Nathan said the things that he said in 2 Samuel 12; he said David,
you could have a harem of all the kinds of girls you wanted on My operational
basis, but no, you couldn’t tolerate that, you had to go in with
Bathsheba. And the point that God is
making, that God could have provided for David’s libido.
The second thing that you often notice is that David becomes insecure,
and when he becomes insecure he panics.
This pattern caused him to kill Uriah, it caused him to do many other
screwy things which we’re noticing as we go through this narrative. So David had a problem of erasing this –R
learned behavior pattern. When God the
Holy Spirit brings to your conscience a pattern of life that has to be changed,
we are faced with a situation we have been studying Wednesday night. So let’s turn to Hebrews 4:11. God the Holy Spirit points something points
something out and once the Holy Spirit points that pattern out, this places us
under a sort of ban or a sort of curse until we do something about it.
The author of Hebrew says in verse 11, “Let us labor, therefore, to
enter into that rest, lest any man fall after the same example of [unbelief]”
literally disobedience. Now he is
exhorting believers to trust in God’s promise, that God has provided a total
solution to their life, that they do not have to revert to Judaism, they do not
have to return to the old forms to relieve themselves of persecution in
Christ’s name. They don’t have to find
some human viewpoint gimmick way out of life.
So he warns them that once the Holy Spirit has made this an issue to
their soul, from that point forward God the Holy Spirit is going to deal with
them in a very decisive way.
See, the Holy Spirit operates through the conscience. The Holy Spirit through the human spirit, He
indwells the human spirit and through that He works on the mind through the
conscience. And He will warn the mind of
certain things. And he will say that
this is something that must be changed; see the name of the game in the
Christian life is that within the framework of absolutes you’re constantly
changing. And people who do not
constantly change are out of it spiritually.
By that we do not mean change in your beliefs but change in the way in
which you align yourself to what you know to be true. This is sanctification; sanctification is
continuous change and believers who become sterile, believers who have rebelled
against God’s Word become unchanging and immutable. David is becoming
unchanging and he is losing his sanctification at this point. But the Holy Spirit through the conscience
operates on the mind.
That’s one way the Holy Spirit has and the best way of warning you when
you’re out of line. And you ought to, as a Christian, develop sensitivity of
listening to your conscience. Now this
is not subjective mysticism if you will also remember to check everything by
the Word of God. But be open to the fact
that as you read the Word of God, and you must continue to remain in the Word
if you expect the Holy Spirit to change your life. The Holy Spirit is not going to give you your
own special edition of the Bible. He
already put one forward in history and He wants to speak to men through that
book. Therefore, if you have trouble in
your life and you’re wondering why there are certain problems, my first
admonition to you would be to stay in the Word, I don’t care now bad you feel,
how depressed you are, I don’t care what the problem is, your objective is to
get down, pick up that Bible, and get somewhere in there, from Genesis to
Revelation, and start reading.
Now this is an emergency type program when you are really down in the
dumps. Get the Word of God flowing by an
act of your choice; do not stay passive.
You have to take decisive action so get in the Word. Get yourself concentrating on, say the
Psalms, that’s a good place to start.
And just the act of getting your eyeballs in contact with the page of
God’s Word provides the Holy Spirit with a tool that he then can begin to
use. So the Holy Spirit working on the
mind, the Word of God coming into the mind, the Holy Spirit raising perception
of certain passages of Scripture, for example you may read Psalm 51, Psalm 32,
Psalm 38, you may read some of these Psalms and you may have read that Psalm
108 times before but today as you read down through there one or two verses
stand out and you are sensitive to those particular verses on this particular
day. Why? Because God the Holy Spirit is
using that portion of God’s Word to bring conviction over certain things. That’s how you find out what the Holy Spirit
is doing.
Most of us usually flunk out the first test and so the Holy Spirit has to
use the secondary backup system. When we
fail to see what it is that he’s drawing our attention to through our minds, in
our conscience, then the Holy Spirit begins to work, the conscience activates
certain things and activates certain emotions in our body, it’s a physical
activation. Conscience activates, turns a switch somewhere, and you begin to
have all these emotions. And the
emotions are not the central issue, they are just warning lights that go on and
off, on and off, on and off, on and off to say there is something wrong. People who are overly emotional have a
problem. No one, incidentally, has
emotional problems. All people have
doctrinal problems or spiritual problems of the Word of God and their so-called
emotional problems are a direct result.
So the emotions get haywire, and by that time the second stage is
reached, it means the Holy Spirit has tried the first one and we have not
responded, we have failed to respond.
Then if we don’t respond that way the Holy Spirit has a third way the
conscience begins to activate psychosomatic illnesses. And so our body responds
in a very bad way.
So the conscience is a key, it’s one of the most important things you
can know about and certainly one of the most important things you should pay
attention to. Now when this conscience
begins to work, the conscience in fellowship will remind us of certain
things. The Holy Spirit uses the
conscience, not only to convict us of sin when we are out of fellowship, the
Holy Spirit also uses conscience when we are in fellowship and He speaks to us
through the pressure of the conscience.
Certain things become bothersome; certain patterns that were not
bothersome before now suddenly become bothersome, and so the Holy Spirit is
bringing these patterns to our attention.
Again we remind you, compare with the Word of God, don’t go just on
subjective feelings. Be sure that it’s
conviction of the Holy Spirit and you can tell because it will fit the
categories of the Word of God.
So you have the Holy Spirit bringing conviction through conscience. Now in David’s situation what had happened
was that he was out of fellowship, he confessed, he got back in fellowship, and
he had this –R learned behavior pattern and the Holy Spirit kept bringing that
to conscience. David, however, it
appears from the text of 2 Samuel chapters 14-15 and so on, that David rebelled
against this correction. In other words,
David confessed his sin, he got back in fellowship; so far great. But after getting back in fellowship, then
the Holy Spirit said David, I want this thing changed, you can’t go the rest of
your reign as king over this nation with this pattern in your soul; it’s going
to lead you from one problem to another unless we decisively deal with it. Now let’s start. But David never started; David secretly
protected and coddled his –R learned behavior patterns, he secretly said yes
but it might be true really after all that God does not provide sufficiently
for my sexual needs, He does not provide sufficiently for my security, and
therefore harboring these doubts, harboring an indecisiveness to root out the
problem, David then finds himself face to face with his sons who have inherited
the same –R learned behavior patterns from their father.
And here is why David made a poor father, because he failed to decisively deal with his problems
in his soul, when that same pattern of behavior became apparent in the lives of
his sons, he could not deal with it decisively.
Let’s see how David dealt with his sons; we’ll look at several passages
in Samuel and Kings to remind ourselves just what kind of a father he was.
2 Samuel 13:21, compare these passages with what we know of David
previously. We know that previously
David was always a decisive man. David
had his problems, he took a vacation to
Now let’s think back to the soul again and why this isn’t unreasonable
at all, in fact it fits exactly what we know of the soul, the conscience and
the mind. The conscience is what makes
one decisive. An indecisive person is
wandering around in limbo because they don’t know right and wrong in that
situation. So if the Holy Spirit has
said hey, David, let’s deal with this –R learned behavior pattern, and David
has said no, he begins to develop scar tissue, blotting out the conscience from
his mind. This develops in response to
his “no.” The mind will not tolerate
habitual conscience telling it no, no, no, no, this is wrong, this is wrong, this
is wrong; the mind has corrective devices in it and one of those is to build
scar tissue, to insulate itself, to anesthetize itself against the call of the
Holy Spirit through the conscience. So
this happens, and thus people who are in violation of their conscience on one
issue, it turns out that now they are indecisive in many, many different areas.
Now let’s see how this plays out when he comes to disciplining his son. He sees that his sons have these patterns,
yet 2 Samuel 13:21, “But when King David heard of all these things,” that’s
when David heard of the rape of Tamar, when Amnon raped his half-sister, David
heard about it and he did nothing. He
did nothing with the result that this poor girl had to remain, probably the
rest of her life, in social oblivion, because a princess who was not a virgin
could not be used to intermarry and so on, the way they wanted to use them;
these girls were basically tools of the state department, and princesses were
assigned certain husbands from various nations and no husband would accept a
non-virgin and so therefore a princess who had been raped was in a very bad way
unless it was compensated for within the royal family by some sort of marriage
with a noble person. And David took no
action, it says “he was very angry.”
There’s his emotions, but there is no action; there’s his temper, but
there is no training. David has failed to be decisive toward Amnon and
Tamar.
In 2 Samuel 13:39, after Amnon is killed, murdered by his brother,
Absalom, as we corrected the translation verse 39, “And it kept King David from
going forth unto Absalom.” What kept
King David from going forth to Absalom?
The fact that “he was comforted,” or “he was mourning concerning Amnon,
seeing he was dead.” In other words, his
grief for the death of Amnon kept him from then dealing with his second problem
with Absalom. So David has gone fro one
problem, Amnon, which he failed miserably to deal with, then he goes now and he
has a problem with Absalom and he fails to deal with that problem.
Then looking ahead, in 2 Samuel 18:33, after the revolt of Absalom, and
he is killed, David can do nothing except verse 33, “And the king was much
moved,” notice again the emotions are playing, but again there is an absence of
decisive Biblical action. His emotions
are “moved, and he went up to the chamber over the gate, and wept; and as he
went, thus he said, O my son Absalom, may son, my son Absalom! Would God I had died for thee, O Absalom, my
son, my son!” Now Absalom was one of the
biggest clods, one of the original rebels of Israel. And because he was he led
a very serious revolt, almost killing his father. And instead of taking
decisive action and coping with the problem and coping with the after effects
of the problem, David spends his time crying in his closet. Again it shows the
instability of this man and his lack of decisive action.
One further verse, 1 Kings 1:6, his action toward his third son. This is Adonijah; the first baby dies, and
after Amnon is killed, Absalom is slaughtered, remember David had to pay
four-fold, and he is about to pay four-fold now because this is his fourth son
that will be brutally and violently removed from the political scene. “And his father had not displeased him at any
time,” now notice that. In other words,
he withheld discipline from his fourth son also. So now we’ve got a pattern; we’ve got a
pattern with Amnon, we’ve got a pattern with Absalom, we’ve got a pattern with
Adonijah. So we can deduce, then,
certain things about David. We can deduce that, as far as he’s concerned, these
boys are not worth the trouble of disciplining.
Now that may sound like a very cruel and a very premature judgment to
make. But parents who do not train their
children are lazy and do not care and do not love their children. Any parent who acts indecisively toward their
children does not love them. Now parents
can act decisively and wrongly because they’re misguided by not following
Scripture, that may be true. But that is
not half as bad as not acting at all toward children. We used to have a saying in the service, if
you’re going to do something wrong do it consistently, and that would help
parents. If you’re going to screw up,
then at least be consistent because at least you will provide an atmosphere of
regularity and law that can then be used to correct the problem later on. But if you are chaotic, sporadic in
discipline, you never develop any kind of a system of law or framework and the
child winds up without security and so forth.
So it’s important that parents deal decisively with their children’s sin
to train them, not to beat them, but simply to train them in the nurture and
admonition of God.
David failed in this regard and his failure is due to the fact that his
sons have a certain –R learned behavior pattern. Now David is not accepting the Holy Spirit’s
teaching that that is sin. Here’s the
problem; here’s the pattern in David, the Holy Spirit says sin, David, remove
it, start working with it, trust Me to remove it, give Me the go ahead signal
to take it out of your life. David says
no because I’m not really convinced yet that God provides for my every
need. So because David is on negative
volition at this point he is not agreeing with the Holy Spirit that that
pattern is sin. He’s in rebellion against
the Holy Spirit at that point. Now since
that same pattern shows up in all three of these sons, as their lives prove in
the pages of Scripture, and David isn’t going to put it down in his own life,
he is not putting it down in his son’s lives, he is not treating it as a
sin. He is not treating it as something
that should be dealt with. Now this
little principle also tells parents why sometimes God deals with you areas
in your life that you can’t really
figure. In other words, of all the many
things you know do not conform to God’s will, why is it that God picks out this
rather than that. Oftentimes it is
because God wants you to deal with this in order to deal with this in your
children. In other words, if parents
were in fellowship more of the time they would correct the patterns that are
going to develop and crop up in their children’s lives. And if they would remain sensitive and deal
with these decisively in their own lives, then they could deal decisively with
them in the lives of their children.
Al right, come back to 2 Samuel 15 and we begin a new cycle in David’s
life, a cycle that will last from chapters 15-19, a seven year cycle; seven
years of the Absalom incident. We’ve
already dealt with chapters 13-14, seven years of the Amnon incident; now we
move to another incident involving David’s third son, Absalom. Now recall that David, as a fallen creature,
has numerous
– R learned behavior pattern, as
we all do. Recall also that God does not
ask for perfection before He accepts you.
He accepts you first, then brings perfection about, not in this life but
in eternity.
So we have God selecting, of all possible learned behavior patterns
certain ones to work on. Now here is
where you cannot sanctify yourself. It
would be very easy in some situations to sit down with the Bible and say now I
see, by this passage and this passage and that passage that I’m wrong and then
suddenly create your own schedule of correcting these problems. But that is autonomous sanctification and
it’s a legalism of a very subtle sort.
You have to deal with these patterns as God leads, and He may lead you
to deal with one pattern first and then the second pattern. Here’s where the Holy Spirit is your
counselor. And if you have trusted
Christ you have the perfect counselor in the person of the indwelling Holy
Spirit and it’s His job to lead you, that’s what Romans 8 says, “as many as are
led by the Spirit,” they are the sons of God.
Now in this second incident we’re going to find the Holy Spirit
constantly pointing the same pattern out to David; Absalom shows the same
pattern in his life, and now things get ever more violent. You recall that Absalom has spent three years
in exile, in a place in Syria called Geshur.
It’s located far to the northeast of Damascus. Geshur is the city of his
mother and he went to the king of Geshur, who was his grandfather. So Absalom has spent time in the royal court
of the king of Geshur, who equals his grandfather. That’s the family relationship, that’s why he
trotted off to Geshur. But when he went
out to Geshur he left the land of Israel.
And there’s a principle in God’s Word that when a Jew is out of the
land, the principle is given in 1 Samuel 26:19, when the Jew is out of the land
he is not serving Jehovah, he is serving the gods of those lands. And since we have Absalom in Geshur and not
in Jerusalem, he then is essentially, as far as God’s Word is concerned,
serving the gods of Arimea, or Syria as it today is called.
Verse 1, when he returned, remember two years before he’s reconciled to
his father, “And it came to pass after this,” so we’ve had, “after this” the
seven years of the Amnon incident.
Verses 1-12 of this chapter, which are the verses we are studying
tonight, deal with a period of four years.
So let’s do a little math and see how long it takes patterns to get
started. Here’s three years in Geshur,
see the first seven year period was a 2-3-2 time; that was the seven years; 2
years he was plotting the assassination of his brother, during that time he was
in the land. For three years he was out
of the land. And then for two years
after that he was not reconciled to his father.
So for 5 years at least this has been brewing. These 12 verses an additional four years, so
by the time we get the revolt of Absalom he has had 9 years to work this thing
out. So there’s a considerable time
period. Notice how long this takes.
But in verse 1 we are at least, he has had five years to brood on the
situation, and he’s learned a lot; three of those years were spent in the king
of Geshur’s royal court. So it’s not
surprising that when we read in verse l, “And it came to pass after this, that
Absalom prepared him chariots and horses, and fifty men to run before
him.” Now that is a custom of the
Ancient East of pagan kings. To show you
that custom we’re going to look at 3 or 4 verses of Scripture. Hold the place and turn back to Genesis
41:43, Pharaoh’s court.
In Genesis 41:43 we have Joseph; now Joseph is operating here according
to Egyptian custom; this is a pagan custom, this is a human viewpoint custom,
the exaltation of the kingdom of man, the exultation of the divine state. And it says “And he made him to ride in the
second chariot which he had; and they cried before him, Bow the knee: and he
made him ruler over all the land of Egypt.”
In other words, this is the adoration of Joseph as the vicar of
Pharaoh. Notice the parade, it’s a lot
of pomp and circumstance, it’s associated with state power.
In Deuteronomy 17:16, you’ll see the cry of the Word of God against such
accumulation of centralized government power.
Here we have one of the great documents of the Old Testament defining
divine viewpoint philosophy of politics, and in it is an attack against
centralized government. Centralized
government is a deification of the state and represents apostasy. And part of the dangers they would get into
as king would be the accumulation of this pomp and circumstance, and so in
verse 16, “But he shall not multiply horses to himself, nor cause the people to
return to Egypt,” in other words, he should not pollute the simplicity of God’s
Word with all these extras which eventually turn people’s hearts away from God
and onto the divine state.
Turn to 1 Samuel 8:11, the central political passage in God’s Word, in
the Old Testament portion. This is one
of the greatest political addresses of all times, and Samuel said, “And he
said, This will be the manner of the king who shall reign over you:” not it’s
not that Samuel is saying this is good, he is simply warning the people that if
you go to a monarchy, if you centralize your power under a mere human king, you
are going to have this tendency develop, and so he’s predicting something in
verse 11, he’s not saying this is good, it’s just a prediction. “This will be the manner of the king who
shall reign over you: he will take your sons, and appoint them for himself; for
his chariots,” and notice the last phrase, “and to be his horse men; and some
shall run before his chariots.” There’s
the custom, and it was well-known in the ancient world.
Turn to 1 Kings 1, in the verse just before the one we cited earlier
dealing with Adonijah, you find that when Adonijah wanted to claim the throne
he did precisely the same thing. “And
Adonijah, the son of Haggith, exalted himself, saying, I will be king;” so
there you have his designs on the office of king, “and he prepared him chariots
and horsemen, and fifty men to run before him.”
So these passages certainly confirm that there is a custom that is
associated with grandiose state and government power. It represents a
distortion of Scripture. And it’s that
exultation of state power that we now read in 2 Samuel 15:1; Absalom. And in these verses you will find every
gimmick that every human viewpoint politician has thought of from time
immemorial, they are all here. Absalom
represents human viewpoint par excellence in the field of politics. Absalom is sneaky, Absalom is smart, he’s
skillful but it’s total human viewpoint all the way. Absalom, incidentally shows something, it
shows you various principles of election.
Why of al the sons of David, the four that are prominent, the infant
that died, Amnon, Absalom, Adonijah, and Solomon, God elected David’s seed, but
which of the seed, and how do you tell the elect from the non-elect. You tell by looking at them, it couldn’t have
been the infant, he was disqualified by death, he was under the curse. Amnon is out because of his pattern of
behavior toward the things of God, he showed no sign of spirituality. Absalom shows
no sign of spirituality, it’s human viewpoint all the way. And Adonijah shows no sign of spirituality,
he too has human viewpoint all the way.
Solomon is the only man that stands up, and here’s an intriguing thing
to think about in dealing with Solomon.
Solomon is known for his wisdom, but few Christians realize that the
wisdom was not given from birth. Solomon
got to the point where he was going to reign as king, and he asked God. God said Solomon, I’ll grant you a promise,
ask anything and I will give it to you.
And Solomon said Lord, give me wisdom; and God gave Solomon great
wisdom. Now if you study David’s life
you may understand why Solomon made that petition. Solomon lived in the latter days of his father. David turned into a very stupid king, and
Solomon had at first hand experience watched David’s progressive foolishness
develop and begin to wear away and eat away at the nation. He saw the nation almost go down in total
defeat because of the lack of wisdom of his father, so it’s no surprise that
Solomon, the first thing he did when he got to the throne was ask God for
wisdom.
2 Samuel 15:2, here is some of Absalom’s gimmicks. First you see gimmick one, verse 1, is where
he has a great grandiose scheme to attract attention to himself. Notice that he is initiating the action. I hope you understand by now that the
procedure from the divine viewpoint to secure your office as king was to go to
a king-maker; the king-maker was always the prophet. No king could reign apart from prophetic
approval. This is why Solomon alone reigns
as David’s successor. Only Nathan gives
him that right. The men are picked, not
by the people, the men are picked by God.
All power is not in the people, all power is in God, God alone is
omnipotent. The people do not have the
power, God has the power and God will choose.
So it must be the prophet who chooses and picks out the king.
But you have Absalom initiating the process, and so in verses 2-6 you
have a habit pattern of Absalom described.
The Hebrew verb tenses depict a continuous type thing. It occurs over and over and over and over;
everything between verse 2 and 6. Verse
2, “And Absalom would rise up early,” should be the proper translation, not
just one day he did this, but many days, he did this over and over, in fact, he
did it for a thousand days, he did it for four years, that’s how long that the
pattern of verses 2-6 extended. “And
Absalom would rise up early, and stood beside the way of the gate,” the way of
the gate was the path into the king’s palace where people would come that had a
legal question. Remember the king of
Israel acted as the judge. What is the
name of the book before 1 Samuel?
Judges. Who acted in place of the
king before they had a king? The
judges. Does the king, therefore, do
away with the function of judging? No,
the king is the judge. So the people
then come to the gate of his palace for judgment. “…and it was that, when any man who had a
controversy” the word is our familiar word, rib,
and this is the word for lawsuit, “any man that had a lawsuit came to the king
for judgment. This shows you the king
had a function to perform in the area of discernment. And that is precisely where a person who is
indecisive fails.
You see how it’s pulling together now? David is on negative volition
because he’s failed to clean up a pattern in his life. His failure to clean up the pattern in his
life, once the Holy Spirit has pointed this out, results in scar tissue. Scar tissue results in indecisiveness, and
the indecisiveness means now he fails in his job as king; he is flunking his
job. So “ and it was that, when any man
who had a lawsuit came to the king for judgment, then Absalom called unto him,”
or he would call unto him, “and said, Of what city are you? And he would say, Thy servant is of one of
the tribes of Israel.” Now don’t be
deceived the way the King James has translated verse 2; the ides is that he
would tell him the tribe, that’s just put in there as a general indirect
discourse, it’s not a direct quote. He
would tell him.
So Absalom is sitting here with a little notebook and he waits by the
door and he says hey, what’s your name?
My name is so and so. What city
are you from? I’m from Ephraim or some
place up in Ephraim so he’d write this city down. And then he’d say, what’s your tribe? The tribe would be Ephraim in this case, so
he’d write that down. Now what is he
tabulating? He’s getting a list of
people that he’s going to use, a list of malcontents that he is going to turn
against the kind, a very clever man, Absalom.
Verse 3, “And Absalom said unto him, See, your matters are good and
right; but there is no man that is disputed of the king to hear you.” In other words, he starts the politics of
pity; in other words, this person should be pitied, his cause is good, and
therefore he deserves better treatment than he’s getting. Now in a way that’s true, he does deserve
better treatment because David is falling down on the job. But Absalom isn’t going to give the man
better treatment either, though he would have him believe so. And he insinuates at the end of verse 3, no
man actually delegated of the king is fit to hear you. So he points out a fault in David’s
administration. So he is breeding
malcontent among the people of Israel.
Now what’s the difference between constructive and destructive
criticism. Oftentimes people will read
the New Testament and they say we should be in subordination to the government
officials, Romans 13:1-4, therefore it’s wrong for a Christian to criticize
government. That’s a wrong
deduction. A Christian should criticize
governmental practices when the practices violate the laws of God’s Word, yet
at the same time he should be ready to provide a positive alternative, again
from the authority of the laws of God.
And therefore criticism of the government is legitimate. But this is illegitimate criticism in verse 3
because Absalom is not really after a solution to solving the problems of his
father’s administration. He simply wants
to eliminate his father.
In verse 4, “Absalom said, moreover, Oh that I were made judge in the
land, that every man who has any suit or cause might come unto me, and I would
do him justice!” Several things to note,
this verse is filled with the center and heart of human viewpoint politics. “Oh that I were made judge in the land,” oh
that it would happen that I were made as judge.
Who makes the judge? God does, and so you notice that Absalom has
replaced men; men now replace God. God
used to be the one who set up the king, now Absalom appeals to the people, the
power of the people must be the source of political direction; it must be the
people that determine what happens and not God.
The people in human viewpoint politics always try to acquire to
themselves powers that are only God’s.
Absolute democracy is one of the most anti-biblical things the human
race has ever come up with. All power is
not in the people, and any time you hear that slogan you hear something
ridiculous. Obviously people don’t have
power, people don’t have the wisdom; only as we are taught by God’s Word do we
have any sort of wisdom, and the less we know of God’s Word the more ignorant
we are and the less capable of political self-direction. The only people qualified for democratic
government, from the standpoint of God’s Word, are those most sanctified,
because they know the most of God’s Word and have trained their soul in
obedience to its principles.
Now in verse 4 when it says “oh that I were made judge,” he’s appealing
to the people to make him as king, short-circuit the prophet, short-circuit the
king-maker, I will be come judge. And
then he makes an absurd promise, “that every man who has any suit or cause
might come unto me.” Now Absalom
certainly knows he can’t deal with every cause.
He’d have to have numerous assistants, he would have to have much more
wisdom than he has, but in the Hebrew it’s written differently and this
difference in translation brings out an interesting point. After it says “I were made judge in the
land,” it says, “unto me” first, which means that in the original language in
verse 4 “unto me” is the center of emphasis.
It is not on the justice, it is on Absalom. And that is another feature
of all human viewpoint politics. Notice
the absurdity. We have the equation:
power of God cancelled out and replaced by the power of the people. Then immediately after this transformation in
some miraculous way occurs, then we begin to talk about social justice. And we raise the question of what is right
for the people, what is just for the people.
But the people have no absolute standards, finite man cannot crank out
the absolute standards of right and wrong.
And so giving up the power of God is actually giving up justice. So once the power goes to the people, it’s a
death knoll for all justice. The people
have no justice because they have no standards nor the power to keep the
standards that they do know.
So right here Absalom has basically cut his own throat. By going against God’s Word to establish his
campaign to be king, Absalom has in effect destroyed all source of justice. On the evolutionary basis there is no such
thing as justice; on the evolutionary basis there is only one ethic: might
makes right. And those who survive are
the fittest to survive, and if you really believe in evolution you should
accept that as your ethic and go along with the racial supremacist because they
fit into the mold of evolutionary ethics.
But if the Bible is true, then man is different and therefore ethics are
different.
So what Absalom has done is tube the authority of Scripture and as a
result destroyed all possibility of ever giving justice to anyone. How do you decide what is right and what is
wrong? There are only certain sources. You decide by personal prejudice, that’s
anarchism. You decide by social customs,
and you have the power of the 51%. What
about the 49%, suddenly when we get one more vote a standard becomes
right—absurd! Or we have God’s Law. Now you have to pick from those three, one of
those three is your source of what is right and what is wrong. Absalom has chosen, apparently either the
first or the second. He certainly hasn’t
chosen the third or if he had he wouldn’t have sought office the way he did.
Verse 5, “And it was so, that when any man came near to him to do him
obeisance, he put forth his hand, and took him, and kissed him.” Now that’s not the man kissing Absalom;
that’s Absalom kissing the man. Now what
is this problem of kissing doing. It’s
not what you think. Absalom is
undergoing a custom that was prevalent in that time in history. In fact we have testimony outside of the
Bible to this kind of custom. We find
that in the plays of Euripides he mentions that it was this process that
Agamemnon used to secure the Greek Army. Agamemnon would come along and he
would kiss the soldiers and this is how he developed his authority and rule
over the Greek armies, prior to the Trojan War.
So we have historical precedence that this was a commonly accepted way
of operating. What is happening in verse
5 is that Absalom is building an army.
And that’s why, obviously verse 6 follows so closely on this
manner.
Verse 6, “And on this manner did Absalom to all Israel that came to the
king for judgment; so Absalom stole the hearts of the men of Israel.” And you wonder, why was it so easy for
Absalom to steal the hearts of the people?
The fact that Absalom could do this shows you there was a tremendous
amount of negative volition in the nation as a whole. It shows you there was a tremendous amount of
ignorance of Bible doctrine in the nation as a whole. The very fact that this was at all even a
possibility shows that Bible teaching had by and large failed in David’s
time. Now why is it important to know
this? Because when you look at what is
going to happen, God’s promise is that David’s house will reign forever. Look at the most unpromising environment that
promise was given. Reign forever? Look, David can’t even manage his own sons,
David doesn’t even name one of his sons to sit on the throne, it’s a big mess
when David dies because he’s gone away and not left a successor to the throne,
really, in a definitive way. Reign
forever, look, the nation doesn’t even respect the authority of the Word of
God. So with all these things in chaos,
in turbulence, churning in the political time period, how can the promise of 2
Samuel 7, the Davidic Covenant, ever come to pass? That’s the story of this book; God’s promises
come true whatever the circumstances, no matter how impossible, God’s promises
always come true.
Let’s look at some more of the mess that we have. Verse 7, “and it came to pass after four
years,” not forty, there’s a textual problem on this, “That Absalom said unto
the king,” now again this is put into the text to show you how David is so
stupid. Every plot that has succeeded has been by David’s permission. Remember when Amnon had the idea of getting
in the girl’s dorm. How did he do
it? He went to David and asked
permission for it. David was stupid
enough to give him the key. When the
wise woman of Tekoa came to him, she gave him a parable, and he didn’t
recognize it until he got trapped. When
Nathan comes to him and gives him a parable he doesn’t recognize it until he
gets trapped. And now Absalom, Absalom
came to him before and said hey, I’m going to throw a big party, I want to
invite all my brothers, that okay? So he
got taken again, this is about the sixth or seventh time David’s been
taken. Now is this the mentality of the
discernment of a judge? Of a king that
is supposed to decide lawsuits and controversies? Well, the Holy Spirit, I believe, puts these
verses in here to show you what has happened in David’s soul, tremendous
deterioration of discernment.
“Absalom said unto the king, I pray thee, let me go and pay my vow,
which I have vowed unto the LORD, in Hebron. [8] For thy servant vowed a vow
while I abode at Geshur in Syria, saying, If the LORD shall bring me again
indeed to Jerusalem, then I will serve the LORD.” That’s a sweet-sounding thing, but it may
indicate something of Absalom’s mentality.
He probably did vow a vow while he was in Geshur, he had three years
learning human viewpoint, and he probably vowed a vow that when he got back to
Jerusalem he’d overthrow his father. So
actually Absalom is probably telling the truth, it’s just one of these cute
little things where you don’t tell people ALL the truth, just part of it,
enough to say I told you the truth, I just didn’t finish the sentence. So he told David what he had done.
He goes to
Verse 10, “But Absalom sent spies throughout all the tribes of Israel,
saying, As soon as ye hear the sound of the trumpet, then ye shall say, Absalom
reigns in Hebron.” Now this would be
equivalent today when rebels take over a government they always hit the
government radio stations. Well, this is
equivalent to a government radio station, the spies through all the tribes with
trumpets. And their announcement is
“Absalom reigns. Now we’re going to give
you one of those footnotes that we do from time to time in the text of the Old
Testament to relate to other portions of the Bible. This is a phrase that you want to know. We’ll put it this way ___blank___
reigns. That is a formula, it is a
formula of succession to the throne. It
means visually that a man has assumed the crown rights. It is a technical clause.
Let’s see where that technical clause occurs again and we’ll see that it
defines the gospel, Isaiah 52:7; you have heard the word “gospel” and some of
you come out of a very religious background and have certain images of the
gospel. You think that it refers to a
big revival or something, and you sign tithing cards and all the rest of
it. Others who come out of non-Christian
backgrounds, you don’t know what it means.
But the original root of the word “gospel” is found in this passage;
here’s the original meaning of the word; it’s a lot different from you’re used
to hearing. “How beautiful upon the
mountains are the feet of him that brings good tidings,” there’s the word which
translated into Greek comes down into the New Testament as “gospel,” that bring
the gospel, “that publishes peace, that brings the gospel of good, that
publishes salvation, and” and here’s the content of that gospel, “that says
unto Zion, thy God reigns.”
Now that you know from Absalom what that formula means, now you should
know what this phrase means, “thy God reigns” means a divine messiah will
physically sit on the throne. So this is an important point showing that they
believe in both a divine and human messiah in the Old Testament, and when that
messiah would come that would be the gospel; he reigns, it means that he has
sat on his throne and the fact that he has made it to the throne is the good
news. That’s the gospel. Now that’s bound to be different from what
you’ve heard.
Back to 2 Samuel 15, we know what the formula, “reigns” is, he has
ascended the throne. We’ve got one more
complication in this and then we’ll be prepared for the blowup next week. Verse 11, And with Absalom went two hundred
men out of
Then one more piece is added to the whole puzzle, a strange man by the
name of Ahithophel, now it’s no accident that this character shows up because
when you find out who he is, then all the components to the bomb are
laid. “And Absalom sent for Ahithophel,
the Gilonite, David’s counselor, from his city, even from Giloh,” which is in
Now we have to do a little detective work to find out who this man is
but it’s worth it. Turn to 2 Samuel
11:3, this is a passage with Bathsheba, you have Bathsheba, who is the daughter
of Eliam, so this places Bathsheba’s father.
Now turn to 2 Samuel 23:34 we’ll find out a little bit about Bathsheba’s
father. Here you have a list of David’s
favorite commanders. Eliam is listed in
the middle part of the end of verse 34 and who is his father? Ahithophel.
“…Eliam, the son of Ahithophel, the Gilonite.” Now look what we’ve got.
Let’s go back and take another look at Absalom. Absalom has gotten the
tribes together and he plays on the weakness of his father, his father’s
indecision. Now he gets a counselor
loyal to himself who is the grandfather of Bathsheba. Does it strike you as to why he might be
interested in getting Ahithophel and why Ahithophel might be very much
interested in undoing David? Because after all, Ahithophel’s son was Eliam;
Eliam fought in the army and probably knew Uriah real well, that’s probably how
Bathsheba and Uriah met, her father and her husband both fought together in
David’s army. So this family knew what was going on and Ahithophel undoubtedly
knew what happened to Uriah. Uriah
didn’t just disappear; military people are very, very loyal and that order,
that secret order to get Uriah out [can’t understand words] that order must
have been in the gossip, back to the ears of Ahithophel. And so his grandson-in-law if you want to use
that expression, was murdered. His
granddaughter was raped. Ahithophel has
a sore that can be activated by Absalom.
Now notice what Absalom has done, he’s a parasite, he’s a leech that
feeds in the sore of the righteous. His
whole program is based on human viewpoint, but that whole program is basically
a leech program, a parasitic program, and the only way that David could have
averted the disaster was to do what he promised to do in Psalm 51, and we’ll
close by turning to Psalm 51 and remind ourselves of one great petition David
had made in this confession, and if he had only… if he had only kept this going
he could have solved the problem. You
deal with parasites by taking away their food.
You deal with the leeches by removing them. And politicians of the kingdom of men like
Absalom are parasites, political parasites, that feed on the soul of society,
they don’t want to help society, [can’t understand phrase]. But they get in office deceivingly on
people’s discontent, as Absalom does.
Now the way to solve the problem is to remove the discontents, and in
Psalm 51, after David confessed, he made a series of petitions in verses 9-12;
here those petitions are relevant. One,
in verse 10, two in verse 11. In verse
10 David said, “Create in me a clean heart, O God, and renew a right spirit
within me.” Had David persisted in this
petition and had David obeyed God’s Word following from the petition, he would
have had this granted. And he had this
granted, then conscience and mind would have been dealt with, the right spirit,
the right attitude, would have taken care of that original –R learned behavior
pattern, and knocked it right out, if he had the right spirit and the clean
heart. And in verse 11, “Cast me not
away from Thy presence,” was the call and the plea that I cherish the office of
king, but we don’t know that David’s cherishing it too much. You see, at the time of confession he knew
that was wrong, he knew that changes were needed in his life and he prayed,
once or twice, about the changes in his life and then he forgot, and let those
changes fall by the wayside. [can’t
understand some—tape very hard to hear]
But the last two verses of this Psalm talk about building up