2 Samuel Lesson 68
David Flees Absalom – 2 Samuel 15:13-37; Psalm
3
Turn to 2 Samuel 15, continuing our series on David. We’re into the David/Absalom incident and
this covers several years. In the Old Testament,
chapter 15:1 through
And this great long march of David into the wilderness area, it’s not so
long but it’s very, very sad situation for him to face, a very desperate
situation. It’s the day of disaster and
David, thrown out by his own son, is going to be very, very quick to
respond. And we’re going to see
something most interesting. Now to
review, David’s character, as we go through the book of Samuel we see more and
more about David’s character. Now David
was an excellent soldier, when it came to fighting he was without any peer in
Another area that we will see tonight is that David had the remarkable
ability to attract people of character.
David commanded tremendous loyalty on the part of men near him. This actually is going to save him now in
this situation; he is able to gain the support of people of intense spirituality. David has a loyal following that sticks with
him through thick and thin. But David,
though an excellent soldier, was a poor administrator. And this comes out again in this book. The more we study it the more we see these
flaws in David’s character. He was
skilled as a soldier but weak as an administrator. The weakness of his administrative ability is
shown first in his own home; he is a very poor manager of his four sons and he
loses them, as God foretold, in the discipline because of the Bathsheba
incident, and each one is lost because of David’s extreme sentimentalism. He does not discipline his children, he is
lax toward them, even when they are out of line, he lets them get out of line,
when Amnon rapes his half sister David becomes angry and does absolutely
nothing. When Absalom revolts and
finally he’s killed by Joab, David goes into a hysterics because he’s lost his
son. In fact later on Adonijah is
involved in the same kind of treatment.
So we find throughout the book that David shows his lack of
administrative ability in the area of his sons.
He also shows his lack of administrative ability, as we saw in verses
1-12, in that he did not set up a very sharp judicial machinery for the nation
and it was that weakness in his administration that Absalom was able to take
advantage of. Another area where David
seems to lack in his administrative ability, and this is going to come out
tonight, is that David did not really unify the nation. Even though he was a national hero he hadn’t
really unified the nation. There were a
lot of people that were only loyal on the surface. Why?
Why was David weak as administrator, picked by God for the job, yet why
did he fall down?
We have suggested several things; we have suggested that David never
dealt with his –R learned behavior pattern, for one thing. In his own life he had a problem that came
out with the Bathsheba Uriah incident. He promised God, in Psalm 51, he would
deal with that pattern and he never did.
And when the same pattern cropped up in the lives of his own sons, he
stood by, because you don’t put down in your own children what you have in your
own soul. So parents, if you do not
suppress –R learned behavior pattern in yourself you will not be able to, in
good conscience, suppress them in your children. So you deal with your own soul first, then
you deal with your children. So that’s
one reason we suggested.
Another reason that we have suggested is that David didn’t quite believe
all the terminology of the Davidic Covenant, in that God would raise up one of
his seeds. David was always getting his
sticky little fingers in to try and decide which son was going to sit on the
throne. David wanted Amnon, so therefore he didn’t discipline Amnon for the
situation because he wanted to keep Amnon as his firstborn to succeed him. As a
result God had him assassinated, so David would keep his fingers out of God’s
pie. David, then, didn’t fully believe
the terms of the Davidic Covenant.
A third reason I would suggest, why he lived this way, is that basically
he had limited interest. David was interested in the combat side of the
Now we have a modern illustration of the same tendency, we have a man who is an
excellent soldier but a poor administrator in an incident that happened in his
life, George Patton. After operation
torch, which was the Allied invasion of French Morocco, the Allied armies had
come in because they had to get a toehold in the
McMillan, Churchill’s representative,
said this when he went to visit the Moroccan headquarters, he said: It
seemed to me a monstrous thing that General Patton could be so easily impressed
by the gay hunting parties and the lavish entertainment which was given in his
honor. Patton showed little concern at
the way friends of
We have this situation with David, but the contest now is between
Absalom and David and we want to compare these two men in their character, and
we want to look at their true characters, it teaches us a lot about
spirituality and God’s grace in our souls, because God obviously, even though
David has the faults and even though David is a poor administrator, and even
though David has dropped the ball numerous times, God’s man is still
David. He is not going to dump David and
go to Absalom. David was a king that was
proclaimed by a prophet; Absalom was a king that was proclaimed by
himself. A primary difference in the two
men; one desired to attain the office independently of God. David attained the office by Samuel’s
anointing. So we have that difference is
that as we saw last week, Absalom is a typical politician making his empty
promises; he is going to bring about perfect social justice in
See, we tend to read our Christianity into the Old Testament, and it
always hurts us when we do that. What
I’m trying to do for you as we go through this book of Samuel is to try to
present just what kind of things were happening in that day, and when you do
that you realize David was not a popular man.
In fact, we could almost generalize and say that most of the population
thought David was some sort of religious nut.
He was a good hero, a national hero, popular for that reason but not too
popular once he became king. Another
thing that’s interesting is that Absalom is a very religious person. He is religious because of the vow that we
discovered in the text last time, how he said I have come in the name of
Jehovah to fulfill my vow, and his vow was to kill David. He did it out of religious motivation. And that’s also a sign of human viewpoint
politicians, there are lots of religious politicians that are absolutely
dangerous. People would have voted for
Absalom, Absalom just fits everything
people like.
David, on the other hand, not being religious was grace oriented; he
realized that he couldn’t take himself that seriously. David never took himself that seriously, he
took God seriously. God was the center
of his thinking, he was occupied with the person of Jesus Christ, not himself
and his little spiritual experiences.
David was intensely grace oriented and that is also going to come out of
Psalm 3 which was written during this period.
David, as a result, attracted a small number of loyal men. Absalom attracted a large number of
idiots. And that is their character;
Absalom attracts people on what basis?
Political resentment, that’s what basis, malcontents, that’s what the
basis is, if you’re dissatisfied with David, come with me. Always the unity in Absalom’s human viewpoint
political camp is based on resentment and self-pity. You watch that as you observe the political
scene; which politicians are building unity on the basis of self-pity, you poor
people, you are run down, you are persecuted, let me save you, this kind of
thing. The whole pitch is to generate
self-pity; that’s just Absalom at work again.
So let’s look at verse 13 and see how David responds. Absalom has men throughout the country have
declared revolution, and now the word comes to David. “And there came a messenger to David, saying,
The hearts of the men of
In the first seven chapters of 2 Samuel do you recall how David attained
his office as king? One way was through
what we would call a civil war between the north and the south, between
The second thing you recall from the first seven chapters was that the
Philistines, we had a Philistine war, and that wasn’t started by David
either. Remember the Philistines came up
and they got themselves clobbered. Again
it was God’s grace that established David on the throne. David did not do the doing, God did the doing.
As a result, the unity never was of David.
Never! So in verse 13 you read “the
hearts of the men of Israel are after Absalom” David must respond this
way. He must say they were never with me
because of anything I had in the first place, because frankly, I don’t think
David was too interested in a lot of the details of the king; he could have
cared less, he liked it out there fighting somebody but he didn’t like to sit
on the throne. So with that kind of a
nature David really wasn’t too excited about trying to stimulate unity in the
nation. And when this report comes in
David recognizes that God’s grace is faded down somewhat, that God has withheld
his grace, because the lack of unity proves the reverse of the first seven
chapters of this book. It’s a signal to
David that something has gone wrong.
Verse 14, “And David said unto all his servants,” now verse 14 is a
beautiful illustration of David’s military nature taking over, “David said unto
all his servants who were with him at Jerusalem, Arise, and let us flee; for we
cannot escape Absalom. Make haste to
depart, lest he overtake us suddenly, and bring evil upon us, and smite the
city with the edge of the sword.” Now
that shows two great decisions David has made.
Notice one, “lest he overtake us suddenly.” David is militarily aware that he’s in a
precarious position. He’s got a limited
number of people but he doesn’t want to undergo a long siege behind walls with
people that he’s not really sure of, because he can’t tell how many people
inside the city are loyal to him and how many are loyal to Absalom. So unsure of his situation David gets out of
there; he is not going to chose to fight on enemy grounds, and that is also the
mark of a great fighter. You do not
fight on the ground of your enemy if you can help it. You choose the place to fight and the weapons
to use but don’t let your enemy choose the place, the time and the
weapons. So David gets out, that’s the
wisest thing he can do.
The second thing is little noticed but it’s that last clause, “lest he
smite the city with the edge of the sword.”
That shows David’s love of God; David loves the city of Jerusalem and he
knows its God’s city, and he doesn’t want harm to come to the city, so rather
than risk a big battle over the city he just gets out, and that is a testimony
to his faith, his trust, his loyalty, and his occupation with Christ. By the way, in World War I when the Germans
and the Turks evacuated Jerusalem they did precisely the same things because
they didn’t want the Christian and Muslim sacred sites to be destroyed by a big
battle and bombardment and so it has been the nature of military down through
the ages that great historic areas would be evacuated to avoid fighting on them
and over them.
Now at this point David’s mental attitude is obviously galvanized into
action; David’s rolling again as we saw the old David before the times of the
doldrums. And to show you what was going
on in David’s soul we stop here and go to Psalm 3 because Psalm 3 was written
after this entire episode and tells you about it. And we’ll be referring to Psalm 3 in the next
few times together in 2 Samuel. Psalm 3
pictures David’s mental attitude, and how he dealt with the problem.
Psalm 3 is an individual lament Psalm.
What is an individual lament Psalm?
An individual lament Psalm is just that, it’s about an individual who
has a problem and he’s lamenting. So an
individual lament Psalm is that kind of situation. And individual lament Psalm
has five parts; they sometimes will blend together but they’ll be there some
place. The first part is an address,
always an address preliminary address to God.
The second part is the lament itself.
There will be a description of the problem, an analysis of the problem
from divine viewpoint and taking this problem before God in petition. Then somewhere there’ll be a confidence or trust
section. And that shows you the promises
that the man is trusting in when he copes with the difficulty or adversity in
his life. That is a very important
position because that should teach all of us how to trust God in these kinds of
disasters. Then we have petition; David
or the writer of the Psalm will make a petition, and that should be in there,
and finally it will end in praise. So
those five parts are always in an individual lament Psalm.
Now let’s look at what those five parts are in this Psalm. The address and the lament are together in
verses 1-2. Notice that, “LORD, how are
they increased that trouble me! Many are
they that rise up against me. [2] Many there are who say of my soul, There is
no help for him in God.” Now the word
“Selah” when you see it, don’t worry about it, nobody knows what it means. It apparently is a marker in the text. And the word, it’s “Selah” all right, but
nobody knows what it means. All right,
verses 1-2, the address and the lament.
Now verses 3-6 is the confidence section. Notice how it goes, “But thou, O LORD, art a
shield for me; my glory, and the lifter up of my head. [4] I cried unto the
LORD with my voice, and he heard me out of his holy hill. [5] I lay down and
slept; I awaked; for the LORD sustained me. [6] I will not be afraid of ten
thousands of people, who have set themselves against me round about.” There is David’s confidence.
Then the petition, notice the first part of verse 7, “Arise, O LORD;
save me, O my God.” Now the petition in
this Psalm blends, verse 7 a, blends with the praise, there’s a transition from
7b to verse 8 and you’ll catch it if you notice how it starts with a
presupposition “for.” “…for Thou hast
smitten all mine enemies upon the cheekbone; You have broken the teeth of the
ungodly. [8] Salvation belongs unto the
LORD; thy blessing is upon Thy people.”
Now that’s not quite the kind of praise that would be too acceptable in
many Christian circles, “thank you God for bashing their teeth in,” but that’s
the kind of praise that David gave, doctrinal praise, not sentimental
praise.
Let’s look at verses 1-2, the first part of the Psalm. We’ll outline the Psalm as follows, we’ll
outline verses 1-2 together as one section, David rehearses the powerful [can’t
understand word] of his enemies. And
we’ll label that as a section of the Psalm.
The we’ll take that confidence section, keep that as one whole in the
outline, and make it David acknowledges by his action that he completely trusts
Jehovah, he not only acknowledges by mouth but by something he’s going to do.
David acknowledges by his action that he completely trusts Jehovah. And then verse 7, we’ll just say that’s
David’s petition, and then he petitions Jehovah knowing victory is already in
his hands. And then verse 8, David
praises God. So the Psalm we’ll analyze
as having four sections.
And if you’ll look at this again and notice the proportion of verses,
just looking at how many verses are in those sections, what do you think is the major point of this Psalm? The major point of the Psalm is confidence,
trust, and that is David’s mental attitude.
You see, that’s why David is able to handle himself in the crisis;
that’s why David is able to not panic, not fall apart, but quietly make good
decisions, skillful decisions under the most intense pressure in a day of
disaster, when things are falling apart, David moves effectively, efficiently
and confidently. Why? He relaxes in God’s plan.
Now let’s look at how he does it; verses 1-2. The heading of the Psalm is part of the verse
in the Hebrew text, “A Psalm of David, when he fled from Absalom, his
son.” Actually Psalm 3 probably should
occur somewhere in the 16th chapter of 2 Samuel; I am giving it to
you earlier before we’re even encountering some of the events, so you’ll be
able to refer to it as we go through.
All right, here’s his address and his lament before God. The address and
lament again, the section where the Psalmist deals with his problem. May I suggest that when you encounter a
problem in your spiritual life you do the same process that is found in the
lament Psalm. Before you make your
petition, do what David does in Psalm 3.
You see, David doesn’t pray to God until verse 7, before he prays to God
a lot of other things are dealt with.
First, he thinks through the problem in the light of the Word of
God. He categorizes the problem he
analyzes the problem. Now that’s what we
should do, under pressure, before we open our mouth to God, think. In other words, let’s approach God with
dignity, and before you come to an important person… if you walked into the
President of a company and before you were escorted into his office you’d
think, hopefully, before you opened your mouth.
It’s the same thing in coming before God, we think through things.
So that’s one thing we can learn right away; notice how he thinks. “LORD, how are they increased that trouble
against me.” And that’s an
acknowledgement of the reality of it. David is not saying oh Lord, oh Lord, oh
Lord, oh Lord, I close my eyes and hope the problem is going to go away. It’s not some imaginary solution to it. He acknowledges the reality of the
problem. He says yes, look at them all,
the whole twelve tribes are with Absalom; we have a mass national
defection. There’s nothing in verse 1
that leads us to suspect David is minimizing his problem. He maximizes his
problem, yes it’s bad, you bet it’s bad, it’s gross. So don’t be afraid of staring a problem in
the face and seeing how bad it is. With
Christ and confidence in your position you can do this and not tear yourself
apart. You can look at the problem with
all of the details and not have to worry about it because your confidence isn’t
in you to begin with. It should be in
Christ.
Then he says, “Many are they that rise up against me.” And the verb “rise up” in the original
language, the Hebrew, is a participle and it means right now they are rising,
the horns are blowing, Absalom reigns, Absalom reigns in Ephraim, Absalom
reigns in Benjamin, Absalom reigns in Dan, this is going on right when he’s
doing the Psalm they area rising up against me.
Verse 2, “Many there be,” and this is a key in verse 2, David not only
knows the people are defecting but he knows why they’re defecting. “Many there be who say,” the verb “say” is a
participle, “many there be that are saying,” in other words, he has picked up
Absalom’s propaganda. Here’s the
propaganda, “there’s no help for him in God.”
Now that’s the classic legalist type operation. In other words, here you have people that are
looking at David’s faults. They think…
the Bathsheba scandal, the Uriah scandal, the lack of judicial officers in his
administration, and they probably could name a whole bunch of things, so they
say, why any man who does that isn’t a Christian. “There’s no help for God” in a guy like
that. That’s the propaganda going
on. Now the fallacy of this kind of
thinking is that David’s acceptance in the first place depended on his
character. Here’s what we dealt with
this morning; is justification on the basis of something that happens in
heaven, before the high priest, or is it something that happens in your
heart? David’s acceptance in the first
place wasn’t grounded on what he did. So
how could his continuation on the throne be grounded on what he does. It’s grounded on God’s will, not upon what he
does. But nevertheless, notice the
theme, “there is no help for him in
God,” the emphasis is on him, HIM, that kind of attitude.
Now in verse 3 we come to the second section of the confidence, and this
is one of the rich parts of the Psalm; these Psalms are tremendous, particular
in times when you’re depressed, times when
you’re struggling with these kinds of things in your life, go to the
book of Psalms and just read them. If
you can’t do anything else get your eyeballs glued to a Psalm and move them
from word to word and get them going, and finally you’ll get your soul in
operation and then there’ll be the blessing that comes as the Holy Spirit
teaches you and encourages you.
But here in verse 3 we have, “But Thou, O LORD,” and when you see these
“But Thou” in the Psalms, that’s usually the beginning of a confidence
section. That’s just a simple way of
finding it. “But Thou,” and when you see
a “But Thou,” this means that David before was looking at his problem. He looked at his problem and saw how bad it
was, he analyzed the problem, all the details, all the things that could go
wrong. He wasn’t blind to it, but the
trick in solving your problems biblically in your life is not to just sit there
with your eyes glued to the problem.
David didn’t do that. When you
have a “But Thou” you have David’s attention shift to the essence of God. Now, how many times has that happened with
you. When you have a problem, occupation
with the problem, occupation with the problem, day and night, occupation with
the problem, worry about the problem, etc. etc. etc. instead of just turning to
the Lord. “But Thou,” that’s the shift,
it’s just as though he’s physically turned around and looked the other
direction.
“But Thou, O LORD,” and then he describes God’s essence. Go back to the doctrine of divine essence,
very simple but it solves all problems.
God is sovereign, God is righteous, God is love, God is omniscient,
omnipotent, omniscient, immutable and eternal.
That is basic theology and you
ought to be able to go to passages of Scripture that verify these attributes of
God; there are more attributes of God than these but that’s just
convenient. So God’s character now
occupies his attention. Now David in
three words he’s going to depict God’s character because he’s going to apply
divine essence to little-bitty David.
Now watch how he takes the doctrine and he applies it to his
situation. He says, “O LORD, You are a
shield for me,” the word “shield” is the word used in battle, it’s a defense.
And so this is the application of divine essence in area of defense; God, you
are my perfect defense in this situation.
So he calls God a shield, that’s divine essence, God is sovereign, He is
in control of the situation, God is omnipotent and He’s able to handle the
situation and therefore David says I am going to rest that you are my perfect
defense. So he calls God his shield.
Then he says, and God, You are “my glory,” now why does David say God is
his glory? This again goes and flows in with what we saw this morning, in true
justification all the focus is upon what God does and what Christ does, not
what the Holy Spirit is doing cleaning up my life. Now that’s a good work, yes, but that isn’t
where the emphasis should be. The
emphasis should be in heaven at the Father’s right hand. And so what David is saying, my reputation,
whatever I contribute to history and to my fellow man, ultimately is but a
reflection of your character. What David
is doing, he says my reputation, Father, is totally and completely dependent
upon Your reputation, Your character, Your essence. So when he says You’re “my glory,” he is
denying that he himself has a testimony.
He is not testifying to David’s life, he is testifying to God’s
character. He says if I want to brag
about something, I’m going to brag about You Father, but I am not going to make
my life the center of attention. That’s
the second word, He is a shield, He is his glory.
And He is “the lifter up of my head.”
Now that is a phrase that was used in the Ancient Near East, it’s used
in Genesis, with Joseph and so on, “lift up my head” would means the person is
prostrate, he’s injured, he’s prostrate and you come and you comfort somebody
and you lift up their head to give them a drink of water or something. It’s that kind of thing. In other words, God, You love me, and I am
down, I’m knocked down, and You’re going to lift me up again. No man is going to do it, I can’t rely on
Joab, I can’t rely on any other man, even my friends, to lift my head up; You
alone are capable. So in verse 3 we have
a simple analysis that went through David’s soul; if you’ve latched onto it,
use it.
Verse 4, “I cried unto the LORD with my voice,” now we’re going to see that
prayer in 2 Samuel 15, so for now we’ll take note of it but the prayer is
actually given in 2 Samuel 15 on the Mount of Olives, as David, the
messiah-king is thrown out of his nation, where does he go to make his prayer? The Mount of Olives. And where did the true Messiah, when he was
thrown out of Jerusalem, go to make His prayer?
The Mount of Olives. Same place,
same prayer. So David prays, “I cried
unto the LORD with my voice, and He heard me out of His holy hill.” See, David is across the Kidron Valley on the
top of the Mount of Olives, and over there is Mount Zion, and he says God heard
me out of His mountain, because he localizes God’s presence, and we’ll see that
to in 2 Samuel 15, God’s presence, even though God is omnipresent He is localized
as to the place, the point where you pray too, and at that point, since you
have the ark of the covenant David actively prays westward, across the Kidron
Valley toward it, and he says I look over there and I know that on that
mountain, on that holy hill, God hears my prayer. And he’s going to have
empirical evidence of this shortly.
So verse 6 the logical conclusion.
“I will not be afraid of ten thousands of people,” now he was before he
started, but you see, before he even came to God in prayer… he hasn’t made a
petition yet, he’s not going to make that until verse 7, but look at how he got
himself out of depression, look at how he faced a totally adverse situation and
he was able to totally cope with it and by the time he comes out of verse 7,
the petition section, he is so on fire with confidence in the Word of God that
he prays his prayer and he puts a “because” clause in there that you can’t
believe.
Let’s look at it. “Arise, O LORD;
save me, O my God;” there’s his petition, God, you’ve got to move, now I have
confidence you’re going to. “…for Thou
hast smitten,” it’s past tense, “Thou hast broken,” those are case of the
prophetic perfect in Hebrew; it is a perfect tense that refers to something as
though it has already happened, but it hasn’t happened. That’s what’s going to happen but David is so
fantastically confident in the middle of this thing, God you’ve already bashed
their teeth in, that’s His confidence.
So he uses this as a prophetic perfect.
Now there’s even a significance about the bashing of the teeth in verse
7, “You have smitten all mine enemies upon the cheekbone; and You’ve broken
their teeth,” now that is put in there because the enemies were primarily using
their mouth to run him down. So again
and again in the Psalms he complains about the tongue, he complains about the
ungodly gossip that goes around that’s trying to malign his character. And because of this, he says God give it to
them where it’s coming out. They can’t
shut their lousy mouths so You shut them for me, will you? Now that’s a tremendous kind of prayer. This is language that David used in the Psalm
against gossipers, just smash them in the mouth.
And then in verse 8, his praise, “Salvation belongs unto the LORD,” and
he has no illusions that he is going to save himself. Salvation is totally of the Lord. And now notice verse 8 because it
synchronizes with the verse that I just showed you in chapter 15 about him
going… [tape turns] … “thy blessing is upon Thy people.” So even in the darkest of hours David had
loyalty to the ha Yisrael, the people
of Israel, that was an occupation of his, even though he didn’t like a lot of
the details God asked him to do, he basically was still oriented to God’s
plan.
That’s the Psalm that depicts his attitude, now let’s go back and see
the attitude operate in 2 Samuel 15. In
verse 15, “And the king’s servants said unto the king, Behold, thy servants are
ready to do whatsoever my lord, the king shall appoint.” Now that shows you the tremendous
character. They could have easily
defected, after all, David is an old man at this point in his life. It’s not too wise to cast your boat with a
sinking ship. And these men are so
faithful to David that they don’t care if he’s an old man or not, they’re with
him. This is the kind of men David
attracted to himself; whatever you want, we’ll do David.
Verse 16, “And the king went forth, and all his household after
him. And the king left ten women, who
were concubines, to keep the house.”
Those ten women are going to play a role in the text later on. Verse 17, “And the king went forth, and all
the people after him, and tarried in a place that was far off.” Literally in the Hebrew verse 17 reads: “the
house most distant,” and apparently it was a house on the eastern most side of
the city toward the valley of Kidron, the last house there at that time, and
that’s where he set up a temporary headquarters to review the parade that was
going out the east side of the city.
“The king went forth,” and they came to the place, they waited in that
place.
Verse 18, “And all his servants passed on beside him;” in other words,
they marched, you have an orderly evacuation of the city through the east
side. “…and all the Cherethites, and all
the Pelethites,” these apparently are foreign legionnaires, David has won them
to Christ and they are serving with him, they are Gentiles, “and all the
Gittites, six hundred men who came after him from Gath, passed on before the
king.” Now these Gittites, there is some
problem with them, apparently they are called Gittites because they were the
men, they’re Hebrews actually, but they were the men that went down into Gath,
you recall, when David allied himself with the Philistines.
Remember that episode in his life, when you have the Philistine pentapolis
down here, you have the boundary line there, Saul is marauding through this
area to get David, so David aligns himself with the king of Gath, and while
he’s with the king of Gath he decides a little extra curricular activity is
called for and he makes raids against the southern border, the enemies on the
southern border of Israel, and all the while he falsifies the military reports
back to the Philistines and says yeah, I clobbered the Jews. He wasn’t clobbering the Jews, he was
clobbering the enemies of the Jews to the south of the border. Well he had a tremendous band of men, about
six hundred that were in his raiding parties, and these are his old time
veterans, and it’s that body that forms the core of his new army; they are
loyal to David, their leader. They’ve been through many battles, they’ve
fought, some of them have died, but they’ve always been David’s friends. And so these are the people of high, loyal,
solid ethical character that David has with him. “…and they passed on before the king.”
Now verse 19 shows you David’s attitude.
“Then said the king to Ittai, the Gittite, Why do you go with us? Return to thy place, and abide with the king;
for you are a stranger [foreigner], and an exile. [20] Whereas you came
but yesterday, should I this day make
you go up and down with us? Seeing I go
wherever I may, return thou, and take back thy brethren; mercy and truth be
with you.” Now this is a man who has
defected from Philistia; he has come over and joined forces with David. We’ll
see later he is a believer, he’s a Gentile Philistine, he is a man who has
trusted in Jehovah as his only God. This
man, out of faith and loyalty to Jehovah has come over and offered his
services. He’s a tremendous Philistine
commander. And this is going to save
David, and by the way shows you, all the pieces fit in David’s life. You’ll see
this, as God leads you in your life and you look back and things right now look
disconnected and you wonder about this detail and that detail and how does it
all fit together, and later on there’ll be something else, apparently totally
divergent from where you are now, and then the pieces will fall together and
you’ll say oh, I know why that happened and why this happened because it all
fits with how God is leading us.
Now back when David was going through all this mess with the Philistines
he apparently made friends with this guy, and this guy respected David’s
military prowess and David respected his, and David probably told him the
doctrines of Jehovah, and he won him to Christ, and this man defected and came
over to Israel. Now he’s saying David, I
want to fight with you, I want to fight for you, I want to fight in your army.
And David says in verse 20, look, I don’t expect this of you, you have defected
out of loyalty to Jehovah, you just stay in Jerusalem with whomever is king,
literally “the king” in verse 19 doesn’t mean David or Absalom, it means
whoever turns out to be king, you just stay here, this fight doesn’t have
anything to do with you, you’ve declared your loyalty to God, that’s
sufficient, God doesn’t ask you to do any more than that, this is just kind of
a private war between me and my sons, you can just stay out of it.
Now look at the response of Ittai, “And Ittai answered the king, and
said, As the LORD liveth, and as my lord, the king lives, surely in what place
my lord, the king, shall be, whether in death or life, even there also will
your servant be.” Now you couldn’t ask
for more loyalty than that. Do you see
the kind of men that David attracted to himself versus the kind of men that
Absalom was attracting to himself that we saw last week. There’s just no contrast, the only contrast
is in numbers, Absalom has more but David has better.
Verse 22, “And David said to Ittai, Go and pass over. And Ittai, the Gittite, passed over, and all
his men, and all the little ones who were with him.” That is their families; see David has
compassion in this hour of national disaster, when revolution strikes, he’s
thinking about other people than himself.
Notice that, the characteristic of agape love. He’s thinking about the city, he doesn’t
panic, he respects God’s place there, he comes out, he thinks about Ittai and
his family, he doesn’t want to involve them in an unnecessary war. Now how can David respond this way? Because of Psalm 3, he’s basically a relaxed
man in the middle of tremendous pressure; he’s relaxed because he knows God has
already [can’t understand words].
Verse 23, “And all the country wept with a loud voice, and all the
people passed over; the king also himself passed over the brook Kidron,” this
is to the east of Jerusalem, “and all the passed over, toward the way of the
wilderness.”
Now verse 24, another group comes up, “And, lo, Zadok also, and all the
Levites with him, bearing the ark of the covenant of God: and they set down the
ark of God; and Abiathar went up, until all the people had passed out of the
city.” In other words, as they parade by
this house, we can just visualize at the end of a street, the parade is going
by the house and on the front lawn of the house Zadok and Abiathar are holding
the ark of the covenant, and it’s a solemn procession as the loyal soldiers
exit the city and they hold the thing there and David’s behind the ark, he’s
watching, he’s reviewing the parade.
And so he says this as he talks to the men:
Verse 25, “And the king said unto Zadok,” okay, the parade is over,
“Carry back the ark of God into the city; if I shall find favor in the eyes of
the LORD, he will bring me again and show me both it, and its habitation.” But the Hebrew doesn’t say “it,” the Hebrew
says “Him and His habitation.” Do you
know what David is doing there, that is one of the most tremendous statements
of faith that David has made yet in the historic text. He’s saying I’m going to trust the Lord to
work this thing out. You take that ark
back and put it there in Jerusalem, it belongs in Jerusalem, that’s where God
said He’s going to make the temple. You
don’t have to take it out with me as a good luck charm, if God wants me to win
the battle, I’ll win the battle, now you just relax and take it back
there. It’s God [can’t understand words]
Him equals the ark. See, God’s presence
is physically localized in the ark on the holy hill, from which, by the way,
Psalm 3 says the prayer was answered. So
the ark is Him, and he says if God favors me I’ll get a chance to see the ark
again so take it back.
Verse 26, “But if He say thus, I have no delight in thee; behold, here
am I, let Him do to me as seems good unto Him.”
Now look at that, that is a total casting of the entire problem into the
hands of the Lord. See the faith
technique being exercised; see David’s grace orientation there; it’s
tremendous. He commits the whole thing
into the hands of Jehovah at that point.
Now there’s going to be a lesson here on the faith technique that I want
you to catch. The faith technique, which
is really orientation to grace, the faith technique always has a doing side and
a resting side. Now there’s a simple
rule that you want to remember about this doing and resting. You do what is God’s will for you to do,
regardless of how impossible or hard it looks.
God may ask you to do something, for example He asked Abraham to go slit
his son’s throat. That was very, very hard
for Abraham to even attempt to do. But
Abraham did it, he did, no matter how hard it seemed to him to do it. So the principle is you do regardless of how
impossible. Now the other side of the
coin, on the resting side, is the opposite, you don’t do what God doesn’t want
you to do, no matter how easy it looks.
See, there’s a tendency to jump into something because it looks easy, on
that thing, I don’t trust the Lord for that.
And that’s fallacy, don’t jump in just because it looks easy because you
may be jumping in a trapdoor situation.
So David is going to both rest and he’s going to do.
In verses 25-26 we see him resting, he is totally committing the problem
to the Lord’s hands. Now immediately
after that, in verse 27-29 he does something, and it sounds like he doesn’t
believe, and liberals have read this and they criticize it and say oh, this
religious faith business just is nothing.
Yes it is. Let’s look at what he does. Verse 27, “The king said also unto Zadok, the
priest, Are you a seer? Return into the
city in peace, and your two sons with you, Ahimaaz, thy son, and Jonathan, the
son of Abiathar. [28] See I will tarry in the plain of the wilderness, until
there come word from you to inform me. [29] Zadok, therefore, and Abiathar
carried the ark of God again to Jerusalem; and they tarried there.” Now that’s a very significant thing. Do you know what David has done just
now? He has just established the center
of his spy apparatus inside the camp of Absalom. So he’s committing it into the hands of the
Lord, and at the same breath that he commits it into God’s hands, he also takes
an action, he plans to spy inside the very capital of the city. So he says you just go there, he says you’re
a seer, he’s saying you pay attention to what’s going on, you be an informant
in other words. So Zadok wants to serve
David and David says Zadok, you can serve me a lot better by going in there and
being my informer.
Now verse 30-31, here’s another resting side to David, “And David went
up by the ascent of Mount Olivet, and wept as he went up, and had his head
covered, and he went barefoot; and all the people who were with him covered
every man his head, and they went up, weeping as they went up,” this is a dark
hour in the life of the nation as far the believing remnant is concerned. Their beloved king, the king who was so loyal
and faithful, who set up the temple and won their victory, exits the city and
retreats in defeat. It’s a dark hour,
and he goes to the mount of Olives, adumbrating, an adumbration of the Lord
Jesus Christ in His dark hour when He too would go to the Mount of Olives.
Verse 31, “And one told David, saying, Ahithophel is among the
conspirators with Absalom.” Remember who
Ahithophel was? Bathsheba’s
grandfather. And he knew that
Ahithophel, a very, very old man and trustworthy advisor had secret ulterior
motives for seeing that David was put down, David, the man who raped his
granddaughter, David, the man who killed and murdered the husband of his
granddaughter. Ahithophel had secret
reasons for seeing David put down. And
now David makes a prayer, here David rests.
“And David said, O LORD, I pray thee, turn the counsel of Ahithophel
into foolishness.” In other words,
thwart his counsel; we’re going to see that prayer is answered in a fantastic
way in chapter 17. So this is the rest;
David rests. What does he do? No sooner does he utter the prayer… and this,
by the way, is why I think in Psalm 3 he says “Thou hast heard from thy holy
hill,” because here he is, he’s walking up the Mount of Olives, and this
messenger comes up and says hey David, you know who he’s got? He’s got Ahithophel; now this is the final
blow. To understand why it’s a bad, bad situation,
up to this point David knows that his son only has junior officers, young men,
men without wisdom. Now no man has a lot
of wisdom until he’s very old in life.
This is why people are called “elders” in the Bible, this is why a Board
in a church should always have some older men because older men are the only
men who have lived long enough and have had enough experience to have stability
and to meet situations that a younger man just wouldn’t know about. So when the news comes, out of all people,
who does Absalom have? Ahithophel, this
is very bad news indeed because it now means that Absalom has age too on his
side. Not only does he have the masses
of the people but he has experience and this is a deadly blow. So David can do nothing except pray that God
would turn the whole counsel of Ahithophel down.
Now verse 32, no sooner does David pray this, “And it came to pass that,
when David was come to the top of the mount, where he worshiped God,” and in
the Hebrew he’s just getting to the top, this is the neatest thing to watch,
how God answers his prayer. Here’s the
Mount of Olives, David’s walking up the Mount of Olives, the messenger meets
him, David immediately responds to the bad news, as he continues to walk, “O
LORD, turn the counsel of Ahithophel into foolishness.” By the time he gets to the top of that
mountain the answer to prayer has come.
See, this is why he knows God’s working now in a fantastic way, because
who trots up. Just at the time that he
hits “the top of the mount, where he worshiped God, behold, Hushai, the
Archite, came to meet him with his coat torn, and earth upon head. [33] Unto
whom David said, If you pass on with me, then you shall be a burden to me,”
this is another very, very old man.
Verse 34, “But if you return to the city, and say unto Absalom, I will
be thy servant, O king; as I have been thy father’s servant to this time, so
will I now also be thy servant; then mayest thou for me defeat the counsel of
Ahithophel. [35] And has thou not there with thee Zadok and Abiathar, the
priests? Therefore it shall be, that
whatsoever thing thou shalt hear out of the king’s house, thou shall tell it to
Zadok and Abiathar, the priests. [36] Behold, they have with them their two
sons, Ahimaaz, Zadok’s son, and Jonathan, Abiathar’s son; and by them ye shall
send unto me everything that you can hear. [37] So Hushai, David’s friend, came into the
city, and Absalom came into Jerusalem.”
So what has David done? He has
established a spy net right into the heart of Absalom’s camp, not bad for a few
hours work. Why was David able to secure
a base for his counter revolution? Because first he had that mental attitude we
saw in Psalm 3, in the face of these kinds of disaster God can work quickly,
right in the middle of the chaos, no matter what the problem is in your
life. This was a dark hour in David’s life,
a dark hour in the lives of the people that loved him and cared for him, yet
right there within minutes God was answering prayer… within minutes. And he had a perfect net, and to just see how
great an answer to that prayer was, in chapters 16 and 17 we are going to see
how his spy net worked, and it’s going to be one of most beautifully
functioning intelligence systems you’ve ever seen, all set up by God under a
perfect use of the faith technique.