The ancient events are here to teach us how to better do life. We're supposed to learn from this story, and there is much here to learn from. The battles in the Bible are historically true, but they are spiritually relevant. Listen to this verse about King Jehoshaphat in First Kings 22.
Now, the rest of the Acts of Jehoshaphat. The might that he showed and how he made war—are they not written in the book of the chronicles of the kings of Judah? This is Cross Reference Radio with our pastor and teacher Rick Gaston. Rick is the pastor of Calvary Chapel Mechanicsville. Pastor Rick is currently teaching through the book of Second Samuel.
Please stay with us after today's message to hear more information about Cross Reference Radio, specifically how you can get a free copy of this teaching. But for now, let's join Pastor Rick in the Book of Second Samuel, chapter ten, with today's edition of Cross Reference Radio. Second Samuel chapter ten. Paranoia brought death. That's the title of this consideration.
I was going to. Entitle it "The Stouthearted Versus the Dimwitted," but felt that might be a little harsh, or at least taken that way. There are dimwits in this chapter, and they cause much death, and they were unkind people. These are the folks that sent a message to those of Jabez Gilead long ago and said, "We want you to subject yourselves to us, and we'll take out the right eye of each man, and we will bring shame on Israel." And they sent to Saul, who was just anointed king, Israel's first king. And Saul rallied the men, and they went up, and they fought, and they were successful against these people.
So that king Nahash, apparently the same people, he had a common enemy with David, and that was Saul. And that comes out a little bit in the story when we get to it. But we're dealing with paranoia. These folks were too paranoid to receive an act of kindness, and they were too stupid to say sorry after committing an unkind act. And again, it brought much death.
It wasn't like, "Oops, you know, just sorry about that. We hurt your feelings." Thousands of people died. These ancient events are in the Scripture to teach us how to do life better. They're not just some archaic story with no value. There is a moral.
There is a purpose for them, and God is very much involved. And so we are getting another act of kindness from David, an act of paranoia from these dimwits. And much bloodshed because of them, the carnage they caused by again stupid people. It stands out, and so I repeat: the ancient events are here to teach us how to better do life. We're supposed to learn from this story, and there is much here to learn from.
The battles in the Bible are historically true, but they are spiritually relevant. Listen to this verse about King Jehoshaphat in one Kings twenty-two.
Now, the rest of the acts of Jehoshaphat, the might that he showed, and how he made war, are they not written in the book of the Chronicles of the Kings of Judah? Consider the implications of the language alongside life experiences with these two phrases from that brief biographical moment: the might that he showed. And how he made war. The puzzle of life begins the moment that we forget that life is a battle, that we live in a war zone. Earth is a war zone.
It doubles as an insane asylum, but it is also a war zone. It is not an end to itself. It's not. This is not it. This life lived in a war zone.
Where there are no spectators, none of us born into this life are spectators. All participants, and we lose sight. If we lose sight of this, then we risk becoming bitter and fatalistic, paganistic, unbelievers. And so, again, going back to King Jehoshaphat, the might that he showed.
Well, I want to show might in my faith. And how he made war. Well, how do you make war? You live in a war zone. How do you make war?
How do you go about your life for Christ? And so it does matter.
So as I look at these stories personally in my own devotional time, I say to myself, "Boy, this is how it is spiritually." Now, verse one. It happened after this that the king of the people of Ammon died. And Hanan his son reigned in his place. Then David said, Verse two: I will show kindness to Hanan, the son of Nahash, as his father showed kindness to me.
So David sent by the hand of his servants to comfort him concerning his father. And David's servants came into the land of the people of Ammon. This is on the east side of Jordan, modern day Jordan, the Kingdom of Jordan. This Nahash again is probably the one defeated by Saul at Jabesh Gilead, and the reason why he showed kindness to David is the link would be that they had the mutual enemy of Saul. But here again, is David showing more grace?
He was showing it to Mephibosheth, what descendant remains of Jonathan, my friend, who I may show kindness to, and he did just that. And now he hears that Nahash died, and he says, "You know, this is terrible thing to deal with. I'm going to just send my condolences through my ambassadors." Verse three, and the princes of the people of Ammon said to Hanan, their lord. Do you think that David really honors your father because he has sent comforters to you? Has David not rather sent his servants to you and to search the city and spy it out and overthrow it?
Another palace in the Bible, stuffed with naive counselors and advisers, smug enough to give horrific advice. I mean, you're going to give advice to somebody if they're going to ask you know what looks better with this you know blue shoes or brown shoes you can give bad advice and they can just suffer the consequence if they take it or not. But there are other areas in life where advice can be very harmful for both. The person may receive good advice and not do what they're supposed to do with it. Did do the opposite thing.
Well, before we open that up, because I want to stay on paranoia a little bit, that is unfounded mistrust. We have no reason to be, you know, spooked like that. There must be facts involved, not just you know your feelings. Paranoia creates a mess. It is a sorcerer.
It creates this potion of poison that does nothing good. And this paranoia, this fearful suspicion without basis, is a rude brand of distrust. Here, the man is showing them kindness, and they're too unkind to recognize it. It's an unreasonable suspicion, and we should fear unreasonable suspicion. There sometimes can be overruled by a spirit of discernment.
That has a history of being accurate, and so this contrast between the kings David is gracious and Hanun is incompetent. He's going to listen to these advisors. He's not going to challenge them, and he's going to lose everything. And so are a lot of others. Unfounded suspicion can wreck a life, many many lives around it.
And that is a great part of this lesson: that it's not cute, it's not good for anyone. It's bad for everyone. It would be different if they again had something to say.
Well, this is why we do not trust David. Satan's seeds of mistrust, without proof, were planted in the mind of Eve. When she was led to question God, without proof, has God said that was the first seed? You will not die. It's the next one.
You'll be like God. All of them meant to hurt, to cause harm, to cause her to fear, to fear that God was somehow not being honest with her. To question his character, the devil got Eve to doubt God, doubted his good intentions when he said, "Of all the trees you can eat, any one of them except one." Is that too much to ask you for any reason? I am God. I don't have to give you a reason.
I'm giving you a command. You can eat any of those except this one.
Well, from then on. Life became the war zone that I was talking about earlier, and these princes of Ammon got Hanun, this king, to doubt this good king David's intentions, and then it became a war zone for them. Critical decisions should not be dominated by baseless fear. We all have concerns, and we should approach it reasonably, methodically. Facts must not be passed over simply because something sounds possible or doable, you know, feasible or plausible.
I mean, I could have had chicken for lunch. That's believable and it's doable, but I did not have chicken for lunch. And of course, I don't know. I'm not very good at bringing up some examples sometimes, but that's the one I had. And this feasibility and plausibility, this doable and possible, that's not enough to make an important decision.
You gotta have truth, something that has some teeth in it. All heresy. Has in it that which is plausible and feasible, that which is doable and possible. On the surface, it sounds good, and those who don't dig down deeper, they fall for the lies. Colossians chapter two, Paul said, "Now this I say, lest anyone should deceive you with persuasive words." Remember, he said, "Beware, lest anyone cheat you through philosophy and empty deceit, according to the traditions of men." Basic principles of the world.
You're complete in Christ. Still telling this to Christians, and they still don't believe it. Not all, thank God, but many Christians don't believe they're complete in Christ. They have to go to the world to find out how to be complete, and it's not biblical. But you know, you love anyway.
I mean, when none of us are dynamos or superheroes of the faith, we all have our weaknesses, but we must. Work to contain them. Paul, when he says, "Lest anyone should deceive you with persuasive words," that phrase "persuasive words" in the English is a single word in the Greek, and it means plausible. It sounds true without proof. That's what Paul was saying to the Colossians because the Gnostics were coming in there with all these grand ideas.
Well, spiritually speaking, sin is not the same, and just the stuff that was a lie. I mean, I can say to you, you know, you can't put fire out with hot water.
Sounds right. Fire is hot. Water is hot. The two together must make it hotter. But it's not true.
Hot water will put out fire, and some of you will try it. Maybe it's like I'll be darned; it works.
So we arrive at our conclusions on truth and fact, not just possibilities and the doables. Just because something is believable does not make it so. There's more to it. And that's why those at Berea were more noble-minded than those at Thessalonica, in that they searched the Scriptures daily to see if these things were so. And Paul would preach to the Jews that were in Berea, and they would say, "Man, that's pretty good.
Now let's go to the Scripture and see if you can back it up." Whereas the Thessalonians were, in their case, they were a little bit more ready to receive what Paul had to say, but it worked out.
Well, except for the ones that cause trouble, of course. And so now we move on to verse four, knowing that as we're going forward, paranoia is not something we need to feed in our own lives. It can devastate any relationship. Not just a marriage, not just a church, friendship, any relationship can be ruined if someone is determined to be paranoid. And if you've ever met someone who's paranoid, they're to after a while it becomes like their little pet.
They've got to have it with them. They're not comfortable unless they're paranoid. That was my take on some of them that I've had to deal with. It's like, what is it going to take you to stop feeling this way? You've got no proof, no evidence for this, and yet you continue with it, and it's destructive.
Well, they can counter with, well, just because I'm paranoid doesn't mean someone's not chasing me. I mean, you could be paranoid, and someone is after you, but that's not right. Anyway, verse four. Therefore, Hanun took David's servants, shaved off half their beards, cut off their garments in the middle at their buttocks, and sent them away. And without even considering the consequence, you see what I mean by dim wits.
They didn't say, "Well, David's going to love this." Instead of making up their minds, they made up their feelings, and they acted out their paranoia. And they didn't mind acting it out on others, causing them shame to humiliate David again. Short sighted. Not considering that he was not to be trifled with, Isaiah has this interesting thing to say. Because remember, David is showing them kindness, and they're too dense to see it, too suspicious and nervous about it.
You can't even compliment them; they think you're out to get them. He's just trying to butter me up. Isaiah 26:10. Let grace be shown to the wicked, yet he will not learn righteousness. And in the land of the up.
Of uprightness, he will deal unjustly, and will not behold the majesty of the Lord. He's stubborn. You can't show him kindness. He'll take it. He'll explain.
He thinks it's weakness or something, and try to just mess up the whole affair. There are really people like this, unfortunately, and every key on our keychain tells us that. That you have to lock up your stuff. Because people can really be a problem, and so this triple insult hurled at David, they slandered his motives, which was probably the heaviest strike at all. You know, so you're doing kindness, and they call you a liar.
They attacked the masculinity of his ambassadors. If they had come as tourists, nobody would have mind. But no, they had come with the kindness from David. They humiliated the Jewish people.
Well, they attacked the masculinity by shaving off half their beards. That was a big thing in their culture. The men wore beards. The price of razors just made it impossible. No, it's not true.
But anyway, the Jewish people, of course, being humiliated when they exposed their nakedness. Leaving them naked from the hips down, this treatment of shaving that they received, the cutting off the garment, was how you treated prisoners of war. Isaiah chapter twenty.
So shall the king of Assyria lead away the Egyptians as prisoners and the Ethiopians as captives, young and old, naked and barefoot, with their buttocks uncovered, to the shame of Egypt. And so there. Cutting their garments like this was to shame the Jewish people. This was in line with Nehash, the king that died when he wanted to conquer Jabesh Gilead. He said right out, "I want to shame the Jewish people." I think part of the problem, just part of it, that Antichrist will have against the Jewish people is that they're not going to want to be globalized.
They're going to want to retain. Their identity, and that's going to really just fuel the flames of his hatred. Because we know, in a world that wants to be globalized, you don't have a right to be a patriot to love your country. You have to love this global monstrosity that they are cooking up, this modern day babble. Anyway, it's about a thirty mile trek from Rabah, the key city of the.
Ammonites, where this is taking place, to Jericho, where these men will have to wait.
Now, thirty miles. You got to know they're hoping they're not going to see anybody on the way. How unfortunate! You know they're ashamed, and I'm sure they saw people. And man, what a rough ride!
Verse ten. When they told David, he sent to meet them because the men were greatly ashamed. And the king said, "Wait at Jericho until your beards have grown, and then return." So David is sympathetic. I know, guys, a tough blow. I know you don't have to come here; just hang out there, and I'll take it from here.
This is an act of war. He can't let this slide. The next thing you know, other kingdoms will be coming against him. He had this cannot go unpunished.
So the deed of grace. Shown to these dimwits at Ammon, plunged the region into war, and it's a big war, not a little one. Verse six: When the people of Ammon saw that they had made themselves repulsive to David, the people of Ammon sent and hired the Syrians of Bethreob, the Syrians of Zoba, twenty thousand foot soldiers. And from the king of Maaca, one thousand men, and from Ishshab, twelve thousand men.
So there's a lot of people going to be on the battlefield. This is just one side, and a great many of them going to be slaughtered. And this is only the first part. It's a two part war. It says here, the people of Ammon saw that they made themselves repulsive.
Elsewhere, the translators in the Old King James version used the word odious. It's closer. They had a stench. That's the word. David thinks we have this smell about us.
That is kind of the picturesque language. First Chronicles in the parallel account, chapter nineteen. When the people of Ammon saw that they had made themselves repulsive to David, and there they use the same word. Hanun and the people of Ammon sent a thousand talents of silver to hire for themselves chariots and horsemen from Mesopotamia, from Syria, Maaca, and from Zobah.
So they reached out all over the place. A talent of silver is about seventy-five pounds.
Well, here they have a thousand.
So this is a king's fee. This war is already expensive. All because they could not accept a deed of kindness.
Now, I mean, there are times you know someone's maybe stalking you or something like that. That's not paranoia. That you have grounds for a little concern about what's going on here. But these guys, with nothing, brought all of this down on the region, and they're spending, as I mentioned, a king's fortune to hire these mercenaries to deliver them. From this self-inflicted wound, and the one thing that could have saved everyone—further judgment and punishment, and ultimately defeat—would have been just, David, we were wrong.
They don't even try. They don't send ambassadors to David. They, instead of lawyering up. They, you know, war up. Everybody's the war drums are beating all over the place.
They don't even bother to try. They are dim wits with no care. They think that they're going to win. The very thing they thought that they were avoiding by identifying these men as spies is the very thing they caused. As such, this is what paranoia does.
Imaginary problems can become a real problem if one's reasoning abilities collapse.
So, if you think you're being chased by a giant bunny, and it's not true, but if you really think it, it becomes a problem. Especially if you run out into traffic trying to get away from the giant bunny. How do you advise somebody on this? This is all in your head.
Well, that doesn't mean it's trivial. It means it's a problem. I'll come back to that.
Well, I'll stay on it just for a little bit more. It's not the fault of the one who gives good advice if the one who does not receive that good advice does something to themselves or someone else. Yes, Satan would try to come along and say, "Ah, you gave advice, but it didn't work because you didn't make it the right way or some other stupid thing." The individual is responsible. Proverbs chapter one verse thirty. There are quite a few of these throughout the proverbs.
He says they would have none of my counsel and despise my every rebuke. Wisdom is appealing to them. Wisdom is appealing to their decision, but is not appealing to them. I hope I'm not confusing you there. Coming back to Proverbs, therefore they shall eat the fruit of their own way and be filled to the full with their own fancies.
So there in Proverbs one, he said, you know, I've appealed to you. I've made this argument that this shoots down this crazy stuff you're up to, but you're going to do it anyway. In another section in chapter one, he says, and wisdom will mock them. Told you so. But you just won't listen, will you?
We know people like this. They make a wreck of their lives because they just will not listen. It's so frustrating. What are you supposed to do? I mean, you pray, you appeal to God on their behalf, you intercede, and there's really nothing more you can do.
You poke too much, you make things worse. Anyway. Bloodshed because of these incompetent counselors, these low caliber people mess up everything. I had an older friend years ago. He was fond of saying about people who were problems; they mess up the whole world.
It's hyperbole, but it messed up his whole world. Or if you were close enough to them. Verse seven.
Now, when David heard it, he sent Joab and all the army of the mighty men. Had David not sent his army again, further aggressions would come his way. He had to do this. This has been the latest edition of Cross Reference Radio. Pastor Rick Gaston is teaching through the Book of Second Samuel, which details the reign of David as king of Israel.
There are so many life lessons to be learned during these years of David's life. We're glad you've tuned in to hear more from God's Word. This radio ministry comes to you from Calvary Chapel Mechanicsville in Mechanicsville, Virginia. If you're interested in Accessing more messages, just like this one, you can listen online or download these messages at CrossReferenceRadio dot com. You can also subscribe to our podcast by going to your favorite podcast app.
We can't wait for you to step into the next teaching that Pastor Rick has for us.
So come back next time for Cross Reference Radio.
