New Beginnings, Part 2

Today on Summit Life with J.D.

Greer. David, despite being a man after God's own heart, has a besetting sin that ultimately is going to bring him down. So here's my question for you. What might be that besetting sin for you? Because whatever it is, the seeds of it are already at work in you right now. Hello, and welcome to Summit Life with pastor, author, and apologist, J.D.

Greer. As always, I'm your host, Molly Vidovitch. You know, God promised Israel a king, but what they were actually looking for from him was a king that would bring identity, happiness, and security. In the end, their hearts were broken by their first king, Saul. Well, in today's message, pastor J.D. talks about why even David was not the king Israel was ultimately looking for. Just like God brought David and then Jesus to the throne through chaos, he is also sovereign in the mess of our lives too.

So let's rejoin pastor J.D. for the conclusion of this teaching that he titled, New Beginnings. David mourns the death of his political rivals and he throws feasts for them when they want to reconcile. Most of David's men want to execute vengeance on Saul's men who chased him through the wilderness and tried to kill him. But David keeps saying to them, no, no, this is going to be a different kind of kingdom.

It's going to be a kingdom anchored in mercy. And y'all that brings about a peace that lasted for David's entire life over four decades. The greatest leaders in human history have been like this. A few years ago, I read this stunning book called the Bishop of Rwanda about Bishop John Rusihana who led Rwanda in the aftermath of the unspeakable violence that the Hutus, one of the people groups, inflicted on the Tutsis there. After peace was finally restored and the Hutus were subdued, Bishop John, who was himself a Tutsi, one of the ones who was oppressed, he recognized that there was this real appetite among the Tutsi people for vengeance. But Bishop John led his people and the whole nation to see that vengeance would not only destroy the Hutus, the oppressor, it would also destroy the soul of the Tutsis too.

He explained that holding unforgiveness in your heart is like swallowing poison in hopes that it will kill your enemy. The blessing of God, he said, the blessing of God comes to the merciful. And through his leadership, peace was restored to that country.

We can think about that with some of our own country's greatest leaders, right? After the horrific tragedy of slavery and the bloodiness of the Civil War, Abraham Lincoln in his second inaugural address famously said that we would achieve a just and lasting peace among ourselves only by dedicating ourselves to binding up the nations wounded on both sides to him who has borne the battle and his widow and his orphan. Abraham Lincoln said, I have always found that mercy bears richer fruits than strict justice. A hundred years later, Martin Luther King said repaying hate for hate only intensifies the existence of hate and evil in the universe. The strong person is the person who can cut the chains of hate.

Somebody must have enough of God in them to cut hate off and inject within the very structure of the universe that strong and powerful element of love break the chain of hate and inject love into the universe. When you act in mercy, you commune with God. David was a man after God's own heart because he acted in mercy. To the merciful, Jesus says, God shows himself merciful and that's what he did with David. Who is it that you need to act in mercy toward as we begin? Who is there that you got a legitimate thing against them like David had against Saul?

But you say, you know what, I'm in a kingdom that's defined by mercy and I'm going to start out this page of this year in mercy and not vengeance and hate. One more thing about this eulogy that reveals David's heart, what made him a man after God's own heart is number three, devotion to God's glory. Throughout this eulogy, what David grieves is what Saul's death meant for God's reputation in Israel and God's glory in the world. So he said, for example, verse 19, your glory, O Israel, is slain on the high places.

Tell it not in Gath, publish it not in the streets of Ashkelon, the Philistine cities, lest the daughters of the Philistines rejoice, lest the daughters of the uncircumcised exalt. Y'all, here's the thing, Saul's death was personally good for David, right? After all, it opened up his path to the throne. But David does not mention a single word about that, not one. The Christian counselor, Paul David Trebb says, you can know all you need to know about a man's heart by what he celebrates and by what he mourns. David mourns what this means for God's reputation in the world, even though it was good for him. David does not even mention that he's gonna be the new king.

That's how low his own glory was on his list. So let me ask you a question. How high is your glory and your personal benefit on your priority list for this year? What are you most anticipating? What are you most excited about?

What are you most worried about? Is it gonna be about what good and fun relationships might come into your life? Or are you mostly focused on how you might glorify God this year? Y'all listen, God might glorify himself by making you prosperous this year, but he also might give you a chance this year to bring him glory by how you suffer joyfully and patiently through pain or by how gracious you are in the midst of a relational strife.

If that's what God has for you, are you ready to receive that with joy? Y'all, one of the things that I've always wanted to characterize my life and my ministry is that I cared more about God's kingdom than I did JD's. It's one of the reasons that we as a church have focused so much on church planting and raising up leaders and giving away increasing amounts of our money to missions in the local outreach. Like I've told you, church planting and missions are rarely helpful for your bottom line. In fact, it's the opposite.

You end up sending out some of your best people and it costs a lot of money to get them established. I've told you this, not one time in all of our years of church planting, not one of these 508 churches that we planted, not one time have I ever had one of them call me back up and say, man, we had so much money come in last year, we just wanted to share some of it back with you. In fact, like I've said, church plants are a lot like teenagers. All they want is your money and your affirmation and then for you to leave them alone.

That's all they want. But see, someone, if we want to glorify God, that's what we're going to focus on. It's not about growing us. It's not about our empire. It's about the kingdom of God.

And that's a different equation. And y'all, I hope, I hope that when the day comes that it's better for the church, for me to step aside for somebody new, some rising leader, I hope I'll do that. I don't think that's anytime soon, by the way.

I hope not. I mean, I'm only 39, so I've got plenty of years ahead of me, but I hope that when it's time, when it's time for me to step aside, I hope I don't hold on for personal reasons if it would be better for you, for somebody else to take the reins. One of the things Veronica and I, my wife and I do every year in January is we lay our future out on the table. And we just say to God, we say, God, what do you want for our future?

It's a blank check. Listen, I need you to be clear. We have no desire at all to ever leave.

We love it here. But honestly, we are afraid, she and I are afraid of building a nice, comfortable, predictable life for ourselves here and end up focusing more on that than we do God's glory. You can know all you need to know about a man's heart, by what he celebrates and what he mourns. Y'all, I say, I want to be focused on God's glory above all, but honestly, anybody that knows me, that's close to me knows that that is not true of me all the time, or even the majority of the time. Now, I can tell that by how angry I get at God when things don't go well for me personally. I feel betrayed. I'm like, God, I did my part. What are you doing?

God, you didn't keep up your end of the deal. Or I see that in how jealous I get toward others who are doing better than me. I would rather them do poorly and not bring God glory than I would them take some glory away from me. I still seem to care a lot about JD's personal prosperity, so you can definitely pray for me for this year. The Westminster Confession very famously says that the chief purpose of man is to glorify God.

That's my whole role and yours too. Three amazing things about David, a posture of submission, an instinct for mercy, and a devotion to God's glory. These are in large part what made David a man after God's own heart. And yet, and yet, despite these amazing three qualities that we keep seeing in David, these five chapters don't have a positive tone. They have an ominous tone because you see in these chapters some very disturbing things about David that are going to make us ask, how could David possibly be the king that we're waiting for?

If you're taking notes, write down. I'm just going to give you two. We see, number one, compromises of character.

Compromises of character. Flip over to 2 Samuel 3. 2 Samuel 3. And you're going to find a list of all of David's wives. By this point, by the way, he's got six, not counting his first wife, which we'll cover here in a minute.

But you've got Abigail, remember her? Ahinoin, Maakah, or however you say that, Hagith, Abital, and Eglah, which has got to be the worst name for a woman I've ever heard. Eglah.

I mean, seriously, how do you come up with that? Multiplying wives. Y'all, that is exactly, precisely what God had commanded kings in Israel not to do. Deuteronomy 17, 17, don't multiply wives. I know Cam Newton and some of those dudes are out there saying, now it's in the Bible.

It's not. God had told him, don't do that. But see, it was common in those days for kings to take multiple wives because they could.

It was like a status symbol. And tragically, David went along more with the norms of society than he did, conformed to God's word. Then toward the end of chapter three, we're going to find a really disturbing incident involving David's first wife, Michael. Michael had been King Saul's daughter. He was also David's first wife and first love. They genuinely, read the story, they genuinely seem to be in love.

All indications are they have a great marriage and she's a pretty good wife. I say that because at one point she even risked her life to protect David, put her own life in danger. But David wasn't satisfied with just Michael. He became infatuated with Abigail.

Remember that story? And he wanted her too. So while he was married to Michael, he also married Abigail. Well, after David got exiled, King Saul took Michael and married her off to another man. Meanwhile, David goes out and marries five more wives. And now here we are in chapter three, several years later, David is now King again, and he decided he wants Michael back as wife. Not because he misses her, but because he needs her for strategic reasons.

Marry Michael back for strategic reasons. Marrying her would give him a political alliance with the house of Saul, and that would be helpful for him right now. Look at verse 14. So David sent messengers to Ish-bosheth, who is Saul's son, whose rival came, we'll get to that in a minute, saying, give me my wife Michael back for whom I paid a bride price of a hundred four skins of the Philistines, which is an amazing price to ask for your daughter's hands and marriage.

Dads, I don't think we could get away with that anymore for what it's worth, but I love the creativity at verse 15. And Ish-bosheth sent and took her from her husband, Paltiel, the son of Laish, but her husband went with her, weeping after her all the way to Baharim. Then Abner, who was the guy that was leading all this, said to him, go home.

And he having no other choice, he returned. What stands out in those verses, y'all, is the utterly callous attitude that David has toward Michael. David breaks up a happy home for his own convenience. In general, women are pawns for David. And by the way, this won't be the last time that David takes another man's wife for his convenience.

We've got the infamous Bathsheba incident just ahead of us. Thanks for listening to Summit Life with J.D. Greer. If you want to know more about this ministry, visit us online at jdgreer.com.

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It's an honor for us to be able to be a source of encouragement for you each day. Did you know that these Summit Life broadcasts are only one of the ways that you can keep up with Pastor J.D. 's ministry? Now, if you're like me, I spend a good amount of time on my phone.

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Greer, right here on Summit Life. Here's what I want you to hear. The Bathsheba incident doesn't come out of nowhere. The Bathsheba incident is the fruition of a dark pattern in David's life. David, despite being a man after God's own heart, has a besetting sin that ultimately is going to bring him down. So here's my question for you. What might be that besetting sin for you?

Because whatever it is, the seeds of it are already at work in you right now. In accountability groups that I've been a part of over the years, here's how we sometimes will ask that to each other. We'll say, if you knew, if you knew you could see into the future and you knew this year Satan was going to take you down.

If you knew that, how would he do it? If you knew you didn't know what it was, but you knew it was going to happen this year, what do you think it would be? Would it be sexual temptation, an affair, pornography, cheating on your finances, a temper problem, abuse of power, self-pity, bitterness, unforgiveness, judgmentalism?

Whatever it is, beware because the seeds of compromise are present inside you long before they harvest in destruction. If you were to commit some heinous sin three years, three to four years from now, what would you look back on today as the seeds of that sin? You see, all sin is like a cancer.

It starts out small, but left unchecked, it metastasizes until it takes over all the organs and brings the whole body down. If you knew Satan was going to bring you down this year, how would it happen? Identify the seeds of that and you need to address them.

If not, you might have your own Bathsheba incident. John Owen, the famous Puritan, always said, you must be killing sin or it will be killing you. It's like cancer.

You're either killing it or it's killing you. You've got to get radical with some of those patterns. Here's the second thing, the last thing that reveals that David might not be the king that we're looking for. Number two, it's an inability to address Israel's deepest problems. An inability to address Israel's deepest problems. I hope you'll take time to read these five chapters because they record some of the craziest stories that you will find anywhere in the Bible. Stuff, honestly, that would put Vikings and Yellowstone to shame. And I'm not endorsing those shows, okay? But sit back for a minute and let me just tell some of these stories to you, okay?

You ready? Chapter two. After David is anointed king, Ish-bosheth, who is Saul's son, decides to also anoint himself as a rival king. So you've got two rival kings now, one is the king of Israel, one in the south, David, and one in the north, Ish-bosheth, who is Saul's son. Ish-bosheth, whose name is really hard to say, his main general is Abner, who had been the captain of Saul's army. David's main general is a guy named Joab, and these two guys square up their armies to decide who is going to be the real king. Abner, representing Ish-bosheth, the northern army, suggests that they decide it by representative warfare where every side chooses their 12 best soldiers and they fight and whoever wins gets the kingdom.

It's kind of like a gladiators duel or something out of Black Panther by the weird waterfall like that scene. The result, verse 16 says that all 12 grabbed each other by the beards and stabbed each other in the stomach. Apparently, one or two of David's guys are left standing, which means that David's side wins, so Abner and his men take off fleeing for their lives. And Azahael, who is Joab's brother, Joab, remember, was the general of David's kingdom, David's army, Azahael, his brother, takes off in pursuit of Abner. And Abner keeps trying to tell him to go away and not to fight him, but Azahael won't give up. So Abner spins around and puts his spear out and Azahael runs right through it and he dies.

Again, Azahael is Joab's brother, so he's pretty ticked about that. So Abner escapes and goes back to King Ish-bosheth where he starts to sleep with one of Saul's old concubines. But that makes Ish-bosheth, Saul's son, mad because not only is Abner sleeping with his stepmom, he feels like Abner might be making his own play for the throne through that.

Like, sleep with the king's old wife, maybe that means you should be king. So he and Abner get in a huge argument and Abner decides that he is tired of being treated like a servant and so he defects to team David. Abner comes secretly to David to make a new alliance and while they're in negotiation, Joab says to him, hey Abner, there's a few private details that I'd like to work out with you, so why don't you step back here into this dark, secret, private hallway with me and let's discuss. Now remember, Abner was the one who killed Joab's brother, so when Joab gets Abner back in the hallway, he whips out a small dagger and stabs Abner in the gut, killing him.

A lot of gut deaths in these stories. Meanwhile, back in the northern kingdom, two of Saul's old lieutenants, Bana and Rechab, murder Ishmael, who had been Saul's son, who was king there in the northern kingdom, they murder him in his sleep. Then they cut off Ishmael's head, box it up, and bring it to David, thinking that they're going to get rewarded for crushing David's rival king. But David responds to them exactly like he did to the Amalekite in chapter one. He says, how dare you take it upon yourself to murder members of God's anointed family, and he has both those jokers executed right there on the spot. Bottom line, seven and a half years after Saul's death, David is finally king over one united Israel. Now, I know you probably have two reactions to hearing all that.

First, you're like, that is a lot of details. Is there going to be a quiz? No. Well, maybe, but not today.

Your second reaction is, man, that is some jacked up stuff. I mean, this is like Old Testament Game of Thrones, another show I do not endorse, have not seen, and that you should not watch either, okay? But what all this reveals is that the kingdom that David inherits is deeply divided. David reigns over a mess. This is a kingdom that is bathed in revenge, blood, and chaos. And while David is able to bring a chapter of peace, pretty soon this whole thing is going to unravel.

Israel's problems, you see, are too deep for even a righteous ruler like David to fix. Throughout history, endless political leaders have risen up to say that some government system will end injustice and bring peace. Karl Marx promised that his politics would usher in a utopia, but after a couple of centuries, we can safely say that all communism does is exacerbate suffering, famine, and injustice. In the name of equality, it creates tyranny. In many ways, our own country's founding documents imply that our freedoms and our prosperity would produce a race of good men. And listen, our government is certainly a much better system than communism is, but those freedoms have not cured greed, have they? They've not brought justice or equality for all. In many ways, the science realm has said education. If you could just get educated, then everybody will become peaceful and harmonious. That's not true. People say money will do it.

That's not true either. I'm not saying there's no such thing as good government. What I'm saying is that humanity needs a different savior, one that can heal us in places that governments can't touch. And see, that leads us, readers of this story, not to despair.

It leads us to hope. Because you see, one day from the tribe and lineage of David, another king is going to be born in the city of David, a savior who is Christ the Lord. But unlike David, this king is not going to have any compromises of character. He's not going to use his power to take wives or extort privileges from others. Instead, he'll use his power to lay down his life for his people, even for his enemies. And through his death and his resurrection, he's going to release into the world of power that can heal us at our most broken places. David is not the king that we are looking for. Jesus is. Let me close with one final observation. It's striking to me that David, God's anointed king, comes to the throne through a mess. I mean, an absolute bloody mess.

Get this. The same thing was true of Jesus, right? David's defendant, Jesus, when Dave and Jesus one day comes to earth as king, his advent was one filled with bloodshed and injustice. Herod had every baby under two murdered.

Rome was oppressive, some of the most oppressive tyrants the world had ever known. And yet, and yet, y'all, through that dark chaos, God brought his king to the throne. God brought his king to the throne to the chaos in David's generation. He brought his king to the throne in Jesus's generation that wasn't a bunch of random chaotic mess that was actually all part of the plan. And what if I were just to say from there the same thing is true in your life?

Your life may feel like a mess, but just like God was sovereign bringing David to the throne and Jesus to the throne through chaos, he's bringing his kingdom out of your chaos too. Y'all, I'm not saying the mess isn't real. I'm not saying it's not painful. I'm not saying there are not things to address. It is.

It is painful. It is real. I'm saying the mess and the chaos aren't the truest, deepest, most eternal reality. And just as God was sovereign in the mess of these chapters, he's sovereign in the mess of your life too. You can trust him because he's bringing his kingdom out, just like he said, and you should just trust him and join him in what he is doing. There are three amazing qualities we see in David that we should all seek to emulate this year. A posture of submission, an instinct for mercy, a devotion to God's glory. And more importantly, trust the savior who is at work in all these things. And that means all is well in Israel and all is well with my soul. A posture of submission, an instinct for mercy, and a devotion to God's glory.

Are those the things that define your life? What a great lesson from Pastor J.D. Greer as we continue to examine the life of David here on Summit Life. As we wrap up the week, I wanted to make sure that you knew about our premium resource for the month. It's an eight-part Bible study on the life of David that expands on our current teaching series.

It's a fantastic resource to help you grow in your understanding of the lessons learned from David's life and how it applies to us today. All of our gospel partners who support us financially each month are sent these resources automatically, and we also send them to one-time givers as well. So if you'd like to support this ministry today, call us now at 866-335-5220.

That's 866-335-5220. Or you can give online at jdgreer.com. That's jdgreer.com. While you're on the website, don't forget to sign up for our weekly newsletter to get ministry updates, information about new resources, and Pastor J.D. 's latest blog post delivered straight to your inbox.

It's a great way to stay connected with Summit Life, and it's completely free to subscribe. Sign up when you go to jdgreer.com. I'm Molly Vidovitch. Well, we've learned a lot from King David already, and next time on the program, we're going to get undignified in our worship. See you again next week right here on Summit Life with J.D. Greer. Today's program was produced and sponsored by J.D. Greer Ministries.