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A Royal Shambles (Part 2 of 2)

Truth for Life / Alistair Begg
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January 8, 2025 3:04 am

A Royal Shambles (Part 2 of 2)

Truth for Life / Alistair Begg

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January 8, 2025 3:04 am

While sin may provide a season of enjoyment, it ultimately offers false promises of satisfaction it cannot fulfill. Listen to Truth For Life as Alistair Begg follows King David’s ongoing saga of alienation, which illustrates why sin always ends in tears.



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Whether we want to admit it or not, Sin is often alluring. Although it sometimes provides a season of enjoyment, it ultimately promises satisfaction that it cannot fulfill.

And today on Truth for Life, Alistair Begg explains why sin always ends in tears. Well, our heading for this morning, I've decided, is a royal shambles. We continue to be in the midst of lust, death, alienation, yearning, bereavement, rape, murder, and toxic family relationships. And so, as daunting as it is, we need to get down to the task.

And so, what we're going to do is try and work our way all the way to the end. If you want some kind of outline, we're going to consider Joab's concern, the woman's conversation, the king's compliance, and finally, the king kisses Absalom. First of all, then, the concern of Joab. We know that David as the king has failed to execute justice. He at the same time, the king, has not only failed to show justice, but he is unwilling to show mercy, as we discover in this unfolding drama.

In fact, the king fails to show any decisive direction in relationship to this unfolding shambles. And so it falls to Joab to seek to break the impasse. That's his concern. Secondly, to the woman's conversation. And this is the substantial part of this chapter, and it's long. And of course, you will recognize that what is happening here is akin to what we already saw back in chapter 12, when Nathan the prophet comes to David, and he doesn't come to him straight out and say, What you did was wrong. He tells him a parable in order to bring him to the point where the parable brings about a sense of conviction on the part of David, and then he plays the ace, and he says, You're actually that man. Now, what's going on here is very similar. She is going to seek the king's help with a problem that isn't real in the hope that it will help him with a problem that is real.

And her appeal is straightforward. I need your help. Save me, O king, I need your help. Oh, he says, Yes, of course, I'll be glad.

Now, I've imagined that the king did this as something of a favor to Joab. There's a lady I'd like you to see. The lady comes in. Hello, what's she on about? She says, Well, I got a thing with a son and so on. He says, Okay, go home. I'll take care of it. She said, No, no, wait a minute. I want you to know something. And so he thinks that's finished there.

But no! And there we go, verse 11. Then she said, Please let the king invoke the LORD your God, that the avenger of blood kill no more, and my son not be destroyed. Now, what she's saying there is, Intervene so that the cycle of vengeance that my family want to institute will be broken for the sake of my son. He then says, with an oath, a familiar oath, as the LORD lives, a sworn decision by which he commits himself to the woman's cause, not one hair of your son shall fall to the ground.

But of course we know she didn't have a son. She was working the material to get David to see himself in the picture. So just when he thinks his case closed, verse 12, the woman said, Please let your servant speak a word to my lord the king.

Or, if I might just mention, something else. And he said, Speak. And then she joins the dots. Now she comes at him. And the woman said, Why then have you planned such a thing against the people of God?

Why have you acted in this way and convicted yourself by not bringing home your banished one? In other words, she says, what you're doing here in relationship to your son Absalom has got ramifications far bigger than simply whether the two of you are getting along. This has to do with the whole history of the people of God. It's a dramatic moment.

Far more than father-and-son relationship. It has the potential unresolved for civil war. And then she goes on in verse 14, and she says, We must all die.

We're like water spilled on the ground. I take it that what she's saying there is, You know what? Amnon is dead, and he isn't coming back. But God will not take away life. Well, of course, God does take away life. We know that the Lord kills and the Lord brings back to life. That's 1 Samuel 2.6. But what she's saying is, God, in this case, is a life-giver.

He's a restorer. Or, if you like, she's saying to him, King, death is irreversible, but God's dealings are far from irreversible. Or even, if you like, God's responses to things are far from irreversible. Well, of course, that ought to have rung even just a tiny bell in the back of his mind in relationship to chapter 12 and verse 13, when he repents, and Nathan says to him, The Lord has put away your sin. Isn't it amazing how we can know the forgiveness of God and refuse forgiveness to others?

How we can be set free and seek to hold others at arm's length from us? That's exactly what's going on here. Now, interestingly—and this is where it gets hard, I think—in verse 15, she goes back into drama mode. She has stepped out of it to make her point, but she hasn't said in doing that—she hasn't said, Oh, by the way, all that stuff about me being a widow and my sons, no, I just made all that stuff up. She hasn't said that. She doesn't say that. No, she comes right back into it in verse 15. Now, I've come to say this to my Lord the King, because the people have made me afraid.

That's the people that are coming against her. And I thought, I'll speak to the King, because it may be that the King will perform the request of his servant. I came to plead with you for my son.

Our lives have been threatened. So I said to myself, Perhaps the King will listen to me and rescue us from those who seek to destroy our heritage. I was convinced that the King will give us peace, because he is like the messenger of God. He's like the angel of God, the one to discern good and evil.

Was he listening? He said, I am coming to you for resolution, because you are like the angel of God. You're like the messenger of God. You're the one that knows the difference between good and bad. You know the difference between sleeping with your own wife and sleeping with somebody else's wife. You know it all. You're the King. Oh, what a jab in the stomach! And then she says to him, And the LORD your God be with you.

Well, of course, the explanation for David's victories lay in that reality, that it says again in 2 Samuel 5, and the reason for David's success was that the Lord his God was with him. And what we've discovered now is that that is a shaky context. Now, the king answered the woman, Is it okay if I ask you something?

I mean, that's really it. And now she says, she says, Yeah, you could speak. So, first of all, he says to her, You can speak. And now she—it's interesting, the petitioner has become the preacher, and now she is the one who is granting him permission to speak. And, of course, he inquires, Is Joab behind this? Now, the chances are that Joab had already addressed this with the king. And even if he hadn't already addressed it with the king, the king is savvy enough to recognize that there is something—there is someone behind this lady's little pantomime here. And of course, she explains.

She answers. And she says, Yeah, I can't deny it. It was Joab who put me up to it. He did it out of a concern—back to verse 20 now, so we are making progress—he did it out of a concern to change the course of things.

But my Lord has wisdom like the wisdom of the angel of God, to know all things on the earth. Nothing like a burst of flattery just to close it out. And with the drama over, she exits, stage left. So Joab's concern is a concern for the kingdom. The woman's conversation is this parody, this ruse, this subterfuge, in order that by an unorthodox methodology David may be brought to realize the predicament that is before him. Then we come to the king's compliance. Have Jordan chosen the word compliance?

I think it is the right word. Verse 21, then the king, he sent for Joab, obviously, and he says to him, Okay, Joab, fine. I'll go along with this. I grant this. Go bring back the young man Absalom.

And here we have a second falling on the face. Joab fell on his face to the ground, paid homage, blessed the king, and said, Today your servant knows that I've found favor in your sight. My lord the king, then, that the king has granted the request of his servant.

In other words, he must have been so wonderfully encouraged that his little strategy had yielded this benefit. And he acknowledges it. And so, verse 23, he goes to do what the king has said. He goes to Geshur, which is, of course, the jurisdiction of Absalom's maternal grandfather, as we saw, and he brought Absalom to Jerusalem.

Now, keep in mind, three years have elapsed between the end of chapter 13 and the beginning of chapter 14. For three years Absalom has lived banished. We're then introduced to Absalom—I'm not going to delay in that, this little sort of… If it was in contemporary terms, there would be a click on it on your phone.

You could click on it, it would bring up a picture of Absalom, and it would give you a little bit of background on him. He's Mr. Handsome.

There's nobody more handsome. He's striking in his appearance. There is a hint of Saul about him. Remember, Saul was the guy—big, tall, everybody loved him, all the girls fancied him. It's a dangerous predicament, one that I've never known. And it is a circumstance that ought to cause concern for us.

And there we have it. He's striking in his appearance. He's forceful in his personality. He's got a thing about his hair. Clearly, he's got a thing about his hair.

And I guess it cut once a year. And so he returns. He returns.

He has a daughter, Tamar. We'll come back to Absalom later. He returns to Jerusalem unpunished, unforgiven, and, as we're going to discover, unashamed. He returns unpunished, unforgiven, and unashamed. And I say to you again that this is acquiescence on the part of the king. This is the king's reluctant acceptance of Absalom's return.

He does it without protest. How is this then going to end? Because actually, we're at the point in the story where Absalom has now become the central character. Well, you say, let's just go immediately to the end of the chapter, and you have it, and the king kissed Absalom. Yes, well, how did we arrive at the kiss?

Well, we're told. He lives for two years in limbo. He says, You can come back into Jerusalem, but you're not coming anywhere near me.

You wouldn't call that much of a welcome, would you? And so he determines that he is going to have to intervene in some way, and he is contacting Joab. But in contemporary terms, Joab is not returning his calls. He called, tried to put in a call to Joab, I want to go see the king. He doesn't even reply.

He doesn't want to know. He tries it once, tries it twice. And so he takes a leaf from Joab's playbook.

Because remember, Joab decided that in order to achieve his end, he would have to try and use an unorthodox strategy in order to achieve his objective. And so Absalom says, Well, I've got a rather unorthodox strategy. He calls his servants, and he says, You know, his field is right beside ours.

It's full of barley. Why don't you just go and set fire to it? And that's exactly what they do. And so Absalom's servants, verse 30, set the field on fire.

Then Joab arose and went to Absalom at his house. It's a rather dramatic way to get your next-door neighbor to pay attention, but there you have it. And he actually comes and inquires. He must have known the answer. Why did you send your people to set my field on fire?

And he says, Are you kidding me? I sent word to you. Come here that I may send you to the king to ask, Why have I come from Gasher? It would be better for me to be still there. I'd be better off living there, banished, than living here, unwelcomed.

No welcome would be better than a halfhearted welcome. So I want an interview with a king. He's not asking to see his father. You will notice it's king, king, king, king, king. I was underlining king in my Bible until I just stopped. It is the king. It is the kingdom. This is what it is about.

This is not a sort of just a family feud. No, I want an audience, an interview with a king. And then in verse 33, there you have it. Then Joab went, told, summoned, came, bowed, and the king kissed Absalom. Actually, I don't think we need to regard Absalom's professed willingness to accept his fate if he were guilty.

I don't know that we need to take it very seriously, as we're about to see. So, here we end, and the king kissed Absalom. You must remember this. A kiss is just a kiss, and a sigh is just a sigh. What kind of kiss was this? This was a protocol kiss. This was a political kiss. This was a gesture. This is the reaction of the king, who has been manipulated into an environment that he was unprepared for and unwilling to enter into wholeheartedly.

Well, you say, it's fine, though, isn't it? It ends with a kiss. Surely the kiss has fixed everything.

If you think the kiss has fixed everything, it's only because you haven't read chapter 15. Now, what we have here—and I'll conclude in this way—this royal shambles is a terrible picture of alienation and disruption, first of all within a family and then within a kingdom or, if you like, within a nation. It is a picture that leaves us in absolutely no doubt that sin—no matter how good it feels for a season—that sin always ends in tears.

These chapters and this chapter make it absolutely clear how terrible our world would be if God gave us over to the consequences of sin without providing for us a righteous king, without giving to us the gospel. Who can deal with the shambles of our world? Who can deal with the shambles of our nation? Who can deal with the shambles of some of our families?

Who can deal with the shambles of my rebellious heart? Certainly not David. Certainly not David. Then who? Well, the one to whom David points. She says, You're the one who knows everything.

You're fantastic. Well, he wasn't. But the prophet said, There shall come forth a shoot from the stump of Jesse, and the Spirit of the LORD shall rest upon him. And he will execute justice and righteousness, and he will bring peace to the nations. Jesus. Jesus was happy to tell stories that had kisses in them.

You remember? The people are around him, and he says, You know, I've got one for you. There was a man, and he had two sons. And the younger of them, he got banished. He banished himself, actually. He ended up—his life was a complete mess. He recognized it. He decided he would go home.

He had a speech. He would say to his father, I screwed up. I sinned against heaven, and in your sight I'm no longer worthy to be called your son. I'd be happy if I could have a place just down in the garden.

I'd gladly cut the grass for you. But when he was a long way off, his father saw him and ran and fell on his neck and kissed him. That's the kiss you're looking for. Where does God come to kiss us? Where does God run out to us? Where does God stretch his arms to welcome us out of our chaos and out of our shambles?

In the cross of his dearly beloved Son. Two arms outstretched to save us from the shambles of a life lived in disinterest, in rebellion, against the one who has made us for himself, that we might rest in his provision. Oh, I hope that this will at least be a help to some of us, and it may be that one of you, one person, is here today and says, That's it for me. I don't know about that woman.

I don't know about Joab. I don't know about much. But I do know this, that my life is a walk in chaos, and I have been unable to fix it. If that Jesus stuff is the answer, that's for me. Well, may it be so. Father, thank you. Thank you that all Scripture is inspired by you, the living God. It is profitable for correction, for reproof, for training in righteousness. It is given to us in order that we might be made wise for salvation. So may it be that it leads us to the cross, that it leads us to Christ, that we might, as this woman did, bow down in obeisance before the King, and in humility of heart and in expression of our need, ask him to rule and reign over our lives. Certainly the answer is not in our endeavors, but only in your amazing grace. In Christ's name we pray.

Amen. You're listening to Truth for Life with Alistair Begg, a message he has titled, A Royal Shambles. You may feel like your life is in shambles and you're unable to fix it. And if that's the case, the Bible is able to address the pain and struggle you're facing. If you'd like to hear more teaching from Alistair, you can watch or listen to thousands of sermons online for free at truthforlife.org. And if you're searching for teaching about a particular topic, search for it at truthforlife.org slash topics. You'll find sermons on a variety of subjects, things like the assurance of salvation, backsliding, loneliness, marriage, God's providence.

There's so much more. And to help you grow in your relationship with God, Alistair Begg also provides pastoral guidance in a book we're recommending today called Truth for Life, 365 Daily Devotions, Volume Two. These are readings for each day of the year that will prompt you to consider a passage of scripture, to reflect on Alistair's insights about that passage and then apply God's instruction to your life.

One of our listeners had this to say about the book. I received the Truth for Life devotional when I became a truth partner. Not only has it helped our Sunday school study, but your daily nuggets opened my eyes and heart to the issue of forgiveness.

It was an amazing revelation that brought tears to my eyes. Whether you begin or end your day with these devotions, you'll find them an encouraging source of spiritual enrichment. You can request Volume Two of the Truth for Life daily devotional when you donate to Truth for Life today through the mobile app or online at truthforlife.org slash donate.

Or you can call us at 888-588-7884. Thanks for listening. Tomorrow we'll look at how the cultural desire for celebrity status has infiltrated the church. The Bible teaching of Alistair Begg is furnished by Truth for Life, where the Learning is for Living.
Whisper: medium.en / 2025-01-08 06:13:55 / 2025-01-08 06:22:24 / 8

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