“Your Kingdom Come” (Part 1 of 3)

The Bible teaches that David was God's anointed king Why was David's kingdom unstable?

Why would a king chosen by God suffer challenges and failures so late in his reign? Today on Truth for Life, Alistair Begg explains how we can find hope in David's tumultuous story. 2 Samuel 20 Now there happened to be there a worthless man whose name was Sheba the son of Bichri, a Benjaminite. And he blew the trumpet and said, We have no portion in David, and we have no inheritance in the son of Jesse, every man to his tents, O Israel. So all the men of Israel withdrew from David and followed Sheba the son of Bichri. But the men of Judah followed their king steadfastly from the Jordan to Jerusalem. And David came to his house at Jerusalem. And the king took the ten concubines whom he had left to care for the house and put them in a house under guard and provided for them, but did not go into them.

So they were shut up until the day of their death, living as if in widowhood. Then the king said to Amasa, Call the men of Judah together to me within three days, and be here yourself. So Amasa went to summon Judah, but he delayed beyond the set time that had been appointed him. And David said to Abishai, Now Sheba the son of Bichri will do us more harm than Absalom. Take your lord's servants and pursue him, lest he get himself to fortified cities and escape from us. And there went out after him Joab's men and the Cherithites and the Pelethites and all the mighty men.

They went out from Jerusalem to pursue Sheba the son of Bichri. When they were at the great stone that is in Gibeon, Amasa came to meet them. Now Joab was wearing a soldier's garment, and over it was a belt with a sword in its sheath fastened on his thigh, and as he went forward it fell out. And Joab said to Amasa, Is it well with you, my brother? And Joab took Amasa by the beard with his right hand to kiss him.

But Amasa did not observe the sword that was in Joab's hand. So Joab struck him with it in the stomach and spilled his untrails to the ground without striking a second blow, and he died. Then Joab and Abishai his brother pursued Sheba the son of Bichri. And one of Joab's young men took his stand by Amasa and said, Whoever favors Joab and whoever is for David, let him follow Joab. And Amasa lay wallowing in his blood in the highway, and anyone who came by seeing him stopped.

And when the man saw that all the people stopped, he carried Amasa out of the highway into the field and threw a garment over him. When he was taken out of the highway, all the people went on after Joab to pursue Sheba the son of Bichri. And Sheba passed through all the tribes of Israel to Abel of Beth-Makkah. And all the Bichrites assembled and followed him in. And all the men who were with Joab came and besieged him in Abel of Beth-Makkah.

They cast up a mound against the city, and it stood against the rampart, and they were battering the wall to throw it down. Then a wise woman called from the city, Listen, listen, tell Joab, come here, that I may speak to you. And he came near her, and the woman said, Are you Joab? He answered, I am. Then she said to him, Listen to the words of your servant.

And he answered, I am listening. Then she said, They used to say in former times, Let them but ask counsel at Abel, and so they settled a matter. I am one of those who are peaceable and faithful in Israel. You seek to destroy a city that is a mother in Israel. Why will you swallow up the heritage of the LORD? Joab answered, Far be it from me, far be it that I should swallow up or destroy.

That is not true. But a man of the hill country of Ephraim, called Sheba the son of Bichri, has lifted up his hand against King David. Give him up alone, and I will withdraw from the city. And the woman said to Joab, Behold, his head shall be thrown to you over the wall. Then the woman went to all the people in her wisdom, and they cut off the head of Sheba the son of Bichri and threw it out to Joab. So he blew the trumpet, and they dispersed from the city every man to his home. And Joab returned to Jerusalem to the king.

Now Joab was in command of all the army of Israel, and Benaiah the son of Jehoiada was in command of the Cherithites and the Pelethites, and Adoram was in charge of the forced labor, and Jehoshaphat the son of Eliud was the recorder, and Sheba was secretary, and Zadok and Abiathar were priests, and Ira the Jirehite was also David's priest. Amen. We thank God for his Word. And as we seek God's help in studying the text together, the prayer for the second Sunday in Advent is most appropriate. Blessed Lord, who has caused all holy Scriptures to be written for our learning, grant that we may in such wise hear them, read, mark, learn, and inwardly digest them, that by patience and comfort of your holy Word we may embrace and ever hold fast the blessed hope of everlasting life, which you have given us in our Savior Jesus Christ. Amen.

Here we are. Some people have already reached the point—I know, because I'm hearing it, you're saying, at least under your breath—when do we get to the part where it says at the end of the verse, And they all lived happily ever after? When do we get to that bit?

I mean, how many more deaths and murders do we have to have? Well, we're not going to get to that at the end of chapter 20, as you could see, because there are two murders here, and one of them is a beheading. So the return of David to Jerusalem, which we've been anticipating, his humiliation was such that he had fled.

All these things have happened in the interim period. Over a short period of time, Absalom's rebellion has ended with his death. His folks are getting him back across the Jordan into Jerusalem. But it is not a return to tranquility. It is certainly not to prosperity. A lot of water has flown over the dam since the narrator told us way back in chapter 8 about David reigning over all of Israel, administering justice and equity to all his people. Those days are in the past. His kingdom now is fragile.

It is unstable. There's going to be another thousand years before the one to whom this kingdom points finally arrives, when the wise men's question rings out as we have rehearsed it and sung it, Where is he that is born the king of the Jews? We're looking for him. And here David, a thousand years BC, his crown has slipped, his leadership has faltered, his failures have dogged all of his attempts to see things put back together again. But why would we be surprised? That is not a unique story. That is actually the story of all earthly kingdoms. It is the story of all empires. And that is why we need to make sure that what we affirm about the Word of God as being light in our darkness and hope for the hopeless and so on, that we actually truly believe. Because here we are, in the final weeks of a year, of a period of time that has gone almost to two years, where the cry of the community has largely been, Is this thing broken forever? Has the world spun off its axis? Is there nobody that can repair the brokenness in which we find ourselves living?

And if there is somebody who is able to do that, we certainly would love to hear from them. And so we have listened to the stories of how education is necessary, and we affirm the place of education. It's vital. But if it was education that would cure us, we'd be cured by now, I think. Perhaps science will fix us, but science can't agree with itself. Perhaps we will be able to find, eventually, the great political nirvana for which we've been longing. After all, we got rid of King George. We thought that was the answer. Little did we realize that others would emerge, just as bad as him and not even many times as good as him.

And here we are, at this point in history. And people are saying to themselves, If there is an answer, please stand up and say. And perhaps some of you are saying, I wish you would, Pastor. I don't get letters so much from you, but I get letters from across the nation, saying to me, You know, why don't you take these issues on? Why don't you speak about this? Why don't you speak about that? You have a voice, use it. Well, I've been given a voice, and I am using it, but the one thing they think is ridiculous to do is to do what we're actually doing.

Why would you spend your time reading an ancient history of Israel? People are in need. Things are crumbling. Bits and pieces are broken. And you've got us all tied up, and if we hear you correctly, even though you give us a break, you're gonna come back and subject us to the exact same thing. We might have thought that you would forget you had even started, and we could move on, but no, we will be there again.

Why are you doing that? Because, in short order, the answer to the brokenness of our world is in this book. It's actually, in a very specific way, in 2 Samuel. Because it is the promise that God had made first to Abram, now reinforced to David in 2 Samuel 12, that speaks to the answer of the longings of the human heart for the one who can save and rule and who can reign. So that what we're actually doing is at the very heart of the matter. And it was the promise of God that sustained the people of God all the way through the history of their lives.

So, for example, when Nebuchadnezzar came in, in the vastness of his power, when Babylon seemed to crush everything that the people of Israel knew, when they took away the elements of the temple, when they paralyzed the people, when they took their best into exile, when they were tempted to quit their songs and hang their harps on the olive branches. And God, what does God do? Well, he raises up a few young men. And Daniel. And Nebuchadnezzar can't sleep. And one of the reasons he can't sleep is because he dreams. And worse than that, he can't even remember what his dream is. So he can't even go to the soothsayers to explain his dream, because he doesn't know the dream. He needs somebody to tell him the dream and then tell him what the dream was about.

Who in the world could ever do that? God's man. Remember what the dream was, this great big thing? And Daniel says, Well, I can tell you exactly what that is.

And it is simple. All the kings and all the empires that are represented in this great statue will actually be destroyed one day. And we're not here to study Daniel, but in Daniel 2.44, in case you go looking for it, he says, And in the days of those kings… Alexander the Great, the Roman Empire. Add any empire you want to it, if you like. The USSR. Hitler's fascists in Germany. The British Empire. The American crumbling empire as we live it.

Put them all there and listen to what he says. The God of heaven will set up a kingdom that shall never be destroyed. And it shall break in pieces all these kingdoms, and bring them to an end. And it shall stand forever.

Forever. Now, here's the question that is posed to us by such a statement. Do we believe this?

Pregnant pause. Purposeful. Rhetorical question. And if you're saying yes, then surely the exhortation to our hearts must be, Dear Lord in heaven, help me to believe what I believe. Help me to doubt my doubts and believe my beliefs. And that's why I say to you that the study of the ancient kings of Israel is as up-to-date as anything we could possibly be considering, confronting us with this reality. Now, there is a sense in which I have just provided you with the end of the talk.

Which, of course, some of you are saying, Good, let's just leave it there. But no, I have in one sense, because let me tell you how I've framed this chapter. First of all, by considering the opposition of a worthless man.

That's there in the text. Secondly, by considering intervention by a wise woman. And thirdly, by recognizing in it the only possibility of restoration for a weary world. You are the God of the weary. You help those who are in need. Where is this God?

Where do we meet God? You see, one of the things that the Old Testament does for us is it leaves us with unanswered questions. It's kind of like, in many ways, it's an unfinished symphony. You find yourself saying, But there must be a coda to this. There must be… This must resolve.

This must get back to the primary chord. It's not gonna end on a sixth, is it? And of course, it doesn't, because it takes us forward. Now, with that said, let me try and push through this. I will endeavor to do two of the three headings, keeping the third one for this evening, not because, for no other reason, then we're not gonna be able to get to it.

All right? So, first of all, if your Bible is open in front of you, let us see what the Bible says. These things were written down for us so that through endurance and the encouragement of the Scriptures, we might have hope. Now, there happened to be there a worthless man. Here we have the opposition of a worthless man. Absalom's rebellion has been put down, but the end of 19 has made it very clear to us that all is not well. There's tribal tension, there's squabbling, there's jealousy, there's instability. And in that context, Sheba, this fellow from Bikri, sees this as an open sesame for him. He sees it as an opportunity to do what Absalom has been unable to do, and that is to divest the kingdom from the control of David. If you like, it is an attempt at secession rather than attempt of taking over the kingdom. So, he is a troublemaker, and he rallies the disenfranchised folks, of whom there are quite a few, with the blast of a trumpet.

You will notice that as we get to the end this evening, the trumpet blows again, at the beginning it blows in order to say we're commencing, and the trumpet blows at the end to say we've concluded. And so, he sends out the word. There in verse 1, we've got nothing to do with David. There's no future for us with this son of Jesse, which is a disparaging comment. Every man to his tents, O Israel, let's get out of here!

Let's get out of here! We're not gonna live under this dominion. And as a result, we find in verse 2 that all the men of Israel withdrew from David—a wholesale collapse. They go to follow Sheba. But the men of Judah, which is a smaller number, follow their king steadfastly. So you have Sheba and his boys, they clear off, and Judah and the followers of the king cling steadfastly to him. And then, quite strikingly, you have verse 3. But you say verse 3 would naturally follow verse 2.

I get that. But isn't it fascinating that this little statement here is right in your face? In other words, what happened to these concubines could have been a P.S., couldn't it? It could have at the end, when he does that list and he says, So-and-so was in charge of such-and-such and so-and-so.

And by the way, but he doesn't do that. So the narrator wants us to come face to face with this. And David came to his house at Jerusalem, going home. Going home.

If you've been watching The Beatles thing by Peter Jackson, you've heard him singing again, Two of us counting something, On our way back home. We're going home, we're going home. There's just something about being able to go home. I'll be home—right?—for Christmas. As you've gone home. But to go home and meet this, the music has stopped.

There's no band playing. How do you think it felt as he walked up to this place? Yeah, it was his home, but it was really a house. Remember, when we studied earlier, we said that his decision to leave the concubines behind to look after his house would prove to be a really bad decision. Some of you read ahead and discovered why.

Others of us have only just followed it as we encountered it in the text. But if he had never taken a harem, Absalom would never have been able to do what he did to the harem. And so he would not be returning to this sad, sorry place. This, surely, verse 3, is one of the saddest pictures in the entire story. But life has to go on. It goes on for these women.

They live, essentially, in widowhood until the day they die. And now David has to make sure that what is before him in terms of Sheba gets dealt with. And so you will notice that urgently he addresses this uprising. He assigns Amasa to call together the men of Judah to do it within a three-day period and to get here himself. Amasa doesn't manage it for whatever reason—we don't know, we're not told—and David goes to plan B. He decides, well, then, let's use Abishai. And so he tells Abishai, this guy Sheba will actually do more harm to us than Absalom has ever done.

And so what I want you to do is get the people together and pursue him and prevent him from being able to hole himself up in a fortified city. That takes us to verse 6. In verse 7 and following, first of all, we're introduced to the men. They are described as Joab's men. Joab may have been set aside in preference for Amasa by David, but he is at the very heart of things all the time.

And the combined forces appear to be determined by his influence. The mission, in verse 7, is as stated. Pursue Sheba. And then in verse 8, there is a meeting that takes place at a stone, which obviously was a significant meeting point in Gibeon all those years ago.

We could never find it today. And Amasa came to meet them. And he could never have known—he could never have known—that he was walking to his death.

And then you have the record of this murder, the setup described there. It's interesting how we don't really have description of clothing and everything, by and large, but here, the soldier's garment had a belt, there was a sword fastened on his thigh. As he went forward, it fell out.

We can't tell from the text whether it fell out purposefully or whether it fell out inadvertently, but there is no question that if it happened inadvertently, he scooped it up quickly, and as he did so, he had it in his left hand, and with his right hand, he lays hold of Amasa. And in Eastern fashion, he takes hold of his beard, as if to give him a kiss. And he says, And how is it going with you? How are you? Fast forward a thousand years to a garden in Gethsemane, and the traitor comes, and he embraces Jesus the King, and the King says, Would you betray me with a kiss?

How are you doing? He doesn't care how he's doing. He has a plan. Joab has his own reasons for wanting to eliminate Amasa. He does so swiftly, silently, and mercilessly.

And there he lies in a pool of blood. Spirit will work in the lives of many who listen to convert unbelievers and to grow the faith of those who already believe. To supplement the teaching you hear on Truth for Life, we recommend books on a wide variety of topics that you can purchase at our cost.

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