Show Notes
2 Samuel 14
Pastor Christopher Chelpka
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Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Amen.
[00:00:02] Let's pray and ask God to bless the reading and preaching of his word, Our Heavenly Father. It's because you have come to us that we can speak to you, pray to you, lean on you, and receive everything that we need from you.
[00:00:21] And so we ask that you would continue speaking to us now through your word, both read and preached.
[00:00:28] We ask that you would speak into the difficulties and challenges that we face in this life.
[00:00:34] Those ones that are inside of us, those ones that are external to us. And that through your work in us and in our brothers and sisters and throughout the world today, as your Gospel shines forth, that many would smell that fragrance, the good fragrance of the life giving Gospel and be brought to life, would be sanctified and strengthened, built up and encouraged. Lord, reveal yourself to us according to your Word and spirit. Sanctify us according to your word and Spirit. We pray these things in Jesus name. Amen.
[00:01:12] You may be seated.
[00:01:26] This morning we continue through the epic of 2 Samuel, 1st Samuel, 2nd Samuel, 1st Kings, 2 Kings, 2nd Samuel, chapter 14. Today, As a result of sin, relationships are broken, kingdom is falling apart, heartache on all sides, confusion, difficulty to know what to do.
[00:02:05] And here in 2nd Samuel 14, we come to feel that a little bit, maybe we even see our own, some of our own circumstances in it.
[00:02:16] We also see Joab trying to put things back together in a sort of surface level way.
[00:02:24] Let's give our attention to God's word now. Joab, the son of Zeruiah, knew that the king's heart went out to Absalom. And Joab sent to Tekoa and brought from there a wise woman and said to her, pretend to be a mourner and put on mourning garments. Do not anoint yourself with oil, but behave like a woman who has been in mourning many days for the dead.
[00:02:47] Go to the king and speak to him thus.
[00:02:50] So Joab put the words in her mouth.
[00:02:53] When the woman of Tekoa came to the king, she fell on her face to the ground and paid homage and said, save me, O king.
[00:03:03] And the king said to her, what is your trouble?
[00:03:06] She answered, alas, I am a widow, my husband is dead. And your servant had two sons. And they quarreled with one another in the field. There was no one to separate them. And one struck the other and killed him. And now the whole clan has risen against your servant. And they say, give up the man who struck his brother, that we may put him to death for the life of his brother whom he killed.
[00:03:28] And so they would destroy the air also Thus they would quench my coal that is left and leave to my husband neither name nor remnant on the face of the earth.
[00:03:41] Then the king said to the woman, go to your house, and I will give orders concerning you.
[00:03:46] And the woman of Tekoa said to the king, on me be the guilt, my lord the king, and on my father's house let the king and his throne be guiltless.
[00:03:54] The king said, if anyone says anything to you, bring him to me, and he shall never touch you again.
[00:04:00] Then she said, let the king invoke the Lord your God, that the avenger of blood kill no more and my son be not destroyed. He said, as the Lord lives, not one hair of your son shall fall to the ground.
[00:04:15] Then the woman said, please let your servant speak a word to the my lord the king. He said, speak.
[00:04:24] And the woman said, why have you planned such a thing against the people of God?
[00:04:29] For in giving this decision, the king convicts himself. Inasmuch as the king does not bring his banished one home again, we must all die.
[00:04:39] We are like water spilled on the ground which cannot be gathered up again.
[00:04:43] But God will not take away life, and he despises many means so that the banished one will not remain an outcast.
[00:04:51] Now I have come to say this to my lord the king because the people have made me afraid and your servant thought, I will speak to the king. It may be that the king will perform the request of his servant, for the king will hear and deliver his servant from the hand of the man who would destroy me and my son together from the heritage of God and your servant thought the word of my lord the king will set me at rest.
[00:05:15] For my lord the king is like the angel of God to discern good and evil. The Lord your God be with you.
[00:05:23] Then the king answered the woman, do not hide from me anything I ask you.
[00:05:29] And the woman said, let the lord the king speak.
[00:05:32] The king said, is the hand of Joab with you in all this?
[00:05:37] The woman answered and said, as surely as you live, my lord the king, One cannot turn to the right hand or to the left from anything that my lord the king has said.
[00:05:48] It was your servant Joab who commanded me. It was he who put all these words in the mouth of your servant in order to change the course of things. Your servant Joab did this. But my lord has wisdom, like the wisdom of the angel of God, to know all the things that are on the earth.
[00:06:06] Then the king said to Joab, behold, now I grant this.
[00:06:10] Go bring back the young man Absalom.
[00:06:14] And Joab fell on his face to the ground and paid homage and blessed the king. And Joab said, today your servant knows that I have found favor in your sight, my lord the king, and that the king has granted the request of his servant.
[00:06:26] So Joab rose and went to Geshur and brought Absalom to Jerusalem. And the king said, let him dwell apart in his own house. He is not to come into my presence.
[00:06:38] So Absalom lived apart in his own house. He did not come into the king's presence.
[00:06:44] Now in all Israel there was no one so much to be praised for his handsome appearance as Absalom.
[00:06:51] From the sole of his foot to the crown of his head, there was no blemish in him. And when he cut the hair of his head, for at the end of every year he used to cut it, when it was heavy on him, he cut it. He weighed the hair of his head 200 shekels by the king's weight.
[00:07:07] There were born to Absalom three sons and one daughter whose name was Tamar.
[00:07:12] She was a beautiful woman.
[00:07:15] So Absalom lived two full years in Jerusalem without coming into the king's presence. Then Absalom sent for Joab to send for the king. But Joab would not come to him. And he sent him a second time. But Joab would not come.
[00:07:28] Then he said to his servants, see, Joab's field is next to mine, and he has barley there. Go and set it on fire.
[00:07:36] So Absalom's servants set the field on fire. Then Joab arose and went to Absalom at his house and said to him, why have your servants set my field on fire?
[00:07:46] Absalom answered, joab, behold, I sent word to you, come here that I may send you to the king to ask, why have I come from Geshurg? It would be better for me to be there still.
[00:07:57] Now therefore, let me go into the presence of the king, and if there is guilt in me, let him put me to death.
[00:08:03] Then Joab went to the king and told him, and he summoned Absalom. So he came to the king and bowed himself on the face of the ground before the king. And the king kissed Absalom.
[00:08:16] May God bless his word to us.
[00:08:23] So why all this trouble? In 2nd Samuel 14 why is Absalom away? Why is Joab trying to get him back? Why is the king so upset? Why does this woman from Tekoa have to come?
[00:08:40] Well, we know the answer to these immediate events preceding this in Second Samuel.
[00:08:47] The reason is that two of David's sons had a conflict, and a conflict because one of his sons raped his Absalom's sister. So they're half siblings.
[00:09:03] Amnon did this. Absalom was outraged and killed him.
[00:09:09] And after killing his half brother Amnon, he fled.
[00:09:14] He fled and he remained gone, out of the city for some time.
[00:09:21] And things are obviously broken at this point, broken in all kinds of ways. Amnon's dead. Tamar has been violated, and she's living under the protection of Absalom. Absalom is separated and afraid for his life.
[00:09:39] The king is.
[00:09:42] It's hard to know exactly where his heart is. In verse one, it says, the king's heart went out to Absalom. But that could be translated was against or went to.
[00:09:52] Perhaps the most general way to translate it would be something to say was his heart was on Absalom. In other words, he was heavy on his heart. He was thinking a lot about him. Maybe he didn't know what to do, but maybe he was concerned. Maybe he was mad, maybe he was sad. Maybe he was all of those things.
[00:10:12] The king's heart was heavy, didn't know what to do.
[00:10:16] Joab, the commander of many of David's mighty men and a loyal servant, longtime friend and family member, by the way of King David, is seeing the kingdom fall apart.
[00:10:31] The kingdom is falling apart because this family is falling apart.
[00:10:35] This family is falling apart. And now the risk of the kingdom of God is.
[00:10:42] The risk of it is dissolving is apparent to everyone and to Joab included.
[00:10:49] Now, Joab doesn't give any kind of particular theological perspective, but we could wonder, as many people have in the past, whenever we see the kingdom of God and the kings not following his ways, their household in disruption, this question comes to mind. How will God keep his promise?
[00:11:11] Because God made a promise to King David that he would establish a son on his throne who would rule forever in righteousness and peace. It would be the consummation of the kingdom of God in which people, not only in Israel but throughout the world, would be blessed.
[00:11:30] This is a moment where it doesn't feel like that's happening.
[00:11:36] One of the king's sons is dead, having been killed by his other son who's on the run.
[00:11:44] And on and on and on.
[00:11:47] David, in the midst of all this, does not seem to be trusting the Lord. He's not acting decisively. He's not leading.
[00:11:54] Three years have passed of separation, of silence, of destabilization.
[00:12:01] And so Joab not being able to take it anymore, maybe he goes and he says, I'm going to solve this problem.
[00:12:10] He wants to solve the problem, but Joab is going to try to do what we often do, which is solve the symptoms, solve the surface level problems, try to kind of get everyone back together. And what Joab finds is, despite his extremely good ability at politics, despite his cleverness and effectiveness to some degree, Joab is unable to go down to the deepest levels of the problem. He's unable to hit the roots. And that's true for all of us.
[00:12:49] We can do a measure of correction and reconciliation and various fixing of problems at a surface level, but it only moves the needle so far in terms of the deepest problems in our lives and where our problems really come from, which is from the heart.
[00:13:09] One of the things that this story teaches us is that we need the Lord God to enter into these kinds of crises and fix things.
[00:13:19] We need to wait on him, we need to seek him, and we need to trust him. And one of the reasons for that is because God is able to do what no Joab can and what you can't do.
[00:13:33] We'll think about that more today.
[00:13:37] First, let's look at Joab's strategy.
[00:13:41] What does he do?
[00:13:43] Well, he goes to this woman of Tekoa, a wise woman, she's called, a clever woman, and. And, boy, has she got the gift of speech, right?
[00:13:56] I don't know how Joab knew her. Maybe she had a big gift and had a reputation for it. But he finds this woman, finds this woman, and he.
[00:14:07] And there's some sort of dialogue. We don't have it all. It's clear that he put the words in her mouth, how much she devised. Clearly, she's having to kind of think on the fly, right? When Joab's not there and she's before the king, she's very capable, and he tells her the plan, right? So she's going to act as one who is a mourner, and she's going to tell this story.
[00:14:33] This is now the second time. This feels a little familiar, that someone has come to David with a story. Remember, Nathan came to David and said, imagine a situation. And then David's like, that's terrible. We should do this. And then David says, you're the guy.
[00:14:49] The woman of Tekoa is doing something similar here.
[00:14:53] So she comes and she explains this kind of Cain and Abel situation a little different. She starts out, it's important. She says, I am a widow. She has no husband.
[00:15:05] And then her two sons, like Cain and Abel, they're alone together in the field. They get mad One kills the other and other one flees.
[00:15:15] Well, what happens in a community when murder has happened? Now justice is supposed to happen, and so the community is trying to catch the murderer.
[00:15:26] Well, aside from the prom, for the heartache of losing yet another son, this woman says she has this additional problem, which is that if she has already lost her husband, if she loses both her sons, this heritage of the Lord and the name of her husband going on will be lost.
[00:15:48] There's no way to continue the family line.
[00:15:52] She describes it in terms of coal, right?
[00:15:56] A fire that's sort of almost gone out, and then you can kind of get it started going again a little bit with this other son. But if they kill him, that'll be impossible.
[00:16:08] Well, David promises her protection. Her concern is that if justice happens, this other thing will be lost.
[00:16:19] Reconciliation and the continuance of her family line in particular.
[00:16:25] And this is a fiat problem we often face in difficult situations in this life. We have these values that come in, compete against one another, and justice and reconciliation are often two of these competing values. It's one of the thorniest problems.
[00:16:40] If a man gets fired at work because he doesn't do his job, that's fair, but it creates separation and loss. He's no longer there. He's out of that company.
[00:16:51] However, if the man is allowed to continue at work, that's not fair because he's not doing his job. He's not upholding the agreement. What do you do? How do you solve these problems?
[00:17:03] Perhaps easier in a work environment than in a family environment where people can't just be fired.
[00:17:13] Well, here David faces a similar situation. His kingdom is falling apart. How does he bring Absalom back while also having justice for Amnon and Tamar and Absalom and everyone else who's been hurt? In the midst of all of this, what is. What can be done? Well, here's what Joab decides to do. He calls this woman. She goes before the king. She presents this plan, and the king answers, I'll protect you.
[00:17:43] I'll keep you safe. I'll keep your son safe. If anyone tries to touch you, tries to hurt you in this situation, I will deal with this.
[00:17:55] She is happy with this outcome. But she says, you need to do the same thing.
[00:18:02] You need to bring justice and reconciliation.
[00:18:06] You need to bring your son home.
[00:18:12] Now, Joab knows David well, right?
[00:18:17] He knows David well. He thinks this plan is going to work, and it does.
[00:18:22] David also knows Joab well. As one commentator pointed out to me.
[00:18:26] He's hearing this woman talk, and he Says, have you talked to Joab?
[00:18:33] And she's right, she's put on the spot.
[00:18:36] And then what she says is flattery.
[00:18:40] Lots of flattery.
[00:18:43] Or at least high, high praise.
[00:18:48] You are like an angel of God, knowing good and evil. You have seen these things. You are wise. You are just, you know, she's in a dangerous situation. I've done as I've been commanded to do.
[00:19:03] And David says he will grant it.
[00:19:10] Amazing thing, he grants it. He brings back the son, his son, Absalom.
[00:19:15] And then verse 22, quick skip. And Joab fell on his face to the ground and paid homage to the king, right?
[00:19:23] And Joab also thanks him for this.
[00:19:27] Absalom is brought.
[00:19:29] And then we have in verses 25 through 27, a description of Absalom.
[00:19:36] No one is handsome as this guy. There's nothing wrong with him.
[00:19:40] From the bottom of his foot to the top of his head, you cannot find anything wrong with this guy.
[00:19:46] He is gorgeous. And in fact, he is so good looking. And his hair is a part of this deal. There seems to be this yearly ceremony of some sort where Absalom maybe a little dramatically cuts his hair, weighs it about five pounds and.
[00:20:06] Right. And then everybody knows that. Cut his hair. All right, this is, To use a little Gen Alpha language. This is giving Saul.
[00:20:19] This is echoing. I'll skip ahead or back a few generations. This is echoing and repeating things that we've heard before.
[00:20:28] With King Saul, a head taller than everyone else, everyone looked up to him. What a king, right? This is going to be our guy, Is he?
[00:20:41] Is it appearance that the Lord wants?
[00:20:44] No.
[00:20:47] Absalom had three sons. He had a daughter who is now a woman named after his aunt or her aunt Tamar.
[00:20:57] A little sadness there, but also joy. And these typical heartbreaks that we have in our families.
[00:21:04] Not a little bit, of course.
[00:21:07] The fact that she's marked as a beautiful woman here tells us, gives us some details about the timeline of all of this.
[00:21:15] I won't go into all the details, but the bottom line is that this family's growing up.
[00:21:23] Absalom's not a super young guy.
[00:21:26] He has kids. He has a daughter who's a woman.
[00:21:31] This separation of the kingdom, this separation of David, which will escalate even more in the coming chapters, is already here and it's already been going on a long time. And then we come to verse 28. Absalom lived two full years in Jerusalem without coming into the king's presence.
[00:21:52] This is like, you want to move to Tucson, Fine. But I don't want to see you.
[00:22:00] So Joab's plan worked. Quotation marks.
[00:22:05] He's there, but not there. Separated, but together.
[00:22:11] Absalom is getting tired of this. So he calls to Joab. Joab's not answering his text messages.
[00:22:18] Doesn't call, doesn't call, doesn't call. Joab's like, set that guy's field on fire.
[00:22:24] Joab calls, says, why you burned my field? Why have your servants set my field on fire?
[00:22:30] Absalom doesn't even talk about the past. He just says, I want you to go to the king. Why am I even here? What's the point of this?
[00:22:39] Absalom's upset.
[00:22:41] David's still not doing anything. David is still being inactive. He's shutting him out. He's not dealing with these problems.
[00:22:49] Absalom doesn't know what to do. Joab obviously doesn't know what to do.
[00:22:54] And so Joab decides on the pressure of Absalom to go, and he goes to the king.
[00:23:02] The king does summon Absalom. He bows himself to the face of the ground before the king.
[00:23:08] And the king kissed Absalom.
[00:23:12] It's not really the father kissing the son, though.
[00:23:16] You don't really have the reconciliation that you'd want to have.
[00:23:21] And we know this not just because of that language that seems to be missing, but as I mentioned or hinted at already, from the things that are coming.
[00:23:31] The things that are coming are more separation, more rebellion, more difficulty.
[00:23:36] And I mention this just to say this is the nature of sin.
[00:23:40] It gets down into the roots and it destroys and it poisons and it will not stop unless the divine Lord, our God and king, comes and does the miraculous.
[00:23:56] That's what needs to happen. It's the only true solution for the goal of what God promised, which is an eternal, perfect kingdom based on righteousness and holiness.
[00:24:09] A kingdom that is comprised of a family, a people dwelling together of brothers and sisters and aunts and uncles and moms and dads, and all of us together united in the Lord.
[00:24:24] We struggle in this world to get justice and reconciliation going to go together in our family lives.
[00:24:36] Perhaps you've experienced even similar things to what you find here in 2nd Samuel 14.
[00:24:42] If not, I'm happy for you. But we can all recognize that at just a little bit higher level, this is something we experience in the family of the whole human race every day and at unspeakable levels, acts of violence and betrayal and ruin every day, all the time.
[00:25:09] Is that going to be solved with cleverness?
[00:25:16] Is it going to be solved with wisdom?
[00:25:19] Is it going to be solved with money, Be solved with power, with any of these things?
[00:25:30] It won't. It can't.
[00:25:32] Joab kind of does what he can with the tools that he has, but he needs the resources of his God.
[00:25:41] And that's what God provides for us in Jesus.
[00:25:47] He gives to us the healing that we need for ourselves, for our families, for the whole human race.
[00:25:58] When we just cover over paper, over old wounds, they come back, they resurface.
[00:26:07] But what God promises to do is give new life, regeneration, rebirth.
[00:26:16] It's an amazing thing and frankly unbelievable if it weren't for the fact of the One who's promising it. And that's what I want to end with.
[00:26:26] Think about the one who promises these things.
[00:26:30] First think about the fact that God is both the just and the justifier of men.
[00:26:39] Romans 3:26 says that all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God. Everyone, every single one of us.
[00:26:48] And yet no matter what our sins are, we are justified by his grace as a gift.
[00:26:58] So God can create a justified person, even though that person is unjust, even though that person is unrighteous. How can he do that? How can he non condemn or how can he justify a guilty person?
[00:27:17] Well, he does it as Paul says in Romans 3:24, through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus, he redeems us. He pays the debt we owed.
[00:27:28] He pays for the wages of sin, which is death.
[00:27:35] Paul goes on to state gloriously in verse 25 of Romans 3 that Jesus is the one whom God put forward as a propitiation.
[00:27:45] By his blood.
[00:27:47] Jesus would die, would shed his blood, he would be a sacrifice in our place, and God would turn his wrath away from us because of him.
[00:27:59] This is God's provision. This is how God can be both just and justifier.
[00:28:06] God doesn't look at our sins and go, don't worry about it, not a big deal.
[00:28:11] God says he looks at our sins and then he pays for the penalty of our sins, the penalty that He Himself is giving on Himself.
[00:28:23] Amazing.
[00:28:25] This we receive by faith.
[00:28:27] Paul goes on to say, this was to show God's righteousness because in his divine forbearance he had passed over former sins.
[00:28:35] It was to show his righteousness at the present time so that he might be the just and justifier of the one who who has faith in Jesus.
[00:28:43] So then what becomes of our boasting?
[00:28:47] Excluded by what kind of law? A law of works? No, but by a law of faith. For we hold that one is justified by faith apart from the works of the law. That's how we're justified, by faith in our Redeemer, faith in the One who bled for us, faith in the One who died for us. Faith in. Faith in the gift that is given to us.
[00:29:11] It's been said many times by many people that on the cross you have justice and mercy. Kissing on the cross you have these two things that would seem to be irreconcilable themselves coming together in God paying for our sins. He doesn't just dismiss our charges. He. He pays for them. He loves us and he saves us.
[00:29:38] That brings us to the second point. Not only is God perfectly just, he takes care of the injustice that is in our lives, the injustices we've committed and the injustices that have been committed against us. But he's also gracious.
[00:29:55] A friend of mine said to me this week, he said, part of my problem is that I'm always thinking I'm more gracious than God or I'm more tender than God.
[00:30:09] Oh, yeah, that's not just your problem.
[00:30:13] It's true.
[00:30:15] No one is more gracious than God is. No one is more tender than God is. And we see that. And of course, in the story of the prodigal son in Luke 15, the prodigal who has run away, the prodigal who is unrepentant, the prodigal who wasted all of his father's resources, who spurned his father, did hateful things to his father, also his brother and his family, he wakes up out of his sin, he returns to his father, and his father runs to him.
[00:30:49] After being hurt so much, this father being hurt so much by this son, he does not hold it against him.
[00:30:58] He runs to him. He forgives him. He sets a feast to illustrate. Jesus does. Gives us this story to illustrate what God does for us. When we turn to Christ in repentance, when we turn away from our sins and we say, perhaps my Father will forgive me, he doesn't say, we'll see, we'll see.
[00:31:25] He pulls up his clothes and he books it, and he runs. And he embraces us and he hugs us and he puts a robe on us and a ring on us, and he makes a feast for us. And he says, come in, my son.
[00:31:40] The welcome is fully extended to us.
[00:31:44] No one is more gracious than. Than God. No one is more just than God. And finally, no one is stronger than God.
[00:31:52] How can all this happen?
[00:31:54] Joab wonders.
[00:31:58] Not by the power of his hand, not by the power of his politics, not by the power of his maneuvering. Not by the power of his mind, his wealth. That doesn't come into play here, but it often does.
[00:32:12] The kingdom will be secured by the power of God.
[00:32:19] Paul says in Romans, the gospel is the power of God unto salvation. And it's by the Gospel, by the good news about Jesus Christ, that the kingdom of God will be established, has been established, and will be forever. Isaiah 9, 7 says of our Messiah, of his kingdom there is no end.
[00:32:39] And you know what's amazing when you reflect on how we get from 2 Samuel 14 to the beginning of the Gospels, where our Lord is born is. It's a big mess, this kind of cycle. And these patterns continue and continue and continue and continue.
[00:32:57] No wonder the angels proclaimed good news of great joy. The Messiah is born.
[00:33:05] Joab's plan will eventually collapse, as do all our plans and schemes of this world. But the one thing that will never collapse, because it's based on the power and the ability and the grace and the justice of God, is the work of God, the work of the Lord.
[00:33:25] Which means that when we try to preserve our relationship with him, when, or our relationships with each other, without addressing the problems of our sin, without turning to him in repentance, without seeking his grace, his help and his forgiveness, we have fake reconciliation, or at least thin reconciliation.
[00:33:47] It might be true, might be true to a measure, but it just doesn't go very far.
[00:33:53] We can try to manage tension, we can try to soften truths, we can try to ignore the difficulties of unjust justice is left undone.
[00:34:03] But really, if we want, which we do, of course, deep healing, deep unity, deep communion. We need the Lord God, through the grace of Jesus Christ, by the power of His Spirit working in us and in the whole world.
[00:34:24] Let's pray.
[00:34:28] Our Heavenly Father, we ask that you would be at work, work in our lives, strengthen us, build us up, forgive us our sins.
[00:34:39] Bring healing at the deepest levels.
[00:34:43] Especially, Lord, on that great and final day when the Lord Jesus comes and the resurrection will come.
[00:34:50] Resurrection for the just and the unjust.
[00:34:54] Some to everlasting life and others to everlasting punishment and torment.
[00:35:01] On that day, Lord, we ask that you would set all things right. And that those who have trusted in the Lord Jesus for the forgiveness of their sins would be forever secured and established in his grace, even as we now are.
[00:35:17] We thank you for the Spirit testifying to us that we have been raised in Christ, that we are with him in the heavenly places, that we are united to the Spirit who is at work within us, putting to death the evil things that are inside of us.
[00:35:33] Lord, we have no hope apart from you. But in you we have every hope and every confidence. Because you are our God. And you are the one true living God, Father, Son and Holy Spirit, to whom belongs all praise and glory and. And honor, in whom we have perfect power exercised perfectly just and according to all your graciousness and mercy.
[00:36:02] May we lean on you for every need we have. We pray this in Jesus name our Savior. Amen.
