Show Notes
2 Samuel 4
Pastor Christopher Chelpka
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Episode Transcript
[00:00:09] Our Heavenly Father, we again thank you for your word to us. We thank you for all the forms that it comes to us, particularly, Lord, for the history in which you record your acts, the unfolding of your promises and your works in the world.
[00:00:27] As we come to this particular portion of your Word in two Samuel, we ask that you would help us to understand it and to see how it fits into the greater whole, the whole of the Bible, the whole of the history of the world, and of course, our own lives and the things that are yet to come.
[00:00:48] Lord, we ask that you would help us to not only be able to see this, but to believe it and to act accordingly in our own lives with confidence in you and the means that you ordain to achieve your great ends. We ask that your spirit would be at work in us, that we might hear and understand, believe and follow.
[00:01:16] We pray this in Jesus name. Amen.
[00:01:21] Remain standing this morning and turn to two Samuel Chapter four the beautiful and glorious images that we just sang of in our last hymn, I Need Thee, Precious Jesus, are the things that we are a vision of, the things that we're hoping for, that we're looking for in the midst of a world that is marked by so much turmoil and betrayal and bloodshed and many challenges.
[00:02:07] This chapter is a reminder of that and a reminder of God's continuing work even in the midst of much human sin.
[00:02:16] So let's hear God's word this morning from 2 Samuel chapter 4.
[00:02:23] When Ishbosheth, Saul's son, heard that Abner had died at Hebron, his courage failed and all Israel was dismayed.
[00:02:34] Now Saul's son had two men who were captives of raiding bands. The name of the one was Baanah, and the name of the other was Rechab, sons of Rimmon, a man of Benjamin from Beeroth, for Beeroth also is counted part of Benjamin. The Beerothites fled to Gittaim and have been sojourners there to this day.
[00:02:55] Jonathan, the son of Saul, had a son who was crippled in his feet.
[00:03:00] He was five years old when the news about Saul and Jonathan came from Jezreel, and his nurse took him up and fled, and as she fled in her haste, and he fell and became lame, and his name was Mephibosheth.
[00:03:15] Now the sons of Ramon, the Beerothite Rechab, and Baanah set out, and about the heat of day they came to the house of Ish Bosheth as he was taking his noonday rest, and they came into the midst of the house as if to get wheat. And they stabbed him in the stomach. And Rechab and Baanah, his brother, escaped.
[00:03:36] When they came into the house, as he lay in his bed in his bedroom, they struck him and put him to death and beheaded him. They took his head and went by the way of the Arabah all night. And they brought the head of Ish Bosheth to David at Hebron.
[00:03:52] And they said to the king, here is the head of Ish Bosheth, the son of Saul, your enemy who sought your life.
[00:04:00] The Lord has avenged my lord, the king, this day on Saul and his offspring.
[00:04:06] But David answered Rechab and Baanah, his brother, the sons of Rimmon the as the Lord lives, who has redeemed my life out of every adversity. When one told me, behold, Saul is dead, and thought he was bringing good news, I seized him and killed him at Ziklag, which was the reward I gave him for his news. How much more when wicked men have killed a righteous man in his own house on his bed, shall I not now require his blood at your hand and destroy you from the earth? And David commanded his young men, and they killed them and cut off their hands and feet and hanged them beside the pool at Hebron. And they took the head of Ish Bosheth and buried it in the tomb of Abner at Hebron.
[00:04:54] May God bless his word to us. You may be seated.
[00:05:23] Imagine coming across that story as you're scrolling through your news feed.
[00:05:31] It's pretty intense, isn't it?
[00:05:35] Wickedness, assassination.
[00:05:38] You can think about it from various perspectives.
[00:05:40] You can think about it from Ish Bosheth, a man who David calls righteous, who nevertheless was setting up a rival kingdom, or rather was maybe being set up as a rival kingdom. Much of the work that we've seen, much of the things that we've seen about Ishbosheth so far and ending here have been very passive, right? It's Abner who sets up Ish Bosheth. It's Abner who does all these things. Ish Bosheth in many ways, seems kind of hapless, helpless in face of all the events that are surrounding him. And ultimately he's assassinated, murdered in his own home.
[00:06:24] We see in Ish Bosheth in many ways the great weakness of the kingdoms that would seek to rival God's kingdom.
[00:06:35] It seems strong in many ways. Abner, is this great man in control of the army? They have all of Israel on their side. They are in some ways on the worldly way of thinking about the continuing kingdom of Saul. And yet when we look at Ish Bosheth and the way he's characterized in this history, we see weakness everywhere.
[00:07:00] The way he's pushed around, the way he ultimately dies.
[00:07:04] Even here, as it pictures what happens here. There's no security here for him.
[00:07:11] There's no people guarding him. He's asleep in the middle of the day.
[00:07:16] Many other details which point to the ease at which these two men carried out this plot and killed him.
[00:07:25] It gets worse when we notice who they are.
[00:07:30] Recob and Baanah. These are from the same tribe that as Ish Bosheth and as his father Saul, these are his own servants as well. These are his servants, these are his tribe, these are his people.
[00:07:46] And they go and they kill him.
[00:07:50] And they do so in order to gain favor with David.
[00:07:55] And as David says, and we are reminded we've seen this before when we think about this story from their perspective. They think they're going to be heroes.
[00:08:07] They think that they've got a great thing coming to them. They have defeated Ish Bosheth easily. Nothing heroic here that they did. They defeated Ish Bosheth, they cut off his head and they bring it to David, thinking that David is going to be pleased, but he is not.
[00:08:27] What does he say? Or what do they say?
[00:08:30] They say, here's their perspective.
[00:08:33] This is verse 8. The Lord has avenged my Lord. So Yahweh, you see that if you're looking at your Bibles, the capital letters there indicating the name of the Lord is used there. Yahweh or Jehovah, Yahweh has avenged my Lord. Lowercase, then that's referring to David.
[00:08:51] So God has avenged David, the king this day. On Saul and his offspring, they see themselves as divine warriors, right? They're doing the Lord's work. They're out there in the field and they're doing this great thing not just for David, but on behalf of God. So they say they have the Lord's will on their side, the Lord's justification on their side. And they. And they characterize Saul, or sorry, the son of Saul, as the son of his enemy, the one who sought your life. And it is true that Saul sought his life. And there are. It is true in some ways that Saul was David's enemy.
[00:09:36] But how does David see it?
[00:09:39] He sees it rightly, and we see his perspective in verse nine.
[00:09:45] He says, as Yahweh lives, who has redeemed my life out of every adversity?
[00:09:53] When one told me, behold, Saul is Dead, he thought he was bringing good news.
[00:09:58] I seized him and killed him at Ziklag, which was the reward I gave him his news. How much more when wicked men who have killed a righteous man in his own house, on his bed, shall I not now require his blood at your hand and destroy you from the earth?
[00:10:15] Notice how David does not see his victory over his enemy Saul as his victory.
[00:10:24] He says, the Lord is the one who has delivered me. And this is the fundamental perspectives that are fight these two perspectives that are fighting against each other.
[00:10:34] One is the establishment of the kingdom of God through worldly power and sinful means.
[00:10:42] And the other is receiving the kingdom of God through the in the Lord's timing and in the Lord's ways in accordance with the Lord's will.
[00:10:53] And this is the important distinction that we want to focus on today.
[00:10:59] For the sake of safety, for the sake of glory, for the sake of financial security or wealth or the sake of social safety or its extreme fame, we are often tempted to justify all kinds of bad actions by saying that the ends of justify the means.
[00:11:22] As long as we are after a good thing like safety, glory, God's honor, something like this.
[00:11:32] We people will say that we can cut corners.
[00:11:39] If you can get good grades by cheating, why not cheat?
[00:11:45] If you can avoid insurance costs raising by not reporting the accident that you were in, maybe don't report it.
[00:11:56] If you can cover up your mistakes and maybe get a promotion, maybe you should.
[00:12:01] This is the way the world thinks. You can take these shortcuts, you can take these quick paths to success and avoid pain, avoid hardship, avoid heartache.
[00:12:14] And this happens even in the church as well.
[00:12:17] People are willing to do bad things in the name of some greater good and some greater success.
[00:12:24] Maybe we don't care about our standards as much as we say we should. Or maybe we don't apply them evenly.
[00:12:32] Saying to one person one thing, but saying to another person another thing.
[00:12:38] Or maybe we think, well, let's just downplay the offensive things or the things that will make people uncomfortable.
[00:12:45] Or maybe we say, well, we don't want to get in trouble or look bad so we're not going to confess our sins.
[00:12:56] We're going to hide abuse or mismanagement or unfulfilled promises.
[00:13:06] It'll be easier that way, right? These are the tempting things that we haven't. Or we say, well, let's co opt other powers in order to get the the things done that we need to get done. Let's co opt government power. Let's co opt the different tools of this world and depend on them. But the Scriptures are constantly telling us that the kingdom of God and the glory of that kingdom is not achieved by the strength of man and certainly not by him choosing sinful ends to achieve those means. So when these men come to David and say, look, we've got the head of this innocent man, David is not impressed. He recognizes, rightly that these kinds of actions are dangerous. It is the Lord who brings about the kingdom when we fail to wait on God's timing, when we trust not in his will and means, but in ours, and when we question his modes, when we question his methods.
[00:14:09] We put ourselves in a camp with these men when we say, well, preaching just seems so weak and church discipline is too hard and community life is so boring and frustrating and these people are annoying when we say these kinds of things, we are separating ourselves from the Lord and His will and we put ourselves on the side of men like this. We're going to say, well, we're just going to do it our own way and expect God to reward us.
[00:14:44] But instead of a reward, what do we do when we separate ourselves from the Lord's ends and even his means risk the wrath or at least the discipline of the righteous king?
[00:14:58] God doesn't wink at these things. God doesn't say, well, I told you to do it this way, but you didn't. So no, don't worry about doesn't really matter, because it does matter to Him.
[00:15:10] He calls us here. This is a passage with a warning in it, a passage in which he calls us to pursue good ends, noble ends, but through God's chosen means, even when it's inconvenient or painful or hard.
[00:15:28] Think about David's perspective.
[00:15:31] God has promised to him that he would ascend to the throne, that he would receive the kingdom that has been that he has promised his people that he would be the king. And yet everything is constantly falling apart.
[00:15:46] He is constantly having to wait and withhold himself and withhold his men. And sometimes it doesn't work.
[00:15:54] As we saw with Joab previously in the last several chapters, we've seen over and over again moments in where the whole project here and the whole promise would seem to be falling apart because of things in many ways that David doesn't even have control over.
[00:16:13] At each of these moments, he's tempted to. He's tempted with that same temptation that Jesus faced in the wilderness when Satan promised to give him the kingdoms of the world if he would just bow to him.
[00:16:26] Satan is. David is tempted at these various moments to think, well, should I just go along with this?
[00:16:34] This would be a lot easier. It's really good that Ish Bosheth's gone. It was a rival kingdom.
[00:16:40] There's all kinds of ways in which he could be tempted to give into this, but he doesn't.
[00:16:45] By God's grace, he doesn't. And he sets an example for us of faithfulness, of trusting, of waiting, of relying on the Lord. And what is David's reward?
[00:16:57] It is the fulfillment of God's promise.
[00:17:01] He relies on God's promise. And God's promise, as Pastor Lauer taught us last Sunday evening, is reliable.
[00:17:09] We put our hope in him because of who he is and the oath that he has made.
[00:17:18] When we turn away from our impatience, when we turn away from worldly means and receive the promise of God, the forgiveness of our sins, we receive a great, great salvation.
[00:17:33] We've thought already about how means matter as we think about Rahab, or rather these sons of Ramon, Ramon, Rechab and Baanah.
[00:17:47] We saw how they thought they were serving God and David, but they weren't.
[00:17:52] We thought about how Jesus, also, like David, refused Satan in the wilderness.
[00:17:59] And we thought too about what happens when we use worldly means to achieve glory, the wrath of the king.
[00:18:07] God is not pleased when we do these kinds of things.
[00:18:11] But let's think about for a moment what a corrupted kingdom would look like when we do these kinds of things, or if God were to receive them.
[00:18:22] Think about David.
[00:18:23] If David had capitulated the kingdom at this moment or at previous moments, what would have happened?
[00:18:31] If David had given in to these things, he would have been achieving the kingdom along the same way that the world achieves them. He would have been not a righteous king ruling according to justice, but according to his own will and according to his power. According to this is not a kingdom which displays God's glory. This is not a kingdom which shines God's light. It's just. It would be just like any other kingdom in this world, at least outwardly.
[00:18:59] Or think about what Jesus would have happened if Jesus would have said, receiving all the kingdoms of the world right now rather than enduring the cross sounds a lot easier.
[00:19:11] We would still be enslaved to Satan.
[00:19:14] We would stay bound in our sin and our misery, our shame and our guilt.
[00:19:19] Of course, this kind of thing would never happen with the Lord Jesus, because he's without sin, because he is God.
[00:19:28] But the Lord calls us to follow him in that.
[00:19:31] Jesus rebukes Peter and he says, those who live by the sword die by the sword.
[00:19:37] Do not use worldly earthly power to achieve these ends. Or when James and John to him and say, we want to be on your right hand, in your left hand, in your glory.
[00:19:48] Jesus asked them if they're willing to endure the things that they must endure. It's a question that they don't understand, but it's a question we all have at that moment anyway. Eventually they do understand it and give their lives for the sake of Jesus and the gospel.
[00:20:08] When we give ourselves over to using the world's means to even achieve good and godly ends, we build our house.
[00:20:19] We build, or we pretend to build the house of God on a bed of sand.
[00:20:25] It's not his word, it's not his strength, it's not his Messiah, it's not his Christ, it's not his king, it's not our king. It's a weak and unstable foundation that will wash away ultimately in his wrath.
[00:20:41] We cannot build and do the things of the Lord apart from the Lord's means and apart from the Lord's work.
[00:20:52] So what do we do?
[00:20:55] What does it look like when we give ourselves over to the Lord, when we wait on him, when we seek to achieve the things that we are called to strive after and toil after in this world, but receive it from Him?
[00:21:12] Well, first, it happens with a particular mindset. And it's the mindset David gives to us in his statement here.
[00:21:20] It's a mindset. It's a heart set that recognizes that the Lord's work is built on the Lord's work.
[00:21:31] The kingdom that David is going to receive is a kingdom that is based on a promise.
[00:21:38] It's a kingdom that is based on a promise.
[00:21:42] God has promised this thing to David. And so what David needs to do is trust him.
[00:21:49] To trust him.
[00:21:51] And trusting him means believing that it's going to happen.
[00:21:55] But believing that even amidst hardship, even amidst things falling apart, even amidst things in his own house and his own country and his own people, even though these things are all falling apart, he has to trust the Lord, that the Lord will do his work.
[00:22:10] That's faith.
[00:22:12] It's looking at God and saying, I'm going to trust what you are going to do. Despite the way things look, recite the way things seem.
[00:22:23] The world does not want to do that. A worldly perspective looks at our weakness and says, God's not doing what he said he would do. So I have to do it.
[00:22:34] I have to take matters into my own hands. I'm not getting the grades I want. I'm not getting the life I want. I'm not getting the relationships I want. So I'm going to take things into my own hands and I'm going to do them my way.
[00:22:48] The attitude itself is a major problem, as well as all the things that spin out from that, the various sins and things that go exactly contrary to God's will. Faith does the opposite.
[00:23:03] Faith looks at the Lord and says, I know that you will do this no matter what. So I am going to follow you in the ways that you have prescribed and trust you that you will honor what you have said.
[00:23:16] Now it can be easy to doubt those promises of God because of the world's pressure around us and because of the things inside of us. My encouragement to you is to read the Scriptures and to listen to them, because throughout its pages, over and over and over again, God is reassuring us and showing us through his words and, and his actions that he's got us and that he is doing what he says he will do.
[00:23:47] Look at these passages, these last several chapters. We've seen instance after instance of all kinds of terrible, evil, rotten things going on all around, and God using them to bring about his kingdom.
[00:24:04] God using them to establish his son David on his throne.
[00:24:10] This pattern continues on and on and on. And the ultimate picture of it is of course, in Jesus, when the sinful actions of human beings who destroy the Lord and Savior of the world, nail him to a cross, despise him, reject him, kill him, bury Him.
[00:24:34] And God uses these things anyway to bring about the salvation of the world, to establish a kingdom which cannot be broken and can never be undone.
[00:24:48] This is the pattern.
[00:24:51] And it can be hard to see this, especially if you're new to it or you haven't thought about it before.
[00:24:58] But if you look in the Scriptures over and over again, you will see this occurring.
[00:25:05] God uses the weakness and the foolishness and even the sinful things of this world for his glorious ends.
[00:25:14] You can rely on these things. You can rely on Him.
[00:25:20] He is, after all, the Creator of all things, the Governor of all things, the Ruler of all things.
[00:25:30] There's not a single thing that he does not see, a single thing he does not know. He's infinitely wise and knows exactly how all things fit together.
[00:25:42] Unlike us, who are constantly trying to figure out what the best way is to a particular end. God already knows it, has designed it, has ordained it from eternity.
[00:25:54] He cannot fail.
[00:26:01] And when we look at the Lord Jesus, our King, son of David, who is currently resurrected and sitting in power and glory, ruling over the Heavens and the earth, the head of the body of the church, we are reminded.
[00:26:20] You can be reminded that you have nothing to fear.
[00:26:25] As righteous as David is in his waiting and his timing, in his ruling and justice, Jesus is infinitely more.
[00:26:35] He is not confused, he is not concerned, he is not befuddled. He is not wondering what's going to happen or what to do next.
[00:26:46] He's not looking at different situations in this life and unsure about how to bring about justice, unsure about how to make things right.
[00:26:56] The problems that we face, the struggles that we face, whether they're moral matters or physical matters, spiritual matters, whatever it is, he knows and he can take care of it.
[00:27:12] This is the testimony of these things. And the little picture of David here acting well is a reminder to us of our King Jesus.
[00:27:22] David is a shadow of what is to come, the substance of whom is fulfilled in Christ.
[00:27:30] And so we are called in this passage, we are warned in this passage away from the actions, the foolish actions of these brothers.
[00:27:43] And we are called instead to follow Jesus, to follow him according to the promises he's made, follow him according to the actions that he does.
[00:27:54] Follow him even in the suffering and weakness and persecution that we are called to, to doing the right things, even when it's hard, even when it's painful, even when it's difficult.
[00:28:08] We're called to make ourselves resilient against the temptations of this world through faith in our Savior, to put our faith in the power of God and be willing to endure everything for him and for what he's done.
[00:28:30] So take the bad grade, take the loss.
[00:28:35] Be willing to be embarrassed, be willing to be persecuted, be willing to die for the sake of knowing Jesus, for the sake of following the King.
[00:28:47] What God has promised us by his grace exceeds whatever we might have lost or gained in this world.
[00:28:56] Put your faith in your King.
[00:29:00] Lets pray.
[00:29:02] Our Heavenly Father, our Almighty God, our glorious King, we bow our hearts before you today and ask that you would be at work in our world even in all the sin and foolishness and ridiculousness that we get ourselves into every day.
[00:29:22] Lord, even now, when we consider our own sinful actions and we consider the various ways in which we have strayed from your paths, in which we have not loved as you have called us to love, in which we have not served, as you've called us to serve, and ways in which we have not sought justice or proclaimed mercy.
[00:29:44] Lord, we ask that you would forgive us and that you would lead us again through the promise, through the promises that you have made to us.
[00:29:54] To the places we ought to go.
[00:29:58] Lord, we ask that you would do this by helping us to fix our eyes on the promises that you have made to us in Christ, so that we might not lose our way.
[00:30:09] So that doubts and fears might be put aside, so that false hopes and false idols might be seen for what they really are.
[00:30:19] False, weak.
[00:30:21] Pretend.
[00:30:23] We ask that you would help us to study your Word, to know it, to learn it, and to give ourselves more fully unto you, the author of all these things, the center of our story and the redeemer of our lives.
[00:30:41] We pray this in Jesus name, Amen.
