Show Notes
2 Samuel 17:24 - 18:18.
Pastor Christopher Chelpka
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Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Amen.
[00:00:01] Let's ask the Lord to bless the reading and preaching of His Word now.
[00:00:07] Our gracious Heavenly Father, we ask that you would indeed bless us by your word and spirit with the good news of the glory of your name that comes to us through Jesus Christ.
[00:00:19] We pray in his name because apart from him, there's no hope for us apart from him, Your glory and the glory of that, the glory of your name would consume us and we could not even come close to you.
[00:00:38] But you have drawn close to us and you have done so through Jesus who came into our world, took on human flesh, lived, died, rose again, ascended into heaven, and is coming again to bring the consummation of his kingdom into perfect glory.
[00:01:01] Until that day, Lord, we continue to walk with you, not by sight, but by faith. And we ask that you would bless us in that this morning.
[00:01:12] We pray this in Jesus name. Amen.
[00:01:19] You may be seated.
[00:01:22] Remain seated. That's not going to work.
[00:01:28] So let's turn Our attention to 2 Samuel this morning. 2 Samuel 17. As we continue in this great epic, not only an entertaining history, not only an extremely well written one, but one that is of course true.
[00:01:49] Inspired by the Holy Spirit and written not just to entertain or inform or instruct, but to save.
[00:01:59] God gives us his word so that we might know him through his Son.
[00:02:08] Of course, Jesus is David's son, the Promised One whom God had promised to David and ultimately comes for us and establishes himself as king this morning in 2nd Samuel 1724 through 1818. 2nd Samuel 1724. Yes, we see that the glorious kingdom of God is continuing to struggle. These are David's one period of what we might call David's dark days.
[00:02:49] But things are starting to turn around. Absalom his son has been rebelling against him. Absalom his son is now attacking him. But Absalom his son, by the end of our passage will be dead. The rebellion against God's anointed one will be over.
[00:03:07] And yes, because of David's armies and his leadership and various other things. But as we've been seeing very clearly, mostly and really all because of God, because God had decreed these things to be, because God had chosen David to be his servant. That's why David's finding success even through the means that God uses. And we know that because when other people use the same means, the same tools, good strategy, careful planning, looking for advice, it doesn't necessarily succeed.
[00:03:42] The battle belongs to the Lord.
[00:03:46] 2nd Samuel 17:24 Then David came to Mahanaim and Absalom crossed over the Jordan with all the men of Israel.
[00:03:56] Now Absalom had set a messiah over the army. Instead of Joab, Amasa was the son of a man named Ithra the Ishmaelite, who had married Abigail, the daughter of Nahash, sister of Zeruiah, Joab's mother. And Israel and Absalom encamped in the land of Gilead when David came to Mahanaim, Shobi, the son of Nahash from Rabah of the Ammonites and Makir, the son of Ammiel from Lo Debar and Barzillai the Gileadite from Regalim brought beds, basins, and earthen vessels. Wheat, barley, flour, parched grain, beans and lentils, honey and curds and sheep and cheese from the herd for David and the people with him to eat. For, they said, the people are hungry and weary and thirsty in the wilderness.
[00:04:51] Then David mustered the men who were with him and set over them commanders of thousands and commanders of hundreds. And. And David sent out the army, one third under the command of Joab, one third under the command of Abishai the son of Zeruiah, Joab's brother and one third under the command of Ittai the Gittite.
[00:05:10] And the king said to the men, I myself will also go out with you.
[00:05:15] But the men said, you shall not go out, for if we flee, they will not care about us. If half of us die, they will not care about us. But you are worth 10,000 of us.
[00:05:25] Therefore it is better that you send us help from the city.
[00:05:29] The king said to them, whatever seems best to you, I will do so. The king stood to the side of the gate while all the army marched out by hundreds and by thousands. And the king ordered Joab and Abishai and Ittai deal gently for my sake with the young man Absalom.
[00:05:48] And all the people heard when the king gave orders to all the commanders about Absalom.
[00:05:55] So the army went out into the field against Israel. And the battle was fought in the forest of Ephraim. And the men of Israel were defeated there by the servants of David. And the loss there was great on that day, 20,000 men.
[00:06:08] The battle spread over the face of all the country and the forest devoured more people that day than the sword.
[00:06:14] And Absalom happened to meet the servants of David.
[00:06:18] Absalom was riding on his mule. And the mule went under the thick branches of a great oak. And his head was caught fast in the oak and he was suspended between heaven and earth while the mule was there under him went on.
[00:06:32] And a certain man saw it and told Joab, behold, I saw Absalom hanging in an oak.
[00:06:38] Joab said to the man who told him, what, you saw him?
[00:06:43] Why then did you not strike him there to the ground? I would have been glad to give you 10 pieces of silver and a belt.
[00:06:49] But the man said to Joab, even if I felt in my hand the weight of a thousand pieces of silver, I would not reach out my hand against the king's son. For in our hearing, the king commanded you and Abishai and Ittai, for my sake, protect the young man Absalom.
[00:07:08] On the other hand, if I had dealt treacherously against his life, and there is nothing hidden from the king, then you yourself would have stood aloof.
[00:07:18] Joab said, I will not waste time like this with you. And he took three javelin in his hand and thrust them into the heart of Absalom while he was still alive in the oak.
[00:07:29] And 10 young men, Joab's armor bearers, surrounded Absalom and struck him and killed him.
[00:07:36] Then Joab blew the trumpet and the troops came back from pursuing Israel, for Joab restrained them. And they took Absalom and threw him into a great pit in the forest and raised over him a very great heap of stones. And all Israel fled, every one to his home.
[00:07:51] Now Absalom in his lifetime had taken and set up for himself the pillar that is in the king's valley. For he said, I have no son to keep my name in remembrance.
[00:08:02] He called the pillar after his own name, and it's called Absalom's monument to this day.
[00:08:08] May God bless his word to us.
[00:08:18] Absalom was riding with his.
[00:08:22] Absalom was riding with his mule under him, and his head just happens to get caught in the tree of a great oak. He happens to be suspended between heaven and earth. Joab happens to come upon him through the word of this messenger and find himself at a decision point whether he's going to obey his king or not.
[00:08:46] Of course, the narrator wants us to understand that these things are not just happening.
[00:08:51] And this is a way of speaking, of course, from our perspective, we'll see this at various times throughout the Scripture.
[00:08:59] Jesus himself will say something like that, I think, in the parable of the Good Samaritan about a man sort of by chance or happening to come along.
[00:09:08] From our perspective, things happen somewhat randomly, at least, somewhat unpredictably.
[00:09:15] But of course, in God's providence, nothing is random. God is not subject to events. God is the causer of things.
[00:09:26] He is the one who makes things happen. He is the one who rules heaven and earth and judges all.
[00:09:34] This faithful servant says there is nothing hidden from the king.
[00:09:38] If that's true of David, and it often is true, how much more so of God, who sees all things, all actions, past, present and future, and not only sees these things, but he ordains them.
[00:09:53] He chose David to be the king, not Absalom.
[00:09:57] But Absalom wanted to make a great name for himself.
[00:10:01] And that's what we want to focus on. I'd like you to focus on with me this morning.
[00:10:06] He wants to make a name for himself. This is right, a striking and powerful ending to this.
[00:10:16] These battles and the story and all the amazing things that happen, remarkable things that happen.
[00:10:23] It ends with a reminder that in his lifetime, this rebellious son, this son who was trying to take out his Father, who was trying to go against the Lord and the Lord's plans, this son who instituted this resurrection, caused all of these people from Israel astray. He set up a monument for himself, a pillar in his own name.
[00:10:49] But where does he get buried?
[00:10:53] They took absalom in verse 17 and threw him into a great pit in the forest and raised over him a great heap of stones.
[00:11:00] So you've got these two Absalom places, in a way, this place where he's laid, somewhere in the forest, far away from Jerusalem, far away from places that might be, seem more important.
[00:11:16] And we have that as a marker of his life as well as this pillar.
[00:11:22] A pillar, a reminder of who he was and what he did and his not so greatness.
[00:11:30] Absalom, like many people, wanted to establish a legacy.
[00:11:38] When Scripture talks about a name, when Absalom wants to keep his name in remembrance, it's not just a label, of course, or a set of sounds, right, that go together. It's of course, much more than that.
[00:11:51] He wants a legacy. He wants his identity, his standing, his worth, his value to be something of great importance.
[00:12:02] A lot of people want that today.
[00:12:05] We don't want to be unvalued or unworthy or be doing things in our life that really aren't meaningful and don't stick around, are like vapors.
[00:12:19] There is this instinct in us to be great, or to at least be great in the sense of there's meaning of our lives.
[00:12:29] There's greatness in the things that happen and the things that we do, goodness and greatness.
[00:12:37] And it's not a bad instinct because that's how the Lord made us, the Glorious One, made us in his own image. He crowned us as the pinnacle of his Creation. He set us over all of his creation and called us to rule over that world. Humanity was meant to be glorious, to be glorious in him.
[00:13:00] There is something natural in the way that God made us to hunger for meaning, to hunger for value and glory.
[00:13:10] Our problem though, is that when we reject finding that glory in God and seek to establish it on our own, when exaltation becomes self exaltation, and really there are only two paths. Do we exalt ourselves? Do we trust ourselves, secure a name for ourselves?
[00:13:32] Or do we entrust our name to God?
[00:13:35] Do we entrust our lives to God? Our worth, our meaning, our history, our place?
[00:13:43] And the answer, of course we must entrust our name to God. And Absalom is a sad, a strong reminder to not lift ourselves up in our own eyes.
[00:13:57] This self made name, this self exaltation that opposes God is a pattern that is of course common in Scripture. Absalom wants to keep his name in remembrance. And of course remember in Absalom's mind, that is a name that is in rebellion against God, against his Father, against the kingdom, against the covenant, against the promises. That's what he wants, to be remembered, his greatness over and against God.
[00:14:24] We see that when very early chapters of Genesis, Cain, who, after murdering his brother Abel, coming under the judgment of God and the curse of God, he builds a city in Genesis 14, and he names it after his son, Babel. Of course, in Genesis 11, 4, when they build a pillar, a tower, when they build this thing, they say, let us make a name for ourselves.
[00:14:55] That's what they say, that's the reasoning behind it. They're out to establish something, the city of man, the people of Cain are out to establish for themselves a city for themselves and by themselves, which means not under God.
[00:15:14] They want independence, they want to do their own thing. And we do that too, in our flesh.
[00:15:21] And this pattern that we see in kings and in all kinds of people throughout history, the history of the Word and history outside of Scripture, is that God is very patient.
[00:15:35] God does not always bring judgment right away, but the future is determined by God, and he is king of kings.
[00:15:46] And he does respond with judgment, as we see in Babel, as we see in the Flood, and as we see here with Absalom.
[00:15:53] Absalom, despite his cunning ways, despite his amazing charm, despite his clever strategies, good advisors, thousands of people on his side, a greater army than David had very likely indicated. When it says that all the men of Israel came out, he still lost because he was not the Lord's anointed Because he was rebelling against the Lord's anointed Absalom had a totally different path.
[00:16:29] Absalom could have submitted himself to the Lord and to his king and to his father. He could have submitted himself there and lived out his days in the glories of the Davidic kingdom under the pleasure and grace of God.
[00:16:44] How awesome would that have been?
[00:16:46] God has spent all this time taking and raising David up, and now you're the great prince. Just enjoy your life.
[00:16:55] That's not how we are, though.
[00:16:57] We get discontent, we get unsettled. We think there's a better way if we go our own way, apart from what God has chosen.
[00:17:07] So as I said, there's nothing wrong with wanting your life to be meaningful. There's everything good with wanting your life to be meaningful.
[00:17:15] But when we begin to construct the meaning and value and worth in our lives out of our own good works, out of our own rebellion, out of our own self exaltation, it's like taking the garbage from your garbage can in your kitchen and trying to build a mighty tower to the honor of your name.
[00:17:39] It's just going to be bad and stinky. Nobody wants to be near that.
[00:17:45] And we fall into the judgment of God.
[00:17:49] You know, you read Ecclesiastes, you look at your own life, you think about people around you, and it's really obvious that a lot of life under the sun is a coming and going, a passing, a vanity, a wind.
[00:18:06] Mankind springs up, a life springs up like the grass and then it's gone.
[00:18:12] And if we only view life as life under the sun, that's really all there is.
[00:18:18] But when we begin to see things from the perspective of God and what he's doing, when we put our faith in him and what he's doing, our lives are not vain because His Name is forever.
[00:18:33] Psalm 135 says, this is one of many places. Your name, O Lord, endures forever your renown, O Lord, throughout the ages.
[00:18:42] There's no one who's going to come along and topple God, you know, at the 11th hour.
[00:18:46] There's no one who's going to come and outwit him out, charm him. No one who's going to be able to deceive his people and lead them astray, not even Satan himself.
[00:18:59] His name, his kingdom, his power, his glory, endures forever his renown throughout the ages.
[00:19:09] And so he is not going to tolerate kings and other people, including ourselves, who would seek to challenge him, to go up against Him.
[00:19:21] He alone is God. He alone is, is King. Of kings.
[00:19:26] So self exaltation, give it up. Bad project, not worth.
[00:19:32] Brings judgment on us.
[00:19:35] It creates a life full of confusions and abstractions and vanity.
[00:19:41] But there's another option.
[00:19:44] The other option is that God gives you his name.
[00:19:49] So instead of trying to create a life that's on your own, over and against the glorious One who lives eternally throughout all generations and throughout all ages, instead we simply receive his glory and the glories of His Name as a gift. And we are lifted up, all kinds of meaning, all kinds of value, because it's found in him who has infinite value.
[00:20:20] Against this path of self exaltation, God says to Abram, I will make your name great.
[00:20:32] I, God says, will make your Name Great. Genesis 12:2. In 2nd Samuel 7, when the Lord makes this promise to David, he says to David, I.
[00:20:45] I will make for you a great name.
[00:20:48] David doesn't have to set up his own pillar. David doesn't have to set up his own legacy. David doesn't have to secure it and work and grind and grind for it, because God has said he will do it.
[00:21:00] He says, I will make for you a great name. And at that moment, perfectly eternally, David's legacy is secured in the Lord by God's own promise. God, whose name endures forever and whose renown is throughout the ages.
[00:21:22] And the same kind of gift that God gives to us, a gift that comes to us in our rebellion, in our lostness, in our sin, and says, I will make your name great.
[00:21:34] He does for us as well in the new Covenant.
[00:21:38] In Revelation 2:17, he says of the faithful, I will give him a new name.
[00:21:44] In Revelation 22:3,4, we read this.
[00:21:47] No longer will there be of heaven, no longer will there be anything accursed.
[00:21:53] But the throne of God and of the Lamb will be in it. And his servants will worship him. They will see his face and his name will be on their foreheads.
[00:22:07] You want something else?
[00:22:09] You think you can obtain something better than that?
[00:22:13] To be in the new Jerusalem, in the throne room of God, marked and identified as belonging to him, totally blessed.
[00:22:24] Nothing cursed.
[00:22:27] The worship, the glory, the meaning, the value, the community, all of the everything that we could ever want, everything, everything we were all made to be, he gives to us.
[00:22:38] He gives us a new name. He gives us his name, and he makes us great by his own promise and as a gift.
[00:22:51] This happens in a number of different ways. I'll mention two.
[00:22:55] First, it happens in God's redeeming of us, in a way, redemption.
[00:23:01] You can think of it Like a price that is paid to rescue us or to bring us out of slavery and into freedom.
[00:23:11] A lot of what a name means, legacy value, these kinds of things. A lot of what that means has to do with belonging.
[00:23:23] That we are thought of well by other people, that we are received by others, that we have a place among mankind well, what God does for us in redeeming us on the cross, when he pays that price for our sin, when Jesus gives his own life for us, he rescues us out of this slavery, out of this darkness, out of belonging to our Father. The devil is one way the scripture describes it.
[00:23:55] He rescues us out of a family with one name, the city of man. And he brings us into the city of God. And belonging to him.
[00:24:04] And that redemption, that work of redemption, is connected in the Scriptures to something called adoption, which, of course, you guys know what that is, right? When someone is adopted, they are received. They're not a member of a family, naturally, but are received into a member of a family and. And receive all the blessings of that family.
[00:24:23] Well, scripture connects these two. In Galatians 4, 4 through 5, Christ was sent, we read, to redeem us so that we might receive adoption.
[00:24:34] One of God's purposes is to put his name on us, and we are adopted. Romans 8 says in Galatians 4, says, we are adopted as sons, which means we receive an inheritance, a glorious inheritance, one described in Revelation 1, anticipated in the Kingdom of David.
[00:24:52] This inheritance that belongs to the sons of God is given to us through Christ. He redeems us, brings us into his family, adopts us as his children, and gives to us this inheritance, glory, meaning, value, life and belonging.
[00:25:16] Perhaps this is one reason why in Matthew 28:19, we read that baptism, when we are baptized, we are baptized into the name of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit.
[00:25:29] We come to belong to the Lord. He puts his name on us.
[00:25:36] James 2, 7 says that we are called by his name. And. And in Revelation 3, when John writes these letters to the churches, he writes to the church of Philadelphia, and we hear this. This is so great.
[00:25:53] Revelation 3:12.
[00:25:55] The one who conquers, I will make him a pillar in the temple of my God.
[00:26:04] Never shall he go out of it. And I will write on him the name of my God and. And the name of the city of my God, the new Jerusalem, which comes down from God out of heaven, and my own new name.
[00:26:20] Talk about a monument, right? This is not some pillar, some architectural feature in a valley, okay? It's called the King's Valley. It's true, right? Like some right, this is the new Jerusalem.
[00:26:36] This is God making a vision in which he describes us as being a part of the temple in which the Holy Spirit dwells, in which he puts his name on us. And the name of this place, this city, this heaven, and his own name.
[00:26:55] Well, how do we become conquerors?
[00:26:57] How do we get that?
[00:27:00] Revelation 12:11 gives us the answer. Believers conquer by the blood of the Lamb.
[00:27:06] We don't go out and win our own battles. We don't go out and conquer our own enemies. We win by the blood of the Lamb, which means Jesus blood is shed for us, forgives our sins, so that we might be justified, not condemned, justified and adopted, belonging to God.
[00:27:29] Romans 8:37 says, we are more than conquerors through him who loved us, through him who loved us.
[00:27:43] The aim of life, my friends, is not self exaltation.
[00:27:48] It's not what you want. It leads to disaster.
[00:27:54] The aim of life, the chief end of man, is to glorify God and enjoy him forever.
[00:28:05] How does the Lord's Prayer begin?
[00:28:08] Hallowed be thy name. Your name, hallowed be your name. That's where we begin.
[00:28:15] That's where we start our lives, our prayers.
[00:28:19] We don't order our lives around ourselves, we order our lives around him and around the Gospel of Jesus Christ, where God says, I will make you great and I will do so by dying for you and lifting you up.
[00:28:36] We find our rest in the Lord.
[00:28:39] Augustine says this famously in his Confessions. He says, you have made us for yourself, O Lord, and our heart is restless until it rests in you.
[00:28:53] It's true, all parts of that we were made for the Lord by God, and our hearts are restless until they rest in him.
[00:29:04] But that's something we can only receive, only achieve, through God's conquering for us.
[00:29:12] So instead of rebellion against God, instead of deciding on a path of self exaltation and all the continual performance and never ending treadmill that comes from that.
[00:29:29] The Scriptures offer to you a salvation in which you simply rest and receive on the blood of Christ, or rest and receive the work of Christ through the blood of Christ, which is for you.
[00:29:44] You don't need to worry about how you secure your name, because God has already secured it.
[00:29:50] Let's honor him.
[00:29:52] Let's pray.
[00:29:54] Our Heavenly Father, we thank you for this time in your word.
[00:29:59] And we thank you for the reminder on these reminders and history and when man has foolishly exalted himself.
[00:30:09] Absalom, of course, is not alone in this. We see it in David, we see it in Joab.
[00:30:14] We see it in Me, we see it in others.
[00:30:19] The only one we don't see it in is in Jesus, who was perfectly obedient, even to the point of death. And because of that, and the death on that cross in which he gave Himself as a sacrifice for us, to give us what we did not deserve.
[00:30:36] Because of him, because of that work, he was glorified and and all who put their faith in Him.
[00:30:44] Lord, turn us aside from our own righteousness. Turn us aside from our own supposed good works. Turn us aside from all treachery and rebelliousness, and turn us unto the Lord Jesus Christ, so that we might find forgiveness and value and everything that we need in him, including rest for our hearts which remain so restless, poor, apart from you.
[00:31:08] Lord, draw near to us today and glorify us through the name of Jesus Christ.
[00:31:14] Amen.
