All right, let's open with a
word of prayer. Our Heavenly Father, thank you
for this gathering this evening. I pray that the preached word
will be helpful to everybody. We thank you that you've given
us your word in a written form, an unchangeable form, and that
we know that we are reading the same things that you inspired
the prophets and the apostles to speak and write a while ago.
Lord, write these things upon our hearts. In Christ's name
we pray. Amen. Now, we've been going through the
manner of life or the kind of life that David experienced after
his sin with Bathsheba. And of course, the Lord had told
him that his sins were forgiven, and that was certainly in the
eternal sense, and he would not die. The law would have imposed
two death sentences on him for what he did, for adultery and
then for murder. Both of them were death sentences,
and he would not die. But that did not mean that there
were not temporal consequences. You know what I mean when I say
temporal? I mean, you know, within normal life, the believer is
not exempt from, that is, God has not promised him exemption
from the consequences of his deeds in this life. Some of them
are simply natural consequences. You know, you jump off a roof
of a high building, you're going to die just like anybody else
does. And the moral laws kind of have natural consequences
to them, just like physical laws do. And the things that David
did, brought about disastrous consequences
in his life. In particular, the Lord said
the sword would never depart from his household because he
was a man of blood himself, a violent man. And for all that we may
admire about David, there's a lot about him that we would find
very off-putting. Of course, some of it was because
the day and age in which he lived, much more violent back then than
We see now, you know, when people say, well, wars killed more people
in the 20th century than any other time. Well, there were
sounds maybe cold, but there were more people to kill. You
know, you can only kill so many people when there's, you know,
less than a billion people on the Earth. But then when you
suddenly have three or four billion and they all get into war, it's
going to be a bloodier mess. But I don't know that man is
any more violent now than he ever was. He just has some better
weapons than he used to. But it seems as though more of
our of the world right now, at least has some laws that make
unjust violence against the law. Whereas back then, people just
whoever had the power, you know, made the rules and generally
they gained their power by violent means. And while David had never
overstepped God's decree, so to speak, in terms of Saul, is
he never used violence to take Saul's throne from him. And he
tried not to use violence in order to secure that throne later
on after Saul had died. Nonetheless, he was rather quick
with a sword and rather good with it. And so while we might
have had a difficult time, associating with him. Yet he was called the
man after God's own heart. And so we know that he was beloved
of the Lord. In fact, his name means beloved
one. And he was beloved of the Lord. He'd been chosen by God,
chosen from the beginning unto salvation through Jesus Christ.
And God made promises to him. In fact, I've been writing, I
may preach on it this Sunday, but writing a rather long essay
about where he said, well, the King James says, though it be
not so with my house, God has made with me an everlasting covenant,
ordered and secured in all things. And this is all my salvation,
all my desire, though he calls it not to grow. Now, I think
that the King James didn't translate it perfectly there, but David
understood God had made with him a covenant. And that covenant
was the reason that anything good happened to him, because
David had earned nothing but the judgment of God. So, you
know, he said the sword would never depart his house. And we've
been it's kind of a depressing part of the history of David's
life, all the disaster that fell upon his house after that with
one of his sons raping a half-sister, and then Absalom taking vengeance
on his half-brother for raping his sister and other things. And then Absalom eventually stages
a coup and drives David out of Jerusalem and takes over the
throne. Now, through all of this, David
loved his children. They were real scoundrels. I don't know whether it was through
lack of training on David's part. You know, when you look for a
human reason, didn't he ever teach them not to behave that
way? Or was he too busy, you know,
making a kingdom for himself? You know, that's a common thing
among men. You know, you hit your 20s or
something and it's time to When you get married and you start
having a family, you're also trying to build a career and
build your own little kingdom in the world. And sometimes men
get so caught up in that they don't take the time to be a father
to their children. Don't teach them the things they
need to know. Now, we don't blame all the waywardness of children
on their parents, but sometimes they're just kids act the way
they do because they never were taught better. And when you look
at David, who While he was ready to exercise
violence, it seemed like, you know, in every case that you
see about it, up until Bathsheba's husband Uriah, his violence was
somewhat justified, but yet his sons just coveting the throne,
meat of the flesh, seemingly no fear of the Lord. You know,
Solomon's the only one we read about that had any of the fear
of the Lord in him. And he was the one responsible
for leading Israel into idolatry, or letting idolatry rise up in
Israel. So David's life was quite a mess. And we've been now seeing about
this coup led by Absalom. And now we're going to see the
beginning of David's restoration to the throne. In verse 1 of chapter 18, it says, David mustered
the men who were with him and appointed over them commanders
of thousands and commanders of hundreds. David sent the troops
out, a third under the command of Joab, a third under Joab's
brother Abishai, son of Zariah, and a third under Ittai the Gittite.
The king told the troops, I myself will surely march out with you.
Now, Again, we're not certain of David's age at this point,
but he could have been upwards of 60 years old by now. And he's
not. Well, maybe he felt, you know,
the last time I stayed home, I got in trouble, you know, because
that's when he got in trouble with Bathsheba. And so he may
be thinking to himself, I need to go out with the army. But
he took his whatever there was of an army and we don't know
how many thousands there were, but And since there were commanders
of thousands, it had to be multiple thousands. And he just, all he
was doing, he was organizing his army into a useful fighting
contingent. And he divided them into three.
Joab was the commander of David's army, had been pretty much from
the beginning. And then there was Joab's brother,
Abishai, And then there was this fella,
Entai the Gittite. Now remember when David was leaving
Jerusalem, getting out before Absalom got there with a fighting
force, and I'm sure Absalom would have engaged and tried to kill
him. Now that's just how ruthless a man Absalom would have become. And so he was getting out, and
here this Entai the Gittite was going to leave with David, and
David said, you just got here yesterday. I don't know whether
he meant literally yesterday or you just you've been around
here for just a little while. He says, you owe me nothing.
You're not obligated to me, you know, anything like that. I haven't
provided anything for you. But it was committed to David
and he left with David. So now he's been elevated to
the place of a general in David's army. Verse three, but the man
said, you must not go out. If we were are forced to flee,
they won't care about us. Even if we must die, they won't
care. But we're at 10,000 of us. It would be better for you
to give us support from the city. And the king answered, I will
do whatever seems best to you. Now, we won't try to draw any
illustrations from this, that is any illustrations of the gospel,
at least I couldn't find anything. Anyway, you know, if David stands
with a picture of Christ, you can't hardly see how this would
fit in. But there is some wisdom for us to be taught to us here. And that is that when you are
engaging, in activities, even in behalf of the kingdom of God,
it doesn't hurt to use some common sense. David was going to go
out with them. We don't know whether it was
pride that was driving him, being cautious about, as I said, he
was thinking, well, last time I stayed behind, I got in trouble.
Or as we learned, maybe he wanted to go out because he wanted to
see to it that nothing happened to Absalom. Not sure why he didn't
want to go, but he was prevailed on by the wisdom of his advisors. They said, look, when we go out,
they're going to care about us. The only one they're going to
be aiming for is you. If half of us die, it won't make any
difference to them. It won't stop them. They're not
going to stop until you're dead. You're worth ten thousand of
us. If they kill you, the rest of us are gone. I mean, you know.
So you stay here and then also stay here and do what you should
be doing, which is not wielding a sword. You should be directing
the entire business. You're the commander in chief,
you're not the general. So the king stood beside the gate while
all the men marched out in units of hundreds and thousands. The
king commanded Joab, Abisham, Be gentle with the young man
Absalom for my sake. And all the troops heard the
king giving orders concerning Absalom to each of his commanders. Now we can see that David wanted
to become king, but he wanted to become king without killing
Absalom, who had usurped the throne. Now Absalom in this story,
we can make him a picture of the devil, or any of the allies
of the devil. We could just make up a picture
of anything that stands in opposition to Christ, and in particular,
Christ the King. But David loved his son, despite
what a scoundrel his son was, and did not want any harm to
come to him. Humanly speaking, that's misplaced
affection. I'm not saying that I wouldn't
do the same thing. Awful hard to deal justly with
your own children when you're a man in power. Imagine if you
were a judge and it was your son or daughter that was charged
with murder, capital murder. Well, tough to handle that case,
wouldn't it? But David, wanted to preserve
the life of Absalom. The thing is, can you imagine
what that sounded like to his troops? Because they heard him
saying that. They're going out there to lay
their lives on the line to rescue David, as it were, from a usurper
to the throne, and David saying, take it easy on the usurper. And that's just not a good way
to lead a group of people. Well, it said, the army marched
into the field to fight Israel. Now, by Israel, it meant those
who had aligned themselves with Absalom, because most of Israel
had aligned themselves with Absalom, even though he was not an authorized
king. That is, God had not authorized
him to be king. He was the de facto king of the
nation at that point. and the greater part of the Israeli
military was behind him. So the army, meaning David's
army, marched to the field to fight Israel. And the battle
took place in the front of Ephraim. There, the army excuse me, of
Israel was defeated by David's men and the casualties that day
were great, 20,000 men. Now, I don't know if that's total
casualties from both sides. I tend to believe probably just
meant the other side because it's not like they'd want to
brag about how many they lost in the effort. So 20,000 of Absalom's men died trying to
support Absalom. And it says the battle spread
out over the whole countryside, and the forest claimed more lives
that day than the sword. And that's a little unusual when
you think about how the forest killed people. Probably what
is meant, I mean, it probably most of them died by the sword,
but they wouldn't have died by the sword. It wouldn't have been
that they ran into the forest and got tangled up and couldn't
get away. But nonetheless, in this particular
battle, the terrain was every bit as important and every bit
as effective in terms of defeating David's enemies as was the weapons. Now verse 9, Absalom happened
to meet David's men. in all the chaos. And you can
imagine what chaos hand-to-hand combat is. You know, we're so
accustomed now, you know, it's missiles fired from far away.
You know, there isn't a whole lot of even infantry-like combat,
at least not to begin with, you know. But this was just men against
men with swords drawn. And So there's chaos everywhere. And then Israel's army starts
running in retreat. And Absalom ends up face to face
with David's army. So he runs. He was riding his
mule. And I kind of got a kick out
of this. You know, we think of all these
warfares, we're thinking all these guys on big stout horses
and all that, people who ride mules. It was just a little short
thing, you know, that's what they had to get around on. You
hardly think of a mighty warrior on a mule, but that's what he
was on. And he was riding his mule. And as the mule went under
the thick branches of a large oak, Absalom's head got caught
in the tree. He was left hanging in midair,
while the mule he was riding kept on going. Now, other translations
say hair. I didn't look it up to see if
there was a way to know one way or the other. In the commentaries
I was reading, they said he could have been either one. He either
got his hair all tangled up in the branches, or his head got
stuck fork of a tree limb. We don't know. I tend to think
hair. If he'd all at once got his head stuck, it would have
killed him right then. It would have been like hanging him. You
know, because mules aren't as fast as horses, but they can
move along. And I guarantee he had that mule going as hard as
it would. And so probably got caught in
his hair, got caught in the branches. Now, our translation says oak. I believe the King James says
oak. Others say terebinth. a terebinth tree, which I was
trying to look that up, see what that's like, what kind of tree
it is. It's related to the word for
turpentine. So evidently they've used it to make turpentine, but
it is a tree. There is a kind of tree called
the terebinth in that area. And I guess just some translators
think that it was really an oak tree. Others think that that
word means the terebinth tree. A lot of that kind of stuff we
can't know for certain. Just like when you read about
the precious stones and stuff. You know, it'll say this one
was a sapphire. This one was a diamond. This was a ruby. They're
doing the best they can. But this is, you know, Hebrew,
it's in the Bible. That form of Hebrew hasn't been
spoken in a long time. And so they aren't always sure
about details like that. I suppose what kind of tree it
was isn't all that important, but we do know this. He took
off on that cold. He got caught in a tree somehow
and he was left hanging in the tree because the cold kept going. I mean, the mule kept going.
When one of the men saw this, he told Joab, I just saw Absalom
hanging in an oak tree. And Joab said to the man who
told him this, wait, what? You saw him? Why didn't you strike
him to the ground right there? Then I would have had to give
you 10 shekels of silver and a warrior's belt. Joab said,
what are you just killing? Why did you come tell me about
it? And that shows you the difference now between Joab and David. And
in this case, Joab's right. And even in the spiritual picture
that's being drawn here, which we'll talk about in just a minute,
David, as I said, was trying to keep the throne and Absalom. And you can't have both. There
was no way for that throne to be secure so long as Absalom
was alive. And it didn't matter to Joab
what David had said. Joab was going to do what was
right to do for the sake of David and for the sake of the nation
of Israel. But the man replied, even if I if a thousand shekels
were weighed out into my hands, I would not lift my hand against
the king's son. In our hearing, the king commanded
you and Abishai and Hittite protect the young man Absalom. And if
I put my life in jeopardy and nothing's kept from the king,
what it means is if I killed Joab, the king would have heard
about this. I mean, if I would have killed Absalom, the king
would have heard about it. He said you kept your distance
from me. Now, realize these guys may represent, you know, be used
as illustrations of good things, but they also were just men.
And this fellow was right. If he killed this, if he killed
Absalom, and David found out about it, and David's anger burned
against this man, do I have to just back up? I don't think any
of these people are the kind of folks we want to live next
door to. It seemed to me they were all,
well, human. As I said, we preach total depravity.
We shouldn't be surprised when people act totally depraved.
But now, let's go on and we'll back up
in a few minutes and make some comments. George said, I'm not
going to wait like this for you. So he took three javelins in
his hand and punched them into Absalom's heart while Absalom
was still alive in the oak tree. And ten of Joab's armor bearers
that surrounded Absalom struck him and killed him. Now, it's
a little bit difficult to understand here. The guy was alive, still hanging
in the tree. Couldn't get out from it. And
so Absalom uh thrust him through with three spears evidently it
didn't kill him and whether he did it as a warrior knowledgeable
of where to stab and therefore avoided it for the purposes of
making it a horrid death i don't know but it says in 10 of joab's
armor bearers and that would have been you know men was always
with him and were also warriors themselves It says that they
surrounded him, struck him, and killed him. So he wasn't dead
until those 10 guys got done with him. And I would imagine
they pretty much hacked him to pieces. Then Joab sounded the trumpet
and the troops stopped pursuing Israel, for Joab halted them. Now, Joab Once again, he's exercising
the wisdom of a good military leader. Despite David's words,
the objective was to get rid of Absalom. Absalom was the problem,
not the men that were with him. The men that were with him were
mistaken. They followed the wrong guy. And it is interesting to
see even how our Lord Jesus, when he was in this, in the world,
he made a distinction. between the leaders and those
who followed them. He said he saw the people of
Israel as sheep without a shepherd. But the Pharisees, he didn't
have a kind word for them. They should have known better.
They were, humanly speaking, they were the problem in Israel,
the Pharisees and other leaders of the temple, Sadducees, the
scribes, and the political figures. And it was those who got his
harshest reviews. And so Joel said, we were going
after Absalom. And he was willing to kill however
many Israelites it took to get to Absalom. But once Absalom's
dead, he said, stop. We've achieved the objective. They took Absalom, threw him
into a big pit in the forest, and piled up a large heap of
rocks overhead. Meanwhile, all the Israelites
fled to their homes." Now, let's note some things now about Absalom's
end, because it's an illustration
to us of the end of all who raise their hand against the Lord's
anointed, the Lord Jesus Christ. This is what will come to them.
There will be a time when it appears they're succeeding. It
will be a time when it looks like they have the power. And
they will have the greater part of the world on their side. But what happened? Well, if you
take it, it was his hair that got caught in the tree. What
was it that he gloried in? A few chapters back, we read
about the fact that That was a big thing. How fast it grew,
how thick and luxurious or whatever you want to call his head of
hair. He was known for how handsome he was and what a great head
of hair he had. He got hung up by his own glory.
And that happens to everyone. Yeah, I'm safe, aren't I? That's not going to happen to
me, is it? I'm going to say, yeah, it might
be something else, but it's not going to be my hair. Yeah, if I got a nut by my ear,
I'd fall because it wouldn't hold me up. No, but men get tangled
up in their glory. The very thing in which Men glory
is the thing that eventually brings them down. That's why
Paul said, God forbid that I should glory in anything other than
the cross of my Lord Jesus Christ. If that's your glory, well, your
hair will get caught in a tree. So his glory is what destroyed
him. Secondly, he became a cursed
man. It is written, cursed is everyone
who is hanged upon a tree. That's in the law. Now, it almost
sounds funny. I mean, when you read the story,
here he is on a mule, run away, and suddenly he's hanging in
a tree. There's a reason God made it happen that way. Absalom
was cursed. And while the picture seems kind
of funny, it's a very sobering thing to think about. hung between
heaven and earth, rejected by both. Cursed by men, worse yet, cursed
by God. The man, he's killed, brutally,
mercilessly, and savagely killed. rendered utterly helpless by
his cursed position. And those who were on, at least
for the sake of the story, and were on the right side of the
issue, killed him in a brutal manner. I don't preach a great deal about
eternal judgment. And one of the reasons is, it's
just not a subject I like to talk about. You know, I much
prefer the topic of eternal salvation. Of course, eternal salvation
can be declared as good news only when you consider what the
natural course of events is. But I like to present God in
terms of His grace and mercy. It's a little difficult for me
to present Him in terms of His merciless justice. But here's a sobering truth.
God will eternally condemn without mercy every enemy of the Lord
Jesus Christ in that day. It's not going to be a pretty
sight. It'll be just. It'll be righteous. It'll be
absolutely horrible. And if you think he won't do
it, just go to Calvary and take note of what he did to his own
son. when he bore sins that he himself did not do. Imagine what
he shall do to the enemies of his son. That is, those who remain
enemies until the last day. They slew him, and then they
put him in the pit. It is written in the book of
Revelation that Satan was consigned to the pit, the abyss. and locked up. And every enemy
of the Lord will find himself in the pit. And then what did
they do? Covered him up with a pile of
large stones. He was already dead. Then they
put him in a pit. He couldn't have got out of it
and threw stones on top of him. This man, a threefold Death,
if you will. A threefold curse. It's absolutely
impossible that Absalom could recover from what happened to
him. And if a man dies as an enemy
of God, there is absolutely nothing to be done for him. Maybe we should talk more about
that subject. I know it's sobering to me when
I do. It takes away frivolous religion. We start to realize
the serious issues we're dealing with. We're not talking about
Baptist, Reformed, or Methodist here. We're talking about life
and death, eternal life and eternal death. We're not talking about who's
right on this minor point of theology. who does the ceremonies
right, we're talking about saved or damned. That's how important
these issues are. And I cannot describe to you
the horror of damnation any more than I can describe to you the
glory of salvation. Both of them are beyond our,
the capacity of our minds to comprehend. But God is a God of justice,
absolute, unswerving, unyielding justice. If he were not so, if
that's not the way he would, that's not his true nature, Christ
would have had to die. He could have just made an argument
for God to let it go. But God never lets it go. Therefore,
Christ bore the penalty that God demanded. So he could let
us go, even as he didn't let it go, if you know what I mean.
He forgave us our sins, but he did not just forgive our sins. He forgave us in the sense that
we don't have to pay the debt. That's what the word forgive
means, is to clear a debt. He assigned the debt to someone
else who paid it. The debt did get paid. Well, once Absalom is dead, Joab's army or David's army under
the command of Joab is called back. And you know, there's a
little picture here for you and me who are members of the Lord's Army. I
remember singing a kid like a song like that when I was a little
kid. I'm in the Lord's Army. I may never march in the infantry,
ride in the cavalry, shoot the artillery. I may never zoom or
the enemy, but I'm in the Lord's Army. Well, we are. Now, it's
not an army that actually carries steel swords or rifles. That's
not, you know, we don't make our warfare in flesh, but it
is a fight. It is a fight. But our warfare
stops the moment the true enemy is defeated. Once a person has
been reconciled to God, we just pull up. It's done. The Word has had its effect. Anybody that surrenders and these
people were running and they were in retreat, which wasn't
exactly a surrender, but they quit fighting. Well, the one
who was really in the wrong was dead. So quit chasing the people
that are no longer aligned with him and no longer causing a problem. Verse 18, during his lifetime,
Absalom had taken a pillar and erected it in the King's Valley
as a monument to himself. Isn't that something? He thought, I have no son to
carry on the memory of my name. And he did. So he named the pillar
after himself and is called Absalom's Monument. to this day. So what does Absalom, you know,
what do we learn from Absalom? He was a man of great pride,
an impulsive man, a selfish man, a vain man, a man full of the
glory of flesh. Yet for all of that, he ends
up hanging in the tree, cursed, cut to pieces, thrown into a
pit in the middle of the forest and covered up with a pile of
stones. And the only memory there is of him is a stack of stones, a pillar
that he put up and put his name on. And how many people, I mean,
they called it Absalom's Monument, but how many do you think went
past there and said, oh boy, what a man he was? those rocks as a monument to
his stupidity, to his foolishness. And whatever monuments we make
to ourselves will in time become nothing but a monument to our
own stupidity, our own unrighteousness, our own rebellion. In the book of Revelation, and
I can't remember just where it was, where it is, it's just kind
of a scrap of scripture going through my mind, but it talks
about God's people and how they will be given a name in the house
of God. And I don't even name anywhere
else. Do you? You'll be all right, you know?
When I die, you know, I've never remembered again. Because we don't in ourselves
amount to anything. The only name that we should
want is the name Child of God. Because in that name is every
blessing that God has. Well, we'll pick up there next
week and look at the follow-up story about how the news gets back to David
and how he takes that news that Absalom is dead.