Okay, 2 Samuel 14, let's read
this chapter and we'll come back and make a few comments. Now
Joab, the son of Zeruiah, perceived that the king's heart was toward
Absalom. And Joab sent to Jekoah, and
fetched thence a wise woman, and said unto her, I pray thee,
feign thyself to be a mourner, and put on now mourning apparel,
and anoint not thyself with oil, but be as a woman that hath a
long time mourned for the dead. You come to the king and speak
on this manner unto him. So Joab put the words in her
mouth. When scripture says this is a
wise woman, it means she had a quick and ready tongue. She
always knew just what to say and how to say it. She was not
like me who thinks it's the best thing to say hours later when
I'm home. She always knew what to say and how to say it when
the situation presented itself. In verse 4, when the woman of
Tekoa spake to the king, she fell on her face to the ground
did obeisance, and said, Help, O king! And the king said unto
her, What aileth thee? And she answered, I am indeed
a widow woman, and my husband is dead, and thy handmaid hath
two sons. And they two strove together
in the field, and there was none to part them, but the one smote
the other, and slew him. And, behold, the whole family
is risen against thy handmaid. And they said, Deliver him that
smote his brother, that we may kill him for the life of his
brother whom he slew. and we will destroy there also.
And so they shall quench my coal which is left, and shall not
leave to my husband neither name nor remainder upon the earth.
And the king said unto the woman, Go to thine house, and I will
give charge concerning thee." David's going to investigate
this situation and he'll make a decision, that's what he means.
Verse 9, the woman of Tekoa said unto the king, My lord, O king,
the iniquity be on me and on my father's house, and the king
and his throne be guiltless. And what she's saying here is,
let the punishment be on me and on my family. If I haven't told
you the whole truth about this case, you know, if these, you
know, avengers of blood come and kill my son, I will hold
you accountable, hold you responsible. But what she's insinuating to
him is, other people probably will. And, you know, you'll have
to answer to them. She's a wise woman and she knew
just what to say, didn't she? How to say it to him to put this
on him. In verse 10, the king said, Whosoever
saith aught unto thee, bring him to me, and he will not touch
thee any more. And she said, I pray thee, let the king remember
the Lord thy God, that thou wouldst not suffer the revengers of blood
to destroy any more, lest they destroy my son. And he said,
As the Lord liveth, there shall not one hair of thy son fall
to the earth. She's appealing to David's emotions
here, remember the Lord thy God. Imitate his grace and his mercy. Imitate how merciful he is by
showing mercy to me and to my son. In verse 12, then the woman
said, Let thine handmaid, I pray thee, speak one word unto my
lord the king. And he said, Say on. The woman
said, Wherefore then hast thou thought such a thing against
the people of God? For the king doth speak this thing as one
which is faulty, and that the king doth not fetch home again
his banished. She said, You're guilty of not
doing for your own son what you do for somebody else's son. This
is the guilt trip, you know, she's laying on him. In verse
14, she says, For we must needs die, and ours water spilt on
the ground, which cannot be gathered up again. Neither doth God respect
any person, yet doth he devise means that his banished be not
expelled from him. And what she's, the logic she's
following here is everybody's got to die somehow. Everybody's
going to. And if you smite Absalom and
kill him, well, that's not going to bring Amnon back. He's as
water spilt from the ground. You can't gather him up again.
And God's not a respecter of persons. He doesn't just immediately
smite people down every time that they're guilty of a crime.
Then why should you? If God hadn't struck Absalom
down, why should you? God's not a respecter of persons.
He has been pleased to provide a way to let the manslayer be
restored, to be restored to his home. Then why shouldn't you
do the same and restore Absalom back to his home? See why she's
crafting this story? So verse 15, she says, Now therefore,
I am come to speak of this thing unto my lord the king, is because
the people have made me afraid. And thy handmaid said, I will
now speak unto the king. It may be that the king will
perform the request of his handmaid. For the king will hear to deliver
his handmaid out of the hand of the man that would destroy
me and my son, together, out of the inheritance of God. Then
thine handmaid said, The word of my lord the king shall now
be comfortable. For as an angel of God, so is
my lord the king, to discern good and bad. Therefore the lord
thy God will be with thee. Then the king answered and said
unto the woman, Hide not from me, I pray thee, the thing that
I shall ask thee. And the woman said, Let my lord
the king now speak. And the king said, Is not the
hand of Joab with thee in all this? And the woman answered
and said, As thy soul liveth, my lord the king, none can turn
to the right hand or to the left from all that my lord the king
hath spoken. For thy servant Joab, he bathed me, and he put
all these words in the mouth of thy handmaid." Boy, she's
really buttering David up. Flattery will get you somewhere
with most people. In verse 21, the king said unto
Joab, Behold, now I have done this thing. Go, therefore, and
bring the young man Absalom again.' And Joab fell to the ground on
his face and bowed himself and thanked the king. And Joab said,
Today thy servant knoweth that I have found grace in thy sight,
my lord, O king, and that the king hath fulfilled the request
of his servant. So Joab arose and went to Gesher
and brought Absalom to Jerusalem. And the king said, Let him turn
to his own house. and let him not see my face.
So Absalom returned to his own house and saw not the king's
face. But in all Israel there was none to be so much praised
as Absalom for his beauty. From the sole of his foot even
to the crown of his head there was no blemish in him. And when
he pulled his head, when he cut his hair, for it was at every
year's end that he pulled it, because the hair was heavy on
him, therefore he pulled it, and he weighed the hair of his
head at two hundred shekels after the king's weight. And unto Absalom
there were born three sons and one daughter, whose name was
Tamar. She was a woman of fair countenance.
Absalom named his daughter after her hand. She was beautiful,
a beautiful young woman, just like her aunt was. So Absalom
dwelt two full years in Jerusalem and saw not the king's face.
Therefore Absalom sent for Joab to have sent him to the king,
but he would not come to him. And when he sent again the second
time, he would not come. Therefore he said unto his servants,
See, Joab's field is near mine, and he hath barley there. Go
and set it on fire.' And Absalom's servant set the field on fire. Then Joab arose and came to Absalom
unto his house, and said unto him, Wherefore have thy servant
set my field on fire? And Absalom answered Joab, Because
I sent unto thee, saying, Come hither, that I may send thee
to the king, to say, Wherefore am I come from Geshur? It had
been good for me to have been there still. Now therefore let
me see the king's face, and if there be any iniquity in him,
let him kill me.' So Joab came to the king and told him, and
when he had called for Absalom, he came to the king and bowed
himself on his face to the ground before the king, and the king
kissed Absalom." Now there's a story for you, isn't there?
And the key to this whole chapter is at the end of verse 14, where
this wise woman said, "'Yet God hath devised means. that his
banished be not expelled from him." And that's the title of
our lesson, God's Means to Restore His Banished. Now, when Adam
fell, Adam and Eve were put out of the garden. God put an angel
there with a sword that turned every way to keep Adam from coming
back into the garden. Adam was banished from the presence
of God, and all mankind was banished from the presence of God in our
father Adam. And ever since then, It's been
in man to know there's a separation between us and God. It's in man
to know that there is a need for the banished to be brought
back to God. So men have devised ways to try
to come back to God. And when man devises a way to
try to cross that bridge and come back to God, what they produce
is false religion. Man will never think up the way
that God has provided to save sinners. Man will never do it. Man's not wise enough to do that.
Man's dead. And that's what's pictured in
our text. Joab tries to devise this way to restore Absalom who's
vanished. And what these words that he
put in this woman's mouth is a picture of false religion.
First, this is a picture of false religion because how often do
they do it with a woman preacher? Very often in our day. Very often. And there's just a feminine feel,
a sentimental, feminine feel to the weak gospel that's preached
by men in our times. And often, it's with a woman
doing preaching. And that's just what happened
here. Second, this is a picture of false religion. Because true
preaching is never, ever done by a man putting words in your
mouth. commentators, and I know John does too, listen to other
men, but now you don't just mimic what those men say. The gospel
is not preached by a man putting words in your mouth. Joab put
these words in her mouth, not the Holy Spirit. True preaching
is done when God the Holy Spirit puts his word in a man's heart,
and then he causes it to come out of his mouth. False religion,
they have these national, you know, Sunday school outlines
and stuff. And it's a script that somebody's supposed to use.
Everybody's supposed to be saying the same thing at the same time.
Well, it's not the Spirit leading somebody, is it? True preaching
is done when God the Holy Spirit gives a man a message for his
people for the hour. Third, false preaching, these
false gospels, are full of half-truths, which are really just outright
lies. And they use human logic, a combination of human logic
and half-truths to bring people to the wrong conclusion. Bring
people to the conclusion they want them to arrive at. They
trap people with their message. They say, well, you don't want
to go to hell, do you? Well, of course the answer to that
is going to be no. Of course nobody wants to go
to hell. Well, you don't want to go to hell, do you? Well,
then they say, do this and do this and they got you trapped.
And I'll tell you why that works. Because it's in men to know the
banished need to be restored. It's in men to know that we're
guilty. At least to a degree, it's in
men to know we are guilty and that guilt of sin must be removed. And so people just do what these
false prophets tell them to do in an effort to remove that guilt
of sin. And that's what this woman's
message is. It's full of outright lies and half-truths that are
designed to trap David into the wrong conclusion. In her story,
this woman says her son killed his brother in the heat of anger.
Well, that's not what happened between Absalom and Amnon, is
it? Absalom did not kill Amnon in the heat of the moment. It
was a carefully premeditated cold-blooded murder that took
him two years to plan. False religion never calls sin
what it is. Ever. In this story, the woman
says, if justice is done, I'm going to be left without any
provision and that's not fair. If her only son is put to death.
Injustice. Well, now nobody in David's situation,
nobody in Absalom's situation is going to be left a widow.
Nobody's going to be left without provision. Nobody's going to
be left without inheritance. Nobody's going to be left without
an heir. Her story is not representative
of the truth. Then, this woman is willing to
let justice be overlooked in order to protect her guilty,
in order to protect someone that she loves and bring her banished
home. And that's what false religion is now. False religion never
deals with the holy demands of God's law and God's character.
The way they preach it is God is going to overlook sin. Because
that's what we do with our children. Isn't it? That's what we do with
our loved ones. We overlook their faults. And they put that same
attribute on God saying He'll just overlook that sin. They
don't deal with Him putting sin away. Putting it away. Now, it's
true that in Adam, we lost our inheritance. In Adam, we lost
everything. In Adam, we died. And if we're
going to be restored, it's going to be through a kinsman redeemer.
It's not going to be through a violation of God's holy law. That's just not possible for
God to do. God saves sinners. If you can ever find a sinner,
you write this down, God will save them. If that person knows
they're a sinner, God saved that person. He died for sinners.
But God must save sinners in a way that's consistent with
His holy character. He must do it. Then this woman
in her story, she accomplishes her goal by getting David to
make an emotional decision. She wanted to keep him from investigating
all the facts. You know when you listen to a
man preach? Go home and investigate the facts. Find out if what he's
saying is true. She didn't want David to investigate
the fact, did she? Because he'd find out she wasn't
telling the truth. That'd be a problem. She gets
David to make an emotional decision based on the emotion of the moment.
And unfortunately, it's a decision that's not consistent with the
law that David the king is supposed to uphold. Now, God does not
operate that way. Men do. David does. God does
not. God's not like us. And aren't
we thankful? God's not like me. He doesn't
have the sentimental feeling that men call love that would
make him compromise his holiness and compromise his power to beg
men to come to him. David can ignore absolute sin.
God cannot. And he will not ignore the sin
of his people. And if you want proof of that,
look at Calvary. When the sin of his people was
laid on his son, God did not ignore it. He punished him for
it. He killed him for it, because
God will not overlook sin. God's holy. Or, this story is a picture of
false religion, because this woman appeals to David's love
for his son, for Absalom. Every parent in here knows why
David fell for this. You love your children. You understand
why David fell for this. I understand it. But false religion,
when they talk about God's love, now it's not God's love. They try to apply human love,
human emotion to God's love. God's love is not human love. It's not human emotion. They
say God loves everyone. Does that matter to the people
who are in hell at this very moment? If God loves them and
they're in hell for eternity, what does God's love do for them? God's love is not the emotion
that we call love. David's love, our love for our
children, is not representative of God's love for his people.
David loved Absalom. Of course he loved Absalom. Even
though Absalom was guilty, of course he did his son. But David
did not have the power to restore his son in justice. David loved
his son. He did not have the power to
change Absalom. He did not have the power to
give Absalom a new heart. And proof of it is, Absalom comes
home and the very man that was the mediator for him, that brought
him from Gesher back to Jerusalem, he burned his field. And in the
next chapter, he's going to try to supplant his father on the
throne. David, despite how much he loved his son, did not have
the ability to give his son a new heart. And David's love is passive. David isn't doing anything in
this situation. One way or the other, he's not
seeking Absalom in justice, and he's not seeking Absalom in mercy.
A lot of the writers say David was in a deep depression here.
He was just in bed. He couldn't do anything one way
or the other. That's not God's love. God's
love is an active love. God goes where His sheep are
and brings them home. He goes where His sheep are.
He calls them out by name, gives them an ear. They know His voice
and they follow Him. He goes where his sheep are.
They're lost. They're gone. They're going the
wrong way. He goes where they are, puts them on his shoulder,
carries them in his bosom and brings them home. He gives them
life. He does everything for his sheep David could not do
for his son. God's love is active and it's
effectual. And this woman, she appeals to
David's love for his son and compares that love for God's
love for his people. Now God does love his people.
I'll thank God for his love. He calls his people in love and
mercy. But now God does not love everyone.
He does not love everyone and hope everyone, you know, comes.
No, God loves those people for whom he died. If God loves someone,
he satisfied the law for them. I know who God loves. It's the
people for whom he satisfied the law. If God loves someone,
he suffered their punishment. on Calvary's tree and set them
free from the fear of death and the fear of punishment because
he died in their place as their substitute. God loves his people. And scripture is clear, God does
not love everyone. And that half-truth, which is
really an outward lie, an outright lie, sends people to hell every
day. Fifth, this story is a picture
of false religion. In this way, the false gospels
that men think of are a reflection of the wisdom of men, not the
wisdom of God. The gospel is a reflection of
the wisdom of God, but none of these false gospels reflect God's
wisdom. This woman, she talked, she buttered
David up. She talked about how wise and
how powerful David is, but David's not wise enough in this situation
to find a way to be just and justifier. He cannot find a way. to bring Absalom home in justice. So what does David do? He brings
Absalom home under house arrest. Under house arrest. He was quote
unquote restored, but he couldn't leave his home. He could not
come see the king's face. That's the mixture of law and
grace that men will devise. That's it. Believers are not
under bondage of any kind. None whatsoever. If you're a
believer, if you're a child of God, you are God's free man.
You're free to do whatever you want. And I have no qualms about
telling God's people, do whatever you want. You're free to do whatever
you want. And you know why I'm not afraid
to say that? God gave you a new walkthrough. That's why. What
do you want to do? Follow Him. Oh, I want to follow
Him. I want to know Him. I want to
know Him better. You're free to do that. You're
free to do whatever you want. You're God's free man. False religion
tells people, now you make a decision for Jesus. You let Jesus be the
Lord of your life, and if you do that, then you'll be restored. See, it's conditional. But the
best they can produce is house arrest. You can lose that salvation. It's dependent upon you to obtain
it, and it's dependent upon you to keep it. That's house arrest.
That's what that is. And the truth of Scripture is
Men are dead. Now, we are dead in trespasses
and sins, and that means no one in themselves can restore themselves
from the banishment that we're in in Adam because we're dead.
We cannot do this ourselves. God's got to do it for us. And
we'll see that here in just one second. The gospel proclaims
not what God's going to do. It proclaims what he has already
done. And sixth, this is what false
religion produces. It produces, first of all, the
pride of flesh. And I reckon if you can have
some pride about yourself, if you saved yourself, you could. But that's not the way salvation
is accomplished. False religion only deals with
the outside. That's all they deal with. Boy,
Absalom wasn't outside. He was something else. Well,
I mean, there wasn't a blemish on the outside. The inside, that's
all it was, was corruption. But on the outside, there was
no blemish. And wasn't Absalom proud of his hair? Who does this? He lets his hair
grow all year so he can cut it and weigh it? Who does that? I love you women, but now I'm telling
you, this sounds like a woman who's obsessed with her hair. Doesn't sound like a man, does
it? I read this and I say, dude,
man up. I mean, Josephus said, not only
did he, I mean, he kept his hair, he oiled it. And a lot of people
at this time, this era, oiled their hair. He powdered his hair
in gold dust. Who does this? He's obsessed
with the outside. And that's what false religion
is. We read of Absalom's beauty.
You never read of grace in the heart. Hmm. That's so sad. You cannot discern God's grace
in a person by looking at their outside or looking at their outward
circumstances. If someone's, oh, they're blessed
with so many material outward blessings, that doesn't mean
that God's grace is in their heart necessarily. Our pastor's
going through the book of Job. Can you picture him sitting there
in your mind's eye? I feel so sorry for him. It's
awful. Does that outside look like the
work of grace in the heart? But it is. It is. When you look
at Absalom, boy, he looks like, would everybody like to look
like that fellow? You want to trade places with him? No grace
in the heart. And all false religion can produce
is a whited sepulcher. They can get you to reform some
of the things that you do and that you don't do, but what's
inside is still corruption. It's full of dead men's bones. Because that's what dead men
are. They're full of dead men's bones. And false religion fools men
because they deal with the outside into thinking there's no iniquity
in him. I can't believe the gall of Absalom
to say, well, let me come before the king and he finds the iniquity
in me and kill him. Are you kidding me? My friends,
this is, all we are is sin. It's not just, can you find some
iniquity in me? And it's not just, can you find
some goodness in me? No, you can't. There's no goodness
in us by nature. And people don't know that because
false religion never calls sin what it is. False religion is
a gospel that cannot save. They preach a Christ that's powerless
to save. And it's proof of a spiritually
dead heart that men will believe in that weak, impotent Savior.
The Savior of this book is not weak and not impotent in any
way. He is the Almighty. Now, this
woman's right. God has devised a means that
His banished can come home, that they'll not be expelled from
Him. And if you give me a minute, I sure would like to tell you
one more time how God restores His banished back to Him. Now,
I spend a lot of time on false religion, and I thought about
that, and I did for this reason. We must be warned about false
religion so you recognize it when you hear it and you won't
be fooled by it. It break my heart. So I hope
God will apply that to your heart. But now here's the way that God
restores his banish to him. What this woman in verse 14 is
referring to is the manslayer. God provided refuge for the manslayer
in the city of refuge, didn't he? If he could get to that city
of refuge, the Avenger of Blood couldn't touch him. But you know
what? He's banished to that city. He
must stay in that city. If he ventures outside that city
and the Avenger catches him, the Avenger can kill him because
he left the place of refuge. But God provided a way that that
manslayer could return from his banishment and return home and
the Avenger of Blood couldn't touch him. And you know how he
did that? When the high priest died. In
the year that the high priest died, the manslayer could go
home from the city of refuge and nobody could touch him. Nobody
could say a thing to him. That's how God's banished our
return. A sinner's guilt can be removed
and we can be restored from our banishment through the death
of the Lord Jesus Christ, our great high priest. When our high
priest died, the law was satisfied. And if Christ died for you, the
law cannot touch you, because he satisfied the law's every
requirement for his people as their substitute. Now, in Adam,
we're guilty. We're banished from God's presence.
But if you look over 2 Corinthians 5, let me tell you the gospel one
more time. Here's the gospel. Let's look first at verse 21.
Here's how the banished are returned. For he, God the Father, hath
made him, God the Son, to be sin for us, to be sin for his
elect, to be sin for those sinful, totally depraved men and women,
him who knew no sin, that we might be made the righteousness
of God in him. God's elect are brought back
from their banishment because they're made not guilty. In Christ,
they are made not guilty because Christ was made sin for them. Sin wasn't overlooked. Sin was
imputed to the perfect substitute and God's Son was made guilty. The Lord Jesus Christ took the
sin, took the guilt of his people in his body on the tree and he
put their sin away. through the shedding of his precious
sin-atoning blood. And those people are made not
guilty. God's Son was made guilty, so
his people would be made holy, be made righteous. And those
people can come freely, can come boldly into the presence of God
the Father. And this salvation is of the
Lord. Look back up now at verse 17.
This salvation is of the Lord. Therefore, if any man be in Christ,
He's a new creature. He's a new creation. God made
him new, a new man that never existed before. Old things are
passed away. Behold, all things have become
new. And all things are of God. Salvation is of the Lord. All
things are of God, who hath reconciled us to himself by Jesus Christ
and given to us the ministry of reconciliation. Now, God has
reconciled his people to himself, and he's given us this message.
Now, what's our message? What's the message? We're to
cry. This salvation is accomplished. Our message is not you do something
to make this salvation effectual. Our message is the salvation
of God's people is accomplished. It's finished. When our Lord
cried, it's finished, he didn't waste words. It was finished,
Dale. Complete. It's done. The great transaction
is done. God is reconciled by the sacrifice
of his Son. Now you surrender, stack your
arms, and be reconciled to God. How? Through the sacrifice of
God. You be reconciled to God the
same way God has reconciled you, through the sacrifice of his
Son. Look at verse 19, to wit, namely,
this is our message, that God was in Christ, reconciling the
world unto himself, not imputing their trespasses unto them, and
have committed unto us the word of reconciliation. Now then,
we're ambassadors for Christ. As though God did beseech you
by us, we pray you in Christ's dead, you be reconciled to God. Just surrender. Come to Him and
be reconciled to God through the sacrifice of our Lord Jesus
Christ. That's our message. That's the
only message. That's the only message we'll
ever preach. Well, now, who's going to believe that? Who has
believed our report? I know who believed our report.
It's Kozilek. And I know when they'll believe
it. I don't know who they are, but I know when they'll believe
it. When God burns their fields. Did you wonder, what is that?
I wonder, I read that chapter, I thought, what is this Absalom
going to burn in Joab's field? What's that there for? Well,
Absalom burned Joab's field out of pure meanness. That's all.
You can't reconcile that in any way. But it did accomplish his
twisted goal to get a mediator to go to the king. See the gospel
there? God's going to burn the fields
of his people now. He's going to burn them to the
ground. Everything that we think we'll
trust in is going to be burnt to the ground so that we'll be
shut up to Christ. So that we'll be shut up to our
only hope of salvation is in that mediator between God and
man, the man Christ Jesus. Then a man will be saved. That's
exactly when. And from time to time, even after
conversion, the Lord's going to burn our fields. He's going
to do it. He's going to burn our fields.
John talked about Wednesday night. I started scribbling immediately.
He used the term sanctified sorrow. Sanctified sorrow. What is that? When God burns our fields, it
makes us draw closer to Him. It makes us look to Him. Sing
to Him and draw near to Him. I'm not looking forward to the
next time it's about harvest time and my fields are burned.
I'm not looking forward to it. Say, it'll be good for me. It'll
be good because it's sanctified sorrow. Make us draw near to
Him again. Make us go back one more time
and look at the gospel one more time. He hath made Him be sin
for me. Him that knew no sin. been in
a miracle of God's grace and power, I might be made to righteousness
of God in Him. That's how God's banished. I
was restored to Him. All right. Well, the Lord bless
you.