Hope From the Word

Guest (Male): Since the Garden of Eden, pride has been the downfall of many people. It was certainly true in the case of Absalom, David's son, who was out to end his father's reign. Pastor Bill Luebkemann gives us an example of the size of Absalom's ego, which may have triggered his own demise.

Bill Luebkemann: There's all kinds of monuments in the world. There were monuments back in this day, there's monuments today, there's monuments in Philadelphia, there's monuments in DC. You can go down, see the Jefferson Memorial, the Lincoln Memorial, the Washington Monument. There's monuments and memorials to everything. What's one thing they all have in common? They were set up by somebody else.

Lincoln didn't build the Lincoln Memorial, somebody else did. Washington didn't build the Washington Monument. Jefferson didn't build the Jefferson. But here, this guy built his own monument. When you think about how whacked out this was. You look around the world today, different people that did things, different monuments to different people in different places that were heroes or famous or did something. But can you think of one that the person made themselves? I mean, this is like the epitome of self-centeredness.

Guest (Male): There are countless joys that accompany parenthood, from the birth of a child to watching them walk and talk for the first time, their first day of school, their words of love and appreciation, and on and on. But there are also times when a parent's heart breaks. And perhaps some of you are experiencing that right now due to a rebellious child.

Today on Hope From the Word, Pastor Bill Luebkemann picks up where we left off in our study of 2nd Samuel. We'll soon see that even King David experienced great heartbreak because of his rebellious child. Let's see what we can take away from his parental nightmare from 2nd Samuel 18.

Bill Luebkemann: So if you will turn to 2nd Samuel, we're going to be in chapter 18 tonight. Just to refresh your memory, in the couple of chapters before this, David has left. He's been run out of town. He's evacuated the area because Absalom, his son, has done a power grab. But David has a few spies in Jerusalem who are spying things out. One of them is this guy Hushai who goes to Absalom and pretends to be on his side, but he's really on David's side.

Absalom's soliciting advice. Ahithophel, one of David's closest advisors who has become now an advisor to Absalom, telling Absalom at the end of chapter 16, here's what you need to do: lie with your father's concubines and do it in the open so everybody can see it. So that there's no doubt you're really stabbing him in the back when you do this. And Absalom did that.

And then Ahithophel says, now here's what you need to do. Here's the next thing you need to do. You need to go out there now tonight, take 12,000 men, pursue David, and get him while he's tired and get him while he's weary and while he's worn out and he's out of energy and beat up. He's been trekking and he's run down. Now's the best time to get him, and you can strike him and get rid of him. Really, very good advice.

Absalom, though, decides to ask Hushai the Archite what his advice is. Hushai, who is on David's side, remember. The Lord uses him to frustrate the advice. Hushai said, oh, that's not good advice. Your father and his men, they are fighters and they are fierce as a bear whose cubs have been taken away from her. You'll never get away with that. And they're experienced and they're going to be hiding. You're never going to get them. You're just going to get slaughtered.

Here's what you need to do. You need to take your time and you need to gather up a big army, and then you need to lead it yourself. So he was feeding into Absalom's ego here. Because only on Star Trek does the captain go out on the away mission himself. That doesn't really happen in real life. Only on Star Trek does all the top people go somewhere and risk their lives, leaving all the runts back to fly the spaceship. It doesn't really happen that way.

And here, Hushai feeds into Absalom's ego and says you should do this yourself. You're something else. Really, the other guy was giving him better advice. Ahithophel's advice was much better, but God was going to frustrate that. And so Ahithophel goes off and hangs himself because his advice wasn't taken. Perhaps he can see that Absalom's not going to be king very long because he takes bad advice, so he ain't going to last. Having since Ahithophel's now on the wrong side, maybe he saw his only way out was to hang himself.

But Hushai gives this advice to Absalom. Absalom takes him up on it, which gives time for David to be prepared and to be refreshed and to make his plans. That's what we see happening here at the beginning of chapter 18. David mustered the men who were with him and appointed over them commanders of thousands and commanders of hundreds. Now, Josephus tells us that David had around 4,000 men. We're going to see here in a little while that Absalom lost 20,000 men in the battle. 20,000 perished.

I don't know how many more ran away, got away, or didn't perish. But it looks like, if Josephus's number is correct, it looks like experience won out over quantity. Looks like David had the experienced fighters, the guys that were well-prepared. He appointed them and he set them up in groups of thousands and groups of hundreds. He set up commanders over them and he knew who his people were and he divided up his resources in a logical way.

And then, verse two, David sent the troops out: a third under the command of Joab, a third under Joab's brother Abishai, son of Zeruiah, and a third under Ittai the Gittite, who was David's friend, I think from Gath. The king told the troops, I myself will surely march out with you. So here he is taking time to plan and taking time to prepare and taking time to divide and send them out in different directions. He had some kind of plan.

It doesn't say all of what it was here, but he knew what he was doing. And he said, hey, I'm going to go out with you. But the men said, you must not go out. If we are forced to flee, they won't care about us. Even if half of us die, they won't care. But you are worth 10,000 of us. It would be better now for you to give us support from the city. The king answered, I will do whatever seems best to you. The king is in a city. I can't remember what city at this point. But they say to him, you don't want to come with us.

Because you're the figurehead. You're the king. You're what this whole thing is all about. If you die, the rest of us don't even matter. It's you versus Absalom. We need you. You're the king. We can't afford to lose you. We can't afford to be without you. See, Absalom should have been taking this kind of advice. And he wasn't. He was out there in the middle of the whole thing, which is why he gets killed and David doesn't. David does the right thing and Absalom his son does not.

And his troops say to him, you don't want to do that. You're more important than us. If half of us die, it doesn't matter. But you're the king. If you die, it does matter. You're worth the same as 10,000 of us. David submits to that. That's very, very interesting and says a lot about what kind of guy he is. He submits to that. He doesn't say, well, it's my way or the highway, or I know more than you do, or who do you think you are giving me advice? I'm the king and you should shut up and do what I say. He doesn't do anything like that.

He submits to it. He says, I will do whatever seems best to you. He can hear the reason and the logic and the common sense in this. He knows that these people are experienced fighters and they know what they're suggesting. He also knows that what they're saying is true. He also knows that these guys love him. These troops, they are 100% behind him. He has no doubt about that. They're giving him the best advice they can give him.

So the king stood beside the gate while all the men marched out in units of hundreds and of thousands. He sat there, stood there rather, and watched them go out in hundreds and in thousands. They went out and got ready for the battle wherever it was going to be. The king commanded Joab, Abishai, and Ittai, be gentle with the young man Absalom for my sake. And all the troops heard the king giving orders concerning Absalom to each of the commanders.

Now, this is very important that this is in here. He's telling these guys, this is my son we're fighting against. I don't want anything to happen to him. Be careful with him for my sake. Don't do it for him. He don't deserve to have it. He's a murderer, he's a rapist, he's a power grabber, he's a sheep stealer, he's every bad thing there is. But he's still my son. The king says, be gentle with him for me.

And he said it loud enough that everybody heard. So he told the commanders, but the whole army was within earshot. So everybody is on notice here from the generals on down. Watch out, don't mess with David's son. Be gentle with him. It doesn't say don't beat him, don't whoop him, don't capture him. It doesn't say let him kill you or anything. It just says be gentle. Disarm him, capture him, whatever, but be gentle.

So verse six, the army marched into the field to fight Israel. Israel being those that were supporters of Absalom. And the battle took place in the forest of Ephraim. There the army of Israel was defeated by David's men, and the casualties that day were great, 20,000 men. The battle spread out over the whole countryside, and the forest claimed more lives that day than the sword.

How can the forest claim lives? There's lots of theories on this. Some people say in the forest there were crevices that they fell in, and caves, and that they tripped up and got mired in the mud. Then David's guys were able to come in and kill them. They weren't making good time. They were stuck, going in circles. If you watch Winnie the Pooh, he was trying to get out of the forest and he goes around and he keeps coming back to the same place and he can never find his way out.

And he said, weren't we just here before? This is where we started from. And they could never find their way out of the forest. Well, maybe that's what was going on here. Between wild animals, between getting lost, between getting bogged down so that David's people could come in and capture them, between whatever dangers there were in the forest, just between being inefficient with the battle and what have you. For various ways, the forest was an asset to David and his men, and it was the opposite of an asset, it was a liability to Absalom's men, to the men from Israel.

And the battle spread out everywhere. 20,000 men were lost. Now, remember what I said. Josephus said David had 4,000 men with him. So it would appear that the quantity didn't measure up to the quality. And that Absalom had lots of quantity, but David had quality. His fighters knew how to play the game. Now, verse nine, Absalom happened to meet David's men. 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 mid-air while the mule he was riding on kept going. Okay, now when one of the men saw this, he told Joab, I just saw Absalom hanging in an oak tree. Somebody said he was suspended between heaven and earth and neither one wanted him, which was interesting. Now, you may remember a couple of chapters before, it talked about how Absalom would cut his hair once a year and he got like, I think it was six pounds or something, but the guy had this big bushy crop of hair. And once a year he cut it and he weighed it.

If you look back a few chapters, it has how much it weighed, but the guy had a lot of hair. It doesn't really say he was hanging by his hair, though. He says he was hanging by his head. So whether it was his hair, his head, whether it got caught in the branches. Josephus said his mule kept on going as if nothing had happened. So dot-ti-dot-ti-dot, the mule just didn't stop. And here he is somehow hanging in mid-air from his head, from his hair. He can't get down.

Somebody said he was trying to extricate himself with his sword and he looked down and saw the pit of hell and decided hanging from the tree was better than falling into hell. That was what some commentator said. Clearly, there's a good picture there of a lot of different things because this guy was a rapist. He raped his father's concubines. He was a murderer. He was fighting a war here. People were dying on account of him. He had been disloyal to the king. He was a power grabber. If you listed all the things this guy did, the list goes on quite a while.

And here he was hanging here. And David's men saw it and went back and told Joab, you're not going to believe this, Absalom is hanging in a tree. Can you believe that? He's hanging in a tree. I know a guy that was in Vietnam and he was riding on a tank and he was a believer and he had his Bible in his pocket. He has all kinds of stories about how he was protected by the Lord. But he was riding on top of the tank just enjoying the sun or something and the tank hit a landmine and blew part of the tank off.

He went sailing through the air and landed in a tree standing upright on a branch up in the tree. And this made me think of that. God can protect you regardless of where you are or what you're going through. And on the other hand, God can deal with you be it ever so severely if you're on the wrong side of him. And that's what was happening to Absalom here. Joab said to the man who had told him this, 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.

He's like, what are you crazy? You saw the guy? You could have got it all over by now. You could have got down. You could have run away. You could have lost the opportunity. You could have struck him dead right there and gotten it over with. But the man replied, even 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 Ittai, protect the young man Absalom for my sake.

And if I had put my life in jeopardy and nothing is hidden from the king, you would have kept your distance from me. So he said, number one, I wouldn't do it because we all heard the king say protect his life. And it doesn't matter if you gave me a thousand shekels of silver and all the tea in China, I wouldn't do this. And furthermore, if I had, you wouldn't have been around to defend me. You would have kept your distance from me. You would have said, oh, he did it. We didn't do it. He did it. And I would have wound up getting whacked.

This man says, what are you crazy? We all heard the guy say it. Joab said, I'm not going to wait like this for you. So he took three javelins in his hand and plunged them into Absalom's heart while Absalom was still alive in the oak tree. And 10 of Joab's armor bearers surrounded Absalom, struck him and killed him. They did what David specifically said not to do. Now, this guy Joab was fiercely loyal to King David. Fiercely loyal.

But I think at the same time, he was also knowing in his mind anyway that Absalom's done all this stuff. He's not to be trusted. If we let him live, he'll probably try to stab David in the back. Absalom may have been thinking on his own, this is too risky. We can't let him leave. I don't think he did it in spite. I don't think he did it because Joab said, well David wants me to let him live so I'll do the opposite. I think in his mind he was doing what he thought was the right thing for David.

It's better to kill him and he gets over it than to have this kid hanging around here. David's never going to punish him. See, this was David's problem. He never punished any of his kids for anything. It didn't matter what they did wrong. This is why David had all these problems. When the one son raped his daughter, he didn't do anything about it, which made the other son kill that. All these problems that he had are because David didn't discipline his children. And Joab could have been thinking, nothing's going to happen to this guy.

He's going to go back, he's going to go off again, start another rebellion, and we're going to have to go through all this again and all these other people. I'm just going to put an end to it. And I think Joab used some logic in his brain and thought he was doing the right thing. Now look, if he put three javelins, three darts, one translation says, into Absalom's heart, how was Absalom still alive to be killed by these 10 guys? It says and 10 of Joab's armor bearers surrounded Absalom, struck him and killed him.

Some people feel that the word for heart there just refers to the general area of your chest, not necessarily the organ we call the heart. And so maybe he had three spears in his chest somewhere, but he wasn't actually dead yet. Well, he was now. Then Joab sounded the trumpet and the troops stopped pursuing Israel, for Joab halted them. No point in pursuing your fellow countrymen anymore. The guy that they were following as king is not around anymore. So we can call this whole shindig off.

If he had taken Absalom back to David, it's possible that Israel could have kept fighting and more people could have died. So Joab may have made a smart decision here. He's eventually going to pay for it, of course. They took Absalom, threw him into a big pit in the forest, and piled up a large heap of rocks over him. Meanwhile, all the Israelites fled to their homes. Some people say, well Joab didn't want any memorial. He didn't want anything to be done to remember this guy Absalom, and putting a big pile of rocks on someone was what they did when they wanted to desecrate the body, in effect, like grinding him up and spitting him out.

During his lifetime, Absalom had taken a pillar and erected it in the King's Valley as a monument to himself. For he thought, I have no son to carry on the memory of my name. He named the pillar after himself, and it is called Absalom's monument to this day. So we see that this guy is very self-centered, this Absalom guy. And he's very much concerned about himself, me, myself, and I. Now he had three sons and a daughter, yet he says here I have no son to carry on after me.

Josephus says that what he said was just in case my sons die, just in case they don't live, I'll have this monument for me. It's possible maybe his sons had died prior to this. So he wanted to have a monument to remember himself. He wanted to be remembered. And we as Christians, our goal in life should be at the end of our life that people would remember the Lord and not remember us. If you die and people remember you, what a great person you were, wasn't he something else, wasn't she the greatest thing.

He did this, she did that, wasn't that person amazing. Well then you've kind of missed the point of the whole thing. Really, what matters is, do people remember Jesus? And this guy here Absalom was mixed up. He was interested in having people remember him. He wanted to have things revolve around me, myself, and I, the three most important people in the universe. And he actually went so far. There's all kinds of monuments in the world. There were monuments back in this day, there's monuments today, there's monuments in Philadelphia, there's monuments in DC.

You can go down, see the Jefferson Memorial, the Lincoln Memorial, the Washington Monument. There's monuments and memorials to everything. What's one thing they all have in common? They were set up by somebody else. Lincoln didn't build the Lincoln Memorial, somebody else did. Washington didn't build the Washington Monument. Jefferson didn't build the Jefferson. But here, this guy built his own monument. When you think about how whacked out this was.

You look around the world today, different people that did things, different monuments to different people in different places that were heroes or famous or did something. But can you think of one that the person made themselves? I mean, this is like the epitome of self-centeredness. And this guy was not only a murderer, a rapist, a power grabber, and didn't honor his father and his mother and whatever else you could think of, but at the same time, he was awful high on himself.

And he wanted to be remembered. It's funny, he built this monument wanting to be remembered, but you got to remember is he remembered more for the monument or more for the pile of rocks that was on his body, which is more of a monument to what he really deserved. Now, Ahimaaz son of Zadok said, let me run and take the news to the king that the Lord has delivered him from the hand of his enemies. You are not the one to take the news today, Joab told him.

You may take the news another time, but you must not do so today because the king's son is dead. This guy wants to run to the king. Because what happened was, it doesn't say it in here, but according to Josephus, we know their DSL line was down and they couldn't send the news by email. So, just joking. This is the way they got the news there. They run. And this guy says, man, I got to tell the king, we got to tell the king he won. Let me be the runner.

I'm going to go, I'll get down there, I'll give the king the news. And Joab said, no, no, no. Are you crazy? His son died. What do you want to be the one to do that? He might accidentally kill you when he gets mad. So then Joab said to a Cushite, go tell the king what you have seen. The Cushite bowed down before Joab and ran off. Ahimaaz son of Zadok again said to Joab, come what may, please let me run behind the Cushite.

But Joab replied, my son, why do you want to go? You don't have any news that will bring you a reward. You really don't want to be there when the king gets this bad news. Let this other poor fool go. It's not beneficial. You're not going to get a reward. You might get in trouble. It's not going to be good. You don't want to be around. You want to steer away from that.

Guest (Male): You've been listening to Hope From the Word. We're currently in Pastor Bill Luebkemann's study of 2nd Samuel. If you'd like to hear this message again, you have several options. Visit our website at ccmarlton.org and download the Hope FM app to your smartphone or tablet, or look for us wherever you find podcasts.

If you're thinking about visiting Calvary Chapel of Marlton, where Bill serves as pastor, we'd love to have you. Our service times are on Sunday mornings at 10:00. We also meet midweek on Wednesdays at 7:00 PM. You can also livestream from home when you visit our YouTube channel at Calvary Chapel of Marlton. For more information, go to ccmarlton.org. We hope to see you soon.

Before the day is done, we'd like to connect with you. Share a praise report, prayer request, or what you're learning from this series. You can easily email us from our website, ccmarlton.org, or just call us at 856-983-1662. There's more to come from Bill's study of 2nd Samuel, and we'll have that for you next time on Hope From the Word with Pastor Bill Luebkemann. This program is brought to you by Calvary Chapel of Marlton.