Hope From the Word

Guest (Male): Many of us are pretty good at procrastinating and putting things off. But when it comes to important spiritual matters, Pastor Bill Luebkemann says we can't afford to wait another moment.

Bill Luebkemann: You think about today, people who say, "Oh, you know, we're going to think about accepting the Lord. One of these days, I'm going to get back to church and find out about the God stuff. I'll look into that one of these days when I get around to it. One of these days I'll do the right thing."

Or maybe you're a Christian and in some situation, you know what the right thing is, but you're not doing it. You keep thinking, "One of these days, I'm going to do that," whatever that right thing is in your life that you're not doing. Here is what God's Word says: now do it.

Guest (Male): If you're a fan of hockey, you've probably heard the term power play. Throughout the game, players are penalized for a variety of reasons and sent to the penalty box. This affords the opposing team two minutes of play with a one-man advantage.

There are power plays of another sort that are even found in the church. Here today on Hope From the Word, Pastor Bill Luebkemann takes us back to the book of 2 Samuel. As we open chapter three, we read about some people all involved in power plays in the worst way. However, we'll soon see that their thirst for influence, power, and authority led to failure. Here now is our teacher, Pastor Bill Luebkemann.

Bill Luebkemann: 2 Samuel 3. We saw David became king over Judah and he was at war here in chapter two with the house of Saul. We saw that what happened was the people in the land of Judah made David their king, and they did that right away very quickly after Saul died.

Meanwhile, Abner, who was the commander of Saul's army—he was also related to Saul and they were both of the tribe of Benjamin—Abner, son of Ner, took Ish-bosheth, which was apparently Saul's only remaining son. He set up Ish-bosheth as king over the rest of Israel. So you have David here, king over Judah, and you have Ish-bosheth, king over the rest of Israel.

David is the anointed king who's waited patiently now almost for 20 years. From when Samuel anointed him to be king, it's been almost for 20 years to get to this point. Meanwhile, Ish-bosheth is the son of Saul. He feels, apparently, that he has a right to be king to take over from his old man. Abner, who's the chief of the army for Saul, has propped this guy, Ish-bosheth, up and put him in position because we're going to see Abner wants to maintain himself in power.

So, there's been some skirmishes and some battles between David's people, represented by Joab, who's the commander of his army, and Saul's son Ish-bosheth and Abner, who's the commander of his army. They've had some battles between them, which is really sad because they're all Israelites. They're all Jews and they're fighting against one another, which was certainly not what God intended.

And we saw towards the end of chapter two that Abner again, the commander of Ish-bosheth's army, killed Joab's brother, Asahel. It was Asahel that got killed. So Abner now has killed the brother of Joab, who's David's commander.

The war continued and this went on for a couple years. We're in chapter three now, verse one. The war between the house of Saul and the house of David lasted a long time. David grew stronger and stronger while the house of Saul grew weaker and weaker. So this battle goes on. There are skirmishes. I don't think there was any real giant battle here, but they were fighting brother against brother and it should not have been. And over a period of time, David was getting stronger and stronger and Saul's son getting weaker and weaker.

Now, in verse two, we pick up chapter three, 2 Samuel verse two. Sons were born to David in Hebron. His firstborn was Amnon, the son of Ahinoam of Jezreel. His second, Kileab, the son of Abigail, the widow of Nabal of Carmel. The third, Absalom, the son of Maakah, daughter of Talmai, king of Geshur. The fourth, Adonijah, the son of Haggith. The fifth, Shephatiah, the son of Abital. And the sixth, Ithream, the son of David's wife Eglah. These were born to David in Hebron. By the way, I make no claim to know how to pronounce these names and I don't know why anybody would name their kid with a name that was so long and unpronounceable, but they did.

And the first thing I want to say here is David's got himself messed up here. He's got six wives and he's got six sons by six wives, one son per wife. It's interesting none of them bore him more than one son. Don't forget, he has the wife that he married previously, Saul's daughter, which Saul took away from him, but she's going to be brought back into the scene here pretty soon. So she's going to be wife seven and we haven't even got to Bathsheba yet, which is coming up in a few more chapters, which will be wife eight. So he had at least eight wives. I'm not sure if he had any more or not. His son Solomon liked that idea and took it even to a greater degree than he did.

But right away, the guy's mixed up here. He's mixed up on this topic, anyway, because people read this stuff and they say, "See, the Bible doesn't condemn this." The Bible here is treating this as what it is: facts. And the facts are that he had these six wives and the facts are he paid dearly for doing so. Back at the very beginning of Scripture, we're told a man shall leave his father and his mother and cleave to his wife and the two shall become one flesh. It doesn't say the three, four, five, or six should become one flesh. It says the two shall become one flesh. That was always God's plan.

In Deuteronomy, specifically, it says kings shouldn't be taking more wives to themselves, spelled out specifically with regard to kings in Deuteronomy. And David ignored that also. He knew he was anointed king when he was much younger. He didn't have any wives back then. So what was he doing here? He's off base with what God's plan is and he's off base with what the Scripture specifically said about kings. And of course we look into the New Testament; there's even more that was said about marriage. The Bible doesn't condone polygamy, never says it's a good thing. And in fact, it just presents it because this is what these people did and you can see as you track through how much trouble he had.

Some of these sons you never hear from again. Kileab, this son, was also called Daniel over in Chronicles. I don't think he's mentioned ever again except he's listed here and he's listed in Chronicles and that's it. And there's a couple of these other sons they don't hear from again either. I think there's three that we never really see again, maybe they're mentioned once, and then there's three that play key roles in his life and those three are messed up. So of the six sons, three are messed up and three we never see again.

How messed up were they? Well, his firstborn was Amnon. What did he do? He slept with his half-sister, Tamar. He raped her. Tamar was the sister of Absalom. So Amnon slept with his half-sister, raped her, and that caused at some point Absalom to go back and kill his half-brother, Amnon. So you've got the one guy who's guilty of rape and the second one who's guilty of murder.

And then, Absalom, after he kills Amnon for what he did to his sister, Absalom tries to take over the kingdom. And he actually has a bunch of people following him at one point and they actually run David out of town even. And he's got the army on his side and even some of the priests. And he says to the one priest at one point, "What do I have to do to tell people I'm really in control now?" And the priest says, "You should sleep with your father's concubines in sight of all Israel." So they set up a tent on the roof and he sleeps with his father's concubines so everybody can see it. And this is the product here, what David got out of having all these wives.

And then you have Adonijah, who hangs around a little bit longer, but when Solomon eventually becomes the next king, Adonijah tries to get the kingdom away from him and Solomon winds up killing him. So of these three sons here, three of them wind up mixed up, confused in a serious way, and the other three we never hear from again. And it's not till Solomon comes along that he actually has an heir to the throne. Look, don't get the idea here, and if you're ever talking to somebody and they say, "We don't believe the Bible," and you say, "Why? Why don't you believe the Bible?" "Well, people on there condones polygamy." It doesn't condone it. It reports the facts of what happened to sinful men when they did sinful things, and we can see what the fruit of that sinful stuff is. And he has a family here and it's just one mixed-up mess. Well, this is the beginning of his family: these six wives and his six sons, and he also had some daughters thrown in along the way.

Verse six. During the war between the house of Saul and the house of David, Abner had been strengthening his own position in the house of Saul. Now, Saul had had a concubine named Rizpah, daughter of Aiah, and Ish-bosheth said to Abner, "Why did you sleep with my father's concubine?" So now, let's focus on the house of Saul. Saul's dead. Ish-bosheth is the king. Abner's the chief or the commander of the army over there. And Abner, we see, has been strengthening his position.

So, does he really support the king or is he trying to take over himself someday? Is he really loyal to Saul because Saul's dead? Is he got some kind of a loyalty here to the name of Saul, to the memory of Saul, that he's trying to keep Saul's son propped up and in power there, or is he doing this for his own benefit? It looks to me like from this verse here, at least in some way, he's trying to get himself in a better position.

So maybe he knows in the future he's got some plan for something. Maybe he thinks, "Man, if this guy Ish-bosheth ever dies, I'm going to be in a position here to be the king." I'm not saying he's going to go out and have a coup here. Maybe he wanted to do this, but at the very least, he wanted to be in a good position perhaps if the king did die. And I think here this king Ish-bosheth knew that, so he accused Abner of sleeping with his father's concubine. Now, the way this worked was when the king died, nobody slept with his wives or concubines ever again. They didn't get remarried. If you tried to steal one of them, it was considered stealing, and if you slept with one of them, it was kind of like you were trying to take the throne. This was a mega-bad thing to do.

It doesn't give us any reason to believe Abner really did it, by the way. Maybe he did, I don't know, I don't think so, but he was accused of it. I think maybe Ish-bosheth thought to himself, "This guy Abner's getting too powerful. He's getting too strong. I'm going to have to take him out. I'll accuse him of this fake thing and then I'll get him, maybe I'll try to get him arrested or something and get rid of him." I think maybe Ish-bosheth was worried about it. It's a shame because it seems like Abner was mostly on his side.

And Abner did not like being accused of this. In verse eight, Abner was very angry because of what Ish-bosheth said and he answered, "Am I a dog's head on Judah's side? This very day I am loyal to the house of your father Saul and to his family and friends. I haven't handed you over to David. Yet now you accuse me of an offense involving this woman? May God deal with Abner, be it ever so severely, if I do not do for David what the Lord promised him on oath and transfer the kingdom from the house of Saul and establish David's throne over Israel and Judah from Dan to Beersheba."

Ish-bosheth did not dare to say another word to Abner because he was afraid of him. Look, from the reaction here, it seems like it's quite possible Abner was innocent of this charge. And he says, basically, "What am I, some kind of a fool? Over here there's a David who's the king over Judah and he's the guy that God wants to be the king and he's the guy that God's anointed to be the king. And here I am serving you, you crummy bum, doing all this stuff for you, and you treat me like that and accuse me of that? I must be out of my mind."

I think that what he's saying is, "Man, I must be confused. I must be crazy to be over here helping you when I could be doing the thing that God wants me to be doing." Now, it's not clear how long he knew that David was truly the one to be the anointed king over Israel. I didn't know—did he know that for 20 years as long as David did? Did he know it for 10 years? Did he just find it out the week before? When he propped up Saul's son in power, did he know at that time that David was supposed to be the king and maybe he's trying to get a better deal for himself, figured if I could keep Saul's household in power, I'll be in a better position? It doesn't really say.

But somehow, somewhere along the way, somewhere he came to this conclusion here: David is really the man who is the righteous king. In fact, it seems like at this point in time, almost everybody knew this. And he says in effect here, "I must be a crazy man to be over here, you bum accusing me of something I didn't do, when I could be carrying through here and being on the winning team that God wants me to be on."

So he basically makes an oath here to God: "May God deal with me, be it ever so severely, if I don't do for David what the Lord promised him on oath and give him the whole kingdom." And Ish-bosheth got really scared at that. Not scared enough to do anything about it. Maybe if he called in his other top guys and had this guy bumped off, he could have kept power a little bit longer. But Abner decided, "That's it, I'm through dealing with you. I'm going to do what I guess what he felt God was calling him to do."

We see that in verse 12. But then Abner sent messengers on his behalf to say to David, "Whose land is it? Make an agreement with me and I will help you bring all Israel over to you." So basically what he says is, "I'm going to commit treason against the son of Saul, who shouldn't be the king anyway, and I'll bring everybody under me over to you." And we already saw earlier he had strengthened his position, so he had some kind of numbers of people that were following him. And we saw the king is afraid of him.

So now he's just concerned about what kind of a deal can he get out of it. "Make a deal with me and I'll bring everybody over there." Like, can I get a good job in your army or can I do something? What are you going to do? Certainly at the very least, he wanted to make sure he wasn't going to get killed for leading the rebel army. So at the very least, he wants to stay alive and beyond that to some degree, perhaps he was looking to get something for himself and he says to David, "Look, let's work something out and let me do this."

And David was very happy at that. Now see, you have David here, a guy who never, ever, ever did anything, it seems, to push his own case. He waited 18 years patiently for the kingdom to come to him. Numerous opportunities he had to kill Saul and he wouldn't do it. He was going to wait for God's timing for God to bring it about. And he was doing that here. David did not go and kill the king. David was minding his own time, waiting the time, waiting on the Lord, letting the Lord work things out. He knew God was good for His promise.

"Good," said David. "I will make an agreement with you. But I demand one thing of you: do not come into my presence unless you bring Michal, daughter of Saul, when you come to see me." Then David sent messengers to Ish-bosheth, son of Saul, demanding, "Give me my wife Michal, whom I betrothed to myself for the price of a hundred Philistine foreskins."

So Ish-bosheth gave orders and had her taken away from her husband Paltiel, son of Laish. Her husband, however, went with her, weeping behind her all the way to Bahurim. Then Abner said to him, "Go back home," so he went back. So David responded to Abner here and said, "That's okay. Let's make an agreement, but ain't nothing going to happen till I get my wife back, whom Saul took away from him and gave to someone else."

And he said, "I bought her fair and square, right? I was betrothed to her. I paid the dowry. The dowry was a hundred Philistine foreskins." You remember he actually gave Saul 200 foreskins. The deal was a hundred. He said, "I'll get an extra hundred," and he went out and slew 200 Philistines and brought their foreskins there. He said, "She's my wife. We can do a deal, but nothing happens till she's back with me." Now why exactly he felt like he needed a seventh wife at this point, I don't know, but she was the daughter of Saul and so Saul, maybe it's possible he saw this as some connection to Saul's family. "I'm not his son, but I'm his son-in-law." So in some way there, he may have looked at this as some kind of validation. Maybe some people would have seen it as some kind of validation of his right to the throne.

Now, why didn't he have Abner do that? I don't know that. But David sent the messengers to Ish-bosheth. And we already seen this guy Ish-bosheth is a nervous Nellie here. He was afraid of Abner, his own commander. He wasn't hanging on to power very well. He also knew, I think, that David was supposed to be the king. So he wasn't going to mess around. You wonder, why didn't Ish-bosheth give David a ring and say, "Look, I'll make a deal with you and, keep me alive and give me something to do and I'll give up being king." It seems like that's something that didn't really happen.

For whatever reason, David sends his messengers to Ish-bosheth and he says, "I want my wife back," and Ish-bosheth sends the wife back. And her new husband is not happy about it, but Abner says, "Look, forget about it. Go back home. You're outnumbered, you're outvoted, you're outranked," whatever else, and, "You should have thought of this when you married her." It seems like a hard thing to say, "Isn't that terrible, they sent the guy away," but she was married to David first. This guy shouldn't have married her to begin with, perhaps. He should have known that when he had the opportunity to get married to her in the first place. She's not, can't really be my wife. She's already married to David.

Verse 17. Abner conferred with the elders of Israel and said, "For some time you have wanted to make David your king. Now do it! For the Lord promised David by my servant David, I will rescue my people Israel from the hand of the Philistines and from the hand of all their enemies." So now, at this point, David has his wife back and Abner goes ahead with his part of the deal, which is to get together those people on his side, the elders of Israel. Over here you have Judah; over here you have Israel. Abner gets together with the elders and he says, "For some time, you've wanted to make David your king." So this wasn't some new thing. They'd been pondering this, reflecting on it for a while. They probably were thinking, "You know, this isn't right. We should all be under David, but we got this other guy here we're stuck with and how's this going to work out?" And it seems like they were maybe waiting on God for the right timing.

And Abner says, "Stop waiting on God because the time is now. Just do it. Now do it," he says. And you know what? You think about today, people who say, "Oh, you know, we're going to think about accepting the Lord. One of these days I'm going to get back to church and find out about the God stuff and I'll look into that one of these days when I get around to it. One of these days I'll do the right thing." Or maybe you're a Christian and in some situation, you know what the right thing is but you're not doing it. And you keep thinking, "One of these days I'm going to do that," whatever that right thing is in your life that you're not doing. And here's what God's Word says: now do it.

You've been talking about doing the God thing, the right thing, the thing that the Lord wants you to do. It's time to stop talking and do it. And that, I think, we can look in our own lives also and say: what area in our own walk with the Lord are we in a holding pattern in? What area in our own walk with the Lord are we treading water in? We're just holding our own or swimming against the current. We're not getting ahead, we're not getting behind, we're staying in the same place. What part of our lives did we not turn over to the Lord? So often times, we want to keep certain parts of our lives to ourselves. We say we'll give the Lord this part, but we'll keep this other part.

We'll give Him Sunday, and we'll keep Monday through Friday and Saturday we'll split it 50/50 or something. Or when we go to church, we're with the Lord, but when we stay home, what we watch on TV or whatever, don't, we don't want to hear about it. We enjoy watching or listening or doing this other stuff or wasting our time in some way. And I think this is a real exhortation here to an unsaved person who says, "Someday I'm going to get right with God. Someday I'm going to check that out." Someday may never come. Do it now.

Guest (Male): You've been listening to Hope From the Word. We're currently in a study of 2 Samuel. You can hear this message or more Hope From the Word with Pastor Bill Luebkemann by going to ccmarlton.org.

Pastor Bill's messages can also be found by downloading the Hope FM app on your smartphone or tablet. Or if you prefer to listen via podcast, go wherever you find your podcasts and sign up there. We'd love to have you join us at Calvary Chapel of Marlton either in person or online.

Our Sunday service begins at 10:00 AM, and there's a Wednesday evening service at 7:00. To catch us online, you can subscribe to our YouTube channel at Calvary Chapel of Marlton or just go to our website for the link at ccmarlton.org.

And if you'd take a moment to write to Pastor Bill, it would be such a blessing to us. We're thankful each and every time we hear what God is doing in our listeners' lives, and we want to pray for you, too. Either email us through the website at ccmarlton.org or call 856-983-1662. We'll continue our study in 2 Samuel next time on Hope From the Word with Pastor Bill Luebkemann, a presentation of Calvary Chapel of Marlton.