Sound Doctrine

Jeff Johnson: When the inevitable trials of life come along, where will you go for guidance and help? This is Pastor Jeff Johnson. Things that come up to hassle us. Things at the job, things at home, the parents, the children, this and that that come up in our lives. Again, where are you going to run to? Where are you going to go?

You need to go to the Lord. And we learn that through these things. Endurance, patience, causing us to be more mature in our faith. So that's why he says, "Count it all joy." Get excited. Thank God for them because you would never grow unless you had trials and tribulations. Think about that. You would never grow in your love for God and in your roots going down in the Lord and in faith in God without trials and tribulations.

Guest (Male): Welcome to Sound Doctrine with Pastor Jeff Johnson. Today we return to our verse by verse journey through 2 Samuel. King David led quite a life. He had incredible highs and some mind-numbing lows as well. Today we see him once again threatened by someone who wanted to take over.

This time a rebel named Sheba. This guy was pretty charismatic. He told the men of Israel that they should abandon David, and so they did. David also had a man named Joab to contend with. With the details, here's Pastor Jeff in 2 Samuel, chapter 20.

Jeff Johnson: 2 Samuel chapter 20 talks about another rebellion. Just what David needed, right? Let me give you a little bit, go back a little bit, and catch up all of us on where we're at, where we're going here. David has just put down Absalom's rebellion, remember, as Absalom, his son, rebelled against his father. And there the tribes fought over David. Judah wanted to bring him back and make him king, and Judah was bringing him back over Jordan. And then Israel said, "Well, we should be able to bring him back because we're 10 tribes. We have 10 parts with David."

There was a little dissension there. It says that Judah spoke louder and tougher than Israel did, and so they kind of won the little dispute, but it was still going on in their hearts. What's interesting to me is that after the 10 northern tribes were fighting against David, now all of a sudden they're fighting over David. It just shows you how fickle man is. One minute he's crying, "Hosanna! Save now, King!" The next moment he's crying, "Crucify him!" That's how we change, so quickly to change because our hearts are deceitful, aren't they?

They're wicked, the Bible says. Paul even said, "I know that in me, in my flesh, there dwells no good thing but Jesus Christ." I think we need to be warned here that our hearts are deceitfully wicked and that in a moment, we too can become fickle, forgetting our first love, getting away from our devotion to our God and our King, and just living a life that's not pleasing to the Lord. That quick, it can happen.

As we go on here now, David continues to be surrounded with dissension and turmoil. He has learned to put up with these little squabbles now in his life. They're just coming at a regular basis. You see, when I was looking at this, I thought, isn't this just like the Christian's life? Once you receive Christ, hey, guess what? The battle just begins. There's warfare going on. There's battles that continue. In fact, it increases when you receive the Lord into your life. It doesn't cease.

You can't get a furlough from this fight. There are no days off. It's a continual thing because in the world, we're going to have tribulation. We have an enemy that's real and that's always hassling us, always causing dissension. This world, listen, is never going to be satisfying our hearts. We know that. This place is never going to totally fulfill us. So this is not our home. We know and understand that we're pilgrims passing through. This is not where we're going to get our roots. We're looking for a home that outshines the sun. We're looking upwards.

This place is going to be chaotic. This place is going to be this way until Jesus comes. We just got to understand this. I think David was coming to an understanding that, "Hey, okay, another rebellion. So what's new?" Always, if one day brings another new thing, every day's new. There's always little hassles and always little things that we have to contend with. So don't let it bum you out. Get used to it and fight the good fight of faith. Be more than a conqueror in Christ. Take your stand in the Lord and watch God do that work through you.

Watch him deliver you from each and every situation. Listen, if there wasn't a warfare, we wouldn't know how sweet victory was. Because there is war, we know about victory. Victory in the Lord. Victory in giving our hearts to him and in standing firm. David was learning this during this time of dissension in the land. Another rebellion he's up against. You know, James said it so good. James chapter 1, he says, "Count it all joy when you enter into different trials and tribulations." It's the enduring thing. It's the thing that helps us to get grounded and rooted more in our Lord.

Why? Because of these little trials. Little things that come up to hassle us. Things at the job, things at home, the parents, the children, this and that that come up in our lives. Again, where are you going to run to? Where are you going to go? You need to go to the Lord. And we learn that through these things. Endurance, patience, causing us to be more mature in our faith. So that's why he says, "Count it all joy." Get excited. Thank God for them because you would never grow unless you had trials and tribulations. Think about that. You would never grow in your love for God and in your roots going down in the Lord and in faith in God without trials and tribulations.

Now, going on in 2 Samuel, chapter 20, we enter into this other hassle for David. It says, "And there happened to be there a man of Belial," that means a worthless fellow, just a jerk, all right, "whose name was Sheba, the son of Bichri, the Benjamite. And he blew a trumpet and said, 'We have no part in David, neither have we inheritance in the son of Jesse. Every man to his tents, O Israel.'" So Sheba blows the trumpet of revolt. And he tells everyone we are going to have nothing to do with this David. So this worthless fellow gets everyone to turn against David.

Here is a picture of man's revolt against God. It's so clear. It happens right before David is re-enthroned as king. Many times, right before an individual is going to come to the Lord or right before he is that close in giving his life to the Lord, all kinds of hassles come up. Here we have this guy, Sheba. You know, there's an old Arab proverb that says when you throw a rock into the midst of a bunch of dogs, the one that yelps is the one that got hit. Right? Good proverb. I think Sheba is here getting hit and he's yelping louder than anybody else.

He's trying to make problems and bring on this revolt. He says, "We will not have this man be our king." You know, it reminded me of when they turned against Christ. "We won't have this man be our king in our lives. Caesar's our lord," they cried out. "And may his blood be upon us and upon our children." Whoa. I think man's reasons for rebellion are right here in this first verse. Number one, we see that man rejects divine call, as Sheba rejected David's divine call. Said, "I don't see God's anointing on him. This guy is not the chosen. He wasn't anointed."

Oh, what do you mean, Sheba? Samuel anointed David, and he was raised up by God. "Oh no, what's this one way stuff? One way to God? Jesus? No one way. I reject that." Remember what they said of Jesus? "Is not he just a Nazarene? He's the son of a carpenter. He can't be the Son of God." And they rejected the divine claim. They reject the supernatural. Man still does this today, doesn't he? Yet, oh, when Christmas comes, "Oh, let's get our little manger set." Didn't God intervene in man's affairs 2,000 years ago? And he's going to intervene in man's affairs any day now. He did it once; he's going to do it again. He's promised that.

But man rejects it. He's like, "Ah, no, that's not going to happen." See, the natural man doesn't understand the things of God, neither can he know them. They are spiritually discerned. But once you take that step of faith and say yes to the Lord, he opens your eyes and opens your ears, and you see spiritual things. You see that this is a truth, that the Lord is involved in this world. He does care for this place. He loves it. And he's going to come again and deliver those who believe in him out of this place before all hell breaks loose.

The second thing I see here is man rejects God's self-revelation to man. And so Sheba was rejecting that Samuel went—his whole mission was to get a king for Israel. And he did. He got David. It was God's man, not man's man. It was God's man. His revelation of himself to Israel through David. Man today also continues to reject Christ's mission. Do you know that Jesus came into this world to do just one thing and one thing alone? His mission was to save sinners. That's what the Bible says. He came to save sinners, of whom I'm chief. One of the chief ones.

Then there's a bunch of other chiefs out there, right? He came to save us. And in my life, his mission was accomplished. Has it been in your life, or have you continued to reject that mission? That's why he came. But you know what? Man's without excuse. Paul said that. You know so much, and yet you're going to continue to reject the Messiah, the Savior of the world? "Oh, well, he's good for those people and he's good for this religion or that." No, he's the Savior of the world. God so loved the world he sent his son. Sheba, what are you doing? You know too much. You know better. You're without excuse.

The third thing I see here is man rejects Christ because of man. You see, Sheba knew David's partiality with his son who fought against him. He knew that he loved his son, but he also knew that David went after his son and fought him. And Sheba didn't like that. Sheba knew David's error with Bathsheba, that he committed adultery with her. He knew that David always put Judah in preference, Judah above all the other tribes. And he didn't like that. He said, "That's not fair." And so it turned him off towards God. It turned him away from God.

He had a lot of excuses. I'll tell you something. If you're running from God and you're going to continue to be set against him, you will never lack for reasons if you look at man. Because man will always give you excuses. And if you're looking for the perfect man, you're looking for the righteous man, you need to be looking to Jesus Christ and not to your fellow man because we're all sinners saved by grace. "Oh, I don't know, I'm not going to go to that church, bunch of hypocrites there." And then when you get there, there's one more. Come on, give me a break.

There's hypocrites in every church. We've all sinned and come short of the glory of God. And we're forgiven. And yet man continues to say, "Well, look at that guy over there." Hey, the Lord never told you to believe in a man. He told you to believe in the Son of God, Jesus Christ. He never told you to believe in a church. He told you to believe in him. And you need to do that if you haven't already. You're always going to find an excuse if you look at man.

Number four, man's rejection is void of any reason. Sheba rejected David as king, but he had no reason. He had totally negative principles. He had no viable alternative to lead Israel. He had no direction to give them. He just said, "We're leaving David. Everybody go to his home and we're going to revolt." Then what are you going to do? "I don't know, but we're going to revolt. I know that." Then where are you going to go? "I don't know." What's your alternative? "I don't know."

It's the same way with those who reject Christ today. Man goes off on his own, led by the whims and the passions of this world, wandering through this place aimlessly, living chaotic lives. As a ship without a helm just is drifting and meandering through this place, having nowhere they're going. They don't know where they're going. You ask them, they go, "I don't know. When you die, where are you going to go?" "I don't know. Six foot under." And that's usually their response. "That's it, huh?" "Yeah, that's what I believe." "Well, who told you that?" "I don't know."

And they just go on. I mean, when you think about it, it's the mob rules. Everybody's doing it. Go with the flow. And the flow is—many that go in thereat, right into destruction. Few that are going to be delivered, that are going to receive. I'm glad I'm part of the few that have pulled out of this place. Pulled up like a plane that was going to crash. And now he's flying my plane, man. He's in the driver's seat. And I gave him control of my life. I mean, look at the people today. If you ask them about their deep convictions, they have none.

And as far as giving you any type of an intelligent view, they have none. They're void of it. They have no direction. They don't know where they're going, where they came from, what's going on. And they're lost as sheep without a shepherd. And Jesus saw that and his compassion went out over the multitudes. And he says, "Oh, you guys, you need the Good Shepherd. If you don't, you're going to be wiped out. You're going to self-destruct just as sheep do without a shepherd."

Sheba here takes advantage of the squabble between the tribes. You see, he sees his moment and he seizes it. He jumps in the middle of this whole thing and he raises himself up, and he cries every man to his tent. In other words, listen, everybody go home to your homeland and we'll just sit there and we'll resist David as being king. So now those who claimed 10 parts of David—and they really did, in the last part of chapter 19, they said, "Well, we're 10 tribes so we have 10 parts in David. We should be leading David back as king."

And now all of those that said this now want no part with David. Look at the fickleness of man. One minute fighting against him, one minute fighting over him, the next minute saying, "I don't want anything to do with him." Look at how man changes all the time. Oh, Lord, help us to be grounded and rooted in you. That we wouldn't be tossed to and fro with every wind of doctrine and so confused by this world. That we would get into the word of the Lord and know why we believe and who we believe in. That nothing out there would be able to cause us to sway one way or another.

That we would not be fickle. That we would always love you, Lord, and always serve you and stay in your word and stay with that protection around us. Well, verse 2, so every man of Israel went up from after David and followed Sheba. Can you imagine? Look at what one bad guy can do. He can disrupt everything. And everybody's like sheep anyhow. They go, "Huh? What? We're not to follow David now? Who said that? Oh, that guy Sheba? Okay, where are we going now? Everybody go home? Okay." One guy, just needs to speak up and lead everybody off.

And the son of Bichri, but notice the men of Judah cleaved unto their king from Jordan even to Jerusalem. So those who were discontented and restless, the lawless ones, full of jealousy, full of pride—and pride will keep you from the Lord, from being King of your life—they became very contentious against David. They said, "We will not follow you." And there's some of you that are caught up in that today because of your own pride. You're angry at God, and you will not give your heart to the Lord. You're being ripped off. They left David.

This division is going to get a little better. I mean, we see it right here, it's kind of festering. And it gets a little better when David is king and then his son follows him as king, Solomon. But after his son dies, Solomon, it gets really bad. In fact, it finally split. 10 tribes go to the north and 2 to the south. And yet here we have a divided kingdom now. It'll never work. A divided kingdom will never stand. Your divided heart will never stand. If you're wishy-washy and you go, "I don't know if I believe in God. Oh yes, I do believe in God," and you're just going through life like this, you're just going to get wiped out.

You've got to make a decision, man. United we'll stand. Your heart united in the Lord. United in your marriage relationship. United in your family. United in your church. We're going to stand. But divided we're going to fall. Verse 3, "And David came to his house at Jerusalem; and the king took the ten women his concubines, whom he had left to keep the house," remember that was back in other chapters further on in the past that he left those women there when Absalom was king. "And he put them in a ward and he fed them, but went not in unto them. So they were shut up unto the day of their death, living in widowhood."

So the ones that David really loved, he loathes now. He doesn't want to get near them. He takes care of them, but he stays away from them. And here I see an incredible change, a drastic change in David's life and in his conduct after all of his trials, headache, and all that he went through. Now he's saying, "I don't want any more women. I don't want these wives. I'm going to stay away from them." Now remember, he's over 50 years of age now. Maybe he's finally learning some lessons here about his mistake when he began to build his harem. I don't know. It looks like he's making some decisions.

Verse 4, "Then said the king to Amasa, 'Assemble me the men of Judah within three days, and be thou here present.'" So Amasa went to assemble the men of Judah, but tarried longer than the set time which he had appointed him. Remember David got angry at Joab who was his general to start out with because Joab was a very severe guy. Everybody who threatened his position he seemed to kill them. And David just after a while, after once Joab killed Absalom, his son, David said, "That's it, Joab. You're stepping down. I'm putting Amasa as my general." And he did that.

Amasa was a very capable person to take charge of the army because he had been a general before. He had been given orders by David—three days be back here. Three days went by. Where's Amasa? I don't know. He's not here. And David knew that when you've got a rebellion, you've got to move fast. And Amasa wasn't moving fast. Hey listen, you snooze, you lose. And for those of you that are tarding a lot, those of you that are late a lot for things, maybe once you get through this story, you'll say, "That's it, I'm never going to be late again."

This is how to solve tardiness. Because when you do, you lose a lot when you're late. And he's losing a lot here. Verse 6, "And David said to Abishai," he looked over at Abishai, another one of the generals there. This is Joab's brother. He doesn't look at Joab. Joab's sitting there going, "All right." He's standing there. And David doesn't even look at Joab because he didn't want to use Joab, right? Not that Joab. I'm going to use your brother. And he takes Abishai.

And he tells Abishai, he says, "Now shall Sheba the son of Bichri do us more harm than did Absalom. Take thou thy lord's servants and pursue after him, lest he get him fenced cities and escape us." "And there went out after him Joab's men, and the Cherethites," which were David's special guards, "and then the Pelethites," which were the elite guards, and all the mighty men. And they went out of Jerusalem to pursue after Sheba the son of Bichri. Now I want you to notice that Joab and his men went with Abishai with this group to go after Sheba.

Because really, Joab saw himself still as commander-in-chief. He just said, "I'm just going to—I'm biding for my time. I'm still," you know, in his mind he figured he was still the head guy. And he was going to get that position back. Look at verse 8. "And when they were at the great stone which is Gibeon, Amasa went before them." Now Amasa, remember, he was late. He should have been there, he wasn't there. Abishai took the forces and went and did it. But Amasa's saying, "Hey, wait guys, wait!" And he met them at this spot, and they all got together.

And Joab's garment that he had put on was girded unto him, and upon it a girdle with a sword fastened upon his loins in the sheath thereof; and as he went forth, notice, the sword fell out. So here's this guy, he's got this long garment on. You know, you've seen pictures of these ancient pictures of these guys back in David's time where they have these long gowns. Well, what they would do, they would have belts, and they would take their long garment and they would tuck it in their belt when they rode, when they went out to battle so it wouldn't get in the way.

The belt held the garment so it was in a safe position. Well, along with this belt, there was a sheath on it with a sword in it. The sheath probably was a little loose. And as he rode, his sword just so happened to fall out on the ground. Now this is a set-up. And what Joab is doing is he's setting the scene for us as he drops his sword.

Guest (Male): Well, what we have here is a good old-fashioned cliffhanger. We'll have to wait until our next program for Pastor Jeff to tell us how this story plays out. This is Sound Doctrine. We house all of our 2 Samuel studies at sounddoctrineradio.org. This comes in handy should you miss a study or two on the radio, or just want to hear something again, or even share it with someone you know. This study and more are available now at sounddoctrineradio.org under messages.

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