David: Passive Father or Forbearing King? | Episode 23

This week on the YTTB podcast, we discussed who David really was.

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

We're only like two chapters after David being a different kind of David. Then we have David in Bathsheba. Nathan rebukes him, and and now everything starts to get out of control, which God said was gonna happen. Yep. Okay, welcome back everybody to the Year Through the Bible podcast. My name is Rodney Adams.

SPEAKER_01 0:22

I'm the executive pastor at Asbury Church in Tulsa, Oklahoma, and you are I'm Andrew Forrest and the senior pastor here at Asbury, and we are continuing the unraveling of David's story in our Year Through the Bible podcast. This is not what you learned about in Bible school. And it's heavy stuff.

SPEAKER_00 0:40

Well, yeah, and in Bible school, when you're a kid, you learn about David and Goliath, and you've got David. I had one of those Bibles, it had a zipper. So it was like beige in color, and it had a zipper, and you open it up, and like every tenth page had like a glossy color photo, right? So it was it was like a story Bible almost, but it was a real Bible. I don't remember the the translation or if it was uh like a kid translation, but it definitely had a lot of photos. So you've got David standing there with his little sling, you know, and Goliath's all mad at him. You've got David, you know, he's got a sheep or something, he's like walking around with the sheep. There probably was not a photo of David in Bathsheba. But I knew about David in Bathsheba.

SPEAKER_01 1:27

I don't think that's skipped over in kids' stuff. I don't know how they talk about it, but I knew about it as a kid.

SPEAKER_00 1:32

I totally knew about it. Maybe they just kind of say that he liked another man's wife or something.

SPEAKER_01 1:36

You knew about I always remember the part about the army withdrawing from poor Uriah and he's left up by himself, and then I always remember that as a little kid. It's very vivid to tell.

SPEAKER_00 1:46

But that's pretty much it. Yeah. I mean, that's that's or at least those are the major sort of waypoints that you pick up and remember as a kid.

SPEAKER_01 1:54

Trevor Burrus, Jr. I remember the one thing, other thing I remember is Absalom and his hair and how he gets stuck in the tree. I always remember that as a kid.

SPEAKER_00 2:00

Trevor Burrus, Jr. I don't think I picked up on that one.

SPEAKER_01 2:01

Okay, so we'll get there today. Yeah. So what we've been saying, and we talked about this last week, is that David, who's a man after God's own heart, a very interesting phrase. God himself describes that in 1 Samuel about David. David does great, does basically everything right with some questionable moral decisions around women. He does everything right up until the moment he's established in Jerusalem as the king, and then it it's almost like everything goes south.

SPEAKER_00 2:26

Aaron Ross Powell It starts to change rapidly. So And it changed really, really after his own actions. Yes. This was things didn't start happening to him. He he started happening things. Like he he he didn't go out to battle in the spring when everybody else did. He found Bathsheba. He started doing stuff.

SPEAKER_01 2:47

So now listen, I don't want to force the Bible to say a thing it doesn't say. But I think there is a red thread through all this, and it is a it is a lack of David's, it's a it's a David is showing passivity when he should be showing activity. He doesn't go out to battle, and that causes problems. We're gonna see this is that's a major theme of the Absalom story. Major. Here we go. 2 Samuel 13. And this truly is really rough stuff. Just warning everybody. David has a bunch of wives and a bunch of kids. Absalom, David's son, had a beautiful sister whose name was Tamar. And after a time, Amnon, David's other son by another woman, loved her. I don't think the word love is the correct word. It's he lust, he's lusting after her, he's obsessed with her. He's so tormented that he makes himself ill. And he's like, I don't know how I'm gonna get to her. Amnon has a friend, Shema. Oh no, the friend is Jonatab, who is his n his cousin. Jonathan is a very crafty man, so that's not a good description in the Bible. And he said, Why are you so upset? And Amnon said, I love Tamar, but I can't have her. And Jonathan says, Hey, set it up and then uh make her come serve you, and then you can do what you want. So they set up this thing where he it the whole thing makes you sick.

SPEAKER_00 4:12

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 4:13

He They baited her. He baits her, makes her come in to serve him. She's a young, she's a like we don't know how old she is, but I'm assuming from context that she is a young woman. So she's not a child, but she's a young teenager. Teenager, yeah. Yeah, unmarried virgin lady. Yeah. So she's a teenager. Poor this poor girl. So he he the Bible says he violates her. Y'all can use another modern word, which would be more appropriate, but I don't know who's listening on this podcast. He he violates her for sure. Yeah. Uh very bad four-letter word he does to her. Rhymes uh begins with an R. So he does that to her. And then how gross is this? Verse 15. Then he hated her with a great hatred. So that his hatred was greater than the lust he'd had for her. He like this weird psychological thing that he wanted this thing he couldn't have, he's obsessed with it, lusting after it. And then when he takes the thing and abuses her, then he like, get out of here, kick her out of here. And then she cries even more. Don't do this. So she cries when the thing happens to her, and then she cries and says, Don't send me away like this. And he does it. She walks away crying.

SPEAKER_00 5:24

Here's here's Well, she says, if you sending me away is worse than the thing that you just did. Yeah, this poor girl. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 5:30

Yeah. Verse 20. Absalom said, uh why are you crying? And she she he she he basically figures it out that their their half brother has done this thing to her. And Absalom says, Hey, I'll take care of it. So she lives with Absalom then, and look at this, verse 21. When King David heard of these things, he was very angry. But he doesn't do anything about it. That's it. And Absalom spoke to Amnon, neither good nor bad, for Absalom hated Amnon because he had violated his sister Tamar. So Okay, one little quick narrative point. Look at verse 18. She was wearing a long robe with sleeves. That's the same phrase that the robe that Joseph wears, and we don't know what it means. It's a coat of many colors. We don't know what it's some there's some beautiful thing she's wearing, and we don't know what it means. Uh and she tears it, by the way, she rips it because she's so aghast after what's happened to her.

SPEAKER_00 6:29

Yeah. So I heard a teacher say one time about about Joseph's coat that the the sleeve thing was like if you're you have like your your like almost like your sleeveless like under robe that you would work in. Like you would you that's when you that's what you put on to go. It's like your jeans and t-shirt you go like mow the yard in. It's like your but the the robe with the sleeves or the robe with the mini colors is the robe that goes over that when you don't do any work, like royalty kind of kind of thing. So um it's like fancy. Yeah, like it's uh it's status. It's like she had her um, you know, she wasn't wearing her everyday clothes, she had a a dress on or something, like in modern context. Some kind of something that I don't know what that means with her, but I just that that's what I've heard about Joseph's report.

SPEAKER_01 7:20

And it's precious and she tears it to show how utterly uh distraught she is. Okay. So we've pulled up the point, David does absolutely nothing, which is just an outrage. On every level, it's an outrage. Forget the familial side of it. He's the king. The king has to keep order. And then he has these sons. Plus, it's so foolish, he's got all these young men for sons. Young men are all gonna be vying for power anyway. Everything about this is a recipe for disaster, which is about what happens.

SPEAKER_00 7:54

So and let's just I don't think that our people need a reminder, but because we just started this episode and we've been reading a lot throughout the week. We're only like two chapters after David being a different kind of David. Right. Then we have David in Bathsheba, Nathan rebukes him, and and now everything starts to unraveling, get out of control.

SPEAKER_01 8:16

Yeah, and to your point, it's not the out, it's not bad guys fighting them, it's them in the inside. Which God said was gonna happen. Yep. So then Absalom, two years go by, and Absalom doesn't do anything. He keeps totally he keeps quiet. It again, forgive the reference, we made it last week. It's very much a godfather type long-term vendetta grudge he's holding on to here. So Absalom waits two years and then he gets he has this plan to get all the king's sons out to his property, and while they're there, he has he has Amnon murdered. Absalom has to flee, but nothing else happens to him. So he's now murdered his brother. Nothing else happens. Finally, Joab gets tired of this whole deal, so Joab arranges it in this long, complicated kind of scene in first chapter 14 for Absalom to come back to Jerusalem. But he comes back, but he doesn't talk to the king. Here we go.

SPEAKER_00 9:14

Now, this is can I just bring this up real quick before we start on that? So in 13, um, verse 37. But Absalom fled and went to Telmai, the son of Amahud, king of Geshur. And David mourned for his son day after day. So David's mourning because Absalom's gone. I think so, yeah. So Absalom fled and went to Geshur and was there three years. Listen to this. And the spirit of the king longed to go out to Absalom because he was comforted about Amnon, since he was dead. So back to chapter 13, verse 21, when King David heard of all these things, he was very angry and he kind of didn't do anything. Yep. But now the situation has been resolved. He seems to he seems to be um basically the son, his son did something about it that he probably should have done or or took action on, and now he wants he wants some kind of connection with Absalom, but Absalom's gone. Anyway, it's just worth pointing out because earlier it was a it was a big deal that David didn't do anything.

SPEAKER_01 10:21

Well, and Absalom has David has a soft spot for all his children, which is often where guys get in trouble. Well, hold on. Samuel, Eli, we just saw that. Those guys would not rebuke their own sons.

SPEAKER_00 10:34

Bible said they're literally worthless fellows.

SPEAKER_01 10:37

Yeah. And that's a major way that people get in trouble, is when you become a patriarch and you're not willing, and you're the only one who can really address your sons. So if you you have 45-year-old sons and you're 75, you're the only one who can speak authority over them. And a lot of guys don't do it. And that causes problems in families.

SPEAKER_00 11:01

And Jacob's boys.

SPEAKER_01 11:02

Actually, he's the paradigmatic example here.

unknown 11:04

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 11:05

He won't do anything.

SPEAKER_00 11:06

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 11:06

Yeah. And look at all the problems. So uh we see this here. Okay. So Absalom finally comes back to Jerusalem to this long machinations of Joab. We mentioned Joab last time. Joab has always got his hand in somewhere. He is a fascinating character. It'd be a fun miniseries that focuses on Joab. Okay. Verse 28, chapter 14. Absalom lived two full years in Jerusalem without coming into the king's presence. And Absalom wants to get Joab to come to him, and Joab won't come to him. So Absalom sets fire to Joab's fields, which makes Joab come to talk to Absalom, and Absalom's like, I want to talk to my dad. So he gets Joab arranges it. Verse 33, the end of the chapter 14. Joab went to the king and told him, and he summoned Absalom. So he came to the king and bowed himself on the face to the ground before the king, and the king kissed Absalom. Okay, so now they're back into each other's good graces. But then in chapter 15, Absalom is a piece of work. After this, Absalom got himself a chariot and horses, fifty men to run before him. And Absalom used to rise early and stand beside the way of the gate. And when anyone had a dispute to come to the king, Absalom would call to him and say, Hey, where are you where are you from, buddy? And he said, Oh, I'm from here, this place. Absalom would say, verse three, man, I hear what you're saying. And there's nobody designated by the king to help you. Absalom said, If I were a judge here, people could come to me. I would help them out. And whenever a man would come to pay homage to him, he would put out his hand. He didn't, he was like the people, and he wouldn't let them bow before him. He would take hold of him and kiss him. Thus Absalom did to all Israel, and Absalom stole the hearts of the king, uh the men of Israel. So Absalom is really a wily character here, and he's kind of showing, hey, let me tell you what good kingship can look like.

SPEAKER_00 13:05

Yeah. Stole the hearts is a is a um an appropriate phrase here. Yeah. Because the the these people were trying to approach the king, like they wanted they wanted judgment from David or whatever. It kind of just made me think in this moment. I wonder what Absalom knew. So going back to when things were going okay, and well, God um God prom God basically says that the that the the kingship or the line or whatever's gonna go through your sons, like you're like there's a promise, there's a promise to David that kind of coincides with his his iniquity. I wonder if Absalom either thought it was gonna be him or wanted it to be him. Like I wonder if I wonder if he almost like he's a grasper, like the he like the heel grabber. Like I wonder if I wonder if he I just wonder if he is sort of acting in such a way that that he wants this to be him. Yeah, I think it's possible. I mean he certainly acts that way. Or if he knows it's not gonna be him and he's trying to grasp it. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 14:12

This is the previous chapter, but it's just a fun little note. This is verse 28, 25 in chapter 14. Now in all Israel, there is no one so much to be praised for his handsome appearance as Absalom. From the sole of his foot to the crown of his head, there was no blemish in him. And when he cut the hair of his head, he used to cut it every year because it was real heavy. He weighed the hair, it was 200 shekels. So he has all this hair, too. Yeah. And they were born to Absalom three sons, one daughter, whose name was Tamar. She was a beautiful woman. So he names his daughter after his sister. Okay. Anyway, so Absalom sets a conspiracy to take over Jerusalem, and David has to flee, which is amazing. So David flees from Jerusalem. And chapter 16, a lot of stuff is going on here, really deep kind of uh, you know, emotional scenes.

SPEAKER_00 15:06

Well, he flees partially because he's been passive up to this point. But Absalom draws draws David's basically his people after himself. So David can't really rely on all the hearts that he won in the preceding years, like they're they don't really belong to him anymore.

SPEAKER_01 15:23

So he has to flee.

SPEAKER_00 15:24

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 15:24

Chapter 16, Absalom enters Jerusalem. And here's the part that you uh referenced earlier. Absalom comes into Jerusalem. This is chapter 16, verse 20, another really nasty scene. Absalom says to Hahithophel, his buddy, what should we do? Ahithophel says, verse 21, chapter 16, here's what you do. Take your father's concubines and have relations with them. And then everybody will know that you can't ever be reconciled to your father, so the people that are with you will know that you have burned your ships and you are all in against David. So, verse 22, they pitched a tent for Absalom on the roof, and Absalom went into his father's concubines in the sight of all Israel. So he does this nasty thing in front of everybody to show he's the dominant male. It's exactly what Nathan said is going to happen.

SPEAKER_00 16:18

Yeah, as a reminder, go back to 2 Samuel chapter 12, verse 10. Now therefore the sword shall never depart from your house, because you have despised me and have taken the wife of Uriah the Hittite to be your wife. Thus says the Lord, behold, I will raise up evil against you out of your own house. So, okay, check. Absalom is is drawing people after himself and working against David. And I will take your wives before your eyes, and give them to your neighbor, and he shall lie with your wives in the sight of the sun. What you did in secret, I'm gonna do in public to you. That's exactly what happens. That's what happens.

SPEAKER_01 17:00

So there's goings and comings, and it's really fun stuff to read. We're not going to go into all now. But turn to 18, chapter 18, this is his death. This is the part I referenced I remembered as a kid. So, verse nine, chapter 18. Absalom happened to meet the servants of David. There's civil war in Israel, by the way. Absalom was riding on his mule, and the mule went under the thick branches of a great oak, and his head caught fast in the oak, and he was suspended between heaven and earth while the mule that was under him went away. And a guy comes and tells Joab, who's David's right hand guy, Absalom's hanging. Joab said, What'd you do? Why didn't you kill him? The man said, If you gave me a thousand pieces of silver, verse 12, I wouldn't kill the king's son? Because the king had told them, Whatever you do, don't kill don't kill Absalom. Joab said, I'm not going to talk to you anymore. Verse 14. And he took three javelins in his hand and he thrust them into the heart of Absalom while he was still alive in the oak. And they killed Absalom. They bring Absalom back home. The body. Well, they had the body. They tell David the boy has been killed. And here's this very, very, very famous scene. Verse uh verse this is verse uh chapter 18, verse uh 33. And the king was deeply moved and went up to the chamber over the gate and wept. And went, and as he went, he said, Oh my son Absalom, my son, my son Absalom, would I have died instead of you? Oh Absalom, my son, my son. So it's just this amazing sense of grief.

SPEAKER_00 18:38

Heart wrenching.

SPEAKER_01 18:39

It's heart-wrenching. Even though David has been the cause of all this, it's still heart-wrenching.

SPEAKER_00 18:43

And he's been working against him. Absalom's been working against him.

SPEAKER_01 18:46

Basically, you know, whether Absalom was going to try to kill him or not, he's trying to take away all that, his whole kingdom. This is where uh William Faulkner gets the title of his famous novel, Absalom, Absalom, from this thing. Okay. So then, chapter 19, verse 1, it was told Joab, Behold, the king is weeping and mourning for Absalom. So the victory that day was turned into mourning. Because the people said the king is grieving his son. And the king covered his face, verse 4, and he cried, Oh my son, Absalom, oh Absalom, my son, my son. And then Joab is like, Are you kidding me? You're crying over this guy after all he caused, and he caused civil war and he killed good people. What is your problem?

SPEAKER_00 19:31

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 19:31

And David listens.

SPEAKER_00 19:33

Joab has this weird way of kind of getting David's attention. Joab's like the kind of guy that he's going to do whatever needs to be done. Correct. Right. And in a lot of different ways, whether he's um morally right or not. He the other guy's like, I'm not going to kill Absalom. It's the king's son. And Joab's like, it's got to be done. I got to do it. It's got to be done. Even though David has told him not to do it, he does it anyway.

SPEAKER_01 19:57

I'm telling you, Joab, we should write a miniseries for this. Anybody want to fund it? Let's fund it. Okay. David is still pretty magnanimous. He tries to pardon his enemies. There's a few other things that happen, and David now grows old. He has this chapter 22, this beautiful psalm, which is very much like Psalm 18 in the Bible. He has this song about kind of his life, and it draws near to the end of his life, and he kind of makes some last vows and all. And 2 Samuel ends with David as an old man restored back in Jerusalem, but he's not dead yet. Okay. Then 1 Kings begin with David as an old man. And that sets up a succession crisis. David is an old infirm man at this point. And Nathan, the prophet, works with Bathsheba to try to get Solomon to be the king's successor, not one of the older half-brothers. And there's some of that stuff that's going on there. And ultimately in 1 Kings chapter 2, David dies, and Solomon becomes the king. And the and we'll end on this note and we can talk about it. Chapter 3, 1 Kings is the beautiful place where Solomon doesn't know what to do. And God says, I'll do whatever you want. And Solomon says, God make me wise. And God does. And he says, I'll make you wise and rich both. And this is a beautiful promise. It's like just like with his father, God is with them. And it's great, great, great, great, great. And there's that great story. This was in a children's Bible, I bet, where the two ladies come before Solomon with the baby. And then Solomon says, Cut the baby in half. And then he provokes them to tell them whose baby it is. I love that story as a kid. And then after that, it kind of goes bad from there. But we'll end there for today.

SPEAKER_00 21:49

We'll end there for today. But once again, um it's almost like you, we just in our post 2000-year post-Jesus like Western morality minds, like we cannot, we can't hold two things at once in our head. That that somebody that is chosen by God who prays for a virtue that God gives him, who will also somehow like live without using that virtue. So Solomon does a bunch of of things we would not call virtuous. He lives a certain way. But we get all the we basically get all the wisdom literature in the Bible from presumably from Solomon. Like so he somehow is wise and also things kind of spiral a little bit. It's just it's it we'll talk about this more, but it's it's worth just paying attention to Solomon.

SPEAKER_01 22:38

Yeah. Yeah. And it starts out really well with him. And you think this is the the greatest king we've had. Because he even knows about nature. He's a naturalist, and and the Queen of Sheba comes to listen to him, and then it goes south.

SPEAKER_00 22:49

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 22:49

So the story of David is just a fantastic story. It's all mixed up together, like life, good and bad, and he's a man after God's own heart. And from David comes Jesus ultimately, so many centuries later.

SPEAKER_00 23:02

Yeah. Okay. Um we don't have any additional questions uh for this week. So I feel like that's a pretty good place to stop, and then we will pick up uh probably talk about Solomon a little bit. Yeah. You know, in the coming weeks or something like that. So um anyway, go to year through the Bible.com, send in your questions, uh, keep reading. Uh we are chugging our way through uh the the their our reading plan, the Old Testament, New Testament, Psalm and a Proverb every day. I should tell everybody at some point where the halfway point is.

SPEAKER_01 23:35

Yeah, we're we're in the 40s in percentage now.

SPEAKER_00 23:37

Yeah, we're coming up on like our halfway on the halfway mark, the turnaround point. We got to turn around and go back to the back to the starting point.

SPEAKER_01 23:43

Oh, we read the Psalms twice.

SPEAKER_00 23:46

So we actually might be mathematically, maybe we actually are there, depending on but but as far as the reading plan goes, we're almost in the middle of the calendar year, which means we're almost in the middle of our plan.

SPEAKER_01 23:56

And yeah, what's gonna be interesting is when we get later on in the year, up to this point in the year, the Old Testament has mainly been narrative, not always, because we have Leviticus and stuff, mainly been narrative, and the New Testament has entirely been narrative because we've been in the gospels. And then we have Acts that'll be narrative. But what happens when we get to the letters of Paul and we're in the prophets? It's gonna be a lot different. Totally different genre of reading. No narrative.

SPEAKER_00 24:21

There's nothing to really follow the It's gonna be it's gonna be different. Probably harder than than we think. Probably harder sledding than we think, just reading the the the prophets and lamentations and just different different things happening in the Old Testament. Yeah. And I'm looking forward to that because I don't know that much about the prophets. I mean, uh not not um certainly not the uh I don't know much about the minor prophets. You still talk about them that much. No, you don't. Yeah. So I'm looking forward to that. All right. Well, that's it for today. Uh year through the Bible.com, send in your questions, and we'll see you again. Let's do it.