Blessing after Buffeting

Welcome to our women's Bible study on the book of 2 Samuel called the reigning king today. We're going to cover chapters 16 to 18 We're going to run into many useful themes this morning, and I'm going to pause when we get to them We're going to talk about discernment again and guarding our discernment. We're going to talk about handling criticism Refreshing ourselves in the Lord, but one of the biggest themes that I want us to notice is God's continued blessing over David And so I titled today's lesson blessings after Buffeting now we've watched David's life since he was young. We've watched him as a young boy We were inspired by his courage and his faith We watched him for years run from Saul we were inspired by his patience and his perseverance and then we had to watch him go through that season of sin failure and so as We've watched David. We're reminded. He's human. He was the coming king He is the reigning king, but he's a human being and in God's story of redemption We need to look for someone who is not a human being who is divine To be the coming king the reigning king for us And so he this is a reminder of that, but we've also become painfully aware of the consequences of David's sin in these last few lessons and in this lesson we now see that for those who love the Lord for those who repent and Restore their relationship with the Lord that God's steadfast love Triumphs over those consequences of sin. So I want us to start with a passage from Lamentations Lamentations chapter 3 verse 31 and 32 and I want to lay this down as a Foundation for what we're going to see this morning and it goes like this out of the ESV

. Isn't that beautiful? What a wonderful promise and as we begin chapter 16 now, we pick up David is fleeing out of Jerusalem He's going to meet two men in this chapter and they're gonna respond react to him differently one with cunning and one with cursing Let's start in chapter 16 when David had passed a little beyond the summit Ziba the servant of Mephibosheth met him with a couple of donkeys Saddled bearing 200 loaves of bread a hundred bunches of raisins a hundred of summer fruits and a skin of wine That is a lot of provision. That is a big gift coming David's way And the king said to Ziba why have you brought these and Ziba answered? well the donkeys are for the king's household to ride on the bread in the summer fruit for the young men to eat and the wine For those who faint in the wilderness to drink he thought of everything and the king said and where is your master's son? Remember he was set up to be the servant over Mephibosheth a few chapters ago and Ziba said well behold he remains in Jerusalem For he said today the house of Israel will give back to me the kingdom of my father Which sounds really fishy because why in the world would Absalom want to restore the kingdom back to Saul's family? But that's what he said and the king said to Ziba All right, all that belonged to Mephibosheth is now yours and Ziba said I pay homage Let me ever find favor in your sight my lord the king And we want to pause here because we remember last week that we talked so much about discernment and now I want to present guarding our discernment in my life I have found that discernment is a really tricky thing to guard when someone shows up with a really nice gift For me there was a season and this is another hour-long story that I'm condensing to 60 seconds but there was a season in Seattle right before we moved here 32 years ago when the Lord really allowed a Mess in our lives. We were faced with and we were young. We were I was in my mid-twenties and we had this Confusing mess that needed to be unraveled and there was all these people and who's telling the truth And it was a pretty big deal in our lives like it consumed us and there was one particular Old woman, she was probably 48 and she But to me, she was this older woman and We needed to figure out like are you there's something there's something that doesn't feel right about you There's something that doesn't feel right about what you're saying But what but she was in our life and she had a big voice in our life and one day she came over to my house with this basket of fresh fluffy bath towels and a Dining gift card Well, we were poor poor poor poor. I probably hadn't had towels since my wedding day and I looked at that gift that came in and I'm like Those are nice. They always pawing the towels and And I remember feeling like of course she's telling the truth. She loves me We call a bribery today But you know it can happen and I kind of think it may have been happening to David Look at all of these provisions. Of course, he's telling the truth. He loves me He brought all this stuff and we're reminded in this passage to be on our guard we need to guard discernment in all situations and another thing is when kids when Adults are nice to our kids Overly nice to our kids. They love me. We need to trust the Lord for our discernment So the next man was a little bit more forthright verse 5 when King David came to Baharim there came out a man of the Family of the house of Saul whose name was Shimei the son of Gera and as he came he cursed Continually he threw stones and he cursed verse 7 middle of verse 7 He said get out get out you man of blood you worthless man The Lord has avenged on you all the blood of the house of Saul in whose place you have reigned And the Lord has given the kingdom into the hand of your son Absalom see your evil is on you for you are a man of blood and Also in my life. I have found it difficult to handle criticism and I bet I'm not the only one It's called cursing here, but I'm gonna call it criticism. So it's a little bit more relatable for us When we are criticized like this we have a couple of responses we can melt like a puddle onto the floor like you're right I'm worthless or we can take what someone is saying at us This fiery dart coming at us and look at it and throw it right back Like I'm not taking any of that and we can throw it back and do harm David was being criticized cursed by Shimei and he didn't neither of those things. Okay Which is worthy of us noticing that he never neither fell into a puddle nor did he throw back the spiry darts and The reality of it is in our life when we are criticized I like to say in the smoke of criticism. There's usually a burning ember of truth Sometimes there's a morsel of truth that we need to look at and we need to acknowledge Was there any truth in what Shimei had said to David? Well, there actually was he starts off by saying you man of blood Well, God had told David that It was true. There's nothing David could do about it. He was a man of blood that had been his job He had subdued Israel's enemies to bring peace So Shimei wasn't wrong and what he was saying, but then he went on and said you're a worthless man Well, that wasn't true. He said there was blood guilt on him for the house of salt. That was definitely not true We we walked with David through those seasons. He did anything he could to not take over Saul and Then he said the kingdom would be given to Absalom also not true David had been told by God the kingdoms going to Solomon So do you see how criticism goes all this smoke all these lies? Then there's this little ember of truth and in our lives when we are criticized it's often the same way and it's good for us to Accept the truth that is in the criticism and to look at it and say was there anything I can do about it sometimes there is sometimes there isn't sometimes it is what it is, you know, and but But then reject all The other accusations without either falling into a puddle or throwing the darts back now Abishai he didn't care about what was going on. He just wants shimmy I dead But David kept a cool head and we read in verse 12 David said it may be that the Lord will look on the wrong done to me to me and that the Lord will repay me With good for his cursing today And what I see was that David had learned to follow the words of the great philosopher Dory Who said just keep swimming? Just keep swimming and David just kept walking. He just kept walking He didn't throw the darts back and that's worth us looking at and that's worth us emulating So verse 14 the king and all the people who are with him arrived weary at the Jordan and there he refreshed himself And I want to pause here too Because I really do think I always like to picture these things in Scripture Like what did it physically look like for him to refresh himself? I think finally he stopped walking. It was a long distance to go to where he was going, maybe almost 60 miles. And so he stopped and he rested, but I also, knowing David, he didn't just refresh himself physically. He refreshed himself in the Lord here. Okay, this business with David and Bathsheba, this is past history already. This is 15, maybe 20 years in the past. Ever since Psalm 51, David had reconnected with the Lord. He had refreshed his, I bet he wrote a whole bunch of Psalms between then and now. He was at this moment connected with the Lord. And so as I, just in my Bible reading time this week, I kept reading things like in the Psalms and different things, like what did that look like? What does it look like when you are going, what does it look like when you are going through a tiring, a fatiguing, a difficult, a criticism time? What does it look like? How do you refresh yourself in the Lord? What do those words look like? I changed the scripture I'm about to show you four times because I found so many things that David has said that I go, oh, that's what it looked like right there. But what I'm gonna do is show you a scripture from 2 Samuel verse 22, that's also Psalm 18. And I want you to picture David refreshing himself by praying this,

. Does that not refresh a person when you declare all those things about the Lord? And so there is something there for us to see in David and to take into our own lives, to be prepared to refresh ourselves when we are going through wearying, difficult, trying times. So meanwhile, Absalom comes into Jerusalem and who should he meet? But Hushai, remember last week, Hushai wanted to go with David and David said, nope, you're gonna be useful to me, you go back to Jerusalem. And he meets Absalom right away. And Hushai said to Absalom, long live the king. And of course, Absalom is looking at him like, you're my dad's friend, why are you saying this? And Hushai said to Absalom, for whom the Lord and his people and all the men of Israel have chosen, his I will be and with him I will remain. And again, whom should I serve? Should it not be his son? As I have served your father, so I will serve you. In other words, my loyalty is to the throne, not necessarily the person is what he's saying. And he was flattering. He was clearly just flattering Absalom to see what would come of it. So Absalom now possessed two of David's advisors, David's friends, Hushai and Ahithophel. And he probably felt like things were going pretty good for him. But remember, Absalom had never really done the hard work of helping with the kingdom. He only talked to people. And so he, now he's in Jerusalem, he doesn't really know what to do. So he asked Ahithophel, what should we do? Look at the middle of verse 20, what shall we do? And Ahithophel said, go into your father's concubines, whom he has left to keep the house, and all Israel will hear that you've made yourself a stench to your father, and the hands of all who are with you will be strengthened. So they pitched a tent for Absalom on the roof, and Absalom went into his father's concubines in the sight of all Israel. Clearly, this is wrong. Clearly, this was bad moral advice, good military advice, bad moral advice, and this was bad moral action. But we see in this a couple of layers of irony. The first thing that we see is how did all of this get started with Absalom? Remember, Absalom has been supposed to be our focus for the last six chapters, or, anyway, a couple chapters. How did all this get started? Absalom knew that his brother, half-brother, had raped his sister. He was angry, it built up this bitterness, and now look what he's doing today. Let's just call it what it is. He takes these concubines, he's raping them. They don't belong to him. And so, what do we see? The monster hunter has become the monster. And that's what happens with undealt-with bitterness and hatred. And so, we are reminded here, be careful, that while fighting a monster in our lives, we do not become that monster. The other piece of irony that we see, irony number two, is the writer's words here, on the roof, where have we heard that before? Also, where this all started. It was on the roof where David was looking out and saw a woman and the violation that he brought into his home. And do you remember that God had told him that through the prophet Nathan, that there would be public consequences for this? God said, what you did in secret will be done before all Israel. So, this is super tragic, and it brings up difficult questions for us as we think about this. We might ask the questions, so, is this how God acts? Are people just pawns in his chess game in order to punish wrongdoing? Is that how God does things? These 10 women had to suffer because of what David had done wrong? And it's a difficult question. It's a legitimate question, it's difficult. When we come up to questions like that, that we don't know, we always fall back on what we do know, and what do we know? I know a couple things. I know, number one, they absolutely were not pawns in God's hand. That is not how God operates. I know that we sometimes suffer because of the consequences of our sin, but other people's sin in our lives. We sometimes suffer because of the consequences of someone else's sin. I also know that we also, we all are definitely affected by the brokenness of this world. Remember, this isn't heaven, this is earth. It's broken. We're all affected by it. God did not determine to punish these women simply because David sinned. But maybe it's fair to say that because David sinned, God's hand of protective mercy had been lifted over David and those around him for a season. And because Absalom's sinful nature, the women suffered. I don't think sometimes we're always so aware of God's hand of protective mercy in our lives. I just, I thought about that this week. Like, God's hand is protecting me so much. I'm so unaware of all the bad things that could be happening. And there's a favorite verse that I have, Jude. It's Jude, I'll put it up on the screen for you. Jude 21, this is from the Living Bible. And it says, stay always within the boundaries where God's love can reach and bless you. This is a preventative measure. This could be something that could have been spoken to David. It's like, no, no, no, no, no, no. Stay within the boundaries where God's hand of protective mercy can bless you. But we do wander out of those boundaries, don't we? The scripture says, David did what was evil in the sight of the Lord. And he's not the only one. But he did, but God's hand of mercy was lifted for a season. Now listen, not forever. And not in regard to eternal matters. But for God's reasons. But I wanted to title today's lesson Blessings After Buffeting. Because from here on, we're gonna see blessing after blessing after blessing. We're gonna see God just lavish his blessings on David, which reminds us of where we started with lamentations. God does not accuse forever, whatever word was in there. All right, so the last verse in chapter 16 says, now in those days the counsel of Ahithophel gave was if one consulted the word of God, so was all the counsel of Ahithophel esteemed both by David and by Absalom. So now chapter 17, here's what Ahithophel says. He said to Absalom, let me choose 12,000 men and I will arise and pursue David tonight. And then he went on to build his case of why that was a good idea. David would be weary and discouraged. It would be an easy victory and he wasn't wrong. That was good military advice. But because of this chance meeting, divine appointment that Absalom and Hushai had had, it put it in his mind for Absalom that he should check with Hushai. And so verse five, Absalom said, call Hushai also. Let us hear what he has to say. And this is exactly the situation David had hoped for when he was leaving. And Hushai basically, I'm gonna condense this. He basically said, Ahithophel's advice isn't good this time. You know, I know your father very well. They're all mighty men. He's gonna be acting like a mama bear. He's probably hiding somewhere, laying a trap for you right now. If you run out right now, they may. pounce upon you, everybody's gonna hear about it. It's not gonna look good. And so now Hushite begins to flatter again Absalom. And he says in verse 11, my counsel is that all Israel be gathered to you. Because see now you are the king over all Israel. From Dan to Beersheba as the sand of the sea for multitude and that you go into battle in person. Wouldn't that be your style Absalom? Oh, Mr. Man who would get 50 men to run before him just to sit at the gate, that's your style. Get them all and you be out in the lead. And so what's not to love about that? And this is exactly an answer to David's prayer. God is blessing him. I'm gonna remind you what David said last week. He said, oh Lord, please turn the counsel that hit the fell into foolishness. And Hushite did that for him. Now look at how the Lord had blessed David again. I'm gonna summarize this. Hushite was able to then go tell the priest, Zadok and Abiathar that Absalom took his advice. He's gonna wait and gather all the men. So the priest sent a women to go tell their boys. The boys ran and it was this kind of weird like hide in a well covered up with grain kind of like Jericho. Did you kind of feel like you were revising that again? And then in verse 22 it says David arose and all the people who were with him and they crossed the Jordan by daybreak, but not one was left who had not crossed the Jordan. And we have a little sub note here about a hit the fell in verse 23. When he saw that his counsel was not followed, he saddled his donkey, he went home, he set his house in order and he hanged himself because he knew he had nowhere to go. He knew neither king would listen to his advice. All right, verse 24. David came to Mahanaim, which if you looked on your map, we don't know exactly precisely where that was, but that's probably the general vicinity. And it was a long, long way to go. Skip down to verse 27 to see God's blessing. And when David came to Mahanaim, Shobai the son of Nahash from Rabah of the Ammonites and Maker the son of Amiel from Lodabar. He was the former host of Mephibosheth. That's where Mephibosheth had been first. And Barzillai the Gileadite from Rogallam. They brought beds and basins and earthen vessels, wheat, barley, flour, parched grain, beans, lentils, honey, curds, sheep, cheese from the herd for David and for the people with him to eat. For they said the people are weary and hungry and thirsty in the wilderness. Wow, what an abundance. David fled with nothing. And look what God did. Look how God used his friends, his former relationships to bring this massive blessing. I just love it. Now it took Absalom a little while to gather up all the people from Dan to Beersheba and to march out in front of him. And so he was a little bit late, but he finally crossed the Jordan with all the men of Israel. And now in verse 25, now Absalom had set Amasa over the army instead of Joab. Joab is with David, but we wanna pay attention to this Amasa, okay? Amasa was the son of a man named Ithra, the Ishmaelite, who had married Abigail, the daughter of Nahash, sister of Zeruiah. Abigail and Zeruiah are sisters. Joab is one of the sons and Amasa is one of the sons. What does that mean? They're cousins, okay? So he is a cousin to Joab, meaning a nephew to David as well. Verse 26, and Israel and Absalom encamped in the land of Gilead. Chapter 18, then David mustered the men who were with him and set over them commanders of thousands, commanders of hundreds. So he had quite a few men with him. And David set out the army, one third under the command of Joab, one third under the command of Abishai, the son of Zeruiah, Joab's brother, and one third under the command of Ittai, the Gittite, also another guy who expressed his loyalty to David in our last week's lesson. And David himself wanted to go out, but the men said, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. You will be a liability to us. You stay right here. And David took their instruction. But in the middle of verse five, before they left, he gave them instructions. He said, deal gently for my sake with the young man Absalom. And all the people heard when the king gave orders to all the commanders about Absalom. This was a well-known directive. So David's army advanced in the forest of Ephraim against Absalom's army. It was a terrible day for Absalom's army. They lost 20,000 men. It was a pretty good day for David's army. But now we're honing in on Absalom because he is the point of our story here. Verse nine, middle of verse nine. 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 on. And so we have another ironic picture. This hair that he used to cut every year and weigh, obviously it represented to us his pride, was his undoing. Poetic justice there. And a man saw this and told Joab, verse 11. Joab said to the man, what, you saw him? Well, why then did you not strike him there to the ground? I would have given you 10 pieces of silver and a belt. And I just have to chuckle because I think about girls saying, what, you didn't do that? I would have given you a Starbucks gift card and a purse. If you had done, it's just kind of a weird thing in there. But I think belts were in high esteem. But the man said, hey, even if I felt in my weight the thousand pieces of silver, I would not reach out my hand against the king's son. For in our hearing, the king commanded you and Abishai and Ittai, for my sake, protect the young man Absalom. If I had dealt treacherously against his life and there's nothing hidden from the king, you yourself would have stood aloof. In other words, you wouldn't have come to my aid. And Joab knew he was right and he knew he was losing the argument. And so he just said, I'm not gonna waste time because that's a good way to end an argument. It's like, it's a waste of time. But anyway, it says that Joab took three javelins in his hand and thrust them into the heart of Absalom while he was still alive in the oak. Remember, this is his cousin. This is David's son. And he had an order not to. Joab, Joab, Joab. But he's gonna save us next week. I'll tell you what. Joab guy, he goes from bad to good to bad to good. He's slippery. And then 10 young men, Joab's armor bearers, surrounded Absalom and struck him and killed him. And then Joab blew the trumpet and the troops came back from pursuing Israel for Joab restrained them. That basically meant we have victory. And they took Absalom and they threw him in a great pit in the forest and raised over him a great heap of stones and all Israel fled, everyone to his own home. When it says all Israel, that's of course Absalom's army, okay? And now Absalom in his lifetime had taken and set up for himself a pillar that is in the King's Valley. For he said, I have no son to keep my name in remembrance. Which I don't really know what that means because we read last week he had three sons. So either they had passed from the scene or they were not worthy of what he thought, I don't know, we're not told. But he had set up this big monument to himself and we have a final burial irony here with Absalom that he had set up a monument to himself in the King's Valley and yet where did his body end up? In a pit in the forest under a pile of rocks. Well, King David needed to be told and the son of the priest Ahimeas wanted to carry the news. But Joab told him, he says, you are not, I'm in verse 20 here, Joab said, you are not to carry the news today. You can carry the news another day but today you shall not carry the news because the king's son is dead. And Joab knew how the king would respond to that. So Joab found himself a Cushite to carry the news but Ahimeas went anyway and he knew a shortcut. And verse 28, Ahimeas came to the king, he cried out all is well and he bowed down before the king with his face to the earth and said, blessed be the Lord our God who has delivered up the men who raised their hand against my Lord the king. And the king asked, of course, is it well with the young man Absalom? Ahimeas answered, you know, I saw a big commotion. I don't know what it was. And the king said, well, turn aside, stand over there because he knew there was another man running. And behold, the Cushite came and said, good news for my Lord the king for the Lord has delivered you this day from the hand of all who rose up against you. And the king asked the Cushite, is it well with the young man Absalom? And the Cushite answered, may the enemies of my Lord the king and all who rise up against you for evil be like that young man. And the king knew what that meant and he was deeply moved. And he went up to his chamber over the gate and he wept and as he went, he said, oh my son Absalom, my son, my son Absalom, would I had died instead of you? Oh, Absalom, my son. My son. And that's where we leave it this week, with David suffering from this deep grief. The sword had indeed reigned in his family, in his household. And we feel his loss. But we also see God's blessing. We also see, to me, God's blessing trumps all the things that God had put in place for David to be victorious over his enemies. And so, as I'm reading this, what I want to do is I want to close, again, by going back to Lamentations, and I'm going to put it up in a different translation, but I want to encourage us, when we find ourselves in these situations, where we have suffered loss, where we have suffered criticism, where we have gone through a fatiguing time, a difficult time. We all do. Half of you are in that season right now. You feel like you're exactly in that place. So now, to take it in a little bit more personally, I want to read that same verse from Lamentations 3, 31, 32, from NLT, and I want you to think about your own life. God says, for no one is abandoned by the Lord forever. So He brings grief. He also shows compassion because of the greatness of His unfailing love. For He does not enjoy hurting people or causing them sorrow. And these are the kind of, this is what we lean into in these difficult times. We lean into words like that. We lean into the truth. What truth do we find in that? No one is abandoned by the Lord. You are not abandoned by the Lord. We see that He says He doesn't enjoy hurting people or causing them sorrow. So when we ask those questions without answers, why is God doing this to me? We lean into this. He doesn't enjoy hurting people. He doesn't enjoy causing them sorrow. And we read here, too, that He shows compassion because of the greatness of His unfailing love. And those are the things we lean into in the middle of difficulty. What would Jesus say? He would say, in this world, you will have trouble, but take heart. I have overcome the world. Amen. Father, God, thank You for these lessons. Thank You for so many things that we can see that David did well in this season and that we can apply to our own lives. Lord, Thank You for seeing a season of great difficulty in someone else's life and being reminded of Your character in those times, Lord, that we can apply to our life. Lord, we love You. We thank You for Your Word. Lord, help us not to forget the things that we learn. I pray in Jesus' name. Amen.