Episode Transcript
[00:00:03] Speaker A: Welcome to the leaders notebook with Dr. Mark Rutland. Dr. Rutland is a world renowned leadership expert. He is a New York Times best selling author and he has served as the President of two universities. The Leaders Notebook is brought to you by Global Servants. For more information about Global Servants, please Visit our website, globalservants.org Here is your host, Dr. Mark Rutland.
[00:00:26] Speaker B: Psalm 51.
Not going to read the whole thing at this point, but we will.
Have mercy upon me, O God, according to thy loving kindness, according unto the multitude of thy tender mercies.
Blot out my transgressions.
Wash me thoroughly from mine iniquity, and cleanse me from my sin, for I acknowledge my transgression and my sin is ever before me. Against thee, Thee only have I sinned, and done this evil in thy sight, that thou mightest be justified when thou speakest, and be clear when thou judgest.
Behold, I was shapen in iniquity, and in sin did my mother conceive me. Behold, thou desirest truth in the inward parts, and in the hidden parts. Thou shalt make me know wisdom.
At this point in David's life, we are at sort of the peak moment of David, Inc.
He has solidified his brand.
He has turned Israel into the dominant Middle Eastern force at that time, a level of dominance in the Middle east that it would never reach again until the late 20th and 21st century.
He is the most beloved man in Israel and the most feared man internationally.
He is king of Israel without any question.
He is at the peak of his career.
And it is at this moment of huge prosperity.
The nation is prosperous. David himself is very prosperous, as you will see in a subsequent Wednesday when we talk about the capital campaign for the.
For the Temple.
David is. David is at the peak.
It is at this moment that David makes his first major fall.
If you ask a thousand believers what was David's greatest sin, they will say Bathsheba.
It certainly was not. It was not his most expensive sin, and it was not his most.
Is not his most costly as sin, but it is certainly his most famous. And one of the reasons that it is his most famous sin is because David himself made it famous.
When the army goes out, there is a siege going on at Ramah and the army goes out. David remains behind in Jerusalem. It's the first time that he hasn't gone out with the army. He stays behind.
Whether that is a mistake or not.
We read back through the story of Bathsheba, and so we impose on it that it was a mistake.
But there are other times when the army says To David, please stay in the back. If we lose you, we lose everything.
So we don't know what caused it. But David stays behind and the story is famous. I hardly can believe that there's anybody here that doesn't know David walks out on his balcony one night while he is alone in Jerusalem and he sees a woman bathing on the rooftop. I've had several people ask me, why was she doing that? It is extremely common and flat roofs, and she's bathing on the rooftop.
And David calls somebody and says, who is that woman? And they say, that's the wife of Uriah. Uriah, one of his top generals. A trusted fellow comrade at arms.
And David sends someone to get her. He brings her to the palace and there is a fascinating verse.
It says, and because she was beyond her uncleanness, David went in unto her.
Now, that verse may not mean a lot to 21st century Christians, but it would to Jews.
Because following the end of her period, she would have to go through Mikhvah, everything and be clean before she can have sex.
The verse is fascinating because how would David know that?
He had to ask her.
So I just want you to see what legalism does.
He asks her, how long since the end of your period are you clean? In order that he can commit adultery with her. He wants to make sure he doesn't break the law so that he can break the law.
And then soon, and very soon, she sends him a text message.
Hey, look, big boy.
The night has paid off.
She's pregnant.
And so David makes the decision to cover it up.
He recalls Uriah from the battlefield, assuming that he will spend the night in his house.
And then when she announces that she's pregnant, David is going to palm his baby off on Uriah.
And it turns out Uriah is a man of more character than David.
So he comes home and some ostensible purpose, David delivers messages with him, whatever. And then David says, okay, that's fine. I'm glad you're home. Go to your house. Uriah says, you, Majesty, I can't do that. My men are sleeping on bedrolls in the desert.
The other officers, they're intense in the desert.
I can't go to my wife.
I would feel horrible.
But he says, I'll lie down out here outside your door, and at least I can be useful while I'm home. And I'll serve as your guard so that you can sleep well inside. I'll lie down out here and sleep in the hallway outside your door.
David pays him off by sending a note with him to Joab. Everybody here remembers Joab, right? As David's kinsman. He is, I've told you before, he is the head of David's armies and he's a very dangerous hombre. David sends a note to him saying, look, I want you to put Uriah out in the very front of an attack and charge the line of the enemy. And then while he's out there, call retreat and abandon him.
And if he gets killed, then remember, the sword falls on one and then another.
And so Joab does exactly that. He sends David a note. Your servant Uriah the Hittite, has been killed.
And David says, these things happened in battle.
He waits the minimum amount of time possible, quickly marries Bathsheba.
And look, David is a king.
You have to understand this. We live in a republic. We have elected officials, we have laws, we have courts. We have a supreme court.
You have to understand. David is the unque questioned emperor of his nation.
When his brand new wife is suddenly, pretty quickly pregnant, everybody just says, that's the king's business.
And the baby is born.
Everything's fine. David feels like he's gotten away with it.
The baby's fine. Everybody's okay.
And then one day, this little prophet Nathan shows up.
And perhaps you know the story, but let me rehearse it for you quickly.
Nathan says, you, Majesty, a terrible thing has happened. I want to tell you about it and see what you say. There's a poor man. He didn't have anything but one little ewe lamb. He raised it as a pet. He loved it. It wasn't like it was a. It wasn't like it was a livestock. It was really a pet to him. A rich man across the street had guests that were coming, and he sent soldiers over and took the ewe lamb and they killed it and ate it.
And the.
They ate the little lamb that belonged to this poor guy.
And David is outraged. He says, as the Lord liveth. As the Lord liveth, this man shall die.
And Nathan says, you are the man.
Now, I got something I want to say here. If there is a phrase of modern contemporary lingo that I find absolutely trite and disgusting, it is speaking truth to power. I'm absolutely sick of it.
They use it all the time to mean everything. Some 8th grader who screams at her teacher. They say she's speaking truth to power.
Some movie star makes a cockamamie political speech at the Academy Awards denouncing people in Washington, D.C. she is not running any risk.
She knows she's going to be cheered by her fellow Movie stars.
But they say she's speaking truth to power.
But let me tell you something about truth to power. You point your finger in the face of the king and say, you're the man. I know exactly what you did. You took Uriah's wife, you got him killed, you got her pregnant. And you, you're the man.
Now let me say something. That's what we call speaking truth to power.
All David has to do. The air goes out of the room.
All David has to do. Joab's already got his hand on his sword.
He has. He has no conscience. He'll gut this little prophet like a fish.
He's got his hand on his sword. All David has to do, kill him.
So up to this point, David looks horrible because of what he's done is horrible. There's no equivocating, there's no compromise. It's horrible.
Adultery, conspiracy, murder. Really, he got the guy killed. He didn't kill him with a knife.
All David has to say is, this is a false prophet. Kill him.
And they would have killed him and nobody would have looked back.
And David says, he's right.
I did it.
There is that redemptive feature in David, that he did what he did. But when he came that moment of confrontation and conviction, he spoke up.
I did it.
And Nathan says, this is going to cost you.
The baby's going to die.
David begins to fast and pray. He won't eat, he won't shave, he won't deal with anything.
Just goes into total and complete fast mode until everybody in the palace is worried for his health.
They're worried when the baby dies. They're afraid to tell him. They say, if he's done this when the baby was sick, what will he do when the baby dies?
Finally they say, well, we're going to have to tell him.
And they go in and say, you, Majesty, the baby's dead.
And David shocks them again.
He says, okay, I did the best I could. He got up, cleaned himself up and asked for food and ended the fast.
So somebody called him on it.
They said, you, Majesty, you fast and prayed and won't eat. And all this while the baby's sick. And as soon as he dies, you quit.
He said, this is David's pragmatism.
He says, I didn't know what the Lord would do.
I had to shoot my best shot.
I had to try. I had to try. Maybe God would repent, Maybe he would let the baby live.
But as soon as the baby's dead, what can I do? He'll never Come back to me. I'll go to him.
There's an odd little application to that here, and I wanna say it to you. And it is this.
When we pray for people that are desperately ill until the very end, there is absolutely nothing wrong and everything right about praying with faith and believing God.
But when the answer comes, when it's finished, we now put them in the hands of God and we say, they will not come to us. We will go to them.
And that's when you move into a different thing.
There's nothing at all wrong with praying right to the last split second. But when God's answer comes and it's final, then you say, they're in heaven now.
I'm moving on.
And so David does.
And then there is another one of these fascinating little verses.
And it says, and David comforted Bathsheba.
Now, this is intriguing, because for all the wickedness that he did, David never blamed Bathsheba. And we shouldn't.
She was weak.
But this is a classic case of a dominant, powerful, wealthy, prosperous man in high political office who seduces a weak woman.
This is on David, and David knows it's on David.
But he knows that this woman whom he seduced has been seduced, embarrassed, scandalized. And now she's grieving over a lost baby because of his sin. Their sin, yes, but his sin.
And it says.
And David comforted her and went in unto her, and she conceived.
So this is the complication of this whole story.
David says, okay, we shouldn't have done what we did. Now we've paid the price. The baby's dead. But we're married now. We're married.
And I don't want you to grieve over this and over this baby. And David sleeps with her, and she conceives and has another baby.
And that baby they name Solomon.
And another verse of such interest, it says, and God loved him.
What a fascinating little verse that the baby of judgment gives way to the baby of grace.
And God loves him.
His name, Solomon, is. Or in Hebrew, Shlomo.
Solomon is prettier, isn't it?
But in Hebrew, Shlomo. And it comes from.
It's a derivative of shalom.
So it's almost like naming the baby Peace.
So they've gone through all they've gone through. And now here's this baby that gives them peace and grace.
[00:16:58] Speaker A: So
[00:17:00] Speaker B: David is a king, poet, warrior.
He calls Asaph the Seer, the chief musician.
And he says, I've written this, and I want you to use the cantor and sing this in the temple. On Saturday, in the tabernacle, on Saturday, when we have Shabbat, I want this to be read, sung, intoned, and the chief musician, the superscription says to the chief musician a psalm of David.
Not finished, but that's what it says to start with. So we know David wrote it, and we know that he handed it to the chief musician. You give it to the chief musician only for one purpose, to sing it, if you will. It would be an intonation of some kind, a chant, if you will.
So the chief musician reads it, and he says, you, Majesty, let's don't do this.
I don't want to read this.
Look at these words.
People are going to think this is about Bathsheba.
And David says it's about Bathsheba.
He says, my sin was public, My repentance is going to be public.
And he said, as long as people read the Word of God, I want them to read Psalm 51.
And so where we stopped off was verse seven. Purge me, he writes with hyssop, and I shall be clean. Wash me, and I shall be whiter than snow. Make me to hear joy and gladness again, you might say, make me to hear joy and gladness that the bones which thou hast broken may rejoice again.
Hide thy face from my sins, Blot out all mine iniquities.
Create in me a clean heart, O God. Renew a right spirit within me. Cast me not away from thy presence, and take not thy Holy Spirit from me. Restore unto me the joy of thy salvation, and uphold me with thy free spirit.
Then will I teach transgressors thy ways and sinners shall be converted unto thee. Deliver me from blood guiltiness, O God. Thou God of my salvation and my tongue shall sing aloud of thy righteousness, O Lord. Open thou my lips and my mouth shall show forth thy praise. For thou desirest not sacrifice, else I would give it. Thou delightest not in burnt offerings. The sacrifices of God are a broken spirit, a broken and contrite heart, O God, thou wilt not despise.
Do good in thy good pleasure unto Zion Build thou the walls of Jerusalem.
David's personal identification with the nation of Israel and the city of Jerusalem.
Then shalt thou be pleased with the sacrifices of righteousness with burnt offerings and whole burnt offering. Then shall they offer bullocks upon thine altar. This is not a teaching on the 51st Psalm, so I'm not going to spend a lot of time on it, though I would love to.
But I will say this.
This is the complex complication of this magnificent Genius called David is that he can go from conspiracy, murder and adultery to a prophetic utterance.
This is a prophetic passage.
This sounds New Testament. Purge me with hyssop. Do you know hyssop is what the priest would dip into the blood of a sacrifice and splatter?
David is pleading the efficacy of the blood sacrifice a thousand years before the Messiah is born.
Then he's dealing with sanctification theology. Take not thy Holy Spirit from me.
Then he says, when you restore me, I'll restore you.
I'll restore people to you.
When you restore me, I'll restore people to you. I'll become a missionary, an evangelist. I'll preach, I'll teach. Lord, if you'll just restore me the bones which you have broken, the grief that I'm going through, the loss of that baby, the public humiliation, his wife's tears, his friend's death.
He says, God, heal me, cleanse me. Forgive me, all of that. You know what he doesn't mention?
Bathsheba.
No reference to her. He doesn't ever say, we in thy sight, against thee and thee only have I sinned and done that which is evil in thy sight.
He doesn't say, lord, she hadn't been out there on that roof.
I'm just saying.
He doesn't say.
He doesn't say anything in any way to diminish his personal guilt.
I have sinned.
Now, there's one other thing in this which is easily overlooked, and that is his sense of identification with Jerusalem and Mount Zion.
He says, in other words, lord, when you restore me, it will also have a restorational effect to this city and this nation.
It's a fascinating psalm.
And the superscription is to the chief musician, a Psalm of David. When Nathan the Prophet came unto him after he had gone into Bathsheba, one of the Psalms, the exact reason that he wrote it, we know. And it is powerful and prophetic, and virtually it belongs in the New Testament.
It's a New Testament verse almost.
And powerful.
So the first half is about Bathsheba.
What you're hoping is that the second half will be about something real. Jolly.
Well, it's not.
David was a.
David was a multifaceted genius.
David's one of those men that. I believe, irrespective of what age or generation into which he had been born, he would have been a genius.
It was. It's innate in him.
He was a musician, a poet, a warrior, a politician, a businessman.
Huge success. There was one thing he was not good at.
Family.
He. He was, first of all A polygamist had many wives and concubines. Of course, he was a piker compared to Solomon, his son, but he had a lot of.
Polygamy is a complicated thing in Africa. I've spent so much time. I met a lady tonight from Ghana. I spent so much time with polygamists, and I've dealt with polygamists. And polygamous households are political nightmares.
They compete against each other so the children don't all know each other. He may have five bushwives. He lives in Kumasi, but he's got five bushwives in different vill. If he's smart, he keeps them in different villages.
I have seen them all in the same compound.
That. That's a political nightmare. That make the Democratic Party jealous. They're. They're.
And David there, as a result of this, he has grown children by his early wives.
And now he has a baby by Bathsheba, Solomon. But he's got these grown children and they don't all. They don't all even know each other. They're half siblings. They all share a father, but they have different mothers.
So the crown prince is a boy named Amnon.
He is. He is the oldest firstborn male. If David were to die quickly, Amnon would be the king.
His mother is Ahinoam, one of his early wives. So he's a grown man. A young man, but grown. When Solomon is a baby in arms, Amnon begins to lust for his half sister, Tamar.
Tamar is the full sister, sharing David as their father and Maacah as their mother.
And her brother is Absalom.
Absalom is the second born.
So if David were to die, it would be Amnon. If Amnon dies, it would be Absalom.
Absalom. And Tamar's mother is Maacah.
Or you can say both of the A's.
It. It just depends on how you want to say it.
But Meacah. Maacah is not a Jew. She's not Jewish.
She is a Geshurite.
David's marriage with her is a political convenience to form an alliance with the king of Geshur.
So Absalom may feel a. He's second.
We're seeing in all this political and relational. I find the British royal family to be extremely tedious. But if those interest you have these two brothers and all this quibbling and all that stuff. And so you may have that.
But Amnon, the older of the two, turns out to be an absolute d. Degenerate.
So he sends a message to David that he's sick. In bed. And it's stupid. The, the, the, the message is just stupid.
He says, I, I can't get. Well, the only thing that'll help me would be if my half sister Tamar would come and, and just feed me right into my mouth.
I, when we see David, we can ask him, man, really, do you believe that?
I mean, that is, anybody with one eye and a half sense would say, you get out of that bed and quit that your half sister's not coming, and sit on the bed and feed you.
But he does. David orders her to. Tamar goes there, Amnon rapes her.
And after the rape is finished, Tamar says, remember marriage in these huge royal families, intermarriage, sibling marriage is not unknown.
She says, okay, you got what you wanted. Now let's go to our father and let him and we can get married.
You do the right thing by me. And this is a fascinating verse. It says, and now he hates her. That is so real. That is so. I love it when the Bible is so real he can't live without her. He rapes her. And the minute he rapes her, then he hates her.
And basically Tamar has a nervous breakdown and she lives the rest of her life in her brother Absalom's house.
And Absalom loves her and cares for her, but carries a deep wound over her. When his wife gets pregnant and has a baby, it's a girl, and they name that girl Tamar.
David doesn't do anything about it.
He doesn't deal with it. He's mad, he's angry, but he doesn't deal with it.
So Absalom evidently believes what the Mafia.
Vengeance is a dish best served cold.
So he waits until the heat blows over. He thinks everybody's forgotten it, including Amnon. He has a barbecue at his house, invites all of his brothers, including Amnon, and he has Amnon murdered.
Word comes to David. All of your sons. Amnon has killed all your sons. That's not true. But the word comes to David. David is grief stricken, horrified. Then somebody comes and says, no, no, only Amnon is dead.
Only Amnon is dead. Absalom has killed him, had him killed. And Absalom has fled the country.
So look at the mess David has.
He has a grief stricken, psychologically broken daughter whose brother is in exile because he has murdered their half brother Amnon, who was a rapist.
And David declares, absalom in exile. He can't come back.
That seems to be the end of it.
But Absalom, living out of the country, begins to send Emails to his Uncle Joab saying, get my dad to bring me home. Get my dad to bring me home. Get my dad to bring me home. And Joab ignores him.
So Absalom burns his farm down.
Joab goes to see him and says, how come you burned my farm? He said, hey, answer your emails.
And so Joab goes to David and says, why don't we bring this guy home?
Let's bring him back. It's finished. There's nothing to do about it. And David lifts the exile and allows Absalom to come home.
Absalom, immediately that he's home, begins to act out a plot to replace David, to depose him.
He begins to go through the streets of Jerusalem with a group of men running before him, chariot, dressed up. He's one of the few people in the Bible, by the way, that is physically described. The Bible doesn't describe very many people, but Absalom is described. He is handsome and, you know, the long flowing hair. And he's handsome. And so he draws attention to himself.
He'll park the chariot at the gate, and when people come in, he says, hey, where are you from? And the guy says, I'm from such and such a village.
And he says, oh, I know that village. I love that village. Oh, that's one of my favorite villages. Why are you here?
He says, I'm here to get King David to help me with a lawsuit I'm in.
And Absalom says, oh, you can forget that.
You can forget that. David won't appoint any deputy judges. He thinks everything has to hang on. David, David, David.
He won't appoint anybody. So you can go home. You'll be in a queue. That'll last six years. Go on back to your village.
And then he says, oh, that David would appoint me as deputy judge. Listen to what he says. He doesn't say, I would make right decisions.
I would see that your case is right. I would decide your way. He didn't know anything about it, but if. If he would appoint me. Well, what does that guy want? He wants David to appoint him, doesn't he?
And then it says he would draw him up into the chariot, and the guy would try to bow, and Absalom would say, oh, no, no, no, no, no, I don't. That's kind of stuff my dad likes. He likes that stuff. I don't do that.
And he says he would take him up into the chariot and kiss him. Now, that's not homosexual. It's Middle Eastern.
When I first went to Africa, holding hands with my friend Was really difficult for me.
We would walk down the street and Sammy would take my hand.
Could we just walk?
But we live in such a crazy world. We make something out of things that isn't even there. And that this kiss doesn't mean anything.
The next verse is critical. It says, and thus Absalom stole the hearts of the men of Israel.
So it is out and out rebellion. He is the classic deep state. He works for his dad. He's stealing the people, the loyalty of people that ought to be loyal to David and he's shifting it to them. David knows none of this.
Then he goes to David and he says, I made a vow when I was in exile that I would go down to Hebron and make a sacrifice. David said, oh, fine, go ahead and do it.
But he's lying.
He goes to Hebron. Remember, that is where David was king when he was king over only Judah. It's the tribal headquarters of the tribe of Judah.
So he goes to Hebron, but he doesn't make a sacrifice. He raises an army. He goes around and he says, david has forgotten about us. David doesn't love Judah anymore. David has become the king of Israel. He doesn't care about us. If I were. If I were the king, Judah would be the top, like it should be. And he raises this army and he marches the army toward Jerusalem.
David takes his small army and leaves Jerusalem.
Been asked many times, why wouldn't David fight it out?
I think there are two main reasons. One is David has never defended anything.
He's only attacked.
The second thing is he loves Jerusalem. And he knows that hand to hand, street to street, door to door combat is going to wreck that city and kill a lot of innocent people. So he leaves. He takes his army and leaves. He leaves 10 of his concubines there to care for the palace. And he leaves an insight into David's character as he leaves Ittai, his gittite comes to David. Gittite, that does mean gittite is somebody from gas.
So he is somebody that is in the Israeli army. But he is obviously a Philistine from the city of Gath, where Goliath was from, where David used to be a mercenary. Are you remembering previous Wednesdays?
And he comes to David and says, I'm coming with you. Then Zidok the priest comes with the Ark.
He and the other priests are carrying the Ark. David says, no, no, no, take the Ark back.
If I come back to Jerusalem, fine. The Ark will still be here. If God doesn't show me grace, the ark, I'M not taking the Ark into the wilderness.
And then there comes a man named Hushai.
And Hushai is an elderly military and political advisor.
And he says to David, I'm coming to you. David says, you're too old for the wilderness.
Go back.
But he says, there is something you can do for me.
Go to Absalom and tell him you're going to switch to him.
You're going to become his adviser. You're so famous for your wisdom and wise counsel. And he'll trust you. Stay with him because he has another man with him, an advisor named Ahithophel. And he's going to listen to Ahithophel unless you can advise him. So he commissions this old guy to stay more or less as a spy.
Then there comes this man named Ziba.
Do you remember. Can you remember last Wednesday night? These are so many names to just be thrown at you, aren't they?
Mephibosheth, the little crippled prince. And when David saves him and all, he turns to a man named Ziba and he says, from now on, you serve Mephibosheth as you serve Saul. Take care of him, everything. Ziba comes to David as he marches out of the city.
And David says, where's Mephibosheth? And Ziba said, oh, that kid.
He's turned against you.
He said, as soon as Absalom is the king, he'll lift me up.
He's gonna take care of me.
And so David says, okay, everything he's got is yours.
And then as they march out of Jerusalem, a man named Shemai comes out and curses David and throws rocks at him like a dog. Get out of here. Get out of here, you bum. We never liked you. And curses him and Joab again. Joab says, I'm going to go over there and kill this guy. David says, no, no. He said, don't kill him.
My own son has turned against me.
My own son has turned against me. Why would I kill this guy?
[00:40:01] Speaker A: Isn't.
[00:40:02] Speaker B: Isn't David a fascinating person?
What a remarkable way to think.
So David and his men march out into the Judean wilderness, which David knows like the back of his hand.
Absalom and his army now come in and take possession of Jerusalem and occupy. And Absalom takes possession of the palace.
The first thing he does is set up a tent on the roof of the palace. And one by one, he rapes all ten of David's concubines.
In other words, he says, now you know how it feels. And now I give it to you. 10 times what you gave me.
I think you know how Absalom ends.
He attacks.
Ahithophel tells him, attack fast, go fast, go after it. Hushai, David's old guy says, oh, no, don't do that, don't do that. He says, you attack David now, you'll lose. Wait until you have the whole army. Wait till everybody's come. Then you'll have all the army. Then we'll go after him. Why does he do that? To give David time to hide out in the wilderness. Now, where you don't want to come after David is in the Judean wilderness.
And so he waits until David is gone. And now then Ahithophel, then Hushai, the old man says, all right, now go and get him.
They go after him to attack him. They lose the battle.
Absalom is caught by his hair in a tree. David has ordered nobody should kill Absalom.
They tell General Joab, Absalom's hanging by his hair in a tree. And King David told us not to kill him. And Joab said, yeah, he told you not to kill him.
And he takes some arrows in his hands, in his hand, a bundle of arrows, and he. And he stabs him in the heart hanging in that tree.
So the battle is won. David returns to Jerusalem, goes in the palace and. And then he gets the word that Absalom is dead.
And that's when David makes this Shakespearean speech.
O Absalom, Absalom, my son, my son. Would that I had died for thee. You remember this long, passionate soliloquy.
So the army, that is just one, is kind of slinking back into Jerusalem. The king is grieving over a battle that they've won.
And for once, Joab shows great wisdom.
Joab comes to David and he says, now listen, those men risk their lives for you. I risk my life for you. If Absalom had won, he would have killed all of them and he would have killed you and he would have killed me. And you know it.
You sit up here grieving over this guy that would have killed us all.
If you do that tomorrow, you won't have an army. You better get out on that balcony and wave like the Pope.
And David listens to him and goes out. And the, the rebellion of Absalom is completely finished and David's army remains loyal to him.
Now let me just give you a few wrap up points on Absalom. This is very important.
How can one identify when an Absalom spirit, and maybe that's a wrong word to use an Absalom character Is loose.
How does one identify that? First of all, it begins to draw attention to itself.
Absalom, David, for all of his success, never ever said, pay attention to me, pay attention to me.
Absalom did. He went through the streets, had people point to him. He was glamorous, he feasted on celebrity.
The second thing is this disloyalty may not require an act.
In other words, Absalom didn't actually do anything disloyal at first. At first he did. Finally he did.
He simply set up a way in which he contrasted himself.
So here's a very wicked phrase.
It's a very wicked phrase and I hear people on particularly, I hate to say this, on church staff, use it all the time, the powers that be.
The powers that be is a reprehensible phrase. It is subtle disloyalty.
It's saying they, whoever they are, they are bad people. They are. We would do this, we would all have that. We do this, except the powers that be. And that is exactly what Absalom does, the powers that be. He draws attention to himself and he sets up a gap between himself and the powers that be.
The third thing is this.
The character of Absalom always depends on some kind of a wound, either perceived or real.
What drove Absalom vindictive, violent, rebellious. He would have killed his father. He would have killed him. It's patricide.
So he would have killed David to get his throne.
What drove all that was the rape of Tamar.
He could never get it out of his mind. He could never deal with it.
And when he raped those 10 concubines on the roof of the palace, he was saying to David, gotcha.
That's what that was about.
What about David? We're just about ready to close.
There can come those situations where there is somebody that you love and you care about, but you know that if you do what they want, go what they want, whatever, that other people are gonna get hurt.
David could not yield the throne to Absalom.
Absalom would have been a vain, self serving, despicable tyrant.
And David knows that David has been appointed by God to be the king over Israel. Nobody else. David. And he knows that.
And he can't abandon Jerusalem and Israel and his own calling and his destiny. He can't let go of that. But he knows it's going to cost Absalom.
What you finally come to is have to love God and his kingdom's work more than you love Absalom.
And that's tough.
David, for all of his greatness struggled with the same things that we do.
Family problems, squabbles, disloyalty, hurt, disappointment, betrayal, and his own sins.
But having said all that, listen to the great man.
He says, lord, I sinned.
I confess it.
I did it.
I'm not only not hiding it, I'm announcing it.
He's putting it on television, singing it for the whole nation of Israel to sing it on Shabbat in the tabernacle.
He's putting a full page ad in the daily newspaper. I killed Uriah the Hittite and got his wife pregnant. I did it.
It's astonishing.
We cannot take David's sins and weakness as permission for our own.
We must take his pattern of repentance as a pattern for our own.
We confess, we plead the blood.
We love the Lord and his kingdom, and we get on with the work, ministry, leadership, position, whatever it is to which he has called us.
We are wounded and hurt, but we comfort others as he comforted Bathsheba. And we believe, God, that after the baby of judgment, there comes a baby of grace and peace.
And his name shall be called Shalom.
Well, let's pray. Heavenly Father, I thank you for these precious people gathered here. Bless, O Lord, their lives and families.
Any place where there is woundedness, bring healing. Any place there's been betrayal, bring grace, strength and renewal.
Come, Holy Spirit. Come, Holy Spirit. We believe you for it. We thank you for it.
In the name of Jesus, the strong Son of God, Amen. Amen. Don't forget about Sunday.
If you have a friend or an enemy, make sure you bring them on Sunday.
You don't want to leave Sunday and say, oh, I should have done that. Make some calls. Pray for our pastor. He's in Thailand. He's in good hands. But I just want him home safe.
Amen.
Senor. Dios DEA.
Psalm 23. You've done a good job tonight. Thank you. Sister.
Will you stand? And we're going to read Psalm 23. I have remembered it one time so far.
One Wednesday. I remembered it.
All right. Are you ready? Turn your eyes to it. Let me get out of the way of this one. And let's read together, nice and loud. David. Psalm 23. The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want. He maketh me to lie down in green pastures. He leadeth me beside still waters. He restoreth my soul.
He leadeth me in the paths of righteousness for his name's sake. Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil, for thou art with me. Thy rod and thy staff, they comfort me. Thou preparest a table before me in the presence of mine enemies. Thou anointest my head with oil.
My cup runneth over. Surely goodness and mercy and shall follow me all the days of my life. And I will dwell in the house of the Lord forever.
Now, good night.
[00:51:41] Speaker A: You've been listening to the leader's notebook with Dr. Mark Rutland. You can follow Dr. Rutland on x@dr. Mark Rutland, or visit his website, drmarkrutland.com where you can find information about his materials and and his app. Join us next week for another episode of the Leader's Notebook.
