Sermons

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David and Absalom
February 4, 2001
Series on the life of King David: "A Heart After God"
Pastor Dan Baumgartner

2 Samuel 14-19

We want to continue today with our next-to-last look at the life of King David.

You know, it’s funny how when you keep working with something, keep it in front of you the way we have with David, you notice references popping up all over. Yesterday, for instance, the New York Times had an interesting article about a new theme park down in Orlando. It’s called the Holy Land Experience, and it builds around Biblical history from 1450 BC to 66 AD. I’m sure David is in that park somewhere. In fact, I know it, because if you get hungry, you just stop by the Oasis Palms Café, and order up a Goliath burger!

This morning’s sermon will focus around the theme of hard times, or suffering. It’s a good thing for us to think about, I believe, because of all the crazy theology that seems to get thrown out about Christians and suffering. Though there are many who would seem to tell you otherwise, the conclusion of MY exhaustive research is that Christians suffer in the exact same proportion as non-Christians. We are not exempt. We go through times of great difficulty, and we must confess that God does not (either in the Bible or in real life) provide any immunity. Wouldn’t it be great if it were the other way? Think about how much easier your evangelizing might be: “Just believe in Jesus, and you’ll never have another difficult moment in your life.” It would make things so much easier, wouldn’t it? But it’s not the way things are.

Just three weeks ago we noted that David seemed at the top of his game. Everything had gone his way, he had pushed all the right buttons and had taken his rags to riches story right to the top as king of Israel, chosen by God. Last week, we saw David starting a downward slide. The story of his affair with Bathsheba and his murder of Uriah was a painful one to read.

Today, the narrator of 2 Samuel seems to continue his tale of David’s slide. He launches us into the story of David’s family, a story which consumes most of chapters 13-22 of this book. It isn’t a pretty picture. It is has been said that a godly person will affect generations. That is very true. But the opposite is also true…the shortcomings of one generation often are carried on into succeeding generations. And while David the King was brilliant…David the father left much to be desired.

David’s eldest son is named Amnon, the crown prince and first heir to the throne. Amnon, however, rapes one of David’s daughters, Tamar. David hears what has gone on, and the scripture tells us he was “furious,” but he apparently does nothing about it. Absalom, the next son in David’s line, is not content to do nothing. Absalom waits for two years, biding his time and then murders Amnon.

David mourns the loss of one of his sons, and we are left to notice that David’s first two sons participate in sexual immorality and murder…the exact same things David modeled out for them in his relationship with Bathsheba. Having committed murder, Absalom flees Jerusalem and stays away in exile for three years. And so five years have elapsed all together, years in which we know little of David’s life. But we might speculate that as David’s family began to fall apart, he was probably not in a good place either.

Absalom finally returns from exile, with his father’s permission…but it seems that not all is well. Chapter 14 (verse 23) tells of his return: “Absalom (was) brought back to Jerusalem. But the king said “He must go to his own house; he must not see my face.”

So Absalom went to his own house and did not see the face of the king.”

And so, for two years Absalom lived in Jerusalem, had four children … but STILL his father King David would not see him. Jerusalem was not THAT big of a city. David would have to try hard NOT to see his son. And so Absalom is left hanging in limbo…returned, but apparently not forgiven. Given new life, but always with the asterisk of second class citizenship.

Quite a contrast to the story Jesus tells of the prodigal son, isn’t it? The son who, when he finally returned home after messing up horribly…was greeted by a father who had been watching for him, received hugs and kisses and a party to welcome him. It makes me wonder…how this story of Absalom and David might have turned out if Absalom’s return had been handled differently.

Absalom becomes resentful and bitter, and begins to plot against his father. He spends FOUR YEARS undercutting the king, ingratiating himself to people, gathering allies, lying…and finally moves against Jerusalem and his own father with an army.

David is forced to flee from Jerusalem, and heads once more back to the wilderness. It’s incredibly ironic, isn’t it? The very place where David had been a shepherd. The very wilderness where David had labored long and suffered much, pursued by mad King Saul for year after year. And, very importantly, the place where it seems as though his close relationship with God was truly forged. And whether it is his own shortcomings which have driven him there, or the evil in other people, or as is usually the case, some combination of those…It’s a hard wilderness where David finds himself once again. Pursued by his own son. A painful suffering indeed.

Sometimes life hurts. I don’t care who you are, there is suffering and hard times in this life. Sometimes it is our own fault. A good friend of mine made a series of very bad business decisions…perhaps not things that were illegal, but certainly deceptive…and he suffered the animosity of other people…as well as great anxiety and self-doubt. We create our own suffering sometimes.

At other times we are hurt because of someone else’s actions, and just the evil present in the world. You are robbed at your house, a drunk driver kills someone you know and love.

At still other times, we suffer for no apparent reason, nothing we can attach cause-and-effect meaning to. Our parents die, a child is sick, a good job disappears. Regardless of the cause, we WILL find ourselves at different times in life out there in the hard wilderness with David, in pain.

The David and Absalom story forces us to ask: “Now what?” And it seems that we will experience one of two answers. Either the suffering will destroy us…embitter us, make us cynical and hard, and stunt our development as people. OR… the suffering will bring us back to who we really are, cause us to grow and to see God’s hand in our life. Hardship and suffering CAN form our character and make us better, not worse.

I get very squeamish when people talk about God intentionally bringing on suffering to teach them some lesson. But I believe very strongly that God is the only one who brings about growth and good out of a bad and evil situation. It seems that David is able to embrace this time of suffering, and it bears fruit in his life in three ways:

First, David’s difficult time seems to restore a sense of humility. In chapter 16, as David flees from Jerusalem, he is met on the eastern slope of the Mount of Olives by a man named Shimei, a distant ancestor of King Saul. Shimei walks along the hillside above David and his entourage, and ridicules him publicly. “He…cursed as [David] came out. He pelted David and all the kings officials with stones…though all the troops and special guard were on David’s right and left. As he cursed, Shimei said “Get out, get out you man of blood, you scoundrel! The Lord has repaid you for all the blood you shed in the household of Saul, in whose place you have reigned. The Lord has handed you over.”

One of David’s men said “Why should this dead dog curse my lord the king? Let me go over and cut off his head.” But David said “Leave him alone, let him curse. It may be he is cursing because the Lord said to him “Curse David.”

And so David allows him to continue on. David is not playing the part of the powerful, grand king. He is not exercising his power over this rude voice ringing in his ears. It seems as though some of his humility has been regained. He is willing to acknowledge that God’s hand may be in this in a way he did not foresee, willing even to acknowledge the possibility that God is choosing to end his reign. Humility, for David, acknowledges that the future is more in God’s hands than his own.

The wilderness can restore a sense of humility. I remember going back to school at age 35. My very first class at seminary, and the professor spent the whole first class talking about how to write a three-page paper. I was bored to tears. I KNEW how to write. In fact, I had always been a very good writer. Why did I need to listen to this remedial stuff? I was, in fact, more interested in showing my professor just how much I knew. And I handed in that first paper with daydreams of the positive comments coming back on the absolute profundity of what I had written. It came back with a large “C-”on the top, and more red ink on the paper in criticism than I had written in the first place! I was deflated.

But it certainly made me sit up and remember why I was at school…to learn. It reminded me that God had me there to grow, not to show others how knowledgable I was. Difficult times remind us that we are not quite as in control of life as we might want to believe. They take us back to square one, and to an openness to what God might be about.

The second thing that David’s suffering does…is drive him back to prayer. We have not heard David pray in many chapters, not since the incident with Bathsheba. But now, as he flees from Absalom, this instinct returns.

In chapter 15, as David flees, he hears word that Ahithophel has joined Absalom. Ahithophel had been one of David’s trusted friends, an insider in David’s circle. He was renowned as a counselor, and David had great respect for his wisdom. And when David hears that Ahithophel has turned traitor and is advising Absalom, the first word out of his mouth is…a prayer. “O Lord, turn Ahithophel’s counsel into foolishness” (2 Samuel 15:31). A very practical prayer, to be sure. But David’s suffering, his return to the wilderness, has caused him to go back to praying. We hear him again if we read Psalm 3, with the subtitle “A psalm of David. When he fled from his son Absalom”:

“O Lord, how many are my foes! How many rise up against me! Many are saying of me, “God will not deliver him. But you are a shield around me, O Lord, you bestow glory on me and lift up my head. To the Lord I cry aloud, and he answers me from his holy hill.”

During a very difficult and confusing time in my life, I found my prayer life going deeper and deeper. In fact, during those six months, I prayed as I never had before. Not the nice, neat, tidy prayers of the person for whom all of life is going well. But the desperate, searching cries of someone in need. Probably the most honest prayers of my whole life.

“God, where are you? Why don’t I feel you beside me? Have I been disobedient? How will I get through this?” Suffering does not produce easy prayers, nor quick solutions to pain. But it can produce an intimacy with God that does not develop in other situations.

Suffering can drive us, quite literally, to our knees. Abraham Lincoln, in the midst of the pain over the Civil War, once wrote: “I have been driven many times upon my knees by the overwhelming conviction that I had nowhere else to go. My own wisdom and that of all about me seemed insufficient for the day.”

And third…suffering can produce great compassion. In chapters 16, 17 and 18, David's cleverness, his network of spies, his military strategy…and the unmistakable hand of Yahweh bring him to a final battle with Absalom’s army of traitors. David summons his commanders to give them the final instructions, the inspirational speech that would goad them to victory. He stands by the gate of the city, and his last words to his commanders?

“Be gentle with the young man Absalom for my sake” (2 Samuel 18:5).

What?! Could this be correct? David, readying for the final battle, telling them to treat his son…no, barely his son, a son he wouldn’t acknowledge for over two years when he lived next door…David telling them to treat Absalom gently? Do our ears hear correctly that David is concerned for this double-crossing, murderous, scandalous, insolent son who has tried for years to usurp the entire kingdom from his own father…treat HIM gently?

Yet, we hear it correctly. There is something profound going on inside of David. The wilderness of David’s suffering seems to have reawakened his remarkable heart of love. He has been reminded of who he is, and of who God is, and has recovered his life of prayer with God…and those things allow him now to once again love. Love as the fruit of humility and prayer. “Loving Absalom that day,” Eugene Peterson writes, “was one of the most magnificent things David ever did.”

This kind of love, this heart of compassion that could even spill over onto one’s enemies, is seen even more clearly in the much later Son of David, Jesus the Christ. It was Jesus, you will remember, who in John 13 gave the very simple and very difficult command to “love one another. As I have loved you, so you must love one another.”

Those words of Jesus came immediately after his follower Judas left the room to go and betray him…and just before his other follower Peter began to deny even knowing him. Jesus’ love surely came out of humility and prayer as well.

When David’s army triumphed over Absalom’s, some of David’s men totally ignored his instructions to deal gently with his son. Finding Absalom caught in a tree, they viciously murdered him. And when the news was given to him, David broke down and wept: “O my son Absalom! My son, my son Absalom! If only I had died instead of you -- O Absalom, my son, my son!” At such great cost, David’s heart has been restored.

And I think he was very serious in sobbing that if he could have done Absalom’s dying for him, if he could have paid the price for Absalom’s betrayal…he would have done it.

Frederick Buechner says, “If he could have given his own life to make the boy alive again, he would have given it. But even a king can’t do things like that. As later history was to prove…it takes a God.”

Suffering can diminish and destroy us. But it can also return us to ourselves, draw us closer to God, and leave us better people…not worse. In David, and more fully in David’s descendant, Jesus, God calls us to look for Him, even in times of suffering…especially in times of suffering…and to grow richer in humility, in prayer…and in love.