A Royal Shambles

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Two Samuel 14:1: “Now Joab the son of   Zeruiah knew that the king’s heart went out to  Absalom. And Joab sent to Tekoa and brought from   there a wise woman and said to her, ‘Pretend  to be a mourner and put on mourning garments.   Do not anoint yourself with oil, but behave  like a woman who has been mourning [for] many   days for the dead. Go to the king and speak thus  to him.’ So Joab put the words in her mouth.   “When the woman of Tekoa came to the king, she  fell on her face to the ground and paid homage   and said, ‘Save me, O king.’ And the king said to  her, ‘What is your trouble?’ She answered, ‘Alas,   I am a widow; my husband is dead. And your servant  had two sons, and they quarreled with one another   in the field. There was no one to separate them,  and [the] one struck the other and killed him.   And now the whole clan has risen [up] against  your servant, and they say, “Give up the man   who struck his brother, that we may put him to  death for the life of his brother whom he killed.”   And so they would destroy the heir also. Thus  they would quench my coal that is left and   leave to my husband neither name nor  remnant on the face of the earth.’   “Then the king said to the woman, ‘Go to your  house, and I will give orders concerning you.’   And the woman of Tekoa said to the king,  ‘On me be the guilt, my lord the king,   and on my father’s house; let the king and his  throne be guiltless.’ The king said, ‘If anyone   says anything to you, bring him to me, and he  shall never touch you again.’ Then she said,   ‘Please let the king invoke the LORD your God,  that the avenger of blood kill no more, and my son   [not be] destroyed.’ He said, ‘As the  LORD lives, not one hair of your son   shall fall to the ground.’ “Then the woman said,   ‘Please let your servant speak a word to my lord  the king.’ He said, ‘Speak.’ And the woman said,   ‘Why then have you planned such a thing against  the people of God? For in giving this decision   the king convicts himself, inasmuch as the king  does not bring his banished one home again.   We must all die; we are like water spilled on the  ground, which cannot be gathered up again. But God   will not take away life, and he devises means so  that the banished one will not remain an outcast.   Now I have come to say this to my lord the  king because the people have made me afraid,   and your servant thought, “I will speak to the  king; it may be that the king will perform the   request of his servant. For the king will hear  and deliver his servant from the hand of the man   who would destroy me and my son  together from the heritage of God.”   And your servant thought, “The word of my lord  the king will set me at rest,” for my lord the   king is like the angel of God to discern good  and evil. The LORD your God be with you!’   “Then the king answered the woman, ‘Do not hide  from me anything I ask you.’ And the woman said,   ‘Let my lord the king speak.’ The king said, ‘Is  the hand of Joab with you in all this?’ The woman   answered and said, ‘As surely as you live, my lord  the king, one cannot turn to the right … or to   the left from anything that my lord the king has  said. It was your servant Joab who commanded me;   it was he who put all these words in the mouth  of your servant. In order to change the course   of things your servant Joab did this. But my lord  has wisdom like the wisdom of the angel of God to   know all things that are on the earth.’ “Then the king said to Joab, ‘Behold now,   I grant this; go, bring back the young man  Absalom.’ And Joab fell on his face to the ground   and paid homage and blessed the king. And Joab  said, ‘Today your servant knows that I have found   favor in your sight, my lord the king, in that  the king has granted the request of his servant.’   So Joab arose and went to Geshur and brought  Absalom to Jerusalem. And the king said,   ‘Let him dwell apart in his own house;  he is not to come into my presence.’   So Absalom lived apart in his own house  and did not come into the king’s presence.   “Now in all Israel there was 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 (for at the end of  every year he used to cut it; when it was heavy   on him, he cut it), he weighed the hair of his  head, two hundred shekels by the king’s weight.   There were born to Absalom three sons,  and one daughter whose name was Tamar.   She was a beautiful woman. “So Absalom lived two full years in Jerusalem,   without coming into the king’s presence. Then  Absalom sent for Joab, to send him to the king,   but Joab would not come to him. And he sent a  second time, but Joab would not come. Then he   said to his servants, ‘See, Joab’s field  is next to mine, and he has barley there;   go and set it on fire.’ So Absalom’s servants  set the field on fire. Then Joab arose and   went to Absalom at his house and said to him,  ‘Why have your servants set my field on fire?’   Absalom answered Joab, ‘Behold, I sent word to  you, “Come here, that I may send you to the king,   to ask, ‘Why have I come from Geshur? It  would be better for me to be there still.’   Now therefore let me go into the presence of the  king, and if there is guilt in me, let him put me   to death.”’ Then Joab went to the king and told  him, and he summoned Absalom. So he came to the   king and bowed himself on his face to the ground  before the king, and the king kissed Absalom.”   This is the Word of the Lord. Thanks be to God.   Father, we come to the Bible aware of  our need—our need of comprehension,   interpretation, application. We look from  ourselves to the enabling of the Holy   Spirit. Grant that we might hear your voice in and  through my little voice. For Jesus’ sake. Amen.   Well, our heading for this morning, I’ve  decided, is “A Royal Shambles.” “A Royal   Shambles.” We continue to be in the  midst of lust, death, alienation,   yearning, bereavement, rape, murder,  and toxic family relationships.   In fact, many of us were breathing a sigh of  relief as we got to the end of chapter 13.   I know that I was. And I was keenly looking  forward to getting into the relative comfort   of chapter 14, only to find that having, as it  were, left behind these distasteful chapters,   we now have this relatively straightforward  account of Absalom’s return to Jerusalem.   And I was, quite honestly, unprepared for the  sense of helplessness that one feels before the   text of Scripture. I don’t know if you ever find  this: you read a passage, and you say to yourself,   “My, my, I think I better read this again and  maybe in another version of the Bible that might   make it a little clearer.” I was encouraged when  I read one of my colleagues, who simply wrote,   “2 Samuel 14 puzzles me.” I said, “Well, that’s  good. I’m not alone. There’s safety in numbers.”   And so, as daunting as it is,  we need to get down to the task,   and so what we’re going to  do is try and work our way   all the way to the end. If you want some kind of  outline, we’re going to consider Joab’s concern,   the woman’s conversation, the king’s compliance,  and finally, the king kisses Absalom.   "Joab’s Concern" First of all, then, the concern of Joab.   We won’t take time to go back into previous  chapters. We have already met Joab.   If you only remember him for one instant, you  will remember the gory occasion when he manages to   encourage Abner to come into the passageway or  into a hallway, and then he promptly sticks a   knife into his gut, and that is the end of Abner.  So, you wouldn’t want to mess around with Joab.   We’ve seen him before. He’s a kind of get-it-done  fellow, and here he’s concerned to get it done. We   will be meeting him again, and for those of you  who are alert, you will remember that as the son   of Zeruiah, he is a nephew of David himself. Now, we’re told immediately what he knew. And   what he knew is that “the king’s heart went  out to Absalom.” “Well,” we say to ourselves,   “that’s fairly straightforward. But what does  that actually mean?” And from our study last time,   you will perhaps recall that I acknowledged to you  that the original text of the closing verses of   chapter 13 stretches the abilities of all Hebrew  scholars. And there is a significant amount of   debate as to just exactly what it means there  as to David longing “to go out” after Absalom.   We concluded last time—at least I concluded  last time—that the way to understand the end of   13:[39] is like this: “And this”—that is, the  circumstances that have been conveyed (namely,   that Absalom has made a run for it into the  custody of his maternal grandfather and out   of the jurisdiction of David)—“and this, held  the king back from marching out against Absalom,   but he mourned over Amnon because he was dead.” Now, if that is correct—and I take it that it is   correct—then what Joab is aware of here when it  says that “the king’s heart went out to Absalom”   is that he’s aware of his antagonism towards  Absalom, not his affection for Absalom.   In fact, as the story unfolds, it’s very hard  to see why Joab would need to come up with such   a convoluted plan to simply do what he knew David  wanted to do—namely, go and reach out to Absalom   and bring him back because of his affection  for him. I think the context helps us, in 14,   understand the end of 13. If we have that  in mind, then I think we won’t go wrong.   His concern, then, is on account of David’s  antagonism, not David’s affection. And he is   seeking, you will find down in verse 20—because  of what he knows, he is seeking (the lady explains   this down in verse 20) “to change the course  of things.” “To change the course of things.”   What “course of things”? Well, the king and  Absalom are on a collision course. And a collision   course between the king and his potential heir  may only result in all kinds of disruption—at   least, so it seems to Joab. And so Joab’s  concern here is a concern for the kingdom   itself. And out of his desire to see things  resolved, to see resolution, he intervenes.   We know that David as the king  has failed to execute justice.   He has allowed Absalom to get away. Absalom should  have been prosecuted. He killed his brother. He at   the same time, the king, has not only failed to  show justice, but he is unwilling to show mercy,   as we discover in this unfolding drama. In fact,  the king fails to show any decisive direction   in relationship to this unfolding shambles. And  so it falls to Joab to seek to break the impasse.   That’s his concern. That’s what he knew. What  did he do? Well, you can see it here in the text:   he “sent to Tekoa,” and he “brought from there a  wise woman”—Tekoa, about ten miles from Jerusalem,   about five miles from Bethlehem. So he sends  over there, and he brings back this lady. We   know nothing of her. Perhaps she was a counselor.  Perhaps she was well-known. Perhaps she had   a drama school, for all we know. But he sends  for her, because he has determined that he is   not gonna get resolution in this circumstance  by working through normal political protocol.   He’s not going to be able to apply, if you like,  the principles of a normal bureaucratic structure.   In fact, what he’s seeking to do is to resolve  the situation by presenting it to the king in a   different light. He is, if you like, a turnaround  specialist in some ways. Some of you in business   are turnaround men or turnaround women, and you  know: first of all, you define, and then you   analyze the problem, and then you determine the  scope and the strategy that is to be exercised.   That’s exactly what he’s doing. He’s using a  strange methodology, an indirect methodology,   but a methodology that is  going to prove effective.   Now, when it says that he sent for a wise  woman, some of us who’ve been paying attention   immediately go, “Wait a minute! The last wise  person we had was none other than Jonadab,   Mr. Crafty, and that wasn’t exactly  wonderful. What is going to happen here?”   So, he sends for the lady—and I’m going to  summarize some of this so as not to simply   repeat the text—he has her come, and  he says to her, “Here’s the plan.   I want you to pretend to be in mourning. I  want you to dress accordingly. I want you to   behave as a woman who has been mourning for  quite a while, for day after day”—which was   exactly what David had been doing over the  death of Amnon. “And I want you to know,   madam, that I have got an outline here  for you. I have your script ready for you.   I’m going to allow you to adopt it and to adapt it  as necessary in order to achieve the objective.”   All right? So, the concern is he knows it’s a shambles, and he is concerned at the same time  to try and fix it. "The Woman’s Conversation" Secondly, to the woman’s conversation. And  this is the substantial part of this chapter,   and it’s long. And I read it a lot during the  week, and it took me a long, long time before I   felt that I even had a handle on it. You’re about  to discover whether I do have a handle on it. The   woman’s conversation. Actually, we might better  refer to it as the woman’s performance, because   this is quite a performance. She plays the part  with finesse. She plays the part with bravery.   And, of course, you will recognize that what is  happening here is akin to what we already saw   back in chapter 12 when Nathan the prophet comes  to David, and he doesn’t come to him straight out   and say, “What you did was wrong.” He tells him a  parable in order to bring him to the point where   the parable brings about a sense of conviction  on the part of David, and then he plays the ace,   and he says, “You’re actually that man.” Now, what’s going on here is very similar.   She is going to seek the king’s help with  a problem that isn’t real in the hope that   it will help him with a problem that is real.  Now, we’ve got a slight advantage over David,   as the readers of the story, because  we know that Joab has set her up.   We know that her story is bogus. We know that  she’s pretending. We know that when she comes   and makes her appeal as she does, she’s very  skillful. “She fell on her face to the ground.”   There’s quite a bit of falling of face to the  ground in the space of these thirty-three verses.   And her appeal is straightforward: “I need  your help. Save me, O king. I need your help.”   Now, what she actually knows is that the  king needs her help. Anyway, it’s a good   start. It’s very disarming. Incidentally, if  you’re ever involved in a difficult discussion   or a business dealing or something else that  you’re not really looking forward to—especially   if you have to do something that’s a little  hard—then it’s not a bad beginning just to say,   “I wonder if we might meet. I need your help.”  “Oh,” he says, “yes, of course. I’d be glad.”   Now, how she was able to come directly  to the king, presumably, is because   of Joab himself. He could make it happen. So  now she has the king’s ear. And she speaks:   “I’m a widow. My husband is dead. My two sons  got into a fight. They were out in the field.”   (Might make you think of Cain and Abel, out in the  field.) “And the one boy struck and killed him.   The family, our whole family, the clan, has ganged  up against me. They want me to hand over the son   who did it so that they can put him to death as  recompense. But if they do that, they will snuff   out the only spark of my life.” That’s the coal  there, you will see in the text. “They will snuff   out the only spark of my life. I’ll be left with  no husband and with no heir and with no name.”   So in other words, this is very, very skillful,  isn’t it? Because this is a problem of lineage.   This is a problem of transition—the  very transition that is before us now   in the story of the kings, and  particularly in relationship to David.   So, that’s the first part of her talk. He responds  in a positive way: he says, “Why don’t you go   home? I’ll take care of this. Go home, and  I’ll take care of this.” But that won’t do.   You will see, verse [9]: “And the  woman of Tekoa said to the king…”   She comes back again. She says, “Well, wait  a minute. I want you to know that I’ll take   responsibility if you are criticized for  helping me.” An interesting thing to say.   It seems like she actually has to… She can’t let  the conversation stop. She’s gotta keep it going,   because she’s not at the point—anywhere close  to the point. So now the king says in verse 10,   “If anyone says anything to you,” if  anyone objects, “just bring the man   to me and he’ll never touch you again.” Now, I’ve imagined that the king did this   as something of a favor to Joab: “There’s a lady  I’d like you to see.” The lady comes in. “Hello.”   What’s she on about? She says, “Well, I got a  thing with a son” and so on. He says, “Okay.   Go home. I’ll take care of it.”  She says, “No, no, wait a minute.   I want you to know something.” And so he thinks  that’s finished there. But no! There we go, verse 11:  “Then she said, ‘Please let the king invoke  the LORD your God, that the avenger of blood   kill no more, and my son [not be] destroyed.’”  Now, what she’s saying there is, “Intervene so   that the cycle of vengeance that my family want to  institute will be broken for the sake of my son.”   He then says, with an oath—a familiar oath, “As  the LORD lives,” a sworn decision by which he   commits himself to the woman’s cause—“Not one  hair of your son shall fall to the ground.”   But of course, we know that she didn’t have a son.   She was working the material to get  David to see himself in the picture.   So just when he thinks it’s case closed, verse  12: “The woman said, ‘Please let your servant   speak a word to my lord the king.’” Or,  “If I might just mention something else…”   And “he said, ‘Speak.’” How do you think that come  out like? “Speak.” Or did he say, “Oh, go ahead.   Yeah, all right, fine. Fine. Go ahead. Speak.” And then she joins the dots. Now she comes at him:   “And the woman said, ‘Why then have you planned  such a thing against the people of God?’”   “Why have you acted in this way and convicted  yourself by not bringing home your banished one?”   What is happening is simply this: that  David gives his ruling on her acted case,   only to discover that he has passed judgment  on his own case—a case which affects not only   him and not only Absalom but the family, the  people of God . That’s the significance of it.   “Why then have you planned such a thing against  the people of God?” In other words, she says,   “What you’re doing here in relationship to your  son Absalom has got ramifications far bigger   than simply whether the two of you are getting  along. This has to do with the whole history   of the people of God.” It’s a dramatic moment—far  more than father-and-son relationship. It has the   potential, unresolved, for civil war. And then she goes on, in verse 14,   and she says, “We must all die; we[’re]  like water spilled on the ground.” I take   it that what she’s saying there is, “You know  what? Amnon is dead, and he isn’t coming back.   But God will not take away life.” Well, of  course, God does take away life. We know that   the Lord kills and the Lord brings back to life.  That’s 1 Samuel 2:6. But what she’s saying is,   God in this case is a life-giver.  He’s a restorer. Or, if you like,   she’s saying to him, “King, death is  irreversible, but God’s dealings are far   from irreversible”—or even, if you like, “God’s  responses to things are far from irreversible.”   Well, of course, that ought to have rung even  just a tiny bell in the back of his mind in   relationship to 12:13, when he repents and  Nathan says to him, “The LORD … has put away   your sin.” Isn’t it amazing how  we can know the forgiveness of God   and refuse forgiveness to  others? How we can be set free   and seek to hold others at arm’s length from  us? That’s exactly what’s going on here.   Now, interestingly—and this is where  it gets hard, I think—in verse 15,   she goes back into drama mode. She has stepped  out of it to make her point, but she hasn’t said,   in doing that, she hasn’t said, “Oh, by the way,  all that stuff about me being a widow and my sons?   No. I just made all that stuff up.” She  hasn’t said that. She doesn’t say that.   No, she comes right back into it in verse 15:   “Now, I’ve come to say this to my lord the  king because the people have made me afraid.”   That’s the people that are coming against  her. “And I thought, ‘I’ll speak to the king,   because it may be that the king will  perform the request of his servant.’   I came to plead with you for my son. Our lives  have been threatened. So I said to myself,   ‘Perhaps the king will listen to me and rescue  us from those who seek to destroy our heritage.’   I was convinced that the king will give  us peace, because he is like the messenger   of God. He’s like the angel of God,  the one to discern good and evil.”   Was he listening? She says, “I’m coming to you  for resolution because you are like the angel   of God. You’re like the messenger of God. You’re  the one that knows the difference between good   and bad. You know the difference between  sleeping with your own wife and sleeping   with somebody else’s wife. You know it all.  You’re the king.” Oh, what a jab in the stomach!   And then she says to him, “[And] the LORD  your God be with you!” Well, of course,   the explanation for David’s victories  lay in that reality: that it says,   again, in 2 Samuel 5, “And the reason for  David’s success was that the Lord his God   was with him.” And what we’ve discovered  now is that that is a shaky context.   Now, “the king answered the woman…” “Is it okay  if I ask you something?” I mean, that’s really it.   And now she says—she says, “Yeah, you can speak.”  So, first of all, he says to her, “You can speak,”   and now she… It’s interesting. The petitioner  has become the preacher, and now she is the one   who is granting him permission to speak. And,  of course, he inquires: “Is Joab behind this?”   Now, the chances are that Joab had  already addressed this with the king.   And even if he hadn’t already addressed it with  the king, the king is savvy enough to recognize   that there’s something, there’s someone  behind this lady’s little pantomime here.   And, of course, she explains. She answers,  and she says, “Yeah, I can’t deny it.   It was Joab who put me up to it. He did  it out of a concern”—back to verse 20 now,   so we are making progress—“he did it out of  a concern to change the course of things.   But my lord has wisdom like  the wisdom of the angel of God   to know all things on the earth.” Nothing  like a burst of flattery just to close it out!   And with the drama over, she exits stage left. So, Joab’s concern is a concern for the kingdom.   The woman’s conversation is this parody, this  ruse, this subterfuge, in order that by an   unorthodox methodology, David may be brought to  realize the predicament that is before him.   "The King’s Compliance" Then we come to the king’s compliance.   I’ve chosen the word compliance;  I think it is the right word.   Verse 21: “Then the king”—he’s sent for Joab,  obviously, and he says to him, “Okay, Joab, fine.   I’ll go along with this. I grant this. Go bring  back the young man Absalom.” And here we have a   second falling on the face: “Joab fell on his face  to the ground … paid homage … blessed the king,”   and “said, ‘Today your servant knows that  I … found favor in your sight, my lord the   king, in that the king has granted the request of  his servant.’” In other words, he must have been   so wonderfully encouraged that his little strategy  had yielded this benefit. And he acknowledges it.   And so verse 23, he goes to do what the king has  said: he goes to Geshur—which is, of course, the   jurisdiction of Absalom’s maternal grandfather,  as we saw—and he “brought Absalom to Jerusalem.”   Now, keep in mind: three years have  elapsed between the end of chapter   13 and the beginning of chapter 14. For  three years, Absalom has lived banished.   We’re then introduced to Absalom. I’m not  gonna delay on that, this little sort of…   If it was in contemporary terms, there would be a  click on it on your phone. You could click on it;   it’d bring up a picture of Absalom, and it  would give you a little bit of background on   him. He’s Mr. Handsome. There’s nobody more  handsome. He’s striking in his appearance.   There is a hint of Saul about him. Remember,  Saul was the guy: big, tall, everybody loved him,   all the girls fancied him. It’s a dangerous  predicament—one that I’ve never known—and it   is a circumstance that ought to cause  concern for us. And there we have it.   He’s striking in his appearance. He’s  forceful in his personality. He’s got a   thing about his hair. Clearly he’s got a thing  about his hair and gets it cut once a year.   And so, he returns. He returns. He has a daughter,  Tamar. (We’ll come back to Absalom later.)   He returns to Jerusalem unpunished,  unforgiven, and, as we’re going to discover,   unashamed. He returns unpunished, unforgiven, and  unashamed. And I say to you again that this is   acquiescence on the part of the king. This is the  king’s reluctant acceptance of Absalom’s return.   He does it without protest. How is this then going to end?   Because actually, we’re at the point in  the story where Absalom has now become   the central character. “Well,” you say, “let’s  just go immediately to the end of the chapter,   and you have it: ‘And the king kissed Absalom.’”  Yes, but how did we arrive at the kiss?   Well, we’re told. He lives for two years in  limbo. He says, “You can come back into Jerusalem,   but you’re not coming anywhere near me.” You  wouldn’t call that much of a welcome, would you?   And so he determines that he is going  to have to intervene in some way.   And he is contacting Joab, but, in contemporary  terms, Joab is not returning his calls.   He called, tried to put in a  call to Joab: “I want to go   see the king.” He doesn’t even reply. He doesn’t  want to know. He tries it once, tries it twice.   And so he takes a leaf from Joab’s  playbook. Because remember, Joab decided   that in order to achieve his end, he would have  to try and use an unorthodox strategy in order   to achieve his objective. And so Absalom says,  “Well, I’ve got a rather unorthodox strategy.”   He calls his servants, and he says, “You  know, his field is right beside ours.   It’s full of barley. Why don’t you just go and  set fire to it?” And that’s exactly what they do:   “[And] so Absalom’s servants,”  verse 30, “set the field on fire.   Then Joab arose and went to Absalom  at his house.” It’s a rather dramatic   way to get your next-door neighbor to  pay attention, but there you have it.   And he actually comes and inquires—he  must have known the answer—“Why   did you send your people to set my field  on fire?” He says, “Are you kidding me?   I sent word to you, ‘Come here, that I may  send you to the king to ask, “Why have I come   from Geshur? It would be better for me to be  still there.” I’d be better off living there,   banished, than living here, unwelcomed. No welcome  would be better than a half-hearted welcome. So I   want an interview with the king.’” He’s not asking  to see his father. You will notice it’s “king,”   “king,” “king,” “king,” “king.” I was underlining  “king” in my Bible until I just stopped. It is the   king. It is the kingdom. This is what it is about.  This is not a sort of—just a family feud. No, “I   want an audience, an interview, with the king.” And then in verse 33, there you have it:   “Then Joab went,” “told,” “summoned,” “came,”  “bowed”—“and the king kissed Absalom.”   Actually, I don’t think we need to regard  Absalom’s professed willingness to accept   his fate, if he were guilty—I don’t know  that we need to take it very seriously,   as we’re about to see. "The King Kisses Absalom" So, here we end: “And the king kissed  Absalom.” “You must remember this:   a kiss is just a kiss, a sigh is just a  sigh.” What kind of kiss was this? This was   a protocol kiss. This was a political kiss. This  was a gesture. This is the reaction of the king   who has been manipulated into an  environment that he was unprepared for   and unwilling to enter into wholeheartedly. “Well,” you say, “that’s fine, though, isn’t it?   It ends with a kiss. Surely the kiss has fixed  everything.” If you think the kiss has fixed   everything, it’s only because you haven’t  read chapter 15. No, what we have here—and   I’ll conclude in this way—this royal shambles is  a terrible picture of alienation and disruption,   first of all within a family, and then within  a kingdom, or, if you like, within a nation.   It is a picture that leaves us in absolutely  no doubt that sin—no matter how good it feels   for a season—that sin always ends in tears  . These chapters, and this chapter, make it   absolutely clear how terrible our world would be  if God gave us over to the consequences of sin   without providing for us a righteous  King, without giving to us the gospel.   Who can deal with the shambles of our world?  Who can deal with the shambles of our nation?   Who can deal with the shambles  of some of our families?   Who can deal with the shambles of my  rebellious heart? Certainly not David.   Certainly not David. Then who?  Well, the one to whom David points.   She says, “You’re the one who knows  everything. You’re fantastic.” Well, he wasn’t.   But the prophet said, “There shall come  forth a shoot from the stump of Jesse,   and the Spirit of the Lord shall rest upon him.  And he will execute justice and righteousness,   and he will bring peace to the nations.” Jesus. Jesus was happy to tell stories that had kisses   in them. You remember? The people were around him,  and he says, “I got one for you. There was a man,   and he had two sons. And the younger of them,  he got banished. He banished himself, actually.   He ended up—his life was a complete mess. He  recognized it. He decided he would go home.   He had a speech: he would say to his father, ‘I  screwed up. I sinned against heaven and in your   sight. I’m no longer worthy to be called your son.  I’d be happy if I could have a place just down in   the garden. I’d gladly cut the grass for you.’ But  when he was a long way off, his father saw him,   and ran, and fell on his neck, and kissed him.” That’s the kiss you’re looking for.   Where does God come to kiss us? Where does God  run out to us? Where does God stretch his arms   to welcome us out of our chaos and out of our  shambles? In the cross of his dearly beloved Son.   Two arms outstretched to save us from the shambles  of a life lived in disinterest and rebellion   against the one who has made us for himself,  that we might rest in his provision.   Oh, I hope that this will at least be a help  to some of us. And it may be that one of you,   one person, is here today and says, “That’s it  for me. I don’t know about that woman. I don’t   know about Joab. I don’t know about much. But I  do know this: that my life is a walking chaos,   and I have been unable to fix it.  If that Jesus stuff is the answer,   that’s for me.” Well, may it be so.   Father, thank you. Thank you that all Scripture is  inspired by you, the living God. It is profitable   for correction, for reproof, for training in  righteousness. It is given to us in order that   we might be made wise for salvation. So  may it be that it leads us to the cross,   that it leads us to Christ, that we might, as this  woman did, bow down in obeisance before the King   and, in humility of heart and in expression of our  need, ask him to rule and reign over our lives.   Certainly, the answer is not in our  endeavors but only in your amazing grace.   In Christ’s name we pray. Amen.
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Channel: Parkside Church
Views: 3,052
Rating: undefined out of 5
Keywords: Church, Parkside, Bible, Teaching, Alistair Begg, God, Jesus, Sermon, Biblical Figures, Christ as King, Conviction of Sin, Effects of Sin, Sin
Id: DcktoiF5XsE
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Length: 39min 31sec (2371 seconds)
Published: Tue Sep 28 2021
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