2 Samuel chapter 20, 2 Samuel chapter 20. Many years ago there was a Hollywood movie out called Rebel Without a Cause. Rebel Without a Cause. Most of you, most of our younger people don't even probably know, maybe they've heard the title, but probably don't know much about the film. I'm not necessarily recommending the film in any sense. But what I'm noticing is the title of it. And that is, it's not as if there had never been rebellions any time in human history up until then. All right? It's not as if there had never been rebellions, but think of how curious this is that in the second half of the 20th century, it was good to be a rebel even if you didn't have a cause, in a sense. In other words, that made you cool. You're just against authority. You're against the man, and you're going to make sure that you don't obey or do anything that the authority wants you to do because you're a rebel. Interestingly, we have an example of rebellion here in 2 Samuel 20, and I will note this, that the Bible always presents rebellion as sin. Alright, always presents rebellion as sin. Now there are biblical ways to resist tyranny. That's not the same as rebellion. Okay, biblical ways to resist tyranny are different than rebellion. But what we're going to find is here at this end of this section on the rebellion of Absalom, the rebellion continues. And, as we've, the book of Samuel's not silent about the concept of rebellion, is it? In 1 Samuel, we find that Saul doesn't kill King Agag as he's supposed to. He doesn't destroy all the sheep like they were supposed to after they went to war against the Amalekites. And when Samuel comes to see what's going on, he says to Saul, who says, I've obeyed the commandment of the Lord. He says to Saul, then what is this bleeding of the sheep in my ears? Why do I hear so many sheep? And he tells him, he says, does the Lord have his great delight in burnt offerings? Because Saul says, well, we kept them alive to give them as burnt offerings to the Lord. And Samuel says, does the Lord have his great delight in burnt offerings and sacrifices? Is it obeying the voice of the Lord? Behold, to obey is better than sacrifice, and to hearken is better than the fat of rams. For, what does he say? Rebellion is as the sin of witchcraft. All right, which ironically is what's the sin that Saul dies being involved in. He goes to a witch at the end of his life. I'm sure, I'm not sure, but I could guess that Saul was probably thinking, Samuel, you're really overstating this. I didn't kill a few sheep and now you're saying I'm involved in witchcraft? But it leads him to the path of witchcraft, eventually in false worship. And so the idea of rebellion, especially against God, and that's the very heart of sin, that, hey, I can be like God. In our singles Bible study last week, we were looking at Genesis 3, and what we see there is one of the things, the thing that the serpent holds out to Eve is, God doesn't want you to eat that fruit, not because you'll die from eating it, because if you eat it, you'll be like God, and He's afraid you'll be like Him. So if you would rebel against God, you'll make your life better. That's the lie of sin. And so rebellion throughout the scripture, specifically rebellion against God, but there are God-ordained authorities as well, and that rebellion is never a positive thing. Chapter 20, verse 1, and there happened to be there a man named Belial, a man of Belial, whose name was Sheba, the son of Bichri, a Benjamite. And he blew a trumpet and said, Now if you remember what happened in the end of chapter 19, there's this argument between the men of Israel and the men of Judah. Because the men of Israel are bringing David back as the king, but the men of Judah haven't done that yet. So David sends emissaries to try to get Judah to come back to him. And when they come back to him, then they bring him into the city as the king, and the people of Israel feel left out. And so there's this division between these two sections. The very powerful southern tribe of Judah, and then the northern tribes of Israel. And what we find is that because of this division, there happens to be. Notice this. This is not that this man is a great leader. He's just somebody who happens to find an opportunity. He's an opportunist. And he figures, hey, I can lead a bunch of these people away and set up my own kingdom if I lead a rebellion against David. And so he says, he blows a trumpet, which is a way to assemble an army around him. And he says, we don't have any part in David. We're going to declare our independence. And you know, there are times in human history that various nations have done this, that we're independent, we're not a part of that nation anymore, they conquered us a long time ago and we're going to rule ourselves. There's been other times that it's been humorous. So some of you have probably been down to Key West and you're familiar with the fact that at one point they declared their independence from the United States and called themselves the Conch Republic. and blocked the highway into Key West and said, we're our own country now. Obviously, it never really functioned that way, but they did that for a short amount of time. It's more of a humorous note than it is anything else. There was no war or anything fought over it. But there are times that very serious rebellions happen. Here, what we find is this man takes this opportunity, but notice how he's described. He's described as a man of Belial. Belial is never a positive term. All right. This is the idea. Sometimes we might say worthless. He's a man of no character. Really, the word Belial is a little stronger than that. The Hebrew word Belial has the idea of being a person who is under God's condemnation. In other words, He's a person who is going to face God's judgment. So he's, in other words, he's not somebody who fears God. He has bad character and he has no fear of God. He's just an opportunist. That's who Sheba is. That's why we don't see a whole lot about him. So every man of Israel went up from after David and followed Sheba the son of Bikri. Now notice this, every man of Israel is not an expression saying all of the Israelites, all of the northern tribes. What it means is there were people representing all of those tribes that followed him. Alright? It's an expression that means people from each of the tribes. It doesn't mean a majority of them. But this is a rebellion nonetheless. And they followed Sheba the son of Bichri, but the men of Judah clave unto their king, from Jordan even unto Jerusalem. But the men of Judah, they stick to David. Now these are the women that Absalom had raped and it was considered an act of treason and in fact a claim to the throne to do that. And so David says, I'm not going to treat them as concubines anymore, I'm going to treat them as widows. So he takes his responsibility to care for them, to feed them, but doesn't treat them as, basically wives and concubines are similar. We don't use that word concubine that much anymore. But what a concubine was, was basically a slave that you purchased as a wife. In the Old Testament times, if you had a wife, what you did is she was your social status, your social equal, and you would go to her father and you'd make the arrangements for marrying her. Usually pay a dowry and those kinds of things. For a concubine, what you would do is she was owned by someone else as a slave girl, and you would go to her slave owner and say, I want to marry her. Sell her to me. And you'd marry her. Okay, so the difference between a wife and a concubine has to do with social status primarily. In other words, you purchased a concubine, you made a wedding agreement with a wife's father. So in other words, concubines, there was no family deal going on. So you have to understand, many times people married, it's very hard for us to understand this because people married not primarily for romance only, but they married also for connections. In other words, I want to marry somebody from that family because that family's connected, my family's connected, that'll make both of our families stronger. And so we have to understand most marriages were arranged and there was no dating, there was no 18th century style courtship, there was nothing like that. It was a man saw a woman, talked to her for a little while, went to her father and said, I think I'd like to marry her. The father said, what will you pay me? They made a deal, and then if the father was a just man, and we find this, for example, with Rebecca and Laban, her brother, in that case, that they asked her, do you want to go and marry this person? So they gave her choice. She didn't have to go. They weren't selling her off into slavery. But this was the process. So when he has these concubines, these are women who are not of his same social status, but they had lived as wives. So what he does is he pays for their living, but here he no longer treats them as wives because of the fact that they had been abused by Absalom. And what we have to understand is that this is a passage that is really very much a part of their culture. You shouldn't find anything about this. There's nothing about modern marriage that you can learn principally from that verse. Do you follow what I'm saying? There's nothing about modern marriage you can find principally. One, you're not a king, men. As much as you think you are, you're not. Two, you don't have concubines. If you're married, you have a wife, and it's a very different status. Three, what David is doing here is very much a part of that ancient Near Eastern culture, and it has to do with claims to the throne and all kinds of things. Verse four, then said the king to Amasa, assemble me the men of Judah within three days and be thou here present. So Amasa went to assemble the men of Judah, but he tarried longer than the set time which he had appointed him. So remember, Amasa had been the general of Absalom's army. He was connected in Judah. David had reached out to him and he'd made him the king to solidify his stance in the tribe of Judah. And he tells Amasa, okay, you're in charge of the army now. You take three days and put together an army so we can go fight Sheba. But the problem is either Amasa is incompetent or he's not fully loyal. Something happens and Amasa doesn't put an army together in the amount of time David wanted him to put one together. And David said to Abishai, now notice David is avoiding talking to Joab. Normally he would have given this job to Joab. And Joab was very good at these things. Okay? For Joab's flaws, his flaws are not in military command. He's a good military commander. And we can understand this. There's times in American history that we had men who were good military commanders, but you wouldn't necessarily want to be close friends with them or emulate them in other areas. Patton would be an example of that during World War II. All right. You know, during World War II, he smacked a soldier who was what they called shelled shocked back then, but we'd maybe call it PTSD. And FDR punished him for it, took his command away from him. Adolf Hitler didn't even believe that was true. He thought it was fake because he thought there's no way that the American president is going to take his best general and take his command away. But America behaved a little differently than Nazi Germany, and so they did that, right? Was he a great general? Yes. Was he a nice person? Not so much. Okay? Joab's kind of like that. What we find here is Joab is a man who's brutal, he's violent, he's self-serving, and he's now killed David's son. So David's just not having a lot of dealings with him. So he talks to Joab's brother, Abishai. Now you have to remember who Abishai really kind of... Joab's in charge of the army, but it appears, as we kind of fit these pieces together, that Abishai has some role with David's mighty men. Okay? That he has some role in putting together those mighty men of David that have been loyal to him since the days he was fleeing from Saul. In other words, we might take too long here. He's going to have too big of an army. He'll get fortified. In this rebellion, Absalom was a personal threat to David, but Absalom was not going to divide the kingdom down the middle. If Absalom had succeeded, there still would have been one nation. ruled by Absalom instead of David. But here, if Sheba succeeds, there's going to be two nations, a northern nation of Israel and a southern nation of Judah. Now that eventually does happen under David's grandson, but David is trying to avoid that here. Take thou thy Lord's servants, in other words, the mighty men, and pursue after him, lest he get him fenced cities and escape us. In other words, I don't know where Amasa is, and he's not putting together the armies of Judah, so I need you to take the mighty men and you go after him. In other words, this is the special forces. These are the men, they're the professional soldiers, they're the men who are able to go out and fight. And there went out after him Joab's men, and the Cherethites, and the Pelethites, David's elite men and all the mighty men and they went out of Jerusalem pursue after Sheba the son of Bichri. So what happens is you find these elite soldiers of David go out and they're going to go hunt down Sheba before he gets too strong. Now, here's what's being described. The King James word for girdle is a belt. Okay, this is a leather belt. So in other words, he's wearing a garment, he has a belt on, and the belt has a dagger in it. And he made it in such a way that when he bent over it would fall into his hand if he wanted it to. Okay? And he doesn't like Amasa. Amasa has taken his job. Amasa's now doing a lousy job as general. Amasa helped lead Absalom's rebellion. Joab doesn't like Amasa. And Joab has one way that's been pretty efficient throughout all of his life to get what he wants. Kill people. That's what he does. Okay? So what Joab decides is, I can solve the problem of this incompetent Amasa, and I can get my job back. And so here's what he does. And Joab said to Amasa, art thou in health, my brother? Now remember, they're both men who are leaders in Israel. And Joab took Amasa by the beard with the right hand to kiss him. So they would greet with a kiss. So he comes up, are you healthy? How are you doing? So in some cultures of the world, And it used to be that way in much of America, too, especially in rural America. Even if you didn't know somebody, you ask them about their health and their family and everything else. All right? I remember being in Africa years ago with one of our missionaries. We pulled into a gas station. And we pulled into the gas station. And the missionary starts talking to the gas station attendant who was full service, who pumped the gas. And he starts talking to them. And he's talking to them in the African language. And they're talking and going back and forth. 10 minutes of conversation. And then he hands him some money, and the guy goes and pumps the gas. I said, oh, do you know him? He said, no, I've just met him. I said, well, what were you talking about? He said, well, in this culture, you drive up, and you say, hi, how are you? Are you healthy? Are you feeling well? How about your parents? Are they healthy? Your wife and children, are they doing well? And you have this long conversation with them. And then at the end of the conversation, you say, and since I'm here, why don't you fill it up with gas? You make it all about the person and not about the exchange. See, in our culture, it's now we don't even talk to people when we buy gas, right? Pull up, pull this little piece of plastic out of our wallet, swipe it in this thing, pump the gas, and go away. And in a certain way, we view that as an advantage because it's quicker, and two, I don't have to wait in line behind the guy buying lottery tickets. Okay? But we also lose something in our culture, and that is that there's not as much community as there once was. that many of you, if you grew up even in Winter Garden, you know, and it was a smaller town, you knew everybody in town. You knew who owned which store and, you know, there were days that, in many small towns in America, that you'd go into a shop and you'd put a few things on the counter and you'd pull out your money and say, oh, I can't pay that one right now, I don't have enough money for it. And the shop owner knew you and said, you're good for it, next time you come in, pay me. Now, that's not gonna happen at Lowe's. Right? You either pay or you don't take it. That's the way it works. But in a small town, you see, so there used to be more of that. And that's exactly how this was. He's coming up to him, calls him brother. He greets him. He's going to give him a greeting with a kiss. But in all of this, he's planning to kill him. And Joab took Amasa by the beard with the right hand to kiss him. But Amasa took no heed to the sword that was in Joab's hand. In other words, when he bends down to kiss him, he lets that sword fall into his hand. So he smote him therewith in the fifth rib. Now that's a King James way to say, or a Hebrew idiom to say, in the abdomen. All right? and he shed out his bowels to the ground and struck him not again and he died." In other words, it only took one stroke and he basically killed him. I mean, not to be too disgusting, but basically what the text is saying is he disemboweled him. He just cut him open and left him there to die. It's pretty gruesome, okay? This isn't even a merciful way to kill the man. I mean, it's not like a stab to the heart or something like that. He just lets him there bleed out. So Joab and Abishai, his brother, pursued after Sheba the son of Bichri. So they're like, okay, we took care of Amasa, we're gonna go on. And one of Joab's men stood by him and said, he that favoreth Joab and he that is for David, let him go after Joab. Joab's in charge now, let them follow Joab. If you're for David, you're for Joab, let's go. Because Joab's been David's general all these years, so that seems natural to people. And Amasa wallowed in his blood in the midst of the highway. And when the man saw that all the people stood still, he removed Amasa out of the highway into the field and cast a cloth upon him when he saw that every man that came by him stood still." In other words, here's your general bleeding out. People are like, whoa, we better stop to help him. They said, no, pay no attention to this. They drag him off the road and throw a cloak over him so that people don't see who he is. I mean, this is just cold-blooded murder. There is not a justifiable reason to do this. This is not in battle. This man is not a rebel. This is not, what we find here is Joab wants his job, so he kills him. That's all that is to it. All right? This is why David describes these men as men of blood, because they solved problems with the sword, and they were good at it. It worked for them with violence. All right? And when he was removed out of the highway, all the people went on after Joab to pursue after Sheba, the son of Bichri. And he went through all the tribes of Israel and to Abel and to Bethmayachah and all the Beorites. And they were gathered together and went also after him. And they came and besieged him in Abel of Bethmayachah. And they cast up a bank against the city, and it stood in the trench. And all the people that were with Joab battered the wall to throw it down. What we find here is Joab put some siege works. They lay siege to the city of Abel. Alright? So he lays siege to it because Sheba's in there. Now it's really interesting because this section on Absalom's rebellion begins with David bringing back Absalom. And who's involved in that process? Joab. But who does Joab engage to have this happen? A wise woman from Tekoa that he pays to come and tell a story to David to convince him to bring Absalom back. Do you remember this? So, the Absalom rebellion begins with the involvement of a wise woman, and now, even though Absalom's dead, this is the remnants of his rebellion, is going to end with a wise woman. And what we actually have here is, this is actually not a criticism of women. What it is, is it's showing that there's more than one kind of power. There's a kind of power that Joab has that he uses a sword to carry it out, and that kind of power has its limits and moral questionability to it. Okay, let's note this. War is a terrible thing. There may be times that it's necessary to wage war to protect yourself. But it is a terrible thing. God did not make us to kill each other. God didn't create us to kill each other. All right, it's an awful thing. Anybody who's been in war, there may be men in this room who've been in war. Anybody who's been in war will tell you that's not something they want to repeat. I remember asking my grandfather who served in the Second World War in Europe, European theater during World War II. And I remember asking him, he was in the Black Forest and they started taking shells from the Germans. And he was a medic, combat medic, and so he was administering morphine primarily and some first aid to men who had been wounded. He said it was a terrible scene because the German shells would come in and they would explode and the shrapnel from the shell would go everywhere. But when they would hit a tree, they would turn the tree into wooden shrapnel and the pieces would fly everywhere and wound and injure men. It was terrible. And so he was taking cover behind a tank, because a tank's pretty good cover from things, especially when the shots are coming in. You know, bullets, you can get your head down. When things are raining in from above, you just don't know where to hide. So he's hiding behind a tank, and he hears a wounded man in the road cry, medic. So he knows it's his job to get out from behind. the tank and he runs out to the road. As he's running out there, he's got his medical kit with him. He sees a jeep slowly driving up the road and he said the next thing he remembered was he woke up on his back. The jeep was gone. It was a direct hit from the German shell. And he rolled over, went to reach for his med kit, and realized he couldn't move his right hand because it had nearly been blown off by the shrapnel from the shell. So if you were to meet him today, he's still alive. He's 95 years old. Well, he's 94. He'll be 95 this year. You would see his right hand is Because of scar tissue and some things, he's got some limitations of the movement in his right hand. His VA doctor told him, he said, you know, if this happened to you during the Vietnam War, you would have had full use. You'd had some big scars, but you'd had full use of your hand. He said, if it happened to you in Iraq today, you'd have scars so small, people would hardly notice them. Because medicine has gotten so much better since then. But back then, they just hoped to save the hand, and they stitched it back together and had to take bones from other places and move them around and stuff in his hand to put him back together. But I remember asking him. After that, he was sent to a military hospital. Then eventually, when he healed up there, they put him on a military ship on the way home. And by the time he pulled into port in New York Harbor, the war had ended. So the war had just ended in Europe. And he said, they're pulling into New York Harbor. And he said, of course, you see the skyline. But the first thing you also see is Lady Liberty as you come into New York Harbor. And he said, at the time, because the war had ended, there were fireboats. And they could shoot the water. And if you've ever seen that in New York, the fireboats can shoot the water. And they had dyed the water red and blue so that it looked like red, white, and blue as the fireboats were spraying. And these hospital ships were coming in. And men were coming back. And his infantry unit was being re-geared up to go to the Pacific. But I asked him, I said, now, after you got injured, were you sorry? Did you wish you could go fight more Germans? He said, no, not really. He said, I did my part. I'm glad I did my part. He said, I wasn't a coward. I did everything I was called to do. He said, but war is a terrible thing, and I was ready to be done with it. I said, right, that's true. And just about any person that has been through war gives that same kind of answer. Job doesn't think of war as a terrible thing. He thinks of it as a great tool for himself. I mean, he's won himself money, honor, prestige, by being a great warrior. And I thank the Lord for men who protect us. I don't think I'm denigrating that, but Job's bloodthirsty. So that's one kind of power, but we're going to find another kind of power here. We have to understand, in the ancient world, women didn't go out to war. All right, they simply didn't. The physical strength differences made that very unwise. OK, and so physical strength and those kinds of things in sword fights were a bigger difference than they would be today, say, with rifles and things of that nature. And so they didn't go out to war. But here we're going to find a woman who exercises power, but she does it through wisdom. She does it through wisdom. She stops a rebellion, not by the force of a sword, and she saves the lives of the people of her city, not through the force of a sword, but through wisdom. Then cried a wise woman out of the city, here, here, say I pray you unto Joab, come near hither that I may speak with thee. She calls from the walls of the city and says, tell Joab to come over here so I can talk to him. I want to have a conversation with him. And this wasn't unusual. When a military commander would make demands to the city, he would often stand a distance from the wall and talk. You know, under a flag of truce kind of idea, with the people in the city and say, if you give up, we'll be merciful to you. All you have to do is meet these demands, etc. And that's exactly what's going on here. But notice here, the Lord is giving us this for a reason. Obviously, this is what happened, but it's not a mistake that what we see here is the opposite of a soldier like Joab. It's a wise woman, rather than a soldier like Joab. And when he was come near unto her, the woman said, Art thou Joab? And he answered, I am he. Then said she unto him, Hear the words of thine handmaid. And he answered, I do hear. So she says, Are you Joab? He says, I'm Joab. And she says, Will you listen to my words? Will you give me a hearing? And he says, I'm here. I'm listening. Then she spake, saying, They were wont to speak an old time, saying, They shall surely ask counsel at Abel. So they ended the matter." In other words, there used to be a proverb in Israel that said the wise people are in Abel. If you want advice, go to Abel and get it. I am one of them that are peaceable and faithful in Israel. Thou seekest to destroy a city and a mother in Israel. Why wilt thou swallow up the inheritance of the Lord? Why would you kill me, a mother in Israel? Why would you destroy my city, a place known for wisdom? I've been faithful. I support David. Why are you here to destroy our city and mar the inheritance of the Lord? This is part of, I mean, why should Israelites be killing each other? And Joab answered and said, far be it, far be it from me that I should swallow up or destroy. He says, I don't want to destroy your city. Now even though war is quite effective for Joab, he also does realize that if you can win the battle without people dying, that works better too. He's not a fool in that sense. The matter is not so, but a man of Mount Ephraim, not Ephraimite, Sheba, the son of Bichri by name, hath lifted up his hand against the king, even against David. Deliver him only, and I will depart from the city. And the woman said unto Joab, behold, his head shall be thrown to thee over the wall." Pretty gruesome. But she says, if that's all it takes, all you want is Sheba's head, I think I can convince the people in the city of that. Now, this might sound barbaric. But you have to understand, this was the day and age they lived in. This was the guarantee. This is how you know he's dead. You want to know if Sheba's dead? He's not going to walk out willingly. What they're doing, they're actually carrying out justice here. He's a rebel. He's committed treason against the king. He's worthy of death. They're just going to carry out the death penalty and turn over the remains that show that it's been done. Now, I'm not saying we ought to take up this tactic today. Okay? But it was their custom. This was a fairly effective way to show that the man had been dealt with. And she's saving a lot of lives. In other words, the demand is, make sure this rebel who's a traitor against David and against the kingdom and against God, ultimately, because David is God's chosen king, make sure this man is turned over to us and we'll leave you alone. And she says, done. That's all you need? Is to turn over the criminal? Done. See, she's not called a wise woman for no reason. And notice another kind of power here. She has the power to end this battle with her words of wisdom. See, violence isn't the only way to accomplish things. Violence isn't the only way to accomplish things. Now I realize that there may be occasions in which you just can't reason with certain people. If somebody's charging you to kill you, it's not, well, let's talk. That probably may not go so well. I recognize that. But on the other hand, we can recognize that there's more than one kind of power here, and there is power in wisdom. Then the woman went to all the people in her wisdom. So remember, this man took shelter in the city because he's got some followers there, and they've given him shelter. So she's got to convince the city to turn on him. And they cut off the head of Sheba the son of Bichri and cast it out to Joab. And he blew a trumpet and they retired from the city, every man to his tent. And Joab returned to Jerusalem unto the king. So what we find here is that this rebellion has ended. But notice how awful this rebellion has been. The rebellion started with Absalom because he was self-serving and power hungry and wanted to be the king. He was going to be the king someday anyway. He just wanted to be the king early. And get revenge on his father. Because he was mad at David. Then, when that fails, what we find is this other opportunist, man with no character, decides to take up the rebellion himself, and he ends up losing his life. How many people died? See, again, the rebellion is never viewed as a positive thing. The rebellion is never viewed as a positive thing. Rebellion isn't the way that the Lord calls us to deal with problems. Like I said, there are biblical principles for dealing with tyranny, but they're not rebellions. But there's a part of our fallenness that wants to be a rebel. It's kind of cool to be a rebel. I get to do what I want. I get to be in charge. and these kinds of things. And we romanticize that in our culture, but the Bible doesn't romanticize that. It condemns rebellion, whether it's Sheba or whether it's Absalom. These cost the lives of a lot of people. I read a news article recently that there was a flight attendant, and she was checking people in for a flight. She was in California, and she was checking people in for a flight to New York. And these two teenage girls, 17 years old, were checking in for the flight. Now, they were old enough to fly unattended because they were 17 years old. But she noticed they had first class one-way tickets, which was very unusual. And they only had a carry-on bag, which a one-way ticket to New York with a carry-on bag is a very unusual situation. So she started asking the girls questions. She said, where are you going? We're going to New York. To meet whom? Well, we met this guy online. And he bought us these tickets and said he'd get us modeling jobs in New York if we flew out there. Well, the flight attendant, having worked for the airlines for 25 years, realized there's something fishy about this. And she called the sheriff's department. And they came and talked to these girls. And then the sheriff's department, through the social media, through Instagram, through the way the man had contacted these girls, they reached out to him. And all his social media things disappeared. He erased them all. Well, it's clear what was going on. He was going to abuse those girls in some fashion. But you know what? They both lied to their parents and said, I'm going to go spend the night at my friend's house. So each set of parents thought the other girl was at their friend's house. And they would have gotten in a lot of grief if they had followed through on that. But they thought that little rebellion against their parents was no big deal. We're just going to go have fun in New York. No, you're not going to have any fun in New York. It would have been a terrible situation. It's a nightmare situation that it was probably brewing there. All right, so even though it sounds like, you know, it's just a little rebellion against parents, it could land somebody in a lot of trouble. We all know these nightmare kind of scenarios, and we've read about them in the paper. Thankfully, they're not everyday occurrences for most of us, but they do happen. And that kind of rebellion is a terrible thing. Those girls thought that that just little rebellion wasn't a big deal, but it could have led, thankfully there was a wise adult there who made a good choice, but it could have led to a terrible, terrible outcome. They could have ended up dead, could have ended up sold into trafficking and all kinds of things. Thank God that didn't happen. So rebellion is condemned in the Scriptures. So whether it's children against parents, whether it's adults against government, whether it's, you know, the Lord doesn't call us. I might get frustrated with things about the United States government at times. But the solution isn't, you know, go burn down the White House. That's not what the Lord calls us to do. There are solutions. There are biblical ways to deal with it. But rebellion, in that sense of the word, as we find in this passage, is not it. Verse 23. Now we get to this last section, and what we find is this last section, it looks just like a list to us, but you have to remember what it's saying. It's saying that proper governance has been reinstated in Israel. David's back on the throne and the kingdom is back to running the way it should run. Now, Joab was overall the host of Israel, so what we find is Joab's general again. He's the commander again. And Benaiah, the son of Jehoiada, was over the Cherethites and over the Pelethites. These are David's key soldiers. And Adoram, or as we find also Adoniram, was over the tribute. The idea here is that's the forced labor. And Jehoshaphat, the son of Ahilad, was recorder. So he's the scribe, he records the events within the court. And Sheva, was scribe. And it's interesting because they've chosen to go with this Shiva pronunciation rather than Sheba here, so we don't confuse these two men. Shiva was scribe. So we have a scribe, we have a court recorder, and Zadok and Abiathar were the priests. And Ira also, the Jairite, was a chief ruler about David. And so what we find here is, here's this chief ruler about David. He appears to be some kind of vizier or something like that. We don't understand exactly how it was all ordered, but don't notice this, okay? You've got a commander of the army. You have a commander over David's mighty men. You have somebody running the forced labor. Remember, there's building projects and things going on. You have, and the forced labor wouldn't have been Israelites primarily. Many, much of it probably was was people who had been captured in battles and things like that. I'm not advocating that, saying it's a good thing, but just to give us an idea of what was going on. Then you have people keeping records in the court, and then you have somebody who's helping manage, as a steward if you would, the whole government. It's a pretty busy job for one king to keep track of. So notice when we get to the end of chapter 20, what we find is things are back to stability. For the rest of David's reign, there's no more rebellions. at this point. It's back to a stable setting again. But this has been an awful time. This has been an awful time from the time of the sin with Bathsheba. And remember, after Nathan meets with David, he says, all of these things are the things that were going to happen. This is what's going to happen to you. There's going to be bloodshed in your family. It's going to be terrible. And that's exactly what happens here. This was all the results, the consequences of David's sin. He, I'm sure, Had he known all this, would have thought twice on the rooftop. But what happens is we tend not to have foresight when we sin. We tend not to think about the consequences, we only think of the sin. Because the consequences tend to be significant and more significant than we expect them to be. But here, we see God's grace. God has graciously reinstated David's rule in his kingdom. Because David throughout this has been a man after God's own heart. Remember the question throughout 1 and 2 Samuel is what kind of man should be the king of Israel? What kind of man is qualified? And it's a man after God's own heart. What is that? Somebody who recognizes that he answers to God, that he doesn't exercise authority merely on his own, he exercises it under God. Now remember, the time that he failed to do that, his sin with Bathsheba, stealing another man's wife, and then having that man killed, exercising his kingly commander-in-chief authorities to have the woman's husband killed, when he exercises authority that way, is when it brings judgment on him. But all up until this time, before his sin with Bathsheba, what we find is David exercising authority, and every time he goes to battle or does something else, he asks the Lord, how should I do this? What do you want me to do? Recognizing that God was the ultimate king. Now, was Absalom going to be a ruler like that? No, he was an egomaniac. Was Sheba going to be a ruler like that? No. He was one that didn't even know the Lord, didn't fear God, and didn't have character. And so as flawed as David is, it comes back to David, and God shows his grace to him. Now, ultimately, when we get to this, we say, what kind of man ultimately can rule Israel? Here's a flawed one, but there is a greater son of David that is without flaws. Right? Jesus Christ. That there is going to be a son of David who rules forever on the throne of his father David, and that's Jesus. And in the best days of David, things were good. But when Jesus rules and reigns, they'll be perfect. And so we see in this passage a pointing forward to Christ. Interestingly as well, we see the role that these two wise women played, and both of them play a positive role. In this whole narrative, But in the same way, we have women that play a role in the narrative of Christ. I don't know if you've realized this, but the first century Roman world was a very male-dominant, male-centric culture. And so, for example, women's testimonies were not considered equal to men's in court. But yet the Gospels record that the first people to see the resurrected Christ are whom? Women. See, if you were making up details to try to justify it, that's not the detail you would make up. You'd say, there were these three really wise men walking there. You wouldn't say, oh, these women were there, because we were like, that doesn't count as testimony. In that culture, it doesn't count. But the fact is that we find women exalted to a role here, all the way from way back in Genesis 3.15, that it's not, it doesn't say that Adam is gonna crush the head of the serpent, it's one born to Eve who will someday crush the head of the serpent. From Eve to Mary, to Mary Magdalene, we find these women playing a role. And here they're playing a role in David's life, but later we find wise women, godly women playing a role in the life of the greater son of David, Jesus. And this is a very positive thing. In other words, Christianity has exalted the status of women. In our culture today, people think of Christianity as chauvinistic and anti-feminism and anti-women, but the fact is that everywhere Christianity has gone, things got better for women. They simply did. Their status moved up. That women in the in the Christian world started to have a higher place. Because they were viewed as made in the image of God. Jesus died to save men and women. And there's this great place for women as equals to men, made in God's image, redeemed by Christ. And here we find these women playing a role. The mighty men aren't able to solve this as well as this wise woman. So we have this wonderful truth from God. Let's go ahead and bow our heads.