1 Kings 1, and you might wonder why I'm going to be reading the name Jehovah three syllables rather than Yahweh two syllables. Well, I've always been skeptical of the establishment position on that name, especially since every time the word Jehovah occurs in the Hebrew, it's Jehovah, or Yehowah if you want to do it the Hebrew not Yahweh and it's a pretty long convoluted arguments as to why they came up with that but I've got a paper if you're curious in reading that. I am going to back up just a little bit more than what's in the bulletin and start reading in context at verse 5. Then Adonijah the son of Haggath exalted himself saying I will be king And he prepared for himself chariots and horsemen and 50 men to run before him. And his father had not rebuked him at any time by saying, why have you done so? He was also very good looking. His mother had borne him after Absalom. Then he conferred with Joab, the son of Zeruiah, and with Abiathar, the priest. And they followed and helped Adonijah. But Zadok, the priest, Benaiah, the son of Jehoiada, Nathan, the prophet, Shimei, Ray, and the mighty men who belonged to David were not with Adonijah. And Adonijah sacrificed sheep and oxen and fattened cattle by the stone of Zoheleth, which is by Enrogel. He also invited all his brothers, the king's sons, and all the men of Judah, the king's servants, but he did not invite Nathan the prophet, Benaiah the mighty, Benaiah, the mighty men, or Solomon, his brother. So Nathan spoke to Bathsheba, the mother of Solomon, saying, have you not heard that Adonijah, the son of Haggith, has become king? And David, our Lord, does not know it. Come, please, let me now give you advice that you may save your own life and the life of your son Solomon. Go immediately to King David and say to him, did you not, my Lord, O King, swear to your maidservant saying, assuredly your son Solomon shall reign after me and he shall sit on my throne? Why then has Adonijah become king? Then while you are still talking there with the king, I also will come in after you and confirm your words. So Bathsheba went into the chamber to the king. Now the king was very old and Abishag, the Shunammite, was serving the king. And Bathsheba bowed and did homage to the king. Then the king said, what is your wish? Then she said to him, my lord, you swore by Jehovah your God to your maidservant saying, assuredly, Solomon, your son shall reign after me and he shall sit on my throne. So now look, Adonijah has become king. And now my Lord the King, you do not know about it. He has sacrificed oxen and fattened cattle and sheep in abundance and has invited all the sons of the King, Abiathar the priest and Joab the commander of the army, but Solomon, your servant, he has not invited. And as for you, my Lord, O King, the eyes of all Israel are on you that you should tell them who will sit on the throne of my Lord the King after him. Otherwise it will happen. When my Lord the King rests with his fathers, that I and my son Solomon will be counted as offenders. And just then while she was still talking with the King, Nathan the prophet also came in. So they told the King saying, here is Nathan the prophet. And when he came in before the King, he bowed down before the King with his face to the ground. And Nathan said, my Lord, O King, have you said Adonijah shall reign after me and he shall sit on my throne? For he has gone down today, and has sacrificed oxen, and fattened cattle, and sheep in abundance, and has invited all the king's sons, and the commanders of the army, and Abiathar the priest. And look, they're eating and drinking before him, and they say, Long live King Adonijah. But he has not invited me, me your servant." nor Zadok the priest, nor Benaiah the son of Jehoiada, nor your servant Solomon. Has this thing been done by my Lord the King and you have not told your servant who should sit on the throne of my Lord the King after him?" Then King David answered and said, "'Call Bathsheba to me.' So she came into the king's presence and stood before the king and the king took an oath and said, As Jehovah lives, who has redeemed my life from every distress, just as I swore to you by Jehovah, God of Israel, saying assuredly Solomon, your son shall be king after me and he shall sit on my throne in my place. So I certainly will do this day. Then Bathsheba bow with her face to the earth and paid homage to the king and said, let my Lord King David live forever. And King David said, call to me Zadok the priest, Nathan the prophet, and Benaiah the son of Jehoiada. So they came before the king. The king also said to them, take with you the servants of your Lord and have Solomon my son ride on my own mule and take him down to Gihon. There let Zadok the priest and Nathan the prophet anoint him king over Israel and blow the horn and say, long live King Solomon. Then you shall come up after him, and he shall come and sit on my throne, and he shall be king in my place. For I have appointed him to be ruler over Israel and Judah. Benaiah, the son of Jehoiad, I answered the king and said, Amen. May Jehovah, God of my Lord the king, say so too. As Jehovah has been with my Lord the king, even so may he be with Solomon, and make his throne greater than the throne of my Lord King David. So Zadok the priest, Nathan the prophet, Benaiah the son of Jehoiada, the Cherithites and the Pelethites went down and had Solomon ride on King David's mule and took him to Gihon. Then Zadok the priest took a horn of oil from the tabernacle and anointed Solomon and they blew the horn and all the people said, long live King Solomon. and all the people went up after Him, and the people played the flutes and rejoiced with great joy, so that the earth seemed to split with their sound. Amen. Father God, we thank You for Your Word, and it is our desire to honor You, to please You with the responses that we have to it. In Jesus' name, Amen. Well, last week I examined verses 5 through 10 with primarily making applications to family. And it was titled Camouflage Sin, and that's a pretty scary case for the general way that sin is at work. But the primary message of this whole chapter is political. Yes, there is family involved, the family of David, and so it was legitimate for making applications last week. But it's a political chapter, and today I want to apply the same section to conspiracies in civil government. That will be point number one. And then the second and third points will bring the encouraging news that our God is a conspiracy buster. Now when I say a conspiracy buster, I do not mean that God disproves conspiracies and says there's no such thing as conspiracies. On the contrary, I mean by God being a conspiracy buster, that God scoffs at conspiracies. He exposes their secret meetings. He frustrates their purposes. Psalm 2, which we're going to be singing immediately after the sermon, makes clear that conspiracies have always existed and yet Christ will triumph over them. And I love what Gary North wrote in his book, Conspiracy, A Biblical View. He wrote, there have been many conspiracies in history, A few gain power for a while, most of them lose from the beginning. These conspiracies have a model, the satanic conspiracy against God. They rely on secrecy covered in a shell of public positioning. They promote hidden agendas. They all lose. One by one, they all lose. This is why Isaiah warned God's people You're not to say, it is a conspiracy in regard to all that those people call a conspiracy. And you're not to fear what they fear or be in dread of it. It is the Lord of hosts whom you should regard as holy and he shall be your fear and he shall be your dread. And I say, amen. I say amen to the idea that there are many conspiracies. It could not be otherwise if Satan truly is at war against God. I mean, he's in this cosmic battle for planet Earth, desperately trying to retain whatever kind of control that he can. And Christ is resting nation after nation, family after family out of his grip. So it could not be otherwise. But I say amen to the idea as well that all eventually fail in light of the fact that Jesus is sitting on his throne and he has been given all authority in heaven and on earth. In fact, he even causes the wrath of man to praise him. You see, Jesus can use Satan's actions against Satan's kingdom, just like in the book of Esther. You remember how Haman pretty much had his ways, but it ended up that the very gallows that Haman had used to hang Mordecai were used to hang Haman. And Jesus uses humanistic conspiracies to thwart other humanistic conspiracies. And for that matter, he uses conspiracies to discipline and motivate the church and to keep the church from longing for the approval of the world. But the thesis of Psalm 2 is that all conspiracies against Christ and His kingdom will eventually fail. And the main thesis of 1 Kings 1 is that God is in the conspiracy-busting business. So even though from a human perspective, we should be concerned about conspiracies, they're dangerous, they can't be ignored, yet from God's perspective, they're so easily exposed and destroyed, just as Adonijah's conspiracy was exposed and destroyed. So let's start by highlighting some of the characteristics of the conspiracies that have existed over the past several thousand years. First of all, we see pride in verse five. Then Adonijah the son of Haggith exalted himself. Now almost all conspirators are impatient with God's process of leadership through service, through humble service. They exalt themselves. They do not have the patience of David. You see, David refused to take the throne even though God had anointed him until the people were ready to put him on the throne. And the people were ready to put him on the throne when they saw for years he had been so selflessly sacrificing, so selflessly and humbly serving. So David served, and I believe it is imperative that we not respond to the conspiracies in our culture and their prideful arrogance in like-minded pride. Gary North, toward the end of his book, gives some extremely wise advice to those who want to expose the evils in our national civil government. And he warns us, do not use the same prideful means that the conspirators do. He wrote, the principle of localism is fundamental. It has been the suicidal urge of political conservatives to focus on the big issues at the national level where their nearly invisible political opponents have long since mastered the art of deception. What we need is to develop skills on the local level before we can hope to defeat our opponents nationally. The county courthouse, the local school board, the city council, here are our initial targets. If we cannot win here, why should we expect to win nationally? Is it pride, which motivates good people with minimal skills to seek the highest offices first? The biblical principle of authority is clear. Success first in the family, then in the church, then in civil and social affairs. Success in the little things of life is to precede any attempts to master the big things of life. Now, I don't think I need to delve into that point any further. I think it should be fairly straightforward that Satan, whose chief sin was pride, is going to motivate leaders to prideful self-advancement, whereas God the Holy Spirit, whose chief leading characteristic is to point to Jesus, would motivate leaders to humility and service. And it's really a rare thing to find in politics. Next we see power. Verse 5 quotes Adonijah saying, I will be king. And this drive to power can be seen in every form of conspiracy. Sometimes it's hidden, camouflaged. The wife who is like Jezebel may look like she is serving her husband, but her goal is to control her husband. And if possible, to control the agencies her husband sits on through her husband. And it's a different manifestation of power, but it's still an issue of power. And then husbands who are like Ahab may look like they're henpecked husbands who have no power, but it's really not the case. They give in because they know what it takes to feel like a man, to feel like they're in positions of power. Ahab really got his way by pleasing others or manipulating others, but it's still an issue of power. Let me give you a couple of other examples. When the Church of Scientology engaged in all kinds of criminal behavior to intimidate, discredit, and even attempt to assassinate their chief critic, Paulette Cooper, it was an issue of power. Everything about Operation Daniel, Operation Dynamite, and Operation Freakout are related to power. They were exposed by the FBI. The propaganda about the second supposed incident in the Gulf of Tonkin was engaged in because President Lyndon Johnson did not have the votes and he did not have the public sentiment to be able to go into war in Vietnam. You see, the issues, the ultimate outcomes may be different, but conspiracies are almost always a quest for some kind of power and control. Gary North wrote, It has been the essence of conspiracies throughout history to substitute power for ethics and to substitute unrestricted power for limited authority. If one word summarizes the conspiratorial program, it is this one, centralization. In all things, the state is to be the preeminent power, the initiating agency, as well as the final court of appeal. And I'm not gonna take the time to look at every issue that I've listed for you there in your outlines, but I think if you study those verses that I've given, you will see these common things that you read about in conspiracies down through history, you'll see them here. For example, just as Absalom manipulated people over a period of time to get their support, Adonijah does exactly the same thing in verse five. Likewise, verse six, shows Adonijah using the very system that had benefited him to try to promote his conspiracy. And you see that in the phrase, and his father, which of course relates to David. If it had not been for David's sacrifices, Adonijah would be nowhere. He would not have the resources, the influence, the position to have even been able to attempt to overthrow his dad. And it's frustrating that those who have succeeded in overthrowing America's Christian roots and constitution have done so because they've benefited from the very freedoms that constitution and biblical law have given to them. They have done this over and over, and yet virtually all conspiracies, including those within the family, like Jezebel, use the very system that has benefited them to try to gain control. As Gary North words it, this is a conspiracy of insiders against outsiders, not the other way around. And you can look at the other points in your outline. You can see that this conspiracy really does parallel the other conspiracies in history. Uh, there was a misuse of liberty. But Nathan points out in verse 11, Adonijah is not planning to give Solomon and Bathsheba and David and any of the other people that are in that tight circle. He's not planning to give them the same liberty. No way. He's planning to kill them. And you see this issue over and over again. Solomon's willing to have mercy. Adonijah would not have had mercy. The GLBT conspiracy in America has used Christian freedoms and liberties to get into power, and the moment they get into power in any city council or any state, in the name of tolerance, they absolutely will not tolerate us. You see it in conspiracy after conspiracy. You see in Adonijah's conspiracy that charisma, attractiveness, other veneer issues camouflage the ugly dangers underneath. So verse five says he was also very good looking. Now conspiracies ordinarily are not gonna put forward their most ugly person. Maybe Bela Abzug of the ERA might be a possible exception, but normally they're gonna put the most good looking people forward. They're going to at least have a spokesman that will make it look a little bit better for them. Like other conspiracies, this one was pursued by an insider with other insiders. And Gary North has a lot to say about that in his book. Obviously, Adonijah was an insider working with other insiders. In verse 7, you see secrecy. I'll spend a little bit more time on this point because that's really at the essence of these conspiracies. Later in the chapter, you discover that David didn't have a clue of what was happening. Verse 7. Then he conferred with Joab the son of Zeruiah and with Abiathar the priest, and they followed and helped Adonijah." They were the brains behind this operation, okay? So they know certain things that they cannot communicate to the populace. And North points out that, quote, conspiracies rely on secrecy covered in a shell of public positioning. I saw that in our former denomination. We conservatives, we would have planning meetings just like the progressives did, but we conservatives always had open public meetings to which anyone was welcome, whereas the progressives who were taking over the denomination always had secret caucuses to which only people who were specifically invited were welcome. Now contrast that with the actions of Jesus. Jesus said, in secret I have said nothing. In secret I have said nothing. That's in John 18. So the Gospels portray the open ministry of Jesus versus the secret conspiracies of the Jewish leadership. And Jesus called his disciples to imitate him to have a very open policy of being a light, not hidden under a bushel, a light that everybody could see, to be a city set on a hill, not hidden in a valley, set on a hill. He was advocating an open sunshine kind of a policy, not the backroom deals that go on in both dominant political parties. Gary North said, a war is in progress. It is a war between light and darkness, truth and falsehood, ethics and power. It is also a war between two conflicting strategies, visible proclamation versus secret organization, public representation versus secret initiation. This war has been going on from the beginning, or at least one week after the beginning, It has been going on in human history since the serpent tempted Eve. Secrecy. Now, of course, not every aspect of a conspiracy can be secret or you wouldn't have very many followers. We already saw that Adonijah tested the waters with some public displays that really only a king should be involved in. And you might wonder, why would he show his hand by having these chariots and these horsemen and, you know, these 50 runners in front of him? He's obviously showing that he's got aspirations to do something there. Well, he's, we saw last week, testing the waters, but he's also wanting to attract followers who might side with him. So not everything he did was secret. Now the question is, is that a contradiction? And the answer is absolutely no. This is the way conspiracies have almost always worked. Gary North again. The conspirators always keep their program of long-term convergence relatively quiet. I say relatively. Since 1973, the Trilateral Commission has published its intention repeatedly to create a new world order. Doesn't this refute my contention that they are a conspiracy? Aren't all conspiracies always completely secret? No, they aren't. Adam Weishaupt's Illuminati were almost entirely secret, but as time goes on, the conspirators have become more open, especially the conspirators by execution. Hitler published Mein Kampf. Lenin published his intentions repeatedly. True, they did not announce their intention to liquidate specific numbers of specific groups, but they announced their general intentions. But hardly anyone in power believed them. Why not? Because the conspirators by manipulation always said that these were just verbal excesses. They really didn't mean it, so let's make a deal. But aren't all conspiracies through manipulation always secret all the time? No, they aren't. They are secret about some things. They were secret about the real intentions of the Federal Reserve System before it was voted into law in 1913. They were secret about the real intentions of the Federal Income Tax before it was voted into law, or more accurately, before voters were told that it had been voted into law in 1913. But some of their program has always been public. Their helpful guys image is carefully maintained. Nevertheless, prior to Dan Smoot's invisible government, 1962, the CFR kept an incredibly low profile. And the same has been true of virtually every conspiracy that I've studied in American history. George Grant, I think, has a wonderful book exposing Planned Parenthood's you know, secret meetings where eugenics was going to be used to try to get rid of the blacks and get rid of minorities, and then contrasting those secret meetings with what they put out as a public face. And that was radical enough, what they put out in public, but it made them popular. And I think it parallels in some ways what was secret and what was public with Adonijah. Adonijah was not about to tell everybody that he has plans to kill his dad and to kill his brother Solomon and Bathsheba and a few other people. I mean, that would not sit very well with the public. And so he tells Joab and Abiathar what they need to hear in order for him to succeed, but he tells the public what they want to hear. The ACLU too has had secret meetings for many things and then very public meetings on other issues. Years ago, I had a friend who was a mole in the American Humanist Association, and he would secretly tape record all of the meetings. And I've listened to those tapes. They are one of the most fascinating insights onto the secret meetings that go on, and then contrast that with the public meetings that the Humanist Association had. And actually, in one of those tapes, And I think I've mentioned this to you many, many years ago. Very encouraging to me because they said the most dangerous Christians in America, and this was back at the moral majority, they said, you don't need to worry about the moral majority. Yeah, they're popular right now. They're gonna fail. And he talked about the various groups. He said, the people that you need to fear are the Reformed Reconstructionists because they've got an absolute objective standard in the law of God. They've got an optimistic view about the future, and that's going to make them relentless in pursuing their goals. They're putting their plans to action. And so they said that we are the most dangerous. They were very discouraged in this meeting. We are the most dangerous people. And I'm thinking to myself, here we are, such a tiny minority, almost no Christians have heard of us. But these guys had, and they said in that meeting that they have to discredit us, they have to undermine us, they have to infiltrate, they have to do everything they can in the churches, in the civil government, in the media to discredit and put down the Reconstructionists. And they've been hard at work doing that for the last 30 years since I listened to that tape. But they also talked about what they should publicly disseminate in order to advance the cause of humanism and what things they had to keep secret. You see the same things in the GLBT community and other conspiracies against Christ. They've had this division between public statements, and they're often radical enough, and then the secret books and agendas that would have been Too radical for people in the sixties to have been comfortable with. And the success of these secret conspiracies has been very, very frustrating to American Christians and conservatives. And if you're one of those people who has been frustrated at how they've taken over America, how in the world could this be possible? I think you'll find the rest of this sermon to be very, very encouraging. The rest of this chapter. What we're gonna be seeing today is that God is in the business of busting conspiracies. He does so providentially, that'll be point number three. But he also does so by directly working in their lives by the Holy Spirit. Verse 11 says, so Nathan spoke to Bathsheba. Nathan is a tool in God's hand of providence, and we'll look at him under point number three. But I want to look behind him at what the Holy Spirit is doing. The Holy Spirit has sent Nathan the prophet to David. Why has He sent him? Now previously the Holy Spirit had sent Nathan the prophet to expose sins in David's life. And as frequently as the Holy Spirit exposes sin in your life and in my life, you might get the impression the only sins that the Holy Spirit's concerned about are exposing sins in His own people. Well, yeah, He is faithful to do that to us, but I want to read you a passage that shows one of the main purposes of the Holy Spirit from the time of Pentecost and on. John 16 and verses 6 through 11 say this, But because I have said these things to you, sorrow has filled your heart. Nevertheless, I tell you the truth. It is to your advantage that I go away. For if I do not go away, the helper will not come to you. But if I depart, I will send him to you. And when he has come, he will convict the world of sin and of righteousness and of judgment. Of sin, because they do not believe in me. Of righteousness, because I go to my father and you see me no more. Of judgment, because the ruler of this world is judged. The Holy Spirit exposes sin. And in that context, He is called our helper, which implies we too are called to expose sin in the world. So there's a connection between points two and point three, where God's people are involved and He providentially uses them. But don't forget that it was God who sent Nathan. King Jesus is taking over this world, and one of the functions of the Holy Spirit is to expose any sins that might frustrate Christ's purpose. And this is one of the things we can be praying for, that the Holy Spirit would expose evil as evil, just like He did in the book of Esther. You know, in that book, Haman gives his plan to the emperor, and the emperor thinks, okay, that's a great deal. He didn't have any problems with Haman opposing. Christians. He didn't really know what was going on. But then overnight, Haman gets exposed for being an absolute wretch, absolutely evil kind of a person. He's discredited. God is in the business of exposing what Satan doesn't want exposed. And if you have not read the book of Esther, you absolutely need to. It's one of the funnest stories in the whole Bible. And I think it's a great, great book on understanding God's providence. Anyway, Jesus warned His disciples, therefore whatever you have spoken in the dark will be heard in the light, and what you have spoken in the ear, in inner rooms, will be proclaimed on the housetops. That's Luke 12 verse 3. Now he's not talking about the final day of judgment. He is talking about exposing sin to the public from house stops. So the house stops are still around when there's this talking. It's not the end of history. He's talking about the Holy Spirit's work in history. And the point is that there is no conspiracy so powerful It's so powerful that the Holy Spirit cannot expose it. There is no secret so deep that the Holy Spirit cannot dig it up. You know, Moses told the leaders who thought they were getting away with their sin, he told them, be sure your sin will find you out. In Isaiah 28, Isaiah talks about the leaders of that day who were in civic office and thought that they were getting away with high crimes, that that is not what is happening. Not at all. God was using them for a purpose, for a time, and the citizens were shaking their heads. They were frustrated because it seemed like these civil leaders are just getting away with anything. They can get away with murder even, and nothing is happening to them. Had a hard time exposing these sins in high places. And anyway, Isaiah summarizes the confident attitude of those wicked government officials where they said, we have made lies our refuge and under falsehood, we have hidden ourselves. They too thought the public could never expose them. Just as it now seems impossible to take conspirators down in Washington, D.C., to Isaiah's contemporaries, it seemed impossible to take down conspirators who were hiding behind their lies. But God assures the populace of that day that even powerful conspiracies in government cannot remain secret forever. Who would have thought that Snowden would expose the things that he exposed? Who would have thought that other leaks in government from whatever source would have taken down some pretty powerful leaders in the past? Anyway, in verse 18 of Isaiah 28, God uses a metaphor for what's going to shortly happen to those conspirators in government. He said, the hail will sweep away the refuge of lies and the waters will overflow the hiding place. Yeah, they're hiding behind these lies. He says, I'll just take it all away, take their refuge away. And so the most important point of this whole story is the story behind the story. The story of God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit advancing the Davidic Kingdom, which is a type, a picture of the Messianic Kingdom of Christ. You see, Solomon has to get into power because he's going to be a symbol, a type of glories in the future that we've not even yet experienced. of peace on earth and of worldwide dominion. And so there is no conspiracy that's going to be able to stop Solomon from getting on the throne. And part of the Holy Spirit's work today is to expose sin and rebellion wherever such sin and rebellion will hinder the advance of Christ's kingdom. God did it through providence and through his people. And this is Roman numeral three. God often uses tools to engage in conspiracy busting. And Nathan the prophet was the first tool in God's hands. So verse 11, so Nathan spoke to Bathsheba, the mother of Solomon saying, have you not heard that Adonijah, the son of Haggith has become king and David, our Lord does not know it. Where did Nathan even find out about this advice? I've assumed, but can't prove it. I've assumed that the spirit revealed it to him, but he could have just been told it. You know, perhaps he had received a Snowden type leak of the scandal and he immediately acts. Every action of verses 1 through 49 had to be decisive and quick. There could be no hesitation. But the focus of our passage, interestingly, is not upon how he got that information, but on the fact that even Nathan, a prophet, did not take a hands-off, you know, church camp metal and political affairs, did not take a hands-off. No, he had to be involved. Nathan finds out about a political conspiracy. He immediately does something about it. And I wish that pastors today would act as decisively in writing letters and making phone calls and instructing and doing everything that they can to expose the Adonijahs of our day. There was a time when there were thousands of pastors in the black robe regiment. Now it was called a black robe regiment because the pastors back then wore these black robes. I always thought they're cool, but people would think I'm weird if I wore one of them. But these were not, these were the Geneva gowns. These were not the priestly robes that were worn in the Roman Catholic Church, which were white. These were the robes of scholars, the robes of teachers. And back then, The preachers knew enough about scripture and about politics to be worth listening to as teachers. Okay, they had a lot of advice to give. Preachers once knew how to apply the whole counsel of God to the whole of life. And until the church becomes informed in what the whole Bible says to the whole of life, and until ministers begin to become salt and light to our society once again, the Adonijah conspiracies will continue to prevail. But I believe even though we're small in number today, all it takes is one black-robed regiment preacher Providentially by the Holy Spirit connected to one person of influence and a world of trouble in America might be able to be averted. And of course Bathsheba was a woman of great influence in David's life and so it's providentially a good thing Nathan was able to connect with her. He tells her, come please, let me now give you advice that you may save your own life and the life of your son Solomon. Now how did he even know that their lives would be in danger It could have been a logical deduction, it could have been part of a Snowden-type informant, but it is more likely this was a revelation from the Holy Spirit. And to me this is encouraging because the Holy Spirit knows far more about what's going on behind the scenes, the evils, than we ever will. And we can have the confidence that when it serves his purposes, he can make sure that just enough information gets released from whatever source that it can make the bad guys go down big time. Anyway, this piece of information he is about to give is pretty serious charge against Adonijah. It's going to be his undoing. Verses 13 and 14. Go immediately to King David and say to him, did you not my Lord, O King, swear to your maidservant saying, assuredly your son Solomon shall reign after me and he shall sit on my throne? Why then has Adonijah become King? Then while you're still speaking there with the King, I also will come in after you and confirm your words. And Bathsheba does what she can to stop this conspiracy. Now she's only one person, and she might think, what can one person do? But she does what she can do. Verses 15 through 17. So Bathsheba went into the chamber to the king. Now the king was very old, and Abishag the Shunammite was serving the king. And Bathsheba bowed and did homage to the king. Then the king said, what is your wish? And she said to him, my lord, you swore by the Lord your God to your servant saying, assuredly Solomon, your son shall reign after me and he shall sit on my throne. So she is appealing to a vow that had been taken, just like we can appeal to vows that have been taken by politicians to the constitution. And she points out here that failure to do something would be a breaking of that promise. So now look, Adonijah has become king, and now my lord the king, you do not know about it. So she's assuming the best about him, that it's simply an issue of ignorance. But she goes on to speak of the crisis that is happening and quickly names three people who are not a part of the conspiracy. It's important for David to know who he can trust. And I think it's important for us as Christians to know, who can we trust in government? Who are the strict constitutionalists? And more importantly, who are the people who are biblicists, the Christians who are biblicists there? Anyway, she goes on in verse 19. He has sacrificed oxen and fattened cattle and sheep in abundance, and has invited all the sons of the king, Abiathar the priest, Joab the commander of the army. But Solomon, your servant, he is not invited. And as for you, my lord, O king, the eyes of all Israel are on you, that you should tell them who will sit on the throne of my lord the king after him. Otherwise it will happen when my lord the king rests with his fathers that I and my son Solomon will be counted as offenders. Now in this speech, without being offensive in the least, Bathsheba has made four things crystal clear to David. First, she has made it clear that he has lost touch with his kingdom, and he needs to act quickly. And there are a lot of people who have lost touch with what is happening in America, who don't realize how serious things are. It is imperative that people wake up. And actually, to me, a picture I have in my mind is the church is like David, shivering in bed with Abishag, and it's really scandalous that the church has been derelict, has dropped It's duty to our culture. So second, she has made it clear that Adonijah, Abiathar, Joab, and David's other sons are all involved to one degree or another in this conspiracy, and so he cannot depend upon them to help. She names names. And I think it is high time that we start naming names of the traitors in Washington, D.C., in state government, in city and county governments. It's past time for politeness. We live in critical times and conspirators need to be identified and exposed. Now, unfortunately, conservative Republicans, who I do not think are really the answer, don't even have the guts to vote against Boehner. You know, he gets brought in again. You take a look at that recent vote. It really makes me mad. There are so-called good guys who voted for him. He almost got ejected from his seat. But the good guys don't have the guts to stand up to traitors and to conspirators to expose them. And if we don't have the backbone and the will to name names and expose conspirators, we are not going to have the boldness to make a difference. Third, she makes it clear that Israel is not indifferent to what happens. She says, the eyes of all Israel are on you. Now some politicians fail to take any kind of decisive, bold actions like David takes in this chapter because they think that You know, the public is not going to stand behind them, and I think they underestimate the public. The public may be foolish, it may be stupid, and a lot of things that they do, but the public really does long for statesmen, not politicians. I think intuitively, the public despises politicians just as much as they despise those noblemen in Scotland in the movie Braveheart. We long for politicians who will take bold actions to defend God's law and to defend the Constitution. And so we can tell Christians the same words that Bathsheba told David. The eyes of Israel are on you. They really do want a leader and we can encourage our leaders to be bold. Fourth, she makes it clear that both she and Solomon are in danger of their lives since Solomon will be treated as a threat to the throne. And in the same way, conspiracies down through history have had a habit of dealing harshly with independent thinkers and critics. Okay, don't think that just because we have not been persecuted, we won't be persecuted in the future. If pastors keep quiet now, while they still have a chance to preach, they may not continue to have a chance to preach in the future. You saw that under Hitler's Nazism. And I really do find it offensive what that Pastor Chividian said recently from Coral Bridge Ministries, where he just blasted pastors who ever preach to social evils. He says, you cannot preach to social evils from the pulpit. And D. James Kennedy would just grieve if he knew who had taken over his role in that church. But if citizens keep quiet now when they have a chance to act with principle, they may not have opportunities to even vote for true constitutionalists in the future. If congressmen fail to act on principle, there may come a time when they cannot act. The dangers are real for the kind of totalitarianism that always tends to follow the victories of Adonijos. Verse 22 continues, and just then, while she was still talking with the king, Nathan the prophet also came in. So this is tag-teaming. And there needs to be tag-teaming. There needs to be a synergy of efforts and a uniting of Biblicists across the nation. Verse 23, so they told the king saying, here is Nathan the prophet. And when he came in before the king, he bowed down before the king with his face to the ground. And I want you to notice there were other people who were around. This is not a secret caucus. This is a public meeting. Verse 24, and Nathan said, my Lord, O king, have you said Adonijah shall reign after me and he shall sit on my throne? for he has gone down today, and has sacrificed oxen, and fattened cattle, and sheep in abundance, and has invited all the king's sons, and the commanders of the army, and Abiathar the priest. And look, they're eating and drinking before him. And they say, long live King Adonijah. But he's not invited me, me, your servant, nor Zadok the priest. nor Benaiah the son of Jehoiada, nor your servant Solomon. Has this thing been done by my Lord the King, and you have not told your servant who should sit on the throne of my Lord the King after him?" So Nathan arrives while she's still talking so that there could be no time to question or dispute what she is saying. God knows exactly what is needed in order to move David to action. And even though David has tended to be passive when it came to family issues, He was anything but passive when it came to the welfare of the kingdom. And so despite his frailty, despite his weakness, he demonstrates he still has a very sharp, very clear mind. And he takes four actions which will make it clear to everyone who his choice for king has been. First, he swears to Bathsheba in front of everyone. Then King David answered and said, call Bathsheba to me. So she came into the king's presence and stood before the king. And the king took an oath and said, as the Lord lives, who has redeemed my life from every distress, just as I swore to you by the Lord God of Israel, saying, assuredly, Solomon, your son, shall be king after me, and he shall sit on my throne in my place. So I certainly will do this day. Then Bathsheba bowed with her face to the earth and paid homage to the king and said, let my lord, King David, live forever. Then come the players, Zadok, Nathan, and Benaiah. King David said, ìCall to me Zadok the priest, Nathan the prophet, and Benaiah the son of Jehoiada.î So they came before the king. The king also said to them, ìTake with you the servants of your lord and have Solomon my son ride on my own mule and take him down to Gihon.î There Zadok the priest and Nathan the prophet anoint him king over Israel and blow the horn and say, ìLong live King Solomon.î Then you shall come up after him and he shall come and sit on my throne and he shall be king in my place for I have appointed him to be ruler over Israel and Judah. Benaiah the son of Jehoiad answered the king and said, amen. May Jehovah God of my Lord the king say so too. As Jehovah has been with my Lord the king, even so may he be with Solomon and make his throne greater than the throne of my Lord King David. So just to summarize what was going on there, he swears to Bathsheba in front of everybody. So it's a very public testimony. Then he summons men who will be able to stand up against Joab. Then he has Solomon placed on the king's mule. Now this is symbolic, I believe, for what David really wants to transpire in the aftermath of all of this mess here, because a mule was a sign of peace. A horse was a sign of war. And I think it helps to answer the critics who criticize David for his actions in chapter two. I think David actually has a balance between peace and mercy on the one side and taking definitive, immediate action to people who could be a danger and destroy the kingdom on the other side. I really do think there is a balance. And even this issue, he's saying, we want peace if we can have peace. And so there's a symbol that's going on here. Let's see here. Next, he has Solomon anointed with oil by the priest and by Nathan the prophet to make it very clear that this is not just David's pick of the next king. This is God's pick. Remember, way earlier, Nathan the prophet had already told him that he was to call Solomon's name Jedidiah, which means beloved of God, because he was going to be the next king. So this has been God's pick for king all along. And then finally he has Solomon sit on David's throne to show that he was already being given the full powers of a king, even though it was going to be a co-regency of David and Solomon until he dies. Solomon was thus invested with everything constitutionally needed or allowed that would enable him to deal with the rebellion and to hopefully avoid civil war. And this all must have transpired very, very quickly because the celebrations of verses 38 through 40 happened at the same time as the celebrations going on with Adonijah. Let's read verses 38 to 40. So Zadok the priest, Nathan the prophet, Benaiah the son of Jehoiada, the Cherithites and the Pelethites went down and had Solomon ride on King David's mule and took him to Gihon. Then Zadok the priest took a horn of oil from the tabernacle and anointed Solomon, and they blew the horn. And all the people said, Long live King Solomon. And all the people went up after him. And the people played the flutes and rejoiced with great joy so that the earth seemed to split with their sound." Now, with Jerusalem as a whole in on this celebration, it would be very hard for Adonijah to mount an offensive. This was brilliant thinking on the part of David And I think, again, it shows even though he was weak in body, he had a very, very sharp mind. Now next week, I hope to take verses 41 through to chapter two, verse nine, to contrast revolutionary overreaction to conspiracy with biblical principled handling of conspiracy. It's a remarkably measured response that I wish Republicans would embrace. Instead, Republicans typically want to oppose terrorism and other conspiracies with more control and more centralization. It's not a good thing. But I decided I wanted to end with verse 40 and not continue on with the rest of the chapter because of time, but also because I just want one main take-home issue for you today. And that is this, don't get paralyzed with the conspiracies in our nation. Realize that God can use conspiracies to wake up the church, to discipline the church, to oppose other tyrannies. In other words, they're simply pawns in God's hand. God is doing something with them, and I believe it's to discipline a nation that has become idolatrous. But ultimately, conspiracies are no match for King Jesus. That's the guarantee of Psalm 2, and that's the message of this section. God is in the conspiracy-busting business, and may we be willing participants with Him. Amen. Father, we thank you for your word, and we thank you that it does apply to all of life. And even though there's lots of issues in this chapter that we have not dealt with, I pray that we would be encouraged to have faith to expect great things from you and to attempt great things for you, that we would not be frightened into inaction by the size or by the advancement of the conspiracies that have happened in our nation. But instead, we would do our duty, trusting you with the outcome. We pray that you would bless this, your people, with faith. In Jesus' name, amen.