As we've been going through the series in 1 and 2 Samuel, we've been seeing that David had learned how to enter into the joy of the Lord even in the most difficult of circumstances. And we're going to be looking at one of the worst, 2 Samuel chapter 18. And the slice of bread we're going to look at today is verses 1 through 8. And David numbered the people who were with him and set captains of thousands and captains of hundreds over them. Then David sent out one third of the people under the hand of Joab, one third under the hand of Abishai, the son of Zeruiah, Joab's brother, and one third under the hand of Ittai, the Gittite. And the king said to the people, I also will surely go out with you myself. But the people answered, you shall not go out, for if we flee away, they will not care about us, nor if half of us die, will they care about us. But you are worth 10,000 of us now. For you are now more help to us in the city.' Then the king said to them, whatever seems best to you, I will do. So the king stood beside the gate and all the people went out by hundreds and by thousands. Now the king had commanded Joab, Abishai and Ittai saying, deal gently for my sake with the young man Absalom. And all the people heard when the king gave all the captain's orders concerning Absalom. So the people went out into the field of battle against Israel and the battle was in the woods of Ephraim. The people of Israel were overthrown there before the servants of David and a great slaughter of 20,000 took place there that day. For the battle there was scattered over the face of the whole countryside and the woods devoured more people that day than the sword devoured. Father, we thank you for your word, and as we dig into it, we pray that you would give your anointing on the preaching of the word, that it may be quickened by faith in our hearts, that you would help us to dig deeper into you, and that our character would be more and more conformed to the character of Christ. We love you, we want to grow in you, and we continue to worship as we look into your word. In Jesus' name, amen. When David fought against his son in this chapter, he was engaging in a very uncomfortable duty. We've already seen from past sermons that David really did not want to be involved in this battle. And if you take a look at verse 5, you will see that he asks the people to deal gently with Abishai. He really did not want, not Abishai, with Absalom. He really did not want to be fighting against Absalom, did not want to see him dead. And if you look at verse 33, you will see that when David gets news that his son has been killed, he was so deeply distressed, he goes into almost inconsolable mourning. In fact, he almost loses his sense of duty to the country because of this mourning and almost loses his throne. He really did not want to fight against Absalom and so the $100 question is, why did he do it? And I believe that he did it because of a heightened sense of duty. And I'll point out that David had this heightened sense of duty throughout most of his life. It was really this God-given sense of duty that made him fight under King Saul despite the fact that Saul misused and abused him. This sense of duty to country caused him to continue to be faithful to God and fight for the country even when he was a banished citizen. His sense of duty to his men made him faithful to them even when they were really being mean-hearted to him. And when you study his whole life from the perspective of the two Hebrew words that I've put into your bulletin inserts there, I think you will come to agree that David is an amazing, wonderful example of this God-given grace of duty and what it's all about. It was a sense of duty that made David pour out the water that his friends had gotten from Bethlehem. They just overheard him say, oh wow, I wish I could drink some water from Bethlehem. And they said, wow, let's go do it. And they go charging off to Bethlehem and they bring it back at great risk to their lives. And David pours it out before the Lord. He says it's like it was their blood. And that might have been initially surprising, but it was his sense of duty to his men that almost forced him to do that. That was a great sign of respect to them just as their giving of the water was their great sign of respect to David. But in any case, in this chapter, It was a heightened sense of duty that made David fight against Absalom, even while he was hoping upon hope that he could preserve Absalom's life, not his kingship, but his life. He fought because David was a God-appointed king who had a duty to God and to the nation. You see, Absalom was not a legitimate king, not in any way. We've already examined that. He was lawless. He would have brought disaster upon disaster upon his nation if he had ruled as king, and so David needed to protect his nation from Absalom's lawlessness. He knew that. Now, if you take a look in your outlines, you will see the dictionary definitions of the two Hebrew words for duty, mishmaret and ma'amad. And other dictionaries say that these words for duty have these nuances. an inward impulse to fulfill a stewardship held in trust, duty, obligation, to be devoted to a task or an office, required stance, place in life, to remain true to your calling, faithful to an agreement, charged to be kept, or a sense of moral obligation to do something. So when we speak of duty, we're not speaking about a task that somebody has given you to do. That's almost a misuse of the term duty. We could grudgingly do a task and not have a lick of this sense, this God-given sense of duty that the words are talking about. The two Hebrew words for duty are speaking of a deep compulsion to do the right thing, the thing that you're either morally obligated to do or legally obligated to do. And the sense of duty sometimes makes us do things that other people might consider a little bit weird, a little bit odd. But in hindsight, as they look at that, they will honor this duty. They will recognize that this is something amazing. And I want to just give you an example. You've maybe heard of the angel at Fredericksburg. During the battle and the war between the states at Fredericksburg, Confederate Sergeant Richard Kirkland of the 2nd South Carolina just could not stand hearing the moaning of the Union soldiers that had been moaned down earlier in the day. They're crying for water. They're in a pitiable situation. and none of the Union soldiers can get out there to help them because they will be killed immediately. This 19-year-old sergeant approached Brigadier General Joseph Kershaw, CSA, to ask permission to go out onto the field and to give them some water and perhaps some medical attention. And even though he was initially reluctant to do so, the general finally acquiesced, refusing, however, to allow him to carry a white flag that would ensure safety. Well, despite the danger, Kirkland jumped over the stone wall and went dashing toward the Union soldiers that were wounded. And at first, the Federals shot at him, but as he was dodging back and forth with all of these canteens clanking on his front and on his side, and he was unarmed, they realized what he was about to do, and so they quit shooting. And as they witnessed him giving water to enemy soldier after enemy soldier, Cheers started ringing out all along the lines of the Union soldiers. And he became known as the Angel of Mary's Heights. And here's the weird thing. After he emptied out his canteens, he came back into his own camp and he resumed his duty of killing federal soldiers. I know it sounds weird, but here was a man who was conflicted by two different senses of duty. He had a higher sense of duty to defend his own country, and yet he felt this duty to humanity, this duty to be treating in a humane way the suffering of their enemies. And we see a similar conflict going on in David's heart. Now it's easy to be very critical of David, and I will criticize him when we get to verse 33 for lapsing in his duties. But I think in these verses he is showing the complicated urges of duty to country and loyalty to family at the same time. In fact, The more I've studied this issue of duty, I was just scratching my head, how do I communicate in such a short space all that is involved in this rich, rich Hebrew term? And it's so important, it's so essential to the Christian life. But what I want to do, I want to start by quoting at length from a speech from General Douglas MacArthur. It was a speech he gave at West Point in 1962, and I think this summarizes the subject so, so well. Now, the whole speech is wonderful. I'm just going to quote from a little section in it. And as I quote this, you know, it's an older language and your mind might be tempted to wander, but I want you to try at least to process each one of these phrases. that he is talking about. You might be tempted to think that this is just glorified exaggeration, but hopefully by the end of the sermon you're going to realize, no, that's not exaggeration at all. This is absolutely right. Near the beginning of the speech he said this, duty, honor, country. Those three hallowed words reverently dictate what you ought to be, what you can be, what you will be. They are your rallying points. to build courage when courage seems to fail, to regain faith when there seems to be little cause for faith, to create hope when hope becomes forlorn. Unhappily, I possess neither the eloquence of diction, that poetry of imagination, nor that brilliance of metaphor to tell you all that they mean. The unbelievers will say they're but words, but a slogan, but a flamboyant phrase. Every pedant, every demagogue, every cynic, every hypocrite, every troublemaker, and I'm sorry to say some others of an entirely different character, will try to downgrade them even to the extent of mockery and ridicule. But these are some of the things they do. They build your basic character. They mold you for your future roles as the custodians of the nation's defense. They make you strong enough to know when you are weak and brave enough to face yourself when you are afraid. They teach you to be proud and unbending in honest failure, but humble and gentle in success, not to substitute words for actions, not to seek the path of comfort, but to face the stress and spur of difficulty and challenge. To learn to stand up in the storm, but to have compassion on those who fall. To master yourself before you seek to master others. To have a heart that is clean, a goal that is high. To learn to laugh, yet never forget how to weep. To reach into the future, yet never neglect the past. to be serious yet never to take yourself too seriously, to be modest so that you will remember the simplicity of true greatness, the open mind of true wisdom, the meekness of true strength. They give you a temper of the will, a quality of the imagination, a vigor of the emotions, a freshness of the deep springs of life, a temperamental predominance of courage over timidity, of an appetite for adventure over love of ease. They create in your heart the sense of wonder, the unfailing hope of what next, and the joy and inspiration of life. They teach you in this way to be an officer and a gentleman. Why did firemen rush into the Twin Towers to try to save more lives, fully knowing the incredible danger of doing so? There was a sense of honor, duty, and calling. Why did men willingly go and die in such faraway places as Verdun, the Ardennes Forest, Pearl Harbor, Tawara, Porkchop Hill, Da Nang, and Baghdad? And we won't get into whether those were godly wars or ungodly wars, you know my views on that. But I'm talking here about that inner sense of duty that drove these men to do what they thought was right, okay? They really were being driven, many of these people. by this heroic sense of duty. And while cynics throw off the need for duty, honor, and true patriotism, Christians can stand in the gap, and there is a huge, huge gap that needs to be stood into. But I'm convinced Christians will not stand in the gap until God gives the church at large this grace of duty. And that's where I want to start, that this really is a God-given grace. Now, of the 17 Psalms that David wrote during this period, there were four that I think highlight this duty, this grace that God gave to enable him to stick with duty even though he didn't feel like sticking with it. You can even sense this conflict in some of those. Psalm 37, I think, is one of the richest in terms of outlining this duty. But the other ones have hints of that as well. For example, Psalm 26 talks about walking in his integrity, even when everything's pushing him against that. I have also trusted in the Lord, I shall not slip. And he later repeats his determination to do the right thing, even though he doesn't feel like it, and even though he has pressures to do something different. And because of lack of time, I'm not going to dig into those Psalms, but I would encourage you at some point to at least read them, Psalm 37 especially. But it's so important that we teach our children to enter into this grace by the indwelling Holy Spirit, by faith in what Christ has purchased, and to the glory of God the Father. We do not want to instill a humanistic sense of duty, otherwise that will be manipulated by those who are in authority, by the humanists themselves. There must be a sense of duty that is 100 percent a servant to Christ. Peter T. Forsyth was correct when he said, the first duty of every soul is to find not its freedom, but its master. And Christ must be the master of all our urges to duty, or those urges will get us into trouble, just like they did with King Saul's men. They ended up a lot of times doing the wrong things. And when duty flows from the throne of grace, then all of these other points will follow. And we're going to dive into the text here. Verse 1 shows that David held to duty despite the fact that the odds of success were against him. says, and David numbered the people who were with him, and then the verse goes on to make it very clear he did not number those to get a kind of a confidence for himself. Okay, I've got more people than I thought that I had. He numbered those people in order to be able to properly apportion them unto the various leaders. In fact, numbering them probably would have given him less confidence if he was just focused on the numbers. When we get to verse 3, we'll see a hint that there were approximately 20,000 troops that had defected to David by this time. But what is 20,000 against hundreds of thousands of soldiers in Absalom's army? In fact, if you take seriously chapter 17's speech by Hushai, and Absalom agreed to it, and if you take seriously the three references to all Israel fighting against David, then there was likely way over one million soldiers who would come against him. Some people think it's a lot higher than that. And so you got 20,000 soldiers against at least a million, could be two, could be more than that. than the odds were definitely against him. So you've got to ask yourself, why would David take a stand against such odds? And I believe it was duty and trust, trust in God. And if the Spartan king, Leonidas, could have a pagan duty that would enable him to stand against Persia's massive army, we need to pray that God would give us a genuine, divine urge to duty that would enable us to stand up against overwhelming odds. In fact, I like what one of Leonidas' soldiers was purported to have said. This was back in 480 BC. Persia was trying to conquer all of Greece. And these are the guys that are standing in the gap, Leonidas and his 300 Spartans. And the envoy came and he said, hey, there's no point in even fighting. It's futile to resist us. And the envoy said, our archers are so numerous that the flight of their arrows darkens the sun. And a soldier by the name of Dionysius immediately replied, so much the better, for we shall fight in their shade. Anyway, Leonidas and his 300 men took their stand and they died defending their country. But you know, in one sense it's sad to me that it's a pagan who is a greater example of duty, courage, and sacrifice than many Christians are. Many Christians at the least temptation in their battle against the flesh. And unfortunately, it's many pastors, too. They fall. They fall into sexual sin so quickly. They do not take seriously duty, honor, marriage. There are many people who, as soon as there's troubles in the church, they want to bail. They have no sense of duty, honor, church. And when they look at the overwhelming odds that are against us in the culture wars of America, they say, we can't fight. There's no point in even being involved in this. They have no sense of this duty, honor, and country. And there should be a God-given urge to take your stand for God, just as David did in the forest of Ephraim. So, whatever your calling, Whatever your calling under God, whether it's duty, honor, job, duty, honor, marriage, duty, honor, family, duty, honor, church, duty, honor, country, Satan is going to try to deflect you, make you abandon your calling and do what comes easier. That's what he's going to try to do. And you need to ask God to give you a divine commitment to take your stand even if it doesn't seem like you will be successful. Now the text goes on to say, David numbered the people who were with him and set captains of thousands and captains of hundreds over them. Then David sent out one-third of the people under the hand of Joab, one-third under the hand of Abishai the son of Zeruiah, Joab's brother, and one-third under the hand of Ittai the Gittite. And the king said to the people, I also will surely go out with you myself. Duty sometimes calls us to uncomfortable leadership. And despite the bad testimony of his son, and I'm sure there were plenty of people talking about that, and despite the fact that he's uncomfortably fighting against his son, David showed great leadership. Five times he is called a king in this passage, and he certainly acts like a king. He sets captains in place, he organizes a new army, he divides the army into three parts, he numbers the people, he apportions them under leaders, And he does it all diligently to take a stand against his son. And I think this is what distinguishes David as an ideal king, as a remarkable king. He did not allow personal feelings. to get in the way of duty. Elders sometimes have to do uncomfortable things. Fathers sometimes have to do uncomfortable things, but their office of father compels them to a duty before God. God holds them accountable for how they act as a father, and they do the right thing rather than the comfortable thing. Godly magistrates sometimes have to lead in uncomfortable ways. One modern leader whom I think has been a tremendous example of this point is the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court in Alabama, Judge Roy Moore. Years ago, a federal judge by the name of Judge Thompson told Chief Justice Moore that he could no longer acknowledge God in the courtroom. Well, Moore insisted such a mandate was unconstitutional for that matter. Thompson had no jurisdiction in Alabama's courts to be making a declaration like that. He pointed out that God is acknowledged in the Alabama Constitution to which every judge in Alabama is sworn to uphold. He is acknowledged in the Declaration of Independence, which is the first legal document of our nation. He says he is acknowledged in such a vast body of court case precedent in both the state as well as in the national courts that it would be impossible to ignore all of this evidence. And anyway, to make a long story short, after saying that, you know, it violated history, law, court precedence, jurisprudence, jurisdiction, conscience, and a huge body of law, he was put into impeachment court. And by the way, the Republican Attorney General was a professing Christian who did this impeachment trial. But anyway, they refused to look at any of the legal evidence that was presented, and they kept defaulting back to saying, we don't care about all of that other stuff. This is an issue about you disobeying Judge Thompson's order. They wouldn't look at the body of evidence that was presented. It was a kangaroo court, and the irony is that the very court that impeached him for acknowledging God opened with prayer and swore in the judges with the words, so help me God. And I've watched the video, and it's just one of the most bizarre things I've ever seen before. But I want to give you a little bit of a hint, because I think he's such a great example. At one point in the trial, Attorney General Bill Pryor questioned Chief Justice Moore, asking, Mr. Chief Justice, And your understanding is that the federal court ordered that you could not acknowledge God. Isn't that right? Yes. And if you resume your duties as chief justice after this proceeding, you will continue to acknowledge God as you have testified that you would today? That's right. No matter what any official says? Absolutely. Let me clarify that. Without an acknowledgment of God, I cannot do my duties. I must acknowledge God. It says so in the Constitution of Alabama. It says so in the First Amendment to the United States Constitution. It says so in everything I have read. And he gets interrupted. The only point I'm trying to clarify, Mr. Chief Justice, is not why, but only that, in fact, if you do resume your duties as Chief Justice, you will continue to do that, acknowledge God, without regard to what any other official says. Isn't that right? Well, I'll do the same thing this court did with starting a prayer. That's an acknowledgment of God. Now, we did the same thing that justices do when they place their hand on the Bible and say, so help me God. It's an acknowledgment of God. The Alabama Supreme Court opened with, God save the state and this honorable court. It's an acknowledgment of God. In my opinion, which I've written many opinions, acknowledging God is the source, a moral source of law. I think you must. And three times the attorney general asked him if he would repent, which is a rather strange choice of terms if you don't want to acknowledge God or the Ten Commandments. It was the Ten Commandments case. But anyway, when he refused to repent of acknowledging God, he was deposed. Now, this was incredibly stressful, incredibly stressful. But throughout the whole ordeal, he upheld his oath of office. his duty to the Alabama Constitution, and his Christian duty to God. And he did so with courage and with conviction. And it was so satisfying to see, after he's deposed, they had another election, and the people voted him right back in to be Chief Justice. It was such an in-your-face statement to the federal courts, I just couldn't help clapping, you know? It was wonderful. It was wonderful. But in so many areas of life, being a leader will require courageous commitment to leadership, such as Justice Moore demonstrated. Here are some other statements that Chief Justice made at that time. To deny God would be to recognize man as sovereign and would be a violation of the first commandment as well as the first amendment. Judge Thompson's order, running counter to the supreme judge of the world, is null and void. And brothers and sisters, we need more office holders with that kind of commitment to duty. He also said, same time, the law of God will remain forever. This case is about the acknowledgement of God. Indeed, we must acknowledge God because our constitution says our justice system is established by God. For him to say that I can't say who God is, is to disestablish the justice system of the state. I will not violate my oath. I cannot forsake my conscience. I will not neglect my duty and I will never deny the God upon whom our laws and country depend. Acknowledging God is the source, a moral source of law. Then upon his removal from office in 2003, he said, God is sovereign and shall remain so despite what the Supreme Court and the federal courts of this land have said. I obeyed the rule of law by not allowing the unlawful dictates of man. And then upon being sworn back into office a few years ago, he said, we've got to remember that most of what we do in court comes from some Scripture or is backed by Scripture. And I really do praise God for men like Chief Justice Moore who have had a heightened sense of duty to God despite being slandered by the press. vilified everywhere that he went, despite threats to his office, death threats to his family, despite enormous pressures from every quarter. Duty frequently calls us to uncomfortable leadership. So here's my question. Men, are you up to that? Are you up to that task? If we're going to restore this nation, we have got to restore this God-given urge to be faithful to the duty, to the calling that God has given to us. And it may be that we're going to be rebuilding a nation out of the ashes, but whatever the case, we need to be instilling this idea into our children, into the next generation. Now this brings up the next point, and that is that duty is inherently self-sacrificial. Look at the last sentence of verse 2. And the king said to the people, I also will surely go out with you myself. So he wasn't asking others to do what he himself was unwilling to do. He was willing to die in the cause of justice and in the cause of defending his country. And so this God-given urge is something we should pray for in our children, I believe It helps our children to rise above selfishness and laziness and apathy and all of the other self-centered sins. It's one of those things that God enables us to break through selfishness and into service to God. The fourth characteristic is that it is one of the twin graces is duty and humility, verses 3 through 4. But the people answered, you shall not go out, for if we flee away, they will not care about us, nor if half of us die, will they care about us. But you are worth 10,000 of us now, for you are now more help to us in the city. Then the king said to them, whatever seems best to you, I will do. So the king stood beside the gate, and all the people went out by hundreds and by thousands. Now where pride looks only to what will benefit our ego, duty is willing to do the right thing even if we will be misunderstood and even if others will get the glory. Now David, like any he-man, would rather be out there in the battlefield than with the women and the children in the city, right? This would have been really hard for him to do. But he had a willingness to listen to others. Humility listens. Doesn't matter if you're an elder or president, you've got to listen to others. Now, ultimately, we ought to be listening to God. And hopefully, God is speaking through others into our lives, right? But Albert Barnes once wrote this, one of the evidences of conversion is a desire to be instructed in the doctrines and duties of Christianity and a willingness to attend the preaching and teaching of God's Word. A healthy Christian is hungry for Holy Spirit inspired teachings and he makes time to be exposed to it. He's willing to listen. Any duty that is arrogant is a counterfeit duty. It's not a grace from God. The second evidence that this sense of duty was humble duty was he was willing to take a back seat in the interests of others. And the third evidence of humility was a willingness to honor the sacrifices of others. David stood as the ranks marched by. So He was honoring them. And so duty makes us realize it's more about the needs of the country as a whole than it is about our desires, our glory, our own wants. And so He lets the body minister to Him even as He has sought to minister to the body. God-given duty is not so prideful that it can only minister. It's willing to be ministered to, right? People are willing to be both minister as well as being ministered to, even if you cannot pay a person back, being willing. It takes humility to do that. And it would have been very humbling, as I said, for David to be back with the women and the children. But from the Psalms that he wrote, 17 Psalms, we don't know that they're all written on this day, but it's pretty clear that David was praying his heart out in the city on behalf of his men. So he was involved in a support role. Now, verse 5 shows that duty is often in painful conflict with other deep desires and loyalties. And we've already talked about this already, but let's go ahead and read verse 5. Now, the king had commanded Joab, Abishai, and Ittai, saying, Deal gently for my sake with the young man Absalom. And all the people heard when the king gave all the captains orders concerning Absalom. Now Lord willing we'll return to this verse next week when we see why Joab's actions were wrong. But here it is painfully evident that David's desires concerning his son were in conflict with his duty to his country. His duty to country forced him to fight and risk his son's death. Now whenever I disciplined my children, there was something in me that really did not want to do that because I didn't like to see my kids cry, but duty to my office as a father usually, I mean, I was not always consistent and disciplined with my kids, but usually enabled me to do the right thing even though it made me uncomfortable in bringing discipline to my children. Your duty to your husband may conflict with your feelings about your husband. Okay? Your duty to your job may put you into conflict of soul where you wonder, Lord, what do I do? I need the wisdom of Solomon. Please help me to do the right thing. But if you don't already have a strong sense of duty, you're likely going to do the wrong thing. I read a wonderful story where a child's duty to his father caused him to potentially face the wrath of the Duke of Wellington. Nashua Cavalier tells the story of the Duke of Wellington going on a hunting trip with a whole bunch of his buddies. And they rode up to this huge property that was all walled off and there was a boy at the gate and the Duke of Wellington commanded the boy to open up the gate. and let the hunting party through, and the boy said, I'm sorry, sir, but my father sent me to say that you must not hunt on his grounds. The duke answered gruffly, do you know who I am? No, sir, the boy answered meekly. I am the Duke of Wellington. The boy took off his cap to honor the duke, but he still didn't open up the gate, and instead the boy quietly said, the Duke of Wellington will not ask me to disobey my father's orders. To which the Duke took off his hat, smiled and said, I honor the boy who is faithful to his duty. Okay. That was an incredibly uncomfortable duty. It was a tough place for that kid to be in. But the boy remained firm and Wellington and his party rode off. Now, the last thing I want to highlight from David's own duty was that duty sometimes is in conflict with the country that we love, okay? If your highest loyalty is the state, okay, and your sense of duty cannot see anything higher than the state, you've got an idolatrous sense of duty. It's counterfeit. It's not a God-given sense of duty. Verse 6. So the people went out into the battle, excuse me, went out into the field of battle against Israel. Now David's the king of Israel and he's fighting against Israel. And there are times when God metaphorically calls upon us to fight against Israel because we love Israel. And how do we apply this? Well, we could apply it very literally in terms of the culture wars that we are engaged in in America. Some people might think that we're not being loyal when we don't go along with whatever the government says to do. But our sense of duty transcends the state. It goes beyond that. We have a duty to Constitution. We have a duty to liberty. We have a duty to God. And it may mean that we have to come into disagreement and resist and oppose some of the things that are happening in America. It may be uncomfortable at times, but when... When anything in our country asks us to violate our duty to the Father, like that boy in his little bit of a tussle with the Duke of Wellington, we must stand fast by our duty. But we could also apply this to how we handle a member of the family that has gone astray. Tough love must sometimes take tough actions, and it's duty that God calls us to in taking those actions. I know that Rodney feels terrible for having to exercise tough love with Isaiah as he rules his family, but I honor him for having done the right thing. And I really do think he has fulfilled an elder's call to rule his family. Now, I understand a sabbatical so you can regroup, you know, and minister in the family and everything. But even though Gary and I will respect whatever decision he makes down the road, I really think he has fulfilled his duty. Now, I'm not trying to pressure him from the pulpit here. He's going to do whatever he wants to do, right? But I believe he has been a role model of duty, honor, family, and duty, honor, church. I really do. And I think it's our duty to pray for the Swabs and to pray for some other families whose kids are in trouble. We need to be praying that God would prosper and bless their efforts to influence, and sometimes influence through tough love. Now let's apply it to business. When I was in seminary, the wife of one of the seminary students was helping to put her husband through school by working at a medical equipment company. It was a great job, brought in a lot of income. But she was brought face-to-face with a major conflict. She was asked by her boss to sign off on a large run of contaminated equipment, and I forgot to ask Kathy, I don't remember now if it was contaminated syringes or test tubes or what it was, but it was, It had failed the quality control, and it had failed it very, very miserably. Well, she felt bad for the boss, but she told him that it had failed all of the objective standards, and she could show him exactly what they were. He just hit the roof. He got really angry. He says, if you don't sign off on this, you are fired. Now, he could always pin the blame on her down the road, you know, if there was ever any legal troubles. But she tried to plead with him that she would be legally guilty. She would be morally guilty if she signed off and asked him to change his mind. He would not hear any excuses. So here was a situation where a call to duty to God, actually into the laws of the land, made her have to, you know, suffer the loss of a job. And she did. She got fired. And God, by the way, gave her a much better job after that. But there's lots of applications that you can make at this point. I want to quickly point out that it's not just leaders like David who should be driven by this God-given sense of duty. Every Christian should. In fact, until the populace as a whole begins to regain a heightened sense of self-sacrificing duty, it's unlikely that this nation will turn around. At least the church needs to once again become salty. John Foster Doles said, freedom and duty always go hand in hand. And if the free do not accept the duty of social responsibility, they will not long remain free. And I believe it is precisely because the church has abandoned its duty to be salt and light that, as Matthew 5 words it, we as a church have been cast out, trampled underfoot of man. He says it's good for nothing but to be cast out and trampled underfoot of men. That's indicating that the humanists are going to dominate in culture. And that's what's happened. But it's because we've abandoned So let me read that statement again. Freedom and duty always go hand in hand. And if the free do not accept the duty of social responsibility, they will not long remain free. And it's not just in politics that this is important. Semper Fi is not just something for the military. It's for all of us, forever faithful. Martin Luther rightly said, the maid who sweeps kitchen is doing the will of God just as much as the monk who prays, not because she may sing a Christian hymn as she sweeps, but because God loves clean floors. The Christian shoemaker does his Christian duty not by putting little crosses on the shoes, but by making good shoes because God is interested in good craftsmanship. See, the call to duty is a call to be faithful to every task that God has called us to. And to do it faithfully is unto the Lord. And when we do that, even the giving of a cup of cold water to, you know, one of the little children in here, Jesus said, we'll by no means lose its reward. Christ guarantees it. And frankly, sometimes ministering in a support role behind the scenes in changing diapers and educating is a lot more difficult and in some cases a lot more important than fighting out there on the front lines of the battlefield. And my point is, we're not saying everybody needs to be involved in politics. Everybody got their station in life, their station of time. They've got all kinds of different things you've got to process through. But here's the point. When God has given you a calling, be faithful to employ that calling to the best of your ability. Now, in this chapter, David's men are inspired to sacrificial duty by David himself. Verse 3, But the people answered, You shall not go out, for if we flee away they will not care about us, nor if half of us die will they care about us. But you are worth ten thousand of us now, for you are now more help to us in the city. They knew the odds that they were up against, and the New American Commentary points out that the literal Hebrew says, even if half of us die, they won't care, for now there are 10,000 like us. And then it comments, though more obscure, the traditional Hebrew reading suggests that even in the event of a battlefield rout, David would have 10,000 troops he could still use to mount a further attack against Absalom. In other words, even if half of them are killed, There's going to be 10,000 left. Well, if 10,000 is half, you got 20,000 soldiers. That's how I calculated that 20,000 soldiers had by this time defected to David. So they know full well that the odds are against them. They knew what they were up against. They shared David's willingness to sacrifice himself for his country. It's almost like it was infectious, like they're inspired to duty. And we can inspire our children to duty by reading them great missionary biographies and great war stories and great stories about women and children, and even by seeking to model duty ourselves. Now they too will later imitate David's duty at great discomfort by obeying David's orders to go easy on Absalom and disobeying Joab's orders. Like Joab, they probably don't think David's orders are a very good thing. They know that Joab is going to be upset with them for not doing it, but their sense of duty will make them willing to risk Joab's wrath in disobeying him. In fact, why don't you just take a look down at verses 11 to 12. We'll just anticipate next week. So Joab said to the man who told him, you just saw him, and why did you not strike him there to the ground? I would have given you 10 shekels of silver and a belt. And the man said to Joab, though I were to receive 1,000 shekels of silver in my hand, I would not raise my hand against the king's son, for in our hearing, the king commanded you and Abishai and Ittai saying, beware lest anyone touch the young man Absalom. They may not have agreed with David on going soft on his son, And I don't agree with David on going soft on his son there. But they too showed obedience because they're not in sin by going soft on the son. I think it's right for them to obey David's orders, totally right for them to do so, even though it's uncomfortable. So verse 6 says, so the people went out into the battlefield against Israel and the battle was in the woods of Ephraim. And because I've already dealt with these points, most of these points under David, I'm not going to amplify hugely here. But I will repeat that duty is something we should instill in our children when they are quite young. everything they do should be done as unto the Lord with the same seriousness as David's duty." Now, in a letter that a lot of people ascribe this quote to Robert E. Lee, but I've done research on it, and it seems like this letter has been misascribed to Robert E. Lee. It was written by somebody else, but who knows. But anyway, somebody said, Duty then is the sublimest word in our language. Do your duty in all things. You cannot do more. You should never wish to do less. Without a heightened sense of duty, police departments are gonna become a menace rather than a comfort. I don't know if you've read the stories about the Washington, D.C. Police Department. There's two police officers were caught with child trafficking and child pornography. One of them's immediately shot, and it appears that it's somebody in the police department that shot them. It seems like it's a cover-up, so they're hiding this other guy until they can figure things out. But this is the direction that our whole country is headed if we lose this sense of duty. As our country becomes more and more pagan, these Christian concepts of duty, honor, justice, integrity will become things of the past, and we will not be able to trust any department of the government to be faithful in their duty, not any department of the government. And the same will be true of marriages and contracts and jobs and really every area of life. We are in a crisis situation in America. We've got to do everything that we can to reverse it. U.S. News and World Report gave the following statistics on cheating in high school and college. And I'm giving these statistics because, again, it's an indicator of where people are at in terms of these character issues. In a massive, massive study, that was done all across the state, 75% of college students admitted to cheating, 85% of college students said that cheating was necessary to get ahead. Now in another much smaller study, it only had 1,800 students from nine different state universities, it says 70% of the students admitted to cheating on exams, so that's only 5% less than the larger study, 84% admitted to cheating on written assignments. Any society that loses this inward urge to duty, honor, and faithfulness will become a backward nation, just like most third-world countries have become. It's one of the essential ingredients of a Christian civilization, and it must be restored. Now let me end by pointing out how verses 6 through 8 show that though the duty is ours, the results are in God's hands, and Christians should be totally content with that. Whether we are successful or not successful is immaterial. We want to be faithful to God. And I've divided up those two points with a quote from Oliver Cromwell. He was campaigning in Ireland and when his troops were about to cross the river, he said, put your trust in God, but mind to keep your powder dry. And he was referring to gunpowder. And it's gotten corrupted and shortened down to trust God and keep your powder dry. But his point was, Yes, we need to trust God in every area of life, but we've got to do our duty. We've got to be responsible. Those two go hand-in-hand. Trust and duty are not opposites. They are twin cousins, okay? They go hand-in-hand. And so I think this is a great way to end the sermon. First, God was calling them to put their trust in God. If indeed they were 20,000 soldiers against over a million soldiers, they certainly couldn't trust in numbers. The odds were all against them. And even though God is not mentioned in this passage, He is in the Psalms, but even though He's not mentioned in this passage, Anybody who reads this passage and sees this wind is going to say, God did a great thing. It's a miraculous wind. There's no way that you could ascribe this to the prowess of Joab and Abishai and Ittai. No, this was a God thing. And part of it was not only the enormous odds, but that they were spread out so far. And I'll explain that a little bit. that the losses of Absalom's men are almost double David's. Verse 7, the people of Israel were overthrown there before the servants of David and a great slaughter of 20,000 took place there that day. Now, if this was all that died, this would mean that there was one loss in Absalom's army for every soldier in David's army, but there seems to be more. Now if the 20,000 is a reference to what the sword devoured, And the forest devoured more people than that. That means there were more than 40,000 people who were slain. Now we don't know for sure. The Hebrew is a little bit ambiguous there. But the fact that the woods devoured more than the sword at least implies that God was moving nature against Absalom. Now, commentators have tried to say, well, how in the world would the woods devour people? Maybe it was they're bitten by poisonous snakes, or maybe there were bears and other wild animals. Maybe it was the pits that they fell into and the cliffs that they fell off. They don't really know. And we don't need to know. All we need to know is that if God is against us, nothing can be for us. Everything in nature will be against us. It's the exact reverse of Romans 8, verse 28. God moved even nature to be against Absalom. So it's a divine intervention that cannot be explained simply in terms of the prowess of men. The 17 Psalms that David wrote on this day shows that he was fighting the battle through prayer from the city. His trust was in the Lord. Now, the next point, if David would have had gunpowder then, he would have said, yeah, but I'm also trusting my gunpowder, you know. I want to keep my gunpowder dry. And he would have done his duty. He would have done his best to be the best leader he could. The soldiers would do their best in soldiering. The women and the children would do their best in praying to Almighty God. Now we see four strategies of war that symbolize this taking of duty seriously. He divided his army into three, thus forcing Absalom's forces to spread out over a wider territory. Second, he picked up the battleground would be to his own advantage. And that was the incredibly dangerous woods known as the Woods of Ephraim. Now these thick woods would have kept Absalom's men from being able to see each other as well, would have kept them from being able to see the flag signals. Back in those days there were all kinds of banners that would signal to people off in the distance, well you can't see very far in the thick woods there. So it would obliterate that advantage. And then there's the dangerous pits and cliffs so that if they can get Absalom's men running, some of them probably fell into pits and over cliffs. It was a dangerous place to just be running blindly. So he's engaging in duty by seeking the best territory to engage the battle. And then thirdly, they took one problem at a time. In the leadership journal, Hugh Duncan told about an old man who was walking at the beach at dawn, and off in the distance he saw a young man who was throwing starfish into the ocean. And when he caught up to him, he asked what he was doing, and the answer was that the stranded starfish would die if they were left stranded in the morning sun, so he was throwing them back. And the old man said, but the beach goes on for miles and miles and there are millions of starfish. How can your effort make any difference? And the man looked at the starfish in his hand. He said, makes a difference to this one. And he threw it into the ocean. And I think that's a great, great perspective that we need to have. You may not be able to take on every problem in America, but you can certainly take on the problems that God has presented to you. Don't worry about the other problems. Focus on the ones He's presented to you. Duty does not look at the overwhelming job that the whole church is facing and then give up. It takes on one problem at a time, leaves the results to God. And that's what each soldier in David's army had to do. There is no way that each soldier could take on 500 or 1,000 or more, depending on various figures for Absalom's army. And if he started worrying about fighting 500 or fighting 1,000, he'd just be overwhelmed. He'd feel like giving up. What did each soldier do? He focused on the one that was right in front of him and dealt with that person. And over time, the rest of the army fled. The fourth area of duty that is sometimes mentioned by commentaries is that by picking their battleground first, they were able to reconnoiter and use treacherous ground to their own advantage. Okay, so that's verses 1 through 8, and in these eight verses I've tried to illustrate just a tiny peek into the huge subject of duty. It's really hard to adequately capture all that's involved in that, but To give you a glimpse of how far-reaching and important this is, I want to reread that quote that I started with from General Douglas MacArthur. And it's my prayer that duty would once again become just a normal household term with our youth. MacArthur said, duty, honor, Country, which by the way was the motto of West Point. Duty, honor, country, those three hallowed words reverently dictate what you ought to be, what you can be, what you will be. They are your rallying points to build courage when courage seems to fail, to regain faith when there seems to be little cause for faith, to create hope when hope becomes forlorn. Unhappily, I possess neither that eloquence of diction, that poetry of imagination, nor that brilliance of metaphor to tell you all that they mean. The unbelievers will say they're but words, but a slogan, but a flamboyant phrase. Every pedant, every demagogue, every cynic, every hypocrite, every troublemaker, and I'm sorry to say some others of an entirely different character, will try to downgrade them even to the extent of mockery and ridicule. But these are some of the things they do. They build your basic character. They mold you for your future roles as the custodians of the nation's defense. They make you strong enough to know when you are weak. and brave enough to face yourself when you are afraid. They teach you to be proud and unbending in honest failure, but humble and gentle in success, not to seek the path of comfort, but to face the stress and spur of difficulty and challenge. To learn to stand up in the storm, but to have compassion on those who fall. To master yourself before you seek to master others. To have a heart that is clean, a goal that is high. To learn to laugh, yet never forget to weep. To reach into the future, yet never neglect the past. To be serious, yet never to take yourself too seriously. To be modest, so that you will remember the simplicity of true greatness. The open mind of true wisdom, the meekness of true strength. They give you a temper of the will, a quality of the imagination, a vigor of the emotions, a freshness of the deep springs of life, a temperamental predominance of courage over timidity, of an appetite for adventure over love of ease. They create in your heart the sense of wonder, the unfailing hope of what next, and the joy and inspiration of life. They teach you in this way to be an officer and a gentleman. Brothers and sisters, Embrace your duty before God and pass that sense of duty on to the next generation. Amen. Father, we thank you for your word and the challenges that it gives to us, and we pray that it would reach into our hearts, pull us out of ourselves, and give us that sacrificial duty that both the Old and the New Testaments speak so much about. We pray that this would not be something that we would humanistically do by pulling ourselves up by our bootstraps, but Father, that Your Holy Spirit would come upon us, engendering within us something supernatural that would enable us to stand up boldly, courageously, even when everything comes against us. We pray that You would bless this, Your people, in Jesus' name. Amen.