One of the unique features of both the Bible and the Christian faith is the historical honesty in recording the lives of its heroes. Sinners all.
Here’s a biblical fact that people don’t hear much about. Okay: David had 19 sons from several different wives. David’s firstborn was named Amnon, and he was first in line to be the king. But Amnon himself wasn’t a very good boy. He had feelings for his half-sister Tamar, and he wanted her. So he took the suggestion of a friend — a plan — and he thought, “Come on,” thought it would be a good idea. So Amnon pretended to be sick, and he asked King David, his father, to send Tamar to take care of him in his illness. One day when they were alone, Amnon took her. He then resented Tamar, for he had raped her, and he began to blame her for the whole situation. Had her exiled, sent away, where she fled to her brother’s — her full brother’s — house, in absolute desolation.
When King David was told about the rape and about the exile, he was very, very angry. But he didn’t do a thing to punish Amnon or to recall Tamar from her exile. Absalom, Tamar’s full brother, was enraged over what his half-brother — excuse me, I mean — and he wanted him to pay. And he was equally enraged that his father, the king, would do nothing. And he waited for two whole years for his father to take some kind of disciplinary action against his half-brother. But the king never did. Two years went by. David did nothing.
So Absalom decided to take matters into his own hands. Absalom told some of his servants, some of those who were sheepshearers, to take Amnon out into the field, to wine him and dine him and get him drunk, and then there stab him to death — to kill him. And they did. And once the deed was done, Absalom fled and exiled himself for what he had ordered, and to avoid any punishment that might be dished out.
So three years he was in exile. Three years. And then King David decided to bring him back to Jerusalem, with one little caveat: Absalom would not be permitted to enter any room where the king was. It was a security issue. They didn’t want the son of the king anywhere near the king, for fear of what the son might do.
You see, during the three-year self-imposed exile, Absalom was enlisting support for himself, while stirring up at the same time rebellion against his father, King David. He is reported by the biblical text to have been a charmer, a very handsome young man who made friends quickly, and people just naturally liked him. And he was a natural-born leader, and bright — smart as a whip. But once back in Jerusalem, he decided he’d also now enlist the help of people in and around Jerusalem. And there was a gate where people who were coming to court to have a grievance heard by the king — in this case King David — Absalom would camp out every morning. And as the petitioners, the plaintiffs, came to the court, he’d stop them outside the gate, and he’d tell them that his father, King David, had no interest in judgment. He had no interest in judgment. He had no interest at all except for protecting the corrupt of the people of Jerusalem. And he’d persuade these people not to have their petitions heard. And then he’d say, “If I become king, I’ll make sure that true justice shall be done.”
2 Samuel chapter 14 and chapter 15 details a plot that gets laid out by Absalom against his father, King David. And when the time was right, Absalom went to the city of Hebron, and he sent out secret messengers throughout the entire Middle East, and they were to declare it to the people that Absalom is king at Hebron. And there Absalom gathered together an enormous army and planned to lay siege to the entire city of Jerusalem.
The news reached King David, and King David decided he’d spare the city and the people. So he fled from Jerusalem and allowed Absalom to enter unimpeded. That’s 2 Samuel chapter 16. But he would not relinquish his trust. In fact, he wrote Psalm 3 as he fled the city for safe haven. Here’s Psalm 3: “Lord, how many are my foes, and how many rise up against me. Many are saying of me, ‘God will not deliver him.’ But you, Lord, are a shield around me, my glory, the one who lifts my head high. I call out to you, Lord, and he answers me from his holy mountain. I lie down and sleep; I wake again, because the Lord sustains me. I will not fear though tens of thousands assail me on every side. Arise, O Lord! Deliver me, my God! Strike all my enemies on the jaw; break the teeth of the wicked. From the Lord comes deliverance. May your blessing be upon your people.”
When he said ten thousands surround him, he meant it literally. Ten thousands were now in and around Jerusalem, holding the city. But David went about gathering up his own army of loyal men, and he marched against his very own son. The battle was waged just outside Jerusalem in the forest of Ephraim, and David’s army routed Absalom’s army. But Absalom, for fear of his life, fled on a mule through the forest. As he rode, his hair got caught in a low-hanging branch of a tree. He stopped, but his mule did not. So there he was: Absalom, the son of King David, hanging off a branch by the hair on his head.
That’s when David’s men found him. They found him hanging there, and they reported Absalom’s location and his circumstance to the commanding general, Joab. And despite the fact that David had issued an order to every single soldier and every single officer, especially his chief general Joab, that Absalom was not to be killed — he was to be saved and brought back to his father, King David — Joab would have nothing of this dangerous young man. So he picked up three spears and ran them into the heart of Absalom as he hung from the tree.
When King David was told of his son’s death, the king was shaken, and he went up to the room over the gateway, and he wept. And as he went, he said, “O my son Absalom! My son, my son Absalom! If only I had died instead of you! Oh, Absalom, my son, my son!” Only a mother or a father would say — or offer — such a thing. A mother and father’s love for their children, or their child, is a very tough and durable thing.
The needs of a baby right away take the right of way from the family. The parents’ whole life becomes the kids’. I think it’s the other way around, but it’s not. But now the parent’s life centers around and revolves around the children of the family. A mom might give up her career because she believes that’s what’s best in order to raise her children. Nearly every parent offers and is willing to take the place of their child, that their child is suffering with a great illness of some sort. And most parents, even as depraved as we become as a culture today — most parents, even these days, would sacrifice their own life in order to save the life of their child.
And David was no different. In the face of these terrible two evil sons, Amnon and Absalom, David is conflicted between being a king and what’s good for the kingdom, and being a father who loves his sons. Thus the interest of the parent and the interest of the kingdom collide right there on the battlefield outside of Jerusalem. Despite all that Absalom had done, David wished that he had been the one who was killed in battle, not Absalom.
And yet you have before you this evening another dysfunctional family of the Old Testament. Yet the story of Amnon, Absalom, and David should put each one of us in mind of the love that our heavenly Father has for us, and what he did to his very own Son in order to take on our suffering. The story should drive home the point that this Father is willing to do whatever he needs to do to rescue his children.
2 Samuel chapters 13 through 18 tell the whole story of Amnon, Absalom, and of King David, and it reveals just how screwed up — quite frankly — the family was, how wicked and depraved members of the family became. And it reminds us of what human beings are like and what human nature can be like, even for those who have been chosen by God to be his very own children, and who are supposed to, as the epistle says, be a light unto the nations — people who shun all of those grievous kinds of sins. This is a story of God’s people committing acts of incest, rape, family injustice, murder, rebellion, and war — all in pursuit of their own individual lusts.
Yet it’s also a story about faithfulness to the children, and his continual call to repent, and in their repentance providing for them the forgiveness of sins, life, and salvation. His pledge to protect and to keep his church safe is what David was banking on when he wrote Psalm 3.
That was then. This is now. We are now the people, the children of God, the adopted family. 1 Peter 2:9 says of you: “You are a chosen people, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, God’s special possession, that you may declare the praise of him who called you out of darkness into the marvelous light.” That’s what we are in Christ Jesus, according to our new nature. And that’s what the epistle talked about. This is obviously an article of faith, isn’t it? God declares it to be so, and faith takes hold of the declaration. But we ourselves don’t see that in ourselves. If we see something else, then there’s something very wrong with us. In fact, we and everyone else see something quite differently than a picture of safety and holiness. They don’t see what we’re declared to be in 1 Peter 2:9, for the old nature still lives in us.
And Jesus has something to say about that too. Right? Jesus knew what human beings were like: “Out of the heart come evil thoughts — murder, adultery, sexual immorality, theft, false witness, slander. These are the things that defile a person.”
The Absalom lesson was written to us as well, about us and for us, to urge us to fight against our base instincts, which are always, by the way, evil. We are like Absalom in that we too rebel against our heavenly Father. We do this every single time we unseat the Word of God, when we decide to replace our ideas and our understanding of him, of ourselves, and the world around us, and of his way of salvation, instead of simply clinging to the promises of the Word of God. We unseat the Word of God every time we break and cast aside the Ten Commandments, every time we give slack to bad doctrine, every time we deny the true faith or we deny true love and instead are ruled by our own wants, our own ideas, and our own sinful impulses. That is as much of a betrayal as what Absalom did to King David. For when he did it to King David, he was rebelling against the God-ordained king — God himself, Yahweh Elohim, had anointed and placed him over the kingdom.
There were times, though, we must admit, in circumstances in King David’s life, when he did exactly what Absalom had done. His own behaviors condemned by the law. His own house dysfunctional because he himself became so. But David repented when he was confronted by the prophet Nathan. Absalom went to his death, a son who wanted the throne to himself and his father dead — yet his father still loved him.
Deuteronomy 21:23, the famous passage: “Anyone hanged is cursed by God.” To be hung on a tree was a special death. It demonstrated something to the whole world: that you had died the most horrible kind of death of all, one under the judgment and curse of God the Father. Absalom fell prey to this curse by way of his own sinful, unrepentant life. And apart from Christ, in and of ourselves, we don’t deserve any better either. We are not the perfect children to a perfect Father. We, each of us, are little Absaloms. We have no merit to offer and deserve the same as was given to Absalom. Our sin has earned God’s curse, and we should expect nothing else but the wrath of God.
Yet out of his great love for us, God sent Christ, the true Son of David, the perfect Son to the perfect Father, to become the person hanging on a tree as the sacrificial atonement for your sins and mine. This Son hung on a tree, pierced with a spear, as Absalom. Galatians 3:13: “Christ redeemed us from the curse of the law by becoming a curse for us, for it is written: Cursed is everyone who hangs on a tree.”
When we fell into sin and rebelled, God cried out, similar to King David: “Oh my children, my children! Would I have died instead of you?” Oh, my children! But he did far more than that: he offered up his only-begotten Son, the perfect one, the one in whom he was well pleased, the one whom he loved. He did the unthinkable. In God’s case, he carried out the substitution that David could only hope for. God willingly gave up his only-begotten Son to death — the ultimate death, the curse of death. The Son of God became the Son of Man, the true perfect Son of David, the true perfect Son of God the Father, in whom there was no sin, no rebellion, no lust, to carry out what God had promised King David and all the others who rebelled at one time or another: David’s kingdom — the church — would be established forever, and it would never be undone, for Christ himself died to make her whole.
Christ became cursed for you. He died the death you deserved. He who knew no sin became your sin, that you might receive his righteousness. That’s the sacrifice of the heavenly Father. That’s what he was willing to do for you — no matter how far you stray, no matter how violently you rebelled, no matter how you attempted to remove him from the throne of your heart and your life. God loves you enough to send his very own Son. He calls you each and every week to confess your sins, and he promises that each and every time you confess your sins, he is faithful and just to forgive your sins and cleanse you from all unrighteousness.
Yes, there’s a part of us — you and me, all of mankind — that are little Absaloms. But there’s a greater part of you, a new nature, which is in the image of Christ. Imitate him, as the epistle says, for your sins are forgiven.