2 Samuel Lesson 58
Catalog of David’s Military Victories - 2
Samuel 8 & 10:
Turn to 2 Samuel 8. The first
part of this book, chapters 2-7 dealt with hot God established the basis of
David’s kingdom, and in order that we recall from all the details the great
principles behind those details, let’s look at some of the references before
chapter 8 that build up to this chapter, because this chapter moves over to a
new theme, God prepares for David’s worldwide kingdom. And there are many principles that are going
to be involved that can be applied in your Christian life. The argument in this book is that if God can
do what He is doing with David, in the arena of world history, then certainly
God can do what He has promised in your itty-bitty life. So the argument is from the greater to the
lesser; if God can do all of these things in David’s life, then He is perfectly
competent to deal with any problem that you face.
The thing to see so far in chapters 2-7 is the fact that at every point
David arrives in a position of power, not by his design. It is not the case where David is in charge
of a vast political machine; he doesn’t have buttons under his table that he
presses, switches that he turns on that brings these things about. All the things that he has brought about, all
the things that occur to him, all of his blessings, are due strictly to God’s
sovereignty in history.
To refresh your mind, turn to 2 Samuel
2 Samuel 3:27, just when David thinks he’s got everything under control,
when it appears that at least he’s in a better bargaining position than he was,
he has his hands into more people’s pies, he discovers much to his dismay in
verse 27 and the events that follow that one of his own trusted Lieutenants
murders, he assassinates Abner. And
David confesses that he has no control over this. Verse 39, he concluded, “And
I am this day weak, though anointed king; and these men, sons of Zeruiah, are too
hard for me.” So you have a confession
here that David is not the one who’s calling the shots; God is calling the
shots. The running of any administration
by David is too big a job for even David, God’s chosen man. God’s chosen man cannot control all the
little things. It’s a lesson, who is in
charge.
2 Samuel 4:6, no sooner does he see Abner assassinated but in 4:6 a
group of assassins to into the house of Ish-bosheth and murder him; Saul’s son
is assassinated. It’s beyond human
control. In chapters 2-4 a series of
critical (and we’ll put it in quotes) “accidents.” David didn’t plan these things, but this is
how God in His sovereignty works. Take a
lesson from this. When God wants to
demonstrate Himself to you, He will demonstrate Himself to you by doing things
that it will be very obvious that you had no control over. This is why under the categories of suffering
we have one category called the learning category, and this explains why we
suffer at times. God puts us in a
situation where all the props are knocked out, in order to demonstrate that no
matter how mature we may think we are, no matter how much doctrine we think we
know, we still aren’t in charge; God is.
And here David when he goes to fight with the Philistines, remember in
chapters 2-4 he secures rule over the people, chapter 5 he secures rule over
the land, event this David couldn’t have pulled off by himself. Look at
2 Samuel 5:19, “And David inquired of the LORD, saying, Shall I go up to
the Philistines? Wilt Thou deliver them
into mine hand?” And the Lord said go
ahead, I’ve delivered them into your hand.
And then in verse 20, the word perez,
is the Hebrew word which means the Lord breaks forth into a violent physical
judgment upon his opponents. Did David
destroy the Philistines? Or was it God
that destroyed the Philistines. It was
obviously God, it was not under David’s control. 5:24, second time they go to battle, what was
the sign of victory, wait behind the trees until you start to see the trees
bend, and there’s going to be no wind; the
trees are going to bend because an army of angels is passing over these
trees, unseen powers. Is David
responsible for this? Can David pull
this off all under his control? No, it’s
not under David’s control, it’s under the Lord’s control.
In chapter 6 David gets the ark, this chapter goes out of its way to
show that when David’s in control they goof, remember what happened? They used the wrong procedure in trying to
recover the ark; a man was killed because of wrong procedures and not following
the word. So in the last part of chapter
6 we find the correct procedures are given to him from the Word of God, the ark
is brought up and it arrives. And finally
the chapter concludes in verse 23 with making Saul’s daughter barren forever.
In chapter 7, when God gives David the covenant, if it had been left to
David’s control, he would have built a palace for God, a temple for God, like
all the other Ancient Near Eastern kings.
But David no sooner proposes this than God vetoes it.
Co chapter 2, 3, 4, 5, 6 and 7 have argument after argument after
argument that David didn’t get into his throne by his own political
wisdom. He got into his throne by
circumstance after circumstance after circumstance that were dictated and
controlled by God’s sovereign decree.
That’s a lesson for us when we are grace oriented believers. The tendency is always to want to control
everything. You can’t get it, you can’t
do it mentally. You’d love to be able to
control the doctrine of Christology, be able to state it perfectly with
adequate understanding. You’d love to
state the doctrine of the Trinity but you can’t get your mind spread out enough
to encompass it all; it can’t be brought under your mental control. Why?
Because it’s a revealed truth from an infinite God. And so with circumstances in your life, they
can’t always be brought under your control. We’re responsible for an area, but
always remember that in living the Christian life under the concept of
orientation to grace, we are responsible on a very small area; an area that in
fact is so small that it directly contributes very little to our spiritual
growth… very little. You look at the
area over which God makes you responsible, development of certain things,
certain talents, certain gifts, and so forth, but even there it’s pretty
small. A whole vast area of your life is
not anywhere under your control and never will be, and that’s where a grace
oriented believe is going to relax in what the Lord’s plan is for him.
Like David at this point; David had a sphere over which he was responsible,
that’s where his faith did something.
But this vast area David could do nothing but rest and relax and let the
Lord handle it. He couldn’t have
controlled those men to stop the suicide; he couldn’t have controlled the
Philistine battle; there had to be something else here. Now the battle always is in the Christian
life, the tendency in human viewpoint, is to go in one of two different
directions. Human viewpoint always has
this characteristic about it, and as your mind absorbs it, you’ll always tend
to do it this way. On the one hand human
viewpoint always wants to bring everything under total control of me;
intellectually we call that rationalism.
But it’s not just intellectual, it’s very practical in the every day
life. I love to be in final control of
my business, my home, my loved ones and everything else; I want to be the
reigning king over my empire. That’s one
tendency. And then we oscillate between
licentiousness and lasciviousness, between asceticism and hedonism, and
oscillate from that pendulum; we have an oscillation here between rationalism
and irrationalism, and in this case chance reigns. The human viewpoint believer is very weak at
this point. Either he tries to get
everything under his control or he gives up, prostrates himself before the
fierce god of Chance and hopes by chance that things will work out. And his vocabulary is liberally flavored with
words like “luck,” “I hope so” or something like this. And there’s always this tendency.
Now human viewpoint is a counterfeit of the real thing and the real
thing, instead of going to those extremes, divine viewpoint has two parts to it
also: one, a doing, and two, a resting.
But the doing isn’t like the doing of human viewpoint because you
recognize, or should, and that’s why I went over these verses, David’s doing
was not a sufficient cause for the result that came about. A most obvious illustration of this, perhaps
will get it to you easier, is visualize Moses when they were fighting the
battle and he had to hold the rod up.
Now one man on a hill holding a rod up isn’t a sufficient cause for
victory thousands of yards away from any soldiers. In other words, what’s the link between Moses
holding a rod up and thousands of soldiers winning a battle yards away. What is the link? The sovereignty of God. The holding up of the stick is a beautiful
illustration of the fact that what God call us to do He wants us to do. The soldiers would not have won had Moses not
obeyed God and held up the stick, but the holding up of the stick wasn’t the
cause of the victory. It was necessary
but not sufficient. Now David was a
grace oriented believer all during these chapters; he was a man who realized
that what he did was necessary for his kingdom to arrive but not sufficient.
Applying it personally, look at it this way. God has you responsible for doing certain
things. Do you know what some of them
are? Taking in the Word, that’s one
thing that He wants you to do. Can you
grow spiritually unless you do this? No
you can’t, unless you sit down and study and study and study the Word of
God. So the taking in of the Word of God
is something God wants you to do. There
are many other things we could say just under the general title application of
the Word. But all those things that you
do, don’t ever be deceived, they aren’t what gives you the victory in the
Christian life. Even though you are
diligent to take in the Word of God and God won’t fight for you unless you do,
the taking in of the Word of God is not going to give you spiritual victory in
itself. Your spiritual victory comes
about because of what God the Holy Spirit does in your life, suppressing the
sin nature, working in circumstances, conquering powers around you. All that work is done on your behalf as a
believer and all of this is not a direct result of your doing. See, that’s
where the resting…. So the ironic thing is in the Christian life, you have
those two tensions all the time. Do what
God wants you to do and rest for the rest, just relax and let Him take care of
the others, and don’t ever get the idea that your doing is actually producing
the results you’re seeing. That’s how to
get spiritually fatheaded and out of fellowship real fast.
What you do is not responsible for the results spiritually in your
life. If you’ve been blessed spiritually
and you see maturity and you see growth in your life, that growth isn’t
because, just because, you’ve been diligent to take in the Word. That wouldn’t have happened if you had not
taken in the Word. The people that are
diligent in taking in the Word of God are people who will grow, but their
growth isn’t due directly to their taking in the Word. The taking in the Word puts them under a
regime of God in which He blesses them, and that’s the area of rest.
Now we’re going to come to chapter 8 and a new section of this book, and
these lessons that David has learned are going to be carried over. This is the famous section in the book of
Samuel where David is going to stumble.
And he is going to do it because he does not stay grace oriented. But whether he stumbles or whether he
doesn’t, these principles still remain, the resting and the doing. Except now we are going to deal in the next
chapters, chapters 8-12, God prepares for David’s worldwide kingdom, with a new
divine institution. Up to now we’ve been
talking about the fourth divine institution, David as the executive, David and
the government, now we’re going to start talking about the fifth divine
institution, tribal diversity.
The divine institution of tribal diversity is one that is related to
world history, and it’s this divine institution, it’s the tribal diversity that
God at this time in the postdiluvian civilization has broken history up into
compartments, so that for one time one tribe of men will have the ascendancy,
and then for another period of history another tribe will have the
ascendancy. Throughout history the three
sons of Noah have had ascendancy; first the Hamites. The sons of Ham who include the colored
races, who include various white races like the Egyptians and so on, these sons
of Ham were the first tribal areas to dominate the world. Every great first civilization on every
continent was begun by a son of Ham. If
you go to
With the rise of David this stopped, and now we are watching, under the
fifth divine institution the rise of the Semitics, in particular, Yisrael. So now we enter a new phase of history in
which the dominant world reigning power lies with the sons of Shem. And the sons of Shem control the
And all of these peoples are Semitic peoples; these are the tribes of
the sons of Shem. Now of course later on
in history, in our day, world control has passed to ourselves, the sons of
Japheth. The sons of Japheth include
Indo-Europeans; most of you come from the stock of Japheth, and Japheth at this
time, beginning in 586, Japheth was given the power to run the world.
So down through history we have, under the fifth divine institution, not
world government but we have what is known and imperialism. Now we teach ideas around here that are
deeply offensive to everyone, whether we deal with economics, politics or
anything else, here’s another one, add it to the list, it is God’s design to
further the cause of imperialism in history.
Imperialism is of God, and everywhere you have had strong imperialism
you have had world peace. When the
Under the sons of Japheth, beginning in 586 BC we have had four kingdoms
rise and fall. We have had Babylon,
Medo-Persia, Greece and Rome, and then Daniel predicted that the Roman Empire
would divide into east and west. And
therefore we see the east and the west arms of the Roman Empire still operating
today with eastern Europe and Russia being the eastern side of the Roman Empire
and the USA and Europe being the western side of the Roman Empire. And it is God’s will that all of these
imperialistic schemes work out so that the sons of Japheth basically, don’t
necessarily control every square foot of the earth but they are the leading
actors in the international scene. That’s always a sign of imperialism, that
all the other nations are going to start responding to the one tribe that God
is working with.
Now a brief capsule on the United States.
The United States was a minor power under the western leg of the Roman
Empire as defined by the book of Daniel, or the fourth kingdom. The United States was blessed and rose to the
point after World War I, the United States became a major power. By the end of World War II the United States
basically had only one opponent, Russia. In God’s wisdom, arguments can be made, and
I’m not going to make it dogmatically, but an argument can be made that it
would have been wise for the United States to conquer the world in 1945, as
startling as that may seem. We had the
atomic bomb, we had the war machine to do it; we could have dictated peace on
every continent of the world and it would be enforced by the nuclear shield of
the United States Air Force. No one
would have challenged the United States.
The missionaries would have had clear entrance on every continent. The communists would not be the bully-boys
they have been in Eastern Europe and Asia.
We could have taken advantage of the collapse of Europe to totally
dominate the scene. But Americans in
1945-46 were tired of war and they wanted to go back to materialism lust and to
enjoy their families and go back and enjoy what they felt they missed during
the war years. So this part of American character was destroyed.
So into this, since out of the sons of Japheth, one or the other must
dominate, it looks like the shift of power now has gone over to the eastern
side of the Roman power, so that’s why Russia now is in the ascendancy. She
basically has taken over the lead and in our own generation under the fifth
divine institution, Gog, or Russia, is the tribe that basically dominates
history. United States foreign policy is
not initiative, it’s reactive. Our
foreign policy is reactive to what the Russians do. They are the ones that
initiate the shock, we are the ones that react to it. That is a significant
point and it’s going to be demonstrated from 2 Samuel 8. But under the fifth divine institution the
imperialist tribe or the non-imperialist tribe is whether you have the
political and international initiative on your side. It is part of the mental attitude of
non-imperialist tribes, we’ll call it a national mental attitude, a national
mental attitude is set up and established and we’ll see that in this chapter,
that when the fifth divine institution functions in history, and how He does it
I’m not sure, but He creates a mental attitude of subservience on the part of
all the other tribes. And then the tribe
that is in the lead has a national mental attitude of aggressiveness. And right now it doesn’t take a genius to see
that America is not in an aggressive mental attitude.
Let’s look at chapter 8 and see some of these principles. We’re actually going to cover two chapters,
chapter 8 and part of chapter 10 because both of these chapters have to do with
the same subject. Chapter 8 is a
catalogue of all of David’s military victories under the concept of the fifth
divine institution. In other words, this
is a catalogue of David’s imperial policies, a catalogue of David’s
imperialism. Chapter 10 takes one
incident out of chapter 8 and expands it, typical of the way Jewish history is
written. First you have the general,
then you have the specific; first you have chapter 8, then you have chapter 10
which is a specific.
To outline the rest of chapters 8-12, chapter 9 is a parenthesis, and
chapters 11-12 are a parenthesis; they continue the concept of David’s
imperialism, but each has to do with court intrigue. Chapter 9, what about the seed of Saul and
chapter 11-12 deal with what about David’s successor. Chapters 11-12 you are familiar with because
that’s the David-Bathsheba incident, but I want you to frame it properly in
your mind, since this is a study in 2 Samuel, it’s not a study on the
principles of one chapter; we’re going to deal with the David-Bathsheba
incident, but we’re going to frame it in the overall argument of Samuel. And when you frame the David-Bathsheba
incident, the motive behind this is to show you that God’s chosen man and his
successor to the throne are all men who are deeply sinful. And it’s a chance to give a divine viewpoint
perspective of the fact that even his successor on the throne comes about by a
(quote) “accident,” because it’s Bathsheba who is going to give birth to
David’s son. So that’s the flow of the
argument.
Now chapter 8, “And after this it came to pass that David smote the
Philistines, and subdued them; and David took Metheg-ammah out of the hand of
the Philistines.” Now first let’s see
where the Philistines are. The
Philistines are in the Gaza strip and northeastward. It is this area that David is now dominating;
he hasn’t yet conquered them. The word “Metheg-ammah” is a word that is
disputed in what it means lexically, but we at least know what its intent
is. The intent of this expression is the
initiative. Some translate it as the waistband
given to the son by his mother. Other
translators translate it by another thing: the arm of the strong one. So depending on the translation you have a
different rendition of it, but regardless of the rendition, regardless of the
translation, everyone agrees to the meaning of this. This word essentially means initiative, and
it means that David is now seizing the initiative on the international front so
that nations around Israel are now going to design their foreign policy in a
reactive way instead of in an initiative way.
So that under God’s sovereignty when Philistia makes a move from now on,
it’s going to be because first David has made his move. No longer is David going to react to what the
Philistines have done, now the Philistines react to what David does. And it’s a very vital point and this is one
of the key areas of history that reveal the workings of God’s fifth divine
institution, tribal diversity, and the fact that when the power flows from one
tribe, here Philistia, over to another tribe, Jacob, the external overt
empirical sign is who’s reacting to who; who’s got the basic command of the
situation and who’s reacting to it defensively.
So it’s a very critical point, verse 1, this is the sign David is now
ascending power.
Verse 2, “And he took [smote] Moab, and measured them with a line,
casting them down to the ground; even two lines measured he to put to death,
and with one full line to keep alive.
And so the Moabites became David’s servants, and brought gifts.” Moab is this area to the east of the Dead
Sea. Moab is a distant relative of
Jacob, and what verse 2 says, we’d like to know why or how it all started, but
what that business about the two lines and the one line is that he lined all
the men who were of military age, he lined them up in lines, and he had them
stoop over to the ground, bow to the earth, this was done in the Ancient East,
and then his swordsmen went through and cut the heads off of the first line,
went through and slaughtered the second, left the third, slaughtered the fourth
and fifth, left the sixth, and that’s what he did; he killed two-thirds of all
the young men of Moab. David isn’t very
nice… but this is imperialism. We don’t
know what precipitated the event, but somehow God worked it out in His sovereignty
that Moab did something against David and when David responded, then he just
went in there and cleaned out their man power.
Now to see the foreign policy that governed this kind of a situation
turn to Deuteronomy 20:11, this is the foreign policy God gave the nation
Israel for war. Now what’s interesting
about this, under the concept of imperialism, divine viewpoint imperialism,
under this concept the nation that God is going to bless does not have to start the war: God in His
sovereignty always works it out so they get attacked or something happens.
We’re going to see this again and again. David doesn’t start one of these wars;
his opponents always ask for it. God
started the incidents and in this chapter it’s loaded with incident after
incident after incident after incident that God just stirred up in history to
give David an opportunity to start a war.
So when you deal with an imperialistic rise of a tribe in history, God
will always arrange international explosive incidents to give opportunity for
that group.
Now in Deuteronomy 20:11 is what happens when that occurs, when they’re
given an opportunity to start a war.
“And it shall be, if it make thee an answer of peace, and open unto
thee, then it shall be that all the people who are found therein shall be bond
servants unto thee, and they shall serve thee. [12] And if it will make no
peace with you, but will make war against you, then you shall besiege it.” And by making peace they had to submit to the
rule of Jehovah and the Law of the Word of God.
So these cities were offered a peace pact. Either you submit to the Word of God or
you’re going to get killed; that was the diplomacy that was used. Verse 12, if it doesn’t make peace, that is,
if it doesn’t submit to the authority of the Law of God, you make war against
it and then you will besiege it. [13] “And when the LORD thy God has delivered
it into thine hands, thou shalt smite every male thereof with the edge of the
sword, [14] But the women, and the little ones, and the cattle, and all that is
in the city,” they’re all spoil for you.
God has given them to. Now there
you notice that every male was to be slaughtered; don’t get hacked at David for
doing it, he’s just following out the will of God.
Now why doesn’t he kill every male?
Because the exact form of Deuteronomy 20 has been negated by Judges 2;
in Judges 2 God announced that He would not honor the exact terms of the Mosaic
Covenant any further due to Israel’s negative volition. And to it becomes
distorted from that point forward in history and it’s not ever carried out
again. So in 2 Samuel 8, when David
carries the destruction of upon two out of every three males he is simply being
gracious under the terms of the original foreign policy. And to show you that he’s being gracious,
notice the word “full” in verse two, it says “one full line” so apparently what
he did is that the lines that he slaughtered had less men in than the lines
that he kept, so where he’d see a line of men lined up that were full he’d let
them go. And if there were just a few
men in a line he’d kill them, and then he’d go to the next one and kill them,
kind of that way, it wasn’t necessarily that he had to kill every third one,
but the average was that two out of every three men were slaughtered.
Now why did David do that? Because the
last part of verse 2, another principle under the fifth divine institution,
“the Moabites became David’s slaves,” by doing this David set up an
international situation where Moab would be minus her army. This was a way of doing several things: one,
minus the army; two, he tremendously dispirited the nation, obviously if the
nation loses two out of every three young men it’s a very dispirited
nation. This day in Moab, two out of every
three men, there wasn’t a family in this nation that didn’t lose some of their
finest young men. David completely
crippled this nation. So that’s one of
the great results of an imperialist policy.
The other tribes round about are crippled.
Now 8:3-8, “David smote also Hadadezer, the son of Rehob, king of Zobah,
as he went to recover his border at the river Euphrates.” Now this requires a little knowledge of
geography. The kingdom of this man, by
the way this is a league, it’s not just one man, you see where it says he was
the king at Zobah; Zobah is located south of the Euphrates valley, but north of
a place called Aramea. Now let’s get a
few name straight here. In the Bible
you’ll see, in your Bible it’s called Syria, but I don’t like that
fundamentally because that’s not the word that’s originally meant, it’s just
translated Syria because the people now are the people we call the Syrians. But
I don’t like that because there are another group of people in the Bible much
bigger called the Assyrians. And I
prefer to reserve it, so wherever you see Syrians, I’m going to talk about the
Arameans, or Aramea, so you’ll know what I’m talking about. That’s the original
word and that’s the word that should be used.
That’s the word in the original language in the Hebrew; Aramea.
Now let’s line these nations up and get them straight. Close to the Euphrates valley you had
Zobah. You have a league of nations
centering on Zobah. Hadadezer forms a
league with many of these nations round about and it’s a rising power to the
northeast of David, and David’s diplomats are very well aware, he has a good
operating state department, and they are very concerned with this rising power
to the northeast. South of Zobah is a
place called Aramea, and that’s what’s translated in your Bibles Syria. And south of them are the Ammonites. The Ammonites today are the modern day
Jordanians. The Arameans are the modern day Syrians. And the Zobah people are the people that are
up north in Iraq and Iran.
In verse 3 we have this league and the league is in trouble because he’s
going to recover his border at the River Euphrates. So the league of Hadadezer is having problems
up here at the Euphrates River. Now why
are they having trouble at the Euphrates River?
Here’s where chapter 10 amplifies the point, so turn to 10:1. Here’s a series of incidents that occurred
before 8:3; in other words, 10:1 and following chronologically go between
chapter 8, verses 2 and 3. Learn to read
the Old Testament topically, not chronologically and then when some liberal
tells you, ooh, there’s an error in the Bible, this is out of order. Well of course it is, it was never intended
to be in order; Jews don’t write history in chronological order, they write it
in topical order. One of the greatest
attacks on liberal higher criticism has been done by Jews. One of them is [can’t understand name, sounds
like: Imberto Cassudo] who was a professor at Hebrew University and he wrote
The Fallacy of the Documentary Hypothesis, one of the greatest works, and he’s
not promoting fundamental Christianity, he’s just a good Jew who knows Jewish
literature. He says look at all these
Gentile [can’t understand word]; they don’t know how to read our literature, of
course they see contradictions in it.
And the other man who in this day and age has been an outspoken critic
of higher criticism, and he heads [can’t understand words] who has held that
Israel was monotheistic from the time of Abraham forward, there was no such
thing as evolutionary development of a religion at all. So a Jewish scholar is best qualified to
understand and pass judgment on Jewish literature. And when you read them, they don’t buy this
kind of stuff.
All right, Zobah, Aramea, Ammonite; that’s the sequence. Now watch the sequence of events that lead to
the destruction of the league of Hadadezer.
First in 10:1, “And it came to pass after this, that the king of the
children of Ammon died, and Hanun, his son, reigned in his stead.” All right, now remember, the initiative
basically was Yahweh, not David. Remember we started off by giving you incident
after incident after incident that David is not in control, David can’t stop a
guy from dying. This is an “accident,”
this isn’t chance, this is God’s sovereignty, God has promised David you’re
going to be a worldwide king. And so
this little innocent looking “accident” is going to be used under God’s
sovereignty to give him a powerful empire; let’s watch how it happens.
10:2, “Then said David, I will show kindness unto Hanun, the son of
Nahash, as his father showed kindness unto me.” The word kindness is chesed, our word for loyal love. Now what is the kindness that this Nahash
showed to David? We don’t know; all we
know in Scripture is that in 1 Samuel 11 Nahash was the guy that fought Saul,
apparently later on David became friends, that was many, many years ago, and
somewhere during the interval Nahash showed kindness to David; it might have
been while David was on the outs with Saul, we don’t know, the Bible doesn’t
tell us. But the word “kindness” is a
word that means loyalty to a prior agreement, so at least it tells us that
David and Nahash had some sort of a working international policy going between
them, they had some sort of a deal worked out.
So David was going to honor the deal that he’d worked out with Nahash. “And David sent to comfort [console] him by
the hand of his servants for his father.
And David’s servants came into the land of the children of Ammon.” They came to attend the funeral.
10:3, “And the princes of the children of Ammon said unto Hanun, their
lord, Thinkest thou that David doth honor thy father, that he hath sent
comforters unto thee? Has not David
rather sent his servants unto you, to search the city, and to spy it out, and
to overthrow it?” See, they’re all shook
up because next to Ammon is a place called Jabesh-gilead, remember the last
incident of Jabesh-gilead? The people of
Jabesh-gilead had been reward by David for keeping Saul’s body, remember they
were the ones that dared to come on over and take his body off the temple that
the Philistines had nailed his body up to.
So when David became king he gave all sorts of gifts to
Jabesh-gilead. Obviously the Ammonites,
being north of them, know exactly that David is very friendly to their
enemies. Besides, Jabesh-gilead is part
of the Jewish nation. So they didn’t
like this, they’re very suspicious. And
then they’re going to make one of the worst mistakes they ever made.
Verse 4, this is an international incident that has severe
repercussions, it’s one of the (quote) “accidents” (end quote) that happened
that plays into God’s hand’s beautifully.
“Wherefore Hanun took David’s servants, and shaved of one half of their
beards,” the beard was a symbol of glory in the Orient, “and cut off their
garments in the middle, even to their buttocks, and sent them away.” Now that was a laugh, in other words, he
just cut off their pants and sent them chasing through the streets with
everybody laughing at them, they thought that was pretty funny, good joke, all
done in humor, until it got back to David.
And David didn’t have the policy that we have when our business
executives are assassinated in another country but notice David, he was
oriented to doctrine and when his ambassadors were insulted, David took
military action. Verse 5, David is
taking procedures, meaning that he’s not laughing at it, it’s not a joke to
him. “When they told it unto David, he
sent to meet them, because the men were greatly ashamed; and the king said,
Tarry at Jericho until your beards be grown, and then return.”
Verse 6, “And when the children of Ammon saw that they stank [had become
odious] before David,” that’s just a Hebrew idiom, “the children of Ammon sent
and hired the Syrians,” see they had a volunteer army too, they had to hire
people to fight for them, “and the Syrians of Zobah, [had] twenty thousand
footmen,” and what’s happening now? Watch your map and watch the power of
politics begin to work. Talk about the
domino theory, watch how beautifully this one’s working. Jabesh-gilead, positive volition; Ammonites
negative volition, Arameans negative volition, Zobah negative volition. What is God going to do? He’s going to promote the tribe of David. How is He going to do it? Set off an international incident and start a
war. So Jabesh-gilead has positive volition, so the Ammonites are going to set
up a fight with David. They’re going to
get in a fight but they’re going to pull down Aramea; Aramea is going to get in
a fight to help the Ammonites and guess who’s going to come in behind
Aramea? And the whole three things,
boom, boom, boom, are going to come in, and this way David has a chance to
knock all three off at one shot. So it’s
a beautiful opportunity for David and his military power.
Verse 7, “And when David heard of it, he sent Joab, and all the army
[host] of the mighty men. [8] And the
children of Ammon came out, and put the battle in array at the entering in of
the gate;” the particular city, by the way, in which this battle was fought is
the modern capital of Jordan called Amman, and that’s why it’s called Amman,
it’s actually a city, a modern day city that is still there, and Amman is named
after the Ammonites. That’s where they
fight. They put it at the gate. “…and the Syrians of Zobah, [and of Rehob,
and Tob, and Maacah], were by themselves in the field. [9] And Joab saw that the front of the battle
was against him before and behind, he chose of all the choice men of Israel,
and put them in array against the Syrians.” What has happened here is that Joab
gets caught in a pincer move. They come
up on the city of Ammon and the Ammonites are in the city, they choose to fight
defensively, so they’re located at a point.
That doesn’t bother Joab, he comes up and starts the siege; but while
he’s sieging the Syrians come down and surround him. So now he’s cut off, he’s got a surrounding
of the Syrians here, and the Ammonites here and Joab’s caught in the
middle.
Now Joab knows that he’s fighting on a divine viewpoint basis, because
in verse 12 he says, “Be of good courage, and let us play the men for our
people,” in other words, let’s be men about this thing and fight to kill, “and
for the cities of our God; and the LORD do that which seems to Him good.” So they’re fighting for a cause. Just by way of a footnote of application
here, all of you in this day and age, when the anti-military attitude is
prevalent, turn to a verse that you ought to know, Nehemiah 4:14. This is the classic text of the Old Testament
and the New Testament that tells us the motive for fighting and why Christian
young men should be part of their country’s military. This is not during holy war so verse 14
applies to all nations. Here are the
reasons given in the Bible for killing in warfare. “And I looked, and rose up, and said unto
the nobles, and to the rulers, and to the rest of the people, Be not ye afraid
of them. Remember the Lord, who is great
and terrible [awe-inspiring],” in other words, be occupied with the Lord, grace
oriented, and then, “fight for your brethren, you sons, and your daughters,
your wives, and your houses.” Those are
the divine institution of your country.
Look at it, your brothers, your sons and your daughters, there’s the
third divine institution, family; you fight for your wives, second divine
institution; women are always the ones who suffer the most when a nation loses
war; always have, always will; and your houses, that’s your property, first
divine institution.
So is it clear why a young man can fight with a clean conscience. He fights to protect the divine institutions
of his country, contrary to the advertisements of the Army and the Air Force
and the Navy, you do not fight because you’re going to get job training, and
you do not fight because you’ve got $400 a month income, and you do not fight
because of monetary incentives. That has never been part of why men and it’s a
group of kooks we have in the services that are the PR boys. The service has
gone the same way the seminaries have gone, they hire these PR people and they
always ruin it for everybody, so young men come in, oh I’m going to be job
trained and the first thing you know they go out on a two week expedition and
wallow through mud up to their waist and oh this doesn’t me a job, what’s this
all about. One job you should learn in
the service and that’s how to kill somebody, that’s your job. And verse 14
gives you the reasons why you should learn to kill; you’ve got lots of good
reasons and none of them have to do with your job or the money that you
make. They have to do with something
more precious. You’re fighting in the
armed service to protect your homes, your girlfriends, your wives, your
families; that’s what you’re fighting for.
Nehemiah 4:14 gives you four things worth fighting for.
Back to Joab, Joab didn’t have job training; Joab motivated his soldiers
by patriotism in verse 12, good old fashioned patriotism, loyalty to the God of
their country, which was Jehovah. And he
did a very smart thing here, he had a choice.
He had two enemy groups; he had the Ammonites and the Syrians. Now watch which one he hits first; watch how
he does it. In verse 9 it says he took
the choice man and put them against the Syrians, or the Arameans, [10] And the
rest of the people he delivered into the hand of Abishai, his brother, that he
might put in array against the children of Ammon.” Now why do you suppose he did this? Because the principle of war which is, if you
have two people you’re fighting, you know you’re going to have to fight both of
them. The first thing you do when you’re
fresh, and you’ve got the maximum number of soldiers, clobber your most fierce
opponent first, because if you waste your time losing men fighting your weak
ones, then it’s going to weaken you when you fight the strong ones. So in a situation like this it’s very much
military chokmah to pick off your
strongest folk first. If you can’t win
with him you’re not going to win with the other ones, it’s very obvious. So he takes all his men and he hits the
Syrians because they’re the best fighters here.
And he won, verse 13, “And Joab drew near, and the people who were with
him, unto the battle against the Syrians; and they fled before him. [14] And
when the children of Ammon saw that the Syrians were fled, then fled they also
before Abishai, and entered into the city.
So Joab returned from the children of Ammon, and came to
Jerusalem.” Now verse 15, power politics
began to take over, “And when the Syrians saw that they were smitten before
Israel, they gathered themselves together.” Again we go back to our map and
see what’s happened. The Ammonites have
now been clobbered. That leaves the southern boundary of Aramea open, now
they’re thrown into a defensive posture. Do you see what’s happening; the
political initiative lies with who now?
David or the Arameans? The Arameans, they’re the ones that are backing
up, they’re the ones that are going into a defensive posture and David is the
one whose calling the shots. So Aramea
goes up and to the north of them is this Hadarezer’s league, in verse 16, “And
Hadarezer sent and brought out the Syrians who were beyond the river,” that’s
the River Euphrates, “and they came to Helam; and Shobach, the captain of the
hose of Hadarezer, went before them. [17] And when it was told David, he
gathered all Israel together, and passed over the Jordan, and came to
Helam. And the Syrians set themselves in
array against David, and fought with him.” David said all right, they’re going
to fight me, I’m going to go clobber them; we clobbered the Ammonites, we’ve
hit the Arameans, let’s make a clean sweep and that way we’ll drive all the way
up to the Euphrates; beautiful opportunity because in Genesis 15:13 it says
that the empire of Israel is going to ascend all the way up to the Euphrates
river. Don’t tell the Syrians about it
but in the millennium Israel is going to own all the land up to the
Tigris-Euphrates valley. This is an
opportunity.
Verse 18, And the Syrians fled before Israel; and David slew the men of
seven hundred chariots of the Syrians, and forty thousand horsemen, and smote
Shobach,” he was the commander in chief and a very good soldier, “the captain
of their host, who died there.” And so
in verse 19, “And when all the kings who were servants to Hadarezer, saw that
they were smitten before Israel, they made peace with Israel, and served them.” When they saw that they were smitten before
Israel, notice what happens, they made peace and served them, imperialism; they
are taking a position of national servitude.
And then mental attitude lesson, something the United States has never
learned; you can teach nations lessons, and here is one nation that learned a
lesson. “So the Syrians,” collectively
as a nation, “feared to help the children of Ammon any more.”
Nations act like people; nations can be bully nations and they have to
be cut down to size. And once they’re
beaten real good, they pull in their horns and mind their business. And like
handling bullies, there is only one lesson and that is clobber them good. Here
you have divine imperialism; David won a victory, clobbered them and he had peace. Now he did it without Kissinger, the United
Nations or anyone else. How did he pull
it off? He pulled it off on a Biblical
basis, he just clobbered them, period.
Like the Arabs telling us what they’re going to do with the oil? Who gave them all the machinery to mine the
oil? We are still equipping the Arabs
with all the valves they need for their pipes, all the pipes they need to
connect their refineries, because Uncle is afraid the Arabs might get mad if we
stopped. All we have to do is say no
oil, no valves, by-by.
2 Samuel 8:3, this is why in chapter 8 Hadadezer is in trouble. “…he went to recover his border at the river
Euphrates,” now he is recovering because he’s trying to recover from what
happened in chapter 10. Verse 4, “And
David took from him,” look at this, wiped him out, “a thousand chariots, and
seven hundred horsemen, and twenty thousand footmen; and David hamstrung all
the chariot horses,” it means he went along with a sword and cut the back leg
muscles so he made sure that those horses would never ride again, he took care
of that little operation.
Verse 5, “And when the Syrians of Damascus came to aid Hadadezer, king
of Zobah, David slew of the Syrians two and twenty thousand men. [6] Then David
put garrisons in Syria of Damascus; and the Syrians became servants to David,
and brought gifts.” Imperialism. “And
the LORD preserved David wherever he went.”
Imperialistly, see, there’s a policy of imperialism. David did not start the wars, God did, and he
just cleaned up. And now look what
happened, national spoils, verse 7, “And
David took the shields of gold that were on the servants of Hadadezer, and
brought them to Jerusalem,” and later on, verse 11, “Which also King David did
dedicate unto the LORD, with the silver and gold that he had dedicated of all
nations which he subdued.” So he gave
all the spoils to God; that again shows his gracious spirit. Now “spoils” is another empirical observation
to watch as you monitor history in our own generation.
Spoils do not have to be removed from a nation by military
conquest. Spoils can be removed from a
nation by economic means. You look at
something; the largest truck factory in the USSR today was build by
Detroit. The Russian armor has most of
its armor built in factories that American businessmen built for them. The Russians have not even paid for these
factories; the Chase Manhattan Bank still has outstanding loans from Russia for
building them. So we not only face an
army that’s fantastic, we’re the ones that paid for it; we’re the ones that
built in. In the Russian air defense
system, the computers of that system was generously given to Russia through
IBM. And the Russian people are now
eating bread because we gave them our grain on credit. You ask me, where’s the flow of spoils.
Russians are laughing at us, what a bunch of stupid Americans, we don’t even
have to conquer them and we get they spoils.
Look at this, they made our army for us and they feed us. We are so stupid and at one time America was
looked up to as one of the greatest country there ever was; more countries were
inspired by our constitution than any other document in history. We were at one time the most respected nation
on earth. And we are the biggest jokes
on the face of the earth; in 200 years we’ve come a long way—down.
This is imperialism and I want you to see how finally it results in
David’s time. Verse 13, “And David got
him a name when he returned from smiting of the Syrians in the valley of salt,
being eighteen thousand men.” All of
this is the culmination and the fruition of the Davidic Covenant. Did God say He was going to promote David’s
kingdom? Yes. Is he?
Yes. In conclusion, apply all
these principles to your life. We’ve
been talking big tonight, we’ve been talking big in terms of divine institution
number five. Now you look at the
tremendous engineering of God’s sovereignty in history, to pull this event off,
this event off, this event off, event after event after event to bless David,
bless him, bless him bless him, bless him.
Why? Because of David’s heart attitude.
Remember what we said about sanctification: the issue in sanctification
is not primarily getting rid of your sins, that’s only a means. Sanctification is wanting to be fit for God
and David was that kind of man. He put
God first and he had a passion to see God face to face. He wasn’t interested in some nitpicking
religious 11:00 o’clock service; David was interested in saturating his soul
with the Word of God so he could meet God face to face.
Now look what God did for that man, look at all the things that come
together here to guarantee this man’s blessing.
Now if God did that, think what He can do in your life, in your (quote)
“big problems” that aren’t anything compared to these kinds of problems. If God can control history according to His
Word, can’t He control the details of your life, in the office, in your
business, on the campus, in your family.
Can’t He control those details, if He can control whole nations and
bring about His Word perfectly and bless a person. He sure can, and the beautiful thing about it
all is that God doesn’t ask you, here you have all these concerns, all these
problems, God doesn’t ask any of us to be able to control all of them. He’ll take one or two areas, say take in the
Word, do this or do that, and He’ll say now I want you to concentrate on those,
you concentrate on those things I’ll take care of the rest. David wasn’t in control of all these things;
David was just in control of one thing, he was getting that ark centered in
Jerusalem, studying the Word of God, writing Psalms, and look what happened:
God took care of the rest. It’s the same
principle in your life. With our heads
bowed.