The Day After Tragedy

ReCAST Church of Mattawan

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You're listening to the podcast of Recast Church in Matawan, Michigan. This week, Pastor Don Filsak is preaching from his series,

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The Warrior Poet King, Study of Second Samuel. Let's listen in. I'm Don Filsak.

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I'm the lead pastor here, and we're going to go ahead and get started by giving an introduction to the message this morning. First, I want to just remind you that it is

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Father's Day. I hope none of you forgot that, but maybe you're due for a phone call to your dad.

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Maybe it's a trip. Maybe it's a meal out. But seek to honor God by honoring your earthly father today as he has told us to.

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It's really awesome that here in America, we at least have these cultural milestones and these dates and these cadences throughout the year that remind us to obey

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God in terms of honoring our parents, and so I encourage you to do that. And a special welcome to those of you who are just kind of here kicking the tires, figuring out if this church is a good place for you.

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Recognize that that can be an intimidating thing, and so I'm glad that you've taken the chance to come here and worship together with us this morning.

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We're all on a journey together with God, and that's really what Recast is all about. He's brought us on this journey, and we love to journey together, and so we welcome you here and would love for this to be a great fit for you.

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When we set out 13 years ago to start a new church here in Mattawan, I realized that the core value of simplicity was a bit risky.

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I say it's risky because there's so many things we could put on the page when you ask, what does a person need to grow spiritually?

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When we ask that question, what does a person really need in order to be good with God, we recognize that our lives and the pages of our lives can get flooded with all kinds of good things, right?

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How many of you know you could be busy every night of the week and multiple times on Sunday growing spiritually, right?

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We just know that that's a reality. But we set out to strive hard after three primary things here, really not necessarily removing everything else off the plate, but saying, here's what simplicity is.

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Simplicity is focusing on these three things, and 13 years later, I am not disappointed that we haven't added to that list.

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We believe that everybody needs to be growing in faith, growing in community, and growing in service.

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We believe that that's what you need, and so coming together on Sunday morning is that growing in faith, engaging and getting involved in a community group is growing in community, and using the gift that God has given you to serve the body is the third component.

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This morning, our text is going to be a growing in community kind of message, growing in relationships.

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One of our core values here as a church is authenticity. What we mean by that is we don't like to wear masks.

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If you've had a rough week, somebody here should know about it. If you've had a great week, somebody here should know about it, and a lot of times it's in that community group.

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We recognize that you come into a setting like this, and it's not really easy to have a super deep conversation here in this context.

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That's why you need community groups for that, but our text at face value this morning looks like a relatively insignificant few verses that closes out the accounting of a battle in the

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Old Testament that began back in chapter 10 in the life of David. The army of Israel has been out to battle under Joab the commander, under David, and they've been setting siege to a city named

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Rabba. It's the capital of the Ammonite Empire. There's all kinds of personal sin and personal strife that's been going on with David for the last couple of chapters back in Jerusalem.

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The king is in personal turmoil. The king has sunk himself in darkness and in sin and in grief.

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Meanwhile, his army is out to war. David is really at the point where we get to our text this morning.

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David has been sidetracked into a spiral of personal concerns, and I think many of us have been there.

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Maybe, to be quite honest, some of us are coming off of two years of that. It's quite possible.

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He's been spiraling due to personal concerns while his kingdom continues to go on without his attention.

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He is a personally compromised ruler who has sinned.

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Not only has he sinned, but then he embarked on a failed cover -up attempt where God called him out on it.

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He has confessed, and last week we saw him grieving over the consequences of his own sin, dire and dark and deep consequences like the death of his son.

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But there is still a kingdom to rule. There is still a military out on the battlefield.

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There is still something to be done the day after personal tragedy.

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Did you guys know that? There's still something to be done the next day. I'm entitling this message, The Day After Tragedy, really kind of more as a figure of speech than anything, because the word day sounds like, oh, just the very next day after something bad strikes.

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You have to pick yourself up, but I think you can bear with the figure of speech. There is nothing in our text that is concerned for the time frame of how long it takes for all of this to wrap up.

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We don't know if the final overthrow of the Ammonite capital that we're talking about in our text, that city of Rabbah, we don't know if that happened a day, a month, or a year after the infant son of David and Bathsheba died.

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We don't know how many days there was. What we do know is that David needs to be shaken back to his calling and his responsibility, and it is his commander,

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Joab, the commander of his army, that God uses to shake David back awake to his responsibility.

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David is a king in our text who has forsaken his calling. He has endured real and true and deep tragedy.

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How many of you would just raise your hand just as a manner of confession and say, I have in my life experienced at least an event of deep tragedy, at least something that has moved my heart to sorrow, to grief, to weeping.

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I think all of us know that experience. In his context, he was caught in sin and confronted by the

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Almighty. He has now lost a son. He has a grieving wife, and he has to live with the incessant knowledge, and I believe deep conviction, of how he obtained that beautiful, grieving wife.

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And so what we see is an intentional text this morning, not just a passing connective tissue, kind of like, let's wrap up the story, move on to the next account kind of thing.

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It's not just merely a text showing us how the battle of Rabbah ended. We see

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David victorious in our text. We see the show going on in the text, even the day after tragedy.

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So let's open our Bibles or your devices or your Scripture journals. If you have downloaded the app, you can click the faith tab at the bottom, and you'll see sermon notes there.

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Click that, and it takes you right to the text. There's a little space for you to take digital notes there, if you're into that kind of thing.

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I know that taking notes helps just to solidify it. How many of you take notes and then never read them again? That's me, but there's a benefit to it, to me, while I'm taking notes, so I'm kind of like that.

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But again, it's 2 Samuel 12, verses 26 through 31. Let's read this together, church.

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God's holy and precious word to us on this Father's Day. By the way, a message to fathers and mothers and children and all of us.

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Now, Joab fought against Rabbah of the Ammonites and took the royal city. And Joab sent messengers to David and said,

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I have fought against Rabbah. Moreover, I have taken the city of waters. Now then, gather the rest of the people together and encamp against the city and take it, lest I take the city, and it be called by my name.

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So David gathered all the people together and went to Rabbah and fought against it and took it.

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And he took the crown of their king from his head. The weight of it was a talent of gold, and in it was a precious stone, and it was placed on David's head.

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And he brought out the spoil of the city a very great amount. And he brought out the people who were in it and set them to labor with saws and iron picks and iron axes and made them toil at the brick kilns.

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And thus he did to all the cities of the Ammonites. Then David and all the people returned to Jerusalem.

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Let's pray. Father, I thank you so much for your gracious word.

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I thank you that you are a God who seeks to call us out and call us back in, that you have gifted us, you have blessed us in community with others around us.

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I pray that you would make us through this text the kind of people who speak truth as to one another's lives.

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I think that probably to a person here, there are times when we have ceased to share ourselves with the world, and we have ceased to believe that we have much to offer.

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And it is in those seasons that we need community more than ever. It's in those seasons when we're most likely and most prone to isolate ourselves that we need others' voices around us.

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And so, Father, I thank you that in your wisdom you have created church, you have created gathering, you have created togetherness, you have created even this gathering here this morning with intention, that we would look around us and see that we are not alone in our faith, nor are we free to just spend our days, our months, our weeks, our years licking our wounds.

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You have a ministry, you have a responsibility you have called each one of us to, you have a service for us to render, you have community that each one of us has to offer to one another.

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So Father, I pray that this word this morning would have its way in our hearts to re -engage us.

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Father, if there's anybody here who is disengaged, and I know that this has been a season, a long season of disengagement, and even though we are in attendance, we may very well be very disengaged.

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So Father, I pray that you would draw us closer to you, and in that, closer in community together with your people.

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I ask this in Jesus' name, amen. Alright, yeah, you can go to be seated, but if any time during the message you need to get back up and get more coffee juice or donuts, donut holes back there while supplies last, you're not going to distract me if you need to get up during the message.

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If you need to use the restrooms, those are out the double doors down the hallway on the left -hand side, take advantage of that too. And then

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I do ask that you please keep your Bibles open, your device, your scripture journal, whatever it is, to 2

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Samuel chapter 12 verses 26 through 31, that's going to be our text this morning. I want to start with a question this morning.

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What happens the day after tragedy? What happens the day after tragedy?

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In context, this is the way that the author of 2 Samuel chooses to wrap up the account of David's moral fall into deep sin and the consequences that will become a painful sequence moving forward throughout the remainder of the entire book of 2

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Samuel. The rest of this book is going to plunge into spirals of difficulty and darkness in the life of David due to his moral failings with Bathsheba and his murder of Uriah.

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What does that day look like? In this sense, what we're looking at in this text this morning is the indication that the show must go on.

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The show must go on. And within this text itself, the content shows Joab, David's military commander, intentionally trying to get

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David to re -engage in his responsibilities to get back to kinging well, get back to recognizing you're king, get back to recognizing that you have responsibilities, you have a battlefield that you need to take care of.

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You see, David was not discharging his responsibilities since back in chapter 11, verse 1. We've heard nothing about him being king and everything about him failing and faltering.

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We saw him stay at home in chapter 11, verse 1, while his soldiers marched out to conquer the Ammonites and lay siege to their capital city of Rabbah, and that's where we're still at here at the end of chapter 12.

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David has been mired in personal pain, personal suffering, inflicted by his personal choices to commit three things that he says in Psalm 51 about this context.

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He says, I committed transgression, I committed iniquity, and I committed sin. Words that mean he has actively rebelled against God's command, that word transgression.

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Words like iniquity that means he has twisted and disfigured the way that God wants an image bearer to look, and he has missed the mark, sin, he has missed the mark of the holiness that God has called him to, and that's the context of our passage here.

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And the consequences of his sin has already begun. The child born of the sinful union between him and Bathsheba has died, and there are more consequences on the way, more consequences coming.

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So take this passage on as the calm before the storm in the life of David. The Lord is still with David, that's clear in the text, and it's going to be clear throughout the book, but there's also going to be consequences to his sin.

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But we're going to see David achieve victory here, he's going to be graciously called back to ruling by a close friend and confidant in our text.

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And we will see that rather than merely a pitiful, weak, compromised leader who's now going to slouch his way through the rest of his life,

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David still has, by God's grace, David still has the shoulders to carry a kingdom.

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And not only that, but we see in this text he has the neck to carry a crown that weighs 73 pounds.

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The outline is super simple this morning, and it divides the text exactly in half, so if you're a note -taker, this is just straightforward.

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Verses 26, 27, and 28, the first three verses are Joab's concerns, Joab's concern, rather,

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Joab's concern. And then verses 29, 30, and 31 is David's conquest. So Joab's concern,

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David's conquest, that's the outline. So first we take on Joab's concern in these first three verses. We're back where we left off right after chapter 11, verse 1.

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All that came between 11 .1 and 12 .26 has been a major point in the life of David.

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It's set in the action of the context of a war between Ammon and Israel. And so we might need a quick refresher.

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Why in the world is there battle in the Middle East? Well, just because it's the Middle East, I don't know. But there's war going on in our text in the

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Middle East. Surprise, surprise. But David found out that the king of Ammon, Nahash, has died.

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Okay, so this happened back in chapter 10. Nahash was a kind and faithful individual to David.

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We don't know what the context was in which the king of Ammon showed kindness to David, but he did.

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And so David sought to return the favor by sending his formal condolences to his son,

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Hanun, who's the new king in the absence of the dad who was kind to David. Is that making sense? So Hanun took counsel.

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The delegation from David arrives to the eminent capital of Rabbah and is welcomed into the city and they come before the new king,

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Hanun, the young new king, Hanun, who takes counsel from his princes. What should I do in this context?

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The young princes and his young counselors gather around him and whisper, whisper, whisper and they say, these guys are here to spy out your kingdom.

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This is David seeking to conquer you. Poor advice, poor counsel. David sent a delegation to offer his condolences and instead he's being accused of spying.

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Well, Hanun took and shamed the delegation, cutting off half their beards, cutting off the backside of their robes and sending them away back home in shame like poor hazing at a college campus.

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David didn't like it. Can you imagine? Would you like that? If that's the way your delegation was responded to, you sent some friends to some place and they're treated poorly and shamed and sent back to you.

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So he sent his army to deal with Ammon, but they hired Ammon, goes, oh no. Hanun goes, oh no, we're going to get crushed.

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The Israelites are stronger than us. So they hire mercenaries from Syria and Zobah, two northern kingdoms, to surround

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David's army outside of the gates of Rabbah. But then they see that the mercenaries, hired for pay, actually see the strength of David as well and they fled.

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Israel saves Rabbah, saves Ammon for another day and instead goes back to Jerusalem, regroups all of their troops and goes and attacks

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Syria and Zobah, the two nations that were the mercenaries. And they remove them, they obliterate them, they counterattack all the way to the degree that Israel is now able to set up garrisons in Syria, able to set up garrisons in Zobah way up north.

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They obliterate these people. A year later, now it's time to deal with Ammon again.

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Let's go again. And so with Syria and Zobah out of the picture, David sent Joab and his best military units into Ammon to conquer the whole thing.

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And finally, they set a siege to their capital city of Rabbah and it's nearing the end of this battle sequence.

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While the siege is underway is when David took the wife of one of his military officers and then had him put to death, and that's the context in which we've seen the sin of David in the last couple of chapters.

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Now we're not given a timeline on how long this siege of Rabbah took, but we have some fairly decent indication that it was a long period of time.

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It wasn't just like a six -week affair or something like that. What you need to understand is that in ancient military sieges and warfare and that kind of thing, when a river runs through the city, you have your work cut out for you in siege.

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Because how many of you know what's the number one thing that you need to survive? Well, you got to get water.

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You're not going to last more than three or four days without water. Now you can go a while without food, but you can't go long without water.

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Well, the Jabbok River flows right through the city of Rabbah. So that would increase the length of any kind of siege.

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And so it's likely that it was lengthy. It seems reasonable from the flow of the text throughout 2

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Samuel, if you're trying to piece things together, that the siege must have lasted somewhere upwards, beyond a year, probably a little longer than a year, simply because the child from David and Bathsheba has been born, he has been afflicted with illness, and he has died all during the course of the time that the siege is going on in Rabbah.

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So all of those events transpire while the siege is going on. And so with that context, we come to verse 26, with the clear statement that Israel, under the leadership of Joab, the commander of David, has all but declared final victory over the royal city of Rabbah.

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The city is about to fall into the hands of the Israelite military. So at this moment of final victory,

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Joab, David's highest military man, sent a message to David. He has taken the battle to Rabbah.

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He now has control of the city of waters, the waters that flow into the city.

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The word that's used there is kind of like their utilities, okay? How he came to control the water supply for the city is a little, is not specifically clear in this text, but in ancient warfare, there were extensive and amazing, amazing feats, really, when you think about it in the ancient culture, to divert rivers, to divert waters, to dam up entire rivers in order to siege a city and keep them from getting water.

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And it's likely that one of these methods was used by Joab to stop the flow of water through the city, and he's accomplished that.

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Now the city, it's just a matter of days, not weeks, and he says, David, get up here. This battle is going to end.

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Once the utilities are under the control of an invading force, the end is near. To put this in modern terms, once they cut off the fiber optic cables so we can't stream videos anymore, we're as good as done, right?

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Some of you know it shouldn't be that way, but unlikely, it's probably close. But in verse 28, we see something very noble in Joab, even if it doesn't come in the nicest of terms.

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Joab is concerned for his king to get the credit for the victory. In verse 28,

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Joab is concerned for David's absence from this warfare. Now, I want to point out, like I did in an earlier sermon, that it is not common for a king to be absent from war like this, especially during this era.

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Kings led their troops, physically led their troops, wearing armor, carrying shields with a sword out into battle.

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They engaged during this time, and David has been sitting in Jerusalem licking his wounds all this time.

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And apparently, the concern is increased in Joab by a common cultural phenomenon that we don't really relate to. He brings it up in the text to clarify it for us.

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You see, what you need to understand is Jerusalem was called the City of David. Why was Jerusalem known colloquially?

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A word on the street, name on the street was the City of David. Why? Because David conquered it. David took it out of the hands of the

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Jebusites. He conquered it, so people called it the City of David. The people would call it by the conqueror, regardless of any attempts to formally name it.

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That's why we know it as Jerusalem. We call it Jerusalem, but that's not what they called it.

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That's not what the common folk called it. He tried to name it Jerusalem, the City of Peace, and they weren't having any of it. They called it the

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City of David. Joab appeals to this to get David up out of his personal tragedies and back to taking on royal responsibilities.

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I don't think I'm reading too much into the text to say this. David has been far removed in body and heart from leading his people well during this foray into darkness and rebellion and sin.

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So, what do we need most when we go through self -inflicted seasons of difficulty and darkness?

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When our sin catches up with us and we feel terrible and we feel rotten to the core, or when circumstances around us drive us inside ourselves, like for a couple of years of pandemic, how do we come out of that?

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What do we need to hear and what do we need to do the day after tragedy?

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Now, I want to point out what Joab is doing in these first three verses and make sure that we realize when

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I talk about it, I want to make sure you know that this isn't just some ancient story. This applies to us here in Matawan in 2022.

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The way that he responds here matters in that this is God's wholly revealed word that ought to change and shape the way that we do things, the way that we recognize our calling and our need and the things that we need to listen to as well as the things we need to say.

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David has a friend, a coworker, a confidant named Joab, and he is calling

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David back to his responsibilities to his kingdom. In a church that believes that we are all created for community and that we must be growing in community, we need to lean into these three verses and really take on what they're saying.

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David has someone in his life who can grab him by the figurative lapels and give him a good shake and say, you're the king for crying out loud.

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Get out there and act like it. Being a good friend is seeking to strike a balance between sitting with a friend in their misery and suffering, but it also must recognize that there is a time to say, all right, sad time's over, time to get back to work.

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That's not very popular. I don't even see a face in here that's smiling at me right now. I don't know that anybody goes, oh yeah, let's get to that.

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We were a culture, and I suggest to you that we are seasoned church by our culture substantially.

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We're a culture that increasingly does well at empathy, and empathy I would define as sitting with people in their suffering or experiencing, maybe even better yet would be experiencing the suffering that others are going through.

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But I suggest that we often do so at the exclusion of ever calling someone back to the work of service, the work of faith, the work of community, a genuine

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God -given responsibility that he has given to us as his image bearers. I like the way that Douglas Wilson draws a distinction between empathy and sympathy.

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He has a kind of a documentary series called Man Rampant, and in one of those series he really tackles the idea and the distinction between empathy and sympathy, two words that you probably don't have a lot of distinction between, but the two words matter, and they're very substantially different.

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We use them both almost interchangeably now, and probably empathy is a little more popular. But empathy is a relatively new word.

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Like think invented in the 1800s by psychologists, like it wasn't a word before the 1800s.

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Psychologists invented this word to describe the entering into the pain of others and feeling what they feel.

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The most important thing you need to understand about the concept of empathy is that you feel, the goal is to feel exactly what the other person feels.

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If they feel despair, you feel despair. If they feel hopeless, you feel hopeless. If they feel godless, you feel godless.

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End of story. While sympathy is a more ancient word, and sympathy comes from the

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Greek, and it means to suffer, literally means suffer alongside of. The Latin equivalent, by the way, of this word is found many times in the

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Bible. It's compassion. We find sympathy in Scripture, but never empathy.

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Empathy means not suffering alongside of, but in the suffering with. So what's the big deal?

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Are we going to sit here and argue this morning about words? Is that the purpose? Is that the point? I don't think so, but I think it matters significantly in our understanding of what people need from us and what we need from people.

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In seasons, in times of tragedy, seasons of suffering, of mourning, of grief.

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As Douglas Wilson explains, sympathy keeps a grip. This is fundamental difference between sympathy and empathy.

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Sympathy keeps a grip on objectivity while grieving with the person.

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It keeps a handle on God. It keeps a handle on responsibility. It keeps a grip on the word and a grip on the truth.

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Do you get me? It brings to the suffering person a perspective like Joab uses here.

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You're still king. There are people depending on you, dude. It's time to get up off the sofa and get back to being king.

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For Joab to express empathy in this is for him to become immobilized in the suffering with David.

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Nothing to do, just feelings to feel. For Joab to express empathy is for him to become immobilized in suffering with David.

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The best illustration of this keeping an objective grip comes again from Douglas Wilson.

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He says, imagine you and a friend are wandering through the jungle and your friend falls into quicksand. I'm going to say imagine that you're wandering through the fire swamp and you fall into the lightning sand.

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Imagine that that happens. What does your friend need from you? Do they need empathy? Empathy is this,

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Geronimo, as you dive in after them so that you can feel the sand pressing against your mouth so that you can feel that desperation of their hopelessness and their helplessness.

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You can feel all the feelings with you as you suffocate with them.

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Empathy. Get in there with them. Make sure whatever you do, make sure you got no way out.

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Make sure you feel as desperate as they do. Make sure you have no objectivity to bring.

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Make sure you wouldn't bring any harmful solutions to them like the word of God. No harmful solutions like an attempt to fix it.

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No attempts to help. That's empathy. Empathy. The only standard in empathy is to be sure, sure, sure that you feel the same thing as them.

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Does that resonate with our culture? Is that where we live? Is it healthy?

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Sympathy in that context is what Wesley does. What does he do?

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He grabs a vine, something outside of himself to grip, and dives in the lightning sand and rescues

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Princess Buttercup. How does he rescue her?

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Because of empathy? No, he rescues her by holding on to something outside of himself.

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He has nothing else to bring. Two suffering people are not better than one suffering person. You've got to maintain some kind of objectivity.

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Sympathy grabs the vine and jumps in. Joab doesn't run back to Jerusalem to sit with David in mourning and fasting in grief.

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Joab sends a message and says, get up off the sofa and get out here and start kinging. There is a kingdom to run.

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There is a city to conquer. And unless you want Rabba to be named Joabville, you better muster the rest of the troops and hurry up in here.

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We need you. Your people need you. Your kingdom needs you.

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Your soldiers need to see you, David. Get out here and be king.

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Now, I don't believe that Joab's concern is merely about the naming of a city. I think he uses that. But I believe that Joab's concern is for the absence of the king.

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He will do this again later at the death of another son. Another deep scar in David's soul is coming up again in the book, and we're going to see scar after scar in his family.

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He's going to lose a son named Absalom. I mentioned him last week. Joab is again going to have to cuff

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David upside the head verbally with a wake -up call then too. Do you not know that your grieving over the death of your rebel son is making those who defended your very life from that rebel son feel worthless?

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Do you not recognize what you're doing to your people? They need to see their king. Let me ask you a question, church, honest question, and answer it.

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I hope you have a name. I hope you have an answer. Who is your Joab? Who's your

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Joab? Who can speak into your life enough to literally say to you, enough wallowing in your pity?

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It's time to get up and get back to the things that God has called you to. Who's in your life that can say that to you or will say that to you?

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Who can remind you that life is short, and you're not here to lick your wounds, and if you think you're here to lick your wounds, that's all you will ever do?

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How many of you know that? How many of you have lived long enough to know that if you just keep licking wounds and never end, there are plenty of wounds?

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You are here to serve. To a person in this room, you are here to serve the almighty

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God. If there's nobody in your life that can speak like that, it might be time to reevaluate and seek out genuine community, and I suggest to you humbly that the church is where these types of relationships must be forming.

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It's here in this context. Now I see it. I see it. I feel like to some degree at times

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I'm preaching to the choir. I see people engaged and involved in each other's lives, but I just want to point out that I think we've gone through a darkness.

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We've gone through a season, a time of primarily thinking fundamentally of ourselves, and I don't think we've shaken it yet, church.

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I think we might have shaken the idea and the notion that we talk about COVID every day. How many of you would just say, yeah, probably been a few days since I mentioned

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COVID. It's not in my mouth all the time anymore. It's not always there, but we need to lean into community.

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This fall at the end of the summer, it's going to be here before you know it, warning, we're in summer, boom, going to be fall.

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This fall we're going to be making a big push out into community groups, church. This is a little bit of a PSA plus an application from the message.

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We are seeking to offer a variety of groups and our goal is to get enough groups that everyone that calls

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Recast Church their home can get involved in a community group, connect to one.

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That means that if you're willing to host or you're willing to lead a group, this fall is when we need you to step up.

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If you would be willing to open up your home to a community group meeting there, let us know. If you'd be willing to lead one, let us know.

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By the way, when we talk about leading a community group, we don't pretend that it's community veiled as a

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Bible study. Lynn and I have led community groups. We led one that we called

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Prayers and Players. We got together, we played board games and passed around three by five cards, write out your prayer and then pray for each other during the week.

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That was it. If you think you could host a group and have them play board games at your table and get to know one another and share some life together, maybe have dessert, maybe not, there's no pressure there.

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If you think you can do that, man, we need you to step up and get some pockets of people who are rubbing shoulders with one another, those relationships.

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Relationships like this with David and Joab are forged over a lifetime together. They're forged over connection.

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Sometimes they're forged over board games. Sometimes they're forged over watching a football game together.

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Maybe that might be the start of something. I encourage you all to be thinking now about community groups coming up in the fall.

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We're going to be announcing that. We're going to be getting those out. But contact Linda, contact the office if you're interested in hosting or leading a group.

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But it's not enough to ask who is your Joab. It's not enough to ask who speaks into you that way because you know what's coming.

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We also need to consider whether or not we are growing into a Joab for someone else. Who are we speaking into with love and gentleness but truth?

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Who are you loving and who are you coming alongside of in grief and sorrow? Who are you able to speak into with tough words like, it's time, dude.

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It's time to get up off the sofa, put down the remote, and let's get back to sharing you with the world?

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You've been absent. You've been checked out for a while now, and the world needs you. You've got skills.

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You've got abilities. You've got service to render. You've got people to reach with the good news. Let's get out there.

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Who can you speak into like that? The second movement of the text is David's conquest. David heard

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Joab's message and it went to his heart. And in verse 29, David gathered the rest of the conscripts, went to Rabbah, fought

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Rabbah, and took Rabbah. Short succinct verbs show the re -engagement of Israel's king.

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Joab's message has had effect. He is not returning to his people.

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I want to point out there's no way that David is returning to his people the same man that they saw the last time he led them.

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He is more knowledgeable in sin. That's not a good thing. He is now haunted by his knowing what he is capable of in his sinful human nature.

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But he's still David. He is loved by the steadfast, promised, eternal, committed love of God who pledged that to him back in chapter 7 and said, sin's not going to stop this.

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Sin's not going to get in the way of my promises to you, David. But I'm also confident that David had to remind himself of that regularly.

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How many of you know what I'm talking about? Raise your hand if you're forgiven by the blood of Jesus Christ. Go ahead and raise it. Raise your hand.

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Keep your hand up if you just remember that every moment of every day and it's always there in your heart and you never forget it. It goes away, doesn't it?

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We've got to constantly be reminding ourselves of what is true. I believe

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David was in that position too. He had to routinely and probably even closer to the sin of rape and murder, he probably had to remind himself more often.

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Joab had set things up so that when David showed up, the city fell. Rabba was ready.

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He took the crown from their king. David took the crown from their king and it was an obnoxiously, obtusely, ludicrously large crown.

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It weighed a talent of gold and you guys go, wow, a talent of gold. But some of you already looked at the little footnote under there, didn't you?

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Anybody know how many pounds that is? It's actually, it's even refined in scholars, it's about 73 pounds.

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We'll say 75. That's good. That's a good answer. What do you think it's a big crown? Anybody?

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I'm just, you know, just putting it on his head. When I read this, my mind immediately goes to this guy from the internet.

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So what kind of neck does David need in order to wear a 73 -pound crown, okay?

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What are these muscles called right here? Anybody got a name for those? Traps? I think he had to have some substantial traps going on there.

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I've got to visit the chiropractor thinking about wearing a 73 -pound crown. Just thinking about it,

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I'm like, oh, ah. But here's the interesting thing, church. I love this when this happens, and this is just kind of a little nugget.

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It's not necessarily my main point, but there are sculptures that have been found in the Ammonite territory by archaeologists, digs and pulling up sand and, you know, those little scraper things and stuff and revealing sculptures that demonstrate that kings in this era and in this location did indeed wear these ludicrously large crowns to show their dominance during this era.

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Anybody who can wear a 73 -pound crown has a lot of our respect, doesn't he? God had granted to David victory after victory after victory in the past.

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And here in David's conquest, we get the vague reminder that God is still with David. God is faithful to keep his promises.

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Despite David's faithlessness and David's egregious sin. If God has promised to rescue, if God has promised to save, if God has promised to perpetuate

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David's royal line, then guess what God's going to do? He's going to save. He's going to rescue.

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And he's going to perpetuate David's royal offspring. Israel obtains very great spoils from the city, and the

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Ammonites are made to be subject to the politics of Israel under the rule and reign of King David. They're put to labor as miners, diggers, loggers, and brickmakers, the text tells us.

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It's unclear if David honored God by applying the law of Jubilee to these subjugated laborers, but if he was actually following the

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Old Testament law of Moses, he was actually obeying that, and it's unclear whether he did or not. We know that David is a grab bag of obedience and disobedience, but if he did so, then these

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Ammonites would have been progressively emancipated legally in the next generation. This ends the part where things go well for David.

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This is the calm before the storm, and it wraps up an accounting of David's sin with Bathsheba that alters the course of his life.

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Church, listen carefully for just a second here. A few minutes of pleasure, a gruesome cover -up, and a lifetime of consequences.

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A few minutes of pleasure, terrible attempt at cover -up, lifetime of consequences that we're embarking on, church.

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It's going to be some tough text coming up, especially next week. But in this text, we see a friend concerned, and that concern results in the restoration of David to the place he should have been all along.

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He belonged at the battle with his troops back at the beginning of chapter 11. Instead, he stayed back and made his own life much, much, much more difficult.

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And I would suggest to you that we all, to a person here, have made our lives more difficult through our own sin, through our own transgressions, through our own iniquities.

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We have made our future more sketchy. And hear me carefully, we have made it easier for us to have extended pity parties where we just forget what we were made for.

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That's us. As a matter of fact, I believe that Satan wants every single person in this room to be immobilized in Jerusalem, sitting on our couches, in sorrow, in despair, or depression, forgetful of what we are made to be in Jesus Christ.

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That's where he wants us, self -focused, internally distracted, and completely focused on one person, ourselves.

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He doesn't want us to remember, Satan does not want us to remember our station, the position that we've been given in Christ.

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He doesn't want us to remember that we are called, that we are blessed, that we are equipped, that we are forgiven.

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And more than that, we are useful. We are powerful. We are called to courage.

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We have people to reach. We have territory to take. We have powerful prayers to be offered. We have good news to share.

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We have a glorious, risen, powerful, beautiful Lord to serve this week, to honor

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Him, to fix our eyes on Him, with our days, and our weeks, and our months, and our years, and our decades, and yes, our very lives.

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That's our calling, church. Or we can just wait for the next episode, you know, they auto -start again, so just wait for the next episode as that little thing goes through, eight counts down, eight seconds, and boom, we're in the next episode, on the couch, feeling sad and useless.

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We can do that, or we can remember what God has made us to be.

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Why end this service about the Old Testament interplay of Joab and David? Why end that at communion?

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How in the world do we get to communion from there? Because it is at the cross that we find the power to get back in the battle, church.

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It is through the sacrifice of Jesus Christ that we find forgiveness. It is there, at the cross, that we find our value and our strength to go out into this week and make a difference for the

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King. Without the cross, church, without the cross, this is true of all of us, but I'm gonna just make it personal, without the cross,

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Satan is right about me. His accusations stick. Without the cross,

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I am worthless. Without the cross, I am lost in my sin.

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Without the cross, I am useless, and pitiful, and wretched, and powerless to move out in any meaningful way and impact this week for anything that really matters.

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Get what I'm saying there? Do you feel that? But let me be a Joab for you right now, in the absence of anybody else.

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If you have asked Jesus to forgive you of your sins, if you have asked Jesus Christ to be your Lord and Savior based on the work that He did on the cross for you, then get back into your calling.

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Get back into community. Get back into growing in faith and taking in His Word. Get back into serving others.

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Get back to praying the Word, faith, community, service, and take the cracker and the juice this morning, remembering that He who died is faithful to rescue and to save.

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If you've not asked Jesus Christ to be your Lord and Savior, then I encourage you to please skip communion, just take in the song, just remain where you're seated, but I do encourage you also to please feel free and just pray for the boldness.

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If you have questions, if you have just a curiosity about Christ and what He's done, feel free to come and talk with me about how you can be rescued from a life of sorrow, a life of self -pity, and a life that I think has struck many of us in this last few years of apathy.

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How can you be rescued from being owned by your own sin? I would love to talk with you about that.

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But let's go out from here, church, trusting God enough to seek out joabs in our life through community, and let's be committed to being joabs, carefully, lovingly, but faithfully calling others, calling each other to get our heads back in the game.

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Let's pray. Father, I ask that You would allow

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Your Word to settle on each and every heart here. I think we all have something to do with it. Maybe for some it's an encouragement.

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It's just an encouragement that they're on the right track, that they are engaging, they are involved, and they are recognizing

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Your pull, and You have been pulling them out from themselves to serve and to give to others.

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I just think of 60 people this past week giving significantly of their time and energy to minister to young children, and what a great celebration that was, not just for the kids that participated in the sports camp, but for the volunteers as well, to just be encouraged.

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My soul was encouraged this past week. Father, I pray that You would continue that, that You would continue to build that in us.

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Don't let apathy grab a hold of us. Don't let entertaining ourselves like we practiced so much for two years, don't let that entertaining of ourselves be our priority, but instead,

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Father, please help us to lift our eyes, open our eyes to the needs around us, and then open our eyes to the need for others to speak into our hearts and into our lives.

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Father, I thank You for the cross of Jesus Christ. I thank You for the hope that we find in that place, the only hope to make a difference this week for You.

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It is from a safe place of forgiveness, a safe place of strength, a safe place of Your Spirit indwelling us as Your children, that we can launch out and meet the needs of others.

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Without that stability, we are just fighting to stay alive. We are fighting to try to kick our way out of the lightning sand, but Father, I pray that You would continue to bring others in.

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Help us to rescue others, bring others in, and we thank You for that ultimate, ultimate rescue that comes from Jesus Christ.

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When we were sinking down hopeless, He dove in after us. He didn't make it, and He died for us to rescue us.

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Father, I pray that You would allow us to reflect on that as we take the cracker and the juice to remember, re -centering our lives on this truth, that we are not worthy, but in Christ we are deeply, deeply, deeply worthy.