2 Samuel 16:15-17:14 Loyalty and Betrayal

Of Recast Church in Matawan, Michigan. This week, Pastor Don Filsak is preaching from his series, The Warrior Poet King, Study of Second Samuel. Let's listen in.

The Hope of God’s Promises in David’s Dark Season

Welcome everybody to Recast Church. I'm Don Filsak, I'm the lead pastor here, and I am so glad that we have the opportunity to gather together here this morning. It amazes me every Sunday how God draws together people from various walks of life, from various contexts and histories, to come together in this place to worship him, and that just knocks my socks off.

That's amazing that he brings us together in a way that probably we wouldn't necessarily have a ton of affinity to everybody else in the room except for Jesus Christ. What we participate in this morning, I wanna remind you, is just a sliver of the big picture of what God is doing around the world.

We're just a little part of that, and yet, the awesome thing is that this small gathering, this small gathering here in Matawan, Michigan, is a powerful tool that God is using to bring about more faith, more community, and more service in us, through us, and beyond us.

He is a God who is running the universe. Can you think about that? And yet, he also is the God who meets with us here in little old Matawan, Michigan. That should be mind-blowing to us. The text of scripture we're gonna be looking at here this morning is found in the book of 2 Samuel.

We've been marching through this Old Testament book chapter by chapter, verse by verse. It's interesting because I think that in some ways, I'm experiencing this, and I guess if I'm experiencing it, I think you probably are, too, and that's that it seems like this section of the book of 2 Samuel begins to slow down a bit.

And I'm even trying to take off some larger chunks, and it seems like it plods a little bit, but it plods with intention, because I really believe that this time of David's life plotted. I don't think it was all glitz and glamor and a lot of enthusiasm.

I think it was a hard time in his life. So if you're experiencing this sermon series and going, man, this is kind of a down time, this is kind of a little bit slower and a little bit more laborious, that would match the tenor of the author.

That would match the mood of the text. The text of scripture is 2 Samuel, and we're in a section of the life of David that is, I've really found it intriguing. Actually, back when I was in college, my pastor at Ada Bible Church, Jeff Mannion, up in Grand Rapids, while I was going to Cornerstone, he preached through the book of 2 Samuel, and so it's kind of interesting that now that I'm older, be going back and preaching through a passage that really stuck out to me, or passages that stuck out to me when I was in college and were formative in my life.

But this is a season in David's life where the promises of God seem a bit iffy. The promises of God occasionally in our lives will feel a bit iffy. Kind of like, is this really gonna happen? I say this because I'm convinced that David experienced these days and these months and these years that we're covering in this section of 2 Samuel in that way.

Is God really gonna stand by his promises? Should God stand by his promises? Do I deserve God to stand by his promises? And if you've asked that question and you've been in stages of life where you've gone like, yeah, I mean, I'm not sure that God should stand by his promises toward me.

I'm not sure that I'm worthy of that. I'm not sure that that makes sense. I'm not sure that's a good use of his resources to continue to hold me up. If we're honest, I think most all of us in this room have gone through a season like that.

We've gone through seasons where we've sinned either so much or so grievously that we wondered if God's patient covenant of love has run out or should run out on us. Have you ever asked the question, how could God still love me?

How could he save someone like me? The section of the life of David is that section. It's that time of his life. It's that period of time, that type of living that can be really hard, that can be like a slog to wake up in the morning and do it all over again.

God anointed him, remember, as king over Israel. He pledged to work through him. He pledged to keep him. He promised that David's kingdom would not be torn away from him like Saul's kingdom, his predecessor, not like Saul's kingdom was torn away from him.

God says, I'm not gonna do that to you, David. And in our text this morning, it looks a lot like David's kingdom is about to be torn away from him. That's where we find David. God says, I'm not gonna tear your kingdom away from you, and it looks like it's about to happen.

David, of course, in context, before we read this, I'm kind of setting some of the context, and then we're gonna sing some songs, but David has sinned egregiously. God has pledged consequences to that sin that included strife and evil rising up within his own household.

And that prophecy, through the prophet Nathan, after he sinned, he's been caught, God saw it. Nobody else, he's made a big cover-up, but God saw it. And Nathan included some specific consequences of very specific sexual sin that would occur within his own household as a result.

Those consequences are gonna be fulfilled in this very passage. And yet, by the end of this passage, we will see that God has not given up on his promises to King David. God is at work to bring to nothing the betrayal of his son, Absalom, who it looks like is going to be king in his place.

The point being, in our darkest moments of life, we will find loyalty, and we will often find betrayal. And in our text, we see the distinction between those two in the lives of two men, and we see God as sovereign over all of it.

So let's open our Bibles, or your devices, or your scripture journals. You can navigate to the app and click on the Faith tab at the bottom, click on Sermon Notes there, and you've got a place to take notes, and the passage itself will come up.

But we're gonna read a little bit larger chunk of scripture than we usually do. 2 Samuel 16, verse 15. So 2 Samuel 16, verse 15. We're gonna read all the way over into the next chapter, chapter 17, verse 14.

I think that the guy who sat down in the Middle Ages and divided scripture into chapter and verses did a really good job, and how many of you are grateful that he did that so that you can kind of reference it really easy?

But occasionally, it's like, oh, bro, this all goes together. So I wish that there was not a chapter break at 17, but we're gonna read that together. So again, recast God's holy word. Awesome that we have the privilege of reading this together out loud.

Please follow along. Now Absalom and all the people, the men of Israel, came to Jerusalem, and Ahithophel with him. And when Hushai the Archite, David's friend, came to Absalom, Hushai said to Absalom, long live the king, long live the king!

And Absalom said to Hushai, is this your loyalty to your friend? Why did you not go with your friend? And Hushai said to Absalom, no, for whom the Lord and his people and all the men of Israel have chosen, his I will be, and with him I will remain.

And again, whom should I serve? Should it not be his son? As I have served your father, so I will serve you. Then Absalom said to Ahithophel, give your counsel, what shall we do? Ahithophel said to Absalom, go into your father's concubines, whom he has left to keep the house, and all Israel will hear that you have made yourself a stench to your father, and the hands of all who are with you will be strengthened.

So they pitched a tent for Absalom on the roof, and Absalom went into his father's concubines in the sight of all Israel. Now in those days, the counsel that Ahithophel gave was as if one had consulted the word of God.

So was all the counsel of Ahithophel esteemed by both David and by Absalom. Moreover, Ahithophel said to Absalom, let me choose 12 ,000 men, and I will arise and pursue David tonight. I will come upon him while he is weary and discouraged, and throw him into a panic, and all the people who are with him will flee.

I will strike down only the king, and I will bring all the people back to you as a bride comes home to her husband. You seek the life of only one man, and all the people will be at peace. And the advice seemed right in the eyes of Absalom and all the elders of Israel.

Then Absalom said, call Hushai the archite also, and let us hear what he has to say. And when Hushai came to Absalom, Absalom said to him, thus has Ahithophel spoken. Shall we do as he says? If not, you speak.

Then Hushai said to Absalom, this time the counsel that Ahithophel has given is not good. Hushai said, you know that your father and his men are mighty men, and that they are enraged like a bear robbed of her cubs in the field.

Besides, your father is an expert in war. He will not spend the night with the people. Behold, even now he has hidden himself in one of the pits or in some other place. And as soon as some of the people fall at the first attack, whoever hears it will say, there has been a slaughter among the people who follow Absalom.

Then even the valiant man, whose heart is like the heart of a lion, will utterly melt with fear. For all Israel knows that your father is a mighty man and that those who are with him are valiant men. But my counsel is that all Israel be gathered to you, from Dan to Beersheba, as the sand by the sea for multitude, and that you go to battle in person.

So we shall come upon him in some place where he is to be found, and we shall light upon him as the dew falls on the ground. And of him and all the men with him, not one will be left. And if he withdraws into a city, then all Israel will bring ropes to that city in which you'll drag it into the valley, and not even a pebble is to be found there.

And Absalom and all the men of Israel said, the counsel of Hushai the Archite is better than the counsel of Ahithophel. For the Lord had ordained to defeat the good counsel of Ahithophel, so that the Lord might bring harm upon Absalom.

Let's pray.

Father, I thank you for this gathering. I thank you for the privilege that we have to come together in your name. I recognize that we're here for a whole, a whole grab bag of motivations. Some maybe are here for the first time.

Some have been here from the very beginning. Some are here because it's the thing that our family does on Sunday morning. Some are here because they're desperate to hear from your word. Father, wherever we're at this morning, I pray that you would meet us here.

I pray that those who are discouraged and despairing, that they would find new revelation in life through your word and through the gathering of your people this morning. For those who are abusing others in sin, are completely angry at others in our faith, and need to repent, I pray that you would bring about repentance through your word this morning.

I pray for those who maybe here are far from you, that they would be drawn close to you in this gathering this morning. We rejoice that we have salvation in the name of Jesus Christ. We thank you for the cross that gives us hope.

We thank you that wherever we're at in life, we can come back to that place, a solid foundation, where we know we have been loved. We know that our sin is gross in your eyes, so far that you had to send your son to die for us, but you chose to do that out of love.

And so, Father, I pray that that would release us to worship you with glad hearts, with gratitude and thankfulness this morning. I pray that that would be the spirit with which we sing these songs, that we would not be mindful of others in the room, but we would be mindful of you as we sing these songs to you this morning.

I thank you for your love, I thank you for your grace, and I thank you for the unity in these that you've brought together here this morning in Jesus. And it's in his name that we pray, amen. All right, you can go ahead and be seated.

But like I say, every Sunday, if you need to get up and get more coffee, juice, or donuts, I'm well-supplied to last back there. And then also, just reopen your device or your Bible to 2 Samuel 16, verse 15, and we're gonna march through that section that I read earlier.

Hushai’s Loyal Infiltration of Absalom’s Court

There's an obvious structure to our text this morning, so we'll jump right in. I'm kind of outlining it. It simply goes like this, Hushai, Ahithophel, Ahithophel, Hushai. There you go, there's your outline.

Or you can call it loyalty, betrayal, betrayal, loyalty. It may be tempting then to think that the application and the conclusion from that order is gonna be something like loyalty wins the day or something like that.

Make sure you surround yourself with loyal people or something like that. But we're gonna see by the end that there's something else at work here that wins the day for David. And so the outline is directly this.

Here's, fill that out because that's not super helpful. So Hushai's acceptance, verses 15 through 19. Ahithophel's domestic counsel, verses 20 through 23. Ahithophel's military counsel, chapter 17,.

Verses one through four.

And Hushai's military counsel, verses five through 13 of chapter 17. So if you're taking notes, that's, there's your outline right there except for one thing. There is a fifth point, single verse point that's going to win the day and it is simply this, God wins, verse 14.

So we have all of this structure, all of this organization, all of these schemes, all of these plots, all of these things, God wins. So why didn't he just say that? Well, you'll see that, how many of you know that your life just doesn't work that way, that God just goes right to the end?

But he has a journey, he has a place that he wants to take you. A lot of the reality of our lives and the benefit in a relationship with God is entrusting him in the midst of hard times and difficulties.

So we're gonna start here with Hushai's acceptance, verses 15 through 19. A little bit of history, a little bit of background. Absalom has declared himself king over Israel. Now this is the son of David.

Israel already has a king though. King David is the anointed by God, chosen by the people, king of Israel. But his son says, no, I don't like, I don't like your rule, dad. I'm gonna take over here. And he's actually trying to put to death his own father.

In verse 15, Absalom came into Jerusalem with all of his loyal insurrectionists marching in. And in their number is a man named Ahithophel who is the former close advisor to his father, King David. So Ahithophel is a betrayer in our text.

Ahithophel knows David. He's considered one of the wisest strategists of the kingdom. And according to verse 23 in the text, you can kind of look forward a little bit. The counsel that Ahithophel gave was considered like scripture, as if God has spoken.

When Ahithophel says, invest in this, you invest in this. When he says, pull your money out of that, you pull your money out of that. Ahithophel was that kind of advisor that was just on top of everything.

And when he gave advice, you followed what he had to say. He was wise and it was deemed like scripture. David had trusted him implicitly, and now Absalom also, it says, esteems his counsel. So what you need to understand is Ahithophel was considered one of the wisest men.

He knows David in and out. He has been out planning and strategizing battle on behalf of David. Now he is strategizing and planning battle against David. This is a significant betrayal. This is like somebody who knows every playbook and has watched you coach all your life turning to the other team.

He knows your playbook, he knows how you respond when it's fourth down and two. He knows how you respond in all kinds of situations. He knows when you fake punt and when you don't. He knows all of the ins and outs.

That's Ahithophel to David, now turning to his son Absalom. But we know from back in chapter 15 that David had sent a fifth column of spies into Jerusalem when he heard that Absalom was marching up from the south.

He got out of Dodge and headed east, but he sent men back into Jerusalem as this fifth column to seek to thwart Absalom's plans. And one member of David's fifth column was Hushai. When David heard that Ahithophel had defected to his son, he shot up a prayer to God asking God to turn the counsel of Ahithophel to foolishness.

Our text today is showing God answer a direct prayer that David prayed and just kind of shot it up to God. Oh my goodness, Ahithophel is against us. We're in trouble. God, would you please intervene? Our hope is in you.

The only hope is that you would somehow thwart the counsel of this guy or he's gonna get the better of us. And so then also, right when David finished that prayer, a guy, another counselor, a lesser counselor, one that's not said his words were like the words of God, not that everybody trusted, but his name is Hushai, a close friend of David, another counselor and advisor.

And David sent him in to do whatever he could to disrupt the counsel of Ahithophel. And so that's where we're at. Hushai arrived, Absalom came into town, and we're gonna start seeing the first meeting between the two of them.

And we see Hushai being vetted by Absalom in verses 16 through 19, the acceptance of Hushai here. As you can imagine, Absalom would be leery of anyone who had been loyal to his father, ought to be leery of anybody who was loyal to his father, David.

But Hushai proactively went to Absalom. He doesn't have to be called into his presence. He goes, it says, and declared immediately a shout of pledge of loyalty. He says, long live the king, long live the king.

This is a phrase that was adopted even back in the Middle Ages for kings. And throughout the Bible, this is often declared with the name of the king to clarify who you want to live long, who are you pledging your loyalty to.

So it'd be long live Jeconiah, long live Jeroboam, long live Hezekiah, and all of these kings' names. And you would add the name, but Hushai leaves it off. And that's, scholars kind of point to that as being a pretty significant thing here.

I think it's pretty significant. He doesn't declare which king he wants to live long. Remember, he's loyal to David, but he's here trying to get in good with his son Absalom to be a spy for him. And I don't doubt that when he says, long live the king, his heart is screaming, David, may David live long.

May my friend and the one that I'm loyal to. So when he exclaims this, long live the king, Absalom accepts this as speaking about himself and is okay with that, but Absalom remains a bit skeptical. And so in verse 17, he asks about Hushai's loyalty.

Is this how you express loyalty, Hushai? What about your friend David, he says in verse 17? Why didn't you go out with your friend and flee the city with him? And again, in verse 18, Hushai wisely answers in a vague declaration that I think he still was thinking about David, but he's couching his terms carefully.

He says, he will support and serve the one whom the Lord and the people have chosen to be king. Why wouldn't I support that one, says Hushai. Of course, we know that the Lord and the people have chosen who to be king over Israel?

David.

They've chosen David. God chose David to be king. So when he says, I will support the one that God chose and I'll support the one that the people chose, we know that the Lord and the people have chosen King David and nothing has changed that.

Now, I believe that what Hushai is doing here in this opening section is using Absalom's arrogance against him. Absalom thinks himself to be chosen by God. He thinks he has the loyalty of all the people.

So who else could Hushai be speaking of except him? Of course, he's talking about me. So Hushai goes on to give veiled support for David in verse 19, saying, and paraphrase, why wouldn't I serve the son of my best friend?

I will serve you as I have served your father. This is apparently a sufficient defense for Hushai has been effectively and quite easily inserted into the inner circle of the young insurrection. This all is happening simultaneous with last week's message about David's exodus from Jerusalem.

Remember, he was heading down to the Jordan Valley last week and we left David resting for the night there on the western side, the Jerusalem side of the Jordan River. But these events are happening earlier that same day according to that timeline.

So these are happening that day. David is not yet resting at the Jordan when these things are happening. He's still on the road, on the way out of town. Hushai is loyal to David, so loyal that he's put his life on the line to enter Jerusalem as a spy.

There is absolutely no doubt in my mind that if Hushai gets found out that he's spying on behalf of David, his life is gonna be cut short quickly. He's gonna be executed by Absalom and his men and they're gonna be like, he's loyal to David and that's the end of it.

Now there's a minor point of application here at the beginning of this and it's really centered on loyalty in the Lord, loyalty in relationship to others and God. Hushai was, in the text, an example of a loyal friend.

He doesn't duck and run when his friend is being attacked but rather stands with him. He goes into battle with him. I think many of us spent the last couple of years, if I'm just being honest, I think that it's affected all of us in varying degrees of course but we've spent a couple of years unlearning friendship and community and togetherness.

Everything in our culture has warred against those types of connections and it is time to get back to what is meant by the word friendship. You see the word in the text, Hushai is David's friend. It is good to have your people.

It is good to do life together with others and at the risk of sounding self-serving, I'm gonna suggest to you that you should have your people in your church. You should have people here. I have people come to me all the time and say, well, I've got fellowship outside of here.

I've got connections outside of here. Well, why? Why aren't you connecting here? Why aren't you loving here? This is the body with which you gather on Sunday morning to sit under the teaching of the word and to hear and to sing together and why not connect here?

And if it's a problem of having been burned in the past or a problem and I get that. I mean, I think probably if I asked you to raise your hand, if you've been hurt by the church or hurt by people in the church, I bet all of us would raise our hand.

At some level, there have been heartaches and pains but God calls us to fellowship together. He calls us to connect and to bear with one another and to lift each other up and to bear each other's burdens.

And I think all of us know that when things go bad, that's when we miss it, right? It's like, oh, okay, when life is down and I've got nowhere to turn and it's like, okay, everything's melting away from me, where's the connection to people who in Christ are gonna uphold me, are gonna lift me up, are gonna pray for me, are gonna bring meals to you and are gonna really love on you and let you know that they love you and they care for you.

It's good to do life together with others. I mean, the community group signups are out there and it's unashamed to put a plug in for that only in as much as those are vehicles and tools to actually forge real genuine connections and community here.

We're all designed to need shoulders to lean on church. We all like to think of ourselves as independent. We're Americans, aren't we? But even the mighty King David, remember who this guy is. He's the one who ran out with five stones.

I always think it's funny because he didn't just take one, he took five, but he ran out with five stones going I'm gonna take down this giant and who was beside him, who was running out with him? No one.

Everybody else was kind of like sitting back going, I don't know how this is gonna work out, but hiding, like what's gonna happen? Had nobody else to lean on in those moments, but he went through seasons of significant dependence upon the loyalty of friends.

So we see going on in his life here. He's not standing alone in the middle of the field right now, he is dependent on others. We all need others. The second movement in the text is Ahithophel's domestic counsel.

This is the gross part, this is the ugly part. But scripture does not shy away from showing us human history, which always requires us to look at the grotesque moments of sin. Do you know what I'm talking about?

If we're gonna write, that's the funny thing about our biographies is our biographies rarely get into the depth of people's brokenness. I don't want anybody to write a biography that includes all of my crap and my crud, right?

But scripture is honest, it's true to us. The back and forth of this text is meant to show us dueling counsel between Ahithophel and Hushai, and we start with Ahithophel's counsel here. And the end is gonna show us the reason that one of them is winning or will win.

But Absalom seeks counsel from Ahithophel. What should we do first? What should be our first plan of attack? They're there in Jerusalem, they've marched in, they've declared Absalom king. Now what? What do you recommend, you counselor whose words are like the words of God, the one who when you speak, it's infallible and we should just always do what you say.

And the advice is shocking and scandalous and even maybe a bit sickening to us when we hear it, when we read it. I call it domestic counsel because what Ahithophel counsels has more to do with loyalty to Absalom within the country than it has merely to do with his military exploits.

The counsel in verse 21 is direct and so I will speak directly. The Hebrew, the translation, again, scholars don't always love to translate things directly and so they don't necessarily love the language but it says in the text, go have sex with your father's concubines whom he left to keep the house in order.

David, when he was departing, it said in the text earlier in chapter 15, he left 10 concubines in charge of the household to maintain things until he returns. And I just wanna point out that the whole thing from beginning to end reeks of sin and sexual deviance.

From beginning to end, that's what we're looking at. Just looking up the definition of concubine results in feeling gross. I just look up that definition and you're like, oh, really? A concubine was an ancient relationship by which a woman was brought into the household as less than a wife but still had the status of sexual partner.

So in our text, to be clear, in verse 22, Absalom is being counseled by Ahithophel, a very wise guy, to have sex with 10 women that his father had arranged to have sex with, likely for the primary purpose of multiplying the royal offspring.

But hear me carefully, church, lest there be any confusion over the sexual ethics of the Bible on this front. The Bible is faithful to report to us what people did but it's also faithful to tell us what they should have done.

The law in Deuteronomy prohibits the kings of Israel from taking multiple wives, let alone concubines. And although this was the practice in ancient Israel, it was not according to God's design nor was it according to God's law.

I had a couple conversations with people this week about this passage, people who I kind of like to bounce ideas off of and another pastor. And he just said, wouldn't it be really nice if we had really clear teaching about God not liking this?

I'm gonna ask you to raise your hand. How many of you would just love it if God said, and what they did in this time and era was wrong? How many of you would like that? It just declared it openly here so that you're just like, okay, Absalom is sinning in this.

David is sinning by having concubines. But I wanna be clear. We do have clear teaching about what God wants from his written law. We just don't read it very well. We skip over those parts.

We breeze through them.

Our mind kind of draws a blank when we go through the second half of Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, Deuteronomy.

We're just kind of like, ugh,.

And then get on to the next part. It's clear in there. It's just that it's hard to get to because it's mixed in with all these laws about clothing and different materials and all of this stuff, and we just get bogged down and we ignore it.

We go, I don't know if anybody can understand this. Well, you can. You can, and it's written clearly. The historical sections are there. These historical sections are there to show us how far away from the standard that's clearly revealed in the law, how far people stray from that standard.

David wasn't supposed to have multiple wives, let alone concubines, and Absalom certainly was not supposed to sleep with somebody who slept with his father. That's clearly in the law in Deuteronomy and in Exodus.

It's written there without question. The fact that David had concubines was against God's plan from the beginning, and yet following the pagan practices around them, Israel and her kings added many royal wives and concubines.

Of course, David's son is going to be the one, Solomon, who's going to follow in his footsteps. That's kind of a spoiler alert.

I thought it was going to be Absalom.

No, it's not going to work out very good for him. Solomon is going to take this to the nth degree with 700 wives and 300 concubines, or I got that reversed, I'm not sure which, but over 1 ,000 sexual partners.

Are you kidding me? And further here, Absalom practices one more common pagan practice. It's a common pagan practice for the harem of one king to pass on to the next king. So that's what's going on here.

By pitching a tent on the roof, which I want to point out is likely, we're talking about the palace here, likely the very same roof from which David observed Bathsheba bathing. Likely the very place where all of this mess began, and Absalom has his servants pitch a tent there, and he sleeps with his father's concubines in the sight of all Israel.

Of course, don't forget there's a tent. But Absalom shows the nation he is for real. He's not pulling any punches. He is not pretending to usurp his father's kingdom. He is not hoping to be reinstated.

He's not leaving himself a plan B in case David comes in and conquers, and like, oh, I was just kidding, Dad, just joking. He is burning all of his bridges. He is planning on no retreat. The reason that Ahithophel counsels this is for that very reason.

Show your men that you mean business. Show your military and show the nation that you are serious about this. You are the king. Take his harem. And his goal, Ahithophel's goal in the council is to strengthen the men that are with Absalom.

They will now fight knowing that Absalom has no retreat available, and they further are implicated in this whole plan and plot. Absalom obviously acts on this council in verse 22. Horrendous. And it's a bit ironic when we consider Absalom that we see hypocrisy in him pretty clearly.

We consider Absalom's severe anger and indignation at the violation of his sister Tamar just a few chapters ago. Super angry that somebody violated his sister. But Absalom was not, he shows himself here to not be against sexual abuse.

He was just against someone abusing someone in his family. He doesn't have general moral scruples. He has a lot of self-interest, and his morality only really serves his own causes. That's Absalom. And let me point out an observation that's potentially frightening, but is worth identifying.