2 Samuel 18:5-9, 15, 31-33; Psalm 130; Ephesians 4:25-5:2; John 6:35, 41-51
But Absalom did not honor David. In fact, he began to build up a personal following. After four years of this, he went to Hebron, built up the conspiracy more and had himself declared king. Then, he began to march to Jerusalem.
David retreated from the city well before Absalom arrived. And after a couple of more days of intrigue, we come to our reading, where David has assembled his troops. Once again, the reading skips. The people urge David not to join in the battle personally because his abilities as a leader and as a symbol to fight for are said to be worth 10,000 troops. So David stays at the small town where they have assembled, but he commands the leaders of his divisions, Joab, Abishai, and Ittai to “treat Absalom gently” for David’s sake.
In the battle against Absalom’s troops, David’s army completely defeats Absalom’s troops. They scatter, many running into the forest. Absalom is one of these. He’s riding his mule in the forest when his head gets stuck between some branches, the mule keeps going, and Absalom is left dangling. The original Hebrew says, "between heaven and earth".
Joab, David’s long-time very practical general, always thought that David was too weak, too sentimental, too likely to forgive and forget. Joab considered that loyalty was extraordinarily important, and traitors were deserving of death. Immediate death as soon as practical. When told that Absalom was hanging in the oak tree, Joab asks the messenger “why didn’t you strike him to the ground right there?”
The messenger told him, “No way. The king commanded you to protect Absalom.”
Ever practical, ever angry, Joab took three spears and thrust them into Absalom’s heart while he was still alive, still dangling from the oak tree. Then the 10 young men who worked for Joab surround Absalom, struck him, and killed him. Joab had dealt with the traitor. Another problem was solved. Permanently.
You may notice that Absalom died while hung in a tree. Christ also died on a tree. While on the tree, Absalom was struck by spears. Christ was also struck by a spear. But most importantly, both had fathers who loved them tremendously.
When David hears the news, David is struck with grief. He famously wept and cried, “My son Absalom! My son, my son Absalom! If only I had died instead of you, Absalom, my son, my son!”
When we look at the life of David, there are many of his actions that are not good actions. He committed murder and adultery. But we are repeatedly reminded that David was a man after God’s own heart, for we see in the Psalms that David recognized his sins, he asked God to forgive him for his sins, and he ultimately always tried to walk on the path of holiness, even if he stepped off the path sometimes.
And we see in the story of Absalom that David truly cared for his sons – all his sons – even if Absalom could not see this, even if Absalom and Joab both read his love as weakness. And this is where David's heart most matches the heart of God the Father.
It is a difficult thing for fathers and sons. Infant boys are cute and cuddly, just as infant girls are. Most fathers look at their newborn sons and want to protect them. They give hugs to them freely. They hold them and keep them safe. They play with them as they begin to toddle, and they teach them as they begin to speak.
But there is a point where young sons need discipline and correction – and fathers are usually the providers of that correction, for most men understand that what is cute in a four-year-old becomes dangerous and causes trouble when that four-year-old becomes fifteen or sixteen or twenty-five. And so discipline and correction are applied when the child is young in the hope that when he is older, he will have less discipline and correction applied by society – employers, friends, his wife, the police.
Yet there is another difficult transition to come, for as a boy becomes a teenager, the father must begin to back off from his stern demeanor and become a good coach to the young man. We’ve all known of the families in which the father never relaxed, in which the father demanded military-like obedience from his sons, and in which the fathers and sons did not speak in a civil manner to each other after the son was big enough and tough enough to take on his father in a physical fight.
But we also know of the families where there is mutual respect between father and sons, where the father cherishes the gifts of each of his children and they recognize the wisdom the father has.
I’ve seen that this second group of families tends to occur when the father truly has been concerned about the well-being of the sons more than his own well-being. And one way that this is demonstrated is with Scripture.
There is one thing which a father can do for his sons which is worth more than anything else, any training in sports, any driver’s training, any employment training, any discipline. That is to teach his sons the reality of God the Father and God the Son, to teach his sons the sacrifice that the Father and Son made for the Father’s earthly sons – you and I – and to show his sons how to read and understand Scripture by themselves, how to learn holiness from that Scripture, and how to practice two-way prayer with God, asking of the Father and then listening for the voice of the Holy Spirit.
We are so good at teaching our sons the importance of the things of the world, the things of the world’s culture. We teach our sons that Ford trucks are better than Chevy’s or vice versa. We teach our sons how to play football, basketball, and baseball. We work terribly hard to improve their skills so they can become stars of the team. We teach them how to work hard, how to be self-sufficient, how to be courageous and tough.
But when it comes to teaching them about the one thing in their lives which has eternal consequences – because of our culture we pass the buck. “Go to church with your mother”, we say. Or we tell mother, “He’s twelve years old. If he doesn’t want to go, don’t make him.” And we say this on Sunday morning while we plan our trip to see the Steelers or look at the baseball schedule. In the single most important life lesson, we fathers often pass the buck to others.
Our sons and daughters learn from us and our actions what is important in life. This is how we each directly affect the culture around us. If we don’t miss a Friday night football game or a Mountaineer game, they learn that this is important. If we tell our children “I never understood math, but I’ve done pretty well”, we’ve just told them math isn’t important to learn and they probably won’t put in the effort to get much past arithmetic. If we choose to take them to soccer games instead of church, they will teach the same to their children. And at the end of time, some, even most of them will not be joining us in Heaven with our Heavenly Father.
Our modern American life is filled with all the times when we say, “I’m too tired.” It is filled with those times we’ve said, “I don’t know how. Can we find a teacher for her?” But a hundred and fifty years ago, we used to respond: “If we want it done well, we need to do it ourselves.” We got off the couch and we worked and we taught the kids.
I’m not sure where this tendency to pass the buck to others came from. I’m tempted to say it happened when first the radio, then the television began to take time from our personal at-home work and family teaching hours. I remember when I was a teen putting a roof on a newly constructed outbuilding with my father one October, listening to Mountaineer games on a battery-powered radio while we worked. It led me to go to WVU for college – but I also learned the value of hard work, consistent work with my father – and how to put shingles on a roof.
Were we experts? No. But we did it well enough that the building’s roof didn’t leak - until the tornado came and blew up the building about five years later. We did it because my father had decided that working with his son and putting a roof on that outbuilding were worth doing. (The rebuild was paid for by insurance, so we let the professionals do it that time. We'd had our experience together.)
A hundred years ago G. K. Chesterton, a British Christian author who wrote many good things worthy of being read, said that "If a thing is worth doing, it is worth doing badly."
If a hole in the ground is needed, it doesn’t have to be pretty. If a fence is needed to keep in the cows, it doesn’t need to have beautiful black posts – locust poles will do. If we want our children to get to Heaven, a bit of Bible read to them every day and a talk about God’s forgiveness will usually do the trick. We don’t need to be Billy Graham in our homes.
Here today, though, in our culture says that only near perfection in anything is all that is worth doing. We walk out of the restaurant if a couple pieces of lettuce are wilted – even though we’d thrown them away if we fixed the salad ourselves. We complain and return the burger that is overdone even though we ate the crispy burgers we left too long on the grill last week because we were distracted by the phone call. We fight over the couple of drips of paint the professional left on the molding, even though we left plenty when we repainted the downstairs last year.
When Saundra and I were first married, we soon moved to Medina, NY, halfway between Buffalo and Rochester, NY. (We spent a decade there that winter!) I had a good job and Saundra was alone at home that summer. She likes to sew, so she bought some wool fabric and decided to make me a three piece suit, beginning with the vest. I came home and vest was beautiful. She’d even made a small welt pocket in the vest, the type that you put a pocket watch into. But that day I focused on the slight wrinkle that happened because the outside of the pocket was about a tenth of an inch longer than the back of the pocket. She gave up the project. I learned a valuable lesson.
I would have loved to have had that suit that my wife made, wrinkle and all. But I had not learned the lesson that an imperfect suit is better than no suit. And so I did not get that suit. Ever. Later, I had to buy one for hundreds of dollars – and it did not have the love in it that that imperfect vest did.
When we lived in Atlanta, we decided to home school our children. Why we made that decision is a long story – I’ll save it for another time. But there were certain things we wanted to teach our children, things that we felt that, imperfect though we were, we simply could not delegate to others. And we were mostly successful teaching them what needed to be taught.
Even though we are imperfect, we can do a "good-enough" job of leading our children to Christ.
In our culture today, there is a tremendous shortage of fathers. There are many baby-daddies – but few fathers. Our culture encourages our young men to remain boys until they are in their thirties. But our culture wasn’t always that way.
In the 1800’s in America, most young men married in their late teens. Even as late as the 1950’s, the senior prom was in reality a pre-engagement dance. It was the night when most young men and women made their final selection of the one they planned to marry for the rest of their lives. Untold millions of Americans became engaged on prom night, and were often married a month or two later. A year later the first children arrived.
But today, we have mixed up the order of things. Where it used to be marriage, sex, then children, it is more likely to be sex, children, then a marriage several years later – if at all.
I have seen articles congratulating American for a declining divorce rate. Yet the articles don’t mention the big secret – the reason for the declining divorce rate is because couples don’t tend to get married until they have lived together for several years. The breakup rate if these homes is still well over fifty percent. They just don't call it divorce because the breakup happens before the marriage.
And the reason is because of a misunderstanding of what love is. Is love sexual desire? Is love what we feel for a sleeping baby? Is love that caring feeling between two brothers or two sisters? Can we truly love someone who is a stranger, our neighbors?
The ancient Greek language of the New Testament did not have this puzzle, for ancient Greek had four different words for love.
There is eros, the intense love of a man and woman.
There is phileos, the love of two brothers, as in Philadelphia, the city of brotherly love.
There is storge, the affectionate love of grandparents for grandchildren or vice versa. It is the love for a good horse, a fine dog, a faithful servant.
And there is agape, the unselfish love of a Christian for a neighbor, a love which is there even if unrepaid. It is the love of a father, The Father, for his children. It is the love of a mother for her children.
David had the agape love of a good father for his sons. They did wrong, but that did not change his love for them. One was a rapist, the other a murderer and traitor. David still loved them both.
And this is where we see the love of God the Father for us. This is why David's heart was much the same as God's heart.
We each have done wrong, yet God the Father and God the Son were so in tune with each other and their love for all of us, God’s children, that God the Son died to restore the relationship between us and Father.
God the Father tore part of Himself off and sent Him to earth as the Christ, to become the God-man Jesus, to teach us, first by words, and then by the example of being sacrificed on the cross. He taught us just what a Father’s love, a Father’s agape love, can truly be.
Would you do the same for your children? Would you voluntarily die a terrible death to rescue your children from death?
Any good father would do this for his children or grandchildren. Many mothers would quickly make this sacrifice, but a good father understands that when the time comes for sacrifice, it is up to the father to make that sacrifice, for the children need their mother to survive. It is an old-fashioned view, but we are talking about an old-fashioned view of fatherhood, the father who acts as a father, and not simply as the oldest child of the family.
To be a father means to be mature, taking on the responsibility of leading the family, of determining what is right and what is wrong, of deciding what is important and what is not important – not in isolation from his wife, but in consultation with her – yet making the hard decisions himself, for that is what it means to be a godly man. When the tough decisions need to be made, a godly man says, "I will take the blame, right or wrong, and make that decision, and live with the consequences."
A godly man, you see, voluntarily takes on the leadership of the family – not to dominate his wife, but to relieve her of worry, to remove stress from her, to set a positive example of male maturity for his children. But our culture today would have men remain large, overgrown children, focusing on sports, on bars, on toys and video games, on play, while turning over their decision-making to those on television, those in politics, and those who are the “experts”.
Yet, a godly man prays. A godly man knows that there is not supposed to be anyone between Him and God, Jesus, and Holy Spirit. The godly man sets the spiritual tone for the family, knowing that each person’s relationship with Christ is the most important thing. A godly man leads his family to Christ.
Would you sacrifice yourself for your children? Would you voluntarily die a terrible death to rescue your children from death?
Then why will you not give up your time to teach your children, your grandchildren, and your neighbor’s children about how to avoid eternal separation from God, how to gain eternal life, and how to be with Christ?
In our culture today, there is a tremendous shortage of fathers. There are many baby-daddies – but few fathers. Our culture encourages our young men to remain boys until they are in their thirties. But our culture wasn’t always that way.
In the 1800’s in America, most young men married in their late teens. Even as late as the 1950’s, the senior prom was in reality a pre-engagement dance. It was the night when most young men and women made their final selection of the one they planned to marry for the rest of their lives. Untold millions of Americans became engaged on prom night, and were often married a month or two later. A year later the first children arrived.
But today, we have mixed up the order of things. Where it used to be marriage, sex, then children, it is more likely to be sex, children, then a marriage several years later – if at all.
I have seen articles congratulating American for a declining divorce rate. Yet the articles don’t mention the big secret – the reason for the declining divorce rate is because couples don’t tend to get married until they have lived together for several years. The breakup rate if these homes is still well over fifty percent. They just don't call it divorce because the breakup happens before the marriage.
And the reason is because of a misunderstanding of what love is. Is love sexual desire? Is love what we feel for a sleeping baby? Is love that caring feeling between two brothers or two sisters? Can we truly love someone who is a stranger, our neighbors?
The ancient Greek language of the New Testament did not have this puzzle, for ancient Greek had four different words for love.
There is eros, the intense love of a man and woman.
There is phileos, the love of two brothers, as in Philadelphia, the city of brotherly love.
There is storge, the affectionate love of grandparents for grandchildren or vice versa. It is the love for a good horse, a fine dog, a faithful servant.
And there is agape, the unselfish love of a Christian for a neighbor, a love which is there even if unrepaid. It is the love of a father, The Father, for his children. It is the love of a mother for her children.
David had the agape love of a good father for his sons. They did wrong, but that did not change his love for them. One was a rapist, the other a murderer and traitor. David still loved them both.
And this is where we see the love of God the Father for us. This is why David's heart was much the same as God's heart.
We each have done wrong, yet God the Father and God the Son were so in tune with each other and their love for all of us, God’s children, that God the Son died to restore the relationship between us and Father.
God the Father tore part of Himself off and sent Him to earth as the Christ, to become the God-man Jesus, to teach us, first by words, and then by the example of being sacrificed on the cross. He taught us just what a Father’s love, a Father’s agape love, can truly be.
Would you do the same for your children? Would you voluntarily die a terrible death to rescue your children from death?
Any good father would do this for his children or grandchildren. Many mothers would quickly make this sacrifice, but a good father understands that when the time comes for sacrifice, it is up to the father to make that sacrifice, for the children need their mother to survive. It is an old-fashioned view, but we are talking about an old-fashioned view of fatherhood, the father who acts as a father, and not simply as the oldest child of the family.
To be a father means to be mature, taking on the responsibility of leading the family, of determining what is right and what is wrong, of deciding what is important and what is not important – not in isolation from his wife, but in consultation with her – yet making the hard decisions himself, for that is what it means to be a godly man. When the tough decisions need to be made, a godly man says, "I will take the blame, right or wrong, and make that decision, and live with the consequences."
A godly man, you see, voluntarily takes on the leadership of the family – not to dominate his wife, but to relieve her of worry, to remove stress from her, to set a positive example of male maturity for his children. But our culture today would have men remain large, overgrown children, focusing on sports, on bars, on toys and video games, on play, while turning over their decision-making to those on television, those in politics, and those who are the “experts”.
Yet, a godly man prays. A godly man knows that there is not supposed to be anyone between Him and God, Jesus, and Holy Spirit. The godly man sets the spiritual tone for the family, knowing that each person’s relationship with Christ is the most important thing. A godly man leads his family to Christ.
Would you sacrifice yourself for your children? Would you voluntarily die a terrible death to rescue your children from death?
Then why will you not give up your time to teach your children, your grandchildren, and your neighbor’s children about how to avoid eternal separation from God, how to gain eternal life, and how to be with Christ?
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