There is Purpose in the Struggle: 2 Samuel 2:1-11

You're listening to the Bible Guys, a podcast where a couple of friends talk about the Bible in fun in practical ways. Hey, everybody, welcome to the Bible guys. We're we are back better than ever. There we go. We're always better than ever. Jeff always, although the older we get, can we really claim that? Because I don't know. It seems like when I wake up and. Like you ever hear Brian Reagan, the comedian say, he's like when you get old, He's like, oh, my hipsnap, my hip ERTs, he goes. I guess now. Forever forever it always hurts now. Right right, I guess I'll just have to live with that page. I was walking in today and my knee was hurting. Oh no, and I thought, I wonder if I did something to my knee. Oh, you're gonna be talking about prunes next exactly. That's what you told me last week. You start talking about aches and pains. You're only a year or two away. We start talking about the benefit of prunes. Because I said, I was bird watching. Yeah, my wife has a bunch of bird feeders. She likes them. That's what happens. All right. Well, today we're going to jump into a segment called guess the word. It's like taboo, and if you're watching instead of listening, we're going to be putting the words that I cannot say on the screen on the bottom of the screen. But basically, I'm that's the whole that's the whole thing. I'm not allowed to say these words. Okay, I gotta get you to say the word. Okay, ready, you're trying to get me to say a specific word without saying a bunch of words that she's banned. The keywords forbidden keywords. Okay, all right, here we got ready. Yes, if I were to make a shirt, I could either fascinate with snaps. Or buttons another thing. Yes, correct, I couldn't say pants. I couldn't say button or fly or jacket. Or I couldn't say the word zip. Oh okay, so I said shirt shirt, Not bad? Right, very good? Okay, excellent, Chris, this is going to. Be very quick. You ready, Yes, you say God bless you to what sneeze? That's it? So she said, I couldn't say cough tissue, cold, handkerchief. Or allergy. Okay, but the. God bless you is a pretty it's a great yes, it was excellent, good angle, Chris. If I do say so myself? All right, ready a referee whars this around his neck whistle. Yes. I was not allowed to say blow tune, train stop, or hum? Okay, right, okay, but hey, I just jo I went for football. Good job, that's right. Okay. Now this one's by far, by far as the hardest. Okay. If I were to take my pencil and to write something randomly while daydreaming, that is called a sketch. No, randomly while daydreaming random it's nonsense. Yes, it's a doodle. Really, yes? Wow. I was not allowed to say yankee, dandy, draw poodle or scribble. Okay, yeah, yankee do so the key was nonsense. I had to say the word nonsense, and I didn't say that right away. I should have said that right away. Yes, okay, these are this is a four? That are sticks? What? Oh? I blew it? Oh? I was looking at my keywords that I wasn't allowed to say these are chump sticks. But I'm not allowed to say sticks. Allowed to say stick because it's a version of the word I was. I wasn't allowed to say Chinese rice noodles, Japanese or Asia. But I said a fork that are sticks? A fork that are sticks? Yeah, I blew it. I blew it. I'm usually pretty good at this. Yes, but I said the word sticks. Do it all right? Well? Then sorry to let you see you. And I what did we get? We got four thousand points A thousand points of piece to my public mistakes are ten thousand points. So yeah, our listeners just got ten thousand points today, regulations listeners. Yes, we are so happy for you, for all the people. Who believes in me, believed in me. I'm so sorry, well, very. Feel that down very much. If I can go on with the rest of this episode. Yeah, I can't go on to read Second Samuel too. Yes, so, uh we've We're in Second Samuel now, which is really cool. First Samuel covers the life of Samuel covers the coronation of Saul. Saul gets derailed and starts pursuing his own interests. David winds up being elevated anointed to be king. He kills Goliath, he winds up building a great army, he has to run away from Saul, and finally, after Saul disobeying God and dishonoring God so many times, God kills him. Look at you. You just summarized the entire book of her Samuel. There you go. So then he is he's been killed. David has been out with his army running around just destroying the Malakites, and goes back to his hideout in Zicklag, which is Philistine city, and he has Akish, the king of the Philistines, thinking that he's an ally and he's not. He's just hiding from Saul in enemy territory. So while he's there, he finds out that Saul has been killed, and he kills the messenger right guy brings him the message. But then in Second Samuel, chapter two, it says after this, David asked the Lord, should I move back to one of the towns of Judah. Yes, the Lord replied. Then David asked which town should I go to? To Hebron. The Lord answered. David's two wives were a Hinnom from Jezreel and Abigail, the widow of Nabel from Carmel. So David and his wives and his men and their families all moved to Judah and they settled in the villages near Hebron. Then the men of Judah came to David and annoyed him king over the people of Judah. When David heard that the men of Jabesh Gilead had buried Saul, he sent them this message. May the Lord bless you for being so loyal to your master Saul and giving him a decent burial. May the Lord be loyal to you in return and reward you with his unfailing love. And I, too, reward you for what you've done. Now that Saul is dead, I ask you to be my strong and loyal subjects, like the people of Judah who've annoyed me as their new king. But Abner, son of Nr, the commander of Saul's army, had already gone to Mahonaem with Sal's son, Ishbosheth. There he proclaimed Ishbosheth king over Gilead, Jezrael, Ephraim, Benjamin, and the land of the Asteurites and all the rest of Israel. Ishbosheth, Sal's son was forty years old when he became king, and he ruled from Mahonaem for two years. Meanwhile, the people of Judah remained loyal to David. David made Hebron his capital, and he ruled as king of Judah for seven and a half years. Is that ry end it is? That is where? Yes? Okay, So he's become the king of Judah and he invites the people from Jabesh Gilia to follow him too. But there's another pretender to the throne, Ishboshev. So what a Sal's sons who didn't get killed? So give us an explanation as to what is the difference between Judah and Israel. Doesn't Israel encompass Judah. Yeah, so there's twelve tribes in Israel, and this comes up in you know, Jacob's twelve sons or he had thirteen sons, but the twelve tribes of Israel when they come across the river with Joshua, then Joshua helps divide the land into these twelve essentially like we would think of states or counties. It's not a very big place, only ninety miles north and south, so more like counties. And the different tribes got land based on how big their tribe was. And so Judah was the largest of the tribes and was pretty powerful, and they have the land around what is now Jerusalem, right, so hebron there and Bethlehem, all that area is all in Judah, and so what happened was this one tribe, Judah. They said, hey, we're on your side, we think you're king. And then he reaches out to Jabesh Gilead, which is in another region. It says, hey, Judah is following me, want you guys follow me too, And so he has two of the tribes following him. The other ten or it doesn't even say all ten, but a bunch of them follow five of them, six of them follow ishbel Chef instead for a little while to a half years, seven and a half years. Yeah, So it's interesting how in the Old Testament, how you know, they would refer to Israel as all the people of Israel, but then sometimes it's Judah and Israel, and we'll see that they actually war with one another, right, and so they're divided, and yet they're technically the same people. They're just divided because they have, you know, different beliefs in this case about who's king. Right. So Abner, if you're curious, Abner was was Saul's main general. It's interesting because David had served under Abner. Remember David kills Goliath and then Saul sets him up and he's a commander of one of Saul's armies. Well that the top general of all of SAAL's armies is Abner. Later on, when Saul is hunting down David, Abner is the one hunting David, right, He's the one that's in charge of trying to find David. And it's interesting because they have a lot of respect for each other. They see each other across the enemy lines often. But you know, warriors recognize warriors. You know, there's some of those gangsters recognize gangsters. Right. That's kind of the thing that there's a certain amount of respect between these two guys, even though they want it being on opposing sides. And so during this time, then Saul dies and Abner jumps in and goes, hey, isbel Chef is the last living son of you know, the last healthy living son of Saul, and so I think he should be king. And so he takes the forces of Saul's army and he elevates ishbol Chef and so now here they are, they're squaring off against each other even then, so it's kind of an interesting moment here where there's a lot of tension. For seven a half years, you think, oh good, Saul's dead, David gets to be king and even here for seven and a half more years. He's not king of a unified yeah nation. It's crazy. There's a little thing here in the Life Application of Study Bible, which is so helpful to have a study Bible, and it just gives a section about Abner itself and talks all about him, and it says his weaknesses, he had selfish motives and his efforts to reunite Judah in Israel rather than godly conviction, and he slept with one of the royal concubines after Saul's death. Well, there you go. And his lessons from life is that God requires more than conditional, heartfelt cooperation. And so yeah, how about that? So Abner is recognized as a as a key player in this story for sure. Yeah, And we'll see Abner more over the next several several days. I think we'll see him pop up a few times. But I think it's interesting to say, why why would God let after all this time David has waited maybe what thirteen fourteen, fifteen years? Right? Why would God make him wait seven and a half more to have all of Israel follow him? Right? What do you think is the reasoning behind that? You know, I don't know, probably consequence to Saul's disobedience, perhaps, you know, just taking a nation that was once recognizing God as the king. And then you know, part of Samuel's prediction, right, didn't Samuel talk about how it would be divided and how there would be you know, basically almost almost nothing good coming from. Wanting a king. And so God said that he was just tired of the nation of begging them and pleading to God for a king. And so God just says, you know what, I'm going to give him what they want. But Samuel, before this happens, I want you to tell them everything bad that's going to come from wanting a king. So even though that God promised David to be the next king, he technically did not promise David that he wasn't going to inherit a mess right, right, David was just going to be the best king, the most righteous king. David was going to be a significant king in the line of the Messiah. But you know, we can't necessarily figure out why. But honestly, my guess is it's a consequence of Saul. I think you see God doing because I think you see God developing David. David had tremendous potential as a young man in those hidden valleys, as we've talked about, learning to use his sling, learning to play the harp, learning to write down these amazing prayers, learning to fight the bears and the lions, and to have courage and to be faithful in a man of integrity even when nobody else was watching and he was alone with his sheep. God's developing him. Then God goes, Okay, I can trust this kid. I'm going to elevate him, and he makes him famous. He goes out and kills a giant, and they're singing, David's killed or you know, Saul killed his thousands, David killed his ten thousands. They're giving him more credit than he deserves at that time. And then he has favor with Saul. You know, he's playing in Saul's palace, and then Saul's hunting him, and then he has favorite and then he's being hunted again and he's running, and during that time he's gathering around himself these mighty men, the fiercest warriors that Israel had ever really known, right, not just one or two, like all of them, right, all of the toughest guys. And during that time, David is learning international diplomacy with the Philistines. He's figuring out how to stay safe and coexist with his mortal enemies. So he's learning international diplomacy for a few years on that, he's learning how to navigate his men. He's being challenged in his own integrity. Are you going to kill this guy or no? Are you going to kill Abigail's husband or no? He chooses integrity in that moment. He listens to the advice of Abigail. You're seeing all this character and these skill sets being developed over time. Hey, only time can build wisdom into you. Time in God's word. Right, And so he says, now he has he didn't touch Saul, right, He left Saul, and he just let God's time work out, which then demonstrated he has patience in God. He's going to follow God's way. He's not going to be like Saul, where he's just going to force his way all the time. And so then he's not going to take matters into his own hands. God sorts it out, and then he only gets part of the kingdom, and it's going to take over the next several years diplomacy and victory over maybe the greatest warrior that he's going to have to come against Abner. Yeah. Right, And so he's learning internal diplomacy. He learned international diplomacy with the Philistines, cross cultural. Now he's got to figure out diplomacy within his own people. How does he lead well? And so this skill set. He's still a pretty young man at this point, right, he's under forty, and he's a young man who God is choosing. Hey, listen, you will be king. That is set in stone. It will happen. Not only that you will reign for a very long time. That's set in stone. It's already a promise. But just because God made a promise doesn't mean God doesn't say, hey, I've got a lot of things to develop in you before I set your set you loose because there's a lot of responsibility. The more responsibility desire, the more development it's going to take to get you there. Yeah. And you know, it's a reminder to us that God never promises us a trouble free life. So you know, we can look back to the Bible and we can still see all the great promises that God has for us. They're all still true. They're all where we find our hope. But we have to understand that just because we follow Christ, Christ doesn't guarantee us free from trouble. In fact, he actually says, you know, in order to follow me, you're gonna have to pay a price, because the world will hate you at times. The world will persecute you, The persecute you, the world will reject you at times times. And so you know, you have to be committed to follow Christ, and you know, to make your choice, to understand that it's the best way, it's the only way to which to whom other God shall we turn to. You know what, God is as great as our God, that type of thing. And and but at the same time, Jesus, you know, he calls us to die, right, I mean, isn't that Isn't that really what Christianity is. It's dying to yourself, he says. He says, take up your cross and follow me. And he says, if any man isn't willing to forsake their own mother and father and everything dear to them and follow me, he cannot be. Worthy of being my true disciple. So you know, God, God never promises a trouble free life, but he does promise to always be with us. He promises to never leave us, never forsake us. He promises to give us strength and to give us power, to give us the you know, ability to depend on him every day, and honestly, the most powerful position that we could be in, just like David, I'm sure right, he has to remind himself like that every day. The most powerful position to be in is to say, Okay, God, I'm waking up today, and I got to tell you I need you today, right, I need you today? Because that's why Deuteronomy even says, he says, hey, get you're going to get in the promised Land, and when the things are going well, you're going to forget me, right, right, So don't forget me when things are going well, you know, because when things weren't going well, you woke up every day depending on manna, depending on the wilderness, right, depending on my daily provision. And when things weren't going well. Man, you had no choice but to depend on me, right, And when you have blessings in your life, don't forget me. And uh and so yeah, I think all of that is sort of wrapped up into what we're seeing here. You know, this question of hey, what's the deal. God, you promised me to be a king, and yet it doesn't feel like I'm fully a king. Right, you know, and you're not yet. You're not yet. But guess what it's going to come. Yeah, But he could just manage. I think God gave him what he could manage. He could manage Judah. Yeah, and he. Could manage maybe Jabesh, Gilead. That's it. Now, let's see how you lead that, lead that for a while. Be faithful there. You know you mentioned a big part of the call of Christianity is to take up your cross. And there's an old gospel song that says he never promised that the cross would not get heavy or the hill would not be hard to climb. Yeah, he never offered victories without fighting, right, And there's something to that that. What we want is we want the easiest way to the greatest successes. That's our preference. Lord, if you're looking what I would like, we'd like to open up the menu of the Bible, right, we'd love to open up. We want the Bible and God's word to be like a big menu, and we want, let me see what's the easiest way to the greatest success And that's what I want from you God, and that's what we want to order. We want to like we're talking to a short order cook. He just whip it up real quick, give it the big and instead, God says, no, I'm going to use the events in your life and I'm going to develop you into if you'll let me into the greatest person that you can become for me. And what you see is David is I don't know of a person in the Bible who demonstrates more long term patients with a promise established when he was a teenager. Right, there's other patient people in the Bible. Yeah, but he was promised to be king. Dude, if you were promised to be king when you were fifteen and you had to wait five years, you'd be losing it, right, I would be too. But he waits for so long unbelievable patients, and he also in that patience develops all the skills to become the greatest king Israel had ever seen, right right. Right, Yeah, it's a great point. Yeah. And you know sometimes when we even think back, like I went to New York and I saw just bear with me on this one. I'm going this is a little bit of a stretch. Okay, But when I went to New York, you know, you see places where your forefathers were oh right, and when you sometimes think of like, oh, Abraham Lincoln did such great things, right, Abraham's Lincoln's life was rough. Bro he was almost like he was assassinate. He was people attempted to asassinate him almost every other day. I mean, he absolutely had one of the worst existences ever. And he fought and fought and fought and did and did something great. And and so we when we went to the place. Where you know, Hamilton was in there and and uh Aaron Burr and and uh George Washington, and we sat down in the restaurant where they actually had, you know, all the debate. You know, Hamilton says, the room where it happened. I was in the room where it happened. Literally, and uh and uh, and I was thinking about, man, this is where all greatness was. But guess what, back then, I'm sure it didn't feel great. I'm sure it was hard. Man. You know, you read about just some of their hardships for great things, and you know, and again it's just a reminder that, you know, David, we look back now and say Oh what a great king. He's the most important king. He's in the line of Jesus, and everybody refers to this anchor of kingship in the Old Testament. Man David went through it. Man, it was hard. It was hard. Yeah. Yeah. So time is one of those things that we just hate to spend to develop the skills that we need. But there are some skills and experiences, there are things that you need to develop, and so I just want to encourage, especially if you have not yet achieved what it is that you're dreaming of or that you believe that God wants to do in your life. I have a conversation with some young adults recently just struggling financially and losing something like, hey, I was there, You've been there, right, And there's just something with regard to you know, we get frustrated because we know Elon Musk made his billions when he was thirty right, right, So oh man, I'm not a billionaire yet and I'm already thirty five, So what do I do? Right? But the average the normal people, normal people, usually wealth begins to come if you manage well. Late forties early fifties is when you start to come into Okay, I'm figuring out how to make some money, and then you get that like this fifteen year run of really making some money. The top executives in America for the most part, are in their fifties and early sixties. That's right. It takes a whole lifetime to get this window of ten or fifteen years of massive your peak productivity. Right. And so take the time, develop the skills, learn the things. You might feel frustrated in your faith right now that you just don't know enough about God's word. Take the time, lean into it, spend the time. God will give you eventually, if you're faithful, a person of integrity that's faithful and patient waiting on God, God will give you exactly what he promises he'll give you, right. And that's what happens in Dave's life. It's coming, it's coming. We're going to read it. We're going to read some rough roads ahead here for the next little while. But he gets there. That's great, super exciting. Well, hey, that's our time. So we'll pick up tomorrow and hopefully we'll see there on the Bible. Guys,