David Looks Back on His Own Sin

24Behold, Zadok also came, and all the Levites with him, bearing the ark of the covenant of God; and they set down God’s ark; and Abiathar went up, until all the people finished passing out of the city. 25The king said to Zadok, “Carry God’s ark back into the city. If I find favor in Yahweh’s eyes, he will bring me again, and show me both it, and his habitation; 26but if he says, ‘I have no delight in you;’ behold, here am I. Let him do to me as seems good to him.” 27The king said also to Zadok the priest, “Aren’t you a seer? Return into the city in peace, and your two sons with you, Ahimaaz your son, and Jonathan the son of Abiathar. 28Behold, I will stay at the fords of the wilderness, until word comes from you to inform me.” 29Zadok therefore and Abiathar carried God’s ark to Jerusalem again; and they stayed there. 30David went up by the ascent of the Mount of Olives, and wept as he went up; and he had his head covered, and went barefoot: and all the people who were with him each covered his head, and they went up, weeping as they went up. 31Someone told David, saying, “Ahithophel is among the conspirators with Absalom.” David said, “Yahweh, please turn the counsel of Ahithophel into foolishness.” 32When David had come to the top, where God was worshiped, behold, Hushai the Archite came to meet him with his coat torn, and earth on his head. 33David said to him, “If you pass on with me, then you will be a burden to me; 34but if you return to the city, and tell Absalom, ‘I will be your servant, O king. As I have been your father’s servant in time past, so will I now be your servant; then will you defeat for me the counsel of Ahithophel.’

Life brings us many things we never saw coming. We call it life, this slow piling up of years in which joy and sorrow cross each other, and no life is made of joy alone, just as none is made of sorrow alone. Among all the things that can befall us, no pain is greater than being betrayed by another person. To receive love freely given and then wound the relationship at will is a deep grief to the one who suffers it, whether that one is God or a human being.

David was betrayed by the son on whom he had lavished his love, yet, mercifully, there were people who had not forgotten his kindness and remained at his side. Attacked by his own son and driven from the palace, David came to see how utterly vain the worldly power, striving, and longing of all those years had been. He had been brought to the shame of being cast out by his own child, but in that very hardship he was given the chance to look back on his own sin. From this it seems that for a person of faith, suffering, painful as it is, can be a channel of blessing through which they turn back to God.

Absalom came home from his mother’s family after three years, but for more than two years he stayed shut up in his house without seeing his father. He ought to have understood the grief of a father who did not send for him and waited until he was forgiven; instead he was seized by the thought that he was being ignored. Bent on revenge against his father, he plotted rebellion. By threatening Joab, Absalom at last managed to see his father after two years. Why go to such lengths to see his father and be forgiven? Because to rebel, he first had to win the hearts of the people.

2 Samuel 15:6

6Absalom did this sort of thing to all Israel who came to the king for judgment. So Absalom stole the hearts of the men of Israel.

Absalom met in person those who came with a lawsuit and, pretending to comfort them, worked to get close to the people. He listened so well to those who felt wronged that the people took him for a good man. Knowing that they revered his father, he deliberately spread word of his father’s incompetence, and those he deceived began to turn away from David. Blind to Absalom’s cunning, they even came to believe that he had been unjustly forced to flee because of David. Once he thought he had won over enough of the people, Absalom deceived David yet again. He said he had made a vow while living with his mother’s family and wanted to go to Hebron to pay it to God, and David sent him off without even asking what the vow was. Once more Absalom had exploited David’s goodness. He had used a father’s unconditional trust to draw people to himself, and now he had even laid plans to push his father off the throne.

2 Samuel 15:10-11

10But Absalom sent spies throughout all the tribes of Israel, saying, “As soon as you hear the sound of the trumpet, then you shall say, ‘Absalom is king in Hebron!’” 11Two hundred men went with Absalom out of Jerusalem, who were invited, and went in their simplicity; and they didn’t know anything.

Absalom went down to Hebron for the express purpose of rebelling against his father. What is astonishing is that two hundred of David’s officials suspected nothing of his plan and followed him without a thought. Knowing what kind of man David was, those officials should have acted with care. They knew that Absalom had killed Amnon and that he resented his father, yet they helped him without stopping to think. It was because of people like these, who decided and acted so thoughtlessly, that Absalom’s rebellion could succeed.

Israel was not a nation built on the world’s structures of power but one governed by the word of God, so its high officials all knew by what faith David had ruled Israel. And yet, taken in by Absalom’s lies, they took part in the betrayal of David.

In the same way, when believers fail to discern the spirits and fail to make sound decisions by faith, the church is divided, and souls may stumble because of it. When foolish people fall into the grip of an evil spirit, they act in ways that divide the church, the body of Jesus. Pastors and church officers who have strayed from God’s will and fail to set an example are, instead, blocking the gate of heaven so that precious souls cannot be saved.

Because the Holy Spirit and the spirit of Satan are both at work in the church, members who cannot discern the spirits by the truth will cast not only the souls of others but even their own into hell.

Later, those who followed Absalom fell into death, while those who followed David were blessed to return to the palace. That shows how important it is to discern well where we should stand. Absalom plotted his rebellion together with Ahithophel, who bore a grudge against David. Ahithophel was a wise man who for decades had shared life and death with David on the battlefield and had fulfilled his charge as David’s counselor.

When Absalom invited the two hundred officials to go to Hebron and offer sacrifice, he also summoned Ahithophel and drew him into the scheme. Had Ahithophel acted wisely at that moment to turn Absalom back, God would have helped him go on living as David’s counselor. But Ahithophel, thinking that the tide had already turned toward Absalom, decided to become Absalom’s counselor. In his reckoning, Absalom, being a son, could be forgiven whatever wrong he did, but he knew that he himself would not be. So Ahithophel devised a wicked scheme to keep Absalom from ever going back to David: Absalom was to lie with his father’s concubines. A son lying with his father’s concubines would be a disgrace to David, and Ahithophel reasoned that Absalom, too, would then be beyond forgiveness; so he made Absalom commit a sin that no human being should ever commit.

Hurt feelings and betrayal drive people, as they did here, into sins that cannot be undone. However much Absalom was at war with his father, when he heard Ahithophel’s wicked counsel he should have weighed what may be done and what must never be done. Had he looked at the matter with a clear head, he could have seen clearly what to do; but sin already had hold of him, and he had lost all good sense.

In 2 Samuel 23:34 the record names Eliphelet the son of Ahasbai, the son of the Maacathite, and Eliam the son of Ahithophel the Gilonite, and 2 Samuel 11:3 records that the woman was Bathsheba, the daughter of Eliam and the wife of Uriah the Hittite.

Ahithophel’s son was Eliam, and Eliam’s daughter was Bathsheba, the very woman David took; her husband was Uriah. Since Ahithophel was Bathsheba’s grandfather, it is easy to understand how fierce his anger must have been toward David, who had killed Uriah. To Ahithophel, Uriah’s death and Bathsheba’s misfortune likely felt like a bitter injustice; yet had he not avenged himself but left the matter with God, God would certainly have righted that wrong for him. Since David’s evil in killing Uriah and taking Ahithophel’s granddaughter Bathsheba was plainly sin, God would have dealt with it himself if Ahithophel had not taken revenge.

But, friends, do you know how hard it is to hold back the urge for revenge? It is never easy to entrust our pain to God and wait patiently. Yet we must endure to the end and watch how God works. Had David known Ahithophel’s anguish, comforted him, and asked his forgiveness, this tragedy would never have happened.

David’s indecisive nature had driven one more person down an evil road. Absalom used Ahithophel, who harbored ill will toward David, as an instrument of rebellion. When David heard that Absalom had rebelled, he reasoned that war with him could bring harm to many of the people, and he resolved to leave the palace.

Here David makes another serious mistake. God had told him plainly through the prophet Nathan that his wives would be taken by his neighbor in broad daylight, and still he blundered by leaving his concubines in the palace. He had heard the prophet’s word, yet he went on acting without thinking and kept bringing trouble on himself. For the sake of his own revenge, Ahithophel urged Absalom to lie with his father’s concubines in broad daylight, before the eyes of the people. With his thirst for revenge at its height, he now does what is sinful without the least hesitation. Once Satan has captured the heart, people can sink so low as to violate a father’s wife, and can commit sins worse still. And yet, when the tide of the war turned, David begged his soldiers not to kill Absalom, and that shows how much he loved his son.

As he was driven out by his son, David probably thought of God. He was hurting from Absalom’s betrayal, and he thought that God the Father must likewise have been hurt to watch him betray God so easily once life became comfortable. Many people followed David as he left the palace, unwilling as he was to fight his own son. Without weighing gain or loss, they gave up their comfortable lives to repay the kindness they had received from him, and they followed him ready to lay down their lives. Among them was Ittai the Philistine. Like Joab and Abishai he was a commander, a great warrior who had won renown for his valor in his homeland, Gath of the Philistines. Ittai had received kindness from David and become one of his people, and when he said he would follow David with six hundred soldiers, David, fearing that Ittai would come to harm, told him to stay at the palace. In flight as he was, David had in Ittai a man who could keep him safe, yet he thought first of their lives.

David already knew that this war would not go according to human will or human plans; it would end only when God helped him. So he made the hard decision to send back Ittai, who could have been a great strength to him. But Ittai told David, who was worried for his safety, that his help was essential in this war and that he would go with him. He said, “As Yahweh lives, and as my lord the king lives, I swear that wherever the king may be, whether I live or die, I will be with the king.” Ittai knew that if he left the palace with David now, he might never come back, but he could not betray David. He swore his loyalty because he knew what kindness David had shown him and the people until then.

Here we see how mature a character Ittai had: he gave up his own comfort to repay kindness rather than follow immediate gain or ordinary human feelings. Ahithophel betrayed David because he was true to his natural instincts, but Ittai did not hesitate, because he knew that God was with David.

Ittai could hardly have been unaware of David’s sin. Yet he went with David in the faith that God would deal with David’s sin and that his own part was to repay the kindness he had received. Now the son of David’s own blood had abandoned his father, while Ittai, a foreigner who had not forgotten the kindness shown him and was grateful for it, stood guard over David. It was an irony too bitter to laugh at.

From this we can see that a heart that repays kindness comes from character more than from education, since alongside a Judas Iscariot, who betrayed though he was so greatly loved, there are those like Ittai the foreigner, who repay kindness with their lives. In the same way, the chosen Jews killed Jesus, while believers from among the Gentiles came to know the grace of Jesus and became God’s people who serve him. Whether one looks at the eternal Kingdom with Christ at the center or at the world with human beings at the center, that difference brings about consequences this vast.

Friends, if you have received love from God and from others as Ittai did, I hope you will have the good heart that knows how to repay it, even when it costs you.

2 Samuel 15:24

24Behold, Zadok also came, and all the Levites with him, bearing the ark of the covenant of God; and they set down God’s ark; and Abiathar went up, until all the people finished passing out of the city.

Zadok was a priest who had done much to defend David’s throne. When Absalom plotted his rebellion, Zadok fled the palace with Abiathar the priest and the Levites, carrying the ark of the covenant. He did so because he assumed, as a matter of course, that David must take the ark with him. But David ordered Zadok to carry the ark back to the palace, and, as he commanded, they guarded it there until the revolt was over. David was able to return to the palace because people like these, who helped him at the risk of their lives, were at his side. As he sent Zadok back with the ark, David said, “If I find favor in Yahweh’s eyes, he will show me the ark again; but if he has no delight in me, I will bear whatever suffering comes.”

This was David’s true heart and his faith, leaning on God alone. He knew that victory would not come from having the ark, and that he could return to the palace only when God forgave his sin. Had David gone out with Zadok the priest and the ark, Absalom and the people would have feared him. But David already knew that unless he stood right before God, he could not return even with the ark beside him.

To David, who had repented of his sin, God sent Hushai the Archite. When David reached the Mount of Olives in his flight, Hushai, David’s friend and the counselor who had always helped him make sound decisions, came out weeping to meet him. David asked him, “Go into the palace, pretend that you have betrayed me and come over to Absalom, and thwart the counsel of Ahithophel.” At that time Ahithophel’s counsel was so brilliant that it seemed as wise as hearing the word of God directly, so a strategist like Hushai was needed to overturn it. David told him that if Hushai heard Ahithophel’s plans in the palace and passed them on to Zadok, who was keeping the ark, Zadok would get word to David at once, and David himself would devise a strategy to meet them. Hushai went into the palace without hesitating.

Having co-workers who trust one another like this is surely a blessing. If Absalom did not believe Hushai’s lie that he had betrayed David and come over, Hushai could be killed; but he was not a man to fear death where David was concerned. He loved David, but he loved God more, and so in every situation he gave his best to fulfill his calling, that God’s will might be done. Hushai had only one task, to defeat the counsel of Ahithophel, because Ahithophel’s success would mean David’s death and the fall of Israel.

Look closely at David’s short life, and you see a great many events tangled together like a spider’s web. There were those who knew David’s failings and still helped him, believing that helping him was God’s work; and there were those who had received his freely given love and tried to harm him instead.

Friends, as you know from Scripture, the love David gave was ultimately a sharing of God’s grace. To attack David, then, is to betray God, and those who do so come under God’s rebuke. Attacking a good person, then, is an unwise act. What you need to understand here is that God did not help David because David was without sin; God made the plans of Absalom and Ahithophel fail because they had committed wicked sins against his will. Even if David wins this war, he has no reason to be proud.

Exodus 20:16-17

16“You shall not give false testimony against your neighbor. 17“You shall not covet your neighbor’s house. You shall not covet your neighbor’s wife, nor his male servant, nor his female servant, nor his ox, nor his donkey, nor anything that is your neighbor’s.”

To give false testimony about David, as Absalom and Ahithophel did, in order to steal the people’s hearts is a scheme of Satan. And to covet a neighbor’s house and possessions, as in the taking of Bathsheba, is Satan’s trick to rob our neighbors of the peace, rest, and faith they enjoy by God’s grace, and so draw them away from God. Attacking and obstructing David, too, is sin, because it ends up obstructing the work of God. Strictly speaking, Amnon’s lust and Absalom’s murder were not David’s sins. All David bore was the self-reproach of a father who had not raised his children as he should have. So Absalom, who could not master his anger and laid all the blame on his father, and those who followed him could only face God’s judgment.

You too must not bear false witness against your neighbor; help the church and the saints who carry on God’s work, and fulfill your calling well. In this painful moment, hunted by Absalom, David must make the right choice. He must decide whether to cling only to the pain of betrayal or to prepare new wineskins in repentance and recover his faith. You must take heart and rise up, for God always helps those who prepare new wineskins with a mature faith.

Had David insisted on keeping the ark, he would not have looked back on his own sin. It was his faith that he could return to the palace only by God’s mercy, not by the ark, that set him upright and caused him to receive God’s help. David was able to return to the palace because he laid aside the merely human thinking he had clung to until then, repented with all his heart, and recovered the faith that had cherished life.

In this life we may sin, repent, and sin yet again, but we must keep striving to turn back. For a believer, restoring the relationship with God matters above all.

Friends, even if the suffering you face now looks as daunting as a towering mountain, with the Holy Spirit beside you, you are well able to overcome it. When David’s faith went astray, God prepared the rod of Absalom; in the same way, if you leave God and choose evil, you will have to cross a mountain of suffering greater than the grace you have received. May you never forget that.

As he was driven out of the palace, David blamed no one, for he knew that the suffering he met had begun with his own sin. Blaming others traps us in a sense of victimhood or inferiority, and we cannot see the problem whole; but when we look at ourselves, we see not only our sin but also that God is our refuge. This is the wisdom and the blessing of a believer who has repented.

If you lean on God alone, like David when he sent the ark back, God will protect you as he protected David. David returned to the throne when humility and obedience were restored in him; in the same way, if you become people who prepare new wineskins with humble and obedient hearts, you can live as children of the holy God. May you be children who never lightly forget God’s grace, and may you receive blessing in abundance.