Endless Human Greed

14He went through all the tribes of Israel to Abel, and to Beth Maacah, and all the Berites. They were gathered together, and went also after him. 15They came and besieged him in Abel of Beth Maacah, and they cast up a mound against the city, and it stood against the rampart; and all the people who were with Joab battered the wall, to throw it down. 16Then a wise woman cried out of the city, “Hear, hear! Please say to Joab, ‘Come near here, that I may speak with you.’” 17He came near to her; and the woman said, “Are you Joab?” He answered, “I am.” Then she said to him, “Hear the words of your servant.” He answered, “I’m listening.” 18Then she spoke, saying, “They used to say in old times, ‘They shall surely ask counsel at Abel;’ and so they settled a matter. 19I am among those who are peaceable and faithful in Israel. You seek to destroy a city and a mother in Israel. Why will you swallow up Yahweh’s inheritance?” 20Joab answered, “Far be it, far be it from me, that I should swallow up or destroy. 21The matter is not so. But a man of the hill country of Ephraim, Sheba the son of Bichri by name, has lifted up his hand against the king, even against David. Just deliver him, and I will depart from the city.” The woman said to Joab, “Behold, his head will be thrown to you over the wall.” 22Then the woman went to all the people in her wisdom. They cut off the head of Sheba the son of Bichri, and threw it out to Joab. He blew the trumpet, and they were dispersed from the city, every man to his tent. Then Joab returned to Jerusalem to the king.

Through the stories of Absalom and Barzillai, God lays bare the evil and the good in people and teaches his people to discern rightly. He showed his good work through David, yet people go on sinning without rest for the sake of their greed.

Even true repentance is possible only for those who know the word. Those who know the word must labor to beat their bodies and bring them into submission. Yet people chase the gain they can see right in front of them, and that is why they go on living endlessly for themselves.

David had ended the war with Absalom and was on his way back to the palace. The people who had not helped him in his suffering were now quarreling with one another to win his favor, since he had defeated Absalom and was coming home. The men of Israel were furious that the men of Judah had crossed the Jordan ahead of them to meet David, saying Judah had stolen the reward that was theirs. If Israel had truly wanted to make amends to David, it would not have mattered who met him first. To David, both Israel and Judah were simply enemies who had betrayed him, yet they were arguing over which of them was greater. For people who had not helped David in his hardship to quarrel over such a thing was shameful. If they were sorry, then rather than fight over who had met David first and who would take the higher place, the right course would have been to serve the nation and David quietly.

These were the people who had abandoned the king God had set up and backed Absalom, who seemed to have seized power. Lacking spiritual discernment, they cared not about sincerely seeking David’s forgiveness but only about who would hold power. Unable to see the whole of God’s work, they were interested only in fighting over their share of the spoils.

When God’s people cannot clearly tell the world from the Kingdom of God, greed takes hold of them and they can no longer discern what is holy. Nor can they see the great picture God has planned. We are told to see the forest and not just the trees; in the same way, if we look to God who leads our lives, we can know what we should be doing where we stand now. If we can look at this world, racing toward the last day just as God’s word says, and read it rightly, we can grow spiritually and prepare for God’s time.

As grumbling Israel and Judah walked beside David when he entered the city after great suffering, so on the road to heaven the obedient and the disobedient walk together among God’s people. Even when the Holy Spirit is at work and those who go before set an example of faith, those who are not themselves born again will live as chaff, drifting back and forth between the world and the church. Let us not forget that the chaff, which a single breath of God will blow away, stayed with the wheat until the last day. The chaff spent a long time in the same place as the wheat, through the burning sun, the hardship of threshing, and the master’s sharp eye sorting out the grain, but in the end it will be thrown away.

Are you wheat? Or are you chaff? If you attended church together, worshiped together, and served, and then God cast you away as chaff, would that life not be terribly empty and sad? The decision is God’s to make, yet each of us knows whether we are wheat or chaff. If you think you are not full, ripe grain, you must repent before the God who shows mercy, starting now, and strive to become wheat.

Matthew 20 tells of the mother of the sons of Zebedee. She begged Jesus to let her two sons sit in his Kingdom, one on his right hand and one on his left. She had grown ambitious, thinking Jesus would become king of this world. Hearing her request, Jesus said that she did not know what she was asking. Then he asked the sons of Zebedee, “Are you able to drink the cup that I am about to drink?” and they answered confidently that they were able. Because they did not understand how narrow and hard a road they had just agreed to walk, they were glad at the thought of gaining a higher place than the others. When people cannot tell the spiritual from the fleshly in this way, they do not grow into wheat even if they hear and learn from Jesus himself. Jesus meant that to sit at his right and left, they must first endure suffering beyond what any human can bear; but lacking spiritual discernment, they said they could drink the cup of the cross that Jesus would drink.

To drink the cup Jesus drinks, we must set our hope on the Kingdom of God, serve others from the lowest place, and give our lives as a sacrifice for the salvation of many. But Zebedee’s wife wanted her sons to rise above everyone else and get ahead in the world, which kept her from understanding what it would mean for them to drink the cup of suffering. James and John had already become God’s own by his grace. Yet even as Jesus’ disciples, they had not truly grasped God’s providence, and so they wanted worldly success.

As Jesus came down to the lowest place, David forgave the tribe of Judah, who had betrayed him, and crossed the Jordan with them. Judah was grateful, knowing David had forgiven them, but Israel, wanting a greater reward, abandoned David. Without eyes to see God’s work, people may meet David, the man of God, and still throw that opportunity away by their own choice.

When Israel began to grumble against David, who had done nothing wrong, Satan used Sheba, a wicked fellow who was there, as his instrument of evil. We must keep firmly in mind that a moment’s carelessness can make us Satan’s tools. Sheba appeared, blew a trumpet, and stirred up the people, saying they had no portion in David; and Israel abandoned David and went back, every man to his tent. In following Sheba’s words, they were abandoning God and David. But Judah did not betray David; they stayed with him to the end. Sadly, Israel and Judah had received the same forgiveness, yet one side chose betrayal and the other chose service.

From them we learn that the road we travel depends on the choice we make. If we remember that we too, like Israel and Judah, have betrayed God and been forgiven, we can live as people who have been forgiven. There are all too many people in the world like Sheba who lead others down the path of evil. So if we do not hold a firm faith, we may be deceived by a Sheba and become fools who abandon the truth.

I hope you will hold fast to the end, as the tribe of Judah did, to the resolve you have once made. For if you lose your thankful heart, as grumbling Israel did, you may end up David’s enemy and a partner of Sheba, who was judged.

Had the men of Israel not given in to greed but followed David, whom God trusted, they would have received the reward they wanted. David took Sheba’s revolt very seriously, because war with Sheba would force him into war with Israel and could throw the nation into deep turmoil. He ordered Amasa, whom he had made commander of the army, to capture Sheba, but Amasa failed to carry the order through. So David ordered Abishai, Joab’s brother, to catch Sheba before he could reach a city and hide there. David did not give the important task of capturing Sheba to Joab, and the reason is plain: the more Joab achieved, the prouder he became. If Joab had been truly loyal to God and David, David would have made him the guardian of the nation. Joab could easily have kept a good relationship with David, yet he would not let go of his own greed; seeing him, we learn how important sound spiritual discernment is.

2 Samuel 20:10

10But Amasa took no heed to the sword that was in Joab’s hand. So he struck him with it in the body, and shed out his bowels to the ground, and didn’t strike him again; and he died. Joab and Abishai his brother pursued Sheba the son of Bichri.

David had ordered Abishai, rather than Amasa, to capture Sheba, but Joab went against David’s wishes and set off with Abishai after Sheba. Perhaps Joab saw in killing Amasa a fine chance to clear away every obstacle to his own advancement. Joab had already killed Abner, the commander of Israel’s army, and David’s son Absalom; killing Amasa, who had become commander in his place, was nothing to him. Having no fear of David, he could do such evil. It never occurred to him that such deeds were heaping up sin. Amasa, suspecting nothing, greeted Joab warmly, and Joab, coming close, could not master his jealousy and committed murder once again.

2 Samuel 20:23

23Now Joab was over all the army of Israel, Benaiah the son of Jehoiada was over the Cherethites and over the Pelethites,

After getting rid of Amasa, whom the king had appointed, Joab became commander of the army. Doesn’t a question arise in your mind here? Why did David make Joab commander, when Joab had defied his orders again and again?

I simply could not understand this. At first, of course, I thought David might have been under Joab’s thumb because together they had committed the sin of killing Uriah. But by now he was a king with great power. That being so, he could have charged Joab with disobeying the king’s command and taking lives at will, and removed him. Yet time after time David made him commander.

This came from David’s faith, wisdom, and patience, which ran deep in the spirit. A spiritual leader must have the wisdom to put people in the right places according to their gifts and the need, and the strength to lead and control them. David now had the power to keep Joab in check, and in an urgent hour when Israel and Judah had to be bound together and set right, he needed Joab’s skill. He would have wanted to cut Joab off at once, but it may be that he held back because the stability of the nation came first. David did not appoint Joab out of ignorance of his evil deeds; he could control the man, so appointing him posed no problem. He simply used Joab’s talents and abilities to protect Israel, because for the time being he still needed him. Had Joab known he was being used, he would have been bitter, yet Joab, who worked himself nearly to death for the nation and for David but never changed for the better, never became David’s brother in faith. When David set the wicked Joab over the army again and sent him to the battlefield for the nation, he did it not because he was foolish but because he was strong and wise.

The same holds for church officers who are entrusted with God’s work. If, in doing God’s work, they cannot clearly tell God’s will from human thinking, they may become wheat or they may become chaff. If your service in the church is good, in keeping with God’s will, you will be wheat; but if, like Joab, you refuse to bend and act as you please, you will end up as chaff.

Joab committed the evil of betraying God and David in the weighty office of commander of the army, and for that he received a heavy judgment. Though he saw David’s good life up close, he was never born again, and that is why God’s wrath finally fell on him.

Receiving an office in the church carries a very great responsibility, because if pastors, elders, senior deaconesses, ordained deacons, and deacons still behave like newcomers to the faith, the discipline they receive from God is far heavier. Sinning in ignorance and sinning knowingly are entirely different matters.

Judas Iscariot was not someone God called from the beginning to be Satan’s instrument. He was more richly blessed than others, but his life did not match the word, and he did not take up his own cross; so for all the privileges he had received, he fell into hell. However much of the word you learn, if you do not show it in deeds of faith, God says you have disobeyed. When we serve in the church, if our faith is sincere, our deeds will show themselves good.

Those who lay down their own righteousness and show good deeds of faith to exalt God become an example to the weak in faith, and so God will lead them into heaven.

Joab won on the battlefield, yet for all his gifts, his pride and his craving to exalt himself brought him at last to death at Solomon’s hands. Like David, may you believe that God himself deals with the wicked in his own time, and not give way to anger. When I see David using Joab, the man who had killed his son and killed his commanders, only as a tool for building God’s kingdom, I can only marvel at how wide his vision was and how great his faith and patience were. God does not judge at once those who betray him after receiving his forgiveness; he leaves them as they are so that he may use them as a rod for someone. Because their evil deeds can become the means by which good people of God are brought to repentance, God leaves them where they are until the time comes. Those who do not understand this say they were blessed because they were faithful and served, but that is foolish talk. Since a rod is a tool that is snapped once the children stand upright, my hope is that you will take care never to be used as a tool for setting others upright.

Will you be a Joab, used and then discarded like this? Or will you be a David, who with a cool head and abounding faith endured to the point of death and knew how to put people to good use for the Kingdom of God? To become a David, we need a faith that endures even when it feels like dying.

In all likelihood Joab believed that a man as wise and capable as he was could never be cast aside by David. He would have told himself that David kept making him commander, however he threatened him, because he was such an outstanding warrior—but that is to treat God with contempt. Joab, who would do anything to get his way, seemed to have become commander even after killing Amasa, but at the end of a road that had already gone wrong, Solomon was waiting, and Joab would soon meet him.

Joab, who had sinned more than anyone and been forgiven more than others, chose to the end the path of betraying David. As Jesus kept Judas Iscariot by his side to the end though he knew Judas would betray him, David kept Joab beside him until God’s judgment came. What you must know is that God did not choose Judas Iscariot from the start to be the betrayer and so nail Jesus to the cross. God had foretold that someone would sell Jesus for thirty pieces of silver, and Judas Iscariot took that place of his own accord and, just as Scripture said, committed the sin of selling Jesus.

In the church, too, those who rate their own abilities highly grow proud. The conviction that one’s own judgment is right comes, at bottom, from selfishness, and since it does nothing to help save souls, we must beware of it. People try to bring the world’s ways straight into the church, but may you hold firmly in mind that the world and the church have different destinations and different aims, so the work of the church cannot be done with the world’s knowledge and experience.

When Joab besieged Abel, where Sheba, David’s enemy, was hiding, and was tearing down its wall, a wise woman who lived in the city called out to him. As he was breaking down the wall, the woman said to Joab, “This city of Abel has been whole in faith from of old; we are loyal to David, and we are Yahweh’s blessed inheritance.” True to its name, Abel was a city that served God well. Sheba had slipped into this peaceful city, and to catch him Joab was ruthlessly destroying Abel. Just to capture Sheba, he meant to tear down a city that was keeping its faith. He gave no thought to the suffering of others; all that mattered to him was achieving his own goal.

As Joab ruthlessly tore down the city by worldly means, the wise woman offered to hand over Sheba to protect the people’s lives. She grasped exactly what lay at the heart of the matter, and that made it easy for her to reach what Joab wanted. Joab was battering the city regardless, for the sake of his goal, but the woman, who valued life, gave up Sheba to save the others. With spiritual wisdom a problem can be solved this simply; if we try to solve it by worldly strength and wisdom, we commit the wrong of tearing down Abel, a city God loves. When the woman had Sheba killed and his head thrown out to Joab, Joab, having achieved his goal, returned to Jerusalem with Sheba’s head. Joab is a man who is satisfied as long as he has spoils to boast of.

Here we must learn from the woman’s wisdom, because Joab, bent on getting his way, did not spare people’s lives, while her wisdom, which sought to guard the people’s lives and keep God’s name from dishonor, saved many. When a Sheba slips into your church or your home, you must discern quickly by the word and have the wisdom to drive that sin out. For that, you must know the word of truth with certainty and have a bold faith that keeps the word at the center and lives it out.

I hope you will be wise as serpents, with the courage and patience to use a wicked Joab for good ends, as David did. And may you learn the good sense of the woman who saved Abel, be harmless as doves, and receive from God both the commendation of being wheat and an everlasting reward.