The Consequences of Joab’s Sin
17Abner had communication with the elders of Israel, saying, “In times past, you sought for David to be king over you. 18Now then do it; for Yahweh has spoken of David, saying, ‘By the hand of my servant David, I will save my people Israel out of the hand of the Philistines, and out of the hand of all their enemies.’” 19Abner also spoke in the ears of Benjamin: and Abner went also to speak in the ears of David in Hebron all that seemed good to Israel, and to the whole house of Benjamin. 20So Abner came to David to Hebron, and twenty men with him. David made Abner and the men who were with him a feast. 21Abner said to David, “I will arise and go, and will gather all Israel to my lord the king, that they may make a covenant with you, and that you may reign over all that your soul desires.” David sent Abner away; and he went in peace. 22Behold, David’s servants and Joab came from a raid, and brought in a great plunder with them; but Abner was not with David in Hebron; for he had sent him away, and he had gone in peace. 23When Joab and all the army who was with him had come, they told Joab, “Abner the son of Ner came to the king, and he has sent him away, and he has gone in peace.” 24Then Joab came to the king, and said, “What have you done? Behold, Abner came to you. Why is it that you have sent him away, and he is already gone? 25You know Abner the son of Ner. He came to deceive you, and to know your going out and your coming in, and to know all that you do.” 26When Joab had come out from David, he sent messengers after Abner, and they brought him back from the well of Sirah; but David didn’t know it. 27When Abner was returned to Hebron, Joab took him aside into the middle of the gate to speak with him quietly, and struck him there in the body, so that he died, for the blood of Asahel his brother.
Joab went through every trial alongside David. Even while they were fleeing from Saul, he did much to bring David to the throne, and he too came to hold great power. As commander of David’s army, he could have thrown the nation into turmoil had he set his heart on evil. Trusting in his own strength, Joab defied David’s orders more and more often. He knew how the king cherished human life, yet without David’s permission he fought Abner and lost many soldiers. It was in that fighting that he lost Asahel, the brother he loved. Joab and his two brothers won their battles only because God’s help stood behind them. Yet they took all the credit for themselves and grew so proud that God could no longer use them.
After enduring countless trials, David went to Hebron, where Saul no longer reigned, and at last took the throne. He became a king who loved his people as he himself had been loved by God. When we see how David governed with goodness and humility, we realize how grievously Joab, who held life cheap, had sinned against God and against David. Joab had squandered hundreds of lives in pointless battles with Ishbosheth’s soldiers, and when his brother Asahel was killed, he betrayed David for the sake of revenge. David would never fight a battle like that, one that could cost him his men, nor would he betray someone who had trusted and relied on him. Joab had watched David strive to act according to God’s will. But once he gained power, he came to disregard both God and David, and his decisions parted ways entirely with David’s. Two people may go through the very same events and, depending on their character, their faith, and their devotion, weigh them this differently; and by the way they interpret them, they may go on to live very different lives.
There is suffering of the body and suffering of the spirit. To onlookers, the suffering that comes from our own sin and the suffering that comes as spiritual training look exactly alike: both are hardship. While we are in training, we cannot tell whether a trial comes from our sin or is meant to make us grow. Once the training is over, though, we can tell for ourselves which it was. Suffering that comes from our own sin is forgiven only when we repent with everything in us. Even after repentance, such suffering is bound to last a long time, because we must stand at yet another starting line, where we still have to grow spiritually. Spiritual training feels as hard as death while we are in it, but because we come to understand God’s will as we work through each problem, we find, once the refining is over, that we have grown remarkably.
David, too, sinned whenever a human sense of his own righteousness rose up in him, deciding and acting by the world’s standards. God told him to go to Judah, but he chose Philistia, a choice that sent him the long way around for many years. Had David obeyed, gone up to Judah, and held back the invasions of foreign nations, Saul would still have harassed him, to be sure, but his refining would have ended sooner. Even if the suffering in Judah had been harder than the suffering in Philistia, I am sure David would have come to understand God’s will more deeply. When we fail to discern spiritually like this, we may end up carrying burdens we never entrusted to God and enduring harder trials still.
The world is a battlefield where people compete over who can seize more land. On this earth, small as a speck of dust, multitudes struggle fiercely for land, their eyes so blinded by greed that they cannot see the eternal world. Yet a human being is a frail creature: when God, the master of our souls, calls us, we must leave behind in this world everything we have clutched in our hands. Those who forget this will live for themselves alone, and for that they will one day face a judgment that can never be undone.
Joab had learned all of this through David, yet he could not overcome his greed, and he even came to think he could deceive David. This small difference in thinking between David and Joab is what makes one person a child of God and sends another away from God onto the road to destruction. As time went on, the war between the house of Saul and the house of David dragged on. Joab’s spiritual state was far from whole, yet his victories kept making David stronger. God was using the abilities of wicked Joab for David’s sake. So you must give yourselves to God with a faith he will accept, because nothing could be sadder than to be used as a whip or a tool for someone God loves, only to be cast aside afterward, as Joab was.
People go to church because they want to live in heaven after they die. They also cling to a faith that seeks only blessing, convinced that if they believe in God they are bound to prosper in this world. All of them believe in God as if doing him a favor, for the sake of the blessings they will receive. But unless they let go of this thinking, they cannot meet Abba, Father. Abba, Father is not someone we meet by keeping the law well, nor someone we reach by offering him our strength and devotion. We meet God when we believe in Christ and live in obedience to his word. Human stubbornness and pride, hot temper and possessiveness, are like the great stone that sealed Jesus’ tomb. Jesus rolled the stone away and showed us that the resurrection is true, yet we are afraid, and we still have not gone into the empty tomb to see for ourselves.
We can be saved only if we are convinced of Jesus’ resurrection; in the same way, the light of Christ can enter a darkened heart only when we cast off the human righteousness that keeps us from coming to God. David boldly rolled away the stone that stood between him and God; Joab clung to that stone and hid himself in the darkness. The lives of David and Joab show us plainly that the outcome of a life turns on the decisions we make.
David had six sons in Hebron. That he fathered six sons after becoming king means the nation had grown stable, strong, and prosperous. His life had been a rough path of thorns, but he lived it well, with an obedient faith, until God gave him this blessing. Whenever he suffered, he prayed to understand why God had placed him in such circumstances, and he looked forward to the eternal kingdom he would share with God. God permitted David’s hardships so that he would rule the united kingdom with a mature faith. Even in shabby and wretched circumstances, David grasped God’s will and prayed with all his heart. Seeing him, God ended his suffering and established him as king, for there was no further reason to train him.
You must become people after God’s own heart, as David was. Here is an illustration. If a single lily were blooming in a place heaped with garbage, people would feel it was too precious to leave there and would move it to good soil. In the same way, God wraps in the Holy Spirit, guards with his angels, and blesses without lack the saints who put down roots of faith in a world as filthy as garbage and give off the fragrance of heaven like that lily. The lily did not bloom in order to be protected; it simply put down roots where it was planted, as God created it to do. It did nothing more than bloom according to God’s will, and yet it was loved and protected.
I hope you will receive this love and protection from God. If you do your very best to put down roots, bloom, and bear seed in the place he has given you, God himself will move you into good soil. Joab too had received this love from God, but because he would not leave the place of sin, he ended up going as far as murder. As Cain, who could not let go of his temper and his greed, murdered Abel, so Joab finally killed Abner. When people drift away from God, it is the same as pushing themselves into the pit of judgment. The world calls it murder only when someone takes a physical life, but to drift from the word so that one’s own soul cannot enter heaven is murder as well. We must never commit a murder that God will not forgive.
2 Samuel 3:6
6While there was war between Saul’s house and David’s house, Abner made himself strong in Saul’s house.
Abner made Ishbosheth king and became commander of Israel’s army. Regarding the new king as a puppet, he brazenly took Rizpah, Saul’s concubine. For a subject to take the king’s concubine was utterly unthinkable. Ishbosheth rebuked Abner, asking how he could sleep with his father’s wife. Abner turned the blame back on the king and retorted that he had protected Ishbosheth from David and made him king, so how could Ishbosheth rebuke him without a thought for all he had done? Of course, it was thanks to Abner that Ishbosheth had become king of Israel and had kept his life. But no subject should speak to a king like that, and in speaking this way Abner was showing contempt for God.
In the middle of threatening Ishbosheth, Abner said something remarkable. He warned that Yahweh had promised to make David king, and that if he did not carry out that will of God, God would punish him. Think carefully about these words, and it becomes clear that Abner knew God’s plan to establish a united kingdom through David. Knowing it, he still committed the sin of setting Ishbosheth on the throne for the sake of his own power.
We who belong to God likewise know full well what plan God has for salvation and what kind of life he wants us to live as his witnesses. Knowing it, we still sin by serving the world as our king to satisfy our own desires. We must understand how evil this thinking is, because, just as Abner took Saul’s concubine and then threatened the king, we live for the world and still pray for God to bless us. Of course, it was Abner’s betrayal of Israel that made it easy for David to unite the nation. But the union of Israel and Judah was God’s plan to fulfill what he had promised David; it did not come about because of Abner. Had Joab not murdered him, Abner would probably have pressed his own labors on David and demanded a higher position. Even now there are many who parade their own merits and expect to be blessed for them. When pastors and church members boast of their faith and grow proud, they too are committing the sin of trading on God’s name for their own gain.
If people who were saved only barely, and only because Jesus shed his blood for them, are trading on God’s name to enjoy wealth and glory, they are no different from Joab and Abner. The two men had become army commanders because God had helped them all along, yet now they were acting on trust in their own wisdom. Holding God, David, and Ishbosheth cheap and complaining about everything, they weighed and settled even God’s work as they pleased. Whatever we give ourselves to for God, we can bear it only with the help of the Holy Spirit. No one can serve or pray simply by resolving to. If you are now laboring faithfully beyond your strength, that is a sign that the Holy Spirit is helping you.
To treat God’s grace as our own possession, as Joab and Abner did, is sin.
God used Abner’s wicked heart to make him hand Israel over to David, and Abner was killed by Joab for his own sin. In the same way, since God uses our hearts too, whether good or evil, we must always work at living with a good heart. Had Abner been a good man, God would not have stood by and watched him be cut down so senselessly by Joab. How foolish was Abner, who knew God’s will and still was not saved? Your life must not be like that of Abner, who died so emptily.
2 Samuel 3:12
12Abner sent messengers to David on his behalf, saying, “Whose is the land?” and saying, “Make your alliance with me, and behold, my hand will be with you, to bring all Israel around to you.”
Abner sent messengers to David, offering to hand Israel over to him if only David would make him a promise. He stressed that David would certainly need his strength to unite the nation, and he asked for a guarantee of his safety. David would naturally make that promise. But even if David guaranteed Abner’s safety, unless God protected his life, Abner would still be open to attack from the wicked and from evil spirits.
Abner thought he would be safe once David gave his word, but without the Holy Spirit’s protection he was as good as standing alone in the middle of the wilderness. Human plans are this empty: we may lay hundreds of plans, yet none will come to pass unless God answers. When Abner told the men of Israel and of Benjamin that he would hand the kingdom over to David, they all agreed and rejoiced. David, hearing this welcome news through Abner, could now unite the nation without bloodshed, so he entertained Abner generously and sent him away. Abner preened himself as though he had delivered Israel to David by his own strength and ability, but we should read this as a sign that God was at work. Because David knew that God was at work, he had no need to cross words with Abner. He knew that if Abner were a wicked man, God would judge him; even without confronting him, then, David had no reason to take his life.
Just then Joab returned from a great victory, and when he heard that David had entertained Abner generously and that Abner had gone away, he could not contain his rage. He had risked his life on the battlefield, while David had sent away alive the very man who killed his brother; that made him furious. How good it would have been if Joab had had spiritual eyes that could see a little farther! If, instead of looking only at what lay before his eyes, he had trusted that there was good reason for David’s sending Abner away alive, his own life would have turned out differently. But Joab, wanting revenge, called back Abner as he was leaving and killed him, without even asking David’s permission. In this way sin invites more sin, and a hot temper invites murder.
David knew nothing of Abner’s death. The people, however, mistakenly believed that David had conspired with Joab to seize Israel and kill Abner. Because Joab committed murder at such a critical moment, just as David was about to rule a united kingdom, all that David had planned could have come to ruin. So, to prove his innocence, David fasted all day, and he ordered the people to mourn Abner’s death and follow his bier. Then the people came to believe that Joab had killed Abner out of a personal grudge, and they recognized that David was innocent. Though Joab had put him in this predicament, David did not call Joab to account for his sin and left it all for God to decide.
Yet one thing seems strange. Whenever David met a problem, rather than dealing with it decisively, he behaved as though he were weakly covering everything over. No matter how badly others wronged him, he never took revenge and always forgave, which made him look like an indecisive man. But there is no faith more mature than David’s: to have the power and strength to settle matters himself, and yet to entrust all his vengefulness and anger to God.
Just as the wicked remain wicked, Joab did not repent even after David forgave him, and he ended up being put to death by Solomon. Joab, the nephew, was given a chance by his uncle David to turn back, but he never turned, because sin leaves a person unable to choose wisely. The price of sin is God’s judgment, so we must have the wisdom to turn back quickly while we still have the chance. Ironically, it was through the labors of Abner and Joab that David became king over a united kingdom.
Had they not been judged, they would have said something like this to David, in their arrogance: “Without us you could never have united the nation, and you would not be where you are.” Such words are both right and wrong. Because they helped David, God’s chosen one, the nation could be united; but because they despised that same David, they labored faithfully even to the point of death and still had no reward.
God uses the wicked just as they are. If they work hard to push their own will through, he will use their very abilities to accomplish his plan of raising up those who are good. Will you be a David who follows God and enjoys his blessing, or a foolish Joab who could not give up his own righteousness? The choice is yours. People sometimes excuse themselves by saying their circumstances left them no choice, but a choice is not made for you by circumstances, situations, or other people; it is your own faith that decides. That is why the way you interpret every problem you meet on the road of life can change the course of your life.
I hope you will not look only at what is right in front of you, but will think farther and wider. You need to consider what decisions you made on the way to this moment, whether you have defied God’s word in anything, and what consequences the decision you are making now will bring. God has kept you in his love until now and turned back every attack of the wicked because he wanted you to grow spiritually. May you lean on God as David did, who built a united kingdom by God’s grace, and may your choices be wise and your life happy.