2 Samuel 13:1-39, John 17:1-26, Psalms 119:81-96, Proverbs 16:6-7
Today is the 28th day of May. Welcome to the Daily Audio Bible. I’m Brian. It’s good to be here with you around the global campfire as we come in out of the chaos of the world and warm ourselves in its light. And just allow the Word of God to wash over us. And speaking of the chaos of life, King David has some chaos within his family and we’re about to enter into that story. 2 Samuel chapter 13 today. We’re reading from the Common English Bible this week.
Commentary:
Okay. So, we encounter something terrible in the Old Testament and something beautiful in the New Testament. So, let’s just dive in and talk about it for a second. So David has an affair, right, with a married woman, Bathsheba, who happens to be the wife of Uriah the Hittite and was one of David’s top thirty most loyal warriors. A colossal misjudgment. That brings Nathan the prophet who tells David he’s going to have problems from within his family as a result of this and that is pretty much exactly what we see playing out here. Amnon, David’s oldest son, has lustful desires for his half-sister Tamar, which results in his rape of her. Probably because she wasn’t a willing participant, he throws her out. So, he has deeply shamed her. And when her brother Absalom finds out about it, he tries to comfort her, asks her to keep quiet about it for now, but this obviously broke her. And two years later justice was served. Absalom had made a plan and Amnon was killed. And then Absalom is on the run. So, he’s in Geshur. He’s back in the kingdom of his grandparents. And, ironically, Geshur is up in the Galilee region and would later have a different name, Bethseda, a place where Jesus ministered. So, yep, we can say the prophecy of Nathan came true. David’s family is in turmoil. And here’s the thing about this story. It is a horrible story. It is in the Bible because it’s a horrible story and we’re supposed to wrestle with it. But in wrestling with it, there is no way to overlay a 21st century cultural view on top of a thirty-five-hundred-year-old story, right? So, when I hear of the rape of Tamar and I consider it in the world that I live in, I’m outraged over this like we all would be. Like we all are. And, so, who do we look to? We look to David. He’s their parent. He’s Tamar’s father. Where is he in this thing? Why isn’t he rushing in to rescue her and set things right somehow and where are the wheels of justice on this train? We have to peel that back and enter into the time that they are living in, which leads us to hot buzzwords like patriarchy, which is fundamentally ordering a society though a patriarch. So, there is the oldest man in a family, he’s the patriarch, his first born son will be the next in line, his first born son will be the next in line, so on and so forth. Which essentially means that the males held the primary power in the society. And so we can get lost in a quagmire because we can get distracted and we can think, okay, well this story brings up all the things that we should be talking about today. This is a very, very old story that has been talked about in different ways over the last three thousand years. So, all that there may be plenty of things that need to be talked about, that is not the point of this story. The point of this story is a continuation of what David did. When David had this affair with Bathsheba, as much as there might have been a glossing over of the whole situation, everybody knew what happened, especially David’s family. And this obviously eroded his authority. He lost respect. And we don’t have every little detail of this story. We don’t know what’s going on in David’s mind. He might be thinking of self-protection because how many scandals can the kingdom handle? Or he might have been following his advisors? We don’t know. The point is that Nathan told David in advance that his family was gonna come unglued, that the problems that he was gonna face were gonna be from within. And this is what is happening. And we’re not done with Absalom. Absalom served what he felt was justice, which was the killing of his brother Amnon, who had raped his sister Tamar. So, we could say ultimately Amnon didn’t skate by free. He was assassinated for what he did. But David’s problems are not over. Absalom had lost complete respect for his father. Now he’s estranged from his father and we’ll see where that story goes. So, I’m not justifying the rape of Tamar. I think it’s horrible. I think rape or sexual assault of any kind is horrible. I also happen to think that adultery is horrible, and that was the first step in the process of the story that we are telling right now. And if patriarchy is your hot political button right now, look, we’ve come a long way in the last thirty-five hundred years and we have a long way to go. We’re in process. I’m not advocating this and I would wager that the Bible is not advocating this either. If we go back thirty-five hundred years, this is how the world works. So, we can make judgements from thirty five hundred years later and that’s fine, but it’s not the point. That’s how the world was, including slavery and all kinds of things that we would consider not a part of our society and not helpful in any way to humanity. That’s how things were. So, to try to wash over and not just enter into the story in a time how things were makes us back read a bunch of stuff that isn’t there. In fact, I would wager that the Mosaic law in terms of things like slavery and patriarchy were a dramatic move forward in the world in comparison to the cultures that were in the surrounding areas at the same time. So that was then, this is now. We’ve come a long way since then. We’re in the process of restoring this world, but that’s what we are here to do. We’re here to collaborate with Jesus as his hands and feet in this world to restore Shalom to this planet. Wholeness. A peace. But it’s never gonna come to the world until it comes to us individually.
Which brings us to the book of John, where Jesus is praying what is known as his High Priestly prayer and he’s praying it over his friends. And he’s praying it over us. Jesus said, I’m not praying only for them, speaking of his disciples, but also for those who believe in me because of their word. That would be us. When Jesus says, I pray that they will be one, Father, just as you are in me and I am in you , I pray that they also will be in us so that the world will believe that your sent me. I’ve given them the glory that you gave me so that they can be one just as we are one. I’m in them and you are in me so that they will be made perfectly one. Then the world will know that you sent me and that you have loved them just as you loved me. Okay, so that’s where this is all headed. That we’d have oneness with one another, oneness with Jesus who had oneness with the Father. Union. A place where there is wholeness and completeness and peace. So, we can judge David and his passivity from three thousand years ago, but we have to look in the mirror too because are we experiencing that oneness and that wholeness? Can we experience that oneness and wholeness with anyone, including our spouse, all of the time? Okay, well then there is still some work to do. We’ve done a lot of work moving forward in a lot of ways in the last several millennia. We’ve also made colossal mistakes over the last several thousand years as humanity. We’re still in process. We’re still working it out. We’re still making mistakes. We’re still restarting things. We’re still in process. But we have the prayer of Jesus our Savior over us, asking God to make us one just like the Father and the Son are one. But that can’t happen unless we are in Christ and live into it, actually live that out. That is how all of the stuff that outrages us gets eradicated from the world. So, if we want to judge their society than we can. If we want to judge our own, well then, we have to include ourselves by at least asking ourselves, what am I doing to restore Shalom into my home, into my workplace, into my neighborhood, into my church community, into my town, into my nation, into this world? Am I so self-absorbed that the universe revolves around me and everything really is about what’s happening to me? Or am I getting down on my knees and washing the filth from the feet of my brothers and sisters? Am I remaining in Jesus’ love by obeying him? No matter what story we enter into in the Bible and no matter what kind of reaction we have to it, at the end of the day, the more that we ponder, the more that we zoom out, the more that we gain proper context which is so vitally important in anything, the more that we find the whole thing becoming a mirror and everything bouncing back into our lap and asking us, what am I doing about it? How am I participating in bringing Shalom? How am I participating in revealing the kingdom of God upon this earth? What am I doing to reflect the glory of the Lord upon this earth?
Prayer:
Father we invite You into all of that. We invite You into whatever the Scriptures bring up just about every single day because we need You. And everyday we are made aware. We are reminded that we have a role to play in all of this. And so we pray along with You Jesus, make us one. Make us one that we may be in You as You are in the Father. Come Holy Spirit we pray. In Jesus name. Amen.
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And that’s it for today. I’m Brian I love you and I’ll be waiting for you here tomorrow.
Community Prayer and Praise:
This is Candace from Oregon. First and foremost, I want to offer my love and condolences to Vickie from Arizona and to your family in the loss of your husband. You said on a Wednesday, probably, almost the last Wednesday of May. I pray that God will come and I know He will for you. He is the husband to the husbandless and I know firsthand. Lord, bless Vickie and bless her family and all those who have lost this beloved person. And I just want to also be in agreement with Monica from Kentucky. Thanks, by the way, Monica, for just all your encouragements. But I want to add my agreement that while you need to be part of the church family, this DAB is part of that, but also one your own community, people that you, as she said, can forgive and do life together. And then agreeing with Brian Hardin when he said recently we ask for a bountiful harvest of the fruit of the Spirit in our lives. Thank You Lord for everything You’re doing. Thank You for being so present and so faithful and true.
Hi. My name is Nonny. I’m 15. I’ve called before like when…I called before because I didn’t really have any friends to go through this with and I just want some more and I’m such __ I don’t know what to do. And I’m hurting so much and it’s hard to trust God when there’s just so much leaving you and there’s so much you’re losing. I don’t know what to do. And I know I have to trust Him but it’s hard. It’s really hard. That’s it. I just pray because I’m really struggling __. Thank you.
Good morning Daily Audio Bible family. This is Lee from New Jersey. Today is Friday, May 25th and today is day 24 of my prayer against anger. So, today’s prayer is a little different because it’s to praise God for a day without it, without anger. So, yesterday was one of those days. So, I want to praise God every single time. And of course, ask God to teach me what I need to learn those days that I __ up. So, Father thank you for a wonderful day yesterday Lord, a wonderful day, not a peaceful day Lord, but for a day that didn’t require anger or where anger didn’t show its ugly face. And yes, issues appeared, things needed to be resolved, and they were resolved without the use of anger, without the need of anger Lord. No boiling point. Nothing. I thank You for that Lord. I thank You for continuously blessing us and continuing to shine Your wisdom on us, that we may reflect Your wisdom in our daily lives with our families and everyone that we interact with on a day-to-day basis. Lord I ask that I die moment to moment Lord that I continuously die Lord to you, that I continuously forget who I used to be yesterday every single second Lord that I die instead of moment to moment, second to second Lord. That you continue to renew me every second of the day Lord. And we pray this in Jesus’ name. Family, also wanted to ask for prayer for our teenagers and technology, that they may fill their minds with more appropriate material - music, literature - because they are our future and, of course, they’re loading themselves up with popular culture and the music out there, stuff like that. So, just want to pray for that as well. Asking you all to pray for that. Of course, I know one of my brothers is praying for our children so add that to your prayer…
Hi Daily Audio Bible family. This is Jeff B. calling from Canada. Been listening now for just about six months and really appreciating the program. I’m visually impaired, so having Brian actually read it out loud…I don’t know…just faith comes by hearing…and it’s very powerful. So, thankful for that. Thank you, Brian and Jill for your ministry. Wanted to reach out. I go to Africa every year and I’m about to go on June 11th here. I’ll go for about a week. And what I do in Africa is, although we do a gospel festival, and a pastor’s conference, I personally reach out to government institutional and business leaders and we share…I bring a group of business and government leaders with me. We share business and value that way. But we also share our faith story and we lead leaders to the Lord. And it’s a powerful thing. It has an impact on the entire region because we get decision-makers and people of influence to come to Jesus. Every year before I go there’s obviously opposition. And, so, I’m just asking as a new community that I feel connected with, I’ve been praying for you guys over the last six months. I’m asking you to pray for me. And I will give you an update if I have a chance. And just want to again, thank you for the ministry. And have a very blessed day.