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Second Samuel chapter #10 In the Word of God this evening we'll
just start right from the beginning.
How about that? Because I don't know where that
came from. Ecclesiastes chapter #3 says
this to everything. There is a season and a time to
every purpose under heaven, and actually says in verse #8 a time
to love and a time to hate, A time of war and a time of peace.
And the Bible makes clear that there is a time for warfare, but
yet there's also a time for peace as well.
I am afraid though. However, this evening I am
concerned that there are some Christians especially, who live
in a constant state of warfare. Now listen, I understand.
Is there spiritual warfare raging all around us at any
given time? The answer is absolutely.
And if you don't believe that's the case, then you've been
lulled the street, friend. Because the fact of the matter
is, is that there is spiritual wickedness in high places.
Satan certainly is conspiring against believers and he can't
take your soul. Praise God, because we are safe
within the Father's hand. We have security of our
salvation in Jesus Christ, the hand of Christ, which is in the
hand of the Father. That's what we find in the
Gospels. However, Satan can't take that,
but he'll try to take everything else from you as possible.
He'll try to take your joy. He'll try to take your
effectiveness. He'll try to take your
testimony. He'll try to take your good
name. He'll try to take your ability
to witness to others, and on and on and on and on.
Listen, he wants you to be like Job, who's just sitting on a
pile of ashes, scratching himself with a piece of pottery
and just saying I got nothing left.
That's what Satan wants for you. And so I'm not discounting the
fact tonight that spiritual warfare is a very real thing,
because spiritual warfare is a real thing.
We wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against
principalities and powers and rulers of the darkness of this
world, against spiritual wickedness in high places.
Ephesians chapter 6, verse 12. But what I'm talking about this
evening is not necessarily the recognition of spiritual
warfare, but I'm talking about the Christian has a hair trigger
and is ready to fight someone at the drop of a hat.
Now, I'm not talking about necessarily a fist fight because
I think most Christians would have the understanding that, you
know, it's probably not best for us to have fist fights after
church. You know, probably not.
You know, could you imagine just like a ring of people out after
church, fight, fight, fight, fight, you know, two people in
the middle just kind of duking it out and they'd say, what's
going on over this? Oh, it's all right.
It's church service. You know, it's that crazy in the
bed of Baptist Church. They're just having a fight out
there. No, no, I'm not talking about
that. We would understand that's not
the case. However, I would say that while
physically that might not take place, that spirit very well
could invade the soul. The spirit of a believer, yes,
even a believer. The idea of fighting these
needless wars. These people aren't happy
warriors that are simply looking to do the will of God from the
heart. No, no, these are the people who
wrap a thin layer of God, godliness over a heaping helping
of pride and arrogance and haughtiness.
Now let's be honest, it's easy to do in our flesh if we're not
careful. Well, tonight in the Word of
God, we had the example of a man, an Ammonite, Certainly not
a believer in the sense that we would look at ourselves this
evening. But I believe if we're not
careful, the spirit of the Ammonite can be found in us as
believers if we're not careful, picking fights where we ought
not to be, picking fights and having wars when it's not time
for war. So why don't you stand, if you
could, please, for the reading God's Word?
We're in second Samuel chapter #10 and we'll read the first 5
verses to begin. The Bible says this.
And it came to pass after this that the king of the children of
Ammon died, and Hannon his son reigned in his stead.
Then said David, I will show kindness unto Hannah the son of
Nahash, as his father showed kindness unto me.
David sent to comfort him by the hand of his servants for his
father. And David's servants came into
the land of the children of Ammon.
Isn't that nice of David to be able to do that?
That's certainly the case. But you ever heard the saying,
No good deed goes all right? And the Princess of the children
of Ammon said unto hand, And their Lord, Think us thou that
David doth honor thy father, that he has sent comforters unto
thee. Hasn't David rather sent his
servants unto thee to search the city, and to spy it out and
overthrow it? Wherefore Hannon took David's
servants, and shaved off the 1/2 of their beards, and cut off
their garments in the middle, even to their buttocks, and sent
them away. When they told it to David, he
sent to meet them, because they were greatly ashamed.
And the king said, Terry at Jericho, until your beards be
grown and then return. Now, if you've never read this
passage before, when we got to the end of verse number two, you
probably weren't guessing the next step, that these servants
that were just trying to show kindness come back with half
their beard shaved and their garments cut down to their rear
ends. But that's exactly what we see
here. A man who really was just being
shown kindness by the king decided to pick a fight where he
ought not to pick a fight. And I'll tell you, there were
some devastating consequences from it.
And that's what we're going to look at tonight.
So why don't you be seated as we pray together?
Heavenly Father, do you pray to be with me this evening as I
present your word? And certainly the spirit of the
Ammonite could be within us to be able to find fights where
there should not be fights, to find warfare where there ought
not to be warfare, to be able to fight at a drop of a hat.
I pray that You help us as believers to have the right
spirit, the right countenance, to know when we need to stand,
to know where we need to be seated, to know we need to speak
out, to know when we need to keep our hands over our mouth.
Lord help us to be able to have the Holy Spirit discernment to
know these issues and to have the discernment for them.
And we ask it in Jesus name, Amen.
At first glance, Rolf Klassen, a Gray haired Swede who hobbles
around on his Walker, looked like an easy target.
At least that's what 2 would be, robbers thought as they accosted
him at an ATM in Iceland back in 2011.
One of the thugs waved a knife while the other thug told
Classen to turn over his wallet. What they didn't know was that
their victim was also the former European light middle weight
boxing champion. Classen warned them.
This isn't going to go well. When the men scoffed his
warning, he knocked one of them out to the floor with a sharp
right hook for laying the other out with a left jab.
Yes, thank you, Ralph. So where those Amens are coming
from? By the way, I looked this up
this week because that's one of those sermon illustrations.
Like, that's a great story, but it can't be true.
It absolutely was true. This took place in Iceland 2011.
But what caps it off is the police officer who at the end of
the story says this. At the end, they came after the
wrong guy. They thought they had an easy
mark and they didn't. They came after the wrong guy.
Clearly in Second Samuel Chapter 10, Hannon came after the wrong
guy. David, in the integrity of his
heart, says, you know what? Hannon's father was a blessing
to me. Hanning's father, Hannon's
father was a man who had been some level of encouragement to
me in my life. And so he decides very early on
in the text that he has Hannon is grieving his father's death.
He says, you know what, I want to send some men that are going
to come and bring comfort to him as I have received comfort from
his father in the past. And again, we we saw just a few
chapters ago that what is David doing?
He he wants to, he's looking out, if you could put it this
way, he's looking out for the interests of the Lord.
He says, why am I dwelling in a House of Cedars?
And the Lord dwells in a House of curtains.
And so he was looking out for the needs of the Lord.
Of course we know the Lord has no needs, but in David's heart I
want to do something for God. And so his heart was, I want to
do something for God. In the last chapter we saw that
he want to do something for Mephibosheth, which technically
could have been one of his enemies because he was from the
household of soul. And so David says I want to do
something that's good for Mephibosheth and he did.
And so here we see him tonight once again, what is he doing?
His kindness continues. Once again he is showing his
graciousness and his love to this man named Hannon because of
the kindness it says in verse #2 that his father had shown unto
him. And so he sends some of his
servants, He sends some of his counselors to the land of the
Ammonites. Now the Ammonites were close to
the people of Israel. If you go to the South and
Israel, if you were looking at a map and you see where Jerusalem
and you see where the tribe of Judah is, if you go directly to
the South, you think of where Beersheba is.
And sometimes in the Word of God, you see from Dan, even
under Beersheba, you see that phrase really means from the
north to the South of the place of Israel, the nation of Israel.
If you were to go South of Beersheba, you would find the
land of the Ammonites. So they were very close to one
another in proximity. And So what does David do?
He sends these counselors and he sends them over and says,
listen, you go show the kindness that I was shown by Hannon's
father. But Hannon receives these men,
but he also receives his own counselors as well.
And so he asked his counselors, what do you think's the deal
with these guys? Why do you think they're here?
Why do you think David sent them over here?
And instead of just coming to the conclusion that maybe, well,
David was a godly man, instead of coming to the conclusion
that, well, you know, David just is trying to be a nice guy.
No, no, what happens? Well, it says in verse #3 it
says, think of thou that David doth honor thy father, that he
has sent comforters unto thee. Has not David rather sent his
servants unto thee to search the city and to spy it out and to
overthrow it? He says, you really think, are
you so naive, Hannon, that these men are here just to be able to
say, wow, we're really sorry for you?
David could have sent you a greeting card if that's what he
wanted to do. No, what he did was he said
there are no greeting cards back then, just to be sure you're
paying attention. All right?
But he says, no, no, they sent these men because they're spies.
And what they're doing is they're trying to find our
weaknesses. They're trying to see where we
are LAX. And he's going to go back and
report to David. And before you know it, we're
going to be no war. David's a warrior.
You're a fool to accept these men.
You're a fool to allow them into your presence.
You need to send them away. You know, no, you don't need to
just send them away. You need to absolutely humiliate
them. You need to send a message not
just to these men. You send a message to David that
we, the people of Ammon, are not to be trifled with.
So instead of just saying, you know, thanks for coming by, but
the king is really busy. He's got a lot of people to see.
And so maybe you could come back another day.
They said, hey, hey, come here. We want to talk to you for a
second. And they get close and they
arrest them. They, they, they, I don't know
how necessarily you would find it, but somehow they have
captured them to the point of taking their beards and shaving
them. They're not shaving their
beards, just shaving half of their beard, say pastor.
What's the big deal about that? Well, one commentator said of
the shaving of the beard. Except for the performance of
certain religious rituals or to express profound emotional
distress, Israelite men always wore beards.
To remove an Israelite male's beard forcibly was to show
contempt for him personally. The idea was this.
We're going to shave your beard to show you how much contempt we
find you. And we're not even going to
shave your beard. We're going to shave half of it
because we want you to be absolutely humiliated.
If that humiliation wasn't enough, what do they do?
They took their outer garments and they split the garments, and
the Bible says yes. It says all the way down to
their buttocks. Meaning what?
They wanted to expose them and to make them look like fools.
Now, if you and I have an issue where our clothing may RIP or
has some sort of problem, what do we do?
Well, we go to the store and we buy a new piece of clothes,
right? Well, if you're in the land of
Ammon and you got to go home, do you think there's a Kmart on the
way? No, you're walking all the way
home with your beard cut in half.
You're walking all the way home with your clothes rent and your
body exposed in a way that is humiliating.
And again, the issue wasn't even necessarily what was physically
done to them with the beard and what was done to them with the
clothes. The clothing.
The issue was really this. They were shown complete and
utter contempt by a man that was supposed to have been helped,
but instead he takes it completely wrong.
And what happens? Well, he insults these men and
sends them right back to David. Now David again is a man of
kindness. He hears of this and he says in
verse #5 when they told it unto David, he sent to meet them,
because the men were greatly ashamed.
And the king said, tarry unto Jericho until your beards be
grown and then return. He says, listen, don't even
return to society, don't even return to your family, don't
return to your friends until your beards can be grown back
again. David cares for them as men.
David cares for their souls. You, you can just feel David's
care for them here. But I'll tell you this, if we've
learned anything thus far from David's life, David's thought a
man to be trifled with. David tried to be nice.
David tried to play it nicely. But what happens?
He realizes that, well, there's probably going to have to be
some consequences. But before any consequences,
come look at what it says in verse 6.
And when the children of Ammon saw that they stank before
David. Yeah, I'd say that's probably a
problem, isn't it? The children of Ammon sent and
hired the Syrians of Beth. Rob Beth, a hub and the Syrians
of Zoba, 20,000 footmen, and then of the king Mecca 1000 men,
and of Ishtab 12,000 men. And if you were to go to First
Chronicles 1917, you'll have to turn there right now, but you'll
find a parallel passage text in First Chronicles 19.
You'll find there were also 32,000 Chariots that were in the
mix as well. So the Ammonites realized,
whoops, maybe we should have done this.
Wow, it sounds like David's mad about this.
But what do we do? Well, instead of trying to make
it right, what they immediately do is say, you know what we need
to do? We just need to wipe David off
the face of the earth. We just need to take over
Israel. We need to go to battle against
him. And it says that they hire the
Syrians. Now, this is interesting because
if, again, if you were to look to a map, the Ammonites are
going to be to the South, but if you were looked at the Syrians,
the Syrians would be almost directly to the north.
Meaning this that basically by hiring other groups of soldiers
to be able to come in confederacy with them, which was
not unusual during that time, you had a lot of smaller nations
that would try to ban their resources together to come in
power against a larger nation. But basically what happens is
you have a nation to the South and their army and a nation to
the north and their army, and they've got Israel in a vice.
What's Israel going to do? Well, if you go down to verse
#7, it says. And when David heard of it, he
sent Joab and all the host of the mighty men.
By the way, this is the first mention of David's mighty men.
We're get to know a lot about them as we continue to look
through. But this is the very first
mention where they are called mighty men.
And the children of Ammon came out and put the battle in a ray
at the entering end of the gate of the Syrians of Zoba and of
Rahab, and of Ishtab and of Mecca, when were by themselves
and were by themselves in the field, when Joab saw that the
front of the battle was against him before and behind.
So what is it saying again? He's in that vice.
He's got men to the north, men to the South.
What are we going to do? How are we going to fight our
way out of this? It says this.
He chose of all the choice men of Israel and put them in a ray
against the Syrians and the rest of the people.
He delivered into the hand of Abishai his brother, that he
might put them in a ray against the children of Israel.
And he said, If the Syrians be too strong for me, and thou
shalt help me, but the children of AM and be too strong for
thee, then I will come and help thee.
Be of good courage. Let us play the men for our
people and for the cities of our God, and the Lord do that which
seemeth good before Him. So what is the end result of
what takes place? Well, I think you could imagine
what the end result is. Even though Israel's backs are
against the wall, God once again provides.
Israel wins, they don't just win against the Ammonites, they also
win against the Syrians and also some others who try to get
involved in this battle as well. And every single one who gets
involved, listen, is totally at a loss against David as men.
And I love the end verse #19 it says that when all the kings
that were servants that had a riser who also became part of
the battle, we met him last in chapter #8 saw that the people
were smitten before Israel. They made peace with Israel and
serve them. Listen.
So the Syrians feared to help the children of Ammon no more
anymore. They realize, you know what,
Hey, we probably shouldn't have got involved with this.
I don't care how much money they gave us to try to help protect
him. But maybe we shouldn't have
gotten involved in this whole thing in the 1st place.
Because what David had just started as as a very kind
hearted, what David had just started something that was very
tender hearted on his part. I just want to be a blessing to
this man. Turned out to be an absolute
disaster, not because of anything David did, but because
he was dealing with a man who was ready to fight.
He was dealing with a man the spirit of the Ammonite was,
listen, I don't know what your intentions are here, but I'm
going to automatically think the worst.
And hey, why don't we escalate this from a scale from a one to
10? How about we escalate this to an
11? And before you know it, the
Ammonites and the Syrians and a bunch of other city states are
involved in a war with David that never should have happened
in the 1st place because the guy just wanted to fight.
The bottom line here is this. What we just saw was a needless
war and one that didn't need to be fought.
There was nothing righteous about what we see here.
Hannon was a fool at a very base level.
A fool to take a man who was trying to help him and not just
push him away, but to embarrass him, to mock him to, to do what
he did to his counselors, to his men.
And he ended up paying the price, not just with his own
condition being put at the worst in battle, but also ending up
having a very bad reputation with the other nations to the
point the Syrian say, hey, Amon, if the phone rings from you
guys, we're not answering. We don't want to get involved
with you people anyway. Look what you've done to us.
A needless war. The problem with what we're
looking at here tonight is that you and I, if we're not careful,
we can also get ourselves involved in some needless wars
as well. It can be as small as escalating
an issue on the road. Any of you here driven in
Massachusetts before anybody? OK.
I think it's some people's purpose in life to antagonize me
while they're driving. I feel like they're looking out
for me. It's like there's a bulletin
that goes out, hey, when you see.
And what really hurts is when they do it to me and I'm in the
church van and I get really upset, but I'm in the church van
that says Liberty Baptist Church.
And I don't want to be bad testimony, but it's easy to
escalate when someone gets on your nerves when you're driving.
It could be as innocent as someone who said something that
maybe just kind of rubbed you the wrong way.
It could be as foolish as turning a slide at work into a
grudge. It could be a senseless arguing
with someone online because of a post that they made that didn't
hit you the right way. It could be resentment over an
invite that should have been made or that you thought should
have been made but that ended up getting lost in the mail.
It could be bickering with family over holiday plans.
It could be letting a rude comment ruin a friendship.
It could be people in a church that just end up rubbing each
other the wrong way. It can always start with
something so small, something that you could never have
imagined. It could have turned into
something big, But it turns into something big.
Why? Because someone has decided it's
time to go to war when it wasn't time to go to war, and we as
Christians are held to a higher standard.
I'm going to say that again, we as Christians are held to a
higher standard. You say, well, the world always
wants to fight. That's because they're in the
world. That's because they don't have
the peace of Jesus Christ inside of you say, well, pastor, are
you saying there's not a time to fight?
There is a time, Ecclesiastes chapter 3, we're to earnestly
contend for the faith. Absolutely we are.
But a lot of times our righteous anger quote, UN quote is really
just unrighteous anger that's just wrapped up with gift
wrapping that looks righteous. But again, it's nothing more
than pride and arrogance and really just getting our feelings
hurt. So what can we learn from this
text that can help us to not fight these needless wars in our
life? I think there's three principles
that we find here quickly this evening.
And the first is this. Be careful of assigning motive
when it comes to issues with other people.
Be very careful when you assign motive.
Look, there was no good reason for the Ammonites to act the way
they acted. There was none.
What was the evidence that David was doing what they accused him
of doing? Well, the evidence was none.
In fact, David had shown kindness to the father and vice
versa. There had been no war between
the Israelites and the Ammonites for probably over 40 years.
You find the last time there was even a skirmish between the
Ammonites and the Israelites was very early in Saul's reign.
There was no evidence that the men were even doing the things
of which they were accused of doing.
And why was there no evidence? Because it was obvious they
weren't doing it. But what did they do?
They assigned motive to these men.
Well, if they're here, it must be because XYZ.
And that immediately got them down the road to the place of
saying, well, if they are here and this is their motive, than
they are doing wrong. And they got it all worked up in
their mind. But everything they got worked
up on their mind was absolutely wrong.
You know what I've seen happen before at church?
I'm sure you've never seen anything like this before, but
I've seen it here and there. People get upset at 1, you know,
people get upset at church once in a while.
You ever did, you know that? OK, Only my wife laughed at
that, OK. Everyone else is uncomfortable.
All right? People can get upset at church
once in a while. Well, that person didn't talk to
me. Or I said something to them and
they didn't answer. And I've heard even people say
something like this. I know they don't like me.
Why? Because I said something to them
and they didn't answer me. What is that?
Well, that's immediately assigning intent.
Do you know that for sure? Oh, you could just tell How?
No, I mean, just listen. If I got to explain it to you,
pastor, then you don't know. What?
What could it be? That possibly, you know, they
didn't see you. Oh, no, they saw me, Pastor.
They looked. They looked right at me.
Well, I mean, haven't you ever looked at someone before?
And maybe you didn't even realize they were there.
You were kind of looking at them, but you were really
looking right through them. Well, I mean, yeah, sure, I've
done that before, Pastor. But that's not exact.
That's not what happened. They had to have heard me.
They had to have seen me. You don't know.
Well, maybe it could be. Well, you could have been maybe
distracted. Well, I mean, I called him by
name. Of course, they had to have
known that I was there. What could it have been that
perhaps maybe they had a lot on their mind.
They mean they just maybe barely made it into church.
They were just glad to be able to make it to church.
Could it have been they had a bad day?
Could it have been that they're hard of hearing?
Could it have been that all of these other things that it could
have been? But oftentimes, what's the first
thing that we do when we feel disrespected, when we feel
slighted, What's the first thing we do?
We immediately in our flesh assigned the very worst to the
person. And you don't know what they're
thinking. Don't tell me that you do
because you don't know for sure. Now, can there be a body of work
overtime? OK, you said their name once and
they didn't respond. OK, you said their name. 3
church services in a row and they walked past you.
OK, we're getting somewhere. So what do we do?
Oh, pastor, this is the this is the part I'm looking for.
It's time for war. What be time for Matthew 18?
Say, what's that? Is that war, pastor?
That's the war passage, right? No.
Why are you? Why are you so worried about
war? Hey, Hannah, calm down, all
right? You know what the Matthew 18
part is? You go to a brother and say,
hey, is there a problem? Have I done something to offend
you? Have I hurt you?
Have I done something? No, not accusing them, but even
looking within yourself, have I done something that you can tell
me about? And you say, well, what happens
if they don't listen? Well, Jesus already thought of
that because he said the next step was to bring a witness to
bring a brother with you or or a sister laid bring someone else
and you say, Hey, we want to get this right with you.
We want to talk to you about this.
It seems like this could be the case, but I don't want to assign
the motive. The Bible talks about casting
down imagination. So I just want to make sure if
I've built something up in my mind that's not true, I want to
let's knock it down right now because I don't want to think
badly of your brother. I don't want to think badly of
your sister. And so let's get this take, man.
I don't want to be at war with you.
We're brothers in Christ. What does it say we be,
brethren, the Bible, Bible says, no, I want to get this right
with you. No, I don't want to go to war
with you. I want to make peace.
Say, well, that's weak and soft. Well, if you call being a
Christian weak and soft and go for it.
But to me that sounds like conflict resolution of the
biblical sense. No, not sticking our head in the
sand, not pretending that the issue isn't there, but first of
all, not assigning intent. The very first time or two
something happens. But then just to say after that,
well, maybe there is something here, but I don't know for sure.
So I'm going to go to him. I'm going to talk to him like a
brother and sister in Christ. The world doesn't get this.
The world solves things like this.
And sure, a church may not have a circle of people like a high
school out in the parking lot and two guys duking it out.
I hope a church never has that. But I'll tell you this, there
are churches that have done everything but that, and they
get to the place where they might as well do it because
that's the way they're acting, like juveniles and like the
ungodly. Listen, they assigned intent,
and the intent that they assigned was absolutely and
factually incorrect. But what does the Bible say?
First Corinthians 13, four and five, Charity suffereth long,
and it's kind. Charity envieth not charity,
vaunteth not itself, is not puffed up, does not behave
itself unseemly, seeketh not her own, is not easily provoked,
thinketh no evil. What do we do?
We treat one another like brothers and sisters in Christ.
And if there's something wrong, listen.
And you are the offender and someone comes to you, don't
blast them out of the water for coming to you.
Listen in humility. And if both people are humble
and both people want to honor the Lord, why can't something be
worked out? No, we don't need endless wars.
True Christian charity thinks the best of others until
compelled by the truth to recognize an undeniable reality.
I'm going to say that again. True Christian charity thinks
the best of others until compelled by the truth to
recognize an undeniable reality. I'm going to think the best of
you until we get to the place where there is no question that
what the bad thing is, is actually what it is.
But even then we get there. You know what I want to do?
I want to see if we can make it right.
You know, we don't need to be doing cutting guys beards off.
You know we ought not to be doing cutting people's clothes,
humiliating people, acting the fool.
No, be careful in assigning motive #2 I see this from our
Texas W. Well, be careful who you listen
to. You know what Hannon's greatest
mistake was here. He had some counselors of his
own who said you don't want to do this, you don't want to do
this. He said, you know what, you're
right. You want to make sure that you
are not fighting needless wars in your own life.
You be careful who you listen to.
Some of the saddest situations in the Bible came from people
who listen to counselors they ought not have ever listened to.
I said this a few weeks ago. One of the saddest verses in the
Bible is this. And Amnon had a friend because
that friend named Jonah Dab encouraged him to force himself
upon his half sister. And it started with this.
And Amnon had a friend that was no friend.
Amnon shouldn't have listened to Jonadab.
We're going to see in a little while, David will have a son
named Solomon. Solomon will have a son named
Rhea Boem. And Rhea Boem is going to have
some trouble early in his reign to try to figure out how should
I, how should I handle these people?
They want me to lower their taxes.
And the older counselor said this.
You know what? You want to, you want to really
get their heart lower their taxes.
By the way, hello, That still works today.
Amen. All right, lower some taxes.
You know what I'm saying? You got our hearts all right.
But his younger brethren, his younger friends, rather as
counselors said this. Listen, you tell those
ungrateful people that if they thought Solomon's taxes were
hard, yours will be even harder. And his foolish friends and Raya
Boehm listening to his foolish friends ended up tearing the
Kingdom apart. Saul just a few chapters ago, he
needed direction in a very difficult time of his life.
And he says, I can't hear from the Lord.
And he had servants who said, you know what, you want to go
see a witch. He had the wrong counselors.
Maybe he should have said, hey, get right with God and all of a
sudden things would have changed.
So what, It's all due. OK, I guess I'll go see the
witch. The next day he's dead.
And his sons. David in our next chapter is
going to have some bad counselors.
He's out on the portico at night and he looks over the city and
he sees a woman. And he says, who is that?
And his servants knew exactly who she was and knew exactly how
to get her into the King's palace.
And not a one of them, said David, you ought not to do that.
God wouldn't be happy with this. That woman is the wife of Uriah,
one of your mighty men. And even if she wasn't, it's not
pleasing to God. And you know it, David.
But what happened? Nobody said a word.
Listen, be careful who you listen to.
Be careful who you make your closest counselors.
They could end up telling you to go right off a Cliff and they'll
be cheering you on while you go off the Cliff.
Psalm or Proverbs 27 six says this faithful are the wounds of
a friend, but the kisses of an enemy are deceitful.
Do you know what a real friend will tell you?
They'll tell you when you're wrong.
A real friend will tell you when you're not right with the Lord.
You know, as a pastor, oftentimes when I sit down with
people and counsel with them, you know what I want to do?
I just want to make them feel happy.
Hey. Oh, I know.
I agree with you. I agree with you.
Yeah, I know. Isn't that crazy, right?
I want to. I agree with you.
I want to agree with you know why?
Because I want them to leave happy.
But if I want to be the biblical type of pastor I'm called to be,
there are times I have to wound them.
No, no. Out of that.
A vengeance or spite. Not to be able to yell at them
or to be able to say what's the matter with you or you, are you
crazy? But to be able to love, to say,
brother, I love you and This is why I'm telling you this.
But you're going the wrong way. Listen with God's help, and
he'll get you through it. And if I can help you, I will.
But I want you to know you're making some bad decisions.
See, those are the kind of friends you need to have.
Those are kind of counselors you need to have.
Not this one. I can tell you what you want to
hear, but it's going to tell you what's biblical.
By the way, to have those kind of counselors, you have to have
men and women in your life that know what the Bible says in the
1st place. You know, just follow your
heart. Well, how else do you want my
life to explode? Your heart's evil and
desperately wicked. Who can know it?
Do you follow your heart? What kind of advice is that?
Come on, Hannon. You know what'd be funny?
Hey, cut off their. No, no, no.
Cut off half their beards. No, no, no, that's not it.
Don't just do that. Get the clothes.
Yeah. You don't want you to do the
clothes. Hey, cut it.
Cut it halfway down into the buttocks.
Man, that would that be fun. They're going to be walking all
the way back to Jericho. They're going to look like
fools. But we're going to show.
We're going to show them right in hand.
And all of a sudden, Yeah. You know what?
That is pretty funny. That's a pretty good idea.
Until his Kingdom is in ruins because he listened to the wrong
people say pastor, well, you think you're talking to
teenagers. We're older people here.
And certainly I'm looking at at folks who are are of all
different ages. And I will say that dealing with
having the right crowd in your life is something you struggle
with more when you're younger than when you're older.
But I will say this, oftentimes we're careful who we allow into
our friend and peer group when we're older, but we're not often
as discerning about who we allow to speak in our ear when we're
older. Meaning this, be careful what
podcasts you listen to. Be careful whose sermons you
listen to. You say, well, pastor, this is a
Christian pastor. So I just saw it's a Christian
on it. So I went ahead and listened to
it. That doesn't mean it's something
that will help you be discerning who you listen to.
Be discerning about the media. You know, listen, the media's
job is to have people to fight all the time so they can get
ratings. And I'm not saying there's not
good media out there, but what I'm telling you is this, that
the media is not the gospel, only the gospel is the gospel.
Be careful what you take in. Be careful that you put
everything you hear through the filter of God's Word, your
entertainment, your music, the books you read, the websites you
frequent. Listen, is it giving me good
biblical counsel? And I know not everything is
biblical in the sense that everything has to do with the
Bible. But even then, when you read
these things, when you take these things in, are they
helping you draw closer to God or farther from God?
Are they making you want to fight more or they're making you
want to be biblical and how you handle things?
And these are things you have to discern for yourself.
Well, pastor, just give me a list and I'll follow that list.
You know, the Holy Spirit will tell you, if you listen as you
pray on it, that He will make known the things that you need
to internalize and the things that you probably should not
have as part of your life. Be careful who you listen to.
And I'll say this number 3, not just #1 be careful assigning
motive #2 be careful who you listen to, but #3 be careful
with actions you can't take back.
You know, once you shave 1/2 a beard, there's no going back.
Once you cut someone's garment down to the buttocks, there
ain't any going back. What Hannan did, there was no
going back. As Christians, there are times,
and I want to be, boy, I want to be careful how I say this.
As Christians, there are times that we feel like the most
reasonable thing for us to do is to cut certain people out of our
lives. And I want to say this, be very,
very careful with who you cut out of your life.
Be carry very careful with the bridges that you burn.
Now, are there times that trust has been violated and that
boundaries must be had? There are.
There absolutely is. But be very careful in saying in
a trigger happy, I don't want to be around this person anymore.
Listen, you start doing that with people in your church and
what happens? They're not going to be many
people you're able to talk to in church.
If you start doing that with people that you meet with,
you're going to start to feel very alone.
Boundaries are good. They can be necessary, but be
careful. The phrase don't burn bridges
may not be in the Bible, but I think there's some biblical
foundation to it. Ecclesiastes 10, verse 12 says
the words of a wise man. The words of a wise man's mouth
are gracious, but the lips of a fool will swallow up himself.
You know, I one of the saddest things that I have found has
been there are people been people who have left our church
over the years. And some of them have even said
to me in such a phrase or the way they put it to me,
basically, that they felt they left in such a way that Pastor,
I can never come back. And I'll say something like this
to them. Well, you may feel that way, but
I don't feel that way because if repentance is real, then someone
should be able to come back into the fellowship of the church,
even if they've left under poor circumstances.
Well, pastor, do you really mean that?
There's a reason we call this the comeback Church.
There's a reason why I can start pointing out people over and
over and over again who have left and then sometimes years
later have returned. Why?
Well, because we don't want to have a fighting spirit, you
know, other times that restoration needs to be made.
Forgiveness has to be offered. Absolutely, there is time for
that. But if that's the case, then why
can't, under normal circumstances, there be a
restoration of fellowship again? And we want that to be the case
again. And sometimes you might be
thinking of some of the very most extreme cases, and we're
not talking about those. I want to talk about really
where 99% of all of these things live, the things that we deal
with every day. You know, I seem to think that
Jesus said somewhere along the lines in Matthew chapter 5,
blessed are the warmongers. No, you guys are new.
You didn't get that right. OK, blessed are the peacemakers,
isn't that right? But see The thing is, we all
know that. And again, there is time for us
to say thus saith the Lord. There is time when things have
to get tough. But even then, what do we do?
We speak the truth in love. Jesus never diminished the truth
just so he could be lovey dovey. He was loving and truthful and
never did his love diminish and never did his truth diminish.
And the same should be said of us.
I think maybe the best way for us to look at that at at this
text tonight is is found in Romans 12/18.
I'll, I'll just I'll quote it for you.
It says if it be possible, as much as lieth in you live
peaceably with all men because there is sometimes that is much
lieth in you. You still can't find peace with
somebody because they just want to fight no matter what.
But listen, let that not be said of us as believers, for us, as
much as we can within us live peaceably of all men.
Perhaps the worst part of all of this is this.
And if you took one thing from the message tonight, perhaps it
would be this. Foolish fighters bear the scars
of battles they were never supposed to have fought.
Foolish fighters bear the scars of fights they never should have
fought. You ever see guys compare scars
with each other? It's a guy thing, isn't it?
To compare scars? I don't.
Yeah, I type a lot. I don't have a lot of scars.
You know, I might have carpal tunnel syndrome here in the next
few years from all the typing. I don't really have a lot of
scars, but I do have a scar on my elbow from when I was playing
basketball when I was about 12 years old, when the guy fouled
me on a cement asphalt court. And he pushed me on a fast
break. And I kind of did one of those
Superman kind of things. And the next thing I knew, I
slid across the asphalt and my skin slid across the asphalt.
Literally, my skin was sliding across the asphalt and it wasn't
on my body. I still have a little bit of a
scar right there. It's actually really, really
small. It's almost microscopic.
But I like to think it makes me feel really tough that it's
still there, you know? And listen, you get scars.
You remember, Hey, I was riding a bike and I broke my leg when I
was a kid. I got.
Hey, listen, I got a scar across my neck from that knife fight I
was in years ago. Actually, No, I I had surgery is
what it was. But do you know, you know,
really it's not. Yeah.
Joanne said no. Yeah.
No, my scars aren't interesting, Joanne.
All right, basketball when I was 13 and a non cancerous tumor in
my jaw, right? That's what I got.
Don't mock me, all right? This is what I got is what I'm
working with. But you know, there's one thing
to say. Hey, I've lived a life.
I've lived a full life. And here's some of the scars
from living life. There's another thing to bear
the scars of your foolishness and of battles you never should
have fought. And sometimes you might look at
those scars in your body and think this, I shouldn't have
been doing that. I shouldn't have been doing
that. I shouldn't have been doing
that. Foolish fighters bear the scars
of battles. They never should have been
involved. The Ammonites, the Syrians, all
of them ended up being put to the worst because of one man who
wanted to fight. Not only was it sad, it was
unnecessary, was the Proverbs say.
It says in Proverbs 1722. A merry heart doeth good like a
medicine, but a broken spirit drieth the bones.
And the worst part about all this was who paid the price?
Who paid the price? Was it Hannon?
It seems like he was pretty insulated from the whole event,
wasn't he? Everybody else was the ones who
paid for it. I can think of several occasions
here at Liberty Baptist Church where there was a situation that
went wrong. And I want to be careful in how
I say this, but often times, usually there's one spouse that
gets upset and what happens, the other doesn't want to leave.
Fact. The other regrets leaving, but
one has made the decision we're not going back.
And I'll tell you, as a pastor, it's one of the things that
breaks my heart more than anything.
I've sat in a conference room in our glass room before with a man
who was defending a situation that his wife had made that was
not defensible. And he knew it wasn't
defensible, but he was trying to defend it because he felt like
he had to, because it was his wife.
And it was sad. It was awful.
I pleaded with him to let's get this right, let's figure this
out. Let's sit at this table and
let's not get up until until we get this right.
And there's always someone else that shouldn't get hurt that
gets hurt. And we're the ones that fight
wars. We off not to fight.
You say are are you saying we're not supposed to be tough?
I think the Bible talks a lot about us being spiritually
tough, if you will. In fact, it said here in our
text that Joab says, listen, we need to to quit ourselves like
men and be strong here today. And the Bible tells us to do
that. What I'm saying is there is a
difference between biblical spiritual toughness and being
someone that always wants to get in a fight.
And God has very little that he can do.
When we're in the situation where we're always offended,
where we're always wounded, where we're always hurt, where
we're always looking for a fight, God has no use for that
person functionally until they can get that taken care of.
Stan Makita, an eventual Hockey Hall of Famer, He was generally
regarded as the best center of the 1960s, used to get into a
lot of fights during games. He stopped.
He stopped though, when his 8 year old daughter asked him a
very grown up question. Daddy, how can you score goals
when you're always in the penalty box?
There's a lot of Christians that can't score the goals that God
wants them to score because they're sitting too often in
God's penalty box. Why?
Because they can't play nice with others.
Well, you don't know what they did.
I may not know, but we handle our issues like believers, not
with the spirit of an Ammonite. Thank you for listening to the
sermon from the pulpit of Liberty Baptist Church.
If this message was a blessing to you, or if there's any way we
can serve you, please let us know by contacting us at
info@mylibertybaptist.org. Or you can visit us this Sunday
at 800 Washington St. in Easton, MA.
May the Lord bless you as you grow in His Word.