Pastor
Richard Waldschmidt
The Fourth Commandment
July 3rd, 2016 Weekend
II Samuel 18:1-12
15
In the course of time, Absalom provided himself with a chariot and horses and
with fifty men to run ahead of him. 2 He would get up early and stand by the
side of the road leading to the city gate. Whenever anyone came with a
complaint to be placed before the king for a decision, Absalom would call out
to him, “What town are you from?” He would answer, “Your servant is from one of
the tribes of Israel.” 3 Then Absalom would say to him, “Look, your claims are
valid and proper, but there is no representative of the king to hear you.” 4
And Absalom would add, “If only I were appointed judge in the land! Then
everyone who has a complaint or case could come to me and I would see that they
receive justice.”5 Also, whenever anyone approached him to bow down before him,
Absalom would reach out his hand, take hold of him and kiss him. 6 Absalom
behaved in this way toward all the Israelites who came to the king asking for
justice, and so he stole the hearts of the people of Israel. 7 At the end of
four[a] years, Absalom said to the king, “Let me go to Hebron and fulfill a vow
I made to the Lord. 8 While your servant was living at Geshur in Aram, I made
this vow: ‘If the Lord takes me back to Jerusalem, I will worship the Lord in
Hebron.[b]’” 9 The king said to him, “Go in peace.” So he went to Hebron. 10 Then Absalom sent secret messengers
throughout the tribes of Israel to say, “As soon as you hear the sound of the
trumpets, then say, ‘Absalom is king in Hebron.’” 11 Two hundred men from
Jerusalem had accompanied Absalom. They had been invited as guests and went
quite innocently, knowing nothing about the matter. 12 While Absalom was
offering sacrifices, he also sent for Ahithophel the Gilonite, David’s
counselor, to come from Giloh, his hometown. And so the conspiracy gained
strength, and Absalom’s following kept on increasing.
"Peace Comers
From the Father"
I. When the family is a mess. II.
When the nation is a mess.
Grace,
mercy and peace are yours from God our Father and from our Lord and Savior
Jesus Christ. Amen.
"Honor your father and your
mother, so that you may live long in the land your God is giving you."
In
the name of Jesus who perfectly obeyed the 4th commandment and all
of the commandments for us dear fellow redeemed children of God;
I
used to have lots of hair on my head.
Not so much anymore. I find myself
at times a little envious of someone like Absalom. The Bible tells us that “whenever he cut the
hair of his head--he used to cut his hair once a year because it became too
heavy for him--he would weigh it, and its weight was two hundred shekels by the
royal standard.” That’s about 5 pounds
of hair. Absalom had a lot of hair. He didn’t have much peace in his life. That’s sort of ironic because his name means,
“Peace of the father.” Throughout his
lifetime he gave his father all kinds of grief.
Many of Absalom’s problems came because he had trouble with the fourth
commandment. He didn’t let God’s
representatives (i.e. his father, the king) take care of things when wrongs
were done to his sister, he made himself turned vigilante and killed his brother.
That put him into exile but finally he forced
himself back into the king’s presence.
He was sort of a jerk and made no mention of regret or repentance for
the trouble he had caused. When it came
right down to it, Absalom had a big head and I’m not just talking about his
hair. He thought that he could do things
better than his dad and king. He
rebelled against both. In doing so he rebelled against God who wanted to bless
Absalom through His representatives in Absalom’s life. God wants to bring blessings through his
representatives in in our lives. The Bible says, "The authorities that
exist have been established by God." Our parents, our president, our
pastors, our teachers and our policemen are all God’s representatives in your
lives and are really just extensions of God’s governing our lives. That’s why he said, “Honor your father and
mother.” As we compare that commandment
to our track record all of us again have to cry out, “I need Jesus!” As in everything peace comes from the
Father. I. Peace when the family is a
mess. II. Peace when the country is a
mess.
With
the 4th commandment, the focus of the commandments shifts. In the
first three commandments we hear how God expects us to treat Him and His word.
We call commandments 1-3 the first table of the law. In commandments 4-10 we
hear how God expects us to treat others and ourselves. Remember that in the 10 commandments God is
summarizing His Holy Law for us and not making a law code, which sets forth
every conceivable situation where that commandment is broken or kept. God often
chooses the most widely known ways commandments are kept or broken as He
summarizes His law for us. He does that in the 4th commandment as He
speaks of how he wants us to treat his representatives in the family. He uses a
situation we are all intimately acquainted with since at one time or another in
one way or another all of us are members of a family. We have all been under
the rule of God’’s representatives in the family.
Absalom
pretty well made a mess of his family relationship. He shredded his relationship with his
Father. Imagine this. “In the course of
time, Absalom provided himself with a chariot and horses and with fifty men to
run ahead of him. 2 He would get up early and stand by the side of the road
leading to the city gate.” So he bought
himself a new chariot with plenty of horsepower. Then he got fifty men to run alongside his
new ride. Seems to me as though the time
when you saw people running alongside a chariot was when a victorious king was
entering a city. But Jerusalem already had a king. It was Absalom’s father.
Things were a mess. Absalom undermined his own father. “Whenever
anyone came with a complaint to be placed before the king for a decision,
Absalom would call out to him, “What town are you from?” He would answer, “Your
servant is from one of the tribes of Israel.” 3 Then Absalom would say to him,
“Look, your claims are valid and proper, but there is no representative of the
king to hear you.” 4 And Absalom would add, “If only I were appointed judge in
the land! Then everyone who has a complaint or case could come to me and I
would see that they receive justice.”
The
Prophet Isaiah spoke of some of the ills of society that were going to bring
God’’s judgment on His Old Testament people. 1. The men were not doing their
job of being loving leaders. 2. The women were haughty. 3. The children were in
charge. Many of the problems in our society today can be traced back some of
those same problems as we have seen a breakdown in the basic building block of
the family. Not the least of which being that in many cases, children are in
charge in families. In the midst of the stories about having to walk 3 miles in
the snow to school uphill both ways, my dad often tells of having to sit on
catalogs to see over the dashboard when he was driving the truck on the farm.
I’’m not sure how much driving of the trucks my dad did when he was younger but
I do know that trucks where not meant to be driven by children. In the same
way, families are not meant to be driven or controlled by children. God who
created the family unit knows that families run best when God is the one in
charge there ruling through His representatives, parents. It is a time-tested
formula! That’’s why He said it to His Old Testament people about to enter the
promised land 3,500 years ago and to us today, "Honor ‘‘your father and
your mother, so that you may live long in the land your God is giving
you." Absalom was no little child when these things were going
on. Even though David calls him a lad he
is old enough to know better but he was casting aside the family structure and
taking on himself the role of leader in the family when God had still clearly
given that role to someone else. Rather
than honor his father, Absalom made his father’s life miserable. He thought his dad was a numbskull and he
wasn’t shy about saying it to others.
Have you ever thought in your mind that
your parents are so dumb that you would be better off being raised by a pack of
wolves or at least by the family down the street? Careful Absalom! Have we as parents ever done such dumb things
that maybe it would have been better if a pack of wolves raised our
children? How much respect have we shown
God’s representatives? Aren’t we being
Absaloms if we drive by the policemen tucked in a driveway under the crest of a
hill and think to ourselves, "well that sneak! Trying to catch me
speeding!!"? Do we obey the laws of
our land when we agree with them and when they go against our grain do we go
against them or evade them because "well we just don’’t agree with them?
Or at work what kind of a view do we have about those placed over us as
supervisors? Do we honor and respect them or do we think that they are really
just a bunch of lazy knuckleheads? Do we let our children see that? Who of us can hold up the record in our
families and say it is spotless. Our
families may be a little different than David’s family with 7 wives and 19 sons
and a daughter who are mentioned in the Bible, is there any one of us who would
be able to say that our families aren’t messy at all? Aren’t there many times when we might have to
admit that our family is a mess. But when
our families are a mess peace comes from the Father, our heavenly Father and
the one he sent, our Savior Jesus. He stepped
into our shoes and took our punishment on the cross. He poured out His blood to
square our account with God for all the times we rebelled against God. Your God
loves you. He died for you. He sends His representatives into our lives because
he loves you and wants to bless us.
Now I know that there might be some here
this morning that have been burned in your life by parents who have not acted
very much like Jesus as they represented Him in your life. Maybe they drank too
much or abused you in some way so that the words father and mother do not have
the resounding ring of God’’s love in your ears. Know that you have a Father in
heaven with whom you will spend eternity. You have a brother in Jesus Christ
who gave His life so that you could be with Him in heaven. Somehow, someway
your God will work everything for a blessing in your life. Peace comes from the
Father even when the family is a mess. It
is your heavenly Father’’s love that enables all of us to do honor our earthly
parents because when we honor them we are not so much honoring them as we are
honoring the rule of Jesus in our lives.
Absalom’s mess went even farther because
his father was the king. The Bible says, that “he stole the hearts of the
people of Israel.” Over the next months
he came up with an evil plan that would leave his county a mess. He lied to the king and said that he was so
happy to be back from exile that he wanted to go to church back in Hebron and
offer a sacrifice there. He invited 200 guests to meet him there. Meanwhile he had secret messengers sent who
would tell everyone that when they heard the sound of the trumpet they should
shout that Absalom was the new king. He
also had a Benedict Arnold in the camp of David, his name was Ahithophel. “While Absalom was offering sacrifices, he
also sent for Ahithophel the Gilonite, David’s counselor, to come from Giloh,
his hometown. And so the conspiracy gained strength, and Absalom’s following
kept on increasing.” War broke out
between Absalom’s soldiers and David’s followers. Absalem’s forces took the
capital city and David and his followers had to flee. Things were a mess. But when things in the country are a mess,
peace comes from the Father. David
reflected that when he was leaving Jerusalem.
There was a man who followed them shouting curses at David and pelted
him with dirt and rocks. One of David’s
men came up and asked the King if he wanted him to go other and denogginize the
man who was giving him grief. David said
“No”- leave him alone. “This is from
God.” David knew God would work
everything out.
Are
you wondering about how things in our country right now? When the country is a mess, peace comes from
the Father. Even when your parents make
mistakes and even when your government makes foolish laws, God is strong enough
to make everything a blessing for you when you obey His representatives in your
life. If those leaders command us to do something God tells us not to do we
know then we know what to do, “We must obey God rather than man.” But otherwise let’s, “Obey and honor”
even if we have to hold our noses. Let’s remember to pray for our country and
it’s leaders. Let’s thank God for the peace we that do get to enjoy in our
great country. After all peace comes from the Father.
The story of Absalom did not end
well for him. His long hair got caught
in a tree and the donkey he was riding kept going. But God did work everything out. David and
his family came back to Jerusalem. Years
later a baby would be born from David’s family who would bring peace-peace that
came from the Father.
Amen.
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