David, “How to Keep Your Head On.”
2 Samuel 4:1-12
Vs. 1-7: Losing your heart
Vs. 8-12: Losing your head
Intro.
The fourth chapter again is a chapter that involves political intrigue and assassinations. It seems that what David did not want as king has taken on a life of its own, as Abner was murdered outside the gates of Hebron by David’s Nephews, and now Ishbosheth is murdered by his own countrymen while asleep. The world is a sinful place full of people who are out to “get even” or “get ahead,” but how are we to maintain ours while those around us are losing theirs?
I suggest to you that this chapter offers us some practical insights into not only not losing our heads but making sure that we don’t take off others. Oswald Chambers wrote, “Wherever God sends us, He will guard our lives. Our personal property and possessions are to be a matter of indifference to us, and our hold on those things should be very loose. In essence, Jesus says, I will guard your life, but if you try to guard it yourself, you will remove yourself from My deliverance.” Jesus said as much in Luke 17:33. “Whoever seeks to save his life will lose it, and whoever loses his life will preserve it.” As we now venture through these 12 verses, you will notice the relevance of Jesus’ words.
Losing your heart
Vs. 1 Of primary importance is the timing of the events. Notice that before Ishbosheth ever lost his head, before he lost his heart (verses 1, 7). Since the object for you and me is not to lose our hearts, this sequence of events gives us a great key to not losing our heads. Here is what I mean: the battle of the head is always won or lost at the battle of the heart. Consider the words of Jesus in Matt. 12:35, “For out of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaks. A good man out of the good treasure of his heart brings forth good things, and an evil man out of the evil treasure brings forth evil things.”
Ok, now the events to the loss of heart:
- We have David, who no doubt had been bummed out by the practices of his nephews as they took out their vengeances upon Abner. So what does Abner’s murder have to do with Ishbosheth losing heart? Well, it caused a ripple effect, as it had been Abner that was the driving force in keeping him in power, and all of Israel knew it. More importantly, these two brothers knew it and most likely expected a quick invasion by David and took action, thinking that this was going to help save lives, especially their own.
- It is a safe bet to assume that Ishbosheth knew of Abner’s resolve to broker a deal with David by which he was to lose the kingdom, so why did he lose heart after Abner is dead? Well, the death of Saul meant that there would be a new king, and the way the world handled this was that everyone in the previous king’s family would have to go as well, and the way they did that was by killing all of them so that there would be no future coup attempts. Seeing that Abner was dead caused Ishbosheth to lose heart because it appears that Abner’s death meant that the deal was not accepted and that David was going to take the kingdom by force. Poor Ishbosheth, can you imagine what must have been going through his mind when he hears that the guy that propped him up and placed him in the position has been killed while brokering a deal that would cause him to lose his kingdom? This couldn’t have been interpreted as a good thing.
- Finally, we have the story of Jonathan’s now 12-year-old son, who was the son of David’s best friend and was also a choice to be king; even though he was crippled, he would have been favored by David over Ishbosheth.
In all of this, I see two great truths for us:
- Allow the Lord to raise you up: If God had placed Ishbosheth as king, why lose heart and be troubled? When we take the reins of our own lives and things don’t work out, then there is always that sinking feeling in our lives that we are losing control. Hey saint, look out at the mountains. Which of those did you or I create? Here are the words of God’s reproof of Job in 41:10-11. “Who then is able to stand against me?” Who has preceded me that I should pay him? Everything under heaven is mine.”
- And in light of this Job’s response in 42:2-3 “I know that You can do everything, and that no purpose of Yours can be withheld from You. You asked, ‘Who is this who hides counsel without knowledge?’ Therefore I have uttered what I did not understand: Things too wonderful for me, which I did not know.” You and I have nothing to lose heart over now, matter what the circumstance, if where we find ourselves is right where God has placed us and not of our own doing.
- Don’t trust in man: Ishbosheth had trusted in a man to gain his position, so when the man was gone, he knew his position would be soon gone. Hey saint, it is always a foolish thing to trust in man to prop us up, whether that is in man’s schemes or support. If we are in the place we are based upon whom we have surrounded ourselves with, or by any other means of human ingenuity, then we have good reason to “lose heart.” Ah again, I remind you of David, who had inquired of the Lord while still in Ziklag and asked, “Shall I go and where shall I go?” We can have the greatest confidence only when we have no confidence in ourselves or anyone else and every confidence in the Lord!
Vs. 2-3 The text is very explicit concerning these two brothers, Bayanna and Ray-Cob. I have a habit of looking into these things when they are in the text, as I believe that at very least they may offer color to the passage we are studying. Here is what we know of these two men that were captains of Israel’s army and were the sons of Rimmon a Beerothite, children of Benjamin. These brothers were from a town that was not originally part of the allocation to the tribe of Benjamin and, in fact, was not part of any tribe, “a sort of renegade town” that later on became part of the tribe of Benjamin.
So these Beerothites came from one of the cities of the Canaanites, and according to Jos. 9:3, they were descendants of those who succeeded in deceiving Israel and making a covenant with them. Furthermore, they seem never to be content with where they are, as verse 3 informs us that they “fled to Gittaim and have been sojourners there until this day.” The name Gittaim means “double wine press” and again kind of gives me a picture of these fellows. They are renegade, deceiving party boys. The kind of guys who are “always trying to get a head” at the expense of someone else’s, if you know what I mean?
How does this fit into the application of not losing our head?
- Well, first we saw the truth: the best way to not lose your head is to not lose your heart.
- Second, we see the truth that the best way not to lose your head is to not trust in man but God as far as getting a head.
- Thirdly (and that is where we are now), the best way to not lose your head is to make sure you’re not seeking someone else’s.
Vs. 4 Hey saint, consider the story surrounding Mephibosheth (Me-fib-o-sheth), also called Meribbaal (Baal’s fighter), in 1 Chron 8:34. The facts concerning him and his handicap are recorded for us in verse 4, where we are told that at five years of age, his nurse dropped the boy permanently, leaving him a cripple while fleeing after hearing the news of Saul and Jonathan’s deaths. What does this story have to do with Ishbosheth losing his heart and then his head? As mentioned, Mephibosheth was the last male descendant of Saul, and with that, he was the only other person who had a legal claim to his grandfather’s throne, even though at this time he was only 12 years old and crippled. My point? Consider these two men and their handicaps:
- Ishbosheth was handicapped because of a heart issue and having confidence in men.
- Ah, but Mephibosheth was weak because of circumstances beyond his control (his age and because of injury that came from the misfortunes of a good intention). My point? There are a lot of folks who may be whole of body but crippled in heart, which is a far worse condition to overcome. We won’t meet up with him again until the 9th chapter, then again in the 16th, 19th, and 21st, where we see that he is granted a special dispensation of grace by David as David becomes a surrogate father and he eats at David’s table the rest of his life.
Ishbosheth loses his heart and then his head, but Mephibosheth discovers the glorious truth that we are weak. God is strong on our behalf.
Vs. 5-7 Ishbosheth had no real loyalty among his troops, as they were only loyal to him when they thought he was strong. The two brothers, “son of oppression” and “horseman,” came all the way into the house and escaped without any opposition, which revealed the state of Israel under the leadership of Ishbosheth. These two brothers were of the same tribe as Ishbosheth, which again reveals the popularity of the puppet king as well as a character flaw. To take a noon nap was not uncommon, but to do so without a guard reveals a lazy heart. It was necessary in the minds of Baanah and Rechab, as his head would prove their deed.
As bad as the murder of Abner was, the murder of Ishbosheth was even worse, as his only crime was being Saul’s son. He had not broken any law, injured no one, and wasn’t even given the opportunity to defend himself as he was killed while taking a nap by his own countrymen.
There are several things that aggravated the guilt of those wicked men.
- Ish-Bosheth was an innocent man; therefore, neither of them had any grounds to kill him.
- Second, he was in his own house, which was his sanctuary, and none but the worst of men would disturb him there.
- Finally he was on his bed, resting in the heat of the day, and so free from suspicion that he was not even attended by his guards, nor had his doors secured. To take the life of such a man, whom they also professed to hold as their king, was the worst type of treachery.
It never ceases to amaze me how twisted the thinking of men can become when we seek to govern our own lives. Apart from submitting to the Lord, we all would be sneaking around, pretending to be someone we aren’t to “get ahead.”.
Losing your head
Vs. 8 These two brothers didn’t even show respect to his corpse as they took off his head and then claimed that they had done this act in obedience to God’s word. It is a bad thing to do what these men have done, but a far worse thing to then claim God as the One who authored their actions. “Yeah, I stole, lied, manipulated, and murdered because God told me to.” They are following their father, but it is not our Father, as Jesus said in John 8:44. “You are of your father the devil, and the desires of your father you want to do. He was a murderer from the beginning and does not stand by the truth because there is no truth in him. When he speaks a lie, he speaks from his own resources, for he is a liar and the father of it.”
So many want to use God to justify one’s actions when his clear teaching in the word makes no such claims.
So these two brothers pretend to be delivering wheat while Ishbosheth was taking a nap and kill him as they thought that this might get them somewhere in David’s reign and to prove that they had done what they claimed that took with them Ishbosheth’s head.
These two brothers made two false assumptions:
- They made the mistake thinking that because David was Saul’s enemy, Saul’s son would be his.
- They claimed that the Lord was behind their actions and that He approved of their deed, and all they had acted on were the Lord’s express orders. Perhaps they were not aware of the song that David composed for Jonathan and Saul in 2 Samuel 1:17–27.
So David answered Rechab and Baanah, his brother, the sons of Rimmon, and said to them, “As the LORD lives, who has redeemed my soul out of all adversity.” You see, David had learned an important lesson, and that is not to take things in his own hands. “I don’t need a man. I’ve got the Lord working, and I’m on His side.”
Rechab and Baanah thought David would be pleased to see the severed head of Isaac. Back in 1 Samuel 24:20-22, David had pledged his loyalty to God and the house of Saul by promising to preserve Saul’s family and descendants by saying he would not “destroy Saul’s name from his father’s house.” David had carried the head of Goliath as a trophy of God’s work through him to slay an enemy, but David knew that Saul and his descendants were not his enemies.
This is a difficult thing for us Christians to understand, is it not? Sometimes those in the body of Christ become at odds with each other, and a battle ensues. Hey saint, be careful that you don’t take the head off of a brother or a sister in Christ because it makes a poor display on your trophy case! “Ewe, what’s that in your cabinet? Oh, that’s my brother and fellow servant in Christ; you see, we were in disagreement over an area, and I won, so I took his head off to display to everybody how right I was and how wrong he was!”
Ishbosheth was not the Lord’s anointed; he was not on the same level as God had placed David, but David didn’t see Ishbosheth as his problem, and if God had allowed him to reign, then God could remove him without anybody taking off his head.
David had never once broken God’s commandment not to kill to advance his own position, and the Lord had still advanced him to be king when it was time. He did not want to be involved in trying to accomplish God’s will in his strength. Look at this carefully, as David did not accept these two fellows’ evil deed, even though it seemed to serve a good purpose (unifying Israel under David’s reign as king). No servant of God can ever consent to do evil that some good may come of it. Jesus, while on earth, never accepted the testimony of demons, even though the truth they said about Him was true. These men were not soldiers fighting together with him; they were murderers who deserved just punishment. David’s enemy was injustice, and he was not a respecter of persons, even if the act that was done personally benefited him and his reign as king.
Perhaps these brothers justified their action by saying, “There is no avenger for Mephibosheth, so we’ll do the poor fellow a favor and take out his uncle since he can’t do it himself.” And you know what? They probably took his head and stuffed it into a wheat sack to carry it out and would have gotten away with the crime had they not come to David.
So he has the two brothers executed, cutting off their hands and feet. According to Deut. 21:22–23, we are told that “If a man has committed a sin deserving of death, and he is put to death, and you hang him on a tree, his body shall not remain overnight on the tree, but you shall surely bury him that day, so that you do not defile the land which the LORD your God is giving you as an inheritance; for he who is hanged is accursed of God.” So doing what David did was the ultimate humiliation, yet David took Ishbosheth’s body and buried it with Abner’s in Hebron.
These guys thought that they were going to be rewarded by David, and they were according to their deeds, and David told them that their reward was going to be the same as what the Amalekites were who claimed he had killed Saul, death. You see, these two fellows were trying to “get ahead” at the expense of another’s. There are far too many folks doing this sort of thing, coming in stealthy, pretending to be something they are not to take off someone’s head in order that they might get ahead. The moral of the story is that if you take a head to get ahead, you will end up losing yours.