[00:00:00] Speaker A: Foreign.
Welcome to the collective table where we celebrate the intersections of Jesus, justice and joy.
This podcast is brought to you by Oceanside Sanctuary Church. Each week we bring our listeners a recording of our weekly Sunday teaching at Oceanside Sanctuary, which ties Scripture into the larger conversations happening in our community, congregation and even the podcast. So we're glad your here and thanks for listening.
[00:00:39] Speaker B: Hey good morning.
[00:00:41] Speaker C: My name is Jason. I'm one of the co lead ministers
[00:00:43] Speaker B: here along with Janelle and we have been working through a series that we're going to continue today. Actually, today's our last teaching. In this series that we have called After God's Own Heart, we've asked this bigger question.
Does it mean when the Hebrew Bible and the New Testament in the Book of Acts describe King David, this sort of mythical historical Hebrew king figure, what does it mean when he is referred to as somebody who was a man
[00:01:13] Speaker C: after God's own heart?
[00:01:15] Speaker B: And we've sort of problematized that a bit and complicated it by pointing out that David behaved in a lot of ways that we might not consider to be godly or even maybe meet the basic minimum standard of common human decency
[00:01:32] Speaker C: from time to time.
[00:01:33] Speaker B: And of course, much of that is
[00:01:35] Speaker C: us reading our own contemporary moral and ethical sensibilities back into this ancient Near
[00:01:42] Speaker B: Eastern first century, really before that 8th century BC culture.
But some of it you we would like to believe that like some human values and ethics are eternal, right?
[00:01:55] Speaker C: Like that they transcend culture and time and space. Like, you know, stealing another person's wife and arranging for the murder of that husband so that you can abduct their wife.
[00:02:06] Speaker B: Like maybe that should be considered immoral
[00:02:11] Speaker C: no matter what your culture is.
[00:02:12] Speaker B: And of course it is disturbing to
[00:02:15] Speaker C: us as Christians to imagine that that sort of behavior might be condoned by God if we consider ourselves to be people who are followers of Christ. So we've asked ourselves this question.
[00:02:25] Speaker B: What does it mean that David was
[00:02:28] Speaker C: a man after God's own heart?
[00:02:30] Speaker B: And we've explored the story of David and Bathsheba together.
Janelle gave a pretty heavy hitting teaching
[00:02:37] Speaker C: last week, by the way, just as
[00:02:39] Speaker B: an FYI, if this is your first
[00:02:41] Speaker C: time here, if you're just entering in on this teaching series a bit of a trigger warning, I am going to talk today about some disturbing things and Janelle did last week as well. Janelle last week talked about the interpretation of David's abduction of Bathsheba as a form of rape, and we will be talking a little bit more about those kinds of ugly realities today.
Also, some Murder will get mentioned. This is all in the Bible, right?
[00:03:13] Speaker B: So I'm not adding to anything that's in this story.
[00:03:15] Speaker C: We're going to discover a story today that's really disturbing.
[00:03:20] Speaker B: So if that's maybe a little too
[00:03:23] Speaker C: much for you, that's okay.
[00:03:24] Speaker B: No judgment. There are a couple of options. You can grab one of those doodle pads and head on out. We have a library here at the back. There's a cozy little setup back there with some adult coloring books. You're welcome to do that. You're welcome to do whatever you need to do.
[00:03:36] Speaker C: But we will be talking a little bit more about those sorts of things today.
[00:03:41] Speaker B: I want to start, though, by jumping into one. Kings, chapter 2, verses 19, 20. This is sort of our core verse for today, and it enters into a story that's already well underway. So I want to read this to
[00:03:54] Speaker C: you and then ask you to pray with me, and then I'm going to share with you what I'm taking away from this passage today.
[00:04:00] Speaker B: First, Kings, chapter 2, verse 19 says this. So Bathsheba went to King Solomon. Okay, so something has changed, obviously. We have fast forwarded in Bathsheba's story. Now there's a whole different king on the throne.
[00:04:16] Speaker C: David is no longer the king. And so circumstances have changed.
[00:04:20] Speaker B: So.
[00:04:21] Speaker C: So Bathsheba went to King Solomon to
[00:04:23] Speaker B: speak to him on behalf of Adonijah. And the king rose to meet her and bowed down to her.
[00:04:32] Speaker C: We have a king bowing down to Bathsheba.
[00:04:36] Speaker B: And then he sat on his throne and had a throne brought for the
[00:04:42] Speaker C: king's mother, and she sat on his right.
Now we discover that Bathsheba is actually Solomon's mother.
[00:04:52] Speaker B: Not only is she the king's mother, but he brings another throne, sets it
[00:04:58] Speaker C: to his right, and sets Bathsheba on this throne.
[00:05:04] Speaker B: And then she said, after sitting in her throne, in her new place of
[00:05:09] Speaker C: power, at the right hand of the king, her own son, she says, I have one small request to make of you and do not refuse me.
And the king said to her, make your request, my mother, for I will not refuse you. Would you pray with me?
[00:05:33] Speaker B: God, we thank you again for today,
[00:05:35] Speaker C: for this opportunity for us to gather here at the Oceanside sanctuary to pray our prayers, to sing, to express our hearts of desire for your goodness, for your righteousness in our lives to come and to wrestle with these ancient texts and all that is difficult and problematic about them, and ask that you would shine a light on these stories for us and that in turn, they might shine a light on us that we would learn to become people after your own heart.
We pray all this in Jesus name.
Amen.
[00:06:21] Speaker B: Okay, so obviously Queen Bathsheba's fortunes have changed. She's no longer merely the abducted bride of King David. She's no longer merely sort of relegated to this position in David's harem, forced to be married to him, forced to bear him children. Now, fast forward, she has been placed in a position of great honor.
These are kind of difficult and sticky things to talk about. So as much as I would like to tell you a cute little story about my grandkids right now, which is
[00:06:59] Speaker C: sort of my MO. You know, like, I read a passage, I pray, I tell a cute Otis story or an Eve story.
[00:07:05] Speaker B: It loosens you all up.
[00:07:06] Speaker C: You warm up.
[00:07:07] Speaker B: You like me, you trust me, and then you believe the things I say. That's what happens here almost every week.
[00:07:16] Speaker C: Now you know how the sausage is made.
[00:07:20] Speaker B: Try as I might, I don't have
[00:07:22] Speaker C: a cute Otis or Eve story that illustrates the truly bizarre things that have happened to get us to this place in this story.
[00:07:31] Speaker B: So instead, what I'd like to do is to tell you the story of
[00:07:34] Speaker C: what happened right before our passage.
[00:07:38] Speaker B: And that story is found in First Kings, chapter one. And I can't tell you the whole, or I can't read you the whole chapter.
[00:07:44] Speaker C: I mean, I could, but you're all going to get hungry soon.
[00:07:48] Speaker B: So what I want to do is sort of do what Janelle did a
[00:07:50] Speaker C: few weeks ago, tell you the story the way it would have been told then as a kind of oral tradition.
[00:07:57] Speaker B: But I do want to read the
[00:07:58] Speaker C: first couple verses of 1 Kings, chapter 1 to you and ask you to
[00:08:02] Speaker B: ask yourself how you're hearing these words. 1 Kings, chapter 1, verse 1 says, this king David was old and advanced in years, and although they covered him with clothes, he could not get warm.
Okay, listen, if you're past a certain
[00:08:22] Speaker C: age, you totally know what that's like, right?
[00:08:25] Speaker B: Like you just can't get warm no
[00:08:26] Speaker C: matter what the temperature is.
So his servant said to him, let
[00:08:32] Speaker B: a young virgin be brought for my lord the king, and let her wait on the king and be his attendant. And this is the key part. Let her lie in your bosom so that my lord the king may be warm.
So they searched for a beautiful girl
[00:08:53] Speaker C: throughout the territory of Israel and found Abishag the Shunammite and brought her to the king. The girl was very beautiful.
She became the king's attendant and served him, but the king did not know her sexually.
[00:09:13] Speaker B: Okay, so here's what's going on here. King David getting very old in his bed, can't get warm. What can we do to make our king happy? What can we do to help him out? I know what we can do. We'll search the land and find a beautiful teenager to keep him warm.
Now, it should be obvious to you that at least to me, her job
[00:09:38] Speaker C: was not just to keep him warm.
And what I want you to understand is that this is an interpretation.
The text does not say that Abishag the Shunammite was brought to him in order that he might enjoy the sexual
[00:09:55] Speaker B: pleasure of a teenage girl while he
[00:09:57] Speaker C: lay in bed as a very old man. Instead, I am inferring that that is what's going on here.
[00:10:04] Speaker B: Number one, the first clue is that they make a big deal out of the fact that she was beautiful.
And then an interesting thing happens. At the end of the passage that I read to you, it says the
[00:10:15] Speaker C: king did not know her sexually.
[00:10:20] Speaker B: And I'm interpreting that passage in a very particular way.
[00:10:26] Speaker C: And I wonder how you're interpreting it.
[00:10:29] Speaker B: The way I'm interpreting that passage is that David was too old and decrepit and his plumbing just didn't work the
[00:10:38] Speaker C: way it used to.
That is one way to interpret this passage.
A forceful, terrible tyrant king who has a history of literally abducting young girls from his own town has called for another young girl to be brought to him.
[00:10:58] Speaker B: And the only reason he didn't know her sexually is because he could no
[00:11:02] Speaker C: longer perform in the pre Viagra age. Yes, that's a technical term.
I told you, trigger warning.
[00:11:12] Speaker B: Right.
[00:11:15] Speaker C: That's one way to interpret those first few passages.
[00:11:18] Speaker B: Another way to interpret it might be to read this as though David is so virtuous as a man after God's own heart that he somehow was able to resist the temptations of the very beautiful girl in his bed. The problem with that, as we have other records of David's conquests, in 2nd Samuel, chapter 3, verse 2, we have the genealogy of David's children. David's children include Amnon, who was born of Jezreel, and Chiliab, who was born of Abigail, who was the widow of Nabal.
[00:11:51] Speaker C: I wonder what happened to Nabal.
[00:11:55] Speaker B: We also have Absalom, who was born to Maka, who was the daughter of King Taal of Geshur. So he took a wife from the royal household of a rival kingdom.
Also Adonijah, who we're reading about in this story, was born to Hagith and then Shephatiah was born to Abital and then Ethereum by Egla. These are all of the sons, not
[00:12:19] Speaker C: just the children, but the sons. There's no real reason to mention daughters in this age.
These are the sons of David born to all of these different women.
[00:12:32] Speaker B: But wait, there's more, because if you go to first Chronicles 3. Five, there's a whole nother set of kids, it turns out.
[00:12:38] Speaker C: Second Samuel 3.
[00:12:39] Speaker B: Two only begins the chronicle of David's sons from Hebron. Hebron is where David first established his political power. It's where he first amassed his claim to power in Israel. But later he conquers Jerusalem and he unifies the kingdom under his rule. And there he really begins to reproduce in earnest.
There Shemaiah, Shobab, Nathan and Solomon are born to Bathsheba, the woman that we learned last week was abducted from the village. And then Ibhar and Elishama and Ephelet and Nogah and Nepheg and Japhea and Elishama and Eliadeh and Eliphalet were born to his other primary wives. Verse 9 says all of these were David's children, aside from the children of his secondary wives.
[00:13:30] Speaker C: Right.
I don't know if you were counting, but that's 19 sons by a whole host of women. Only one woman is named in this list, and that is Tamar, who is the half sister of all of these sons born to King David's primary and secondary wives.
My point is, for David, procreation and sexuality were not a matter of restraint.
There's no good reason to believe that David resisted sexually knowing this young girl in his bed because he was so virtuous, because he was a man after God's own heart.
And just in case you think that I might be reading our sort of like, I don't know, illiberal, like sexual mores anachronistically back into an old culture, let me just add this. This genealogy is really not a genealogy of David's like sexual sins, although it is that too, in my opinion.
[00:14:37] Speaker B: But really, the purpose of this genealogy
[00:14:40] Speaker C: is to chronicle David's ascent to power,
[00:14:44] Speaker B: because the first list of David's children are all the children that he amassed,
[00:14:49] Speaker C: the sons rather, that he amassed while he was building power in Hebron, while he was a kind of regional warlord.
[00:14:58] Speaker B: And then the second chronicle of children are the children that then are born
[00:15:03] Speaker C: to him once he ascends to the throne in Jerusalem.
[00:15:07] Speaker B: So what we see here is that
[00:15:10] Speaker C: women and children are not just objects of sexual gratification for people with power like David, they are in fact, stepping stones to power.
They are very much property.
[00:15:29] Speaker B: And these genealogies demonstrate for us how
[00:15:32] Speaker C: David's power expands almost without limit.
[00:15:39] Speaker B: He is able to do whatever he
[00:15:41] Speaker C: wants to do, and that's important for our story.
[00:15:45] Speaker B: It's also important, however, to understand how Abishag plays into this story from 1 Kings chapter one. So let's just return to that very briefly. We have this opening scene where David can't get warm. They find for him Abishag, who becomes his newest wife, his newest woman, sort of his trophy wife, the very beautiful Shunammite, who was brought to his bed. This makes her a genuine object of
[00:16:11] Speaker C: status in David's kingdom.
[00:16:15] Speaker B: But David is getting very, very old, as you heard. And David's son Adonijah was, who is the next in line for succession to the throne, says to himself, hey, I'm going to be king very, very soon. And he starts to go around and tell everybody who will listen, I'm going to be the king. And he starts to compile around him allies in his campaign to become the
[00:16:41] Speaker C: next king of Israel.
[00:16:43] Speaker B: And he begins to enlist prophets and leaders of the Israeli military who come alongside him and say, yeah, we'll throw our lot in with Adonijah. However, not everybody aligns with Adonijah.
Nathan the prophet, who you'll remember was
[00:17:01] Speaker C: the prophet who called out David when he abducted Bathsheba. Nathan would not align himself with Adonijah,
[00:17:09] Speaker B: and a few other leaders of the
[00:17:11] Speaker C: military also refused to align themselves with Adonijah.
[00:17:16] Speaker B: But Adonijah moves forward, and he begins
[00:17:19] Speaker C: to do all kinds of things that signal to their community that he is the rightful king.
[00:17:25] Speaker B: He begins to offer sacrifices in holy places that establish his political claim to the throne.
He begins to throw extravagant feasts and parties where he says, I am now the king of Israel because my father is in, literally on his deathbed.
[00:17:47] Speaker C: Nathan the prophet catches wind of this, and he comes to Bathsheba and he says, have you heard what's going on?
[00:17:57] Speaker B: Have you heard that Adonijah has declared himself to be king? Have you heard that he is sacrificing goats and sheep so that he can establish his rulership? Listen, this isn't good.
If Adonijah becomes the king, then your life is in danger. Your son's life, Solomon's life is in danger. And my life is in danger, too, because Adonijah is going to see us
[00:18:22] Speaker C: as a threat to his claim to the throne.
She says, well, what do I do?
Nathan says, do this. I'll tell you what, let's Make a plan.
[00:18:33] Speaker B: You go and call upon the king
[00:18:36] Speaker C: and tell him, did you know that
[00:18:38] Speaker B: Adonijah has already proclaimed himself king? And then, just as you are explaining this, I'll show up, too, and I'll corroborate your story.
And that way he'll have two witnesses, and he'll have to believe that this
[00:18:53] Speaker C: is what Adonijah is doing.
[00:18:56] Speaker B: And then he will be angry and upset.
[00:18:59] Speaker C: And at that point, I want you to tell him that he promised that your son Solomon would be the king.
And so this is what Bathsheba does. She shows up David's royal abode.
[00:19:14] Speaker B: She calls upon him. She is announced. She enters into his royal chambers. She prostrates herself before him, genuflects all the things that you do when you enter into royalty. And he says, what can I do for you? Ask of me anything. And she says, do you know that
[00:19:34] Speaker C: Adonijah is running around and proclaiming himself to be king?
[00:19:40] Speaker B: Don't you remember that you promised my son Solomon would be king?
[00:19:44] Speaker C: By the way, no record of that promise anywhere in Scripture.
[00:19:53] Speaker B: Don't you remember that you promised my son Solomon would be king? And by the way, if Adonijah becomes the king, not only will your promise be broken, but Adonijah will immediately kill me and Solomon because he'll see us
[00:20:08] Speaker C: as rivals to his claim.
King David jumps up, furious.
[00:20:14] Speaker B: Right then, it's announced that Nathan the prophet has arrived. He sends Bathsheba out. Nathan the prophet comes in.
He prostrates himself before the king, performs all of the required genuflections. And he says, king David, have you
[00:20:29] Speaker C: heard that Adonijah has proclaimed himself king?
David is now furious. He jumps up.
[00:20:37] Speaker B: He says to Bathsheba, calls her back, says, go get your son.
We are going to make sure that
[00:20:43] Speaker C: he becomes the king.
[00:20:45] Speaker B: And so he says, get my mule
[00:20:47] Speaker C: and have Solomon ride my mule, the royal mule, into the court. And we'll perform our own sacrifices and we'll blow the royal trumpet and will anoint your son Solomon to be the king.
So the plan works.
Solomon is proclaimed to the king.
[00:21:08] Speaker B: Sacrifices are made. The trumpet is blown. A procession marches through the streets. Solomon rides on David's own mule.
[00:21:18] Speaker C: And the party that Adonijah is having suddenly gets disrupted.
Everybody sees what's going on, and everybody scatters out of fear.
And Bathsheba's son Solomon becomes the king, and Adonijah runs away in fear.
One thing I think that's important for us to ask is how are we interpreting this story?
[00:21:52] Speaker B: Are all of these things that are
[00:21:54] Speaker C: happening Are all of these things ordained by God?
Is it ordained by God that there would be so much sort of intrigue and backbiting and backstabbing and murder? Adonijah, by the way, is David's fourth son.
The reason that the fourth son is the first in line to be king is because the first son was killed when he raped his half sister, Tamar, which is why she's important to the story.
The second son of David was born and then never mentioned again, so probably died at birth. And this third son of David was
[00:22:35] Speaker B: killed when he tried to rise up
[00:22:37] Speaker C: and take David's throne from him. And so David had his own soldiers kill his son.
So Adonijah is next.
Doesn't that sound like fun?
[00:22:52] Speaker B: First Kings, Chapter one is like an
[00:22:56] Speaker C: entire season of the HBO show's Succession
[00:23:02] Speaker B: or Game of thrones.
This is 100% Game of Thrones.
Imagine for a moment watching succession. I won't ask for a show of hands, because some of you won't be
[00:23:13] Speaker C: willing to admit that you watched Succession
[00:23:17] Speaker B: or Game of Thrones, but imagine watching succession and thinking, this is how we should be.
Imagine watching Game of Thrones and thinking, that seems like a good way to live.
But many of us have been conditioned to read all of Scripture as though it is morally exemplary that God is somehow demonstrating for us how life should be, when in fact what we ought
[00:23:50] Speaker C: to be doing is bringing our brains and our hearts to the task of interpreting.
[00:23:59] Speaker B: And so just like, you know, you're
[00:24:02] Speaker C: supposed to interpret succession and judge the
[00:24:05] Speaker B: behaviors going on in that show, so too you should be reading First Kings or I don't know, the whole thing
[00:24:15] Speaker C: and asking yourself, self, what seems good here, what doesn't?
What sort of behaviors should I be emulating?
Where is the heart of God revealed?
Is the heart of God revealed in David chasing a young teenage virgin deep into his deathbed?
[00:24:37] Speaker B: Is the heart of God revealed when
[00:24:39] Speaker C: David abducts Bathsheba from her home and
[00:24:42] Speaker B: forcibly has sex with her and causes
[00:24:45] Speaker C: her to be trapped for the rest of her life in a situation not of her own choosing?
[00:24:50] Speaker B: Is it the heart of David when sons and fathers and brothers and cousins murder each other for power?
[00:25:01] Speaker C: Where's the heart of David?
[00:25:03] Speaker B: Where's the heart of God?
[00:25:04] Speaker C: Where's the heart of man in these stories?
It's our job to make those decisions.
It's not my job to decide those things for you.
[00:25:20] Speaker B: I know I act like it is.
[00:25:23] Speaker C: That's what they teach you in seminary.
The whole point of these stories is to learn to read them. With discernments, with judgments, to ask yourself, what in the world is going on?
A good example of bringing discernment to this story is the Hebrew scholar Will Gaffney's interpretation of these passages.
She reads this story, and here's the conclusion she comes to. I imagine this is Will Gaffney speaking about Bathsheba. I imagine that she, that is Bathsheba,
[00:25:59] Speaker B: said to David, you are not going to shut me away like you did
[00:26:04] Speaker C: your first wife, Michael.
[00:26:07] Speaker B: You stole the life I had with my husband in the sight of God, the man I love, the husband I chose to live with. You stole our future. You stole our children.
I can't get that back.
[00:26:22] Speaker C: But I can have your children and the security that comes with them.
I will be the mother of kings.
You can't find those words in this story, but you can infer them.
[00:26:43] Speaker B: We can read this passage and see that Bathsheba acts in ways that secure her own liberation.
And we can see that she does
[00:26:54] Speaker C: it in ways that we might consider today to be a bit dubious, a bit suspicious.
Let's go back to our original passage. I know there's a lot of Bible today. Stick with me.
First kings, chapter 2, verse 13. This is right before the passage I read at the beginning.
[00:27:15] Speaker B: Then Adonijah. This is after, by the way, Solomon has become the king. This is after Bathsheba and Nathan's plot to disrupt Adonijah's claim to the throne is successful. Adonijah runs away in fear. All of Adonijah's allies run away in fear. Adonijah literally goes to the altar of God and grabs the horns on the altar to protect himself from Solomon's wrath and says, swear to me that you won't kill me. And Solomon says, as long as you behave, I swear I won't kill you.
[00:27:44] Speaker C: That's basically what he says.
[00:27:47] Speaker B: So fast forward a little while later, and Adonijah.
[00:27:51] Speaker C: Second kings, verse 13. Adonijah, son of Hagith, comes to Bathsheba, Solomon's mother.
[00:28:00] Speaker B: She asked, do you come to me peaceably?
And he said, peaceably.
And then he said, may I have
[00:28:06] Speaker C: a word with you? And she said, go on.
[00:28:09] Speaker B: He said, you know that the kingdom
[00:28:11] Speaker C: was mine and that all Israel expected me to reign.
[00:28:15] Speaker B: However, the kingdom has turned about and
[00:28:18] Speaker C: become my brothers, for it was his from the Lord.
[00:28:23] Speaker B: Even though I was the next in
[00:28:25] Speaker C: line, God apparently favored your son.
[00:28:29] Speaker B: And now I have one request to make of you. Do not refuse me.
[00:28:35] Speaker C: She said to him, go on.
[00:28:38] Speaker B: Doesn't that just seem like somebody with power?
[00:28:40] Speaker C: Now go On.
And now I have one request.
Do not refuse me. She said, go on.
[00:28:52] Speaker B: And he said, please ask King Solomon if he will not refuse, because he
[00:28:57] Speaker C: will not refuse you to give me Abishag the Shunammite as my wife.
This is the very same teenage trophy wife that David abducted on his deathbed.
He says, will you give her to me so that she can become my wife?
[00:29:22] Speaker B: Bathsheba said, very well.
[00:29:25] Speaker C: I'll speak to the king on your behalf.
Now, this is fascinating, because by asking for Abishag, David's latest and apparently hottest trophy wife, what Adonijah is doing is he's trying to secure for himself another foothold to claim power because he's still
[00:29:52] Speaker B: the next in line. He's still the fourth son.
He still has a coalition that are behind him.
Now, if he can marry Abishag, David's
[00:30:04] Speaker C: most recent wife, he'll have a new claim to the throne.
People will see him as legitimate.
And he thinks he's going to come and ask David's dumb wife Bathsheba and trick her into manipulating the situation for him.
And so we're back to the passage we read.
So Bathsheba went to the king to
[00:30:32] Speaker B: speak to him on behalf of Adonijah. And the king rose to meet her, and he bowed down to her.
And then he sat on his throne and had a throne brought for the king's mother, and she sat on his right.
[00:30:46] Speaker C: This woman, who as a child was
[00:30:50] Speaker B: abducted by David and forcibly raped by
[00:30:54] Speaker C: David and forced to have his children, is now sitting on her own throne at the right hand of her son.
She is no dummy.
She never was.
And then she said, I have one small request to make of you and do not refuse me.
And the king said to her, make your request, my mother, for I will not refuse you.
[00:31:23] Speaker B: And she said, let Abishag the Shunammite be given to your brother Adonijah as his wife.
[00:31:31] Speaker C: She brings Adonijah's request to Solomon, and she says, don't refuse me,
[00:31:40] Speaker B: for he is,
[00:31:43] Speaker C: excuse me.
[00:31:44] Speaker B: Let Abishag the Shunammite be given to
[00:31:46] Speaker C: your brother Adonijah as his wife.
[00:31:48] Speaker B: And King Solomon answered his mother, and why do you ask Abishag the Shunammite for Adonijah?
Ask for him the kingdom as well.
[00:32:02] Speaker C: See, Solomon sees what the danger is.
[00:32:05] Speaker B: He says, why are you asking me this? Why do you want me to give Abishag to Adonijah? You might as well be asking me to give my kingdom over to him.
[00:32:17] Speaker C: And then King Solomon swore to the Lord, so may God do to me.
[00:32:22] Speaker B: And More also, for Adonijah has devised this scheme at the risk of his life.
Now, therefore, as the Lord lives, who has established me and placed me on the throne of my father David, and who has made my house as he has promised today Adonijah shall be put to death.
So King Solomon sent Benaiah, son of
[00:32:43] Speaker C: Jehoiada, and he struck him down and he died.
My question to you is this. And this is another opportunity for interpretation.
Did Bathsheba know?
Was she asking sincerely for Abishag to
[00:33:08] Speaker B: be given to Adonijah? Was she like, I mean, that's not so bad. Like, you know, you've suffered so much. Of course, I'll go ask for this,
[00:33:16] Speaker C: you know, pretty young woman to be your wife.
[00:33:19] Speaker B: Or was Bathsheba like,
[00:33:24] Speaker C: yeah, sure, I'll ask that for you.
Knowing full well that Solomon would see right through it and that she could feign innocence while Solomon executed, pun intended his anger.
And in so doing, Bathsheba is secured in her power, secured in her place as Queen Mother.
[00:34:01] Speaker B: I kind of like to believe that
[00:34:03] Speaker C: that's what's true, partly because I just love stories like that.
[00:34:08] Speaker B: But it raises a little bit of a wrinkle, doesn't it? Like, if Bathsheba knew what she was
[00:34:14] Speaker C: doing, if she knew that she was setting up Adonijah for his death, that's kind of harsh.
In my opinion. It fits perfectly well with the politics and the intrigue that we see in this story.
I think it was Michel Foucault who said, politics is war by other means, which I think he stole from Huey Newton, the Black Panther, who said, politics is war without bloodshed, and war is politics with bloodshed.
The reason I like this interpretation is
[00:35:08] Speaker B: because it shows us that power has
[00:35:13] Speaker C: the ability to corrupt in really spectacular ways.
And I think that's ultimately David's part of this story.
[00:35:26] Speaker B: David's part of this story is that
[00:35:28] Speaker C: at the beginning he was a man after God's own heart.
That's the question we've been asking this whole series.
[00:35:37] Speaker B: What does it mean to be after God's own heart? The context of that phrase in 1st Samuel 13 and the same context we
[00:35:47] Speaker C: find later in Acts 13 when it's
[00:35:49] Speaker B: repeated, is that David was a man after God's own heart. Because David, when he was anointed the king, was a person of humility who
[00:35:59] Speaker C: wanted nothing more than to do what was right.
And so God saw him.
[00:36:09] Speaker B: And compared to Saul, who was corrupted
[00:36:11] Speaker C: by power, he said, this is what God's heart is, the desire to do what's right.
[00:36:19] Speaker B: And one of the tragedies of this
[00:36:21] Speaker C: story, and there's more than one, obviously,
[00:36:23] Speaker B: but one of the tragedies of this story is that a young shepherd boy who wanted nothing more than to do what was right became the king who
[00:36:34] Speaker C: abducted women to serve his own pleasurable and political ends.
And that is a story about power and what power can do to every one of us.
[00:36:51] Speaker B: And I wonder if this story also
[00:36:53] Speaker C: shows us that Bathsheba, too,
[00:36:58] Speaker B: was forced
[00:36:59] Speaker C: into a position where she had to exercise the same kind of power in order to protect her own life.
And that is also the tragedy of this story, that people who are victimized and oppressed and abused and traumatized often have to play the same dirty game just to survive.
That's a hard story.
So then what does it mean to be a person after God's own heart? Where do we find God's heart in these passages?
I think we find it in three places in this story.
[00:37:45] Speaker B: The first, I think that we find
[00:37:47] Speaker C: God's heart in the powerful, like David, when they are able to resist the temptations of power.
[00:37:58] Speaker B: And we find that, like David, they
[00:38:00] Speaker C: lose the heart of God when they succumb to the temptations of power.
[00:38:07] Speaker B: And listen, that is true for all of us, right? Like, nobody in here is a king. Nobody in here is a president.
Nobody here is, you know, elected to high office.
Somebody may be elected to school board, God willing, But if Joey is elected to school board and suddenly begins accumulating a harem of husbands, we might need to be concerned about the corruption of his heart.
I mean, no judgment, But, I mean, you know, school board doesn't have that much power.
[00:38:49] Speaker C: We all have different versions of power. No matter who we are, we all have power over somebody.
You have power over your children, if you have them.
[00:38:59] Speaker B: You have power to a certain extent
[00:39:00] Speaker C: over your spouse or your partner, if you have them.
[00:39:03] Speaker B: You have power over your employees if you have them, you have power over the people that you influence. If you're a member of your, you know, neighborhood association, God forbid, because that's hell, literally, right? Like, you have power. If you're the chair of some committee, you have power. If you're on the board at the Oceanside Sanctuary, you probably have some expression of power.
[00:39:28] Speaker C: God's heart is with you when you're able to resist the temptations of power and instead to do what's right.
And what this story tells me is that is really, really hard.
It's very difficult to not be corrupted by power.
The second place, I think we see power is when the privileged become allies to those who are suffering.
And we see that as Nathan, the prophet who had the courage to stood up, to stand up to the king and to advocate for Bathsheba, to call out his behavior.
And we see it also when Nathan comes to Bathsheba's aid, when Adonijah is declaring himself to the to be the king. And Nathan says this will result in Bathsheba's death and Solomon's death and maybe my death too.
[00:40:25] Speaker B: Nathan doesn't have as much power as
[00:40:27] Speaker C: David, but he does have privilege and he uses it to rescue Bathsheba and Solomon.
[00:40:34] Speaker B: And lastly, I think we see the heart of God in this story when the oppressed
[00:40:41] Speaker C: take the opportunity to attain their own liberation.
And this might be like the stickiest point because the way Bathsheba found her liberation was through pretty harsh means.
But I think that when the oppressed recognize the opportunity to be liberated from oppressive and corrupt power, the heart of God is with them.
And ultimately, I think that's the point of this whole story.
Bathsheba really is the Queen Mother vindicated by the heart of God who is with the poor and the oppressed first and foremost. Amen.
Would you pray with me?
God, we thank you again for this text and this story.
And we ask that you would
[00:41:43] Speaker B: cause
[00:41:44] Speaker C: it to work in us and on us.
[00:41:50] Speaker B: That we would have the courage to
[00:41:52] Speaker C: stop excusing the corrupt behavior of kings,
[00:41:58] Speaker B: that we would have the courage to
[00:42:00] Speaker C: become allies and stand up for those who are beaten down.
[00:42:09] Speaker B: And that to the extent that we are those who are beaten down, if
[00:42:13] Speaker C: that is any one of us in here, victimized and oppressed and exploited, shoved to the margins, that you would give us the courage to seize our liberation when it comes that we would take that opportunity.
And mostly I pray God as co lead pastor here, that you'd give us the courage to interpret these stories for ourselves, to take responsibility for our moral judgment, to recognize what's good and right and true and have the courage to stand there.
We pray all this in Jesus name.
[00:43:01] Speaker A: Amen.
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