Betrayal

Scripture

Even my best friend, the one I trusted completely, the one who shared my food, has turned against me.

~Psalm 41:9, NLT

Quote

Blessed are the merciful, for they shall receive mercy.

~Jesus

There is no way a man like David should go to heaven but the same thing can be said about me. David was saved by one thing: the mercy of God. He is the poster child for GRACE in the Old Testament. David took life when it wasn’t necessary. He was to prone to use the sword. He had people executed for bringing bad news. David was inconsistent: He showed mercy to Saul and Absalom but in other cases, he showed no mercy at all. In Psalm 41, David is in the sick bed and many thought that he would not recover. His “so called” friends come in to see him and then as soon as they left, began spreading gossip. They were saying, “He’s not going to make it. This sickness will be his death.” David had a lot of enemies and they hated every fiber of his being. I doubt seriously that you or I have the same kind of enemies that prayed and plotted for David’s demise. They not only wanted him to die in disgrace: they wanted his name to be forgotten. God, for His own glory, did not allow this to happen.

One of those people who pretended to be David’s friend was Ahithophel, David’s counselor. Ironically, his name means ‘brother of foolishness’ but he was anything but foolish. He was very wise and Absolom would have been wise to have followed his advice. Dr. Wiersbe and others believe that Ahithopel was the grandfather of Bathsheba but this is hardly likely being that he and David were about the same age [between 60-70]. Dr. Wiersbe thinks Ahithophel got upset with David when he took Bathsheba and had Uriah killed. The part that makes no sense is that Bathsheba’s son Solomon is being groomed as the next king, not Absalom. It doesn’t seem likely to me that Ahithophel would be conspiring against his great grand son. A more likely scenario is that Ahithophel was going with the odds. Absalom was immensely popular and David’s sin had damaged his image. All the opinion polls favored Absalom. There seems to be some evidence that Ahithophel was the master mind of the rebellion. Unfortunately, most us are guessing; we really don’t know exactly what happened. I think it is very possible that Ahithophel was very upset with David and Bathsheba but not because he was related to Bathsheba. I think he did not want her son to become king and he knew that was the direction David was taking.

Anyway, long story short, Absalom did not heed Ahithophel last counsel. David out smarted his son by sending Hushai back to Absalom to counteract the advice given by Ahithophel. Hushai appealed to young Absalom’s vanity and it worked. This gave David time to retreat and regroup. Once Ahithophel saw that Absalom taken the bait and basically signed his own death certificate; he knew coup was bound to fail so he went home, got his house in order and committed suicide. It would make a great movie. The bottom line is not David’s wisdom and experience prevailed but I credit his success to the mercy and grace of God. God wanted David’s name and dynasty preserved. Thus the glory goes to God, not David.

You probably did not notice but we have gone full circle on the Psalms and we will start Proverbs tomorrow Lord willing. We started this series in Psalms last July. Actually, we did Psalm 41 twice. Our plan is to do the series in Psalms on the Podcast beginning in April I think. It will be a slightly different format than the blog.

Larry Garner is making improvement but it is slow. He is still very weak. He somehow got RSV. The doctor said yesterday, that it most likely came from the stem cell treatments. He also has pneumonia in the left lung. He walked about 4 steps yesterday and ate a good dinner. The cardiologist came in and told us that his heart was out of rhythm and that is one reason he is so tired. He changed his medication and said that he should get better. Larry is tired and weak but his mind is sharp as a tack.

Big L and I drove to West Limestone last night but we didn’t bring the boys any luck. They got beat. Too many turnovers and too many bad shots. They didn’t catch any breaks from the refs either. In the second half, Danville was called for 18 fouls and WL for 5. They have to travel next Tuesday night to Fayette County. The girls have to go to Winfield.

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