The wrong counsel

 2 Samuel 10:1-6

Have you ever listened to the wrong counsel, sure you have, we all have, but when you are in charge of a nation, lousy counsel can cause great disaster if listened to an carried out.  The Ammonites have been under Israel’s domination, and yet David and the king of the Ammonites have a good working relationship, that gives the Ammonite people a lot of freedom.  But then King Nahash dies, and David wants to show respect and kindness to his son Hanun.  Shall we look in the story in 2 Samuel 10:2b-4, “So David sent by his servants to console him concerning his father. And David's servants came into the land of the Ammonites. But the princes of the Ammonites said to Hanun, their lord, “Do you think because David has sent comforters to you, that he is honoring your father? Has not David sent his servants to you to search the city and to spy it out and to overthrow it?” So Hanun took David's servants and shaved off half the beard of each and cut off their garments in the middle, at their hips, and sent them away. When it was told David, he sent to meet them, for the men were greatly ashamed. And the king said, “Remain at Jericho until your beards have grown and then return.”

The Lord handed down to Moses the Law.  The Law must have been available to the new King of the Ammonites because he had the emissaries of King David’s beards cut.   In the book of Leviticus 19:27, “You shall not round off the hair on your temples or mar the edges of your beard.”

But the young King allowed fear to rule that day, if only he had someone to remind him of this quote: “Many of our fears are tissue-paper-thin, and a single courageous step would carry us clear through them.”  (~Brendan Francis)  But that is not what he did, and now the fear is justified in that they had broken trust and turned a kindness into a stench to David.

 What do you do when you blow it with the boss?  I hope you don’t do what this young King did!   King Hanun went on a hiring binge, first the Syrians of Beth-rehob, and the Syrians of Zobah, 20,000-foot soldiers, the king of Maacah with 1,000 men, and the men of Tob, 12,000 men.

Now someone forgot to tell him that hirelings always cave when the battle begins to turn on them.  That is what happens to so many churches when the pastor does not know that the local group that goes by the name church does not employ him, but he is God’s tool if called by God in the first place.

Tomorrow we will see how the battle is played out.

From the Back Porch,

Bob Rice

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