2Samuel 20

Sheba learned the wrong lesson from Absalom's rebellion.

The only reason it had seemed easy -- and had almost succeeded -- was David's reluctance to fight his son. He felt no such reluctance when it came to Sheba, and when the people of the city where Sheba had hidden saw this army arrayed against them, they took care of the problem themselves.

Review: THE PURSUIT OF GOD by AW Tozer

Other than a couple of CS Lewis books, nothing that didn't say Holy Bible on the first page had such an effect on me.

It's a very good book, one of the best I've ever read. I recommend it in the strongest possible terms. Some of that may have to do with its size; it's not a long break at all, but it's a very full one.

But it might not affect you the same way. I think it's one of the greatest books ever written. Your mileage may vary.

2Samuel 19

Joab was replaced as David's top general, that's given in a short, almost throwaway, clause in a sentence about someone else. It's significant, since Joab had been with him a long time, and was one of the very few people who could speak openly to the king. Maybe that's why David got rid of him.

He was afraid to face a popular general who was much like himself.

Review: DELIVER US FROM ME-VILLE by David Zimmerman

This is a very good book.

It covers a lot of the same ground as Embracing Obscurity, but in my opinion is the better book.

The idea is that Christians should stop expecting everything to revolve around them and churches should stop catering to that.

We live in a very self-centered time, in which we have to be told we aren't the center of the universe. This book is a good antidote for that, and I definitely recommend it.

2Samuel 18

Absalom was ultimately brought down by his hair. If that isn't an argument for short hair, I don't know what is,

Like the Amalekite in chapter 1, the Cushite thought he was bringing David good news. He didn't account for how much the king loved his son, though.

From thence he will come to judge the quick and the dead

First off, "quick" is just an old way of saying "alive". The Apostles' Creed simply says that Christ will judge the dead and the not-dead. Last I checked, that covers everybody.

Wait. Jesus is going to judge people? I thought we weren't supposed to do that. Doesn't it say right there in the Bible, "Judge not, lest thou be judged"?

It's funny how people who don't know the first thing about Scriptrure always quote this King James Version. If you hear very old, Elizabethan English, you're virtually guaranteed to be talking to one.

And I know that the KJV was translated not under Elizabeth I, but under her successor, James I. I also know the KJV was meant to be slightly old-fashioned, Elizabethan even.

But that's just a very long rabbit trail.

What matters is what that line means, and the answer to that is simple: exactly what it says.  It's remarkably straightforward. There just isn't a lot of explanation necessary. Just remember that God the Son will leave the Father's side to judge humanity.

Like it says.

2Samuel 17

it has always bothered me when God's people get what they want by lying. In this chapter, Hushai was sent specifically to call Ahithophel's good counsel bad. He was to lie.

I'm still thinking that through.

Review: THE NEXT STORY by Tim Challies

Challies is a very popular blogger. He is also Canadian, which doesn't have anything to do with anything, but I thought I would mention it anyway.

This book is about the incredible growth of computer technology and interconnection, and how Christians should react. It's timely and very well-written. I recommend this book as a good look at a very important subject.

2Samuel 16

David showed wisdom even in defeat.

He would have been justified in killing Shimei, or in telling someone to do it. Instead, he let him live, showing how the years and the circumstances had mellowed his hot-headed nature.

Should church be more entertaining?

That's something I've heard a lot. It's usually used as an excuse for why men don't want to go to church. The other popular excuse I've heard is that women are just more religious than men. That's patently false; in the various Eastern Orthodox churches, as many men as women attend, and in Islam more men than women attend weekly services.

So much for the second objection. 

The first brings us back to the original question. Should church be more entertaining? I remember hearing last year that it church were more like football, he might go.

But should that be the case? Should church be more like football? I'm not going to defend the modern church service, which owes more to the medieval Church of Rome than to the Bible. I don't think that the church needs to be more entertaining. I think we're too concerned about being entertained.

That's why some churches have a live nativities. It's why some have motorcycles, wild game nights, and whatever else they think will attract men. This is just pitiful.

What we need to do is stop going to church looking to be entertained. What the church needs to do is stop trying to compete with the world in terms of entertainment. It can't, and it shouldn't. All the church has that the world doesn't is Jesus.

That's where the focus should be. Before they hear about anything else, they should hear about him. There isn't anything inherently wrong with all the other stuff, but it's all secondary to him.

Let's keep first things first.

2Sanuel 15

This is what happens when you let your kids run wild: they rebel.

This chapter tells about the early success of Absalom's rebellion. Rather than stand up to his murderous, rebellious child, David ran. He also made plans to take his throne back. He had been at his best when running from a king, after all.

Review: THE MYTH OF A CHRISTIAN RELIGION by Gregory A. Boyd

This  is a companion and a follow-up to Boyd's earlier work, The Myth of a Christian Nation. Unfortunately, it's just not good enough.

There are two problems with it. The fact is that it's not alone. The premise is that modern Christianity owes more to secular sources than to the Bible. This is also the idea behind Pagan Christianity, by perennial trend-chasers George Barna and Frank Viola, and as much as I hate to admit it, the latter is the better book.

The other problem is the specter of Open Theism that overshadows the book. For those who don't know, Open Theism is the belief that God doesn't know the future, and it's a position with which Boyd has been increasingly associated. I'm not sure of his beliefs right now, but it's hard not to read his work without that in mind.

Even leaving that aside, I don't recommend it. It's not as good as the book it follows, and it's not as good as the one by Barna and Viola. 

2Samuel 14

David was as decent as any man who ever lived, but he seems to have been impetuous, blind to his own behavior, and far too enamored of his power as King. Together, these made the palace of King David a dangerous place for anybody not named King David.

That may be why he so often had to be tricked into doing the right thing.

Review: MINISTRIES OF MERCY by Tim Keller

Keller started a church in the middle of New York City, which I suppose makes him qualified to write a book on helping the poor. Well, that and the fact that he's a good writer.

That isn't always the case. Too often, people get book deals just because they're famous. No one seems to care if they can write., or if they have anything to say. The work is usually farmed out to ghostwriters anyway, which makes it ironic when they can't write either. There's no pressure to make a good book; the publisher is selling the famous name, not the book. The only loser is the reader. I blame Al Gore.

Sorry. I didn't mean that to turn into a rant.

What I meant to say was that Keller writes well. Many books of the kind first try to bury the reader in statistics or drown him in syrupy sentimentality before bringing in bibical reasons to care. Keller disdains tactics like that,keeping a close focus on Scriptrure the whole time.

Why should we care about the poor? Keller gives us a biblical answer, and shows how that answer can look played out in the world. This book's goal isn't to make you feel guilty, but to help you act biblically, and I recommend it.

2Samuel 13

Everyone should read this chapter. It has everything -- incest, rape, murder  -- something for the whole family, really.

It also gives us a chance to talk about David. He was a great warrior and poet, less imprssive as a king, and to judge by this chapter, an abject failure as a father.

He ascended into heaven, and sits at the right hand of God the Father Almighty

We not only believe that Jesus lived a perfect life and rose from the grave on the third day, but that he ascended into Heaven, where he remains today, ruling with the Father.

There isn't much else to say. Personally, I feel that his resurrection and eternal life give me more reason to trust in my own.

2Samuel 12

A lot of the time, sin doesn't just hurt the sinners. Already David had to have Uriah killed to protect himself. Now the child that would have exposed him died after a week anyway.

If it weren't for the 51st Psalm, I don't know that anything good could have come from it.

Review: COMPLETE WORKS by Sophocles

This is the second of three Greek tragedies in the Great Books series. It's marginally better than the plays of Aeschylus, but that's like saying you'd rather be hanged than injected. (I would, by the way.)

I found this slightly more interesting simply because I was familiar with one of the plays, Oedipus the King. Since that's the extent of the nice things I can say about it, I'll just rant about something instead.

I really like Delphi's complete works collections, but to keep prices down they have to use Public Domain translations. These are mostly Victorian, and the translators all chose to use very archaic English as the target language. Maybe the fact that they're old translations of even older English plays that are ancient by any definition is part of the reason they don't do it for me.

Needless to say, I don't recommend this book, except as a sleep aid.

2Samuel 11

This is David's great sin, the one that changed his life and tarnished his reign.

It all started because he stayed home when he should have been with the army. He was bored, and it led to him committing adultery (as did Bathsheba; don't think she was just a wide-eyed innocent in all this), lied to cover it up, and had a man killed because he wouldn't help with his own deception. And it all began with a man being somewhere he had no business being, watching something he had no business watching.

The question about the centurion

I had a question put to me that asked why Jesus, when he healed the centurion's servant, he didn't tell the centurion to hang up his sword and stop being a soldier. After all, if followers of Christ are to depend on him rather than on weapons, as I believe, shouldn't Jesus have mentioned it to a professional soldier he actually met?

I can think of a couple of reasons why he didn't. The first is that Jesus didn't have exactly the same mission as his followers. I want to be very careful here, because we are commanded to be imitators of Christ in a great many ways. There are some things we can't do, though, which is fine because they aren't our job anyway. For example, no matter how good you think you are I'm prepared to guarantee that you weren't sent to die for the sins of the world.

The second is that Jesus was very clear that he came to the Israelites. He didn't come to save Romans, or Finns or Incas for that matter. He said he came for the lost sheep of this house of Israel, and that was in the context of not wanting to help a woman who was far more closely related to the Jews than a centurion would be. Simply put, Jesus' earthly ministry had a very tight focus, and correcting Roman soldiers wasn't it. It's significant that the task of carrying the Gospel out of the Promised Land was given to the apostles.

Figuring out why Jesus Christ did something is often very difficult. Figuring out why he didn't do something is at best nearly impossible. It's just one more example of the Bible telling us not what we want to know, but what we need to know.

2Samuel 10

When the king of the Ammonites died, David sent people to offer his condolences to the new king. Unfortunately, this new king listened to some very bad advice and mistreated them, which should a war.

Being suspicious'll get you killed.

Review: ALMOST HOME by Chris Fabry

This is a good example of why you shouldn't judge a book by its cover. The cover, with its saturated colors and clichéd overall appearance, it leads the reader to expect a nice, quiet, cozy kind of buzz.

It's not. 

It's the story of a life, lived mostly in a hollow in West Virginia, with all its ups and downs. While there are some cliches, it's mostly a small story told very well. It's about a man's commitment, first to God, then to the people, places, and things he loves.

I recommend this book. I was pleasantly surprised by it, and I think you will be too.

2Samuel 9

Don't forget people when you're on top.

Even though he was the king of all Israel, David never forgot his friend Jonathan. For Jonathan's sake, he wanted to do good to whoever remained of Saul's family, and when the one he found turned out to be Jonathan's son, that was even better,

Review: MACBETH by William Shakespeare

Let's just take for granted that I don't get Shakespeare. That way I don't have to complain and you don't have to read it.

I actually like this one. It's considered one of the greatest plays of all time, so it's not like anyone was waiting for my opinion, but I really do like it. The little things that could be left out without harming the basic story, like this witches and Lady Macbeth's descent into madness, add layers of gloom to an already dark play. Even the movement of Birnham Wood contributes to the almost surreal atmosphere.

In short, if you haven't read it recently, you probably should. I didn't appreciate it when I was 17 either.

2Samuel 8

This is a chapter of triumph, plain and simple. Everything David touched seemed to turn to gold. The key is that he was always doing God's will.

If you're on God's side, he'll always be on yours.

The third day he rose from the dead:

This is the heart of the Christian Faith. As this apostle Paul said, if Christ didn't rise from the dead, we should be pitied more than anyone else. Fortunately, there's no good reason to doubt it.

"Proving it scientifically" isn't an option. The scientific method can never be used to prove historical events. They are by nature not repeatable. You can't prove that the North won the Civil War scientifically.

You can prove it evidentially, though, and wiser people than I have done so. The fact is the only reason to doubt it is to decide beforehand that the supernatural never happens.

But never mind that.

The reason I called it the heart of the faith is that so much depends on it. If Christ couldn't defeat death for his own sake, what makes me think he can do it for me? If he didn't rise, then I'm confusing God with a dead criminal. I and millions more over the last two millennia have devoted ourselves to a lie.

I believe in a Saviour who rose from the grave in three days. If I'm wrong I've wasted my time and yours, and I hope you'll forgive me. But I don't think I am.

2Samuel 7

I think it's interesting that God didn't speak directly to David on this, but used the prophet Nathan. Anyway, what he was talking to Nathan about was David's plan to build a temple. In response to what seems like a simple yes or no question, God makes an extravagant promise.

Be careful what you wish for. You might get something better.

Review: THE JOURNEY OF DESIRE by John Eldredge

After the death of Bret Curtis, John Eldredge could have quit writing. After all, Curtis was his best friend, as well as his partner in almost everything. Instead, he has become very prolific.

This book was one of Eldredge's earliest solo books, and the lack of confidence shows. It is a well-written book, and all of Eldredge's major themes are here, some still unfinished.

I wish I could recommend this book, but especially in light of the more mature work Eldredge would later produce, I can't.

2Samuel 6

Dignity is overrated, anyway.

Michal's complaint was basically that David was undignified and the servants would talk. David just didn't care. He wasn't dancing for her or the servants anyway. He was dancing because he was happy, and he was dancing for God. God didn't seem to mind a little Indignity, so neither did David.

God is love?

Of course. It says it right there in the Bible. In those exact words. In 1John. End of post.

Except actually not. As C. S. Lewis wrote, a lot of people say "God is love" when what they mean is "Love is god." Even worse, we think our 21st century Western view of love is god.

The current version of love is largely negative; we can't say anything about someone's "choices" -- which are immutable -- and we can't push our religion on anyone, which is defined as bringing it up or letting it affect our opinions.

In contrast, the Bible sees this as terribly unloving. There, love is seen as a positive motivation; it makes people do things. In the Bible, love equals action.

Think about that for a moment. To the world, love basically equals sex. You can do whatever you want with whomever you want provided you "love" them. The biblical definition of love includes wanting the best for a person, not just for now but for the long haul ... and according to the Bible, the long haul is very, very long.

The simple fact is that revelations about God are meant to do one thing first and foremost: reveal something about God. "God is love" tells us that God is love. It does not provide a convenient loophole that allows you to do all kinds of things the rest of the Bible condemns.

2Samuel 5

David was finally anointed king over all Israel.

Of course, God had had Samuel anoint him king years before, but it sometimes takes a long time for people to catch up to what God is doing.

Review: JESUS: THE ONLY WAY TO GOD by John Piper

Pluralism is the belief that there are many paths to God. It says that no matter which religion you choose, they all lead to the same place.

Frankly, it's insulting, not just to Christianity but to every other major religion as well. Since they all make conflicting claims, by saying they're all true, pluralism says that none of them are.

Piper's book is a broadside against all that.

He takes Jesus' claim to be the way, the truth, and the life at face value and examines what it means in today's world. It's sobering for those outside the visible Church, and even more so for professing Christians within it.

I recommend this book, with all the usual caveats about Piper's work.

2Samuel 4

David's respect for Saul extended to his family. The brothers thought David would be happy with Ish-Bosheth's death. After all, he had peeled off most of the kingdom, and was David's chief rival for the throne. Instead, David had the assassins killed and the remains of the false king honorably buried.

Wait 'til you see how he treats Jonathan's son Mephibosheth.

Review: HOW SHOULD A CHRISTIAN VOTE? by Tony Evans

The answer, unfortunately, is "like he always has". 

This book came out just before the 2012 presidential election, ostensibly to convince people to vote for the Republican candidate. But how do you convince people who have been taught their whole lives not to vote for a Democrat no matter what?

The fact is that, down here in Alabama at least, there were no undecided voters to convince. Some groups always vote for Democrats while the others always vote for Republicans. There are exceptions, but they're rare, and since there's no point in campaigning among people who already know how they'll vote, both groups have effectively taken themselves out of the electoral process.

I'm most definitely not trying to win votes for the Democratic Party. I just want people to think before they vote.

Regardless, this is supposed to be a book review, not a rant about voting. I don't recommend this book, because I don't agree with Mr. Evans' conclusions. Doing more of the same while expecting different results is just insane.

2Samuel 3

Be nice to people, because you just don't know,

Abner was a great general, even if he was on the wrong side. Through Ish-Bosheth's jealousy, Abner defected to the other side. unfortunately for him, Joab got his revenge for the death of his brother. David had his people mourn Abner, which only made them love him more.

Suffered under Pontius Pilate, was crucified, dead, and buried. He descended into Hell

The Romans were good at three things above all else: making laws, building roads, and killing people.

Modern law is still based on Roman codes. All over Europe are roads the Romans built that are still in use. And when a Roman soldier told you somebody was dead, you could pretty much count on it.

So let's not have any nonsense about how Jesus just fainted and the soldiers thought he was dead. I've seen people who have fainted, and I'm fairly certain that a spear thrust into his side, piercing his heart, would have at least woken him up.

So he suffered under Pontius Pillate, the Roman governor at the time (helping to establish his historicity) and was crucified, died, and was buried.

The only part that gives some people trouble is the thing about the Savior descending to Hell. If it makes you feel better, call it Sheol, the Land of the Dead, or whatever floats your boat.

2Samuel 2

This is where the divided kingdom began.

Not for good; there were three kings of the united monarchy, and so far we've only seen one. But it's funny how things broke down.

Review: HEARING GOD by Dallas Willard

Willard is that rare and strange creature popular with both Pentecostals and Baptists. This book, though it seems based on the title would have a Pentecostal focus, is actually much more about prayer.

It's a truism that prayer is a conversation with God, but too often the conversation is completely one-sided. We present our wish lists to God and leave, not caring what the Maker and Sustainer of the Universe might have to say to us.

Willard's book is about the other side of the conversation; it's basically about learning shut up and listen to God is saying to us. It's a message we evanjellyfish need to hear, but unfortunately Willard's style is sufficiently bland that the message slips the mind.

I recommend this book for its arguments, but I don't for its presentation. It's an easy book to admire, but a hard one to love.

2Samuel 1

There are two things you should know about David: he meant to eliminate the Amalekites, and he wouldn't allow anyone to hurt Saul, the Lord's anointed.

The Amalekite should have known what he was getting into.

W. D. J. K.?

Back in the late 1990s got used to seeing W. W. J. D on everything. It stood for "What Would Jesus Do", which was derived from the central question of Charles Sheldon's novel, In His Steps.

On one hand, it's a good question. We should try to act like our Savior in every situation. On the other, it's not a good question at all, because by asking what Jesus would do, it opens the door to all kinds of speculation.

A better guide to behavior is Ray Comfort's WDJD?: What Did Jesus Do? This has the double advantage of preventing speculation and encouraging people to read the Gospels to see what he did,

For the purposes of this post, though, I'm not asking What Did Jesus Do.?, but rather Who Did Jesus Kill? The church in which I was baptized was in love with the military; it held a Uniform Honor Sunday every year, and acted like my joining the Navy was the best thing to happen in years. For all I know, to their way of thinking, it was.

I've seen this in every church of which I've been a part. Why do we love the military so much? Why do people who claim to worship the Prince of Peace think that it's better to put a bullet in someone's face than to give that person a reason for the hope that lies within us?

So who did Jesus kill? According to the New Testament, no one. I can't think of a single time he retaliated against anyone who hurt him. Someone will no doubt come back with Jesus' appearance at the Battle of Armageddon. Two things should be remembered about that, though.

First, it will be less a battle than a slaughter. The enemies of God will see it as a final chance to rebel, but the Bible depicts it as a way to get all of Christ's enemies in one place. Second, we're not invited. As I recall, it isn't so much between two armies as between an army and Jesus Christ.

And whatever you do don't throw Romans 13 at me. I'm very tired of people so desperate to justify themselves that they allow a poor understanding of a single chapter to trump everything else the NT says.

In closing (a meaningless phrase preachers use) I want to share with everyone something a good friend once asked me. "Should we hope some people remain unsaved so they can be soldiers? I didn't know how to answer then, but I think I do now:

No, we should try to make everyone a Christian so we don't need soldiers anymore.