Good afternoon, everyone! Hope everyone's doing well. Those who were able to make it to the feast, it sounds like from talking with everyone beforehand that everyone had an enjoyable time and a meaningful feast. It's good to have the new addition out in the congregation as well. We had one other new addition that I'll just make a brief announcement about, and that was that we had the opportunity during the feast to baptize Stephen. So we have a new baptized member here in our congregation. Just wanted to congratulate Stephen.

Before I start into this sermon, I did want to give credit for the sermon. A good friend of mine, Tim Pebworth, allowed me to use his notes for a sermon that he'd given back about a year ago, and so I used his notes for the basis of this message, and just wanted to mention that before I launch in. The title of the sermon, for those of you who like titles, is Let No Man Take Your Crown. Let no man take your crown. Of course, we've just gotten done with the Feast of Tabernacles, a time when we think about the Kingdom of God, a time where we look forward to God's Kingdom coming, and the opportunity for us to rule as kings and priests, and the crown, the eternal crown that we will get, as we will work with Jesus Christ as part of those who will help to bring the world to God, to his knowledge, and to help rule and move the world forward under God's laws and under God's way of life.

If we look in Revelation 3, like we know in the early part of Revelation, as John is writing under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, he writes letters to the different churches, to the seven churches, and in the section that's addressed to the church at Philadelphia, Revelation 3, verse 11, there's a fairly simple statement that the title of this message comes from, and that is Revelation 3, verse 11, Hold fast what you have, that no one may take your crown.

It's appropriate, coming back from the Feast, to think about this statement. You know, we've, as I mentioned a moment ago, just completed a time that pictures God's Kingdom ruling on the earth. We've got a bit of a hiatus here over the weekend. I know we're all trying to get things done, get regrouped tomorrow, before most of us go back to work and everything else that we have going on in our daily grind.

But with the day today, with the Sabbath and the time that we have left, a good time to sit back and reflect, not only on the things that we learned about God's Kingdom, but thinking about our life now going forward. God's Holy Days, of course, run in cycles. The Feast of Tabernacles, the last day, completing that cycle for a year.

And now we'll go through wintertime and we'll look forward again to Passover. We'll start the cycle all over again in a number of months. And so over the course of these next few months, it's good also to reflect now to think about what is it that we're going to do in our lives? How will we live our lives with the understanding that we've gained over the course of the last feast?

If we think about this statement, Revelation 3, verse 11, there are a couple of things that I'd like to focus in on as we take that statement apart. Again, it says, Hold fast what you have, that no one may take your crown. So at first it talks to us about holding fast. And so what it's implying here is that if we do hold fast, that no one will be able to take that crown from us.

If we look at it in the opposite direction as well, it also implies that if we don't hold fast to what we have, we leave ourselves open to the possibility that someone could take that crown away.

Now, when we think about the time that we first came to the truth, we think about that moment when you thought about making a commitment to God and what that looked like, what the reasoning was that was in your mind. I'm sure at that point in time when you thought about it, you made that commitment to God, you were quite convinced at that point that there's no one who's going to be able to take that crown from you.

At that point in time, there's great clarity of thought. We've thought about things, we've pushed out of the way of things that aren't consistent with God's way of life, and we know exactly what it is that we want to grab a hold of. How strong does that feeling feel to you today? How strong is that commitment? What is there that could come in the way and loosen that grip and stop us from holding fast? Why would any of us let something like that happen to such a precious belief that we have?

Regardless of whether or not it makes sense, the truth is that it can happen. We've probably all experienced some people who've come to God's way of life, come to His truth, and over the course of time, for a variety of different reasons, might have let it go.

What I'd like to do is to focus in on one thing today and one way that people can potentially lose that crown, and an example of the literal king in the Bible who went through an experience of this sort. Turn with me, if you will, as a starting point to Mark 9, verses 38 through 42.

What we're going to focus in on on this story is how both our conduct can affect other people and how the conduct of other people can affect us, sometimes to the point where it can cause us to loosen our grasp on God's kingdom, on our calling, and could cause us to let someone take our crown. Turn with me again to Mark 9. We'll read verses 38 through 42. Verse 38 of Mark 9, As you belong to Christ, assuredly I say to you, He will by no means lose His reward. But whoever causes one of these little ones who believe in Me to stumble, it would be better for Him if a millstone were hung around His neck and He were thrown into the sea. So we see here, again, in this last statement that's made in this passage, that there is an ability to make others to stumble based on the way that we conduct our lives. And having a millstone hung around our neck and thrown into the sea is not anything that any of us are wishing for, I know. It's an awfully strict penalty that we see there. But what this verse holds out is the fact that we can cause others to stumble. The conduct, the way we conduct ourselves, can cause other people to stumble. And likewise, as we look on the conduct of others, the way that we see that conduct and how we process that can also cause us to stumble.

So let's look at a couple of examples briefly as we work our way into this, and then we'll go to the main example. But the Bible is actually full of a number of examples of people who were righteous and committed some terrible sins. And as we consider these examples and these things that we look at, one of the things that we have to think about is how would we have reacted in that situation?

Let's put ourselves into the situation in some of these stories that we've read about and consider how we would handle that situation and how we would react. The first one is in Genesis 26 and is in verses 7 through 11.

I'm not going to read the passage, but I'll talk briefly about the story. If you want to look there to refresh your memory about the story, please feel free to do that. Genesis 26, verses 7 through 11. Here, the story is about Isaac and how he lied to Abimelech and the men of the region concerning his wife, Rebecca. So if you remember, they were traveling through the region, and Abimelech was a very strong ruler. And Isaac was afraid because Rebecca was a young lady and very attractive, and he was afraid that perhaps he would be killed by Abimelech because he would be attracted to Rebecca.

And so he lied about her, saying, no, she's not my wife, she's my sister, because, again, he didn't want to be in a situation where he would have a target on his back if the king liked his wife. So we read that how the king scolded Isaac, saying that one of the men of the region might have decided to take Rebecca and then brought shame on the whole people because of a lie that Isaac told. How would any of us have felt if we were part of that group traveling with Isaac, if we had seen that lie being told, if we'd experienced that?

Here was supposedly a man of God who was willing to lie and willing to have his own wife potentially taken and molested or abused, and even harmed because he was afraid for his own safety. Would that have bothered us? This example to me is somewhat touching because it shows how somebody who's of the world, in this case, a bimlech, can sometimes have ethics and morals that surpass the decisions that we make when we get into a difficult situation. And it had to have been humbling for Isaac as well, after he told this lie to realize that this king, who didn't know God, actually was more focused on doing right in this situation than he himself was.

That would certainly have been humbling. Imagine if you were a married person as part of Isaac's traveling party, and you'd seen that happen. Would that have set a stumbling block in front of us? How would we have processed that, seeing that happen? Let's think of another one in Samuel, 1 Samuel 8. Again, an account that you can read later. We won't read it in detail. But Samuel, if you'll recall, was called as a young man, really as a boy.

His mother had prayed for children, made a vow, and left Samuel there with the priest, basically as soon as he was old enough to be left on his own. And he was raised in the house of Eli. And when Samuel was old, he made his two sons to be judges of Israel.

But if you recall the story about Samuel's sons, they didn't follow in his footsteps. They took bribes, they judged incorrectly, and they were involved in all kinds of other corruption in Samuel's name, in the name of the temple, in the priesthood. And the people saw this, and they clearly knew what was going on. It was actually part of the reason that the nation of Israel rose up and said, we want a king like the other nations around here.

Because they saw the example of Samuel's children and the things that they were doing. And it had such a poor reflection on Samuel and the way that he carried out his duties as a priest, that they didn't want the priesthood anymore. This was someone who had done incredibly great things for God as the priest. If you think of the time that he found King David, anointed him, and all the things that happened during the time that Samuel was the priest.

So, if we were to catch people doing some of the things today that Samuel's son did, they would go to prison. Not sure what that was. So, if you think of that influence peddling, bribery, politicians today go to prison every day for those types of things. And Samuel's sons, in this case, were doing that.

How would we have felt if we were part of the nation of Israel at that time while these things were going on? Let's fast forward to one more example in the first century. This was after Jesus Christ had come and been crucified and taken back into heaven. Who was it that was then converted after some time? Think of a man named Saul, who was struck down on the road to Damascus, became the Apostle Paul, and put yourself in the position of a church.

And somewhere in Asia Minor at that point in time, perhaps you had relatives who were put to death by Saul, as he as a zealous Jew was putting to death the Christians until he came to his point of conversion. We see some stories about how it took time for Paul to be accepted in. Imagine how that would have felt as a part of a congregation if you had friends, relatives, acquaintances, people that you knew of who'd been murdered by him, or by people who were with him. And that had to have happened, because he moved through that entire area, and it talked about, for example, him even being present at the stoning of Stephen, the first deacon who was anointed and called out as a deacon.

This was a powerful man in the end who was being used in God's service, but one who also committed a number of grievous sins. The point of these stories to ask is, would we have remained close to God? Would we have remained committed to him if we'd seen these types of actions? Or would they have put a stumbling block in front of us and allowed us to loosen our grasp on that crown that we have hold of? Proverbs 18 verse 19 tells us that a brother offended is harder to be one than a strong city. And it's easy in situations like this to think, how in the world God could work through someone who did these things, in all these different examples that we see, how God could work through someone like that.

But we know that God chose, in these cases, to forgive these people. He worked through them powerfully, despite the sins that they committed. And God knew their hearts, and he worked with them, and despite the things that they did, some of the hurt that they left behind them, despite all of those things, they were people to whom God, as far as we see in the Bible, will give salvation. So today I want to explore one more specific story. We'll go into it in a little more detail, and think again about this idea of keeping hold of our crown, how it is that we react as we see things going on, and whether we're able to keep our eyes on God, and have faith in Him as a righteous judge, to look after and see that justice is done in every situation.

I'd like to explore a story from the life of David, and it's going to be one that vividly illustrates an example of one person's actions leading to another person becoming so discouraged that they actually turned against God. And as we go through the story, I'd encourage everyone to think about this warning that's in Revelation 3.11, and put ourselves into the middle of this story and consider how it is that we would react, how it is that we would process things, think about things, and what our view would be of God if we had to go through a situation like this.

As a starting point, let's turn to 2 Samuel 11. 2 Samuel 11, and we'll read the first five verses to get into the story.

2 Samuel 11, verse 1, Then it happened one evening that David arose from his bed and walked on the roof of the king's house, and from the roof he saw a woman bathing, and the woman was very beautiful to behold. So David sent and inquired about the woman, and someone said, Is this not Bathsheba, the daughter of Eliam, the wife of Uriah the Hittite? And then David sent messengers and took her. And she came to him, and he lay with her, for she was cleansed from her impurity, and she returned to her house. And the woman conceived, and so she sent and told David, and said, I'm with child. I think we know this story relatively well. Probably anyone who's had even basic Bible classes of any sort has read this story before. And David's got a problem now, and the first thing he does, of course, is try to cover it up, as we know. Plan A, that he comes with, is to call Uriah back from the battle. Brings him back from the front line, and if you read in verses 8 and 9, he encourages him to take it easy and spend some time with his wife. He figures if he can get Uriah to come back, be with his wife, he can cover up his own sin, and everyone will think that the child belongs to Uriah. And so verses 8 and 9, David said to Uriah, go down to your house and wash your feet. And so Uriah departed from the king's house, and a gift of food from the king followed him. But Uriah slept at the door of the king's house with all the servants of his lord, and he didn't go down to his house. So he was a man of duty. Some accounts say that he might even have suspected what was going on, but certainly the accounts point out directly that he was a man of duty, and he didn't feel like it was proper for him to be called back from the battle and enjoy all the comforts of life back in Jerusalem while his compatriots were out there still fighting. So David moves on to plan B. He calls Uriah back to the palace, and this time he gets him drunk, so he'll go back to his house and be with his wife. Let's read verses 12 and 13 for this part of the account.

In verse 12, then David said to Uriah, wait here today also, and tomorrow I'll let you depart. So Uriah was eager to get back to the battle. Again, as a man of honor, someone who was used to fighting, he didn't feel right about everyone else being there in battle and him being kept back. So Uriah remained in Jerusalem that day and the next, and when David called him, he ate and drank before him, and he made him drunk.

And at evening he went out to lie on his bed with the servants of his Lord, but he did not go down to his house. So even in that state, even when David had gotten him drunk, his sense of duty kept him there, kept him away from his wife, and again he decided to sleep with the servants, and to stay on his own and not go back to his wife.

So then David moves down to plan C. You can just think of how horrific this is, as he's continuing to desperately find ways to cover up this sin that he's committed. And in plan C was to kill Uriah. And you think about the premeditated evil that this shows on David's part, as he was working his way through these different options that he had, and finally, in a cold-blooded way, decided that it was bad enough, the situation was desperate enough, that he was better off killing Uriah than having his sin come to light.

So he writes a letter to Joab, telling him to put Uriah in the forefront of the battle, and then retreat so that Uriah will be killed. And then he has Uriah himself deliver the letter. Amazing, if you can think about the gall of doing that. Giving someone a letter that contains their own death warrant. Now again, some commentaries will speculate that Uriah might have thought that David had been with his wife, but the fact that he didn't open the letter pretty much says that he trusted the king completely.

As far as we know, he simply took the letter and faithfully delivered it to Joab. And so in verses 22 and 24 of this passage, we then read that the messenger went, and he came and told David all that Joab had sent by him. And the messenger said to David, Surely the men prevailed against us and came out to us in the field, and then we drove them back as far as the entrance of the gate.

The archers shot from the wall at your servants, and some of the king's servants are dead, and your servant Uriah the Hittite is dead also. So David gets confirmation, and he believes that everything is taken care of.

And when we read the story, at first blush, when we look at this, we believe that the main actors in the story know what happened, but probably no one else. There's probably a handful of David's servants who would have been in the palace and seen everything that was going on.

He was probably not a man who was ever entirely alone having servants around him. And of course Bathsheba and Joab would have known at some level what was going on, because Joab received the letter saying what David wanted to have happen to Uriah. But let's look in 2 Samuel 12, and we'll read verses 13 and 14. I'd like to focus on an area here that maybe we haven't seen in this passage before.

2 Samuel 12, verses 13 and 14. Here David is talking to Nathan the prophet. If you recall the story, Nathan the prophet comes to David and tells David that punishment is going to come upon him because of the things that he's done. So God apparently supernaturally revealed to Nathan what David had done, and as a messenger from God, as a prophet, Nathan comes to talk about what's going to happen.

In this case, David says to Nathan, in response to his message, I have sinned against the Lord. And Nathan said to David, Lord also has put away your sin. You will not die. So if you recall, he told the story about a sheep, and someone had tended a sheep and raised it, and then a powerful man, a king, came in, took that sheep and killed it, and he asked David what should happen to that man.

David said that man should die. It was cruel. Nothing like that should ever happen. And Nathan looked him in the eye and said, you are that man. And David, as a response to that, which is why he was referred to as a man after God's own heart, repented. It took until that point, but he did repent. So the Lord Nathan said to David, the Lord has put away your sin and you will not die. But because by this deed you have given great occasion to the enemies of the Lord to blaspheme, the child also who is born to you shall surely die. So the question I have at this point is, have we noticed this?

I hadn't until I first was exposed to this message. Have we focused on those words that are in this verse? Because Nathan tells David, by this deed you have given great occasion to the enemies of the Lord to blaspheme. So that would imply that this deed that was done, the fact that he was with Bathsheba and fathered a child with her out of wedlock, perhaps even the idea that he had Uriah killed as a result of it, was common knowledge among David's enemies, among the enemies of the house of Israel, the people who should be looking at the nation of Israel and understanding them as God's people.

And what's laid out in this verse is that the dishonor that David did, the sin that he committed, was known much more widely than this circle of just a handful of people. Now how the word would have spread, how people would have found out, the Bible doesn't tell us. But it clearly points out from this passage that what David had done was known.

And if it was known by the enemies of Israel, it must also have been known, at least in some quarters within Israel. Maybe it was palace gossip, maybe it was words that were passed along on the street, but there was certainly word around that something must have happened. So let's take a turn in the story now and reflect in a little more detail on the depth of this sin and all the tentacles that it had as it worked its way through David's life and the people around him.

And in the end, the main character is not David, but another character in the story who we'll identify later. So let's fast forward many years later to 2 Samuel 15. We're skipping a lot of sad occurrences in David's household, things that came directly from his sin in 2 Samuel 12.

You might recall, for example, that not too long after this happened, among all of the children that David had, there were many half-brothers and half-sisters, and how one of the brothers went in and actually raped one of his half-sisters, two of David's children. And then as a result of that, Absalom, another sin of David, went and killed that son. So when you think of all these things, these dynamics, these horrible dynamics that happened within David's family, the fruit of the type of life he lived, some of the decisions that he made, even though he was forgiven for those things, the fruit of those decisions, the consequences of the things that he did, worked its way through his family.

Not the type of family dynamic any of us would want to have, or the things that any of us would want to deal with. Let's move on, though, to 2 Samuel 15. And let's read in this case verses 1 through 6 of 2 Samuel 15. Here it's talking about Absalom, and this is after the time that he had killed the other son of David.

And it says, after this had happened that Absalom provided himself with chariots and horses and fifty men to run before him. Now Absalom would rise early and stand beside the way to the gate, and so it was whenever anyone who had a lawsuit came to the king for a decision, Absalom would call to him and say, what city are you from?

And he'd say, your servant is from such and such a tribe of Israel. And then Absalom would say to him, look, your case is good and right, but there's no deputy of the king to hear you. And moreover, Absalom would say, oh, that I were made a judge in the land, and everyone who has any suit or cause would come to me, and then I would give him justice.

And so it was whenever anyone came near to bow down to him, he would put out his hand and take him and kiss him. In this manner, Absalom acted toward all Israel who came to the king for judgment. And so Absalom stole the hearts of the men of Israel. So Absalom was playing a long game here. He wanted to be the king. And he figured out the best way to do it was to try to curry favor with people who were trying to come to the king to have judgment.

So at that point in time, as happened in many kingdoms through the ages, kings would often directly render judgment. It was almost as though what we're used to as a court system would work right up through the monarch. And if they couldn't receive satisfaction at a local level in some of the things that were going on, they would take things to the king. We saw this even in the Roman Empire, right, with Paul.

When he was taken in chains, he as a Roman citizen appealed his case all the way up to Caesar, which is why in the end Paul ended up in Rome. So this is a fairly common thing that kings have done through the ages. But Absalom, as his son, would intercept these people and say, you know, everyone there is so busy, you're not going to really get heard when you're in Israel. Wouldn't it be great if there was somebody that would really hear your case and care about it? By the way, I'd make a great choice, wouldn't I? And over the course of time, over four or so years, he built a power base as he was trying to consolidate the loyalties of people to him and sort of work his way in there as being the favored one among the people.

Continuing verses 7 through 11. Now it came to pass after 40 years, and most people believe this 40 years is not measuring 40 years of Absalom doing this, but it's shifting to a timeline of King David's reign.

And with Absalom went 200 men invited from Jerusalem, and they went along innocently and did not know anything. So here you have Absalom, the son of the king, gets himself 200 guys that he believes he can trust, but he doesn't tell them anything. And then he goes out into all the land to the people that he's influenced over the course of time and says he's going to set himself up as king. And if we notice in verse 12, it introduces a man named Ahithophel, who's now on Absalom's side. Verse 12, Absalom sent for Ahithophel the Gilonite, David's counselor, from his city from Gilo while he offered sacrifices.

And the conspiracy grew strong for the people with Absalom continually increased in number. And so what we see here is a coup growing, right? The son of the king takes time to curry favor among the people, takes armed men, has people in all the different provinces, and he sets himself up as king. And he even manages to get the counselor, you think of it like a secretary of state, maybe even a prime minister to David, and manages to draw him over.

As we've seen from time to time in different countries around the world, he's now overthrowing the kingdom. He's taking over. If we remember the accounts from the Bible, David actually runs in fear for his life, because Absalom's done such a good job of setting all of these different pieces of groundwork into place to take over the kingdom from his father.

Now Ahithophel, let's go back to him, was David's counselor. We're not going to take the time to turn there, but in 1 Chronicles 27, we see that among the top ranking officials under David were Joab, the commander of his armies, and Ahithophel, his counselor. So again, you can think about that in our government, sort of like the secretary of defense, Joab, and secretary of state, Ahithophel, one of the very top counselors that he had. And so this is serious business, right? Because if Absalom is able to take away someone that powerful within David's government, now he's able to make a claim, a realistic claim for the throne, and probably bring over a lot of the people who are wondering in the end who they should follow.

Let's skip over to 2 Samuel 16.23, and we'll learn a little bit more about Ahithophel. Here in 2 Samuel 16, verse 23, it says, Now the advice of Ahithophel, which he gave in those days, was as if one had inquired at the oracle of God. So was all the advice of Ahithophel, both with David and with Absalom.

So this is a guy who was so respected that the opinions that he gave, the advice that he gave, was viewed as something that came directly from God. Somebody who was probably the wisest counselor in all the land. He'd given advice to David for years, helped him to make decisions about how to rule the kingdom, how to deal with matters of state, how to run affairs of the army, how to organize the economy.

And now he's gone over to Absalom, and as it says in this passage in verse 23, he's offering that same wise advice now to Absalom. And David had to miss his advice, and you would figure very close friendship as well. We'll see in a moment a little bit more about that. In 2 Samuel 15.31, when David hears that Ahithophel is among the people who've gone to Absalom, he's deeply troubled.

In verse 31 of 2 Samuel 15, it says, then someone told David saying Ahithophel is among the conspirators with Absalom. And David said, O Lord, I pray, turn the counsel of Ahithophel into foolishness. Because he knew that if Ahithophel was there, he knew David so well. He knew his mind, he knew how he would react to any situation. He'd worked with him for so many years, and he was just playing a really sharp guy. And David cries out to God, asking that his counsel be turned into foolishness, because he knows that's the only way that he's going to survive.

If you turn to Psalm 55 verses 12 through 14, there's actually a Psalm written, which most people believe relates to this period in time in history, when Ahithophel had left. Psalm 55 verses 12 through 14, we'll read this from the God's Word translation.

David here writes in Psalm 55, 12, If an enemy had insulted me, then I could bear it. If someone who hated me had attacked me, then I could hide from him. But it's you, my equal, my best friend, one I knew so well.

We used to talk to each other in complete confidence and walk into God's house with festival crowds. So David pours his heart out in this Psalm, talking about how much it meant to him, how much it hurt him when Ahithophel abandoned him and went to his son, who was trying to take his throne and kill him. So why in the world would a counselor so close to David do something like this?

What would motivate a man to turn against the king, somebody he had to recognize as God's anointed, why would he turn against him and support a coup, someone trying to take over the throne? Now, while we weren't there, we can't know for certain 100% what his motivations are, but I'd like to lay out for you today what I believe it is, and show you in the Bible the evidence that's there for you. So we'll do our own little CSI, we'll do CSI Jerusalem, we'll start a new series, and see if we can take this apart and understand the motivations that might have been there in Ahithophel's mind.

As a start, let's turn back to 2 Samuel 11, and we're going to read verses 1 and 2 of 2 Samuel 11 again, and we're going to look at it just a little bit more closely. 2 Samuel 11, verses 1 and 2. Now, what's odd about this is why in the world was David not in battle?

It says all of Israel went out to battle. His generals went out, his army went out. It's probably a bit of an exaggeration when it says all of Israel, because we know that every woman and child didn't leave the homes enjoying the battle. But it's basically, it's saying in this passage, everyone of fighting age, everyone of fighting ability went out to battle, but David stayed back. Does that strike you as odd?

Until he became old, was almost killed in battle himself, David always went out into battle. He would accompany the ark, he would accompany the army, and he would be out there as any king of his day would have been in battle. So this makes you think that there was something going on that he had already been thinking about. A reason that he decided to stay back. A reason that he wanted to be back there when everyone else was not around.

We're looking here at, more than likely, a premeditated situation. It brings to mind James 1, verses 14 and 15. James 1, verses 14 and 15, which points out that each one is tempted when he's drawn away by his own desires and enticed.

And then when desire has conceived, it gives birth to sin, and sin, when it's full grown, brings forth death. We've seen this sort of cycle play itself out over and over in the course of human history. If we're honest about it, we look at our lives. We can think about things that have played themselves out in our own lives, as there's something that we've set our desire on. And over time, it grows to take over all other thoughts in our lives. And we'll do stupid things, we'll do foolish things, we'll risk all kinds of things as human beings to go after those things.

You think of Bernie Madoff, for example. Anyone remember Bernie Madoff from five or ten years ago? A very wealthy person. He was a money manager, managed private investment funds for some of the richest and most famous people in the United States. And one day it's found out that all this time he's been a fraud. He's been taking money and had just run a monstrous Ponzi scheme, took all the money, fooled the accountants, the people who were auditing, fooled the regulators because he was so highly looked after and regarded that they were willing to accept some of the stories that he told. And he funneled millions and millions of dollars off in order to buy himself luxury goods, do things for his family, and go after all of these things that most of which, many of which, he had access to anyways, but he wanted on a larger scale.

And as he focused himself more and more on that, he just started to make one bad decision after another and felt like there was no turning back. And at some point he just kept going. If you look at some of the interviews with him, he described some of the things that were going on in his mind at that point. And at a certain point he was in so deep, there was really nothing he could do but keep going on until he got caught.

Or at least that's what he had convinced himself at that point. If you ever have watched shows like CNBC's American Greed, there's endless stories. They can air every week. They can probably air every day in terms of things like this that have happened. As people find holes in the system, they get tempted to exploit that hole, and then it just starts to snowball until they can't get themselves out of it. They're so far down the road, there's nothing else they can do. David probably wasn't much different than this. So he probably at some point in time noticed Bathsheba, and it started to grow in his mind what he wanted to do.

And he looked for the opportunity where he could capitalize on that. Look in verse 3 as well. In verse 3, the way this response is worded in 2 Samuel 11, the response in verse 3 when he asks who it is, the servants are saying, well, of course you know this is Bathsheba. Remember the daughter of Eliam, as though he should know this all along. And we'll look at this in a moment, because they're talking about her being both the daughter of Eliam and the wife of Uriah, as though he should have known it all along.

So who were these men? Who were Eliam and Uriah? Let's turn to 2 Samuel 23. 2 Samuel 23 will start in verse 8, and it tells the account of David's 37 mighty men. Now, we might recall that when David was on the run from King Saul, the first king of Israel, he had a whole band of essentially renegades that were with him. Men who had nothing to lose, they were willing to lay down their lives for David, they were willing to fight to the death for him, and they were incredibly loyal to him. 2 Samuel 23, verses 8-10.

And near the end of this chapter in verse 39 is Uriah the Hittite. So Uriah was one of the men who was running with David back in those days. Now, there's speculation about why he's mentioned so late in this passage. More than likely, most people think it's because he was so young at that point in time.

He was probably one of the younger men in the group, and so he was labeled near the end. So Bathsheba was the wife of one of David's mighty men. And if you recall, these are people that were with David really from the beginning, from the time that he was on the run, very early on, loyal to the death. People who were with him all the time. People who he knew like brothers. We think of those years that he spent on the run in the desert. Probably sleeping in caves, sleeping out in the sand, running from one place to the next every couple of days, in order to continue to disappear before they were found.

So this Uriah was no stranger to David. He was one of the people who had been with him through thick and thin. And then if we go to verse 34, we also see Eliam mentioned, the father of Bathsheba. It's interesting to see in verse 34 that Eliam was the son of Ahithophel. Eliam was the son of Ahithophel. So as we start to take this apart, we see that there are actually very close connections to the people who were involved in this situation.

This wasn't a random situation where David's out one day, nothing better to do, so I'm going to go walk outside and look out the window, and, oh, there's somebody there. I've never seen her before. I wonder who she is. Uriah, one of his mighty men, ran with him for years, was part of his band. Eliam, Bathsheba's father, also part of that group. And his father, one of the closest advisors, the two closest advisors to the king. It doesn't take a lot of leap of logic to believe that Bathsheba, when she was growing up, and her age difference with David was, depending on the accounts that you read, probably somewhere around 25-28 years.

It's not too much of a leap to believe that she, as a toddler, as a child, was running through the palace and knew David as one of the friends of her father and as somebody that her grandfather was extremely close with.

It's not too much of a leap to think that she was there and somebody that he was someone that she trusted, like a friend of the family, like an uncle, someone that she'd known her whole life, someone who was as close as a family member. This is the type of relationship that we're dealing with here in this story. We won't take the time to turn there, but 2 Samuel 23, it talks about some of the difficult times that David faced when his mighty men risked their lives just to give him a drink of water from a well.

So David had been through everything with them. They'd fought together, lived together, laughed and cried together. And he was probably even at Bathsheba's wedding as a guest of honor. How would he not be if you think Uriah was one of his mighty men? He was the king. It's not at all a leap of logic to believe that he was there.

One of these things are mentioned specifically in the Bible, but as you put these pieces together and you see the close relationships that exist, it was not a random occurrence. It was not a situation of some stranger coming along. And what this did to Ahithophel, as it began to wear on him, is what we'll look at last. Now think about Ahithophel. Here's David, the man he served faithfully for many years, gave wise counsel to, helped out through thick and thin, chosen by God as king of Israel and a man after God's own heart.

Probably somebody that Ahithophel looked up to as well. In this psalm that we read, Psalm 55, David refers to him as though he thought of him as an equal. Somebody who could stand with the most powerful man in Israel and trade their thoughts, confidences and advice with each other. Imagine how betrayed Ahithophel felt in this situation. As David gave into the desires that he had, was someone who was very close to him, a family member of his closest advisor, and he shamed Ahithophel's family by shaming his granddaughter and by conspiring to kill the husband of the granddaughter. And what makes it even worse, if that's not enough, that the great grandchild that was born as a result of that sin died.

Think of how you would feel if you were Ahithophel in this situation, and all of these things that had happened by one of your closest friends, and what you would do about it. Keep in mind that in the end, God told David he was forgiven of this sin when he repented. But let's look at what this did to Ahithophel as he tried to process everything. There was nothing that he could do at the time this happened. David was the most powerful man in that part of the world. He had armies to command. He could put people to death when he wanted to.

We see what he did to Uriah as he gave the orders to Joab. Let's turn to 2 Samuel 16, because one of the things we're going to see here is that Ahithophel never let go of this. God forgave David, but Ahithophel did not, and he didn't forget. 2 Samuel 16. We'll go back to the passage that we were reading a few minutes ago, where Absalom was rebelling against his father, and Ahithophel had come to join in.

Absalom asks for Ahithophel's advice on how he should proceed. Let's see what it is that Ahithophel gives as advice. 2 Samuel 16, verses 20-22. Absalom said to Ahithophel, Give advice as to what we should do. And Ahithophel said to Absalom, Go into your father's concubines, whom he has left to keep the house, and all Israel will hear that you are abhorred by your father.

Then the hands of all who are with you will be strong. So they pitched a tent for Absalom on the top of the house, and Absalom went into his father's concubines in the sight of all Israel. This is a very personal situation, isn't it? You see the advice that Ahithophel gives. And what is he saying that you see? What he's saying is, I know what David did to my granddaughter. You go and you do that to every one of David's concubines.

You shame him. Shame him for what he did to me and my family. There's a power play there, and there's revenge there in the advice that he gives. Let's read next, 2 Samuel 16, 23 through 17, verse 4, and let's see how the advice goes on from there. Now the advice of Ahithophel, which he gave in those days, starting in 2 Samuel 16, 23, was as if when it inquired at the oracle of God. So was all the advice of Ahithophel, both with David and with Absalom. Moreover, Ahithophel said to Absalom, Now let me choose twelve thousand men, and I will arise and pursue David tonight.

I will come upon him while he is very weak and weary, and make him afraid, and all the people who are with him will flee, and I will strike only the king. Then I will bring back all the people to you, when all return except the man whom you seek, all the people will be at peace.

And the saying pleased Absalom and all the elders of Israel. So this is a very personal piece of advice that Ahithophel gives, isn't it? He doesn't tell Absalom, Find your most ruthless killer in your army. Find your best guerrilla warrior. Find your best band of special forces troops to sneak in. Now he says, Give me twelve thousand men, and I personally am going to do this. You can almost feel, when you read this account, knowing the background of it, you can feel the personal vendetta that's there.

You can feel the revenge that Ahithophel wants for things that have been done to his family. And as we might have experienced at a time in our lives as well, it's the people who are the closest to us that have the ability to hurt us in the most deep way. And I have to believe that's how Ahithophel felt in this situation. He wanted personal revenge. He wanted to take advantage of this situation to personally kill David for what he had done.

And you can imagine he was already thinking about what he was going to tell David as he saw the fear in his eyes and before he killed him.

We know now what happened, because it's all written in the Bible, right? What would you have done in that situation? What would you have done if you were Ahithophel or someone very close to him and knew all of these things that happened? What would that have done to your hold on your crown of righteousness?

Would you have allowed David's actions to loosen your hold on that crown? Or would you have had faith in God as the righteous judge to judge him for his actions, to extend mercy where it was warranted, to grant repentance when it was asked for, and to judge righteously through all those things? Let's think about how the story ended. All those years of bitterness. And yet, after all of this, 2 Samuel 12.13 tells us that David repented and that God forgave him of his sin.

We know again from the Bible that God is mentioned as someone who is after God's own heart. Jeremiah 30 verses 7 through 9 tell us that David will be in the resurrection and will be in God's kingdom. And we know in Acts 13.22 where it states that David was a man of God's own heart.

How many remember what happened to Ahithophel? In 2 Samuel 17.14 we see that after God intervened divinely to thwart Ahithophel's good advice, that he realized Absalom's rebellion would end in failure. So he went home, and if we look in 2 Samuel 17, I think it's down verse 23, that Ahithophel took his own life. So he knew that his power play, his opportunity for vengeance, the ability to get revenge for everything that had happened to his family had come to naught.

And he knew exactly the punishment that would come to him for resisting the king. You might recall as well from the story that Absalom himself was killed. I believe it was Joab that did it because he didn't believe David in the end would have it in his heart to kill his own son. And so Ahithophel took his life. It's not clear from the Bible whether Ahithophel was one of those select people in the Old Testament who's granted the Holy Spirit. We see the passages that talk about the fact that the advice that he gave was as though someone got advice directly from God.

There was an indication, perhaps, that that would mean he was granted his spirit. We don't know that for certain. What we do know is that at a minimum, Ahithophel made a complete wreck of his physical life, as vengeance and bitterness and the desire for revenge tore him apart and led him in the end to try to personally kill David. So what is it that we should think about as we reflect on this story, as we wrap up the message?

It's a grisly story. The Bible is full of grisly stories, and they're so that we can learn from them, so we can understand that humanity hasn't really changed a lot over the course of the years. The way we work things out in our lives, the way we express the sin and the weakness and all of the problems that we have in our human minds and hearts might have changed a little bit in terms of how we do it, but those root issues, Satan, as we've heard in the sermonette as well, and the way that he drives his thoughts and his processes haven't changed.

The outcome of how some of those things work out changes with modern technology and our modern society compared to what it was back then, but the rest is really the same. Now, clearly, we shouldn't condone sin. It stands in stark contrast in this story, though, that in the end, David the sinner, who repented and trusted in God for mercy and for everything in his life, was granted repentance. And Ahithophel, clearly a wronged party, beyond the shadow of a doubt, a wronged party, did not rely on God, did not put it in God's hands, believed that it was his to exact vengeance, and it consumed him and led him to end, in this case, actually his own life.

So a few lessons, just three lessons to take away from this story, if I could leave those with everyone to think about. Again, as we come away from thinking about the Kingdom of God, the crown that's waiting for us, and as we reflect also on the year coming up ahead of us, and how we need to make sure that we're living our lives in a way that we take fast hold on that crown, that we don't let anyone rest that crown out of our hands.

The first one, it's not wrong to be angry. It's not a lesson that we should take from this that we shouldn't be angry, and we'll look biblically in a moment at that. It is not wrong to be angry, but it must be expressed properly and constructively. Turn with me, if you will. I believe it's Ephesians 4, verse 26. I didn't write the scripture down here in my notes.

Correct me. I think it's Ephesians 4, 26. Be angry and do not sin, says here in Ephesians 4, 26. Do not let the sun go down on your wrath, nor give place to the devil. Let him that stoles steal no longer, but rather let him labor, working with his hands what is good, that he may have something to give him who has need. Let no corrupt word proceed out of your mouth, only what is good for the necessary edification that it might impart grace to the hearers. And don't grieve the Holy Spirit of God, by which you are sealed for that day of redemption.

Let all bitterness, wrath, anger, clamor, and evil speaking be put away from you, along with all malice, and be kind to one another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, even as God in Christ forgave you. It's interesting that this passage that talks about putting away bitterness and being kind to one another and forgiving also says at the beginning, be angry. God made us. He made our emotions. He knows how we think and how we feel as people. He knows that when we're wronged, when we see something terrible happen, that the natural reaction, the natural human reaction is to be angry.

God doesn't tell us don't be angry. He says, be angry but do not sin. And then he talks about the actions that we have to take in order to be reconciled, laying out for us in this passage that we need to be sure that we're not bitter as a result. Because as we saw played out in this story of Ahithophel, as that bitterness works its way down within us, it becomes just like the sin that we saw David commit.

Because it works its way as a worm into our lives. It takes over everything else that we can think of and all that we want to do in the end is exact that revenge, as it really grabs hold and takes its power. And we can't allow that to happen because as that bitterness, that revenge, whatever it is, starts to take hold of us, it weakens our grasp, doesn't it? It weakens our hold on that crown and it starts to fall from our hands. We can't know why it is that Ahithophel did not approach David in the way that Nathan did.

But I would personally speculate that if Ahithophel had gone to David, friend to friend, brother to brother as it were, and looked him in the eye, and told him how hurt and wrong he felt and how awful his actions were, I find it difficult from what's shown to us in the Bible about David not to believe that David would have repented and asked Ahithophel, probably with great tears, to forgive him for what he had done.

Would that have made a different outcome to this entire story? We can't know for sure. I think it probably would have.

Second point to consider in this context. It's God's place and not ours to judge motives and to give justice. It's easy when we see other people's actions, especially actions that are clearly sinful. There was no doubt about what David did in terms of those actions. They were sinful without a doubt. But God saw other things in his heart as David reacted and ultimately repented of that sin. Things that we as human beings can't always see from a distance. We have to leave it for God to judge because he's the only one who can see and understand human beings in a way to truly give righteous judgment, to extend mercy when it's needed, to be strict and unforgiving when it's needed, and to do exactly what's right and proper for every circumstance. Romans 12, verse 17.

So we can see how the things that are written about in this verse really come to life in the story of David and Ahithophel as well. Ahithophel was not comfortable for whatever reason, leaving it for God to deal with David. And if we look at David's life, in a lot of ways, David's life, especially his family life, was a total wreck. We talked briefly about some of the things that happened within the family life.

And I believe it's a direct result of some of those things within David that play themselves out with Bathsheba. You can't have a normal family life if you've got all kinds of wives and concubines and you see a woman from a distance and you bring her in and she becomes the next one. It doesn't lead to a normal family life, does it?

It leads to all of the things that we saw play themselves out in David's life. But Ahithophel could not leave it to God to work justice and vengeance. He had to try to pull it into his own sphere. God clearly tells us, through those examples and here in Romans, that it's his place, not ours, to judge motives and to provide justice and consequences for actions. Lastly, knowing how our actions can impact others, we have to take great care in how we act so that we minimize the possibilities of causing offense.

Knowing how our actions can impact others, we have to take great care in how we act so we can minimize the possibilities of causing offense to others. Again, the example of David is very glaring. I think there's no question what he did was wrong. There's not really a lot of shades of gray there. But if we think in other areas of the Bible and of our personal conduct, there are many things that are not necessarily pointed out specifically as right and wrong. They might be cultural things. They might be things that are tradition in our ways of belief, that aren't clearly right or wrong.

But, as we see in the Bible, if we believe it's going to make someone else to stumble, then it's not something that we should do. Let's look at one brief example before we wrap up. That's in 1 Corinthians 8 and verse 13. This passage in Corinthians deals with the idea of eating meat. Now, it might seem a little strange to us in our culture today why eating meat and where you buy meat would be such a big deal. But it happens that in this world, there were a lot of pagan shrines and temples.

And offerings would be given all the time in these pagan temples. And for these offerings, animals would be brought and they would be slaughtered. And they would be offered up to an idol. But once that offering was done, where would the meat go? In many cases, the meat would go off into the marketplace and be sold off to people who are looking for food. And so the marketplaces would be filled with meat that might have been offered to an idol and then sort of shifted over and sold to a merchant. And it might be filled with other meat that came from somebody who tended sheep out in the pasture and slaughtered the sheep and brought them in to sell them as meat.

And so there was a lot of controversy within the church at that point in time. Paul made it clear in his writings, look, these idols, it's a chunk of wood, it's a chunk of metal, okay? The fact that meat was offered to that idol does not taint the meat. It's okay to eat it. But look at what he says in 1 Corinthians 8, verse 13.

He says very clearly, If food makes my brother stumble, I will never again eat meat, lest I make my brother stumble. And that's the example that's laid out to us, the attitude that's laid out to us. Again, we think of it in the context of what we've been reading, so that we don't do anything that's going to cause our brothers and sisters in Christ to start to have problems with us, to wonder about what does all this really mean?

If I see this person doing that, which I think is clearly wrong and offends me, how can this really be God's truth? We don't want to put that sort of a situation to anybody. And so we see this example that Paul lays out, that if there is something that we think will offend someone else, even if it's not a matter of right and wrong, we don't say, ah, grow up and figure it out, it's clearly not wrong, I'm going to do whatever I feel like doing. Paul instead says, I'm going to make sure I don't cause offense.

So as we wrap up, let's keep in mind that as we go forward in this world every day, we do have an adversary that's out there, and there's nothing he'd like to see more than for us to get disenchanted. Disenchanted about the actions of somebody else, feeling revenge or vengeance, a need to get back at somebody for something that they've done to us. And every time that comes towards us, those things happen, it starts to loosen the hole that we have on that crown.

So let's let that example, that picture of God's kingdom that we've developed and have refreshed in us over the course of the feast in the last week, stay strong in our lives. Consider this example of David and the Hithafel and how their lives work their way through, and let's ensure that no one takes our crown.