Sunday School | David - 1 Kings Wrap Up

We have redesigned this—as much for the people listening in three days as for you. But if you're listening to this recording, you're gonna have a hard time finding it shortly because we've changed the way the podcast is structured. We're gonna separate out the Church of the Holy Spirit sermons and the Church of the Holy Spirit Sunday School.

So henceforth, going forward, when you go to the website, if you just go to—I don't know—Listen, it's like Sermons and Sunday School are separate options. But both of those have historically taken you to the same spot at SoundCloud. If you listen to this on SoundCloud, you're gonna find this Sunday school class disappears there. So on SoundCloud, you'd want to go to churchoftholyspirit sundayschool within SoundCloud and subscribe to that channel as well. I'm gonna say that every week for the next couple weeks so folks don't think that it disappeared. If you listen to it on tape, it's on SoundCloud, and you can get it through our website, but we're gonna separate out Sunday School from sermons.

Also, next week we have a treat. We have a guest speaker named Chad.

Chad then spoke about facilitating the men's bible study at the 10:00 hour, finishing up a study of James and beginning a new ten-week study on inspirational men in scripture. He will teach lesson one next week in the current room, then the study will continue in Room 303.

Tim then noted that he and Kelly will be away at a conference, and encouraged anyone interested in Chad's study to feel free to join, while noting he'll return the following week to start a brand new series.

Finishing David's Story

What we're doing today is we're going to finish David. You might have thought we were done. Here's how this works: we've been studying the life of David for a long time, and it looked like we were studying 1 Samuel and 2 Samuel because that's where we find David's story. But David's story doesn't end in 2 Samuel. There's a little bit of a postscript in 1 Kings, and we're not gonna study 1 Kings now. We're gonna do something else. But we are gonna finish—we're gonna land the plane on David by looking at his final days, which we only get in the first couple chapters of 1 Kings. So if you're used to being in Samuel, just go one more page, and we're gonna see this thing wrap up.

It's funny how they split the book. Who was 1 Samuel about, by and large? Saul. And who was 2 Samuel about, by and large? David. But who is 1 Kings gonna be about, by and large? Solomon—then the next generation of guys. But we just get this little bit of David at the very beginning of 1 Kings.

The names and the division of these books—Samuel used to be one united book and Kings were one united book. We divided them up for our own purposes. So it's 1 Samuel and 2 Samuel, and then we just kiss into 1 Kings, and then 2 Kings follows after that. That is one continuous, unbroken narrative from Saul's kingdom, David's kingdom, Solomon's, and then all the kings that follow after. But then you've also got these other two books, 1 and 2 Chronicles, and it gets a little bit confusing.

So just real quick, the way these things line up: if you want to continue reading First Kings, get through all that, and when you get to Chronicles, kind of back up. One Chronicles summarizes one book, namely Second Samuel. Then Two Chronicles repeats—it doesn't summarize, it repeats—two books, namely First and Second Kings.

So if you want to catch the life of David, where would you find that in Chronicles? One Chronicles. One Chronicles is a recap of Second Samuel, which is going to be David's life.

Do you know why we have it? Why do we have the Chronicle books in addition? We've got this thing that's coherent and complete: First and Second Samuel, First and Second Kings. Why do we go back and then duplicate Second Samuel and First and Second Kings with the Chronicle books? Anybody know what's going on with that?

Different Perspectives, Different Times

Zach?

Isn't it the same account from a different person's perspective?

It is the same account, and it's right that it's from a different person's perspective. But the difference isn't so much the person's perspective as the time's perspective.

First Samuel, Second Samuel, First Kings, Second Kings are largely written to explain why these guys go into captivity. It's a story of God's faithfulness to these people and their complete lack of faithfulness in response. We've seen this already. You get a hint of it in Saul. God is faithful to Saul, and then Saul bails. David is really faithful to God, but he's got some tragic flaws. Do you see that? It's really going to ramp up as we get into Solomon and the other kings. The culminating moment in Second Kings is like, "It's over here, friends. Bring on Babylon." The Assyrians come in and bring destruction. The Babylonians come in and bring destruction. And the book ends with a sense of: God has been faithful to His people. They've been faithless, so boot them out of the land, and it's over. That's a coherent story.

The Chronicler is going to come and write his history of the same time period, but he writes it after they have already been kicked out of the land and as they're coming back into the land. What he's saying is not only is God faithful, and not only are we faithless in response, but when we repent, God is faithful again. The Chronicler is going to give a bigger sense of hope after failure because he's writing to a group of people that have failed miserably and are hoping that it's not completely over for them. Does that make sense?

The Example of Manasseh

So when you get to, for instance—Kelly—one of the most villainous creatures in the king's narrative is Manasseh. Do you remember what Manasseh is famous for? What the low point of Manasseh's life is?

Sacrifice his children.

Sacrifice his children, Gary. Manasseh's horrible duty. He's worshiping the pagan gods, and they have this bronze statue of Molech. You take your baby—can you imagine?—and they lay their baby into the arms of this molten, this red-hot oven as a sacrifice to their god. Manasseh, the king of Judah, does this, and that's all you get in Kings. He's just bad, bad, bad, bad, bad.

But in the Chronicler account, we get all of that, but then we get this additional detail. God brings judgment into his life, and he is so miserable, but they put a hook in his nose. Foreign kings put a hook in his nose and drag him away. When God sees Manasseh's misery, He is moved by his sorrow and restores him.

The Chronicler is going to give us that. He's going to say, "Yeah, yeah, yeah, he blew it huge, but he repented and God restored him. And even as you repent, He will restore you."

If you continue on—we're not, but if you continue to read Kings, you're going to get the sense of it's bad, bad, bad, bad, bad, bad, bad. And then if you decide to read it under Chronicles, you'll see it really was just that bad, but every once in a while, somebody would repent and God would restore them.

Kelly Sue?

Is that because Judah was the only one who experienced restoration because the mourning trapped her lost?

That's exactly right. What Kelly is saying—she's filling this in. We've got First and Second Samuel, First and Second Kings, and then Second Samuel gets the recapitulation in One Chronicles, and then both of the Kings books in Two Chronicles. What's added to it are all these stories of repentance and restoration. What's removed from it is the story of Israel because what hasn't happened yet—what's going to happen is the kingdom's going to split into north and south. The North keeps the name Israel, and the South keeps the promise. The Messiah is going to come from the southern tribes. So we have ten northern tribes of Israel and the two southern tribes: Judah and Benjamin.

And so the chronicler, because he's recapping restoration, he's only concerned with the part of the nation that is restored, namely Judah, the southern tribes. And you'll have incidental mention of Israel, but it's not following their nation. So more repentance, less Israel, because Israel didn't repent. That's how that comes, which is not what we're talking about today.

John, another purpose in the first Chronicles is the first 10 or 11 chapters provide a real challenge to people who are going through Bible program. There are passages in first Chronicles—honestly, there's passages all over the place—that are, as we might say, challenging to those doing it through the Bible reading program. Some things that slow you down a little bit. All right, let's watch David die. You ready?

David's Final Days

One Kings, chapter one. And there are some interesting ways that the good and the bad of David's life is all about to get buttoned up.

When King David was old and well advanced in years, he could not keep warm, even when they put covers over him. So his servants said to him, "Let us look for a young virgin to attend the king and take care of him. She can lie beside him so that our lord the king may keep warm." — 1 Kings 1:1-3

I mean, what else are you going to do? It's the only possible solution.

Then they searched throughout Israel for a beautiful girl and found Abishag, a Shunammite, and brought her to the king. The girl was very warm, and she took care of the king and waited on him, but the king had no intimate relations with her. — 1 Kings 1:3-4

So what is up with this, you guys? What do you make of that? She is a bed warmer. You find this encouraging or discouraging? It's in the Bible. Strange. He did learn a lesson, I think. What lesson do you think he learned? Bathsheba.

David as Type and Pattern

Well, okay, this is the thing, right? We've been saying a couple of different things about David. On the one hand, David is the type for the Messiah. He is the shape, he is the pattern, he is the form. And when Jesus comes, he will be known as the Son of David. He's coming in the form and in the shape and in the manner. He is fulfilling the mode that David sets. David is the forerunner for the King of Kings. And David is a man after he has so many things that David gets ready. He trusts the Lord, he seeks the Lord. But David is not the Messiah, and David can't fulfill his own model. In so many ways, David is like this hopeful picture of what could be, and then he just screws it up, right?

So you have to have this dualistic vision of David. He is a man after God's own heart, and he gets an awful lot of things right. But David—and we've watched this for weeks and weeks and weeks from Bathsheba on—man, life just spins out of control, right? We've also seen that David has two areas of his life that keep screwing him up, right? What are the two primary ways that David screws things up? Lust. Lust and anger. Anger, violence, right?

These are not unique. David is not unique in this. These tend to be probably the number one and number two results for half of you that are testosterone laden, right? And so when we see it, you could come to this and you could be encouraged or you could be discouraged. You could be like, "Man, David, really? Still? Is sanctification real? Do we improve? Do we grow? Do we get better?" And it could be kind of discouraging.

It's almost like his servants are the ones who cooked up this idea. Well, you know, he has agency. They're following what he wants. So on the one hand, a little bit of exculpatory data is that it doesn't appear to be David's idea—it was the servants' idea. But he's trained them, they know what he wants, and he could have been like, "What are you talking about? Enough of this." He could have. So there are some gaps in our narrative. We don't know how much agency David has. But he's not all that feeble. There's going to be a couple of things happening in the next couple of chapters. He is still speaking. He's still in command. And you don't get the impression he puts up much of a fight.

In one way, it could be encouraging to know that he's a typical male. Typical? All right. Do we take offense to that? Can we take offense to that? That was the two things.

Yeah, okay. This is a particular approach, though. So it could be that you're encouraged—like, "Okay, God still uses broken people." You could grab that. Or you could be discouraged—like, "Man, is there any improvement ever gonna come in my life?" I wonder if you might think, have you guys ever gotten to the point where you're like, "I really thought twenty years down the road I'd be better at this than I am"? Has anybody thought that they would become more patient, more wise, and you're like, "You know, I just thought we might be in a better place than we are right now"?

Okay. Tommy?

I see it as a bit of an extension of the abuse of kingship by man. For sure. It's falling away from sanctification, and this kind of points to the fact that we can't have man's—that's sake, it has to be right. If he had taken her as a concubine, for instance, there would have been an exchange. If he had relations with her, maybe he would give her a child, a son that could have taken care of her later. And instead, would she go marry after laying in the bed with the king? That's actually gonna become a major plot twist because she's—we'll see that you're getting—I probably gotta get moving here. We always get stuck on verse one.

So, yes. And so when you say the limitations of a human king, that's what David is. The type of the king, but he's not the king. He can't do it. And we see even as an old guy, he's still dragging around some of the same old things.

The Question of Succession

Okay, so here's what happens. He's dying, and when the king is getting ready to die, what's everybody else thinking about? Who's next? Who's next, right?

And so one of his sons—look at verse five:

Now Adonijah, whose mother was Haggith, put himself forward and said, "I will be king." So he got chariots and horses ready, with 50 men to run ahead of him. His father had never interfered with him by asking, "Why do you behave as you do?" He was also very handsome and was born next after Absalom. — 1 Kings 1:5-6

Okay, we've been at this game for months. What's the narrator doing? There's something that just happened that you're supposed to be like, "Uh-uh. I get it." What is that?

It's a rhyming of history.

Yes, that's a great way to put it. It's a rhyming of history. What is he rhyming historically with?

Absalom.

It is Absalom. Remember, Absalom is super good looking, right? There are two things that are being rhymed here. Number one, this guy probably has a lot of hair, right? He's really beautiful. Absalom was really beautiful. What's the other parallel he's setting up?

The chariot.

What is it?

The chariot.

Okay, they're both power hungry.

Yeah, that's right. There's another one—not just between Absalom and Adonijah, but between David and David. Lily?

His complete negligence of being a parent. This, right? It says, "His father, David, had never interfered with him by asking, 'Why do you behave as you do?'" That's what ruined his kingdom. Do you remember this? He loses everything because of this whole Absalom and Amnon, and this one likes his sister, and this one murders the brother, and all this stuff, and David was just being passive and negligent. And what the author is telling us here at this moment—he's showing us—remember how David had a problem with women? Well, now he has a problem with some teenager, right?

Remember how David had a problem engaging with his kids? So watch what we're seeing at the very end of the game. We're cheering for David. Like, "Come on, David. You're like, 'Let's go!'" And there are just things where he doesn't go, right?

And so again, you can look at this and be like, "I thought redemption worked. What gives?" Or you could look at it and say, "God is merciful and patient, even at people that made the same stupid mistake for the fiftieth time." It might be that David is rhyming with his own history, and this might be places that he's rhyming with you, right?

And so we're watching the story through these eyes. Okay, so parts of us sometimes are slow to redeem.

Look at verse seven:

So Adonijah conferred with Joab son of Zeriah and with Abiathar the priest—we might remember some of these names; we won't recap them all now—but Zadok the priest, Benaiah son of Jehoiada, and Nathan the prophet, and Shimei and David's special guard did not join Adonijah. — 1 Kings 1:7

So that's good. Some of these guys are like, "Oh, no, you're not the guy. You're putting yourself forward. You're not the guy. We don't want you to do it, so we're not going to step on your team." But do know who does join his team? Joab is going to join this team. That's gonna be a problem, okay?

And it's so consistent. People divide into factions. Whatever's going on is these guys back this horse, these guys back this horse. And so I think the author here is showing us the consistency, not just of David, but of mankind. Sometimes we just get it wrong, and then we get it wrong, and we get it wrong, and then we get it wrong. That's what's going on.

And now, Bathsheba comes in.

Now, listen again. The narrator is giving you a hint. The narrator isn't saying, "Isn't it scandalous that David's in bed with this girl?" He's just gonna drop little hints. Listen to how this is recorded in verse 15:

So Bathsheba went to see the aged king in his room, where Abishag the Shunammite was attending him. Bathsheba bowed low and knelt before the king. "What is it you want?" the king asked. — 1 Kings 1:15

Why is it framed that way? Why does he point out that Abishag is attending the king? Why does the narrator mention it when Bathsheba comes in the room? There's a debt there, the whole thing with Bathsheba cheating on her husband. He had power, he took her. But now her husband was murdered, and she bore a child from that marriage. You screwed me up pretty hard. Now it's time to keep this promise.

So Bathsheba knows a thing or two about David's issues with women. Bathsheba was the other woman. And she knows it from that side of the story. Now that Bathsheba is probably a fair bit older too, and David has this younger woman—Abishag—it's probably from her perspective a little bit galling to come in. I'm just guessing. Would that be galling? I think that would be a little bit galling. And so I think the narrator is just trying to point out to us that this is just weird. And yet, God is gracious in this whole thing.

What's her request going to be? Do you know why she's coming to see him? Because this other punk has taken over the kingdom, and it's supposed to be her kid, their kid, Solomon. Do you remember any of this? She's like, "David, what are you doing?" And so God is gonna basically put down the Adonijah rebellion before it even gets started because David's gonna come in and say, "No, no, no, not him. Him." David's gonna pick his successor at the request of Bathsheba.

Solomon's Mercy and the Transfer of Power

Skip down to verse 49. There's all this drama, all this intrigue, and in verse 49:

Adonijah's guests rose in alarm and dispersed, but Adonijah, in fear of Solomon, went back and took hold of the horns of the altar. — 1 Kings 1:49

What's happened here is Solomon has been made king, and now Adonijah thinks, "Oh no, I was making a play for the throne. This guy won it. It's not just that he gets to be king, but now I'm gonna get to be dead." And he runs and grabs the horns of the altar. In verse 51:

Solomon was told, "Adonijah is afraid of King Solomon, and he's clinging to the horns of the altar. He says, 'Let King Solomon swear to me that he will not put his servant to death with a sword.'" — 1 Kings 1:51

And Solomon is gracious. In verse 52:

Solomon replied, "If he shows himself to be a worthy man, not a hair of his head will fall to the ground, but if evil is found in him, he will die." — 1 Kings 1:52

Then King Solomon sent men, they brought him from the altar, and Adonijah came and bowed before King Solomon, and Solomon said, "Go to your home."

What's happening is this kingdom is finally transferring from David, who still has the same issues, into Solomon. Solomon begins his reign in humility. He begins his reign in mercy. I think we're supposed to see this, and it's supposed to give us new hope. The new guy—we thought it was David, but it wasn't David. Now, it might be Solomon, and it really might be. We're waiting for the good king to come, and right now, things are off to a pretty good start. The stories aren't gonna end all that well, but right now, it's pretty good.

But David is gonna give him final words. Go to chapter two, verse two. This is David passing things on to his son Solomon, who has now become king. Listen to this:

"I am about to go the way of all the earth," said David. "So be strong, show yourself a man, and observe what the Lord your God requires. Walk in His ways, keep His decrees and commands, His laws and requirements, as written in the law of Moses, so that you may prosper in all that you do and wherever you go, and so that the Lord may keep His promise to me. If your descendants watch how they live, and if they walk faithfully before me with all their heart and soul, you will never fail to have a man on the throne of Israel." — 1 Kings 2:2-4

Pretty good. David is saying, "Hey, Solomon, it's a little bit of do as I say, not as I do." And it's a little bit of do as I do. David hasn't gotten everything wrong. He's gotten a lot of things right. We're picking on the things that screwed up, but he really has gotten a lot of stuff right. And he's saying, "Son, get it right. Do it." He's setting up what Solomon is going to say over and over and over again.

Where does Solomon repeat what his dad said to him? Proverbs. Proverbs is, by and large, Solomon telling his son, "Son, listen to me. If you want to be wise, if you want to gain wisdom, you want things to go well, do this." It's an amplification of what he's learning from his dad. So it's not all bad. He's been negligent in some key places, but sometimes he gets it right.

And then it's going to get a little bit spicier. Take a look at what happens in verse eight. Still David, still giving instructions to the new king. He says, "And remember, you have with you Shimei son of Gerah."

Who's Shimei? Do you remember Shimei? The rock kicker. The one that's like, "Get out of here, you scoundrel, you man of blood, right?" And when David came back into his kingdom, Shimei bowed before him, and David extended mercy to Shimei. Do you remember all this?

Now, David says this—and this is spicy:

Remember you have with you Shimei son of Gera, the Benjamite from Bahurim, who called down bitter curses on me the day I went to Mahanaim. When he came down to meet me at the Jordan, I swore to him by the Lord, "I will not put you to death by the sword." But now, you don't need to consider him innocent. You are a man of wisdom, you will know what to do to him. Bring his gray head down to the grave in blood. — 1 Kings 2:8-9

What do you think of that? Is that surprising? He had promised to Shimei, "I'm not going to kill you," but one of his final orders is to the new king, like, "Deal with that guy." Good or bad? What do you think, John?

Well, he promised to Shimei that he wouldn't kill him. That's exactly right. So is he upright in this? This is tricky. Robin?

Robin is saying it just kind of gives some indication that David is holding on to bitterness here. He's been mad at Shimei for years. He bound himself by an oath, and he's not going to violate it, but now maybe there's a way out.

Michael?

Michael is saying there's a vulnerability for Israel, right? Because there's a kingdom transfer, and in the midst of kingdom transfer, there's the opportunity for somebody to start throwing sand in the gears and to redirect history. This has happened thousands of times in human history. And so David, reasonably, is like, "We've got to make sure that anybody that could hate me—he's probably going to hate you. He didn't want me to be king. He's not going to want you to be king." There is some level of political stratagem going on here that's reasonable. Kelly?

Kelly's saying that there's Mosaic Law that you're not allowed to curse the king. Shimei is guilty and should be punished. And so we've got Mosaic Law, we've got securing the kingdom, we've got a promise that was made, we've got all sorts of different pieces, and it's coming to Solomon.

What we know is what is Solomon going to be famous for very soon? Wisdom, right? Being wise. And this is what David says to him: "You are a man of wisdom. You will know what to do to him." He's basically saying, "Solomon, work this out—it's going to be complicated."

And so here's what Solomon does. Take a look at this. Go to verse 36.

Then the king sent for Shimei, and he said to him, "Build yourself a house in Jerusalem and live there, but do not go anywhere else. The day you leave and cross the Kidron Valley, you can be sure you will die. Your blood will be on your own head." And Shimei answered the king, "What you say is good. Your servant will do as my lord the king has said." And Shimei stayed in Jerusalem for a long time. — 1 Kings 2:36-38

This is interesting. David said, "Bring his gray head down to blood," and Solomon says, "I'll tell you what, I'm going to put you under house arrest. Build yourself a sweet house, stay in Jerusalem. As long as you do that, I won't touch you." He's giving himself permission to be gracious within confined boundaries, but he's also giving himself permission: "If you step out of it, I'm going to kill you, and you know it."

And so do you understand how he's giving himself the ability to execute judgment, to keep his hands clean, to offer mercy, reserve the right for judgment, and to limit his ability to screw things up for the kingdom.

All in one fell swoop, he's found a way to be just, a way to be merciful, to protect his kingdom, and then ultimately to probably set a stage that is going to result in exactly what his father wants, which is the death of Shimei. And it works. Shimei stays there for a long time, but then what's going to happen in verse 39 is:

Three years later, two of Shimei's slaves ran off to Achish son of Macha king of Gath, and Shimei was told, "Your slaves are in Gath." And at this, he saddled his donkey and went to Achish at Gath in search of his slaves. So Shimei went away and brought the slaves back from Gath, and when Solomon was told that he had gone from Jerusalem to Gath and had returned, the king summoned him and said, "Did I not make you swear by the Lord and warn you on the day you leave to go anywhere else, you can be sure that you will die? And at that time, you said to me, 'What you say is good, I will obey.' Why then did you not keep your oath to the Lord and obey the command I gave you? And then, kind of the haymaker here: You know in your heart all the wrong that you did to my father David. Now the Lord will repay you for your wrongdoing, but King Solomon will be blessed and David's throne will remain secure before the Lord forever." The king gave the order, they struck him down, and he died, and the kingdom was now established in his hands. — 1 Kings 2:39-46

What do you think? Any takeaways from all of this? Why does the narrator give us this story and play it out as it is? What are we trying to see in all of that? We've already hit some of the hints of this, but what do you take away?

He creates a circumstance where he can keep his hands clean, right? We're going to be just. We're not just going to be acting out vengeance, but the Lord will—if I do what is right, it's very likely that the Lord will bring about the circumstances that this justice can be executed, and that's exactly the way it plays out. So the point is, not only is the kingdom firmly in his power, but he doesn't begin his kingship with bloody hands. It was proper, the way it all plays out.

I think the other thing is if we then take that and apply it to our lives: when you know that you believe that something's going to come to fruition—99.9% for sure that something's going to come to fruition—but yet you don't act out of that belief. Be patient. Right? But you act out based on what we know from the Bible, from biblical teaching. Just be patient, do what is right, and we'll let the Lord bring this out.

The Donna Story

I remember learning this in a really distinct way. We were at JMU. Kelly had lived in a house full of girls, all these wonderful crew girls, campus crusade girls, but a new roommate came in. And as time played out, all these ladies began to have objects go missing. Things just disappeared. A shirt would disappear. Things just started disappearing, and it became obvious somebody was stealing. And we were pretty convinced that it was this other girl, Donna, that was just stealing stuff from them.

So we're like, what do we do? And I remember we had a meeting with Phil, our pastor, and he basically said, "You just wait, and you trust this, that the Lord will bring to light the deeds of darkness." We were ready to set a trap and set a camera and do all this kind of stuff. He's like, "No, no, no, no. We're Christians. We're people of the light. We don't lurk about in the darkness. We just live in the light, and we trust the Lord will bring all things clear in the time that He chooses."

And so that's exactly what happened. And I remember as it happened, as Donna unwittingly ended up revealing her treachery, it was for me like, "Who knew that Phil was right about that?" We didn't need to play any games. We didn't need to manipulate the situation. Just live in the light, and the Lord will bring to light these things. That's what we're seeing here, right? Solomon didn't need to play any games. The world is filled with game players. We can simply be honest, truthful, honorable people and trust the Lord to bring the thing to pass. And he did. And she was exposed, and she ended up moving out and returned all their stuff, and it all worked out.

I think it largely worked out because of the way that Kelly and her roommates were willing to trust the Lord in the midst of all of it. Would you add any detail to that story? Any color that I'm missing that you want to add? No. Is that good enough? Okay.

All right. So let's take a look at this other part of the story. Go back to 2:20. We're kind of unbraiding the storylines here in the chapter. In 2:20, Bathsheba comes in and says this, which is funny because Bathsheba had—what was Bathsheba's earlier request?

Make Solomon.

Yeah, keep your word to do what? To make Solomon. Make Solomon, make my son Solomon king instead of who?

Adonijah.

This time, she's going to come and make a request on behalf of Adonijah, which is so weird. Like, what are you doing, Bathsheba?

So in 2:20, she comes in now to Solomon and says:

"I have one small request to make of you," she said. "Do not refuse me."

And the king—this is now Solomon, not David, the new king, Solomon—replied:

"Make it my mother. I will not refuse you."

P.S. Never sign a blank check. Okay? Never do that. She says, "Give me what I want." He's like, "Anything you want, Mom." And then she says what she wants. So she says:

"Let Abishag the Shunammite—this is the girl that's been in bed with your dad—let her be given in marriage to your brother Adonijah."

Okay. What is she asking? What does this mean? Because Solomon is not going to like it. Okay?

Yes, Suzanne?

Normally, the king's harem or whatever you want to call it passes to the next king.

Yes.

If she becomes Adonijah's wife, then it portrays that he should have been king.

Do you hear this? Okay. So this is so odd. So Bathsheba had said, "Don't let Adonijah be king, let Solomon be king." And then Solomon is king. And then she goes to Solomon the king and says, "Hey, give a member of your dad's harem to your rival." And he has already said, "Whatever you want, anything you like." He retracts it immediately. Verse 22:

King Solomon answered his mother, "Why do you request Abishag the Shunammite for Adonijah? You might as well request the kingdom for him. After all, he is my older brother. Yes, for him and for Abiathar the priest and Joab son of Zeruiah." And then King Solomon swore by the Lord, "May God deal with me, be it ever so severely, if Adonijah does not pay with his life for this request. And now, as surely as the Lord lives, he who has established me securely on the throne of my father David and has founded a dynasty for me as he promised, Adonijah shall be put to death today."

And so King Solomon gave orders to Benaiah, the son of Jehoiada, and he struck down Adonijah, and he died.

Why do you think she says this? There's a variety of ideas on this.

Stuart?

I think maybe she's pretty smart and knew that if she did that, then he would be locked in this chain. The one person that could be his sort of rival is now gone.

Yeah. This is one of the theories, and I think it's the best theory: that Bathsheba knew exactly what she was doing. This wasn't her idea. Adonijah had come to Bathsheba—we skipped it, but Adonijah had come to Bathsheba and said, "Hey, hey, you know, I'm dragged away, that whole thing worked out, but I'm glad your son is the king, so lovely. But just one small thing, could I get the girl?" And she probably—I think the case is that she hears this and thinks, "You want me to go ask Solomon to give you one of David's harem? That's what you're asking me to do?" He's like, "Yeah, yeah. Would you mind doing that?" She's like, "Yeah, you bet. Happy to. Sure thing." And then she does, and Solomon responds in the absolute predictable way. And then her son's kingdom is secured, not just against Shimei, but also against this other rival, and her son's throne is established. I think that's what we're supposed to see happening there. Because otherwise, it makes no sense why Bathsheba would be advocating for this. Okay?

Chris?

I'll take this. Okay, just shut him down. Isn't Solomon just following through with what he's made the deal with, and Shimei saying, "If you are a worthy man, you're okay"?

Well, he goes to the best. Yes.

And he's not a worthy man.

Yes. And that's right. And so what Bob is saying is in the same way that Solomon was justified in taking out Shimei for this start, he's justified in taking out Adonijah because there's a deal like, "Hey, behave yourself, it'll go well with you, but if you don't, I'm the new king." And that's exactly how it plays out, for sure.

Kelly?

That's a fair question. And I confess, I'm not super knowledgeable about the inner rules of harems. So, but yes. Yeah, yeah, I know. It's just you and me, babe. But that might be somewhat plausible. However, it's certainly the case that Solomon sees her as being sufficiently associated with the harem that it's a threat to his throne. And I totally agree that Bathsheba probably— Yeah, maybe he was justifying it to himself.

I think Adonijah probably wouldn't have had the galls or the courage to make that request if she was a legitimate bride of David or in the harem. But this ambiguity about how she's, for all intents and purposes, part of the harem technically—that probably speaks to human nature and Adonijah's mind. You know what it's like when you've already made your decision, and then you backfill the justification to yourself. Why does he like her? Probably because she's really pretty. And then once you've gotten that, you're like, "Oh yeah, the rest of this makes total sense in light of the fact that I already know what I want." Well, she's not really part of the harem, and off we go. It's just a warning to human nature. We're like, "I know why I've already made my decision, now I'm just gonna fill in the justification."

So, one question: Is it possible that Abishag the Shunamite was on Solomon? That we call her—it's interesting. So we call her the Shunamite, and I didn't chase down what even that word means. Like, is it simply a people group? How broad is that? So it would be fascinating if she is the one to whom he writes the love song. Has anybody looked into this? Is she the girl that we think was Solomon's queen? Is Shunamite somebody from the city of Shunam? I don't know if it's connected to Song of Solomon. In Song of Solomon, the queen of Song of Solomon is known as the Shunamite. But I don't know if that's her. That's really interesting.

And then I feel like there was another hand. Judy, was it you? I skipped it, but Adonijah goes to Bathsheba to be like, "Hey, did you ask your son a favor for me?" It's so dumb. It's really dumb. Again, think the blinding nature of desire just makes things seem like a good idea that really aren't a good idea.

The Life and Legacy of David

So here's where we end. We've been studying David for months and months. The things I want to leave you with are this: He really was an amazingly godly man, exceptionally so. We get more data on this one guy than anybody else in the entire Scriptures besides Jesus. His life is traced in enormous detail. We've got all these poems that he wrote, the history he's referred to countless times in the New Testament. He's a major, major, major player, and yet he's tragically flawed.

He began with all of the goodness of his life, and then these last months we've just seen how many ways he shipwrecked his life. He couldn't fulfill his own promise, and that's good news for us. That's really good news for us. It's good news for us because he was not the Messiah, but a Messiah would come.

All your life, you know, you're going to find men and women that you admire, and you will think, "Oh, they're wonderful, they're great," and then you learn that they're not that much different than you. And every time it happens, every time it happens, it's meant to shake us free from this sense that we can place our hope in man. If this job is going to get done, God is going to have to do it. The only way this can possibly work is if God Himself becomes a human being and lives the life that the rest of the pretenders simply cannot live.

And it's even true in the final moments of David's life. He gets a few things right at the end, he gets a few things wrong at the end. Because so it is forever.

There's this wonderful character in Voyage of the Dawn Treader named Eustace Scrub, and he's just a wretched kid, but he ends up being redeemed by Aslan, and his life has changed. And Lewis has this comment about how much his life was really transformed. He really was changed, he was really improved, and he was not anything like the selfish brat that he had been. But on the right kind of day, under the right kind of circumstances, Lewis remarks that Eustace was Eustace after all. Right?

Does that give you hope? That, you know, we all have our good days where we arise above our base nature, where the redemptive work of God is there, where we're yielded to the Spirit, but dang it all if at the end of the day, Eustace isn't Eustace. Right?

Our hope is not in this world of moral behavioral modification. Our hope is that God is transforming us, that in the world to come, we will finally be made like Him, we'll see Him as He is. He is moving us into His image, but it's a slow gig. The day is coming that He will transform your lowly body to be like His glorious body, and we will see Him, and we will be like Him. We're just a little bit this side of the line right now.

So it was for David, so it is for us. Put your hope in Him. That's the life of David.