Ten Minute Bible Talks Devotional Bible Study - Do You Feel Spiritually Stuck? | Historical Books | 2 Samuel 20

Episode Date: July 10, 2025

Should I expect the Christian life to always be up and to the right? What are besetting sins? Is it okay to be spiritually stuck? In today's episode, Patrick shares how 2 Samuel 20 encourages us to confess our sin, repent, and wait for God's Spirit to work in our hearts. If you're listening on Spotify, tell us about yourself and where you're listening from! Read the Bible with us in 2025! This year, we’re exploring the Historical Books—Joshua, Judges, 1 & 2 Samuel, and 1 & 2 Kings. Download your reading plan now. Your support makes TMBT possible. Ten Minute Bible Talks is a crowd-funded project. Join the TMBTeam to reach more people with the Bible. Give now. Like this content? Make sure to leave us a rating and share it so that others can find it, too. Use #asktmbt to connect with us, ask questions, and suggest topics. We'd love to hear from you! To learn more, visit our website and follow us on Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter @TenMinuteBibleTalks. Don't forget to subscribe to the TMBT Newsletter here. Passages: 2 Samuel 20

Welcome to 10-minute Bible Talks, where we connect the Bible to your life. In the time it takes to get to work. I'm Patrick Miller. Sometimes we assume that the Christian life should always be up into the right. We should always be growing in holiness, always growing in our love for God, always maturing, always getting better. But I've started to wonder if that's a biblical expectation. When we look at the lives of characters in the Bible, do we always see them improving? And if they're not always improving, should we assume that they weren't? really following God to begin with?

I ask because I think the ordinary Christian life really feels like it's progressing in a single direction. For anything like me, you often feel stuck. You often feel like your sin struggles aren't really dealt with. They go unchanged. In fact, old theologians had a word for this. They called them besetting sins. The idea was that sometimes there are some idols, some sins that are rooted so deep in our

heart that they never seem to go away, but they take years or death. decades to defeat. And then, even after years of defeat, sometimes they come back with a vengeance. I don't really follow celebrities, but a friend of mine told me that Justin Bieber has been going through a hard time, and he sent me this Instagram post that Justin posted, and I thought it was pretty interesting. This is what he said. People keep telling me to heal. Don't you think if I could have fixed myself, I would have already? I know I'm broken. I know I have anger issues. I tried to do the work my whole life, like the people who told me I needed to be fixed, just like them. And it just keeps making me more tired and more angry. The harder I try to grow, the more focused I am

on myself. Jesus is the only person who keeps me wanting to make my life about others, because honestly, I'm exhausted with thinking about myself lately, aren't you? I'm sure plenty of people read that and judged Justin. I'm sure part of why he's so tired and angry is that he constantly feels like he's not measuring up to the expectations of others. But when I read that, I don't judge him at all. I find myself thinking, amen. Amen. I am tired of thinking about myself so much. Amen. Sometimes my best efforts to change myself end up becoming just self-obsession. Amen. If I could fix myself, I would have fixed myself already. And amen. Jesus is the only person who makes that insane treadmill of

self-help stop. So I've been looking at my own expectations and I've been asking, what's an honest picture of the Christian life? Not because I want to justify my sin or be okay with unholyness, but because sometimes I fear my expectations of personal perfection, well, they end up sabotaging the small, incremental changes God does want to make in my life. And because my expectations of personal perfection often turn into self-powered, self-focused, exercises, they end up being exercises in futility. What if God's plan is to change us slowly so that we don't grow proud? What if God's plan is to allow us to fail and fall back into our sin so that we learn to trust on his grace alone and don't just trust ourselves? As we near the end of

2nd Samuel, I can't escape the feeling that the author wants us to reflect on this exact question for one simple reason. The aging leaders of Israel aren't ending well. David, who started off so bright, ends up committing adultery with Bishiba, killing Uriah, passively allowing his son Amnon to rape his daughter, and then Absalom, his other favorite son, to lead a rebellion. Later, he refuses to show Mapheth, who was the son of Saul, well, he refuses to show him the kindness and the favor that he once showed him in the past. But it's not just David. who seems to be in decline. It's the people around him. His general Joab goes from being a loyal friend at the beginning of the story to eventually becoming a murderer. He murders a guy named Abner first.

Now, if you don't remember, Abner was Saul's general. And after Saul's death, Abner came to David to make peace. And David was all for the offer, but Joab was not. Perhaps this was because Joab was jealous of Abner. Maybe he feared that Abner would take his spot as the lead general. Or maybe he thought Abner was a threat to David. Whatever the reason, Joab killed Abner. Now, David rebukes Joab, but Joab doesn't change. He doesn't take the lesson. He just gets worse. In chapter 20, the story of Abner repeats itself in a far worse form. There's a man named Shiba who leads a rebellion against David, much like Absalom did. And David dispatches a general named Amasa to deal with a problem. We read this in verse four. Then the king said to Amasa, summon the men of Judah to come to me within three days and be here

yourself. But when Amasa went to summon Judah, he took longer than the time the king had set for him. Now we don't know why Amasa is taking so much time, but David knows he can't wait, so he sends Joab to deal with the rebels. Yet Joab doesn't really obey him. He doesn't go directly to the rebels. Instead he seeks out Amasa. Instead he seeks out Amasa, who is taking too long. And it turns out that Amasa has actually been doing his job. He's been gathering men. It's just taking longer than expected. And so here's what happens when Joab and Amasa come together. Verse 8. While Joab's men were at the Great Rock in Gibbon, Amasa came to meet them. Joab was wearing his military tunic and strapped over it at his waist was a belt with a dagger

in its sheath. As he stepped forward, it dropped out of its sheath. Joab said to Amasa, How are you, my brother? Then Joab took Amasa by the beer. Then Joab took Amasa by the beard with his right hand to kiss him. Amasa was not on his guard against the dagger in Joab's hand, and Joab plunged it into his belly, and his intestines spilled out on the ground. Without being stabbed again, Amasa died. Then Joab and his brother Abashai pursued Sheba, the son of Berki. That was the rebel against David. One of Joab's men stood beside Amasa and said, Whoever favors Joab and whoever is for David, let him follow Joab. Amasa lay wallowing in his blood in the middle of the road, and the man saw that all the troops came to a halt there.

When he realized that everyone who came to Amasa stopped, he dragged him from the road into a field and threw a garment over him. After Amasa had been removed from the road, everybody went on with Joab to pursue Sheba, son of Bickory. It's a shocking turn of events. Joab treacherously murders Amasa and then uses a threat to make Amasa's men follow him and said, he says, hey, if you're for David, you better follow me now. He doesn't even bury the body. He leaves the body in the middle of the road. And then finally has a man to scarred him out in the wilderness.

Again, we don't know why Joab is doing this. Was he jealous that David called on Amasa instead of him? Was he envious of Amasa's military force? Was he proud and insecure and thus needed to eliminate his rival and take his power? And this situation is worse because, whereas Job could at least justify Abner because perhaps he thought Abner was threatening David, that's not the case with Amasa. He's just killing a faithful warrior,

and he's taking advantage of that faithful warrior's tardiness. Worse yet, he does it in cold blood. He uses Amasa's trust against him. You see, sometimes a sin that blossoms in our younger years, it comes to full fruit in our old age. And in the case of Joab, the sin of envy and pride and murderous rage, it blossoms into envy and pride and murderous rage against people who are his allies.

And that suggests that in some dimensions of our lives, our faith is not a movement up into the right. Sometimes besetting sins get worse. So what can we learn from this? Well, first, there's a warning about leaving our sin undelt with. Sin only fester. Sin only gets worse. Are there sins that you've grown comfortable with? Stopped fighting. They may be only a small problem now, but at after a decade or two, they can become disastrous. But the second lesson is that this passage, it sobers our expectations for the Christian life. It tells us that it is possible to get worse, that growth is not always a guarantee. Those of us who follow Jesus have more than Joab did. We know our Savior. We know His cross. We have been washed, sanctified, and justified by his blood.

We've been indwelt by His spirit. And we've been promised the possibility of change. But I wonder if Joab tried to work on his envy and his violence for years. I wonder if he gave up because it was never perfect. And then he became what he once tried to resist. I don't know. But what I do know is that we must not give up on our own sin. Not because we're confident in ourselves, but because we know the one who is at work in us.

In Philippians 1-6, Paul writes, He, Jesus, who began a good work in you, will carry it to the day of completion until the day of Christ Jesus. Your hope is built on nothing less than Jesus's blood and righteousness. So if you feel stuck like Justin Bieber or David or Joab, don't grit your teeth and try harder. Give him to God. Repent of sin.

And wait for his slow work to work in your heart and life. Lean on his spirit. Thank him for his grace. Learn to trust him on your best days and your worst days. The truth is that the Christian life isn't a perfect life. It's a slow life of slowly growing closer to the image of Christ.