Ten Minute Bible Talks Devotional Bible Study - Passivity Will Destroy Your Life | Historical Books | 2 Samuel 14

Episode Date: June 26, 2025

Does passivity tempt you? Do you act or react? Are you willing to take responsibility? In today's episode, Patrick shares how 2 Samuel 14 encourages us to repent of our passivity and turn to the God of action, who sets us free to do right in the world. 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 14

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. Yesterday, we read the tragic story of Amnon and Tamar. If you didn't listen, here's the quick story. They were half-siblings, and they were both children of King David. They just had different mothers. And as the story goes, Amnon starts lusting after Tamar,

and then he feigns sickness to get Tamar into his bedroom where he tries to seduce her. and when she refuses, he ultimately rapes her. It's a story that's incredibly dark, but it reminds us how real the Bible is because the truth is that sexual violence, it's a part of many lives. And it's often perpetrated by family members or the people that we know and trust.

And so this story, it's one of those stories, and it's even more real than that because afterwards Amnon, he starts to hate Tamar, but we all know it's really that he hates himself for what he's done. And Tamar, for her part, she's traumatized. She never fully recovers. She goes into the house of her full brother, Absalom, spends the rest of her life in hiding. Now that name, Absalom, another of David's sons, perhaps his favorite son,

it means father of peace, father of Shalom. It's the way we would think about God, but neither Absalom nor his father knew much about peacemaking. David is completely passive in this story. He refuses to hold Amnon accountable. He does nothing to help Tamar. It's a gross miscarriage of justice. And as a result, there's no peace. He's not a peacemaker. Absalom, he ends up waiting three years. And then he tricks David into sending Amnon with him to a sheep shearing.

And when he's with Amnon, he calls his men to murder them as a recompense for what Amnon had done. Now, after this, Absalom knows that he's broken God's law, even if he had a good reason to do it. And so he goes into hiding. And yet again, David is passive. He mourns Amnon's death, but he's even more upset because he loved Absalom more. And now we can't see Absalom. And he's sad that he may never see Absalom again. But nonetheless, David does nothing.

He doesn't hold Absalom accountable for the murder. He doesn't try to bring Absalom back. And maybe on one level we're a bit sympathetic to Absalom. Yes, he broke God's law. He murdered someone in cold blood. But he was also trying to rectify a terrible injustice that his father. let's sit. So perhaps that's why when we get to today's chapter, 2 Samuel 14, Joab, who's David's chief military commander, he finds a woman in a nearby city, and he asks her to

try and trick the king with a false story. Now, his goal is really simple. He wants to show David that it's okay to bring Absalom back, even if Absalom murdered someone. And the whole time, we're supposed to be asking, is Joab right here? I mean, is it right to not hold Absalom accountable? should David bring him back, even if Absalom Haggard meaning of this? Entire chapter is shaded with ambiguity, the ambiguity of real life, but the ambiguity of living in a kingdom where you have a passive king who's allowing injustice to happen unpunished. And what are the consequences of that? But let's pick up the story as this woman that Joab has found.

She comes before the king and she sets this false tale before him. She claims, she says, I am a widow. My husband is dead. I your servant had two sons. They got into a fight with each other in the field, and no one was there to separate them. One struck the other and killed him. Now the whole clan has risen up against your servant. They say, hand over the one who struck the brother down, so that we may put him to death

for the life of his brother whom he killed. Then we'll get rid of the air as well. And she continues, they would put out the only burning coal I have left, leaving my husband neither named or descendant on the face of the earth. Now, the woman is claiming that if her neighbors follow God's law and execute her son after his murder, that's how the law worked. Well, she'd said, then she would lose the land, they would take it, and she'd lose any protection that she has over her own life.

And so she's begging the king for mercy to stay the execution and let her guilty son live. Now, David is gracious, and he grants her request. no one is allowed to execute her son for his sin, but then the woman continues, and she reveals the truth. She says, when the king says this, when he says, hey, you should let your son go free, you should live with him and have him back with yourself, when the king says this, does he not convict himself? For the king has not brought back his banished son, like water spilled on the ground, which cannot be recovered. So we must die. But that is not what God desires. Rather, he devises ways so that a banished person does not remain banished from him. Now, her point is clear. She's saying, if you'll show my false son, grace, why not your own son? Doesn't God make a way for the banished to come back home?

Now again, this chapter has shaded ambiguity because it's a true statement. God is the one who makes a way for banished lost sinners, even murderers, to come back to himself. And God is in many ways like David, a gracious king who forgives wrongdoing and restores relationships. And so we see so much truth in what she's saying and what David's doing. And yet there's part of us that feels uncomfortable because we are talking about a murderer, but then we feel better because he did murder a rapist. And this is the complexity that the chapter wants to force us into. David sees through the ruse. He guesses that Joab put her up to this, and she admits it. But nonetheless, he grants her request and he brings Absalom back to Jerusalem.

But there's no reconciliation or resolution. David is not, as the name Absalom suggests, the father of peace. There's no peacemaking. In verse 24, David says he, Absalom, must go to his own house. He must not see my face. Now the question in this story is, of course, a moral question. I mean, is it wrong that Joab sent this woman to communicate a false message by false means? Is David wrong to forgive Absalom to withhold just punishment?

for his sin, just like he did with Amnon? Is he wrong to bring a murderer back and give him a household? Is he wrong to just ignore Absalom and refuse to see him? He's a really complex questions, and they're the sorts of questions the Bible wants us to wrestle with because they're real. The Bible is real. It's gritty. It's complex. But here's the theme that you can't escape from throughout this whole chapter. David is passive. Again and again, he's no longer the actor. He's just reacting to things, and he's always taking the path of least resistance. Even to a woman from a small town who's pretending to be something she's not, when she tries to force his hands as you need to bring back Absalom, he just goes with it. He is incredibly passive. And it seems like the people are

beginning to see this too, because they're beginning to look to Absalom as a leader, as a king. But much like King Saul, there's things about Absalom that make you think he might not be a king after God's heart. The very first thing that hits you is that Absalom is a very good-looking guy, just the way Saul was. This was part of what attracted people to Saul and part of what God rejected. Verse 5, in all Israel, there was not a man so highly praised for his handsome appearance as Absalom. From the top of his head to the soul of his foot, there was no blemish in him. Whenever he cut the hair of his head, he used to cut his hair once a year because it became too heavy for him, he would weigh it his hair and it weighed 200 shekels. That's about five pounds of hair, which I guess makes you a really manly guy.

And again, when we read this passage, you wonder, is this good or bad? I mean, it's not a sin to be good looking, but it does feel like a cryptic warning, given the fact that it's in the same book where Saul was complimented for his good looks and things didn't go well with Saul, given that this is the same book where God says explicitly that he does not look on outward appearances, but at the inward heart. And it seems like Absalom isn't really a stand-up guy on the inside. This becomes evident because Joab, again, David's commander, he honors David by not seeing Absalom, just like David said. He said, don't see him. And Absalom keeps requesting meetings, but Joab refuses. And finally, Absalom gets so frustrated that he burns down Joab's fields of barley to get his

attention. Now, that might not sound like a big deal to us other than property destruction, but in that world, that was tantamount to starving people. So Absalom's willing to starve people to demand their attention. And he knows that David's too passive to do anything about this. And so finally Joab comes to him and says, why are you burning down my fields? And Absalom says, get me before my dad. And so Job says, okay, whatever, I'll do it, I'll bring you in. And then when the king summons him in, we'll pick up in verse 33.

Then the king summoned to Absalom and he came in and bowed and bowed down with his face to the ground before the king. and the king kissed Absalom. So yet again, David just goes with it. He's going to change his mind. Absalom's back in. So what do we make of this chapter? Is it a heartwarming reconciliation between a father and son, a story of the father of peace doing the right thing? Or is it an ironic warning about false peace? About what happens when we're passive, especially when we're passive about terrible injustices. What happens when we refuse to do the right thing,

but justify it because we're not doing a wrong thing instead. The Bible calls us to do justice, to love good, to resist violence, to love enemies. These are all themes of Jesus' teaching. And, you know, as such, one might think that David has done the right thing by loving his enemy. But it doesn't seem like David's doing this for the right reasons. It seems like he's just being drawn down the path of the least resistance, which is part of what makes the right. the end of his reign so sad. I mean, he started so strong, but he ends so poorly. Why? Well, not merely

because of the sins he committed with Uri and Bashiba, but also because of the good deeds that he left undone, because of passivity. I think it's a warning to all of us. If you're anything like me, you struggle with passivity. And if you do, you're not alone. David was nonetheless a man after God's own heart. Clearly that didn't mean that he was morally perfect or blameless. and to the contrary, he was a sinner like you and me, but nonetheless, he was a man after God's heart. And that tells us that those whom God rescues are precisely the people that God transforms into the ones who are close to his heart. They are the ones that his saving grace has rescued and also renewed so that their hearts can begin to look like him. And so the ultimate invitation here

is, of course, to confess our passivity, but not merely to repent of it, to also turn to the God of action. Turn to the God who is always on the move, turn to him and say, would you please not just set me free from doing sin, but set me free to do right in the world, to reflect Christ into my community through my everyday actions every single day of my life.