Ten Minute Bible Talks Devotional Bible Study - The Crown Heist | Historical Books | 2 Samuel 15:1-12

Episode Date: June 27, 2025

What's the cost of reaching for the crown? Has deception twisted your life up? Are you facing your sin? In today's episode, Jeff shares how 2 Samuel 15:1-12 encourages us to let God wear the crown in our lives. 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 15:1-12

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 Jeff Parrott. In the spring of 1671, a pastor visited the Tower of London with his wife to view the crown jewels on display. By all appearances, this visit seemed harmless enough, except for the fact that the man was not a pastor. The woman was not his wife, and they were not at the Tower of London to view the person. the crown. They were there to steal it. The man dressed up as a pastor was the Irishman Thomas Blood. His visit to the Tower of London with a female companion set off a chain of events that led to

the crown jewels almost being stolen for good. While he was in disguise, Blood and his alleged wife deceived the master of the jewel house and built a false sense of trust over the course of several days. Eventually, Blood and his co-conspirators gained access to the crown jewels. They bound the master of the jewel house and stole some of the most important images of royalty, including St. Edward's crown. Blood and his companions were captured in short order, and in a turn of events that's hard to fully understand, King Charles gave Thomas Blood a full pardon and even gifted him a plot of land in Ireland. People are still trying to figure that one out, but good for you, Thomas Blood. One of the many interesting elements of the story is not only the theft of those royal items,

but the damage they absorbed while being stolen. In order to make a covert escape with the valuables, blood didn't just take the St. Edward's crown. He took a mallet to it and flattened it out with a hammer, so it would fit under his cloak. Now, while it was eventually restored to its former status and significance, the theft of the crown occurred simultaneously with its vandalism. As the crown was being stolen, it was also shattered. That's an interesting image of how stealing something as valuable as the crown of a king

involves a great deal of both deception and destruction. In the act of taking the crown, the truth is compromised, and the crown itself is tarnished. In 2 Samuel 15, we come across a moment in the history of Israel when there's an attempted theft of the crown. Not unlike Thomas Blood's plot to steal the crown, this theft involves deception and destruction, and it serves as a sobering picture of how the lure of self-rule

is really a form of deceiving ourselves. As we approach God's word, let's pause and ask for His grace, his mercy, to move through our time together. Heavenly Father, thank you for the gift of life and breath. Thank you for your word. We bring before you our joys and our sorrows. our anxiety, our excitement. Our calendars and our contingencies, God, would you meet us in this space? We need you.

Jesus, help us abide in you and remain in you as we engage with your truth. Holy Spirit, we ask you to move in and through this time in 2nd Samuel. As we read these words, let these words read us and restore us. In Jesus' name, amen. Back in 2nd Samuel chapter 14, David's son Absalom, returns to Jerusalem. And that chapter ends on a bit of a cliffhanger, with Absalom conniving his way back into the king's presence.

There's this really significant moment when David kisses Absalom, offering a sense of resolution in Absalom's chaotic life. It seems like his relationship with his father, the one wearing the crown, is restored here, but this sense of restoration turns out to be temporary, as we learn in our text today. Chapter 15 starts with Absalom, obtaining a chariot, horses, and 50 men to accompany him. With his new entourage, Absalom begins a routine of intercepting people who are traveling to the king for a judgment in disputed cases.

And here's where the element of deception really starts creeping in as Absalom stops people on their way to see the king. Let's look at verses 3 through 4. Then Absalom would say to him, the person going to the king, Look, your claims are valid and proper, but there's no representative of the king to hear you. And Absalom would add, if only I were appointed judge in the land, then everyone who has a complaint or case could come to me, and I would see that they received justice. So see the deception at play here, right? Absalom is suggesting that his father, the one true king of Israel, isn't able to hear the complaints of his people.

And instead, Absalom inserts himself as the potential distributor of justice over Israel. Verse 5 amplifies the twisted plans of Absalom. Here it gets relational. Here's what we read about Absalom. Also, whenever anyone approached him to bow down before him, Absalom would reach out his hand, take hold of him, and kiss him. So Absalom is happy to not only wish he was the king. He's trying to curry favor with people as if he was some kind of benevolent ruler.

This isn't looking good, but verse 6 is the icing on the cake. Absalom behaved in this way toward all the Israelites who came to the king asking for justice. And so he stole the hearts of the people of Israel. Okay, so remember as chapter 14 ended, it seemed like Absalom was somehow restored to the one reigned the crown. But now we can see that he's actually reaching for the crown himself. And in his effort to steal the crown from his father, he's stealing the hearts of the people.

I mean, he's creating a relational mess. That's a big statement to be stealing the hearts of the people. So far, we've seen deception at play in Absalom's reach for the crown. But here's where we see the destruction. He's stealing the hearts of God's people and is thereby shattering the reliance their own. meant to have on God and on God's anointed human king. Not unlike Thomas Blood, this is Absalom effectively taking a mallet to the crown, deforming it so it can somehow fit into his scheme of theft.

Absalom's plot of deception and destruction goes on for some time. In verses 7 through 8, his work of deception is turned directly to his father, King David. He asks David if he can go to Hebron, the city of his birth and the place where David himself began his reign as king over Judah. Absalom asks to go to Hebron so he can worship God, ostensibly at least. But verses 10 through 12 unveil the real motives behind this trip. We read this in verse 10. Then Absalom sent secret messengers throughout the tribes of Israel to say, As soon as you hear the sounds of the trumpets, then say,

Absalom is king and Hebron. yikes this is a massive takeover effort it's secretive it's deceiving it's destructive as absalom rallies more and more support verse 12 ends by saying this and so the conspiracy gained strength and absalom's following kept on increasing this passage in second samuel is detailing the escalation of sin in his quest to reign over his own life and reign over israel absalom Absalom went from soliciting attention to bending the truth to shattering trust, both in the king of Israel and by association, shattering trust in the creator king who plays David on the throne. This is escalation at play, and that's what sin does.

It's never as simple as taking something for ourselves. It also involves taking it from someone else and doing damage along the way. And that effect of sin, the damaging effect of sin, it keeps on, increasing. It's both deception and destruction playing out over time. In stealing and shattering the crown, Absalom shows us how sin can seem so small at first, only to send shockwaves into our relationships with other people and our relationship with God. Like Absalom, those shockwaves often start with deception and then lead to destruction. Think about your life right now, this past week, past month, maybe in this past year or longer.

Are there ways that deception, that a twisting of the truth is actually twisting your life out of order? Maybe like Absalom, it starts in the small things, the half-truths, the subtle deceptions that seem harmless, but are actually furthering a trajectory of destruction. How is the Holy Spirit spurring you on to live in the truth, to walk in the truth? How is God trying to inject a sense of integrity into your relationships through an honest conversation sometime this week? Or consider how this dynamic of stealing the crown might connect to your relationship with God.

Just like Absalom's deception came from his lust for power and control, our twisting of the truth is usually, if not most of the time, connected to our own attempted theft of the crown, trying to live apart from God's wisdom and relying on our own instead. The tragedy of trying to rule over ourselves is that we don't just deceive other people. We also deceive ourselves with delusions of grandeur, disconnecting ourselves from the one we're meant to depend on for life and breath and everything. So how is the Holy Spirit revealing a need to depend on God's wisdom, on God's presence and his love as you honestly face the sin in your life. Are there ways that you need to stop pretending like you can wear the crown of the universe

and let God be the one who wears it and holds all things together? Heavenly Father, as we reflect on the ways that we live in deception and live in destruction, we do ask for the goodness of your truth to break into our lives. Jesus would you set us free to live in the light of the truth of the gospel, knowing that you are the only king worthy of the crown over all things, worthy of the crown over our lives. Holy Spirit, would you empower us to connect with you and other people to spread your truth, your beauty, and your love into every moment you bring us into today?

We ask this because of your grace, for your glory, and your story. We pray in Jesus' name. Amen.