Biblestudy: Psalm 55
Dealing With Betrayal
#BS-011715
Richard T. Ritenbaugh
Given 17-Jan-15; 60 minutes
description: (hide) There is nothing more disconcerting than to be betrayed by someone we really care about, such as some individuals from our former fellowship who shun us as heretics and pariahs for various reasons. Psalm 55 provides insight for dealing with betrayal, written at a time of fleeing into exile, describing David's profound sorrow upon suffering betrayal from a supposedly close friend, the counselor Ahithophel, who joined Absalom's rebellion. God apparently sent David some comfort and a way of escape by sending another well-trusted counselor, Hushai to his side, a man whom David entrusted to spy on the rebellion and neutralize Ahithophel's evil counsel, creating confusion in Absalom's mind. In the meantime, David's mercurial mind was roiled with despair, sick at heart from the betrayal of his son as well as his once trusted counselor. Psalm 55 shows us how a righteous man deals with treachery and betrayal. When we are faced with horrendous problems such as betrayal, escape is never an option. As David surveyed the situation of the enemy camp, he became aware of their division and conflict, embroiled in violence, unrest and destruction, all resulting from corrosive sin. David had considered Ahithophel an intimate friend and a spiritual brother, experiencing the betrayal as a painful twist of the knife. Ahithophel, whose granddaughter was Bath-Sheba, probably was bitter about the dishonor brought to his family, possibly feigned friendship and loyalty until he had the opportunity to get even. David realized that a treachery of this magnitude would meet the same fate as the rebellion of Korah and Dathan. Ahithophel, having opened himself up to evil, ultimately hanged himself while Absalom, hanging by his hair in a tree, was speared by Joab. David called upon God repeatedly at regular intervals, and God
transcript:
Perhaps the worst thing to happen to us as members of God's church is when someone in the church betrays us. Now what I am talking about, for instance, some people in our former church association have treated us very badly since we left. They will not talk to us. They think we are heretics, and even those that came out with us have gone into other groups and they think we are heretics for some other reason and they do not like us. They will not meet with us. They will not come to our churches. They do not want us to go to theirs. They do not want their kids dating our kids. You know, that sort of thing. It happens.
There are certain groups out there who believe that they are the one true church and all the rest of us are Laodiceans or worse, and they do not want to have anything to do with us. They will tell their people, do not have contact with them. And them, the people that they are not supposed to have contact with, may be family members who are not with that particular group.
So what do you do when you are faced with a situation where you have this antagonism with someone who was once a brother? How do you deal with that? What are you obliged to do as a Christian? What steps do you take as you go through this trial in trying to have a relationship with this person? Or maybe it is impossible. What do you do?
That is my question for today. How do you handle a situation like that before God? How do you handle it righteously?
Some people would say, "Well, you're supposed to turn the other cheek. Isn't that what Jesus said?" Well, sure, but that may not be a full solution. You might actually be drawn in deeper than just that. How do you handle that? Do you then fight back? Do you fight fire with fire? Do you accuse them of things? Obviously, we probably would not do that, although we might be tempted to do that because maybe you see the hypocrisy in what they are doing or whatnot.
But the question is, what is a Christian to do when a friend, a brother, maybe even a family member, turns coat and becomes your enemy? For wisdom on this subject, we are going to be spending the remainder of the time of this Bible study in Psalm 55 because Psalm 55 is a psalm of David where he goes through and talks about how he handled a situation like this.
If you want to look in your hymnal, this is page 45, "But as For Me, I'll Call on God." There is the answer right there. Page 45 in the hymnal is actually the last half of Psalm 55. The first half of Psalm 55 is found on page 46. For some reason, when they were putting the hymnal together, they got this particular psalm backwards. Page number 45 should actually be what is on 46. They are backwards. Page 46 are actually the verses before page 45.
We do not necessarily have to go to Psalm 55 immediately. I want to give you some background on it so that we understand what is going on because there is historical background to this, and the historical background is in the Bible, so we can go and look at it. It is widely accepted, as I have already mentioned, that David wrote Psalm 55, and he wrote it while he was in exile because of the rebellion of Absalom. So this puts us in the area of II Samuel 15-17.
Now if you remember anything about the rebellion of Absalom, you will know that David decided to flee. He fled over the River Jordan and went into Moab. He had to do something to fight Absalom's rebellion. Of course, David was the Lord's anointed, and he had to do something, but the setting of Psalm 55 is essentially that time when he is on the run. He has not gotten to where he is going to go to resolve the situation. He has not gathered his army around him. He and just a small number of people are fleeing out of Jerusalem and he goes away, he goes up the Mount of Olives. And he is looking back down on the city and he is already trying to figure out what he is going to do. He is looking back into the city (you will see this as we go through the psalm), and he is seeing what is in there, what is in the city, and he is trying to decide what he needs to do.
Let us go back to II Samuel 15 and just read a little bit about what is going on. We are going to read verses 10 through 12. This gives us the run up to Absalom's rebellion.
II Samuel 15:10-12 Then Absalom sent spies throughout all the tribes of Israel, saying, "As soon as you hear the sound of the trumpet, then you shall say, 'Absalom reigns in Hebron!'" And with Absalom went two hundred men from Jerusalem who were invited, and they went along innocently and did not know anything. Then Absalom sent for Ahithophel the Gilonite, David's counselor from his city—from Giloh—while he offered sacrifices. And the conspiracy grew strong, for the people with Absalom continually increased in number.
This Ahithophel the Gilonite is an important figure in all of this going on in the rebellion of Absalom. Ahithophel is a prodigy. He was known in Israel as being the wisest man around. Counsel of Ahithophel was thought to be like the counsel from God, and he had been David's counselor for a long time. And so when Absalom called for Ahithophel and Ahithophel joined the rebellion, this was seen as a severe blow to David's monarchy. Because now the best counselor in Israel, the wisest man around, was following Absalom and giving him counsel when he had given his counsel to David before.
Let us go on to verse 31.
II Samuel 15:31-34 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!" [This is asking a lot.] Now it happened when David had come to the top of the mountain, where he worshiped God—there was Hushai the Archite coming to meet him with his robe torn and dust on his head. David said to him, "If you go on with me, then you will become a burden to me. But if you return to the city and say to Absalom, 'I will be your servant, O king; as I was your father's servant, so I will now also be your servant,' then you may defeat the counsel of Ahithophel for me."
This is David's plan as the events start to unravel. David finds out that Ahithophel is with his son, and that is bad news. But as he is going on his way, he meets Hushai. Hushai is an old friend, and I have to emphasize old, he was an older man, and Hushai was a pretty smart fellow. Hushai though, more than being a smart fellow, was someone that David could really trust. I mean, look at how he appeared to him. He had dust on his head and robe torn, he was in mourning over what had happened to David. You know, this is like the end of the world to him, and David knew that Hushai was loyal to him and so he could trust him.
And so he decides that, I am trying to think of what David thought, "Well, Hushai is here, he's been sent by God. There is a reason for Hushai being here. I can use him. But I can't take him with me because I can't use right now a big entourage, and he's old and he's slow. He'd just slow us down, so I'm going to use him in a different way. And what I'm going to do is I'm going to send him back down the mountain into Jerusalem, and I want him to go and say that he'll be loyal to Absalom, that he'll be his servant."
And his job at this point was to say exactly the opposite that Ahithophel said. That if Ahithophel said, "Strike David now." then Hushai should I say, "No, wait till later." And that is actually what happened. But if he said, "Go to the north," Hushai should I say, "Go to the south." He is just trying to go there and confound Absalom by giving him opposite advice so that Absalom really has to think things through, slow him down, maybe make the wrong choice—which is what happened.
But that is the job that Hushai was sent to do. He was sent in to make things confused and chaotic within, if nothing else, Absalom's own mind, so that things would not run smoothly in Absalom's rule there in Jerusalem.
We know, as we read what goes on here in II Samuel, that this plan succeeds. Hushai does exactly what he was supposed to do and what Ahithophel said was very smart. He said, "Absalom, get all your men. Get on your horses, chase after David before he gets too far away, before he gathers all his men around him, before he can fortify himself, and defeat him as quickly as possible, and then it's all yours." And Hushai says, "No, wait a second, let's think this over a little bit. Maybe you shouldn't, maybe you should gather your strength first. Make sure that you have all your supply lines ready to go. You know, everything has to be in place because you know that David, he's wily. He's fought many battles. He's not going to be tricked into battle this soon. He will find a way to evade."
I am putting words in Hushai's mouth, but this is essentially what he did. He said, we have got to do something other than what Ahithophel says, so let us do the opposite. And Absalom thinks about this and says, "Hmm, I think Hushai is right. David is a warrior. He's renowned for his soldiering. He has killed many men. You know, David killed his 10,000s, while Saul just his thousands. He's a mighty man of war. I better approach this cautiously."
And that is his downfall because David was allowed to get away, he was allowed to gather his troops, he was allowed to establish his battle plan. Joab came, the whole army came, Israel came, basically, to David and the rebellion was overthrown.
Let us go to II Samuel 17, a couple of pages over, and we are going to read just verse 23.
II Samuel 15:23 Now when Ahithophel saw that his counsel was not followed, he saddled his donkey, and arose and went home to his house, to his city. Then he put his household in order and hanged himself and died. And he was buried in his father's tomb.
Ahithophel, wise man, great counselor, knew his goose was cooked. When David came back, which he surely would, the conspirators would be killed and he was going to lose his life anyway, so he decided to take it himself.
So this is the end of the story. We know what happens, but we are missing something here in the telling of the story, and that is what was going through David's mind during all of this? He was the one that was having to face this. He was the one that had been deposed. He was the one who was God's anointed. And look at this terrible thing that has happened. How am I going to approach this? How am I going to answer this? What do I do? What is godly? What does God want me to do?
At the writing of the psalm as it opens in Psalm 55, none of this is known to David, that his plan with Hushai is going to work, that God would actually restore him to his throne. He figures that that is what God wanted him to do. He wanted him to rule all Israel. He had given him promises. But he still had to face the situation minute by minute, and he was still a man of great emotional highs and lows. You read the psalms, you know, he went from great despair on one hand to just kicking up his heels on the other. (Lost a wife that way, kicking up his heels too high.)
But David has to work through this, and as my dad said in the sermon today, he worked through this so that we can have an understanding. God put him through this trial so that it could be written down in this psalm, and in II Samuel, and we can have the benefit of the wisdom that he gained through his experience. So this psalm will show us how a righteous and godly man handles treachery and betrayal. Let us read the first eight verses of Psalm 55 so that we can see David's state of mind, his emotions as this trial begins.
Psalm 55:1-8 Give ear to my prayer, O God, and do not hide Yourself from my supplication. Attend to me, and hear me; I am restless in my complaint, and moan noisily, because of the voice of the enemy, because of the oppression of the wicked. For they bring down trouble upon me, and in wrath they hate me. My heart is severely pained within me, and the terrors of death have fallen upon me. Fearfulness and trembling have come upon me, and horror has overwhelmed me. And I said, "Oh, that I had wings like a dove! For then I would fly away and be at rest. Indeed, I would wander far off, and remain in the wilderness. Selah. I would hasten my escape from the windy storm and tempest."
Like I said, this is David's state of mind, the emotional turmoil that he is going through as he thinks about what is going on in this situation. What we see here is that he is completely distraught. He has been bowled over. This was the farthest thing from his mind that would happen, that one of his sons would overthrow him like this. And Absalom of all people, the one that he loved, the one that Israel loved, he was the heir, essentially. But then he decided to bump David out of the way before his time. So he felt blindsided. He felt deeply hurt.
And what we find out here is that it is not just that his son rebelled against him, but as we go on, we find out that it is Ahithophel's betrayal that really sticks the knife into his gut and twists. It seems like, as we find out in other places, that he did not have all that great of relationships with his children, but he had a wonderful relationship with Ahithophel, he thought. And here his best friend had gone to the other side.
Like I said, he was completely blindsided about this, and so he was hurt, he was emotionally like a rag doll. And he was fearful for his life. He describes this as "terrors of death [having] fallen upon [him]." So, he says here as we get into verse 6, all he wanted to do was get out of there. Remember that Southwest Airlines commercial? Want to get away? That is how David felt. He wanted to get away and he wanted to get away fast. He wanted to fly out of there. And he wanted to be at rest in some wilderness area where there was no one else around and all he had to do was worry about food and water. I mean, that was great for him. He was used to that. But he did not want to have anyone around, he did not want to have any problems. He just wanted to get out of there, hightail it into the country, and find a place where he could hunker down and work through this.
But he could not. That is not the way it works. You cannot run away from your problems. Your problems follow you around. If he had run out or flown out into the wilderness, Absalom would have come found him. He was not going to leave him out there. He had to face up to this problem that he had and solve it somehow. He did not know how. He was still going through all this emotional turmoil and he was confused of mind. He did not know what was going to come out of all this.
But he did figure out at some point he could not escape the problem. And that is one of the big lessons that we have to learn, that we cannot escape these problems once they come upon us. Escaping those problems just prolongs them. It is better to face them. It is better to figure them out and overcome them rather than just run away.
But you know, this is a typical reaction that people have. Most people when they are faced with the problem, the first thing they want to do is run from it. We would go back to Job in Job 3:3. He cursed the day he was born. "I wish I'd never come here. I wish I'd never been. I'm going through this terrible trial. I wish I could get away." But he could not. He had to face it. Jeremiah was the same way in Jeremiah 20:14. He says something very similar to what Job said, I wish I was never born. But that is just stupid thinking. Because you are born, you have been born. You are there. The problem has hit you. You have to face it.
So, even though it is a natural reaction to have that sort of a feeling that you want to get away, it really does not do much good because you are going to have to face the problem at some point and you might as well do it now.
Let us go on to verses 9 through 11. Because his emotions change a little bit here. He says,
Psalm 55:9-11 Destroy, O Lord, and divide their tongues, for I have seen violence and strife in the city. Day and night they go around it on its walls; iniquity and trouble are also in the midst of it. Destruction is in its midst; deceit and guile do not depart from its streets.
What he decides to do when he finally figures out that running away is no good, he decides, "OK, I'm going to shift the focus of my attention to them," to his betrayers, to those who had rebelled against him. So what we saw in verses 1 through 8 was the state of David. What we see in 9 through 11 is the state of his enemy's camp. What is going on inside Jerusalem? What he can see from the top of the mountain as he is looking back into the city and trying to get some balance to his emotional state. "OK, I've looked at myself and I see what a horrible wretch I am and how much I'd like to get away and how fearful I am and, and how this has just hit me upside the head, totally blindsided me. Now let's look to see how the other people are faring."
So he looks back into the city to see what they are up to. And what he sees when he looks at it objectively, is that the enemy camp, his enemies, are divided. They are divided against themselves. They are not in all that great shape either. They are going through different emotions, obviously, they are going through different things, but they are not in any better shape than David is. And so he starts listing some of these things that he sees. What he does see when he looks back in Jerusalem is that he sees that there is a lot of sin there. There is violence there. There is oppression there. There is division there. There is trouble in the enemy camp too. And it gave him some comfort. That they were not this big bad bear with all this power and might and the certainty of his destruction as he had thought. Because there were problems there that they needed to face up with.
I mean, look at what he says here. He says he has seen violence and strife in the city. When you think about it, they have chased David out. But David has a lot of supporters still in Jerusalem. There were a lot of people that loved him and wanted him to remain their king. They had not gone over to Absalom, so when he was looking back into the city, he was seeing civil war. One part of the city was fighting another part of the city, and Absalom and Ahithophel were having to deal with that. There was division there. "Day and night they go around it on its walls." What does that tell you? There is a lot of unrest. Guards are having to watch everything, day and night, because they have to keep the peace somehow, they have to keep those that are loyal to David down. They are uneasy.
Have you ever heard that "uneasy lies the head that wears the crown"? Well, he sees that. That there is stuff going on in Jerusalem that is causing them problems, and they are probably fearful for their lives. "Iniquity and trouble are also in the midst of it." This "iniquity" here can also be translated as crime. Maybe there were hooligans out there throwing Molotov cocktails into shop windows. I am just taking something modern, putting it back there anachronistically, but stuff was happening that they were having to deal with and it was causing them trouble. It says trouble here. Sorrow. There were people dying. "Destruction is in its midst; oppression and guile [deceit] do not depart from its streets."
So what he sees in looking back into Jerusalem, is that there are huge problems and huge sins going on there. He makes a judgment here, a righteous judgment about the state of the people under Absalom. And it gave him confidence because now he sees that the enemy is not as strong as he had first thought they were when he was all confused and troubled emotionally. But it also gives him comfort because he sees that they are showing, expressing, a lot of sin. And then in comparison to what he was doing, he comes out smelling like a rose.
Now obviously, David had his sins. But in this case, the sins, the weight of sins squarely fell on Absalom and then Ahithophel. They had overthrown the Lord's anointed. They had rebelled against the crowned and anointed king. And there were other things too. Remember one of the situations that came up was that Ahithophel told Absalom, "OK, if you want to make sure everybody knows that you've taken over, you go up on the rooftop and take David's concubines in the sight of all Israel." Sin. He committed fornication or adultery with David's wives. That is what the concubines were. They were just lesser wives, probably wives that he had made alliances with various heads of state or whatever, or important people in Israel, married their daughters.
So he saw that. He saw sin and oppression and deceit and all this crime and all this going on within Jerusalem, and he knew that it benefited him. One of the things that really benefited him was the fact that he knew God, and he knew that God punishes sin, that God is a God of justice, and that God had given him promises, like I said, that he would be king and his sons would rule after him. He was not dead yet, so this must not be something that God wanted to go on indefinitely, that He would turn this around. And so he knew that this iniquity would be punished. It gave him strength and his faith, and that was something that he could depend on.
Now there is a way to judge these things without going into sin on our side and being judgmental. But when the time comes where you have to weigh these type of things, you could make these judgments and acknowledge that there is sin. It is not saying that you are going to condemn them but that you can see what other people are doing and safely acknowledge that what they are doing is sin without getting judgmental. So what he was doing was just fine. You can judge things by their fruits. You can judge things properly by what what you see. We just have to make sure that we do not take that a step too far and condemn them out of hand.
Let us go on. We are going to read verses 12 to 14, and this is where David really begins to narrow it down to Ahithophel rather than Absalom. Verse 12. You could say that this section, 12 to 14, is David's description of his Judas, his betrayer.
Psalm 55:12-14 For it is not an enemy who reproaches me, then I could bear it. Nor is it one who hates me who has magnified [exalted] himself against me; then I could hide from him. But it was you [makes it personal], a man my equal, my companion and my acquaintance. We took sweet counsel together, and walked to the house of God in the throng.
He wants us to know just how close this man was to him and how much a friend and brother he considered him, and why it hurts so much, as we saw in verses 1 through 8. David's anguish, his emotional state, his heartfelt trouble, was all the greater because his primary enemy was one he had considered to be an intimate friend. A companion, a counselor whom he took advice from. And especially as we get to verse 14, a spiritual brother. Like I said before, it was like a twist of the knife, that this particular person was the one who had betrayed him. This is what really hurt.
Notice some of the words that he uses here. It says here that it was "you, a man my equal." In Hebrew, this phrase essentially means of the same rank. He felt that Ahithophel was just like him. He was a king, and he was one of the leading men of Israel and he felt that Ahithophel was equal to him, of the same rank.
"My companion and my acquaintance." We think of acquaintance in terms of somebody you might have met once or twice on the street, you do not know them very well. But that is not what this Hebrew word means. I used the word earlier, this is an intimate friend. It is someone that he had over for wine and cheese and for dinner and had over at his house to stay. It was someone who he had gone on vacations with, if you know what I mean. It is someone that he felt he knew inside and out because they had spent so much time together. And when David had a problem, whether it was a problem in the family or an affair of state that he had to make a decision on, the first person he thought of calling was Ahithophel. They took a sweet counsel together. It was enjoyable to David to have Ahithophel over to talk shop. To banter over what was going on, to make decisions together.
What we see here is that they consulted each other frequently on whatever the situation happened to be. You could say they fellowshipped together quite often and it draws it into a spiritual kind of a friendship here, when they "walked to the house of God in the throng." In our parlance, we would say they went to church together. When the religious festivals came around they went with each other's families. They enjoyed each other. They went out to the same restaurants. They did all that stuff together. But this is the guy who betrayed him. And that is why it was so bad.
Now, let us make this even worse for David. We will be able to see why it was such an emotional thing for him. Let us go back to II Samuel again, this time in chapter 11. And if you know your chapters, this is David and Bathsheba, but I just want to pick out verses 2 and 3.
II Samuel 11:2-3 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?"
David is out there in the palace. It is a nice evening. He goes out to just take a little walk before bed and woo-hoo! there she is taking a bath on her roof. You know, the king's house is obviously at the top of the hill and her house is down a few and he can see her, he does not need binoculars to know what is going on. And he says, "Hey, who owns that house down there? Who is that?" And they go up there and say, "Oh yeah, that's Bathsheba. Isn't she the daughter of Eliam, the wife of Uriah the Hittite? You remember Uriah, one of your best soldiers." "Oh yeah, yeah. Wow, that's his wife? Call her up here."
Let us then go to chapter 23 and get a look at David's mighty men.
II Samuel 23:34 Eliphelet the son of Ahasbai, the son of the Maachathite, Eliam the son of Ahithophel the Gilonite.
Whoa, now we are getting some juicy soap opera stuff. Bathsheba was the daughter of Eliam and Eliam was the son of Ahithophel. Hmm, interesting, is it not? I gave a sermonette about this many years ago called "Israelite Soap Opera," and that is exactly what this is. Because now we find out that Bathsheba, the wife of David, is the granddaughter of Ahithophel.
Let us just make some suppositions here. This happened a while back, this thing with David and Bathsheba. What does David do? He commits adultery with Ahithophel's granddaughter! His sweet little granddaughter. And then he kills his son-in-law, Uriah the Hittite, one of David's mighty men, by trickery. "Hey, Joe, put him in the front of the battle. Make sure he dies, okay?" This is Ahithophel's beloved son-in-law.
Now, Ahithophel is obviously devastated. Eliam's devastated. I do not know if Bathsheba is devastated. Now she is queen! I do not know how devious she was. But you know, people in these societies back then had a certain honor about their family. And I am just making a supposition here, but perhaps Ahithophel took this pretty hard. That David had put a big black mark on their family. First, by dishonoring his granddaughter then killing Uriah the Hittite. And he was not going to take this lying down. Could this, what happened in II Samuel 11, been the beginning of Ahithophel's betrayal? The beginning, the very beginning?
We do not hear much about Ahithophel before this time. Maybe Ahithophel decides that the best way to do the most damage to David is to get right by his side. You know the saying about holding your enemies closely? Well, maybe that is what he did. Maybe he decided that he was going to play David until the time came when he could get him back. And when Absalom, his beautiful son with the long hair that he only cut once a year, when he decided to betray his own father and take the throne, that is when Ahithophel decided was the best time and the best way to get back at David. I am just supposing; it is a possibility.
But perhaps what happened here is that when David began to think about all of this, casting back in his mind through the years of what had gone on, he figured it out. This guy had been playing him for years. His friendship was feigned, totally feigned. He did not like David at all, maybe he gave good counsel, but it was not for David's sake. He was trying to set him up. He was trying to figure out a way that he could do the most damage to David—and that is why it hurt so much. He had been duped for years. And this person that he considered such an intimate friend had never truly reciprocated it. He had been false all along.
You know why I think this is correct? Look at the next verse.
Psalm 55:15 Let death seize them; let them go down alive into hell [he says], for wickedness is in their dwellings and among them.
Here, David is certain after what he has just figured out that this is what is going to happen. That they are going to be judged very harshly for what they have done, especially Ahithophel. Betrayals like this demand reactions like this. Betrayals like this demand punishment like this. It was not his to give out. God would do that. But He could see now, finally, in looking at all of this over all this time, that he was definitely in the right, and this was not going to work out very well for them. That if he just held on and did what God wanted him to do, that this would work out in his favor.
Now this is very interesting what he says here in verse 15. He says, "Let death seize them." In the English, this sounds like it is a plea. God, please let death seize them! That is not what he said. This is very positive in Hebrew. It says, desolation will seize them. And the next one, "let them go down alive into hell." It is more like they will go down alive in hell or the pit. He is actually looking back here at the incident in the wilderness with Korah. Remember what happened with Korah and Dathan and Abiram? They rebelled against Moses. Moses was the Lord's anointed. And when it all came out, the earth opened up and swallowed Dathan and Korah and Abiram, and they went down alive into a big pit. And they died, them and their families.
And so this is what he is saying. The same thing that happened in the time of Moses when somebody rebelled against the Lord's anointed is going to happen now to these people because they have rebelled against the Lord's anointed. They are going to go down into the pit. They are going to die. And what happened? Absalom got caught by his pretty hair and Joab killed him. And we already saw what happened with Ahithophel. He hanged himself, he was his own pit of destruction.
But David was sure of it now. That this was the only justice for such a betrayal. And then he says, "For wickedness is in their dwellings and among them," which gives you the sense that he is now saying that this spirit has engulfed that whole family. And in Hebrew, as the NIV shows it, is even more picturesque. The NIV says, "Evil finds lodging among them." As if evil is walking down the street and has to find a place to stay for the night. Whose door does it knock on? Ahithophel's. And Ahithophel opens it up wide and says, "Come on in." That is the word picture that is here, that he opened himself up to evil and he let it live in him.
From verse 16 on, we get to David's resolution about what he is going to do. Let us get his plan of action here in verses 16 through 19. He said,
Psalm 55:16-18 As for me [now that he understood what is going on here, he has it in a much broader picture], I will call upon God, and the Lord shall save me. Evening and morning and at noon I will pray and cry aloud, and He shall hear my voice. He has redeemed my soul in peace. . .
Notice that, how different it is from the first eight verses, now that he has figured it out. He says, "He has redeemed my soul." He has brought back my life "in peace from the battle which was against me." Notice here, this is in the past tense. He is saying the battle is done, it is over now. In real life it was still to come, I mean the real physical battle. But now for him the battle was in the past. He had figured this out and he could go forward in faith.
Psalm 55:18-19 He has redeemed my soul in peace from the battle which was against me, for there were many against me. God will hear, and afflict them, even He who abides from of old. Because they do not change, therefore they do not fear God.
That is his conclusion.
His plan of action here is that he would call on God repeatedly. He decided here that he would not respond in kind to Ahithophel, he would not respond in kind to Absalom. That he would just call on God to make the appropriate response. So he would make it a regimen, like in the Parable of the Persistent Widow in Luke 18. That he would bring this before God at regular intervals. He says three times a day, when he prayed, evening and morning and at noon. And he would pester God about this. You can look at it that way. He would bug God about this. Let us just say he would constantly bring it to His attention so it never got far from His mind that David was here having this trouble and he needed God to act.
Now, he was not doing this to make God upset. He was doing this because he wanted to show God not only that he had a problem—God knew he had a problem—but that he himself had made a determination about this and that he was determined to see this through, his plan of action, and that he had faith in God that God would make the right decision at the right time and that he was going to just leave it there with Him. But he wanted to make sure that God understood his heart at regular intervals, that it had not changed and that he is going to continue to wait on God for an answer. And he is very confident that God would eventually answer, however long it would be, because he was in the right. He had made that determination that he had not done anything wrong. He had not brought this on because of his own sin, and so he would therefore wait for God to judge and bring this whole situation to a resolution.
And how does David know this, that he is in the right? Because he looks back and he sees, as he says here, they do not change. They are still the same old rotten people that they have been for however long this trial has taken place and all the lead up to it, that I see no repentance. They have not sent anybody out here to say they are sorry, come on back, sit on the throne, we have given you a new cushion. They have done nothing like that. They are still determined to kick him off the throne and to kill him. And so, until that time if there was any kind of change, he would think that they are still of the same mind. And they were.
And the other part is that they do not change because they do not fear God. And he sees that they do not fear God. If they did fear God, they would change. But there was no fear of God there. Instead, what did he see? Evil living in their house. So he says, the evidence is there, clearly, that they are in the wrong and they are not changing. Obviously they do not fear God, and so God is going to destroy them ultimately. So all he needed to do was be patient.
For some reason at this point, David has to describe his enemy again. Maybe he is trying to give us, as the reader, more evidence that he was right about them. So he says verse 20,
Psalm 55:20-21 He has put forth his hands against those that were at peace with him; he has broken his covenant. The words of his mouth were smoother than butter, but war was in his heart; his words were softer than oil, yet they were drawn swords.
What he does here is he describes Ahithophel a little bit more fully, especially his deceit and his hypocrisy, and shows just how slimy this guy is. Oily is better, because his words were like butter or softer than oil But he sees here as he reviews what has gone on in his past, and he thinks about the various times that he had asked Ahithophel for counsel, now he has new eyes and he looks at those memories and he can see that the guy was playing him. That if he had only been a little bit more aware of what was going on, he would have known.
But what he sees here and looking back on what Ahithophel had recommended to him and counseled him to do, is that he had been setting Absalom up all along. Forcing David into the corner so that they could draw their swords and kill him. But he did it all through these words, these hypocritical words that sounded so good to David but was actually undermining him.
And he says here verse 20 that "he put forth his hands against those who were at peace with him." He is saying there was no reason for this. I had made my peace with him. He loved him. He was his intimate friend. He had no hard feelings whatsoever against Ahithophel. He thought he was a great guy. He probably invited him over for beer every night. It was that kind of a friendship. "Come on over, let's play cornhole or whatever." You know, it was just one of those things that he felt, that this was a guy that he could relax with. He was at total peace with him. And he says here that, "he has broken his covenant." He has "profaned" is actually the word that is in there. Not only had this man profaned his covenant with God, because part of the covenant is being righteous, doing right things, but he had broken his covenant as a friend. And David knew that God's attitude toward covenant breakers was pretty harsh. That He was not going to stand for anyone breaking a covenant to this level. So it just made David all the more certain that God was going to work this out in his favor.
Let us go down to verses 22 and 23. He gives us some advice as he gets to the end of this. It turns from talking about his own situation to talking directly to the reader, us. So he says,
Psalm 55:22-23 Cast your burden on the Lord, and He will sustain you; He shall never permit the righteous to be moved. [Then he talks to God.] But you, O God, shall bring them down to the pit of destruction; bloodthirsty and deceitful men shall not live out half their days; but I will trust in You.
Now that last line; I do not know why they have done this, but they left out some words that really help us pull the whole thing together. It really should read, "But as for me, I will trust in You." Because remember he had said earlier, "As for me, I will call upon God." This kind of puts the ending and the capstone on it, but as for me, I will trust in You.
So we have his advice to us about how to face these these situations. His advice is to let God handle things. For nothing else, He is the one that is directing your life anyway. And if you go in there and try to do stuff, to get back, to have vengeance on these kinds of people, or you want to punish them somehow, you are just getting in the way of what God is working out. So it is better to cast your burden on the Lord. Let Him do it. Because it says here, "He shall sustain you." He will keep you going. He will build you up. He will keep you alive and moving in the right direction. But if you decide to take these matters into your own hands, you are just going to make things worse. You are going to cause some problems and it is just going to make the whole trial that much worse.
We have to understand in faith that He set us on this path. He allowed this to happen. He brought this into our lives and if we trust in that, we will also know that He is going to give us everything that we need to get to the end of that path, to get to the end of the trial, to solve it. So all we need to do here is to remain faithful. Follow His ways and it says here He will not let us be overthrown. "He shall never permit the righteous to be moved." That is really not a good translation. It should, as I used the word, "overthrown" is a better translation. Another one might be fall, or removed.
Remember, he was removed from his throne and so he is thinking of it in terms of that. But in terms of us, he is saying that if God has set us on this path toward the Kingdom of God, He is going to work His utmost to make sure that we make it. He is not going to let us be overthrown because He wants us in His Kingdom. And so if you cast your burden on Him and you have faith in Him to see it through and to give you the answers and to do what needs to be done, then that is good. You can continue on your way because He is going to make sure that you get there.
Let us go to I Corinthians 10, verse 13.
I Corinthians 10:13 No temptation has overtaken you except such as is common to man; but God is faithful, who will not allow you to be tempted beyond what you are able, but with the temptation will also make the way of escape, that you may be able to bear it.
If you cast your burden on Him, if you are patient; that is a big one, if you are patient. Because you have got to wait for Him to act and sometimes He does not act in the time that we think He is going to act or whether we expect Him to act. And so we have to be patient and think about things in accordance to His timing. But it says here very positively He will also make the way of escape. He will get you out of it so that you can bear it.
Now, one little caveat here. Just because God makes a way of escape does not mean that it is going to be easy. God makes ways of escape that require faith. It is going to be something where you are going to have to take that proverbial leap. Now, if you do not take the proverbial leap and you take a way of escape that is easy, you know what you are setting yourself up for? Another trial. Because you did not pass this one, you did not pass this test to the level that He expected of you. And so something similar will come up in the future that you are going to have to face and pass to grow. Because God does not give us easy trials. Easy trials is an oxymoron. And if it becomes too easy, then that means we are probably taking the escape that is not faith-producing. We are probably actually making the way of escape ourselves and it is not the one God set out for us. So we have to be careful that when we take the way of escape, that it is God's way of escape and not our own.
But what I said about being patient, James says,
James 1:2-4 My brethren, count it all joy when you fall into various trials, knowing that the testing of your faith produces patience. But let patience have its perfect work, that you may be perfect and complete, lacking nothing.
Then he goes on to say, if you do not have have the wisdom that you need to get through this trial, ask and God will give it to you.
But that patience is very important, faith and patience and the wisdom to see the escape route when God opens it up.
Since we are in the New Testament here, let us basically sum this up, what David taught us, and let us go back to the book of Romans, chapter 12. Maybe Paul was thinking of this, I do not know. Let us just read verses 17 through 21. This kind of gives a summary of David's advice.
Romans 12:17-21 Repay no one evil for evil. Have regard for good things in the sight of all men. If it is possible, as much as depends on you, live peaceably with all men. Beloved, do not avenge yourselves, but rather give place to wrath; for it is written, "Vengeance is Mine, I will repay," says the Lord. Therefore "If your enemy is hungry, feed him; if he is thirsty, give him a drink; for in so doing you will heap coals of fire on his head." Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good.
That is the kind of attitude we have to have when we face a trial like this, where we are betrayed by a brother. Being blindsided by the betrayal of a friend or a brother in the church is one of the hardest experiences that we will ever have to go through. Even Jesus had to endure betrayal from Judas Iscariot. It was one of the last things He had to endure. And what did He say? "What you have to do, do quickly."
So the way to overcome this very terrible trial is to place all your trust in God. Remind Him through prayer that this is your mindset and that you are going to wait patiently for Him. And then just know that justice will prevail. Be patient. God will act in His time. You may lose a friend—and you probably will lose a friend. But you will, on the other hand, gain a lot of wisdom—and eternal life.
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