Mediator of Truth

Let me give you a bit of context here.

Absalom, one of David's sons had actually, he's talking about giving justice to people in the scripture, but actually just a few years earlier, he had actually killed one of his half brothers.

And you can read the account of why he killed his half-brother.

I'm not going to go into the details.

Some of you would read the account and feel like he was justified in doing so.

But he killed his half-brother.

And rather than staying and receiving justice for his actions, he actually ran away and hid in Gesher.

And he hid there for three years until finally, finally, Joab, the commander of the army, talks to David and the prophet Nathan, and they begin to try and convince them to let him come back to Jerusalem.

So that's the context.

That's the context.

He's been living somewhere else, in hiding, afraid of the murder that he has committed.

And then when he's allowed to come back, the very first thing he does is not be punished, by the way, but he comes back and he begins to stand at the gate and It begins to interact with everybody who comes to the king, right? And instead of saying, the king was so gracious to me, I killed my brother and yet he's let me come back.

Instead, he begins to start stirring in the hearts of the men who visited, oh, everything, your concerns, they are good and right.

Unfortunately, the king won't listen.

But if only I was the king, then I would make sure I would listen to you day and night.

And he says, as he did this, the result was he stole the hearts of the men of Israel.

And his intention was proven very quickly a few verses later, where he lies to his father, the king, and says, I'm gonna go, I just wanna go fulfill my vow to worship the Lord.

But really at the same time, he's organizing a secret coronation for himself that he would be proclaimed king in Israel.

In other words, all the groundwork he'd been doing in the hearts of men at the gates, it was now time for the fruition of that plan.