II Samuel 18:32 And the king said unto Cushi, Is the young man Absalom safe?
Have you ever won a great victory in battle and then lost the war. I’m not talking about a literal, physical, violent encounter. I just mean sometimes you have some goal in mind and maybe you win some small victory in a battle tactically, but strategically in the big picture you lose the war. That is exactly what happened with King David as his son, Absalom, was leading a rebellion against him.
Let me start by saying that it is a fable that your personal life and your public life are two separate things. One will always affect the other. This very public civil war between Absalom and his father David was the result of a very private war between Absalom and his father David. Ironically, Absalom’s name means “father is peace,” but his life was anything but that.
When you begin reading II Samuel 18, you find David repeatedly asking, “Is the young man Absalom safe?” When the answer was given, “Your enemies have been defeated and Absalom is dead,” instead of being grateful in victory, David wept in defeat. II Samuel 19:2 says, “And the victory that day was turned into mourning unto all the people.”
Now David did a lot of things right, but he had sinned and God was judging him. He took it meekly in these days when Absalom was coming against him, but there is a lesson we can learn from the bad actions of this great man. We should learn that the sooner you fight the battle, the more likely you are to win the war. You don’t want to win a battle with your kids but lose the war. So fight the battle early and win the war.
Here David won this great victory nationally, but lost the war when it came to his own son. There are some stages here. If you look at the very first mention of Absalom’s name, it is in II Samuel 3:3 when the Bible is naming how David is coming to power and how his family is growing. His six sons are mentioned here, and all of them had different mothers.
Now none of us can take back our past and God wants to take you from where you are right now to where you need to be, but we need to remember that the first step to winning a war is at the very beginning. It doesn’t start with you and your child, but with you and your spouse. David had a confusing relationship as a husband and a chaotic relationship as a father. There were six different mothers for these six different sons. So, start early by doing right in your marriage. Win the war.
The next mention of Absalom is in II Samuel 13 where Absalom is furious against his brother Amnon and murders him because Amnon has defiled their sister Tamar. What happened there was a father who was passive and non-responsive. The Bible says that David’s response to the sin of Amnon was that he was very wroth, but it says that Absalom hated Amnon.
So, David was angry but did nothing, and Absalom nursed a grudge for two years, not just against Amnon but against his father, David. Instead of responding one way or the other to Absalom, David just ignored him. He was a passive father.
What ends up happening is that because Absalom cannot get his dad’s attention in a personal way, he gets his attention in a national way by leading a giant rebellion. The rebellion here was not really a rebellion of Israel against their king, but of a son against his father. And it ended tragically.
If your children are older than you would wish, God can give you grace for where you are right now, but wherever you are, your kids are younger now than they will be tomorrow and there is more hope today than there will be next week. So I hope you win the battle today and realize that the battle today is part of a larger campaign.
You are not warring against your kids. You are fighting for your kids and against the enemy of their souls. Both children and problems get bigger with age and the sooner we tackle these things, the sooner we nourish, train, and pay attention to our children, the better things will go.