Hey everybody. Welcome back to another edition of the Daily Bible Podcast. Hello. Hello. It is Saturday and we are down at the men's conference. We, we thought about doing. This live from the men's conference, and then we just thought, we thought better. Nobody's gonna really wanna watch this live because it's the same thing that you hear on the audio, except just you and me talking. And it's slower because at least with the podcast, you can speed us up. I don't like how slow you guys talk. Let me just double time this and I can have it done in 10 minutes in real time. You can't do that, sadly. Not yet. I'd be curious to know. How many people listen to us on double speed? Triple speed. Triple speed would be impressive because I think we talk fast as it is. I triple speed us. You triple speed us. Yeah. Okay. I do it for quality control. I wanna know what the podcast sounds like and make sure nothing sounds askew, making sure you're not preaching heresy. So I'll listen to us pretty regularly, although not every day. I'll find a time to listen to it, and I'll listen back at three, three and a half, sometimes four if you're taking a long time. I don't think I'm the only one. Yeah that's fine. Yeah. Yeah. One speed is hard. Especially with some of the podcasts out there. So I wonder who out there listens to us on on double speed, the challenge with that. Is that you're training yourself to hear faster, right? To listen faster. And I wonder I think it does, it has carry over to real life where you become intolerant of slow speakers and that's not helpful in a church setting because there's lots of different speeds. Or the person that has to think between their statements that pauses. And you can see the wheels turning as they're trying to come up with the next thing that they're trying to say. And you're like, can come on. What? Come on. What is what? It takes so much restraint for me not to jump in. I've practiced this for years where I don't jump in the middle of someone's thinking. But I do. I will seed your point. That is a challenge. And here's something funny. I edit our podcast every time we do it, and I cut out. The long silences. Did you know that? I did not. I cut that. That doesn't surprise me. I cut out the long silences. Who needs that? Nobody needs that. And if they want it, they can pause. You can add your own long silences if you want them. But I cut them out when they're longer than one second. I'll remove them. So you just cut that part out? I did. Okay. I did alright. You wasted my three seconds. But for them, didn't matter. It's an act of love. Act of love. Is that what that is? I guess I save us like four seconds every episode. For sure. Good. Maybe even somewhere. Sometimes it's to 10 seconds. So if they've listened to all of our episodes ever, then they've probably saved like four minutes in their life. Maybe. You're welcome. Yeah. I don't do it for the accolades, but you can send a thank you card anytime to yeah. Pastor Rod Gomez, compass Bible Church 2 9 1 South Preston Road. There you go. Hey, we have an email. Do we wanna hit the email today or do we wanna hit it tomorrow? You brought it up now. We can do it tomorrow. Alright, then we're gonna hit it today. Okay. It's a significant one. I would've done less googly if I'd known. Okay. We're only three minutes into the googly. Only. We'll see how it, we could save. We'll see how long is no. Let's do it now. Okay. We had an email written in on the subject of forgiveness and it's a two part, a two part question. Really. The first part had to do with the scenario the scenario being the building off of what happened with Carmelo Anthony and Austin Metcalf not long ago now, here in Frisco, nearby where we are. And this is a difficult one. She asked the question that the writer does and says, Hey let's suppose that Carmelo is truly repentant for what he has done. And he wants to seek forgiveness. Obviously, Austin Metcalf, the man he murdered, is not here to give him forgiveness for stabbing him. So he asks Austin's family to forgive him for stabbing and killing Austin. Is the forgiveness for that act theirs to give, or would the forgiveness come from God on Austin's behalf? And she says, I hope that makes sense. Because she's looking at Excel spreadsheets all day. No, it does make sense. It's a great question. What about the Astros part? Do you wanna put that in there too? Nope. Okay. The Astros are not ahead of the Rangers anymore, so she doesn't want me to put anything about that in there. Oh. 'cause that would not be good for, the Astros fan in her heart. Yeah. Anyways, this is a tough question. Here's what I'll say, and I mentioned this the other day with regards to forgiveness and whether or not when Jesus tells the disciples, when you forgive sins, they're forgiven in heaven. And when you withhold forgiveness, they're withheld. He's not giving them the power to forgive sins on behalf of God. In other words, we can't, if. If your kid punches another kid in the face, you can't go to your kid and say he forgives you. In other words, you can't absolve your own child of the offense against another person's child, let alone can we absolve any one of their offense against God. So even when the offense is against, I. Is against us in this scenario. Let's say, and this would've been great had it been the case, but let's say Austin had survived this attack. Even if at that point Carmelo Repentant had gone to Austin and said, Austin, please forgive me for what I did to you. Even if in that moment Austin was willing to forgive Carmelo. It still would not have absolved Carmelo before the Lord. So there is a horizontal transaction of forgiveness and there is a vertical transaction of forgiveness that needs to be considered here. So in this case, Carmelo could seek forgiveness from Austin's parents, and I think rightly because he did sin against. Austin's parents by taking away their child from them, by by murdering their child. And so to go to Austin's parents and say, will you forgive me? They're, he's not in, in that sense, asking them to forgive on Austin's behalf because they can't do that. But he is asking them rightly to forgive the offense against them, which is that he took their child away from them. They can forgive. Forgive Carmelo for that, should that ever happen, but again, even in that scenario, Carmelo's sin against God is not absolved. There's the vertical component and the horizontal component. Horizontally. We can forgive other people, but they need to do business with God when it comes to their offense against God. And that is in keeping with what we've been reading about in our daily Bible reading with David. When David sinned against Bathsheba and Uriah and everybody else involved in that, then yeah, David could go to them, not Uriah obviously, but the others and seek their forgiveness for the sin that he had committed against them. But David's correct in Psalm 51 when he says against you and you only have I sinned, and he's saying that about God. So he knew that. Ultimately the rec the absolution that he needed was not a man granted absolution, but a God granted absolution. So he needed forgiveness from God. And that's true here. God can't lemme rephrase that. Car Austin's parents cannot forgive Carmelo on behalf of God. They're not in that position. Carmelo has to be right before God between him and God and Him and God alone. And so they can forgive the offense against them horizontally, but they can't forgive his offense against. God. Any thoughts on that first part Pier? Yeah, the only thing I would offer to accentuate that I agree with all that, that you just mentioned, and I would say on top of that, the Christian's position has to be one of forgiveness. This is one that's really hard. Jesus talks about this. If we've been forgiven much, we also have to be for willing to forgive as much and perhaps even more. Here's the thing, we're never gonna sin. No one's ever gonna sin against us more than we sin against God. And therefore God expects us to forgive others. I know that you're asking this about their forgiveness of him, but on our side, if someone were to come to us and say, I asked for your forgiveness about this and that Peter says, should I do it as many as seven times? And Jesus says, Nope. A lot more than that. Basically multiply that by infinity. That's how many times we. That I want you to forgive people that ask for your forgiveness. Now, here's my re here's my question for you. PPJ. If someone doesn't ask for forgiveness, do I still have to forgive them? And therein on the part of the person that's been offended, there's still a horizontal and vertical component. Your thirst for vengeance has to be rolled over to God. So in that sense, there is a release, if we want to think about it that way, rather than the idea of full forgiveness where you are releasing your right to demand. And exact your definition of justice in this sit situation, you're gonna roll that over to God and trust. When God says vengeance, his mind declares the Lord. You're trusting him to execute justice in that. And so in that sense, you are freed from the bitterness and the anger and the the cloud that otherwise this would hold over your heart. But there are offenses that are gonna be done against you wherein that horizontal relationship may never be reconciled. If that person doesn't come and seek forgiveness in contrition and ask for that there may be situations where that earthly relationship is never going to be reconciled. There, there's not gonna be a point where the two of you are going to be on board with each other and able to sit next to each other at church again and have a meal together. There, there may be those circumstances and granted, we pray and hope and trust that within the church, those are few and far between because in the church, to your point, pastor out our offense is never gonna be as great as the offense of God against our own sins. So we need to be ready to forgive one another. But sometimes when somebody doesn't seek our forgiveness, that relationship earthly. Speaking is going to come to an end. But still in those moments, we need to be able to release and to surrender our thirst for vengeance and justice to the Lord trusting that he's gonna met out justice according to his perfect plan. Yeah. One of the ways I heard that heard about, that talked about was there's attitudinal forgiveness. The forgiveness where you have the attitude toward a person that says I'm willing to forgive you. I've released you to use your words, and then there's transacted forgiveness. Where forgiveness actually is exchanged between both parties, the offended and the offender. So attitudinal forgiveness demanded of the Christian transacted forgiveness only when both parties are willing to cooperate. Yeah. Yeah. The second part of the question, let's deal with that one tomorrow. Okay, how about that? Yes. So part two for this question, tune in tomorrow for that one. And then you also said Go Astros. Is that what I heard you say? I didn't, because the Rangers are actually just behind the Seattle Mariners in second place in the division and the Astros. I can't see them anymore. They're in the rear view mirror somewhere, so she doesn't want me to talk about that, okay. We won't, anyways go Rangers. Hey, let's get to our passage for the day, second Samuel 1617. Go Dr. Teen. Second Samuel 16 through 18. We're doing in chapter 16 with the continued flight of David. So David remember is running and he's running from Absalom chapter 16. Here we find Zeba. Now we're gonna have to flash back on who Zeba is. Zeba is the one that was the servant of Mephibosheth. He was a part of Saul's household servants. And David had been me, Mephibosheth and had installed Mephibosheth as essentially for lack of a better way of looking at it, part of his own family, given him a seat at the royal table given him all the possessions of land that were entitled to his father's household and told Zeba has Zeba. You serve Mephibosheth, and so we've got a unique situation here. That's difficult for us because we're not exactly sure who to trust here because Zeba is gonna come with a story that Mephibosheth is gonna have a different account of when Mephibosheth and David are reunited later on. So we have to say we're not exactly sure. Who's telling the truth here? Because Zeba says, Hey, Mephibosheth is staying behind because he thinks this is the moment that he's gonna get the throne back. And he despises you, David. And I'm here because I'm the one that's really, truly loyal to you. I side with Mephibosheth in this encounter because I think number one, Mephibosheth is lame. So he wouldn't have been able to get there without Zebra's help. And I think Zeba knows that. Number two. Absalom made a play to the throne. So it's not that like the throne was vacant and Mephibosheth could have been like, oh, we're gonna have elections now. I'll be the one to sit on the throne again. There's somebody on the throne still, and it's Absalom. And Absalom has the power and the strength right now. So for Mephibosheth to think like Zeba iss saying, Hey, I'm gonna get the throne back. That doesn't make any sense. And I just, I think zebra's a smarmy guy. So that's my read on the situation. But that's the first encounter. After that, then we get Shiia. Shiia is a guy, he he's a different difficult guy because he's gonna show up and he's gonna be cursing David as David is fleeing. I believe Shiia is a member of the tribe of Benjamin, which is Saul's tribe. And he's cursing David and throwing rocks at David, and they're saying, Hey, let's go kill him. And David says, no, because maybe God is the one who ordained this and and to be the case. And so he says, we're not gonna do this. And so there, there's Zeba and Shiia as his way on his way out of town. Meanwhile, the rest of the chapter flashes to Absalom entering town. So David's leaving, Absalom's entering, and when Absalom enters he does so and commits a great offense in that he takes all of David's concubines and goes up to the rooftop and spends time with them to keep it pg in a way that would've been defiling to David and his concubines there and flexes. And tries to make it look like, Hey I'm the king now look at me. And this is a power grab from him. Absalom does, wicked does evil here. David is running. It's still not a good situation. At chapter 16, I guess a couple notes on this. One of the things that you should notice is that a hit the Fell who was previously David's counselor, is the one behind Absalom's willingness to violate these gals. So that's important because you seem to get a sense of some of that. Betrayal and the hurt that David has in the Psalms. It could be that when David's talking about the betrayal of a specific person, he could be talking about Absalom, but he also could very well be talking about a heath fill who was David's counselor. He would've been one of the guys that is considered someone David could rely upon and give. Hard words and input to some of David's big decision. So that's an important person to keep in mind. And also I think it's interesting at minimum I don't know exactly what to do with it except to say that I think one of the things that's endearing about David is that he's entrusting himself to the Lord. Even as he's being cursed. He says Maybe God has told him to do this. In fact, he says it more strongly than that. God told him to curse me. This shimmy I guy. So I'm gonna let it happen. And perhaps he says, God will look down on me and hear what he's saying, and then he'll repay him. With, he'll repay me with good and he'll stop him at some point. Such a fascinating interplay because I'm not sure I would've done that, right? I would've said, dude, I'm the king. I'm still the king. Even if I'm walking away from the city you need to stop and have one of my guys go and cause him to stop. But he doesn't do that. I find that so fascinating. Again, for all that you can say evil about David. You can say so many good things. This heart is a posture of. I don't know, childlike trust. Lord, you'll have to take care of me. I'm not gonna do anything about this guy 'cause I'm gonna trust you to do something. Yeah we just talked about that with the idea of forgiveness right there. There's a measure of that with forgiveness. That's what we're doing when we're saying, Hey, we're gonna trust you, God, to, to deal with this in the way that you see fit. Yeah, that's great. Trust I hit the fell. Maybe you could say as a guy that lacked integrity, which might be something relevant to, to what's going on in the life of our men's ministry right now with the retreat that we're on. Just trying to draw connections there. Oh, in integrity? Yes. The theme, the, anyways, you can cut that part out. I'm gonna keep it. Alright, great. I rarely cut anything out. It's just awkward Hey, this didn't land. I was No, that's okay. I was trying to make a, I was wondering where you were going with it. I didn't realize you were setting me up to swing because, and especially with the a, a hit that fills words that he proved to be a man of. Not much into whatever I quit. Hey, chapter 17, speaking of a hit fell we're gonna see a hit fell. Give abso some advice. That was actually really good, wise, strategic advice. A hit fell, says it is time to strike while the iron is hot. He's running, he's going to be in a state of disarray. He's not gonna be expecting this. He's gonna be in a state of vulnerability. Go get him. Go kill him. And honestly y'all, if Absalom had done what a heel suggested right here, I think Absalom wins the day. And I think maybe even David dies in that situation. And yet God had ordained for Hai to be there and with no reason, honestly, because this was not only right to Absalom, it seemed right to the rest of the counselors in the room too. And yet Absalom because of God says let's hear from Hai. And in a hit the fells you can almost picture him in the background just. His Gabber is Flad. He's sitting there going I don't know what to do with this. Why are you consulting him? I'm the guy. Even David used to trust me. And who is this HAI guy that you're gonna ask about this? So Isha comes in and he says, no, don't do that. Here's what you need to do instead. David's gonna be ready for this attack. You need to go this way instead. And Absalom listens because why? Verse 14, the Lord had ordained to defeat the good counsel of a hit the fell so that the Lord might bring harm upon Absalom. And so God. Is the reason why all the questions, why would he consult Hoi? Why would he believe Hoi? Because of verse 14. God ordained that it would be that way. And so as a result of this, Hoi sends word to David warns. David says, Hey David, this is what you need to do because this is what's coming your way. I. In that way, God uses HAI to spare David's life and save him from a hitha fell's. Otherwise wise and shrewd counsel there a hitha fell is not gonna take this well. He he thinks, man, what more do I have to live for if my role has been undermined by this outsider? This guy Hai. So he goes home, puts his affairs in order, and ends his hi, his own life here. Chapter 17 is a. Is a bad chapter for Absalom on that front. One of the things that may stand out to you as odd is why a hit thetical would respond so dramatically to, to something that's seemingly small in its effect. It's like saying, okay there's a 25 cents offense here. Let me just take a $10 response. It doesn't seem to add up until you recognize that under the Old Testament mindset, the honor, shame culture is a driving force. It still is today. It's huge. Eastern mindset is honor and shame. You do certain things because of the honor that belongs to you and your family. You don't do other things because of the shame that could potentially, I. Ruin you. And so a hit the Fell's response only is understood in light of the timeframe that he lives in. The shame that would've come along from this situation would've been unbearable to the point where it might've been more honorable for him not to live than it would be for him to live and carry the shame of saying my, my wisdom was overcome. Another take on this is that he knew the end, and that's another possibility. He understood what this was gonna lead to, and so he's just expediting the process. They're going to lose if they do what? What who shy says. And so he says if that's the case, I'm gonna die anyway. When David comes back, he's gonna execute his opponents, his enemies. And so I'll just get to the process before they do it better than I better I do it than they do it. Yeah. Earlier in this, right before this we have another one of those situations where God allows and permits deception. It appears as part of his divine plan in order to accomplish the greater good. When the spies come or when the woman is hiding him as, and Jonathan and the men of Absalom come to the woman's house, she says, oh I don't know what you're talking about. They've gone over there and the reality is she knew exactly where they were. She was hiding them. So here's very much the Core 10 boom situation right here biblically for us, where she's hiding somebody that needs to be preserved, their life needs to be preserved and God, at least at this time, seems to ordain the deception in a way that is permissible in order for the greater good. All right, chapter 18. Chapter 18, under Joe Abs command. Here, David is gonna go out and lead the charge, and lead the battle against, this is weird to say, against Israel against Absalom, we should say. And Absalom's men are gonna suffer defeat. And in the process, Absalom is con of. Very vulnerable position where he is suspended by his neck between these tree branches. And some have suggested, maybe it was by his hair. Either way, he can't get down. He's caught in midair. Somebody tells job about this. Joe EB says why didn't you kill him? And the guy says, because David told us not to, which is true. David said, treat my son gently. And job says, we're not doing that. Takes three Javelins and. Ends his life with three spears. And then it says on top of that there were other men that gathered around and continued to attack the body, and it seems like potentially even abused the corpse afterwards as far as doing violence to him. Then they take him, they throw him in the middle of the road, they pile a bunch of rocks on him. So this is not an honorable end for Absalom, nor is it an honorable treatment of him after his death either. And following this, there's two runners that come back to tell David of the news and they think that it's gonna be met with good news and rejoicing from David. But David, all David can think about is the death of his son. And so he mourns over the death of Abso, he grieves over the death of Absalom, and we're gonna see that's gonna impact his relationship with Israel and specifically with Joe Ab in the coming chapters here. This is where Joab is something of a questionable character. There's times where he does good things and there's things that you admire and perhaps even say this is good. This is one of those times where I'm confused. I'm not sure. 'cause I do think he does the right thing both times. Killing Absalom was the right move. That's my hot take. And I could be wrong on that, but I think he did the right thing. He needed to do that for the sake of the unity of the people. Even though David didn't want that, David didn't know what was best for him. And so I think Job does something that's necessary. And I think job's also gonna do what's necessary in this upcoming chapter. But I think David is clouded because of his relationship to his son. And this is again. Part of the problem for David, he is not doing what he needs to do because of the people involved. And this goes back to what we were talking about either yesterday or the day before, that our allegiance has to be first and foremost to God. When Jesus says this in the New Testament, he says, your love for me ought to be like you hate your mother and father because your love for me is so great. Of course, he's not telling us to hate them. Scripture tells us to honor our mother and our father, but Jesus is making the point by hyperbole saying, we need to make sure that. In our allegiance, Jesus is always first place, practically speaking. That has a lot of impacts for how we live our lives. If we're wise enough to discern those things in our culture, especially in our, I don't know our culture where the family is the, it's a thing. It's a thing here. People do the thing people love putting their family first. They talk about work life balance, which I think is a good thing generally speaking, but sometimes families can idolize their family. Where their allegiance to their family is clearly greater and stronger than their allegiance to Christ. Now, that's not. Always the choice. But if there ever is a choice, let it be true for you that you're not choosing family over Jesus. Jesus must be first. And in fact, when you love Jesus most, you'll love your family best. That's a good line. That's that man. Put that on a shirt. We should, yeah. And then I also agree with everything that you just said. Not that one. Not that one. Yeah. Alright hey, lemme pray and then we will be done with this episode and move on to the next. God, we thank you for this day and we we want to love you most to be able to love others best and help us to do that and to figure out what that looks like for us and how to balance all of those obligations that we have. Lord, I know that's a hard thing. It's hard to figure out how do I love you most and love my spouse as you're calling me to love my spouse and my kids, and so forth and so on. This is something that we need wisdom. And that's why it's so good that if we do love you most, we're gonna spend a lot of time in your word. We're gonna spend a lot of time with the Bible, and you've given us some clear instructions and guidelines and helps and admonitions and encouragement, and you've given us your spirit to take these things and actually help us to live them out. And so it's not a, just. Strange out there. Call to, to love you without any guidelines as to what that looks like. You've given us your word to help express how we love you and what that should look like in our lives. So I pray that we would be people that love you well through the word and we pray this in Jesus name. Amen. Amen. Keep your bibles. Y'all in. Tune in again tomorrow for another edition of the Daily Bible Podcast. See ya. Bye.

Thanks for listening to another edition of the Daily Bible Podcast. This is a ministry of Compass Bible Church in north Texas. You can find out more information about ourChurch@compassntx.org. We would love for you to leave a review to rate to share this podcast on whatever platform you happen to be listening on, and we will catch you against tomorrow for another edition of the Daily Bible Podcast. Yeah. I would agree with everything that you said