2 Samuel 15:2-6 – Winning Hearts and Minds
The next thing Absalom does in verses 2-6 is to try and win the hearts and minds of the people. In v2 he makes sure he’s standing at the gate when anyone comes to the king to ask him to rule on a dispute. Absalom pretends to show an interest in them by asking where they’re from. Then he says: ‘your claims are good and right’. And he does that for every single person who comes! Of course, if he was really king, if he really had to make hard decisions, he would have had to say no to some people. But because he’s not in that position of responsibility, he can just say whatever he wants.
Beware if you hear people saying: ‘The church should be doing this, this and this’. Or: ‘If I was an elder, I’d do that’. Now maybe the church could be doing XYZ. But it’s very easy to say things like that when you don’t have to weigh up pros and cons, when you don’t have to take on board a range of legitimate views, or when you know that there may be many good options, and you have to choose between them. There are those who can be all talk. But they don’t ever take on responsibility. They’re quick to criticise, but slow to get involved. Talk is cheap. And we see that here with Absalom. He can talk all day about how much he would help people if he could. But he never actually helps anyway. Beware of people who only ever tell you what you want to hear.
It’s also the case that what Absalom says just isn’t true. He says in v3: ‘There is no man designated by the king to hear you’. People no doubt believed him, because he was the king’s son. But what have we just seen in the last chapter? We’ve seen a woman pretending to be in mourning, and coming and being allowed to speak to the king himself. Perhaps David wasn’t able to hear everyone himself. But we only have Absalom’s word to say that he hadn’t delegated others to listen to the cases he couldn’t. So Absalom’s strategy is to say: Your case is right, but there’s no-one to hear it. Then to passionately cry out: ‘Oh that I were judge in the land!’ He’s like a politician during an election campaign. It’s easy to promise the world when you’re not the governing party.
Question
- What is the danger of people telling us only what we want to hear?
Prayer Points
- Pray that we would be slow to speak critically.
- Use prayer points from your congregation.
- Pray for family matters.