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Hey Bible readers, I'm Tara Lee Cobble, and I'm your host for the Bible Recap. The last time we were in David's story, he had just won a lot of battles and brought Mephibosheth Jonathan's one surviving son to live in his home. Today the king of the Ammonites dies, and he had been amicable toward David, so David decides to treat his son Hanun kindly in return. Hanun is the likely heir to the throne, and it's a wise diplomatic move on David's part to keep peace with his neighbors. But Hanun's advisors are suspicious. They mistrust David's motives because they don't know him. They haven't seen how he's taken in Mephibosheth, or how he's mourned the death of his enemies, or even how he refused to kill Saul twice when he had the chance. They feel unnecessarily threatened by him. So they take David's servants who were sent to comfort Hanun and degrade them by shaving off half their beards and cutting their clothes in half. Both of these moves are emasculating for David's servants. The beard is considered a mark of manhood, and to cut their garments in half is symbolic of castration. It's something they do to prisoners of war to shame them. These men who came to Hanun to serve him are left half-naked and humiliated. David doesn't retaliate, but he's not happy with the Ammonites. They get wind of it and decide to go on the offensive by hiring more than 30,000 mercenaries, including a bunch of Syrians who already hated Israel, to fight Israel on their behalf. David sends his army, led by Joab, to the battle, and Joab demonstrates good leadership and trust in God during all of this. In 1012, he's talking to his brother Abishai, who's commanding another part of the army, and he says, "Be of good courage, and let us be courageous for our people and for the cities of our God, and may the Lord do what seems good to him." This is what confidence and faith in God looks like. He's reminding his brother and himself that the cities belong to God, and that God is in charge and that God is trustworthy, and because of that, they can be courageous. In the battle, Israel's enemies flee before them, and they're victorious. But then the Syrians are like, "Oh, man, why did we do that? We're warriors. Let's give it another go." David finds out they're coming back, and he goes out to fight against them again and wins again. In the process, Israel kills a bunch of the Syrian mercenaries, and their surviving Syrians decide they're better off not helping the Ammonites anymore. Instead, the Syrians make peace with Israel and become their servants. We see Israel being more than conquerors yet again. They're turning their enemies into allies. As for the Ammonites, things are kind of left-hanging — we'll come back to them in a few days. Just a quick refresher on how we got here. This all started because David was trying to make a humble move by sending comforters to the new Ammonite king, Hunan, when his father died, but the Ammonite advisors mistrusted him. And in both battles, Israel was on the defense, not the offense. Before we move on to Psalm 20, I want to talk about one thing you may have noticed. There's a discrepancy in the number of chariots between the two similar accounts we read today. 2 Samuel 10 says there were 700 chariots, and 1 Chronicles 19 says there were 7,000 chariots. Your Bible probably has a footnote about this, but if not, here's what's going on and why I love that Scripture relieves this discrepancy in. There are multiple ancient manuscripts, and if one says something different than the others, they'll often keep both bits of information in in order to make sure that the truth is preserved somehow and they don't accidentally delete the version that got it right. These kinds of things are rare, but it happens most often where numbers are involved. I love that kind of intentionality, even at the risk of it being confusing. But let's be honest, none of us are here for chariot numbers anyway. Our faith doesn't hinge on whether it was 700 or 7,000, so don't stress too much over what the right answer is. We're here to see God, not chariots. Okay, on to Psalm 20. This is a corporate song of praise for God's promises to King David. Even though the promises of the Davidic covenant were specific to David, there's still a lot of God's heart for all his people reflected in this psalm, and it's where I saw my God shot today. Verse 2 says, "May he send you help from the sanctuary." The word used for sanctuary here is most often translated as holiness. May God send you help from his holiness. I think it's so beautiful that God's help originates from his holiness. He comes to us from his set-apartness to rescue us. He meets us in our need. He knows he's our only hope. And another thing I love from the psalmist when David says, "May he grant you your heart's desire and fulfill all your plans." David knows that the only way God can answer this prayer with a yes is if those desires and plans align with God's desires and plans. Otherwise, that will be praying for less than the best since God's plan is always best. This prayer isn't a blanket request for God to reduce himself to being a genie and doing whatever I want. It has the connotation of alignment, of being so in sync with God that I pray for what he has already planned. A friend prayed this chapter over me recently and it was so encouraging, so I want to pray it over you in the same way if that's okay. May the Lord answer you in the day of trouble. May the name of the God of Jacob protect you. May he send you help from the sanctuary and give you support from Zion. May he remember all your offerings in regard with favor your burnt sacrifices. Salah. May he grant you your heart's desire and fulfill all your plans. May we shout for joy over your salvation and in the name of our God set up our banners. May the Lord fulfill all your petitions. Now I know that the Lord saves his anointed. He will answer him from his holy heaven with the saving might of his right hand. Some trust in chariots and some trust in horses, but we trust in the name of the Lord our God. They collapse and fall, but we rise and stand upright. Oh Lord, save the King. May he answer us when we call. He's where the joy is. Each month we offer special bonus content to those of you who are recaptants. For the month of May we're focusing on mentoring. Our mentoring toolkit will walk you through how to find a mentor, how to be a mentor, and what mentoring relationships might look like. This is valuable information and it's available for recaptants who have joined at the bonus content tier or higher. If that's you, just log into your recaptants account to get your perks or if you've selected to have your perks emailed to you, look for it there. And if you're a recaptant on a different tier and you want to access this perk, just log into your account and adjust your membership accordingly. And if you're not yet a recaptant, what are you waiting for? Today's a great day to check it out. Just go to thebiblerecap.com and click the recaptants link or look for the link in the show notes. Hope Nation has another fun song battle for all of you who love worship music. Watch the latest video to see if you can recognize these songs before Josh Baldwin from Bethel and worship leaders Pat Barrett and David Leonard. Click the link in the show notes to watch. (dramatic music)
