Starting Right
Starting Right is a 5 minute Day Starter to help keep you motivated, encouraged, and focused throughout your day. DannyMac is a pastor, teacher, motivational speaker, husband, and father. His years of leading and training people have given him vast experience in helping individuals to accomplish change in their lives and meet their goals. He can help you set the course for your day by offering practical advice from God's Word in a positive and fun way. There is no better way to begin your day than by Starting Right with DannyMac.
Starting Right
Absalom's Folly
What happens when someone blessed with every advantage—looks, privilege, and opportunity—loses their way because of vanity and poor character? The biblical story of Absalom serves as a powerful warning across the centuries.
Through this compelling narrative, we uncover three crucial life lessons: the danger of letting conceit and appearance mask a corrupt heart, the devastating consequences of surrounding ourselves with poor advisors who tell us what we want to hear rather than what we need to hear, and the painful reality of parental blindness that prevents us from seeing our children's true character. David's inability to recognize the darkness growing in his son ultimately contributed to both their downfalls.
Whether you're in a position of leadership, raising children, or simply navigating relationships, Absalom's story offers timeless wisdom about the importance of character over appearance, choosing wise counsel, and loving others with clear-eyed honesty. Join me every weekday morning for these five-minute reflections designed to start your day with purpose and perspective. Your mornings matter—let's make them count together.
Good morning and welcome to Starting Right with Danny Mac. I'm going to be here every Monday to Friday to help you get a great five-minute start to your day, so grab your cup of coffee, sit back, relax and let me help you start your day. Right Over the last while, we have spent some time talking about the different characters there are in the Bible, we've talked about the ones who were unknown that did amazing things. We've talked about those who had absolutely no qualifications to be leaders or important, and God chose them and used them for significant purposes to lead the people. But we haven't touched yet on a group that was the privileged, the ruling class people. These are the people who, because of their birthright, were in a position to make a great difference in people's lives and for their countries, but in many of them, there was no strength in their character and so they wound up just messing it all up.
Speaker 1:One of these characters is a son of David. His name was Absalom and we read most of his story in the book of 2nd Samuel. Now the story goes on for several chapters, so let me summarize it for you, but before I start I just need to warn you this is a pretty sordid tale. There are all kinds of very repulsive things that occurred under David's watch, in his own home, amongst his own family, and yet God left this story in the Bible for a reason to teach us some things. Absalom was not David's oldest son, but he was David's favorite. His older brother was named Amnon, and he was the man that Absalom wound up killing because Amnon had raped his sister. It was an ugly situation. This murder of Amnon caused the separation between David and Absalom, and over a few years, though, david reconciled with his son and they got back together.
Speaker 1:Now, along with many of his other negative qualities, absalom was also incredibly vain. In fact, he had this long flowing hair that he thought made him the most gorgeous man in the whole kingdom. In 2 Samuel 14, starting in verse 25, it says In all Israel, there was not a man so highly praised for his handsome appearance as Absalom. From the top of his head to the sole of his foot, there was no blemish in him Whenever he cut the hair of his head. He used to cut his hair from time to time. When it became too heavy for him, he would weigh it, and its weight was 200 shekels by royal standard. Yes, he thought he was pretty hot stuff.
Speaker 1:Shortly after David and Absalom reconciled, absalom decided that he wanted to be king, so he plotted to overthrow his father. David was so afraid of Absalom that he ran away and hid. Absalom found himself being more popular than his father and he surrounded himself with so-called advisors, but really they weren't very wise. They were Absalom's buddies from his partying days and they gave him some very poor advice, one of them telling him to go after David and kill him now, while he had the chance. So a war broke out between King David's men and Absalom's men. Now David had fewer men, but they were true warriors. They knew how to fight and they were winning. In fact they killed over 20,000 of Absalom's men.
Speaker 1:In 2 Samuel 18, absalom is out in this battle and he is riding a mule. When he goes underneath a tree and his long flowing, gorgeous hair gets caught in the tree, the mule goes out from under him and he's left hanging by his hair. He was found there by Joab, one of David's mighty men, who killed Absalom right then and there. Now there are some lessons we can learn from this story, and I'm going to give these to you very quickly this morning. First lesson is that Absalom let his conceit get the better of him. He actually was too greedy and in a lot of ways David was too trusting. He loved his son so much he didn't see all of the evil things that were in his heart. And it cost David greatly. And even though Absalom looked good, very handsome, very charming, sometimes looks conceal a very murderous heart. Secondly, absalom got bad advice from his advisors. He had gotten rid of the men who were guiding David in his life, with the exception of one who tried to protect David in the middle of all of this. But Absalom decided to listen to his new advisors, his buddies, his friends, those he hung out with. Their ideas and their wisdom were more important to him than the people who understood what it meant to function and act in the position that Absalom was now in. He got rid of the people he could trust to guide him and to help him, and he should not have. I want to give you one more. This is about King David. King David, let his emotions get the better of him.
Speaker 1:As parents, we all want and expect the best from and for our children. There are many parents that refuse to believe that their child could ever misbehave in school or in youth group or in anything else. They simply refuse to believe anything could be wrong about their children. Their children are brilliant and perfect, no matter what. That kind of blindness can hurt us, as it hurt David, but it also hurts the child, and we see that in how Absalom then took that and twisted it around to try and gain power for himself.
Speaker 1:David refused to see the ugliness there was in his son. We need to be honest with ourselves. We need to encourage truth from our kids. We need to expect the best from them, but we also need to be very much aware of what their weaknesses are, so that those weaknesses don't destroy them at some point in their lives. So there you have it the story of one of the privileged and one of the ones who had opportunities in abundance to do great things, but they began to focus too much on themselves and let the selfishness ruin and destroy them. It is a sad story, but with some great lessons. I hope you all have a great day, enjoy your family, share some love, Say hi to somebody you haven't talked to for a while. Let God bless you and work through you. Have a great day. We'll talk again tomorrow. Thank you for listening today and I invite you to join me Monday to Friday, right here on Starting Right with Danny Mac.
