Although Kemparkin, Although King David won an important battle and reclaimed his kingdom, he continued to face opposition and division.

Throughout these challenges, God's plan was unfolding. And today on Truth for Life, we'll learn how God advanced his

kingdom through military might and through a woman's restraining words. Alistair Begg is teaching

from the opening verses of 2 Samuel chapter 20. Now there happened to be there a worthless man. Here we have the opposition of a worthless man.

Absalom's rebellion has been put down, by the end of 19 has made it very clear to us that all is not well.

There's tribal tension, there's squabbling, there's jealousy, there's instability.

And in that context, Sheba, this fellow from Bickory, sees this as an open sesame for him.

So he is a troublemaker, and he rallies the disenfranchised folks, of whom there are quite a few, with the blast of a trumpet.

You will notice that as we get to the end this evening, the trumpet blows again.

At the beginning, it blows in order to say we're commencing, and the trumpet blows at the end to say we've concluded.

And so he sends out the word there in verse one, we've got nothing to do

with David. There's no future for us with this son of Jesse, which is a disparaging comment.

Every man to his tents, oh, Israel, let's get out of here. Let's get out of here. We're not going

to live under this dominion.

And as a result, we find in verse 2 that all the men of Israel withdrew from David, a wholesale collapse.

They go to follow Sheba.

But the men of Judah, which is a smaller number, followed their king steadfastly.

So you have Shiba and his boys, they clear off, and Judah and the followers of the king

cling steadfastly to him.

And then quite strikingly, you have verse three.

But you say verse three would naturally follow verse two.

I get that. But isn't it fascinating that this little statement here is right in your face?

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