2nd Samuel 13 TURMOIL AND TRAGEDY The breakdown of family life and even family structure is not some new phenomena of this day and age. It happened in David's family when he became so caught up in his own personal life and the business of being a king that he neglected his responsibilities as a father. He had ruined another man's family by his multiplied sins against that family and also against the Lord. He had sinned against a woman and had deliberately killed an innocent man. His son Amnon sinned against a woman, and his son Absalom killed a man - Amnon, his half-brother.
The sin of Amnon was the rape of his half-sister. To allow the lust of the eyes to continue in one's life leads to adultery, fornication and lasciviousness. We must resist temptation and "abstain from all appearance of evil." Always evaluate advice given and be sure it has a righteous and solid basis behind it. Not every person who claims to be our friend can be trusted. Deception started the chain of events that made David's family such a dysfunctional group of people. Half-brothers were jealous of each other and looked on their mothers as leaders rather than their father. David was the king, even in the family, but his role and responsibility as a father was basically missing.
It is important that we do not equal love and lust. They are two very different things. Lust demands satisfaction - love is patient. Lust makes demands and wants its own way - "love seeketh not her own." Lust likes to be called love but does not have any godly characteristics. Lust will not wait and when it has physically expressed itself it results in self-disgust and hatred for the other person who was involved. Amnon ruined Tamar's opportunity for marriage, and in revenge Absalom ruined the family's chance for any kind of normal family relationship. David ruined the chance for reconciliation by not dealing with Amnon, probably because of his own previous sin.
The sin of Absalom illustrates the teaching of the Lord Jesus when He equated anger and murder. For two years murder was in the heart of Absalom. What a person allows themselves to think about a lot, so characterizes who they are. "As a man thinketh in his heart, so is he." Absalom's sin was of such a nature that it ultimately involved a great number of others, including his servants, his siblings, his father, and it set the course of his own future. Even his maternal grandfather was involved. One act of sin because of one man's unguarded eyes, and one woman's unguarded modesty affected all their family and the lives of those around them. "Then when lust hath conceived, it bringeth forth sin: and sin, when it is finished bringeth forth death."