Show Notes
2 Samuel 21:1-14
Pastor Christopher Chelpka
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Episode Transcript
[00:00:08] Our Heavenly Father, we thank you for the word of grace that you give to us in Jesus Christ.
[00:00:13] We do behold him in the heavenly places arisen for us, establishing a kingdom, a place, and us as his people, that we might live and reign with you forever.
[00:00:28] We ask, Lord, that you would strengthen us in our temptations to despair in the weakness of our flesh, that you would help us to put to death that which is earthly in us and follow after you in every way. And let us do so knowing that you are at work within us, that by your power the war will surely be won, and that we will be glorified along with you forever and ever. In Jesus name we pray. Amen.
[00:01:03] Let's remain standing today and turn Our attention to 2 Samuel, chapter 21, 2 Samuel 21, 1 14.
[00:01:24] With this section we enter into the last major section in the Book of Samuel, Books of Samuel, 1st and 2nd Samuel, in which the Lord begins to wrap up in some ways this portion of our family history, this portion of this the development of the kingdom of God, a kingdom under David, in contrast with Saul, who rejected the Lord's will and the kingship that he had been called to the Lord, establishing this kingdom under David and ultimately David's greater son, Jesus Christ. We'll think about these three kings, different than we sing about other times of the year. Saul, David, and Jesus today.
[00:02:22] 2nd Samuel, chapter 21 let's give our attention to God's word now. There was a famine in the days of David for three years, year after year.
[00:02:35] And David sought the face of the Lord.
[00:02:38] And the Lord said, there is blood guilt on Saul and on his house, because he put the Gibeonites to death.
[00:02:46] So the king called the Gibeonites and spoke to them.
[00:02:49] Now the Gibeonites were not of the people of Israel, but of the remnant of the Amorites.
[00:02:55] Although the people of Israel had sworn to spare them, Saul had sought to strike them down in his zeal for the people of Israel and Judah.
[00:03:05] And David said to the Gibeonites, what shall I do for you, and how shall I make atonement that you may bless the heritage of the Lord?
[00:03:14] The Gibeonites said to him, it is not a matter of silver or gold between us and Saul or his house.
[00:03:20] Neither is it for us to put any man to death in Israel.
[00:03:24] And he said, what do you say that I shall do for you?
[00:03:28] They said to the king, the man who consumed us and planned to destroy us, so that we should have no place in all the territory of Israel. Let seven of his sons be given to us so that we may hang them before the Lord at Gibeah of Saul, the chosen of the Lord, and the king said, I will give them.
[00:03:48] But the king spared Mephibosheth, the son of Saul's son Jonathan, because of the oath of the Lord that was sworn between them, between David and Jonathan, the son of Saul.
[00:04:00] The king took two sons of Rizpah, the daughter of Aiah, whom she bore to Saul, Armoni and Mephibosheth.
[00:04:09] That's a different Mephibosheth.
[00:04:11] And the five sons of Merab, the daughter of Saul, whom she bore to Adriel, the son of Barzillai, and, sorry, Barzillai, the Maholathite. And he gave them into the hands of the Gibeonites. And they hanged them on the mountain before the Lord.
[00:04:27] And the seven of them perished together.
[00:04:30] They were put to death in the first days of the harvest, at the beginning of the barley harvest.
[00:04:37] Then Rizpah, the daughter of Ayah, took sackcloth and spread it for herself on the rock from the beginning of the harvest until the rain fell upon them from the heavens.
[00:04:46] And she did not allow the birds of the air to come upon them by day or the beasts of the field by night.
[00:04:53] When David was told what Rizpah, the daughter of Aiah, the concubine of Saul, had done, David went and took the bones of Saul and the bones of his son Jonathan from the men of Jabesh Gilead, who had stolen them from the public square of Beth Sha', on, where the Philistines had hanged them on the day the Philistines killed Saul on Gilboa.
[00:05:11] And he brought up from there the bones of Saul and the bones of his son Jonathan. And he gathered the bones of those who were hanged. And they buried the bones of Saul and his son Jonathan in the land of Benjamin, in Zelah, in the tomb of Kish, his father. And they did all the king commanded. And after that, God responded to the plea for the land.
[00:05:32] You may be seated.
[00:06:07] The language of kingship very prominent in this passage.
[00:06:12] David is referred to as king. Over and over Saul is mentioned. We are reminded of his reign, a specific moment during that time, and other things as well.
[00:06:24] We are reminded of the relationship between the king and the people, between the king and the Lord, the people and the Lord.
[00:06:33] There's a lot of relationships, and in fact, we could say covenants going on here in this passage.
[00:06:43] One of the things that we see here is that Saul has. We are reminded here at the end of 2nd Samuel, that Saul failed in some very significant ways.
[00:06:55] And in the moment of this failure, in the moment of this reminder of this failure and the things that happened, we are also reminded that David has some choices to make.
[00:07:05] As the Lord's anointed, what will he do? Will he do the right thing? Will he do the wrong thing? How well does he does it? How well does he do it? How much does he accomplish? And in all of it we see the Lord, the Lord, who is supreme in all of these things, the Lord, who is working in all these things, the Lord, who is the true king over all men and over his church, his people, Israel.
[00:07:31] The strength of the Lord.
[00:07:35] The covenant position of God as king comes clear in the very first verse.
[00:07:42] There was a famine in the days of David for three years, year after year. And David rightly goes to the Lord.
[00:07:50] He seeks the face of the Lord and asks what is happening.
[00:07:56] We are reminded in numbers, chapter 35 of this requirement.
[00:08:02] You shall not pollute the land in which you live, for blood pollutes the land. And no atonement can be made for the land for the blood that is shed in it, except by the blood of the one who shed it. You shall not defile the land in which you live, in the midst of which I dwell. For I, the Lord, dwell in the midst of the people of Israel.
[00:08:24] Numbers 35, 33, and 34.
[00:08:28] Famine is one of the curses that God promised he would put on the land for disobedience.
[00:08:35] The land has been polluted because of murder, and we could even maybe call it a genocide.
[00:08:43] When the Gibeons speak about the matter, they say in verse five to David the king, the man who consumed us and planned to destroy us, so that we should have no place in all of Israel.
[00:08:57] This is what Saul sought to do. And it's a reminder of other moments in which Saul acted so faithlessly and so abhorrently as king over Israel.
[00:09:10] Sometimes he did not spare or he despaired those he was not supposed to spare, the Amalekites.
[00:09:17] In other examples, he let his rage and his vengeance and his desire for power and his jealousy over David get hold of his heart. And in one instance he killed all the priests of Nob. You might remember that all the priests of Nob, simply because they had done what they were supposed to do, or rather one of them had done what he was supposed to do in serving and helping David.
[00:09:43] Here, Saul, in a kind of way that we see as typical of him, it says that he did this in his zeal.
[00:09:52] He did it in his. This is in verse.
[00:09:55] Excuse me. Verse 2 says, now the Gibeonites were not of the people of Israel, but of the remnant of the Amorites. Although the people of Israel had sworn to spare them, Saul had sought to strike them down. In his zeal for the people of Israel and. And Judah, Saul maybe had this good motivation, but he was doing the wrong thing.
[00:10:18] That was a marker throughout his life and unfortunately, some of ours as well. Right. We see the thing that needs to be done. We have a desire to serve and help in a certain way, but then we think we're going to do it in our own way rather than following the will and the instructions of the Lord. We seek what I've called throughout this a sinful shortcut, a way that says, well, I'll just do this to accomplish these ends, even though it's not what God wants, it's harder, it takes longer, whatever it is. And that's what Saul did.
[00:10:52] Now, the background here is that way back in the time of Joshua, the Gibeonites had come to Joshua secretly and made a covenant with Israel that they would not be destroyed. They. They saw what had happened to other kings and other peoples as Israel came into the land, and they said, we don't want to die. And so let's go pretend and see if we can sneakily get Israel into this covenant with us in which we would be left alone. And that happened.
[00:11:25] Israel did make a covenant with them, and they became stone cutters and water carriers, I believe, servants of Israel. But they had a place in Israel.
[00:11:36] This people had a place in Israel. And this was a promise that was sworn before the Lord.
[00:11:42] Right? So the Lord God remember who is king and the high one of this whole situation.
[00:11:48] He knows that. He remembers this covenant that was sworn. He was witness to that. And he knows that there is blood guilt because Saul, instead of preserving them and keeping them, sought to destroy them.
[00:12:02] As a result of that, as a result of the actions of the king in breaking this covenant with the Gibeonites, God was now judging.
[00:12:14] God was bringing the curses that were promised famine in the land.
[00:12:20] And three years of famine is hard, especially when you know, as David would have and should have, that famine in Israel at this time was not just a weather event and an unfortunate thing that would happen, but a specific curse that God brought for disobedience.
[00:12:41] So David is right to go seek the Lord. David knew the curses, he knew the blessings, and he said, what is wrong? And the Lord tells him what is wrong. He tells him of the guilt of Saul.
[00:12:53] Now, Saul was not just his own man.
[00:12:59] Saul was not just one man in Israel who had murdered a lot of other men and tried to murder a lot of other men. But Saul was also king.
[00:13:10] He represented the people. In some ways, Saul in Israel and David as well was kind of like Adam in the Garden of Eden, representing the people that were under him. And as the curse comes down upon Saul, it also infects or it has implications for everyone under Saul, just like the curse that fell upon Adam had implications for everyone who was under Adam. And so this curse is coming down upon the people of God, because their head had failed, because their representative was unrighteous and led them into covenant breaking with this particular people and with God.
[00:13:50] How with God? By not taking care of the blood guilt that was in the land, by not solving and resolving these problems.
[00:13:59] And so God brings it to their attention. The Gibeonites come to him, and they say in verse six, let seven of Saul's sons be given to us so that we may hang them. And notice they say before the Lord at Gibeah of Saul, the chosen of the Lord.
[00:14:17] This is fascinating language.
[00:14:19] It gives us insight into the theological way in which the Gibeonites are framing this.
[00:14:27] They are doing this before the Lord. They recognize that the Lord is in their midst, that the Lord is the one who is witnessed, that the Lord is the one who has been sinned against.
[00:14:39] Not just them.
[00:14:41] They are going to be hung before the Lord as an act of judgment and as an act of removing the pollution from the land and the defilement.
[00:14:51] They also recognize that Saul is the chosen of the Lord and was the chosen of the Lord, the one who was anointed and the representative of the people.
[00:15:02] So we've talked about a few things. Pause that for a second.
[00:15:05] We've talked about the covenant that the Gibeonites made with Israel.
[00:15:11] I've hinted at, and I maybe mentioned it. I'll make it explicit. Now, there is also this covenant that God made with Israel under Moses, right? The laws in number that I read, and other laws about murder.
[00:15:22] And these are held forth in the books of Moses, in which God established his covenant over this people, which he said he would dwell in the land, and these kinds of things.
[00:15:32] But there's also other covenants and other promises that are going on.
[00:15:36] We have, of course, Saul's promise to Jonathan to spare his son and his house. We even have a promise to Saul that David made not to destroy his house completely.
[00:15:52] And so David is going through all these things. David, as the representative of Israel, is having to figure out, how do I make sure that God is satisfied, that the Gibeonites are satisfied, that my promise to Jonathan is satisfied, that my promise to Saul is satisfied. This is a very difficult situation and reminds us that this is not. David here is acting in many ways. Well, this is not just political maneuvering. This is not just appeasement. This is David seeking to be obedient to the Lord in a very difficult situation, particularly because Saul's dead.
[00:16:31] How do you hold Saul accountable when Saul's not around?
[00:16:36] Well, it's decided that these seven sons would be chosen. David spares Mephibosheth as he had promised to do. In verse seven, we read because of the oath of the Lord that was between them, between David and Jonathan, the son of Saul.
[00:16:52] And he takes these two sons of Rizpah and these five other sons that are as well, and they are hanged on the mountain before the Lord. The seven of them perished together. They were put to death. The first days of the barley harvest. At the beginning of the barley harvest.
[00:17:12] Now this might seem like a good place to end, right?
[00:17:16] The Lord brought forth a problem which David recognized. He attended to it.
[00:17:23] And now the sins presumably have been atoned for. But of course, the chapter continues, and we read about the mother of these sons, Rizpah, the daughter of Ayah.
[00:17:42] What does she do?
[00:17:43] What's happening here?
[00:17:45] She takes sackcloth and spreads it for herself on the rock.
[00:17:49] Some commentators think that this means that she put up a shade because it was summertime, it would have been hot. She was going to be there a while. Sackcloth is also frequently used as a sign of mourning. And so it's possible it's in connection with that she puts up this sackcloth, spreads it before herself from the beginning of the harvest until the rain fell upon them from the heavens.
[00:18:16] And possibly quite a long time, months perhaps.
[00:18:21] And during this time she protects these bodies that are hanging and did not allow the birds to come upon them.
[00:18:29] Now, this should indicate a problem to us, because when people were put to death in Israel, they were not to hang in, hang there forever. So Deuteronomy 21:22. And if a man has committed a crime punishable by death, and he is put to death, and you hang him on a tree, his body shall not remain all night on the tree, but you shall bury him the same day.
[00:18:59] For a hanged man is cursed by God. This is used in reference to Jesus later.
[00:19:06] You shall not defile your land that the Lord your God is giving you for an inheritance. So again, a land defilement problem.
[00:19:15] The land defiled when someone is hung on a tree and then left there.
[00:19:25] So what's going on here? If David acted righteously, why are these men still hanging?
[00:19:31] It doesn't explain exactly, but it does show certain patterns. Or it's an example, I would say, of patterns that we've seen throughout first and Samuel, going all the way back to Samuel himself, the priest at the very beginning of First Samuel. And where we see people dealing with problems, but sometimes in a halfway kind of way, or dealing with problems, but not for all the best reasons, or dealing with problems, but with mixed motives. Or dealing with problems, but then kind of letting them linger. All kinds of things like this.
[00:20:08] Imperfect solutions, we might say.
[00:20:12] Insufficient actions.
[00:20:15] Faithfulness mixed with unfaithfulness.
[00:20:20] Think about Rizpah.
[00:20:22] What's she supposed to do?
[00:20:25] She's no king in Israel.
[00:20:28] She's the concubine.
[00:20:30] So not even the wife, the concubine of Saul who was rejected, and her whole family and all the house of Saul has been destroyed and here brought to this final end here, as these sons are hanged and she's mourning.
[00:20:53] And what can she do other than mourn, other than witness to the wrong, and wait on the Lord and wait on the Lord, and she does.
[00:21:07] She waits and waits.
[00:21:09] And then finally, in verse 11, when David was told what Rizbah the daughter of Aiah, the concubine, had done, he woke up and he acted.
[00:21:19] And he didn't act only to take the bodies off the trees and bury them properly.
[00:21:28] But he also remembers something else that was still left undone. As if this passage wasn't complicated enough, David now remembers or decides to handle it, doesn't say what's going on in his heart, but there was a thing that was left undone. And what is it? Well, remember when Saul and Jonathan were killed by the Philistines, another group a while back, Philistines, the men of Israel, went, got them heroically, right? Got them, got their bodies and brought them. And then there was kind of a quick burial, but not with his fathers, not with Kish, not in. With. In verse 14, we read, they buried the bones of Saul and his son Jesus, or Jesus and his son Jonathan, in the land of Benjamin and Zela, in the tomb of Kish, his father.
[00:22:20] There was something that was undone, a bringing back, a bringing home, an honoring, a hope, even in the resurrection that needed to happen, and it hadn't happened yet. And so, as a result of Rizpah's crying. And as a result of her witness, as a result of her waiting, David hears of it. And by the Lord's grace, he acts.
[00:22:44] And he collects the bones of Saul and Jonathan. He collects the bones of the other men and he brings them there.
[00:22:57] He gathers them all together and buries them in the tomb of Kish, Saul's father in the tribe of Benjamin.
[00:23:07] As we read all of this, we can't help but think, what a mess everything is.
[00:23:14] Bloodshed, genocide, murder, evil acts of kings, falsely directed zeal, missed opportunities, undone things, broken laws, covenants that are intention, nation that is falling apart, brothers warring against brothers.
[00:23:40] But God is supreme over it all.
[00:23:44] We also see in the midst of all of this trouble, the insufficiency of the kings of Israel to establish the kingdom in the kind of blessing, not curse, but the blessing that God had promised for the land if Israel had obeyed.
[00:24:01] A land flowing with milk and honey, a land full of produce and children, a land full of happiness and, and safety and protection.
[00:24:11] The kings of Israel are struggling, struggling, struggling to make this happen. Why?
[00:24:19] Because of sin.
[00:24:21] Sin keeps coming into everything and messing everything up over and over and over again. And so we see even the best examples of Israel's kings, like David struggling to uphold the covenants, the covenants with God, the covenants with friends, the covenants with other people, these promises that define these relationships, promises which were built on often good things.
[00:24:48] Struggling, struggling, struggling.
[00:24:54] In all of this we have a picture of covenantal guilt and curses piling up, problems piling up, complicated things piling up as the representatives of God's people fail to do their jobs, as the king over God's people fails to do his job.
[00:25:19] This struggle, this imperfection, points us to what God provides for his people in the fullness of time.
[00:25:29] And that's a king who doesn't fail and a king who brings all these things into perfection and completion.
[00:25:39] Jesus, our Lord, our king, head over his people, never fails.
[00:25:46] He never goes and pursues after some good end, but then takes a sinful shortcut to do it. And he was offered it, wasn't he?
[00:25:53] By Satan himself? Offered various options. His disciples offered it to him at various times.
[00:26:00] Just do this, take the easy route, do this thing. And Jesus instead chose to do the suffering thing.
[00:26:08] Jesus chose to obey God and the laws that were put on him and offer to God a perfect obedience, which meant in a lot of things, which meant not only the fulfilling of the law, but the fulfilling of the covenant that Jesus, the Son of God had made with the Father from the beginning of all time that he would go and represent his people and die for them.
[00:26:37] So Jesus didn't just send others to go and atone for the sins of his people. And to fix the broken covenants, Jesus gave his own life.
[00:26:49] Jesus hung on a tree.
[00:26:52] Jesus was cursed by God, not because of anything he did, but to atone for our sins, to make things right and to make them right. Finally, so that the people of God would not be defiled, so that we would be made the perfection of holiness, so that we would be made the bride of Christ without spot or wrinkle or any blemish, and so that the people of God would be placed in the kingdom of God, a place we can call heaven, we can call the New Jerusalem, we can call Zion.
[00:27:31] This place which will be perfect and glorified and undefiled.
[00:27:37] Undefiled.
[00:27:39] Jesus is giving us an inheritance, Peter says, that is undefiled and kept in heaven for us.
[00:27:47] This inheritance that Jesus gives us is perfect in every way, even as he will make us perfect according to his promise of glorification.
[00:27:57] The weaknesses that we see in the Kingdom of Israel at this time point us to the strengths that God will provide in King Jesus.
[00:28:07] The covenantal satisfaction, the perfect atonement, the perfection of the land, the perfection of the people. All of this, all offered perfectly by him.
[00:28:19] And so my encouragement to you this morning is that as you feel the weight of covenantal guilt, as we feel the weight of the curse of Adam in this world, the brokenness around us in creation, as we feel in our own bodies and in our world, as the flesh wages war against the Spirit of God, and we feel overwhelmed and we feel like we're struggling and we feel guilty and we feel shamed and we feel afraid.
[00:28:54] Know that you can look to a king who is perfect, a king who will not fail you, has not failed you, will never fail you, because he's God himself and a king who has perfectly represented you before God so that you are not now justified and no longer condemned. And you have peace with God and an inheritance with God through Jesus that is undefiled and perfect for you.
[00:29:24] Let's pray.
[00:29:27] Our Heavenly Father, we thank you for the sacrifice of Jesus Christ, our Savior, our Lord, our King. We ask that you would help us to obey him and to follow him with all of our heart, all of our soul, all of. All of our strength.
[00:29:41] Help us to live as those who are citizens of the kingdom of God. Though pilgrims and strangers and in some ways exiles in this world.
[00:29:50] We know where we belong. We know to whom we belong. Help us to live in the power and the freedom of that.
[00:29:57] Help us to wage war against the spirit or against the flesh by the power of the spirit. Help us to produce the fruit of the spirit. Bring out in us the true zeal, true righteousness, true joy, true hope, true love.
[00:30:14] Lord, we ask that you would be at work among us so that the sorrows for sin and the misery of the curse would one day be fully lifted and that we would experience blessings at your right hand forevermore.
[00:30:33] And we thank you, Lord, finally, that even amidst the sufferings of this life, they come to us not as a curse, but as sanctification.
[00:30:44] What a marvelous thing you can do to turn even trials into blessings.
[00:30:49] What a marvelous thing it is you can do in taking dry bones and raising up new life.
[00:30:57] Lord, we thank you that Jesus, although he was buried, did not stay buried, but rose victorious over the dead, rose victorious from death, and now reigns with you forever.
[00:31:14] It's in him that we have our own lives, our own resurrection, and it's in him that we pray this Amen.
