The Covenant Keeper - [2 Samuel 21:1-9]

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I've been recently listening to a series on theology, and something was said by the teacher in an almost offhanded way, and it just sent me off studying this, and I thought
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I would continue on in my series that's going on forever in John, but this morning I wanted to take a brief sabbatical.
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I want to take a little journey into the book of 2 Samuel. So if you turn to 2
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Samuel chapter 21, that's where we're going to be this morning.
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And you know, I've seen so many pastors getting political as the election gets closer and closer, and I didn't really want to be left out.
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So I was like, okay, I need a candidate. I need to pitch my candidate to you this morning, and I wanted somebody, because we're going to see how important this is this morning, somebody who says what he means and then does what he says.
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I have the perfect candidate. The problem is the people don't like him.
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It's God, Father, Son, and Spirit. And we're going to see this morning, I think as we go through this passage, as we look to the
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Word, we're going to see that there is only one person in all of history who always, always means what he says and then does what he says he's going to do.
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2 Samuel chapter 21, verses 1 to 9. Very familiar passage.
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I had to say that. 2 Samuel 21, verses 1 to 9.
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Now, there was a famine in the days of David for three years, year after year.
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And David sought the face of the Lord. And the Lord said, there is blood guilt on Saul and on his house, because he put the
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Gibeonites to death. So the king called the
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Gibeonites and spoke to them. Now, the Gibeonites were not of the people of Israel, but of the remnant of the
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Amorites. Although the people of Israel had sworn to spare them,
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Saul had sought to strike them down in his zeal for the people of Israel and Judah. And David said to the
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Gibeonites, what shall I do for you? And how shall
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I make atonement that you may bless the heritage of the
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Lord? The Gibeonites said to him, it is not a matter of silver or gold between us and Saul or his house.
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Neither is it for us to put any man to death in Israel.
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And he, being David, said, what do you say that I shall do for you?
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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
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Lord at Gibeah of Saul, the chosen of the Lord. And the king said,
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I will give them. But the king spared
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Mephibosheth, the son of Saul's son, Jonathan, because of the oath of the
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Lord that was between them, between David and Jonathan, the son of Saul. The king took the two sons of Rizvah, the daughter of Eah, whom she bore to Saul, Armoni and Mephibosheth, and the five sons of Mirab, the daughter of Saul, whom she bore to Adriel, the son of Barzillai, the
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Meholathite. And he gave them into the hands of the
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Gibeonites, and they hang them on the mountain before the Lord. And the seven of them perished together.
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They were put to death in the first days of the at the beginning of barley harvest.
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Now, one of the themes of, well, first of all, first and second Samuel in the some of the oldest collections of the
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Hebrew Old Testament was one book, just the book of Samuel. We've later on split them up into first and second
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Samuel. But one of the themes is the consequence of both personal and national sin, the cost of sin.
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We're going to see this morning, the cost of sin is high. And we're also going to see again, as I said, that there is only one person in all of scripture, really in all of history, who keeps all of the covenants that he makes.
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We're going to see how seriously God takes his name being used, used in a covenant.
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When he's involved in a covenant, how seriously he takes that. And what lengths he will go to, to uphold his name.
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It's important to him. This morning, I want you to see three gospel parallels, three parallels to the gospel drawn from our texts.
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And you say, well, this is second Samuel. How does this happen in second Samuel chapter 21?
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It's here. At first, we're going to see the violation or the sin revealed.
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The sin that is going to be so costly. We're going to see that first in verses one and two.
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And first we see Saul puts the Gibeonites to the sword. Verse one, now there was a famine in the days of David for three years, year after year.
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And David sought the face of the Lord. And the Lord said, there is blood guilt on Saul and on his house because he put the
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Gibeonites to death. Now famines, as you might imagine, if you've been to Israel, or if you've even seen pictures of Israel, it's a desert.
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It's not a big surprise that it would be difficult. First of all, that you would run out of water sometimes. And then secondly, even when you have water, that the temperatures would be so extreme that maybe the crops wouldn't come in.
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It would be difficult to survive. So it's not like famines were unknown, but this one goes on for quite some time.
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And David becomes concerned for the welfare of the nation. He is, after all, the king, and he's concerned about his people.
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And he prays fervently. That's what it means when our text says he sought the face of the Lord. It would be, if you sought the face of the king, that meant you wanted to go have an audience with him.
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You wanted to be ushered into his presence. And so David is earnestly seeking the Lord. He wants to know what is going on.
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Who better to go to than the sovereign of all creation? You go to the king of kings when you have a problem like this.
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And the Lord answers that this famine is impacting the entire nation is due to the actions of the now dead.
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He's been dead for a while. King Saul, when he sought to exterminate the
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Gibeonites. So imagine this, by the sins of one man, the representative of the nation, because he was the king, the entire nation suffers.
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All the people suffer because of one man. Well, why was
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God so angry? Why would he punish Israel? What's so special about these Gibeonites?
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Well, they were in effect a protected people. We have protected species.
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They were a protected species. Why? We're going to have to go back to Joshua.
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You can keep your finger in second Samuel, but we're going to go back to Joshua nine, Joshua chapter nine for a moment.
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If you'll recall, the book of Joshua basically is about what conquering the land of Israel, right?
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And God instructs Joshua, the people of Israel there to drive everybody out there to destroy everything in their path, basically.
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And we come to Joshua chapter nine, and we're going to see Israel take a little bit of a curve here.
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Joshua chapter nine, I'm going to begin right in verse one. As soon as all the
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Kings who were beyond the Jordan in the hill country and in the lowland along all along the coast of the great sea toward Lebanon, the
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Hittites, the Amorites, the Canaanites, the Perizzites, the Hivites, and the
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Jebusites heard of this. They heard about what was going on, how Israel was conquering city after city,
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AI, and all the rest. They gathered together as one to fight against Joshua and Israel.
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But when the inhabitants of Gibeon heard what Joshua had done to Jericho and to AI, they on their part acted with cunning and went and made ready provisions and took worn out socks or sorry, sacks.
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Socks would be good too, but worn out sacks for their donkeys and wine skins, worn out and torn and mended with worn out patched sandals on their feet and worn out clothes.
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And all their provisions were dry and crumbly. They dressed up like hobos.
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This is like, thanks. You're like Halloween. You know, they're all dressed up. They're going to go and they're going to fool their neighbors is essentially what they're going to do.
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It's trick or treat time that I could have called the message that trick or treat verse six.
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And they went to Joshua in the camp at Gilgal and said to him and to the men of Israel, we have come from a distant country.
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So now make a covenant with us. That's the whole point of dressing up like this to look like they'd come from far off.
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Listen to verse seven. But the men of Israel said to the Hivites, perhaps you live among us.
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Then how can we make a covenant with you? In other words, they knew if these people lived within the promised land that they needed to be driven out, they needed to be defeated.
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And Joshua said to them, who are you? And where do you come from?
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They said to him from a very distant country, your servants have come because of the name of the
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Lord, your God. They have the utmost respect for Yahweh, the
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God of Israel, for we have heard a report of him and all that he did in Egypt and all that he did to the two
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Kings of the Amorites who were beyond the Jordan to Sihon, the King of Heshbon and to Og, King of Bashan, who lived in Ashtaroth.
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So our elders and all the inhabitants of our country said to us, take provisions in your hand for the journey and go to meet them and say to them, we are your servants.
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Come now and make a covenant with us. You guys are incredible. Make a treaty with us, make a bargain with us, cut a covenant with us.
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Here is our bread. It was still warm when we took it from our houses as our food for the journey on the day we set out to come to you.
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But now behold, it is dry and crumbly. These wineskins were new when we filled them and behold, they have burst.
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And these garments and sandals of ours are worn out from the very long journey.
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Lie after lie after lie. I told you I was going to get political this morning. Verse 14.
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So the men took some of their provisions. These would be the men of Israel, but did not ask counsel of the
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Lord or from the Lord. They're going to make their own judgments.
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They're not going to seek the face of the Lord as David does later. They'll decide for themselves.
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Thank you very much. Verse 15. And Joshua made peace with them and made a covenant with them to let them live.
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And the leaders of the congregation, that is to say the congregation of Israel, swore to them at the end of the three, after at the end of three days, after they had made a covenant with them, they heard that they were their neighbors and that they lived among them.
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And the people of Israel set out and reached their cities on the third day. Just a few more days of walking.
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They come upon Gibeon, Shapira, Beeroth, and Kiriath -Jerum.
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But the people of Israel did not attack these cities, even though they were commanded to before.
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Why? Because the leaders of the congregation had sworn to them, had sworn to the
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Gibeonites by the murmured against the leaders, you cut a bad deal.
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We need to renegotiate. Verse 19. But all the leaders said to all the congregation, we have sworn to them by the
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Lord, the God of Israel, and now we may not touch them. They're protected.
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This we will do to them. Let them live. Lest wrath be upon us because of the oath that we swore to them.
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They understood right then and there that the wrath of God would be visited upon them if they violated this covenant with the
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Gibeonites, even though the Gibeonites had tricked them into it. They lied to them.
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They played this big charade to get this deal. Nevertheless, they understood that because they had done it by the name of the
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Lord, that the wrath of God would be upon them if they violated it. Very shrewd move by the
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Gibeonites. Very foolish of Israel. And again, notice in verse 19 that this covenant is sworn to them by the name of the
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Lord, the God of Israel, and now we may not touch them. There's going to be no attack on the
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Gibeonites. So back to 2
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Samuel. The Lord, because David has come and sought an answer, has revealed to him, has told him why this is happening, why there is famine in the land.
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So something has to be done about it. Look at verse 2 of 2
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Samuel chapter 21. So the king called the Gibeonites and spoke to them.
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Now the Gibeonites were not of the people of Israel, but of the remnants of the Amorites. Although the people of Israel had sworn to spare them, remember that?
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Saul had sought to strike them down in his zeal for the people of Israel and Judah. Saul was going to finish the job.
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He was going to finish conquering the land. Well, the problem was it was a violation of the covenant that they'd sworn.
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Now I feel obligated here to just talk a little bit about what a covenant is. Sometimes we hear the word covenant.
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Well, we have several reactions to it. One is we might think, ooh, covenant. Steve's getting in trouble. He's talking about covenants.
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I'm not getting in trouble. Don't worry. We think of a covenant maybe as like a contract.
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You do this and I'll do that. Maybe like a car loan or a home loan or some other kind of business contract we would enter into where one person does this, the other person does that.
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You pay the money, they hold the interest on or they hold the note on your home and charge you interest.
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Covenants are a lot more serious. We're not going to go to Genesis 15, but if you recall,
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Abraham was concerned. He believed
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God, but it was like this. His thinking was, God, I believe, help my unbelief.
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I'm getting old. I don't have a child of my own. I don't have a daughter, let alone a son.
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And by the way, all my stuff could only go to a male there anyway, so it has to be a son. And right now that's going to be somebody who's not even one of my kids.
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I want to believe you, God, but things aren't looking too good. So God says, listen,
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I'll show you how serious this is. He says, you get these animals, you get these birds and let's set them up.
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Just like we're going to cut a covenant here. I'm running through this here really quickly.
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Then what happens? If you'll recall, God puts Abraham to sleep and he essentially, we get this figure of this smoking oven, this lamp, just passing through these separated animals, these animals cut in half.
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Why? Why does that happen? Abraham doesn't go through those animals. God does.
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Why? Because the message to Abraham is this. You want to know how you can rest assured that all the promises
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I made to you, the fact that you're going to have descendants more numerous than all the stars, all these land promises, everything
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I promised you, you want to know how you can know that they're going to happen. Because Abraham, if it doesn't happen, as sure as those animals were cut in half, that same thing is going to happen to me.
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Not to you because you were asleep. You didn't go through those animals, but to me,
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God, which is impossible. So he's saying, listen, you can rest on this.
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You can know that I'm going to keep my word to you. This is for your benefit that I am telling you this.
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That's how serious a covenant is. Two parties would walk between these separated animals, these animals cut in half, and they would make conditions.
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And the promise was, if either one of us breaks this covenant, the same thing that happened to these animals is going to happen to the one who breaks the covenants.
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I probably wouldn't take out a home loan if they said, by the way, Steve, if you're late on a payment, cut in half.
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That would not be a good deal, right? I mean, you know, you get a little late fee, something like that.
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Okay, but not cut in half. But that's what we're talking about when we talk about a covenant, very serious.
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And what Saul had done was he had violated that covenant.
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And even though the Gibeonites had done it by deception, it didn't matter because Yahweh's name, his reputation, his honor was at stake.
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He was going to enforce the violations here. He was going to make sure
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Israel honored that contract. Saul broke it.
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And therefore, this famine came along. The entire nation is going to suffer until things are set right.
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Saul had, in effect, taken the Lord's name in vain. I hear that used a lot, you know, don't take the
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Lord's name in vain as if it's just referring to a swear word. This is what it means to take the Lord's name in vain, to make an oath like this and then break it.
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So gospel parallel number one, the violation revealed. This is the sin. This is the problem. This is why you people are in the situation you're in.
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Second gospel parallel, the atonement sought, the atonement sought.
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We're now going to see David intervene in effect. Now, this is the lesser
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David. Think about the role he's about to take here. He's about to become mediator between Israel and the
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Gibeonites, those who had sinned in Saul, right?
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They didn't really all do it, but they're all suffering because of the sin of Saul. That's Israel. And it's going to bring them into right relationship with the
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Gibeonites. So what's it going to take to make things right? Look at verse three.
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And David said to the Gibeonites, what shall I do for you? And how shall
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I make atonement that you may bless the heritage of the Lord? Now that word atonement, very familiar to us.
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It means in the Hebrew to make amends or to make reconciliation, to bring two parties that are at odds together.
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What price does Israel have to pay to set things right? Notice also it says there that David wanted the heritage to be blessed.
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In other words, he wanted the Gibeonites to set things right and to make things right for their children's children.
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That's kind of the concept. So how do we make this right? How do we just restore things the way they were?
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And how do we make this so that our children will experience the blessings of peace? Well, the cost is not going to be financial.
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Look at verse four. The Gibeonites said to him, it is not a matter of silver or gold between us and Saul or his house.
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Neither is it for us to put any man to death in Israel.
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And he said, this is David. He says, what do you say that I shall do for you?
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The Gibeonites don't want money. Saul is dead. So what's to be done?
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They say they don't even want to put anybody to death in Israel. Something has to be done.
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David cutting to the chase here. What do you want? Gospel parallel number three.
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They don't all have the same length. Some of them would go faster. The horrible price paid.
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The horrible price paid. Here's what they asked for.
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The Gibeonites look at verse five. They said to the king, the man who consumed us. I can almost hear
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Nathan saying because it really should read that man. That's the word. It's that man, that man who consumed us and planned to destroy us so that we should have no place in all the territory of Israel.
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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
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Lord. The price for the sins of Saul for his slaughter of the
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Gibeonites. It's going to be nothing less than seven of his male descendants.
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The price of sin, the price of atonement, the price to make things right is death.
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The wages of sin is death. Why seven male descendants?
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Well, some of you are sitting there thinking, well, seven is a biblical number of perfection. That's exactly right.
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It's symbolic and immense, complete satisfaction. This was to represent the fact that the
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Gibeonites had met out the full measure of wrath upon Israel for the sins of Saul.
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They were going to put these men to death. And by the way, this wasn't going to be a pleasant death. They were going to stone them. I'm like, couldn't they at least get a hanging or a firing squad?
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Nope. Stoning. So they get stoned and you say, well, wait a minute. It says that they're going to be hanged before the
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Lord. Yes, they are. But to just explain the whole process, they got stoned to death and then they would strip their bodies and stick them out on basically on spears on this hill so that they would be, and that's what
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Gibeah means is it means hill or mountain. And we see it even later where it says mountain.
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They're going to be put in an elevated place on these wooden stakes. They're dead, shame -filled bodies for everybody to see why.
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Why would such a thing be required? Sounds terrible. These men didn't do anything.
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At least they're not directly responsible. We could say that they're innocent. And all this to bring two parties into reconciliation to remove the curse of God from one of the two parties.
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Again, the gospel parallels are pretty striking. Now we're going to see this, the payment, and I call it the payment with an asterisk because there is an exception.
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And the king said, I will give them, I will meet your demand, the seven male descendants of Saul.
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But the king spared Mephibosheth, the son of Saul's son, Jonathan. And look at the reason why, because of the oath of the
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Lord that was between them, between David and Jonathan, the son of Saul. Now listen, the oath of the
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Lord, I looked it up because I wanted to see, it's not a covenant. It's not strictly a covenant, but it's a promise, an oath of the
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Lord that was between them. And if you just think about it, if David is seeing what is happening because Saul broke his word,
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I think it would have been pretty foolish of David to think, well, I'm going to go ahead and violate that promise that I made to Jonathan.
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So he doesn't. But nevertheless, David is going to give the seven male descendants of Saul to the
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Gibeonites. The Gibeonites will kill them and put their dead bodies really in a horrible display.
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It's bloody. It's shocking. It's outrageous. I thought about, you know, like maybe giving this sermon an
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R rating because if you really visualize it, this is horrific. And then
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I thought, well, it's very reminiscent of what? The crucifixion.
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Jesus put to open shame and suffering. So these seven men are sacrificed for the sins of Saul.
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Look at verse seven. The king took the two sons of Rizpah, the daughter of Eah, whom she bore to Saul, Armoni and Mephibosheth.
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This is a grandson. This isn't the son of Jonathan. And the five sons of Merab, the daughter of Saul, whom she bore to Adriel, the son of Barzillai, the
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Meholathites. And he gave them into the hands of the Gibeonites and they hanged them on the mountain before the
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Lord. And the seven of them perished together. They were put to death in the first days of the harvest at the beginning of barley harvest.
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Some of these are the sons of Saul's concubines. Others are grandsons, but they are all male descendants of Saul.
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Now, what does the text say before the Lord, before Yahweh? And the word
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Yahweh, now, when you think about it, we refer to that. Pastor Mike loves to say Yahweh. Why? Because it reminds us of the covenant keeping nature of God, the fact that he is faithful.
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And that's the force here. So why is this done before Yahweh?
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Well, just as God's people had dishonored him by breaking a covenant made in his name, so would these descendants of Saul be dishonored before the
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Lord. In the same way they broke the covenant, so would the covenant be restored.
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The sins against the Gibeonites would be expiated, would be recompensed. The wrath of God would be propitiated, would be satisfied.
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This famine would go. So we've seen the violation revealed, the atonement sought, the horrible price paid.
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When I was thinking about covenants, if you think about the covenants that are either implied or stated in the
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Bible, Adam broke covenants.
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Abraham broke covenant. He certainly was not faithful. Moses and the people of Israel broke covenants.
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Saul broke covenant. David would break covenant. In fact, if you search all of scripture, you would find only one man who did as he said he would do, the
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Lord Jesus Christ. Let's turn over to Jeremiah 31.
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We are on a communion
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Sunday, so it seems fitting that we ultimately point to Christ and to a better covenant.
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Jeremiah 31 verses 31 to 34. Behold, the days are coming, declares the
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Lord, when I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and the house of Judah, not like the covenant that I made with their fathers on the day when
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I took them by the hand to bring them out of the land of Egypt, the mosaic, the
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Sinaitic covenants, my covenant that they broke, though I was their husband, declares the
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Lord, for this is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel after those days, declares the
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Lord. I will put my law within them and I will write it on their hearts and I will be their
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God and they shall be my people and no longer shall each one know or each one teach his neighbor and each his brother saying, know the
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Lord for they shall all know me from the least of them to the greatest, declares the Lord.
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And listen, for I will forgive their iniquity and I will remember their sin no more.
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This is a new covenant in which we've been engrafted and it is not like the old covenants.
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All who are in it will be forgiven their sins. It says it right there. I will forgive their iniquity and I will remember their sin no more.
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All who are in the new covenant will go to heaven. In fact, Jesus in Luke chapter 22 verse 20 says, and likewise the cup after they had eaten saying, these are the words of Jesus here, this cup that is poured out for you is the new covenant in my blood.
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His blood is the seal of the new covenant, the signal that nothing can break the new covenant.
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His blood was needed to remit sin, to seal the covenant.
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It has been ratified. It has been sealed. Our sins are remitted.
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They are forgiven because of the death of Christ. To make the parallels obvious from our passage this morning, the violation revealed our sin against God revealed.
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We understand when we think about the gospel that we are sinners, each and every one of us.
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Our second parallel was the atonement sought. We could ask ourselves this question, who can reconcile sinful man and holy
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God? It had to be Jesus. Only someone who is fully
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God and fully man could be that mediator. The Bible tells us that. That there is one mediator between God and men, the man
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Christ Jesus. Then we said there was a horrible price paid, those seven men of Jesus being fully
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God and fully man. Only he could be fully obedient to all the
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Father commanded. Only he could suffer in innocence, be convicted wrongly, and then crucified, exposed to a most shameful death, an excruciating death, and raised for all to see.
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And all this was done by the predetermined plan of God. In fact, in Isaiah 53, it says what? It pleased the
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Father to crush him. My question as we close here this morning is, are you in the new covenant?
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Have you had your sins forgiven? Have you been sealed by the blood of the
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Lord Jesus Christ? And it's only by believing in him that you're in the new covenant.
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There's no other way. You can't prepare yourself. You can't make ready for salvation. And once you're in, you're always in.
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We have the very words of Jesus. It's sealed in his blood.
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There is nothing that can remove us from the love of God in Christ Jesus.
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There's no one who can take us out of the Father's hand. There's no one who can take us out of the
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Son's hand. He laid down his life for the sheep. All these words over and over again, reminding us of the surety of our salvation.
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Who does, who says, well, let's put it this way. Who says what he means and then does what he says.
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Only the God of the universe. And in terms of mankind, only the
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Lord Jesus Christ. Let's pray. Father in heaven, what a blessing it is this morning to be reminded, even in the midst of unusual circumstances, a famine, the last for three years, how you will defend your name, how you will glorify your name, how you will bring honor to your name.
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Father, even better to think that our mediator died for us, was raised for us.
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Our hope is in the life, the death, and the resurrection of the
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Lord Jesus Christ. The new covenants sealed in his blood.
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No one can violate that. We have your word on it. You cannot break your word.
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You cannot break your covenant. You have given us all these symbols, all these old
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Testament examples that we might understand your faithfulness, your unchangeableness, that we might learn to trust in you and to trust in you fully, not to be concerned about the circumstances that we're in, but to be concerned with knowing you, loving you, trusting you, and looking forward to the day when we will be with you forever.