The Sinners God Uses

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Don Filcek; 2 Samuel 3:1-25 The Sinners God Uses

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You're listening to a podcast of Recast Church in Matawan, Michigan. This week, Pastor Don Filsak is preaching from his series,
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The Warrior Poet King, Study of Second Samuel. Let's listen in. I'm Don Filsak, I'm the lead pastor here, and I want to just welcome everybody.
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I'm glad that you guys have taken the time to gather together to worship our great God, and the operating word there is together.
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I'm really grateful for the opportunity that we have to get together every week, worship together.
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It always amazes me how God brings together people from a variety of different backgrounds and forges us together into a community of faith, and that's exactly what he's been doing here over the last 12 years since Recast started.
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I want to thank you for seeking to grow in faith. I hope that that's a big part of why you're here this morning, is that you recognize that your relationship with God needs ongoing checkups, needs ongoing connections with him, needs to take in his word and believe it and trust it, and so we do so in community this morning.
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I hope that you're also seeking to grow in community, that this isn't just a show that you come to take in or that it's just kind of like a thing you do on Sunday morning, some kind of a program to bring your family to or something like that, but I hope that you're growing in community that is in connection in relationship with others.
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We are not islands. We are not made to be isolated. Despite the fact that in the last couple of years it's been kind of like one big sociology experiment in isolation, right?
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Anybody know what I'm talking about? It doesn't work. It doesn't work. How many of you just raise your hand and say it doesn't work?
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Testify. This doesn't work. We need each other. We need relationships. We need to use our gifts.
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We talk about growing in faith, growing in community, growing in service. God has gifted each one of us with some part to play in his body.
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If you belong to Jesus Christ, then you have a gift to offer to his church, and equally the others have gifts that you need to be the recipient of as well, and so I encourage all of you to be growing in faith, growing in community, and growing in service together.
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This morning we look at a text. We're going to look together at a text in Scripture that reveals some messes that are caused by sin, and how many of you have ever seen those in the course of your life?
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A mess that was caused by sin or by a sinner? Any of you? Five of us?
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Okay. And then the rest of us are just not feeling like raising our hand like Dave said earlier, like you just didn't feel like it, but I think all of us have been both on the giving end of that mess as well as on the receiving end.
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Amen? You know what I'm talking about? Like we have both been the cause of messes, and we have also been the recipient of the messes of others.
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And as we look at these historical accounts in the life of David, we're going through the book of 2 Samuel together, and as we're marching through this, it's kind of fundamental that we understand what we're looking at as we look at the accounts of the life of King David of Israel.
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Please know that these stories do not exist here to tell us about the hero David, who is our model and our example.
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Just live like David. No, don't. We're going to see some stories here that are going to be like, if you assume that these are hero stories, then you're going to run up against some things that are going to go like, wait a second, am
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I supposed to live like that? In our text today are some of those things. Instead, what we're looking at when we're looking at 2
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Samuel is we're looking at a book that's showing him as a sinful human like us that God still uses to advance his redemptive purposes and to glorify himself.
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God is forging a people in the Old Testament in honor of a promise that he made to Abraham in ancient times.
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He came to Abraham and said he would make his offspring into a great nation. He would give them a great land as a protective gift to them.
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And through that people and through that land, he would provide one who would be born of their lineage who would be a blessing to all the peoples of all times, of all nations.
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Who is that person? Does anybody want to say his name? Jesus. Absolutely, it is
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Jesus. Jesus is the right answer, right? It's always the Sunday school answer, but it is the right answer. Who built the ark?
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Jesus. No, okay, it's not always. Oh, no, it's not always the right answer. But these accounts have as their primary focus as we're marching through 2
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Samuel. The point is the God who is faithful to accomplish his promises.
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That's what we're looking at throughout this entire section of the Old Testament history. God who is faithful to keep his promises.
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And he does so despite our sin against him. And he brings about his purposes through human history.
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And it's a history full of all kinds of sinners. And I want to share a little secret with you guys. When God looks over humanity to decide who he's going to make king over his people, he does not have any perfect people to choose from.
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No perfect people to choose from. And further, when he determines the road to get that man to the crown, as we're looking at in these chapters that we're here at the start of 2
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Samuel, how David arrives at the crown, he only has sinful humans to work with on that winding road as well.
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So all of the people who have influenced your life have been sinners.
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Did you know that? And you yourself, are you ready for it? You're a sinner as well.
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Our text is once again full of things that may offend modern sensibilities. I will keep it careful this morning because I recognize this is a fifth
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Sunday and we've got our children in here as well. But the passage itself is not particularly PC.
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It's not particularly politically correct. And if we're honest, human existence is full of hypocrisy, full of inconsistencies, full of systemic and systematic societal failings.
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And our own personal history, I think, mirrors this as well, does it not? How can we stand an arrogant judgment over David here in this text, for example, and his seven wives when we have our own favorite brands of sinning in our day and age?
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And honesty requires us to be honest and truthful about our own sin in humility.
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By the way, it doesn't mean that we're okay with sin. Make sure we understand that the text is not saying be okay with sin, but we ought to be quick to be done away with the pretense of our own self -righteousness.
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And that's the main point of this message this morning. To be done with the pretense of our own self -righteousness, throw ourselves at the mercy of a
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God who only ever saves and uses sinners in his cause. So we're going to be looking at some of the sinners that God chooses to use in the process of propelling
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David to the throne over Israel. So if you're not already there in your Bibles, turn over to 2
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Samuel 3, and we're going to read the first 25 verses, 1 through 25, together.
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If you have a device, if you prefer to use your phone as an app for the
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Bible, or you want to use one of those scripture journals, you could even get up now and go back there and grab a scripture journal if you want one of those.
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But it's going to be 2 Samuel 3, 1 through 25. And we're going to read this in its entirety. Again, as we're reading these histories, we're reading longer chunks of God's Word together.
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But I think this might be the most valuable thing we do when we gather together, is actually hear directly from the Almighty God.
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My voice, but his words. 2 Samuel 3, 1 through 25. There was a long war between the house of Saul and the house of David.
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And David grew stronger and stronger, while the house of Saul became weaker and weaker.
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And sons were born to David at Hebron. His firstborn was Amnon of Aenom of Jezreel, and his second,
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Chiliab of Abigail, the widow of Nabal of Carmel, and the third, Absalom, the son of Macca, the daughter of Talmai, king of Geshur.
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And the fourth, Adonijah, the son of Haggath, and the fifth, Shephetiah, the son of Abital.
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And the sixth, Ithrim of Eglah, David's wife. These were born to David in Hebron.
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While there was war between the house of Saul and the house of David, Abner was making himself strong in the house of Saul.
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Now Saul had a concubine whose name was Rizpah, the daughter of Aiah. And Ish -bosheth said to Abner, Why have you gone into my father's concubine?
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Then Abner was very, very angry over the words of Ish -bosheth and said, Am I a dog's head of Judah?
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To this day I keep showing steadfast love to the house of Saul, your father, to his brothers and to his friends, and have not given you into the hand of David, and yet you charge me today with a fault concerning a woman?
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God do so to Abner and more also, if I do not accomplish for David what the Lord has sworn to him, to transfer the kingdom from the house of Saul and set up the throne of David over Israel and over Judah, from Dan to Beersheba.
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And Ish -bosheth could not answer Abner another word because he feared him. And Abner sent messengers to David on his behalf, saying,
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To whom does the land belong? Make your covenant with me, and behold, my hand shall be with you to bring over all
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Israel to you. And he said, Good, I will make a covenant with you, but one thing I require of you, that is, you should not see my face unless you first bring
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Michal, Saul's daughter, when you come and see my face. Then David sent messengers to Ish -bosheth,
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Saul's son, saying, Give me my wife Michal, for whom I paid the bride price of a hundred forskins in the
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Philistines. And Ish -bosheth sent and took her from her husband Paltiel, the son of Laish. But her husband went with her, weeping after her all the way to Behurim.
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Then Abner said to him, Go, return, and he returned. And Abner conferred with the elders of Israel, saying,
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For some time past you have been seeking David as king over you. Now then bring it about.
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For the Lord has promised David, saying, By the hand of my servant David I will save my people Israel from the hand of the
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Philistines and from the hand of all their enemies. Abner also spoke to Benjamin, and then Abner went to tell
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David in Hebron all that Israel and the whole house of Benjamin thought good to do. When Abner came with twenty men to David at Hebron, David made a feast for Abner and the men who were with him.
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And Abner said to David, I will arise and go and will gather all Israel to my lord the king, that they may make a covenant with you and that you may reign over all that your heart desires.
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So David sent Abner away, and he went in peace. Just then the servants of David arrived with Joab from a raid, bringing much spoil with them.
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But Abner was not with David at Hebron, for he had sent him away, and he had gone in peace. When Joab and all the army that was with him came, it was told
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Joab, Abner the son of Ner came to the king, and he has let him go, and he has gone in peace.
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Then Joab went to the king and said, What have you done? Behold, Abner came to you.
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Why is it that you have sent him away so that he has gone? You know that Abner the son of Ner came to deceive you, and to know you're going out and you're coming in, and to know all that you are doing.
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Let's pray. Father, I thank you for your word. We read these historical accounts, and they can be, they just forge a lot of various thoughts in our minds and in our hearts, and I'm not sure that we, at first reading, ever quite get down to the root of what you're trying to communicate to us.
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Father, I pray that you would make this text come alive to us, as we just talk in terms of what real life looks like on this real fallen planet, with real people and real history.
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Father, I pray that you would meet each one of us where we're at. We are all sinners. We are all broken to a person here.
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We all have our own brand of falling and failing. And so, Father, I pray that you would meet us in this place, not to be okay with our sin, but to all the more delight and all the more rejoice and all the more celebrate the great gift of salvation that we have through your
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Son, Jesus Christ. Our hope is placed in the greater King who came, of the line of King David, the one who arrived here, lived a sinless life, was crucified at our hands, and rose again, and now sits at your right hand, where he awaits your word to come and rescue us.
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So, Father, we look forward to that day, and I pray that you would help us to lift our voices together in gladness and in joy and in hope together.
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We thank you for making this church an outpost of heaven here in a dark place, and I pray that you would continue to shine your light out through each one of us as we meet here, gain strength and grow in our faith, and then go out to share that with others.
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I pray that you would be with our praise this morning, help us to lift our voices, not just singing songs, not just moving our mouths, but that we would be moved in our hearts in gratitude, thankfulness, and awe of your great love for us.
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In Jesus' name, amen. Yep, you can go to be seated, but if at any time during the message you need to get up and get more coffee or juice or donuts, take advantage of that back there.
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I think there's still some donut holes back there. And then if this is your first time here, in case you need the restrooms, those are out the double doors down the hallway on the left -hand side, so take advantage of that if you need it.
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And then keep your Bibles open to 2 Samuel 3, 1 through 25. We read that earlier. That's our text. We're gonna be walking through it.
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And I wanna just point out that I find great comfort in the Old Testament. I've talked with many people, and I've even talked with many pastors who tend to shy away from the
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Old Testament. They're like, just give me the New Testament. It usually has something to do with the ambiguity of the
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Old Testament compared to the clear instructions and clear direction of the New Testament.
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How many of you just would admit that like, I kinda like clear communication, I like things to just be told to me, tell me what to do, and I'll go do that.
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The New Testament leans in that direction where it takes a little bit more work to get through the Old Testament to figure out, but trust me, there are gems here for us.
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This is God's truth. This is what the Holy Spirit desires to communicate with us. So 2 Samuel is not less than Galatians.
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Hear me carefully. It's not less than Romans. It is God's revealed truth through human history, and that's fundamental.
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Now, there is indeed ambiguity in some of these texts, and the New Testament tends towards very, very clear instructions.
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The New Testament tends to give us clear explanations of the Gospel and then points to the finished work of Jesus Christ, but I have loved and always have loved the
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Old Testament for its realism. Nothing compares to the Old Testament for its real indication, real finger pointing at the truth of our existence, what it's like to live on this planet.
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I find comfort in it. It's earthy. It identifies the place that I live and the place that you live, whether you acknowledge it or not.
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It identifies for us the way of life on a fallen planet. In all of its messes and all of its crud and all of its broken relationships and all of those things that we experience, it makes sense of the messes
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I routinely see in the news. It makes sense of the messes I routinely see in others.
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It makes sense of the messes that I routinely see in my own heart. Does that make sense?
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So that's what we're digging into and we're looking at the Old Testament. I'm choosing to preach this text in a way that follows the characters that we see revealed here to explain what kinds of sinners we are looking at because I believe that this text has to go there in order to be honest.
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A lot of us have this Sunday school cleaned up version of these characters and these people in the
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Old Testament and then we stumble upon texts like this and we skip over them because we're like, wait, that looks like a bunch of messes. How in the world can
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David have so many wives? How in the world can this happen? How can this guy kill this person? And so we just kind of like, I have no idea what that was about, right?
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And just move on to the next chapter. But we need to dig in to see what God desires to communicate to us.
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These are not fictional hero accounts where the good guys are clear and only ever do good and the villains are very clear and only ever do bad.
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No, that's not what we're looking at this morning. Just like real life, these accounts show us that the line of sinfulness cuts right down the center of every single human heart.
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The categories of good people and bad people are made up by us. You get what I'm saying on that? The heroes and the villains are made up by us.
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But all of us have within us the capacity to be the villain. Do you know what I'm talking about? All of us have within ourselves the capacity to be the villain.
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Our text begins in verse one with a summary statement to kind of set the context of where we're going. The war between the remnants of the house of Saul.
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Saul has died and there's this kind of battle over the kingdom of Israel. Saul, the very first king over Israel.
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He's died and God has appointed David to be the king, but there's this protracted war with those who were loyal to the former king,
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Saul, and David who is rising in power. His military commander,
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Saul's former military commander, Abner, has set up Saul's youngest son, Ish -bosheth, as the king in opposition to David, the one that God said should be the next king.
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But one of the 12 tribes, Judah, has chosen in our text last week to recognize
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David as their king, so David is king over 1 12th of the inheritance promised to him in his youth, while Ish -bosheth is the king over 11 12ths of Israel.
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But we see a trajectory in verse one. David is growing stronger and stronger while the influence of the house of Saul is becoming weaker and weaker.
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That's the context of all of these events that we're seeing here transpire. These events happen over the course of a couple of years.
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It's not like we read this and this is one event that happened on one day. These things are happening. There are battles and skirmishes over the course of two years between David's men and Saul's men, which would be
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Abner and Joab, the two army commanders. While David set up his headquarters in Hebron, we see an accounting of the birth of his six sons.
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Some commentaries were like, oh, this must have been added later or it was just kind of a strange time to talk about that.
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But it's at this point that I want to point out the first of the four types of sinners that God uses. We're talking about four types of sinners that God uses.
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Our first type of sinner is a sinner like David. A sinner like David. A sinner that is in love with God.
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Another way to state this is a repentant sinner. A sinner who is ready to repent when they are confronted with their sin.
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I would suggest to you that anyone who is trusting in the gospel of Jesus Christ for salvation fits into this first category, must be in this first category.
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A sinner who loves God. You see, recorded for us in verses two through five, what's recorded there can be summarized that David had six sons with six different women.
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And if I just said that to you, hey, there's a dude in the Bible who had six kids with six different women.
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How many of you kind of go like, what? Like, what? And he was chosen by God. Okay, wait a second.
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Because if I came to you and said, hey, there's this friend of mine and he had six different kids with six different women, that's a different context, right?
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Like, where we live, that would sound bad. Anybody with me? Anybody that thinks that's normal?
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Okay. That's concerning. I'm looking for hands. It's like, nobody's gonna raise their hand even if they thought it was normal, right?
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No, of course that's not normal. And so now I wanna be clear about two things that I feel like I can state about this event, these circumstances of David and his multiple wives and multiple children with multiple women and all of that stuff.
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The first I wanna state emphatically and clearly is that this was a cultural norm during the life of David.
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I'm not dismissing it. I'm not justifying it. I'm not saying it was okay. I wanna make sure that you understand fundamentally that the rest of his world, the rest of his culture looked at this as normal.
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They didn't think anything of it. Well, they should've, but they didn't. The culture was so far down the road of polygamy during this era and this time that there was probably likely an expectation that David would have more than one wife.
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He may not have, and it seems likely that he may not have even considered this to be sin.
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The second thing that I wanna point out about this is that this is absolutely and clearly in Scripture not the way
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God designed marriage to work. Did you already know that? This is not the way that God designed marriage to work.
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Polygamy is indeed sin. This is not a Mormon church, folks. We're recast, okay?
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Polygamy is indeed a sin, and I believe in part that this list of sons in this passage is actually here to show
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God is blessing David, and you gotta go, wait a second. Well, God is blessing David. His house is increasing.
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Saul's house is decreasing. He's having sons born to him, and Saul's power and Saul's influence, obviously he's died, but the power of his household is diminishing, and it might not melt some of our minds when we consider that God could bless a man in the midst of his sinning, but that's what's happening here, but then
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I want you to consider that God isn't blessing him because David is sinning. He's blessing him despite his sin, and further and more fundamental, and let this come home to roost in your heart, church.
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Every time that God has ever blessed you, he is blessing a sinner. Thought about it?
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Every single good gift that he has ever, and by the way, every good thing that you have ever received in your life has come down from the
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Father who loves you. Every good blessing that has ever come across your desk, across your household, across your heart has been from God, and children born in sin are not sin.
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The child is always a blessing. The sin, of course, can be a very vile thing, rebellion against our creator, a rebellion against his good design for us in polygamy.
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Yes, here, the children are not sin. The children are a blessing. Why can
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I say this with such confidence? How can I tell you that this is sin? Some of this leaves some ambiguity.
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Am I confident? Are you confident, Don, that David was sinning in this? What's going on here? Of course, our culture would swing the opposite way and say, of course, this must be sin, right, without thinking about Scripture.
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Anybody with me that it seems like this is mentioned just kind of nonchalantly in the text? Kind of nonchalant.
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Yeah, he had this kid to this wife, and this wife gave him this kid, and this wife gave him this kid. With no real mention of the sin itself, no real condemnation of David in any of this, but consider the words of Jesus.
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Our Lord and Savior, God in flesh, here on earth, speaking and teaching, and what he taught about marriage was to reaffirm the book of Genesis.
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Therefore, a man shall leave his father and mother and be glued to his wife, singular, and the two will become one flesh.
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Not several flesh. One flesh. One man, one woman.
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Man is singular. Wife is singular in that text. God invented marriage. Man invented polygamy and all other forms of sexual deviancy that don't match that Genesis account affirmed by Jesus.
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Amen? So what do we see here in this text? Are we looking, when we're looking at the life of David, are we seeing a perfect man held up, do it like David did it?
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No, don't do it like David did it. Are we looking at God working in real human history, using sinful people to bring himself glory by his grace and patience?
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Absolutely. We're seeing him putting up with us. We're seeing his patience and his grace and his mercy to bless sinful people who love him, who love him.
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How can God use a man like David with seven wives and an apparent, we're gonna see, by the way, over the course of his life, slowly exposed a problem with lust.
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Now it's gonna come in one big event with Bathsheba. Some of you are familiar with that name and you know what's gonna happen. Let me just suggest to you that it didn't happen on one day that all of a sudden, lust overtook him and he was on the roof of his house looking out over his kingdom and happened to see a woman bathing and happened to go for her.
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He had a problem. David is a man with a problem here, folks. He is not perfect.
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So how can he use, how can God use a man like that? Well, let me ask you a more close to home question.
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How can he use you? How can he use me? Why hasn't he judged us swiftly?
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You see, I find comfort in the story of David and what amounts to an unholy family here.
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It reminds me that God can use sinful people. Anybody glad for that? God can use sinful people.
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He has no one else to choose from. But don't take my words too far, church. What you might be tempted in your hearts to do right now is take it one step further and say, then are you saying that God is okay with my sin?
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By no means. Absolutely not. I am saying he only has sinners to work with and works with what he has available.
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So let me be clear that David was both a man after God's own heart, the testimony of God about this man.
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God who knows all hearts, God who knows all things, says, David, look at him, he's a man after my own heart.
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Well, he was a sinful man after his heart. Both a man after God's own heart and a sinner.
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This is indeed a category of person. And you want that to be said of you.
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You want that to be said of you. We see that David had a heartfelt love for God as revealed in the songs that he wrote and what's spoken of him directly in scripture.
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God testified that David wanted to please him. And we will see David later in his life confess and turn from sin when he's confronted with it.
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He demonstrates repentance, shows us what it's like to be sorrowful over his own sin, and broken over his own sin, and even identify and reap the consequences of his own sin.
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But God is bringing to his chosen throne a sinner who loves him, who runs to him in humility.
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God uses men and women, people like David, sinners who love him.
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And let me add that the particular brand of David's sin mentioned in this text might be helpful for us to consider. It was a social sin.
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Think about it, it was a social sin. Acceptable to everybody around him. And I confess that I think we could all be blinded by some specific social sins that we rarely are moved to consider.
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I don't know if you can think in terms of, I'm just gonna give an illustration, I'm gonna throw something out here, but I would suggest that there may be some things that you're blinded to that I'm not.
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But can you imagine sitting around with the Apostle Paul, this is a genuine, legitimate question I want us to wrestle with, can you imagine on the new earth sitting around with the
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Apostle Paul, explaining to him our fascination with the highly sexualized streaming content of Netflix?
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That got quiet. Or YouTube TV, or whatever is your brand of poison.
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I'm convinced that our entertainment is our Christian brand of sin. Few would question
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David's six, soon to be seven wives in the text, despite the fact that the Torah clearly expressed
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God's will on the matter. Very clear indications from Scripture, if they were students of the
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Word, if they were just taking in the Word and studying it, they wouldn't have all these wives. They would follow
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God. But instead, their culture has become so steeped in the idea of polygamy that they just do it.
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No thoughts. And few will question what we allow to entertain us.
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I tell you all frequently that Recast will never publish a list, you're starting to sweat a little bit, you're going, Don, is this where you give me the list of things that I can and can't watch?
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Is this where you say what is and isn't appropriate? Absolutely not. Those of you that have been around here for a long time, you know that I don't do that.
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It is not our position as a church that we are your conscience, that we are the Holy Spirit. I will refuse every time to be the
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Holy Spirit for you. I want you to listen to Him. I want you to talk to Him. I want you to hear from Him what's in your life that doesn't belong there.
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I believe that it's there, church. I think everybody in this room right now, there is something that is deceiving you.
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There is something that is capturing you right now that you're unaware. But here's the thing, ask
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God to show you and I think you'll be faithful to. The question is, don't ask Him if you're not willing to sever it.
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And I think that's a big problem for many of us, right? In our hearts, we don't even want to ask the question because we don't want to give up the fun things.
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We want to be in the know, right? We want to be able to watch that show and talk to others about it the next week. We want to know what's going on and all of that.
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I don't give an acceptable and unacceptable programming list of shows you can watch or not watch, music, video games, any of that stuff.
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But please don't hear me implying that anything goes. I only am suggesting that you do the hard work of listening to the
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Spirit, to hear what He is saying is sin, and then pray for the strength to follow
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Him in truth. The second kind of sinner is Ish -bosheth here in the text. I would call him a clueless, lazy, opportunistic sinner.
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Others kind of suggest sin and he just runs with it. He's the kind of guy who could actually kind of say, well,
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Abner made me do it. Abner made me do it. Abner's the one who set me up as king against God. I didn't really, it wasn't my idea, it was
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Abner's. I just kind of was there and I'll sit on the throne. Sure, I'll do this. That God uses him may not be particularly apparent to many of us, but let me point out that he is absolutely being used by God as we are here thousands of years later talking about him.
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He is in the history of the humanity that God is using to bring forth His Messiah. We see in verse six that Abner was becoming strong in a weakening dynasty.
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How can that be if Ish -bosheth is the king? Well, he has certainly been a puppet king. Abner is the real power behind opposition to God here.
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Ish -bosheth is, Abner made him king over 11 twelfths of Israel and Ish -bosheth just kind of went along with it.
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But there's very little said about Ish -bosheth in the text and I can't make much of him. His name, by the way, means man of shame, which there's a little bit of irony in that.
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I don't think he called himself that. I think God is calling him that here in this text. But what is said of him is enough to point out his incompetence and his arrogance.
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In verse seven, he challenges Abner, his military commander, over an issue with a woman named Rizpah. Rizpah was one of the,
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I hate to say it, but it's the right translation of the word concubine. She was a second -rate wife of King Saul.
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And again, Scripture is pointing out what they did in history, not what they should have done. So again, there should be no such thing as concubines in Scripture, but they're all over the place.
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Ish -bosheth accused Abner of sleeping with his father's concubine, which would amount to basically taking the kingdom from him.
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For him to sleep with one of the former king's wives is to basically try to take upon himself authority.
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Well, Abner's appointed Ish -bosheth. He's not interested in the kingship. And it's unclear if this was a true accusation or not.
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It doesn't state directly in the text, well, Abner never did this thing. But by Abner's response and by everything in the text,
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I lean toward it being a false accusation. Ish -bosheth is falsely accusing his military commander of sleeping with one of his father's wives.
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After all that Abner has done for Ish -bosheth, after years of hard service to his father on the battlefield, he is rewarded by this son of Saul with scorn, with shame, and with false accusation.
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And I believe it got heated, it got angry, it got very, very tense between these two.
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And you see that in the text. This amounts to a very severe and even sinful level of ingratitude on the part of Ish -bosheth towards Abner, who has served his father's family for decades.
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If it was true, there may have been a more gentle way to address this issue with someone such as Abner, who has served his family so well.
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But instead, Ish -bosheth plays a fool and falsely accuses his most powerful ally. But let me point out to Ish -bosheth's primary sin throughout this passage is not merely that he was rude to Abner, as if that's the extent of it.
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No, no, no, his greatest sin is that he's accepted the crown that belongs to David, according to the words of God, according to the prophet of Almighty God.
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So this man of shame is willing to play king against God. Now, when you hear it that way, does that sound like a particularly severe sin?
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Play king against God's choice? That's pretty dangerous, I would say. According to verses eight through 12, it is this foolish false accusation on the part of Ish -bosheth that proves to be the downfall of what is already a sham kingdom.
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Abner, being shamed, says, after all I've done for you, do you take me for a dog's head of Judah? That phrase sounds strange to our ears, but a good translation of that would be traitor.
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Do you take me for a traitor? Do you take me for one of just kind of like a weak man among Judah, their enemy?
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He knew that to sleep with the king's wife would be tantamount to betrayal of the king, and he has been nothing but loyal, nothing but faithful to the line of King Saul.
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He is not merely angry at Ish -bosheth by the end of this text, he is done with him.
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He is done with him. And in verse nine, we find in clarity that Abner fully understood that God has sworn the kingdom of Israel to David, not to Ish -bosheth.
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And just like that, David's enemy has become an advocate. Just like that,
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Abner says, may I be condemned, I was gonna say something different in here, and now the kids are in here, and I was gonna say, because what he says here is so strong that it's like a curse that you would hear in your workplace.
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But it's a really strong curse. May it be done so to me by God, and more so if I do not turn the kingdom over to David's hands.
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He says that to Ish -bosheth, that you're not gonna be king anymore. I'm the one in charge here, and I am going to deliver the other 11 tribes to David.
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Ish -bosheth was afraid of Abner, it even says in the text, he was afraid, he wasn't really any powerful king, he was a puppet.
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And Abner sends messengers to David inviting a covenant in which Abner promises now to deliver the kingdom of Israel to him.
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Ish -bosheth has been lazy, a lazy opportunistic, go with the flow kind of sinner. And Abner says,
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I'm gonna set you up as king over and against the Lord's anointing. And he's like, I'm game, sure, whatever, whatever you wanna do, man.
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I'm your guy. You wanna put me on the throne? I'll do that. We are responsible for what we enter into even when it's someone else's idea.
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Did you know that? Even when it's somebody else's idea. We will give an account to God without effective pointer fingers.
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These won't work on the day of judgment. You know, I mean, you have that right away in the garden, well, you gave me the woman.
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He points to Eve and says it's her fault and she points to the serpent. But how many of you know everyone faced judgment on that day?
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All of them. It wasn't just like, oh no, let's follow the chain of fingers until we get down to the root cause.
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Whose idea was it? Okay, it's their fault. Abner made me do it will not be an effective defense.
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Man of shame indeed, Ish -bosheth. And you ladies are not off the hook too just because his name is
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Ish -bosheth. You could actually be an Ish -bosheth, a woman of shame.
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But I want to point out what is a helpful observation to me from this text. Consider how God turned an enemy into an ally here.
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Note David's role. What did David do to win the heart of his enemy Abner? What did he do? I mean,
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David, like, go to leadership conferences. How to win enemies and how to influence people and how to, five steps to taking an enemy and turning them into an advocate.
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You know what I'm saying? Is that what David did here? Did David really get it done and win the heart of his enemy?
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Not at all. Take comfort, church. We serve a
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God who is able to work without our involvement on the issues that plague us most.
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How many of you have some issues that are plaguing you? It's probably relational. Probably has something to do with your family, right?
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If we're honest, we have these situations, these issues that come up. Much of it relational. Much of it difficulty that we face in regards to family and relationships or maybe it's a workplace or a boss or some kind of job thing going on or maybe even a war over the fence with your next door neighbor.
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I don't know what it is for you, but we all have these issues. A young man, here's an illustration.
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A real life situation that I've encountered, there was a young man who went off to college. He had professed
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Christ in his youth, but then his junior and senior year, he got in running with the wrong crowd and had difficulty and ended up basically coming to his parents his junior year and saying,
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I have no faith. I do not believe there is a God. I want you hereby to call me an atheist.
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I don't believe. He went off to a state school, had a bad breakup with a girl his first semester there and then had dark feelings of deep despair as young men often do over those relationships and breakups and he responded to a flyer for a campus ministry meeting there on that state school.
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He attended that meeting. He connected in relationship with those people. He was saved and he now to this day serves in ministry.
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Do you know what his parents did about that? Do you know how his parents got that to happen? The only thing they could do was pray.
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The only thing they could do was pray, but hear me carefully, not the only thing, but they didn't influence the change.
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They didn't make the change in their son. Are you hearing what I'm saying, church? They didn't pull up by the bootstraps and get it done.
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God working. God working. His plan in the life of this young man. God doing it.
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We pray. Church, we pray to and lean on and trust in the
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God who can indeed work in us. Amen? And a God who can work through us. Amen? And a
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God who can work without us. Amen? Without us.
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He doesn't need us to fix people. He can do it himself.
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And he does that here in this text. God turned David's greatest enemy, Abner, from enemy to advocate overnight, and he used the sinful folly of Ish -bosheth to accomplish it.
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Do you see it in the text? He took an enemy and made him an advocate overnight using the folly of a sinful man.
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Our third type of sinner in the text makes a guest appearance by implication.
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Guest appearance from the dead. His name is Saul. He shows up in some of the circumstances that are dictated in our text.
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Saul was a fear -driven kind of sinner. That's the type of sinner that Saul was. He was paranoid that someone was going to steal his kingdom.
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So at one point in his paranoia, and this is a setup for this understanding about how in the world does David have this wife that isn't living with him and is married to another man and this
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Paltiel and her name is Michal. I pronounce it Michal. I don't know if it's supposed to be
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Michael. It's definitely different letters in Hebrew. But at one point in Saul's paranoia, he decided to give his daughter in marriage to the man he feared most,
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David. But this was his logic, and we're told way back in 1 Samuel 18 that this is the way that Saul was thinking.
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His logic went like this. I will offer him my daughter Michal who it said in the text already loved David. She loved
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David. And so he says, I will use her to ensnare him. I will require him a bride price of 100 dead
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Philistines. Yeah, I know the text says something different, but that's all that's going on there is proof of death. That's what he's looking for there, and it's a weird scenario, but that's what he's going for.
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This is his logic. Hopefully David will die trying to obtain the proof of death of 100
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Philistines. And then I'll be rid of my greatest enemy to my throne and my kingdom.
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But it backfired. David killed 200 Philistines and brought the proof.
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So David married Saul's son Michal. And I want to point out that one of the things
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I already mentioned and it's kind of interesting is that the relationship between David and Michal, it's the only place that I'm aware of in all of Scripture where we see that a woman was in love with a man before they were married.
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She was attracted to him before they were even married. She wanted him. You can go back and read that account in chapter 18 of 1
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Samuel if you're interested. But she loved David and her dad found out and sought to take advantage of it for his kingdom.
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But fast forward to our text, Saul, in the midst of chasing David across the countryside, has recalled his daughter as David's wife.
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Now you can't really do that, can you? Well, you can if you're king. I mean, we can't do that, but he does.
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So Michal is now taken from David, has been in the past taken from David as of our text and given to another man.
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Saul basically doubling up the dowry here. Got a dowry from David, dowry from Paltiel.
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She loved David and her dad found out. Sorry, back up. I jumped into the wrong paragraph there.
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So Michal, Michal, is married to two men and she's living with Paltiel. So now we see in verse 13 that David is asking for his wife back as a request for fairness, but I also think to test
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Abner's loyalties. He's testing Abner. Saul is sending, by the way, to bring
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Michal with him and give her back to David is going to make him a stench to the house of Saul.
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And David knows this. So to restore her to David is a way of making sure that he has no place to go back to the house of Saul.
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Saul has sinned against David by basically stealing back his daughter. And the mess it causes is obvious. Abner agreed to bring
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Michal with him to restore her to David, which would be the final bridge burning for Abner and the household of Saul.
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Here's poor Paltiel weeping after his wife that he loves as Abner takes her away to bring her back to her first husband,
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David. Scripture has no shame competing with the likes of old school daytime talk shows and TV shows like Springer.
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Sin leaves messes. It leaves what I would call Gordian knots, unresolvable knots of relationships.
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How do you untangle this one, folks? I would not want this in my office trying to untangle this mess.
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A woman married to a man she loves stolen back by her daddy and given to another man who loves her only to be stolen back again by her original husband.
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Does that sound like it's made for Springer? It does. Some of you don't even know what I'm talking about when I say Springer. That's a good thing.
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That's a good thing. Those of you that know, shame on you. I'm just kidding. I'm the one giving the illustration here.
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It's a mess. And anybody in the room that's thinking right now that wait, isn't she the victim in all of this?
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Anybody think of that? Isn't she the victim in all of this? You would be right. You would be right. But sin always has victims.
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And I'm very, very sorry that so often women have suffered harm and abuse at the hands of sinful men and that's reality.
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Women have been used often in power plays. Saul was a powerful, paranoid man full of fear.
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He sinned out of an impulse of self -preservation. He was used by God despite his sin -cursed heart.
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But sometimes the extent that God uses a life is as an example of what not to do. How many of you do not want your life to stand primarily as a cautionary tale?
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Here's now how not to live. I hope that that's not the extent of my life, right? Like you don't want that to be your legacy.
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Well, don't live like he did. Okay, but that's Saul because here's the problem.
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Saul was an unrepentant sinner who loved his kingdom more than he loved
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God. Loved his kingdom, loved his power, loved his authority more than he loved
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God and he would not repent and turn to God. Lastly, we should reflect on Abner. He was kind of a high -handed type of sinner.
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He was a political mover and shaker who got stuff done. I'm actually quite convinced that many of us would like Abner if we met him.
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He's a get -it -done kind of guy. Get stuff done. He even had kind of a religious veneer about him at times.
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Abner meets with the elders over the tribes of Israel acknowledging that for some time they've been courting the idea.
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They've been kind of frustrated with Ish -bosheth. They've been wanting to go over to David and he says, go for it. He encourages them to go ahead and make
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David king in verse 18. And he speaks with the tribe of Benjamin because they're the tribe of King Saul and likely thought, well, the kingdom ought to, the crown ought to stay in our tribe.
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David being of Judah, he probably had to broker a good deal with them. And Abner actively went and made a covenant with David and David fixed a feast for Abner and his men and sent them away in peace while Joab, David's military man, thinks
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David is a fool for entertaining a covenant with Abner. He hates Abner.
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We saw that Abner killed his little kid brother in a text earlier and that hatred is going to boil over next week.
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A little bit of a cliffhanger. Come back next week to see what happens between Abner and Joab. These are historical passages.
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But Abner represents a high -handed, get -it -done kind of sinner. He is a man that makes things happen.
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He can oppose God or support God but the common theme of his life is control. There is nothing in this text that looks like repentance on the part of Abner.
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It is not that he has come to Christ, had a come -to -God moment here and all of a sudden he wants to support
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God's chosen leader. That's not what the text says. He is angry. What motivates him to come over to David's side?
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Anger. Anger at Ish -bosheth. Plain and simple. His loyalty is going to go to the one that he thinks best serves him and now
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David, he thinks, is going to serve better. We have these categories of sinners and I want you to think it through.
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We have David, a sinner in love with God, a man who shows himself hungry for repentance and holiness even though he is a product of his culture in which he is blind to many of his sins.
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We have Ish -bosheth, an opportunistic, lazy sinner who just kind of points at others and says, he made me do it, he made me do it and at the end of the day he is just the guy who is just kind of like a loaf, like letting life happen to him.
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We have King Saul, a paranoid, fearful, unrepentant sinner who says, I'm going to do things my way and I need power above all things and he has something that he is in love with more than God.
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And lastly, we have Abner, a high -handed, do -it -my -way kind of sinner who seeks control and seeks to control everything around him including everyone around him.
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He may even appear religious despite having no real love for God. There is indeed a religious category of sinner, did you know that?
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There is a religious category of sinner who, at the bottom of their hearts, is control over others and control over even themselves, control over everything and they think that that's all that a relationship with God looks like is control.
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God only ever uses sinners to accomplish his plans, Jesus being the only exception to that rule, of course.
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He used one perfect person to save us all. But my question for all of us this morning as we wrap things up and we're getting ready to come to communion is to consider where we see ourselves in this text.
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Who do you most identify with? Answer that question in your heart, but do so quickly because the follow -up question is much more important than that.
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Identify yourself and see where you're at, but what kind of sinners will be saved by Jesus? What kind of sinners will be saved by Jesus?
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Paul establishes very clearly in the book of Romans that all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God, all of us worthy of condemnation to a person.
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We are all sinners, so what's the difference between those who are saved and those who are not? If we're all sinners, are we not all condemned?
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Yes, we ought to be, but hear me carefully, church. Only repentant sinners will be saved.
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Only those who say in humility, God, I need you to carry me. I need you to rescue me.
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Even from my sins that I don't know, even from those cultural things that I do that I don't even know that I do, those things that I've fallen into just because of the others, the things that I would do that I would just point to others, to say to God, I hate my rebellion against you.
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I regret it and I wish it wasn't there. Unlike Abner, I don't want to control it and try to fix myself anymore.
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Unlike Saul, I apologize to you and long for your rule and reign in every area of my life.
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Unlike Ishmael, I own my own sin and recognize that I have been in opposition to you.
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I cannot blame anyone else for my sin. To a person in this room, let me encourage everyone to take a moment of repentance this morning before we get up to go into the lines to take communion together.
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And if you've asked Jesus to save you and have asked Him to rule in your life as your King, then I encourage you to come to the tables during this next song to remember the way
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He purchased you back from the brink of eternal condemnation by taking the punishment in Himself at the cross.
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If you've not yet asked Jesus Christ to rescue you, let me encourage you to cry out in your heart this morning,
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Jesus, save me. Jesus, rescue me. Jesus, lead me. And then
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I'd encourage you to reach out to me and let me know if you've cried out to Jesus today. Let's pray.
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Father, I thank you so much for the hope that we have in Christ. We are all sinners and honestly, the message would be heavy and only point to brokenness and darkness were it not for Christ.
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We see in David a model of a man who wanted to do things right, wanted to honor you, failed in many points, but still loved you and I pray that you would make that become more and more real, that you would help us all to process that in our own hearts.
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Even before we come to the tables of communion, I pray that you would meet with every person here to help them reconfirm that they actually do love you.
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We're all sinners, we're all broken, and so we come to these tables recognizing we're not worthy of the death of Jesus Christ, but he has loved us and given that to us by grace.
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I pray if there's anybody here who doesn't know that, that you would allow today to be a day of crying out, save me, rescue me,
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Jesus, and that some here, maybe in the hearing of this message, would respond and be saved today.