Check Your Assumptions

This sermon is from Grace Fellowship Church in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada. To access other sermons or to learn more about us, please visit our website at graceedmonton .ca.

Good afternoon, everyone. It's really a pleasure for me and my family to worship with you today. And it has been a privilege to know and be encouraged by your pastors. So we became friends, and I deeply respect them.

Checking Our Assumptions Before Reading 2 Samuel 21

And I hope that as they encourage me, that today also from God's Word, I'll be able to encourage you. So if you can, please, if you have your Bibles, please open with me 2 Samuel 21. In 1453, the Ottoman Empire, the predecessor of modern Turkey, conquered the Constantinople, which is the capital of Byzantium.

Europeans, who long enjoyed the safe passage to India and China by land, now didn't have this access anymore. In search of alternatives, the Spanish crown sponsored the voyage of Christopher Columbus.

When Columbus dropped his anchor in Caribbean Bahamas, he was absolutely confident that he had come to Asia. That was his assumption when he left Spain. And this initial assumption was so strong that none of the evidence could change his mind, including scientists pointing out to him that the captain underestimated the size of the earth by one third.

Our assumptions often serve as strong fortresses that are hard to penetrate, even with solid, sharp arguments. As Columbus sailed around the sea seeking for Asia, so do we Christians often wander through the pages of the Bible looking for confirmation of what we already think is true.

We already know what we want, right? We know how much time and money we want to dedicate to the church. We want what type of dating or marriage we want to have. We also know what kind of pastors and leaders we want to have in our churches, don't we?

And then we take the Bible and we start searching. We find the passage which confirms our opinion so that we can argue that what we think is not merely human, but divine. The narrative of our passage today, 2 Samuel 21, is controversial, at least for the modern reader.

I once came across this passage in my daily devotion. But though it wasn't the first time I read it, this time it didn't let me go. My previous assumptions about godly leadership and corporate responsibility were challenged by the Spirit.

I wrestled with God's Word as Jacob wrestled with the angel of the Lord on his way back to the promised land. This sermon is an outcome of my fight, and I can gladly announce that I was defeated and refined.

Moreover, I was informed that the timing of this sermon for Grace Fellowship is also quite fitting. Your congregation recently recognized a new elder pastor. That was an important decision. And through prayer, godly teaching, and Christ-centered fellowship, you learn a lot in this process.

But now you have to continue to uphold this leadership. And as you do that, you have to do this together as one church. The church as a whole, not just leaders, are responsible before Christ for the teaching you have here in your church, for the testimony that you uphold.

Therefore, my hope today is that the Holy Spirit will apply this message to our hearts. So whatever decision the Church of Christ would have to make, she will do this in the light of God's Word and for His glory.

Let us pray for this. Heavenly Father, please reveal Yourself to us. We ask that the Holy Spirit will lead us in glad submission to everything we hear in Your Word. We ask these things in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ.

Amen. Now, I'm a little bit old-style, so if you can, please rise for the reading of God's Word. 2 Samuel 21, Behold the word of God. Now there was a famine in the days of David for three years, year after year.

And David saw the face of the Lord, and the Lord said, There is blood guilt on Saul and on his house, because he put the Gibeonites to death. So the king called the Gibeonites and spoke to them. Now the Gibeonites were not of the people of Israel, but of the remnant of the Amorites.

Although the people of Israel had sworn to spare them, Saul had sought to strike them down in his zeal for the people of Israel and Judah. And David said to the Gibeonites, What shall I do for you? And how shall I make atonement that you may bless the heritage of the Lord?

The Gibeonites said to him, It's not a matter of silver or gold between us and Saul or his house. Neither is it for us to put any man to death in Israel. And he said, What do you say that I shall do for you?

They said to the king, The man who consumed us and planned to destroy us so that we should have no place in all territory of Israel, let seven of his sons be given to us so that we may hang them before the Lord at Gibeah of Saul, the chosen of the Lord.

And the king said, I will give them. But the king spared Mephibosheth, the son of Saul's son, Jonathan, because of the oath of the Lord that was between them, between David and Jonathan, the son of Saul.

The king took the two sons of Ritzpah, the daughter of Aiah, whom she bore to Saul, Armoni and Mephibosheth, and the five sons of Merab, the daughter of Saul, whom she bore to Adriel, the son of Barzillai, the Micholothai.

And he gave them into the hands of the Gibeonites, and they hanged them on the mountain before the Lord. And the seven of them perished together. They were put to death in the first days of harvest at the beginning of barley harvest.

Then Ritzpah, the daughter of Aiah, took sackcloth and spread it for herself on the rock from the beginning of harvest until rain fell upon them from the heavens. And she didn't allow the birds of the air to come upon them by day or the beasts of the field by night.

When David was told what Ritzpah, the daughter of Aiah, the concubine of Saul, had done, David went and took the bones of Saul and the bones of his son, Jonathan, from the men of Jabesh-Gilead, who had stolen them from the public square of Beth-shan, where the Philistines had hanged them, on the day the Philistines killed Saul on Gilboa.

And he brought up from there the bones of Saul and the bones of his son, Jonathan. And they gathered the bones of those who were hanged. And they buried the bones of Saul and his son, Jonathan, in the land of Benjamin, in Zelah, in the tomb of Kish, his father.

And they did all that the king commanded. And after that, God responded to the plea for the land. This is God's Word. You may be seated. How do you like the story? Yes, this story is the beginning of so-called epilogue of the books of Samuel 1 and 2.

The chronological sequence of these two books runs from the first chapter of 1 Samuel to chapter 20 of 2 Samuel. And it uncovers the transition from the period of judges to kingship. But the last four chapters of the 2 Samuel, from chapter 21 to chapter 24, instead of continuing this chronological narrative, what they do, they aim to give us the summary and a proper theological perspective for these two books.

I have a lot to say about how beautifully this epilogue is composed, these four chapters. But then I would take us away from our particular story. So, I leave it for you to discover later. What you need to keep in mind is that this whole section, from chapter 21 to chapter 24, and our story in particular, is organized to highlight the divine approval for David and his kingship.

Therefore, the main focus of the sermon will be what makes a difference between godly and ungodly leadership. But at the same time, it is impossible to tackle this passage without touching on the question, is it fair for the seven sons of Saul and for the whole nation to suffer for the king's sins?

To answer this, we will take a brief step back from the leadership theme, roughly in the middle of the sermon, to discuss the notion of communal or covenantal responsibility. A proper understanding of this doctrine not only has important implications for interpreting our passage, but also is widely ignored or misunderstood in modern churches.

So, the time we will talk about it will be well spent. Do we have structure maniacs in the room? So, for those of you who need to put structure in your little piece of papers. So, here's the structure.

The first part, first we'll talk about Saul's ungodly leadership, part one. Then, in the middle, we'll answer this fairness question, and then we'll conclude by examining the leadership of David. All right, without further ado, let's start.

Saul's Ungodly Leadership and the Danger of Twisted Motives

Comparing two leaders and their faithfulness to the Lord is the very common technique in the Bible. In the first and second book of Kings, ungodly rulers are often compared with whom? Ungodly rulers. So, he was like, he is following the sins of Jeroboam, right?

Remember this very bad king who made another altar for the Lord in Bethel? And godly rulers, they were compared with David, right? All the time. So, here in our passage, the outcome of Saul's life also serves as a background to fetch out the heart of David.

So, let's get some context about who Saul is from the book of Samuel. So, Saul is the king whom Israel demanded from the Lord so that Israel can be like other nations. And God gave them the king they deserve.

Probably, he is even the best king Israel deserves. Saul was tall and handsome. He started well. He won a battle against Ammonites and was merciful to his opponents in Israel who first despised his leadership.

But then, the office of the king made drastic changes in Saul's character. After the official religious inauguration, his style of leadership and his decisions were guided exclusively by pragmatic, godless considerations.

These changes in Saul before and after are so astonishing that there are even some Bible scholars who try to claim that these two narratives were written by different narrators. But that's not true. Particularly striking is how Saul's religiosity becomes the means to achieve his personal interests.

His negligent attitude to the ritual of sacrifice, hectic oaths, massacre of the priests, and many other episodes, some of which you might recall from the books of Samuel, all testify about the profound dissonance between king's heart and God's law.

The passage that we cover today reminds us and provides a case study about the implications of ungodly leadership with twisted motives. Though the story of Saul and Gibeonites is not mentioned anywhere else in the Bible, it roots grow from chapter 9 of the book of Joshua, where we read about the first encounter between Israel and the Canaanites of Gibeah.

We will not read the whole chapter, that would be a lot of context, but I will highlight for you the key points that relate to our story. So the narrative of chapter 9 tells us that the Gibeonites were a nation that tricked Joshua and the rest of the leaders in order to survive.

So they realized, so when Israel were coming to the promised land, they realized that God is with Israel. And there was no chance that they could stand against this God. So what they did? They disguised themselves.

They came to Israel and begged for peace and established a covenant with them. But then Israel discovered that they are actually their neighbors, that they were destined for destruction. I will briefly read for you the passage from chapter 9 of the book of Joshua, starting from verse 17.

And the people of Israel set out and reached their cities on the third day. Now their cities were Gibeon, Shaphira, Beroth, and Kiriath-Jerim. But the people of Israel did not attack them, because the leaders of the congregation had sworn to them by the Lord, the God of Israel.

Then all the congregation murmured against the leaders. But all the leaders said to all the congregation, We have sworn to them by the Lord, the God of Israel, and now we may not touch them. This we will do to them.

Let them leave. Lest wrath be upon us because of the oath that we swore to them. And the leaders said to them, Let them leave. The oath before the covenant established in God's name didn't allow the leaders to cause any harm to the Gibeonites.

Gibeonites remained as servants of Israel and probably became worshippers of Yahweh. How do we know this? Because they used the covenantal name of the Lord in our passage and also in Joshua chapter 9.

So I guess this is a good guess. But now Saul comes and he has a zeal for the people of Israel and Judah. We like zealous people, don't we? When somebody is passionate and assertive, especially if these people claim that what they do is for our good.

Politicians, media persons, and even preachers often exhibit their zealousness to win the votes and likes. What exactly Saul had against the Gibeonites, we do not know. Maybe he thought that there was an omission on the part of Joshua to keep them, that this nation caused problems for Israel.

Maybe he thought that eliminating Gibeonites would give him some advantage in keeping his claims for the kingdom from David. We don't know that, but what we know is that Saul doesn't inquire the Lord when he makes a decision.

This is not his style. He either reads the situation and acts accordingly right away or consults the ungodly sources of revelation like necromancers. He has a political agenda in mind. I will repeat it once again.

Saul has a political agenda in mind and this is his unshakable assumption. As a result, Saul's political endeavors dictate his understanding of God's commandments. This in turn led to the abuse of the covenant which was made on behalf of the nation.

The will of the Lord is not Saul's ultimate authority. Brothers and sisters, this is a lesson for us. I beg you, do not abuse the Bible, adjusting the Lord's will to support your political agenda. I beg you because first, you misrepresent our God and His gospel before the world.

And second, while doing this, you are in danger of being disciplined by God. And this discipline might be tough. In the case of Saul, it was a tragedy for his family and disaster for the nation. Here is one story for you.

During the COVID time, one person showed me a message forwarded into one of the prayer chats. It mentioned that a group of people came to Ottawa to boycott the governmental measures to handle the pandemic.

Some of the protesters decided to follow the tactic of the Israelites in conquering the Holy Land, which is described in Joshua chapter 6. They decided to walk for six days around the building of the parliament.

And then on the seventh day, they would make seven laps. And then in this prayer chat, what they asked, they called the whole Canada, regardless of their location, to honk and shout for 10 minutes. So that as the walls of Jericho fell down, so would the political opposition they face.

I want to emphasize, and this is important, the intentions of these people. They could be good, but their handling of God's word and their theology is out of place. I don't try to undermine the importance of anyone's participation in the political life of the country using the godly means that are available.

But please, beloved friends, do not shape the gospel message into bullets to shoot down your political enemies. Rather, let the word of God to shape you into the humble weapon of the gospel in Christ's hands.

As a preventive prescription to guard against the false interpretation of God's will, here are some practical applications. First, I would recommend all of you to study the Bible expository, which means verse after verse, chapter after chapter.

Study the themes of the books, discover the flow of the narrative. First, track down the meaning of this passage, and then think about its application. Even if you have already read all 66 books of the Bible several times, I beg you, please do not slip into the habit of just doing like a short daily devotion or a verse of the day.

These are good things, but not as a main meal. It's more like a supplement, like a coffee during the day. So study the Bible expository. The second application would be having very close to you someone with the same heart for the Lord and His gospel, but being from a different cultural or social or political background.

Someone who would make you stop and re-evaluate your standings. Of course, sometimes it will not be easy. You'll be asking yourself, why am I doing this? Why is this so hard? This will happen as you will be having these discussions.

But I tell you, do not quit. It will be rewarding for both of you. If today all your friends are your cultural twins, if you surround yourself exclusively by people of the same age, the same interest, you are in danger that one day you will be driven by something different from the gospel message.

Especially, I talk to those of us who have a leadership role. You know that God's requirement for leaders in handling His word is higher. And those of us who teach will be judged with greater strictness.

Because that teaching, good or bad, has an impact on people who God entrusted to us to guide. Remember that the folly of Saul's leadership backfired not only on him, but resulted in humiliating execution of his descendants and three years of hunger for the whole nation.

Communal Responsibility, Covenant, and the Meaning of “House”

Alright, we came to this fairness point, right? Was it fair then for Saul's children and the whole nation to suffer just because of one man? Fair question, right? That's where we need to talk about our communal responsibility.

We will tackle it in two parts. First, addressing the implications for the children and then for the nation. Are you still with me?

You're following? Great. Good.

Just wanted to chat. The execution of Saul's children might be difficult to digest. Not only because we are 21st century Westerners, I mean, some of us, but also because there are passages in the Bible that actually speak that the children should not be responsible for the sins of their parents.

Moses records that in Deuteronomy chapter 24. I will read it for you. Fathers shall not be put to death because of their children, nor shall children be put to death because of their fathers. Each one shall be put to death for his own sin.

So, what do we have here then? Does the Bible contradict itself or did David abuse God's law? But I would argue neither of that. Despising Saul, God rejected his whole house. The house is a key word highlighted in verse 1.

Do you remember reading for us the passage from chapter 23? There David also talks about the house. So, in our passage in verse 1, we read, there is a blood guilt on Saul and on his house. So, what is the house?

In the Old Testament, the house often means the covenantal entity. Who the covenant was made with. The house could refer to a nation. It could refer to a priest dynasty. Or it also referred to the king's lineage, like the house of Saul.

The house, those who belong to this covenantal unit, they would share the blessings of this house and charges against it. So, that you don't need to believe me by word alone, here are some examples for the house of Israel.

So, house of Israel. In Deuteronomy chapter 28, in the famous passage, do you remember where the nation was standing on two mountains? The mountain of blessings and the mountain of curses. Remember that?

The second generation of Israelis. So, in this passage, Moses said before the nation on behalf of the Lord, the renewed covenant. So, verse 58. If you are not careful to do all the words of this law that are written in this book, that you may fear this glorious and awesome name, the Lord your God.

See here again, the name is mentioned. Then the Lord will bring on you and your offspring extraordinary afflictions, afflictions severe and lasting, and sickness grievous and lasting. That's the curse part.

Of course, we could read the blessings part as well. There's a good part in there. But you have the idea, the understanding, that the covenantal entity, the house of Israel, shares the blessings and the curses against it.

Same for the house of priests. When Eli and his sons, in the very beginning of 1 Samuel, they dishonored priest Judas at the tabernacle, God promised to cut short his strength and the strength of his priestly house, including those who were born after these events.

Again, this was the covenantal unit, the house of the priests. This pattern should help us make sense of our passage where seven of Saul's descendants were hanged before the Lord. They all belong to the same covenantal unit, the king's house in this case.

Just by their birth of right, the king's son have claims to the throne. That's what it makes to be a king's son. But in the same way, they might experience afflictions because of their royal predecessors.

Seven is the symbolic number in the Bible and it symbolizes completion. By executing the seven heirs of Saul, the reader would understand that the Lord brings to completion the abandonment of Saul's house.

Okay, you might think this is informative, maybe for some of you even interesting, but these house covenantal things, they are the Old Testament stuff, right? We're in the New Testament era. Everything is different.

Though it's true that there is such a thing, though there is some truth that there is not such a thing as an ethnic national covenant today. And therefore, there is no such a thing as national responsibility, ethnic national responsibility for the sins despite the efforts of critical race theories to convince us otherwise.

But our God is still a covenantal God. He is still the same God in the Old Testament and in the New Testament. So then, what implications do New Testament believers have from this covenantal responsibility?

First of all, the covenant God made with Adam, the blessings for obedience and the curses for disobedience, the covenant was made on behalf of the whole humanity. And it is still active. Pastor Shane mentioned it in the beginning of the service.

That's why every man and woman bears the consequences of this broken covenant. Adam and Eve, by sinning against God, brought death and humiliation to their house, which is everyone. That's a very bad news.

Some try to avoid this bad news by claiming that they have nothing to do with Adam and Eve, and their grand-grand-grand-grandmother was a monkey named Lucy. But in reality, there is only one way to escape from the curse of this family.

You can be adopted to the family of Jesus and become part of His house. This family is entirely free from the curse because Jesus on the cross paid it all. He, being Himself sinless, He suffered for every sin of those who would entrust their lives to Him.

I want to emphasize for you how one becomes the part of Jesus' family. First, the Spirit convicts you of your sins. Every one of us, every person sinned against God. Maybe even today, multiple times you sinned against Him.

What does it mean to sin against God? You didn't want or didn't consider God's will for your life, but you did what you wanted. This makes you an enemy of God. God justly pours out His terrifying wrath on His enemies.

But God also so loved the world that He sent His only Son so that whoever believed would not perish but have eternal life. God on the cross poured out on Jesus His wrath for the past and future sins of those who, according to Father's will, one day will proclaim Jesus the Lord and the Master of their lives.

That's how we become a part of Jesus' family, the beloved sons and daughters of God. If you haven't become a part of His family yet, then I call you, repent and believe the gospel. If you're already in the faith, make sure that this good news you share with others, you share with your friends, with your families, and you give this invitation in the name of Jesus Christ for others to become a part of the family which is completely free from every curse.

Okay, this was the first covenantal implication for us. The second one is that we, as a body of believers, are collectively responsible for representing the Lord properly and keeping His gospel. Not just the pastors, all of us.

This is the family business. We do it together. That's why our church, I'm from Fellowship Baptist as I was introduced, and your church, Grace Fellowship, sorry, both of these churches, they are congregationally governed churches.

Our theology or ecclesiology directly reflects our understanding of covenantal responsibility. That's why in Corinthians 5, the whole church was shamed for not being involved in the church discipline.

In Galatians 1, Paul calls on the whole church to keep the purity of the gospel. And I don't intend today to dig deeper into ecclesiology or what the church is, but what I still want to emphasize is that we have this communal responsibility, but we are guilty of downgrading it, particularly in our governance.

It often remains in forms of committees and voting, right, with artificial involvement otherwise. Instead of talking to one another, having fellowship with one another, we just vote against one another.

Or instead of following the examples of our pastors and teaching one another, we just put everything on their shoulders and then become religious consumers. And then people are quick to run if they don't like something or anything goes wrong.

But here's a warning. You may run from the problems. You may run from the particular local church. But here's a warning. Ultimately, it's up to God to decide whether your responsibility for the particular local church is over or not.

You cannot run from God. He is merciful, but He is also just. And you have to remember that He will not allow scorning the covenant He made with us as a church. All right, if you still wonder in our story whether it was fair for the nation to suffer three years of famine, I call to your attention that this nation wasn't any better than their king.

In fact, Saul was a mirror reflection of his people, the true son of his nation. Both Israel in the promised land and Saul in his kingship had the inverted U-shape pattern. So, inverted U-shape,.

Yes, like this.

At first,.

There were triumphal victories, but then followed a rapid spiral of spiritual degradation. So, it is not that the nation was faithful and then suffered unjustly because of the bad king, but rather the nation's unfaithfulness was a result that they had such a king.

Because Israel became like the nations around them, they received the king like the nations around them. And so, they justly bore the consequences of his kingship. There is a fundamental principle.

Here for us.

We have to remember this. Bad leaders are what we deserve, and good leaders are the mercy and grace from God. I want to repeat it because maybe it's down the road in the sermon and now you're sleeping.

Bad leaders, they are what we deserve because we are sinners. And good leaders, they are grace and mercy from God. So, if you have a good husband, if you have a good supervisor, or you have good elders at the church, don't think that you are entitled to have them.

But be grateful to God for that. But if your leader has a problem, then please don't hoard this bitterness against them in your heart. But bring this before the Lord because He is merciful. He can either change the heart.

Of this leader.

He might want to decide to change this leader, or He might just give you patience and perseverance through these circumstances. In our today's story, David is presented as a God-given leader with a godly character, a man after God's heart.

David’s Godly Leadership: Justice, Covenant Faithfulness, and Mercy

So, what is so godly about David here? First of all, David, in contrast with Saul, runs to inquire God. Look in verse 1. Do you have your Bible still open? Verse 1. 2 Samuel, verse 21. He seeks the face of the Lord when the famine devastates the nation.

How exactly David was seeking the Lord this time, we do not know. For the author, it is important to show David's heart, a heart genuinely seeking God's will in his life. Then in verse 3, David acts upon the revealed God's will.

As a leader of the country, his role is to settle the accounts on behalf of the nation. The request of the gibbonites is the request for justice. When David asks in verse 3, and how shall I make atonement? Gibbonites respond, it's not a matter of silver or gold.

Neither it is for us to put anyone to death in Israel. Basically, they say, look, we're not looking for financial restitution. Neither we're driven by the bloody revenge. What we want is justice. And justice requires that the blood that polluted the land would be only atoned by the blood of the one who shed it.

As we already read and thoroughly discussed, the indictment of the Lord in verse 1 for the blood guilt was not only on Saul, but also on his house. And now after the charges are brought forward, the issue should be justly dealt with.

The godly leader has to uphold justice. And David, being the leader faithful to God, had to act according to God's indictment. Though, I believe that wasn't easy. No sugar-coated solution was available here.

If the leader wants to remain faithful to the biblical principles, at one point, sooner or later, he will face a hard decision to make. Not always that hard, but still hard enough. This is the reality of leadership.

The idea of strong authority might scare people. We're afraid of strong government. We're afraid of strong husband leadership. We're afraid of strong elders in the church. Part of that is because we hear about abuses of authority.

But I'm fully convinced that the main reason is that we have a propensity, starting from the Garden of Eden, to resist authority. We can also trace this shift from authority in the religious practices of the West.

In the 60s, do we have people who lived through the 60s here? In the 60s, the time of beetles and flower children, in order to maintain some spiritual experience but avoid this pressure of authority, many people turned to Eastern religions.

Unflappable Dalai Lama or smiling Buddha, they look very attractive. Have you seen pictures of Buddha statues? Big smiles, closed eyes, open hand. These religions demanded very little and promised a lot.

Soon some churches started to realize that they were losing the competition for attendance. So they began to adapt to the crowd's demand and gradually implement authority-free principles. Preaching became predominantly topical.

The challenging topics were avoided or misinterpreted outside of the context. No conversations about sin, no testing of the spirit, and church discipline became a curse word. The elders in these churches also look like smiling Buddhas.

There is gossiping and partiality in the church.

That's okay.

The gospel is compromised. Nothing to worry about. People might praise such leaders at least for a while before the actual crisis will come. But God, through the scriptures, in the Old and in the New Testaments, calls leaders to uphold what is right and just, even if this is not popular.

And David in our story also exemplifies his commitment to justice. That's another mark of a godly leader. Further, we see David's faithfulness to the covenant. David spares Mephibosheth because of the oath he made before the Lord with the house of Jonathan.

The details of his oath can be found in 1 Samuel 20. But let's for a moment think about the big picture of this story. Saul, the father, breaks the covenant. So the father breaks the covenant. Then because of that, many of his children, many of his descendants, they suffered humiliation and death.

But now, down the line, another covenant with a righteous king preserves the life of crippled, helpless Mephibosheth. Does it remind you of something? Yes, this is the gospel. This is our story. Adam, our father, he broke the covenant and because of that, death and sin entered into this world.

So many perished. But praise the Lord for the new covenant, the covenant of Jesus Christ. Because of this covenant, me and you, crippled and helpless, are spared by the king of kings. And we can stay in his presence and eat with him at the same table.

Isn't that beautiful? May all the glory be to our Lord Jesus, who is faithful to the covenant. It is essential for every leader to reflect this covenantal faithfulness of our God. Alright, if the goal of the narrative would be just to give us some historical context, our passage could have ended right here at the execution in verse 9.

We already know everything that historians usually care about. But there are five more verses. What else do we need to know about David? What else do we need to know about good leadership? And here's the answer.

We need to know that besides loyalty to the Lord, firmness in justice, and faithfulness to the covenant, the godly leader has a merciful heart. The story of Ritzpah is heartbreaking. It is hard to think about a more disadvantaged person than she.

First of all, she wasn't even a wife of Saul. She was a concubine. Even if something is left after her husband, she could not claim as a wife would do. Second, she's a widow. Saul, her husband, died in the battle.

Her sons are shamefully executed. Nobody to provide for her. Nobody to protect. Even politically, she is disadvantaged because her husband was an enemy of the current king. What is left to Ritzpah is only the sackcloth, the rock to sleep on, and the dead bodies on the wood which she selflessly protects for an indefinite amount of time.

It's so easy to overlook her. So easy to ignore. But when David hears about her situation, his heart is moved. By giving the remains of Saul and his descendants proper burial, he not only honors those who passed away, but also extends his mercy to the deprived condition of the widow who is alive.

David shows himself as a compassionate leader. A leader without mercy and compassion is an ugly picture. Having the authority, such a leader might become a heavy burden to those who are under his leadership.

But a compassionate leader, the one who draws from Jesus his strength to endure and forgive, will be like a balm for the weary, wounded souls. Such gracious leaders are blessed because we have a promise from God's Word that the merciful would receive mercy.

David's act of mercy completes the picture. The consequences of the broken-by-Saul oath are justly dealt with. The life-preserving covenant between David and Jonathan is honored. And mercy is displayed.

Only then God responds favorably. The line in verse 14, God responded to the plea for the land is like a stamp as a confirmation of God's approval. God approves just faithful and merciful leadership because these are His qualities.