The Gruesome Work of God

ReCAST Church of Mattawan

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You're listening to the 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. Good morning to everybody.

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I'm Don Filsak. I'm the pastor here. And we have gathered together, I hope, to honor our

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Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. We will sing some songs to Him over the course of our time here. We're going to hear from His Word.

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And we believe that the Bible is the truth. That it is the capital T truth that guides and directs our lives.

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And that's why a large chunk of our time gathering together on Sunday morning is hearing what He has to say from His Word.

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And the truth this morning, we've been going through the book of Second Samuel, just taking it off like chapter by chapter, paragraph by paragraph, kind of running through it.

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And the Word of God this morning is going to bring to us a brutal truth.

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I don't know what you signed up for when you came here this morning, but it is a pretty much in -your -face view of atonement.

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It is a shocking truth. If you leave here and you are not wrestling with feelings of, that was intense, or even a little thought in the back of your mind, what was that?

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I think you probably were not paying attention. So if you're paying attention, there's going to be some thoughts, there's going to be some feelings that this passage is going to evoke in you.

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We're about to read a strange, sorrowful, and even to some level gruesome, Old Testament type account of atonement.

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Big words, theological words, atonement, propitiation, that is the appeasement of divine wrath towards sin.

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But let me set the tone for what we're about to read together before we come to worship Him this morning, and that is that God is not, what we think about God matters significantly, and I just want to point out that God is not merely like a really, really good version, like really super -souped -up, hyped -up you.

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That's not God. God is holy in a way that we are not holy. God always will punish sin.

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All that is contrary to His nature results in death and separation from relationship with Him.

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You see, we are not holy, and the way that that expresses itself is that we tend to be flippantly gracious toward others.

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Somebody wrongs us or does something wrong, and especially if it's a close friend, we can say this phrase,

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NBD. What's that mean? No big deal. No big deal. Don't worry about it.

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God never says NBD. When we sin, He never has a no big deal response.

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He is holy in a way that you and I are not holy, in a way that you and I cannot even really deeply relate to, in a way that we don't deeply understand.

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Now, you might have been really angry at somebody before, but that was still probably fairly selfish in its motivation.

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God is not like that. God is consistently, consistently in opposition to sin.

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Anybody kind of sweating already? Like, wait, where is this going? What we see in this text is punishment for sin.

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It's shocking. It's ugly. And I'm going to even point out that it seems, as we read it, it seems like it is a bit unfair.

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The text will even feature the sorrow of a specific mother over her two dead boys who have paid for the sin of their nation.

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The gap between our culture and this ancient culture of Israel could not get any wider than the span between the reading of this text and our ears this morning.

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This is one of those passages, one of those rare passages in Scripture where the gap between their culture and ours requires a lot of understanding.

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We don't see ourselves as being corporate. We are not communal like they were. We do not understand blood guilt and the need for atonement.

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They got that right away. They understood the need for sacrifice. We think of atonement as some, if we think about it at all, let's be honest, but if we think of atonement, we think of it as a theoretical, theological framework by which

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God is redeeming humanity from our sins, and we think about it in an academic perspective, that God put our sins over on Jesus or something like that.

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We talk about it in church offices and seminary libraries and in churches that have been cleansed and sanitized.

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Thanks to Bob Gilman for doing such a great job cleaning our facility. We like it being clean. Why am

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I talking about it being clean? It's because atonement is messy. We talk about it in pristine places.

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But the Israelites in David's time knew what atonement meant. They saw it and they smelled it.

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You see, without the shedding of blood, the scriptures bear testimony that without the shedding of blood, there will be no forgiveness of sins.

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They carried their lambs. They carried the pigeons. They led the oxen to the altar.

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Blood was spilled gallon after gallon after gallon, day after day after day.

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Blood spilled to cover sin. It was messy work. It was gross work.

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It was atonement work. It was the work prescribed by God for the covering of sin, of our sins.

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Several years ago, someone was invited to recast church someone who had never been here before, and in the middle of the discussion about service times, yeah, we meet about 1030, and the location, here's our address, 25120

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Front Avenue. Actually, we weren't meeting here then. They paused in the middle of the discussion and said, hold on a second, there's a fundamental question.

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Before I visit your church, I just want to know, are you one of those blood churches? It's a pretty startling question.

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Are you one of those blood churches? Blood church? What do you mean, blood church? What are you talking about? Are you one of those churches that's always singing about blood, always talking about blood?

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I just can't stand all that blood talk, she said. I think this message will make it clear that we are indeed one of those blood churches because the

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Bible is a book about the forgiveness of sins through the atoning blood of our

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Lord and Savior Jesus Christ because atonement is bloody work.

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And we are bought by Jesus Christ with the payment that he made, not in silver and gold, not that kind of payment, but in the payment for our sins in his blood.

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Our text is about punishment. Our text is about atonement and the grief and sorrow that life in this broken world bring about because of the effects of sin and the remuneration needed for sin.

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So I'd encourage you, go ahead and just feel free to be shocked and scandalized as I read this Old Testament account of atonement.

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And while I read, consider a fundamental question. Would your God let a substitute die for the sins of others?

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Would your God allow that? Would he allow someone to pay the price for the sin of another? The men who die in this account,

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I want to clarify, they are not innocent, but they will pay for the sins of their nation. But I know a perfect, innocent, sinless one who paid for the sins of the world.

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So let's open up, if you're not already there, to 2 Samuel. Did I get anybody's attention, by the way? Here we go. 2

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Samuel 21, 1 -14. And we're going to read this in its entirety. Church, this is a good word.

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It's a hard word, but it is a good word from our Lord and Savior. 2 Samuel 21, 1 -14 verses.

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So the king called the Gibeonites and spoke to them. And his zeal for the people of Israel and Judah.

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And he said, what do you say that I should do for you?

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They said to the king, So that we should have no place in all of the territory of Israel?

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Let seven of his sons be given to us, that we may hang them before the Lord at Gibeah of Saul, the chosen of the

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Lord. And the king said, I will give them. But the king spared Mephibosheth, the son of Saul, the son of Saul's son,

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Jonathan, because of the oath of the Lord that was between them, between David and Jonathan, the son of Saul.

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The king took the two sons of Rizpah, the daughter of Aiah, whom she bore to Saul, Armani and Mephibosheth, and the five sons of Merib, the daughter of Saul, whom she bore to Adriel, the son of Barzillai, the

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Maholothite. And he gave them into the hands of the Gibeonites, and they hanged them on the mountain before the

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Lord. And the seven of them perished together. They were put to death in the first day of the harvest, at the beginning of the barley harvest.

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Then Rizpah, the daughter of Aiah, took sackcloth and spread it for herself on the rock from the beginning of the harvest until the rain fell upon them from the heavens.

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And she did not 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

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Rizpah, the daughter of Aiah, the concubine of Saul, had done, David went and took the bones of Saul and the bones of his son

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Jonathan from the men of Jabesh -Gilead, who had stolen them from the public square of Beth -Shon, where the

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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

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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 Zillah, in the tomb of Kish, his father.

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And they did all that the king commanded. And after that, God responded to the plea for the land.

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Let's pray. Father, there's a lot in this text, and I pray that you would allow us to, by the end of our time together, see the glory and the wisdom and the great grace that you offer to us through atonement.

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It's a messy business. It's not easy to discern. It's not easy to figure out.

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But this one thing we know and we can relate to, at least one thing we can grasp, and that is that you have set forward a plan by which one would be substituted in our place.

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All of that Old Testament and Old Covenant and the sacrificial system and the tabernacle and the temple and all of those years of bulls and goats, all pointing toward, and even this passage, pointing toward a greater atonement, pointing towards one who would give himself up for us, not just for our nation, not just for our people, but for the sins of the world.

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So, Father, I pray that as we have an opportunity now together in these songs to let our voices be mingled in singing to you,

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I pray that you would help us to praise you as a people who are increasingly knowing what it means to be set free from the consequences of sin and death, brought into newness of life through the sacrifice of Jesus Christ, our

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Lord and Savior. I pray that that would produce within us delight and joy and gladness, a lightness in our step, but also a seriousness in recognizing what sin does, how devastating it is.

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Thank you that you're continuing to rescue us from our sin, from the guilt, and also from the power that it once held over us.

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I pray that you would continue to do that in us, in Jesus' name. Amen. All right, yeah, you can go to be seated, but for those of you that aren't around here much, or maybe this is new to you, you can get up at any time during the message and get more coffee or water or donut holes, while supplies last back there.

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You're not going to distract me if you need to get up at any time during the message. And then restrooms are out the double doors, down the hallway on the left -hand side if you need those, especially after all that coffee.

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So we'll see. But I encourage you to try, operating word is try, to get comfortable this morning.

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And then I ask that you also keep your Bibles open to 2 Samuel 21, verses 1 through 14, so that you can see that the things that I'm talking about,

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I'm talking about that passage. I'm trying to bring that to our culture, trying to bring that to us, to our hearts, so that we can live it out and understand what we need to do with it.

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I'm going to start off with a question, and it's a rhetorical question, but why was the

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Passion of the Christ movie rated R? Why was it rated R? Ask yourself that question.

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How many of you saw the movie? Did any of you see the movie The Passion of the Christ? Mel Gibson, what was that? Maybe 10 years ago, 15 years ago now?

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Rated R. Why couldn't Mel Gibson have sanitized it and made it PG -13 for the masses?

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Why so graphic in the scourging scene? Why so much blood?

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Why so much blood? You see, sin brings about death. Scripture is abundantly clear that through sin, death came into the world.

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And the cost of atoning for sin is life.

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It is blood. When I say the sentence, the cost of atoning for sin is blood,

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I'm guessing that many of us have a fairly innocuous understanding of what that means. But what

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Scripture teaches us is more robust, I think, than probably what we have in our minds when

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I say that sentence. So let me state it another way. Every single sin, every single breach of God's law, every lie, every sexual deviance from His explicit standard, every single instance of gossip, every act of greed, every thought of lust, every act or thought of covetousness or envy, all of it, and that's a small list compared to all the sins that are mentioned in the

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Bible, all of it must, must, must be punished by a holy

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God. And physical death, physical death in this world serves as a physical reminder of a spiritual reality.

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Death is like a great big old example. It's a pretty stern example, right?

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But it's a big example of a spiritual reality. Punishment for sin is real.

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And that spiritual reminder is that there is an eternal punishment in a place called hell for all of those who do not come under the atoning work of Jesus Christ.

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In this sense, physical death serves as a foreshadowing of an even more shocking judgment that is to come.

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It is a wake -up call to all of us. All sins must be punished.

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But God has made a way for the many to go free. I want to relieve a little of that tension here at the start, steal the thunder from the end and just say, hold on, we need a little bit of a breather in that reality.

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Because God has made a way for the many to go free by the substitution of one. The eternal sinless

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Son of God is the only one who could suffer an eternal punishment for the sins of so many like all of us all across the world.

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As far as the flow of 2 Samuel, our text serves as the first book end to four chapters that are going to wrap up this entire book.

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So we're nearing the end of 2 Samuel here as we've been marching through it for coming on a year now.

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And we're going to be wrapping that up and then doing some Christmas stuff and some Christmas messages and then we're going to be going over to 1

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Corinthians. But this is the first chapter that makes a kind of ending summary to the rule and reign of King David here.

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So it makes sense that this first book end is reflecting back a little bit and it deals with David handling problems, leftover problems from the previous administration.

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Saul is the one who sinned. David is the one here who is left to mop up after his failed rule and reign.

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So our text this morning is going to break into three movements. The first is found in verses 1 -6. It's a corporate problem.

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The second movement is a corporate solution, verses 7 -9. And then personal grief, verses 10 -14.

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So corporate problem, corporate solution, personal grief. First we see a very serious corporate problem in the text in verses 1 -6.

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It's very significant and serious for the nation of Israel during the reign of King David. The author is not super concerned with chronology and so we know that this falls at least sometime after chapter 9 because Mephibosheth and the covenant that David made with Mephibosheth actually occurs in chapter 9.

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But it's also, most scholars don't believe this happens at the very end of David's rule and reign either. So sometime in the middle of his life and rule and reign as king, there were three years of famine.

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Now the word famine, you know, I mean we talk about recessions, we talk about supply chain issues, we talk about not being able to get stuff as quick through Amazon and things like that.

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We've not experienced famine. I would dare say that not a single person in this room or a single person alive today in America really understands the idea of famine.

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Now even when we went through the Great Depression, I'm sure that there were some struggles there. But very few remember those years.

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Three years of a lack of rain. Three years of poor harvest. Remember this is for subsistence people.

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These are people who ate the stuff they grew, right? And there's no rain and there's poor harvest and there's increasing starvation.

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I believe that three years into any famine in a subsistence farming culture, you have people dying.

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You have people who do not, I'm guessing somewhere around year two, people are dying. They've stored up enough, but not enough to last two, three years.

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And this is a devastating season of David's reign. So David goes and does what a good king is supposed to do in the nation of Israel.

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And he goes and he says he sought the face of the Lord to see if he's gonna, if God will tell him why is this happening.

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Why are there three years of famine going on? Now here's what you need to understand about that.

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When it comes to going to God for answers or for solutions, David understands something fundamental that we ought to grasp and take ahold of here as well.

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David knows that God knows why this famine is going on. God knows why the famine is going on.

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There is always, always, always a purpose in God's plan behind the things that are happening. Now it might be a trial, like for example, in Job's case.

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In Job's case, we're brought into the behind the scenes stuff and Job was being put through a trial and all of these devastating things.

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And if he had come to God and said, God, why is this happening? He wouldn't have said it's because of your sin. He would have said it's because this is a trial for you.

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It could be for the purpose of growth in the faith of his people that God is growing his people through adversity and through trials.

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And just like we've gotta break down muscle to build it back up again, he may very well be doing that. All different kinds of reasons why

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God's people may go through hard times. It also could be for the purpose of discipline.

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That's one, that one always grabs our attention, but that's one of multitude of reasons why God may bring us through times where things are spare and scarce.

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This text gives us no blanket indication, by the way. Gives us no blanket indication of the purpose behind specific tragedies today.

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Okay, so why a hurricane in Florida and oh, those wicked sinners or people will say all kinds of terrible, terrible things about devastations.

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There's no blanket indication from this passage why God does any novel or unique thing on the planet.

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It only teaches us that God knows what is behind everything we experience and we can deduce one further thing.

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We know that at least sometimes the reason is judgment. It's not super helpful for us in determining why

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God does any one thing, but we know that sometimes it is for judgment, right? Do you see that in the text?

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Sometimes bad things happen because God is judging. God does here explicitly reveal the problem.

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Why is there three years of famine? At some point during King Saul's reign, he was zealous to purify the nation of Israel from all pagan influences and so he attempted to commit genocide against a group of people called the

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Gibeonites and you're like, oh yeah, I know the Gibeonites. Yeah, no, you probably don't. Some of you maybe remember.

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There's a super brief history of the Gibeonites to help you to clarify who in the world are these people. They figure very significantly in this text.

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They were first encountered all the way back in the book of Joshua in Israel's ancient history. Back when

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Israel was told that God was using them to judge the pagan Canaanites and Amorites and all the ites and the flashlights and all the people.

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So he was going after those ites and he was giving their land to Israel. The Israelites were told to come in and take over the land and eradicate the current residents and of course we might have all kinds of issues with that.

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Then you go, it kind of pushes the, why would God do that? And time won't permit me to get into explaining all of the depth of that, but the

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Canaanites just, I think it might suffice to say at least for now and if you want to have a further conversation with me, I'd be open to that later, but the

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Canaanites were not boy scouts or altar boys. I just want to make sure that you understand that they were suffering for their own sins and for their own judgment and God was literally using

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Israel to judge the Canaanites for their sins. But one specific group of the Canaanites, the Gibeonites, from a subset of the

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Canaanites called the Amorites, the Gibeonites came up with a plot to preserve their people way back in Joshua.

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They dressed up in worn out clothing to pretend that they had traveled from a long, long, long, long, long, long, long ways away.

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I mean, they literally are putting on their old shoes that are worn out and dust all over the place and they've got parched water bottles and all this stuff that are broken down and stuff and they came from so, so far away and they come to Joshua and his troops.

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You see, they knew that the Israelites were set on conquering the land of Israel and so they asked for a treaty with Joshua.

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We're from so far away, we'll sign a trade agreement with you and you don't destroy us, we won't destroy you and we'll make trade routes and all this stuff is going to be great.

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And Joshua and the leaders did not ask God's guidance and instead entered into a sacred oath with the

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Gibeonites involving the name of Yahweh their God, saying, as the Lord lives, we will not conquer you.

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You have our agreement, you have our word based on the holiness of God, we will not do this. And lo and behold, the

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Gibeonites were from an area smack dab in the middle of Israel. So all the way down through the times of the judges to Saul's dynasty and into the days of David, where we're at today in our text, the

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Gibeonites had dwelled among the Israelites. But Saul, Saul under his dynasty and his rule and reign broke that oath, dragging

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God's name through the mud. By rejecting that oath, the nation had made to the Gibeonites in the name of Yahweh and he had all but wiped them out.

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He had committed genocide against them. Once David knows the situation, he goes to the remaining

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Gibeonites, which would probably be few. Saul wasn't effective, but he tried. He tried to eradicate them.

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And he asked them, what would you like for atonement? You can see it in verse 3 in the

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English Standard Version of the Bible there, the word atonement, a very specific word.

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The goal of atonement is to bring the people back to God. The goal is to bring

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Israel corporately back into a good relationship with Him for the purpose of the Gibeonites seeing the glory of God and His great worth.

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And a quick point here from the ending of verse 3, sin always sullies the glory of God. I want to clarify that.

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Whenever we sin, every single discreet event in which we sin and go against God, we testify to others that God is not enough for us.

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His ways are not enough for us. God doesn't know what He's talking about. I do.

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A sin is a testimony. A sin is communicating something, especially as a

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Christian. A sin is saying, I'm going to do this my way. God's way is not good.

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God's way is not right. A sin is a way of communicating that He is not worthy of trust.

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Let that settle on you. The Gibeonites have suffered an attempted extermination, but they have suffered further.

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They have also suffered now a wrong view of God, a wrong view of His trustworthiness due to this sin of the nation of Israel under King Saul.

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They've been all but exterminated, and they now do not see the glory of God among His people

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Israel. The Gibeonites answered, we know the process here.

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We've been kicking it with you guys for generations. We know what's required. We understand it.

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It's not silver and gold. You can't buy off sin. You can't pay enough. You can't come into church, write a check, and then go sin this week, despite what some churches have done over the ages, and middle ages, and things like that.

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You don't get an indulgence. You don't get to write it off. You know what I'm talking about?

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Silver and gold, no, says the Gibeonites. They get it right. They understand. No, it's not silver and gold in the text.

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The only thing that pays for sin is blood. And despite the fact that they understand that blood is required, they get it.

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They understand. To cover blood guilt, there must be the shedding of blood. But they have no authority or power to execute anyone in Israel.

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They say it's not within our power. We're a weak, subservient group of people to Israel. You've been gracious to allow us to live among you all of these years.

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You preserved our people, but we are not allowed to execute. We don't have that authority. But they're pointing back at David in this conversation.

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You do. You have the authority to make this right. So they request David use his authority.

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He comes back. There's this give and take in the conversation, and David's like, no, but really, and a second time, what do you want from this?

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How do you want to make this right? And they're like, we want to follow your laws. We want to follow your rules to make it right.

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In a way that seems unjust to our ears, they make a request. Give us seven descendants of Saul.

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Give us seven descendants of King Saul. He's the one who tried to eradicate us, says the Gibeonites. And the request is for seven, which

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I'm told by scholars is not an arbitrary number, which seems to be likely. I mean, why choose seven?

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Why not two? Why not 10? Why not 50? They choose seven with intention because it's the number in the

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Jewish culture for perfection, a number that is often used to symbolize God Himself.

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It is His sacrifice going to be offered. Maybe a picture, to some degree, of a future perfect sacrifice.

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And if it's not arbitrary, then we see something of that perfect and holy sacrifice being enacted here.

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But in verse 6, David listens to their request and he agrees to it. He selected seven male offspring of Saul, five sons, direct descendants, sons of Saul with his concubines, and then two grandsons.

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And we find that Saul had two grandsons named Mephibosheth. Somebody mentioned that to me before the service and I thought, wow, that's really great that he's reading the

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Bible. But he was like, doesn't it say that he didn't select Mephibosheth because he wanted to honor his covenant and then he selects

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Mephibosheth? But even Linda's parents have two grandsons. One is Luke and the other is Lucas.

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And how many of you would just identify that there's a possibility for grandparents to have two grandkids with the same name?

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Any of you have that, by the way? Anybody here in the room have that in your family? A couple of you? It's not that rare and we find that there's two

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Mephibosheths in Saul's line. It's not that crazy. But David spared Mephibosheth Jonathan's son, that specific one, because he had made a covenant with him to spare him.

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There's something vital in that notion. Maybe in this we see just a slight glimpse of salvation based on the gracious choice of a king.

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Why does this Mephibosheth go free in this scenario? Why is he not one of the seven? Why is he selected?

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He is spared because the king promised to spare him. End of story.

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Nothing in Mephibosheth that makes him worthy of being saved. As a matter of fact, it's actually abundantly clear in the text that he was not able to get around on his own.

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He was a paraplegic. He had to be carried everywhere that he went. He was dropped as a kid. It tells us in the text of 2

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Samuel, dropped as a kid and probably some vertebrae broke.

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He's not able to walk. He's not able to get around. He's certainly not able to save himself.

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Why is he spared in this situation? Because the king said he would. Because the king just promised.

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Why are you and I going to be spared on that day? It's only going to be on the basis of his promise.

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Only on the basis of him saying, I'm going to spare you. He's done something, obviously, to give that right, that ability to forgive us.

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But I call this section a corporate problem because it's national in scope. Hear me carefully. God is not giving us here in this text a model for how to handle personal disputes.

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Right? Please say amen to that. This is not how you settle a dispute with your neighbor.

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I believe that God is showing us the devastating severity and scope of sin. Just think of it from another perspective.

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A perspective you're probably not considering. How many have already died from the genocide of Saul? How many among the

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Gibeonites have had their blood shed? How many have died from the famine? And then ask yourself, is seven a fair number?

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Is the death of the murderer in capital punishment ever worth the people that they killed?

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When a serial killer is put down, is that fair?

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Are we all good now? One for 20? One for 30? One for 50? Are we good?

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Raise your hand if you think that just sounds super just. That's a good one. What is human justice?

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What are you talking about? God is the one who gets it right. I praise God that there is hope for a justice that goes beyond this life.

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One who sees it all and can be just. Because I can't get it right. The other question is, should anyone pay for this sin?

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No more fundamental question that I'd encourage you to wrestle with this week. And maybe this is going to result in some conversations with some of you.

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But is God good? Is God good? That has to settle on you today, church.

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I encourage you to ask that question and really wrestle with it before you set up a meeting with me.

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Don't just lean on me to answer it for you. I'd love to talk with you about it. But after, you take some time to look into His Word and seek to settle that.

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The second movement of the text is the corporate solution. We saw the corporate problem is this famine that's going on.

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And it's nationwide and it's national and it's scope. It's a corporate problem.

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And in verses 7 through 9, we see, therefore, a corporate solution. And it's gruesome. What we think of when we see the word hanged in this text, a little word that's just hanging there in the middle of the text, but it's likely by the word that's used there, it's gruesome.

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It's gross. It's the word impaled. It's much more likely during this ancient time they didn't tie nooses and hang people from trees.

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This is likely impaled and lifted high on a gibbet. They take these seven sons and grandsons of King Saul and they kill them.

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And a question that I wrestled with, crazy significant this week, and I went back and forth and back and forth, were they guilty?

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Were they guilty? I wrestled with this. I read commentaries and I read other people's thoughts and I read the text over and over again looking for their guilt.

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And while I can tell you with extreme confidence that these seven men were not sinless, because there is no one that is sinless except for Jesus Christ himself.

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So although there is no question that they are sinners, I still stand before you unclear whether or not these specific men took part in the actual genocide of the

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Gibeonites. Did they actually have swords in their hand with blood on them at the end of Saul's thing?

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Now, how many of you would just admit if they took part in the genocide then we might breathe a sigh of relief?

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How many of you would just feel better about this text if they themselves killed somebody? Like you feel better, right?

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Somehow that makes us, oh, okay, they're dying for their own sins, right? Oh, okay, that seems more just, that seems more fair.

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Unless this is a passage that has one primary intention, that's to point to somebody who would die for others.

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If that might be what this is about, then suddenly it might snap more into focus, right?

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What if they're dying a representative death? Well, suddenly

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I feel more shifty. Suddenly I'm left with a question mark over God's fairness, His kindness,

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His justice. And so let me ask a stark and honest and very, very, very serious question for us this morning, church.

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Would your God, the God that you worship, the God that you talk with, the God that you seek to meet with in the mornings, the

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God that you believe wrote this very word, would your God put to death someone who is innocent in order to save and rescue those who are not?

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Would your God do something like that? Go ahead and nod your head yes if you think your God would do something like that.

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Shake your head no if your God would not do something like that. While I was shaking, I couldn't see if your heads were shaking.

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There is no mystery that we are looking at an image of atonement.

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It is full of sorrow. It is bloody. And it actually looks at least a bit unjust.

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And it looks a bit like another atonement. I'm even more familiar with than this one. These seven men are lifted up for the sins of their people.

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And there are very few sermons on this passage for obvious reasons. It's uncomfortable. But I'm confident that this text exists to draw us into the discomfort of atonement.

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It's with intention. It is here to startle us, church. It is here to challenge our understanding of how serious sin truly is.

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And even more to highlight how messy it is to get out of the consequences of sin. Reconciliation with a holy

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God is a messy business. And that is according to both the Old Testament and the

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New Testament. Both testify to how messy it is to get out from under the consequences of sin.

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According to verses 12 through 14, David honors these men. David took the bones of these men along with the bones of Saul and Jonathan and gave them a noble burial.

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He sees something in them like our praise when we're singing about the death of our Lord. I was thinking that this morning.

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That's not in my notes, but as I was standing here singing, I was thinking, that's what we're doing. We are praising one who innocently, and some might even say unfairly, took our sins on himself.

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And that's what David does in this text. In a way of honoring these guys for taking it for the team, he gives them a noble burial.

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They have been executed for the sins of the people. And with this corporate stain of sin removed, God restores the reign.

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I wanted to read this text this week when I first ran through it and I wanted to see some notion of some pagan knowledge in here, some kind of misunderstanding and these pagans put these seven guys to death not really understanding what

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God wanted. But look at how it ends. Does God accept this? Go ahead and let me know.

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Does God accept it? He does. He does. What is going on here is atonement.

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And the passage seems like we could move straight from verses 9 to verse 12 and skip verses 10 and 11 for sorrow's sake.

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I don't like verses 10 and 11. They are there with intention. And that leads to the final place we should settle in this message this morning.

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We are meant to settle into a place of sorrow for what sin costs.

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Some passages are not there to move us on to application. They just exist to move us.

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They are there to stir our hearts and our feelings. The mother of two of the boys who are executed for the sins of the nation will not leave their side.

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As they hang there, she sets up camp on a rock and she shoos away scavengers from the corpses of her boys.

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This is not a section of Scripture for thinking as much as feeling. Church, do you feel the sorrow of what our sin costs?

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Do you feel her plight? In this image we see the logical fruit of sin.

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What does sin lead to? Death. What do we like to dabble in?

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Sin. Where does it lead? Death. The seeds of sin were planted by King Saul, the recklessness of his oath -breaking, the violence of his attempted genocide, the straight disobedience to an oath sealed in the name of his

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God. And the fruit of sin, graphically, is these seven corpses rotting in the

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Middle Eastern heat. The fruit of sin. Are we friendly with it,

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Church? Are we comfortable with it? Do we have our little pet sins that we pull out and play with and put back in the closet and then pull out again at convenient times?

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All of it leads to death. All of it will be paid for.

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All of it will be atoned for. What fruit comes of our sin?

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I don't know why, but I picture it to be a muggy morning on the day of his execution.

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He hadn't slept all night. He had been falsely accused, beaten, tortured, mocked, lacerated, struck, and pierced by numerous sharp thorns on his brow.

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The fresh blood was pouring over the blood already caked from the extracurriculars of the guards overnight.

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And they drive the nails through his wrists and through his ankles.

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And they lift him high. They lift him high for all to see.

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Naked, exposed, writhing in pain. Do you see it, church?

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Do you see the fruit of sin? Do you feel it on your shoulders?

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No, do you see it on his? Do you see it on his shoulders? For you?

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Would you stand beneath that cross in sorrow for what atonement means?

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Sorrow for the fruit of your sin. Why were those seven young men hanging there on that day thousands of years ago?

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They were there as a form of atonement. A form of payment for the sins of their nation. And they served as a substitute showing that someone must pay.

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So everyone in this room, please listen up for just a moment. This right now is a sacred moment of honest self -assessment.

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Will you suffer and pay for your own sins? Will you suffer the consequences and bear the fruit of your sins in punishment?

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The only alternative is made through the sacrifice of Jesus Christ on our behalf. You have a choice.

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You have a choice in front of you today. Will you pay for your own sins for eternity? Will you accept the eternal son of God who lived a sinless life and came and died for you?

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Who paid that price on the cross for you? Either his atonement has been applied to your life based on his gruesome sacrifice for you or you remain in a state of paying for your own sins.

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I can't imagine why you would want to stay there. And so let me encourage you all to come to Jesus and stand in sorrow beneath his cross.

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Grieve over the great price he paid in his blood to reconcile you and me to God.

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Don't stay in that sorrow. You can wipe those tears away.

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Unlike those seven who were chosen by the king to be executed for the sins of the nation, Jesus chose to be executed for us.

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He willingly laid down his life so that we could be restored to our heavenly father. Dale Davis in his commentary on this passage said the following, so I think it's going to be up there.

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Christians must become aware, must beware rather, of becoming too refined, longing for a kinder, gentler faith.

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If we've grown too used to Golgotha, perhaps Gibeah can shock us back into truth. Atonement is a dripping, bloody, smelly business.

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The stench of death hangs heavy wherever the wrath of God has been quenched.

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Every morning when we gather, we take a cracker to symbolize flesh torn for us.

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We take a cup of juice to remember blood blood shed in our place. Are we one of those blood churches?

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Recast, could we be a church without that blood? Couldn't. So three brief applications come to mind here before those of us who have asked

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Jesus Christ to save us. If you've asked him to save you and to rescue you and to be your Lord and to call the shots and lead you in life and to save you based on his punishment in your place, if that's you, then you're going to come and take communion here in a moment and I welcome you and invite you, but if you're not there,

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I encourage you, there's going to be some people standing up front here that would love to pray with you, would love to talk with you. At the very end of the service, at the end of communion, at the end of the last song, there's going to be some people up here who would love to pray with you and talk with you more about a relationship with Jesus Christ.

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But here's the applications. The first is stand in sorrow at the foot of the cross. Start there. Start there in sorrow and in grief over what he paid for you.

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Maybe take a moment this morning. If your life belongs to Jesus, then let the stark and full weight of the sinless

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Savior bleeding and dying for you. Let that fill your heart. Let that fill your mind.

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Let that fill your vision. Let the sorrow of that place strike you fresh this morning. But don't end there.

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Let that sorrow remind you then of his great love for you. He knew what he was signing up for when he came here, when he was born of the

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Virgin Mary. Admire his resolve. Receive his sacrifice as love for you.

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And then lastly, let that great love move you then to hate sin all the more, recognizing what it cost him.

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Hate sin and seek to live for him this week. The divine flow of grace into a human life that makes a difference, it begins with his holiness and ends with our eternal obedience to him forever and ever.

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But at the center stands a bloody and grotesque atonement that gives us appropriate sorrow for our sins and awe that he loved us enough to do that for us.

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Recast restoration as bloody. Don't turn your eyes away from it. Take in his love as sorrow and love flow mingled down.

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Let's pray. Father, there's a weight on me.

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I don't know if there's a weight on anybody else here, but there's a weight on me as I just consider the great sacrifice of my

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Lord and Savior for me. So unworthy, so undeserving.

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It should be me that would be lifted up in suffering and writhing. It should be my blood shed for my sins.

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What a mystery. What a great and glorious mystery in the sacrifice of Jesus Christ, the sinless one dying for us, reconciling us to you,

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Father. I could think of a thousand different ways to try to come out from underneath judgment but you and your perfect wisdom have made a pathway whereby you remain just and you demonstrate love to sinners like us.

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So Father, I pray that as we come into this communion time, at the end of the service,

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Father, that you would meet us in this place, give us a fresh vision of the sacrifice of Jesus Christ, what our sin leads to, that fruit of sin that is death and grotesque, but also an amazing and glorious place of your love expressed to us in sacrifice.

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Father, I pray that you would allow that to empower everybody here who is your child to go out with a redoubled commitment to despise sin because we see what fruit it leads to, but also with a desire to honor you because of your great love for us, that we would serve you because you have loved us.

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And then Father, if there's anybody here who does not know Jesus Christ is their Lord and Savior and maybe even in this moment, they're thinking that through and wrestling with it,

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I pray that you'll give them the boldness to come up, come forward at the very end of the service just to come down and talk with somebody, to pray with somebody.

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Father, I pray that you would meet us in this week with your grace in Jesus' name.