King and City

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Don Filcek; 2 Samuel 5:1-16 King and City

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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 evening to everybody.
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I'm Don Filsak. I'm the lead pastor here. And I'm really glad that we can gather together in the name of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ today.
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How many of you would just acknowledge that it's easy to kind of feel isolated in our world today? Anybody feeling just mildly isolated?
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I believe that part of the reason that God has given us church and church gathering is for the purpose of routine grounding in community worship.
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Our gathering does a couple of important things for our hearts and for our souls. It reminds us that our faith is not merely our faith.
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It's a shared faith. We are gathered, and when we gather, we are reminded that our faith must be lived out in relationship to others.
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There are others around us. Us sharpening them, them sharpening us. And that's a big component of what
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God desires for us together in community. It's a big desire of our growth in faith comes from sharpening one another and running into each other and encouraging one another and building each other up and helping each other to recognize that we need to be following Christ in all areas of our lives.
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That's what's building us up. But also in the gathering, we get the simple reminder that we are not alone in this faith in another direction, in another way.
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I encourage you right now, just look around, church. Look around. There are others who love
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Jesus. Amen? There are others who love Jesus. There are others who are called to be his ambassadors to a dark and hopeless world.
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You're not alone in that calling. You're not alone in that calling. You're not alone in that challenge of trying to bring the light of Christ to a dark world.
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It's not just on your shoulders. How many are glad to hear that this morning? It's not just on your shoulders. It's on ours.
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It's together that we're called to be ambassadors. We're called to be light. There are others who are seeking after the king just like you.
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There are others who have their hope placed not in the city of this world but in the city that is to come.
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Our text this morning is going to be framed by two movements in the life of King David that reflect the hope we have in a king, a king that is greater than David.
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Now, we see through the story of the life of David reflections and images and kind of a point through the stories of his life to a greater king that is coming.
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This morning is David's coronation day, a day that's been long anticipated, a day that's been long awaited in the text of Scripture all throughout 1
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Samuel. Through the bulk of 1 Samuel, it is predicted but not fulfilled. And then all the way up until chapter 5 of 2
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Samuel, a building tension in his life about God's promises to him in his youth. And what we're seeing when we see
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David coronated, we need to understand what we're looking at today. We are seeing Israel get the best fallen king she will ever have.
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The best fallen king she will ever have. He's a sinner, but he's a sinner who loves
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God. He is nowhere near perfect, but he knows it. And God uses this man and his rule and his reign to forward his promises that a future king from the line of King David will come and establish a forever kingdom.
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So David will reign from the city of Jerusalem, the glorious city on a hill, the glorious city of peace that has never known peace.
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And so too will Jesus one day reign from the new Jerusalem. What we see in our text is king and city.
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City and king. King and city. Our hope is wrapped up in those two realities.
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King coming to establish his rule and reign in a city. Our text this morning is like a collage of events from the life of King David.
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As a matter of fact, all of chapter 5, we're only taking half of it, all of chapter 5 is like a collage, like a bunch of different disparate stories from the life of King David.
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It's not chronological. Really, it's going to cover an era from his coronation all the way to the building of a palace.
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Now we know that by time in history, we know that the building of his palace took place in the last 10 years, the final 10 years of his reign.
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It's going to spell out the birth of many of his children, and we know that that had to span years of his life as well.
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So let's open our Bibles to 2 Samuel chapter 5, verses 1 through 6. If you've got a device, you can navigate in that.
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If you have one of those scripture journals, you can check that out. And consider what success looks like for King David throughout this text.
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God is faithful. As I read, I want you to think about God's faithfulness to keep his promises.
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He promised to David and his youth that he would one day be king over all Israel, and then we come to 2
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Samuel chapter 5. So let's listen in. It was you who led out and brought in Israel.
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And the Lord said to you, You shall be shepherd of my people Israel, and you shall be prince over Israel.
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So all the elders of Israel came to the king at Hebron, and King David made a covenant with them at Hebron before the
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Lord, and they anointed David king over Israel. David was 30 years old when he began to reign, and he reigned 40 years.
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At Hebron he reigned over Judah seven years and six months, and at Jerusalem he reigned over all Israel and Judah 33 years.
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And the king and his men went to Jerusalem against the Jebusites, the inhabitants of the land, who said to David, You will not come in here, but the blind and the lame will ward you off, thinking
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David cannot come in here. Nevertheless, David took the stronghold of Zion, that is, the city of David.
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And David said on that day, Whoever would strike the Jebusites, let him get up the water shaft to attack the lame and the blind, who are hated by David's soul.
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Therefore it is said, the blind and the lame shall not come into the house. And David lived in the stronghold and called it the city of David.
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And David built the city all around from the mill out inward. And David became greater and greater. For the
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Lord, the God of hosts, was with him. And Hiram king of Tyre sent messengers to David, and cedar trees and carpenters and masons who built
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David a house. And David knew that the Lord had established him king over Israel, and that he had exalted his kingdom for the sake of his people
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Israel. And David took more concubines and wives from Jerusalem, after he came from Hebron.
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And more sons and daughters were born to David. And these are the names of those who were born to him in Jerusalem.
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Shemua, Shobab, Nathan, Solomon, Ibhar, Elishua, Nepheg, Japhia, Elishamah, Eliadah, and Eliphelet.
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Let's pray. Father, I thank you for this gathering this morning.
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It is for our encouragement, it is for our edification, it is for our growth in faith that you have brought each one here today.
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And I don't know where everybody is. I don't even know if we have in our own hearts a right understanding of where we're at.
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We've had busy weeks and a lot of different things going on, and we can be just even confused in our own hearts and own minds about how we're doing with you.
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So, Father, I pray that you would calm our hearts and calm our souls, and draw down into our attention the ability to take in your word, to remove all distractions from this past week, and we would be able to lift our voices together in worship of you, but that we would also be able to take in your word as worship to you, recognizing what you desire from us is an increased faith, to know you better, to trust you more, and to live more closely with you.
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I pray that those things would become a reality, that we would know you in a way that also bubbles out to others to make you known to the world around us.
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Not just known for our own sake, not just glutted with information, not just a historical account and a really interesting lesson from your word, but,
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Father, a word that changes us and transforms us from the inside out, so that we are propelled on mission for you.
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I pray that that would be a reality of what you do here in our midst this morning, and even now as we sing songs to you, I pray that you would allow our voices to mingle together in a recognition that we are not alone, as other voices around us lift up and praise you.
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I pray that you would receive the honor and the glory, and that we would be built up and strengthened together this morning in Jesus' name.
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I encourage you to get comfortable, keep your Bibles open, your devices, whatever, to 2 Samuel 5, verses 1 -16.
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We read it earlier, that's going to be our passage. If at any time, I know that some of you this is your first time here, the others of you are totally tuned out right now because I say this every week, but if at any time during the message you need to get up and get more coffee or water back there, you're not going to distract me if you need to do so.
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And then also, restrooms are out the double doors down the hallway on the left -hand side if you need those at any time as well.
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But for the rest of our time, as much as possible, to try to keep our attention and focus on God's word, so that's why
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I ask you to open it up so that you can see. We're going to walk through that passage. And I want to start off with a question. Sometimes it's good to just get your minds thinking, what are you waiting for?
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What are you waiting for? Are you waiting for a raise? Are you waiting for a move?
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Some of us are by now waiting for spring, return to normal.
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We're in a church, so I hope that at least some spiritual notion crosses your mind when your pastor asks you, what are you waiting for?
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I hope there's some kind of spiritual notion in there. How many of you are waiting for the return of your king? You're waiting for the return of your king?
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How many of you are looking forward to and awaiting that final city of peace?
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Amen. Amen. Looking forward to the place where the gates are never closed in fear, and Jesus, our king, will rule and reign in the midst of his people.
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That's us, church, in the midst of his people with gladness and joy.
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As I said in the introduction, king and city. King and city, that's our hope. The activities of King David in our text this morning point towards that future king and the future city from which he will reign.
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Both a good king who is coming for us, who solves our problems, and will reign from the new
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Jerusalem. Here's the outline for our text this morning, thinking about the life of David, the events that we're going to be taking on. I mentioned it's a little bit of a collage.
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It's kind of a hodgepodge of different things, not necessarily chronological, but just demonstrating that God was with David. God was in this whole thing.
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The first is verses 1 through 3, the coronation of the king. Verses 1 through 3. Verses 4 through 5 is the chronology of the kingdom.
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Verses 6 through 9 is the conquest of the city. Verses 10 through 12 is the confirmation of the king.
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And then verses 13 through 16 is the continuation of the king's sin.
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We're going to end a little bit on a downer, but we'll see that there's a lot of glory in the midst of this, despite the fact that we all know that we also have to deal with sin.
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So let's start in with verse 1, the coronation of the king. Yes, I did alliterate that. It didn't take a lot of work.
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I didn't spend a lot of time on that because it's not super helpful. You're probably not going to remember all those five points. But my hope is that in the midst of talking about this hodgepodge of things in David's life, that something here lodges in you, that the
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Spirit takes something from this text and from the understanding of this text and puts it into practice in your life.
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So we're going to see a lot of different things here, but hopefully something sticks for you. The coronation of the king we see in verses 1 through 3.
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The 11 northern tribes of Israel had been following King Ish -bosheth, the youngest son of King Saul, and they had been following him as their king for a few years now as of the start of chapter 5.
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But he died, and he died last week in the message in the previous chapter. He died a gruesome death, and we talked about that.
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The 12 tribes of Israel are now ready to be united under one king. So they all came together and made their following case for David to be the one.
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And so they're basically saying, we need some justification for making David our king. And so they give three reasons here in verses 1 and 2.
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You might not necessarily see them because they're not numbered in the Bible, but they're there. The first is he's a kinsman. He is of our blood and of our bones.
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David is related to all Jews in that his lineage is from the tribe of Judah, and that lineage ties him back to the great ancestor
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Jacob, whose name was changed to Israel by God. Therefore, it was said in the Old Testament law that the ruler among God's people was to be an
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Israelite. They were not to take some foreigner or somebody that didn't have Jewish blood and set him up as their king.
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He is qualified by his ancestry to reign over the Jews. That's the first qualification that they state for him.
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The second is they appeal to his experience. Under King Saul, he spent years as a commander in Saul's army, bringing
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Israel into the city and out of the city. What that means is he led the parades in and out of the city of military power when they left for war, when they returned victorious.
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He's experienced, he's tried and true, and they're appealing to his experience here.
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Now lastly, and what I think is most important, and unfortunately third in the text, really they didn't need the first two qualifications.
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So it kind of demonstrates to some degree a little bit of backwardness on the people already.
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We're beginning to see signs of where the history of Israel is going just by the fact that they put this last.
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They acknowledge that God had promised to David through the prophets, really through the prophet
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Samuel, that he would be shepherd of the people and be the ruler over them.
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How many of you think that that should have been enough for them? God spoke through the prophet, this is the king, and they're like, yeah, well, let's think about his qualifications.
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Let's go in and interview, let's kind of think through our options and all of that stuff. God said it, and that's the way they should go.
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Now I want to camp on that final point here for a moment, because I think it's really vital to understand that the promise of God is still intact here.
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After years and years and years in the life of David, he's 30 before he becomes king. Some say probably 37 and a half years old by the time that this is happening, because he rules and reigns, we're going to see here in a minute, he rules and reigns from Hebron over Judah for seven and a half years before he assumes this.
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We don't have an exact and perfect chronology here, but it seems like he's probably 37 and some change when he gets to this place.
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The promise of God is still intact. It's weathered opposition from the threats from King Saul, who desired to kill
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David. It's weathered even David's seasons of folly when he was living among the Philistines, trying to save his own skin.
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It's weathered a northern rebellion under Abner and the puppet king Ish -bosheth. And here it is, ready to be fulfilled by the
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God who keeps His promises. The God who keeps
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His promises. Church, I want you to camp on this for a minute. His promises are the most durable thing you will ever encounter.
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Longer lasting than gold or silver or the hardest and most precious of diamonds. His promise is the most durable thing you will ever encounter.
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David was, of course, a very experienced shepherd in his youth, and he has now been raised up to be a shepherd of his people.
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That young boy sitting under the stars, writing songs to God. That young boy, it's said of him by his own testimony, that a bear would come along and take one of the sheep, and he would track it down and beat it to death and take the sheep back.
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I mean, a pretty tough kid, but nonetheless, a shepherd. When it came to his anointing when he was a youth, his dad didn't even consider him.
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The prophet Samuel says, bring out all your sons, because one of your sons is supposed to be the king.
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And his dad didn't even include him. I mean, how many of you would be a little offended? If your dad was told to bring out your sons and you weren't even brought, he's like, somebody's got to take care of the sheep, so you stay out there.
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We're going to have a coronation in here. And the prophet Samuel goes down the line and says, not him, not him, not him.
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You've made a mistake, there must be one more son, because these aren't it.
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Oh yeah, that's right, David. That's right, David, he's out in the field. Some of you have felt that way in your families.
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I know the feeling a little bit. Like, I mean, you get left at Walmart and they have to come back for you or something,
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I don't know. That's not personal experience, but it's someone's experience. I know it happens.
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And if that happened to you, your parents didn't mean it, I don't think. I can't speak for them.
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David experienced that shepherding as a youth, all of God's providence and work in his life, and he is heading toward the crown.
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God's ideal king is one who cares for shepherds, the people.
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His ideal king is not a tyrant. And just like David, who studied to be a shepherd,
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Jesus is the good shepherd. And yet he is also our very good king.
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So with these three reasons in mind, the elders of the tribes of Israel come together at Hebron in verse 3, and they made a covenant together with David.
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That would be both sides covenanting David to lead well in godliness, them to follow well in godliness.
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We don't have the verbiage of that covenant, but we have some indications of what it probably would have been. They anointed him as their king, and this is the third and final time that David is anointed.
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I just kind of spelled out that first time in his youth when Samuel told his dad, go get the other one, and he anointed him there.
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Then he was anointed back in chapter 2 over just Judah, one of the 12 tribes, and here he was anointed over all of Israel.
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And this would be his coronation day. He is now king. And this all happens in the text before the
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Lord. This is not some contractual arrangement going on between some tribal leaders in the ancient world.
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It happens before the Lord. The God of Israel is part of this anointing the great king David. He is in this.
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And the second point of the text, once we've got the setting out of the way, is the chronology of the kingdom. It really only takes up two verses, but it shows us the extent and scope of the kingdom of David.
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He became king in Judah at the age of 30. He reigned over Judah at Hebron for 7 1⁄2 years.
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And then he reigned over Judah for 33 years, rounding out the total years of being king in Israel about 40 years.
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And the only thing I want to point out about this chronology and the text telling us the extent of his reign and the duration and where he reigned from is that we all know that there are limitations to human kings, do we not?
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He reigned for how long in the text? How long does the text say? How long did he reign? Forty years.
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They all die. They all die, every ruler. They all die.
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They're all fairly local. They're all fairly sinful. And they actually range from fairly sinful to wickedly corrupt and evil.
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Even the best of human rulers are capable of deep sin and corruption. Did you already know that? How many of you kind of knew that already?
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Just point this out to say his limitations demonstrate to us the need for a better king. We need a better king.
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We need a sinless ruler. We need a permanent king whose reign doesn't end at 40 or 40 years.
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We need a king who can solve the deepest problems that face us day in and day out.
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A king who can conquer big problems like sin, big problems like death.
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Well, I'll leave that there and move on to the third point in the text. This is the conquest of the city, verses 6 through 9.
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In this collage of significant events over the course of David's reign and over the course of his life, the conquest of Jerusalem is perhaps meant to be highlighted as the most significant of his achievements.
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The city of Jerusalem, Jerusalem meaning the city of peace, a city that has known almost virtually no peace over the course of human history.
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It's mentioned over 800 times in the Bible. 800 times Jerusalem is mentioned in the text of Scripture.
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It becomes the center, of course, of Jewish worship, the place of the temple of God. It becomes the center of hope for the
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Messiah. It becomes the place where Jesus comes to play, the eternal one in flesh there teaching the scribes and the
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Pharisees in the temple at 12 years old. And they are marveling at his wisdom and his ability to teach.
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It's of course where he will make his final sacrifice for sins once for all, even us as the beneficiaries of what happened there in Jerusalem.
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And further, Jerusalem becomes wrapped up in the final end times big word, eschatological hope for our future.
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The end times hope as our final destination is called the new what?
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The new Jerusalem. A city that God is preparing for his redeemed people. A city that he is preparing now but will come down out of heaven an eternal abode for his children.
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Historically, before David, Jerusalem was part of the land that was promised to Abraham. I mean, we're going back ancient now.
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Like as far back from David as Abraham as we are from David now.
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Like it's way, way back there. Part of the land that Moses led the people of Israel to in the exodus, the promised land, was
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Jerusalem. Part of the land that Joshua was given and instructed to conquer was
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Jerusalem. And yet the people in disobedience never conquered it. Why in the world does David have to conquer
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Jerusalem here? A few generations removed from Joshua. Why didn't the people take it when
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God told them to? And so in the text, the Jebusites, when we get to chapter 5 of 2
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Samuel, the Jebusites, a group of Canaanite peoples, have possessed the city of Jerusalem for centuries as an outpost in the middle, smack dab in the middle of Israel.
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And it stands there as a blight on their obedience to God. They refused to take it. It was a small village.
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It wasn't a huge place. And so why in the world didn't they conquer it? Well, it had a substantial fortress on a hill called
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Zion. The name of the fortress is Zion. It stands on a high point. And in historical combat, high points are easy to defend, much easier to defend, not as easy to defend now with satellite imagery and missiles.
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But in ancient warfare, it worked well to be on a hill. Nowadays, you want to be undercover. So different scenario, different story.
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David sets his sights on it as the ideal place to establish his throne. Where's he going to rule from? He can't rule from Hebron.
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Hebron is way, way south in Israel. It's in Judah, the southernmost tribe.
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He's not going to be very centrally located there. It's not a great location for his rule and reign.
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But Jerusalem is. Jerusalem is very centrally located in Israel. It doesn't require him to take any city for himself from among the 12 tribes.
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He doesn't have to go and say, I'm going to take your city. That's going to be mine now. So it fulfills a conquest also that Israel was called to complete centuries before.
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So it's kind of win, win, win for him to conquer Jerusalem and rule from there.
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We get very little of the battle over Jerusalem. There's a little bit of detail there in verses 6 and 7, but not a ton, just enough to kind of pique our interest, and then it's over.
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The battle goes like this. The Jebusites taunt David. David defeats them.
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That's kind of how the battle goes. Does that sound familiar? Any of you ever heard of a story about a little guy named
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David and a big guy named Goliath? What did Goliath come out and do? Taunts David and his god.
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Where does Goliath end up? Down, right? So, I mean, taunt, stone sling forehead.
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Taunt, city conquered. How many of you would just be like, I'm not going to taunt David. Just not going to do that.
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Not going to go there with David. I'd recommend that for longevity's sake, if you want your life, don't taunt
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David. But the taunt serves to show us the misplaced confidence of the Jebusites here in this context.
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Even the blind and lame, they say, even blind and lame people could defend this city from you. There's no way you're getting in here.
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We don't even need to muster our troops to the wall. Anybody could stop you from getting in here.
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They thought that the fortress was impregnable. Nobody was getting into the fortress of Zion. So David found a weakness in their defenses and challenged his men to utilize a water shaft.
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Now, interestingly, under the old city of Jerusalem, that water shaft has been discovered. It's now known by the guy who the archaeologists have found it.
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It's called the Warren Shaft. And you can go there and see it today. This is an actual location, historically, under the old city where there's a water aquifer that runs through and a shaft that leads up into the city.
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And in the account of 1 Chronicles, sometimes we get parallel accounts. So in 1 Chronicles, it tells this identical same story.
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But there it fills out the detail a little bit more for us. The chronicler was more interested in some of the details.
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So David offered a reward of the chief position in his military to the first one up the water shaft.
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And so Joab scrambles on top of everybody else and shimmies up that shaft to maintain his position as the commander of David's army.
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Now, it's a little unclear. How many of you are just going to go in like, did they mount an assault through a water shaft? And where does it end up?
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Did they come up through the plumbing? Are they now in the toilets? Where does it end up, and how in the world do you assault an entire city and take it, or a fortress, through the water shaft?
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Well, maybe, just maybe, in the middle of the night, Joab goes up, unlocks the gate, and voila, army's in.
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We don't know all the details. It doesn't tell us how going up that water shaft was used to their advantage.
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We just know that it was. And it ended up producing a proverbial statement there. Entire taunt to David produced a proverbial statement that most commentaries that I read, actually no commentary wanted to touch it with a ten -foot pole, not for fear of offending blind and lame people, but due to a lack of context.
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It's unclear how that proverbial statement was used in their context. The blind and the lame are not allowed in the house.
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You can't get into the house or something like that. So it's just unclear how it would have been used. How many of you just know that if you go to another culture, you don't understand their proverbs very well?
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They don't mesh with our culture very well. So in verse 9, we see that David made the stronghold his own.
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He even named it after himself, which was a common custom. It's not that he's just arrogant or egotistical. The one who is in charge of the army that conquers a city gets to name it.
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And so he does so, and he calls it the City of David. And he expands it and builds out its walls, and the village itself begins to grow under David's rule.
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But before we move on to the next point, I want to highlight a word that I really like in this text. It's found at the start of verse 7, and I want to camp there for just a second because it just impacted me this week as I thought about it.
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The Jebusites mocked and taunted David, saying, David can't get in this city.
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There's no way David can get in this city. And the word at the start of verse 7 is, in the
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ESV, nevertheless. Nevertheless. I love the word nevertheless.
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Nevertheless, David took the city. They taunt, they say, there's no way you're coming in the city.
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Nevertheless, David took it. Do you see how the word nevertheless applies in that text? With God, our enemies get to face a bunch of neverthelesses.
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We don't get credit for creating the nevertheless, but God does. And our job is to applaud with awe and wonder and joy as God devastates our enemies with nevertheless, after nevertheless, after nevertheless.
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I'll give you some examples. Adam and Eve ate of the forbidden fruit and plunged the world into sin.
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Nevertheless, God promised an offspring to the woman who would crush the serpent's head. In the days of Noah, the thoughts of mankind were only ever to do evil.
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Nevertheless, God saved Noah's family in the ark through the flood. Abraham was raised in a pagan idol -worshiping family in Ur.
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Nevertheless, God called him and promised to bless all the world through his offspring. The world was in dark bondage to sin, hopeless and helpless.
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Nevertheless, God sent forth his son. We crucified the
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Lord of life and put him to death. Nevertheless, he rose on the third day and has ascended as our mighty king.
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We wait in days of increasing darkness. Do we not? Do you feel it?
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Do you sense it around you? Days of increasing darkness. Nevertheless, the Lord will return to finish this history he started.
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And he will come and establish his eternal kingdom. The enemy has his taunts, and the
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Lord has his neverthelesses. His fourth point is the confirmation of the king in verses 10 -12.
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David became greater in verse 10 because the Lord chose to bless him. And it's kind of interesting that we can get some things convoluted in scripture.
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We can begin to read passages like this and go, okay, if God is with you, then you get stuff. Then you become greater.
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Then you're going to be blessed and everything's going to go great. But I want to be clear that God is not a vending machine.
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God is not a vending machine, folks. I was thinking about that earlier. Is that an outdated metaphor? Does everybody in here know what a vending machine is?
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We still at least get pop out of those, right? I guess there's some that have snacks in them or whatever. God is not a vending machine where you put in an input and get out identical output.
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Where you put in prayer and you get out what you asked for. Where you put in money given to the church or to nonprofits and you get something out for it.
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Where you put in your time ministering or doing his work so then you get something out for it.
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Are you getting what I'm saying? We can think of him that way and begin in our minds to even look at passages like this.
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But here's what you need to understand that's really revolutionized my thoughts about how we view God in terms of what he does and doesn't do.
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He's personal. He makes choices. He decides who to bless and who not to bless.
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Do you hear the difference in that? A vending machine that decides, it's more like you put in and you put in and he decides what comes out.
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It's like a vending machine that just decides whether you're going to have the Twinkie or whether you're going to have the barbecued potato chips.
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It just puts out what it wants to. More than that obviously, he's personal and he's good.
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He knows what we need. What I'm getting at here church is we cannot look at a person and tell if they are blessed by God or if they're good at selling drugs.
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Do you know what I'm saying? Why do they have that nice car? Why is their bank account so padded?
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Why are they living the high life? Are you getting what I'm saying in that? Did anybody get that? Some people do actually drive a nice car because they are blessed by God.
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That's the truth. And there are some who drive really nice cars because they're greedy and shrewd and climb up the corporate ladder on the backs of others.
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Both of those can be the case. Are you getting what I'm saying in that? You tracking with that? We cannot look at a person.
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Hear me carefully church. You cannot look at a person and determine that they are blessed because the Lord is with them.
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We see it here that David is indeed becoming greater and greater because the
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Lord of hosts, the host of heaven was with him. And we know that because the Bible gives us insight that we cannot determine with our eyes.
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Are you getting it? How do we know that David was blessed because of the Lord? Because the text tells us.
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That's how that connects. And further, David over the course of his life gains in fame among other nations around him as well.
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The Phoenicians of the region of modern day Lebanon, north of Israel, current country. They had a king named
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Hiram. And his reign only overlapped with David by about ten years. And that's how we know.
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We have fairly decent historical documentation of the overlap of their two reigns.
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And so, it had to be near the last ten years of David's reign that Hiram came and built a palace for him.
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He sent lumber and craftsmen to build this great palace for David at Jerusalem. And archeologists believe even recently that they have found the location and some of the structure of that large palace underneath the old city of Jerusalem.
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They're still excavating and still bringing things to light in that area of Jerusalem. But David received confirmation and blessings as king over Israel.
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God blessed him. Foreign dignitaries confirmed his rule. But notice verse 12.
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David knew that the Lord was the one establishing him. Do you see the significance of that? How many of you want a ruler who knows that it's the
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Lord that has blessed them, not themselves? You don't hear it here said, David was full of himself and thought, man,
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I've got it going on. Of course everybody ought to follow me because I'm just this good. No, he says the
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Lord was the one establishing him. And it says in the text that he knew it. He knew it was up to God. And David further knew that the purpose of his reign was not for his own ease and his own benefit.
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He was called as king and God had lifted up his kingdom for the sake of the people he served.
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David acknowledged God was the one who had raised him up. But David also shows that he knew his calling was not for his personal comfort, but for the purpose of blessing the people and helping them to succeed.
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Now a major theme of this entire sweeping epic of human history is the establishment of the people of God that were promised to Abraham.
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It was a promise that God gave to Abraham that they would become a numerous people, thriving in the land that God promised to Abraham.
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And that one from their royal line would eventually be the ruler over all peoples for eternity and save their people from, save his people from their sins.
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The arrival of Jesus is now out of the frame of what God is doing here in 2 Samuel 5. Why is there a need for a good king to rule with favor over Israel?
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Why establish the people in this way, in this time, in this epic of history so that they are preserved on the earth to bring forth the
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Messiah? That's the answer. What is he doing here? He is preserving a people that will one day produce a
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Messiah. And he's protecting them. He's insulating them. God is working a long -term project of salvation for all the nations through his chosen nation
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Israel in the Old Testament. And in a practical application kind of way, I encourage all of you to consider that God has never given anyone a position of leadership for their own benefit.
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Whatever capacity that God has given you to lead, some of you it's a couple of kids that you lead during the week, a handful of rugrats running around.
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Some of you it's fairly high up in some kind of an organizational structure and you've got people that directly report to you.
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It has never been for your own benefit. Every raising up is for the sole purpose of glorifying God. Consider that whatever gifts, blessings, or callings
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God has placed on your life, they are not for your own exaltation. They are all given for the benefit of others and for the ultimate glory of God.
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It might be good to consider that this morning. What gifts has God given to you? It isn't for you that he has given those gifts to you.
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It's not to end with you that he's given you talent. It's not to end with you that he's given you abilities.
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It's not to end with you that he gave you spare resources or spare time. Your mini kingdom is not the end goal of the blessings of God.
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The last point we end with is a bit of a downer. It's the continuation of the king's sin.
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Lest we only ever puff up David to the epic proportions of hero so that everybody walks out of here with a live like David lived kind of feeling in your gut.
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Verses 13 through 16 here are here to remind us of the continuation of the king's sin.
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Now I established that this multiplying of concubines and wives is sin in an earlier sermon.
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And once again let me briefly remind us that this records what sinful people did, not what they should do.
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So the fact that he multiplies and has all of these wives and all of these concubines and keeps adding every place that he moves he gets a couple more wives.
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Now David is heroic at times but he isn't held up as a man without flaws. He is not in the text to show us how we should live.
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He is in the text to show us how God works in real human history. Even using sinners like David and even sinners like us to further his grand plan of redemption.
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How God keeps his promises even to sinful people. Does that give anybody hope here?
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Did you hear what I said church? God keeps his promises even to sinful people.
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That's why I think I'm going to heaven. That's why I've got hope of a future together with Jesus.
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The only reason is that God keeps his promises to even sinners. How many of you know that none of us are getting there if he doesn't keep his promise to sinners.
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We're toast. We have no hope aside from that glorious truth.
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Well interestingly David is not just... And I want to clarify because some of you think maybe...
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I kind of let him off the hook just a skosh in terms of I believe that this is a cultural sin. I still believe that.
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I believe that everybody's expectation of the king in these ancient days was that he had more than one wife. I think his culture was good with it in other words.
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They didn't look down on him and go what a philandering jerk. What an idiot. He's totally misogynistic with all these wives.
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There were guys hoping that he was interested in their daughter so that they could marry her to the king too.
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Are you getting what I'm saying in this? So you've got to understand that that's the perspective going on here.
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And yet the Old Testament... David had enough information at his disposal to know what he was doing was wrong.
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Deuteronomy 17 .17 says this. You could jot this in your notes. Go look it up later. It speaks directly to future kings.
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This is the Old Testament law. The second telling of the law. Deuteronomy. They knew about first law but did they know about second law?
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Yeah they did. Deuteronomy. Second telling of the law. Verse 17 .17 speaks to the future kings over Israel prohibiting them from taking wives.
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Multiple wives. David is here disobeying God's direct instruction to the king over Israel.
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He's disobeying direct instruction from God. And yet God is still faithful to keep his promise.
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Verses 13 -16 demonstrate that David's royal line is indeed blessed with a deep bench of potential kings to pull from.
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His line doesn't appear to run the risk of running out of potential heirs. That's the upside of it. It doesn't justify it.
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It doesn't make it right but it's the truth. And again let me use this as an opportunity to remind us all that children conceived under sinful circumstances are an unqualified blessing.
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No baby is less than because of the status of their parents when they were conceived.
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We are reminded here that David is not perfect. And that we should remind us all that really should settle in our hearts all the more of the limitations of human governance.
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Not as if we were already putting a lot of trust in government anyways in our current time. But David cannot solve death.
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How many of you knew that already? David can't solve death. David cannot control his own sin in the text.
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David has a limited reign. It is limited by a geography. It is limited by time.
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Forty years. How many of you go, that's a long time to be king. That's a long time to be royal. And it is a drop in the bucket of human history, is it not?
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So let's consider some brief applications from these five points as we close our time together.
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In our first point, the coronation of the king. I'm reminded that God keeps his promises.
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This is where I want our hearts to settle. He is worthy of our trust and worthy of our lives. So consider the promises of God toward you this week.
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He promises to never leave you or forsake you if you have trusted him by faith. He has promised all of his children a place in his eternal kingdom.
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He has promised to cast our sin as far as the east is from the west. He has promised resurrection to all who are aligned in faith and allegiance to his son, our savior and king.
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His name is Jesus. Lean on his promises this week. That's the first application.
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Second is from the chronology of the kingdom. We acknowledge that David was limited in his time.
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But he spent that time doing what God desired of him. We can learn humility as we consider that all that we do is temporary.
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All that we do is temporary. Walk through a cemetery around here and you will find names of people.
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And you will see people buried here in Matawan that nobody is alive who can testify to their character.
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Nobody has ever met them. They don't know them. There is nobody alive today who knows some people that are buried right up off of Red Arrow.
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Nobody has seen them alive. Whatever God has given us to do takes on value because he has it for us to do today.
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So serve the king in the place he has you for the time that he has you. I don't think any of us in the room are going to serve
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God as a king or a queen. But all of us are called by him to serve him nonetheless and to do so with our hearts engaged toward him in love.
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The third application is from the conquest of the city. To apply the conquest of the city is a bit tricky because this is where I'm supposed to get all rah rah.
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Like slay your giants, take your cities for Jesus or something like that. You know, when it's supposed to be kind of like that.
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But instead, I'm going to encourage you a little bit in a different direction. To lean into the neverthelesses.
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God's nevertheless allows David to take what would have been an impregnable fortress.
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Rather than try to take something for God, I would encourage you in the opposite direction this week. Comb over your history, look into your past for the ways that God has pulled you out.
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And applied his neverthelesses in your own history. The application is simple then.
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Thank him for the times when everything seemed stacked against you. And he still came through with victory in your life.
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How many of you have some testimonies like that? You have some places where he applied that nevertheless to you.
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The fourth application comes from the confirmation of the king in verses 10 -12. David was blessed by God.
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And he acknowledged that it was God who had exalted him to the place of leadership. So know that God has placed you in this time and in this place with unique gifts.
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And with unique talents and unique blessings and resources. And these things are not meant to bless merely you.
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They are meant to be used for the sake of his people and for the sake of his kingdom. What is God calling you to apply in terms of your gifting, your talents, your resources, your abilities?
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The final application comes from the final point of the continuation of King David's sins in verses 13 -16.
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And I'd like us to narrowly apply this. I'd like us to apply it broadly throughout our entire lives. I'm reading a book by Eugene Peterson right now called
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The Jesus Way. And he said something that was startling and I've had to wrestle with it for a little while. I read it last week and it's still rummaging around in my head.
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He said the only thing that we can do about our sin that has any real benefit is confess it.
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We can put up filters. We can put up all kinds of barriers. We can just try to set an alarm that goes off that tells us, hey, reflect on what you're saying.
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How are you saying it? What are you doing? You can get accountability groups together. How many of you have battled sin?
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How many of you have fought something? And you can get all kinds of things around. And he says the only thing of benefit that we can really do about it is confess it.
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And in that statement is the loaded notion that we are dependent people.
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We either come to the cross with our crud or we have no hope. We are just a self -improvement project otherwise.
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Are you getting what I'm saying in that? Are you feeling that? The hope is in the confession to God.
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And in confession we're saying, if you don't deal with this, if you don't take care of this, if you don't cover this, if your blood is not sufficient for this, then
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I'm in trouble. But I'm leaning on you. I'm trusting in you. I'm trusting in your promise that when I confess you are faithful and just to forgive me of my sins and to cleanse me and to purify me from all unrighteousness.
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I want to be clean. I want to do things right, Father. I encourage you to have that kind of talk with God this morning before you get out of your seat and get in line to take communion.
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I want you to be honest. He knows already, so why don't you talk with him about it and say, I want purity.
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I want to be cleansed. I recognize my sin. And I encourage you, I think there's something powerful in this.
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It's not magical. It's not mystical. I think there's just something powerful in our hearts to name it. You don't have to say it out loud.
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People will be creeped out. You name your sins out loud. That's okay, too, if you want to do that.
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We're a place of grace, but name it. What is the sin?
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I'm sorry, Father. I'm sorry for this. I'm asking for your forgiveness.
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Once again, I don't think anybody here this week has a novel sin that you've never struggled with before.
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And this is the first time. I'm bringing you something new, Jesus. Another piece of credit. No, it's there.
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I'm coming again, and I'm saying, forgive me, cleanse me, purify me. Take that moment before you take the cracker to remember his body that was broken for us.
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Praise God, his body was broken for us. And as much as we can think morosely about that, and we can think dark thoughts about what he suffered for us, we can also think glorious, light thoughts of joy and gladness that he would do that out of love for us.
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And then we take the juice to remember his blood that was shed for us. Take a moment of honest assessment.
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Name your sin before him. Tell him you're sorry and that you desire to be done with it. Then come to the table to remind yourself why he is able to forgive you.
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Why is he able to forgive you? It isn't that he says, you know what, your sin was no big deal. I'm just going to let this one go.
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He says that about no sin ever. Never. Never, yeah, that one's a small one.
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I'm going to let that go. I'm going to let that one go. You come on in. Never. It isn't that your sin was no big deal.
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It's that he died on the cross to pay for that sin. He took the penalty and he took the punishment for us.
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And hear me carefully. I recognize that there may be some here who haven't embraced this yet, who are still wrestling with this.
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And it's either you or him. I stated that directly. It's either you or him.
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Either you will pay for it or he has already paid for it. Somebody's going to pay for it.
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So if you're in that state where you're like, man, I think I don't know how sins transfer from me to him.
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But I kind of want that transfer. I'd encourage you to come and talk with me. You can come and talk with Dave. You can come and talk with Nick who prayed before the message.
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We would love to talk with you about how you can have your sins forgiven placed on him on the cross.
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So that you no longer bear those sins on your shoulders. And church, we serve a glorious king.
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We are the recipients of a great salvation. And we look forward to the arrival of the great city of peace.
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And our great king coming in glory. Let's pray. Father, I thank you so much for grace.
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Without it, without that hope, without that forgiveness, without that confession, we would all be lost in our sins.
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Hopeless, helpless. And the best that we could have done this morning would have been just to sleep in. So Father, I pray that you would guide and direct every heart here.
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Help us as we contemplate and consider confession, our own brokenness before you.
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I pray that nobody here would be lost in despair. But everyone here would be brought to the light of the hope that is at the cross of Jesus Christ.
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Where you have demonstrated such great love for us in putting our sins on your son. Where he paid the penalty for that.
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So that we can be set free. I pray if there's anybody here that is in despair.
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Anybody here who is working hard to try to accomplish their own salvation. And just hitting up against that wall time and time again.
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I pray that today might be a day of boldness. That they might be moved to come and talk with me or with Nick or Dave or someone.
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That today might be a day of salvation. I thank you for the model and the example of David. A sinful person who is raised up and blessed by you in scripture.
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Not doing everything right but demonstrating to us even in confession and repentance. Father, I pray that you would guide and direct our time during communion.
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Thank you for the blood of Jesus Christ that washes us. Thank you for his body that was broken in our place. In Jesus name.