Enemies Too

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Don Filcek; 2 Samuel 16:1-14 Enemies Too

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You're listening to a podcast of Recast Church in Matawan, Michigan. This week, Pastor Don Filsak is preaching from his series,
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The Warrior Poet King, a study of 2 Samuel. Let's listen in. I pray that God would meet each and every one of us through his powerful word.
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My conviction, church, is that the word is what you need. You don't need to hear me get up and share a bunch of thoughts about the culture.
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You don't need to hear my political views or my leanings or anything like that. What we need to hear is from God's word, and that's why we take off chunks of God's word.
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We walk through it, because I believe that this is the foundation of any meaningful growth that's going to happen in your life regarding your relationship with God.
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God has given us a lot of means to grow in him. He has given us his word by which we grow in faith.
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That's why we make that a central thing. We listen to his word. We believe it. Then we go out from here to walk in it, to actually obey it, to live it out.
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He has given us this gathering by which we grow in community. We need others.
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We're designed that way. It is only among others that our faith is tested as we love him by loving others.
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How do you show God that you love him? By loving others well. He has given us gifts so that we can grow in service.
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Grow in faith. Grow in community. Grow in service. We all have a role to play in serving our church and community.
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Every person is a vital part of the mission that God has for this church to be a blessing to our community.
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I recognize that you all live in different places. Bless the place that God has planted you. Be a blessing there and within the church as well.
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This morning we're going to see two enemies that would seek to get in the way of all of that. All of the good stuff that God wants to get in our lives, there are some enemies out there.
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There truly are enemies in our lives. David will encounter two of them in our text this morning.
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David wrote the very well -known Psalm 23, the 23rd Psalm, but we are unsure of the timing of when he penned those words.
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It may very well have been in his youth when he was very connected with agriculture, very shepherd -oriented and sheep were on his mind and being out in the fields were on his mind.
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Therefore, what that would imply is that he wrote that in his youth, experienced it throughout his life as he grew.
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So he wrote what he didn't know that much about at the time. Other people think and scholars believe it's possible that he wrote this later in life after experiencing
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God's shepherding hand over his life throughout the course. But either way, the words of this psalm reveal an impressive trust in God that shows a perspective that I'm sure was developed throughout his life, either starting with his words as a youth and culminating through a life of experience of the
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Almighty or resulting, the psalm resulting from a life that experienced the
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Almighty. He begins the psalm with the words, The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want. Hold on for a second because you're going, what's this got to do with 2
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Samuel? We're going to get there. What he says at the opening is, The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want.
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I have no lack because it is the Lord who takes care of me. God takes care of me.
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But there's one phrase in the middle of the song that has my attention this week that kind of frames David's understanding of the way that God rolls and works in his life.
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David wrote this phrase in the middle of that very famous psalm. You prepare a table for me in the presence of my enemies.
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You prepare a table for me in the presence of my enemies. Go ahead and give me some jazz hands or raise your hand if you've actually heard that phrase before.
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Have you heard that phrase before? You prepare a table, by the way, I'm doing that. Some of you are like, what is he doing? I got a little critique about asking everybody to raise their hands all the time, so I just kind of threw out some jazz hands there.
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But we may very well go back to just raising your hand just to identify what, because we'll see if it kind of freaks people out.
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Especially if you're here for the first time, you're like, what did I just get into? Jazz hands, are you kidding me? Yeah, just a joke.
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There is hardly anything more casual. There's hardly anything more routine than sitting at a table for a meal.
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Have you really considered what's meant in that phrase? You prepare a table before me in the presence of my enemies?
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It's probably one that we've heard before and not really given much depth of thought to before.
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Rarely would a person be concerned for taking the time for a sit -down meal at a table and eat when their enemies are close at hand.
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What is David getting at by this phrase? I would suggest to you that David has experienced God's peace and provision even at times when he has been most hard -pressed by enemies.
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We are not meant to think that as David was running out to meet the giant Goliath, that lo and behold in the middle of the field was a table set out by God for him to eat.
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With a place setting for one and a steaming hot meal of mutton, lettuce, and tomato just there ready for him.
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I don't think so. David did experience peace and God's care over him even in times when he was beset by enemies.
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We're going to see him in our text beset by enemies. So let's open our Bibles, Scripture journals, your devices.
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You can use the app to navigate there. You click on the faith tab at the bottom of the app and there's a place for sermon notes there and it'll pull the text right up for you, a place to take notes there.
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But 2 Samuel 16, verses 1 -14. Again, 2 Samuel 16, 1 -14.
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We're going to read this in its entirety together. Church, God's holy and precious word, a word that is going to try to change us.
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If we just open our hearts to what God and his spirit wants to say to us, we will not leave here the same. 2
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Samuel 16, when David had passed a little beyond the summit, Ziba the servant of Mephibosheth met him with a couple of donkeys saddled, bearing 200 loaves of bread, 100 bunches of raisins, 100 summer fruits, and a skin of wine.
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And the king said to Ziba, Why have you brought these? Ziba answered, The donkeys are for the king's household to ride on, the bread and summer fruits for the young men to eat, and the wine for those who faint in the wilderness to drink.
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And the king said, And where is your master's son? Ziba said to the king, Behold, he remains in Jerusalem, for he said,
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Today the house of Israel will give me back the kingdom of my father. Then the king said to Ziba, Behold, all that belongs to Mephibosheth is now yours.
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And Ziba said, I pay homage. Let me ever find favor in your sight, my lord the king. When King David came to Behurim, there came out a man of the family of the house of Saul, whose name was
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Shammai, the son of Gerah. And as he came, he cursed continually. And he threw stones at David and at all the servants of King David, and all the people and all the mighty men were on his right hand and on his left.
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And Shammai said, as he cursed, Get out, get out, you man of blood, you worthless man.
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The Lord has avenged on you all the blood of the house of Saul, in whose place you have reigned. And the
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Lord has given the kingdom into the hand of your son Absalom. See, your evil is on you, for you are a man of blood.
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Then Abishai, the son of Zariah, said to the king, Why should this dead dog curse my lord the king? Let me go over and take off his head.
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But the king said, What have I to do with you, you sons of Zariah?
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If he is cursing because the Lord has said to him, Curse David, who then shall say, Why have you done so?
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And David said to Abishai and to all his servants, Behold, my own son seeks my life. How much more now may this
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Benjaminite leave him alone and let him curse, for the Lord has told him to.
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It may be that the Lord will look on the wrong done to me, and that the Lord will repay me with good for his cursing today.
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So David and his men went on the road, while Shimei went along on the hillside opposite him, and cursed as he went, and threw stones at him and flung dust.
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And the king and all the people who were with him arrived weary at the Jordan, and there he refreshed himself.
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Let's pray. Father, I thank you for your word that has the power to transform us, has the power to change us.
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And even here we read a historical account that at face value can be a bit difficult for us to know how to apply.
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And yet we see in Ziba an opportunist. I'll be clear in the sermon as we unfold that.
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And we see in Shimei the negative, ranting troll. Both spirits that are well alive in our culture, both spirits that are tempting to each one of us, the opportunist who even at the pain of others would seek to get ahead, seek to use every means and squeeze out of every opportunity, self -gain, self -promotion.
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And then just the pull in our own hearts toward negativity, toward cursing instead of blessing.
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Father, that's not the way you've designed us. That's not what you've saved us unto. You've saved us unto blessing others, not to be a cursing people.
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So Father, I pray that you would work in each heart here by the power of your grace, recognizing how the cross solves that.
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I pray that by the end of this message we would throw ourselves completely and wholeheartedly at the cross and recognizing the hope that we have in the death, burial, and resurrection of our
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Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. Victory over the spirit of Ziba. Victory over the spirit of Shimei.
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Victory over the opportunistic desire to come ahead. And victory over the negativity that we see in our own hearts and in our own culture.
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We have so much to be thankful for. And I pray that you would even now be working thankfulness and gratitude into your people as we have an opportunity to lift up our voices and praise together.
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What a glorious thing this is. We may not even see fully all that you're doing here in our midst by bringing us together, but we rejoice together.
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We thank you for this congregation and for this gathering this morning. In Jesus' name, amen. You can go ahead and be seated and make yourself comfortable.
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I would ask that you please do yourself a favor and reopen to 2 Samuel 16, 1 -14.
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If you lost your place there, jump back in there so you've got that on your lap so that you can see the things I'm talking about are going to just walk us through that text, 2
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Samuel 16, 1 -14. And I say this every week, but if you, I mean it sincerely, if you need to get more coffee or juice or donut holes back there, if there's some left, you can take advantage of that.
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You're not going to distract me if you get up during the middle of the message. Anything short of shouting me down is probably going to go whew.
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And even that might, I might miss that. But if you need the restrooms, those are out the double doors down the hallway on the left -hand side.
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Our text is a bit strange this morning. I read it, and it's going to cover two enemies that David faced, and that's going to cause us to reflect on the operating factors in the heart of these two enemies.
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And I would say, suggest to you that these are two operating factors that are going on in their hearts that are very prevalent in our culture, and we might find them in our own hearts as well.
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We will meet Ziba the opportunist, Ziba who is concerned for himself and for his own standing and trying to hedge himself into a better position.
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Ziba who will even do kindness as long as it pushes his own agenda ahead.
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He may not look like an enemy at first blush, but Ziba is dangerous. He will do what he can to stay in favor with power.
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And I think we can kind of imagine how that could factor into an application point at the end about our own lives.
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The second person we're going to see is Shemai. Shemai is a blogger ranting and trolling everywhere.
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I think I've met him in the comments section of the interwebs. I think
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Shemai still lives today in the heart of everyone who is always a critic. You've met him, you've known them, maybe some of us have been him.
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Everyone who speaks what he doesn't know is fact, but will still put anyone on blast who he has heard a rumor about, that is a
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Shemai. The text is an ancient encounter. The attitudes are modern.
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They are imminently relevant. They are hopefully personally convicting.
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The most fundamental thing that we need to establish in order to understand where we're at in the book of 2 Samuel and what in the world is going on in this text and really understanding the entirety of this movement of David's life where he's fleeing from his son
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Absalom is to understand fundamentally that God is the one who has established him as his chosen king.
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Without that understanding, we're missing a lot of this. What is this about Absalom? Don't often kings end poorly?
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Doesn't this go the wrong direction? Is Absalom really sinning in this or is this kind of the way that sons gain the throne?
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God anointed David in his youth through the prophet Samuel and nothing has removed that anointing.
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Not David's sin. Not his messed up family. Certainly not his own son's attempted coup that we are seeing in these several chapters where Absalom is trying to take over daddy's kingdom.
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But it is a God -ordained kingdom. David's oldest surviving son is trying to kill his father straight up.
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He has already declared himself king and just before Absalom marches into Jerusalem to kill daddy and take the throne,
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David's squeezed out of the city to the east as Absalom is coming up from the south. And so we see this plodding road east toward the wilderness, toward the other side of the
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Jordan River, out into the wilderness, the desert wilderness area, out into what is modern day, the country of modern day
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Jordan. That's where he's heading. He's heading out east. Now our text barely moves David down the road.
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As a matter of fact, between last week we saw him leaving Jerusalem, this week we see him get to the Jordan by the end.
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He's barely moving down the road at all and instead what it does is our text camps out on two particular encounters that David has with two men, two guys, who have wrong intentions toward the king.
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The first we encounter is Ziba in the text. And he is a run -of -the -mill opportunist. I think that most of us have encountered a person who wants to get ahead by any means possible.
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And they will use any means possible. They will even use people to try to get ahead. Just ask yourself this.
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Is this alive today? Why is it so often so difficult for families to settle estates when both parents pass away?
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A family can be getting along really well until there's a lot of money involved. And it's because of the selfish desire to get ahead even in dark times.
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And that's a reality of the human heart. It's a real problem still today. What you need to understand here in the text is that Ziba is the servant of a guy named
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Mephibosheth. Mephibosheth is over Ziba. Ziba is supposed to be serving this guy named
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Mephibosheth. And we probably need a little bit of history to understand that relationship to really understand why in the world am
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I even saying Ziba's doing wrong? Doesn't he bring out food? It looks in the text like he's bringing out good stuff for David.
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And why am I up here kind of talking bad about him? It seems like he's a servant of David or something like that.
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Well, he's a servant of Mephibosheth. And David had interacted with him back in chapter nine. You could go back and listen to that message if you want.
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I preached that a few weeks ago. But Mephibosheth was the crippled son of David's best friend,
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Jonathan. So David had this best friend in life. His name was Jonathan. He was the son of the king at the time, the crown prince of Saul's kingdom.
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And a quick refresher on that, David had pledged to Jonathan, his best friend in life, that he would care for his family when he came into his kingdom.
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It was revealed to Jonathan that he was not going to be the next king. He was next in line.
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His daddy was the king. He's the crown prince. And God somehow revealed to Jonathan, no,
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David's gonna be the next king. And Jonathan went with it. That's the kind of character that Jonathan had. A humility that goes,
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I'm in line, but I'm not gonna be the next king. You are. And David, God has showed me so clearly that I'm asking of you a favor when you become king.
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Take care of my kids. Take care of my family. Don't put them to death like the tradition of the kings are in our modern pagan culture.
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The tradition is you just kill everybody that could possibly claim the throne, then you get it. That's the idea.
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And he says, please don't do that. So Jonathan and his father Saul were killed in one battle. We see that at the very beginning of 2
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Samuel. And David became king over the course of a few chapters. And he remembered his covenant to Jonathan, and he took care of Jonathan's son,
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Mephibosheth. And he did so by assigning Ziba, this guy, occurs in that text back there, as head over all of Mephibosheth's farms.
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He is the head servant over all of Mephibosheth's holdings.
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Well, why is he put in charge? Well, Mephibosheth was injured in a strange event where Saul and Jonathan are killed in battle.
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And the assumption, like I just said, is that somebody's coming to kill the kids. That's the way it went in ancient times.
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The king is dead. Scoop up all the kids that could possibly claim the throne and head to the hills.
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So that's what the nurse does, the nanny who took care of the kids, scoops them all up and goes running.
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And as she runs, she drops Mephibosheth. And every indication is that from that point on, he was injured, likely a paraplegic.
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His legs didn't work from that point on. And the text was clear back in chapter nine. And so David has been carrying
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Mephibosheth to his royal table to eat with his royal entourage and to eat the king's food every day for a long time when we get to our text here.
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He has been taking care of Jonathan's son. He has been following through on a covenant of loyalty that he made to a dead guy, his best friend.
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Now if anyone should be loyal to David, it should be Mephibosheth. That's what you need to understand. That's why I'm going into this detail. If anybody should be loyal to David, it should be
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Mephibosheth, who expected rightly death at the king's hands and instead has been granted royal favor, tons of property from the dynasty of King Saul, his grandfather, and he is set for life.
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And David has cared for him. But now in this moment of deep crisis for David, as his son is seeking to kill him, as I'm imagining he's a bit flustered and unclear about what's going on and he's just fleeing and trying to save his own skin on the road out of Jerusalem.
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He's got a huge entourage. Ziba just conveniently happens to show up.
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He comes with saddled donkeys bearing, according to the text, 200 loaves of bread, 100 cakes of raisins, and what is likely 100 baskets of summer fruits, and a skin of wine.
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Now this might sound to our ears like a ton of food, and it is quite possible and quite likely that the two donkeys had to pull a cart in order to bring all of this stuff.
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And yet with David's entourage, we know that it includes at least 600 foreign fighters and all their families.
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That's a lot of people. And certainly many more who were not foreign fighters were with this entourage.
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This is like bringing out coffee. And I will always say thanks if you bring me coffee. I'll always say thanks for that.
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But it isn't going to sustain this large mass exodus from Jerusalem. It's a gift, but it's a token gift.
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It's a nice gesture. Don't get me wrong. What we see Ziba doing here is nice.
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But we get a vision of his motivations that are more dark. What's going on in his heart and what he's doing on the outside is for his own personal gain.
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Ziba appears thoughtful in verse 2, and it certainly would have taken him some time and effort to pull together this gift from his master
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Mephibosheth's storehouse. What is he blessing David with? It's not his stuff.
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It's his master's stuff. Are you starting to get a little glimpse of what's going on in Ziba's heart here?
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He's using his master's stuff to gain some blessing for himself. But further, he goes on to actually slander his own master.
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And so David asks the logical question in verse 3, where is your master? Where's he at? And this is where we depart from Ziba as a good guy.
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This is where his heart begins to be betrayed and show itself. You might not see it right away, but Ziba has a wicked heart.
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He lies about his master here. Ziba says that his master Mephibosheth has remained in Jerusalem hoping to regain the kingdom of his grandfather
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Saul. Mephibosheth has designs on your kingdom, David. Always has. And now he sees in your departure a chance to become king himself.
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Mephibosheth. And here in this moment of high emotions, David, in a moment of weakness, gives to Ziba exactly what he was gunning for.
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David takes all the possessions of Mephibosheth and gives them to Ziba there on the spot by fiat. The king's statement is the law.
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And he says everything that was Mephibosheth's is now yours, Ziba. A turn of master to servant.
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Just like that. Ziba was hoping to ingratiate himself to the king by his acts of conniving kindness, but I don't imagine that he even thought his plan would work this good.
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He's gotten everything that he wants. Just like that. He has taken all of these goods from his own master.
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He has given them to David in order to win his favor in a moment of weakness. And he is exploiting both
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Mephibosheth and David for his own gain. And David grants him all that once belonged to Mephibosheth.
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Now the reason we know that Ziba's conniving is unfortunately you don't have the benefit of doing this, but I do,
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I've read the whole entire book multiple times in the preparation for this sermon. And we're gonna encounter Mephibosheth again later in chapter 19.
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So you can, I mean, later on, if anything that I say here, you got a question mark over your mind, why do
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I think this guy's a bad guy? Well you can go forward, read chapter 19 later, and see what I see.
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And he will explain that Mephibosheth says, I'm a victim of Ziba's plot. David is going, why, later in chapter 19 he's gonna say,
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Mephibosheth, why didn't you come out with me? And Mephibosheth's gonna go, look at my legs, they don't work.
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And Ziba refused to put me on a horse and let me out of town with him. And see, I haven't shaved, and I've got dust and ashes, and I've ripped my clothes, and the only thing
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I wanted, David, was to go with you, you're my king and I love you, you've treated me so kindly. And Ziba messed me over.
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Wouldn't let me get out of the city with you. I was dependent on him. He was my servant, and he completely broke ranks and went out to you with my stuff.
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That's the heart of Ziba. Willing to even push aside somebody with special needs in order to gain for himself.
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Assigned as the servant by the king to this man Mephibosheth and says, nah, I'm gonna serve you myself.
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Mephibosheth wanted to join David, but Ziba refused to help him, and his disability prevented him from departing the city with the king that he absolutely loved.
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I need to give Dale Davis credit for a phrase here. In his commentary I encountered it, I'm using it throughout this message, it's
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Zibaism. Zibaism. That's what he says in his commentary on this passage, and I believe he rightly identifies that Zibaism is a significant problem in our culture, and probably, at times, even in our own hearts.
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Americans have a radical desire to get ahead, do we not? It used to express itself,
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I think, in the worship of work and money. That's what we thought it meant to get ahead, was work and money, and work and money, and work and money, and work, work, work some more.
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But I think it expresses itself a little bit differently as the generations move on. What we worship changes.
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The way we try to obtain it is still the same. And what we worship more now is entertainment and ease.
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So you work only enough to make sure you've got the ease and entertainment that you need. And that's kind of what
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I think is developing in our culture today. But the spirit of Ziba is alive wherever we see dishonest schemes and deception in order to promote self.
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Do you see it? Do you see it? Nod your head if you see it. We all see it.
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Wherever we see backstabbing and cutthroat exploitation of a crisis in order to gain financially, there is
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Zibaism. Many of us may deny that we have bought into it. We would never do what
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Ziba did here. We would never push somebody aside in order to get ahead, would we? But I think this has more subtle applications in our lives than many facets and many fingers that it can reach into a soul.
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We may have been guilty of the spiritual sin of Zibaism. When we try to make ourselves look better than others for some spiritual clout, try to put others down.
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Whenever we paint ourselves in a better light on social media to gain whatever social capital we believe is available.
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Whenever we put another down to exalt ourself. Whenever we call into question the work of a co -worker in subtle conversation just to plant the seeds of our next promotion.
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We can be subtle manipulators in this regard, can we not? We are working an unholy ambition when we do these things.
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We are seeking the favor of a superior at the expense of another for the purpose of unholy gain.
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God says, really, Jesus says, you can serve
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God or you can serve wealth.
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You can serve God or you can serve money. But Jesus says definitively, you will not serve both.
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You won't be able to serve both. I'm gonna ask you to raise your hand. How many of you think he was right?
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Jesus was right. You can't serve both. And Ziba made his choice.
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Ziba made his choice. I just need the money. Give me the goods. And he got a lot of land and a lot of lewd out of the deal.
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Ziba's gonna show up again but his judgment will not be as strong as we might want because the king has now issued a command by fiat and it's hard to withdraw the words of a king.
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He gave everything that belonged to Mephibosheth to Ziba in a moment of deception.
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The second enemy David faces is more overt. We see it in the text and you kind of hear it and we read it earlier.
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He's only about two miles east of Jerusalem at Beharim when he encounters Shimei according to verse five.
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Now it's 20 miles down to the Jordan. We do not know how far Shimei followed this entourage but we're gonna see
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David exhausted by the end of this day. He encounters him just a couple of miles out of Jerusalem.
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He's gonna travel 18 more miles after he encounters Shimei. But Shimei is from the same family clan of King Saul.
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Not just of the tribe of Benjamin, that's where King Saul comes from but actually from the very clan.
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The tribes were broken down into family clans and he's from that grouping. So he was actually close in family relationship to King Saul.
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And he is a troll but there's no internet so he's in real life. He follows
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David along the road cursing him continually. Are you tired yet? Are you annoyed yet?
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You ever have anybody who just is perpetually a burr under your saddle, is constantly in annoyance, is constantly a negative influence?
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That's what we've got going on here. Cursing him nonstop. This doesn't mean by the way that he's necessarily swearing.
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When we hear the word cursing, our minds likely go to swear words, naughty words, dirty words, whatever.
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But here he is just calling down judgment on King David. He is cursing him like legitimately like saying, may
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God like do bad things to you. Like that's what a curse means. And he's throwing stones at all the people surrounding
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David, including even his mighty men are there, it says in the text. It wants to make emphasis that like this guy's that cracked.
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Like do you read the exploits of David's mighty men? We're gonna see some of those exploits at the end of this book.
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And some of these guys are like, yeah, I just went down on a pit on a snowy day and killed a lion with my bare hands. Like what?
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Like what are you talking about? Like yeah, there was this Egyptian, he had a spear like a weaver's beam, took it out of his hands and slew him with his own spear.
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He was about eight foot tall. What? Are you kidding me? Like these are David's mighty men here.
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And who am I pelting with rocks? These guys. Like you gotta be a little like, whoa, like something's not here, right?
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Like talk about kicking a hornet's nest. This guy is playing with fire here. Pelting the king and his entourage here with rocks.
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And he says some interesting things in verse seven that's worth thinking through. He called David a murderer.
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And he calls him a worthless man. Shouting on the road continually, get out, get out, get out.
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Well David's trying to get out. He's walking down the road. But it is hard if you think about it.
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And I don't think we give much thought to this. And I just wanna encourage you because Jesus says if you call somebody fool, you've committed murder in your heart.
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And what does he mean by that? Well he means hatred and animosity in our heart is a bad thing. But let me just suggest to you that it is hard to state enough what an affront is found in the phrase worthless man.
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Do you think of that as an affront? Well I can think of worse things to call somebody. I can think of worse things to say.
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Can you? Can you think of worse things to say? Because I don't think you can. That is an oxymoron of the highest degree.
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Worthless man, those two words should never, ever, ever be put together. Worthless man, what is a man?
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What do you understand a human to be? That phrase, worthless man, can only be fueled by the pit of hell.
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To call somebody worthless, to call one who bears the image of the almighty
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God worthless, oh, we should be convicted.
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It is a serious thing. The fall has indeed, hear me carefully church, the fall has indeed marred our worth.
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Because we don't live up to our potential. That potential remains in all of humanity.
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That's the point of the cross, church. Jesus didn't come to redeem junk and trinkets.
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He came to die for we who are broken mirrors designed to reflect God to each other in creation.
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When I say I'm unworthy, and I will say that all the time up here, I will say it frequently, I will say it regularly,
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I am indeed unworthy, and I hope that you would say the same thing. You are unworthy, but it's only in relationship to our sin, it's only in relationship to my sin that I am unworthy.
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And so David allows Shimei to go on cursing him in this way because he knows God has sent him to remind him of the unrealized potential that is wrapped up in his sin with Bathsheba and all of these consequences that he's facing here as he flees
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Jerusalem and his son is trying to kill him. But it's valuable for us, church, to consider these two truths and keep them in tension.
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We are unworthy due to our rebellion against God's way, just like David. But within our nature as beings created to carry the image of our creator and to glorify him forever, we have unimaginable value.
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Unimaginable value, just like David. But when we get to verse eight, we begin to see that the troll has his facts wrong.
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Anybody surprised? Trolls always have their facts wrong, right? But they don't care because they don't play on the same level playing field.
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I mean, they don't need to use logic, they don't need to use rationality, they just have to get you angry. That's all they have to do.
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And so he's got his facts wrong. He's accusing David of the blood of the house of King Saul.
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What's he getting at? You put to death the previous king and you took the throne by violence and blood.
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But the author of 2 Samuel has bent over backwards to clarify that David had nothing to do with the death of the descendants of Saul.
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He has preserved Mephibosheth. He has gone to great lengths to be sure that no one could accuse him of lifting his hand up against the former king.
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He had him in a cave, remember? Saul's there relieving himself and his own leaders and his own military are like,
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God has put him in your hand today. Just plunge the knife and be done with it and then you can be king, David.
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And he says, no, I can't do this. How could I raise my hand up against the Lord's anointed?
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David refused to use any violence against King Saul's house. But Shimei is accusing him of that.
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Here's a man accusing him of the very thing that he has worked so unreasonably hard to be sure he couldn't be accused of.
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False accusation never feels good at all, right? It's never a good thing.
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And I'm guessing that likely all of us here have faced that at some point in various levels. Go ahead and raise your hand if you've ever been accused of something.
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Keep your hand up if it was false. There you go. But I wanna point out the irony that we know something that Shimei doesn't.
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He has the right accusation. He has the right accusation, but the wrong deeds. He says at the end of verse eight, see, your evil is on you,
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David, for you are a man of blood. And what he means by this is you took the throne by bloody violence against my family, the family of King Saul.
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Well, we know that David's evil is indeed on him. That's why he's fleeing the city.
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And he has indeed been a man of blood. And hear me carefully, church, it is the blood of Uriah the
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Hittite that is on his hands. He has blood on his hands. Shimei has merely misidentified whose blood it is.
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Does he get the right accusation? Gets the right critique? For the wrong reasons.
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And how often is that true of us? I asked you to raise your hand if you've been falsely accused, but bear with me for a second.
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How often does the accusation stick to us for the wrong reasons? Where we can loophole our way out.
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Well, I didn't say it that way and I didn't do this. If I were just to hurl general judgments in your direction, how long until one of them sticks to you?
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Let's give it a practice. Yeah, this is heavy stuff. I may not know why, but if I called you a sexual deviant, did
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I get you? If I called you greedy, would
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I get you? How about if I call you unforgiving, or arrogant, or liar, or self -centered, or thief?
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What if I call you tax evader? What if I call you Ziba, or Shimei, the negative mocking troll?
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Did I get any of us? Did I get all of us? My guess is
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I did. Abishai, his nephew, and David's military commander, his military commander's brother.
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So Abishai, Joab, you'll see him often in the text. Abishai and Joab are brothers. They also happen to both be
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David's nephews, David's sisters, Zariah's boys. They have a violent streak a mile wide and Abishai says, well, dude,
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David, why are you putting up with this? This guy, last time I checked, guys without heads don't mock. Can I just do that?
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If I take his head off, he can't keep mocking and we can just go on in peace. Can we take care of this?
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And David calms him down and he says in verse 10, I don't roll your way. He has said earlier in the book that the sons of Zariah are violent and love violence and David does not approve.
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David's heart is pricked by the truth of Shimei's curses. He's able to take what is a false accusation and allow it to have
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God's impact in his heart. He even sees God behind it and he knows he is reaping the consequences of his sins and he hears the truth in Shimei's accusations.
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He doesn't get technical. He doesn't get pedantic. No, I didn't kill any of Saul's family.
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I'm not a man of blood. I am. You might have got the details wrong but the only reason you're accusing me falsely is because you don't know all the details yet but you could easily land those blows easily.
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So he commands everyone to leave Shimei alone. Let him curse and then he makes this phrase.
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Maybe God will see this and grant me good in place of these curses today. There in verse 12, it's kind of a crazy way that he starts.
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It may be that the Lord will look on the wrong done to me. Verse 12 highlights something of the way that David viewed
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God. He sees God as a God of compassion. David sees God as a
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God of compassion. God looks at our hardships and will sometimes choose to give us good in light of hardships endured.
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And yet David doesn't expect it as something God owes him. He just knows God will respond in that way sometimes.
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So what you need to understand here, church, is that David's hope is not in his enemy's head on a platter, like Abishai suggests, but David's hope is in the
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God who expresses grace to us even in our lowest places. So David's enemy, the conspiracy theorist, the negative provocateur
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Shimei, follows them from a bank alongside the road, kicking dust on their heads while pelting them with curses and pelting them with rocks.
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And the king finally arrives at the Jordan River, 20 miles east of Jerusalem, weary as all get out. And there he refreshed himself and likely camped for the night.
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It would be pretty wearying to travel that 20 miles, although it's mostly downhill. But I find sometimes walking downhill, hiking downhill, is harder work than going up to some degree.
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I mean, they're both taxing. But 20 miles downhill to the Jordan on this day, that's quite a haul.
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And then the emotional toll of somebody going along shouting curses at you the entire way.
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How many of you would be a little bit tired? Just tired thinking about it. We see the two enemies
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David encountered here, and I think they represent two types of problems that still exist in our culture. Zibaism is alive and well in our current context.
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There are always conniving exploiters. Shamiism is also alive and well, a heart of critique and a heart of belligerent negativity.
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I think that one's super alive. That one is super with us. And as far as applications, we should consider both sides of each of these enemies.
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So let me start off by saying, how do you handle a Ziba? How do you handle a Ziba? What do you do to try your best to keep a
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Ziba from getting to you? I would suggest a very simple application. It's not the whole ball of wax, and you may need to come up with some other things, but I would suggest that we do not entertain any discussions about the performance, motives, or intentions of others when they are not present.
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Let me say that again. Do not entertain any discussion about the performance, motives, or intentions of others while they are not present.
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Ziba was very quick to discuss Mephibosheth's motives and intentions. David was very quick to listen, and therefore was easy to deceive because he was open to hearing somebody else's motives, somebody else's intentions, something about somebody else that was negative without critique.
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And so Ziba caught David at a moment of weakness and exploited him. If we follow God's way, which avoids gossip and slander, we will add a layer of protection against Ziba's who would take advantage of us and take advantage of others through us.
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Don't entertain gossip. Don't entertain these kinds of discussions about what somebody else's intentions are, what somebody else's motives are.
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Talk to them if you've got questions. The second is, how do we handle a Shammai? David does well here to just allow him to rant it out.
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The fact that David was able to refresh himself at the Jordan indicates that eventually, at least, Shammai ran out of invectives.
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Maybe he has lost his voice. Who knows what the motivation was for him to finally stop shouting, but David is able to rest that night, so it shows that somehow,
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Shammai got wore out. I think that all of us at times are tempted to respond to folly with folly, especially, especially, we are an extremely positive culture face to face.
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It's the internet, man. That internet's going to get you. Responding to folly with folly, that defines the internet.
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Remember back when it used to just be cat pictures? That was fun. We got one season now.
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It's not like two different seasons. It's always political season, isn't it? Maybe more so now than ever, we should learn to keep our mouths shut and leave justice to God.
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I'm not suggesting to you that you never defend yourself, but boy, oh boy, be careful entering into that fray.
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Recognize that the moment you engage with a Shammai, online or in real life, you are entering their playground.
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The follower of Jesus does not have all the arguing tools that a troll has, like falsehood, like lies, like slander, like all of the words that we don't type in chat rooms.
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Do you know what I'm talking about? You don't have the fair fight with a Shammai.
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You don't have the freedom in honoring God to enter that level. When you enter their playground, they have plenty of rocks and plenty of dirt and plenty of curses to sling at you, and you need to be careful if you're going to go there with them, because you need to recognize that many of those curses are going to stick.
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Many of them are true. Be careful how you engage others, particularly online, but especially those relationships that you have.
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Thanksgiving might not be the time to really take it to somebody, the family. You've got neighbors that you've got to work with.
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I'm not talking about appeasement. I'm talking about sharing the truth and love. We're going to get there in a second. And that's the third thing.
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So how do you handle a Ziba? How do you handle a Shammai? And then application three, stop being a
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Ziba. You see, Ziba served himself. A temptation for every single human is to serve themselves, to set up your own kingdom, to put yourself on your own throne and then make everything about you.
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But if God has rescued you from your sins, then he rescued you to a new purpose other than serving yourself.
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He's rescued you to serve him. Do not serve your own interests, church. Live for a purpose that is higher than yourself, that's higher than your promotions.
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Live for a purpose that's higher than your entertainment, your ease, or your bank account, church.
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Live for Jesus. Live for Jesus. The final application is stop being a
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Shammai. Church, just bear with me as we try to share this from our,
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I try to share this from my heart and seek the spirit in it. How can we be a cursor?
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How can you curse and not bless, church? So many Christians in our current political climate have taken up the mantle of cursor -in -chief, calling down invectives on our culture, calling down curses on politicians, calling down curses on the state and federal and local government.
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What were you saved for, church? You were saved to bless.
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You were saved to be a blessing. We are saved to gratitude and thanksgiving.
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We are saved to spreading the gospel. What does the gospel mean, church? Good news.
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We're saved to spread good news. Certainly, you go, well, hold on.
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Aren't there passages that say things like, we tear down all thoughts and all thought structures that set themselves up against the knowledge of God?
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Yes, and we do it in a very winsome and loving way. We do it with smiles on our faces and cheeriness because we are moving into good news.
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We've got good news to offer. I'm convinced that what the world needs most right now, this is a massive statement when
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I say that, but I believe that what the world needs most right now is every Christian united under the one mission.
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United under the one mission. And what Satan wants most for us is to be watered down into various missions.
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He would love for however many, maybe 200, a little bit more than 200 in this room right now, he would love for there to be 200 missions.
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All good things, but no unity. No pulling together. No focus.
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That's what Satan would love. You to be isolated and doing your own thing with your own saviors and your own plans and your own plots.
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Our one mission is to proclaim Christ and him crucified. Our mission is not to defeat a candidate.
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Our mission is not to pass our favorite legislation. We can win battles and lose the war if we are not putting our united force behind the only thing that really will affect lasting change.
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What is that thing that affects lasting change? The gospel. Jesus changes lives one at a time as we faithfully tell others about the hope he has given us through his death, burial, and resurrection.
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While Jesus faced down our enemies, he defeats the enemy of Zibaism by giving his people a higher purpose to live for than selfish ambition.
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He defeats Shimeism by giving us hearts of gratitude and thankfulness to push out that negativity.
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For centuries in church history, the Lord's Supper or communion was called the Eucharist. A phrase that probably doesn't mean a whole lot or a word that doesn't mean a whole lot to you, but this is a
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Greek word that straight up means Thanksgiving. For centuries, when people came to take the cracker and the juice, they thought of thanks.
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Thanksgiving. In remembering what Christ did for us, we ought to land this morning, church, on a deep gratitude.
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I grew up in a context where the predominant feeling, I don't know that it was ever overtly taught, but the predominant feeling
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I thought I was supposed to have during the Lord's Supper was guilt, solemnity, and maybe even fear.
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I don't know if you guys can relate to that or not, but that was the sense that I got from communion time when
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I was a kid and on up into high school, that it was a time for guilt, solemnity, fear, trembling, probably shouldn't go take it this week.
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But freedom, gratitude, and joy were never discussed in the context of the
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Lord's Supper. But church, how can we not rejoice in this moment?
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How can we be held down? We have a Savior to thank.
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We have a Lord to serve. We have sins forgiven. We have freedom granted. We have righteousness supplied and freely given.
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We have boundless love expressed. And we have been enlisted in his grand cosmic purpose of salvation to the nations.
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So come to the tables remembering that we are not left to our own self -promoting Zibaism. We have a
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Lord to live for. He purchased us, and we are not left to the dark negativity of Shammai.
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We have been granted a life of gratitude and freedom from bitterness and angst. All of that because Christ died for us.
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So come to the tables this morning and rejoice if you've indeed been born again to new life through faith in Jesus Christ and his death on the cross for you and you've accepted him as your
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Savior and your Lord. I encourage you to take the juice this morning to remember his blood shed for us.
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Take the cracker to remember his body that was broken for us. And let me ask you to do something a little different this morning.
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I'm gonna ask you to do me a favor. Do yourself a favor. And really, this is about your relationship with God, but during the first verse and chorus of this song,
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I would like you to just reflect. I'd like you to take some time to maybe even take in the words. It's not a song.
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This is a song that Dave's gonna play. It's not necessarily an easy one to sing along to, but I want you to think about it before you get up after the first chorus and just take some time.
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And let's go out from here with loving obedience to him. Don't be like Ziba.
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Don't be like Shemai. Seek to live like Jesus. The Lord has indeed prepared for us a table in the presence of our enemies.
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Let's pray. Father, I thank you so much for your grace, your mercy, your kindness.
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That we know through your word that without the word, we would be left just kind of trying to figure you out, having some semblance or understanding that you're there, but not really knowing how to relate to you.
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So we thank you so much for the very clear understanding that is expressed, the great good news that salvation is through your son.
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We land there every week and we come to the tables of communion every week to the Eucharist, the thanksgiving, because it is the center of our lives.
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It is the center of what we do. I thank you for this routine and this ritual that is meant to be significant in our lives and I pray that you would help us to reflect on the great glory, the great love, the great forgiveness expressed in the sacrifice of Jesus Christ for us.
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I pray that you would empower us then to go out, not to just pull ourselves up by the bootstraps and try to get rid of any opportunistic tendencies within us or just get rid of the negativity as if we could even do that, but to allow the grace and the mercy and the trust that comes and flows through your gospel to push those things out of our hearts and lives.
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Just give us all a significant, heavy dose of gratitude and thanks even here at the start of this song.
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Thank you for bringing us together. I thank you for the unity expressed in communion. I thank you that we are together this morning in the name of Jesus Christ and it's in his name that I pray.