• Jesus came teaching:
  • “Your Father who sees in secret will reward you” (Matthew 6:4, 6, 18).
  • Matthew 7:11 (ESV) — 11 If you then, who are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father who is in heaven give good things to those who ask him!
  • Matthew 6:8–9 (ESV) — 8 Do not be like them, for your Father knows what you need before you ask him. 9 Pray then like this: “Our Father in heaven, hallowed be your name.
    • Episodes like the one before us today highlight newness and freshness and incredible nature of his teaching.

• New for them, but renewed for us.

  • 10 Commandments — Exodus 20:5–6 (ESV) — 4 5 …I the LORD your God am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers on the children to the third and the fourth generation of those who hate me, 6 but showing steadfast love to thousands of those who love me and keep my commandments.
  • J.I. Packer, Knowing God: The certainty that there is no more to be said of God than that he is infinitely forbearing and kind — that certainty is as hard to eradicate as bindweed. And when once it has put down roots, Christianity, in the true sense of the word, simply dies off. For the substance of Christianity is faith in the forgiveness of sins through the redeeming work of Christ on the cross.

• 1 There is bloodguilt on Saul and on his house:

  • What Saul (and his sons and grandsons) had done:
    • Israel — 500 years earlier — had made a covenant with the Gibeonites.
      • Joshua 9:19–21 (ESV) — 19 But all the leaders said to all the congregation, “We have sworn to them by the LORD, the God of Israel, and now we may not touch them. 20 This we will do to them: let them live, lest wrath be upon us, because of the oath that we swore to them.” 21 And the leaders said to them, “Let them live.”
      • Saul harassed and killed Gibeonite people.

1 God’s grace demanded a drought (1-2)

1 Now there was a famine in the days of David for three years, year after year. And David sought the face of the LORD. And the LORD said, “There is bloodguilt on Saul and on his house, because he put the Gibeonites to death.” 2 So the king called the Gibeonites and spoke to them. Now the Gibeonites were not of the people of Israel but of the remnant of the Amorites. Although the people of Israel had sworn to spare them, Saul had sought to strike them down in his zeal for the people of Israel and Judah.

• 1 There was a famine…for three years:
  • What God had said regarding national covenants:
    • Deuteronomy 28:15 (ESV) — 15 …all these curses shall come upon you and overtake you.
    • Deuteronomy 28:23–24 (ESV) — 23 And the heavens over your head shall be bronze, and the earth under you shall be iron. 24 The LORD will make the rain of your land powder…
      • So David sought the Lord.
  • God graciously points out the drought-causing events so that we would make things right.
    • On the last day of the feast of tabernacles, Jesus asked:
      • John 7:37 (ESV) — 37 On the last day of the feast, the great day, Jesus stood up and cried out, “If anyone thirsts, let him come to me and drink.
      • Is anyone still thirsty?
  • When a person has the grace of God (is called and loved and adopted and chosen by him), it is only right for God to allow drought into their lives when harmful disobediences persist.

2 God’s love demanded justice (3-6)

3 And David said to the Gibeonites, “What shall I do for you? And how shall I make atonement, that you may bless the heritage of the LORD?” 4 The Gibeonites said to him, “It is not a matter of silver or gold between us and Saul or his house; neither is it for us to put any man to death in Israel.” And he said, “What do you say that I shall do for you?” 5 They said to the king, “The man who consumed us and planned to destroy us, so that we should have no place in all the territory of Israel, 6 let seven of his sons be given to us, so that we may hang them before the LORD at Gibeah of Saul, the chosen of the LORD.” And the king said, “I will give them.”

• God cared for the foreigner in Israel’s midst.
  • The Sabbath was for, in part, so the “sojourner” or “alien” or “stranger” could receive rest (Exodus 20:10, 23:12, Leviticus 16:29).
  • At harvest they were to leave the corners and the gleanings of the field for the “poor and the sojourner” (Leviticus 23:22).
  • Every third year their second tithe was to be given to local Levites, foreigners, fatherless, and widows, “that the LORD your God may bless you in all the work of your hands that you do” (Deuteronomy 14:28-29).
  • They were invited into God’s sacrificial system (Numbers 9:14 — “You shall have one statute, both for the sojourner and for the native.”).
  • Deuteronomy 10:18 (ESV) — 18 He executes justice for the fatherless and the widow, and loves the sojourner, giving him food and clothing.
  • Deuteronomy 24:18 (ESV) — 18 but you shall remember that you were a slave in Egypt and the LORD your God redeemed you from there; therefore I command you to do this.
    • He wanted his people to treat the foreigner well.
      • We learn:
        • God loves and sees those in the minority.
        • God wants his people to be a witness.
  • God loves all tribes, nations, and tongues.
    • Jesus, through the gospel — Ephesians 2:15–16 (ESV) — 15 create[d] in himself one new man in place of the two, so making peace, 16 and might reconcile us both to God in one body through the cross, thereby killing the hostility.

3 God’s holiness demanded judgement (7-9)

7 But the king spared Mephibosheth, the son of Saul’s son Jonathan, because of the oath of the LORD that was between them, between David and Jonathan the son of Saul. 8 The king took the two sons of Rizpah the daughter of Aiah, whom she bore to Saul, Armoni and Mephibosheth; and the five sons of Merab the daughter of Saul, whom she bore to Adriel the son of Barzillai the Meholathite; 9 and he gave them into the hands of the Gibeonites, and they hanged them on the mountain before the LORD, and the seven of them perished together. They were put to death in the first days of harvest, at the beginning of barley harvest. 10 Then Rizpah the daughter of Aiah took sackcloth and spread it for herself on the rock, from the beginning of harvest until rain fell upon them from the heavens. And she did not allow the birds of the air to come upon them by day, or the beasts of the field by night. 11 When David was told what Rizpah the daughter of Aiah, the concubine of Saul, had done, 12 David went and took the bones of Saul and the bones of his son Jonathan from the men of Jabesh-gilead, who had stolen them from the public square of Beth-shan, where the Philistines had hanged them, on the day the Philistines killed Saul on Gilboa. 13 And he brought up from there the bones of Saul and the bones of his son Jonathan; and they gathered the bones of those who were hanged. 14 And they buried the bones of Saul and his son Jonathan in the land of Benjamin in Zela, in the tomb of Kish his father. And they did all that the king commanded. And after that God responded to the plea for the land.

• The other — and equally beautiful — side of God.
  • This is good! Exodus 34:6–7 (ESV) — 6 The LORD passed before him and proclaimed, “The LORD, the LORD, a God merciful and gracious, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness, 7 keeping steadfast love for thousands, forgiving iniquity and transgression and sin, but who will by no means clear the guilty, visiting the iniquity of the fathers on the children and the children’s children, to the third and the fourth generation.”
    • 2 Thessalonians 1:7–10 (ESV) — 7 …when the Lord Jesus is revealed from heaven with his mighty angels 8 in flaming fire, inflicting vengeance on those who do not know God and on those who do not obey the gospel of our Lord Jesus. 9 They will suffer the punishment of eternal destruction, away from the presence of the Lord and from the glory of his might, 10 when he comes on that day…
      • Our response might be either abject horror or perverse delight, but God is righteous and good and true.
      • J.I. Packer, Knowing God: These are not arbitrary inflections; they represent a conscious growing into the state in which one has chosen to be. The unbeliever has preferred to be by himself, without God, defying God, having God against him, and he shall have his preference. Nobody stands under the wrath of God except those who have chosen to do so. The essence of God’s action in wrath is to give men what they choose, in all its implications; nothing more, and equally nothing less.
      • Revelation 15:3 (ESV) — 3 …Great and amazing are your deeds, O Lord God the Almighty! Just and true are your ways, O King of the nations!
  • There is hope! Exodus 20:4–6 (ESV) — 4 “You shall not make for yourself a carved image, or any likeness of anything that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth. 5 You shall not bow down to them or serve them, for I the LORD your God am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers on the children to the third and the fourth generation of those who hate me, 6 but showing steadfast love to thousands of those who love me and keep my commandments.
    • There is hope!
      • The full formula includes the important qualifier “of those who hate me.”
    • Additionally: The cross of Christ says we can escape our family and enter into a new one.
      • John 9:3 (ESV) — 3 Jesus answered, “It was not that this man sinned, or his parents, but that the works of God might be displayed in him.
      • Galatians 2:20 (ESV) — 20 I have been crucified with Christ. It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me. And the life I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me.

4 God’s kingdom results in enemies (15-22)

15 There was war again between the Philistines and Israel, and David went down together with his servants, and they fought against the Philistines. And David grew weary. 16 And Ishbi-benob, one of the descendants of the giants, whose spear weighed three hundred shekels of bronze, and who was armed with a new sword, thought to kill David. 17 But Abishai the son of Zeruiah came to his aid and attacked the Philistine and killed him. Then David’s men swore to him, “You shall no longer go out with us to battle, lest you quench the lamp of Israel.” 18 After this there was again war with the Philistines at Gob. Then Sibbecai the Hushathite struck down Saph, who was one of the descendants of the giants. 19 And there was again war with the Philistines at Gob, and Elhanan the son of Jaare-oregim, the Bethlehemite, struck down Goliath the Gittite, the shaft of whose spear was like a weaver’s beam. 20 And there was again war at Gath, where there was a man of great stature, who had six fingers on each hand, and six toes on each foot, twenty-four in number, and he also was descended from the giants. 21 And when he taunted Israel, Jonathan the son of Shimei, David’s brother, struck him down. 22 These four were descended from the giants in Gath, and they fell by the hand of David and by the hand of his servants.

• 15, 18, 19, 20 War again / Again war:
• My journal: The enemy keeps coming, keeps morphing, wanting to take us out. Goliath was beaten, but his family keeps coming. Different forms. Inventive. Creative. Stand with us, O God.
• Modern giants:
  • Racism
  • Family brokenness
  • Pornography
  • Lack of biblical thought
  • Complete distraction

Close

• Romans 11:22 (ESV) — 22 Note then the kindness and the severity of God…
  • Consider what it cost to make God your Father.
  • Romans 3:24–25 (ESV) — 24 and are justified by his grace as a gift, through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus, 25 whom God put forward as a propitiation by his blood, to be received by faith. This was to show God’s righteousness, because in his divine forbearance he had passed over former sins.