Let's go to the Lord in prayer. Our Father, we are grateful to be able to come to you, to come to one who is infinitely good, who is also completely self-sufficient, self-reliant. You are, unlike any other, need nothing outside of yourself. You need nothing to add to yourself or to add to your your delight. And yet, Father, you have stooped to deal with us and to share with us from the the boundless. Resources that exist within you, the boundless joy that exists within you. You have come and made saints out of rebels. You've owned us as your own and you have called us your children. God, we cannot help but to look at you and in wonder. Father, we praise you that you are the God of the ages, that there has not been an age that you did not exist, that there will not be an age to come in which you do not exist. but you support each age, every era of time that we could think about, that history could tell us about. You are under it, above it, around it. It exists because of you, and you have sustained it. Father, we praise you that you are a God who is imperishable, that you do not have an expiration date, that you not only always have been, but that you always will be. And that you are not just existing, but you exist in the fullness of your glory eternally. It does not grow. It does not diminish. You're not getting better because you're already perfect. You're not getting worse because you are always perfect. We praise you, Father, that there is no corruption in you. Either internally, and neither can you be corrupted by external forces. You are holy. Your holiness is not a derived holiness. It is who you are. And you are always holy. You are never less than holy. God, we praise you that you are so wonderfully different than your creation, transcending above it. And yet, God, that you have delighted to stoop low and to deal with us, to communicate to us, to give us your word. And more than that, God, to give us your son, to send him into the world, to save sinners, to turn the hearts of rebels to you, and to pour out your love on us, calling us your children. And then God, to think as we have sung that we will one day be with you in your presence, to gaze upon your throne, to worship you eternally and without the sinful corruptions that we now have. It is wonderful to think about. And God, we want to praise You because it is all You're doing. We're not cleaning ourselves up, getting ourselves ready for heaven, but You have redeemed us. You have justified us. And You are presently sanctifying us. And You will bring us to completion so that Your Son presents us as a bride without spot and without blemish. So God, we praise you for this work and we rejoice to think that you have included us in this great epic of redemption that you are accomplishing. God, we are grateful that you concern yourself not only with such wonderful and lofty thoughts as those, but God, with the everyday stuff of our lives now. We are grateful, Father, that you are aware of every bit of it, the day in and day out stuff, the hurts and the aches. God, we think of John Didier back in the hospital and ask that you would watch over him and that you would Fulfill your good pleasure in Him. We thank you, Father, for the way you have sustained Him, and we ask that you sustain Him still. Father, we think of those who are chronically ill. God, we think of Al and Shelton and others, God. Lord, we know that it would be so easy to hear the lies of the enemy, The whispers. It would be easy, Father. These bodies are connected to our spirits and they weigh on one another. It'd be easy, Father, to let the weight of illness affect the way that we think about you. And God, we pray that you would give them grace to fix their hearts on you. And that you would protect them from the lies of the enemy. That they would find such joy in you, even in their illness. God, we thank you that you give us the privilege of pulling aside for a little while tonight to gather with the body and to consider your word. And we ask you for your help. God, we are children. We've come to gather around your word to hear from you. We ask God that you would help us in Christ's name, amen. Second Samuel 21. We'll read the first 14 verses now. There was a famine in the days of David for three years, year after year, and David sought the presence of the Lord. And the Lord said it is for Saul and his bloody house because he put the Gibeonites to death. So the king called the Gibeonites and spoke to them. Now the Gibeonites were not of the sons of Israel, but of the remnant of the Amorites, and the sons of Israel made a covenant with them. But Saul had sought to kill them in his zeal for the sons of Israel and Judah. Thus David said to the Gibeonites, What should I do for you? And how can I make atonement that you may bless the inheritance of the Lord? Then the Gibeonites said to him, We have no concern of silver or gold with Saul or his house, nor is it for us to put any man to death in Israel. And he said, I will do for you whatever you say. So they said to the king, The man who consumed us and who planned to exterminate us from remaining within any border of Israel, let seven men from his sons be given to us. And we will hang them before the Lord in Gibeah of Saul, the chosen of the Lord. And the king said, I will give them. But the king spared Mephibosheth, the son of Jonathan, the son of Saul, because of the oath of the Lord, which was between them, between David and Saul's son, Jonathan. So the king took the two sons of Rizpah, the daughter of Aiah, Armani and Mephibosheth, whom she had born to Saul. And the five sons of Merib, the daughter of Saul, whom she had born to Adriel, the son of Barzillah, the Meholathite. Then he gave them into the hands of the Gibeonites and they hanged them in the mountain before the Lord so that the seven of them fell together and they were put to death in the first days of harvest at the beginning of barley harvest. And Rizba, the daughter of Ayah, took sackcloth and spread it for herself on the rock from the beginning of harvest until it rained on them from the sky. And she allowed neither the birds of the sky to rest on them by day, nor the beast of the field by night. When it was told David what Rizba, the daughter of Ayah, the concubine of Saul, had done, Then David went and took the bones of Saul and the bones of Jonathan his son from the men of Jabesh-gilead, who had stolen them from the open square of Beth-shan, where the Philistines had hanged them on the day the Philistines struck down Saul in Gilboa. He brought up the bones of Saul and the bones of Jonathan his son from there, and they gathered the bones of those who had been hanged. They buried the bones of Saul and Jonathan his son in the country of Benjamin in Zella, in the grave of Kish his father. Thus they did all that the king commanded. And after that, God was moved by prayer for the land." Well, there's been three years of famine. And what we see in verse 1 really is an expression of the mercy of the Lord. It is a mercy of God because in sending the famine, God was alerting Israel that something was wrong, something that they had forgotten about, something that had not ever been dealt with. But God had not forgotten about it. And so you can imagine one year of drought and people notice, but no one stops to think, well, maybe it's the Lord. And a second year of drought, they wait, and a third year of drought, and they begin to really become concerned. And so David realizes that there's a problem, and there is. God has sent the famine because the land had been polluted with blood. Numbers 35, 33 says, You shall not pollute the land in which you are, for blood pollutes the land, and no expiation can be made for the land for the blood that is shed on it, except by the blood of him who shed it. The blood has polluted the land. Expiation has not been made. Atonement has not been made. And so there's this ongoing issue. But the people are unaware of it. David's unaware of it, or they've put it out of mind. And so God answers David when David calls to Him. Verse 1 says that David sought the presence of the Lord. And the Lord said. And that also is a mercy of God. The years have passed. People have forgotten. But when David cries out to God and asks, what's going on? What's the problem? Why is there an ongoing drought? God does answer him and tell him, here's the issue. There is a problem. And he makes him aware of it so that it can be dealt with. Now I wonder, do you think that that is, for the believer, normal, normative? Or is that the exception to the rule? That God answers prayer. I fear that too often we would say, it's kind of the exception. We know God answers prayer generally in a general kind of way, but not sure about my prayer. And so I'm afraid that we might answer that it is an unusual occurrence. And that really is unfortunate. We often make the point that the God of the Old Testament is the same God that we see in the New Testament. Not a different God. He hasn't changed from Old Testament to New Testament. Same character. Would that not be true of his willingness, his ability to answer prayer also? I understand that we do not have the Urim and the Thummim. We don't have Nathan as a prophet to come to us and say, here's what God said. No, don't build that temple. But we do have something better. Hebrews chapter 1 verses 1 and 2 tell us that God, after He spoke long ago to the fathers and the prophets in many portions, and in many ways in these last days has spoken to us in His Son, whom He appointed heir of all things, through whom also He made the world. We have Christ. And we have a completed canon. We have the entirety of Scripture. David didn't have that. David had very small portions. And we have the Spirit of God. We might be tempted to think how much better it would be if Jesus were sitting right here bodily present so that we could ask Him anything and get an answer. But Jesus Himself said that it was to our advantage that He went away so that the Holy Spirit would come. God has not stopped answering prayers simply because there's not a prophet to come to you and say, here's an answer or a Urim and Thummim or whatever else we might raise as an excuse. Listen to these encouragements to us to pray all in the New Testament. Mark 11 24. Therefore, I say to you, all things for which you pray and ask, believe that you have received them and they will be granted you. Matthew 18 19. Again, I say to you that if two of you agree on earth about anything that they may ask, it shall be done for them by my Father who is in heaven. Matthew 21 22. And all things you ask in prayer, believing you will receive. John 14, 13, whatever you ask in my name, that will I do so that the Father may be glorified in the Son. John 15, 7, if you abide in me and my words abide in you, ask whatever you wish and it will be done for you. John 15, 16. You did not choose me, but I chose you and appointed you that you would go and bear fruit and that your fruit would remain so that whatever you ask of the Father in my name, He may give to you. John 16, verses 23 and 24. And that day you will not question me about anything. Truly, truly I say to you, if you ask the Father for anything in my name, He will give it to you. Until now you have asked for nothing in my name. Ask and you will receive, so that your joy may be made full." Luke 11. So I say to you, ask, it will be given to you. Seek, and you will find. Knock, and it will be opened to you. For everyone who asks, receives, and he who seeks, finds. And to him who knocks, it will be opened. Now suppose one of your fathers is asked by his son for a fish. he will not give him a snake instead of a fish, will he? Or if he is asked for an egg, he will not give him a scorpion, will he? If you then, being evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your heavenly Father give the Holy Spirit to those who ask Him? Again and again, we are encouraged to pray, to pray expectantly. Charles Spurgeon wrote, I cannot imagine any one of you tantalizing your child by exciting in him a desire that you did not intend to gratify. It were a very ungenerous thing to offer alms to the poor and then when they hold out their hand for it to mock their poverty with a denial. It were a cruel addition to the miseries of the sick. They were taken to the hospital and they're left to die untended and uncared for. Where God leads you to pray, He means you to receive. Luke 18, Jesus told them a parable to show them that at all times they ought to pray and not to lose heart. Those really are two options, aren't they? For the believer? Pray or lose heart. Don't lose heart. Keep praying. George Mueller, the man who saw so many answers to prayer, said the great fault of the children of God is they do not continue in prayer. They do not go on praying. They do not persevere. If they desire anything for God's glory, they should pray until they get it. Oh, how good and kind and gracious and condescending is the one with whom we have to do. He has given me, unworthy as I am, immeasurably above all I had asked or thought. Oswald Sanders, who followed Hudson Taylor as the director of the China Inland Mission, wrote, the very fact that God lays a burden of prayer on our hearts and keeps us praying is evidence that he purposes to grant the answer. When asked if he really believed that two men for whose salvation he had prayed for over 50 years would be converted, George Mueller of Bristol replied, Do you think God would have kept me praying all those years if he did not intend to save them? Both men were converted, one shortly before the other after Mueller's death. God delights to answer prayer. He calls us to pray. I understand that sometimes the answer doesn't come immediately. Mueller prayed for 50 years for the conversion of these two men. But Jesus said that we ought always to pray and not lose heart. David prayed and God answered him, what a mercy. The God whose eyes are too pure to look at sin listens to you. God does answer David and he explains what the problem is. We see it at the end of verse one and into verse two. The problem is that Saul sought to kill the Gibeonites. He did kill many of them. He sought to exterminate them according to the answer of the Gibeonites a few verses down. He killed many of them. Now, you might ask, why is that a problem? There were a lot of people killed in the Old Testament. Saul killed a lot of people. David killed a lot of people. They were at war with various nations. So what's the problem with the Gibeonites? Well, he explains a bit of it in verse 2. The Gibeonites were not of the sons of Israel, but of the remnant of the Amorites, and the sons of Israel made a covenant with them. This is given to us in more detail in Joshua chapter 9. When Joshua and the people were first taking the land, the people of the Gibeonites had heard about what God had done through the children of Israel. And so they came to them, and they disguised themselves. You may remember they had not come very far, but they dressed themselves, they disguised themselves to make themselves look like they'd come a long way. They put on rags. They brought moldy, crumbly bread, wineskins that were cracked and about to fall apart. And they said, when we left, our clothes were new, and the bread was still warm. The wineskins were new. It's taken us this long to get here. And without asking God, without digging too deep, the people of Israel bought their story and made a covenant with them. And then they found out that they were people who lived in the land and not people they were supposed to make peace with, but it was too late. They had made a covenant with them. When they realized what had happened, the people began to grumble. And in verses 18 through 20 of Joshua 9, The Bible says the sons of Israel did not strike them, the Gibeonites, because the leaders of the congregation had sworn to them by the Lord the God of Israel. And the whole congregation grumbled against the leaders. But all the leaders said to the whole congregation, We have sworn to them by the Lord, the God of Israel, and now we cannot touch them. This we will do to them, even let them live, so that wrath will not be upon us for the oath with which we swore to them." They had cut a covenant with them. They had taken an animal and split it in two and laid it aside and they passed between it and made an oath. We don't keep this covenant. May this be us. May we be split apart like this. But Saul put the Gibeonites to death. We're not positive of the occasion of this. This is the first time we hear about Saul doing this right now. There are some who think that perhaps he did this when David was gaining in popularity and his popularity was waning. First Samuel 22 tells us that he called to his fellow Benjamites and presumably others and said, Will that son of Jesse give you vineyards? Will he make you all commanders of thousands and commanders of hundreds? And so it sounds like he was kind of bribing the loyalty of the people by giving them lands and vineyards. And the question could easily come, where did he get the land in the vineyards? Well, perhaps from the Gibeonites. Perhaps he was killing them for their property to give to the fellow Israelites to win their loyalty. But that is a guess. Whatever reason he had, he did try to exterminate them. Verse 2 says that he sought to kill them in his zeal for the sons of Israel and Judah. In his zeal for the people, he sought to kill the Gibeonites. And he does this while ignoring the assignment that God had given him. Kill the Amalekites. Wipe them out, exterminate them. You remember, he brings back the best of the Amalekites. He brings back the king. And it's because of that that the kingdom will be taken from him. But while he ignores that command from God, in zeal, he attacks the Gibeonites. They're a poor, convenient substitute for the obedience that God demanded, one writer says. Do you ever find yourself ignoring the assignment that God gives you while you pursue an assignment that is more palatable to you? It seems like what Saul was doing. God lays down things for your commands. Here are things for you to do, Saul. Saul ignores them repeatedly. But in zeal, he pursues the Gibeonites, the people he's not supposed to touch. For whatever reason, that appeared more convenient, more palatable. Now, years have passed. Many years. Saul's dead, Jonathan's dead, David is king. He's king long enough that he has found Mephibosheth and is showing kindness to Mephibosheth. In all this time, the Gibeonites have evidently been quiet. Surely Saul's family has not said anything about this. Perhaps they are tempted to think, like we often are, that things will cool off. It'll all blow over. And this has mostly been forgotten, but God had not forgotten. And so the famine comes. David says, why Lord? And God tells him, because of the Gibeonites. Because of what Saul did to the Gibeonites. So David goes to the Gibeonites and asks, what would you have me do? What should I do for you so I can make atonement? And in these verses we see, among other things, we see the humility of the Gibeonites. Again, they've been silent. They're not over there screaming, what about us? It is God Himself who has reopened the case. While the Gibeonites have been victims, they did not play the victim. They're not crying out about their rights. They're not doing anything to call attention to themselves really. God is the one who has brought this up. They're not demanding. When David asks what should be done for them, they don't give him a real answer. He has to urge them, I'll do for you whatever you say. Interestingly, they don't seek a payday, what we want, land, gold, stuff. They don't. In doing that, they are consistent with the law of their adopted country. Numbers 35, 31, we're told that you shall not take ransom for the life of a murderer who is guilty of death, but he shall surely be put to death. Ransom is not an alternative. They don't seek freedom in their covenant that they made with the sons of Israel. They are not to be exterminated, they're not to be harmed. But part of the deal was that they serve Israel. They are kind of slaves in Israel. They serve at the pleasure of the Israelites. And they don't seek their freedom. Here's what we want. Turn us loose. We've had enough of you. This is how the people of God act. We don't want any more of it. It was possibly an option. In Exodus 21 verse 26, if a man strikes the eye of his male or female slave and destroys it, he shall let him go free on account of his eye. But here are people who patiently waited for God to right the wrong that had been done to them. They seem to know and to believe, Deuteronomy 32, 35, vengeance is mine and retribution. So they have waited, they've waited patiently, and now God is bringing about that justice. And he has so worked so that David, asking him in prayer what's happening, and God explains the situation to him, David is now before the people who actually are servants to them, saying, whatever you ask, I'll do it. We want to make this right. There are some people who found fault with this and want to know why David doesn't negotiate with them. They asked for seven men. Why didn't he come back and say, well, what if I give you two? But David's not in a position to negotiate. David is there because God sent him there. And he has to humble himself. They are the wrong party. They get to say, here is what it will take to make this right. And so they ask for seven sons of Saul. Saul's dead. We cannot do anything to him. Seven of his sons. And David tells them, I'll do. for you whatever you say. I will give them, end of verse six, the seven sons, I'll give them. In verse seven, we have a kind of a parenthetical note. But the king spared Mephibosheth. Mephibosheth is the son of Jonathan, and David has a covenant with Jonathan. It wouldn't have been right to break that covenant to try to fix this one. And so Mephibosheth is in this covenant for the sake of Jonathan and there he is safe from this retribution that must be enacted. And so there are a couple of sons and five grandsons that are offered to the Gibeonites. The Gibeonites kill them and they hang them up for everyone to see. Now this is really strange to us. And yet Saul's offense was one that had polluted the land with the Gibeonites blood. That's a strange thing to us. That's what the Bible says. And Saul had violated a covenant oath. And now it's not just Saul that was guilty of this. The children of Israel are liable for the curses of the covenant. This was a national covenant entered into. I suppose it would be like two countries at war. And when one country surrenders and the terms are laid out, here's what happens. You're affected by the surrender, even though you may not have fought in the war. You may not have had anything to do with it, except you're a member of that country that lost and surrendered. And so Saul is before them as kind of a representative. He did not act as an individual. He acted as the king. He acted as a representative of the nation. And the entire nation is brought into this and guilty. The entire nation suffers from this famine. And God's wrath must be appeased. We can't just write this off as a cultural difference. Certainly, it is a different culture and It's very different from the times we live in, the nation we live in, but we can't say that it's really unjust and it shouldn't have happened that way because we live now and they lived then. God transcends culture. And God was appeased by this. God was not unjust. The fact that justice was served is evidenced by the fact that the rain returned. And God was afterwards moved by prayer for the land. There are some who would ask, does this violate Deuteronomy 24 16? That verse says, fathers shall not be put to death for their sons, nor shall sons be put to death for their fathers. Everyone shall be put to death for his own sin. Well, again, the fact that God gave us Deuteronomy 24 26 and God satisfied with this justice would indicate it does not violate that. As to how, that's harder. Again, there's the idea that Saul's the king, he's a representative, the nation itself is liable. There's no reason to think that Saul's sons were not involved in this. Saul didn't kill these people himself individually, it was, I'm sure, the army. If this was Saul's means of providing vineyards to those loyal to him, then there were many who participated in the guilt in that way, knowing where that came from. But there's still much about this that's hard for us to understand, thousands of years removed. But I think we can understand this. And I think it's pretty clear. Sin demands atonement. And atonement is horrible. It's always horrible. 2,000 years removed from the cross, it's easy for us to think that atonement is not that messy. That forgiveness is not messy. We're not like the Old Testament people bringing a bull to an altar and there the throat of the bull is cut and the blood comes out and that animal is butchered and burned. We're not there at the cross where Christ is bloody. A spectacle. It's easy for us to think it's light and easy and clean, but it's not. It's horrible. It's awful. The price for sin is horrible. And we see that pictured here. In verses 10 through 14, there's one other note, we're told that David gathered the bones of these men and they and Jonathan and Saul and buried them all with their fathers. He did this after the rain came and he did this in response to what he hears that Rizba, the concubine of Saul, was doing. These bodies, they're killed and then they're hung up. They don't die by hanging. They're killed and then they're hung up and they're left there. From the harvest, the harvest, the beginning of the barley harvest, we're told, which would have been around April, if I remember what I read. And they're left there until it rains. We're not told how long that was. If it was the time when the rains normally came, it could have been as late as October. And Risba has this sackcloth spread out on a rock, and she sleeps there. And she keeps the birds away. And the other animals away. And she does that for however long it was. Maybe the rains came earlier. Maybe God in mercy sent them earlier. We're not told. But however long that period of time was, she waits. And she keeps the animals away. Seeing that, David is moved, and when the rain comes, showing that God is satisfied, he gathers all the bones up, including Saul and Jonathan, who had been buried elsewhere, and brings them all home to be buried with their father. What Rispa does, obviously, she does out of love, but among other things that might be said about this, I think what, again, is clear is that sin leaves devastation in its wake. It leaves sadness. As you read this, how could you not feel sad? She is sad. She mourns. And sin always does that. We may not always feel it like she's feeling it in this situation. We may feel like we got away with it. We may have enjoyed the pleasure of it for the moment and we may be blind. We may have grown callous. But sin, The man's atonement and atonement is horrible and it leaves in its wake sadness and devastation. As awful as Saul's sin was against the Gibeonites, our sin against God is so much worse. It's against one to whom we owe so much more than the Israelites owed to the Gibeonites. It's against a person of much more infinite worth. The judgment that should be ours because of our sin against him is much worse than the judgment that should have fallen on Saul and ultimately fell upon his sons. It is an eternal judgment. And it is that that Christ took upon himself. Awful, horrible judgment. So that we would receive mercy. And so that we could come to a throne of grace and to come to one who's not just a king, but one who is a father. Who hears prayers, who answers them. Father, would you grip us with a sight of your holiness and a sight of the awfulness of sin and the great, great mercy that you have given us in Christ Jesus. We pray in his name, amen. Good night.