2 Samuel 4:1-12

Sometimes you can sense the effects of it in the background in our culture.

Sometimes the effects, though, are as clear as day and right out front.

Skepticism, cynicism, and suspicion abound in our world.

Almost everyone in this room, or within the sound of my voice, has been disappointed by an individual or by an institution at some point.

The institution might have been a school or the government, could have been a church, and sadly could have been a pastor.

Dishonesty, corruption, and injustice abound.

Is it any wonder that this, the fruit of this, has uh has left some with despairing minds and despairing hearts?

What can be done?

Can this dire situation be remedied?

Is there anybody or anything worth trusting?

Is there any authority we can look to for trustworthy justice?

Those questions and more are why we study through books of the Bible here at the village chapel.

Some of you are wondering what happened to that.

Well, here it comes.

Let's see it together.

We study through books of the Bible here at the village chapel.

We do.

We have extra copies.

If you need one, they're distributing those.

Just raise your hand if you want one.

Uh but I want to throw you a little off guard here this morning so that we could at least, as we approach chapter 4 of 2 Samuel, which is an interesting text.

Um, we'll remind ourselves that our theme throughout 2 Samuel is this unlikely redemption.

Uh, that God chooses those who nobody else would choose.

He uses those no one else would use.

And he can redeem even the vilest of sinners, as uh we'll be reminded of at least by looking at this passage.

We're not going to try to ask David or Ishboshef or the folks that are listed in this short 12-verse chapter.

We're not going to ask them to come forward into our time and try to understand them with our the lens of our the way we look at stuff.

We're actually going to try to go back in time to where they are and try and understand their situation.

The gaps, the hurdles, they're huge.

They're vast.

There are innumerable hurdles to jump in, trying to understand stuff that happened 3,000 years ago.

They had no iPhones, they had no Instagram accounts, they had no, they didn't have the ability to communicate stuff really fast as we do.

So when we read this, please understand we're reading a situation where there's a divided nation, uh, two kingdoms, they are in conflict.

Saul has, uh King Saul, the first king, uh, had died a few years earlier.

David had returned to the Jewish territory, specifically to the city of Hebron.

Uh he did not return to Jerusalem.

He didn't go to Jerusalem.

I've heard some people ask that question.

Well, Jerusalem hasn't risen to prominence, hasn't it become sort of the capital city that it ends up being later?

So for right now, Hebron is the capital city of the territory of the one tribe called Judah that has anointed David as the next king since Saul is dead.

Up in the north, the eleven tribes up there, as King Saul dies, his military commander Abner decides he's going to take matters into his own hands, and he chooses to anoint Ishboshef, the only remaining of Saul's son, to be the next king.

Ishbosheth seems to be weak, seems to be a puppet in the hands of Abner.

The problem is, as we've gone through the storyline, uh it almost looks like a civil war is going to break out.

You're not sure what's happening, but things appear to be going the way of that that God would prefer them to go.

And so we're even told that the Lord had anointed David to be the next king, even though he wasn't of the line of Saul or the house of Saul himself.

And um Abner has been killed now, the commander of Saul's armies.

And so again, things are tense, things are changing, uncertain, lots of uh lots of uh uh fear, anxiety, all that sort of thing.

What in the world is gonna happen?

Um Azahel has been killed.

Azahel was uh one of the nephews of David, and Abner killed him, and then so Joab, Azahel's brother, kills Abner eventually.

Now Abner, the commander of Saul's army, is dead, and the north is in disarray.

Abner's the one that made Ishboshef a king.

What does that mean for Ishbasheth now?

And that's where we pick up right here in verse 1.

When Ishboshev, chapter 4, 2 Samuel, if you're not there, please turn there.

Um, when, and by the way, some of your English translations will just say when he, and that's because some of the ancient manuscript copies of the Old Testament don't name him.

It's as if the narrator didn't think Ishbasheth was that important.

They just say when he, Saul's son.

Um and so when Ishbish, here it says in the New American Standard, Saul's son heard that Abner had died in Hebron.

He, meaning Ishbish, lost courage.

It could be translated, his hands dropped.

It's as if he went, oh, and he has just come to this place of despair.

He has no power.

Because Abner was the strong man, Ishbasheth was the weak puppet king of Abner.

So his hands drop.

He lost courage.

And all Israel was disturbed, and that happens when the leader is fearful, when the leader is weak.

That kind of thing happens.

Saul's son had two men who were commanders of bands, and that's not bands that here we are in music city.

It's not that kind of band.

These are marauding bands, these are these are raiders that would go out and and and try to secure food or or or try to take over an enemy city nearby or something like that.

So Saul had two men who were commanders of bands.

The name of the one was Ba'anah, and the name of the other was Rehab.

There were sons of Rimmon, the Berothite of the sons of Benjamin, for Beroth is also considered part of Benjamin, and the Berothites fled to Getam and have been aliens there until this day.

Until what day?

Until the day of the writing of 2 Samuel.

Who wrote 2 Samuel?

We haven't got a clue.

We don't really know.

Samuel's actually already dead himself, so he didn't write this part.

Unless some dropped out of the sky or something.

Somebody else, maybe Nathan the prophet, maybe Gad the prophet.

But they're keeping a record here, and what's happened is two of Saul's commanders who come from the tribe or the territory of the tribe of Benjamin, and who are named Ba'an and Rehab here, and they're which are interesting names.

But Ramon, their father, you know, sounds a bit like an Italian name, and he's a Beroophite.

That doesn't mean he drinks a lot of beer.

That just means he's got this heritage.

He comes from that area there, where the Gibeonites, the ones who had at one point been able to fool Joshua into making a promise that he that Joshua and the Israelites, as they came into the land, they would allow these Gibeonites to be safe.

And so it's very convoluted.

There's all kinds of stuff going on here in the background.

Verse 4 even seems like a complete where'd this come from in the middle of this storyline.

Now Jonathan Saul's son, and remember, Jonathan died with Saul on Mount Gilboa in the battle against the Philistines.

Jonathan Saul's son had a son crippled in his feet, so that would make him Saul's grandson.

Okay.

He was crippled in his feet.

He was five years old when the report of Saul and Jonathan came from Jezreel, that is the report of their death.

And his nurse or his nanny that took him up, who, this son of Jonathan, this grandson of Saul, took him up when he was five years old, and it happened that in her hurry to flee, he fell.

And he became lame.

This five-year-old did, and his name was Mephibosheth.

Love that name.

Let's say it together.

Mephibosheth.

God bless you.

It sounds like he sneezed.

It's one of those kind of names.

You just see, I love these names.

They're just awesome.

But here indeed is a young boy who's probably less than 12 years old right now.

How do I know that?

Well, we know that David became king in Judah, reigning at Hebron for seven years, before he moves to Jerusalem to reign for 33 more years.

So Mephibosheth, when he got the news that, or when his nanny got the news that Jonathan and Saul had been killed, is five years old.

Add that to the highest number of seven that's possible.

And you come up with, you know, he's 12 or less.

He may be like ten years old.

The sons of Ramon and the Berathite and Rehab and Ba'anah, these two sons, departed and they came to the house of Ishbasheth.

Okay, so they're coming to the one who's taken Saul's place in the northern tribes that Abner set up as the king.

They came to his house in the heat of the day while he was taking his midday rest.

And this is all after Abner has been killed.

And the news that Abner is dead is running rampant throughout the northern tribes.

And remember, when I say running rampant, I just mean there's somebody who walks to one village and tells everybody.

I don't mean anybody tweeted it or posted it.

No, but they didn't have any of that.

So as the rumor spreads that Abner is dead at the hands of Joab, who was David's commander, if you live in the north and somebody's trying to unite two kingdoms that are divided, you start to see this as David.

He is he has got uh some kind of ambition here.

This is a takeover, this isn't a merger.

And you could see how that could create a little bit of tension, a little bit of fear.

These two see the way things are going, Rehab and Ba'anah.

They go to the house of Ishbosheth during the midday rest or the siesta.

They came to the middle of the house as if to get wheat, so somewhere in the center courtyard of Ishboshet's house, which we need not think of it as a huge palace just yet.

Remember, this is uh a really high transition uh period of time here, but probably some kind of a courtyard where food food goods were stored, and they came as if to get some of that, and instead they struck him Ishbosheth in the belly, and Rehab and Batani's brother escaped.

Looking back, verse 7 gives us a little more detail.

When they came into the house as he was lying on his bed in his bedroom, they struck him and they killed him, and they beheaded him, and so now we get more detail, and it's very gory.

And they took his head and traveled by way of the Arabah all night long.

That's the most direct route to go to Hebron across the desert land.

They went through the Arabah all night, and they brought the head of Ishbasheth to David at Hebron, and they said to the king, meaning David, who's the king in Judah at Hebron, here's what they say.

Notice what they say.

Behold, the head of Ishbasheth.

You can see them holding it up.

Okay, how gory, how horrible this is.

Sons of uh these two sons of of uh of Rimon, behold, the the head of Ishbasheth, the son of Saul, your enemy, would have been his rival, David's rival, if there was going to be a United Kingdom, who sought your life.

And this is really interesting, this next part.

You can under you should underline this in your Bible.

Thus, the Lord has given my Lord, the King, vengeance this day on Saul and his descendants.

So, in other words, aren't you glad we brought the head of your rival down here to you?

We've removed the last obstacle to you becoming king of all of Israel by cutting off this guy's head.

And they hold it up.

They're expecting, I'm sure, some kind of, you're two really awesome soldiers.

Thank you so much.

Take a place in my uh military command or something, you know.

Instead, David answers them and says to Rehab and Ba'ana, his brothers, sons of Ramon, and who is the Berathite.

And they he said to them, As the Lord lives, and here's another great phrase.

This could be the entire, the theme for the entire book of 2 Samuel.

As the Lord lives, who has redeemed my life from all distress.

Some of your translations will say, Who has delivered me from all adversity.

And when I read that, I thought to myself, wait a minute, I've read the book of Psalms.

Wait a minute, we studied 1 Samuel.

I mean, David has, if anything, his life is marked with adversity.

He's been pummeled by adversity all through his life.

And yet he stands there and says, As the Lord lives, who has redeemed, who has rescued, who has delivered me from all adversity.

He's my he's the one I trust.

He's the one that can redeem me, even out of the paws of the lion or the clutch of a giant or whatever it might be.

And he says that.

And he says it to these two guys who think they're the ones that are going to save David and unite the kingdom and all.

He says, When one told me, David to them, when one told me, behold, Saul is dead and thought he was bringing me good news, I seized him and killed him in Ziklag.

That's the Philistine city he list he lived in.

David lived in when he got the news Saul had died.

Which, and that was the reward I gave him for his news.

How much more, when wicked men have killed a righteous man in his own house on his bed, shall I not now require his blood from your hand and destroy you from the earth?

And these guys, their ears are popping, they can't imagine, their hearts are starting to beat fat.

They don't understand why this is the response they're getting from David.

And David commanded the young men, and they killed them.

Ba'ana and Rehab.

And cut off their hands and their feet and hung them up beside the pool in Hebron.

And they took the head of Ishbish and buried it in the grave of Abner in Hebron.

Closed scene.

Aren't you glad he came to church today?

This is, again, we're reaching back 3,000 years.

I want to remind you so much that can sound foreign to us and strange to us.

And we ought to expect that when we do good, the the good, the work of good history.

It would be terrible for us to try and understand that in terms of our own day and time and our own norms, even warfare norms, quite different back then as we look at something like this.

We've already seen that Ishbishith was a weak leader, but here his weakness is coupled with fear.

His hands dropped, his courage left him.

With the leadership gap, rivals will certainly be coming to grab power.

And Ishbishith is not equipped for such conflict.

The rivals come, and Ishbashith was murdered by two of his own military leaders, the sons of Ramon.

They were powerful warriors, they were also quite ambitious and self-confident, opportunists.

In spite of all the hurdles, like I say, we have to jump.

I think there are some timeless lessons here for us.

Ishboshith really had put all of his trust in another man, Abner.

How do I know that?

Well, because when he heard that Abner was dead, his hands dropped.

And that's what precipitated his moving from just being weak to being both weak and fearful and lacking any kind of courage.

He was defenseless and he knew his position and power would all soon be gone.

Ishbosheth was vulnerable to despair because he ultimately trusted in another sinful person.

Ba'ana and Rehab put all their trust in themselves.

They took matters in their own hand, just like Abner had tried to do.

With the weakness of Ishbosheth exposed, these two brothers conspired together, turned traitor on their king, and committed a gruesome murder.

They traveled a few days all the way to Hebron, expecting David to be delighted, claiming to have divine sanction.

It was God who did this, David.

And he's now, through us, removed the last obstacle for you to become king.

Ba'ana and Rehab remind us that ambition and opportunism can lead to a world of mischief and madness.

They also remind us that we must beware.

When we begin seeking to explain all of our motives and all of our moves theologically, it might be true that we're just trying to use God for our own purposes.

It's important for us to be reminded of that, no matter what kind of work we're in, including church work.

When I begin to, if I were to begin to think of you as customers instead of communers, I would be making the same kind of mistake.

We, as a church leadership, if we thought of you that way.

If we thought of you as things to people to exploit to be able to sort of build a big giant church on our own, that's the only goal we had, if that was our primary goal, was just to see people as customers, then we'd really just have been reduced to being in the you know in the business of religious goods and products and services instead of being a house of worship or a house of prayer.

And what we need to do is maintain our focus on the worship of the living God.

And it's fascinating to me as I read these kinds of stories to watch each of the different ways that each of the personalities that show up in these stories, how they're responding to God or how they're interacting with God or how they're engaging with God.

David is by no means a perfect man, but he inquired of the Lord, and we were told that over and over and over again.

That was not said of Abner.

That certainly wasn't said of Ba'ana and Rehab.

Ba'ana and Rehab are using the Lord when they go to David.

And uh I think it's a good heads up for all of us.

So I'll give you three points.

If you're wondering what in the world are we gonna get out of these 12 verses, we're gonna get three points out of these twelve verses.

The immoral justifications of opportunism.

By the way, opportunity isn't bad in and of itself.

Uh well I want to make sure I say that.

I don't want you to be, I don't want you to be thinking that, oh, that's the pastor that stands up front and just yells to everybody, get off my lawn! That's not what this is.

But what we must be careful of is the ism.

Okay?

It's the ism where we start to go wrong.

It becomes an idol at some point.

And these two guys are a great example of people who just want to use God to create for themselves an opportunity for advancement and for uh perhaps getting a place in David's uh army.

Bad theology can provide a cloak for all kinds of evil, especially when it's mixed with a penchant for opportunism.

Um they argued that it was God who had sanctioned their violence against Ishbosheth, but David was not fooled by their immoral justification and opportunistic designs.

How about us as neighbors?

How about us as roommates?

How about us as people who live under the same roof?

We're looking for opportunity to the point of using others or using God?

How about us as spouses, as citizens, as civil servants, as church people, yes, even as people in ministry, we've got to beware of our propensity to justify all kinds of immorality or shady ethical behavior in pursuit of all kinds of opportunity.

We've got to be aware of that.

It's good to be concerned about that and awake to that.

Um, and I see that in this text here.

Um The prophet Jeremiah warns us all that the heart of man is deceitful.

We are skilled at arranging our thoughts into arguments in favor of desired outcomes that we want to control.

And the fact is, we will use and sometimes abuse others.

We'll take what is not ours, we'll justify all kinds of unkindness and selfishness in pursuit of our desired end.

And I'm not just talking about you.

This is me.

I have rehab and I have Ba'ana in me to some degree.

I've got Abner in me too.

Self-confident sometimes to a fault, to the point where I'm depending just on myself, not like David inquiring of the Lord over and over again, patient with God.

David was very patient with God's timing.

So one of the reasons that the murder of Ishbosheth is so offensive to David is because he saw even Ishbosheth, that last remaining son of Saul, from the house of Saul, he saw that as God's doing, and these two guys entering in and murdering this guy in his sleep alone was outrageous.

But David was always patient about the timing of God unfolding God's will and purposes.

And that's why David didn't take opportunities himself when he had them.

We must learn to weigh both the cost of an opportunity and the ethics or morality of that opportunity.

We must wake up to the fact that some opportunities will be worth missing.

Let me set you free today.

I want to say that one more time.

Let me remind you.

Some opportunities that look shiny and sparkly and awesome, they're worth missing.

It just depends on how you're wired and how you're thinking.

And are you concerned about what God's concerned about, or are you just concerned about it, your own advancement, like rehab and ba'annah or Abner?

Opportunism is a problem.

Opportunities are not a problem, but opportunism can become a real problem.

N.T.

Wright says, when God gives human beings responsibility, he means it.

The choices we make, not only individually but as a species, are choices whose consequences God alarmingly allows us to explore.

That's so true.

He will warn us, he will give us opportunities to repent and change course.

But if we choose idolatry, we must expect our humanness bit by bit to dissolve.

God's accepting love toward me, God's accepting love toward you must never be mistaken as God's approval of our selfishness, our sinfulness, our bad behavior, or our addiction to opportunism.

Don't mistake God's patience and kindness toward you as God's approval or blessing.

Pray.

Read his word.

Seek the wise counsel of other others who think in terms of, you know, with godly thinking, that think in terms of the ways and the will and the wisdom of God.

Secondly, I think we learn here about the imperfect justice of an earthly king.

David doesn't appear to have been motivated by the thought of merely removing a political rival.

He's pretty much, there's a contrast here, isn't there?

He doesn't seem as opportunistic as Ba'ana and Rehab.

If anything, he's offended at their opportunism.

And he's patient waiting for God's timing and God's unfolding of God's purposes and God's timing.

So he doesn't appear to me to have been obsessed with a lust for political power.

All along we've been told that he's been inquiring of the Lord.

And along with the Amalekite in chapter 1 and these two here in chapter 4, it seems that he's very concerned about God's honor, God's name, and God's sovereignty being on full display in his life and in the advancement of his own life as well.

And I think that's really, really remarkable.

While David reminds us that any sense of justice provides an encouragement for saints and sinners alike.

The fact is, when it gets down to the hard facts, this is hard for us to hear.

I mean, I mean, the way this is done, and again, we're jumping 3,000 years back in time.

These guys commit a heinous murder, they dismember the body, and they bring the head to David, and it's horrific.

And then David, in turn, they have committed murder, he executes them, cuts off their hands and their feet.

Why is that?

That's symbolic.

They, without hands, have no power to yield the sword.

Without feet, they have no power to run to the battle or from the battle.

It's over.

And then he posts their bodies on the wall, much as had been done to Jonathan and to Saul's bodies, as a public display of the fact, and as a deterrent, if you will, to any that would follow in their footsteps and disregard the laws of God concerning murder, for instance.

Again, hard for us to understand some of this, hard for us to get, you know, to see it in our context, but if we go back to their time, it might at least give us a little bit of understanding.

Peter Creed in Back to Virtue says, there are no good people, and the best of us say so the most clearly.

Let's all say it.

There are no good people.

One more time.

There are no good people.

That's right.

We're just sinners here at the village chapel, needing redemption, needing salvation, needing forgiveness, needing grace and mercy.

And these are all on offer, which is a beautiful thing to be able to tell you because of the good news of the gospel of Jesus Christ.

There are no good people, Creep said.

The best of us say so the most clearly.

Saints agree that they're sinners.

Sinners think they are saints.

Only fools demand justice.

For where would we be if we got it?

No, mercy is our only hope from God, and our neighbors' only hope from us as well.

So we are to be like Jesus in this regard.

Jesus who said, Be merciful as your heavenly Father has been merciful to you, in what we call the Sermon on the Mount.

And the only conditional phrase in the Lord's Prayer, we pray it all the time, forgive us our debts as we forgive our debtors, forgive us our transgressions as we forgive those who transgressed or sin against us.

It's the only conditional clause up there.

The entire prayer is in the plural, our Father, us, this day, our daily bread.

And we're a community of people who need mercy, and we need grace, and we need to reflect the grace and mercy of the love of God back to one another as well.

David Atkinson said, Yahweh is the living God who reveals himself in action as the Lord of history, whose involvement in the ordinary processes of human living, offers a constant challenge to the status quo with a call to renewed obedience.

And I'll amend the quote just a little bit.

And renewed growth and holiness, renewed justice, and renewed love.

Why?

Because my tank runs out of all of those.

I'm in the red a lot of times when it comes to love for other people.

Does anybody else feel that way once in a while?

Think of the person who annoys you the most right now.

Okay, now you can say amen to what I just said.

There's somebody, and for some of you it's me.

Okay, I'm sorry.

I need all of that renewed in me all the time.

I need my heart renewed, my mind renewed, I need my loves reordered and redirected.

Because I'm I'm my heart is deceitful.

My heart can be deluded, my heart can be distracted all the time.

And I need the Lord who will come and renew me over and over again and restore me over and over again.

We have the imperfect justice of an earthly king here on display in David.

I look at it and scratch my head and think, oh my goodness, some of the stuff he did.

That Amalachite seemed harsh in chapter one.

Here with Ba'ana and recap.

Why not just put him in jail for six months or something?

I've got all these thoughts.

You may have them too.

But it's the imperfect justice of an earthly king on display.

Reportage in the Old Testament, especially in the Old Testament, but reportage is not the same thing as the divine endorsement of God on exactly the way everything is done.

Yes, you can read some Old Testament laws where there is a capital offense against God, and it seems rather harsh to us as we read it with our 3,000-year-later minds and sensibilities and sensitivities.

But if I knew everything that God knows, and I lived back in that time, it might only seem to drive me to my knees before a righteous and holy God, not shaking my fist at him, demanding he explain to me why he does it that way, but bowing before his majesty, lifting up the empty hands of faith, and crying and praying for mercy and for grace.

How do I respond today?

Well, the good news I have to tell you about it all is that all of this longing for real justice, all of this longing for a king we can trust, leads us to think about the perfect justice and amazing grace of the heavenly King.

King David's greater son, Jesus, who's the greater king, who's the one that really brings justice in all of its amazing fullness.

Because he does more than just cut off my hands and my feet and post my body on the wall.

He actually lets that be done to himself.

And he takes my place on the cross and pays the price for my sin and for yours.

And that's the kind of king I can bow before.

That's the kind of king I want.

There is that golden little verse.

I told you we'd come back to it.

Verse 4, look at it.

Jonathan saw his son, had a son crippled on his feet.

He's five years old when the report of Jonathan and Saul and Jonathan came from Jezreel, and his nurse took him up and fled, and it happened that in her hurry to flee, he fell and became lame.

His name was Mephibosheth.

So in this story, in this story, we have Ishboshith, who's weak and afraid.

In this story, we have Ba'ana and Rehab who are way overconfident, and they think they're large and in charge, and they think they can manipulate the whole thing, and they're opportunists of the worst kind.

But we also have Mephibosheth, who is completely helpless and hopeless, unless somebody else will pick him up and carry him away from the harm that is about to befall him.

We have Mephibosheth, who has been crippled because of the actions of somebody else who dropped him.

And what could he represent in so many different ways?

And what could each of these persons in this short chapter, but violent chapter, but dramatic chapter?

What could all of those people represent in our lives?

How might we be able to relate to and Bethibisheth, completely hopeless and helpless?

And we'll see more about him in chapter 9, chapter 16, and chapter 19.

But for now, that little gem is right there, and his condition of weakness and helplessness is right there.

Just fit right into that story of a bunch of people that thought they had it all together and thought they could control it all themselves and manipulated it all themselves and gained the opportunity or the upper leg themselves.

Timothy George says, if God's it, God's love involves not only compassion, kindness, and mercy beyond measure, but also indignation against injustice and unremitting opposition to all that is evil.

That, my friends, is true.

And that is also why among the 40 different mission organizations and missionaries that we support here at the Village Chapel are people who fight against injustice in this world, like International Justice Mission, End Slavery Tennessee, Justice and Mercy International.

Because we want to join God in the work that he's doing in this world.

Hands and feet that we prayed about earlier.

Caring for 110 different orphans in Haiti.

That's why we do that.

We're driven to do that.

Why?

Because we want to join God in the work that He's doing, to push back some of the injustice, some of the darkness of everything from poverty to political injustice, all that.

We want to push some of that back and join God in what he's doing.

And it looks like something to do that.

Tim Keller says, Christians follow someone who sacrificed everything to redeem and renew the world.

At the heart of the Christian faith is a man who died a victim of injustice.

Jesus accused of things he didn't do, and who called for the forgiveness of his enemies as the nails went into his hands, as the nails went into his feet, and I think about Ba'ana and Rehab and their hands and feet.

And they guilty for what they did.

Jesus not guilty for my sins, for your sins.

The visuals are hard to miss.

But that Christ would do that, that he would do that.

At the heart of the Christian faith is the king who loves justice so much that he will come, and in honor of justice itself, he will actually pay the price, the penalty for my sin.

So that justice is satisfied, and at the same time, mercy, love, and wisdom are all held together right there on that cross.

All four.

Which is the most luminous?

I couldn't tell you.

They're all brilliant.

Brilliant wisdom in thinking to do it that way.

Amazing, amazing wisdom.

Amazing grace and love on full display there at the cross.

Close with this thought from Packer.

Redeeming love and retributive justice join hands, so to speak, at the at Calvary.

For there God showed himself to be just and the justifier of them who have faith in Jesus.

As wild as that story in chapter 4 is, as horrific as it is, there is a yet a bit of foreshadowing of the complete, full, and perfect justice that we'll find in Jesus.

Because here, David will not have murder happening in his kingdom.

And so, as imperfect as that earthly king was, we can look forward to our heavenly king, Jesus, who says that one day he will set all things right.

He's not the kind of king that says, look at that planet full of sinners.

You know what?

I'll just let them have their own way, and turns his back on.

No.

He left the comforts of heaven.

He came, he condescended to become one of us.

And he came to save us from ourselves.

I'll close with a story from Richard Seltzer's book, Mortal Lessons, where he describes a situation that he was in.

He said, I stand by the bed where a young woman lies, her face post-operative, her mouth twisted in palsy, clownish.

A tiny twig of the facial nerve, the one to the muscles of the mouth, has been severed.

She will be thus from now on.

The surgeon had followed with religious fervor the curve of her flesh.

I promise you that.

Nevertheless, to remove the tumor in her cheek, I had to cut that little nerve.

Her young husband is in the room as well.

He stands on the opposite side of the bed.

Together they seem to dwell in the evening lamplight, isolated from me.

Who are they?

I ask myself.

He and this rye mouth that I've made, who gaze at and touch each other with such generous love, almost greedily.

The young woman speaks.

She asks.

Yes, I say.

It will.

It's because the nerve had to be cut.

She nods and is silent.

But the young man, he smiles.

I like it.

He says, It's kind of cute.

And all at once, I know who he is.

I understand.

And I lower my gaze.

One is not bold in an encounter with a god.

Unmindful, he bends to kiss her crooked mouth.

And I am so close, I can see how he twists his own lips to accommodate to hers.

To show her that his kiss still works.

Isn't that what the Christian God is all about?

He finds us twisted and wry.

He finds us helpless and hopeless.

He finds some of us addicted to opportunism.

He finds some of us fearful because we think we are out of power, out of hope.

In a culture that is running just crazy and mad and filled with tension and fear.

This is the Christian God.

He has come in Christ, teaching all of us as he reaches out in love, accommodating himself to our condition, becoming one of us, to show us that his kiss still works.

Let's pray.

Lord, thank you for your redeeming love for us.

As we study this ancient text, I pray that we wouldn't be caught in the weeds of the differences between us and their time, but Lord, that we'd see the timeless truths of Scripture and the timeless nature of your heart toward broken sinners.

So whether I'm thinking like Abner, maneuvering like Ba'ana or Rehab, whether I am like David, lifting my hands up toward heaven, inquiring of you, I pray, Lord, that you would come speak to your people, move among us, give us a sensitivity and the sensibility is of heaven.

And we might see what you see, as we said earlier in our call to worship, that we might want what you want.

And with great joy, Lord, we might delight in you and join you in the mission that you have for us in this world.

We pray this in Jesus' name and for His sake.

Amen and amen.