Fueled By Inheritance

If you have your Bibles with you, why don't you take your Bible and open your Bible with me to 2 Samuel 9?

That's to the left of the Psalms.

If you have a hard time finding that, that's okay.

2 Samuel chapter 9 is where we'll spend the bulk of our time.

2 Samuel 9 · chapter mention

Once you find 2 Samuel 9, mark it with your finger, and then turn over to 1 Peter 1, and we'll start our time together in God's Word at 1 Peter 1.

We're in the midst of a series called Drive.

And what we're talking about in this series is because so many of us oftentimes we get off track in our walk with God.

And we're doing everything we know how to do, and we're doing our best to walk with God, but something just feels like there's this disconnect from God.

And we don't really know how to fix it.

And so the thinking behind this series is this that all around us, that God has placed vehicles.

And these vehicles are headed toward God.

And they're close enough for every one of us to reach.

And if we will, by faith, get into one of these vehicles, these vehicles will carry us back to a renewed sense of our positions as sons and daughters of God.

We don't have to wonder whether or not we're saved and go into heaven.

God says he's given us that knowledge that we would know and have confidence in that.

And so we're talking about the various vehicles that God has placed around us that'll help us feel connected to God in a significant way.

So last week, Pastor Tom talked about the kindness of God.

And if you were not able to be here, I want to recommend that you get a copy of that message because it is a great message of the kindness of God.

And today I want to take a handoff from Pastor Tom and uh and talk about what happens when we are in relationship with a God who is kind to us.

Because the result of his kindness is an inheritance.

And I want to talk to you today about fueled by inheritance.

And so if you'll begin reading with me in 1 Peter chapter 1, and we'll begin our time there in verse 3.

1 Peter 1 · chapter mention

Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ.

In his great mercy, he has given us new birth into a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead, and into an inheritance that can never perish, spoil, or fade.

Kept in heaven for you, who through faith are shielded by God's power until the coming of the salvation that is ready to be revealed in the last time.

Now here's the vehicle is verse 6.

In this, that is your inheritance, in this you greatly rejoice, though now for a little while you may have had to suffer grief in all kinds of trials.

These have come so that your faith, of greater worth than gold, which perishes, even though refined by fire, may be proved genuine, and may result in praise, glory, and honor when Jesus Christ is revealed.

Though you've not seen him, you love him.

And even though you do not see him now, you believe in him, and are filled with an inexpressible and glorious joy.

For you are receiving the goal of your faith, the salvation of your soul.

Now I want to highlight for you verse four.

This inheritance that God has already given to you, it is your possession kept in heaven for you, and here's what Peter says about it it can never perish, it can never spoil, and it will never fade.

It belongs to you now.

And because your enemy knows he cannot take it away from you.

The only thing that he can do is one, cause you to doubt that it's true, two, distract you with temporary things, or three, make you think that it is small compared to what you're going through now.

Well, let me just tell you today.

This inheritance belongs to you right now.

And it's a big deal.

It's a big deal.

In fact, the reason God chose to make your inheritance known to you now is so that it becomes a vehicle that carries us to God when we're weak.

And it's always a reminder that you are loved in heaven.

In fact, I want you to say that with me.

The South Lake campus, say this with me.

I am loved in heaven.

Say that with me.

I am loved in heaven.

Say it again.

I am loved in heaven.

It's really true, you know.

That really is true.

You're loved in heaven.

And I'm going to prove that to you.

2 Samuel chapter 9.

2 Samuel 9 · chapter mention

If you go ahead and flip over there.

2 Samuel 9, it's a short chapter.

We're going to read the whole thing in just a moment because it is a spectacular story.

The truth really is stranger than fiction sometimes.

And what we're going to read right now is a very magnificent truth about the heart of God.

Let me set the context for you.

Saul was the king of Israel.

His son Jonathan and David were best friends.

Saul and Jonathan were killed in battle by the Philistines, and so David gets anointed king over Israel.

Well, years later, he's been the king for a long time.

And one day he wakes up and he asks this question, 2 Samuel 9, beginning in verse 1.

David asked, Is there anyone still left of the house of Saul to whom I can show kindness for Jonathan's sake?

Now there was a servant of Saul's household named Zeba.

They called him to appear before David, and the king said to him, Are you Zeba?

Your servant, he replied.

And the king asked, Is there no one still left of the house of Saul to whom I can show God's kindness?

Zeba answered the king, There is still a son of Jonathan.

He is crippled in both feet.

Where is he?

The king asked.

And Ziba answered, He is at the house of Makir, son of Amiel in Lodvar.

Now let me tell you what's happened here with this part of the story, because it's highlighted in another place in scripture instead of this chapter.

Jonathan, David's best friend, had a son named Mephibosheth.

We're going to meet him in just a moment.

Well, when Saul and his son Jonathan were killed in battle, the nurse that was responsible for Mephibosheth picked him up in order to keep him safe, picked him up and began to run with him in order to get him out of harm's way.

Well, she ran so fast that she tripped.

And she was carrying little five-year-old Mephibosheth.

And she fell on top of him, and his feet were permanently crippled in that accident.

That's what's happening here.

And so David hears about him.

In verse 5, David had him brought from Lodivar from the house of Makir, son of Amiel.

When Mephibosheth, son of Jonathan, the son of Saul, came to David, he bowed down to pay him honor.

David said, Mephibisheth, your servant, he replied.

David said, Don't be afraid.

Let me tell you why David said, Don't be afraid.

Because whenever a new king rose up, it was common practice that they would all go hunt down and find the ancestors of the former king and annihilate them.

So there would never be anyone from the former monarchy who could rise up and command the armies and come back and take, retake possession of the kingdom.

And so Mephibosheth, he's found.

And he thinks today I'm going to die.

And so he comes in, your servant, he replies, David said, Don't be afraid.

Imagine the look on his face.

For I will surely show you kindness for the sake of your father Jonathan.

I will restore to you all the land that belonged to your grandfather Saul, and you will always eat at my table.

Mephibosheth bowed down and said, What is your servant?

That you should notice a dead dog like me.

Then the king summoned Zeba, Saul's servant, and said to him, I have given your master's grandson everything that belonged to Saul and his family.

You and your sons and your servants are to farm the land for him, and bring in the crops, so that your master's grandson may be provided for.

And Mephibosheth, grandson of your master, will always eat at my table.

Now Zeba had fifteen sons and twenty servants.

And then Zeba said to the king, Your servant will do whatever my lord the king commands his servant to do.

So Mephibosheth ate at David's table like one of the king's sons.

Mephibosheth had a young son named Micah, and all the members of Zeba's household were servants of Mephibosheth.

And Mephibosheth lived in Jerusalem because he always ate at the king's table, and he was crippled in both feet.

It's a great story.

And I believe today that if you and I could take a drive with Mephibosheth, that I believe that there's a lot he would say to us, but I want to highlight three things specifically.

And the first is this your identity is greater than your brokenness.

Your identity is greater than your brokenness.

You know, the truth is all of us, in some way, like Mephiboshith, are crippled.

In some way.

And I want to tell you today that I have really struggled with how to communicate this.

And the reason why is because I don't know what it's like to be crippled physically.

I don't know what that's like, and I don't want to come across as insensitive to those who suffer physically that way, the way Mephibosheth did.

But I know that all of us are crippled in some way.

In fact, at David's table, there sat two people who were crippled.

One was Mephibosheth.

The other was David.

Because two chapters later, David committed adultery with Bathsheba and killed her husband, trying to cover the whole thing up.

How many of you know that's crippled?

One you could see, the other you couldn't because it was hidden in his heart.

But I know this, every one of us today are crippled in some way.

And what most of us do is we identify ourselves by our weaknesses.

When someone looked at Mephibosh, they knew two things about him.

One, he couldn't walk.

But two, his grandfather used to be the king.

Used to be.

Now, how many of you know that if your granddad had been the king, that your life had some upshot?

That there were some prospects that were available to you that were not available to the general public.

And every time Mephibosheth looked at his feet, he was reminded of the vast inheritance that he had lost.

He identified himself by his brokenness.

In fact, he says this in verse 8.

He says, Who am I that you should even notice a dead dog like me?

Now, as soon as he said that, there was something inside of David that just it just went off.

Because David had said these very words before.

Remember when David goes up to the hill to kill Goliath?

And he hears Goliath come out and just curse God's people.

And David said, What'll be done for the guy that kills that brute?

Well, you'll be made rich, you'll be made famous, and you get to marry the king's daughter.

And so David kills Goliath, and in 1 Samuel 18, 18, Saul brings his daughter to David, and David said this, Who am I?

And what is my family or my father's clan in Israel that I should become the king's son-in-law?

And Saul took his daughter and gave his daughter to someone else to marry.

Well, it wasn't until years later when David became the king that David realized, who am I?

Is a good question.

It's just not the first question.

Who am I is the second question.

Who is God is the first question.

And who is God is a whole lot better question.

Let me just, I want to give you some breaking news today.

Your friends may not may not have the heart or the courage to tell you this, but I love you.

And I'm going to tell you something that's true about us.

We are far more obsessed with ourselves than we are obsessed with God.

And that's the truth.

We identify ourselves by how broken we are.

Well, he's an alcoholic.

She's divorced.

He's an ex-con.

She's unemployed.

And on and on and on the list goes of our brokenness.

And in fact, we even come before God and we say, God.

God, look at me.

I'm not much.

I'll never do anything great for you.

And God says, you know what?

I made you.

And I love you.

But God, there's just been so much that I've done, so much that has happened to me.

I'll never be able to do anything great for you.

And God says, I'll tell you what, let's just start with friendship.

See where it goes.

And meanwhile, the enemy of our soul, the accuser, he stands back and he says, Look at you.

Look at all you've done.

If these people knew the truth about you, they'd never even let you in.

You'll never do anything great for God.

And here's God's goal.

That we become so dialed in on our inheritance in heaven that we get just consumed by it.

And that when the enemy of our soul begins to distract us, that we say, were you talking to me again?

Because you sound a whole lot like Charlie Brown's teacher to me.

Whang, wham, wham, whh, why.

All I can see is God.

I am so obsessed with my inheritance in heaven.

I'm obsessed with God.

Were you talking to me again?

That's God's goal.

That's God's goal.

Can I just tell you today that you've got issues?

And God's not distracted by those.

Because he loves you.

You're a whole lot more distracted by your issues than God is.

That's really the truth.

In fact, David essentially said, you know, Mephibosh, when I look at you, I don't see a dead dog.

I see royalty.

I see the heir of a vast inheritance.

And you can almost see.

You can almost see Mephibosha say.

Dead dog, royalty.

Dead dog royalty.

I think I like yours better.

Can I just give you some free counsel today?

Don't disagree with the king.

Don't disagree with the king.

His opinion matters more than yours does.

His opinion about you matters more than yours does.

Here's the second thing I believe Mephiboshith would say to us is this is that God is not disabled by your brokenness.

He's not disabled.

If we were honest today, most of us would say that because we are crippled in many ways, that life just has not turned out the way we thought it would.

You remember when you were in high school or college and you start thinking about life in your 30s and in your 40s and your 50s and your 60s, and you just start wondering, what will I be like as an old man?

What will I be like as an old woman?

Here's the way I want my life to go.

And then we get into life, and life begins to happen.

And there's a business failure.

And some of us go through divorce, tragedy, accidents, loss, brokenness, and we think, you know what?

This is not going the way I thought.

This thing's not turning out the way I planned for it to.

Can I just tell you why that is?

Because you're crippled.

Crippled.

I want to give you four ways, at least four, but I want to give you four today that all of us are crippled.

Number one is what I want to just call weakness.

All of us are weak in some areas.

Some of our weakness is permanent.

Some of it's temporary things, things we can actually improve on.

I'm convinced most of it's relational in nature.

But let me tell you another thing I've learned.

Most people who have difficulty handling finances, it's not because they have a wicked heart.

It's because they've never been taught.

And if that's you, call our stewardship ministry.

Let us help you with that.

But the point of having a weakness, it just says, today, I can't do better than I'm doing today.

It's just an area of weakness for me.

Here's the second way that all of us are crippled.

It's what I want to call, or actually, the Bible calls it iniquity.

Iniquity.

And iniquity is an inward bent towards some sin.

It's not the same thing as sin.

And if you read the NIV, which I do, the NIV wrongly uses these two words interchangeably.

But in Hebrew, they're two different words.

The sin is the external part that people can see.

The iniquity is the inward thing that makes us hungry for whatever that sin is.

Here's what God said in the giving of the Ten Commandments.

Exodus 20, verse 5, he says, For I, the Lord your God, am a jealous God, visiting, here it is, the iniquity of the fathers upon the children to the third and fourth generations of those who hate me.

Exodus 20:5

But showing mercy to thousands, to those who love me and keep my commandments.

The sin is the external part, the iniquity is the inward part.

Think about it this way: think about a young man growing up in a house where his father didn't know how to handle stress.

And so the way he handled it was with alcohol.

Well, the only way this little boy knows how to handle stress now is with some addictive behavior.

And it could be drugs, it could be alcohol, it could be work.

But the addictive behavior is the iniquity on the inside.

It may have a whole lot of different results on the outside, but everybody's got some iniquity.

Everybody does.

Here's the third part, the third way that all of us are crippled is physical.

Just simply something wrong in your body.

As I was getting ready for this message, I counted seven or eight just personally.

Just, you know, stuff that is just not right in my body.

And that's just the ones that I know about.

Now listen, I'm believing that God's gonna heal all of it.

But right now, I need God.

And there are worse places that a person could be than that.

Right?

Here's the fourth way that we're all crippled.

It's what I want to just call inherent.

Inherent.

Here's what I mean by that.

It's built in by God.

It's built in.

We all want to be the total package.

The guru.

You got a need?

You come to me, because I got it all.

All of us want to be that way.

We want to live life without any disabilities.

But there are gifts and abilities that God left out of you and me on purpose, by design.

1 Corinthians 12 says that in the body there are many gifts.

There's some hands, there's some feet, there's some eyes, there's some ears.

You realize that we in the Western Church have so exalted the gift of eloquence that we have basically acted like all the rest of the gifts in the body are secondary to this primary gift.

It's just not what the Bible says.

In fact, the most powerful people in Scripture couldn't speak well.

You know, Moses stuttered.

Paul was not eloquent, but they took Paul's handkerchief to the sick, and sick people got up healed.

That's a pretty good trade to me.

Let me tell you something.

In the very place that God has called you, God will disable something important that you think you need so that you see your need for Him.

It's just the way God does it.

And when Paul got a revelation of this, he wrote these words in 2 Corinthians 12, beginning in verse 7.

He says, To keep me from becoming conceited because of these surpassingly great revelations, there was given me a thorn in my flesh, a messenger of Satan to torment me.

Three times I pleaded with the Lord to take it away from me, but he said, My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.

Therefore I will boast all the more gladly about my weakness.

Here it is, so that Christ's power may rest on me.

That is why for Christ's sake I delight in weaknesses, in insults, in hardships, in persecutions, in difficulties, for when I'm weak, then I am strong.

God sees our brokenness as an opportunity to show us how much he loves us.

And the crippleness that Mephibosheth suffered with made room for God to enter in and demonstrate how much he loved him.

God wasn't disabled just because Mephibosheth was.

And you need to know that God is not disabled just because you are either.

God's not disabled.

The way you and I deal with our weakness is as much an indicator of our success as the way we deal with our strengths.

God says to you today, why don't we just start out with friendship?

See where it goes.

Here's the third thing I believe Mephibosheth would say to us is this God is not ashamed of your brokenness.

He's not ashamed of your brokenness.

Some of you really need to hear this.

God's not embarrassed by you.

He's not ashamed of you.

He's not just tolerating your presence.

And he's not waiting for a legal reason to do away with you.

He loves you.

He loves you.

And I want to show you something very profound that took place in the life of Mephibosheth.

2 Samuel chapter 5, beginning in verse 6.

2 Samuel 5 · chapter mention

Look at what happened here.

This is when David was ruling in a little town called Hebron, and Jerusalem was not yet the throne of Israel.

This is when it became the throne of Israel.

Chapter 5, verse 6.

The king and his men marched toward Jerusalem to attack the Jebusites who lived there.

The Jebusites said to David, You will not get in here.

Even the blind and the lame can ward you off.

They thought David cannot get in here.

Nevertheless, David captured the fortress of Zion, the city of David.

On that day, David said, Anyone who conquers the Jebusites will have to use the watershaft, and then he digs at them a little to reach those lame and blind who are David's enemies.

That is why they say the blind and lame will not enter the palace.

Now it became a saying.

And this grew into a national proverb: the blind and lame will not enter the palace, and they were not allowed in.

Ever.

For any reason they were not allowed in.

And you compound that with the fact that it's actually in the law in Leviticus 21, verse 18, no man who has any defect may come near.

Leviticus 21:18

No man who is blind or lame, disfigured or deformed, no man with a crippled foot or hand.

Now imagine David's surprise when he learned that Mephibosheth was crippled.

Without a second thought, he sent for the son of his best friend Jonathan.

And he had him brought in so that he could welcome him, his family.

Here's the reason why.

Before Mephibosheth was ever hurt, David made a covenant.

Here's the covenant.

1 Samuel 20, this is Jonathan, Mephibosheth's father, speaking.

He says to David, But show me unfailing kindness like that of the Lord, as long as I live, so that I may not be killed.

And do not ever cut off your kindness from my family.

Not even when the Lord has cut off every one of David's enemies from the face of the earth.

David had a covenant with Mephibosh's father, Jonathan.

And it listen, it was a covenant of kindness.

That is why twice in 2 Samuel 9, the chapter we read a moment ago, twice David says, Is there anyone left of the house of Saul that I can show kindness to for Jonathan's sake?

It was a covenant of kindness.

Covenant says, He's my family.

The law says, the lame and the blind can't come in.

You need to hear this.

Covenant trumps law.

Covenant trumps law.

David was not ashamed to give Mephibosheth his inheritance, even though his being crippled meant that he was not allowed to apprehend it.

I want to remind you of something that Pastor Robert taught us years ago.

God came to people and said, I want to enter into a covenant with you.

And we said, Okay, we'll do that.

And God goes, Oh, wait a minute.

You can't keep a covenant.

I know you.

So, Jesus, I'm going to enter into a covenant with you.

And you and I get in on this covenant by faith.

David did not have a covenant with Mephibosheth.

David had a covenant with his father Jonathan.

And Mephibosheth got in on it by faith.

Your inheritance in God is not determined by your ability to sufficiently do.

Mephibosheth never killed a giant, could never lead an army in battle.

The only thing he could offer David was friendship.

That's it.

Really, the same is true of us with God.

And so here's what the Lord says to us.

1 Corinthians 6 verse 9 says this.

1 Corinthians 6:9

Do you not know that the wicked will not inherit the kingdom of God?

Do not be deceived, neither the sexually immoral, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor male prostitutes, nor homosexual offenders, nor thieves, nor the greedy, nor drunkards, nor slanderers.

He's not through yet.

He's going to make sure that everybody's hooked in this one.

Nor swindlers nor will inherit the kingdom of God.

And if you ever get verse 11, God will get you.

And that is what some of you were.

But you were washed.

You were sanctified.

You were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and by the Spirit of our God.

When David gave Mephibosheth his inheritance, it was not an act of property management.

It was an act of kindness.

Because he loved him.

You need to understand this.

God is not ashamed to place his name at stake in your inheritance.

In fact, the name Mephibosheth means to cast away shame.

We all walk around with baggage.

We carry it around.

The covenant we have with God is a covenant of kindness.

Think about every time Mephibosheth came to David's table and he pulled himself up.

His feet were covered by the inheritance that David gave back to him.

That's you.

That's you.

I want you to bow your heads, close your eyes, and I want to talk to you just for a second.

Because I really believe that right now that there is in the house a breaking off of shame from people.

You may have done some things in your past that you hope nobody ever finds out about.

And somewhere deep in your heart, you know God knows.

I can keep secrets from people, but I can't keep secrets from God.

And you know God knows.

And there's just a little bit of a fear, maybe a great fear.

You know, I want my kids to go on with God, but for me I'm disqualified because I know what I've done.

And the Lord comes today to say, I'm going to cover that.

I'm going to cover what makes you ashamed.

And I'm going to break that shame off of you today in Jesus' name.

So in just a moment, we're going to pray.

We want to pray for you.

As soon as I pray, we're going to stand up.

Our altar ministry team is going to come down to the front.

You don't have to be a member of Gateway Church to receive prayer today.

In fact, we're not even going to ask you to join the church.

Our sole priority here is to minister the love and the word of God to you today.

And if we can do that, we'd be honored to do that.

I want you to turn your heart to God right now.

And just ask him, God, is there anything between me and you that we need to deal with today?

Father, thank you today for your goodness.

Thank you today.

That covenant trumps law.

Because we can't keep the law.

God, it's our delight to walk in covenant friendship with you.

And thank you today that you extend a hand of kindness to us and say, Let's just be friends and see where it goes.

So, Father, if there are any today who need the ministry that only you can give, and God, we pray that you draw them today in Jesus' name.