Generational Patterns- God’s Redeeming Power and Grace: 2 Samuel 21:1-22

You're listening to The Bible Guys, a podcast where a

couple of friends talk about the Bible in fun in

practical ways.

Hey, good morning everyone.

My name is Chris Zarba and my name is Kyle

Dobbin Meyer. Dobbin Meyer, you said your last name.

I had to follow.

Both of us have weird last names. Yeah, right, I mean,

in other words, it's not like Smith, No, right, even

Forrester's pretty pretty doable, fun fact.

I mean, I don't know, you'll think this is fine.

I think this is I think the our listeners are

like this. So the other day I was looking up

on our database, which for our church that we both

work at, Heritage. We have this database attracts names, and

we're looking up names just to see, you know, how

many Dobbin Myers have ever attended Heritage. There's twenty three

Dobbin Myers in our database, which is kind of a lot.

But then I searched. I was like, wonder how many

Smiths there are. There's like five hundred and thirty five

people with the last name Smith that have ever attended Heritage.

So I thought that was pretty wild.

Wow, thirty five out of like seventy thousand names. But still, yeah,

that's pretty wild.

Yeah, that's incredible. Do you know that here we are

just just rambling about the names. When I lived Atlanta,

Georgia for ten years back in the nineties, they still

had phone books, right, and in Atlanta, I had I

think it was either two or three phone books. I

think it was two, but it was like, you know,

really like six inches thick, and it was like a

through m okay, but it was the greater Atlanta area.

It was four million.

People and then and so anyway, it was z and

so I looked up and I thought, I wonder how

many zarbas there are in the city of Atlanta.

I had a four million people. I looked it up.

We're the only ones? Are you serious? The only ones?

We're the only zarbas in places. Yeah, So it's pretty funny.

That's kind of wild to think about the phone book.

That's a different time, man, a different time nowadays.

It's like, yeah, that's it's crazy to even think that

the phone book existed.

Yeah, I think I think that's when I started prank

calling people. It was the first phone book I had

at my parents' house.

Right.

Yeah, So hey, we're gonna start off with a segment

called the Babylon b because we are dedicated to the best.

News for our listeners, only the best.

And if you don't know, bebelon Bee's a satire column,

but it's always hilarious. It's a very sophisticated humor and

it is very funny. They write it as if it's true,

which to me is just so funny. So here's how

the article reads. The headlines says kid cleverly waits until

bedtime before asking dad to explain the trinity. Okay Omaha,

Nebraska local father Sam Libert was tricked into keeping his

children up far too late last night after his kids

cleverly waited until bedtime to ask him to explain the trinity.

Libert had just finished getting his children, Bradley and Evelyn,

washed up and changed into pajamas and tucked away securely

into their beds when Evelyn repeatedly gave Bradley a knowingly

glance and asked, Daddy, what is the trinity? Can you

tell us? Sam froz for a moment before answering, uh,

he said, the Trinity is well, it's complicated, don't you know, daddy?

Bradley asked, quickly pressing his father on the issue. Of

course I do, son, Sam said, confidently, It's just it's

one of those things that it's like, you know, hold

on a minute. The Libert family, the livered children continue

to contain their glee, knowing that their plan had worked.

Sources within uh, hang hang on.

Sources with inside knowledge of the Libert household claimed to

have the kids weren't interested in the specifics of the trinity,

but just.

Wanted to get out of going to bed.

In any event, Sam bravely formulated his response, You know,

Clover's right, how they have three leaves and yet there's

still one clover? Yeah, His children started stared silently. Now, wait,

that's not the best explanation. How about this an egg?

An egg has three different parts, the shell, the white,

and the yolk, right, but it's one egg, get it?

Or wait, it's a lot more than that, it's actually

Sam then noticed that his explanation of the trinity had

inadvertently put bread and evidence of sleep. At publishing time,

Bradley and Evelyn were holding a closed door meeting today

to devise a better plan to stay up later than

the normal bedtime by asking their dad to explain free

will versus God's sovereignty.

That is so funny. That's great.

I've actually never heard the clover one too. I've heard

the agg illustration about this the whole.

That's kind of funny though. Yeah, you never love everyone. Yeah,

but I actually can relate those.

When my kids were younger, especially, they would ask it's

felt like the most deep questions. Oh God, you're about

to put in a bed. And they're like like, like, Dad,

do you love me? And I'm like, of course, well,

can you tell us how much you love me?

Like you?

What is what is love to you? You're like, how

are you asking this question right now? I was always

right then and there they dropped those bombs.

You know. That's when my son accepted christ was I

was talking him into bed, and I was like, we

had just stayed up late. We just watched Spider Man

number one, and you know, I remember our uncle Ben

get shot and dies.

Won, like the two thousand and four Spider Man. Yeah, yeah, yeah, told.

Yeah, and so yeah, he was like five or six

years old and we and we I'm not sure if

we watch it right when it came out or a

couple of years later. I think it was a couple

of years later because it was at home. We watched

it and I'm talking to Bed and I'm like, I'm like, son,

it's late. We got to go to bed, and he goes. Dad,

he goes because what happens when a person dies? And

I'm like, I got to go.

So I mean, like, I'm talking to you tomorrow.

And then finally we just started talking about it and

he's like, so he's like, do people go to heaven?

How do I get to heaven? And I'm like, are

you serious right now?

And so finally I just sort of surrendered to it

and I was like, I think my son is asking

me about about salvation. So we just talked and talked

and talked, and he prayed right there and that's how

he got saved.

That's great, which.

Was you know, hey, that's a good lesson, I guess,

and just knowing his parents that you know, maybe your

kids are playing something playing you, but also it may

lead to a great conversation.

Well, I tell you what.

Here's great advice to parents, and that is budget time

for checking your kids into bed. Always budget time because

as parents, we want to get them in the bed

and then get downstairs to what lounge around probably right,

turn on the TV and lounge most of the time.

Or something silly like that.

But if you budget time to tuck your kids into bed,

those are some of the best moments that you can have.

That's really good. It's really really good. Yeah, you never

know what could come from it too.

Yep.

All right, So I know we're in Second Samuel, chapter

twenty one. Let's see what verses we're reading today. This

one is twenty one Chapter twenty one. Verses one through

twenty two is what I'm going to be reading.

Hey, i'd like to read this. It's a really good

statement of context. It basically summarizes it by saying, these

are the later years of David's reign. David ruled over

Israel for many years. After the rebellions of Absolom and Sheba.

He finally subdued the Philistines and wrote a song of

praise to God for giving the nation rest from all

their enemies. Near the end of Israel, he decided to

take a census and violation of God's wishes, leading to

tragic consequences for the nation.

It's a good contract set up, Yep, great setup.

All right.

Second Samuel will start in verse one Chapter twenty one

says there was a famine during David's reign that.

Lasted for three years.

So David asked the Lord about it, and the Lord said,

the famine has come because Saul and his family are

guilty of murdering the Gibeonites.

So the king summoned the Gibbeanites. They were a part.

They're not part of Israel, but we're all that was

left in the nation of the Amorites. The people of

Israel had sworn not to kill them, but Saul and

his zeal for Israel and Judah had tried to wipe

them out. David asked them, what can I do for you?

How can I make amends so that you will bless

the Lord's people again. Well, money can't settle this matter

between us and the family of Saul. The gibbean Nites replied,

neither can we demand the life of anyone in Israel.

What can I do?

Then David asked, just tell me and I will do

it for you. Then they replied, it was Saul who

planned to destroy us, to keep us from having any

place at all in the territory of Israel. So let

seven of Saul's sons be handed over to us. We

will execute them before the Lord at Gibeon on the

mountain of the Lord. All right, the king said, I

will do it. The King spared Jonathan's son Mephibisheth, which

we talked about earlier this week, as well, who was

Saul's grandson. Because of the oath David and Jonathan had

sworn beatfore the Lord, but he gave them Sauls two sons,

Harmoni and Maphibisheth, whose mother was Rispa daughter of aa.

He also gave them the five sons of Saul's daughters,

Mireb the wife of Ariel, son of Barzilai from Mahola.

The men of Gibeon executed them on the mountain before

the Lord, so all seven of them died together at

the beginning of the barley harvest. Then Rispah daughter of Aia,

the mother of two of the men, spread burlap on

a rock and stayed there the entire harvest season. She

prevented the scavenger birds from tearing at their bodies during

the day and stopped wild animals from eating them at night.

When David learned what Rispah Sal's concombine had done, he

went to the people of Jabesh Giliad and retrieved the

bones of so All and his son Jonathan. Then it

says in quotes, when the Philistines had killed Saul and

Jonathan on Mount Gilboa, the people of Gibesh Giliad stole

their bodies from the public square of Bethshan, where the

Philistines had hung them. So David obtained the bones of

sal and Jonathan, as well as the bones the men

the gibe Knits had executed. Then the king ordered that

they bury the bones in the tomb of Kish, Saul's father,

the town of Zeila in the land of Bejamin. After

that God ended the famine in the land. And then

it says this next section is about the battles against

the Philistine giants, which David has a history of that

as we know with David and Goliath. But it says

this once again, the Philistines were at war with Israel,

and when David and his men were in the thick

of battle, David became weak and exhausted. Ishbai Banab was

a descendant of the giants. His bronze spear had weighed

more than seven pounds, and he was armed with a

new sword. He had cornered David and was about to

kill him, but Abeshi, son of Zarua came to David's

rescue and killed the Philistine. Then David's men declared, you're

not going out to battle with us again. Why we're

snuffing out the light of Israel. After this, there was

another battle against the Philistines of gob As they fought

Sibekai from Husha killed saff another descendant of the Giants.

During another battle of gob El, Hennan, son of Jar

from Bethlehem, killed the brother of Goliath of Gath. The

handle of his spear was as sticks, was as thick

as a beaver's beam. Weavers beed, there you go, I

totally do you say beaver's weed, I did weaver's beam.

In another battle of the Philistines of Gath, they encountered

a huge man with six fingers on each hand, his

six toes on each foot, twenty four in all. I

love that that they had to add it up for us,

twenty four in all, who was also a descendant of

the giants. But when he defiled and taunted Israel, he

was killed by Jonathan, the son of David's brother Shamea.

These four Philistines were descended to the giants of Gath,

but David and his warriors killed them.

Wow.

Yeah, so uh so David here is just tired, yes,

and obviously he is uh still having to deal with

uh giants, all these Philistines and uh and what what

what a mess he's having to deal with the uh

there's a famine in the land. And he goes to

God and says, why is there a famine the land?

God's ultimately in control of all those things, right, Famine

usually meant there's no rain, right, So there's no rain,

there's no crops.

Uh, there's there's.

Hardly any water. So and and then and then what

does God say? God says, well, it's because of these

sins that are you know, taking care of the past.

So it is really interesting how the rules of war

for us just seem so unbelievably horrible, and they are,

but in those days, it wasn't anything to you know,

hand over the spoils of war, you know. So you know,

here Saul has done this great injustice. Or remember there's

no government, right, there's no government, there's no laws of

the land, which is one of the reasons why God

gave levitical laws, and you know, there were cultural laws.

There was there was laws.

That God gave because there was no government, so you

had to follow and there was consequences, you know, for actions.

You had to have consequences for misbehaving. And so because

there's none of that, you know, that's why there's rules.

So anyway, all that to say, you know, here here's

Saul misbehaves and there's no consequences for him, right, and

so you know, here's God reacting to sin in a

way that he does not react to today. You know,

he doesn't act that way today because of our sins.

But back then here we have this consequences of the sins.

It's what does this say?

It's a three years right, it's a three year famine

all because of yeah, this act.

Yeah yeah, yeah, Well, I mean I shouldn't say that

God doesn't react that way entirely, because you know, sin

does have an effect on different generations. There's generational sin.

We certainly know that. But this idea that David would

have to hand over a sacrifice to make me right,

I certainly know for a fact that the principles don't

carry over. We don't have to pay for our sins

with a sacrifice, because the sacrifice has already been given.

Huh in that way that you know, that's completely not

relevant for ours even to fall along with that.

In the Life Application Study Bible, there's a note about that.

It says, although the Bible does not recoverd Saul's act

of vengeance against the Gibba Kights, it was apparently a

serious crime making guilty.

Of their blood.

Still, why were Saul's sons killed for the murders of

their father committed?

And this kind of gives us context.

What you're sharing there is that in many Near Eastern cultures,

including Israel, an entire family was held guilty for the

crime of the father because the family was considered an

indissoluble unit. Saul broke the vow that Israels had made

to the Gibbei Ights. This was a serious offense against

God's law, which is numbers thirty. And either David was

falling in the custom of treating the families a unit,

or Saul's sons were guilty of helping Saul kill the

Gibbean Kights. So what's saying here is maybe they were

actually guilty for killing the Gibbon Kites. Maybe Saul's sons

were involved in that, they were actually like they were

a part of it, or maybe it's just a part

of the custom in which they they they had to

be like an eye for an eye type situation there.

But either way, you're right, I'm so thankful that that's

that we don't have to.

Yeah, yeah, because again, the sacrifice has already been made

for us since right, so there's no restitution that we

would have to pay, you know, of the life of

somebody because of because of what we've done.

But nevertheless, here's David. He's coming to the end of

his reign.

He's still dealing with all that, you know, all that stuff,

and and hey, you know what I absolutely love about this.

It's hilarious is that he said, Paul says, or the

Bible says that that David spared miss Phibisheth, who was

Saul's grandson. But so then he gave them Saul's two sons,

Amri and Phibischeff.

Yeah, I thought it was interesting. Which is another name? Okay,

just like there's three James. Yeah, yeah, he's another son.

There's different John's. In fact, it even says uh uh.

At the end of the chapter it says when he

defied and talked to Israel, he was killed by Jonathan,

the son of David's brother Shamiah. And when you hear Jonathan,

you think of Salson Jonathan, right, So there's different phibischeffs.

And apparently that was a name good enough. I'd like

to meet him. Would you imagine that being a name

good enough? Yeah, that's wild. By the way.

I I had a guy, a kid who I actually

knew in the second grade, and his name was Epifanio.

Wow, have you ever met? I think it's biblical, though

it's gonna be in one of these verses, that's for sure. Yeah,

for sure, I'm gonna be reading it. Yeah. One thing

I say to and I do love the fact, you

know you're.

Reading this and you're seeing that song. All sons were

held responsible for even either as father's actions or their own.

Either way, there's a serial I mean death because of that.

But I'm so thankful, aren't we thankful that we aren't

judged in that same way? As you mentioned earlier? There

is I do believe that there is generational sin, but

at the same time, I love the fact that we

aren't held accountable for the mistakes of our parents or grandparents,

and and and and the more you get to know God,

the more you get to know Scripture, you get to

see in the New Testament, you begin to realize that

He separates our sin as far as the east is

from the west. And I think it's it's one of

those things when I think on, you know, my parents,

my grandparents and things that happen, and I'm just so

thankful that we have a God who gives us a

new chance, a new start, a fresh start at life,

and wipes us late clean. And we should be thankful

for that as well.

Yeah, you know, it's it's interesting, but don't you find

yourself becoming.

More and more like your parents the order you.

Get and uh, And that's a good thing in a

lot of ways, because you know the good side of

your parents. But at the same time, many times we

are victims of becoming you know, the sort of the

we sort of emulate the bad side, right, And so

it's interesting how as much head knowledge as we can

have in our lives, we behave in such ways we

don't even recognize it in ourself. And then we takes

somebody like our wives or somebody close to us, a

good friend and says, hey, you're acting like your dad,

and you'd say, no, I'm not.

And then you step back and you go, oh, my gosh,

I am I'm doing the same things. I'm doing the

same things, you know.

Jeff Forrester always says that the reason why he doesn't

drink alcohol not because taking a sip of alcohol is

a sin, because that's not a sin. But he says,

the reason why I'll do it is because he said

my parents, my parents were alcoholics, right, or at least

his dad was. And he says, so he goes, I

am probably a predisposed alcoholic, and so therefore he goes,

I'm pretty sure that in fact, he's said that before.

But he doesn't take a drink. And he's over in

another country and they offer him a drink. He goes, oh, no, no, no,

thank you. I'm an alcoholic and it's the best way

to get out of it, right, And they're like, well, okay,

we're not gonna Uh. It's like, uh, I just saw

a movie Crazy Stupid Love with Steve Corell and and

uh and it's Marissa Tome who He's in a bar

and he walks over and he goes, let me buy

you a drink, and she says, no, no, thank you,

and he goes, come on, let me buy you a drink,

and she goes, I'm five years sober. And the waitress

comes over and she goes, we're gonna get for you,

and he goes.

Go away forever, do not come back here.

Right, that's right, you trying to be all smooth, try

to pick her up, but then realized it was not

the right It's.

Not the right way. But that'll get you out of it.

But the reason why he says to do that, and

Jeff does is because he says, hey, you know, chances

are he goes, there's something chemically about my body.

It's probably I probably am alcoholic. Right, he doesn't know,

but but that's it is the case. We we uh

we we do uh we.

We are fickle. We are are very fragile human beings.

And the older I get, the more that I value counseling.

I'm not sure if you ever been in therapy.

Have you ever been a therapy?

But you know, I sometimes think like, oh, you know,

I'm from the generation. I think Generation X is really

a generation that hopefully we're better than our previous generation.

Hopefully every generation gets a little better. But you know,

we've been taught by our generation, you know, the the

Boomers that you know, you just sort of pull yourself

up by your bootstraps to tough enough. You sort of

ignore it, you know, you sweep it under the carpet.

And that's that's what was modeled for us. And hopefully

our generation, you know, is the one that says, you

know what, it's okay to say I love you to

our kids. So our generation is really the first one

to saturate, you know, our kids with the I love

you because because we weren't saturated with it because guess

why their parents weren't modeled.

They weren't modeled. That's that's not what their.

Parents were, the silent generation who never said a flipping

thing ever, Right, And so for our parents to say

I love you is a rare thing.

You know.

But but our generation says, now we're going to say

I love you. I'm getting off on a tangent here,

but I'm talking to us. I started off talking about sin. Right,

we are such fickle and frads of human beings. It's

amazing how God in the Bible gives us advice on

who we are. You know, we just we just learned

this in our small group last night. How he says

a soft answer turns away wrath, and we were like,

does it really? And then we try it in our

practices and our conflicts.

We're like, wow, it does work.

We realize how fickle we are as humans, and as

much head knowledge and as much wisdom as we have

about ourselves, we have to realize that we are victims

of our father's sins, and we are victims of our

mother's sins and our and our and our family's tendencies,

and we do carry over. Have you ever seen those

commercials by I think it's agressive, progressive becoming your parents?

I love, what is it?

Don't become like your parent? What was to say, don't

become like your parents? And then it does the it's

so good, they're good, they're so good.

Guess what. They're funny for a reason because they're true true, yes, right, yep, yeah,

And that's usual.

At least, it's showing more like the meme side, the

joke side of what it's like to become like your parents,

you know, But.

No, I think there's something to that. I think you're right.

I do wonder if sometimes what happens is you say, man,

I'll never become like that, I'll never do that, and

what ends up happening is for one, maybe maybe it's

in the blood, and I definitely there's that. There's some

some you know, predisposition towards certain things or struggles or temptations.

But I think what happens so often is we start

looking outward, looking man if they wouldn't have done that,

if this person wanted to, instead of just having a

little bit of self awareness and saying, man, I just

need to really work on this. This is something I

need to work on. His quit pointing fingers, blaming somebody else,

This is something I need to work on. And I'm

wondering if sometimes that would help, because I find myself

in the same way some of the things that would

frustrate me about family members or friends, and I'm saying

I will never become that way, and then you stip

back and you're like, man, I'm becoming that way. Like

I'm duplicating exactly what I said I would not do.

But it takes some humility and self awareness to say

I don't want to just continue to blame or point fingers.

I won't do that. I need to actually say no,

I'm gonna pause and try to turn from those ways.

Yeah.

Yeah, So one good, one good takeaway from this chapter

as we wrap it up, is to say, hey, listen,

the sacrifice has already been paid, you know, for your

for any generational sin. However, uh, you know, we have

to pay attention to the fact that there is sin

that has passed down in families. Uh, there are tendencies,

there are there are things that we do, we gravitate toward,

we behave in ways that we're unaware of. That's been

proven and uh, and so let's pay attention to that,

but ultimately realizing that Jesus has paid the sacrifice for

any wrongdoing that any of our parents have done or

we have ever done. Right, So there's not a there's

not a a sacrifice that's going to be demanded like

this and David, but let's pay attention to generational sin.

That's good.

All right, Well, that's that's our time. Let's go ahead

and wrap up, and we'll see you hopefully next time

on the Bible guys, see tomorrow.

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