Title: God's Grace / 2 Samuel 9:1-13
Contents <2 Samuel 9:1-13> "God's grace"
In the early days of David's reign as king, he could not enjoy rest due to war, but now, when the nation regains peace and enjoys stability through the power of God, he thinks of his enemies, the Saul family. So, at the end of an inquiry to find Saul's bereaved family, he found a man named Ziba who was a servant in Saul's house. Through him, he learned that Mephibosheth, Jonathan's son, was still alive.
When David told Sheba that he was going to bring God's favor to Saul's house, Sheba took Mephibosheth from Lodbar Ammiel's house to the king. Perhaps from the point of view of Sheba, the king may have led Mephibosheth, thinking that the king was seeking to destroy the descendants of Saul's family. However, David was never looking for the bereaved family of the Saul family with the intention of preventing a prayer to overthrow the throne in advance, as many people think. Nor was it a procedure to gain recognition for the legitimacy of David's usurpation. Nor did he have any sympathy for Jonathan's son.
The grace that David wants to bestow upon Saul's house is not merely a personal and human grace, but it reveals the compassion of the nation that God rules as a true King. In other words, David's actions are shown as a shadow of God's mercy.
When David regained national stability, it was because of the promise he had made to Jonathan in the past to find the family of Saul who had been destroyed and to give him grace. The content of the promise in 1 Samuel 20:14-16, 42 is as follows. First, he would not kill Jonathan, and second, he would not cut off the Son of Man from Jonathan's house. The witness to this was Jehovah God. Even at this time, the relationship between David and Jonathan was quite different from what it is today. It was a time when David's life depended on Jonathan. Nevertheless, Jonathan realized that his life depended on David because he knew that God was not with his father Saul, but with David. So, David, who was being chased, took his life as a mortgage. It was something that could not be understood from a human point of view, but at that time Jonathan saw not only his own power in front of him, but also saw and believed in what God was doing.
The grace that David bestowed upon Mephibosheth in this way was truly immense. All the land belonging to Saul was occupied by Shiba, who was his servant, and Shiba drove out his master's grandson, who had become sick, into a poor house. Not only did he return Saul's land and property to Mephibosheth, but he also treated Mephibosheth like his own son, that is, a prince.
Judging from the general rule of the kingdom to exterminate all men of the old royal family, who are rivals for the welfare and endless development of his royal family, David's grace was not just God's grace, but rather a superior one. What we can see through this work is that God is showing the meaning of salvation through the poor, and furthermore, the work of Jesus shows that it has nothing to do with the protection of the weak in the Old Testament. And as a result of ignorance of the modern church today, it is the fact that they are heading towards an abnormal ministry. So the distorted appearance of the church is appearing here and there, a good example of which is making people with power, money, and wealth shout loudly, and instead, the church has become a place where the powerless, poor, and powerless are despised and ignored. is. This is no longer a church.
Because the church was born by promise within the promise of God, and is still moving according to the promise. This is because God's covenant clearly includes the protection of the weak. When God entered into a covenant relationship with Israel, God revealed His name. “God said to Moses, “I am who I am.” And he said, “Thus you say to the children of Israel, He who I am has sent me to you. They shall be called Jehovah, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob. This is my eternal name and my sign that will be remembered from generation to generation” (Exodus 3:14-15). He revealed that he is the God of the covenant.
Is Cain saying to God, am I my brother or my keeper? As mentioned above, the covenant will be fulfilled at the level that rejects this spirit of Cain, and this is salvation. He is the image of God who protects Abel, the God who protects the weak, the God of the covenant who works in a way that loves his brothers.
The protection of the weak in the Bible is about universalizing the spirit of the Ten Commandments in every corner of society. Just as He rescued Israel from slavery in Egypt, sacrificing the Passover lamb and bringing them out, so God's grace was planted through the Sabbath, Sabbath, Jubilee, and tithe in order to be planted throughout the nation of Israel. All of this was in the sense that Israel would become Israel only when God's mercy among them continued in the form of a covenant by protecting the weak.
Whatever Israel does, this protection of the weak is included. Even when offering sacrifices, there is a law to protect the weak. Therefore, if this law to protect the weak is not implemented, there is no use in offerings for ceremonies, feasts, or prayers (Isa 1:10-17). Rather, these actions only brought about God's judgment. “Learn to do good, seek justice, help the oppressed, plead for the orphan, plead for the widow” (Isaiah 1:17). I did.
The disregard of the protection of the weak in the Promised Land is a phenomenon that occurs because of their unbelief that they can live in the Promised Land on their own. God does not leave Israel alone, but allows them to attack Israel through external enemies and remind them of God's covenant again because of the suffering.
Therefore, this is the reason why Israel's saving the king itself became a sin. Even though they live in the Promised Land, they are not interested in the covenant and, on the contrary, like the Gentile kings who block God's mercy and mercy, they not only claim to be saved by force, but also to maintain the kingdom by force. will be David's position in this respect was to transform Israel's mindset in Saul into a Davidic state of mind. It didn't last long, but David's spirit was the shadow of Jesus Christ, the descendant of David who was to come.
Therefore, Jesus came in the form of a poor man from his birth. The evidence shows that he was born in a manger where animals were born because there was no place for him to be in the official, and that his whole life was a life of hardship. The early church, which was born through the sacrifice of this Jesus Christ, was indistinguishable. I don't have yours or mine, I live without discrimination between the rich and the poor, even if I was in the donation center (2 Corinthians 8:-9:) I donate in the hope that everyone will reach the same level under the principle of "to equalize" I did. Therefore, the law to protect the weak in the gospel is to live content with what we eat and wear, which is the right spirit of living in the gospel (1 Timothy 6:6-21). Conversely, to be friends with the world is to become enemies with God (James 4:4). Therefore, the believer knows that rejecting the mental state of knowing that the riches of this world are all things are the spirit of the cross and that they cannot live without Jesus Christ, who came from heaven.
Protecting the weak is not just an ethic, it is God's covenant itself. Therefore, this spirit knows that I am weak. This is mercy, and it is God's grace. Like Mephibosheth who stood before David, he said, "What is this servant, that you look after me like a dead dog?" He was able to show God's favor because he saw Mephibosheth's appearance as David's own situation.
It is important to note that if we live according to the covenant in this world, we must give up the expectation that we will be honored or treated. If this is not given up, Christ's mercy and compassion will inevitably be expelled from the church. Today, when the church acts as a parent to those without parents, as a husband to those who do not have a husband, and as a refuge for a traveler who has lost his hometown, the church can truly be said to be the church in which the protection of the weak has been restored.