David Stockton 3/7/21 David Stockton 3/7/21

A Divided Heart

Series: A Kingdom Divided
March 7, 2021 - David Stockton

Good morning. It’s very, very, very encouraging to see people here after the last two weeks of messages. Uneasy laughter. It makes sense. It’s been a bit dicey the last couple of weeks. We’ve been going through First Kings. We’re getting a heavy dose of something. And I really am thankful that people are coming to hear God’s word. I’m thankful for the people who are encouraging me. Because you know that I’m just kind of trying to do my best. I’m not perfect in any way and don’t have all this stuff figured out. But I’m trying to really dissect what our cultural moment is describing to us as a vision for God’s righteousness; and trying to get into the biblical narrative and find out what is really a vision for God’s righteousness—against what is popular in our culture, and maybe what is against what’s going on in our own souls and minds.

I don’t claim to be good at it or perfect at it in any way. But I’m doing my best. And thankfully, we have the word of God. I have some people that I’m able to process with. I really do feel like the messages that I’ve been preaching really do represent our elder team and our leadership team here, our staff, all of those things. So I feel good about all of that. But I also know that words can go different ways and they can hit people in different ways. So I’m also thankful for all the people who have been engaging in some dialogue with me through email, saying, “I heard you say this. I want to unpack that a little bit and make sure I’m hearing what you’re saying.”

I know there are people who are deciding whether they really want to stick with Living Streams or not. Because we’re really kind of drawing some lines that are not super popular in society today. So some people are deciding to move on. And I don’t blame them, you know, if that’s what they feel; because we’re not going to adjust or budge or try and let the culture dictate what we preach or what the word of God says. We’re going to let the word of God interpret our culture for us. It’s interesting. I do feel a lot of encouragement. The most encouragement I feel is when someone is actually willing to dialogue. So if you’re thinking about leaving or thinking about saying, “I can’t be here anymore,” I totally understand. But I would like to be able to have a conversation before you go, just to make sure we are dividing over what we are actually dividing over, and not just that you heard something strange or weird that I was saying. Because I know I can mess up too.

That being said, thanks for being here. Hopefully we’ll see you next week. We’re still in First Kings. We’re going to be going through First Kings again, we’ve been looking at this super, super ancient, near-eastern document that’s been preserved for all this time. It’s very old. It’s very outdated. It’s a very different cultur. All of these things. And yet, we think it’s the inspired word of God and has a lot to say to us, because people really aren’t that different from the way they’ve always been. We have the same problems and challenges.

We’ve seen lots of connections from First Kings. There are uneasy transfers of power, which is something we’ve experienced in America. There are debates and divisions over taxes. Again, America. There’s lots of division over political issues. They’re building a wall, which is fun. And it’s a time in Israel’s history where there is tons of prosperity. Prominence, prosperity, world power, all of that is going on. And that’s what we’re experiencing.

At the same time this is going on, the writer, who most likely is Jeremiah, is recording for us a lot of the idolatry that was taking place in the midst of the prosperity. So I think we’re experiencing right now in America, that all of our prosperity has led us to some forms of idolatry in our nation, that displeases God.

So this prophet was writing to his people in his day to try to warn them to not fall into these traps. I’m using this book and we’re trying to warn ourselves from the same traps, so we don’t fall into some of those things. There was a continuous redefining God and what worship is to be. We’ve described that in our context, we have a cross up here. In their day, they had the worship of Yahweh, the God that brought them out of Egypt and made them into a nation, the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob and on and on. So they would worship Yahweh.

But over time they decided that they didn’t just want to worship Yahweh. All the other nations around them had other gods, as well. So they decided, “Maybe if we worship Yahweh and the other gods, we’ll get like double, triple love. We’ll get triple the blessings. We’ll get it all.” So they began to bring in things like Baal worship. They began to bring in things like Asherah poles. They never took down the cross, so to speak. They just started adding other things to their worship.

What they didn’t realize is that the God of the Bible, Yahweh, is a very jealous God. Not in the petty, junior high type jealousy. But in the idea of a woman who’s married to a man and all of a sudden he decides he wants to bring in other women to the relationship. The jealousy that she would feel for her husband would be righteous and right. Saying, “This is not right.” And God himself is the source of that righteous jealousy. God says, “No. I’m not going to stand here and let you add other gods to the worship of Me. You get Me or you get nothing.”

That’s ultimately what happened in Israel’s history. Jeremiah, as he was prophesying, he was called The Weeping Prophet because people kept going, “Eh, you’re annoying.” He kept prophesying and they were like, “Hey, throw him in prison.” He kept prophesy and they’d say, “Hey, put him in a pit. That way we can’t hear him anymore. Just leave him in a pit for a while.”

He was the weeping prophet because he was prophesying as he watched this unfold before his eyes, as people continued to practice idolatry and, ultimately the nation of Israel was completely destroyed, in just a few hundred years.

America, where are you? America, are you willing to listen? We’re coming up on a few hundred years. And where are we going to be?

I don’t know how to change America. I can pray for it, we can reach out, we can do all of those things. But what we really want to do is make sure none of those things show up inside our church, inside our fellowship and our family. So we’re going to preach about it.

Tim Keller wrote a book called Counterfeit Gods, as he was trying to help the church in America understand culturally what the idolatry of today is. Some of the things that he said is:

An idol is something we cannot live without. We must have it, therefore it drives us to break rules we once honored to harm others, even ourselves, in order to get it…

So it’s basically these things we used to hold as true and right, we now want these other things and these things are standing in our way, so we just kind of put those to the side. Maybe something like this right here (bible). It’s happening today. Sorry if that freaked you out super bad. Just trying to make a point. But it came out a little bit abrupt.

…An idol is anything that absorbs your heart and imagination more than God, anything you seek to give you what only God can give, anything that is so central and essential to your life, that should you lose it, your life would feel hardly worth living.

The first thing that came to my mind was the song “Driver’s License.” Sorry. If you don’t know what that is, good. You’re good.

…If I have that, then I will feel like my life has meaning, then I’ll know I have value, and I’ll feel significant and secure.

The “that,” which he is referring to are the idols in our lives. Some people that I’ve been asking recently, “What are you seeing as the idols of our day,”:

“Comfort, convenience, safety and security.” Tyler Johnson, who’s a pastor here in Phoenix. He says, “Those are the idols of our day.”
Tim Keller, in his book Counterfeit Gods, talks bout “Money, sex and power,” being the idols of our day.
Dan Riccio says, “Self,” (uh-oh, that one gets to the point), “Self is an idol in our day. Sex, money, power, acclaim, security,” are the idols of our day. We want those things even more than we want God.We’re willing to compromise even what God has asked of us in order to get those things.

Then one of the things that I feel has been important for me to bring out, and this is just me, I only came up with one, those other guys had a bunch of items, but our desires. I think that’s the idolatry of America today. But I think that’s the idolatry that’s sneaking into our churches. Somehow we’re allowing our desires to dictate what is right and wrong.

You hear it in society. “You do you.” You know, whatever you want, that’s what you should be, that’s who you should be. But our desires do not belong on the throne of our lives. That’s one of the reasons why we keep this cross up here. Yes, to remind us of what Jesus did for us, the sacrifice that he paid so that we never have to fear God ever again. We never have to fear death ever again. But also as a reminder to us that ninety-nine, (I’ve been saying ninety, I’m going up to ninety-nine now)—ninety-nine percent of following Jesus is denying ourselves, taking up our cross, and following him. Denying ourselves means: Do not give in to disordered desires. We are constantly battling between what is a desire that is within us that is of God, and what is a desire within us that is not of God. And we deny the ones that are disordered. And we live into the ones that are not. This is very hard stuff. It’s very hard stuff. I’m not saying it’s easy. I’m not saying, “Oh, just go do it.” It’s very hard stuff. And that’s why he was a weeping prophet.

So 1 Kings 11. Let’s jump in here:

11 King Solomon, however, loved many foreign women besides Pharaoh’s daughter—Moabites, Ammonites, Edomites, Sidonians and Hittites. 2 They were from nations about which the Lord had told the Israelites, “You must not intermarry with them, because they will surely turn your hearts after their gods.” Nevertheless, Solomon held fast to them in love.
Idolatry. He called it love.
3 He had seven hundred wives of royal birth and three hundred concubines, and his wives led him astray. 4 As Solomon grew old, his wives turned his heart after other gods, and his heart was not fully devoted to the Lord his God, as the heart of David his father had been. 5 He followed Ashtoreth the goddess of the Sidonians, and Molek the detestable god of the Ammonites. 6 So Solomon did evil in the eyes of the Lord; he did not follow the Lord completely, as David his father had done.
7 On a hill east of Jerusalem, Solomon built a high place for Chemosh the detestable god of Moab, and for Molek the detestable god of the Ammonites. 8 He did the same for all his foreign wives, who burned incense and offered sacrifices to their gods.

Wow. We’re in a different place here. Last week we were reading 1 Kings 3, where Solomon prays this beautiful prayer. God is asking Solomon, “I’ll give you anything. What do you want?” And instead of asking for all the idolatry-type things, Solomon says, “God, can you give me a heart that listens to you? I don’t want to even have a heart that knows the truth, so to speak, because then I might put myself on the throne and decide what is true and right.” He said, “Could you just give me a heart that listens to you, that can hear you? Because you’re the only one that sees clearly. You’re the only one that should be on the throne.”

Hallelujah! It’s a beautiful, beautiful prayer. We should be praying it every day because we live in a crazy world.

And then we get to see the display of that, where Solomon was able to bring absolute justice, beautiful, righteous justice into a very troubling, street-level justice issue between two prostitutes and one baby. And it was just awesome. And everyone who got to see it was so refreshed that justice and truth could happen in our day. And it was just awesome.

Then, that’s chapter 3. Chapter 3 through 10 you just get to see that Solomon’s bringing out the wisdom. He’s executing justice. He’s ordering Israel in such a way that is causing the most flourishing and freedom for everybody there. The nations around them, instead of warring with them, they send delegations to sit at the feet of Solomon, just to listen to what he might have to say, so that they could experience a little bit of the freedom and flourishing that came through the Judeo ethic.

Solomon builds the temple for the Lord. Solomon builds a palace for himself. Solomon built a wall around Jerusalem. And it starts to describe all of the grain that was brought to Solomon every day because of all the fruitfulness of all the fields. Then it describes all of the flour that was brought in for his table as they made all the food for all the people. Then he talks bout all the gold that was brought in as tribute from other nations, and the wealth and the prominence and the prosperity. It was amazing. Actually, the title of the last chunk of scripture in chapter 10 is “Solomon’s Splendor.” It’s beautiful what the Lord had done, and what Solomon and the people of Israel were experiencing.

And then the weeping prophet, who’s recording for us a little bit of what happened, he says, “However, Solomon loved many foreign women besides Pharaoh’s daughter.” There was a disordered desire within Solomon that was not in line with decrees and statutes and commands of God. And Solomon went for it.

Maybe he thought: I’m doing everything else the Lord is asking me to do. What’s the problem with this one little one? He wasn’t willing to deal with the “little foxes” like we talked about two weeks ago.

And I don’t think that when Solomon married Pharaoh’s daughter, the first one, I don’t think he thought, All right. One down and 999 to go. I don’t think that was the vision that he had. I don’t think he thought, I’ll marry Pharaoh’s daughter and then I’ll marry a whole bunch of others. Just like those who get married don’t come to the altar and profess their vows to each other thinking, Maybe. Even though half of them, so to speak, end in divorce. I don’t think half of them are going, Yeah, we’ll see how this goes.

But little foxes come in and then other little foxes, other little foxes. So Solomon basically made one decision of compromise, sexually. And it led to another and another and another and another and another and another and another. Because sin is never satisfied. Sex is never satisfied. And many of us sitting in this room or listening online can think about the one time we made a compromise and how many more compromises it led to, until, ultimately, you’re in bondage.

Solomon, the wisest person of all—he fell in this way. And he ended up with a thousand wives. Well, seven hundred of royal birth wives, and then three hundred concubines, which are basically illegitimate wives. Because he decided to go for one.

Not only that, but then he decided to keep those wives happy. He started building high places of worship. He built the temple for Yahweh and then he started building temples for all the other gods. Just in case you don’t quite understand historically what it means to build a high place of worship for another god, the gods that were described in here—basically what was happening was Solomon built the correct form of Yahweh and a temple for that. Then he built these other temples.

These other temples, a lot of them had to do with fertility, these gods. It was an agrerian society. So if you wanted your lands to be fertile, if you wanted your family to be fertile, your wives to be fertile, then you would pray to these gods and they would cause your lands to be fertile, which was a really important deal when you’re trying to grow stuff. And your wives to be fertile was really important if you want to survive—have people to work the fields, maybe.

So a lot of these gods had this kind of concept. “If you worship me then you will be prosperous. You’ll be fertile.” But what they required as worship was for you to give up your sexuality, to give up your virginity. Practicing worship for these gods, had oftentimes going and linking yourself with a temple prostitute of some sort. Or giving up your virginity to one of these priests or priestesses. And if you offer that sacrifice, then this god will bless you with fertility. Sex became rampant.

Then, sad to say, others of these gods were gods that actually required human sacrifice. One tradition talks about the god Molek described here as this statue of iron that had a head of an ox of some sort. He would have his arms out and then inside the belly was this hollowed out thing where they would build a fire. That fire would warm up the iron and warm up the hands until it was red hot. Then they would come and lay their babies on his hands and watch their babies burn up as a sacrifice so that they could be fertile.

This is what Solomon produced in Israel. And Israel never recovered until it was destroyed. And if we don’t think we have a sex problem in America, if we don’t think we’ve created an idol out of sex and the compromise and the giving of ourselves in all these different sexual ways, we’re so blind. And, sad to say, what Solomon probably didn’t even know until he saw it was the sexual kind of reality of all this idolatry ultimately led to the killing of babies. If we don’t think we have that problem in our society, we’re blind as well. Our lust, our giving over to sexual desires that are disordered and outside the context of scriptures, has not led to a little, it’s led to a lot of damage for our society. Sad to say, it’s led to a lot of damage for a generation of unborn.

And we get to see it in Solomon’s day and you get to hear the weeping prophet Jeremiah say, “Please wake up.” We get to read the scriptures and there’s so much detail about sex in the Bible. And whenever sex is done outside the context of one man and one woman, it does not lead to anything good. It leads to destruction. And most often it’s not even the destruction of the person, it’s the destruction of the people that come after them.

The scariest thing about sin is you get to choose your sin, but you don’t get to choose the consequence. And even scarier than that is you don’t get to choose who gets the consequence. Most often it’s the ones that go after you. It’s the ones who you love the most that suffer. That’s true in Solomon’s day, as well.

Now you see why I’m thankful that people keep showing up. I’m just saying things and…yeah.

This is our reality. This is us. We read about Solomon and you’re like, “Yeah, that’s me, except for all the rich and smart stuff.” The way Paul describes it in the New Testament, is he actually describes a war going on inside of us. He uses the word war when he describes the battle between our spirit and our flesh. Our ordered desires and our disordered desires. It’s a war. It’s a challenge. It’s a difficulty. It’s something that causes pain and frustration and agony and sleepless nights and prayers and groanings within us.

If we’re honest, we all know that war. We have a nature inside of us that was given to us from Adam that wants to go against the things of God. And those of us who have given our life to Christ, we now have the Spirit inside of us who is compelling us to go toward the things of Christ. But it’s a war. It’s a battle.

Just the other day I was with a family, and one of their daughters who is young, it was so funny because she wanted to say something that was going to be like gossipy. She wanted to say something about what everyone was saying about this person; and the mom was like, “No.” And she was like, “Well, let me just…” “No!” “But, what…” “No!” It was just like, what is happening here? She could not keep it in. It was like she needed to say this juicy morsel of gossip so bad. And her mom was just cutting it off. And I was like, This is so interesting. Then it was funny because she finally stopped and the mom was like, “As soon as we go inside later she’s going to still say it.” Like she can’t help it. It’s the way it is within us. It’s alive in us. It was alive in Solomon.

That is truth. All that we’ve been saying these last few weeks, this is the truth we need to hear. God is setting before us a blessing and a curse. If you walk in this way you will be free. You will flourish in the things of God, and you will be setting up your children and the generations to come for prosperity and goodness in the Lord.

This is true. We have to hear this. We have to know this. But, thanks be to God that there’s more to the story to who our God is. He’s full of truth and he’s full of grace. And as I was reading, I stumbled across something that I want us all to hear. It’s so important. I’m so excited about this.

9 The Lord became angry with Solomon because his heart had turned away from the Lord, the God of Israel, who had appeared to him twice. 10 Although he had forbidden Solomon to follow other gods, Solomon did not keep the Lord’s command. 11 So the Lord said to Solomon, “Since this is your attitude and you have not kept my covenant and my decrees, which I commanded you, I will most certainly tear the kingdom away from you and give it to one of your subordinates. 12 Nevertheless, for the sake of David your father, I will not do it during your lifetime. I will tear it out of the hand of your son. 13 Yet I will not tear the whole kingdom from him, but will give him one tribe for the sake of David my servant and for the sake of Jerusalem, which I have chosen.”

So God visited Solomon again, finding him in all of this idolatry, going from a discerning heart to a divided heart, leading his people into all of this disgusting, detestable idolatry, paving the way for pain and agony for his children and the children of Israel. And God comes to him because he hates sin and what it does. He says, “Solomon, I’m going to have to punish you and I’m going to tear the kingdom away from you. Nevertheless, I’m not going to do it in your lifetime, for the sake of David. But I’m going to tear it from your son. Yet, I’m not going to tear it all from him, for the sake of David.”

If God was just all about truth, Solomon would be over. And to be honest, humanity would be over already, as well. But the God of the Bible is very peculiar. The God of the Bible is very scandalous, because there’s this razor’s edge to his character that’s described in Exodus 34. He is for sure not going to leave the guilty unpunished. But he is also abounding in mercy and kindness and faithfulness. And he loves to forgive.

In this chapter we get to see the nature of God. He’s disgusted and heartbroken over the idolatry and what it’s going to produce and what it’s going to cost—not just for Solomon, but for his children. And that stuff does play out. There are consequences to sin every single time. There is pleasure in sin for a season, but then it’s destruction. And sad to say, it’s not just destruction for you. It’s also for the ones you love. But, at the same time, God always is full of grace and mercy.

Here it is in the Old Testament. We see a little bit of a picture of a New Testament principle. When God says, “For the sake of David, Solomon you’re going to escape punishment. For the sake of David, Solomon, the promise that I made that David will always have someone sit on the throne will remain intact. And, sure enough, that promise did remain intact all the way until there was one born of the seed of David, or the line of David. His name was Jesus. He’s become King that reigns forevermore.

What the New Testament picks up right there is kind of bouncing off this. For the sake of David, Solomon escaped punishment and received the promise. And for the sake of Jesus Christ, everyone who believes in him escapes punishment and receives the full promise of God. This is the way Paul says it in Romans 5:

18 Consequently, just as one trespass resulted in condemnation for all people, so also one righteous act resulted in justification and life for all people. 19 For just as through the disobedience of the one man…

Now, Paul’s talking about Adam, but you could also talk about Solomon—or you could put your own name in there.

For just as through the disobedience of the one man the many were made sinners, so also through the obedience of the one man the many will be made righteous. 20 The law was brought in so that the trespass might increase. But where sin increased, grace increased all the more, 21 so that, just as sin reigned in death, so also grace might reign through righteousness to bring eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord.

The Message translation (MSG) says it this way:

18-19 Here it is in a nutshell: Just as one person did it wrong and got us in all this trouble with sin and death, …

That’s you and me and Adam and Solomon.

…another person did it right and got us out of it….

That’s Jesus.

…But more than just getting us out of trouble, he got us into life! One man said no to God and put many people in the wrong; one man said yes to God and put many in the right.
20-21 All that passing laws against sin did was produce more lawbreakers. But sin didn’t, and doesn’t, have a chance in competition with the aggressive forgiveness we call grace. When it’s sin versus grace, grace wins hands down. All sin can do is threaten us with death, and that’s the end of it. Grace, because God is putting everything together again through the Messiah, invites us into life—a life that goes on and on and on, world without end.

For the sake of David, Solomon escaped punishment and the promise stayed intact. And for the sake of Jesus, you and I, who have the same heart as Solomon, you and I who have stories of divorce, you and I who have stories of sexual immorality, you and I who have story after story of compromise, of little foxes, you and I that can think of all the times we blew it, which led to all the times we blew it, you and I who have no right to escape the punishment for our sins, and you and I who have no right to the full promise of God, which is that we are co-heirs with Christ of everything.

The promise of God is that you and I get everything that God wants to give Jesus. You and I get to experience the full realization of the promise of God, which comes in “kingdom come.” You and I get to know the resurrection life that Jesus brought into our world. And you and I also get to know the redemption that God can do, where he even takes our most heinous and disgusting sins and produces something good through them.

This is the scandal. The more you sin, the more God’s grace comes to you. The more you sin, the more God’s forgiveness is for you. In fact, God, in some ways Paul is saying, go ahead and try him if you want. Go ahead and test it if you want. You cannot outdo God’s love, grace and forgiveness. Even the sins you haven’t committed yet God has already provided grace and forgiveness for that. Your unrighteousness, no matter how hard you try, or no matter how badly you fail because you’re trying to do right, will never be more powerful than the righteousness and forgiveness and grace of God.

The very next thing Paul is saying after this is: Should we sin that grace may abound? God forbid! But he has to say that because, basically, he was saying the more you sin the more grace will abound. But he said don’t go that way because you also need to understand that your righteousness can produce life just like your wickedness can produce death. So be about the righteousness.

But when you fall and when you fail, and all of us sitting in this room or sitting at home, we are right now before God sinners. We are right now before God facing the wrath that he has against sin because we’re sinners. Yet, if we link ourselves to Christ, then he will come and, instead of giving us the punishment, he’ll apply it to the cross where Jesus took it. Instead of disqualifying us from the promise, he’ll apply the blood of Jesus to us, which includes us into the promise. This is the scandalous mystery of God’s grace that is for you and me, no matter what we have done, and the truth is, no matter what we’re going to do.

Paul, in 1 Corinthians 6, says, Don’t you know that you are temples of the living God? His Spirit is inside of you. And if you were going to go join yourself to a prostitute, in some sick way you would be joining together God and the prostitute. You need to understand this is what you are doing.

As I was kind of unpacking that in my mind, and as we were singing that song about Egypt today, I just felt the Lord was saying, “David, the ones you’re praying for, the ones you know that are filled with my Spirit and yet they’re kind of going off,” he said, “I want you to know that I’m going with them.” It broke my heart. Not because of what these people are doing in their foolishness or deception, but because of how much God loves them. That he’s willing to even go into the sickness, into the depravity, into the detestable things in order to be one step away from them, so that the minute they turn around like that prodigal, he’s right there with open arms.

Basically, he was saying, “Hey, David, my holiness can handle whatever sin someone might throw at me.” There is a lot more to unpack there and we don’t have the time. But I just want you to know that God is with you, and he will go to the ends of the earth. He will go into whatever you take him into in order to be one step away from your salvation and your redemption, and to get you back into the promise that he so longs to give you and the generations after you.

Let’s pray. It’s always important for us to remember that when we say, “Let’s pray,” at Living Streams we don’t necessarily mean let’s say some more words. Prayer really is more about listening than talking. So I want to create this time of response right now where we can listen to the Spirit of God and see what he’s saying to the church today. His Spirit alone knows how to make correct application in each of our lives. The Spirit alone knows how to bring conviction instead of condemnation into our hearts. So please don’t hear anything I have to say. Just listen to what the Spirit is saying.

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Mephibosheth Around the Table

David is a very famous figure in the Bible, in the Old Testment, he’s very famous in the New Testament, as well. He is an Israelite. He was king at this point. He was the guy who killed Goliath when he was young. Right after he killed Goliath, he began to be a part of Saul’s household in a way. Saul was the first king of Israel.

David Stockton
Series: Church Around the Table

Living Streams! I was just in Belize for a week and had a great time down there. I’m pretty much fully recovered. We had about six fifteen-hours days in a row, which was long. But it was good. And we also had a basketball tournament one night, where we had to represent America against the Belizeans. And the basketball tournament started about midnight. We won every game, but my ankle lost one game real bad at the end. But other than, doing good.

It’s good to be with you guys. We have a lot of good things going on around here, I keep reading all of these articles and getting all these emails and hearing all these stories about how the church is in decline, and how millennials aren’t coming to church anymore, and whatever the after-millennials call themselves (not quite sure yet), and I just go, “Oh? Interesting.” I’m not saying it’s not true, but it’s just not what we’re experiencing here. We’re experiencing people being added to the church like every week and more every year for sure, getting discipled and plugged in. Were seeing a lot of millennials and those after-millennial people joining up all the time. It’s a really neat season. I’m thankful for what’s going on.

We have a lot of things that, if you are still on the periphery a little bit, I would encourage you to jump in. We have this Explore Express class. If you’re newer to Living Streams, it’s a great place to get to know people, and get to know what’s “behind the curtain” at Living Streams; and we also have Life Groups going on, Polemeo. The Life Group thing, we keep hearing great reports about people getting together, sharing a meal together, sharing some time together outside of this context, getting to know each other. We’ve got that raw authenticity, relentless encouragement. We need relentless encouragement. It’s tough sledding in this life. We’ve got biblical counsel and genuine friendship happening in a lot of ways.

If you’re not plugged into one of those, there are a few slots available even now. But in January, we’ll get some more going. I’m excited because the end goal for Life Groups is not just to get everybody in our church into a group, but everyone in the world into a group. I really mean that because right now we’re trying to establish these communities where the love of God is manifest, it’s just there, it’s easy, it flows. And then those Life Groups would hopefully eventually start inviting people who don’t know the love of Christ, or don’t have a table to go to where they feel the love of Christ, and they can come into our homes and our tables and it’s already there, it’s already present. So next year we’re going to really be trying to make sure that’s a part of Life Groups as well. You guys are doing well. Thank you so much. I know it’s hard. I know it’s so hard following Jesus in this world. But you’re here! You made it.

2 Samuel Chapter 9 is where we’re going to be today. We’re finishing up our Church Around the Table series. That’s the concept where we’ve been spending a lot of time looking at the table that Jesus set up for his disciples, the Last Supper, and really what he was trying to impart. I’ve been teaching the Bible for—how old am I now?—for twenty-five years. Literally, Sundays and Wednesdays, I’ve been teaching the Bible for twenty-five years. I’ve been going to church for a long time, been following Jesus for a long time, and I have felt like God has taught me so much in this last little series. I feel like it’s reshaping my heart. I feel like my heart is being reshaped in a brand new way after all these years, and I’m so thankful.

If you haven’t been tracking with us, everything we have is online. You can go to livingstreams.org. You can watch services live. You can watch them not live. We also have some supplemental material as well that can further your study and hopefully deepen your walk with Jesus.

That said, we’re going to do Church Around the Table today. We’re going to look at another table, an Old Testament table, a table of King David. Let’s read in Chapter 9, Verse 1:

David [who was king of Israel] asked, “Is there anyone still left of the house of Saul to whom I can show kindness for Jonathan’s sake?”

Now I know most of you are Old Testament scholars and all of this brings so much context to you, just this one verse and these names. But just in case you’re not sure, we’ll go ahead and recap a little bit of this.

Now God had chosen this people, Israel, to demonstrate how he feels about everybody by having this one example. He took these people out of slavery in Egypt and he led them across the Red Sea. Moses, prince of Egypt, we’re all there. And he’s going across the wilderness, and he’s forming them into a nation. He’s giving them laws. He’s giving them judges for those laws. He’s giving them the way that he wants to go. He’s delivering them from the oppression of those around them. And then he leads them into the Promised Land to establish them as a nation with land.

So they’re in this place, and God has done so much for them. And they say, “God, it’s a little weird for us, having you be our king. Can you give us a man to be king? We want to be like all the other nations around us that have a man as king.”

And God said, “If I give you a man to be king, he’ll steal everything good from you.”

And they demanded it. They said, “God, we want a king.”

So he did. He gave them a king. And his name was Saul, the first king of Israel. And there it is, Saul’s family. Saul became a king and it seemed like everything was going good at first. He did seem to follow in God’s way and lead in God’s way. But as power came to him, he started to change a little bit. Ever seen that in human history before? Power began to corrupt. Power began to change the way he viewed things. He now was so afraid of losing power that he started to do things that were very unlike what God would want him to do. He became someone that, for the people of Israel, was rejected. He even at one point became demon- possessed, that we know of. He was visiting witches to try to figure out what was supposed to happen instead of listening to the prophets of God. He became a very wicked king in a lot of ways. Very confusing. Very harmful for the people of Israel. And he really became someone that, when we look back, we think Saul represents shame, represents the flesh, represents sinfulness, represents defeat. The people began to see Saul that way toward the end of his kingship.

Saul had a son named Jonathan. Jonathan was awesome. He’s probably my favorite Old Testament character. I really think that Jonathan was the person that gave David the courage to fight Goliath, because Jonathan had done something just as cool a few chapters before. Jonathan was King Saul’s son, so Jonathan lived with this not being king, his family being not known at all, then his dad becomes king and, all of a sudden, they’re thrust to the front of Israel’s vision. And now they are the royal family and treated as such, and known as such. Yet, Jonathan maybe experienced all this and thought “This is great.” Jonathan had some great exploits. People knew Jonathan and loved Jonathan. But then Jonathan also got to watch as the whole tide of the nation began to shift from loving and honoring them to really being embarrassed and ashamed of the family of Saul, of the kingship of Saul. You see this difference that’s taking place? That’s what Jonathan grew up with.

But along the way, as David killed Goliath and Saul brought him in, hoping that the fame of David would kind of rekindle the love for Saul, Jonathan and David became best friends. Like serious best friends. And they loved each other. And one day David said to Jonathan, “I think your dad has turned on me. I feel like your dad hates me. In fact, I think your dad is trying to kill me.”

And Jonathan was like, “Well, how do you know he’s trying to kill you? You’re crazy.”

“Well, he was throwing spears at me the other day.”

And still, they weren’t sure. “Well, I don’t know.” And they came up with this plan to find out, Is Saul really trying to kill David? Has Saul’s jealousy and shame so gripped him that he would try and kill David, Jonathan’s best friend?

So they came up with a plan. Jonathan found out that Saul was trying to kill him and they had to part. They had to break up their friendship, and David basically went and lived as an outcast, outside the nation of Israel, living in caves, trying to just stay alive as Saul hunted to try to kill him.

This is what’s taking place in the context of this one verse. And now David has become king because Saul and Jonathan went to war and they died on the same day. Then for the next six years or so there was this battle over who would be the next king. A couple of Saul’s sons stood forward and said, “I’ll be king.” And there was some battling between them. All of the people’s hearts went with David, and they wanted David to be king. But instead of making David king of all of Israel, David became king of a place called Gibea on the outskirts of Israel.

He was king there for six years while all of this fighting and turmoil was going on. Then, finally, after all that time, David was thirty-seven years old and he becomes king of all of Israel, unites all twelve tribes under his leadership. And he followed God as one who seeks God’s own heart, loves God’s heart, wants to do what’s in God’s heart. He became a great king in Israel.

One of the things he did after he was established after all this craziness, he sat one day and he said, “Is there no one left of the house of Saul that I can bless for Jonathan’s sake?”

This is what was in his heart. This is what stirred in his heart as king. It says:

2 Now there was a servant of Saul’s household named Ziba. They summoned him to appear before David, and the king said to him, “Are you Ziba?”
“At your service,” he replied.
3 The king asked, “Is there no one still alive from the house of Saul to whom I can show God’s kindness?”
Ziba answered the king, “There is still a son of Jonathan; he is lame in both feet.”
4 “Where is he?” the king asked.
Ziba answered, “He is at the house of Makir son of Ammiel in Lo Debar.”

So Lo Debar is an important name, as well. Lo Debar basically means “without pasture; desolate.” Lo Debar is also a place outside of Israel, across the Jordan river, on the wrong side. A place that we find out was where all of Saul’s family that was alive after all of that in-fighting, they fled for their lives in fear of the other sons of Saul coming to kill them because they weren’t part of that lineage—fear of David coming to kill them, because that was common that a conquering king would come and destroy everybody that was a threat to the throne.

And in 2 Samuel Chapter 4, we actually find out what happened to this son of Jonathan. As the people were fleeing, one of the servants of Saul picked up this young boy named Mephibosheth, who was five years old, and as he was fleeing, he was dropped and it broke his legs and he became crippled for the rest of his life. Not only was this boy crippled, but he was taken to go live in a desolate place, hiding for fear, totally overshadowed by the shame of Saul’s name, in a place that was desolate and without pasture.

So David says to Ziba, who tells him where he is:

5 So King David had him brought from Lo Debar, from the house of Makir son of Ammiel.
6 When Mephibosheth son of Jonathan, the son of Saul, came to David, he bowed down to pay him honor.
David said, “Mephibosheth!”
“At your service,” he replied.
7 “Don’t be afraid,” David said to him, “for I will surely show you kindness for the sake of your father Jonathan”

And the reason David says this, all of this is so pertinent and powerful. The fact that he says, “Mephibosheth” and they put an exclamation point there, and there’s a reason. And the fact that he says, “Don’t be afraid,” it’s important because, for all Mephibosheth knows, David could have summoned him to Jerusalem to kill him, to get rid of him. Because the power could have now corrupted David like it corrupted Saul and he wants to eliminate any threat at all.

But when Mephibosheth comes in the room and bows himself down to David, David cries out, “Mephibosheth!” And there’s so much meaning behind that name. Mephibosheth means, “the end of shame.”

Track with me here. The end of shame is what his name means. That name first came to him from Jonathan and his wife. And Jonathan and his wife had Mephibosheth toward the latter years of their life and Saul’s kingship. So here, Jonathan has watched the tide of favor, the tide of grace and glory and strength, completely shift to one of total shame, as his father has done these horrible things as king. So what was once an honor to be the son of Saul has now become a total shame. The people have rejected them.

And Jonathan, when he has a son, with his heart broken at what his dad has done to the nation, heart broken at what his dad has done to his best friend, David—he and his wife agree to name their son Mephibosheth, the end of shame.

I don’t know if God spoke to them and inspired them. We don’t get all of that. But we know that it meant something for these two people to name their son Mephibosheth; because they were wrestling with the shame. They felt it every day. And their hope in this child was that he might be born and grow up and, they might have thought, become a great king that will turn the nation of Israel back toward God and end and remove the shame of the name of Saul.

But right after he was born, just a few years in, Jonathan is killed. Saul is killed. And in the hurry and stress of all of that, Mephibosheth, the one who will end all shame, is broken as he’s fleeing for his life. The one who was to be king and end all shame is now crippled in both feet and can’t walk. And shame remains and another layer is piled on.

Then he’s taken as a young boy to a place where there is no pasture. And there he is living basically disabled, unable to do much, unable to be fruitful, unable to produce anything of value, and every day people say, “Hey, Mephibosheth.” “Come here, Mephibosheth.” And the irony just tortures him. As he is called to be the one who ends all shame, and all he’s ever known is layer upon layer of shame.

Then one day he gets called to go to be with King David, and he walks in and he bows himself to the ground. David, the king that maybe took his place, I don’t know what he’s thinking, but the king is looking at him and what does he say to him? “The One Who Will End All Shame, welcome! Do not be afraid.” And then he goes on to say this:

… I will restore to you all the land that belonged to your grandfather Saul, and you will always eat at my table.”
8 Mephibosheth bowed down and said, “What is your servant, that you should notice a dead dog like me?”

Now, please. We know people all the time who fake humility to try to procure more favor. They say things like, “Oh I could never do that.” And they know they’re better than everybody. And you’re just like, “Blah, blah, blah.” In your mind. You don’t say it out loud. But that’s not what’s taking place here. Mephibosheth is really shocked and confused. He can’t even see the potential goodness because the shame is so thick on the lenses of his life.

When he says to David, “Why are you taking notice of me, a dead dog?”—in a lot of ways he’s saying, “David, please don’t call me Mephibosheth anymore. I’ve changed my name to Dead Dog.”

Out of the heart, the mouth speaks. And shame had won the day. The one who was named To End All Shame has become one who is just gripped by shame. He sees no good thing in him at all. And yet David restores to him all of the land that Saul had owned. That might be even more land than David had. And not only was it land, but Saul who had been king did just like God said. He took all of the best of the land. So now, the one who had only known no pasture, Lo Debar, now has the most fruitful parts of Israel as his. And one more thing. David said, “And you will sit and eat at my table.”

Let’s go on:

9 Then the king summoned Ziba, Saul’s steward, and said to him, “I have given your master’s grandson everything that belonged to Saul and his family. 10 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 Ziba had fifteen sons and twenty servants.)

That plays into something later.

11 Then Ziba 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.
12 Mephibosheth had a young son named Mika, and all the members of Ziba’s household were servants of Mephibosheth. 13 And Mephibosheth lived in Jerusalem, because he always ate at the king’s table; he was lame in both feet.

So there’s this recounting in the library of Scripture, of this guy Mephibosheth. Sure enough, just like most of his life he thought was just wasting away, shame had won the day, now in this moment’s notice, he’s called by the king to come into his presence. There, in his presence, he is restored. All of his inheritance and destiny is restored in a moment. He now has the ability to do exactly what his name and calling is for him to do. He has all of Saul’s resources and he can use them differently than Saul did. He’s given all of Saul’s resources and it’s the most fruitful land.

The guy who grew up in Lo Debar, no pasture, is now having to have servants care for all of the produce that his lands produce. And then it says that he is invited to David’s table. Mephibosheth Around the Table. And when he comes up to that table, so many things take place, you guys. The crippled “Dead Dog” comes to the table. I’m sure on the first day it felt really weird for him. But as he’s sitting there at the table, the only thing people see is who he really is. They don’t see his crippled feet.

I talked to my daughter about that last night. I was like, “You like sitting at the table?” (She’s in a wheelchair.)

She said, “I love it because we’re all the same here.”

She knows what it feels like.

And here, Mephibosheth, however he gets to the table, he’s sitting there. And he really is just like one of the king’s sons. And there, at that first day, I’m sure he felt very unsure and like, “Uh, this is weird. Everybody knows I don’t belong.”

But think about as the years go by, year after year after year, he becomes so familiar there, maybe even tells some great jokes from time to time. Maybe even gives a little counsel. Maybe welcomes another one of David’s sons to the table because he’s been there a lot longer. All of a sudden he’s just there. And the shame, his past, they don’t know him like that. All they know is this person who sits at the king’s table, this person who has fruitful fields.

And day after day, as he comes to that table, year after year, as he comes to that table, his shame dissipates. His shame fades. His shame no longer has authority in his life, no longer grips his heart, no longer is the most powerful voice in his life. But now he’s known as Mephibosheth, the one who ends the shame for himself and for his family.

And this is the call of God to you and me. We are called to be like David. This whole Church Around the Table is trying to inspire us to be more like David. So sit before our kingdoms, whatever they might be; whatever resource you have, whether it’s a car or a house or a table or a good park bench; whatever you have to assess the vastness of your kingdom and say, “What can I do today to show kindness, to show the love of God to someone who might not know it?” And invite them in. That’s what this whole thing is about. We’re trying to inspire that and be that.

And some of you guys are doing a great job of that. You’re having people come across the threshold of your house that you never would have before. People that are so shameful you were afraid of them before. And now you’re inviting them all the way to sit at your table. And you’re not even afraid of their shame getting on you because you know Jesus’ love is too powerful. You’re having people come sit at your table that have done shameful things. And they’re feeling so free at your table to even confess some of those things so that they can be washed and cleansed. And there is so much more to come.

But the really important thing that we’ve got to notice here is that we’re aspiring to be David, but the truth is that David is a picture of Jesus and we’re a picture of Mephibosheth—people who have a destiny to end shame, to remove shame, to set ourselves and our family and others free of the shame of this sinful world, and our sinful mistakes.

Yet, we find ourselves crippled in Lo Debar most days. But can you hear Jesus calling? Can you hear the King summoning you to come? All Jesus wants you to do is to come and sit at his table. He doesn’t care what you bring. That’ll take care of itself. He’s saying, “Come. Come to my table. I have died on a cross. I had my body broken, my blood spilled to provide for this.”

And if you will come to his table every day, year after year, you will find yourself being someone who can’t really remember how shameful you used to feel. You will come to his table, and all of a sudden you will find your destiny, your true name. And it might feel so weird at first. Some of you are here for the first time at church and you’re like, “Whaaaa. This is so weird!”

But as you continue to come into the presence of Jesus, what happens is your shame gets washed away. And it sometimes happens in big, heaping, cleansing waves. Sometimes it’s just a little scrub. Sometimes it takes a few scrubs because that shame is sticky. But if we will keep coming to the table, if we will keep coming into his house, coming into his presence, pretty soon we won’t be known for all of our crippled-ness, all of our past. We’ll be known by our true name.

When we went to Belize, I got to spend some time fasting the day before. All the guys that went, we fasted on the day we were headed to Belize. We knew we were going to go there and we want to tune in. “Okay, God. I don’t want to think about anything worldly. I want to think about spiritually what you’re doing.”

So I was journaling on the plane from Houston to Belize. I was just writing my prayers down and then, I’ve learned over time that praying should be more listening than talking. It’s really hard to remember that. But I was remembering and I was like, “Okay, Lord. Speak to me. What do you want to tell me? What am I looking for? What do you want to do in this time?”

So I started to write some things down. I ended up writing down about four different scenarios that I felt God was speaking to me about. It was interesting because, then it was like I was kind of on a treasure hunt.

One of the scenarios I wrote was that there was a guy that I would meet down in Belize. We were going to do men’s ministry. There was a guy that I was going to meet. And he was a guy that really felt like his soul was dark, that the things he had done in life had broken his soul or had brought so much shame to his soul that it could never be lifted. And he just walked around with this heavy darkness in his soul. And that darkness came because he had really hurt a lot of people, actually physically hurt people. And I was like, “I don’t know if I want to meet this guy.” Then I felt the Lord told me that this was someone that has even murdered someone. Now it got real. And I thought, “Okay. That sounds too specific.” And how do you do that in a conversation? “Hey, have you killed someone?” “Okay, cool. Sorry.”

I didn’t know how this worked. But the very first night we were there, we created these moments of church around hot dogs and taekwondo. And we had all these guys there. And there were a couple of guys I didn’t know. Toward the end of the night I walked over to them and I said, “Hey, you guys. I’m looking for a couple of people. Can you help me out?”

And they were like, “Yeah. For sure.”

So I read the first scenario. I said, “Do you guys know anybody like this?”

And one of the guys said, “I think that’s me.”

I didn’t read the part about killing anybody. I was too scared to do that. And he was like, “That sounds like me.”

And I said, “What does that mean? Do you feel that darkness?”

He said, “All the time.”

And I said, “Have you had a rough past where you’ve hurt people?”

He said, “I used to be in gangs, so I hurt people all the time.”

Then I was like, “Well, I also wrote down here that this person had murdered somebody.” I said, “Is that true?”

He said, “Well, I had a lot of past in gangs. And there is one thing that is really heavy on my soul right now. That’s me and my girlfriend just kind of broke up sort of. It’s complicated.”

I said, “Yeah, it always is.”

He said, “But she was pregnant with our son and she just had him aborted. And it’s been killing me. It’s been torturing me.”

This is where I had a little turmoil in my own heart as I was thinking, can I just say, “Hey, you’re forgiven.” That seems like, “No, you need to say these prayers. You need to show up at church a hundred times.” There’s got to be something to it. But then I remembered that when Jesus walked around here he would walk up to people and say, “Hey, I don’t condemn you. Go your way and sin no more.”

He said to a guy that got dropped through the ceiling, “Your sins are forgiven.” He didn’t know this guy.

And then, in Hebrews 12, we talked about it two weeks ago, that the blood of Jesus Christ, one word and one word only, and that word is forgiveness. And I thought, “I don’t know how else to process this moment; but instead to say to you, ‘I think Jesus has sent me here to pronounce you can be forgiven, and because of the confession you’ve made right now, you are forgiven. You are washed. You are clean. Jesus is going to put brightness and light in your soul. And he’s going to take those sinful desires and he’s going to give you new desires.’”

I was like, “Can we pray for you?”

And the guy was like, “Yeah. For sure.”

And we all gathered around him and we had this holy moment.

This was just a week ago, so I can’t tell you, “And now he’s the president…” I’m going to follow up on him as best I can. But I can tell you it was a really big deal because, that was a Tuesday night, and then we were gone the rest of the time and then we came back Sunday. I was really hoping he would show up. He came to church on Sunday morning in Belize City for the first time as an adult. I think he really believed that maybe, just maybe, there was a spot for him at the table. And he came and we had another time together and prayed. I hope he showed again today because, Jesus does a work the first time. But it takes a lot of showing up at the table before shame can not be the loudest voice in your life. But that’s what the table of Jesus is all about. For you to go and get your shame removed, but also for you to invite others who are full of shame to come and hear about the forgiveness and cleansing that Jesus can bring.

Let’s pray:

Jesus, we do thank you so much for your table that you invite us to; that we can come and sit at your table and we can be sons and daughters of God, full inheritance, free from shame both now and forevermore. And, Lord, it’s a marvel, it’s wild, it’s scandalous, but our hearts resonate with the truth of it. And, Lord, I just want to pray for those right now that are full of shame, that know their soul is dark and their feet are crippled, that they would just be so stirred by your Spirit and that they would come to your table, come into your presence, even right now in this moment. They would say to you, “Jesus, I need you. Jesus, I’m here, wanting to be with you.”

Let’s just take a moment in silence and allow the Spirit of the Lord to speak. If you need to confess, just whisper it. If you need to just rejoice and praise him for his grace, whisper it.

Thank you, Lord.

Unless otherwise noted, Scripture is taken from the HOLY BIBLE, NEW INTERNATIONAL VERSION®. NIV®. Copyright © 1973, 1978, 1984 by International Bible Society. Used by permission of Zondervan. All rights reserved worldwide.

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