Giving and Prayer

Series: Sermon on the Mount
July 11, 2021 - Jeff Gokee

Hey, hey! Morning! Today is the day the that Lord has made, let’s rejoice and be glad in it! Are you with me?

I was reminded in the first service, and even right now as I was listening to worship, how special it is that we’re together. You know, it wasn’t so long ago that we weren’t together and we felt the desire to be together and worship together. Now we’re here and so here’s what I want to say: let us not ever forget there was a time that we couldn’t gather. So when we gather, it’s just really exciting.

For those of you who are watching online, if you’re in proximity, come on! Now, I know there’s some health stuff. I get it. But if you’re in proximity to this church, this body, come. Be a part of the local church. It’s special. And I don’t ever want to forget how good it is to be together. Are you with me? Good.

My name is Jeff. I’m the Executive Director of Phoenix One. At Phoenix One our job is really just to care for the local church both internally and externally. We just want to serve the local body. We believe in not just this church — and this happens to be my church, my family’s church — but we believe in the Church as a whole, that when we come together as one that people are going to come together and see Jesus through the way we love one another. 

Isn’t that a beautiful vision that Jesus gave to us, that we would be one so people will see Jesus— so people will see Jesus through the way we love and care for one another. So I love to do that. But today I love that I’m here. I love that I’m at my church and I get to teach here and I’m so excited to walk through what we’re going to go through. 

So if you have your bibles, we’re going to be in Matthew 6 today. 

I got married when I was 21 years old, my junior year in college, which I suggest for everyone because it was so easy. I got married at 21, my second semester of my junior year. In the brochure they said that there was something called the honeymoon period and I bought into it hook, line and sinker. I was like, “Oh, man, give me the honeymoon period. Give me all the ‘I love yous’ and all the stuff that comes on the brochure.” I’m sure you know what all that stuff is on the brochure. 

So I was like fully into whatever that was. So I was like, “I love you,” all over the place. “I love you, I love you, I love you.” And my wife would always say, “Okay.” Or, “Thank you.” And I’m like, ‘Wait a second. That’s not what the brochure says. You’re supposed to reciprocate that.” Right?

So every time I talked to her on the phone, “I love you,” and she’d say, “Thank you. See you later tonight.” And I’m like, “Man, what is going on?”

Like most men, I came up with a strategy. I decided one night I’m going to just dial it in really good. I’m going do a really good I love you, because we’re in our honeymoon period. It’s in the brochure. So we’re ready to go to sleep and I go, “Hey, listen, you’re the moon to my ocean.” No, I never said that. But I was like, “I love you so much and I’m so glad that God gave you to me. He saw you and he saw me and he put us together. It’s so beautiful. I’m so grateful for you and I love you so much.”

And she said, “Thank you. Good night.” And I was like, “What’s your deal? Honestly! What’s your deal? Why won’t you reciprocate this? What is going on? Am I doing something wrong? I’m putting a lot of stuff out there. I’m putting a lot of ‘I love you’ out there and not getting a lot back.”

She said, “Yeah. That’s the problem. Because your ‘I love you’ is not for me. It’s for you. Your ‘I love you’ is for you because you’re insecure because your mom left when you were twelve years old and you’re worried that I’m going to do the same thing. So you’re going to try to manipulate the system to manufacture some form of love to try to tamper down some deep   level of insecurity in your life. And I won’t have it.”

She was pointing me to Jesus. She was saying, “I can’t be Jesus in your life and you want me to be Jesus in your life. You want me to fill up all that love bucket and I won’t do it and I can’t do it.”

That’s why I said it’s good to not be alone. Man, thank goodness that God created a wife and that wife convicted my heart and showed me there’s something deeper going on inside of me. I wonder for you, I wonder if there’s something deeper going on inside of you. David’s been taking us through the Sermon on the Mount in which Jesus is exposing these things in us. We all tend to deal with the Christian life on the outside and Jesus is trying to get deep on the inside. What is really going on inside of us? 

That’s why I think one of the great passages in Scripture is Proverbs 4:23. It’s an umbrella passage over all of our lives. Solomon’s writing Proverbs and there’s so much wisdom. It’s the book of wisdom. There’s so much wisdom in there and yet he says this:

Above all else…

Which means this. I’m about to tell you a bunch of really good, wise, wisdom things that you can go live your life for the Lord. But above all else…

guard your heart,
    for everything you do flows from it.

There is something inside of us, deep inside of us, that is impacting the way we relate with the Lord and relate with the world that’s around us. And Jesus is coming after our hearts because he loves you. He loves me. He wants to go, “No, can we just be honest? Can we just be real?”

So this is my encouragement this morning. Can we just be honest? Can we just be real? Can we deal with the conviction that the Spirit of God is going to bring to the teaching of Jesus? He’s going to do a much better job of teaching than I am. The Spirit of God is the Helper, so he’s going to open your hearts to what Jesus is about to take us through. 

It’s really important, I would say this morning, it’s really important to feel the feels. Allow yourself to deal with the weight of what’s going on. Because what you do in secret will impact who you are in public. And what you do in public will impact how you connect with God in the secret. This is what this passage is coming after. This is what Jesus has been doing all throughout the Sermon on the Mount. This is a vision of the righteousness of God to the people that are supposed to be righteously following after him.

What Pastor David’s been taking us through the last few months is the vision of the righteousness of God. He’s challenging us to shift the way we think. The upside down reality of the way that the God of the Universe, Emmanuel With Us, is living and acting. To the point like as radical — as David brought to us last week — love your enemies. Love your enemies. I know the world says to hate them. But love them. That’s radical. And what he’s going to invite us into in this next section is no less radical.

He’s starting to get into the disciplines that maybe you and I as Christians have followed. And he’s going to come after those because there’s something deeper that’s going on inside of you and me. 

Matthew 6:1-18 is where we’re going to go. 

Before I move on, I want to say this. Today we’re going to talk a little bit about what the problem is. Why is it that we struggle to connect with God through these things that he’s talking to us about? Next week the worship team is putting on a time of prayer and worship. It’s just going to be prayer and worship. You’re going to love it. It’s going to convict you. It’s going to bless you. It’s going to be a beautiful time next week. 

Then on the 25th I’m going to come back and teach on the Lord’s Prayer. I’m going to teach the Lord’s Prayer, which is essentially what we do. But today is going to be what the problem is, what the struggle is. I want to help you understand that. Then, as we go through this passage, I want you to start looking for the common themes that you see all throughout this passage.

Matthew 6:1 says this: 

“Be careful not to practice your righteousness in front of others to be seen by them. If you do, you will have no reward from your Father in heaven…”

If you do, you will have no reward from your Father in heaven. If you practice your righteousness in front of others to be seen by them, you will have no reward from your Father in heaven. I want you to feel the weight of that as we go into this. I want you to feel the weight of that. And now he goes on…

“…So when you give to the needy, do not announce it with trumpets, as the hypocrites do in the synagogues and on the streets, to be honored by others. Truly I tell you, they have received their reward in full. But when you give to the needy, do not let your left hand know what your right hand is doing, so that your giving may be in secret. Then your Father, who sees what is done in secret, will reward you.

“And when you pray, do not be like the hypocrites, for they love to pray standing in the synagogues and on the street corners to be seen by others. Truly I tell you, they have received their reward in full. But when you pray…

Listen to the personal pronouns. 

“…go into your room, close the door and pray to your Father, who is unseen. Then your Father, who sees what is done in secret, will reward you. And when you pray, do not keep on babbling like pagans, for they think they will be heard because of their many words. Do not be like them, for your Father knows what you need before you ask him.”

So the question is, what do we need? Well, Jesus is like, “Let me tell you what you need. You need to learn how to pray. And this is how you pray.”

“This, then, is how you should pray:
‘Our Father in heaven,
hallowed be your name,
your kingdom come,
your will be done,
    on earth as it is in heaven.
Give us today our daily bread.
And forgive us our debts,
    as we also have forgiven our debtors.
And lead us not into temptation,
    but deliver us from the evil one.’

For if you forgive other people when they sin against you, your heavenly Father will also forgive you. But if you do not forgive others their sins, your Father will not forgive your sins.

“When you fast, do not look somber as the hypocrites do, for they disfigure their faces to show others they are fasting. Truly I tell you, they have received their reward in full. But when you fast, put oil on your head and wash your face, so that it will not be obvious to others that you are fasting, but only to your Father, who is unseen; and your Father, who sees what is done in secret, will reward you.

This is the word of the Lord. And everybody said – Amen! 

When I was a kid, I grew up in the church my whole life. In the tradition that I grew up in, they would bring the children up front and they would pray over them and then kind of dismiss them to Sunday school. Anybody grow up in a tradition like that or experience anything like that? Okay. That’s how I grew up. And every once in a while, the pastor would invite one of the kids up to like pray. 

And I was the kid that was like, “Put me in, Coach. I am ready. I am a warrior. I’m ready to pray this house down.” I was always waiting for my opportunity to pray, because I was going to crush, okay? So one day I was sitting there and Pastor Roger Curson (sp), he was my pastor, I grew up in the same church my whole life. He said, “Jeff Gokee is going to come up and pray for us.” And I was like, “Whew! Now it’s time! Let’s go! I’ve been waiting for this. I’ve been preparing for this. I’m ready to go.” 

I don’t know what happened, but my seven-year-old self turned into a sixteen hundreds English preacher. I started talking about eschatology, ecclesiology, soteriology, right? I’m talking about the propitiation of Jesus’ death and resurrection in the name of the Father, the Son and Spirit, amen. And I sat down next to my mom and I looked at her and I said, “That was a good prayer.”

She smacked me. Whack! She said, “Don’t you ever talk about prayer that way. You are praying to God Almighty. He gets all the glory. Not you.”

And I thought, “Wow!” 

But isn’t that true? No different than what Patty was trying to teach me. I take a long time to learn lessons. You with me? It took a long time to understand there’s a deep rooted thing inside of us, a deep rooted insecurity. We just want to be known. We just want to be known for the wrong things. We don’t want to be known by the King of kings and the Lord of lords who knit us together in our mother’s womb. We want to be known by the masses. We want to be affirmed by them to make sure that we feel okay.

What I find really interesting is that Jesus is talking about three really good things here. These aren’t bad things. These are good things. Right? These were the pillars of what it meant to be a good Jew in that time. He talks about alms giving. A lot of times when we think about alms giving, we think about doling out cash to really poor people. That’s what we think. But actually, in the Greek, the way it’s translated is mercy mindedness. It’s this right here: In the secret place I know how merciful God has been to me and I find this deep level of gratitude in my soul so that when I awaken and open my eyes and go out in the public place I can’t help but be giving mercy wherever I go. Which means, sometimes there’s people who have financial needs. I can’t wait to meet that need because I just sense the mercy of God in my own life and it has changed my perspective on the world. The mercy mindedness is what alms giving really meant.

Praying. The Jews were prayers. In fact to be Jewish was to be a prayer. They prayed a pray called the Shema that roots all the way back to Moses. The Shema. They prayed it every day. They also had a section of eighteen prayers that they would pray every single day. The Jewish culture was a praying culture. So they were known for their prayers. They were known to be a praying people. To connect with the God of the Universe, to connect with Yahweh they would pray. 

And they would also fast. Fasting was interesting because these people were used to going to the temple and making a sacrifice. Fasting was very much a very personal sacrifice. It was sacrificing some aspect of their life to focus in on God. So it became a personal sacrifice. It was a good thing. It was what they were known for.

What Jesus is saying is these are good things that you’ve turned bad, that are now, instead of allowing you to connect with the God of the Universe, it’s creating a disonnance between you and him because it’s no longer about God. It’s about everybody else. 

It’s interesting. Sometimes good things can be really bad. Did you know this? Did you know that drinking too much water can kill you? That’s why I drink coffee, okay? I’m going to avoid that altogether and go straight to coffee. No, but water, if you drink too much water, it can kill you. Now, we all know that if you don’t drink water it will kill you. But did you know that drinking too much water can kill you? 

If your intentions around alms giving, around prayer and fasting is wrong, it can kill you, spiritually speaking. And it can kill others. This is what Jesus is trying to get at. He’s trying to get to the heart of things and going, “The things I’ve given you to connect with me are there to bring you life and life to the full. To allow you to be a light unto the nations for the world” to see, who? Me? No! To see God. To bring glory to him! We’ve come up against those good things and we’ve made them me things. When it’s all about him. This is where the problem starts. 

Psalm 51 has been a really important Psalm to me. Verses 16 and 17. I want you to hear this. It’s so important.

You do not delight in sacrifice, or I would bring it;
    you do not take pleasure in burnt offerings.
My sacrifice, O God, is a broken spirit;
    a broken and contrite heart
    you, God, will not despise.

See we’re all in the marketplace going, “Look at me! Look at me! Look at me!” And he’s going, “I don’t need you to do that. I just want you to be broken. I want a broken and contrite heart that goes, ‘I just want you. I just want to bring you bring you glory. I just want to know you intimately in the innermost being of my life.’”

Jesus, knowing this, is saying, “We have a problem and we need to talk about it.” 

The thing we need to talk about is this thing he repeats over and over and over, which is this, “Do not be like the hypocrites. Do not be like the hypocrites.” And what are the hypocrites? Well, in the Greek, the word literally means actors. The actors. 

You know, I’ve grown up in the church my whole life. I went to church. I went to Christian school. I went to Bible college. In high school, I won the Best Christian in the school. That’s a real thing. I have a plaque. I have two of them. I have two plaques that said… do you know what that does for a teenager’s heart? Right? It’s no different than pouring fuel on the fire of that seven-year-old that got in front of that church and said, “I’m a somebody!” So I know the game. I played the game. 

In fact, let me just tell you this — maybe you don’t know this about people who come up here and teach. It’s hard because I’m doing everything I can not to get your affirmation, that you would think of me as a good teacher. Now, I’m going to serve the Lord to the best of my ability, that he gets all the glory. But it’s painful for me. I have to pray and ask for God to sanctify my heart as I come up here and bring his word. Because I feel unworthy. That I might receive something from you that he wants to give me. It’s hard and it’s heavy. 

Because, what I find so often in the local churches is that I’ve got to come into these spaces and places where it feels at times like we’re just acting. Like we’re playing the part that you play in the church. Do you know the local church is the easiest place to fake it. You say the right words and do the right things and everyone assumes that you are just a solid believer in Jesus Christ. It’s easy to fake it here.

Jesus knows it. He’s exposing that in you and me. He’s like, “Stop acting. Stop pretending to be something. Come before me. Repent before me but don’t act.”

I’ve realized in my own life, would I give? Would I be generous if I didn’t get a writeoff from the government? We get rewarded from our government for giving money away. Would I do it if I did not get that reward? Man! 

I think one of the prayers that I feel are some of the most sacrilegious prayers are mealtime prayers. Because we’re not thinking about God. We’re thinking about, “How do I get into this burrito as fast I can? I’ve got to get through this Christian pageantry so I can get to the good stuff.” He’s the good stuff! He’s provided this. He’s given us the provision. And all we can think about is, “Let’s get through the routine so I can get to my burrito.” When in reality, we should be like, “Oh my gosh! I have a burrito. Oh my gosh! You love me and you care for me and you see me. And there’s people all around the world that don’t have — and I do.” But we’re trying to rush through that because it’s a part of the pageantry that we’ve become accustomed to. 

We have Christian idioms like, “I’ll pray for you.” Think of how often we say that to people or that’s being said to us. Are we really praying for people? Do we not wear the weight of what those words mean? Are we just acting and pretending here and playing a game? Like in a Christian drama? Like it’s like church as a theater, Christianity as a theater. And Jesus is like, “Don’t do it. It’s killing you. Not only that, but it’s killing your witness in this world.”

Here’s the scary thing. Here’s the real scary thing. The consequences, we receive the fullness of that reward in other people’s view of us, not Jesus, which means we don’t get Jesus. We don’t sense his pleasure. We don’t sense his peace. We don’t sense his joy. No, because we’re doling out all of this stuff and hoping to get something in return that only he can give us, and it’s killing us. That should feel weighty. Like Romans 1 says, He releases us, listen to this. It’s so heavy. He releases us to the desires of our hearts.

If the desire of your heart is to be known by the masses, he will release you to that desire and you miss out on the presence of God that is nearer to you than your own heartbeat. And he desperately wants to connect with you in that way. 

So often what we’re trying to look for is an ROI on our righteousness. ROI on our righteous deeds, right? “Oh, God, I’m going to pray to you, but you’d better answer that prayer.” 

“Oh, God, I’m going to give, but you’d better hook a brother up if I give. Right? I want an ROI on that righteousness.”

“I’ll fast. I’ll lay something down. But you’d better honor me and reward me for that.”

And it’s killing us. Do you know this generation is the most depressed, medicated generation of all time? Suicide is at an all-time high. Why? Because we’re trying to get filled up in all the wrong places. We’re trying and begging and hoping that something else will feed us up. 

I find this so interesting. You see this right here? (Indicates taking a selfie.) You ever see this? Maybe you’re one of these people. I’m sorry, but I’m going to go after it a little bit. Just hang with me, all right? You’re one of these people, and God’s like this, “Stop it!” You’re trying to put something out there that’s not real in hopes that you get a Like or a Comment back that will affirm you, when he’s like, “I want to do that for you. I want to fill that desire in you. I want you to sense my presence. I want you to feel my love, but you’re so busy getting it from others.” You get your reward there and it’s crushing you. 

Remember the story in the scriptures of the Pharisee and the tax collector? The Pharisee stands in the temple like so many of us do. “Thank you that I’m not like them. Thank you I’m not a sinner like them. I give my money. I pray. I’m faithful. I stick by all 613 laws and follow the sacrificial system to the 9’s. God you’re so blessed to have me in your kingdom.” And he points to the tax collector and says, “Thank you I’m not like him.” 

Then all of a sudden it transitions to the tax collector and he says, “Have mercy on me, oh God. I’m a sinner.” That’s soul talk. That’s heart talk. That’s conviction talk. This is what Jesus is trying to get after with you and me. But we’ve got to listen to the word of God, to the teaching of Jesus that he has given to don’t be like the hypocrites. Don’t get your reward from the world, from the kingdom of the world, get it from the kingdom of God. Seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness and all these things will be added unto you. All these things will be added to you.

Ten years ago I started Phoenix One. The reason why we started it is because the largest generation of our time, the Millennials, all the research was coming out and they were called Nones. It means they grew up around the church and they got tired of the drama. They got tired of the acting. Because moms and dads would come to church and raise their hands and pray and then come home and fake it. And the kids of that generation said, “I’m out. I’m done.” 

So we were doing everything we could to reconnect them back to the local church, reconnect them back to Jesus. What I want to say is this has to stop. We are at a crossroads in Church history, where we need to stop faking it. What we do in here matters. But what you do out there, it matters. We have got to stop faking it. We have got to stop being a part of this drama and allow the Lord to meet us and convict us and to use us once again. He will if we allow ourselves to slow down to meet him in the secret place. That’s the solution. It runs contrary to the way we process through things. He wants to meet you in that secret place. 

This quote has been so helpful for me. It says this:

I must turn my attention away from a group-consciousness as a ruling norm of my actions and fasten my glance on the source, rather than the impact, of my actions, and this in the sight of God, who is in heaven.” –Erasmo Leiva-Merikakis

It’s going like this, “It’s all about Jesus.” Let him do the ministry. He will. And he will use you as a result of you coming to rest in the secret place with him. All throughout this place. It’s in the secret in your heart. Why? Because it runs your whole life. That’s why you need to guard your heart. It affects everything you do. It directs your life and he wants to meet you there and minister to you there. Why? So you can go out and be a ministry to other people. 

This is what he’s inviting us into. He wants you to come in the secret place. He wants you to be silent. He wants you to be ministered to by him because he loves you. That’s why he sent the Helper. That’s why his death and resurrection made possible the release of the Spirit of God. You are the temple of God. And the Spirit of God — if you’ve made a commitment to follow after Jesus is in you. He’s nearer to you than your own heartbeat. But do you know him? Where is God? God is in the secret and he’s meeting you there, maybe right now he is meeting you there. And the weight of conviction you’re feeling, I hope you are. I am. I am.

He loves you and he sees you and he wants you to know him intimately the way he knows you. I’ll tell you where he’s not. God is not on the street corners blowing trumpets and trying to get all the attention. He’s not in the contorted face in fasting. He’s not in hypocrisy. He’s not in self-promotion. He’s not in religious devotion who steals for himself or herself the glory of God. He’s not in glory thieving. That’s what a lot of us are. We’re glory thieves. 

He’s in the place that he see you. In the secret place. In the place where you first met him and you felt the conviction that allowed you to make your life right before the God of the Universe as a result of Jesus’ death and resurrection.

I was trying to think, “How do we move forward from here?” The best passage I can give you is John 12:25:

Anyone who loves their life will lose it, while anyone who hates their life in this world will keep it for eternal life.

That is a paradox. The paradox is a part of what it means to follow after Jesus. A paradox is like two illogical turns that come together and we’re like, “That doesn’t make sense.” Welcome to the Christian life. If you lost your life, if you lay it down, if you lay down all this public affirmation, all this stuff that we’re putting out there, if you lay that down you get Jesus. You sense his presence. You move forward in holiness and righteousness. You receive peace and joy. Not in the things of this world but in him. This is what Jesus is getting after.

And the Christian life is a paradox. I want you to listen to this: 

As Christians we see unseen things. We conquer by yielding. We find rest under a yoke. We reign by serving. We are made great by becoming small. We are exalted when we are humble. We become wise by being fools for Christ’s sake. We are made free by becoming bond servants. We gain strength when we are weak. We triumph through defeat. We find victory by glorifying God in our infirmities. We live by dying.  

This is what it means to be a Christian. This is what it means to follow after Jesus. We live in these paradoxical, upside down, kingdom-come-will-be-done realities here on earth. The problem for so many of us is we’re resisting that. We’ve created a counter strategy that’s not only killing us but it’s killing the gospel message that we’re called to give in his world. 

Jesus is like, “Stop it. Stop it. Stop it. Stop faking. Stop acting. Stop it. Repent. Return to the Lord.”

Hosea 6:1 says this: 

Come, let us return to the Lord.
He has torn us to pieces
    but he will heal us;
he has injured us
    but he will bind up our wounds.

Right now some of us need some wounded-ness so that we can be healed by the Spirit of God and remind us who we are in him so we can go out in this world and be the presentation that only he can give. We’re just clay. He’s the one who molds us and puts us together. 

I’ve spent a good portion of my life in India. I love India. India is kind of like my home away from home. I love it there. Twelve years ago I got to lead a pastors conference for seven hundred Indian pastors. I thought I was just going to go there and bless their socks off. They rocked me. You know why? Because those paradoxical statements I just read you, they live those out. That’s who they are. That’s what they were doing. It was costly for them to follow after Jesus. 

Here I was, this American pastor, and it really hasn’t cost me much to follow Jesus. And they taught me and I was humbled. And I was convicted. And I repented because I was like, “Oh my gosh. I’ve just gone astray.” 

There’s a picture that’s going to come up. This is Pastor Abraham. I was in his village a couple of years ago, in a village outside of Padafrom (sp), which is in Southern India. It’s the second largest red light district in the country. I was meeting with him and I asked him some simple questions. “Why? Why did you choose to be a pastor?” Because if you choose to be a pastor in India, you’re choosing to be abused. You’re choosing abject poverty. You’re choosing to be mocked. You’re choosing to be flogged. Not only you, but your wife and your children. You’re choosing to have your house be burnt to the ground. You’re choosing that. And I said, “Why? Why would you do that? Why would you pick that?” 

And he says, “Because Jesus loves me. Because Jesus loves me.”

And I wanted to argue with him. “No, no. It’s far more complex than that. There’s way more to it than that.”

And he was like, “I love Jesus. I want other people to see Jesus.”

We need to learn to love Jesus. We need to learn to live for Jesus. This is what it means to be a body of Christ, coming together as one. We’ve got to stop faking it and start sacrificing in order that others may see this gospel, this good news that Jesus loves them and died for them and cares for them. But we’re glory thieves. We’re trying to rob that to fill our own insecurities. We need to stop.

I’m telling you, I stand before you the chief of all sinners. I feel so unworthy to preach this. I’m so unworthy, as I’ve gone through this week, I’m going to tell you, it’s been heavy. I’ve been excited to bring God’s word. I’ve been really excited to bring this word from Jesus. But I feel so unworthy. I feel so challenged by this passage, so convicted by it because what I realize is this. The statement that I made:

What you do in secret will impact who you are in public, and what you do in public will impact how you connect with God in secret. 

I want us to wear that. I want us to feel that. I want us to be convicted by Jesus’ word, the best teacher of all time. He says this in 6:1: 

“Be careful not to practice your righteousness in front of others to be seen by them. If you do, you will have no reward from your Father in heaven…

That’s weighty. I feel convicted by that. I don’t know about you. But I hope this morning you’re convicted by the word of God; but I hope that conviction doesn’t leave you in despair, but pushes you toward the hope that we find in the resurrected Jesus. He didn’t leave us in hopelessness. He became that hope for us, so that we can bring hope into the spaces and places that he’s called us to. This is what it means to be the Church. This is what Jesus was trying to help people understand what it meant to be a part of the kingdom. 

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Unless otherwise marked, scripture taken from the HOLY BIBLE, NEW INTERNATIONAL VERSION®. Copyright © 1973, 1978, 1984 Biblica. Used by permission of Zondervan. All rights reserved.The "NIV" and "New International Version" trademarks are registered in the United States Patent and Trademark Office by Biblica. Use of either trademark requires the permission of Biblica.

What I Learned from the Kings

Series: A Kingdom Divided
March 21, 2021 - Mark Buckley

Well, good morning, Living Streams. It’s a joy for me to be with you guys today. I want to say a special hello to the Grand Canyon students, because it’s a big weekend, you guys having your team at the big dance. We’re proud of you. It was a little difficult yesterday but to get into the dance is one thing. But actually, dancing is a whole different ball game, right?

I also want to say hi to the online community. I’ve been part of the online community for the past year. My wife had a heart transplant and we had to keep a big social distance. But there’s nothing like being back in live church! It’s a whole different ball game. 

I was literally weeping this morning as we prayed before the first service. The Holy Spirit was ministering in a powerful way. We’ve got an awesome team of people in this church. If you don’t know the pastors personally, Veronica Morrison, Faith Cummings, Kurt Cotter, Arthur Le, some of these guys and gals are wonderful. And our elders are wonderful men of God. If you have a chance to get to know them, you’re going to find even more of God’s kingdom in this place than you’ve ever experienced before.

I’m going to be talking today about What I Learned from the Kings. At the end of the service we’re going to have communion. If you’re online, go get your bread, go get your cup. If it’s too early for wine, get some juice, whatever. We’re going to take communion. It’ll be good.

I’m going to give you lessons from three different righteous kings—things that have stuck with me over the years. Even the righteous kings were flawed. The first part of this message is going to be a little bit dark at times, a little bit politically incorrect at times; but if you stick with it, it’ll be worth it in the end,

First lesson from the kings:

1. Immorality has consequences for everyone.

Looking at the life of Solomon. Solomon was a king who pleased God from the time he began. He was a young guy. He knew that he needed wisdom. He asked God for wisdom and the Lord said, “I’m going to give you wisdom. And because you weren’t asking for much more than that, I’m going to give you wealth, I’m going to give you power, I’m going to give you more than you ever anticipated.”

Then it says in 1 Kings 11, 

King Solomon, however, loved many foreign women besides Pharaoh’s daughter… 

which was his first wife.

Moabites, Ammonites, Edomites, Sidonians and Hittites. 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. He had seven hundred wives of royal birth and three hundred concubines, and his wives led him astray. 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.

Let’s pray:

Father, I ask that you’d help me speak this word with clarity and power and that your grace will minister and that your kingdom will come more fully in our lives than ever before. In Jesus’ name.

So Solomon went from being this wonderful young guy with a heart for God, who gained wisdom, who gained understanding, who understand how flowers worked and plants grew, and how cities should be built, and aqueducts, and how an army should be formed, and his palace had such great order that people came and were amazed at what God did through Solomon. He built this magnificent temple and overlaid it with gold. It was a phenomenal place. 

But as he wanted, in the lust of his heart, more and more women—it wasn’t just one wife that was beautiful, it wasn’t just two, it became seven hundred wives, three hundred concubines, which were basically sex slaves. There’s no other way to put it. It occupied his heart. His heart became dark. And his latter years he did not leave the legacy of blessing. The kingdom got divided because his heart was dark, and his son followed his dark ways and took unwise counsel.

I have a deep concern for our society today. I watched my own dad’s life turn dark because of immorality. I watched my pastor’s life become dark because of immorality. I saw the consequences in our family. I saw the consequences in the ministry I was part of when I was a young guy. It grieved my heart.

And today we’re having an explosion of immorality that is like none other. Now, in the sixties, we had free love, sex, peace, rock ’n roll and partying, basically. But the media, for the most part, was trying to warn people that it wasn’t going to end well. If you go to Height Ashbury and see the fruit of the hippie movement, you’ll see the burned out skeletons of people, those who are still alive. You see the bad fruit of that lifestyle. 

But today, Kristina and I were watching Netflix the other day. And, a quick aside, thank you for those who have prayed for my dear wife. She’s doing much better. She’s getting stronger. Her transplant is working really good and we really appreciate your love.

So we were watching Netflix and it says in the upper corner “Language and Smoking,” you know, so keep your eyes out. If somebody smokes, that could really infiltrate your heart and make you want to go smoke or something like that, or you might say a bad word too. It says absolutely nothing about the fact that one guy after another in this show is sleeping with whatever woman he can get his hands on. And women are in bed with other women. The whole thing is rampant immorality. That’s normal. It’s being promoted in our society.

And then people act shocked when a guy down in Atlanta goes and kills eight people. Now that is tragic. And you know, if you do the back story on the guy, he was part of a bible-believing church. And he took a very Old Testament approach to try to get rid of his sin. You know? He was enslaved by his sin. He called himself a sex addict. Well, Jesus said that those who sin become slaves to sin. There is an addiction factor, because it doesn’t provide fulfillment. It provides degradation. So he took an Old Testament approach, kills eight people, which spreads fear and grief and pain. 

Whether you try to gain a political solution through violence, a moral solution through violence, or you’re just being an angry person, that does not produce the righteousness of God. We’re here to proclaim the kingdom and to invite people into the kingdom. And we all have urges. We all have temptations. We all have desires that we have to say no to. The New Testament is about saying no to that which corrupts so you can say yes to the kingdom. There is something better that God has for each and every one of us that we don’t want to miss out on.

In 2 Kings 18, another king that you might not know as well as Solomon, his name is Hezekiah:

In the third year of Hoshea son of Elah king of Israel, Hezekiah son of Ahaz king of Judah began to reign. He was twenty-five years old when he became king, and he reigned in Jerusalem twenty-nine years. His mother’s name was Abijah daughter of Zechariah. He did what was right in the eyes of the Lord, just as his father David had done. … Hezekiah trusted in the Lord, the God of Israel. There was no one like him among all the kings of Judah, either before him or after him.

He was pleasing to God. He did what was right. He believed God. Yet we’re going to see in a moment that Hezekiah had all kinds of trials. Some people erroneously believe that, if you love God, if you do everything right, then you’re going to have a shield of protection, a hedge of protection, some kind of invisible bubble that’s going to prevent any bad news from actually affecting you, either from the outside or any kind of personal crisis. But that’s not the story of the Bible. That’s not the truth, folks. 

What I would really urge you all to do is study, not just the New Testament, but the Old Testament, because you’ll get a more full picture of who God really is. So let’s look at what happens. 

2. Even the righteous face crises.

In the fourteenth year of King Hezekiah’s reign, Sennacherib king of Assyria attacked all the fortified cities of Judah and captured them. So Hezekiah king of Judah sent this message to the king of Assyria at Lachish: “I have done wrong. Withdraw from me, and I will pay whatever you demand of me.” 

So here is this righteous king and he still gets attacked. Major army of Assyria. Hundreds of thousands of people marching against Judah, capturing the outlying cities. And it says:

…the king of Assyria exacted from Hezekiah king of Judah three hundred talents[c] of silver and thirty talents[d] of gold. So Hezekiah gave him all the silver that was found in the temple of the Lord and in the treasuries of the royal palace. At this time Hezekiah king of Judah stripped off the gold with which he had covered the doors and doorposts of the temple of the Lord, and gave it to the king of Assyria.

He made two false assumptions. One assumption was that it was because he did something wrong that he got attacked. He didn’t get attacked because he had done something wrong. He got attacked because there is evil in the world, and evil has a tendency to want to destroy those who are trying to do right. It says in the New Testament that all who live godly in Christ Jesus will be persecuted. It goes with the territory. Jesus said, “Blessed are the peacemakers. They will be sons of God.” We need peacemakers because there’s conflict. There’s conflict because men have fallen.

So another false assumption he made is that, if he goes into a treaty with the king of Assyria, that the king of Assyria is going to honor his word. It’s like trying to make a pact with the devil. You try and make a pact with the devil for your success or for your protection or whatever, and it’s a temporary deception that leads to further bondage. 

Neville Chamberlain, in the late 1930’s, tried to make a pact with Adolph Hitler. The pact was this: we will let you have Austria, we will let you have part of Czechoslovakia, but that’s as far as you go. And Hitler goes, “Yeah. That’s as far as I want to go. We just want to reclaim the German-held territories from these other places and we’ll be good to go.”

Well, Chamberlain comes back to Great Britain, claims to the world, “We have a peace treaty. Hitler’s going to be fine.” And what happens? Within months Hitler’s invading Poland and then he goes after Russia and the whole world is inflamed in war. Why? Because he had an intent from the beginning to dominate and control and make the Aryan race the predominate force on the world. 

So, what happens to Hezekiah if you get into the story is that, after he gives the gold, after he gives the silver, the king of Assyria still attacks. He’s got the gold but now he wants complete and utter control. He’s a picture of Satan in the Old Testament.

Now, by the grace of God, Hezekiah and the people of the Lord are delivered from that. But that’s not the end of Hezekiah’s challenges. In 2 Kings 20, it says this:

In those days Hezekiah became ill and was at the point of death. The prophet Isaiah son of Amoz went to him and said, “This is what the Lord says: Put your house in order, because you are going to die; you will not recover.”

Now we don’t know what his problem was. We don’t know if it was some kind of cancer, some kind of an infection. All we know is that sickness was a sickness unto death and Isaiah the prophet recognized it and said, “Buddy, make sure your will is good. Make sure you kiss your wife goodbye and say what you want to your kids, because this is the end.” 

Hezekiah turned his face to the wall and prayed to the Lord, “Remember, Lord, how I have walked before you faithfully and with wholehearted devotion and have done what is good in your eyes.” And Hezekiah wept bitterly.

I know a little bit of what this feels like. In 1979 I was a young pastor. I had a wife and two kids and a growing church in Northern California. We had a day of fasting and prayer. I’m fasting on my own, in my office, kneeling before the couch in my office, and I heard a voice in my heart. The voice said, “I’m going to take you home.” 

It totally caught me off guard. You’re going to take me home? This is God speaking? I’m going to die? What the heck is going on?

I literally got up off my knees, sat down on my couch, a few minutes later I left my office. I’m walking around, I’m jumpy. I’m irritated. Am I going to die? Was that God? Was that the devil? What happened,

Well, four days later my wife, Kristina, and I left on a trip. We borrowed a Volkswagen camper van. We left our boys with my brother and his wife. We were up in Northern California to go trout fishing, The Volkswagen camper dies and we have to push-start it. I had to gather a bunch of campers together to help me push-start it. Kristina’s in the driver’s seat. We push it to get it going and and it doesn’t start. Then it turns out she had the key off, which was a little embarrassing. So we push it again. There were about five of us. We push it as hard as we can. She pops the clutch and it doesn’t start, because she had it in reverse. 

Now, my wife is usually very mechanical and very responsible. It was very irritating. And four of the guys helping me push the van walked away in disgust. So they leave and it’s just me and one other guy. Now we’re pushing with all our might. We push and she pops the clutch. It starts. And I’m hit with this massive headache. I mean, massive. And within a moment or two I’m literally laying in the dirt, throwing up. It was a bad scene. Kristina gets out of the van, says, “What’s happening?” I said, “I think I’m going to die, and you’d better get me to a hospital.”

She takes me to the hospital, where they do a spinal tap when they see the mess I’m in. They say, “You’ve got a brain bleed” They fly me in a private air evac down to Marin County, and basically said, “We don’t know if you’re going to live or die, but 90% of people that have this kind of brain bleed die.” Obviously, you know how that part of the story ends. I don’t die, by the grace of God. 

But I had been in my office praying, I had been in my office crying after hearing that word that I was going to die. What comforted me is what happened to Hezekiah. This is what I want to say in my third point:

3. The mercy of God is amazing.

Isaiah said in verse 4:

Before Isaiah had left the middle court, the word of the Lord came to him: “Go back and tell Hezekiah, the ruler of my people, ‘This is what the Lord, the God of your father David, says: I have heard your prayer and seen your tears; I will heal you. On the third day from now you will go up to the temple of the Lord. I will add fifteen years to your life. And I will deliver you and this city from the hand of the king of Assyria. I will defend this city for my sake and for the sake of my servant David.’”

In other words, what God is saying is, “I have a plan bigger than you, Hezekiah. The way you were living your life, you might have ended in death. But I have heard your plea for mercy and I’m adding fifteen years to your life.”

So when I had remembered that story, it really encouraged me. And when you’re twenty-nine years old, fifteen years sounds like a long, long time.

Let’s go to our final king. In 2 Kings 22, it says this:

Josiah was eight years old when he became king, and he reigned in Jerusalem thirty-one years. His mother’s name was Jedidah daughter of Adaiah; she was from Bozkath. He did what was right in the eyes of the Lord and followed completely the ways of his father David, not turning aside to the right or to the left.

So Josiah, at eight years old he becomes king. As he grows up, turns a teenager and into his twenties, he is  the most dedicated king in the history of Israel. He tells them to rebuild the temple. The temple had fallen into disrepair. He finds the law of God in the temple and they begin to practice the law of God. They have it read to all the people. They begin to humble themselves. They reinstitute the Passover. They reinstitute the festivals. They reinstitute obedience to God. They finally rebuild the army. They rebuild the cities around Judah. And he has done a phenomenal job. Great guy. There’s about four pages of the Old Testament written about him. Then something happens. 

4. Getting overextended has serious consequences.

2 Kings 23:

While Josiah was king, Pharaoh Necho king of Egypt went up to the Euphrates River to help the king of Assyria. King Josiah marched out to meet him in battle, but Necho faced him and killed him at Megiddo. 

What’s happening? Josiah finds out that the arch enemy of Israel, which is Assyria, is going to be helped by Necho, King of Egypt. Josiah says, “I don’t want anybody helping Assyria. We hate those guys. They took the gold out of our temple years ago and we hate those guys.”

So he marches out in battle. He gets into a battle that God had not called him into. He gets overextended. I deal all the time with guys who are believers who get overextended and it’s not pretty. 

So, 1994, Kristina and I are in a cabin in northern Washington. Kurt Cotter and I had flown up there because a young man in our church was in a coma. He had rolled his car over at a Christian camp. It had settled to the bottom of a pond. He was almost brain dead. He had been in a coma for several days. We went up there to pray for him, to ask God to heal him.

Two years before that, our oldest son had drown. Now, this kid, Daniel Murrow, we had helped raise for three and half years while his dad was in prison. So he was really close to our family. He was the oldest of six kids who lived next door to us. They were in and out of our house all the time. We loved these guys. We were praying over Daniel, asking God to heal him. 

On the way up there, I had told Kurt, “I’m in trouble.” I had been in Alaska, trying to minister to some pastors whose kids were killed in a car wreck. I had been in California at a missions conference, where the churches were having a battle with each other. I had been on a bunch of trips that left me very drained, one right after another. I had nothing left in the tank. Now I had an emergency. I was living my life right on the edge, trying to please God by serving him with all my strength all the time, every day, and leaving nothing behind. Now an emergency comes and I’ve got nothing to give. I’m so wound up I couldn’t even sleep. 

When the elders found out about that, they literally had me sent to a mental hospital for two weeks. Then to a treatment for another two weeks. I want to just tell you, if you’re the senior pastor of a church and you get sent to a mental hospital, it does not look good on a resume. Do you know what I mean? It’s not something you want to brag about to your friends or put in your newsletter. You’re hoping nobody’s going to find out. Yeah. Good luck with that. 

“Where’s Mark? I haven’t seen him for a few weeks.”

“Well, you know how those things go, don’t you?”

Nobody ever gossips or anything. Nevertheless, I was out of the pulpit for four months. And our church held together. Living Streams held together because of love and because of mercy. They loved us. We loved them. And the fruit of the church has been better than ever. But I had to learn a really painful lesson.

I want to tell you how I ended up in that mental institution. I ended up there because, one night when we were at that Christian camp after we had prayed for Daniel all day long, I was trying to go to sleep. David Stockton’s parents were sharing this bungalow with us They were asleep. Kristina was asleep. My son, Phil, was in there. He was asleep. And I feel like my heart is starting to race and beat so fast that I’m having a heart attack. I’m thinking maybe I’m dying or something like that. I hear fireworks going off in the distance and I realize it’s Fourth of July and there’s fireworks. It’s 1994. And, oh, by the way, 1994, the last time I thought I was going to die was 1979, that’s fifteen years ago, and that happened to have been on the Fourth of July weekend. My fifteen years is up! I’m not paranoid. I’m about to die. Literally, that’s what I thought. That’s what flipped me out.

So the mercy of God is amazing. I did not die. But…but the reason I had the mercy of God is because I am part of a really loving, supportive community. Not everybody has that benefit. A lot of people, when they have a breakdown, which is what I had, it takes years and years to recover from. And some people have a hard time ever recovering.

The Body of Christ is a healing place. Don’t ever let people tell you, “I don’t really need church because I’ve got all I need from God.” Well, you’ve got all you need from God until you have a crisis. And if you’re a believer, you’re going to have a crisis, believe me. You’re going to get attacked. There’s going to be health issues. There’s going to be stuff happen. There is no magic protection that’s going to guarantee that your family is always going to escape through the trials of life. You’re going to need your brothers and sisters, and they’re going to need you, too.

Now I want to close this message by talking about the King of kings and the Lord of lords, and a little contrast between the limitations of the righteous king and what Jesus does in our life.

In Revelation 19:11 & 16, it says: 

I saw heaven standing open and there before me was a white horse, whose rider is called Faithful and True. With justice he judges and wages war. On his robe and on his thigh he has this name written: king of kings and lord of lords.

King of kings and Lord of lords. Heaven was open and the apostle saw Jesus, the Word of God, alive and well and true. The Eternal Word through which all things are formed, all things are made, that which established the universe, literally became flesh and dwelt among us, he said, “And I got to touch him. I got to feel him.”

A couple of weeks ago, maybe a little less than that, I was over at a golf course, and I run into a guy who is a judge, who I’ve known for a long time, who was part of our church. And I said, “How’s it going?” And he said, “Well, did you know my golf clubs got stolen?” And I said, “No, I didn’t know that. Did you get any new ones?” And he goes, “No, no, as a matter of fact, one of the detectives caught the guy. He was fencing my golf clubs. And because he was fencing my golf clubs and they’re worth so much money, he’s got a class 4 felony. He’s going to prison.”

And then I’m like, “Oh, really?”

And he goes, “Yeah, but my driver, he gave away to somebody. So he’s making restitution. He’s paying me $17 a month for my driver.”

Now under normal circumstances, I’d say, “Yeah, they got the bad guy!” You know what I mean? We can’t let people steal golf clubs. What would become of people like me that like to play golf, if you just let them take golf clubs? You’ve got to send them to prison.

But that very day, I had heard about a lady taking a very different approach. We had a memorial service for Celia Clifton, the mom of Adriana Gruber, who is part of our staff. Celia Clifton heard from Adriana, when Adriana was a teenager, that when Adriana went on a particular day to get her car washed, somebody at the car wash stole a bunch of stuff out of her car. So she goes home and tells her mom right away, “Mom, I realized that somebody stole my stuff.”

Her mom says, “Which car wash?” She goes right down there. She marches down there. She’s this fiery little Mexican lady who loves Jesus. She tells the manager of the car wash, “I want to talk to all of your guys!”

“All of my guys/]?”

“Yeah. Someobody stole stuff out of my daughter’s car. I want to talk to all your guys.”

The guy literally shuts down the car wash, gathers twenty employees all together. And Celia begins to preach the gospel. She tells them that she knows that they’re sinners because we’re all sinners. She knows somebody’s a thief, but Jesus Christ came to die on the cross so thieves could be forgiven, so immoral people can be transformed, so people can enter the kingdom of God.

During the course of her message, one of the guys starts weeping and he confesses that he had stolen the stuff out of the car. And she leads him to the Lord and twenty of those guys pray to receive Christ. Then she goes to the manager of the car wash and says, “I do not want you to fire him. I want you promote him. You hear me? I do not want you to fire him. I want you to promote him because he’s honest and he’s going to be a man of God.”

So I wanted to say to my friend, the judge, “Hold on a second. There’s a better way than just sending the bad guys who steal your golf clubs to prison. There’s a better way. There’s a more powerful way.”

He can take those of us who have fallen and make us new. Jesus said, “there’s somebody more powerful than Solomon here.” 

Solomon had people come from all over the world to hear his wisdom. And Jesus said what he could do was better. You know why? Because Solomon in his wisdom could find out which of the women is lying. But Jesus, in his power, can turn the liar into a truth teller. 

Moses with his authority could have the adulterer put to death. But Jesus, with his authority, can turn the adulterer into a covenant keeper. There’s somebody more powerful than Moses here. 

And here’s what Jesus had to say. Last point here.

5. The King of kings makes simple great.

Matthew 11:11

Truly I tell you, among those born of women there has not risen anyone greater than John the Baptist; yet whoever is least in the kingdom of heaven is greater than he. 

Greater than John the Baptist. Greater than Moses. Greater than Solomon. Who? Whoever is least in the kingdom of heaven. You may be least in the kingdom of heaven. You are aware that you don’t think right sometimes. You don’t act right sometimes. But you’re not to be disqualified because you weren’t qualified. None of us are qualified because we’re always thinking right we’re always acting right. We’re qualified by what Jesus has done for us, by his gift for us. And if you’re least in the kingdom, you’ve got an awesome gift. An awesome gift. 

My sister is visiting from California this weekend. The last time she came here was over thirty years ago. Living Streams had about fifteen people. I was going door to door. I was doing everything I could to try and reach people. I was going to the parks. I reached a few people and brought them to church.

She came when she was having trouble. She stayed in our house with our four kids. She invited a friend to our church. And her friend brought her boyfriend, Ben. Robin brought Ben. Ben brought J.B.. J.B. brought his parents, Ewell and Betsy. Ewell and Betsy brought George and Mary Ellen. George was the head of surgery at Good Sam Hospital. Ewell was the head of the Shearson Leemon Hutton brokerage. Ben brought Steve Ontiveros, a pitcher for the Oakland A’s. 

I had been exhausting myself, trying to do whatever I could. Katey shows up, starts inviting somebody and the whole church starts to grow. She had a gift from God. I don’t even know if she knew she had a gift from God. 

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©2021 Living Streams Christian Church, Phoenix, AZ

Scripture is taken from Holy Bible, New International Version®, NIV® Copyright ©1973, 1978, 1984, 2011 by Biblica, Inc.® Used by permission. All rights reserved worldwide.

Mephibosheth Around the Table

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.

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.

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.

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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.