Last week we explored something seriously vital to anyone God will use: our sense of God’s grace, His colossal, undeserved, lovingkindness for us. Today (2 Samuel 9) a history that really helps us get a grip on this…
There is more than one aspect to grace: those who really grasp – or are grasped by – God’s huge, undeserved lovingkindness, are undeservedly loving in return. So 2 Sam 9 tells of David’s generous kindness to Saul’s grandson Mephibosheth, even though as a Benjamite of the royal house he was possibly a political threat (cf 16:3, 8 ). But that’s the kind of thing we do if we’ve really been grasped by God’s grace. First practical question then (maybe read Matthew 18:21-35 where Jesus forcefully preaches this): God has forgiven and loved me so unreservedly; yet is there some grudge I am holding on to? is there some resentment I am still hugging to myself? The people God uses most are those who grasp, are grasped by, and live out, God’s grace and lovingkindness. May He help us!
So Mephibosheth had been completely crippled as a child (2 Sam 4:4). We’re going to absorb this history `typologically`, because that can help us vitally, soul-refreshingly, to grasp God’s grace. The Old Testament has many (partial) pictures of Christ (eg Rom 5:14) that can deepen our vision of Him, and David is one such. Jesus is the `son of David’, and passages like Acts 2:25-31 and 13:34-38 show how David prefigured Him, as do psalms like Psalm 22. Here, then, we can better grasp Christ’s wonderful grace to us as we absorb David’s grace to Mephibosheth; seeing ourselves in Mephibosheth’s place…
So 2 Samuel 9:1-5: David takes the initiative to do something wonderful for Mephibosheth. That’s how it is with Christ and us (Eph 2:8): grace always comes first, otherwise there would be nothing (`By grace you have been saved, through faith`). Grace is when God gives us (expensively) all that we don’t deserve, all we could never bring about by any action of our own. (Let’s pause again to thank Him?)
Then look how Mephibosheth responds. He’s crippled, and far from home. But the key thing is this: he doesn’t say as he pulls himself around the floor, I’m alright really. No: he grasps at David’s offer of love, and so he is brought to a place where grace is flowing (v5). Grace starts with God and is utterly undeserved, but (since we’re saved by grace through faith) we do need to come to the place where it flows. (1 Peter 5:5 is an example of this; the whole story of Ruth is another.) The way home to glory starts when in realism, humility, repentance, we are helped by God to see ourselves as we are. We are crippled. Let God remind you of the weakness, the bondage, the sin; how very, very little we deserve God’s lovingkindness… We’re far from home; there is a heaven, and we get shut out from it by our sins and follies, and rightly so. For unlike Mephibosheth our brokenness is partly voluntary. We have rejected God’s rule; we have done so many things that are not just stupid but really lousy in God’s sight. Most of us have lied; there’s been gossip, backbiting, grudges; some of us have sinned with sex or money; all of us have been selfish, unthankful to God who gave us everything we have in terms of food and health and sunshine; wilfully independent. And the way to grace comes as I face up to these things; as I see myself as not OK, but genuinely bent and broken, and in good measure by my own stupid and sinful choices. I’m Mephibosheth; I surely don’t deserve God’s love…
And we need to face too that we can’t do anything about our situation. Human religion is one long sequence of attempts, and none of it takes the stain away, none of it sets us free. Religion cannot help us; we are Mephibosheth, crawling around the floor far from home; and as Isaiah says, all our righteousness is ultimately like filthy rags. So we can only be saved if (Eph 2:1-5) something happens to us like happened to Mephibosheth; something he could never have dreamed or deserved (2 Sam 9:6-8)…
That’s goodness; God’s incredible goodness to you, to me. He calls us in our darkness, and incredibly He turns out to have given his own Son for us; incredibly, Jesus turns out to love us so much that He came here to go through hell in agony for us. With the goal that, just like David in v7, He can restore to us everything our race’s rebellion and our individual rebellion has lost. Indeed, like David (vv7,10,11,13), He’s promised us that we will live in the house of the Lord forever! David was generous, but God is far, far more generous. Far beyond our dreams, far beyond all we could deserve…
What can Mephibosheth possibly say? `What is your servant, that you should notice
a dead dog like me?`(v8)…. If we’ve never felt like that we’ve probably slipped back into religion; and religion is dangerous, religion is being lost. This is how we are; we’ve sinned, we’re crippled, we’re far from home in a place of death, and God loves us, God stepped in, God has given His Son for us, Jesus who loved us so much that He came. And now He says, just like David said to Mephibosheth, Come; come in repentance to me, come home in faith…
`Grace is when God gives us all that we don’t deserve.` God loves us so much more than we can ever dream or dare to hope; and like David in v10, He has set up for our futures things more wonderful than we could ever imagine (Eph 3:20)! It’s like the huge welcome the Father comes running to give to his returning lost, prodigal son in Luke 15. `He who did not spare His own Son, but gave Him up for us all—how will He not also, along with Him, graciously give us all things?`(Rom 8:32). Let’s take a moment to absorb that, and imagine how it might come to pass for us as individuals. This is reality!
And then – let’s maybe write Him a prayer of renewed repentance and joyous thanks….?
`As for you, you were dead in your transgressions and sins, in which you used to live when you followed the ways of this world and of the ruler of the kingdom of the air, the spirit who is now at work in those who are disobedient. All of us also lived among them at one time, gratifying the cravings of our flesh and following its desires and thoughts. Like the rest, we were by nature deserving of wrath. But because of His great love for us, God, who is rich in mercy, made us alive with Christ even when we were dead in transgressions; it is by grace you have been saved! And God raised us up with Christ and seated us with Him in the heavenly realms in Christ Jesus; in order that in the coming ages He might show the incomparable riches of His grace, expressed in His kindness to us in Christ Jesus! For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith — and this is not from yourselves, it is the gift of God — not by works, so that no one can boast. For we are God’s handiwork, created in Christ Jesus to do good works – which God prepared in advance for us to do…` (Eph 2, NIV)
