This passage here, 2 Samuel 9,
is one of my favorite stories. It's not just a story, it's history,
because it's the record of King David honoring a covenant that
he made with his friend Saul's son, Jonathan. Years before this,
you see Saul, you remember Saul was the people's king, and he
had been rejected by God because of his disobedience and his rebellion. Saul had lost the throne, and
David, who was God's anointed, a man after God's own heart,
had ascended to the throne. And you know, you can read all
the scriptures before this, how all the problems that he had,
and Saul being after him and all of that. And one of the first
acts that David performed as king on the throne is he asked,
is there yet any left of the house of Saul? Now Saul was his
enemy, but David was not Saul's enemy. Think about that. Saul was his enemy. Saul wanted
David dead. And you know, you remember David,
I think it was on two occasions, David had an opportunity to kill
that man and he didn't do it. because he wouldn't touch the
man whom God providentially put in as king. Wasn't his to do. And Saul was his enemy, so he
asked this question, is there any left of the house of Saul
that I might show him kindness? And here's the key words, for
Jonathan's sake. for Jonathan's sake. Now, Jonathan
was Saul's son. Jonathan was heir to the throne
of Israel as Saul's son. And yet, Jonathan, he recognized
that he was not God's choice, but David was. And that's something
that's miraculous. You know, you think about the
history of royalty in this world, and it's a cutthroat history.
Killing this one, killing that one so that another one can be
heir to the throne. I mean, it's just a history of
blood and debauchery, selfishness. But here's this man, Jonathan,
Saul's son, the heir to the throne. He recognizes, I'm not God's
appointed king. I'm not going to be king. David
is. And Jonathan loved David. And so the king spoke here, David
the king, is there anybody left in the house of Saul? Look at the first three verses
of chapter nine. He says, and David said, is there
yet any that is left of the house of Saul? That I may show him
kindness. The word kindness there is mercy.
That I may show mercy. And he said, for Jonathan's sake.
Now obviously what you have here is a picture of salvation. by God's grace for Christ's sake. And that's what this is. The
king, David here, he's a type of Christ. He's a type of the
Lord God in the sense that this is covenant language. He says
in verse two, there was of the house of Saul a servant whose
name was Ziba. This is a servant. And when they
had called him unto David, the king said unto him, art thou
Ziba? And he said, thy servant is he. Verse three, and the king
said, is there not yet any of the house of Saul that I may
show the kindness of God unto him? And Ziba said unto the king,
Jonathan hath yet a son which is lame on his feet. So whoever
this son is or son or grandson of Jonathan, he was lame on his
feet. So here we have, first of all,
the word of the king, which is spoken from his sovereign throne. Whatever's going to happen here
is because of the power and the rule and the authority of the
king. And what we see here is his purpose, his thoughts were
the result of a covenant that David and Jonathan, Saul's son,
made years before. If you look back in 1 Samuel,
and I'll read this if you don't want to turn there, but 1 Samuel
18. Now, all this is going on back
here in 1 Samuel when Saul was after David. Saul was David's
enemy. And it says in chapter 18 of
1 Samuel, it came to pass when he had made an end of speaking
unto Saul that the soul of Jonathan was knit with the soul of David. They became compadres. They were
brothers. And Jonathan loved him as his
own soul. He loved David. And this is the
kind of love that goes on for us, the agape love of brethren,
you see. And Saul took him that day and
would let him go no more home to his father's house. Then Jonathan
and David made a covenant because he loved him as his own soul. And Jonathan stripped himself
of the robe that was upon him, that was the royal robe, the
outer cloak, and gave it to David. What's he saying there? He said,
you're the king. You're the anointed one. And his garments, even to
his sword and to his bow and to his girdle, that which wrapped
around to hold the sword and all that, put him down his weapons. I'm not declaring war on David.
He says, I'm friends with David. I love David. And David loved
Jonathan. And that's the basis of the covenant
that they made with one another. All of this, you see this picture
here, it's like us, we're born into this world as enemies of
God. The Bible says in Colossians,
enemies in our minds by wicked works. That's our state in this
world. Now we were chosen in Christ
before the foundation of the world to be God's children, adopted
into his family, justified based on Christ's righteousness in
Peter, but we fell in Adam. And we're sons of the enemy in
our state. But when God sent his son to
redeem us and sends his spirit to regenerate us, we're like
Jonathan. We take off our war clothes. As one old preacher from West
Virginia said, we put down our shotgun, lay it in the dirt.
And as we were enemies of God, now we see him as our master,
our savior. And we love him. And so all of
that's the result of that which God does in his people. And if
you'll look over in 2 Samuel 1, look back at chapter 1. Got it marked here, 2 Samuel
chapter one and verse 26. Well, let's look at verse 25. Now this is after Jonathan died. You see, remember Saul died.
They were in a battle with the Philistines and Saul was killed. You know, he was struck down
by his own, and then Jonathan died before this. And here's
what, here's David's lament. And this, it starts actually
back in verse 17, but look at verse 25. It says, how are the
mighty fallen in the midst of battle? Oh, Jonathan, thou was
slain in thine high places. And David said, I am distressed
for thee, my brother Jonathan. Very pleasant hast thou been
unto me. Thy love to me was wonderful,
passing the love of women. How art the mighty fallen and
the weapons of war perished? Now, it's very sad to say, that
some of the enemies of God, perverted, take passages like that and try
to prove that there was some kind of a homosexual relationship
between David and Jonathan. My friend, that's not only evil,
it's sick. The kind of love that surpasses
the love of women, what David is, is that agape love that exists
between brethren that'll never go away. It'll last forever. Paul wrote about it in 1 Corinthians
13. It's not sexual at all. That sexual love between a man
and a woman in the marriage union is precious, and it's ordained
of God for the human race, but that's gonna end, and there's
a love that surpasses that, and that's what David's talking about.
There's no homosexuality here, no perversion like that. These
two men, they loved each other, and they made a covenant. And
that's a great picture of the covenant that was made between
God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit before
the foundation of the world, where God chose his people and
gave us to Christ and determined that he would show mercy, that
he would show grace, that he would do all that was required
in order to save us from our sins. And so we see this in this
type here, that David's purpose here was to show kindness, to
show mercy. David had every right to show
vengeance. Saul tried to kill him. So, you
know, it was common in those days and many days afterward
When the king killed his enemy, he killed his whole household,
killed his family, his children, because he didn't want those
children growing up to come back at him. But not this. There's a covenant of love here.
And so, as we see in this justice and mercy all coming together,
this is David showing kindness to somebody who didn't deserve
it. Isn't that our gospel? God showing
mercy and grace and love to people who don't deserve it. Enemies
of God by nature. And then God changes all of that.
So this is the language of mercy. David learned that there was
one from the house of Saul who yet lived, Jonathan's son, and
his name was Mephibosheth. That was his name. Before Meshibeth
was even born, long before he was born, David and Jonathan
made that covenant. And in essence, Jonathan became
the surety of Mephibosheth's salvation, in that sense, his
physical well-being. And that's the way it was with
Christ, our surety. He was made surety of his people
for our salvation. And they made that covenant,
and it was mentioned to ensure provision and protection for
Jonathan's descendants. And Jonathan, in essence, was
his surety. This is a picture of Christ.
And this picture's our fault. Listen, it says here, and it's
emphasized in this passage, that whoever this boy was, he was
lame on his feet. And how did he become lame on
his feet? Well, back when he was a baby, a nurse dropped him,
and I think this is back in 2 Samuel chapter 4, you can read about
that. In other words, dropped him on his feet and he was lame
the rest of his life. He was crippled, but it was. Well, what is that picture? Our
fallen Adam. That's what we are, spiritually
speaking, lame on our feet. We can't walk. We cannot walk
spiritually. We're spiritually dead. We cannot
walk with God. By nature, we're enemies of God.
We're sinners, and we fell in Adam. And as a result of that,
we're born dead in trespasses and sin, totally depraved. So
all of that pictures The situation that we're in by the grace of
God through Christ And if you look at look at verse 4 it says
and the king said unto him he said unto Ziba where is he where
is this one and Ziba said unto the king behold he's in the house
of maker the son of Emil in Lodibar now that I didn't put this in
your lesson, but because there's there's some differences You
know about the meanings of these names But Lodebarb seems to indicate
that Mephibosheth is in a place where there's no bread. There's
no sustenance. There's nothing that can do him
any good. Well, that's the way we are by nature. In this world,
we have no hope. In this world, we have no way
to take away our sins. In this world, we have no righteousness.
It's only in God. So look at verse five. It says,
then David sent and fetched him out of the house of Maker, the
son of Amiel from Lodibar. I love that, fetching him. Brother
Mayhem preached a message called Fetching Grace. And you know
that word fetch is really important. It means to bring him out. You go get him, bring him out. He didn't say, Ziba, now you
go down there and plead with Mephibosheth and see if he'd
accept me or accept my kind. He said, no, you go get him.
It means to draw him. It means to carry him to David. You go down and get that boy.
And that's the way the Lord is with us. He's not standing over
the banister of heaven trying to beg us to accept him and come
to him and come into his table. He sends his spirit to fetch
us. He fetches us out of our condition
of depravity and death, gives us life, and brings us to himself. In the New Testament it says
he draws us, like the drag net. When they'd cast the net into
the water and they would catch the fishes and bring them up.
And that's what he does, he draws us. He said, if I be lifted up,
I'll draw all unto me. All who? All for whom he died,
all whom God chose and gave to him before the foundation of
the world. Mephibosheth could not on his
own come to David. He was lame on his feet, he couldn't
walk. Somebody's gonna have to go fetch him. And that's the
way we are by nature. Spiritually dead people will
not come to Christ. So what has to happen? Well,
those whom he redeemed, those who are justified by the imputed
righteousness of Christ must be given life and fetched out
by the preaching of the gospel by the Holy Spirit. So here's
the issue. What David decreed here from
the throne was not going to be thwarted by anybody. Not even
by Mephibosheth himself. He's gonna have this boy because
he made a covenant with Jonathan and all of this is for Jonathan's
sake. And that's the way it is with Christ and his people. No
one is going to stop the Lord of glory from bringing his sheep
into the fold. I don't care what happens. And
he's going to do it by the power of his spirit, which we could
say Ziba here represents the spirit, under the preaching of
the gospel. And they may be 10 years old,
they may be 100 years old, but God's going to fetch them with
that fetching grace. So when David heard that Jonathan
had a crippled son in Lodibar, he sent his servant to go fetch
him. This has nothing to do with what
Mephibosheth has done, is doing, or will do. He didn't say, well
now is this Mephibosheth, is he a good boy, or is he a bad
boy, or what kind of person is he? He didn't say that. You see,
that's the way it is. When God determines to show mercy,
and sets His love and affection on lame sinners, And of course
we know, let me just clarify this because we've got some people
who are God's little secretaries and if you don't say it exactly
right, you know, they're, you know, in every way. God chose
us in Christ before any good or evil was done. Isn't that
right? I mean, he didn't look down through
a telescope of time and say, well now, there's Audrey Asher
and we're gonna see what he does and how he acts. No, God doesn't
respond that way. God chose us before any good
or evil was ever done. And he ordained all things. Well,
that's the way it is with David and Jonathan. See, this was done,
I don't even know, At the time, when David and Jonathan made
the covenant, I'd have to go back and really look into the
history of it. I don't even know that Mephibosheth
was born then. I think it was later. But either
way, this had nothing to do with Mephibosheth's character or works. It was all the purpose of David,
who made the covenant with Jonathan, whom he loved and who loved him.
And he said, now you go fetch him. There's that fetching grace. And when David called his name,
look here, go down to verse seven. Listen, when David called his
name, Mephibosheth answered. It says in verse six, now when
Mephibosheth, when he, the son of Jonathan, the son of Saul
was come unto David, he fell on his face and did reverence. And David said, Mephibosheth,
and he answered, behold thy servant. Mephibosheth knew who David was,
and he knew that the king had every right to put him to death.
He knew that. And the idea here is that he
feared the king. And the reason we know that,
look at verse seven. And David said unto him, fear
not, for I will surely show thee kindness, for Jonathan thy father's
sake. Don't be afraid. Mephibosheth
probably well thought that the king was coming after him to
kill him. And he feared David, and David said fear not. Now,
you know as well as I do in our relationship with God through
Christ, there's a bad fear and there's a good fear. That bad
fear is what we have by nature. That's that legal fear of punishment
and condemnation. That's probably what Mephibosheth
was feeling in his relationship with King David. What's the king
want with me? I better go hide. Well, he couldn't go hide. He's
lame on his feet. But the good fear is that reverence
and respect, that awe of the God of glory. And that's what
David speaks to him. Fear not. I will surely show
thee kindness. Oh, because I just feel sorry
for you. No. for Jonathan thy father's sake."
Think about that. That's the reason we're saved.
That's the reason we have the blessings of salvation for Christ's
sake. It had nothing to do with God
feeling sorry for us. You know, that's the way most
preachers present the Lord. Oh, he wants to save you, but
he just can't unless you, you know, and if you, if you reject
him and walk out and die, he's just gonna, it's gonna just warp
his universe. No, no. Go fetch him. And listen to this
in verse seven, he says, he said, I'll show thee kindness for Jonathan
thy father's sake, and listen to this, and we'll restore thee
all the land of Saul thy father. My grandfather's what it is,
but it's often put that way. And thou shalt eat bread at my
table continually. I'm gonna give you everything
that Saul lost, but I'm gonna give you more. You're gonna eat
bread at my table, at the king's table continually. What a great
picture of our salvation. by the grace of God. Not only
is our sin borne away, taken away by the blood of Christ,
but in Him we have a righteousness that gives us a permanent, perfect,
right standing before God, and we have all the blessings and
benefits of salvation by His grace through Christ. Blessed
be the God and Father of our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ,
who have blessed us with all spiritual blessings. in heavenly
places in Christ Jesus. That's the picture here. And
he says in verse eight, he bowed himself, this is Mephibosheth,
and said, what is thy servant? Now listen, what is thy servant
that thou shouldest look upon such a dead dog as I? Dead dog. Well, that's what we are by nature.
What's Mephibosheth saying here? He's not just putting on the
dog, as they say. He's realizing, I don't deserve
this. My grandfather Saul was your enemy, tried to kill you,
tried to take your throne, the rightful place that God had given
you. I don't deserve this. And that's the humility. Do we
realize, and I think this is something we need to think about
every day of our lives, that if we're saved by God's grace,
we don't deserve and we haven't earned the least of God's blessings. We go around all the time. I
know I do. You know, something happens bad and I say, that's
not fair. My friend, it's nothing but fair. Because I don't deserve
it. And how many times we've said
to each other, and I've told you, the next breath you take,
we don't deserve it, we don't earn it. Because by nature, we're
just dead dogs like on the feather shed. And look at what we have
in Christ. Everything that God can give
freely unto us with Christ, all things. blessedness, eternal
life and glory, salvation. I mean, it's amazing. And then
look at verse nine here. He says, then the king called
to Ziba, Saul's servant, and said unto him, I have given unto
thy master's son all that pertain to Saul and all his house. This is what I've given to Mephibosheth. And then he says in verse 10,
thou therefore and thy sons and thy servants shall till the land
for him. You're going to work for Mephibosheth.
And thou shalt bring in the fruits that thy master's son may have
food to eat. But Mephibosheth. Now what he's
telling Ziba here is you're going to take care of all that land.
You're going to feed the servants there. You're going to take care
of them. But look here, he says, but Mephibosheth thy master's
son shall eat bread always at my table. He's gonna be with
me. You take care of it for him.
You feed all the servants and all the people there, make sure
they're taken care of. And why? Because of Mephibosheth. We see that Mephibosheth's house
was blessed in a temporal way because of Mephibosheth. And
that was because of Jonathan. So it all goes back to the sovereignty
of God in Christ. You see, that's the way it is
with us. And he says, now Ziba had 15 sons and 20 servants.
So they were all going to be taken care of. And then look
at verse 11. It says, Then said Ziba unto
the king, according to all that my lord the king hath commanded
his servant, so shall thy servant do. As for Mephibosheth, now
listen to this. As for Mephibosheth, said the
king, he shall eat at my table as one of the king's sons. You
know what that is? That's adoption. You know, The sonship that we're given
by the grace of God, sometimes I don't think we talk about it
enough, adopted into his family. You've heard the illustration
that some people use that. You can go down to the local
jail or the local prison and pay the bail and get somebody
free and get them off. And usually what we would do
if we were going to do something like that, we'd say, now y'all,
you go on and be a better person. But to take them to your household
and let them eat at your table as one of your children, one
of your sons or your daughters, well, that's what's happening
here. And that's what God has done for us. Not only has He
put our sins away by the blood of His Son, not only has He given
us a cloak of righteousness by which we're justified legally,
Not only has He given us spiritual life to see His glory and to
come to Him and to believe in Christ, but He's brought us right
there at His table. That's what we're doing right
now. Feasting at the King's table, hearing His words, feeding upon
the bread of life, drinking the water of life at the King's table
because we're one of His children. We've been adopted. And it says
in verse 12, and Mephibosheth had a young son whose name was
Micah. And all that dwelt in the house of Ziba were servants
unto Mephibosheth. So Mephibosheth dwelt in Jerusalem,
for he did eat continually at the king's table, and here's
an emphasis, and was lame on both of his feet. Now, why is
that emphasized? It's emphasized to show us that
we're still sinners saved by grace. That's right. We still cannot save ourselves.
Christ has saved us, Christ keeps us, and He'll bring us to glory.
And in that sense, because of the old sinful flesh that still
hinders us, doesn't keep us from seeing the glory of God in Christ,
because we have a new spirit, new life. But we still have that
old sinful flesh that contaminates us, bothers us, still lame on
our feet in that sense. And so we're sinners saved by
grace, only a sinner saved by grace. But we can eat at the
king's table, we're one of his children. And one day we won't
be lame on our feet. One day our sins will be totally
gone. As far as any influence on us,
we'll have a perfect spiritual body without sin, without any
iniquity. We'll be like Christ. Okay.