Pardoned or Punished

Go ahead and turn with me to 2 Samuel chapter four, please. 2 Samuel chapter four. I titled the message, Pardoned or Punished? Pardoned or Punished? Look at verse one. And when Saul's son, that's speaking of Ish-bosheth, heard that Abner was dead and Hebron, his hands were feeble and all the Israelites were troubled."

Now, as you know and remember, Abner had put Ish-bosheth in power. He had made him king in opposition of David. No surprise to anybody that reads these verses in 2 Samuel from the beginning that Abner was really the one in charge. Ish-bosheth was just a figurehead.

He was a very weak man and Abner's death caused him to be scared to death. And Abner was his protector. And he had been relying totally on Abner to maintain his fragile kingdom. And it was a fragile kingdom. Abner was the one who was running things. And now that Abner's dead, Ish-bosheth had no competence because all his competence was in Abner.

There's a lesson there for us. We don't put our trust in man. We're going to be disappointed if we do. Verse one says his hands were feeble. He was, simply means he was paralyzed with fear and helplessness. Have you ever seen someone who's scared to handshake? Well, I can just picture that's the way Yishposheth was.

Every kingdom that rests on human support is the same. and fallen man has no strength in himself. The scripture is very clear that while we were yet without strength, we have no strength, we have no will, we have no ability because we're dead. I don't know what makes a man or woman think that they have any ability to do anything when scripture is very, very clear about our spiritual condition, dead. dead and trespasses and sin. We wouldn't expect a dead man to get up and do anything. And yet, when it comes to spiritual things, we seem to think that dead men and women have the ability to do all these things. They don't. Dead means dead.

We have no strength in ourselves. Every sinner like Yishposheth is weak and unable to secure our own future before God and unable to make any godly decisions on our own. Romans 5, 6, when we were yet without strength. In due time, what? Christ died for the ungodly. We're without strength, we're ungodly. If God doesn't intervene, we have no hope. True enlightenment begins with the recognition that we're powerless to save ourselves. No man will ever find a need for Christ until they see that their own inability to do anything for themselves.

Now, Saul's house here was collapsing. God had foretold that back in 1 Samuel. And it's all coming to realization. And our little imagined kingdom is going to fail also. But Christ's kingdom can't be shaken. And that's why we rest entirely on God's sovereign decree. When is our strength made perfect? Scripture tells us. in our weakness, 2 Corinthians 12, nine. When we're weak, Christ is made strong. We see his all-sufficiency in our total inability. We're rescued by an all-sufficient Savior.

That's why we put such emphasis on God being sovereign. There is no other type God but a sovereign God. Oh, you're one of them that believe in sovereignty. Listen, that's the only kind of God there is. That's the only kind of grace there is, sovereign grace, where God divinely intervenes and interrupts in a sinner's life and enables them and causes them and makes them to believe.

Verse two, and Saul's son had two men that were captains of bands. The name of the one was Baanah, and the name of the other, Rakab, the sons of Rimeh, a Bearothite of the children of Benjamin, for Bearoth also was reckoned to Benjamin, and the Bearothites fled to Gittim, and were sojourners there until this day. Now, verse three at first glance seems like just an unimportant historical detail, but it's not. These two assassins, as we'll see, these two men were Bearethites, and they were of the tribe of one of the cities of the Gibeonites.

You remember them back in our study of Joshua? You know, they're the ones that made all their stuff look old and traveled and came to Joshua and said, we've traveled all this far in order to serve you. And they were scared to death because they'd heard about Israel's God. And they were ashamed. They were just making it up. They weren't from far off at all. But these people were part of that group.

And Joshua 9 informs us that the princes of Israel had made a covenant with them, the Gibeonites, and spared them. And they fled, we're told here, to Gittim. And this verse gives us some insight. These men were refugees. They were displaced and insecure men. They were trying to make a name for themselves.

That just gives us a little background as to why we find them. where we find them here in this chapter. These things fuel their ambition for advancement. So these two brothers, one day they get the bright idea, we're gonna kill Ishmael, and we're gonna go to David, and he's gonna be so proud of us, and he's gonna reward us, and we're gonna be somebody. Well, we'll see if that didn't work out too well. And so they come in here to murder Ishbosheth, trying to be heroes. And like that man who had previously came to David and claimed that he had killed Saul, these men thought they'd be rewarded for it, but they end up receiving the opposite.

Okay, and then we have verse four. It says, and it just seems to be a random sidetrack to the story. When I read this chapter for the first time, I'm like, why is verse four there? Look what it says, and Jonathan, Saul's son, had a son that was lame of his feet, He was five years old when the tidings came of Saul and Jonathan out of Jezreel, and his nurse took him up and fled, and it came to pass, as she made haste to flee, that he fell and became lame, and his name was Mephibosheth." Right just in the beginning of this chapter, we're told about Mephibosheth, and this brief interruption of the immediate story is to introduce Mephibosheth for a very specific reason. Nothing in Scripture is by accident. We may never see the intended purpose, but there's an intended purpose. The writer here is doing two things at once. He's setting up the future.

Now, Mephibosheth is Jonathan's son, and Jonathan was Saul's son. We know that. And that means that there's still a surviving heir from Saul's house, and that would usually assure their execution. Even though Saul's dynasty is falling apart politically, it's been It hasn't been completely wiped out genealogically.

Secondly, verse 4 here highlights vulnerability. Mephibosheth became lame from a fall during an escape, showing us that he's no threat to David. He's powerless. He's dependent. He's not a threat at all to David's kingdom and it was common practice in these days for a new king to wipe out all the heirs of the old king to assure that there wouldn't be any political threats or uprisings.

And this matters because later David's going to show covenant kindness to Mephibosheth in actually chapter 9 of 2 Samuel. And that's a whole other beautiful story in itself. The story of Mephibosheth. The author here though is planting the seed now so that when the time comes, David's mercy is understood to be covenant faithfulness the covenant he made with Jonathan all those years before, and not political motivation.

So back to the story at hand, verse five. And the sons of Rimen, the Bearethite, Rakeb and Baanah, went and came about the heat of the day to the house of Ishbosheth, who lay on a bed at noon. Now, I believe we get a little insight there of the condition that Ish-bosheth was in.

He was just scared to death. Now, even though he's somewhat a makeshift king, kings didn't lay around all day in a bed. This reveals his vulnerability, his weakness, his so-called kingdom's unraveling, his strongest commander's gone, and he already knows he's not in control of anything. And he has no ability to function under pressure. He's just a mess. A lot of times when folks get down and depressed, we just want to mope around and lay down and not do anything.

I believe that's what we find here. And this also shows us something of sin and that it often works in hidden violence. Ishbashist attackers take advantage of his vulnerability. And this is how human nature operates. Willing to harm the helpless when it serves ambition or reward. These men bring death to one sleeping. In contrast, our Lord and Savior brings life to the undeserving sinner while we're asleep in our sin. Just total opposite. These men exploit weakness for gain. Christ enters into our weakness. to cause gain for us. What a king we have. That's what redemption is. It's purchased by payment. You can look up the definition. Christ paid the full price of our redemption with His own blood.

Verse 6, And they came hither into the midst of the house, as though they would have fetched wheat. and they smote him, that being Ish-bosheth, under the fifth rib, and Rachab and Baanah, his brother, escaped." Now that phrase there, as though they were fetching wheat, it's important because what it's doing, it's highlighting the fact of deception. These two men enter his house as if they're servants. And they're fetching wheat.

They're doing a normal daily activity. And this man is murdered. His murder is disguised as normal activity. That shows us something of the deception of sin. They're not intruders in the open. They're insiders using trust and routine as a cover for violence. Evil very rarely ever announces itself. It blends in the best that it can. It tries its best to just be normal.

Our Lord Jesus Himself said, for false Christ and false prophets shall arise and they shall show signs and wonders to seduce, if it were possible, even the elect. Yes, sin and evil is often hypocritical in its disguise and sin and evil shows the fragileness of human security, but here the king's not killed in battle or war. He's killed in his own home, sleep on his bed. A weak man that probably couldn't have defended himself anyway. He's killed under the appearance of a normal life, but God does not operate through deception or hidden balance.

And what sinful humanity does through secrecy and self-interest, that's talking about us. talking about us and our sin. God accomplishes through righteousness and truth. So this verse is not just about Ishmael Sheth dying, it's exposing to us somewhat how sin and wickedness work quietly, deceitfully, under the disguise of normality. but God brings everything into judgment and light.

And verse seven and eight shows us that to be the case. Look at it, verse seven, for when they came into the house, he lay on his bed in his bedchamber and they smote him and slew him and beheaded him and took his head and get them away through the plain of night.

And they brought the head of Ish-bosheth unto David, to Hebron, and said to the king, Behold, the head of Ish-bosheth, the son of Saul, thine enemy, which sought thy life. And the Lord hath avenged my Lord this day of Saul and of Esau." Now, not only is that just a grotesque thought of what these men did, but they come to David and they blame it on the Lord. They say, the Lord hath avenged my Lord, the Lord, and that caused us to do this.

This is why we did this because the Lord told us to do it. And the gospel teaching here is very blunt and it's somewhat uncomfortable. First, it shows the logic of self-justified evil. Evil justifies itself. You better believe it does. These two men don't just kill, they package and present their crime as a service to God's anointed king. The Lord told us to do that. The Lord didn't tell him no such thing. The Lord doesn't operate that way.

In 1 Samuel 15, God told King Saul to spare none of Amalek's kingdom. Remember that? And God said, wipe them all out, even the animals. And what'd Saul do? He spared the best sheep and the oxen and he spared the king himself. And he justified his disobedience by saying, telling Samuel the prophet, well, I, you know, Sam was hearing sheep, bah, you know, bah. And he said, well, do I hear sheep? He said, oh yeah. He said, I kept those sheep because we're going to sacrifice them to the Lord. God said, kill them all. but he justifies it as a service unto the Lord. And I read a moment ago in Exodus 32, I think about Aaron and the golden calf. Aaron was Moses' brother. Aaron was the one that went with Moses before Pharaoh and said, God said, let my people go. Aaron was the high priest. And He attempted to repackage idolatry as the worship of the true God.

He didn't, in Exodus 32, he didn't offer any resistance. They said, make unto us a God that can go before us. After seeing all that God had done in their deliverance out of Egypt. And Aaron doesn't say, no, now guys, hold on a minute here. You remember what the Lord done? No, he said, bring me earrings. then later when Moses confronts him it said there in that passage we read that he took a graven to and he formed this molten calf but he later tells Moses I just threw that gold in the fire and I popped this golden calf People often attach God's name to practices that he has expressingly forbidden.

They had just come down from Mount Sinai and received the law from God, and one of the first things God told them, you shall not make false idols to worship before me. Worship me, the Lord God, and me only. Our Lord said to His followers in John 16 too, they shall put you out of the synagogues, yea, the time will come that whosoever killeth you will think that they doeth God's service. Men, there'll come a time, and that time has come where men will kill a child of God and say that they did God a favor.

And that's what these two men were saying to David. We did this because God told us to, and we did it for you, the king. And many in the day of judgment are gonna declare the wonderful things that they've done in the Lord's name. Lord, Lord, haven't we done many wonderful works in your name? And what does the Lord call them?

Workers of iniquity. These two sons of Rimen revealed to us what a fallen conscience does when it wants reward. Here's a teaching, the Lord's teaching us something here. When it wants reward without repentance, it reframes sin as righteousness. It takes something that God forbids and says, oh no, this is what God meant by that. This is what God wanted us to do. I think about the Jews. Who killed the Lord Jesus? The Jews killed the very God that they claimed to serve. And a lot of people say, oh, well, no, the Romans killed. Well, the Jews was behind it all. They were behind it all. You know that whole story.

We don't have time to get into that. And secondly, here, we see that this exposes the misplaced trust in human approval. Men need to be careful as to what they blame on God. The woman you gave me. The serpent you left. In other words, God, this is all your fault. If you hadn't given me this woman, I wouldn't have ate. If you hadn't put that serpent here, I wouldn't have eaten and he wouldn't have eaten. It's all your fault, God. It's all your fault.

Now these two brothers believe that David's gonna reward them for what they did. And in their minds, political advantage cancels any moral guilt. I mean, you know, man, they not only killed this guy, stabbed him in the heart, but they cut his head off. And they bring, they carry this head all the way to David and say, look here, we did this for you. Oh, you don't think man's depraved? And I mean, and then, you know, they just like, well, the Lord told us to do it.

And this thirdly highlights a basic biblical thing. God never needs sinful hands to accomplish His righteous purposes. Even if David's kingdom is destined to rise, and it is because God said it would, God does not approve murder. as a means of getting Him there. And God doesn't need man's help. Did you hear me? God doesn't need man's help. Let go and let God. What? Do what? How are we gonna let go? If I can let go and let God, then I'm God.

And I'm not, and neither are you. Human beings often try to help God out with shortcuts. Scripture consistently rejects that idea. Yes, men, by their wicked hands. I think about this all the time. And by their evil hearts, they took and they crucified the Lord of glory. That was on them. That's what the Scripture is so plain. They with their own wicked hands and by their own wicked hearts took and crucified the Lord of glory.

God held man, held them responsible for that. But though men did what they wanted to, at the same time, it was allowed of God according to His determinate counsel and foreknowledge. It doesn't change the evil that happened by the hands of wicked men. Only God can take man's evil, of which he's not the cause or the author of, and cause it to accomplish his divine purpose. But the responsibility is still on the one who committed the evil. And that's what makes God, God. That's what Joseph told his brothers. You meant it for evil, God meant it for good. These men bring a head as evidence of their deed, but yet Christ, our Lord, gave His own life as the finished work for His people. And one is an act of violence seeking reward for personal gain, and the other is a voluntary giving of self to violence for the benefit of the undeserving.

You know, I don't think that we can fully enter into the suffering our Lord suffered physically or spiritually. Scripture says his visage was marred more than that of any man, didn't even look like a man. They beat him and all they did to him. And yet he suffered all that to put away your sin and mine. It's overwhelming. Verse nine, and David answered Racab and Baanah, his brother, the sons of Rimmon the Beorethite, and said unto them, as the Lord liveth, who hath redeemed my soul out of all adversity, When one told me, saying, Behold, Saul is dead.

He's referring back to that fellow I was telling you about a moment ago. Thinking to have brought good tidings, I took hold of him and slew him in Ziglag. Who thought that I would have given him a reward for his tidings? You're not the first ones that have done this. That's what he's saying.

And here we have David's response to this brutal killing. And David answers by swearing before the Lord that when this other man once came to him claiming to have killed Saul, though the man thought he was bringing good news, even though the man thought he was doing something commendable, David killed him, had him executed.

I'll tell you what, it's serious, serious business to try to take the Lord's work into our own hands. All who believe they deserve reward will instead find judgment. That's what the scripture plainly teaches. Ray, Ray Cab and Ba Na assume that because they accomplished something, David might want that they'd be rewarded. And David shows them just the opposite. What a shock it was to them.

Wrongdoing does not become righteous because it appears useful. God's anointed king will not build his kingdom through unrighteous hands. And the Lord Jesus Christ will not build his that way either. Even though David will eventually reign, he's not gonna accept murder as an acceptable path to the throne. Look at verse 11. How much more?

When wicked men have slain a righteous person in his own house, upon his bed, shall I not therefore now require his blood of your hand and take you away from the earth? Now here, there's several powerful gospel truths. I'll try to give them to you briefly.

First, God's law and justice requires blood for blood. The Old Testament, eye for an eye, tooth for tooth. These men were to be held personally accountable. The phrase require his blood at your hand means that justice requires an answer. Every sin occurs a debt before a holy and just God. To find justice requires full and complete satisfaction. All sinners secondly stand before stand guilty before God.

None of us are going to stand before God and say, but Lord, haven't I preached in your name and haven't I cast out devils in your name? Without hearing the words from the Lord, I don't know who you are. I don't know how you did anything for me. I don't know you and you don't know me.

Rachab and Baanah thought they deserved reward, but instead they deserved condemnation. And anything man does that he feels is worthy of approval, apart from Christ, is sorely mistaken. The innocent victim here, in this case, Ish-bosheth, points forward to Christ. Now, David calls him a righteous person. Well, we know that You know, we say things like, you know, Steve's a good man. Well, there's none that good. There's none good. But what we're saying is, is as for a man, they're good.

And he was righteous, Ispacheth was righteous in the sense that he didn't deserve this murder that was this treacherous murder. He was helpless and asleep in his own home. And in a far, far greater way, our Lord and Savior, the truly righteous one was betrayed and murdered by wicked men, but he wasn't a victim. He came to die. He voluntarily laid down his life as a substitute.

And therefore we see justice must either fall on the sinner or fall on a substitute. David claims that justice has got to be executed. The gospel declares that God's justice was not determined aside, but fully satisfied on the cross. We see the holy justice of God when we look to the cross of Christ. Christ bore the judgment that His people deserved. Therefore, God's kingdom is established by righteousness, not wickedness.

That's what this chapter is teaching us. David refuses to advance his kingdom, as I've already said, through murder. And our Lord's kingdom is built through his own sacrificial obedience to death. If Christ didn't die, you and I wouldn't live. but it was a sacrificial substitution. He took the sin that we deserved upon Himself and in return gave us His perfect righteousness. Never grow tired of hearing that. Never grow tired of hearing that. Because that's the only way any of us can be saved. It sure wasn't through human sinful schemes.

And that's what David's teaching is here. God's law required the blood of the guilty, but in the gospel, Christ shed his own blood so that guilty sinners might go free. In verse 12, and David commanded his young men and they slew them. And look at this, and cut off their hands and their feet and hanged them over the pool in Hebron. but they took the head of Yishposheth and buried it in the sepulcher of Abner and Hebron."

Wickedness receives public judgment. The hands and the feet here symbolize the instruments of the crime. Their hands carried out the murder. Their feet traveled the path of treachery. By removing and displaying them publicly, David makes it unmistakable that the evil done in the name of God and in the King will not be rewarded. It's gonna be condemned. The guilty are cut off. David says in effect that these men are to be removed from the land, their memory and everything about them.

You know, scripture over and over again, repeatedly uses this language, cut off, cut off, to describe divine judgment and exclusion from the blessings of God. And how about this? The victim receives honor. Although Ishmael was weak and politically ineffective, David ensures that he's buried with dignity. And David here with respect for the dead and Saul's family. Still honoring Saul. Honors the death of Ish-bosheth.

And in all these things, friends, we see a picture of the gospel in substitution. At the cross, the truly innocent one, Jesus Christ, was publicly exposed and executed but not for his own crimes, but for ours. And what happened to Rakab and Banna is what every single one of us deserve. My, what happened to Christ is what he voluntarily endured so the guilty sinners like us could be forgiven.

And the king David here judges the wicked and he honors the wronged. That's what God does. David foreshadows the greater son of David, the Lord Jesus. How many times have we said that? He condemns evil. He vindicates the innocent. That's what God did when he raised Christ from the dead. He vindicated him. He said he died in the room instead of true sinners, but he himself knew no sin. And when God raised him from the dead, he said, this innocent man has paid all the debt of all God's people throughout all time. And it's enough. Death can't hold him. Grave can't hold him. Death has no victory over him. He raised him from the dead.

And this establishes Christ's kingdom and righteousness. Now in closing, I want to go back just briefly to verse four. and remind you of what you already know. I love to say that because we know these things. We just need to be reminded of them all the time. The broken and the helpless need a king. And Jonathan, Saul's son, had a son that was lame on his feet.

Who's that talking about? Who's that represent? Who does that picture? Who does that typify? Due to a great fall, Mephibosheth is a vivid portrait of each and every one of us. Because of Adam's fall, we're spiritually crippled. I know that's not politically correct to say anymore, you know, crippled, but that's what we are. We're spiritually crippled. We cannot come to Christ by our own strength. We're not able to. Mephibosheth couldn't walk, neither can we. We're helpless and undeserving. We belong to a condemned house. Oh my, I am a phibosheth. I am a phibosheth.

And the good news of the gospel is not that crippled sinners somehow pick themselves up by their bootstraps and somehow make themselves worthy. That's not the message. The good news is that the king seeks out the lame and he brings them to his table. I can't wait to get to chapter nine and visit Mephibosheth again. Preached on him a time or two. What a beautiful portrait it is of us.

And likewise, believers are saved because of God's covenant grace and love in Christ. Sinners are one of two things. You remember what I told you my title was? They're either pardoned or punished because of this covenant between God and His Son. And that's what we see concerning David and Mephibosheth is a covenant between David and Jonathan. Because of that amazing covenant of grace, we can change tonight's title from pardoned or punished To pardon, pardoned, not punished. Oh, we deserve to be punished. But we're not, because Christ was punished in our place. This is the summation of the gospel. The verdict has been spoken from heaven. Not guilty. The verdict said, not guilty. Fully forgiven. Completely accepted.

Because of what Christ has done for us, every believer's gonna walk out of here tonight. Now you think about this as you go out the door. We're gonna walk out of here tonight pardoned, not punished. Our sin wasn't overlooked. Christ put it away with perfect justice. Pardon is the act of mercy by a rightful authority. You can look that up too. I got that out of the dictionary. Pardon is the removal of the penalty of offending a holy God. That's what it really is when you get right down to it.

And 2 Samuel 4 reminds us that the king doesn't build his kingdom through treachery or through violence or murder or the schemes of man. Don't you wish religion See that? Because that's all we have in religion today, just schemes created by men in order to try to save themselves.

This is not going to work. Matter of fact, it's going to bring death and judgment to all who try, just like it did to the two men in our story tonight. David rejected the blood-stained hands of those who thought they could earn favor by destroying another. And so it is with the greater Son of David, the Lord Jesus Christ.

He'll never ever accept our self-righteous works, our excuses, our selfish attempts to secure His approval by our own efforts. Hear me on that. But he gladly receives those who come empty-handed. Rock of Ages, cleft for me, let me hide myself. In my hand no price I bring, simply to thy cross I cling. We come empty-handed, we come confessing our guilt, we come trusting in His mercy, and we come asking Him for forgiveness. And when we do, He grants it every time.

Nowhere in this book do I find a sinner coming to Christ, wanting forgiveness, asking for help that does not receive it. Nowhere. If you find a place, call me and tell me, okay? You won't. You won't. All that come to the Lord Jesus in repentance will be forgiven. Every single one. What a great comfort that is. The problem is, folks won't come. The problem is, they don't want His forgiveness because they don't really believe that they need it. But those that have need of a physician, get that physician every single time.

Pardoned or Punished

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Pardoned or Punished

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