WEDNESDAY, MARCH 20
SCRIPTURE:2 Samuel 9
BY: Josh Boles
One thing that we can unequivocally learn from the life of David, is that he is different. Chapter nine is very indicative of this fact. What we see here in this chapter is David keeping his promise to Jonathan, and Saul to not destroy his descendants. Most of Saul’s legacy had already been destroyed, but not at the hands of David. So David is on a quest here to find, and bless Souls descendants.
David was just the second king that Israel ever had but what we need to remember is that Israel demanded a king because of all the other nations that had kings. This would more than likely mean that they modeled their kingship after these countries. This is where we see that David is different from every other king.
Often when a dynasty changed in the Out Testament time period, the new king would kill every remnant of the old king. This means slaughtering every descendant. We see this happen very clearly in 2 Kings chapter 10 and see it repetitively from there on out. Instead of doing this, David wished to show Saul's descendants kindness as we see in verse 1.
Not only did David show is former enemy such great kindness, he went out of his way to ensure he did so. We learn in verse 3 that Saul had a grandson and in verse 4 it is made known that he lives in Lo-debar, which was more than likely at the northernmost point of Israel. He sent for Mephibosheth and brought him back to Jerusalem. As you could imagine, Mephibosheth was fearful that David would kill him, but we see David reveal his intentions in verse 7. David spared Mephibosheth’s life for the sake of Jonathan, but notice at the end of verse 7 that David restores to him all of Saul’s land. This is certainly going above and beyond, but David’s kindness does not stop there.
David tells him, “you shall eat at my table always.” This is not a simple dinner invitation, this is David basically taking Mephibosheth in as his own son. We see this in verse 11 more clearly. This is basically the same arrangement that David would give his own sons. They would have land, money, possessions, but always have a place at David’s table.
David’s kindness was not monetary, it was lasting, and produces much fruit. Mica was the son of Mephibosheth and had many descendants, and became a great, and well known household in the kingdom of Israel. This is just proof that showing kindness produces fruit ten fold. It is always a good thing to show kindness, and many of us I’m sure show kindness to a lot of people. The question I would beg you task however is, do you go above and beyond to show kindness to your enemies?
This sounds counter intuitive doesn't it? Are we really supposed to show kindness to people who are mean to us? That is absurd! Well, isn’t that exactly what Jesus does for us. He shows us ultimate kindness when we are far from deserving of grace. This is why Jesus tells us in Matthew 5 to “love your enemies, and pray for those who persecute you.” David understood that a life devoted to God means being different from the rest of the world. We see this concept manifested time after time again in the new testament. We are called to be different, so go and be different!