9 July 2017
Dear Phyllis,
One
of the strangest events in the life of David happened during the days
of the famine (2 Sam. 21). It is interesting that this famine lasted
three years. Famine is a sign of judgment and isn't supposed to happen
if all is well. I'm sure David prayed early on but it was three years
before the Lord told David what the problem was. The Lord told David
clearly that it was because of a seemingly minor thing that Saul had
done 40 years previously. In this story the Lord teaches us three very
important lessons.
The FIRST LESSON is the seriousness of a covenant.
When Joshua invaded Canaan the people living in Gibeon came up with a
clever scheme to deceive Israel to save their skin. They sent some
messengers to Israel saying that they weren't inhabitants of Canaan but
lived hundreds of miles away and wanted to make a covenant with Israel.
They took old stale bread and worn out shoes to prove that they weren't
local residents but had traveled for weeks to get to Canaan (Jos. 9).
The trick worked and when Israel discovered they lived next door they
said, “Let's wipe them out.” But a covenant is a covenant and Joshua
said they must keep their word even if they had been deceived.
Four hundred years later, in his mistaken zeal for the Lord, Saul
slaughtered a number of the Amorites living in Gibeon and because of
that the Lord sent a severe famine. David asked the survivors what he
could do to right this wrong. The men of Gibeon said, “We want revenge
on the man who sought to slay us”. David gave them seven of Saul's sons
who they hung up on a tree. Two of these men were sons of a Saul
concubine, Rizpah. She wouldn't let the vultures and wild dogs eat the
dead bodies.
The ultimate insult is to feed a human body to the vultures.
Goliath told David that was what he was going to do to him and David
replied that was what he was going to do to the hosts of the Philistines
(1 Sam. 44,46). Jezebel was so bad that the Lord said the dogs would
eat her flesh. But she was so filthy even the dogs wouldn't eat her
skull, hands, and feet (2 Kn. 9: 35,36).
Recently
I have made a major shift in my eschatology. For years I believed that
Ezekiel 38 & 39 comes at the beginning of the seven years of
tribulation but now I am convinced that this is Armageddon. The major
point we read about Armageddon is the angel calling to the fouls to come
to the “supper of the great God and eat the slain” at Armageddon (Rev.
19:17, 21). This is exactly the same language that we read in Ezek.
39:17-20, where the Lord calls the fouls of the air and beasts of the
field to come to the great sacrifice “that I sacrifice for you”. That is
what God thinks of the army of the anti-christ. He feeds them to the
vultures and wild dogs.
The first lesson that we learn from the famine is the seriousness of keeping a covenant, but the SECOND LESSON is that God keeps balanced books.
For years it looked like the mistake Saul made was of no consequence.
But forty years later the Lord saw the books were still not balanced and
sent a sever famine on Israel for three years. The Bible says that the
land can only be cleansed of blood by the blood of the man who shed it
(Num. 35:33), and in this case it took the lives of seven of Saul's sons
to be satisfactory retribution to end the famine.
The THIRD LESSON here is one I have never seriously considered. That is the seriousness of what God thinks of the human body.
The main thing that made Christ different an hour after He was born in
Bethlehem and what He had been for eternity past was, previously, He had
never had a human body. God thinks so much of the human body that He
has determined that every created human body is eternal. The sea will
give up the dead and every body that has been cremated will be put
together again to stand before Christ in the flesh at the Great White
Throne judgment; and the body of the unsaved will be consigned to the
lake of fire for eternity, while we will enjoy our new bodies for
eternity in heaven. I have never considered the body as important but
God and the ancients did. The Egyptians mummified and built elaborate
pyramids for their Pharaohs. Abraham bought a piece of land to bury his
wife and Abraham and all his decedents were buried there. When Jacob
died Joseph went to great lengths to carry his fathers body back to
Canaan to bury it in Abraham's sepulcher (Gen. 50:13). And Joseph made
instruction that his body should be brought out of Egypt to be buried
there. When Israel came out of Egypt four hundred years later they took
Joseph's body with them and Joshua buried it in Jacob's sepulcher (Jos.
24:32).
When
David gave the seven sons of Saul to the men of Gibeon to be killed
Rizpah would not allow the buzzards eat her sons bodies. This reminded
David of a very minor point he had never considered. When the
Philistines had killed Saul and Johnathon they decapitated them and hung
their bodies up in Beth-shan. The men of Jabesh-gilead were fiercely
loyal to Saul and fought their way to get those bodies to bring them
back to Jabesh-gilead. They cremated the rotting bodies, and buried the
bones there. For probably twenty years or more they had stayed there in
Jabesh-gilead. Rizpah's act reminded David of Saul and Johnathon's
bodies. He got the bones of Saul and Johnathon brought them back and had
a proper funeral to bury them in Saul's family plot. That was what God was waiting for and the famine was over.
I
have never considered that bones were important. To this day there is a
major project going on in Vietnam and Laos where the US government is
paying Vietnam and Laos millions of dollars for teams who go to crash
sites of US airplanes to look for the bones of US pilots and send them
home. I have always considered this a waste of money. What's the
difference? At the resurrection everyone is coming back from the dead
regardless of where the bone have been lying. But God considers the
human body so important that He is even concerned how we treat the
bones.
In
his commentary on Hebrews Andrew Murray notes that we are to draw near
to God with our hearts cleansed by the Blood of Christ and our bodies
washed with pure water (Heb. 10:22). In this he remarked “the body is
important”. We have a great emphasis on the heart – which is as it
should be – but the body is also important. Paul talks about sinning
against our bodies. That is why sexual sins are so dangerous. God didn't
give us bodies to be play toys. Jesus kept His body holy and we are
commanded to do the same. Seventy years ago body piercing and tatoos
were virtually unknown in any Christianized society. The only place this
was seen was in pagan cultures. I believe it is a sign how badly we
have drifted from Christian principles and the devil is having a picnic
today making the church look identical to paganism. We are to be clean
on the inside, and if that is true there should be a corresponding
cleanliness on the outside too.
I
was surprised by this story in 2 Samuel 21 by how seriously God thinks
about the human body even down to how we treat the bones. Let's give our
bodies unreservedly to the Lord and keep them clean – both in and out.
And have a great week serving Jesus.
See you next week, bill
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