Uncommon Kindness

2 Samuel 9

Going to church is easy. Following Jesus is much harder. Not because Jesus is hard or a cruel task master. He isn’t. He himself said, “Come to me, all who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me, for I am gentle and lowly in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light” (Matt. 11:28-30).

When we come to Jesus, broken, beaten down, tired and filled with shame, we find hope, healing, and rest in his gentle, loving, grace-filled touch. But as we heal, he looks us each in the eye and says, “Follow me.” Like an athletic trainer on the sideline, rushing out to a player who is injured, he helps us to get the healing and the strengthening that we need. But he doesn’t do that so that we can sit on the sideline and watch the game for the rest of our lives. As healing and rest take hold, he puts his hand on our shoulder and says, “Ok, time to get back in the game. Let’s go.”

Follow me. Following Jesus is hard not because Jesus is hard, but because this fallen world is in direct opposition to what he created it to be. It’s hard because when we begin to follow Jesus, we start to go against the flow of traffic, against the currents of culture. We find ourselves walking into the headwinds of society. And we find ourselves going against the fallenness and brokenness of the sinfulness of our own hearts and minds.

It isn’t easy to love our enemies, to forgive the unforgiveable, to give and serve in ways that really are sacrificial. It isn’t always easy to stand out as different. But that’s what we do when Jesus looks at us with love and says, “Follow me.”

We’re continuing our journey together through the life of King David, and today we find him looking to follow through on a promise he made years ago to a friend he loved deeply. In David’s words and actions, we see a heart finely tuned to the heart of God, desiring to be the person God wants him to be, not the person those around him thought he should be. Turn with me to 2 Samuel 9.

David has solidified his position as Israel’s king in Jerusalem, he has pushed Israel’s enemies back to their own lands and secured Israel’s borders, and he chosen the officials who would serve in his royal court. His kingship is fully functioning. At the end of the previous chapter, we read that “David reigned over all Israel. And David administered justice and equity to all his people” (2 Sam. 8:15). David’s court is up and running, and at the moment, running like a well-oiled machine.

And with that, his thoughts return to his friend, his soul mate, Jonathan, son of the now dead former king Saul, and the covenant promise he’d made to Jonathan two decades ago. Look back at 1 Samuel 20:15-17. Jonathan knows that it is likely that his own father, Saul, will be one of the enemies that God removes from David’s life. And that means that David, not Jonathan, will be Israel’s next king. The only thing that Jonathan asks is that David extend his love for Jonathan to whatever is left of his family, if Jonathan himself is gone too, when the time comes.

And Jonathan IS gone. He died beside his father on the battlefield. Now, think about this for a minute. David made a promise to Jonathan 20 years ago when he was being hunted by Jonathan’s father and the armies of Israel because Saul wanted David dead. David was desperately trying to stay alive. So yes, he’d made this promise to Jonathan. But that was 20 years ago. And Jonathan was dead. No one else had witnessed the covenant between Jonathan and David. No one else knew what David had promised Jonathan.

He’d made the same promise to Saul, believe it or not. Look at 1 Samuel 24:21-22. Twenty years before David became king, he swore to both Jonathan and Saul that he would NOT wipe out their family when he became king. You see, everyone knew that when a new king took hold, when a new dynasty was born, the new king solidified power by removing any remaining family and those faithful to the deposed king.

Old Testament scholar Dale Ralph Davis says, “When a new regime or dynasty came to power, the name of the game was purge. You needn’t go wandering into the ancient Near East to confirm this. You can stay within the pages of biblical history and watch Baasha or Zimri or Jehu to find out what happens to the remnants of the previous regime. The new king always needed to solidify his position. It was conventional political policy: solidification by liquidation. Everybody knew it; everybody believed it; everybody practiced it.”[i]

So when David started asking around about any remaining members of Saul’s family, particularly descendants of Jonathan, everyone would have figured that he was just doing what new kings do – rooting out parts of the old regime that had dispersed and gone into hiding when the king fell and getting rid of potential pockets of rebellion and resistance.

But that isn’t what David is doing, and he makes that clear to his advisors. Look at V. 3. He wants to honor his promise and show the kindness of God to a member of Jonathan’s family, who by definition was also a member of Saul’s family. He didn’t want to destroy them. He wanted to show them kindness. Why? That certainly wasn’t what anyone expected him to do. It made no sense politically. And NO ONE besides David and Jonathan, or David and Saul, knew about the promises David had made two decades earlier.

Well, there was one other who knew. God knew. And David’s heart beat first and foremost for God. His passion for God, his love of God, his trust in God, and his desire to serve God were the center of his life, not the periphery, as they were for Saul. Saul obeyed God when it was convenient for him and served his own goals. David obeyed God when it was inconvenient for him and went against his own desires and goals. When Jesus looks at you and I and says, “Follow me,” that’s what he means.

In 1932, president Franklin Delano Roosevelt gave a speech in Pittsburgh speaking out against government spending. Four years later, in 1936, he gave another speech in which he spoke out FOR government spending. How did he manage the about face on this important issue? According to FDR, it was simple. Deny that you made a speech in Pittsburgh in 1932. Easier to do before everything was recorded and televised and posted on social media as a record of sorts. But even now, with everything streamed and posted and out there for everyone to see, we hear leaders and politicians saying things like, “Well, that’s not what I meant. You’re taking what I said out of context.” Promises and covenants don’t mean much in this world we live in. They never have.

But they mean a lot in the kingdom of God. God is at work in us, producing his fruit in our lives, and one of those fruits is faithfulness. Not just faithfulness to God but faithfulness to one another. Faithfulness to our word to one another. Integrity. David refuses to bow to convention. He refuses to pretend he didn’t make that promise. No one else heard him, after all. The only other human witnesses, the ones to whom the promises were made, were dead. David is off the hook. But he won’t let himself off the hook. God isn’t dead, and God witnessed those promises. And that’s all David needs to know. He will honor his word because God expects faithfulness of his people, and David’s heart beats for God. Followers of Jesus follow through, even when they are off the hook.

I love that God didn’t have to remind David of the promises he made. The Bible doesn’t say, “And God reminded David of the promises he had made.” It doesn’t say that. It says “And David said, ‘Is there still anyone left of the house of Saul, that I may show him kindness for Jonathan’s sake?’” A lot had happened since then. Things between David and Saul got worse and worse, so bad at one point that David and his followers actually went and hid among the Philistines, Israel’s enemies! Worse and worse until God finally removed Saul from the throne as he fell in battle with the Philistines. But David hasn’t forgotten his promise, and he doesn’t even care if it’s a descendant of Jonathan specifically. He’s looking for any descendent of Saul, not to curse or destroy them, but to bless them.

Why? Because he wants to show the “kindness of God” to that person. The kindness of God. It’s the Hebrew word “hesed,” and that is a very, very powerful word. It’s the word translated as kindness throughout this chapter. It also appears in David’s promise to Jonathan. It’s a word that can be translated as grace, loyalty, faithfulness, love, mercy, goodness, and kindness, but none of those English words is really strong enough to get at the essence of what “hesed” really means.

Hesed combines both love or kindness and loyalty. It’s used most often to describe the love of God for humanity. Whenever you see the word “lovingkindness” in the Old Testament, the word “hesed” is the word being translated. It is a tough love. A love that truly seeks what is best for the one being loved, even when it inconveniences or greatly costs the one doing the loving. And it is loyal. It hangs in there when it gets tough to love. It is a bond of love and commitment that cannot be broken.

But hesed can also be used of human love when we are loving others as God loves us, or with the love of God. When Jesus, in John 13:34 said, “A new commandment I give to you, that you love one another: just as I have loved you, you also are to love one another,” he is invoking God’s hesed. Love one another with the same love as I have used to love you. It is a stick with you through thick and thin, no matter what happens kind of love. It is an undying love. And it is far more than a sentiment or an emotion. It is love in action, acting in kindness and in loving ways, not just feeling the emotion of love. In fact, hesed doesn’t require emotion at all. It is a commitment to love in spite of where your emotions are at the moment. That is the love that David wants to bring to bear in the life of someone from Saul’s family.

Through a servant of Saul who is still around, they find a man named Mephibosheth, a broken, crippled man who is living a beggars life out in the middle of nowhere. He wasn’t born crippled. We’re told in the Bible exactly how it happened. Look back at 2 Samuel 4:4. He was dropped as the house of Saul fled in haste after Saul and Jonathan fell. And the nurse who cared for him dropped him, and bones were broken in both legs, and then as they healed they didn’t set properly and he was lame.

They find him and bring him to David. Now, put yourself in his shoes for a minute. He’s Jonathan’s son, Saul’s grandson. A member of the old regime. What does he think is going to happen when he gets to the throne room of David, the new king? A quick judgment and an even quicker beheading. His life is over. As a direct descendant of the former king, he is headed to his execution.

Instead, he hears his name on David’s lips, and the words “Do not fear” come from the mouth of the king. And the words he hears next are the last thing he expected to hear. Saul’s ancestral property would be given to him, and Saul’s servant would work the ground for him because he couldn’t. He would go from being a lame man who had nothing and had to be provided for out of the goodness of others’ hearts, to being a landholder, still lame, yes, but with someone to work his property for him, as was true of any wealthy landowner.

But David didn’t stop there. Look at the end of V. 7. He would eat every meal for the rest of his life at David’s table. The king’s table. Elbow to elbow with David’s sons. David doesn’t just honor his promise. He honors it in spades. He goes above and beyond. Not to impress anyone, but to show the love of God. Good enough isn’t good enough. David is generous.

When we are following Jesus, generosity takes hold in our hearts. Why? Because God is generous with us. And we know that God gives to us not so that we can accumulate more and more but so that we can give more and more. As more flows in, more must flow out. And when that becomes real in our hearts and lives, we are blessed beyond comprehension. We get to be conduits of the beautiful, amazing, incomprehensible grace of God in the lives of others.

Now, there are two things we need to notice about Mephibosheth as we close. The first is that he isn’t the kind of person we usually find in the king’s court. A crippled beggar. When Ziba told David about him, he said, “There is still a son of Jonathan; he is crippled in his feet.” Ziba knew David planned to honor this person. And he was like, “Well, yeah, there is one, but he’s a cripple. Not someone you want hanging around the palace. Mephibosheth had all the wrong stuff. He was a descendent of Saul. He is a cripple. But, because of God’s lovingkindness flowing through David, he found himself seated at the king’s table, not just a table in the palace, but the king’s table, for the rest of his life. God’s love is yours for the taking whether you have the right stuff in this world’s eyes or not. And we are to love all, regardless of their pedigree or worthiness in our eyes.

The second thing I want you to notice is that the Bible doesn’t wrap up the story of Mephibosheth. We don’t really know how he responded to David’s mercy and grace. Only that he received it and ate at the king’s table. Several years later, when David’s son Absalom was grown, he sought to take his father’s throne by force. And David and those faithful to him were forced to flee from Jerusalem for a several days. David encountered Ziba, Saul’s former servant whose job it now was to oversee Mephibosheth’s land for him, on his way out of town. When David asked him where Mephibosheth was, Ziba told him that he was still in Jerusalem and had joined in the insurrection against David.

Later, when David returned, he encountered Mephibosheth, who told him that Ziba had left him behind and then lied to David about it. So Ziba said one thing and Mephibosheth another. Here’s the thing. The Bible doesn’t clean up the story. It doesn’t resolve it. Like at all. We never find out which one was telling the truth. David wound up pardoning both. He could have beheaded both and been done with it. But he didn’t. He showed grace to both. But we never find out the truth.

We are called to love, regardless of the results. Some will receive it with grace and gratitude. Others will complain and slander us. That isn’t our problem. We are still called to love. The same thing happened to Jesus. On a journey to Jerusalem he encountered 10 lepers and he healed them all, telling them to go and show themselves to the priest to be declared clean as the law required. As they went, only one of the ten came back to thank Jesus for the healing. The other nine didn’t. Jesus even asked about them, and the one who came back didn’t have an answer as to why they didn’t show gratitude. Here’s the thing: their healing remained. Jesus didn’t revoke it. We are called to love, regardless of the gratitude shown in return. That isn’t our problem. Our job is to show uncommon kindness, regardless of how it is received.

Truth is, we are all God’s Mephibosheths. We come to him broken and with nothing and find ourselves at his table. God’s Son calls us his friend. In Romans 5:10, we’re reminded that we received God’s grace and mercy WHILE WE WERE STILL GOD’S ENEMIES. We didn’t manage to clean ourselves up enough to look good at God’s table first. No, it is while we were still fighting against God that we received his mercy and grace. Our job is to let that same grace, that same lovingkindness, flow through us into those we come in contact with, regardless of how they look or act.

Going to church is easy. Following Jesus is much harder. Followers of Jesus follow through, even when it looks like we are off the hook. Followers of Jesus don’t do what is expected, we do what is right. And followers of Jesus go beyond what is expected, generously loving as God has been generous with us. This world loves conditionally, and only when it is safe and convenient. That is common love. Common kindness. As followers of Jesus, we are called to show an uncommon kindness.

I’d like to leave you with a prayer written by Joe Seremane called “You asked for my hands.”

You asked for my hands

that you might use them for Your purpose.

I gave them for a moment,

then withdrew them, for the work was hard.

You asked for my mouth,

to speak out against injustice;

I gave you a whisper that I might not be accused.

You asked for my eyes

to see the pain of poverty;

I closed them, for I did not want to see.

You asked for my life

that you might work through me.

I gave you a small part, that I might not get “too involved.”

Lord, forgive me for my calculated efforts to serve you only when it is convenient for me to do so, only in those places where it is safe to do so and only with those who make it easy to do so.

Father, forgive me,

renew me,

send me out

as a useable instrument

that I might take seriously

the meaning of your cross![ii]

[i] Dale Ralph Davis, 2 Samuel: Out of Adversity, pg 105.

[ii] Joe Seremane, “You Asked for My Hands”