All right, it's good to have you all here tonight. As we continue on, here we are in 2 Samuel 21, verses 1 to 14 tonight, what we'll be looking at. We'll just work our way through the Word of God. What a blessing it is to be able to look into this Old Testament and find all these. We've dug out some real gold and diamonds, haven't we, as we've journeyed through this? And so tonight we'll do it again. The Holy Spirit guiding and helping and leading in this. And may the Lord open our understanding that we would understand the scriptures, amen. And just the practical aspect of the word of God. So right before we start this tonight, let's pray one more time and ask God's blessings on this. Dear Heavenly Father, as we come to you right now in the name of Jesus, we thank you, dear Lord, for mercy and grace. We thank you, dear Heavenly Father, for this time tonight as we gather around to study the Word of God. And Lord, as we've been working through this, We just learned so many practical lessons from the Word of God. We thank you for that. And so, Lord, teach us tonight. Give us a few good diamonds from the Word of God, Lord, out of this tonight, and we thank you for that. And so now, Father, I pray, as Walt just prayed, for the presence and the power of the Holy Spirit upon this tonight. Speak to our hearts, we ask it in Jesus' name, and for his sake, amen. All right, as we get started with this tonight, we're going to find ourselves a The first thing I've got to say, I have found myself restrained because I really wanted to get to verse 15, all right? The last few words of verse 15, it said, and after that, God was entreated for the land. And then you go to verse 15, and it said, and David waxed faint. Oh. You're getting old, buddy. And so, the old gray mule and what it used to be. So he went out in the ward and David waxed faint. How do you like that? And so, but anyway, that's upcoming. How's that? That's upcoming. So tonight, let's look at this in a very practical way. May God open the word of God up to all of us here. And may we learn some important things here. Let's read verse one to start off with, okay? Then there was a famine in the days of David, three years, year after year. And David inquired of the Lord and the Lord answered. Now I want to stop right there. It took, now just think, after three years of a famine like that, during the days of this, like back in those days, By this time, the children were hungry, the families were hungry, the animals were dying, everything. You gotta realize what that had done to that economy, right? David could look out the palace window, if you please, and he could see hungry, starving people everywhere. And so sometimes I get amazed at the Word of God because of the truth of it. Sometimes you and I are very slow at seeing that something needs to be done, that something's wrong. I can see maybe the first year David could have said, well, it's just bad weather. You know, the weather pattern has done this to us. Then the second year, David was thinking, I'm getting thirsty. You know, where's the food? What's going on here now? And now the third year, everything has really gotten bad. So David looks at this and he recognized something. And finally, David, after three years, and now they're in a severe drought, famine, and David inquired of the Lord, David, why'd you wait so long? Sometimes I want to ask my own self that. You know, Why'd you wait so long to do this? The next thing I want to ask is, David, didn't you recognize the judgment of God upon the people? And the third thing is simply this. David, if the Lord was so close to you that all you had to do was inquire of him to get an answer, why in the world did you wait so long? I mean, this is not a complex question and answer period, is it? It's not complex at all, folks. David inquired of the Lord and the Lord answered, duh. The problem with David is the same problem that we have. You and I have the same problem. We look at something and we remove, now listen to me, we remove the spiritual aspect from a physical judgment. And that's what David was doing. And that's what you and I do. We don't want to look at something spiritual. We want to look at it physical. Let's try to work it out, figure it out, whatever. Buy it out, get a new one, whatever. And so David, he just kept looking at the physical part of this. But now it had gone on for three years. Now things had gotten desperate. Now David inquired of the Lord. And the Lord answered. David finally recognized the judgment of God. David finally said, the first year I thought, well, it's just the weather pattern. The second year, I thought, well, we're still messed up. Third year, I thought, God's doing this. Listen, if it took three years for David to see it, how long will it take for you to see it? If it took David three years to finally inquire of the Lord about something, and recognize the judgment, how long will it take us to recognize that? Because when God goes to work, he does things and he does it in a way that the only way we're ever going to get an answer is to ask him. Because other than that, we're not gonna be able to figure it out. Do you know that? Now watch this. And the Lord answered, it is for Saul and for his bloody house because he slew the Gibeonites. What? You have to go all the way back to Joshua chapter nine to start finding this stuff out. where Joshua made an agreement with the Gibeonites. But Saul come along, broke the agreement. But when a covenant was made back then, concerning somebody in God, you better keep the covenant. Because God was involved in it. And God is not a covenant breaker. And so because Saul broke the covenant and tried to destroy the Gibeonites, that was a disgrace to God. And so now what we find, after three years, David finally recognized this is God doing this. This is God doing this. All right, God, why are you doing this? Now let me take just a moment and address that issue. God, why are you doing this? Well, God had purpose here, didn't he? You see, ladies and gentlemen, one of the things that you and I need to realize is this. When there is a drought in your personal life, we need to ask God why. If there's a drought in your family, You better stop and ask God why. If we as a church find ourselves in a dry period, we better stop and ask ourselves why. We better learn to recognize the drought. Many people want to excuse the drought. especially in your personal life and in church life. But one of the greatest things you can ever do is to recognize your personal life, spiritually you're in a drought. We need to recognize it as a church. Boy, we're in a drought. Family-wise, we're in a drought. And once we recognize that, the next thing for you and me to do is to go to God. And say, God, why is my life a drought? Spiritually speaking, I'm just, I'm going through the motions. But there's nothing here to really stir my soul. We're in a drought. Now, So the Lord comes back and he's going to explain to David why the drought. It is for Saul and for his bloody house because he slew the Gibeonites. Now verse two, go there. And the king called the Gibeonites and said unto them, oh, now this is interesting. So the king called the Gibeonites. They're the ones, now, that's gonna bring a solution to the problem. Because they are the offended ones, aren't they? And said unto them, now the Gibeonites were not of the children of Israel, but of the remnant of the Amorites. And the children of Israel had sworn unto them, all right? And Saul sought to slay them in his zeal to the children of Israel and Judah. Now verse three, wherefore David said unto the Gibeonites, what shall I do for you? Wherewith shall I make the atonement? The word atonement there is, it ought to just jump off the page at you for a moment. Because David understood now that this drought was brought about because God did it. God's doing this. He's doing this because of something Saul did. Saul went after these people. It was with them that the covenant was broken. So now it's got to be restored. So David goes to them and said, wherewith shall I make the atonement? This is amazing. God is letting David go to these people who are not Israelites. They had a covenant with God. And God's letting David go to them to determine the atonement that needs to be made for a propitiation. In other words, to make peace with God. So it is. I almost wanna sing Amazing Grace, how sweet the sound, but you'd all get up and run if I tried that. But now watch this. So now, here's the, now notice, atonement, there's always this opportunity of atonement. As you go through the word of God, there's always this opportunity of atonement. In other words, what can I do? David's saying, listen, we want to make this atonement. So God will remove this judgment that's on us, but he's not going to do it until we get things right with you. Did you know that's exactly how it is in a lot of relationships? People wonder why things are awry in their life. It's because their relationships are not right. Because the relationship, there's never been an atonement for the relationship. I mean, Christ is our atonement, isn't he? And he's the one that's allowed us to have a relationship with God the Father, right? And so David said, what's this atonement now? We need to get back to having the right relationship with God. He's bringing judgment upon us. Look what he says. That ye may bless the inheritance of the Lord. What? In other words, that ye may bless the inheritance of the Lord. What do we got to do? to get things squared away so that you will say, hey, everything's okay. It's done, it's over with. Listen to me, folks. When I talk about relationship between one another, the church, the word of God, Christ, the Holy Spirit, God the Father, It says here that you may bless the inheritance of the Lord. In other words, remove the judgment. Remove the curse. What do we have to do to do this? Many people would rather live under the judgment of God, or like one fellow said, the frown of God, than the smile of God. than get relationships right. They want to explain away why they shouldn't. David could have said to God, I'm not gonna go down there and talk to that bunch of Philistines. But that's not the point, David. It's not your opinion that counts, the fact that There was a covenant made with them. And the covenant deals with God, not you. So now how many Philistines has David killed? A bunch. What's he fixing to do right after this situation? Kill a bunch more of them. So what you find then is this. Personal opinion Don't count. David wanted to find the solution to the problem, regardless of what he thought about those people. Watch this now. That you may bless the inheritance of the Lord. And the Gibeonites said unto him, we will have no silver nor gold of Saul, nor of his house, Neither for us shalt thou kill any man in Israel. And he said, what ye shall say, that will I do for you. I'm sure David was shocked at that statement. And they answered the king, verse five, the man that consumed us and that devised against us that we should be destroyed from remaining in any of the coast of Israel. Now here's what they say. Let seven men of his sons be delivered unto us and we will hang them up unto the Lord in Gibeah of Saul, whom the Lord did choose. And the king said, I will give them. Now, what you're going to find, we'll talk about this in a minute. But David is going to agree to this, and he does. He says, and the king said, I will give them. Don't you know that scared Mephibosheth to death? I can see Mephibosheth breaking out in a big sweat. He'd almost say, I'd run if I could. But there was something about that. Verse seven, but the king spared Mephibosheth, the son of Jonathan, the son of Saul, because of the Lord's oath that was between them, between David and Jonathan, the son of Saul. If David would have broken that oath, that covenant, he would have been guilty of doing the very same thing that Saul did when Saul broke the covenant with the Gibeonites that Joshua had made with him. David would have been just as guilty as Saul. It would have really gotten bad then But my fellowship was spared. Boy, don't you know? They started calling out names and going out there and getting all of his uncles. And my fellowship's thinking, who's next? Now, seven is the number of perfection. I'm not big on numbers, and gain completion. But there's something gonna happen here now. First of all, there's so much up here in the first part of this lesson that's unbelievable. Do you realize, do you realize everybody could have said, well Saul got away with but there was still something that had to be done. There was still judgment that had to take place upon Saul's house. Now, when this took place, somebody surmised that these seven uncles were also part of Saul's decision to Do away with these Gibeonites. We don't know that, it's not said nowhere. Go to verse eight now. But the king took the two sons of Rizpah, the daughter of Aiah, whom she barren to Saul, Armoni and this Mephibosheth also. That's a different one. And the five sons of Michael, the daughter of Saul, whom she brought up for Adriel, the son of Barthelii, the Meholathite, and he delivered them into the hands of the Gibeonites. So he took two and five. And they hanged them in the hill before the Lord and they fell all seven together and were put to death in the days of harvest in the first days in the beginning of barley harvest. Well, there's a lot of speculation, but there's no nothing written in the word of God about these seven. Just the fact that they were the sons of Saul. Now, this was going to complete something. This was going to stop something. If these guys had it in their head at all that they were going to still defend Saul, that ended that, didn't it? Whatever God's purpose was for this, we don't know. The only thing we're going to know is what happened after that. I do know this. If God didn't want that to happen to the house of Saul, it wouldn't have happened. The only thing that amazes me is God brought this famine upon Israel and it took David three years to figure out that something's wrong. Folks, listen. The thing about you and me praying about things is that may God show us something that we, I mean, May God show us something in the first six months rather than after three years. That's pretty slow, isn't it? Why do we have to wait so many times till things become desperate before we do something? That's what's tragic, isn't it? You might be a person of prayer now, but you let something happen to somebody that's real close to you, family member, grandchild, whatever, boy, your prayer life will change, won't it? All of a sudden, you'll have a focus on this. Go down to verse 10. And Rizpah the daughter of Ai took sackcloth and spread it for her upon the rock from the beginning of harvest until water dropped upon them out of heaven and suffered neither the birds of the air to rest on them by day nor the beast of the field by night. In other words, this woman, went down there, and if you notice, two of those were her sons. And so she went down there, they were hanged, they were taken down, they were wrapped, laid out, for the birds need them, the animals need them, whatever. And she didn't allow that. She stayed right there and kept the birds away by day and the beast away by night. So her actions now is going to cause David to do something else. And it was told David, for Rizpah the daughter of Ai, the concubine of Saul had done. Well now, David knows what needs to be done. So now, and David went and took the bones, now here's what's gonna happen. He got, this time, he got the information of what Rizpah was doing. And then he acted upon that information. There was something that he needed to do to complete this. Let's see what it is. And David went and took the bones of Saul and the bones of Jonathan, his son from the men of Jabesh-Gilead, which had stolen them from the street of Beth-shan, that's where the Philistines had hung their dead bodies on the wall there, where the Philistines had hanged them when the Philistines had slain Saul in Gilboa. And he brought up from thence the bones of Saul and the bones of Jonathan his son, and they gathered the bones of them that were hanged. So now David is going to put the whole thing to rest. Now listen, David went from indecision. Ah, this is just bad weather pattern. What's this? Year number two, man, this is getting bad. Year number three. All right, I need to talk to God. He went from a place of indecision to a place of quick decision. All right, Gibeonites, what do we gotta do? Okay, now she's down there doing that. You know, I need to complete this thing with Saul. I've still got all these loose ends hanging out there. We need to get this done. And so now look what he does. He had left the bones of Saul and Jonathan with the men of Jabesh Gilead for a while now, huh? For a long time? You know, there's times in our lives when we just need to stop and complete some things that need to be done. We need to stop being wishy-washy about it. There's times we just need to make some decisions and go with it. Now let's read verse 14. And the bones of Saul and Jonathan, his son, buried they in the country of Benjamin in Zillah, in the sepulcher of Kish, his father. And they performed all that the king commanded. In other words, these people were out there doing everything that David told them to do. Now look what it says, look how it ends there. And after that, God was entreated for the land. Listen, David, if David was gonna get this thing solved, and get the land back to where it's productive to break the famine. To stop the famine, what David had to do was complete this process so that God would be entreated for the land. Number one, point number one, The problem with Israel and this famine right now was a spiritual problem, wasn't it? It was a spiritual problem. Now, ladies and gentlemen, why should good saved people read the word of God? Listen. The Word of God makes us sensitive to spiritual things. Like it said in Matthew 13, you having eyes to see, you see, and having ears to hear, you hear. In other words, truly saved people, they have a heart to know the things of God. They have a heart to know the wisdom of God. They have a heart to know when God is offended. They have a heart to know that it's ever so important for them to be sensitive to the things of God. We see here, this had to be completed. The famine was what? It was a spiritual problem. So I want you to know this, when it comes to your life, my life, our life, church life, national life, if we're in the word of God, reading the word of God, praying and talking to God, we will be able to see the difference between something that is just a physical thing or whether it's a spiritual thing. And like I said the other week, the situation we're in in America right now, it's not a Democrat, Republican thing. It's not a capitalist, communist thing. No, it's a spiritual thing. We need to recognize that. Now listen, spiritual problems can only be solved spiritually. That's it. You might say, what's spiritual about this? Well, that was God's way of doing it. And so whatever God's way, whatever conclusion God wants, listen, the only conclusion of a problem that counts is the conclusion that God will accept. David done this, now look at this. It says here at the bottom of verse 14, Saul and Jonathan was buried in the sepulcher of Caesar's father, and it said, and they performed all that the king commanded. Listen, there was no skimping on this. If this was going to work, They had to do everything that was commanded. And that's all there is to it. We say business is business. And that's all there is to it, don't we? We say right is right, wrong is wrong. That's fine. But isn't it amazing, we can handle that until it comes to us. And then we want to make an excuse of why we shouldn't, or why we should. Listen, if you've got to make an excuse for your action, I guarantee you, your action was wrong. As saved people, We need to make sure that we stay spiritually minded. Number two, so that we can recognize things. We've got to stay spiritually minded so we can recognize things. So now I'm gonna go right back to point one. How do we do that? Ah. Simple. You need to get your face out of Facebook and get your face in the book. That's it. Listen, I know a fella, I knew him long, many years ago. He's probably passed away by now. But he got up one day and he had this habit of going out, getting the newspaper, come in, reading the newspaper. And he picked up the newspaper one day and there was a little article in there about the importance of the Bible. He said he got under conviction so bad he couldn't stand it. He said he got on his knees right there in front of the chair he was sitting in and said, I'll never read anything for the rest of my life until I've read my Bible. And that's the way he died. He did it for the rest of his life. He didn't listen to nothing, didn't read nothing, period. And that's all there is to it. Nothing kept him from that. And there was great benefit in that. Now listen to me. Three things else that I caught out of this. One, Something had to be done. Two, God had to be appeased. Three, David said, what about the atonement? What do we have to do? And you see, ladies and gentlemen, Those three things we've got to do. I'm so thankful that our atonement was made by Jesus Christ. As I end this lesson, after that, God was entreated for the land. After that, God was entreated for the land. Now I want you to think about something that's not mentioned here. When you go back into Deuteronomy and look around, you'll find that it said that the children are not gonna pay for what the parents have done. In other words, there's a time period there where God said, now if dad sins, then it's on him. And so on, the children are not gonna pay for that. So when you read this, you think, now, wait a minute, there's something wrong here. Why is Saul's seven children paying for Saul's sin? Well, that's where it comes into this. The conclusion, if you was to ask anybody that studied the Word of God, they'd tell you this. Those seven were probably involved in ridding, helping daddy get rid of the Gibeonites. What was their opinion of the Gibeonites? They were probably involved in it. You see, God doesn't have to tell us Why? The only thing God gives us is the Word of God. And that's why the Bible tells you and me that we must properly divide the Word of God. We must properly interpret the Word of God. Search the scriptures for in them In the Word of God, we find answers. Somebody would say, well, the Bible contradicts itself. Where's that? Well, up here it says the children shouldn't pay the price for dad. But over here, man, the children, seven of them, had to make atonement to the Gibeonites because of what dad did. Say, okay, do you know their involvement in this? They were the sons of Saul. Did they like David? No. Did they like the Gibeonites? No. You see, when God fulfills his purpose, listen to me now. When God fulfills His purpose, we do not always know all the answers right now. But somewhere down the road, we find the answer. You know, when we get out of Samuel and we go into Kings and Chronicles, you're gonna be reading this same stuff again. I mean, some of it is almost, quote, verse, I mean, verse by verse, right? But what you find in Kings and Chronicles, especially Chronicles, you find these little tidbits. And those little tidbits are keys to understanding the word of God. So I would say this to y'all. My hour's gone. Don't wait three years when you're in a drought. Start asking God now, Lord, why the drought in my life? Lord, what's in my life that's displeasing you? Lord, why am I living in this? We can definitely say it right now, this dry land, right? And when the Lord gives you the answer, act upon it. The answer might just simply be, you need to repent of your sin. You need to do this or that. come to your heart and mind. Let me end tonight by doing something. Let me take you somewhere. I've read this to you, but it was a long time ago. But this is one thing that I've lived with for years and years and years and years and years. I've lived with this, I've read it. Turn in your Bibles to Ecclesiastes chapter five. Let me end tonight by making this personal to each one of you here. All right? Now this is gonna be very personal because this is personal. Here we go, Ecclesiastes chapter five. Now watch this. Keep thy foot when thou goest to the house of God and be more ready to hear than to give the sacrifice of fools, for they consider not that they do evil. Be not rash with thy mouth, and let not thine heart be hasty to utter anything before God. For God is in heaven, and thou upon earth, therefore let thy words be few. Now watch this. For a dream cometh through a multitude of business, and a fool's voice is known by a multitude of words. Now here's what I have lived with for years and years and years. When thou vowest a vow unto God, defer not to pay it. For he hath no pleasure in fools. Pay that which thou hast vowed. Have you people sitting right here prayed and told God you was not going to do something or you was going to do something, but yet you just went ahead and you've done it anyway. In other words, what you said didn't mean a lick of nothing to you. You might say, God, I'm going to do this and that, but have you done that? You see, what he's saying is this. If you tell me you're going to do something, you're a fool if you don't do it, because I'm going to hold you to it. Now watch verse five. Better is it that thou shouldest not vow, than that thou shouldest vow and not pay. Here we go. Verse 6, I'm going to set it right in your lap tonight. Suffer not thy mouth to cause thy flesh to sin, neither say thou before the angel that it was an error. Wherefore should God be angry at thy voice and destroy the work of thine hands? I've known people that made all kinds of promises to God. They kept none of it. And their lives were nothing but a disaster. I mean, this one fellow, he could have picked up a gold brick and before he stood up with it, it had turned to lead. Read verse 6. Suffer not thy mouth to cause thy flesh to sin, neither say thou before the angel that it was an error. Wherefore should God be angry at thy voice and destroy the work of thine hands? When you make a vow to God, God don't forget it. You'd better keep it. Because look what it says, he'll destroy the work of your hands. There's some people that's made vows to God and everything they try to do falls apart right in their face. I had this one fella told me, he said, man, I can't do nothing. He said, I can pick up a hammer by the handle and he said the head will fall off of it. And he said, if I pick it up by the head, the handle will fall off of it. He said, what's going on? Well, how many vows have you made to God that you haven't kept? You make all these vows. God, if you'll do this, I'll do that. Don't bargain with God. There's a lot of people I know that's made all kinds of commitments to God and never kept it. You ought to see their life. You ought to see their life. It's a disaster. God said, I'll destroy the work of their hands. In other words, whatever they try to do, God frustrates it. God frustrates it. You see, if you make a commitment to God, God will frustrate your life. You'll live a life very frustrated. You get it? Joshua made a covenant with the Gibeonites. Saul broke it. Did he get away with it? Nope. David made a covenant with Mephibosheth. If David would have, because of Jonathan, if David would have broken that, do you think he'd have got away with it? Nope, not at all. And guess what? We won't get away with it either. So if you've opened your mouth and you've made a commitment to God, you better ask God, God, why the famine? Why the famine? And then when God shows it to you, get it right. Other than that, the work of your hands, the work of your hands, he'll frustrate your life until the day you die. Let's all stand, if you would, please. We'll go to the Lord in prayer. Take it just a couple of minutes here and we'll have our business meeting. Boy, these business meetings come around quick, don't they?