On a Hill Far Away

I have your Bibles with you today. Turn with me if you would to 2 Samuel chapter 21. We're going to start off verses 1 through 3 The Gibeonites were not of the people of Israel but of the remnant of the Amorites.

Although the people of Israel had sworn to spare them, Saul had sought to strike them down in his zeal for the people of Israel and Judah. David said to the Gibeonites, what shall I do for you? How shall I make atonement that you may bless the heritage of the Lord? Bow with me as we go to our Lord in prayer. Heavenly Father, we come before your throne this morning, first of all, to lift up Martin Ephard to you. Heavenly Father, he is desperately sick.

He's in a bad situation right now, and he desperately needs your touch. I thank you, Lord, for the doctors and the nurses that are helping him, but Father, he needs the great physician. He needs you to put your hand upon him, Lord, and help him, Lord, and we as a congregation right now are asking you for a miracle, to reach down from heaven and so touch him, Lord, that he might be made well from all of this. Heavenly Father, we pray for others in our congregation who are now suffering with the COVID as well. We pray for Nanette and Tony and Robert Brown and pray that Jeff might not get this disease.

We pray for Christine and Dale Powell also. We see men being executed for crimes that they didn't commit. We see people who are filled with hatred and bitterness and who are seeking revenge.

We see a parent who is bereaved over the mistreatment of her children. This is not a feel-good story, so why did you put it in your word? Because it is life. Our sin has created these kinds of problems. We live in a world where there's very little trust. Nations lie to us. Our own government lies to us.

Our government refuses to be honest with us. The culture feeds a secular propaganda that is purposely trying to turn us against God and towards sin. So many times we just feel helpless. So often we feel angry.

Too often our anger turns into bitterness and our hearts seek out ungodly revenge. Help us, Lord, to understand what we can and to trust you through the things that we can't understand. Be replicated in the hearts of the parents and grandparents of grace. May we love our kids in the Lord. May we fight for them and train them up in the nurture and admonition of the Lord. Father, keep my lips from error today. May Jesus be exalted through this message and may this congregation be edified. And it's in Jesus' precious name we pray. Amen.

You may be seated. There was a famine that lasted for three years in the days of David. Back in the late 1970s and the early 80s, we became very aware of what the horrors of famine were like. For we saw film clip after film clip on the news every night of the terrible famine that was going on in Ethiopia. We saw pictures of little children that were so weak with hunger.

If they couldn't even slap the flies away from their eyes. We saw men who were ripping bark off trees and stuffing it in their mouth trying to fill their hungry bellies. We saw trucks coming into villages that were filled with raw grain. And people would jump up on the trucks, rip those bags of grain open and stuff the raw grain into their mouths. Folks, the famine in David's day was quickly reaching that point.

And that's hard for us to identify with, isn't it? Because we can at least a little bit preserve food and save it and store it up. We've got canned goods. We've got freezers where we can put meat in. We've got all these kinds of things, even pressurized food today that can last up to 25 years. David had none of that.

None of that. And what we see here is an absolute tragedy. People were dying of starvation. And little kids were hungry and wailing and crying with stomach pain. And David was upset. And so he went to the Lord and he cried out to the Lord and he said, Lord, what's the matter? Why is this going on?

Why have you done this to us? And the Lord related to David that this was a problem that Saul had mistreated the Gibeonites. Now who were the Gibeonites? The Gibeonites were not Israelites, but they were descendants of the Amorites. And they were a low class, lazy, bunch of people who had become a great burden on the people of Israel. In Joshua chapter 9, we find out that Joshua has just defeated Jericho in the city of Ai and the Gibeonites come to him and they come disguised.

They wear clothes that are torn and old looking and they put dust on them. And they've let their beards grow long and shabby and they did that to give the appearance to Joshua that they are coming from a long distance away. And they came to Joshua and they said, Joshua, we want to enter into a covenant with you before God. And in this covenant, we want you to promise us that you will not destroy us, that you will not kill us and we will make a covenant promise to you that we will be your servants, that we will be your slaves. Joshua fell into that deception. He made that covenant with them and almost immediately they became an albatross around Israel's neck.

They would not work, so to speak. They were just kind of put in their welfare system. They had to be taken care of and it was a deep burden for them. But Joshua had made a promise before God. Joshua had made a covenant oath and he would not break it. That takes us to point one that I want us to look at today and that is the unrelenting justice of God.

Look with me at verse 1. David saw the face of the Lord and the Lord said, there is blood guilt on Saul and on his house because he put the Gibeonites to death. Several years after Joshua made this covenant with the Gibeonites, King Saul rose to become the king of Israel. And when he saw what the Gibeonites were doing to Israel, he was absolutely indignant. And he said, not on my watch.

I'm not going to let this happen. I don't care what Joshua has promised. I don't care if he made an oath before God.

I don't like the Gibeonites and I'm going to deal with them. And he went after them and cleaned house and killed many of the Gibeonites. And God said, no, you don't do that. You don't make a promise before God.

You don't make an oath before the Lord and then break it. And the result was that God was chastening Israel with a terrible, terrible famine. This circumstance prompts us to make several observations regarding God's judgment. First we see that God's justice is unforgetting and unrelenting.

We say that time heals all wounds. It's not so with God. The passage of time and Israel's dimming memory of this event did nothing to erase the blood guilt in the annals of God. Gordon Keddie writes, This makes clear the importance of sinners seeking forgiveness in the way that God has offered through the blood of His Son, Jesus Christ.

No matter how good we may come to feel about ourselves, minimizing and forgetting our sins against God's law, God never forgets them and will bring them to account in the day of Christ's return. So David prays, Lord, what should we do about this situation? And the Lord says to David, restitution must be given to the Gibeonites. And the word that is actually used there in the Hebrew is the word for atonement.

Atonement must be made. And we know David. David's tough, isn't he? I mean, he wasn't scared of anything that grew hair or fur.

He was just a tough guy. But let me tell you, David realizes that this is serious business. He realizes that this is a situation where God has removed his blessing and not even rain is falling upon Israel at this point in time. And David is deeply concerned because he remembers the scripture in Leviticus chapter 26 verse 20 that says this, And your strength shall be spent in vain, for your land shall not yield its increase and the trees of the land shall not yield their fruit. So David swallowed his pride and he went to the Gibeonites and he sat down with them and said, All right, fellas, the Lord has revealed to us that we have broken our covenant oath with you. And now we're here to ask you, what kind of restitution do you want?

How can we make amends? Let me quit preaching for a minute and go to meddling. Over four decades of pastoring, I've had many people come to me and say, Doug, I've been praying about something and God will not answer my prayer. It's like the heavens are brass. It's like God is ignoring me when I pray.

One of the first questions that I will ask them is this. Have you wronged someone else and not made it right? Have you wronged someone else and not made it right? We can't be right with God until we are right with each other. Psalm 66 verse 18 says, Listen to what Jesus said in the Sermon on the Mount. If you bring a gift to the altar and then remember that you've got something between you and your brother, then leave the gift there. Go get it cleared up with your brother and then come back in fellowship with the Lord.

In other words, your horizontal relationships have got to be right before your vertical relationship is going to be right. A few years ago, a man in my former church was praying and he was asking the Lord to just speak to his heart, to show him what his heart was like. As he was praying, the Lord brought up a situation that had happened in his life when he was a teenager. He wasn't a Christian then, became a Christian much, much later, but this thing was brought up. And what he had done was that he had stolen two magazines from a drugstore back when he was a teenager. And so he decided that he needed to call a drugstore.

He called them up and it was 30 years later, but the man that owned the drugstore was still running the drugstore and he was there. And so my friend Larry asked him, or told him, he said, I need to confess to you that I stole two magazines out of your store 30 years ago. And I want to ask your forgiveness and I want to pay for the magazines. And the man said, I will forgive you and that will be fine. And so Larry started to write the checkout. And when he did, the Lord spoke to his heart again and said, you don't owe him just for the amount of the magazines.

You owe him also for interest all those years. And he figured it up and it was about $250. And so he was on his knees again. He said, Lord, I don't have this kind of money.

I don't know what to do. And as he was on his knees, he got a telephone call from his tax man who had just given him his taxes back yesterday and said, Larry, I made a mistake. I made a mistake and on your taxes you're paying $250 too much. And he said, I want you to know that now you've got $250 that you didn't know that you had. And Larry was absolutely flabbergasted. Folks, God provided the money. Now what did all that accomplish? First of all, his conscience was clear before God and that man. But secondly, what a witness that was to the store owner. For he wrote that checkout. Not only did he write a check, he also wrote a letter. And he shared his testimony of how he had become a Christian and that's why he confessed his sin. He wrote that letter and then he gave a presentation of the gospel verse by verse. I don't know about you, if somebody sends me $250 out of the blue and sends a little letter along with it, I think I might read that letter. Can you imagine what this lost world would do and how they would react if all of those of us who call ourselves Christians would go to those who we've offended and wronged and say to them, I have wronged you, would you forgive me?

And do I need to make restitution to you? What do you think the lost world would say? I think they would say this, wow, that guy's God is for real. He's not just talking. He's not just playing games. He means business with the Lord. Back to the scripture. When David went to these fellows, he knew that they were worthless. He did not realize how worthless they were. But he says to them, how can we make amends?

What can we do for restitution? And they say, we don't want any silver and gold. What we want is seven sons of Saul. And we want to take those sons of Saul and we want to hang them up on the hill of Gibeah. The word hang is the Hebrew word yakat and that word means literally to impale. When David heard this, I'm sure his heart was broken.

I'm sure he couldn't believe his ears. But he was between a rock and a hard place and he had no recourse but to do what they were asking him to do. So the next day, seven of Saul's sons were marched up to the hill of Gibeah and they were impaled on these poles, much like a crucifixion. I think it was probably a very festive atmosphere that was there with the Gibeonites. I think they probably brought their picnic baskets and their six-packs and they probably were circling around these men that were dying up on those poles and they were mocking them and they were laughing at them and cursing them and probably spitting on them all the big time. By the end of the day, all seven of those men were dead. It was a custom with the Gibeonites that they would just leave those people up on the poles and they would not take them down after death.

That would just kind of add to the terrible humiliation. But as twilight approached, a little old woman who was the mother of two of these men made her way up to the top of the hill of Gibeah where these men had been impaled on these poles. This woman's name was Rispa.

That name means hot stone. She was one of Saul's concubines. Two of those men up on those poles were her sons. And so she goes up there and I guess she does what any mother would do. She sees her sons there.

They're dead. Their bodies are stained with blood and she goes over and she wraps her hands around their dead feet and holds them to her chest. Now you would think that after that this little old lady would say, Well, there's nothing more I can do. I'm going home. She didn't do that.

She took a sackcloth, kind of like a blanket, and she just kind of rolled it out. She said, I'm staying here. I'm not leaving. She said, The animals will not come and devour my son's flesh. She said, The vultures will not come.

I will not let that happen. And when the animals did come, when they smelled that flesh and they tried to get to the bodies of her sons, what did she do? She took a stick and about beat them to death. And when the vultures would come, she'd take that sheep skin and she would just wave it and make them flee and get out of the way. Now the Scripture says this happened at the time of the barley harvest and she stayed there until the time of the first rains.

Most scholars believe that the barley harvest took place in May and the first rains took place in September. That was about four months. If that's the case, that's a long time for this woman to be in this kind of danger with these wild animals, with this woman to be in this kind of atmosphere day after day after day when she could have easily just have gone home.

But she would not. Alright, that takes me to the second point. One question to three people or three persons. And the question is this, Why are you here on the hill of Gibeah? The first group I want us to look at are the seven sons of Saul. Saul, seven sons of Saul, why are you here on the hill of Gibeah? Look at verses five and six. They said to the king, the man who consumed us and planned to destroy us so that we should have no place in all the territory of Israel. Let seven of his sons be given to us so that we may hang them before the Lord at Gibeah of Saul, the chosen of the Lord. And the king said, I will give them.

Picture this in your mind. These men are hanging. They are impaled on these poles. They are scorched with the heat from that day. They're dehydrated. Their lips are cracked and parched. Their clothes are just stained with blood. And we look up to them and we ask them this question, Sons of Saul, why are you here on the hill of Gibeah?

And they answer us back and they say, We're here for one reason, because our father sinned. Now think about this thing for just a minute. We inherit the physical traits of our parents and grandparents. I'm five feet, eight inches tall. I wish I was taller, but I'm not.

And the reason I'm not is because my granddad was five feet, eight inches tall. I got it from him. I have a son named Mitch. When Mitch was little, we would be walking down the road and somebody would stop us and he'd say, That's got to be your son because he looks just like you.

And I'd look over at Mitch and say, That's a compliment, Mitch. He'd say, I don't think so, Dad. But it's true that parents and grandparents have their physical characteristics passed down to their kids. That also is true in the spiritual realm.

In Deuteronomy 5-9, the scripture says, The sins of the fathers are visited on the children to the third and fourth generation. Psychologists tell us today that the children of alcoholics have a greater tendency to become alcoholics than children of parents that don't drink at all. I had a friend in high school and we would come home from school and his mother and dad were just hopeless alcoholics and oftentimes we'd walk in the door. They would be laying passed out drunk in the floor.

He'd be embarrassed to death. And I used to think to myself, Man, that guy will never drink. He started drinking in high school. When he was in his early 30s, he drove his car off the road, hit a tree, killed himself.

The sins of the fathers are visited on the children. Let me read you a quick illustration of two men lived at the very same time. The first guy's name was Max Jukes. He lived in New York. He did not believe in Christ or in Christian training.

He refused to take his children to church even when asked to go. He has had 1,026 descendants. 680 of them were admitted alcoholics. 300 were sent to prison for average term of 13 years. 190 were public prostitutes. His family thus far has cost the state in excess of $420,000.

They made no contribution to society. Living at that same time was another man, I think one of America's greatest theologians, Jonathan Edwards. Jonathan Edwards lived in the same state at the same times as Jukes. He loved the Lord, saw that his children were in church every Sunday, as he served the Lord to the best of his ability. He has 929 descendants. Of those, 430 were ministers. 86 became university professors. 13 became university presidents. 75 authored good books. 5 were elected to Congress. 2 to the Senate. 1 was vice president of his nation.

His family never cost the state 1 cent, but has contributed immeasurably to the life of the land today. A pastor friend of mine has a man in his church who is now blind. He has suffered with eye problems from the time he was born. When he was younger, he tried medicines and eye salves and different prescription glasses.

Nothing seemed to work. He didn't know what was happening and why he had that until he was 35 years old and his father died. His family doctor called him in and said, Bob, I want you to know that you have a disease that's going to cause your eyes to completely deteriorate and it probably won't be much longer until you are totally blind. And he said, what's the matter? What is this? Did I do something to cause this? And the doctor said to him, Bob, before you were born, your father had an affair with another woman and he contracted a powerful strain of syphilis from her and when you were born, that syphilis was passed down to you.

It causes the eyes to deteriorate and one day soon you will be blind. You will be blind because your father sinned. I remember when I was pastoring my first church, I was looking at the directory and I saw a man's name that I didn't recognize. I'd been there about a year. And so I decided I'd go see him. I went to his house and he invited me in. His little boy was down on the floor while we were talking in the living room, probably about five years old.

He was playing with his toys. And I started talking to the man about the importance of Christians being in church. I said, the Scripture tells us that we are not to forsake the assembling together of the brethren. And I said, you need to worship God.

You need accountability. You need the fellowship. You need to be in church. And he said, I'm not going to that church. He said, there's too many hypocrites there.

Beside, I'm not hurting anybody but myself. That little boy ran over to him, jumped up in his lap, gave me a long, hard stare. He said, that's right, Daddy, you tell him. We don't need old Jesus, do we?

That man's face turned white as a sheet. He looked over at me and said, Pastor, I'll be at church Sunday. I'll be at church Sunday.

And praise God, he was. Folks, the sins of the fathers are visited on the children. The second group I want to question is the Gibeonites. Gibeonites, why are you here on the hill of Gibeon?

And verses 5 and 6 of the verses, we've already read those so I'm not going to do it again. The Gibeonites respond with snarls on their lips and with gritted teeth. And they say, we're here because of revenge. One reason we are here, we want revenge. We don't like Saul.

We hate Saul because of what he did. And now it's payback time. And they were all excited. They saw those men hung up on those poles, impaled on those poles. And they had a party. And they danced around them. And they spit on them and they mocked them and they laughed at them. And they did this all day long.

All day long. Folks, you think it satisfied them? You think they felt better?

I don't think so. Oh yeah, they laughed and they partied while they were together. They had to go home that night, didn't they? When they went home that night, I'm sure they laid down in their bed and they tried to close their eyes.

And when they did, all they could see in their minds were those seven men whose blood was just dripping down and coagulating the little poles down beneath their feet. There's an expression that says revenge is sweet. I want you to know that's a lie right straight out of the pits of hell. Revenge is not sweet, it's deadly.

And it will kill us spiritually, it will kill us emotionally, and it will kill us physically. In Hebrews chapter 12 verse 14 through 15, the scripture says this, Strive for peace with everyone and for the holiness without which no one will see the Lord. See to it that no one fails to obtain the grace of God, that no root of bitterness springs up and causes trouble and by it many become defiled. I tell you, the Lord is not shy about taking me to the woodshed when there's disobedience in my life.

He'll do that in a heartbeat. Now, my toughest spankings by the Lord have come when there's been bitterness and unforgiveness in my heart. And as I'm going through that discipline from the Lord, I'm reminded that if Jesus could forgive me, how can I not forgive others? Nobody has ever done something to me that was so bad that it made me suffer a literal hell. But what I did to Jesus did make him suffer a literal hell. Folks, vengeance is the Lord's.

He will take care of the injustices. Thirdly, let's ask the question to Rizva. Rizva, why are you here on the hill of Gibeah?

Why are you here? Look at verse 10. Then Rizva the daughter of Ai took sackcloth and spread it for herself on the rock, from the beginning of harvest until rain fell upon them from the heavens.

And she did not allow the birds of the air to come upon them by day or the beasts of the fields by night. There's only one answer that she could give and the answer is a mother's love. This is to me one of the most touching scenes in the entire Bible. A little gray-haired lady makes her way up the hill of Gibeah and she sees her sons dead on those poles and she lays down on the ground right below them. She puts her head down in her hands and she begins to weep. She doesn't understand all the political ramifications of why her sons had to die. All she knows is this, they are dead and on this earth she will never speak to them again. She remembers them as toddlers and remembers how they used to jump up in her lap, how they used to ask her for a drink of water to make a sandwich and how they said these cute little things.

And then she jumped up and I can see her running over to these boys' bodies and she grabs them around the feet and she hugs them and she just wails like a baby. And she says to herself, I'm not leaving. I don't care about the danger of the wolves and the hyenas and the lions. I don't care about the danger of the vultures.

I'm not leaving this place. They will not touch my sons. I don't care if I miss my bridge club. I don't care if I miss some meals.

That doesn't matter to me. They will not touch my children. Praise God we need some parents like that today.

Parents who will stand up and fight the world for their kids. A couple weeks ago we had a ruling elder to open us up in the morning service with prayer. He looked out over the congregation and he said, this week is my son's 30th birthday. A tear began to roll down his cheek and he said, my son does not know Jesus Christ as his Lord and Savior. He tried to ask us to pray for his son and for several moments the words just would not come. When he did that and finally said, please, please pray for my son, all I could think about was risk.

Folks, that elder was broken. He understands that this is not a peripheral issue. He understands that if his son dies without Christ, he is going to be lost for all of eternity. And it blessed my heart to see a daddy care that much. It would to God that we had more parents like Rizva. Parents who refused to get discouraged. Parents who refused to fit into the world's mold. Parents, our culture is rotten to the core and if your kids give in to the culture and reject Christ, they will be lost for all of eternity.

This life is like a puff of steam. It's here and then it's gone, but eternity is forever. If ever there was a time that we need to fight for our children's souls, it is right now. Point three, a portrait of Christ's sacrifice. Look with me at verses 11 through 14. When David was told what Rizva the daughter of Ai the concubine of Saul had done, David went and took the bones of Saul and the bones of his son Jonathan from the men of Jabesh Gilead, who had stolen them from the public square of Bethshan, where the Philistines had hanged them on the day the Philistines killed Saul on Gilboa. And he brought up from there the bones of Saul and the bones of his son Jonathan, and they gathered the bones of those who were hanged. And they buried the bones of Saul and his son Jonathan in the land of Benjamin and Zelah in the tomb of Kish his father, and they did all that the king commanded. And after that, God responded to the plea for the land. Three thousand years ago on a hill called Gibeah, seven young men were sacrificed for the sins of another. These seven men were sinful men, but they were types, they were pictures, they were signposts that were pointing us to another hill that we read about that took place a thousand years later.

That hill is called Calvary. There was another man on that hill that died on a cross. He was the son of God, the Lord Jesus Christ. And he died not because of his own sins, for he was perfectly sinless. He died for the sins of his people.

Folks, Rizpah loved her sons. That love was great, but it was nothing in comparison to the love of Christ. What was the purpose of the cross?

Let me give you four quick purposes. Number one, it was a substitutionary atonement. Jesus died on the cross to take our sin and give us his righteousness, to take our hell and give us his heaven. Second, it was a propitiation. He died in order that the wrath of God against our sin might be appeased.

That God's wrath against our sin would be totally, completely satisfied. Thirdly, it was a reconciliation. Jesus died and his blood washed away our sins completely so that he could reconcile a holy God to sinful people. And lastly, it was a redemption, a redemption. He purchased our ransom.

He died to bring us out of the slave market of sin, and the payment that he made was his own shed blood. I have a question I want to ask you before I close, and that question is this. Are you saved? Do you know it beyond a shadow of a doubt? If you died in a car wreck on the way home today, do you know beyond a shadow of a doubt that you'd go to heaven? You say, Doug, I'm not sure.

How do I know? You repent of your sins. That means that you turn from those things in your life that are displeasing to God, and you run to Christ in faith. Faith in what? Faith in what Jesus did for you on the cross. That he died, and he died not just for the world, but he died for you personally.

And faith in his resurrection, that his resurrection broke the power of death over you. You surrender to the lordship of Jesus Christ, and Jesus becomes your treasure. People, my encouragement to you is don't put this off. Don't put it off. It was Solomon who said to us that we are not to put things off, that we are not to wait. He said we are not to do that because we are to boast not ourselves of tomorrow, for we know not what a day shall bring forth. Paul said today is the day of salvation.

Now is the time of decision. Jesus said all that the Father gives to me will come to me, and he that comes to me I will in no wise cast out. So what is he telling you? If you will come to him right now in faith and repentance, his promise is he will not cast you out. He will save your soul for all of eternity.

Let's pray. Heavenly Father, in John 5 Jesus said, Search the scriptures because they testify of me. As we study this strange event about Saul's sons being executed because of Saul's sin, our minds were turned to the cross. Father, help us to be so Jesus-centered that you might use everything to drive us to our Savior. Help us to say along with Paul, who said, Far be it from me to boast in anything except the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, by which the world has been crucified to me and I to the world. We love you, Lord. Help us to love you more. For it's in Jesus' precious name we pray. Amen.