The Kindness Of God
THE KINDNESS OF GOD
2 Samuel 9: 1-8; 12, 13
This history of Mephibosheth is frequently referred to in the preaching because it is such a wonderful exhibition of the kindness of God. David says here, “Is there not yet any of the house of Saul, that I may shew the kindness of God to him?” It is a wonderful thing that we may all be recipients of the kindness of God. We get that expression in Ephesians 2 : 6, “God ... has raised us up together, and has made us sit down together in the heavenlies in Christ Jesus, that he might display in the coming ages the surpassing riches of his grace in kindness towards us in Christ Jesus”. How wonderful is the mercy of God! Every one of us is by nature dead in trespasses and sins, and guilty of sins committed, that is our state, our condition before God, no pulsation of life Godward at all in us naturally. Think of what it must be to God as He looks down on men and women today! The men and women around in the world are just the same as we are by nature, there is no difference, and yet God is making the corn to grow, supplying food for every living being on the earth, and sending rain from heaven and fruitful seasons, and the large number of them never giving Him thanks! How it must speak to the heart of God, and yet how He must rejoice that the gospel goes out, and that it becomes the means in the hands of the Spirit for bringing life and blessing to many souls.
David was concerned, ‘Was there not someone of the house of Saul?’ Saul had been his enemy, he had hunted him just as one hunts a partridge on the mountains, but now David, as expressing the grace and longsuffering and kindness of God, says, “Is there not yet any of the house of Saul, that I may shew the kindness of God to him?” Just think of that, and that is the very nature of God. You will remember how the Lord, after they had nailed Him to the cross, said, “Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do”, Luke 23: 34. What wonderful grace that was! Think of the Son of God nailed to a cross, and then in the presence of those who had nailed Him there, He cries to God and says, “Father, forgive them, they know not what they do”. I can well understand one of those malefactors that was crucified being converted. I suppose at first he and his companion both reviled the Lord, but then there came a moment when there was a change. Now that is just what God is looking for now; He is just looking to see if someone is going to change, if someone is going to change their thoughts in regard of God. What a great thing it will be if someone in this room just changes at this very moment! You dismiss your own hard thoughts about God, or, it may be, your indifference to God, treating Him with disrespect, not remembering that if you have had some breakfast today God is the provider of it, if you have something more to eat later on, it is again God who is the provider of it. Alas, men dismiss these things from their minds, and take their food as a matter of course. Yet in the apostles’ preaching in Acts 14 they said that He gave “from heaven rain and fruitful seasons, filling your hearts with food and gladness”. Just think of it; that is what God wants, He wants to reach our hearts. Is there someone here whose heart God has not reached, who has not responded to God? “Give me thy heart”, it says in Proverbs 23: 26; that is what God looks for, He wants the heart of man. He fills our hearts with food and gladness; your breakfast this morning was a reminder to you that God gives food from heaven and fruitful seasons with a view to filling our hearts with food and gladness. So God has no pleasure in unhappy people. It is right, of course, to be miserable if there are sins committed which are not confessed or forgiven, but, whatever your sins are, thank God, you can confess them and you can have them forgiven; that is the wonderful thing. Repentance and remission of sins are preached at the present time in the name of the Lord Jesus. There is no remission of sins without repentance. There has to be repentance if you are to have the consciousness of forgiveness of sins. Forgiveness is in the heart of God indeed, and so He speaks from off the mercy-seat. In the tabernacle of old where God dwelt amongst His people, the very centre of things in the holiest of all was the ark and the mercy-seat above it. Now the ark is a type of Christ, and the mercy-seat is a type of Christ, as the place from which God speaks in mercy and grace to all men. God said He would speak to them from off the mercy-seat. Every time Moses went into the holiest of all there was the mercy-seat, and cherubim of glory overshadowing the mercy-seat. The cherubim were representing that God insists on maintaining His rights. The cherubim overshadowed the mercy-seat, as though God would say, ‘No one shall interfere with My right to show mercy’. He says, “I will shew mercy on whom I will shew mercy”, Exod 33: 19. Even if it is the prodigal son, even if it is those who crucified the Son of God, He says, “I will shew mercy on whom I will shew mercy”, and the cherubim overshadowing the mercy-seat just represented that, that God insisted on His rights, no matter what anybody might say; He insisted on His right to show mercy to whomsoever will. You may say, ‘Has He the right to do so?’ He has, thank God. Christ has given Him the right, He has made propitiation for sins, He has given Himself a ransom for all. God never neglects what is right, He never ignores what is right, He never surrenders what is right, but what He has done in the death of Christ, His beloved Son, is that, in virtue of that precious death by which propitiation has been made for sins, on the basis of that, God can come out in mercy to whosoever will. Is that not wonderful? Is that not a wonderful God we have to deal with? That is what this son of Mephibosheth represents. Mephibosheth gave him a name, and the name is Mica, which means, ‘Who is like God’, and that is exactly what you come to in the gospel. Who is like God? Who else but God would have acted in the way God has acted? The wonderful thing for us is that He has acted in that way.
So we read in this passage that David wanted someone of the house of Saul (his bitterest enemy) that he might show the kindness of God to him. They tell him that there is this man Mephibosheth and he was lame on both his feet; it was not very attractive, that he could not walk properly, and that is true of all of us morally. God has great regard to walk. The apostle Paul went to Thessalonica, taught that young company of believers there, only three weeks old as believers, how “to walk and please God”, 1 Thess 4: 1. The first one mentioned in Scripture as walking is God Himself; He walked “in the garden in the cool of the day”, Gen 3: 8. I have no doubt that He had in mind that Adam and Eve should learn how to walk, but, alas, they were not available. God had to cry, “Where art thou?”, and Adam said, “I heard thy voice in the garden, and I feared, because I am naked; and I hid myself”. God said, “Who told thee that thou art naked?” It is a question of how God regards you. “All things are naked and laid bare to his eyes, with whom we have to do” (Heb 4: 13), that is what the word of God says, and the word of God brings you into the presence of God, if you allow it to speak to you. That is something to be taken note of. Mr James Taylor used to say that when he read the Scriptures he liked to sit before them and allow them to speak to him. That is the way to read the Scriptures, to allow them to speak to you, recognise that in them God has a voice to speak to you. Adam was naked in the sight of God, but He says, “Who told thee that thou art naked? Hast thou eaten of the tree of which I commanded thee not to eat?”. Adam said, “The woman, whom thou hast given to be with me, she gave me of the tree, and I ate”. That was a very poor answer, as much as saying to God, ‘You are partly responsible; You gave me this woman, she tempted me, she gave me to eat, and I did eat’—a very poor answer indeed, but God allows that to pass for the moment. The only saving remark in what Adam said was that at the end he acknowledged the truth and said, ‘I did eat’. Then God turns to the woman and says, “What is this thou hast done?” The woman is more honest, more upright in her answer; she goes to the root of things at once, she says, “The serpent deceived me, and I ate”. That is to say, she is not putting the blame on the serpent but acknowledging that she has come under his influence. Instead of listening to God she is listening to the serpent and he is the root of all the evil. When God speaks to the man He asks questions, and when He speaks to the woman He asks her a question, but when He speaks to the serpent He does not ask him a question. When God speaks to you He may raise a question with you, He may raise two or three questions with you, questions that touch your conscience. If God raises questions with you, do not ignore it, because if He raises questions with you, He has in mind to bless you; there is no question about that. He did not raise any questions with the serpent, for He has not any blessing for the serpent. The devil is never going to be blessed, and so to the serpent God says, “Because thou hast done this, be thou cursed above all cattle, and above every beast of the field”. He pronounced a curse on the serpent, but He did not pronounce any curse, either on the man or on the woman, He just asked them questions to reach their conscience, and to make them feel that they were guilty in the sight of God. Then what did He do? He clothed them with coats of skin. You could not get coats of skin without slaying an animal. God sets out at the very outset that, if sinners were to be set up in righteousness before Him, it could only be on the basis of the death of another. That is to say, He was indicating that Christ was the great answer to the need of every man. Is there anybody here, anybody of responsible age in this room, or younger for that matter, who has not yet received Christ as Saviour? He is the provision God has made for you. You are sinful, you are guilty of sins committed, you are sinful in your very nature, and the only way by which that can be met is by means of the death of Christ. He has made propitiation for sins, and in the death of Christ, when He died for us (for it was for us He died, and not for Himself), it was the ending in death before God of the man that was sinful, that lay under condemnation, and He died and was buried. That is part of the gospel, the burial of Christ; the death of Christ and the burial of Christ are both part of the gospel. Would you not think it good news to be told that not only your sins had been made propitiation for, but that you, yourself, had been put out of God’s sight for ever in death and burial? That is what has happened for you in the death and burial of Christ. That is why it is that the burial of Christ is part of the gospel. You will remember how in 1 Corinthians 15, Paul declared the gospel which had been preached unto them, “that Christ died for our sins, according to the scriptures; and that he was buried”. Do not forget the burial, for it is an immense gain, it is a wonderful relief, to see that, not only the sinner has sins forgiven, but the sinner who committed the sins has, in the person of his Substitute, in the Person of Christ, been put out of God’s sight for ever, a wonderful thing! Now God has raised up Jesus from amongst the dead, and He has seated Him at His right hand in glory, and the one who receives the gospel in the obedience of faith, receives the gift of the Holy Spirit, and is set up in life before God in Christ, the Man of His pleasure. Is that not worth having? That is the gospel, those are the elements of the glad tidings; I do not say that is the full extent of the gospel by any means, but these are the elements of the gospel, “that Christ died for our sins, according to the scriptures; and that he was buried; and that he was raised the third day according to the scriptures”. Then, if you want to complete the matter, I think you need to say, “He gives the Holy Spirit to those who obey Him”, Acts 5: 32. Forgiveness of sins is not the blessing proclaimed in the gospel, forgiveness is proclaimed, but the blessing proclaimed in the gospel is the gift of the Holy Spirit. If you want confirmation of that just turn to Acts where Peter and the other apostles were asked, “What shall we do?”, and Peter answered, “Repent”, notice that. The first thing John the baptist said when he went out in ministry was, “Repent”. The first thing Jesus said when He went out in ministry was, “Repent”. Do not forget repentance, God is looking for repentance; you can repent. You may say, ‘I have received forgiveness of sins’; thank God for that! It may be as a believer you sometimes sin; believers do sometimes sin. What have you to do if you sin as a believer? Repent! There is joy in heaven over everyone who repents. Not that I am advocating that saints are to be careless, far from it; but if, alas, a saint does sin, he can do what a sinner does, that is repent, and I can assure you, you will cause joy in heaven. It is a wonderful thing that you cause joy in heaven; “there shall be joy in heaven for one repenting sinner, more than for ninety and nine righteous who have no need of repentance”, Luke 15: 7. There are, in fact, no such persons on the earth, but alas there are persons who think they do not need to repent; they do not cause any joy in heaven. If you admit the truth in regard of yourself, and turn in repentance toward God and in faith toward our Lord Jesus Christ, then you will cause joy in heaven.
This Ziba says, “Jonathan has yet a son, who is lame on his feet”. How sad that is! God does not want you and me to be lame, He wants us to walk. You will remember how John the baptist looked on Jesus as He walked. So I believe God takes pleasure in our walking, He likes to see us walking. I am not speaking now of literal walking, but He wants to see how we walk. He looks at the walk of the saints. Centuries ago He said to Abraham, “Walk before my face, and be perfect”, Gen 17: 1. God has great pleasure in the walk of the saints, how we conduct ourselves day by day. Do not forget that by walking with God you can cause pleasure to God. Enoch walked with God day by day for three hundred years—just think of that! He was sixty-five years, then there came a change in his life, and from that time onwards he walked with God for three hundred years, and then one day, “he was not, for God took him”, Gen 5: 24. It is for us to walk with God day by day, for the day is near when we are going to be taken too. We shall not all die, there is no question about that, many of us will be translated, you can rest assured of that, and hence we want to see that we walk with God day by day, and receive the testimony in our own consciences and hearts that we please God, and we shall find one day that we shall be translated to be with Christ for ever. As He says, “I am coming again and shall receive you to myself, that where I am ye also may be”, John 14: 3. I would like that to ring in our ears and hearts, for those are the words of the Lord Jesus, and not only that but He has, so to speak, enforced it by saying the same thing to His Father. He says, “Father, as to those whom thou hast given me, I desire that … they … may be with me, that they may behold my glory which thou hast given me”, John 17: 24. Those arc the wishes of the Lord. He tells us Himself that He is coming for us to take us to be with Himself, and then He speaks to His Father and tells Him that He wants us to be with Him that we may behold His glory. So let the sense of the love of Christ remain in our hearts. Let us be quickened by it in our affections, and expectant of the coming of the Lord, because the coming of the Lord is near, and He wants us to be ready in our hearts’ outlook and affections, ready to greet Him when He comes forth to receive us to Himself.
These are great matters that have come to us in the gospel. You can understand that Mephibosheth, when he found himself at the king’s table, among the king’s sons, would say, ‘I have a son—what am I going to call him?’ He says, ‘I will call him Mica’, which means, ‘Who is like God?’, as much as to say that every one who meets his son is to have that question raised with them, ‘Who is like God?’ Have you ever known such a one as God, the blessedness in which He gives us forgiveness of sins, clears us righteously from every charge, sets us up with the gift of the Holy Spirit, giving us liberty before Him as His sons? ‘Who is like God?’ Dear brethren, let us enjoy the gospel, and let us be in the liberty and enjoyment of it! Let it give character to our responses to God so that He may find pleasure in us, for His Name’s sake!
BOURNEMOUTH
19th May 1968
From The Word Proclaimed, 1969