The King’s Great Kindness
2 Samuel 9:1-13

 

Intro/Background: David as a type of Jesus Christ (most closely only after Joseph and Moses) (1) He’s a son of Jesse even as Christ is the Rod out of Jesse (2) Both are shepherds (3) Both have a humble beginning (4) David is the only man in the Old Testament ever permitted to serve in each of Christ’s anointed offices (5) David writes many of his Psalms from the very perspective of Jesus Christ.

 

I. It was Kindness to the Fallen. (2 Sam 9:3, 4:4)

  • Miphibosheth is completely helpless, because he’s lame on his feet. We all know unsaved people that we consider pretty good folks. They might be good citizens, or good neighbors, or just nice folks, but there’s one thing none of us could say about ourselves before we were saved. In our unregenerate and helpless case, dead in trespasses and sin before God, we were lame on our spiritual feet such that we could not walk with God in a New Testament sense.
  • Enoch walked with God, and he was not, because God took him. (A picture of the church and Christ’s influence on us that have come into contact with the King’s great kindness.
  • Mephibosheth is lame from a fall. And that fall took place before he even had the opportunity to understand what it meant to be crippled. It was a fall resulting from the death of his father. The very source of our lame condition before God has to do with the fall of our father Adam.
  • Behold I was shapen in iniquity and in sin did my mother conceive me. Ps 51:5
  • The wicked are estranged from the womb: they go astray as soon as they be born, speaking lies. Ps 58:3
  • Wherefore by one man sin entered into the world, and death by sin; and so death passed upon all men, for that all have sinned. Rom 5:12
  • And for that fallen condition, in which all mankind are born, a perfect, thrice Holy God could have turned you and I into hell, and been just in doing so, but praise be to God where sin abounded, grace did much more abound, and the King’s great kindness was shed abroad for us that we might be saved!

 

II. It was Kindness to Rescue. (2 Sam 9:4)

  • Because of Mephibosheth’s crippled condition, he wasn’t even able to get himself to the King if he wanted to. And that’s where this servant named Ziba comes in. See Ziba pictures the Holy Ghost in this story, because when Mephibosheth can’t get himself to the King, King David dispatches Ziba to go down and get him.
  • Now Mephibosheth is in a place called Lo-debar. Lo-debar is a wilderness wasteland on the wrong side of Jordan and the name even means “without pasture” or “outside the fold.”
  • The scene kind of reminds me of the words of Jesus over in John 10 when he tells those Jews, And other sheep I have which are not of this fold: them also I must bring, and they shall hear my voice; and there shall be one fold, and one shepherd.
  • I’m so glad that when I was lost, lame on my feet unable to go to God, my sweet King Jesus dispatched the Holy Ghost to leave the Palaces of glory to come down the barren wilderness of sin and despair where I was a prisoner to my own depravity. And so he came riding upon the heavenly chariot of the Gospel wielding the sword of the Spirit to bid me come and sit face to face with Heaven’s great King.
  • And once face to face with King David, Mephibosheth fell on his face, David called him by name, and that poor sinner, just like me, responded the best way he knew how, Behold, thy servant.

 

III. It was Kindness to Fellowship. (2 Sam 9:7)

  • Notice King David didn’t call him and then just dismiss him.
  • Imagine an invitation to have supper at the White House.
  • David sat Mephibosheth down at his table, as one of the King’s sons, he took up residence in the king’s house, with the king’s resources, and the king’s protection. He was intended to eat continually at the king’s table.
  • What if you said your vows and walked away from the altar and went back to your single life.
  • What if old Mephibosheth showed up at the King’s Table and said the blessing and then got up and left?
  • Those old time preachers used to talk about the Evidence of Conversion. They believed that a man that was really born-again would: (1) act like a new creature, (2) have the presence of the Spirit of God, (3) a brand new love of the brethren, (4) have the peace of God, (5) and that he’d strive to live out a righteous life.

 

IV. It was Kindness to Restore. (2 Sam 19:24-25, 29)

  • As time passed you’ll remember later on in 2 Samuel that David’s son Absalom had stolen the throne from his father and so David has an absence from Jerusalem, but in time he of course was returned to his throne, and that scenario gives us one last picture of the King’s great kindness to Mephibosheth.
  • In all the time that David and Mephibosheth had been apart the Bible says that Mephibosheth hadn’t dressed his feet, or trimmed his beard, or washed his clothes.
  • Here’s a man that had sat at the King’s table, that had been at one time rescued from a hopeless state and given the opportunity to have intimate fellowship with the King. And here he’s just as nasty, and rough, and ragged as he’d ever been. But old Mephibosheth is saying to himself, if I can just get back to the King…
  • David stepping off Ferry sees the reeds on the bank shaking. And out crawls old Mephibosheth, begging mercy of the king. And King David says, I sure wanted you to stay with me, but the offers still on the table.