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In 2nd Samuel 21, I'm going to talk a little bit at length about those first 14 verses, and then we'll switch gears at the end and talk about that ending there. The first 14 can be something that's a little bit confusing for people, especially when you first read your Bible the first few times. You can come into this passage and wonder what's going on with the story, because it seems to, on the surface, when you glance over the story and not really pay attention to what's being said here or know some of the background details, it can seem like God is telling David to kill people who had done nothing wrong. That they were being killed for Saul's sins and not for things that they themselves had done. It's important to understand, first of all, when you look there in verse 1, it says, 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, It is for Saul. But notice it doesn't end there. He doesn't say it's for Saul. It's because of what Saul did. It goes on and says it's for Saul and for his bloody house. So it's not just the actions that Saul did, but it's actually what Saul did and the rest of his house. Because that's a phrase that's used throughout the scripture. When you're talking about somebody's house, you're talking about the people that were members of their family, members of their tribe. So these people are being punished not just for the sins of what Saul did, but also that there were other people involved in it. These guys were, I believe, involved in it. Now the Bible doesn't make that explicitly clear, but it does say right here in the beginning that it was his bloody house that is also responsible for this because he slew the Gibeonites as it says there. Now you probably remember the Gibeonites from Joshua chapter 9, okay? And if you would, go ahead, well just stay where you're at for right now, but we have to remember in the scripture that God is very explicit that they were to not make covenants with the inhabitants of the land. When he was first sending Joshua over into the promised land, he said, look, don't make any covenant with these people. They were to be wiped out. They were to be taken out completely. That's why he said in Exodus 34, go to Joshua 9, we'll just go there because that's the story where we learn about the Gibeonites. I'm sure we're all familiar with it, but we'll look at it real quick. In Exodus 34, God told Moses, he said, take heed to thyself, lest thou make a covenant with the inhabitants of the land whither thou goest, lest it be for a snare in the midst of thee. So he's warning them, look, if you go and make a covenant with these people, it's going to be a snare in the midst of you. And of course, he goes on and explains there and elsewhere that that snare would come in the form of them worshiping false gods. They would be influenced by them when they gave their daughters to them and they intermarried with them that eventually that would be a snare to them. So he's warning and saying, look, don't make any covenant with these people that are there. And of course, we know the story in Joshua chapter 9. That's exactly what they do. They make a covenant with the Gibeonites. Look at verse three. And when the inhabitants of Gibeon heard that Joshua, what Joshua had done unto Jericho and to Ai, they did work willily and went and made as if they had been ambassadors and took old sacks upon their asses and wine bottles, old and rent and bound up and shoes and old shoes and clouded upon their feet and old garments upon them. And all the bread of their provision was dry and moldy. So we know the story here. They feigned themselves to be travelers from a distant land. They're trying to make it out like they're not the inhabitants of the land. They're from somewhere else because they understood that if they had been found out to be the inhabitants of the land, that they would be killed like everybody else. And we know the story that they go and they make this covenant with them under the pretext that they are from another land. And it says in verse 18, the children of Israel smote them not because the princes of the congregation had sworn unto them by the Lord of God of Israel. So of course, if you know the story here, it's only three days later they're found out. They end up in their land where these Gibeonites were from amongst their neighbors and they're found out. And they say, hey, why did you do this? And they knew, they explained that's because we knew you were going to destroy us. So they make this covenant and then when they're found out, notice it says that they smote them not because the princes of the congregation had sworn unto them by the Lord God of Israel. So they understood that once you make a covenant with somebody, you can't break it. And it's important to understand that because God really puts an emphasis on that because think about it. God has made a covenant with us and God has entered in a covenant with us. Back then he made it entered in a covenant with them that he would be their God and they would be his people. And he didn't want that covenant to be broken. So that's why God puts such an emphasis on keeping your covenants or keeping your promises or keeping your oaths. Jesus said, it's better to swear not at all. He said, and we know the story goes on in verse 26, and so he, Joshua, did unto them deliver them out of the hand of the children of Israel that they slew them not. And Joshua made them that day hewers of wood and drawers of water for the congregation for the altar of the Lord, even unto this day in the place which he should choose. So the story goes, he says, look, we're not going to kill you because we made a covenant with you. We're not going to break our vow. We're not going to break our covenant. But you're going to be hewers of wood and you're going to be drawers of water for the house of the Lord. They basically made them servants. And look, again, it's important to understand that God puts an emphasis on the fact that we should keep our word. We should be people who, when we say we're going to do something, we do it. When we make a promise to somebody, we should keep it. And that's something that is reiterated throughout scripture. I'll just read to you from Deuteronomy 23. It says, that which has gone out of thy lips, thou shalt keep and perform, even a free will offering according as thou has vowed unto the Lord thy God, which thou has promised with thy mouth. And look, people breaking their vows and people breaking covenants, this is something that God considers very wicked. In fact, he describes it, very wicked people, one of their attributes of very wicked people is that they are, what, truce breakers, that they are covenant breakers. Second Timothy three, I'll read to you, this know also last days perilous time shall come for men shall be lovers of their own selves, covetous, boasters, proud, blasphemers, disobedient to parents, unthankful, unholy, without natural affection and what truce breakers. People who would say, oh, we're going to be at peace with you and then they would stab you in the back, right? That God says, look, he's describing this very wicked people. This is something that is a characteristic of them to be people who break their covenant with other people. I mean, that's what it means to be a truce breaker, right? When you say, okay, truce, no more, you know, the siblings get into it, finally, you know, someone's getting hurt, it's getting out of hand, they say, okay, time out, truce, right? That's before we get in trouble or whatever, someone gets seriously hurt, we need to, let's make some peace. Well, if you're a truce breaker, you know, then you would, you would go ahead and say, just kidding, you know, once he's let the guard down, you know, he lets you out of the padlock, okay, truce, you know, and then you sock him in the gut, right? You're a truce breaker. Okay. And of course, that's a very mild form of it and that's not something that's necessarily, you know, super wicked or whatever, but being a truce breaker, somebody would say, hey, we're going to be at peace with you, causing people to let down their guard and then to later go on and attack them while they're unsuspecting, you know, that's something that's very wicked. You know, that's something that reprobates are described as in Romans chapter one, without understanding what covenant breakers, truce breakers, covenant breakers, these are wicked things. Okay. So you have to get to understand, you know, why is God so upset about these poor Gibeonites? It's because there was an oath that was performed unto them in the name of the Lord. It was God's people that said, we're going to make a covenant with you. We're going to come to terms with you. We're going to have a truce. We're not going to destroy you. Okay. And God takes that very seriously, especially when you're doing it in his name, when you're representing his people. Okay. And then they turn around what Saul did and attack them. Okay. And we don't know exactly when Saul did this, but if you look at verse two, it says, and the king called the Gibeonites 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. We just read about that right back in Joshua nine and Saul sought to slay them in his zeal to the children of Israel and Judah. So look, the Bible's telling us, that's the narrator saying, look, they had sworn unto these people, but Saul had sought to slay them. And again, it was Saul at his bloody house that did this. Okay. Saul wasn't acting on his own. You know, Saul was often, you know, commanding people and he had people under him and it makes sense that he would have his relative, his sons, nephews, things like that, that would be in his ranks. I mean, that's what David has. You know, he has, many of his high ranking guys are his nephews. Okay. So this is Saul's bloody house. They sought to slay the Gibeonites in their zeal. Now when exactly this happened in scripture, I'm not 100% sure when it happened, but if you would go over to Joshua chapter 18, Joshua chapter 18. What we have to understand is that, you know, sometimes the Bible is just describing things to us that, you know, we just have to kind of infer that there was a, you know, some kind of battle that was taking place between the Gibeonites and Saul's house, the Benjaminites. Right. And you can see that because when you, when you study scripture, you realize that these people occupied the same land. All right. That's why Saul had a bone to pick with them. Okay. It was because they were fighting over land. It was territorial. Very political thing that took place. But in his zeal for Israel and his zeal for Judah, he ended up breaking a covenant that God's people had made with these people. And God said, that's wicked and punish them for it. That's why the plague, God sent the plague. And that's why when they came and said, this is what you're going to give us, God was okay with it. Okay. If you look there, well, I'll read to you from second Samuel four, the Bible said, and Saul's son had two men that were captains of bands. And the name of the one was Bayanah and the name of the other, Rechab, the sons of Rimen of Beirothite. Now, these are the guys that went on later in this chapter and cut off Saul's son, his son is Bosheth's head. If you remember that story. And while he was in his bed, they came and took off his head and they brought it to David and David in turn slew them. Okay. But notice, what I'm getting at is the geography here. Okay. Because these sons of these, these two men that were, that, that Saul's son of Bosheth had, it says they were, they were the sons of Rimen, a Beirothite of the children of Benjamin of Beiroth also was reckoned, for Beiroth also was reckoned to Benjamin. So Beiroth, okay, where this place where the Gibeonites were from, this was reckoned unto Benjamin and the Beirothites fled to Gittaim, right? So he's saying the people that were there, they fled, okay. They fled to Gittaim and were soldiers until this day. Now it says there in Joshua 18 verse 20, 21, now the children of the tribes, now the cities of the tribe of the children of Benjamin, according to the families of Jericho, Betholga and the valley of Kizes, look at verse 25, Gibeon and Ramah and Beiroth. Okay. So these are cities that were reckoned unto the children of Benjamin and Joshua when they doled out the land. All right. Look, I know this is a little dry, okay, but I'm trying to explain something that people struggle with when they read this passage. People read this passage and they say, why were these seven sons of Saul killed? It doesn't seem right. But we have to understand that there's more to this story, that Saul was, you know, afflicting these people, oppressing them, he broke a covenant with them, and there were other people involved in it. Okay. And we're looking at the fact that that stemmed from this basically a land dispute. They didn't like having these Gibeonites with them and Ramah and Beiroth and all that. Look at verse, chapter, go to Joshua chapter nine, verse 16. And it came to pass, verse 16, the end of three days after they had made a league with them that they heard that they were their neighbors and they dwelt among them and the children of Israel journeyed and came to their cities on the third day. Of course, we just read about this. Okay. This is when the, when the Gibeonites are first discovered. Okay. And then it says, now the cities were Gibeon and Jephira and Beiroth and Kerjathjirim. So you can see that the cities that were in Benjamin were previously belonged to the Gibeonites. These were the, that was originally their land. That was theirs. Okay. And then years later when Saul's in power, at some point he's trying to run them off and he's, and he's killing them and he's breaking this covenant that God had made with them all the way back in Joshua. And God said it was wicked. And this is something that, you know, we, maybe this is, we could definitely apply this on a personal level, right? But this is something we should take heed to as a nation, right? When we make a covenant with people, we should keep that covenant and not shed innocent blood. And is that something our country has ever done? Many times, right? I mean, ask the native Americans, right? We made a few treaties with them, as I recall, you know, we didn't, right? They did back then, our nation, right? And they broke some, they broke those covenants many times, didn't they? And a lot of people died. A lot of innocent blood was shed. Okay. And look, the Bible is very clear that we should not, what, vex a stranger. Okay. The Bible says thou shall not vex a stranger nor oppress him for ye were strangers in the land of Egypt. God takes this very seriously. And you had this, the situation here in Israel where you have this people that were originally slated for destruction, but were spared because of the fact that they made a covenant with them on not know, you know, under false pretenses, but it didn't matter. They still said, look, we made this covenant with them. We have to keep the covenants that we make. We can't be truce breakers. Okay. We don't want to be covenant breakers. And you know, and Saul later, he's what? He's oppressing these same people, right? He's vexing them. He's killing them. And the Bible says you should not vex a stranger in your own borders. You could say, well, they were supposed to be killed originally anyway. It doesn't matter. They had made a covenant and God honored that covenant. Joshua and the princes back then, they put more value on keeping their covenant than carrying out that original commandment, right? Because they, they understood, you know, the, the gravity of that, that that's a serious thing when you enter into a covenant with somebody, when you make a peace trini or truce with somebody, it matters. Now, so hopefully that helps explain it. I don't want to spend a lot of time on that, but you know, that's, that's what's going on in the story. So when you read about what's taking place here, picking it back up in verse three, you know, we have to understand that there's, there's more to the story than just, you know, these, these, it wasn't that just Saul's sons were just these innocent people, right? They'd been involved in some of these things. They were responsible. And, and, you know, ultimately we see that God is okay with it. You know, he, he pulls back the, the famine after these guys are hung and buried, right? And you know, some people could really struggle with this because the Bible does talk about the fact that, you know, God is not going to, that, that, that the soul that sinneth, it shall die, right? In Ezekiel 18, the son shall not bear the iniquity of the father, neither shall the father bear the iniquity of the son. The righteousness of the righteous shall be upon him and the wickedness of the wicked shall be upon him. So he said, well, it doesn't seem fair, okay? But look, this isn't a contradiction. This isn't God forgetting what he said earlier about, you know, not visiting, you know, the, the iniquity upon the son, the sins of the father upon the son. What we should walk away from this is saying is, well, for whatever reason, whether my explanation is sufficient or not, these were wicked guys. This was a bloody house of men that were being punished. Saul's house was a bloody house that innocent blood on their hands. This was just what was taking place because, because of that, we know it was just because God at the end approved of it. Right? We're just about, we're going to read that here in a second. And look, God is, he's, you know, he is not the minister of sin, right? He is, he is, God is righteous and perfect and just. So we need to, instead of just at first glance at this story, you know, being aghast that there might be something that God didn't do that was right. Maybe we should step back and say, maybe I don't understand the story or maybe there's more to it that, that is, you know, I haven't figured out yet. I believe I have, I'm onto something here, you know, I believe I got something going with this, this, this, uh, explanation, you know, I think that there's, there's some merit to that. And this is, that's what we see taking place. These people that, that Saul was smiting and killing were sharing that same land. Okay. So there's probably a lot of animosity that had been going on for years. The Bible isn't explicit about that, but it does give us a lot of details and, you know, God allows us to connect dots in the scripture. You know, we might not always get them a hundred percent right, but look, God can't sit down. We, I mean, isn't the Bible kind of long enough as it is? Doesn't anyone agree that the Bible is kind of a long book? I mean, there's longer books, right? But the Bible's, you know, is a longer book, 1,189 chapters, you know, 31,000 some odd, you know, verses, 774,746 words. So I've been told, right, I've been counted them, right? There's a lot to read. God can't sit down and, you know, if God's going to write out every single detail for us and just make it explicitly clear, it's just going to get so much longer because just think about how many stories and things there are in the scripture. So sometimes passages like this, we just have to dig a little deeper, find out the, the, the characters involved, the players involved, look at the backgrounds and God will guide us and lead us to all truth and help us to connect these dots. Okay. Now I, whether or not I've done that correctly tonight, you go ahead and judge for yourself. But let's pick the story up here in Second Samuel 21 and verse three, because there's more, there's some other things in here that people might choke on a little bit. It says in verse three, wherefore David said unto the Gibeonites, what shall I do for you? And wherewith shall I make the atonement that you may bless the inheritance of the Lord? Excuse me. 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 he shall say that will I do for you? And they answered the king, the man that consumed us and the devised against us that he, we should be destroyed from remaining at any of the coast of Israel. So this is what Saul was up to. He was trying to wipe. It was genocide. He was trying to wipe these people out completely. Let seven men of his sons be delivered unto us. And we will hang them up unto the Lord and Gibeah of Saul whom the Lord did choose. And the king said, I will give them. So notice David here, he enters into a covenant right now, doesn't he? He says, hey, whatever you want, that's what I'm going to do. And that's what they named their price and David followed through on it, okay? Now look at verse seven. He said, but the king spared Mephibosheth, the son of Jonathan, the son of Saul, because the Lord's oath that was between them. So again, here's another what oath, another covenant that has been made between people. And David, unlike Saul in the story, is being very careful not to violate that oath, right? Remember he made an oath with Jonathan and said, look, I'm not going to destroy your seed. There's going to be a remnant. When I come into the throne, I'm not going to take vengeance for all the things that Saul is doing unto me, right? And that's the difference here between David and Saul. Saul is ready to break a covenant like that with these people that have been in place for hundreds of years, for a very long time before he came on the scene. This covenant had been understood and kept. And then David here is not willing to break an oath that he had made, okay? So there's a difference in their character. But the king, it says in verse eight, took two of the sons of Rizpah, the daughter of Ahiah, whom she bare unto Saul, are Monai and Mephibosheth. You say, wait a minute, I thought you just said he spared Mephibosheth. Now he's saying he took Mephibosheth, but you have to remember that people can share the same name, right? Yes, there are two Mephibosheths in the Bible. I don't know that there will be another one. I don't know why someone thought that's a good name. Heard that and said, Mephibosheth, I like the sound of that, right? But there you go, right? Because you have Mephibosheth, the son of Jonathan, right? This is Mephibosheth, it says, the two sons of Rizpah, the daughter of Ahiah, whom she bare unto Saul, are Monai and Mephibosheth, right? Imagine trying to call that out at the park, Mephibosheth, come here, please spell your name for the class. I can hardly say it, okay? So that's there. Sometimes people, I've seen people go, what's going on here? There seems to be a contradiction, but isn't that right there on the surface? That one's a pretty easy one to figure out. And it says, and he took them, are Monai and Mephibosheth, and it goes on and says, and the five sons of Michal, the daughter of Saul, okay? Now who was Michal, the daughter of Saul, right? That was David's original wife, okay? Whom she brought up for Adriel, so you say, wait a minute, the five sons of Michal, the daughter of Saul, I thought the Bible said in 2 Samuel 6 that Michal had no daughter or had no children, right? That's what it says in 2 Samuel 6 when we went through that. Therefore Michal, the daughter of Saul, had no child unto the day of her death. So you can see how there's a lot of little things in this passage that you have to kind of take the time to look at and understand, okay? Because some people will point to you, because you know, probably everyone in this room is getting it, but look, there's other people in this world that they are hell-bent on finding contradictions in the scripture. And they will point you to passages like this and say, well, wait a minute, didn't they say in 2 Samuel 6 that Michal had no children? And now you're over here just a few chapters later in the same book, and it's saying that she had these five sons. What's going on there? Right? This is their clever argument to try and attack the Word of God. But again, it's right there on the surface, you know, and people don't want to understand it because they don't want the Bible to be true. You know, and even sometimes, you know, they can't understand it just because of the fact that they're the natural man, for the natural man receiveth not the things of the Spirit of God, neither can he know them, for they are foolish unto him, for they are spiritually discerned, okay? So he says in 2 Samuel 6 that Michal, the daughter of Saul, had no child. And that's true. And you remember the story there that her and David had a fight, right? Because he, you know, was dancing when they brought in the ark, and she was embarrassed for him or whatever. We're not going to rehash all that. And David basically put her away, right? He didn't have any physical relations with her, okay? But it says there that she had, that these were the two sons, excuse me, it said the five sons of Michal, the daughter of Saul. But it says that she bore him, you know, it says whom she brought up for Adriel, the son of Barzillai, the Maholothite. Now if you want to take the time, you can go back to 1 Samuel 18 and understand that Merab, Saul's daughter, was the one that was given to Adriel, okay? Which was Michal's older, or Micah's older sister, right? She was originally going to be given to David, but was then given unto Adriel, right? So something happens here onto Merab, right? Along the line, we don't know, but she's, at this point in the story, she's no longer in the picture. She has these five children, and she's just not there. Did she die? You know, mortality was probably a lot higher back then. So she died, that's why it says that Michal, the daughter of Saul, brought up for Adriel, for her brother-in-law. So she raised these children, it does not say that she bore him, these children. And a lot of times, that's what this, you read these genealogies and things like that, you'll see where, you know, and she bare, if it's referring to the woman that actually gave birth, she'll say, and she bare him, these children, who she bore unto. You know, it taught, that's the language that it uses. So it's being very careful here to say that she specifically brought up these children for Adriel. She did not bear them unto him. So that's how that's explained. And then if you would, we'll continue on with the story here in verse nine. And he delivered them into the hands of the Gibeonites, and they hanged them in the hill before the Lord, and they fell, set all seven together, and were put to death in the days of harvest, and the first days in the beginning of the barley harvest. And Rizpah, the daughter of Ahiah, took sackcloth and spread it for her upon the rock from the beginning of harvest until the water dropped upon them out of heaven, and suffered neither the birds of the air to rest on them by day nor the beasts of the field by night. So when they kill these guys, Rizpah, the daughter of Ahiah, she takes sackcloth and she goes and she spreads on the rock, you know, so she can have a comfortable place to sit. You know, I guess sackcloth is better than a bare rock, okay. But notice it says she stayed there from the beginning of harvest until the water dropped upon them out of heaven. How long was that time? I don't know. You could say, well, the water, you know, spring flowers bring, you know, April showers bring May flowers is how it goes, right. So maybe she was there at the harvest, you know, that would be like the fall, right, and she stayed there through the winter and was there that long. That's one explanation. That could definitely be it. Or just maybe she was there until it rained next. I don't know. But you know, she, in any case, you know, she was there and what was she doing there? She was there to make sure that the birds of the air wouldn't rest on them by day nor beast to the field by night. She was making sure these scavengers wouldn't come and basically pick at their bodies and eat them, which means that these these guys didn't have a proper burial. They weren't buried. Now remember, this whole thing kicks off because God is upset about the fact that Saul and his bloody house have been, have broken the covenant with the Gibeonites and been vexing them and oppressing them. And then when God, and then, and then when they're these, this atonement is made, right, you would think, okay, that's it, it's over. But God still doesn't bring, doesn't end the famine until what? Until all their bones are gathered with Saul and Jonathan and given a proper burial, okay. So God, God's not being, you know, it's not that these guys weren't still worthy of being a proper burial and God isn't honoring this until the fact, until these guys are buried. And you see that in the scripture, very wicked kings, you know, are still buried in the sepulcher of their fathers. If they, even if they committed horrible acts, you know, a lot of times if they were still, you know, returned in the Lord with their heart or there was some good thing in them, you know, often we'll see that they were buried in the sepulcher of the fathers. The really wicked guys often aren't, you know, they're, you know, in some instances, they're not. So it's this Ahia, she's there, she's hanging out and verse 11, and she's, you know, beating off these animals, making sure that they don't come and land on these, on these bodies. And it was told David, verse 11, what Rispa, the daughter of Ahia, the concubine of Saul had done. And David went, took the bones of Saul and the bones of Jonathan, his son from the men of Jabesh Gilead, which they had stolen them from the street of Bethshan, where the Philistines had hanged them when the Philistines had slain Saul in Geboah. So David hears about what Saul's concubine is doing. And to me, it sounds like he gets a little convicted, like, oh man, I didn't think about that. Maybe we should bury these guys. You know, after a while, these are sons of the king, right? These are people that should deserve a proper burial. We look pretty bad just letting them lay out there to rot and let these animals pick at them. Right? So to me, once he hears what Rispa, the daughter of Ahia, did, then he goes, all right, okay, let's do this right, okay? And it says in verse 13, he brought up from thence the bones of Saul and the bones of Jonathan's son, and they gathered the bones of them that were hanged and the bones of Saul and Jonathan, his son buried they in the country of Benjamin and Zelah in the sepulchre of Kish, his father, and they performed all that the king commanded. And after that was God entreated for the land. So God wasn't satisfied until they had buried these bones. Okay? And one application you could kind of take from this is that God wants closure on this whole issue with Saul, because Saul was kind of a guy that, you know, really caused a lot of problems for Israel. And he's persecuting David. He was not a good ruler. He turned out very bad. You know, obviously we've talked about Saul at length going through 1 and 2 Samuel. But I think God is kind of, you know, wants this whole thing to just be, you know, forgive the pun, laid to rest with Saul, this whole issue. This is really just kind of a closure here is what I see. That once God, once all these bones are gathered, once Saul and his sons and these other sons here are finally laid to rest and given a proper burial in the proper place, it's like they're ready to move on now. Okay? Because you have to remember, where is this whole story taking place? You know, in verse 1 it says, there was a famine in the days of David. This isn't immediately after. This is not in chronological order after chapter 20. Okay? Sometimes the Bible reads like that. You know, and if you pay attention to the wording there, he's just saying, look, in the days of David, you're just, it's just kind of like, we're getting towards the end of David's reign. We're going to finish that out here real quick, towards the end of the book. But it's kind of like before we get that, we're kind of getting these highlights that weren't previously covered. When exactly this happened, I'm not 100% sure, but it was sometime in the days of David. Okay? So it seems like at some point God wanted to kind of just put this whole thing to bed and move on with David and just kind of, everyone was just kind of getting back on the same page. That's what I see there. And God is satisfied when these bones are buried, then he is entreated for the land. Look at verse 15. So that's the first 14 verses there. There's a few tricky things in there that might throw people off that we kind of just took the time to explain tonight. But the interesting thing, what I like here is towards the end of the chapter. In fact, it's that last verse, those last few verses. But notice in verse 15 it says, Moreover, the Philistines had yet war again with Israel and David went down and his servants with him and fought against the Philistines and David waxed faint. So if you remember, you know, in chapter 19 and 20, I think it was 19, is when they're fighting against Absalom, right? And David's like, well, I'm ready to go. And they told David, look, you need to stay here. You know, you're no longer, you're too old, you're not fit to go in and out with us. You know, don't go out, right? So you can see this is something that kind of probably led to that conclusion because this again, this is taking place prior to that. This is earlier on before Absalom and things like that. And when David goes out to fight against these Philistines, what he waxes faint, which is not common for David, right? David is a guy who's been very mighty in battle, very hardened man, very strong man. But you know, time catches up with us all. You know, that's the lesson there. Even a guy like David, eventually it catches up with you and you're going to grow old. You know, so hey, do what you can while you're young. Use your youth and your strength to serve God while you're young. Not saying once you get old, you can't serve God. But will you be able to serve into the same capacity as when you're young and full of vitality and strength? Probably not. I can't testify to that yet, right? Because I'm not old. Amen. All right. All right. Thank you. And I'm not old. I don't need to be reassured about that. But I mean, that seems to be in the natural course of things, right? I mean, I know I'm not as, I don't have the strength I used to have, right? I don't have the energy I used to have. But you know, that's always on the decline. That's just nature. Even a guy with David, right, he eventually he begins to wax faint in battle. He waxes faint in battle. Look at verse 16. And Ishbibnob, which was of the sons of the giant, the weight of whose spear was 300 shekels of brass and weight, he being girt with a new sword, thought to have slain David. So these are the sons of the giant. Now this isn't, the giant there is not Goliath. Goliath is another one of the sons of the giant. So the sons of the giant, you know, he had Ishbishb, Ishbishb, Ishbishba, Ishbishbinob, all right, Ishbishbinob, man, some of these names, right? He sought to slay David and then it goes on, but Abishai, the son of Ziriah, suckered him and smote the Philistines and killed them. Then the men of David swear in him saying, thou shalt go no more out with us to battle that thou shalt quench not the light of Israel. He's saying, look, if you go, it's going to be mayhem. Like we need you as our leader. People look up to you. You need to stay back, right? Verse 18, and it came to pass after this, that there was again a battle with the Philistines at Gab. And Sibakai the Hushite slew Saf, which was of the sons of the giant. So here's another giant, right? And there was battle yet again in Gab with the Philistines, where Elhanan, the son of Gerogium, a Bethlehemite, slew the brother of Goliath, the Gittite, the staff of whose spear was like a weaver's beam. So what you can pick up from this is that all these guys that are being mentioned, these sons of the giant, are they themselves giants. Because that's the same thing that's said about Goliath, that his staff was like a weaver's beam, meaning it was an extraordinarily large staff. And it wasn't just because the guy was trying to show off, it was because he was a giant and he could wield a staff that big. So these sons of the giant, it just stands to reason that they themselves are giants. And Goliath, again, he was the son of a giant. This isn't referring, he's not the one that gave birth, because it says there he slew the brother of Goliath, the Gittite, the staff of whose spear was like a weaver's beam. Now look at verse 20, and there was yet a battle in Gath, and there was a man of great stature, which is again, what, saying that he was what, very tall, he was a giant. The head on every hand, six fingers, and on every foot, six toes, four and 20 in number. And he was also born to the giant. So all these guys are giants. And all these other guys are killing him, right? All of David's men. And when he defied Israel, Jonathan, the son of Shemaiah, the brother of David, slew him. These four were born to the giant in Gath and fell by the hand of David and by the hand of his servants. Now what's interesting about this, if you would go back to 1 Samuel chapter 17, 1 Samuel chapter number 17, is that remember when David slew Goliath, right? How did he kill him? He used a stone, right? And he got that stone on his way out to go fight Goliath, okay? And there were how many giants that are slain here in this passage? Four. So you have four Goliath would make what? Five giants. Five men that were the sons of the giant. And if you look there in 1 Samuel chapter 17, look at verse 40. This is when David is going out to fight, to go fight Goliath. And he took his staff in his hand and chose him how many smooth stones out of the brook? Five smooth stones. And he put them in a shepherd's bag, which he had even in a scrip, and his sling was in his hand and he drew near to the Philistine. Now exactly why he picked out five stones, we can speculate, right? Now what's going on here? Because he got five stones and he got five giants. Now why is he picking up five stones? Is it because he thinks I might miss? No. I don't believe that for a second. I believe he knew. Because remember, that whole story is about David stepping out in faith and going to him in the name of the Lord, in the power of the Lord, right? He knew he was going to defeat him. It would be like, well, I know God's with me. I'm going to defeat him. But I better get a few more stones in case God misses or something, right? No he took, I believe, you know, whether he took five stones is just coincidence. But the Bible is giving it, you know, it isn't saying he took stones or a stone. It's saying, look, he took five stones. Did David intend to go kill the other giants? Maybe he did. You know, we really don't know. We're impressed with the fact that he wanted to go kill one giant. But David says, I want all the giants, right? And look, that's something, that's an attitude we should have. And what's that? Go big or go home, right? Let's not do small things for God. Or not just say, well, I did enough for God. What we did was pretty big, you know? You know, we could apply that to our church. You know, Tempe, the church up in Tempe is, you know, within the next decade, within this decade, within the next 10 years, five to 10 years, I believe, will have knocked all the doors in the metropolitan Phoenix area. That's a huge amount of, that's like, Phoenix is I think the fourth or fifth, somewhere in there, biggest city in the United States. That's a giant, folks. That's big. But is that, should that be where our, and we have a vision of doing that down here. And we're well on our way to accomplishing that in my lifetime. We will accomplish that goal of knocking every door in Tucson. I believe that. Now that's a giant task, isn't it? That's a big task. Should we just stop there and say, well, we got, we killed that Goliath. Good enough. No, because now, now the vision is not just these cities. It's the entire state of Arizona. That's that next giant, right? That's why we need another stone. And not only that, we want to knock every door, you know, in this region. You know, we want to knock every door on all the reservations. We're very close to accomplishing that. Really the only last, the one, the only one left is the Navajo Nation. And we've knocked a lot of those doors, but you know, the Navajo Nation spreads over into our bordering states, right? So should we just say, well, we're only going to knock the doors of Navajo Nation within the borders of Arizona. No, once that's done, we're going to go into those other states and finish the rest of the reservation. Because we don't want to, we want to do big things, but we don't want to say, well, but not too big. We should never have that vision. You know, we should always aim higher because the higher you aim, you know, even if you come up short, you know, coming up short to a very high standard or a high goal, still you finish high. You see what I'm saying? Look, if our goal is here and we end up here, that's a lot that we accomplished. But what if the goal was here and we only got to here? Or maybe the goal was here and we made it to here, right? Is that really that much of accomplishment because we set a low goal? Look if we set a very high goal, even if we come a little short of it, we've still accomplished something very great. Now, you know, that's one application there with the fact that there's these five giants and David took five stones. Maybe he went out that day saying, I'm going to get Goliath and all his brothers. Or maybe it's just prophetic. You know, maybe it's just God showing us what was to come. You know, maybe David didn't even understand why he chose five. Maybe that's just totally random. But I believe, you know, it could very well be that David went out there and though the Bible doesn't explicitly say it, it does tell us that he took five stones and there were five giants. I think he went out there that day intending not to kill just one giant, but all of them. He wanted to do something big for God. And a lot of people would step back and say, wow, every door in Tucson, what a great, and they'd be right. That'd be a really big wow. Every door in Phoenix, really. Wow. What a great goal. Good for you. And we could say, yep. And we could put a little badge right here or whatever and just say, we did it. You know, people were real impressed that David killed one giant. Wouldn't have been a lot more impressive if he'd been able to go out there and get the rest of them. David killed not only one giant, he killed five of them. Right? Now, of course, later they accomplished that task. Unfortunately, David had gotten to a place in his life where he couldn't do it himself, but his men were able to do it. They weren't able to go out and finish what David intended to do. Finish what he started. You know, and the application is this. You know, in my lifetime, we may very well knock every door in Tucson. There's a strong likelihood of that. But if we don't accomplish that, something's gone wrong. OK? I believe we're going to do that. And in all likelihood, even within my lifetime, we very well may likely knock every door in Arizona. You know, but that's only two giants. There's still more giants to kill. Look, but that's what I might be able to do in my lifetime, lead this church in your lifetime. But you know what? Maybe by then I'll be waxing faint. You know, maybe by the time we get those goals accomplished, I'll be like, David and I will wax faint. And I'll say, well, you know, what's the goal? To preach the gospel to every preacher, to teach all nations, all of them. That's not going to happen in a lifetime. Could it? It could if you do the math and if everything was ideal, but that's not reality. Who else is going to do it? The next generation. The people that came after David, the men that came after David, they were the ones that had to finish the goal, accomplish the task of killing those other giants. It's the same way with us. You know, a lot of us, we're going to do a lot of great things for God. We're going to accomplish big things for God, but you know what? The greater goal is going to be left to the next generation. The young people in this room, they're going to have to, you know, pick up those stones. They're going to be the ones that are going to have to go out and fight those battles and accomplish what we have started, okay? So set that goal high, you know, because it might take time, it might take a long time and you know, we might not be the ones that get to do it all, but as long as the goal gets done, that's what matters. You think David was upset about the fact that these other four giants, these other four Philistines that defy God and his army, you think he was upset by the fact that he didn't get to do it? No, he was just glad to see that there's some people that got the zeal that he had. Said hey, I've affected people, you know, people have, I've inspired people, I've motivated people to carry on in my footsteps and accomplish the goal. You know, that's what we should try to do in our lives. Kill the giants we can, but along the way, inspire others to do the same thing and to carry on after we ourselves have whacked them.