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2 Samuel 21 the Bible reads, 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 and for his bloody house, because he slew the Gibeonites. Now let me just point out something that I taught several weeks ago, and that is the fact that at this point in the book of 2 Samuel we have stopped going in order of events here. And now I liken this unto the bonus material at the end of 2 Samuel, because a lot of the books in the Old Testament will do this, where they will tell a story and they will be in a perfect chronological order, then at the end they will just add a bunch of other information and stories. That's how the book of 2 Samuel is, because if you study 2 Samuel you will realize that the events with Absalom and his rebellion and the aftermath, those took place in the final year of David's reign, and I'm not going to re-preach that sermon where we proved that, but those events all took place in the final year of David's reign. Starting at the end of chapter 20 verse 23, he starts giving just other information about David's reign. So it says in verse 23 of chapter 20, Now Joab was over all the hosts of Israel, and Benaiah the son of Jehoiada was over the Carathites and over the Pelethites, and Adoram was over the tribute, and Jehoshaphat the son of Ahad was recorder, and Sheba was scribe, and Zadok and Abiathar were priests, and Ira also the Jirite was a chief ruler about David. Then it says in verse 1 of chapter 21, Then there was a famine in the days of David. So basically he's just telling another story of things that happened in the days of David, meaning while David was reigning. In chapter 22 it says in verse 1, look at chapter 22 verse 1, And David spake unto the LORD the words of this song in the day that the LORD had delivered him out of the hand of all his enemies and out of the hand of Saul. Now look, we know that that took place decades earlier when he was delivered out of the hand of Saul. And then if you look at chapter 23 verse 1, it says, Now these be the last words of David. It gives his last words. But then in chapter 24 he says a bunch of other stuff. So what I'm trying to show you is that the last four chapters in 2 Samuel are not in order. There's no chronology. chapters 1 through 20 tell the story, and then 1, 2, 3, and 4 are just extra stories. You say, well why would God put these things at the end of the book like that? Well simply because he didn't want to interrupt the narrative. Because he's telling a certain story in 2 Samuel, he doesn't want to interrupt it and tell an unrelated story. So he puts these unrelated stories at the end of the book. Judges is the same way. You know, you go through all the Judges, then you have some extra stories tagged on the end of the book of Judges where it just says, hey, also in the days of the Judges, here's some other stuff that happened. So I just want to make that clear that this happened sometime during David's reign. It happened sometime in the days of David, but it's not after what we just finished in chapter 20. This is a brand new story that we're starting. Just wanted to reaffirm that in case you weren't here a few weeks ago when we proved that very in-depth. But anyway, in chapter 21 it talks about how during the days of David there was a time when there was a famine for three years, meaning that it was not raining. And so therefore the food was very scarce and people are hungry and people are starving and doing very bad. And so David's praying and asking the Lord, you know, why is this happening? Why is there this curse on our nation? Why are we not being blessed? And the Lord answers him probably through a prophet because, you know, usually the Lord would speak to David through one of the prophets, you know, Nathan or one of the others. But it says here that the Lord answered, it is for Saul and for his bloody house because he slew the Gibeonites. So maybe God just told this to him directly or through one of the prophets. But he tells him it's because of Saul and for his bloody house because he slew the Gibeonites. Now think about this. Saul's reign is over. We don't know exactly when this story took place. Presumably it's closer to Saul's reign than, you know, the very end of David's reign. But even after Saul is gone, the repercussions of Saul's sins are still affecting the nation of Israel. I mean, Saul's dead and gone, and yet people are starving. People don't have food because of Saul and his bloody house. Now who did Saul put to death that he wasn't supposed to put to death? It says in verse 1, because he slew the Gibeonites, okay? And look what it says in verse 2. 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, and Saul sought to slay them in his zeal to the children of Israel and Judah. So what's going on here is that there was this group of people called the Gibeonites, and they were of the Canaanites. They were of the Amorites who dwelled in the land before the children of Israel got there. Now when the children of Israel left Egypt and came into the land of Canaan, they were told to wipe out all the nations that lived there, including the Amorites. And God said to completely wipe out the Amorites. But this group specifically could not be wiped out because they tricked the children of Israel into swearing not to destroy them. And once they had sworn not to destroy them, they could never break that oath. Now go back to Joshua 9, I'm going to show you that story. Joshua 9 is where we learn about the Gibeonites and why Saul was in sin for killing the Gibeonites. See Saul basically, in his zeal for the children of Israel, he got carried away. Saul was supposed to be fighting against the Lord's enemies, and he was supposed to be freeing them from the Philistines and fighting certain battles that the Lord had laid out for him. But instead he got carried away and just decides to just get real militaristic and just start attacking enemies that weren't even supposed to be attacked. So he just goes in and just starts wiping out the Gibeonites because, hey, you know, we're Israel. You know, we need all this land for us. It all belongs to us. God gave it to us. But no, they weren't supposed to wipe out the Gibeonites because they had made an oath unto them. There are so many great lessons to learn from this, but let's first look at Joshua chapter 9 so we can understand the story. It says in verse 1, It came to pass when all the kings which were on this side Jordan, in the hills and in the valleys and in all the coasts of the great sea over against Lebanon, the Hittite and the Amorite, the Canaanite, the Perizzite, the Hivite and the Jebusite heard thereof, that they gathered themselves together to fight with Joshua and with Israel with one accord. So here's what's happening. The children of Israel have come in, they've defeated Jericho, they've defeated Ai, and now all the rest of the inhabitants realize that they don't want to just fight the Israelites one city at a time. They're saying we need to all band together and go out and fight against the Israelites. But the Gibeonites, they decide, you know what, we can't win. These people have God on their side, they've already defeated these two cities, so we are going to trick them into making a league with us. We're going to trick them into making an alliance with us. And so it says in verse number 3, When the inhabitants of Gideon heard what Joshua had done unto Jericho and to Ai, they did work wily, 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 old shoes and clouded upon their feet, and old garments upon them, and all the bread of their provision was dry and moldy. And they went to Joshua to the camp at Gilgal, and said to him, and to the men of Israel, we become from a far country, now therefore make ye a league with us. So the children of Israel were told to wipe out the Canaanites, but they're not told, you know, hey, go on a conquest of the entire world, wipe everybody out. You know, they're just supposed to take control of the promised land and only defeat this one enemy that the Lord had laid out for them of people that were so wicked and so filthy and so perverted that God just said completely wipe them out. And he lists off their sins, just unspeakable, horrific, oh wait a minute, they're happening in the United States right now, but you know, all these horrible, perverted, sick things that they were doing. And so God said man, just wipe them out. But when these Gibeonites come to the children of Israel, they pretend to be ambassadors from a really far country, which of course the children of Israel would have no problem making an alliance with, making a league with, you know, they want to have peace with people across the world, but just not with the Canaanites, they're supposed to defeat the Canaanites and possess that land. God didn't want them dwelling with the Canaanites, he wanted them to get rid of the Canaanites and take over the land. So these ambassadors, you know, that are fake, they wanted to look convincing. So they put on really old dirty clothes, they put on old dirty shoes, and they get old moldy bread to make it seem like they traveled from really far away, even though they're from just right there, okay? So they put dirt on themselves, they just make themselves look like they've traveled a really long way. And they say hey, you know, we come from a really far country and we've heard about the name of the Lord and we want to make a league with you. And so that's what they do. It says in verse 9, well verse 8 he asks them, then said, they said unto Joshua, We are thy servants, and Joshua said unto them, Who are you? And from whence come ye? And they said unto him, From a very far country thy servants are come because of the name of the Lord thy God. For we have heard the fame of him and all that he did in Egypt, and all that he did to the two kings of the Amorites that were beyond Jordan, to Sihon king of Heshbon, and to Og king of Bashan, which was at Ashtaroth. Wherefore our elders and all the inhabitants of our country spake to us, saying, Take vittles with you for the journey, and go to meet them, and say unto them, Where are your servants? Therefore now make ye a league with us. This is our bread. We took hot for our provision out of our houses on the day that we came forth to go unto you. But now behold it's dry and it is moldy. And these bottles of wine which were filled were new, and behold they be rent. And these are garments, and our shoes are become old by reason of the very long journey. And the men took of their vittles, and asked not counsel of the mouth of the Lord. And Joshua made peace with them, and made a league with them to let them live, and the princes of the congregation swear unto them. So they believe them, they don't ask God, they basically just trusted these people, and they made a league with them, and they promised, they swore an oath that said, We will not destroy you. Okay, then a few days later they figure out all these people dwell among us. What have we done? And the people are mad at the leaders, like, What have you done? Why did you swear to these people? Now what do we learn from this? Well first of all, when people are trying to trick you, they'll often say all the right things and use a lot of flattery, and that's what we see here. Oh man, we heard about the name of the Lord, and we've traveled from a far country just to be your servants. And just because, you know, we just love God so much. And basically complimenting them on their past military exploits, praising the name of the Lord. And this shows that sometimes when people say all the right things, it doesn't mean that they're good people. So we need to be careful not to just blindly trust anyone who talks a good talk, as it were. And that's the mistake that they made, they trusted these people. And you know, I can see why they made this mistake, because what these people are saying sounds great. So they swear unto these people, now they're in a position where it is really impossible for them to do what is right here. And people often get themselves into situations where no matter where they turn, it's wrong. And then people come to you like, well what do I do now, huh? It's like, well you messed up. You put yourself in a position where no matter what you do, you're doing wrong. And then they expect you to tell them what the right thing to do is. Now, there's always a right thing to do until you put yourself in a position sometimes through your sin or carelessness or mistake, where sometimes you can get in a position where there's no longer any right answer, and you have to take the lesser of two evils. That's what they're doing here. Because God on one hand had commanded them and said, destroy the Amorites. Don't leave any of them, and do not dwell among them. They're going to be a snare unto you, they're going to teach you to worship false gods, and your kids are going to marry their kids, it's going to be bad. So on one hand, they have that command, but now on the other hand, God makes it real clear that if you make an oath, you must keep that oath. So now they can either break their oath, which is a major sin, or they can not kill these people, and that's disobeying God's command, and then that's going to cause them problems and so forth. So they end up basically choosing to not break their oath. And you know, you'll see people throughout the Bible, when faced with this decision, that's what they always decide to do, is not to break their oath to God. Because breaking an oath that you swear before the Lord is a major sin. You know, by the way, think about that when it comes to your marriage. I mean, these people made an oath, and they're not going to change from it. Jephthah, later in the book of Judges, makes a stupid oath. Puts himself in a stupid position, no matter what he does, it's sin. But he doesn't break his oath to God, he fears to break his oath. And all throughout the Bible, there's an emphasis made on, if you swear unto the Lord, you must perform that which you've sworn. But then in the New Testament, he tells us, you know, just swear not at all. And even in the Old Testament, he says, it's better for you not to swear at all, than to swear and then break your oath. Nobody's forcing you to make all these oaths. And you'll hear people sometimes very flippantly and casually make oaths and make vows and you should not do that. Just say yea or nay. And whatsoever is more than these cometh of evil. But one oath that we do take, one, you know, one vow that we do take, and one oath that is biblical is when we get married. That is supposed to be till death do us part. And that is supposed to be a lifelong do or die commitment. And so we need to take that very seriously. And people will have all the what ifs about, you know, hey, well, what if this happens? Then can you get divorced? Or what if this? Can I leave my husband then? Can I leave my wife then? You know, what about this? What about this? You know what, the Bible is just real clear, you just don't break your vow. And God hates putting away. And that is the end of the story. What God has joined together, let not man put asunder. And people are looking for an excuse all the time to break their marriage vows and to get divorced and just because the grass is greener on the other side of the fence. Even though the statistics show that the second marriage is more likely to get divorced than the first. And the third marriage is even more likely to end up in divorce than the second marriage. So you say, well pastor, what do I do, I've already made that mistake, I've already committed that sin. Well, you know what, you obviously can't go back in time and change it. You know, if you're on your second, third, fourth marriage, you know, that's wrong that you got there. But now that you're there, the Bible is clear, you're supposed to be faithful to the person that you're with now. Because that's the, you know, you already broke vow number one or vow number two. Don't break vow number three. That's compounding the sin. Now there's a very foolish and bizarre teaching out there right now that's telling people who are divorced and remarried to go back to their first spouse. And they say, well you're living in a continual state of adultery with your second, third spouse. You need to go back to the first spouse. That's the only spouse that God recognizes. But that is a false doctrine, it can be proven false many different ways. One way is to go to Deuteronomy 24 where he talks about the fact that once you get married and divorced and then you get remarried, you can never go back to the first spouse, even if your current spouse dies. Okay? Now if people are divorced and their current spouse is still living, or I mean their ex is still living, and their ex has not gotten remarried, so basically two people are divorced and neither one of them has gotten remarried, then basically God's will would be that they would be reconciled. And the options, the Bible says, let not the wife depart from her husband, but and if she depart, let her remain unmarried or let her be reconciled under her husband. So the ideal situation would be reconciliation. I've seen that happen many times. But then once one of those people gets remarried, according to the Bible, reconciliation is impossible at that point. And God said it would be an abomination to go back to the first spouse after you've been remarried. Okay? Very clear in Deuteronomy. But this false teaching is out there. It's a new thing. I'd never even heard of it until a few years ago, and now I'm constantly hearing about it. And I think the reason it's so popular is because a lot of people, you know, they get in the second marriage and it's even worse, and then they're like, you know, that first guy wasn't that bad. You know, the first one wasn't so bad after all, you know, and they want to go back to that. And obviously some people are like, well, no, I'd never go back first. Look, the exception proves the rule, but the bottom line is the grass is always greener on the other side of the fence, and a lot of times when people get divorced and then they get remarried, you know what, they realize that they were the problem, or part of the problem, and that, you know, it's not just, oh, I married the wrong person. Maybe you were the wrong person, or maybe you did it wrong. You know, and so it's easy for us to always blame other people and not take responsibility for ourselves. And so in America today, people break their vows at the drop of a hat. People get divorced all the time for stupid reasons, and, or even for what they think is a good reason, but the Bible says what God has joined together, let not man put asunder. And, you know, if you're ever tempted to think about getting a divorce, you should go back and read these stories where people make oaths and won't break them. You know, read the story of Jephthah and Judges, and then tell me why it's right for you to break your marriage vows. Your oath that you swore in the house of God, sworn unto the Lord. You know, pay what you vowed is what the Bible says. It's for better for worse. It's for richer for poorer. It's in sickness as in health, in poverty as in wealth, and you're supposed to stick with it to the bitter end, you know, and never, that sounds great, huh? But you know, you're supposed to stick with it. And you know what? Nothing may endure for the night, but joy cometh in the morning. You know, there are going to be low points, and then it gets better, you know, and then it gets bad again. But then it gets better again, you know? It's like this, you know? You've got to ride that wave, you know, ride the wild surf, all right? So anyway, the bottom line is that when people make vows in the Bible, it's over and over again emphasized how they must keep them. And we need to have the same attitude, and we need to be careful just not to make vows. Now, getting married is one vow that, yeah, you want to make that vow. But you don't want to just, you know, all the time just, you know, I swear I'm going to do this, or I promise I'm going to do this. Just let your yea be yea and your nay be nay is what the Bible says here. So let's go back to 2 Samuel now that we kind of understand the background a little bit of who these people, the Gibeonites, are. Yeah, they were people that should have been wiped out by the Israelites. They should have been thrown out of the land. But because they swore to them, they could not get rid of them anymore. They had to dwell amongst them. So they said, you know, what are we going to do with these people? So they decided to make them hewers of wood and drawers of water. Because the people said, hey, you know what, we want to be your servants. So that's the oath that they made unto them. So they said, okay, well, I guess you guys are going to be our servants then. So they kept them around as the hewers of wood and the drawers of water. So they basically used them as a cheap labor force to do all the backbreaking work of chopping down trees and hauling water. So that's who these people are. They dwell amongst the children of Israel. Saul in his zeal, not zeal for the Lord, you know, in the beginning he was zealous for the Lord, but honestly throughout his reign he had a lot of zeal for himself. And so in his zeal for Israel, he just starts wiping out the Gibeonites. And now God's curse is on the nation. So here we see, first of all, a person breaking a vow and then the curse coming as a result. And by the way, whenever you break vows, there's a curse that's going to come upon you. There's a curse associated with that. You know, the path to God's blessing is through the door of obedience. And the path to cursing is through disobedience. You know, you want God's blessing on your life, you must do right. If you want to be punished, then do evil. I mean, that's what the Bible teaches. Whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap. And so here we see that this curse is coming upon the nation as a result. Look at chapter 21, verse number 3, David says under the Gibeonites, what shall I do for you? And wherewith shall I make the atonement that you may bless the inheritance of the Lord? What can I do to make this up to you guys? What can I do to make this right? You know, he has to fix it because of the fact that innocent blood has been shed. The blood of the Gibeonites, God's curse is there. How do we fix it? He says in verse number 4, 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. So he's saying, you know, don't kill anybody in Israel and don't give us any money. So he says unto them, at the end of verse 4, you know, what ye shall say that will I do for you. You know, what do you want me to do? And they answered the king, the man that consumed us and that devised against us that we should be destroyed from remaining in any of the coasts of Israel, let seven men of his sons be delivered unto us and we will hang them up unto the Lord and give ye of Saul whom the Lord did choose. And the king said, I will give them. Now wait a minute, didn't they just say don't kill any of the men of Israel for us? Now they're saying, well, you know, kill seven of Saul's sons. Now the question is, does this make any sense, you know, to kill Saul's sons? Now, obviously we know the Bible teaches that when a person commits a crime that their children should not be put to death, that you're not supposed to punish the children for the crimes of the fathers and you're not supposed to punish the parents for the crimes of the children. Every man, you know, dies in his own sin. But you know, the question is, were any of these sons involved in the slaughter of the Gibeonites? That is a possibility that some or all of them could have been involved in killing the Gibeonites. Because for them to say, well, we don't want anybody slain of the children of Israel, they might have meant by that, you know, don't just kill random Israelites, like well you killed Gibeonites, let's just kill some Israelites. Because I mean two wrongs don't make a right. I mean if innocent people of the Gibeonites died, killing innocent people of the Israelites would not be right. So basically there's two different ways to look at this. You could say, well, you know, these are just seven innocent people who just happened to be Saul's sons and they're just being killed as innocent people for the sins of their father. Well, that wouldn't really be just according to God's law. But that's what happened. Or you could look at it and say, well, you know what, when they did this, God did turn away his wrath. It seems like God accepted this of these seven sons being killed because then the famine goes away and God restores blessing to the nation. So, you know, it seems that these sons could have been guilty. Because if you think about it, it's not like Saul just went single-handedly in there and just started wiping out the Gibeonites. You know, his sons are probably reigning with him and not only that, his sons are assuredly going to battle with him, you know, we know some of his other sons went to battle. So, you know, I can't really say for sure whether these sons had any guilt or any involvement but it seems likely, just given the story, that that's a possibility that they could have been involved. But either way, you look at the story, either way, what we can learn from this is that the children do suffer for the father's actions. Because whether it's right or wrong, you will see this happen. God says that human justice should not punish people's children for what they do. But let's face it, the Bible also says that the sins of the fathers will be visited upon the children under the third and fourth generation. You say, well what's going on with that? Well because a court system or a justice system has no right to punish a child for what the parent did. But children always suffer for their parents' sins no matter what, just because that's the way the world works. For example, if your dad is a drunk and you're growing up in a home where your dad's a drunk, don't you think that's going to affect you? If he's basically drinking up all the money and maybe he's thrashing you and thrashing your mother, just coming home, just no reason. Maybe he gets in a drunk driving accident, destroys the family vehicle. Maybe he ends up having to go to jail, losing his job. Any time sin takes place, you're not just hurting yourself but you're hurting the people around you. If parents commit adultery, that's going to mess up their kids. If parents get divorced, that's going to impact the children. Any time we sin, we're affecting the people around us. And so here we see one of the many examples in the Bible where we see children being punished for what their dad did. Now maybe they were involved, perhaps, but whether they were or weren't, they're suffering because of Saul's decision to go after the Gibeonites. You think about the men who wanted to have Daniel thrown into the lion's den and then basically not only were those men thrown in the lion's den, but all their families were thrown in the lion's den also. Not right, I mean that's not biblical to do that, but guess what? It still happened. They still all got killed. As a result, they suffered for what their parents had done. So we need to think about that as parents. Before we make stupid decisions and go out and commit sin, that it's not just ourselves that we're affecting. A lot of people have to say, it's my life, I'm going to do what I want, but you're affecting other people. You're affecting people around you, especially your children, especially your relatives. And so that's what we see here. Now one of the other things we can learn about this story where Saul gets overzealous for Israel and goes and wipes out the Gibeonites is this attitude where people today teach that land, all of it belongs to the Israelites no matter what and throw everybody else out, wipe everybody else out. I mean isn't that what people teach today amongst evangelical Christianity? Get those Palestinians out of there, get the Arabs out of there. That land belongs to the Jews and blah blah, that's their land. God promised them that land in the Bible. But hold on, that's not biblical at all because of the fact that God only brought them into the land when they had faith in the Lord. Because the first generation that came out of Egypt all had to wander and die in the wilderness because they didn't believe the Lord. And then the generation that believed God was allowed to enter the Promised Land. They served other gods, he took them out of the Promised Land. They turned back the Lord, he brings them back in. But if you think about it, even while they were in the Promised Land, they never finished the job of wiping out the Amorites as they were told. They didn't defeat all the Philistines. And so God flat out said, I am going to leave the Philistines to be a continual thorn in your side, I will not drive them out before you. And he said, I'm not going to drive out the Amorites before you. He said, you're going to have to live with these people now because they'd sinned so they didn't get all the land. Because of their sin and lack of faith, they did not inherit everything. They had to deal with Gibeonites, they had to deal with Philistines, they had to deal with a whole bunch of other people in that land. And then when they got too bad, he took them out of the land altogether. So to sit there and say, oh man, that land belongs to the Jews. Because God made an unconditional promise to Abraham. He made an unconditional promise to the children of Israel that that land is their land. That is such a lie, it's garbage. Go look it up in the Old Testament. There are tons of conditions that God lays out and says, look, if you obey my voice, if you keep my commandments, if you don't follow after other gods. And then whenever he said, look, if you follow other gods, I'm going to take you out of this land. So how can you sit there and say, oh, that's their land no matter what. No, he said if you worship a false god, you're thrown out. And that's exactly what happened. When Jesus came, and they rejected him and crucified him, and said, his blood be on us and on our children, we have no king but Caesar. When they did that, God, as a punishment, destroyed the city, burned it to the ground, caused the temple to be destroyed, not one stone left upon another, and scattered them into all nations as a punishment for rejecting Jesus. He gave all kinds of parables about it in Matthew. He talked about the lord of the vineyard, you know, going out into a far country. And he comes back to get the fruit. He sends his son, they kill his son. He said he'll miserably destroy those murderers. He talks about how he's going to burn down their city, burn down their tower, and give the vineyard unto other men that would give the fruits thereof. That's what he did. You know, in that parable, he talked about burning the city, burning the tower. That's Jerusalem. It was burned. It was destroyed. The temple was wiped out. And the Bible says it was a result of killing the son of God. You know, that was the punishment in that parable. You read about it in Matthew 20, 21, 22, there's a series of parables that teach that doctrine. Okay, that's what happened. So they got scattered into all nations. And then this thing of, oh, God brought them back in 1948. It's a miracle. No, it's not. It's a fraud because they never believed in Jesus. So then people will say, oh, no, because, you know, back in the book of Jeremiah and back in the book of Ezekiel, they'll take you back to Old Testament passages, right, and tell you, oh, God said he'd bring them back in unbelief. And every time I confront these people, show me the word unbelief in that chapter. Right, Jeremiah 31. Show me unbelief. There's no mention, but they just, right, right, he brings them back in unbelief, right, and they come back in unbelief. It's adding to God's word. You're a liar. It doesn't say unbelief. Here's what he says. He says he's going to bring them back to the land and purge them from their idolatry. Okay, why? Because part of the reason why they went into Babylonian captivity is because they worship graven images, molten images, literal idolatry. And here's what he said. I'm going to bring you back from Babylon. I'm going to bring you back from all nations, whether I've scattered you, because they were scattered in other places as well. Jeremiah and Ezekiel were written before they came back, people, before they came back from Babylon. Hello? Jeremiah is written, you know, leading up to the captivity, and Ezekiel is written during the captivity. So of course he's prophesying, hey, you're coming home, you're coming back. It already happened. That's why they can't take you to New Testament scriptures about how God's going to bring them back and unbelief and blah, blah, blah. Where is it in the New Testament? See, they take you to Old Testament, and the reason they can trick you, they show you verses about stuff that already happened, done. He brought them back from Babylon. You're living in the past. Get in the New Testament, friend. That already was fulfilled. And here's the thing. He did cleanse them from idolatry, because even to this day, the Jews don't worship idols. Think about it. Do the Jews have graven images and statues of gods that they worship? No, because they stopped having graven images and statues and idols when they came back from Babylon, as God said that they would, okay? So they didn't do that anymore. Now, it doesn't mean that they're worshipping the true God, doesn't mean that they love Jesus Christ. You know, let them be anathema for not loving the Lord Jesus Christ. But they don't worship graven images, folks. Face it. You know, the Muslims don't worship graven images either. Doesn't mean it's a ripe religion. The Buddhists and the Hindus have all the idols, you know, and the Catholics. That's another story. So the bottom line is that, you know, the children of Israel did not just have this carte blanche to just, hey, worship Satan, be a Sodomite, do whatever you want, and this land is your land, this land is my land, from the Nile River to the river Euphrates to the Mediterranean, you know. Oh, this land was made for you and me. No, you're going to hell. You don't believe in Jesus. God's wrath is abiding on you. It abides on those who deny the Son of God. If any man love not the Lord Jesus Christ, let him be anathema, baranatha. That's what the Bible says. Okay, but it's false. And this is a great example where you can't just start wiping people out because you want it to be all Israel, Israel only, let's wipe out the Gibeonites. No, God didn't tell you to wipe out the Gibeonites. You were supposed to have done that another time, but now you have to live with these people. That's what the Bible says. So that's what this story is about here. So they're going to kill these seven sons of Saul, and again, it's questionable what involvement these sons had or did not have in the sin, but either way, they suffer, they die, they're killed, and they're hanged as a result. And of course, David honors his vow unto Jonathan by sparing Mephibosheth. He finds the seven elsewhere and spares Mephibosheth and does not allow him to be killed. Then it goes into a different story because remember, we're in a part of the book of 2 Samuel again where there's just a bunch of stories stacked up, a bunch of information stacked up. So when we get to verse 15, it says, Moreover, the Philistines had yet war again with Israel, and David went down and his servants with them and fought against the Philistines, and David waxed faint. And Ishbi-benob, which was of the sons of the giant, the weight of whose spear weighed three hundred shekels of brass in weight, he being girded with a new sword, thought to have slain David, but Abishai, the son of Zeruiah, suckered him and smote the Philistine and killed him. Then the men of David swore unto him, saying, Thou shalt go no more out with us to battle, that thou quench not the light of Israel. That's the same thing they say to him when he tries to go out to battle with Absalom and so forth, and he ends up not going. But they said, you know, we don't want you to be killed, we don't want to quench the light of Israel. Verse 18, And it came to pass after this, that there was again a battle with the Philistines at Gob. Then Sibakai the Hushasite slew Saf, which was of the sons of the giant. And there was again a battle in Gob with the Philistines, where Elhanan, the son of Jeruah, a Bethlehemite, slew the brother of Goliath the Gitite, the staff of whose spear was like a weaver's bean. And there was yet a battle in Gath, where was a man of great stature, that had on every hand, six fingers, and on every foot, six toes, four and twenty in number, and he also was born to the giant. 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. So again, we're out of chronological order at the end of 2 Samuel, because he's just listing a whole bunch of different battles that took place with the Philistines over time. And he basically documents the deaths of the four brothers of Goliath. And this is why it makes sense that when David went out to face Goliath, he took five smooth stones. And people have theorized, you know, why did he take five stones? Because of course the first stone hits the target, right? He takes one of the stones, puts it in the sling, and slang it, and it killed Goliath. It hit him right between the eyes, knocked him over, and then David went and cut off his head with a sword. But why did he take five stones? You know, presumably it could be because he had four brothers. So it makes perfect sense. He takes five stones, or five giants of the Philistines. And they're all born unto a certain man, because it calls him, you know, the sons of the giant, the brother of Goliath. You know, they're related. It's these five brothers that it runs in the family to be huge. Now what does the Bible mean by giant? A lot of people get confused by this, and they're thinking Jack and the Beanstalk size. They're thinking Gulliver's Travels, you know, they're thinking just these huge, gigantic, and there are people who are so dumb and gullible, they believe all kinds of stupid stuff on the internet, and they believe that they found bones of a 30-foot tall man, and you know, I know it's true, because I saw it on YouTube, I saw the very image. But you know what, those images of the giant skulls and giant femurs, you can go and find how they've all been photoshopped, and they show you. Here's the original photo. Here's where it's been photoshopped to look like the guy is 30-foot tall. Let me tell you something. No one has ever been 30-feet tall. The Bible has all the answers, friend. And the Bible gives us measurements of some of these giants. And so you can't just sit there and say, oh, well, you know, the Bible says giants, that's got to be a 30-footer, and that's got to be a, and even, look, those who believe in the Book of Enoch, 450-feet tall, you know, that right there should show you that the Book of Enoch is a fraud. Here are a lot of reasons why the Book of Enoch is a fraud. Because the Book of Enoch was gone for centuries, and it was only recently discovered. I believe it was discovered in the 1800s in the Amharic language of Ethiopia, and then it was not until the Dead Sea Scrolls in 1948 that they discovered a Hebrew copy of the Book of Enoch. I believe that that's the history of it. So any way you slice it, this book was gone for almost a couple thousand years. Well, the Bible says God's Word would be preserved unto all generations. So anything that is newly discovered is not God's Word, because God's Word would be preserved. He said, heaven and earth shall pass away, but my word shall not pass away. It's easier for heaven and earth to pass than for one jot or one tittle to pass from the law till all be fulfilled. And people will say, oh, but Jude quotes the Book of Enoch. No, Jude does not quote the Book of Enoch. Jude quotes the person Enoch. He says Enoch also, the seventh from Adam, prophesied of thee, saying. How did Jude know that? Because he was inspired by the Holy Ghost to write that. Jude was inspired of the Holy Ghost to know what Enoch had preached before the flood. He's writing it by divine inspiration. But people who don't believe in the divine inspiration of the Bible say, well, you know, he must have got that from the Book of Enoch. But here's the thing. Just think for a second about how the devil would work. If you have all these placed in the Bible where you'll mention things like, hey, the Book of Jasher, or, you know, hey, the book of the sayings of Ito the prophet, or hey, here's what Enoch prophesied. Don't you think somebody's going to go out there and create that counterfeit? So basically anything that's mentioned in the Bible that's, oh, the Book of Jasher, somebody's going to go out and write a book, call it the Book of Jasher, and say, hey, I've got missing books of the Bible. But that doesn't mean that it's legitimate. You see, these books, the Book of Jasher, for example, just because God says, hey, this event that took place is written in the Book of Jasher, does that make the Book of Jasher the Word of God? I mean, what if I say, hey, you know, I read a book about the history of Phoenix, Arizona. Oh, I'm mentioning a book. It must be scripture. I'm a preacher, and I just mentioned a book. They're just mentioning books. If they say, hey, the rest of the acts of so-and-so the king are written in the chronicles of the kings of Media and Persia, or the chronicles of the kings of Israel, or the chronicles of the kings of Judah, that doesn't mean that those writings are divinely inspired. They're just referring to other historical documents. Just talking about books doesn't make them the Word of God. Now, some books, people will say, well, what about, you know, the book of Nathan the prophet, or the book of Ito the seer? You know, these guys are clearly men of God who are divinely inspired. Where is that book? You know, that book is the Word of God. But hold on a second. How do we know what was in that book? We don't know. And you know what I believe? If what was in that book was the Word of God, then we have it somewhere else in the Bible. We have it somewhere else in the Bible. Why? Because a lot of the prophets obviously preach the same things. I mean, look, I'm preaching the same words of the Bible that people have preached for 200, 300, 400, 500, 600, 700 years, okay? Every generation needs to hear the Word of God. And so a lot of these prophets are overlapping and preaching the same stuff. So if we kept every book that these prophets had written, there would be a huge amount of redundancy. Think about that. If we had Ito the seer and everything he said is going to be in the book of Jeremiah or Ezekiel or Zechariah or somewhere else, then we don't need it in duplicate. For example, in Matthew 2.23, it says that it was spoken by the prophets, he shall be called a Nazarene. Now that's nowhere found in the prophets. But notice he didn't say it's written in the prophets, he said it's spoken by the prophets. So that's something that the Spirit of the Lord had come upon men of God in the past to preach about the Messiah and to talk about how he'd be called a Nazarene, okay? But you say, well, where is it written in Scripture? In Matthew. So they're preaching it in advance, sort of like when the Bible talks about something being prophesied by Jeremiah, spoken by Jeremiah, again, not written in Jeremiah but preached by Jeremiah. And the quote is found in Zechariah, which is a much later book. Jeremiah came before Zechariah. So what you have is a lot of verbal preachings of the prophets. You know, some of it's written down at times. It's always preserved in one form or another. So the preaching that Ito and Nathan preached, we have it somewhere else in the Bible, the parts of it that were divinely inspired, God's word. So the Book of Enoch is a complete fraud, and it teaches this thing of, oh, giants, you know, 300 cubits tall, you know, 450 feet tall. I mean, that's just ridiculous, 450 feet, are you serious? But then people will even get sucked into this thing of giants that are 30-some feet tall and try to act like they were non-human, hybrids of space aliens, angels, demons, humans, all this junk, you know, that I kind of touched upon in my sermon on banjangling. And that I've spent other sermons where I went on and on and on and showed from the Bible why that theory is false, this twisting of Genesis 6 instead of just reading it for what it actually says, why God destroyed the earth, because of violence. It's filled with violence. He says it over and over again. Not because he had to clear the gene pool of these hybrids. And then the giants are there after the flood. What sense would that make? Hello. And they say, oh, the product of this union between the sons of God and the daughters of man produced giants. That's not what it says. It says that there were already giants in the land, and then after that, when the sons of God went into the daughters of man, the product was the men of renown, and so forth. So I don't want to get off on that too much, but there are measurements given of giants in the Bible. For example, one of the remnant of the giants, Og, king of Bashan, it talks about the size of his bed. And it says that his bed, they found his bed, and it was something that they put on display, like look at this guy's bed. Because it was 13, it was about 13 and a half feet long. So here you have a bed that's about 13 and a half feet long. Listen folks, that means he was less than 13 and a half feet tall. Because you don't just, it's not like you get in bed at night and it's just like your head's touching the headboard, and your fit is touching the foot, especially when you're the king. You're going to have a spacious bed. They call these beds king size for a reason, okay? California king, alright? So that's why, because kings like to kind of have a little space. I mean you have to think he at least must add enough room in bed to go like this. I mean do you really think he couldn't even stretch like this in a king's bed? So basically he was much less than 13 and a half feet tall. You know, realistically, he was probably what, 10 feet tall, 10 and a half feet tall, 11 feet tall. I mean how tall could he really be even to just be able to reach his arms up? And not only that, he gives us the height of Goliath, the Gitite, under 10 feet, nine foot, you know, the numbers fail me but I want to say nine foot, nine inches, it's somewhere around that ballpark, okay? So here we're looking at guys that are nine or 10 feet tall, that's what the Bible's calling giants, okay? Not 30 feet, hundreds of feet, okay? That's ridiculous. Look, if a guy walked in here right now that was 10 feet tall, he would be a giant under you. I mean those guys that visited from Oregon, how tall are those guys? 6'6", 6'7", whatever. But didn't you feel like a grasshopper in their sight? I mean I know, they took a picture, I took a picture with those guys and in this picture I look like a child, I look like a little kid next to these guys. You know, Corbin looked small next to him and he's tall but I mean I looked like a baby, I'm just like, these guys are huge, you know, and they weren't even close to 10 feet tall. So if you looked at a guy who was 10 feet tall, you'd call him a giant. In fact, there's even a guy known as Andre the, and how tall is he? Does anybody know the stat? Everybody wears shirts with his stats, you'd think somebody would have memorized it, you know these shirts? What is it? 7'10", yeah. I mean that's huge. You know, you think of like Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, Shaquille O'Neal, you know these guys are huge, really tall, they're ducking under doorways and everything, and what are they? You know, 7'10", whatever. So when you jump into the 9'10", that's a really big boy, that's somebody that you would definitely call giants. So don't get carried away on this giant thing, and don't show me pictures on the internet of giant skulls and giant femurs. It's called Photoshop, and you can make anything you want in there, and you can produce all the evidence you want in Photoshop and in all kinds of other softwares and so forth. So these giants are just 9 or 10 feet tall, which is still a big formidable opponent in battle. So now here's another one that just people get freaked out by, verse 20, and there was yet a battle in Gath where there was a man of great stature and had on every hand six fingers, and on every foot six toes, he's a hybrid mutant space alien, demon, human, hybrid. No, because this is a deformity that even exists today. I have known people who were born with extra fingers or extra toes, but nowadays when this happens, it's just a genetic abnormality, malfunction, whatever, it's a deformity, and nowadays when people are born with extra digits on their hand or their foot, they are just surgically removed at birth. You know, they basically, they look at it, you know, take one off, and then good as dead, there you go. It's like it was never even there, because people just don't want to walk around, you know, with six fingers on each hand. So this is an aberration here. This is not, notice, what does the verse say? Every, does it say every giant had 24 digits? No, why does it make a point to say, here's this brother, here's that brother, here's that brother, and then here's this one guy that had this. One guy had the six fingers on each hand and the six toes on each foot. So it's an aberration, it's an abnormality, it's one guy. But people will teach that, oh yeah, all these giants, 30 feet tall, and they all had 24 digits. That's not taught in the Bible. And you can look it up, look up the fact that there are, even today, abnormalities like this. It does happen. It's out there. Now, one thing I want to point out quickly before we're done is just that in verse 19, it says, there was yet again a battle in Gob with the Philistines where Elhanan, the son of Jerah, Origim, a Bethlehemite, slew the brother of Goliath the Gittite, the staff of whose spear was like a weaver's beak. One of the modern Bible versions in this verse will say that Elhanan, the son of Jerah, Origim, a Bethlehemite, slew Goliath the Gittite. So in the modern versions it says he slew Goliath. In the King James it says he slew the brother of Goliath. So that right there would be a contradiction in these new versions. It would make it to where he only had three brothers, and it would make it to where he's dying twice. Because of course he was slain by David, so how can he die again? So that's just something I want to point out. But here in verse 19, we see that it was Elhanan, the son of Jerah, Origim, a Bethlehemite, who slew the brother of Goliath. It's basically, you know, it just doesn't give us the name. So because the name is not known, it's just referred to as the brother of Goliath. Name's not important. So anyway, basically some of the key things that we learn from this chapter is just that if you open your mouth and if you commit to do things, and especially if you make a vow or an oath, you need to make good on your word. And then the second big thing that we learn is that when we commit sin, break vows, do other wrong things, other people are going to suffer, especially our children. But we always harm the people around us. Even though God says, hey, the criminal justice system should not punish them, they're still going to be just punished by being related to you when you're living a sinful life. Because, you know, it's just obviously if you're born in the home of an atheist, you're going to suffer for that in the sense that you're not going to have the blessing of growing up in a Christian home and learning the Bible from a child, knowing the Holy Scriptures, which are able to make you wise unto salvation through faith which is in Christ Jesus. So, you know, there are advantages obviously to having godly parents. You know, I thank God that I grew up in a Christian home and was raised in church. Other people didn't have that advantage. So think about that. What kind of a testimony do you have before your children and what kind of blessings are you bringing upon your children versus bringing cursings upon your children? Because no man liveth or dieth unto himself. Everything that we do does affect other people. Let's bow our heads and have a word of prayer. Father, we thank you so much for your word, Lord, and for the stories in 2 Samuel, Lord, that we can learn from and we can study and interpret them in light of other Scripture. And Lord, we just pray that you give us understanding as we read your word and that you would open our eyes so that we would behold wondrous things out of your law, Lord. Help us not to be gullible and tossed to and fro with every wind of doctrine and carried about with all the slight of men and cunning craftiness whereby they lie in wait to deceive, Lord. Help us to not just believe every word, but rather to search out the truth and search the Scriptures. And in Jesus' name we pray, amen.