Turn with me to 2 Samuel 21.

I have to be honest with you - this is not the sermon I planned to preach this week. This passage challenged me, convicted me, and frankly made me uncomfortable. It's a story about good intentions gone horribly wrong, about religious zeal that actually opposes God, and about consequences that last for generations. But it's also a story that points us to the most beautiful truth in all of Scripture.

If you are in 2 Samuel 21, we are going to read verses 1-11

[!bible] 2 Samuel 21:1-11 - KJV

1. Then there was a famine in the days of David three years, year after year; and David enquired of the LORD. And the LORD answered, It is for Saul, and for his bloody house, because he slew the Gibeonites.
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.)
3. Wherefore David said unto the Gibeonites, What shall I do for you? and wherewith shall I make the atonement, that ye may bless the inheritance of the LORD?
4. 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 ye shall say, that will I do for you.
5. 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,
6. Let seven men of his sons be delivered unto us, and we will hang them up unto the LORD in Gibeah of Saul, whom the LORD did choose. And the king said, I will give them.
7. But the king spared Mephibosheth, the son of Jonathan the son of Saul, because of the LORD’S oath that was between them, between David and Jonathan the son of Saul.
8. But the king took the two sons of Rizpah the daughter of Aiah, whom she bare unto Saul, Armoni and Mephibosheth; and the five sons of Michal the daughter of Saul, whom she brought up for Adriel the son of Barzillai the Meholathite:
9. And he delivered them into the hands of the Gibeonites, and they hanged them in the hill before the LORD: and they fell all seven together, and were put to death in the days of harvest, in the first days, in the beginning of barley harvest.
10. And Rizpah the daughter of Aiah took sackcloth, and spread it for her upon the rock, from the beginning of harvest until 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.
11. And it was told David what Rizpah the daughter of Aiah, the concubine of Saul, had done.

This is a very obscure story. I've been reading about six different commentaries as I've preached through these stories in 2 Samuel - and only one of them had anything at all to say about this chapter. The rest just skipped over this story.

The story starts with a famine. At first, the crops just seem a little stunted and brown. The rain isn't falling. The famine stretches for a year - and probably only the farmers notice. Then the next season the people start to get hungry. They ration their meals. They tighten their belts. When the third year comes around people are starving, kids are begging for food and and people will do anything for bread.

And David realizes God's hand is in this. There must be some special reason for this famine. So David seek's God about the famine and God tells David what it is about.

In this case, it wasn't about David's sin with Bathsheba or about anything that happened with Absolom or Joab. No, God let's David know that this famine is on Saul. Saul - who has been off the scene for decades now. Saul did this.

Verse 1 tells us it is for Saul, and his bloody house, because he slew the Gibeonites.

Not only was this present famine the result of Saul's past sin, but this particular sin happened early in his reign. This was from a long time ago.

The Gibeonites were a group of people who lived a little north of Jerusalem in what was Benjamin's territory. They had always lived there.

Back in Joshua's days, when Israel was cleaning house throughout Canaan. The Gibeonites were the ones who made themselves look like they were travelers and asked for a treaty with Israel. They tricked Israel into a treaty. But Israel gave it to them and God promised them protection.

Apparently, Saul thought 400 years was long enough. He wanted these people gone. And he attempted to wipe them off the map. He attempted ethnic cleansing for this group.

And verse two tells us that Saul did it "...Saul sought to slay them in his zeal to the children of Israel and Judah."

And this brings me to my first of four lessons we are going to learn in this chapter tonight. This one is:

1. A lesson about zeal

You see, Saul probably seemed like he was doing a righteous thing when he tried to get rid of the Gibeonites. They weren't Israel. They had tricked Israel. And Saul was doing this in his zeal for Israel and Judah.

But even though He was zealous, it didn't mean he was right. Even though Saul was doing something that seemed right - I mean wouldn't you want a king who was zealous for his people? - it wasn't right. It was completely wrong.

In fact, Saul's zeal for the people of Israel and Judah actually led to God's punishment of Israel and Judah. It most likely led to widespread death of lots of innocent people.

And so here is the lesson this story teaches us about zeal: Something can seem like righteous zeal, and actually be grievous sin.

This is an important lesson: something can seem right. Someone can seem on fire for the Lord. They can seem like they are doing what God wants them to do with full hearts of zeal. They can even be sincere about it - and God looks at it and in His eyes it is sin.

We see this actually in several places in the New Testament. It would be hard to say that the Pharisees weren't zealous. Jesus said they would compass land and sea to make one proselyte - that is pure evangelistic zeal. But then Jesus said once he is made you make him two times more the child of hell than you are.

Paul later said about the Jewish people that

[!bible] Romans 10:2-3 - KJV 2. For I bear them record that they have a zeal of God, but not according to knowledge.

They were zealous - they were zealous even for God - but they were doing it in ignorance and their zeal was leading them straight to hell. That zeal eventually led them to put Jesus Himself on the cross.

Paul himself had this zeal. He said this about himself before he became a Christian:

[!bible] Philippians 3:6 - KJV 6. Concerning zeal, persecuting the church; touching the righteousness which is in the law, blameless.

Paul was zealous. He was on fire. He was righteous. And He was also committing sin that he would regret for the rest of his life.

Paul thought he was serving God. He was zealous in it. But he was actually committing serious sin.

And so I want to warn you - just because you are on fire, just because you have some zeal - that isn't some kind of automatic guarantee that you are going to do the right thing in God's eyes. Zeal is a good thing - but zeal can also lead us astray if it isn't paired with a clear knowledge of God's word.

So that is the lesson about zeal. But I think this story already teaches us two more lessons.

The second lesson it teaches us is...

2. A lesson about obedience

You might read this story and you might look at what Saul did in killing these Gibeonites and think - that is wicked. That is always wicked.

But the truth is God, actually commanded the very same king (Saul) to do almost the very same thing. In another instance, Saul was commanded to kill all of the Amalekites. The Amalekites had wronged God's people - and God decided in His holy judgment that they needed to go and God told Saul to do it.

And we know that Saul wasn't completely obedient to that clear command from God. He spared some of the Amalakite's sheep and he spared the king of the Amalakites.

But here, maybe to compensate, maybe out of some twisted application of God's previous command - we don't know why Saul did it - but here Saul goes and starts killing these Gibeonites and attempts to wipe out the Gibeonites.

And so I've given you a lesson from this story about zeal, I think this story also teaches us a lesson about obedience. Here is the lesson:

It is often not a good thing to do more than God commands you to do.

Let me tell you what I mean:

Sometimes, people try to do more than God commands them to do. Maybe they think

• "Well, if God wants me to be in church faithfully, I'm going to go to church 7 days a week."
• "If God wants me to dress in a way to respect Him, I'm going to wear a suit all the time."
• "If God wants women to dress modestly, I'm going to make my wife wear a hijab."

In the New Testament, the Pharisees did this. They took God's laws and they decided they could improve on them. They could build fences around them. If God said "don't work on the sabbath day" they said "Well, we aren't going to work three hours before the sabbath starts." and "We aren't even going to pick corn as we walk on the sabbath day."

There are seriously orthodox jewish people today who will not turn on the light switch on the sabbath because to do so would be "to kindle a fire" and that would break the sabbath.

These pharisees thought it would be a good thing if they became stricter than God - and in doing it - what they ended up doing was hurting a lot of people, making God look petty and completely missing the point.

I remember reading a line from Thomas Paine, who grew up in a strict quaker family. Paine (who was his generations version of an outspoken Athiest) said "If the God of my parents had created the world, the flowers would all be black and white."

Church, that kind of strictness that sucks the joy out of life - that doesn't come from God - it comes from our misplaced zeal. It might masquerade as faith - but it is really doubt - it is doubt that God's word is good enough, and God's commands are strong enough.

If you try to improve on God's commands with your own piddly human reasoning - there is going to be trouble. There is going to be hurt.

Saul thought he could improve on God's command by being more zealous than God commanded - and it brought disaster on the very people Saul was trying to protect.

And that leads to a third lesson...

3. A lesson about friendly fire

You see, Saul was zealous and he attacked the Gibeonites. But the Gibeonites were actually people who were under God's protection. The Gibeonites may have even been faithful God-followers at this point. They weren't jews, but they were in a sense God's people.

And listen, when we let our zeal get ahead of our knowledge, and we end up trying obey things God never commanded us to, one of the things that often happens is we attack God's people.

And so the lesson about friendly fire is:

If we attack everyone who is not exactly like us, we might attack God's people, and God will come to their defense.

There are a lot of examples of this we could look at in the Bible.

In the Numbers 11:26 there were two men who were prophesying and Joshua tried to get Moses to stop them and Moses wouldn't do it. He said that he wished all of God's people were prophets.

In Luke 9 (which we looked at recently), John found somebody casting out demons in the name of Jesus and John told him to stop - and remember what Jesus said "forbid Him not, for He who is not against us is for us."

Paul later said that "whether in pretence or in truth, if Christ is preached, I will rejoice."

Here is what often happens, we get zealous, we define our rules - maybe we go farther than God intended - and then we look around for targets. We start trashing people who aren't just like us.

• Maybe they go to a different type of church - and so we assume they aren't real Christians.
• Maybe they hold different positions than us on things - and so we look down on them or make fun of them.

And we never stop to think that maybe we are attacking people who are special to God. We don't think that maybe these people love God just as much as we do. Maybe we should just focus on our own relationship and obedience and not go around judging God's servants.

I'm not saying that you should never take a stand or defend a position. But I am saying you ought to be very, very careful when your stand turns into an attack.

Let me give you a principle that I've personally found helpful: If you are in the right - you do not need to attack. The truth does not need your meanness. The truth can stand on its own.

If you have the right position, then you ought to be able to take error on error's strongest terms, and still show it to be in error.

You don't have to make fun. You don't have to call names. You don't have to twist what others are saying. That changes no one's mind.

Listen, there is a great gulf fixed between a charitable debate and an ugly attack. We ought be very careful who we attack, because if we attack God's people - we might be putting a bullseye on our own head.

Let's get back to our story.

So in the story, Saul tried to wipe out the Gibeonites. God remembered this sin, even decades later, and brought judgment on Israel through a famine. And here God told David this is what was happening.

So David sought to make it right. David went to the Gibeonites and asked them what it would take to make it right. And the Gibeonites told him that they weren't interested in Saul's gold and they didn't want to just go and start killing Israelites like Saul had killed Gibeonites.

So, David asked again, "what will it take to make this right?"

And the Gibeonites said "We want seven of Saul's sons to be given to us, and we are going to hang them up in Gibeah of Saul, in Saul's home town."

And David said "I'll do it."

So David went and found two of Saul's sons and five of Saul's grandsons who were still living, and David brought them to the Gibeonites and they hung them, they executed them and left them up for everyone to see. They left their dead bodies up for months, from the springtime until the autumn.

Saul spared Mephibosheth - because he promised Jonathan he would. But he went and found seven others.

These were two sons were the sons of one of Saul's concubines - a woman named Rizpah and the five grandsons were daughters of Merab, Saul's daughter, who had married a man named Adriel.

It seems like Mechab had died, and these five kids were being raised by Michal. Which means they were probably in David's palace.

This was an aweful thing. It was a painful thing. But it was what had to happen to atone for the sins of Saul and the sins of Israel against the Gibeonites.

And to sort of emphasize how painful this was: Rizpah, Saul's concubine, went out every day and stood vigil over these carcases - and made sure that the birds and the beasts did not get them. Isn't that the saddest thing ever?

But as heartbreaking as this story is, it points us to something more heartbreaking, and more beautiful.

I've given you a lesson about zeal and a lesson about obedience and a lesson about friendly fire. I want to finish tonight with...

4. A lesson about atonement

You see, in order for this sin to be taken care of, and the enmity between Israel and Gibeon taken away - seven of Saul's (presumably innocent) sons had to die.

And I believe this points us to another time when there was enmity - and where another son of a King had to be hung to bring peace. Of course, I'm talking about the Lord Jesus.

• Both bodies were hung publicly.
• Both deaths ended enmity - between Israel and Gibeon and between God and us.
• Both deaths stopped the wrath of God.

The difference is that Saul's sons died for the sins of their father - they weren't completely innocent - and Christ died for our sins.

• Seven sons died to end one conflict between two peoples, but one perfect Son died to end the conflict between all of humanity and God.
• Rizpah's sons brought temporary peace, but Jesus brought eternal peace.
• Their deaths satisfied earthly justice, but His death satisfied divine justice forever.

And so the lesson about atonement is this: The atonement for sin requires the blood of an innocent son.

Aren't you glad that God provided an atoning sacrifice for us in Jesus Christ?

Tonight we've learned that zeal without knowledge is dangerous, that we can't improve on God's commands, that we must be careful not to attack God's people, and that atonement requires innocent blood. But most importantly, we've seen that God Himself provided the perfect atonement in His Son Jesus Christ.

If you've never trusted Christ as your Savior, don't leave here tonight without settling that. And if you have trusted Him, let these lessons guide how you live - with humble obedience rather than misguided zeal.

Let's pray.