Dr. Manny Arango (0:00)

Hey, Bible nerds. This is Dr. Manny Arango, and I'm your host for the Bible department podcast powered by Arma. This podcast follows a Bible reading plan we created to help you read the entire Bible in a year. You can head to the show notes or thebibledepartment.com to download our reading plan and join the Journey family. We used church candy for our new church plant the Garden, and the response blew me and my team away. At our new church plant the Garden, we ran simple invite ads through none other than church candy, and hundreds of people responded. Seriously. People who had never even heard of us, who had never met me or heard me preach. They saw an ad on Facebook or Instagram. They showed up to a launch party or launch team training. Some of them have joined our team. Here's the best part. A good amount of them have started giving and tithing, which means the ads have paid for themselves. Our church plant is growing, and it's because we chose the right partner. We didn't have to figure out marketing strategies or spend hours tinkering with ad settings. Church candy handled it all, and it worked. You might not be planting a church, but if you're a pastor who wants to see more new faces on Sunday. And by the way, I've never met a pastor who doesn't want to see more new faces on Sunday. It's time to check them out. How about you go to churchcandy.com Manny and book a discovery call, Let their team show you what's possible when the right people hear about your church family. Welcome to Day 1 59. I'm so proud of you for making it this far on the journey with us. 159 days that you've spent with us. That means a lot to me. Hey, if you've done the reading for for today, shout out to you. We're in. First Samuel, chapter eight, nine, and ten. Just three chapters of the Bible. If you haven't done the reading yet, then you want to go ahead and pause this video. Pause the audio, stop listening, stop watching. Go do the reading for today. It's going to set us up big time for David's famous, or maybe infamous, I should say moral failure when it comes to his rape of Bathsheba and the murder of her husband, Uriah. So today's reading really creates the context for where we're gonna go tomorrow. So I want us to jump right in, like every day. I'm gonna give us some context clues, I'm gonna give us some nerdy nuggets, and I'M always going to give us a timeless truth. Okay, Context, couple big, big things happening in chapters 8, 9 and 10. The first thing that's happening is that chapter 8, recap the success that David is having, okay? The success that he's having as a military leader, the success that he's having as a king. And so we're going to get a ton of details on who he's conquered, how he's conquered them. And already mixed in here in, in second Samuel, chapter eight is going to be some deviation from what God has actually commanded. So there are certain people who God is saying you got to wipe them out completely. But instead of wiping them out, David's going to subjugate them. Now for those of you who may not understand the difference, ok, this is a nuance. When you fully wipe someone out, you kill everybody, you annihilate everybody, you fully wipe them out. When you subjugate someone, you don't actually kill them, you oppress them, but then you're able to tax them. Okay, so there's a couple of people groups in this list in 2 Samuel where it seems like David's doing the right thing, but really he is choosing to subjugate versus annihilate, which may seem merciful, but really it's not merciful. It's not. David's not a merciful human being. I mean, he really is like a cold blooded killer. Like, he's a ruthless, he's a ruthless killer. And so he's doing it because it's building the wealth of Israel. So that's just a detail that's really, really important to know. However, when it comes to Saul's family, Jonathan's family, we get this merciless killer who's just the soft, most soft hearted, gracious, just generous guy. Okay, so when we get into chapter nine, we're going to get two characters, Ziba or Ziba, Z I, B, A and Mephibosheth. Now the text is going to tell us that Ziba is the steward of Saul's house and that Ziba. I want to actually like get this perfect. I don't want to jack this up at all. It says that Ziba had 15 sons and 20 servants, which means that Ziba probably has multiple wives. And what's happening is that Ziba has began to treat Saul's estate and land and property in homes as if it's his. Okay, so David hears that there's one living ancestor or one living descendant of Saul, Jonathan's son. Now the text is gonna tell us over and over again that Mephibosheth is crippled in his feet. Now, I need us to draw a strong, like, delineation here. I'm not saying that people who are crippled have no value. That's not what I'm saying. What I am saying is that in the cultural context of the ancient near east, people who are crippled don't have value to David. David is a king. Mephibosheth cannot fight in the army. Mephibosheth cannot be a political ambassador. Mephibosheth is of no practical value. And so David decides I'm going to act with kindness. The actual Hebrew word that's used here is hesed. Okay? Kindness, covenant kindness. This is the same kind of love that is described of God multiple times. So he says, is there anybody in Jonathan's home and Saul's home that I can show hesed to show kindness to? And so Ziba is about to lose control of all this property that he's been controlling. And David is going to establish Mephibosheth as the rightful heir of his dad's property and land and his grandfather's property and land. Okay, so this is not the last time we're going to see Ziba. Ziba's not happy about this. So Ziba has gone from being a steward to being someone who's really taking advantage of. Of a man who's crippled in both feet. And David is going to defend Mephibosheth. So we get, in one chapter, which is chapter eight, we get David, who, you know, just listen to this, okay? Chapter eight, verse two. David also defeated the Moabites. He made them lie down on the ground and measured them off with a length of cord. Every two lengths of them were put to death and the third length was allowed to live. So two thirds of them are just. You just die. You just killing them. But just randomly, you just, hey, put a ruler down on the ground and everybody from 0 to 8ft, you're dead. Everybody from 9ft to 10ft, you can live. You know, just. This is cruel behavior. Okay? So the Moabites became subject to David and brought him tribute. So the author's not telling you that this is bad. The author, the narrator, assumes that you are able to compare what's happening to the instructions that God gave for kings in Deuteronomy. And so chapter eight is already painting a picture that David is starting to look like a secular king. He's starting to look like the kings of all the other nations. But we still get these little verses. The Lord gave David Victory wherever he went. And then at the end, verse 14, the Lord gave David victory wherever he went. Okay, so David is cruel, merciless, stone cold killer. I mean, David is a complex character. Okay? And now I'm gonna kind of give you a nerdy nugget. Okay? So we'll maybe come back to some context, but I'll give you a nerdy nugget. Chapter eight, verse 17. We're going to get two names for priests. Zadok son of Ahitub, and, ah, Ahimelech son of Abiathar, were priests. Okay, what's going on here? Remember, Eli gets a prophetic word that his family line is no longer going to be able to be priests. Well, Ahimelech is actually from Eli's line. And Eli's line is actually from one of the four sons of Aaron. So Aaron has four sons, okay, remember, two sons, Nadab and Abihu, get off a strange fire before the Lord and get wholly consumed by God. And then you get Eleazar, and then you get Ithamar. Okay? Eli is actually from the house of Ithamar. Eleazar ends up having a son, and that boy's name is Phinehas. And Phinehas being full of zeal for the Lord when the men of Israel were sinning against God. This is back in numbers, okay? Right after Balaam, the whole episode with Balaam and his donkey. And Balaam wants to prophesy, you know, he's paid to prophesy against them, but he's prophesying for them. And then he just goes, ah, let's just get some foreign women. We can't prophesy against them, but we know they'll have sex with these foreign women, okay? As the people of Israel, as the men of Israel are committing acts of, you know, adultery and fornication with these foreign women, Phineas throws a spear and spears men together with the women that they're having sex with and kills both the men and the women. And this is called zeal. Okay? Jesus actually quotes from this exact story when he's in the temple and he drives out the money changers and says, zeal from my Father's house will consume me. Okay? So Eleazar through Phinehas, is going to be the descendant of Zadok. Okay? So from David on, and we're going to really see this when we get to Kings, it's Zadok's line that's going to become the priests. Okay, so what you see here is that two lines of Aaron's sons are kind of priests together, but God is phasing one out and phasing the other end. And I know a lot of times we think to ourselves, well, God said to Eli, your house will no longer be priests. It needs to get put into effect immediately. But an Eastern worldview doesn't always say, whatever God said, you gotta do it right now. Sometimes God plays the long game and he does things over the course of multiple generations. That's a nerdy nugget that you may not have been able to see for yourself. That I definitely wanted to point out. Family, the wait is over. My brand new book, Crushing Chaos is out now and available everywhere. Books are sold. Literally. Today I walked into a Barnes and Noble and I signed a bunch of copies at a physical location. So you can grab this book at a physical Barnes and Noble or you can go to a Books a million or Amazon or anywhere books are sold and grab a copy. If you enjoy reading the Bible from an ancient perspective, if you understand that the beauty of scripture is actually knowing it in context, then you'll love this book. And if there's any chaos in your personal life, I think that reading the Bible from an ancient perspective can actually help to crush the chaos in your life. I think this book is going to be a New York Times bestseller. I really do. I think we wrote a good one. I think you should get a copy today. All right, back to the episode. All right, let's really hunker down into chapter 10. By the way, when David brings Mephibosheth in, Mephibosheth is scared out of his mind. And the reason that Mephibosheth is scared out of his mind is because any descendant of a former king is a political risk. Anytime a new king took over, sometimes they would kill their own siblings. Okay, like, so let's say your dad was the king. People like Herod the Great killed his own brothers, killed his own sons. Okay? Because anyone who has a claim to the throne by birthright, by blood, is someone who you would see as not safe. And so not only does David go out of his way to show hesed loving kindness to a man who can't repay him, who's. Because he's crippled in both feet, he can't necessarily repay him. He also is showing hesed loving kindness to someone who he has every right to kill, eliminate. See as a political rival. Okay, so this is again, you get brutal, barbaric, kind of power hungry David, but then you get this loving, caring, covenant, loyal David. And David's really one of the first truly complex, nuanced, layered characters of the Bible. And I'm glad that we get to, like, see that people aren't just black and white, good or bad, good or evil. That people are complex and they have good and evil within them. That's all of us. We all have good. Great, great, great good and dark, dark, dark evil living on the inside of us. All right, chapter 10, okay? Chapter 10 is gonna be the domino that starts a very, very long saga, okay? The Ammonites again. Instead of completely wiping them out, David creates a political alliance with the Ammonites. And there's a king Nahash. We talked about him probably a couple days ago. And Nahash and David have formed a great alliance. Nahash dies. And so David is going to extend that same loving kindness to his son. People in the Ammonite camp are going, no way. David's not going to be that kind of you. So David sends messengers. The Ammonites believe that these messengers are spies. And so they cut their beards off and they cut the part of their clothing that would conceal their buttocks. They cut it off, okay? So they have to now go back to the land of Israel with no beards, and they got their butt cheeks exposed. Okay? This is very, very humiliating. Why is this so humiliating? This is humiliating because a Jewish man was not able to grow a beard until the age of 30. Why 30? Because only at 30 was a Jewish man able to exercise authority over other people in a leadership role. So a beard is a symbol of authority. So by shaving their beards off, they are removing their right to lead. They're removing their authority. And a lot of scholars actually believed that they didn't just remove the buttocks off of the clothes, they also removed the front part. And this is a culture that is very, very, very sensitive and around nudity. I know that a lot of us are desensitized to nudity. We live in a world where nudity is everywhere. It's in movies, there's pornography that you can access on the Internet at all times. There's nudity everywhere. A person from this culture would look at most of what we see on Instagram and just go, this is nudity. You know, so this is deeply embarrassing. I don't know how they thought David was gonna respond. Obviously, David responds like David, a cold blooded killer, a ruthless, barbaric warrior. Okay? And so we start a war with the Ammonites. They are at war with the Ammonites. They are defeating the Ammonites. The Ammonites are now paying Other nations like the Aramite, the. The Arameans, to come fight with them. The people of Israel are completely victorious. And they have to stop fighting because winter hits. Now here's where you gotta get context. In the ancient world, once winter hits, everyone stops fighting. I know in the modern world, we fight no matter if it's spring, summer, winter or fall. But in the ancient world, you went to war in spring and summer, okay? Once winter hit every, you just kind of, hey, let's pause. We'll pick this back up next spring, okay? And so they have victory over the Ammonites. And David is so confident in the partial victory that they have over the Ammonites that by the time spring comes, he does not go to war. He sends the commander of his army to go to war, a man by the name of Joab. And he stays back in Jerusalem while all the men are gone. And why all the women are left back home. And the enemy has set David up for the biggest mistake of his Life. And chapter 11 rolls around and the first opening words are, in the springtime, when kings go to war, David is in Jerusalem and he lays eyes on a woman by the name of Bathsheba. He ends up raping her and he eventually has to kill her husband. And this is the downfall of David's life. Nothing after this point is really going to be positive from chapter 11 on, it is going to be drama. I mean, it is going to be full on drama. So the context where we're going to go tomorrow was laid in chapter 10. The Bible has chapter 10 here so that we know in the springtime when kings go to war, that's how chapter 11 starts. But why were they at war in springtime? Who were they fighting last spring? What was going on? What got us here? Chapter 10 lays all that groundwork, lays all that context. And so 2 Samuel, chapter 10 is really, really, really important if you're going to understand. Second Samuel, chapter 11. All right. Our timeless truth for the day is that human beings are complicated. That human beings have the ability to be completely gracious and merciful, but completely brutal and barbaric. And that is the reality of dealing with humans. And as we read through two Samuel, you're not supposed to be pointing a finger at David. You're supposed to be holding up a mirror to yourself. That you and I, that we all as people have these incredible abilities to bring hope and healing to the world around us, but we also have the ability to bring a lot of hurt, harm and damage to the world that we live in. And we have to live in that tension and allow God to redeem us, sanctify us, renew us, and we have to continue offer ourselves to the Lord so that we can crucify those parts of us that are going to bring the worst harm to humanity into society. So that's our timeless truth. And we're going to see that all throughout the Bible. All right, I'll meet you right here tomorrow. We're going to finally dive into two Samuel, chapter 11, 12, and 13. I've got. I. I got a lot to say about these chapters, and I think it's gonna be helpful. I think it'll be a value add. If you're on a streak, don't break it. If you're not on a streak, it's not too late to start. You can start a streak at any time. All you gotta do is get two days in a row and then just keep adding and adding and adding and adding. And before you know it, you'll be up to like, 70, 80, 90 days. Okay, I'll see you right here tomorrow. I love you. I'm proud of you. I'm so glad we get to read the Bible together. I'll see you right here tomorrow. Peace. Thanks so much for joining us on the Bible Department podcast. You can find us online and learn more about the show at thebibledepartment.com and on Instagram @thebible department. If you enjoyed this episode and want to dive deeper into the Bible, you can get free access to our library of courses@thebibledepartment.com we'll see you back here tomorrow.