Mephibosheth, Blessed Through His Father’s Faith

1David said, “Is there yet any who is left of Saul’s house, that I may show him kindness for Jonathan’s sake?” 2There was of Saul’s house a servant whose name was Ziba, and they called him to David; and the king said to him, “Are you Ziba?” He said, “I am your servant.” 3The king said, “Is there not yet any of Saul’s house, that I may show the kindness of God to him?” Ziba said to the king, “Jonathan still has a son, who is lame in his feet.” 4The king said to him, “Where is he?” Ziba said to the king, “Behold, he is in the house of Machir the son of Ammiel, in Lo Debar.” 5Then king David sent, and brought him out of the house of Machir the son of Ammiel, from Lo Debar. 6Mephibosheth, the son of Jonathan, the son of Saul, came to David, and fell on his face, and showed respect. David said, “Mephibosheth.” He answered, “Behold, your servant!” 7David said to him, “Don’t be afraid; for I will surely show you kindness for Jonathan your father’s sake, and will restore to you all the land of Saul your father. You will eat bread at my table continually.” 8He bowed down, and said, “What is your servant, that you should look at such a dead dog as I am?” 9Then the king called to Ziba, Saul’s servant, and said to him, “All that belonged to Saul and to all his house I have given to your master’s son. 10Till the land for him, you, your sons, and your servants. Bring in the harvest, that your master’s son may have bread to eat; but Mephibosheth your master’s son will always eat bread at my table.” Now Ziba had fifteen sons and twenty servants. 11Then Ziba said to the king, “According to all that my lord the king commands his servant, so your servant will do.” So Mephibosheth ate at the king’s table, like one of the king’s sons. 12Mephibosheth had a young son, whose name was Mica. All that lived in Ziba’s house were servants to Mephibosheth. 13So Mephibosheth lived in Jerusalem; for he ate continually at the king’s table. He was lame in both his feet.

A promise is something we settle in advance to keep, whatever happens. Do you keep your promises even when it costs you? Or do you break them easily whenever it suits you? Those who keep their word faithfully earn deep trust. But someone who makes a promise out of their own need, and then breaks it lightly once they think they have gotten everything they wanted from the other person, will find trust hard to win back. Trust is never earned without self-sacrifice and effort.

Suppose you made a promise because you had no choice, just to get out of a crisis, and then every problem was solved. Would you keep that promise even if keeping it meant sacrifice? Suppose you had pledged to repay a kindness someday in the distant future, and the one who showed it to you had died. Would you still strive to keep a promise only the two of you knew about? If we think of it as a promise made merely to a person, it is easy to break. But people of faith, knowing that God is there, will keep their word without hesitation. David was just such a man. Jonathan, who had helped him in his darkest days, was gone from this world, yet David labored to the very end, with all he had, to keep the promise he had made to him.

David was a warrior skilled enough to kill Goliath. When he came home from a great victory and the people sang that Saul had slain his thousands and David his ten thousands, Saul burned with jealousy. From that day on, King Saul was bent on killing David. Whenever David was in trouble, Jonathan came to his aid. Though he was the king’s son, he loved and cherished David as his own life. Every time his father attacked David, Jonathan stepped in to stop him, and because of that David came safely through one danger after another.

Jonathan was fond of David as a man, but he protected him because he knew that God is living and that God had a deep purpose for David. David was sincerely grateful to Jonathan and resolved that he would surely repay his kindness.

1 Samuel 20:14-15

14You shall not only while yet I live show me the loving kindness of Yahweh, that I not die; 15but you shall also not cut off your kindness from my house forever; no, not when Yahweh has cut off every one of the enemies of David from the surface of the earth.”

It grieved Jonathan that King Saul was tormenting David, whom God loved, but as Saul’s son he found it anything but easy to help David. Still, he believed that for King Saul to attack David was to betray God, and he knew that once this season of trial was over, David would come to power.

So he asked David to spare his descendants when he took the throne. And David promised that he would surely honor Jonathan’s request.

As Jonathan had feared, he died on the battlefield along with Saul. Now the promise between them became a secret that David alone knew. With Jonathan dead, there was no one to rebuke David if he failed to keep it. Yet now, with Jonathan gone, David stood on the testing ground where his character and worth would be shown before God. Conduct put on display to win the approval of others is not character. The character God blesses is the kind David showed: even when no one will rebuke and no one cares, it believes that God is watching, and it sacrifices and shares of its own accord.

2 Samuel 9:1

1David said, “Is there yet any who is left of Saul’s house, that I may show him kindness for Jonathan’s sake?”

Once the kingdom was secure, David wanted to keep his promise to Jonathan, but with the house of Saul in ruins he had no way to fulfill it. It was not because he had become king that he set his heart on keeping his word. David acted this way because he was a man who always repaid kindness. So he summoned Ziba, Saul’s servant, to the palace and asked whether anyone was left of Saul’s house, and he learned that Jonathan’s son Mephibosheth was alive. When the summons came, Mephibosheth must have been terrified, for he was Saul’s grandson. But David put the frightened man at ease and comforted him: he wanted, he said, to repay to him the kindness he had received from his father Jonathan. In that spirit of repaying Jonathan, David gave him Saul’s land and showed him the favor of eating always at the king’s own table.

Though Jonathan was no longer in the world, David kept his promise faithfully. Because he had sworn an oath with Jonathan in God’s name, he believed he was bound to fulfill it, and he did. Say, for example, that you promise me you will give yourself diligently to the life of faith. That promise is not made to me. You speak it with God in mind, so it is a promise made to God, and we must keep it, never forgetting that God remembers it. Yet in my experience, people betray most often when life grows comfortable. From that it seems to me that, because human nature is evil, the heart is one thing when it receives and quite another when it is time to share.

God the Father and God the Son also made a promise: to give eternal life to all who believe that Jesus became the atoning sacrifice for sinners. To keep that promise to the Father, Jesus gave his own life, and the promise is still being kept, unchanged, to this day.

Because God never alters a promise once he has made it, his promise has held through thousands of years. Mephibosheth had no claim on David’s kindness, yet he was shown favor through his father’s devotion. In the same way, we sinners have no claim on God’s grace, yet we receive his favor through the sacrifice of Jesus.

Just as David sought out Jonathan’s son to keep his promise, God is even now seeking those who believe in Jesus Christ, to save them. Mephibosheth could come before David because he was Jonathan’s son; in the same way, the saints meet God and enjoy eternal life and blessing because they are children bought with the blood of Jesus Christ.

When David asked whether anyone was left of Saul’s house, Ziba said there was a son of Jonathan, but he was lame. If Ziba was Saul’s servant, Mephibosheth was his master too, and yet Ziba volunteered a weakness he had no need to mention. All David wanted was to find Jonathan’s children and help them. But rather than give the glad news that Jonathan’s son was alive, Ziba spoke of his weakness, quietly implying that Mephibosheth was nobody of consequence.

Here is the wicked way Satan works: when God seeks those who will be saved by faith, Satan tries to get in the way by telling tales of nothing but their faults. As Ziba ran down the lame Mephibosheth so that he would miss David’s kindness, so Satan will do anything to put the spotlight on the sins of God’s people. But David was not curious about Mephibosheth’s circumstances or abilities; what mattered was that he was Jonathan’s son. God does not save you by looking at your circumstances or your station in life. He saves you because you believe in Christ.

However hard you work, the world will not value you as it should, because it does not recognize your precious standing as one of God’s people. The world is the very place that throws its own cloak over the saints who shine with holy light and tries to make their lameness show. And if those who shine like this were to act just like the people of the world out of fear of it, how much uglier the sight would be.

Though Ziba said that Mephibosheth was lame, David paid no attention. He wanted to meet Mephibosheth, the son of the Jonathan he had loved so dearly. However much Satan tells tales of where the saints fall short, God does not listen; he wants to meet those who have faith face to face. Faith in Jesus Christ is the channel of blessing. David told Mephibosheth not to be afraid of him: he would never harm him, and he would give him all the land of his grandfather Saul.

Mephibosheth received blessing beyond imagining simply because he was Jonathan’s son, and in the same way believers have received the immense blessing of entering heaven because of Christ. Before he met David, Mephibosheth lived through fearful, gloomy days. While his grandfather Saul was king, he had been treated with honor above anyone, but now that David was in power he was nothing but a fugitive. When his grandfather, his father, and his uncles all fell together on Mount Gilboa, his nurse heard the news and fled with the five-year-old boy in her arms, and she dropped him. So on top of everything he was left lame. A prince who had lived in luxury could no longer walk. That same Mephibosheth was forgiven by David and began a new life.

Before they received Christ, believers lived as slaves in a world ruled by Satan, serving him as their king. But after receiving Christ, they came to know that there is an eternal light, and they became God’s people, who can no longer live in the world of darkness. Like Mephibosheth, blessed to eat and drink with David, they have come to enjoy peace under God’s grace through the precious blood of Jesus. Those who live in the enjoyment of God’s glory are no longer children of Satan. When David gave Mephibosheth all of Saul’s land and told him to eat always at his table, Mephibosheth was overwhelmed: he was as lowly as a dead dog, he said, so why would the king look after someone like him? He said so because he knew better than anyone that he was not worthy of such love.

We too were sinners who made Satan our master and lived for the world, yet in Christ, God tore down the wall of sin with forgiveness and mercy and gave us salvation. If we understand this grace, we must be all the more faithful and never betray it. Seeing Mephibosheth compare himself to a dead dog instead of simply rejoicing, David must have thought of Jonathan and his great love, because next to the love of Jonathan, who had done all he could to save David’s life, what David was giving now was nothing at all.

Could you do what David did: seek out the descendant of an enemy, give him land and wealth in abundance, and show him the kindness of a place at your own table? Even with his promise to Jonathan, it would not have been easy, by any ordinary reckoning, to show kindness without condition to the descendant of Saul, the man who had watched for every chance to strike him and had driven him to live all those years in fields and caves. In the same way, it is no easy thing for God, who had to hang his only Son on the cross, to look only at Christ and share his glory with people who lived as Satan’s slaves and went on sinning. Yet people who were forgiven and saved so easily think it happened because they themselves decided to come to church. Mephibosheth received David’s kindness through his father’s faith, but betraying David could cost him his life; he must not step outside the good law. In the same way, if we betray God’s unconditional love, we could face eternal punishment. It is not enough, then, to attend church; only by knowing the word and living out our faith as we should can we be saved.

Luke 5:8

8But Simon Peter, when he saw it, fell down at Jesus’ knees, saying, “Depart from me, for I am a sinful man, Lord.”

Peter let down his nets in the deep water as Jesus said, and they caught so many fish that the nets began to tear. We cannot know what Peter the fisherman was thinking when he heard Jesus and let down his nets. But after the catch he called Jesus Lord and showed reverent awe, and that makes it clear that something had changed in his heart. He knew that following Jesus would make him an outcast in his own community, yet he was ready to leave everything behind, and he confessed that he was a sinner.

Mephibosheth called himself a dead dog, and Peter confessed that he was a sinner. We too must confess that we are sinners who cannot be saved except by the precious blood, beings who, like a dead dog, can do nothing at all. Only when we truly know this and confess it can we keep from pride even when great blessings come, and serve Christ wholeheartedly to the last day of our lives. David paid no heed to Ziba, who had belittled Mephibosheth, and commanded him that he, his sons, and his servants were to serve Mephibosheth as their master. Once the king had spoken, Ziba had no choice but to wait on Mephibosheth.

A king’s word carries absolute power; no one can defy it. Mephibosheth’s life had been hard before he met King David, but now that a king of absolute power had become his protector, no one looked down on him. Those who believe in Christ now live in a world ruled by Satan. Evil spirits mock the saints who strive to live good lives as though they were lame, but the Holy Spirit is helping them so that they will not be put to shame. And on the day the almighty Christ comes, all the people of the world will look on with envy as the saints are caught up into the air.

David’s blessing came with one unbending condition: one had to be Jonathan’s son. In the same way, only faith in Christ qualifies us for God’s protection. For others, everything they enjoyed comes to an end when the life of the flesh ends, but the saints are blessed to enjoy eternal life, not only in this life but after death as well. We must understand what an astonishing miracle it is that sinners who lived as Satan’s slaves, unforgiven for original sin, can be forgiven through the sacrifice of Jesus. Only when we grasp how great a love God’s grace is can we prevail in a world where Satan reigns as king. We can never repay the grace we have received, and for that very reason we must live with humble hearts to the end.

Mephibosheth ate at the king’s table, yet he remained a lame man. Just so, the saints have been assured of eternal life, yet the world will go on treating them as lame to the very end. Even when someone becomes a child of God, to the world nothing has changed at all; but those filled with the Holy Spirit have nothing to fear, because they themselves have been changed. If they live leaning on the Holy Spirit, evil spirits will not be able to attack them. Had Mephibosheth believed David’s kindness was his own and grown proud, he could have lost it all. In the same way, if anyone makes God’s grace their own strength and lives in pride, God will cast them aside.

Only when you acknowledge that you are different from the world of darkness, and keep laboring to light your soul with the lamp of the Holy Spirit, can you hold on to grace. Mephibosheth lived as humbly as he could so that nothing would come between him and David. In the same way, the moment you step outside Christ’s will, you are bound to enter Satan’s territory. You must, then, always worship God and walk humbly. Even so, there are foolish people who abandon God once life becomes comfortable, because it never occurs to them that they could lose everything they have received. Of course, I do not mean that God takes away all the worldly things he gave and makes them poor or sick.

Think of the prodigal son. When he had taken his father’s property and lost all his wealth to prostitutes, the world sent him off to the lowly work of feeding animals. God did not need to judge him; drifting away from God was itself the judgment. Outside the father’s fence, the world is a place where not a single person will look after you, and for the prodigal to squander what his father had given him was a wicked act of contempt for his father. For you to go outside God’s fence is like blowing out the lamp you carry on a pitch-dark road; there is no knowing what harm may come. In this dark world there is no place safer than God; that is why you must give thanks in all things and live with wisdom and understanding.

Mephibosheth was born a king’s grandson but suffered hardship until he met David, and through the faith and devotion of his father Jonathan he was given a new life. A father’s devotion becomes a blessing to his children in just this way. We too have been blessed because of the sacrifice of Jesus. He left the throne of heaven and came down to a land of death, and by that sacrifice we who have no merit of our own now enjoy blessing. Jonathan died, yet his son was blessed; in the same way, through the death of Jesus we enjoy eternal blessing. So David kept his promise to Jonathan with all his heart. And it was this good character and faith of David’s that brought Solomon great blessing.

What are you doing to keep your promises? Character that keeps its word whether anyone is watching or not, as David did, is like preparing a large vessel that can hold God’s blessing to the full. But there is something here you must distinguish carefully. As I always tell you, you must tell physical matters apart from spiritual ones. My hope is that you will weigh things well by the law of God, who works over the world, and discern which things come first if you would do good. The world is a spiritual battlefield for God’s people; for that reason you must not forget that if you treat as a promise what the world demands of you in order to bring you down, you may lose what is spiritual. When you see that such a demand could shake your spiritual roots, you must also know how to refuse it firmly. What I am saying may be hard to grasp clearly, and it may confuse you. But I have preached many sermons on Jesus Christ and Satan, on the Kingdom of God and the world, and I trust you will discern well.

You must have the understanding to tell matters of the flesh from matters of the spirit; only then can you receive God’s help and live without shame in the world. To understand God’s deep purposes, we must always read Scripture and take it to heart, and we must pray without ceasing. David kept his promise to the end to Jonathan, who had made it with him in God’s name. May you, like David, keep the promises you have made to Christ and to people of faith, and receive eternal blessing.