Hanun, Who Could Not Receive Grace as Grace
1After this, the king of the children of Ammon died, and Hanun his son reigned in his place. 2David said, “I will show kindness to Hanun the son of Nahash, as his father showed kindness to me.” So David sent by his servants to comfort him concerning his father. David’s servants came into the land of the children of Ammon. 3But the princes of the children of Ammon said to Hanun their lord, “Do you think that David honors your father, in that he has sent comforters to you? Hasn’t David sent his servants to you to search the city, to spy it out, and to overthrow it?” 4So Hanun took David’s servants, shaved off one half of their beards, and cut off their garments in the middle, even to their buttocks, and sent them away. 5When they told David this, he sent to meet them, for the men were greatly ashamed. The king said, “Wait at Jericho until your beards have grown, and then return.” 6When the children of Ammon saw that they had become odious to David, the children of Ammon sent and hired the Syrians of Beth Rehob, and the Syrians of Zobah, twenty thousand footmen, and the king of Maacah with one thousand men, and the men of Tob twelve thousand men. 7When David heard of it, he sent Joab, and all the army of the mighty men. 8The children of Ammon came out, and put the battle in array at the entrance of the gate. The Syrians of Zobah and of Rehob, and the men of Tob and Maacah, were by themselves in the field. 9Now when Joab saw that the battle was set against him before and behind, he chose of all the choice men of Israel, and put them in array against the Syrians. 10The rest of the people he committed into the hand of Abishai his brother; and he put them in array against the children of Ammon. 11He said, “If the Syrians are too strong for me, then you shall help me; but if the children of Ammon are too strong for you, then I will come and help you. 12Be courageous, and let us be strong for our people, and for the cities of our God; and may Yahweh do what seems good to him.” 13So Joab and the people who were with him came near to the battle against the Syrians, and they fled before him. 14When the children of Ammon saw that the Syrians had fled, they likewise fled before Abishai, and entered into the city. Then Joab returned from the children of Ammon, and came to Jerusalem.
We need to receive grace well, but it matters just as much to show it. More important still is a good nature that repays the grace it has been given. Those without such a nature can lose even all the labor they have poured into following the Lord diligently. The people God keeps at a distance are the foolish ones who take grace for granted or do not serve God and his people. Since such people sooner or later choose betrayal, they can be used for a time as tools, but never as fellow workers.
We will meet all kinds of people in this life, but we must weigh them well by the word and work to build good relationships. Lacking wisdom, fools cannot receive the help of the Holy Spirit, who gives spiritual knowledge and works in us to see the world clearly. If we keep company with people who lack wisdom, we have nothing to learn from them and no way to grow. If parents lack wisdom, their children cannot learn a standard for judging the world; if a pastor lacks wisdom, the congregation cannot learn spiritual wisdom. Gaining wisdom, then, takes the effort of doing what the word says.
Without the standard of God’s good word, we fall under the influence of foolish people. We must have the wisdom to understand God’s will, for only by growing in maturity can we build relationships with people of insight. If we linger where fools are, we will end up meeting people no different from ourselves, and we will have no part in the work of saving souls. To have the right knowledge to judge well in all things, we must receive God’s wisdom and act on it. Relationships among the wise can last long in God, and because they help one another, they can grow together.
When someone with a humble spirit forms a bond with a wise person, the humble one learns the love of Christ and can therefore live a good life. For the wise, too, self-denial is never easy, yet through that costly effort they receive the grace of tasting Christ’s sacrifice for themselves. The life of one who gives themselves to the Kingdom of God and finds fulfillment in it can never be the same as the life of one who does not know how to share and lives only for self. So while giving love matters, it matters greatly that the one who receives it be grateful, weighing even the sacrifice and effort of the giver.
To take love for granted is to end up with an immature character. We must always, then, express our gratitude with sincerity in word and deed.
[Figure] God = faith = good character [nature] = new birth = change [in words, deeds, and sacrifice]
When we have a nature that knows how to repay God and good people for their grace, God will help make our lives beautiful and glorious. Those who find joy in giving love grow wiser, because they come to grasp the depth of the love with which God sent his only Son into the world. Whoever is shown such love and still cannot give thanks lacks the eyes to see life broadly; always self-centered, such a person cannot form deep relationships.
When someone fails once or twice to show thanks, we wait, finding excuses for them on our own: there must be some reason. But if it happens again and again, the relationship cannot last. God’s heart is the same. To those who thank him each time they receive grace and give themselves to pleasing him, he gives greater love: he watches over their lives and fills what is lacking. Gratitude can be expressed in different ways. Someone who cannot give time may give an offering, and someone without material means may give time. Whatever form that devotion takes, God, who receives the heart, will acknowledge it. What matters is to give thanks with a sincere heart. But if God sees that someone is using him for their own needs, he closes the door of blessing and does not hear their prayers. People wrongly imagine that no one will notice their shallow behavior, but that is not so.
Because the world is tangled like a spider’s web, without our knowing it we win people’s favor or their dislike; things we never worked for get resolved, and things we labor over still fail. So we need to govern our nature with the same heart and conduct at all times. In life, words and deeds from a few days or a few years ago come back like a boomerang, sometimes as a blessing and sometimes as harm. This shows that life does not end in a day; it is connected up to the moment of death, and even beyond death. What you say and do now can shape your future. It matters, then, to live this one day well.
Jesus gave his life for sinners without asking anything in return. The grace of Jesus, who gave his life, came to us free of charge. So if we live with a mature character that receives grace as grace, we will be given the greater blessing of eternal life. But believers today live their faith as if they were paying a price. They go to church, attend worship, and serve as if doing Jesus a favor, as if he had begged them to come to heaven, and there is no joy in it. This is the typical picture of people who do not know true gratitude. They do not know how to take as grace the grace given freely, and they express gratitude as a formality; that is what keeps them from a whole relationship with God. Love freely given belongs to God, and he may give it as he pleases; but we who have received it must give ourselves fully to returning that love. Born-again believers who know this are sacrificing themselves, sharing God’s love with those around them, to repay even a little of the unconditional love Christ has given.
When God’s people live by faith, God protects them from attack by evil people and evil spirits and grants them overflowing blessing. If someone cannot be grateful for grace received freely, without any labor of their own, there is no reason for God to bless them. All it takes is gratitude; all it takes is humble service. If pride and laziness keep someone from doing even that small thing, they do not deserve to be loved.
2 Samuel 9:13
13So Mephibosheth lived in Jerusalem; for he ate continually at the king’s table. He was lame in both his feet.
Mephibosheth had been mocked until now for the lameness in both his feet, but now he had become a man of honor under the king’s protection. He was shown such kindness by David because he was Jonathan’s son. Knowing how thankful he should be for this grace freely given, Mephibosheth respected David and served him with all his heart. Seeing this, David cared for him to the end, for Mephibosheth did not take grace for granted but worked to repay it.
David meant to show the same love to Hanun, king of Ammon. I hope you will see, from the words and deeds of those who know gratitude and those who do not, how different the outcomes of their lives are. Just as David treated Mephibosheth generously to repay the love he had received from Jonathan, he wanted to repay the love he had received from Nahash to his son Hanun. When Nahash king of Ammon died and his son Hanun took the throne, David sent his servants to Ammon to congratulate him sincerely. But Hanun was a hard-hearted, foolish man who did not know how to receive David’s kindness with gratitude. Judging by the way Hanun and his officials did not fully accept David’s goodwill, they were men of a different character from Nahash.
Hanun, the son of Nahash, had grown up watching his father and David help each other and keep a good relationship. Sadly, though, with no wise advisers around him, Hanun could not see clearly and could not accept David’s love. Who, then, is your wise adviser today? Is it the person you run to every time something happens? Or is it God, at your service, answering whenever you call his name in need? Your wise adviser is your faith, armed with the word. If you have that faith, you will have the wisdom to be grateful for the grace you have received, and you will make sacrifices to repay it. Then you will not repeat your sins. It is for lack of shining wisdom and self-sacrifice that blessing does not continue.
Hanun’s scheming princes told him that David was a man who had brutally slaughtered the Philistines and the Moabites, and that if he had sent envoys, they had come to spy out Ammon and attack it. It was a false reading of the matter. Had Hanun thought about the bond between his father and David, and the good character he had seen in David all along, he would have made the right call. A king in fact has access to more information than his officials; with even a little wisdom he could easily have seen that their counsel was wrong. That is why a king must have the wisdom to see more broadly than his officials if he is to save his nation and his people. But Hanun did not have a good nature, and he insulted the envoys without even hearing what they had come to say on David’s behalf.
Had he been open-minded enough to hear the envoys out, he would not have humiliated them and would not have had to suffer the terrible consequences. Hanun seized David’s servants, shaved off half of each man’s beard, and cut their ankle-length garments off at the buttocks, putting them to shame. Shaving the beard was meant to disgrace the envoys by treating them like slaves, and cutting their garments showed contempt for Israel and for King David. When David heard that his envoys had been gravely insulted, he was furious. Yet he was considerate of them, so that they would not be put to shame: they were to stay at Jericho and come back to Jerusalem when their beards had grown.
To shave the beards of envoys sent to maintain good relations, as though they were slaves, and to cut their garments to disgrace them, was as good as declaring war. People who do not receive grace as grace always make needless trouble like this. A relationship that could go on with just a little regard for the other person’s heart, they throw away. God and good people do not think of getting back the love they give. David showed kindness without condition, but Hanun repaid that kindness with betrayal, and for that he incurred David’s wrath.
David shows grace from where he stands; but for this relationship to continue, Hanun, from where he stands, must recognize grace as grace. God, from where he stands, bore the cross and gives eternal life; but only if we recognize that sacrifice as grace and give thanks are we counted worthy of salvation. David knew how great and how secure God’s love had been to him all along, which is why he had offered even his life in loyalty to God. But Hanun feared neither David nor God, and he did not realize how precious this relationship was, so he trampled on that grace.
Nothing could be better than for children to carry on well the relationships their parents spent a lifetime building, but not every child takes after their parents’ character and faith. A grateful child like Mephibosheth receives as a reward what the father built up, but a foolish, proud one like Hanun cuts off even a good relationship. If you want your children to be blessed, you must first live as a person of true faith and good character yourself. Then teach them always by the word, and teach them the wisdom of relying on the Holy Spirit, so that they can work out every problem in life according to God’s will.
Through the cross Jesus accomplished God’s plan, and by his own life he overcame death and rose again. Now those who believe this will receive eternal life as a free gift. Yet sadly, people take the love of Christ, freely given, for granted, live in pride, and fall under the judgment of hell. Scripture bears witness to this. And because Scripture is not the story of worldly people but of people who met God, we must not forget its lessons or live empty lives.
In every age the Holy Spirit has made God’s will known through people of faith, and through Scripture he has shown plainly that God’s word is truly made manifest in human history. If people still fail to walk the way of truth, that shows how strong Satan’s work is, and that people have thrown grace away to live for themselves. Indeed, we see foolish people who cannot let go of their own righteousness wander outside the truth and fail to be saved.
David, king of Israel, was far stronger than Hanun, king of Ammon. Yet even when such a king showed him grace, Hanun was not grateful, and because of that his relationship with David was now broken. After insulting the envoys David had sent, Hanun thought it over and realized what a grave thing he had done. With wisdom he would never have treated David that way to begin with, but worse still was what Hanun did once he saw his mistake. To prepare for war with David, he paid money to hire nations and men to help him. The way a person solves a problem tells you a great deal about them. The wise set priorities and act before things go wrong; but if they do go wrong, the first thing to do is humble yourself and think it through from the beginning. Had Hanun done that, he would have begged David’s pardon until David forgave him.
But excuses made after a relationship is damaged rarely restore trust completely, even if things improve, because the evil words and deeds remain with the other person just as they were. Having lived wholly centered on himself, Hanun had never once sacrificed himself to serve anyone or shown anyone generosity. He was a man who lived as he pleased, with the proud notion that money could solve any problem and the foolish idea that power is all that counts. David, though, was a humble man who prayed to God even when blessings overflowed, who did not take revenge even on his enemies, and who knew how to set aside his own plans boldly, however much he longed for them, if they were not God’s will. He always repaid the grace he received and never forgot it.
David was a man of a character entirely different from Hanun. If these two went to war, whom do you think God would help? Even if God were to forgive Hanun, he was a man of small capacity, unable to hold God’s great plans and answers, and he would bring about his own ruin. A man like Hanun cannot fully understand a mature man like David, so he twists even the grace he is shown into his own terms, and the relationship is hard to keep. Lacking the good wisdom God gives, Hanun thought that he, too, was a king like David and lacked nothing. He lacked the eyes David had for seeing the whole situation. He had no idea how serious a thing he had just done.
It is the same with us when we fail to understand God’s will. So we must gain wisdom through Scripture and prayer and be led by the Holy Spirit through our lives. Fools forget the love they have received and remember only what they have given; the result is pride and complaint rather than contentment. Such people cannot help drifting away from God, as Hanun did.
With the word at the center of his life, David acted wisely. He brought judgment on Hanun at once, yet with Joab, though he knew Joab was wicked, he waited patiently until God would judge him. Joab was family, and in the eyes of the people he was, at least in name, David’s servant; for that reason David waited for the time when God would act. That is how differently David and Hanun looked at life. Because the war between them was a war between a man with his eyes shut and a man with his eyes open, Hanun could never defeat David.
2 Samuel 10:6
6When the children of Ammon saw that they had become odious to David, the children of Ammon sent and hired the Syrians of Beth Rehob, and the Syrians of Zobah, twenty thousand footmen, and the king of Maacah with one thousand men, and the men of Tob twelve thousand men.
Syria at that time was not a single unified nation, but its people were so formidable that Hanun paid to hire Syrians from several cities. He thought that if he gathered enough soldiers he could defeat David. But because he faced David on worldly terms, he was defeated. Joab chose once more from among the choice men of Israel and set them in array against the Syrian army, and he put the rest under his brother Abishai. The Syrians were strong enough to make Joab and Abishai tense, but the two believed that God would lead them to victory.
From the start, there was no contest between David’s army, which relied on God, and the Syrians, who had come to the battlefield for pay. When the Syrians were badly beaten, the Ammonites all ran and hid. After the allied forces had been routed, Shobach, the commander of Hadadezer’s army, gathered Syrian troops and attacked Israel again. When David heard that Shobach was regrouping the allies to attack, this time he went out to battle himself. David killed the men of seven hundred chariots and forty thousand horsemen, and he won a great victory, striking down even Shobach the commander. The army Joab had driven off, David went out and defeated completely. It was proven that the wars of this world are not won by numbers.
The Syrians came back in force because Joab had not defeated them completely. In the same way, if we do not drive off Satan’s temptations, deceptions, and greed completely, we will be attacked again. We must rely on the Holy Spirit to drive them off to the very end. It is foolish to attack a man of God trusting only in worldly strength. Since God was helping David in all his battles, to attack a person of faith is to invite defeat. The grace of God, who made David win wherever and whatever battle he fought, is the same grace those who trust God receive today. Do not fear the world, then, or those who would draw you away from God; like David, you must lean all the more on the Holy Spirit and fight the spiritual battle.
When Shobach the commander fell to David, all the kings subject to Hadadezer sued David for peace. Once they realized how foolish it had been to side with Ammon against David, they submitted to him. However strong the world’s power may be, when God lifts his hand and scatters it, it is like a sandcastle swept away by the waves. Hanun, sure that he had far more soldiers than David, never once imagined that the Syrian army might lose. But Almighty God was Israel’s King and protector, and for that reason Hanun could not defeat David.
If Hanun had received David’s kindness with gratitude from the start, so many people would not have died and so much time would not have been wasted. One man’s bad decision cost a great many lives. When a small-minded person becomes king, the people suffer; when someone who cannot see the whole becomes a leader, people know no peace. Only when those who act prudently with God’s wisdom are set up as kings, leaders, and parents can people become God’s people.
Do you have the wisdom to know grace as grace and give thanks for it? And do you have the good sense to share the grace you have received? If you have a character that knows how to repay grace sincerely, with sound wisdom, God will use you as a good instrument. God saw David’s humble faith and kind nature and gave him greater power and authority. In the same way, if you take on a good character in order to live by the word, you will be blessed to a thousand generations.
May you be wise like David, repaying God’s grace with gratitude, and may you be cherished by God.