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. Let me just point out something that I taught several weeks ago and that is the fact that in this point in the Book of Second Samuel we have stopped going in order of events. I liken this unto the bonus material at the end of Second Samuel because a lot of the books in the Old Testament will do this where they'll tell a story and they'll be in a perfect chronological order, then at the end they'll just add a bunch of other information and stories. That's how the Book of Second Samuel is. If you study Second Samuel you'll realize that the events with Absalom and his rebellion and the aftermath, those took place in the final year of David's reign. 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 other information about David's reign. It says in verse 23 of chapter 20, Now Joab was over all the host of Israel: and Benaiah the son of Jehoiada was over the Cherethites and over the Pelethites: And Adoram was over the tribute: and Jehoshaphat the son of Ahilud was recorder: And Sheva was scribe: and Zadok and Abiathar were the priests: And Ira also the Jairite 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. Basically he's just telling another story of things that happened in the days of David, meaning while David was reigning. 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. We know that that take place decades earlier when he was delivered out of the hand of Saul.
If you look at chapter 23 verse one 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. What I'm trying to show you is that the last 4 chapters in Second Samuel are not in order. There's no chronology. Chapters 1 through 20 tell the story and then 1, 2, 3, and 4, are extra stories. You say, "Why would God put these things at the end of the book like that?" Simply because he didn't want to interrupt the narrative. He's telling a certain story in Second Samuel, he doesn't want to interrupt it and tell an unrelated story. He puts these unrelated stories at the end of the book. Judges is the same way. You go through all the judges, then you have some extra stories tagged on the end of the book of judges where it says, also in the days of the judges here's some other stuff that happened.
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. In chapter 21 it talks about how, during the days of David there was a time where there was a famine for 3 years, meaning that it was not raining and therefore the food was very scarce. People are hungry, and people are starving and doing very bad. David's praying and asking the LORD why is this happening? Why is there this curse on our nation? Why are we not being blessed? The lord answers him, probably through a prophet because usually the lord would speak to David through one of the prophets, Nathan or one of the others. It says here that the lord answered it is for Saul and for his bloody house because he slew the Gibeonites.
Maybe God told this to him directly or through one of the prophets. He tells him it's because of Saul and for his bloody house because he slew the Gibeonits. 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 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. Saul's dead and gone and yet people are starving, people don't have food because of Saul and his bloody house. 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. 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.)
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. 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. 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. Once they had sworn not to destroy them they could never break that oath. Go back to Joshua 9, I'm going to show you that story. Joshua chapter 9 is where we learn about the Gibeonites and why Saul was in sin for killing the Gibeonites. See, Saul 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.
Instead he got carried away and decides to get real militaristic and start attacking enemies that weren't even supposed to be attacked. He just goes in and starts wiping out the Gibeonites because we're Israel, we need all this land for us. It all belongs to us. God gave it to us. No, they weren't supposed to wipe out the Gibeonites because they had made an oath unto them. There's 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, and 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.
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 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. The Gibeonites, they decide we can't win. These people have God on their side, they've already defeated these 2 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. It says in verse number 3, when the inhabitants of Gibeon heard what Joshua had done unto Jericho and to Ai, They did work wilily, 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 clouted upon their feet, and old garments upon them; and all the bread of their provision was dry and mouldy. And they went to Joshua unto the camp at Gilgal, and said unto him, and to the men of Israel, We be come from a far country: now therefore make ye a league with us.
The children of Israel were told to wipe out the Canaanites, but they're not told go on a conquest of the entire world, wipe everybody out. They're just supposed to take control of the promised land and only defeat this one enemy that the lord had laid our for them of people that were so wicked and so filthy and so perverted that God just says completely wipe them out. He lists off their sins, unspeakable, horrific ... Oh wait a minute, they're happening in the United States right now. All these horrible, perverted, sick things that they were doing. God said, man just wipe them out. 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. They want to have peace with people across the world, just not with 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.
These ambassadors that are fake they wanted to look convincing. 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 right there. They put dirt on themselves, they make themselves look like they've traveled a really long way. They say, 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. That's what they do. It says in verse 9, And 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.
our elders and all the inhabitants of our country spake to us, saying, Take victuals with you for the journey, and go to meet them, and say unto them, We are your servants: therefore now make ye a league with us. This our bread we took hot for our provision out of our houses on the day we came forth to go unto you; but now, behold, it is dry, and it is mouldy: And these bottles of wine, which we filled, were new; and, behold, they be rent: and these our garments and our shoes are become old by reason of the very long journey. And the men took of their victuals, and asked not counsel at 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.
They believe them. They don't ask God, they 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. Then a few days later they figure out these people dwell among us. What have we done? The people are mad at the leaders, like what have you done? Why did you swear to these people? What do we learn from this? 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 fro a far country just to be your servants and just because we love God so much. 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.
We need to be careful not to just blindly trust anyone who talks a good talk, as it were. That's the mistake that they made. They trusted these people. I can see why they made this mistake because what these people are saying sound great. They swear unto these people, now they're in a position where it's really impossible for them to do what is right here. People often get themselves into situations where no matter where they turn, it's wrong. Then people come to you like, what do I do now? It's like, you messed up. You put yourself in a position where no matter what you do you're doing wrong. Then they expect you to tell them what the right thing to do is. There's always a right thing to do until you put yourself in a position 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 2 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. Do not dwell among them. They're going to be a snare on you, they're going to teach to worship false gods and your kids are going to marry their kids. It's going to be bad. On one hand they have that command, but then on the other hand God makes it real clear that if you make an oath you must keep that oath. 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 that's going to cause them problems and so forth. They end up choosing to not break their oath. 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. Breaking an oath that you swear before the lord is a major sin.
By the way, think about that when it comes to your marriage. 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. He doesn't break his oath to God, he fears to break his oath. All throughout the bible there's an emphasis made on if you swear unto the lord you must perform that which you've sworn. In the New Testament he tells us just swear not at all. Even in the Old Testament he says it. 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. You'll hear people sometimes very flippantly and casually make oaths and make vows and you should not do that. Just say yay or nay and whatsoever is more than these cometh of evil.
One oath that we do take, one vow that we do take and one oath that is biblical is when we get married that is supposed to be til death do us part. That is supposed to be a lifelong do or die commitment. We need to take that very seriously. People will have all the what ifs about what if this happens? Then can you get divorced? What if this? Can I leave my husband then? Can I leave my wife then? What about this? What about this? The bible's real clear, you just don't break your vow. God hates putting away. That is the end of the story. What God has joined together let not man put asunder. People are looking for an excuse all the time to break their marriage vows and to get divorced 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. The third marriage is even more likely to end up in divorce than the second marriage.
You say, "Pastor Anderson what do I do? I've already made that mistake. I've already committed that sin." You obviously can't go back in time and change it. If you're on your second, third, fourth marriage that's wrong that you got there, but now that you're there the bible's clear, you're supposed to be faithful to the person you're with now. You already broke vow number 1 or vow number 2, don't break vow number 3. That's compounding the sin. 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. They say, 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. If people are divorced and their ex is still living and their ex has not gotten remarried ... 2 people are divorced and neither one of them has gotten remarried then God's will would be that they would be reconciled. The options ... The bible says, Let not the wife depart from her husband, but in if she depart let her remain unmarried or let her be reconciled under her husband. The ideal situation would be reconciliation, I've seen that happen many times. Once one of those people gets remarried, according to the bible reconciliation is impossible at that point. God said it would be an abomination to go back to the first spouse after you've been remarried. Very clear in Deuteronomy.
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. I think the reason it's so popular is because a lot of people they get in the second marriage and it's even worse. Then they're like that first guy wasn't that bad or that first woman wasn't so bad after all and they want to go back to that. Obviously some people are like no I would never go back first. 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, they realize that they were part of the problem. It's not, I married the wrong person. Maybe you were the wrong person, or maybe you did it wrong. It's easy for us to always blame other people and not take responsibility for ourselves. In America today people break their vows at the top of a hat. People get divorced all the time for stupid reasons, or even for what they think is a good reason.
The bible says what God has joined together let not man put asunder. 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. Read the story of Jephthah in 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. Swore unto the lord. 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 and never ... That sounds great, huh? You're supposed to stick with it. Weeping may endure for the night, but joy cometh in the morning.
Speaker 2: Amen.
Speaker 3: Amen.
Pastor Anderson: There are going to be low points and then it gets better and then it gets bad again, but then it gets better again. It's like this. You've got to ride that wave, ride the wild surf. 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. Getting married is one vow that you want to make that vow. You don't want to just all the time, I swear I'm going to do this, or I promise I'm going to do this. Just let your yay be yay and your nay be nay is what the bible says here.
Let's go back to Second Samuel now that we understand the background a little bit of who these people, the Gibeonites, are. They were people that should've been wiped out by the Israelites, they should've 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. They said, what are we going to do with these people? They decided to make them hewers of wood and drawers of water. The people said, we want to be your servants so that's the oath that they made under them. They said, okay I guess you guys are going to be our servants then. They kept them around as the hewers of wood and the drawers of water. They used them as a cheap labor force to do all the back breaking work of chopping down trees and hauling water. That's who these people are, they dwell amongst the children of Israel.
Saul, in his zeal, not zeal for the lord ... In the beginning he was zealous for the lord but honestly through his reign he had a lot of zeal for himself. In his zeal for Israel he starts wiping out the Gibeonites and now God's curse is on the nation. Here we see first of all, a person breaking a vow and then the curse coming as a result. By the way, whenever you break vows there's a curse associated with that. The path to God's blessing is through the door to obedience and the path to cursing is through disobedience. You want God's blessing on your life? You must do right. If you want to be punished then do evil. That's what the bible teaches. Whatsoever a man soweth that shall he also reap. Here we see that this curse is coming upon the nation as a result.
Look at chapter 21 verse number 3, 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? What can I do to make this up to you guys? What can I do to make this right? 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. He's saying don't kill anybody in Israel and don't give us any money.
He says unto them at the end of verse 4, What ye shall say, that will I do for you. 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 in Gibeah of Saul, whom the LORD did choose. And the king said, I will give them. Wait a minute, didn't they just say don't kill any of the men of Israel for us? Now they're saying, kill 7 of Saul's sons. The question is does this make any sense to kill Saul's sons? Obviously we know the bible teaches that when a person commits a crime that their children should not be put to death. 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 dies in his own sin.
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. For them to say, we don't anyone slain of the children of Israel they might have meant by that don't just kill random Israelites, like well you killed Gibeonites, let's just kill some Israelites. Two wrongs don't make a right. If innocent people of the Gibeonites died, killing innocent people of the Israelites would not be right. There's 2 different ways to look at this. You could say these are just 7 innocent people who happen to be Saul's sons and they're being killed as innocent people for the sins of their father. That wouldn't really be just according to God's law, but that's what happened.
Or you could look at it and say when they did this God did turn away his wrath, it seems like God accepted this of these 7 sons being killed because then the famine goes away and God restores blessing to the nation. It seems that these sons could've been guilty. If you think about it it's not like Saul went single handedly in there and just started wiping out the Gibeonites. His sons are probably reigning with that, and not only that, his sons are assuredly going to battle with him. We know some of his other sons went to battle. 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've been involved. 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.
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. 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, what's going on with that? Because a court system, or a justice system has no right to punish a child for what the parent did. 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 drinking up all the money and thrashing you and thrashing your mother, coming home 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. Anytime 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 their kids up. Parents get divorced, that's going to impact the children. Anytime we sin we're affecting the people around us. Here we see one of the many examples in the bible where we see children being punished for what their dad did. 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 that wanted to have Daniel thrown into the lion's den. Not only were those men thrown in the lion's den but all their families were thrown in the lions den also. Not right, 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. 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 this, it's my life I'm going to do what I want, but you're affecting other people. You're affecting the people around you, especially your children, especially your relatives. That's what we see here.
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. 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 Jew, that's their land, God promised them that land in the bible. 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. The first generation that came out of Egypt all had to wander and die in the wilderness because they didn't believe the lord. The generation that believed God was allowed to enter the promise land. They served other gods, he took them out of the promise land. They turn back to the lord, he brings them back in.
If you think about it even while they were in the promise land they never finished the job of wiping out the Amarites as they were told, they didn't defeat all the Philistines 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. He said, I am not going to drive out the Amarites before you. He said you're going to have to live with these people now because they'd sinned, 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. Then when they got too bad he took them out of the land altogether. 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 ...
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, if you obey my voice, if you keep my commandments, if you don't follow after other gods ... He said, if you follow other gods I'm going to take you out of this land. How can you sit there and say 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 lord of the vineyard 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. 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. The bible said it was a result of killing the son of God, 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. That's what happened. They got scattered into all nations. Then this thing of, God brought them back in 1948 it's a miracle. No it's not, it's a fraud because they never believed in Jesus.
People will say, oh no because back in the book of Jeremiah and back in the book of Ezekiel, they'll take you back to Old Testament passages and tell you, God said he'd bring them back in unbelief. Every time I confront these people, show me the word unbelief in that chapter. Right at Jeremiah 31, show me unbelief, but there's no mention. He brings them back in unbelief. 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. Why? Part of the reason why they went into Babylonian captivity is because they worship graven images, molten images, literal idolatry. 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 nations as well.
Jeremiah and Ezekiel were written before they came back, people. Before they came back from Babylon. Hello. Jeremiah is written leading up to the captivity and Ezekiel is written during the captivity. Of course these prophets are like 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 in unbelief, where is it in the New Testament? They take you to the Old Testament and the reason that they can trick you, they show you verses about things 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. 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. They didn't do that anymore. That doesn't mean that they're worshiping true god, doesn't mean that they love Jesus Christ, let them be anathema for not loving the lord Jesus Christ.
Speaker 2: Amen.
Pastor Anderson: They don't worship graven images folks, face it. The Muslims don't worship graven images either, doesn't mean it's a right religion. The Buddhists and the Hindus have all the idols, and the Catholics. That's another story. The bottom line is that the children of Israel did not just have this Carte Blanche to 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 ... Oh, this land was made for you and me. No, you're going to Hell.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Pastor Anderson: You don't believe in Jesus.
Speaker 2: That's right.
Pastor Anderson: God's wrath is is abiding on you, it abides on those who deny the son of God.
Speaker 2: Right.
Pastor Anderson: If any man love not the lord Jesus Christ let him be anathema, bare anatha, that's what the bible says. It's false. This is a great example where you just can't start wiping 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 in another time but now you have to live with these people. That's what the bible says. That's what this story is about here. They're going to kill these 7 sons of Saul, and again it's questionable what involvement these sons had or did not have in the son, but either way they suffer, they die, they're killed, and they're hanged as a result. Of course David honors his vow unto Jonathan by sparing [inaudible 00:34:14]. He finds the 7 elsewhere and spares [inaudible 00:34:18] 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 Second 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 him, and fought against the Philistines: and David waxed faint. And Ishbibenob, 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 succoured him, and smote the Philistine, and killed him. Then the men of David sware 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 Absolom and so forth and he ends up not going.
They said 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 Sibbechai the Hushathite slew Saph, which was of the sons of the giant. And there was again a battle in Gob with the Philistines, where Elhanan the son of Jaareoregim, a Bethlehemite, slew the brother of Goliath the Gittite, the staff of whose spear was like a weaver's beam. 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 Shimea 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.
Again, we're out of chronological order at the end of Second Samuel because he's just listing a bunch of different battles that took place with the Philistines over time and he documents the deaths of the 4 brothers of Goliath. This is why it makes sense that when David went out to face Goliath he took 5 smooth stones. People have theorized, why did he take 5 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. Why did he take 5 stones? Presumably it could be because he had 4 brothers, it makes perfect sense he takes 5 stones, or 5 giants of the Philistines. They're all borne unto a certain main because it calls then the sons of the giant, the brother Goliath, they're related. It's these 5 brothers that it runs in the family to be huge.
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. They're thinking huge, gigantic ... There are people who are so dumb and gullible they believe all sorts of stupid stuff on the internet. They believe that they found bones of a 30 foot tall man and I know it's true because I saw it on YouTube, I saw the very image. Those images of the giant skulls and giant femurs, you can go and find where they've all been photo shopped. They show you, here's the original photo, here's where it's been photo shopped to look like the guy is 30 foot tall. Let me tell you something, no one has ever been 30 feet tall.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Pastor Anderson: The bible has all the answers friend. The bible gives us measurements of some of these giants. You can't just sit there and say, the bible says giants, that's got to be a 30 footer and that's got to be a ... Even those who believe in the Book of Enoch 450 feet tall ...
Speaker 2: Whoa, yeah.
Pastor Anderson: That right there should show you that the Book of Enoch's a fraud. Here are a lot of reasons why the Book of Enoch's a fraud. 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. Any way you slice it, this book was gone for almost a couple thousand years. 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. Said, Heaven and Earth shall pass away but my word shall pass away. It's easier for Heaven and Earth to pass than for one jot or one tittle to pass from the law to all be fulfilled.
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.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Pastor Anderson: He says, Enoch also the seventh from Adam prophecited these saying. How did Jude know that? Because he was inspired by the Holy Ghost to write that.
Speaker 2: Right.
Pastor Anderson: Jude was inspired of the Holy Ghost to know what Enoch had preached before the flood, he's writing it by divine inspiration. People who don't believe in the divine inspiration of the bible say, he must've got that from the book of Enoch. Here's the thing. Think for a second about how the devil would work. If you have all these place in the bible where you'll mention things like the Book of Jasher, or the Book of the Saying of Iddo the Prophet, or here's what Enoch Prophecized. Don't you think somebody going to go out there and create that counterfeit? Anything that's mentioned in the bible, the Book of Jasher, somebody's going to go out and write a book, call it the Book of Jasher and say, I've got missing books of the bible. That doesn't mean that it's legitimate.
These books, the Book of Jasher for example, just because God says this event that took place is written in the Book of Jasher, does that make the Book of Jasher the word of God? What if I say I read a book about the history of Phoenix, Arizona. 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 the rest of the act 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.
Some books, people will say what about Nathan the Prophet, or the book of Iddo the Seer? These guys are clearly men of God or divinely inspired, where is that book? That book is the word of God. Hold on a second, how do we know what was in that book? We don't know. What I believe, if what was in that book was the word of God then we have it somewhere else in the bible.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Pastor Anderson: We have it somewhere else in the bible. Why? A lot of the prophets obviously preach the same things. Look, I'm preaching the same words of the bible that people have preached for 200, 300, 400, 500, 600, 700 years. Every generation needs to hear the word of God. A lot of these prophets are overlapping and preaching the same stuff. If we kept every book that these prophets had written there would be a huge amount of redundancy. Think about that. If we had Iddo 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. 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.
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. Where's it written in scripture? In Matthew. They're preaching it in advance, like when the bible talks about something being prophecized 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. What you have is a lot of verbal preachings of the prophets. Some of it's written down at times. It's always preserved in one form or another. The preaching that Iddo and Nathan preach, we have it somewhere else in the bible the parts of it that were divinely inspired God's word.
The book of Enoch is a complete fraud and it teaches this thing of giants 300 cubits tall, 450 feet tall. That's just ridiculous. 450 feet, are you serious. Then people will even get sucked into this thing of giants that are 30 something feet tall and try to act like they were nonhuman hybrids of space aliens, angels, demons, humans, all this junk that I touch upon in my sermon on vain jangling. 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.
They say, the product of this union between the sons of God and the daughters of man produce 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 renowned and so forth. 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. It says that his bed, they found its bed and it was something that they put on display like look at this guy's bed. It was about 13 and a half feet long. Here you have a bed that's about 13 and a half feet long. Listen folks, that means that he was less than 13 and a half feet tall.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Pastor Anderson: It's not like you get in bed at night and your head's touching the headboard and your foot is touching the foot, especially when you're the king. You're going to have a spacious bed. They call these bed king size for a reason.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Pastor Anderson: California King. That's why, because kings like to have a little space. You have to think he at least must had enough room in bed to go like this. Do you really think he couldn't even stretch like this in a king's bed? He was much less than 13 and a half feet tall. Realistically, he was probably 10 feet tall, 10 and a half feet tall, 11 feet tall. How tall could he really be even to just be able to just reach his arms up. Not only that, he gives us the height of Goliath the Gittite, under 10 feet. 9 foot, the numbers fail me I want to say around 9 foot 9 inches, it's somewhere around that ballpark. Here we're looking at guys that are 9 or 10 feet tall, that's what the bible's calling giants. Not 30 feet, hundreds of feet, that's ridiculous. If a guy walked in here right now that was 10 feet tall, he would be a giant unto you. Those guys that visited from Oregon, how tall are those guys?
Speaker 2: 6'3" or 6'6".
Pastor Anderson: 6'6", 6'7" or whatever, didn't you feel like a grasshopper in their sight? I know that I did. 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. Corbin looked small next to them and he's tall. I looked like a baby. These guys are huge and they weren't even close to 10 feet tall. 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-
Speaker 2: Giant.
Pastor Anderson: How tall is he? Does anybody know the stat? Everybody wears shirts with his stats, you'd think somebody would've memorized it. You know these shgirts? What is it?
Speaker 2: I think he was 7 foot 10.
Pastor Anderson: 7 foot 10 inches. Yeah. That's huge. You think of Kareem Abdul-Jabar, Shaquille O'Neal, these guys are huge, really tall. They're ducking under doorways and everything, and what are they? 7 foot 10 inches. When you jump into the 9, 10 foot range that's a really big boy. That's somebody that you'd definitely call giant. 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 Photo Shop.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Pastor Anderson: You can make anything you want in there and you can produce all the evidence you want in Photo Shop and in all kinds of other software and so forth. These giants are just 9 or 10 feet tall, which is still a big formidable opponent in battle. Here's another one that people get freaked out on. Verse 20, 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 ... He's a hybrid mutant space alien/demon/human hybrid. No. This is a defomity.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Pastor Anderson: That even exists today. I have known people who were born with extra fingers or extra toes. Nowadays when this happens, it's just a genetic abnormality, malfunction, it's a deformity and nowadays when people are born with extra digits on their hand or their foot they're just surgically removed at birth. They look at it, take one off, and good as day. There you go, it was like it was never even there. People just don't want to walk around with 6 fingers on each hand. This isn't an aberration. This is not ... Notice, what does the verse say? 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 6 fingers on each hand and the 6 toes on each foot. It's an aberration, it's an abnormality, it's one guy.
People will teach all these giants 30 feet tall and they all had 24 digits, but that's not taught in the bible. You can look it up. Look up the fact that there are, even today, abnormalities like that. It does happen. It's out there. One thing I want to point out quickly before we're done is that in verse 19 it says, there was again a battle in Gob with the Philistines, where Elhanan the son of Jaareoregim, a Bethlehemite, slew the brother of Goliath the Gittite, the staff of whose spear was like a weaver's beam. The modern bible versions in this verse will say that Elhanan the son of Jaareoregim, a Bethlehemite, slew Goliath the Gittite. In the modern versions it says he slew Goliath. In the King James it says he slew the brother of Goliath.
That right there would be a contradiction in these new versions that would make it to where he only had 3 brothers and it would make it to where he's dying twice. Of course he was slain by David so how can he die again? That's just something I want to point out, but here in verse 19 we see that it was Elhanan the son of Jaareoregim, a Bethlehemite, who slew the brother of Goliath. It just doesn't give us the name. Because the name is not known it's just referred to as the brother of Goliath, name's not important.
Some of the key things that we learn from this chapter is 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. The second big thing that we learned is that when we commit sin, break vows, do other wrong things, other people are going to suffer, especially our children. We always harm the people around us, even though God says the criminal justice system should not punish them, they're still going to be punished by being related to you when you're living a sinful life. 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 in Christ Jesus. There are advantages, obviously, to having godly parents. I thank God that I grew up in a Christian home and was raised in church. Other people didn't have that advantage.
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. 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 these stories in Second Samuel lord that we can learn from and we can study and interpret them in light of other scripture. Lord we just pray that you give us understanding as we read you word and that you would open our eyes so that we would behold wonderful 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.
