The welcoming party grows as David comes back into the
land. The first we meet is Jonathan’s
son, Mephibosheth, whose servant, Ziba had gone to David and held himself out
as loyal while his master was hoping to be raised up as the king in David’s
place. Mephibosheth’s neglect of his
person would seem to indicate that indeed he was hoping for David’s return and we
don’t know of anything that would argue in the other direction. David determines to split the baby in half as
it were, giving both men equal shares in the inherited land of Mephibosheth,
whose response is the same as the mother of the child in the Solomon story who
was the true mother. Barzillai is
offered the same arrangement Mephibosheth had enjoyed but he, like his forebears,
chooses to remain on the other side of the Jordan and offered his son as
proxy. Ultimately, all Israel wants to
greet the king and rejoice in him, but his own kinsmen, the men of Judah,
prevail in their acclamation. No one, at
this juncture, wants to offend.
When Jesus teaches the scribes are wrong for teaching that the
Christ is the Son of David he points to David referring to this one as
lord. The rules of succession were that
the sire was lord and the offspring, in the presence of the predecessor or in
reference to a predecessor, would use that term. For David to refer to someone as lord, then,
would require David to recognize that one as coming before. Jesus is pointing to his own pre-dating of David,
but at the same time, pointing to David’s acknowledgement that the Christ was
his predecessor. The scribes, here, come
in for condemnation in that they want the honor of the office but do so at the
expense of the poor, certainly something some preachers in our day have done,
preying on their hopes and dreams. Ultimately,
Jesus says, those who are truly righteous are those who are “all in” in faith
like the widow who put in her last penny in faith.
Did you see what Paul reasoned with Felix and Drusilla
about? They spoke of righteousness,
self-control and the coming judgment. Certainly
a strange set of topics, right? It is
really interesting when you know the history of the royal couple. Felix had fallen in love with Drusilla
because of her great beauty and convinced her to be his wife. What a great love story. The problem was that she was already married
and she was Jewish. She, therefore, had
no right to leave her husband to marry Felix but that is exactly what had
happened. When Paul spoke on these
topics it was incredibly personal and could have caused them to repent of their
marriage completely. No wonder Felix was
alarmed and sent Paul away and hoped for a bribe. Paul lived by faith in the Lord and was
attempting to preach the Gospel of repentance, even to the man who seemed to
have life and death power over him. Faith
recognizes the real power of life and death, the faith David had in the one to
come and recognized him as Lord. Paul’s appeal to Caesar gets him the trip to
Rome he had been hoping for, the trip the Lord had promised.
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