The Covenant Table: Grace Without Merit

Welcome to the Table explores the radical hospitality at the heart of the Christian faith through the lens of two tables; the Lord's Table and the ordinary hospitality table of home and neighborhood. Beginning with God himself as the original pursuing host, the series moves through the covenant welcome of Mephibosheth, the table-fellowship scandal of Jesus, the contrast between cold religion and lavish grace in Simon's dinner, and the multiplying power of the early church's daily breaking of bread, eventually culminating in the eschatological feast of Revelation, where the entire arc of redemption ends at a table.

The driving conviction throughout is simple: every hospitality table is a rehearsal for the Lord's Table, and the Lord's Table sends us back to our hospitality tables with new purpose. As such, building an invitational culture is not a church growth strategy, it is a theological imperative rooted in the very character of God.

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:00

Thank you for listening to an audio resource from Stanwich Church, located in Greenwich in Stamford, Connecticut. The vision of Stanwich Church is to know Christ and make him known.

SPEAKER_02 0:30

This can be found on page 307 of your Pew Bible. King David's kindness towards Mephibosheth, the crippled grandson of Saul, is a reflection of God's great mercy and grace toward humanity. A reading from 2 Samuel chapter 9, beginning with the first verse. And David said, Is there still anyone left of the house of Saul that I may show him kindness for Jonathan's sake? Now there was a servant of the house of Saul whose name was Ziba, and they called him to David. And the king said to him, Are you Zibah? And he said, I am your servant. And the king said, Is there not still someone of the house of Saul that I may show the kindness of God to him? Ziba said to the king, There is still a son of Jonathan. He is crippled in his feet. The king said to him, Where is he? And Zibba said to the king, He is in the house of Makir, the son of Emil, at Lodabar. Then King David sent and brought him from the house of Makir, the son of Emil, at Lodabar. And Mephibosheth, the son of Jonathan, son of Saul, came to David and fell on his face and paid homage. And David said, Mephibosheth, and he answered, Behold, I am your servant. And David said to him, Do not fear, for I will show you kindness for the sake of your father Jonathan, and I will restore to you all the land of Saul, your father, and you shall eat at my table always. And he paid homage and said, What is your servant that you should show regard for a dead dog such as I? Then the king called Zibah, Saul's servant, and said to him, All that belong to Saul and to all his house I have given to your master's grandson. And you and your sons and your servants shall till the land for him and shall bring in the produce, that your master's grandson may have bread to eat. But Mashivashev, your master's grandson, shall always eat at my table. Now Ziba had fifteen sons and twenty servants. Then Ziba said to the king, According to all that my lord the king commands his servant, so will your servant do. So Mashivashef ate at David's table like one of the king's sons. And Mephibosheth had a young son whose name was Micah. And all who lived in Zibba's house became Mephibosheth's servants. So Mashibashef lived in Jerusalem, for he ate always at the king's table. Now he was lame in both his feet. May God add his blessing to the reading of his holy word.

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So who here played baseball growing up? Bill, why don't you come up? This is a relic. This could go in a museum. It's a wood bat. You don't find many of these anymore. So are you ready? Yeah, sure. Here we go. No, just you gotta catch it with one hand. Oh, one hand. Yeah. Ready? Can I get another volunteer that knows what I'm trying to do here? Sit down, Bill. I was looking for someone in my age group that would know this. Tom, do you know? Come on, Tom. This really worked well the first service. So hopefully we go uphill from this point on. You ready? Claw. Okay, two out of three. Ready? Double claw. You can sit down now. So anybody under the age of 40 has no clue what we just did. But this began for me in third grade at the Lutheran Church's parking lot. This is how we pick teams. And then you stood in line wondering when you were going to be picked. And maybe if you were going to be picked. And this starts the process of what we do through life. It's our desire to know that we actually belong. Middle school lunch table, school dance, university selected, fraternity. It just keeps on going. The boardroom. We wonder, do we really belong? Because out of our sense of identity, there's two longings within us. The first is to be loved, which gets expressed in belonging. And the second is to know our life has meaning and purpose. We're in our series for the summer. Welcome to the table. Pastor Heather reminded us that this resource is here for you. It's on the at the door going out and inside because there's some really good resources to explore the scripture through the week, that it would feed you beyond Sunday morning. The purpose of this series is to celebrate and foster invitational culture. We do have a bit of a reputation at Stanwich of being a friendly church, but we want to be more friendly. We want people to know that they're always welcome. God presents his invitation every week here at this table to say, come feast with me. And we get to use our own tables, our own sense of hospitality as people, of openness to them to say, Come, I want to enjoy you, hoping that they'll know that God wants to be with them as well. And today's story, story of King David, is an expression of someone who models the way of God, giving invitation to the table. So let's go to the text, draw a few things out of the text for us to better understand it, and then some application for us. 2 Samuel chapter 9. I want to remind you, as Pastor Jelani did last week, that this is Hebrew literature. So there's things you need to understand of the culture of that day, and it's also antiquity. There were rules, societal rules that don't make sense. If we don't understand that, we'll just read this passage and think David was kind of a nice guy. But there's a lot more happening underneath. This was a thousand years before Jesus walked on earth. 1,000 BC. That's 3,000 years ago. And we're still talking about it. Just an interesting side note. They didn't get this in the first service, so we're picking up speed now as we're moving along. For a while, people basically discredited the Bible because there was no extra biblical literature that mentioned David. And then in an archaeological dig 30 years ago, until Dan, they found an inscription, the household of David, which is the way you expressed kingship. So your Bible is not only fun to read, it's reliable. There's great depth in here to find. Now, it's interesting that we had movie night Friday night on David. Now, I would like to tell you that we are administratively so savvy that we planned that Friday night would happen along with this service. No, this is a sign that the Holy Spirit loves you. And he's planning things before we even know what's going to happen. It begins in verse 1. And David said, Is there anyone left in the house of Saul that I may show him kindness for Jonathan's sake? To remind you of the context, Israel wants a king. They want to be like the other nations. The theocracy of God leading them was not enough. And there's really an opening thing that could be a story all day. We always want to be like someone else or some other people. And God concedes and he uses the prophet Samuel to bring the royal line in. And in this first verse, there are three members of royal family that are mentioned. The first is Saul, who's the first king. Now, Saul had everything externally that people wanted in a king. He was tall, dark, and handsome. That just makes you a king right away. And in the beginning, he had everything he needed internally because it says the Holy Spirit rushed upon him. But the problem with Saul is that he leaked. And he leaked big time. In his impatience of waiting for God to do his thing, he tries to take God's plan into his own hands, and it begins the process of the Holy Spirit beginning to release him. One of the saddest declarations in Scripture is that the Holy Spirit left Saul because God had rejected him. I mean, when you hear that word, you understand David's confessional prayer in Psalm 51 when he says, Do not take your Holy Spirit from me. To lose the Holy Spirit is to lose everything that would be accessible for doing the work you're called. The second name here is Jonathan. This is the son of Saul. He's the heir apparent. In fact, you get the feeling that Saul's trying to get him into that place. We're going to see that Jonathan's loyalty to David is even greater than his loyalty to his father. And Saul warns him: if you continue befriending David, you're not going to get the throne in your name. You're going to lose it. But Jonathan and David were connected. And this just created more paranoia for Saul. He didn't like the fact. First, he's hearing the crowds come in. Saul kills his thousands, but David kills his ten thousands. If I were Pastor Gelani, I would sing it really cool way, but I can't. And that jealousy's building, and in the course of that relationship, we hear David say, I love Jonathan even as my own soul. They were blood brothers. They did life together, and now it's getting difficult. Saul is throwing spears at David. Saul will eventually throw a spear at his own son, Jonathan, just out of his paranoia. And they have this great moment where David and Jonathan meet, and David says, Go and see if your father's trying to get me. If he is, come back out and take an arrow and shoot it beyond me and say, Go. And this will be our last time together. And at that moment they make a covenant together. And David says, Jonathan, I will always watch out for your family, because both of them know that Jonathan's not going to be the next king, but David's going to be the next king. Now, when David's chosen as king, if you remember, he didn't have everything externally. He's the younger brother, so he's short. Scripture says he's ruddy, but he's also handsome. So us people that aren't tall can be in the handsome category as well. So don't feel left out in this process. If you remember the story, I love the way the movie picked it Friday night. Samuel comes to Jesse's home, says, Israel's next king is going to come from you. And Jesse is just totally surprised, and he does what anybody would do in antiquity. He lines his sons up from the oldest to the youngest. And Eliab has all the air, the external, of being the leader. And the Lord says to Samuel, Do not look on his appearance or on the height of his stature, because I have rejected him. For the Lord sees not as a man sees. Man looks on the outward appearance, but the Lord looks on the heart. Son number two, son number three, son number four, son number five, son number six, and to Jesse, are there no other sons? Well, there's the runt out in the field. And the Lord anoints him, and he becomes the king. Why? Because he had a heart after God. Now, if we're honest, we're a little bit conflicted by David. Because when you consider all the things that he does in his life that are contrary to God's way, how can he be a man after God's own heart? Well, I think we begin to see it in this passage. He beats with the heart of God. Even though there's rebellious moments in his life, there is this aspect of living out of the fullness of God. David said, Is there anyone left of the house of Saul that I may show him kindness for Jonathan's sake? The word kindness is a tough translation in English. This is the word Hesed. It's what we use to speak of the covenant love of God, his steadfast love, his everlasting love. This is what sets God apart. We often refer in the scriptures to his his sed and his emit, his steadfast love and his faithfulness. And David wants to express this kind of love, and he finds this servant Ziba, and he says to him, Is there not still someone of the house of Saul that I may show kindness of God to him? The reason David has a heart after God is that he flows with the has said of God. The kindness of God is what comes out of him. When we are planted in God, God will start to flow out of us. We don't produce anything, we just become the overflow of who God is in us. And that's the sanctified life. I grew up in a holiness movement where I had to climb up the hill to become like God. I like being in the movement I am in now where I just make myself accessible to God and He lives his qualities through me. His Hassed, David wants to show the Hassed of God to one of Jonathan's family. And we're told in verse 6 there's this guy, Mephibosheth. Okay, you didn't have the chance to read scripture today, so everybody say it with me. Mephibosheth. Mephibosheth. Mephibosheth went to the house of Mephibosheth. Mephibosheth. Yeah. I was gonna call him Meph, but it would be really strange to say David was going all over Israel to find Meph. That kind of messes the story up. A few of you got that. That was pretty good one, I thought, but maybe not. It doesn't really rise. Now it's interesting because Mephibosheth's life name means to spread shame. And where do they find him? Lodabar. Lodbar is the place of unfruitfulness. And the text reminds us at least three times that he was lame in both of his legs. See, in antiquity, when you had all of those things before you, you were considered completely useless and even cursed by God. Now let's be honest, uh, we don't do really well with disabilities yet as contemporary people. When we see people that carry a disability, I don't even like to refer to them as disabled. Because there's people that have disabilities that aren't disabled. We're just not quite sure how we're to respond, but in antiquity, it would have said, this guy doesn't belong, especially in the king's court. Here's another piece. In antiquity, when you became king, you wiped out the previous king's family. Because one of them might want to come back and take the throne. So the fact that even Ziba, one of the household servants of Saul, is still in the story, and Mephibosheth is being invited to David. Go find him and bring him to me, is quite amazing. And the response of Mephibosheth shows how dangerous it is. He comes and he bows before him. And what's David say? Don't fear. Because what does Mephibosheth think is going to happen? He's about to be taken out. David says to him, using the same words, I will show you kindness for the sake of Jonathan. And he invites him into his throne room. So the first act of David is mercy, but the second act is to release three forms of grace. First one is this. He says in verse 7, I'm going to restore to you all the lands of your grandfather Saul. Now, whoever was pulling this together and writing down this history, they're being purposeful, because you would think he would say, I'm going to restore to you all the lands that belong to your father. Because he's doing it for the sake of Jonathan. But to the lands that belong to Saul, Saul was the one who kept trying to kill David. Saul is the one who, in his jealousy, chased David all along. David's kindness goes all the way back to Saul through the lens of being in covenant with Jonathan. The second thing he says, Sibba, take your fifteen sons and your 20 servants, and you care for all that land. Because you're going to give the proceeds to Mephibosheth. Because Mephibosheth is not going to need the produce, because here comes the most amazing one. He's always going to eat at my table. And the scripture says it one three different times, but the second one is this. So Mephibosheth ate at David's table like one of the king's sons. This is the Old Testament's most poignant expression of the story of the prodigal son. Because Mephibosheth is going to join a rebellion against David later. And Zippah's going to come to him and say, What should we do about this? And David says, Let it go. For the sake of Jonathan, he continues to express kindness, the Hasid, the loving kindness of God to Jonathan's family. So what's the so what of this passage? As I was preparing this week, I thought about taking you through four hermeneutical lenses of how this applies to our life. And I was really excited about it. And then I thought, no, that's Chuck the teacher getting in the way of Chuck the preacher. So I'm going to just simplify this. We're all a bunch of Mephibosheths. We are all spiritually lame. There's none of us that brings to the equation anything that's valuable to God except our coming. And we limp. Like Mephibosheth. Paul says it this way: we were spiritually dead. We were at enmity with God. We were children of wrath. It's kind of like what we sang this morning. It really captured me the worship song that we were on today. I was a wretch. I used to know how to use a cell phone. I was a wretch. I remember who I was. I was lost. I was blind. I was running out of time. Sin separated me. The breach was far too wide. But from the far side of the chasm, you held me in your sight. None of us belongs here. But as Paul, when he talks about us being children of wrath, has this great transition. He says, but God in his mercy, with the great love with which he has loved us, he's pursued us to pour his grace out to say, you are welcome at this table. And he continues to pour that grace through us to others to make them welcome at the table. So what's my now what this morning? It's two of the values we have in our discipleship pathway at Stanwich. The first one is in Christ you belong. And you belong at this table. Do you know that you belong? Do you really know that you belong? Have you agreed with God's love declaration over you that He Is delighted to be in relationship. Maybe today is the first time you say, I agree and I accept God's love. Come to this table knowing that the God of heaven, the creator, the Redeemer, loves to be in relationship with you. Jesus said it this way: Behold, I stand at the door and knock. If anyone will open the door, I will come in and sup with them. I will come in and have a meal with them. This is your invitation. Or maybe you're like Mephibosheth part two, you've eaten at the king's table multiple times, but some things happen you're not sure you're still welcome at the table. Maybe this was a tough week. Maybe it's been a tough month. Maybe it's been a tough couple years. You're thinking, is this table for me? You say, well, Pastor Chuck, you don't know what I've done and where I've been. Well, you don't know what I've done and where I've been. We all come, all by the mercy and grace of God, to be at this table. Welcome home. This is where you belong. The second aspect of beyond is that we get to be the welcomers to the table for people that we meet along the way. And so let me ask you this morning, who's your Mephibosheth? Who have you lost contact with? Whose relationship has become strained? And it's time to invite them back to the table. It's not just even the table of your home, the table of your heart. That says, I welcome you. You are a value. You belong to me. It happened probably twelve, thirteen years ago. I don't remember the family's name. And to be honest with you, I'm having a hard time picturing them. They sat in the back. Their family was here all the time. And after preaching a message similar to this about God's grace and his welcome to his table, the daughter said to her mother, who was over 80 years old, Come have communion with me. And she said, I can't. The daughter knew why. See, when she was in her 20s, she had had an abortion, and the church that she was a part of at that time said, Because of that, you're no longer welcome at the table. And a scar had been put upon her. She'd limped spiritually for 60 years. And the daughter said to her mother, Oh no, this is Stanwood's Church. This is an open table. All of us sinners are welcome here. The Father wants to meet us. I remember standing right here and holding the cup and saying the blood of Jesus for the forgiveness of sins. I didn't know what I was saying to her in that moment, except the normal liturgy, but I found out about 10 minutes later what that meal meant. Wandering sinner, yet unconfessed sinner, come home today. The king, the king of everything, is waiting to meet you at the table. Amen.

SPEAKER_01 26:25

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