Ep. 114 | Christian Response to Rejection
Speaker: Tanner Ferguson
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Summary
Tanner Ferguson shares about the Christian response to rejection based off the person of David.
Scripture Explored: 2 Samuel 10, 2 Samuel 9, 2 Corinthians 5:20, John 15:18, Joshua 1:9
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Music created by Chad Hoffman
Artwork created by Anthony Kuenzi
Speaker’s Bio
Tanner Ferguson is Lead Pastor at Verbatim Church, A Calvary Chapel in Albany, Oregon. As he plugged in and got more involved with his church, Tanner began to serve as a volunteer helping and leading in Children and Youth Ministries for several years. In 2018 the Lord called him to pursue ministry full time, and in 2019 God opened doors for Tanner to accept a staff position at his Church. Tanner and his wife Mariah have 4 children and a bulldog, and their favorite way to spend their free time is to camp.
Transcript
Intro:
Hey there, welcome to Pickled Parables. This podcast is presented by Parable Ministries as a Bible teaching resource. Thank you for joining us. Pickled Parables is a podcast about taking in and living out the Bible. Here we will study, contemplate, and testify to the Bible's incredible teachings and how it leads us to live better lives. To stay up to date with all things parable, follow us on Instagram at parable underscore ministries and visit our website at parableministries.com. We hope today's message finds you well.
Message:
Hello, friends, and welcome to Pickled Parables.
My name is Tanner Ferguson.
And in this episode, I wanna jump into 2 Samuel 10 in the Old Testament.
This is right in the smack dab center of David's life, David's rule as the king of Israel.
And if you've never done a study into the life of David, somebody who the Bible calls a man after God's own heart, it's such a powerful study.
So many things we can learn from David and the life that he lived, both good and bad.
As we see David's got triumphant moments and moments where he just kind of blows it as the king of Israel.
But today it's one of these moments where David's experience, it's been a triumphant period for David.
And we've seen where the Lord has been so good to just pour out his mercy and grace and kindness over David.
And David's in a position right now, he's the king over all of Israel.
He's been, man, every time he goes out to battle, he just gets victories and he just gives all glory to God, as he should, as we should.
And David acknowledges the Lord for all he's done.
And he says, you know what, I want to extend that kindness to others.
I want to take this love and kindness that you've shown me God, and I want to give that to other people.
And so just to give you a little bit of context, because context matters in the Bible, you go back to chapter nine, and David finds the grandson, he seeks out the grandson of one of his biggest enemies and just says, you know what, I want to show kindness to this grandson.
His name's Mephibosheth.
I don't see that one in a lot of baby books, but I want to show kindness to this guy.
And he seeks out Mephibosheth, who at the time he's been in hiding.
He's not sure where his standing is, man.
He's like, man, my grandpa tried to kill the king of Israel several times.
I don't know.
He's been in hiding.
He's disabled.
And that was really looked down upon in culture back then.
And so Mephibosheth's like, man, what is going on that the king of Israel would show me such love and kindness?
He actually says in chapter 9, he says, what is your servant that you take interest in a dead dog like me?
That's kind of how we refer to himself as.
And David gives this man Mephibosheth a spot at the king's table.
He's part of his inner circle.
And isn't that just awesome that Jesus does the same thing for us?
Through his love and grace and mercy, Jesus changes everything for us.
He takes us from whatever broken condition we were once in and extends that kindness and a spot for us at his table.
And I don't know what period of time you're listening to this.
I'm recording this in 2024, but there are times, and it just seems to be getting worse, where us as Christians can extend that kindness to people.
Sometimes it's not well received.
Maybe you can remember a time in your life where somebody extended that Christ-like kindness to you, and you felt God's love through them.
And that's something that helped you and lead you to Jesus Christ, where he restored you and he welcomed you to his table, just as David did to Mephibosheth.
And as you became filled with the Holy Spirit and your life becomes filled with joy and peace and happiness, that comes with knowing the Lord and having a relationship with Jesus, the Lord puts on your heart, he calls you, he calls all of us.
And he says, hey, you know, that kindness and that love and that grace that I want or that I show you, I want you now to go share that with others.
I want you to go tell people about me so they can experience that same love and kindness and have the choice to accept Jesus just as you had that choice.
And so now we try to live out that the best we can, lives that glorify God.
Try to go extend that love to others.
Give people opportunities to know who Jesus is.
I hope you're doing that as a Christian.
It's what we're called to do.
Jesus tells us to go and make disciples, go share the gospel to the edge of the world.
And let me tell you, it's such an awesome feeling and experience when the Lord uses us to bring somebody else to salvation in Jesus Christ.
But my question for you today, friends, and what we're going to see in chapter 10, what do we do when we encounter people who just reject us, when we share the kindness and love of Jesus with them?
Or what do we do when they treat us harshly when we share the gospel with them?
That can be a really tough thing.
And you just go, well, God, you've called me to do this, but I'm being treated like garbage.
And like I said, it's 2024 when I'm recording this, there's a election down the road, and people just really seem to not be open to others' ideas.
The world as a whole just seems to be shutting down in that regard, man.
You want to share something with them, and they don't want to hear it.
And sometimes they say that in a much more harsh way.
What do we do with that?
When we put our heart out there, when we be vulnerable with someone, when we go out to do something nice, to muster up the courage to talk to a complete stranger, to be completely rejected by them, to be called names, to laugh, to be laughed at, to be mocked, to have God mocked.
I've shared the gospel at times, and I've been told how hateful and foolish I am for believing in Jesus.
And I'll tell you what my flesh response is.
What my response is, Tanner, without Jesus, is to say, I don't want to put up with this.
I don't have to put up with this.
This guy deserves a nice throat punch to the face.
I don't know how you throw a punch to somebody in the face.
But the reaction is, man, I'm done.
I don't have to go through this.
Just going to stick to myself, man.
As we get into scripture this morning, David's going to extend this kindness once again.
But this time, it's going to be rejected.
It's going to be rejected.
And there's going to be a harsh response to David's kindness.
And what we're going to see from David this morning is that the answer is not to quit.
The answer is not to have a knee-jerk reaction and do something foolish.
But the answer is to focus on being mission-minded, willfully waiting, burden-bearing child of God.
Because God's given us a mission, and it's more important.
It's a matter of life and death, as we will see in our scripture.
So, if you're following along, we're in 2 Samuel chapter 10.
If you're listening in the car, you'll just have to put up with me reading this to you.
So, here we go.
Verse 1 says, It happened after this that the king of the people of Ammon died, and Hannon the son reigned in his place.
Then David said, I will show kindness to Hannon the son of Nahash, as his father showed kindness to me.
So, David sent by the hand of his servants to comfort him concerning his father.
And David's servants came into the land of the people of Ammon.
And so, we find out here that one of Israel's neighboring countries, Ammon, has lost their king, and the king's son takes his place.
And David says, hey, the father, the old king used to show kindness to me, and I'm going to turn that around.
And, man, I want to do something nice for this new king.
Show them that I care.
Show them that I love them.
And so, he sends a couple of his men, some ambassadors, and he puts them on a mission.
He says, hey, here's what I want you to do.
I have an important mission for you.
I need you to go show these people kindness.
I need you to go show these people that we care for them.
And friends, in the same way, we've been called and sent on a mission, too, as children and followers of Jesus Christ.
And our mission is even more important than the one of just kindness.
Our mission can be life-saving.
And we'll read in just a minute that the mission that David sent these ambassadors on ends up being a hard thing for them.
And in these moments where it looks like our mission is hard to go and share that gospel with somebody, to go and deal with difficult people, in these moments where they're a hard thing standing in our way, or we face a hard situation, or we feel like quitting, we need to stop and remember that our mission is too important to quit.
2 Corinthians 5 20 says, Therefore, we are ambassadors for Christ.
Since God is making his appeal through us, we plead on Christ's behalf, be reconciled to God.
And remembering what it means to be mission-minded is so important.
It means that we know the job that we have been commissioned for as ambassadors of God, and that we're going to stay focused on that mission, even through the difficult moments, because we know just how important that mission is.
Now, let's look at verse 3 and see the difficult moments that these messengers had to go through.
It says, And the princes of the people of Ammon said to Hain and their Lord, do you think that David really honors your father because he has sent comforters to you?
Has David not rather sent his servants to you to search the city to spy it out and to overthrow it?
Therefore, Hain and took David's servants, shaved off half their beards, cut off their garments in the middle at their buttocks, and sent them away.
When they told David, he sent to meet them because the men were greatly ashamed.
And the king said, wait at Jericho until your beards have grown and then return.
And so the first thing we need to focus on and what we see in our scripture about being messengers of Christ who can handle harsh people and difficult moments is that we need to stay on mission, being mission minded.
But the second is here in our second part of our text where we're gonna be willfully waiting on the Lord.
And so these ambassadors show up and they are not received well.
Notice it's specifically these advisors of the new king that seem to have the problem.
Makes me wonder what the advisors, the king's advisors motives were here by saying these things.
That they actually think that David was really sending spies?
Or were they just looking for an opportunity to appear wise to their new king?
I don't know if we know for sure, but I like what another pastor, Pastor David Guzik, says on this.
He says, it's common for liars to suspect others of lying.
And I think maybe that's what's going on here.
But regardless, they were so wrong.
They gave this king bad advice.
A little side point for our episode today.
Make sure you're keeping wise counsel around you.
Make sure that the wisdom you're seeking from your friends and people around you is wise and biblical.
Because what happens here is King Hainan believes his foolish counsel and takes David's pure hearted gesture of wanting to just extend kindness to this mourning king.
And Hainan chooses violence instead.
And he chooses to humiliate David's messengers in two ways.
Number one, they shaved off half of their beards.
I'm not talking like giving them a good beard trim.
I'm talking about shaving like half of their face vertically, walking around looking really funny.
Now, something to note is Jewish men, especially leaders back in the day, wore beards as a symbol of maturity and authority.
And a naked face could have been seen as an embarrassment or lower class, so in culture really meant something back then.
And number two, it says they cut off their garments.
They forced these messengers to become indecent, essentially giving them kind of mini skirts where it says they chopped off the bottom half of their robes.
I can only imagine the shame and frustration these messengers felt.
To insult the ambassador of a king is really like insulting the king himself.
Ambassadors are extension of the kingdom.
So it's just as they had done this to King David himself.
The same principle is true with King Jesus and his ambassadors, us.
Jesus reminded his disciples that if the world hates you, you know that it hated me before it hated you.
He says that in John 15, 18.
And notice what David does when his ambassadors return.
He shows these messengers compassion, says, Hey, I see your shame and embarrassment.
And now I want to give you some time to heal.
Have you ever felt that Jesus does the same thing for us?
He went through a worse shame for you and me.
His beard was plucked out.
His robe was stripped.
His body was crushed.
And I don't know about you guys, but if somebody punked me out the way that the Hammonites did to David's messengers, the first place my brain goes is not to a good place.
It's where it says, man, you just did me dirty and triggers a reaction in me that's not good.
My flesh goes straight to, I need revenge and retaliation for what these guys did to me.
Think about these messengers for a moment.
And what would have happened if they would have chose my way?
What if they would have chose violence back?
They probably would have died.
The Hammonites probably would have just killed them.
But just like David did for these guys, the Lord goes, hey, I see you.
I appreciate the effort, the boldness of your mission for you to stay on mission.
But don't do something foolish right now.
Get out of here, go wait this out for a little while.
Let these wounds recover.
Go recover from this properly.
And maybe you're listening to this today and you feel some shame or guilt.
Maybe you just feel wounded.
Can I just encourage you?
Your spiritual beard will be grown back one day.
You will be given a new robe.
Sometimes a jix takes time.
Willfully waiting on the Lord's timing is much better than trying to jump back into things, doing things our way.
When really sometimes all we need is a little time to heal up.
The Lord sees you and he will handle things in his own time.
Let's keep going in our text.
Verse 6 says, When the people of Ammon saw that they had made themselves repulsive to David, the people of Ammon sent and hired the Syrians of Bethriob and the Syrians of Zobah, 20,000 foot soldiers, and from the king of Macca, 1,000 men, and from Ishtab, 12,000 men.
Now when David heard of it, he sent Joab and all the army of the mighty men.
Then the people of Ammon came out and put themselves in battle array at the entrance of the gate, and the Syrians of Zobah, Bethriob, Ishtab, and Macca were by themselves in the field.
When Joab saw that the battle line was against him before and behind, he chose some of Israel's best and put them in battle array against the Syrians, and the rest of the people he put under command of Abishai, his brother, that he might set them in battle array against the people of Ammon.
And so we see here the Ammonites responded to their declaration of war by attacking Israel.
They even hired backup and paid the Syrians to come fight with them.
And David responds by dispatching Joab, the general of his army, to go out with his mighty men and fight.
But do you catch what happens when Joab and the army shows up?
They find themselves surrounded.
The enemy is lined up behind them and in front of them.
The Syrians on one side and the Ammonites on the other.
But Joab has a strategy here.
He's going to divide the army into two and send Abishai's brother with half of them.
And look what it says happens.
I love this response that Joab has here.
Verse 11, it says, then he said, if the Syrians are too strong for me, then you shall help me.
But if the people of Ammon are too strong for you, then I will come and help you.
Be of good courage and let us be strong for our people and for the cities of our God.
And may the Lord do what is good in his sight.
So Joab and the people who were with him drew near for the battle against the Syrians and they fled before him.
When the people of Ammon saw that the Syrians were fleeing, they also fled before Abishai and entered the city.
So Joab returned from the people of Ammon and went to Jerusalem.
And what was Joab's game plan here?
They're going to bear each other's burdens.
Hey, we're up against something big.
We're going to do this together.
If these guys get into a bad spot, we're going to come assist you.
And if we get into a bad spot, you better come to our aid.
The two army halves were ready to bear the burden of one another to carry that weight if things got too heavy.
Friends, this is what we need to be doing for each other here.
It's what we're called to do.
I hope if you're listening to this, that this isn't a substitute for a church, that you're involved in a local church in your community, where you can get to know people, other brothers and sisters in Christ, that can come alongside you and bear the burdens with you, bear these things that you're up against.
It's hard out there, man.
We face a lot of spiritual attack.
There's a lot of struggle and tribulation in life.
And it's so much easier when we can come together and bear each other's burdens.
I know there's a lot of people that are just too anxious, too afraid of being weak or vulnerable, that are trying to carry these heavy burdens around all alone.
And man, can I just say that makes my heart ache for these people because I've been there, too prideful and arrogant to reach out and ask for help.
When my wife and I experienced our first miscarriage, that's what I did.
We sat there alone, too prideful to ask for help, too arrogant, too vulnerable to say, man, I need somebody to come alongside me and help me through this, pray with me.
It was one of the toughest things we ever had to endure, and we endured it alone.
And I don't care how weak I sound now, I'm not going to let my wife and I walk through that alone ever again or anything like that.
When we hide these things and go, no, I don't need any help, I'm okay.
When we really need help, you're going to get crushed.
That's when the enemy is going to crush you.
And just like Joab said to Abishai in our scripture, our city and the people need us to be strong and courageous.
They need us to be ready to do hard things.
You can do hard things when you allow God to be the source of your strength and courage.
When you can be around God's people, who can help come alongside you and say, hey, I've got your back through this.
It reminds me of Joshua 1.9.
It says, haven't I commanded you be strong and courageous?
Do not be afraid or discouraged for the Lord your God is with you wherever you go.
Just encourage you to do hard things.
Bear that burden, be ready to endure some persecution.
John Corson, a Bible teacher down in Ashland, Oregon says, share the best, prepare for the worst and watch and see how the Lord will bless as the enemy is driven back.
And that's what the Lord did here in the scripture.
Both Syrians and Ammonites just fled when they saw Israel wasn't going to back down from that fight.
Let's read the last part of our scripture here, verse 15.
It says, when the Syrians saw that they had been defeated by Israel, they gathered together.
Then Hadadazer sent and brought out the Syrians who were beyond the river.
And they came to Helam.
And Shobach, the commander of Hadadazer's army, went before them.
When it was told, David, he gathered all Israel, crossed over the Jordan, and came to Helam.
And the Syrians set themselves in battle array against David and fought with him.
Then the Syrians fled before Israel.
And David killed 700 charioteers and 40,000 horsemen of the Syrians, and struck Shobach, the commander of their army, who died there.
And when all the kings who were servants to Hadadazer saw that they were defeated by Israel, they made peace with Israel and served them.
So the Syrians were afraid to help the people of Ammon anymore.
And so the Syrians rallied together and prepare for a second fight.
They go, hey, let's rally.
Let's do this again.
Maybe we'll be victorious this time.
But this time, King David himself is going to come to the battlefield.
The giant killer.
David has a reputation for just being a great warrior.
It's said so many times in 1 and 2 Samuel, gives his accounts of how successful he was as a general, as a warrior, as a fighter, a soldier.
He's the man who killed Goliath, the giant.
I would be terrified to fight David the legend.
And friends, the last thing I want to give you in our scripture today, as we look at how to deal with hard situations and difficult people, and people that don't receive our kindness well, is just seeing that ultimately in the end, David had to cross the river and be there before peace could come.
It's a good reminder for us today that Jesus Christ will return one day in power.
You see, the first time Jesus came, he came with compassion and love, just as David did.
He sent messengers, wanted to show compassion and kindness and love.
But ultimately, that's not the thing that brought peace.
It was David's strength.
And the Bible tells us that Christ will return one day in wrath and in power.
In the meantime, let's just focus on being Christ-centered children of God that can just remember that our mission matters so much, that God has given us a mission to go out and make disciples, go out and share the gospel with others, sometimes willfully waiting on what God has for us, being ready to bear each other's burdens, being ready to do hard things, and just keeping our hope in Jesus that he will return one day.
Let's pray.
Lord, we love you so much.
Help us be servants for you that are mission-minded, willfully waiting for you.
Gotta allow us to just be vulnerable enough to ask for help.
Give us the strength to bear one another's burdens.
Keep us Christ-centered.
Our city needs you.
The lost needs you.
Use us to grow us and to go out and be strong and courageous so that we may glorify you and fulfill the mission you've called us to.
You bared the ultimate weight for us and Lord, let that work you did on the cross empower us to go do hard things, to endure harsh situations, and to walk alongside our brothers and sisters in Christ in their hard times.
We love you.
We pray these things in your glorious name, Jesus.
Amen.
God bless you guys.
Outro:
Thank you for listening to Pickled Parables. If you enjoyed this message, please rate us, subscribe, and share with your friends. If you're interested in more things like this, check out our secondary podcast called My Dusky Bible. To stay up to date with all things parable, follow us on Instagram at parable underscore ministries and visit our website at parable ministries.com. Parable is a volunteer organization and we would deeply appreciate your prayers. Thank you for joining us today, we'll catch you later.
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