Ten Minute Bible Talks Devotional Bible Study - Moving Past a Neat Christianity | Historical Books | 2 Samuel 21:1-14

Episode Date: July 11, 2025

Are you stuck with a neat view of Christianity? Are you longing for the real God? Are you working for justice? In today's episode, Jeff shares how 2 Samuel 21:1-14 reminds us of the weight of our sin that Jesus bore on the cross. If you're listening on Spotify, tell us about yourself and where you're listening from! Read the Bible with us in 2025! This year, we’re exploring the Historical Books—Joshua, Judges, 1 & 2 Samuel, and 1 & 2 Kings. Download your reading plan now. Your support makes TMBT possible. Ten Minute Bible Talks is a crowd-funded project. Join the TMBTeam to reach more people with the Bible. Give now. Like this content? Make sure to leave us a rating and share it so that others can find it, too. Use #asktmbt to connect with us, ask questions, and suggest topics. We'd love to hear from you! To learn more, visit our website and follow us on Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter @TenMinuteBibleTalks. Don't forget to subscribe to the TMBT Newsletter here. Passages: 2 Samuel 21:1-14

Welcome to 10-minute Bible Talks, where we connect the Bible to your life. In the time it takes to get to work. I'm Jeff Parrott. Are you stuck with a flannel board version of faith? The author Chuck de Groat describes this version of Christianity in his book, Healing What's Within. He writes this, I still remember the dark and damp church classroom on Long Island, New York, where I'd see the epic Bible stories come to life on flannel board. the vivid greens, ocean blues, and brilliant yellows provided the landscape backdrop to flannel figures

of the great heroes of scripture. Now, DeGroote is talking about the teaching method for Bible stories used usually with children. It's a relatively polyannish patina of flannel or felt boards, where characters and scenes seem more peaceful, more simple than the events probably really were in history. If you grew up in a church any time before the year 2000, maybe even after that, there's a good chance that you learned your earliest lessons about the Bible through a felt board or a flannel board. Now, to be clear, DeGroate is not critiquing the technique of the felt board lessons in the church. Those tools can be faithful, meaningful, and age-appropriate ways to teach the Bible to children. It's great.

What DeGroat critiques here is a version of Christian faith that stays, stuck on the flannel board, on the felt board, and it never grows into a deeper exploration of the Bible, of human life, of sin, of our need for grace. He goes on to write that these felt board images, they fail to convey just how traumatic a life exiled from God and ourselves can be. So according to DeGroat, if our faith doesn't grow up alongside our lived experiences, we can be left with a version of Christianity that's stuck on the felt board, while our questions, our doubts, our pain, our lingering sin, make us wonder where the real God really is.

A faith that grows up beyond the felt board, through the felt board, is an honest faith. A faith that's honest about how tragic life really is. A faith that's honest about the lengths God is willing to go to in order to make things right again. Our passage today serves as a splash of cold water on the face for the areas of our lives where we might be stuck with a felt-bored version of faith. These verses awaken us to the reality of sin that might be uncomfortable at first,

yet as this portion of scripture gives us a clearer, more honest perspective of the problem of our world and our lives, it also gives us a deeper, more hopeful perspective of the solution. As we approach God's word together, let's pause and ask for His grace to move through our time. Heavenly Father, thank you for the gift of life and breath. Thank you for your word. We bring before you our joys and our sorrows, our anxiety and our excitement, our calendars and our contingencies. God, would you meet us in this space in this time?

Jesus, help us abide in you as we engage with your truth. Holy Spirit, we ask you to move in and through this. time in 2 Samuel. As we read these words, let these words read us and restore us. In Jesus' name, Amen. Second Samuel chapter 21 begins a kind of epilogue over the entire narrative of 1st and 2nd Samuel. It takes us to the very end of the book. And we're going to see how some big themes come up in the very ending of this book in these last chapters, these big themes that hammer the truth home. big themes that prod us on to grow into a faith that is more honest, more real, more hopeful than a faith that we might have had before. So getting to our chapter, chapter 21, we go to verse one,

and we learn that there is a big problem plaguing the people of God. There is a famine lasting for three years. And in the face of this huge problem, the king, David, responds by seeking guidance in the presence of the Lord. God tells David that the family, Ammon is actually a consequence of the former king, Saul, killing a people group called the Gibianites. Now, this might seem random for us, a random reason for God's justice. Why is God punishing his people because of the former king Saul killing the Gibianites? I mean, it seems so haphazard at first, but it's actually a big deal to the creator of all

things. The problem of Saul's blood guilt against the Gibyanites stretches back to a moment in Joshua chapter 9, where the people of God made an oath, a promise to protect those very people, to protect the Gibyanites. Verses 2 through 3 in our passage today outlined the problem of this broken promise, and they also show us David's response. So let's pick up in verse 2. The king summoned the Gibionites and spoke to them. Now, the Gibbeanites were not a part of Israel, but were survivors of the Amarites. The Israelites had sworn to spare them, but Saul and his zeal for Israel and Judah, had tried to annihilate them. David asked the Gibbeanites, what shall I do for you? How shall I make atonement so that you will bless the Lord's inheritance? Now, that question from David here in verse three,

it's a big one. He says, how shall I make atonement? How can the brokenness of this broken promise, this betrayal be put back together? The response of the Ghibionites might surprise us, might make a squirm. Let's pick up in verse four. The Ghibionites answered him, We have no right to demand silver or gold from Saul or his family, nor do we have the right to put anyone in Israel to death. What do you want me to do for you, David asked?

They answered the king. As for the man who destroyed us and plotted against him, us so that we have been decimated and have no place anywhere in Israel, let seven of his male descendants be given to us to be killed and their bodies exposed before the Lord at Gibbia of Saul, the Lord's chosen one. So the king, David, said, I will give them to you. Okay, what, we as modern people are like, what is going on here? The Gibbyites seem so measured, so gracious at first. I mean, they refused to ask for silver or gold. They didn't want to put anyone in Israel to death.

That's great. That could fit on a flannel board version of faith. But then they asked for David to offer up seven male descendants of Saul to be killed. And David complies with their request. Now, is this just another example of, quote unquote, justice that turns out to be lopsided in the end? I mean, what's going on here? I mean, this scene, in its fullness, does not fit into the flannel board version of faith. It is far more raw, far more honest than we probably want it to be, more raw and honest about the problem of sin.

Here, sin isn't simply presented as breaking a rule, though it does include that. Here, sin, real sin, is portrayed as the breaking of a relationship, the breaking of promises, the breaking of bonds, the breaking of life itself. Now let's go back to David's question to the Ghibi nights in verse three. How shall I make atonement? Some English translations say, how shall I make amends? The root of the Hebrew word here is kaffar. And the technical construction of it here means something like to cover over. So David is trying to remove the guilt of Saul's sin, the guilt of Saul's sin that spread into the life of his people. He wants to cover over it and repair it, repair that oath that was broken by Saul with the Ghibi knights. And in doing this, David is actually

fulfilling a commandment for God's people that God gave his people back in Numbers chapter 35 versus 33 through 34. Let's go ahead and read that. Here's what the Lord says to his people. You shall not pollute the land in which you live, for blood pollutes the land, and no atonement can be made for the land for the blood that is shed in it, except by the blood of the one who shed it. You shall not

defile the land in which you live in the midst of which I dwell, for I the Lord dwell in the midst of the people of Israel. Okay, so Numbers 35 gives us some helpful biblical theological context here. David is

trying to restore the loss of life that was stolen. He wants the living God, the God of justice and mercy and restoration. He wants the living God there to move through the life of his people. This passage is not about a meaningless massacre. It's about a meaningful mending. And that mending comes about because David's just reign stands in stark opposition to the ruthless reign of Saul. And that, that comes contrast between David and Saul continues as this passage goes on because verse 7 describes how David spared one of Saul's offspring. Instead of offering him up to the Gibyanites, David spares one of Saul's offspring, the son of Jonathan, because of an oath, a promise that David previously made with

Jonathan. So as the passage continues, David is portrayed as a king who keeps his promise. So whereas Saul's broken oath with the Ghibionites caused this mess to begin with, David is the one who keeps his oath with Jonathan, an oath to spare his son. Where Saul breaks promises and steals life, David is presented as a just king who keeps promises and restores life. Now, if we wanted to cling to a comfortable, easy, felt-bored version of faith that never grows up, we might be inclined to just gloss over the injustice, to gloss over the pain of the Ghibionites. We might be inclined to be less than honest about the problem of sin, death, and evil for the sake of our comfort. But of course, this passage in Second Samuel is one of countless other examples in the Bible where Scripture users

us into a kind of faith that moves beyond, moves through the felt board, and into a faith that engages with real flesh and blood, a faith that gives real justice towards. sin and real hope for sinful people. Now, in saying all of this, I really don't want to minimize how brutal reading this passage might feel to so many modern people. It is. But I think that's kind of the point of the narrative. Sin is brutal. The consequences of sin are brutal. The loss of human life is brutal. The violation of shalom and wholeness and peace that God made our world to be is brutal. And the Bible is okay with displaying that.

The Bible is honest. Now, one of the reasons why the Bible can be so honest about sin is because it's also honest about what saves us from our sin. Or better said, who saves us from our sin? Yes, sin and its consequences are so brutal, but so is the cross of Jesus. It too, like this scene in 2 Samuel, takes us from the felt board faith

and into a real flesh and blood faith. The cross of Jesus also displays the severity of sin and God's real just wrath against it. And yet at the same time, like this passage, the cross of Jesus displays the restoration of broken promises, the restoration of life itself. When God's people are shaped by stories like this one in 2 Samuel, are shaped by the finished work of Jesus on a Roman cross,

well then those people slowly and imperfectly become the kind of people who long for and cultivate justice. They become the kind of people who mend broken promises, just like their king. Become the kind of people who restore stolen life, just like their king does. They do this because they're participating in the work that God's been doing and will continue to do as he makes all. things new in Jesus' life, death, resurrection, and reign.

Heavenly Father, as we get ready to continue to follow you into this day, help us grow into a faith that transcends the felt bored and engages with real flesh and real blood, a faith that extends your moving kingdom into the lives of the real people around us. Jesus, we praise you as the risen king who defeated, sin and death and evil, as the king who keeps promises and restores life. Holy Spirit, move through us to have an honest, hopeful, growing faith and the work that you're doing today. We ask this by your grace, for your glory and your greater story.

We pray in Jesus' name. Amen.