The Sound of Grace [ page 2]

The Sound Of Grace ...Continued from page 1

Some say that God’s grace is a New Testament development. Yet, if we look closely, we see that in fact God has been pouring his grace upon humankind since Genesis 3, when God doesn’t strike Adam and Eve on the spot, but lets them live. That was grace. After David sins with Bathsheba and kills her husband, he prays for grace and pens the words that have been teaching sinners to pray for millennia, “Have mercy on me, O God, according to your unfailing love; according to your great compassion blot out my transgressions. Wash away all my iniquity and cleanse me from my sin.” And God forgives David’s sins. And that is grace.
Let me further illustrate God’s grace for us by using an illustration from the Old Testament and one from the New Testament. The story of Mephiboshet in 2 Samuel 9 is a beautiful story of grace. After David becomes king over Israel he asks, “Is there no one still left of the house of Saul to whom I can show God’s kindness?” David, you see, is counterculture. The Ancient Near Eastern culture would dictate that he kill everyone in Saul’s family. David finds out that there is one man, Mephiboshet, Jonathan’s son, who is crippled in both feet. “Where is he?” David asks.
“He is in Lo Debar.” Lo Debar can mean: No word, no thing, or no place. He has nothing going for him. He is in “no man’s land.”
But David says to Mephiboshet, “Don’t be afraid for I will surely show you kindness for the sake of your father Jonathan. I will restore to you all the land that belonged to your grandfather Saul, and you will always eat at my table.” Notice Mephiboshet’s response. “What is your servant that you should notice a dead dog like me?” Imagine Mephiboshet at the king’s table. He says to himself, “There sits the intelligent prince Solomon; he seems to be writing something. People say that he always seems to get in trouble for writing love songs during dinner. Hopefully, he will publish them some day. Next to him sits the good looking prince Absalom; everybody knew that in all Israel there was no one as handsome as Absalom, so highly praised; from the sole of his foot to the crown of his head there was no defect in him. And next to Absalom there sits his beautiful sister, Princess Tamar.

“But what am I doing here? I am crippled, I don’t belong, I don’t fit with the intelligent, with the good looking, with the beautiful.” But he experiences GRACE, because the king comes and tells him, “You sit at the table anyway.”
Lo Debar is not a permanent place. It is a waiting place. How long can you wait? Maybe you too are waiting in Lo Debar. How long can you wait? Remember, the king knows where you are. Even Lo Debar is the place of grace. God is ready to pour grace upon you. I love the story of Mephiboshet because his story is my story. His story is your story. Sin has crippled us and we’re lame; lame in our talk (we stutter, we have an accent); lame in our motives (we do the right thing for the wrong reason); and yet God our King says to us, “You sit at My table anyway.” That’s grace. And one day we’ll sit at the King’s table, and our feet will be crippled no more, because he’ll make all things new.