Grace is Undeserved

Pictures of grace are all over the place. I have been intentionally looking for them in my daily life and finding more than I ever thought I would. Grace is also all through the Word of God, New Testament and Old. One of the greatest pictures of grace is found in 2 Samuel 9.

In verse 1 David wants to know if there is anyone in Saul’s family that he can show kindness or grace for Jonathan’s sake. David is asking if there is anyone in the family of Saul to whom he can demonstrate the same kind of grace.

David does not ask if there is anyone deserving or qualified or smart or powerful who I can show grace to so that they can help me. He simply is looking for anybody related to Saul that he can show grace to. This is an unconditional desire.

Raise the Roof and Remove the Walls is desiring to share grace with anybody.

There is a son of Jonathan who is a cripple that is still alive.

Ziba seems to emphasis that Jonathan’s son was crippled. Yes, there is someone but he is a cripple and you really don’t need to bother with him.

In verse 4 David simply asks where he was. David does not care that he is crippled, he just wants to show him grace. David finds out that he is Lo-debar. Lo-debar means barren place. The young man was crippled and living in a barren place.

In 2 Samuel 9:5-7 David has the young man, Mephibosheth, brought to him. Mephibosheth falls face down before David and says, “Here is your servant!” David then tells him not to fear and that he will show him kindness for the sake of Mephibosheth’s father. He tells him that he will restore all the land of his grandfather and that he will eat at the king’s table.

Raise the Roof and Remove the Walls is grace giving us the desire to release others from fear.

In verse 8 Mephibosheth asks what is your servant that David should show regard for a dead dog should as him. The term dead dog refers to a person who is worthless. Mephibosheth saw himself as a total worthless, valueless person.

Mephibosheth is an unknown, of no importance, and crippled. He is of no benefit to David or his kingdom. There is absolutely no reason David should care about him.

David is desiring to show grace to Mephibosheth not because who he is, but because of David’s relationship with his father, Jonathan.

In verses 9 and 10 David gives orders that Ziba and his sons are to work the land that David restored to Mephibosheth. Then David says that Mephibosheth will eat at his table, the king’s table.

Verses 11-13 tell that Ziba and his sons worked the land and that Mephibosheth ate at David’s tables as the king’s son.

Raise the Roof and Remove the Walls is accepting God’s grace and living as a child of God.

Grace restores us to intimate fellowship with God.

Grace heals us from our brokenness.

Grace restores, heals and forgives us based on Jesus’s death and resurrection.

Grace works in us based on Jesus, not us.

Grace rescues us from a life of bareness and purposelessness to a life of spiritual nourishment and purpose.

Grace makes us God’s children.

Grace abounds more and more where sin is.

Grace makes us all equal in God’s sight.

Grace covers all our disabilities and limitations.

Raise the Roof and Remove the Walls is experiencing the fullness of God’s grace.

Romans 5:20

Now the law came in to increase the trespass, but where sin increased, grace abounded more. So that, as sin reigned in death, grace also might reign through the righteousness leading to eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord.   

No matter the sin, the disability, the limitation, the fear, the hurt, or the doubt God’s grace overcomes.

In God’s Grace, Raising the Roof and Removing the Walls,

                                          Joe