AWAKE BIBLE IN A YEAR MAY 1
Read 2 Samuel 8-9, 1 Chronicles 18
The tables have turned it is no longer the house of Saul ruling it is the house of David.
The statement David once said to Saul, comes back at him although the circumstances are very different.
David in his days of being hunted asks Saul a question loaded with self-abasement.
1 Samuel 24:14 who are you after —a dead dog?
Now the son of Jonathan —Saul’s grandson says this statement of humility to David.
2 Samuel 9:8
Mephibosheth bowed down and said, “What is your servant, that you should notice a dead dog like me?”
It’s his way of saying I will bring you no harm. And then even further why would you be good to me?
David has heard this slang before: “Am I a dog?” Goliath taunted David’s weapons, because he came at him with a staff. (1 Sam. 17:43)
(These dog references/possible insults of low status are throughout scripture 2 Samuel 3:8; 16:9; 2 Kings 8:13.)
In Matthew 7:6 Jesus says do not give what is holy to the dogs, and yet we will see the compassion of God through his son Jesus, to a Canaanite woman.
In Matthew, 15:27, the Canaanite woman calls out to Jesus as the ‘Son of David’ and for healing for her daughter… she says even the dogs eat the crumbs that fall from the masters table.
When she calls him the ‘Son of David’ she refers to Jesus as King. Further exalting him in terms like master, & she, in a statement of personal abasement and humility asks for some of the kings food, ‘even the dogs’
Healing is like bread.
Jesus is the bread from heaven.
I was studying and came across an article written by Terry Nod who suggested,
‘Jesus will trade her places with her, and her request will be answered and his prayer will find silence from God.’
David, Mephibosheth, the Canaanite woman, and Jesus, all show humility, and submission to authority, and for Christ it was to his harm and our good. Their reverence is rewarded. Yours will be too.
We like Mephibosheth and the Canaanite eat at the King’s table, and find restorative nourishment.
And for some of us like Christ we will hear ‘no’ or perhaps no answer at all and trust our spirit to the Lord, to be raised after death, into life eternal and the joyful wedding feast of the Lamb.
Jesus asks in prayer, “Let this cup pass from me,” and finds out there is no other way. Much like the bear hunt children’s song you can’t go over it and you can’t go around it you have to go through it. NOD suggests Jesus, like the woman, experienced the silence of God when he cried out “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” He became, like the woman, the total outsider, and was considered the enemy of God when the sins of the world were laid upon him. Yet, despite God’s silence, despite the no response to Christ’s prayer, God was powerfully at work in the death of his son Jesus, bringing about the forgiveness of sins which leads to the reconciliation of the world.’ To me this all kind of fit with the role reversal that we see.
All of this was just a rough draft and I stuck with it, like your go to sack lunch in grade school. Hope you begin to dig for the carrots of God’s word and feast on a collection of thoughts from the word of the Lord. I could keep digging on this whole posture of humility before authority, and how biblical it is to have no problem with thinking less of oneself. This of course is not the same as negative self talk. These three passages, David before Saul, then Mephibosheth, and the Canaanite woman all show reverent humility when approaching authority. And we know how prized David was to God, and how further how beloved the SON is to the Father, so humility does not diminish value.
Consider God’s exceptionally high value of us in light of his love for the Son! OOOOOh how much God loves the whole world! JOHN 3:16-17
What faithfulness.
