“THE BLIND AND THE LAME” 2 SAMUEL 5.1–12, Easter 3, May ‘19

1.                Grace, mercy, and peace to you from God our Heavenly Father and our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.  The message from God’s Word today is taken from 2 Samuel 5:1-12 (READ TEXT).  It’s entitled, “The Blind & the Lame,” dear brothers and sisters in Christ.

2.                Pride has a terrible effect on the Christian life. It can take us to some horrible places.  The opposite of pride is humility. A number of pastoral interns in the same metropolitan area completed a self-evaluation exercise and showed it to their respective supervising pastors. One intern had assigned himself the highest possible rating, a “5,” in the category of humility. His supervisor looked at that item and asked him, “How does anyone give himself a 5 in humility?”

3.                In our text the proud Jebusite defenders of Jerusalem did somewhat the opposite. They were so proud that they used what they thought were disparaging terms to refer to themselves. This was really a boast. In the end they found that the disparaging terms really did apply to them after all.  So, it goes whenever we try to pat ourselves on the back. Pride goes before a fall.  Instead of speaking of ourselves in glowing terms, we should repent and hear in God-given faith the glowing terms in which he speaks to us. He speaks forgiveness, blessing, and life.

4.                At the beginning of this text David became king over all Israel. It was close to twenty years since David was anointed by Samuel. He had been waiting a long time for this moment.  When it came, David knew exactly what he was going to do. He made a military move on the city of Jerusalem, which lay in Jebusite hands. David wanted to start his reign over all Israel from a new capital city. Somewhat like Washington DC, Jerusalem was located more or less on the border between north and south. David could rule as king of a united Israel from there.

5.                But, Jerusalem commanded the high ground. It was a very difficult city to attack. The Jebusites inside boasted that even “the blind and the lame” could keep David and his soldiers out of the city. But David knew about an ancient water shaft, a tunnel that allowed access into the city. David’s men went up that shaft and attacked Jerusalem from within. They won an easy victory. The Jebusites turned out to be blind and lame in the face of David’s assault. As a result, Jerusalem now belonged to David.

6.                Of course, the Lord had done all these things for David. When the Lord was with David (v. 10), establishing him and his kingdom (v. 12), all of David’s enemies were blind and lame by comparison. David became great because the Lord was with him. According to God’s plan, everything was coming together for David. From here on, the story of David was not the account of his path to the throne, but rather the annals of his thirty-three years on the throne of Israel.  For a long, long time after David had taken Jerusalem, a saying made the rounds: “The blind and the lame shall not come into the house” (v. 8). David’s royal palace, was built in Jerusalem. The king permitted the conquered Jebusites to remain around Jerusalem, maybe because they  accepted David as their king and believed in the Lord as their God. All the same, they seem not to have been allowed inside David’s palace. The saying still called them “the blind and the lame.” These, of course, were the terms the Jebusites had applied to themselves before the battle.  Maybe, as a reminder of his victory, David kept these Jebusites—these “blind and lame ones”—out of his royal palace.

7.                About a thousand years later, on Palm Sunday, Jesus entered Jerusalem as the crowd shouted, “Hosanna to the Son of David!” He went to the temple and drove out the moneychangers. As he did, he quoted the words of the Lord through the prophet Isaiah: “My house shall be called a house of prayer” (Isaiah 56:7). Christ was asserting control over the temple.  Then, people came to him for healing in the temple. Matthew records that Jesus welcomed the blind and the lame into HIS house, and there he cured them (Matthew 21:9, 13, 14). Christ indeed showed himself to be “great David’s greater Son.”  There is more. Children who had followed Jesus into the temple from the streets were still crying out, “Hosanna to the Son of David.” When the chief priests and scribes complained, Jesus told them that from the mouths of babies God brings perfect praise (Matthew 21:15–16). The greatest praise of God is to receive his blessings.

8.                This was a moment of grace, not only for the blind and lame people but also for the chief priests and scribes. Even though they could see and walk, the chief priests and scribes were blind and lame in a way. They were spiritually blind and lame. These chief priests and scribes had in effect taken over David’s city and in their pride they did not want to let it go. They would not be able to withstand God’s power less than forty years later when he would use the Romans to destroy the city. Yet on that day in the temple the Lord Jesus, taking his place as rightful owner, was offering them his love. He was offering it even to proud people, spiritually blind and lame as they were. 

9.                Part of the problem we Christians have with spiritual lameness and blindness is that we can lose track of how sinfully blind and lame our sinful nature is until we get a “wake up call” from God’s law. One Christian businessman got the point. In an article with the tongue-in-cheek title “The Art of Being a Big Shot,” he wrote:  “It’s appealing to me to feel that I am the master of my fate, that I run my own life, call my own shots, go it alone. But that feeling is my basic dishonesty. I can’t go it alone. I have to get help from other people, and I can’t ultimately rely on myself. I’m dependent on God for my next breath. . . . So, living independent of God is self-delusion. It is not just a matter of pride being an unfortunate little trait and humility being an attractive little virtue, . . . When I am conceited, I am lying to myself about what I am. I am pretending to be God, and not man. My pride is the idolatrous worship of myself. And that is the national religion of Hell!”

10.             This man is right. Be honest: you meet these kinds of thoughts within yourself, don’t you? So do I.  In the final analysis, we cannot be talked out of them. Reasoning is not the answer. Prideful attitudes can only be killed by the God who kills in order to make alive. Nothing is more fatal to my pride than to see Jesus my Lord dying for me on the cross. He died in judgment on my pride and also in order to forgive me for it. Everything I might try to stand on is yanked out from under me when he says, “Father, forgive them.” Everything he has to give me, he gives with that reality of forgiveness. So he gives to you too.

11.             Often in this world there are people who seek to “find God” in their own way, and by their own definitions of who God is. Where can God be found? We give thanks He is right here as we gather as His people around the Means of Grace. We hear today’s Gospel of Jesus once again revealing Himself to the disciples, and we give thanks that He continues to reveal Himself to us in the Means of Grace. His Holy Spirit gives us the faith to believe and the eyes to recognize Him as He comes to us still today—our risen Redeemer and Savior.  That’s why today on Confirmation Sunday is an opportunity for all of us, especially you Confirmands, to rejoice in and to reaffirm our Baptisms, the time when our God adopted us into His family.  We recognize that none of us have spiritually arrived.   But, we fully rejoice in the grace of God that claimed us as His sons and daughters in the water and Word of Baptism.  We fully rejoice that He gives us His Holy Spirit to keep us in the true faith as He works through the Word and the Sacraments.

12.             This is the Christ who went out of his way to care for the blind and the lame in the temple. He healed those who were blind and lame in their bodies, and he reached out in grace to those who were blind and lame in their souls. By his Word he reaches out to you in forgiveness and blessing. He gave it to David. You might say that without God David wasn’t David. He lived from God’s rich supply. Remember, for a long time David had faced threats and problems from Saul, from the Philistines and Amalekites, and even from people who should have been among his friends. But the threats did not make him bitter. Any of those reactions would have amounted to another form of pride. But he continued to grow. “David became greater and greater, for the LORD, the God of hosts, was with him” (2 Samuel 5:10).

13.             This is the David who wrote Psalm 23. The Lord was his Shepherd. He lacked nothing. The Lord made him lie down in green pastures and led him beside still waters. The spiritually blind need a guide. That is what the Lord was for David. He provided the Gospel that restored David’s soul.  This Good Shepherd led David in the tracks of righteousness. We, too, can follow Jesus’ footsteps because he walked perfectly before God as our Substitute.  This Shepherd was with David, comforting him even in death’s dark valley. The Lord anointed his head with oil until his cup overflowed. It wasn’t going to be David’s enemies that would pursue him all the days of his life, but rather the Lord’s goodness and mercy. So David would dwell in the house of the Lord forever. David simply wasn’t David apart from this good and gracious God.

14.             Wouldn’t you like that to be said about you: that without God you aren’t really you? Well, it’s true. The new you created in Baptism is the real you, for in Baptism you have been crucified with Christ and raised with him. You have been baptized into one with his body, the church. The fact is that without Christ, you aren’t you. He is your Good Shepherd, and you are his sheep. Part of the adventure of living in him is learning the many ways in which this great truth proves true.

15.             An actress by the name of Lilly Langtry was the toast of London toward the end of the nineteenth century. Her fame spread to America as well. Once she told a friend that the most celebrated human male in two hemispheres was one Fred Gebhard. Her friend asked why. “Because I loved him,” she replied.  Pride oozed from this response. In a much greater way it is true of us that we are who we are because the Lord loves us. He gives the alternative to our speaking in glowing terms about ourselves. Having judged our sin, he now speaks to us in glowing terms, terms of forgiveness and blessing and life. Great David’s greater Son, Jesus, loves even the blind and the lame. In his love, he died for you as the great Shepherd of the sheep, and God brought him back from the dead.  Amen.  Now the peace that passes all understanding guard your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus until life everlasting.  Amen.