Back when I was in college, a friend and I used to go cave exploring as often as possible. Sometimes we went caving about twice a week. One evening we followed a lead for a new cave that we heard about, one that was in the top of a ridge and was supposed to be really huge. When someone tells you a cave is really big, then it probably won’t be much bigger than a groundhog hole.
After an hour of walking up and down some really big hills, we finally saw a small hole at the top of a knob. As we got down on all fours, we crawled in about five feet and we started smelling something really bad. We crawled a little further and we soon discovered the source of the smell. It was an old dead dog. We later named the cave Dead Dog Cave.
A dead dog is a very unpleasant image to think about. We don’t want to imagine such a thing, but how many of us actually think about a dead dog, perhaps on a daily basis? This probably sounds like a really strange question; but we will see today that fear can conjure within our minds the image of a dead dog. You see, if any of us live in fear on a daily basis, the dead dog we see is ourselves. Now, hang on and we’ll soon see what this is all about!
This morning we are going to look at the account of a young man named Mephibosheth who, after having an encounter with fear, looked upon himself as a dead dog. We will come to see that many of us view ourselves as dead dogs too; and we are also going to learn how we can overcome a dead dog image.
Fear Can Be Crippling (2 Samuel 4:4)
4 Jonathan, Saul’s son, had a son who was lame in his feet. He was five years old when the news about Saul and Jonathan came from Jezreel; and his nurse took him up and fled. And it happened, as she made haste to flee, that he fell and became lame. His name was Mephibosheth.
Can somebody say Mephibosheth? King Saul’s grandson, Mephibosheth, was taken away by his nursemaid in a flight of fear after she had heard about the death of Saul and the death of Mephibosheth’s father, Jonathan. It is not entirely Mephibosheth’s fault that he was on the run, but because he was running he fell and became lame. What I want to point out here is that when we run from tough situations because of fear it can become crippling to us.
Fear is crippling to our trust in God; and fear comes by way of a lacking of faith. “Fear whispers to us that God is not really big enough to take care of us. It tells us we are not really safe in His hands.”(1) The more times we doubt God, the more we become afraid, and the more we are afraid, the more we are wounded. And the more we are wounded, the more we continue to distrust God, and this cycle seems to go on and on, never seeming to end. We keep right on fearing, not trusting God and never living in the blessings that come from a wholehearted devotion and trust in the Lord – we are crippled.
Fear causes a person to back down from a difficult situation – perhaps even something to which the Lord could have called them – and then that person begins a pattern of running away. Running away leads to feelings of guilt, shame and failure, and we lose our “Christ-esteem.” We forget how our Lord, Jesus Christ, sees us. We forget how deeply we are loved and treasured.
The Christian must think in terms of Christ-esteem, but the world uses the term self-esteem. The American Psychological Association’s research on self-esteem explains that low self-esteem “boils down to one issue: When you face a difficult situation, do you approach it, take action, and face it head on, or do you avoid it, wimp out, and run and hide? . . . When you avoid facing up to a threatening situation, even if things end up turning out all right, inside you say, ‘But the truth is, I wimped out. I didn’t do the hard thing. I took the easy way out’.”(2) This is the point at which we begin losing courage to attempt anything else.
This research shows that avoidance kills an inner sense of confidence and worth. This, in turn, causes us to back away from God for we feel unworthy to come into His presence. God then asks us to follow Him in faith in a difficult situation, a God-sized task, and we fail to trust Him because we are distant from the Lord in our relationship with Him. And then after we fail to trust Him and follow in faith we feel even more like a failure. We feel that we are unworthy of God’s love altogether. Like I said, it’s a viscous and seemingly never ending cycle.
Fear Leads to a Dead Dog Image (2 Samuel 9:1-8)
1 Now David said, “Is there still anyone who is left of the house of Saul, that I may show him kindness for Jonathan’s sake?” 2 And there was a servant of the house of Saul whose name was Ziba. So when they had called him to David, the king said to him, “Are you Ziba?” He said, “At your service!” 3 Then the king said, “Is there not still someone of the house of Saul, to whom I may show the kindness of God?” And Ziba said to the king, “There is still a son of Jonathan who is lame in his feet.” 4 So the king said to him, “Where is he?” And Ziba said to the king, “Indeed he is in the house of Machir the son of Ammiel, in Lo Debar.”
5 Then King David sent and brought him out of the house of Machir the son of Ammiel, from Lo Debar. 6 Now when Mephibosheth the son of Jonathan, the son of Saul, had come to David, he fell on his face and prostrated himself. Then David said, “Mephibosheth?” And he answered, “Here is your servant!” 7 So David said to him, “Do not fear, for I will surely show you kindness for Jonathan your father’s sake, and will restore to you all the land of Saul your grandfather; and you shall eat bread at my table continually.” 8 Then he bowed himself, and said, “What is your servant, that you should look upon such a dead dog as I?”
A very familiar verse to Christians is Jeremiah 29:11, in which God tells us, “For I know the thoughts that I think toward you . . . thoughts of peace and not of evil, to give you a future and a hope.” Another familiar verse is Romans 8:28, in which we read, “And we know that all things work together for good to those who love God, to those who are the called according to His purpose.” God wants the best for those who love Him and who know His Son, Jesus Christ, as their Savior and Lord. He has only thoughts of peace towards us, and He wants to give us a bright future and hope for tomorrow. So, why are some of us not receiving God’s best? Perhaps because we’re walking in disobedience, which is sin.
God’s best will come to those who choose to follow Him in obedience. A lack of His best in our life is the result of following another path than God intended for us. If we choose to be obedient and follow where God asks us to go, then the path He chooses will sooner or later lead to something amazing. The bottom line is that fear causes us to walk down the wrong path, to be disobedient to God, and thus miss out on some pretty awesome things. But because of God’s great love toward us He gives us another chance time and again.
In these verses King David is symbolic of God. Just as David, in verse 1, sought out someone on whom to show kindness, God is continually seeking someone on whom to bestow His favor, in order to bring glory to Himself. David brought Mephibosheth before him and said, “Do not fear, for I will surely show you kindness” (v. 7), however Mephibosheth said, “What is your servant, that you should look upon such a dead dog as I?” (v. 8).
Whenever we have fled in fear and missed God’s blessings as a result, we lose our trust in God, and we also lose our Christ-esteem, because of our disobedience and failure. And when we feel like we have failed God, we condemn ourselves and we distance ourselves from Him. We feel that God must not be able to love us after what we did. What happens is we fail to realize that God is gracious and that He wants to give us another chance.
Instead of coming to receive God’s forgiveness, we walk around in our self-created condemnation, looking upon ourselves as unworthy and we tend to see ourselves as something akin to a dead dog. We feel as if we are helpless to find a way out of our pattern of disobedience and sin; and, therefore, we don’t bother to come to God for His help. We think that we are forever to be distant from the Lord, and forever out of God’s will.
This mentality is called “learned helplessness,” and if we think like this then we will soon become a dead dog. I want to share with you an interesting study that was conducted on some real life dogs. The following illustration is provided by John Ortberg. He’s the author of If You Want to Walk on Water, You’ve Got to Get Out of the Boat. As I read this illustration, keep in mind that this study occurred during the 1960’s, before animal rights; so, if you’re tender-hearted toward animals, then you might not like this. John Ortberg says,
One of the most influential psychology experiments of the twentieth century involved [learned helplessness]. Martin Seligman was a graduate student at the University of Pennsylvania in the 1960’s when he stumbled onto an interesting phenomenon . . . It happened when dogs were given slight electric shocks over which they had no control – no matter what the dogs did, they could not stop the shocks. The shocks simply stopped at random.
Later the dogs were placed in a situation where they could easily stop the shocks. They were put in a box that had a low barrier in the middle of it; all they had to do was step over the barrier to the other side and the shocks would stop. Ordinarily dogs learn to do this very quickly. When they are shocked they start jumping around and discover that crossing the barrier brings relief. However, these previously shocked dogs had apparently learned something different – they “learned” that they were powerless to stop the shocks. They came to believe that no matter how hard they tried, nothing they did would make a difference. So they stopped trying. They lay down and refused to move even though a few steps would have made all the difference in the world.(3)
Fear causes many of us to be disobedient in performing a difficult task that God has asked of us, and then our disobedience leads to hardship. And when we enter hardship we feel like one of those dogs trapped in the box. We feel that life will never get any better, and so we just lie down like one of those dogs and give up. But like those dogs, all we have to do for things to improve is take one step in the right direction and it will all end. God offers us forgiveness and another chance to receive His best, but we are often stuck where we are because we don’t realize that all we have to do is take that step towards God.
Our True Image in God’s Grace (2 Samuel 9:9-11)
9 And the king called to Ziba, Saul’s servant, and said to him, “I have given to your master’s son all that belonged to Saul and to all his house. 10 You therefore, and your sons and your servants, shall work the land for him, and you shall bring in the harvest, that your master’s son may have food to eat. But Mephibosheth your master’s son shall eat bread at my table always.” Now Ziba had fifteen sons and twenty servants. 11 Then Ziba said to the king, “According to all that my lord the king has commanded his servant, so will your servant do.” “As for Mephibosheth,” said the king, “he shall eat at my table like one of the king’s sons.”
David desired to bless someone in the royal bloodline, just as God desires to bless those who have come into His lineage through a relationship with Jesus Christ. Mephibosheth was part of Saul’s lineage; however, He wasn’t living like royalty. He had learned fear from his fleeing nursemaid; and as we see back in verse 4, his life of fear left him hiding out in the wilderness in a placed called Lo Debar.
One author tells us that “Lo Debar means ‘pastureless.’ [And that] in an agricultural society a place without pastures was probably a place of [hunger]. Why would a king’s grandson be living in such a place? Why hadn’t he come to the palace claiming his rights and privileges as an heir of King Saul, not to mention his rights and privileges as the son of Jonathon, who had covenant relationship with the present king? . . . In ancient Israel, when two people entered into a covenant relationship, everything each of them possessed was made available to the other.”(4)
Fear and feelings of failure caused Mephibosheth to feel unworthy to approach the king. He was living as a slave to fear rather than as a child of royalty. Slaves live in hardship and condemnation while people of royalty live in abundance.
Breaking free of fear and the sin of disobedience, and the associated feelings of failure and condemnation, comes only by understanding our true identity in Christ. Until we understand who we are in Christ, we will continue in this destructive cycle of fear, disobedience, and insignificance. Until we understand the grace of God, and His unconditional love for us, we will remain distant from the Lord, living in some far off place of spiritual poverty.
So, who are we in Christ? Each of us who have a personal relationship with Jesus, and who have invited Him into our heart, are children of a King. If we who are Christ’s are of royal decent, then why do we commit ourselves to living in spiritual bondage? It’s because many of us haven’t understood God’s grace, or His free gift to us. God offers us the free gift of His one and only Son to pay the penalty for our sins, not only that we might have eternal life, but that we might also become royal children. In Galatians 4:1-5 we read that the shed blood of Jesus Christ paid the price for our freedom so that we might become the adopted children of God. Through Jesus we become one of God’s own children and it is a free gift that we receive from God.
The Lord does not view us as some dead dog, but as His child who is alive and well forever more. So what are the benefits of being a child of God? First, we read in verse 9 that all that belonged to King Saul and to his household now belonged to Mephibosheth. When we become children of God we receive an inheritance. 1 Peter 1:3-4 says, “Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who according to His abundant mercy has begotten us again to a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead, to an inheritance incorruptible and undefiled and that does not fade away, reserved in heaven for you.”
Secondly, we read in verse 11 that Mephibosheth would eat at the King’s table as one of his own sons. When we become a child of God we eat with the King, meaning that we have a close relationships or friendship with the King. Jesus said in Revelation 3:20, “Behold, I stand at the door and knock. If anyone hears My voice and opens the door, I will come in to him and [have dinner with him], and he with Me.”
Because the King grants us an eternal inheritance and close intimate friendship we know that we are valued in His sight. God does not view us as a dead dog, and if we could only overcome our fear for just a moment and draw close enough to the Lord to see ourselves through His eyes, then we would run to Him; and when we run to Him and feel His warm embrace the fears will subside.
Then we will learn to trust Him more and to be more obedient to follow Him in difficult situations; and as God comes through for us during those times of great difficulty then our trust in Him will grow even greater until fear becomes a thing of the past. The cycle of fear, disobedience and failure will change to trust, obedience and success; and instead of feeling rejected and condemned we will feel loved and treasured.
If we wish to break the destructive cycle of fear then we have to realize that there is safety on the other side of the barrier. We must stop lying around like some helpless dog, and we must get up and walk as beloved children, and cross over and enter into the safety of God’s arms.
Time of Reflection
You might be a Christian this morning who is living in fear. You might feel condemned because you have not drawn close enough to God in your Christian life to truly know the joy of trusting Him and following Him in obedience. But you have an opportunity to change that today, to repent of your disobedience, and to begin walking in faith and trust.
You might also be someone who does not know Jesus Christ as Savior and Lord. If you do not know Jesus, then you too are living in fear because you really are condemned, and the reason why is because of your sins. Romans 6:23 says, “The wages of sin is death.” Fear causes us to lie down right where we are, and to feel as if there is no hope, and we feel as though we are dead. You may be afraid to come to Christ because you think that the Christian life is one of condemnation, where God sits in heaven judging us for every little sin; but if you fail to come to Christ, you truly are dead in your sins.
But there is hope, and that hope comes from taking one step of faith and crossing over to the other side; and when you get there you will discover that you are deeply loved and cherished.
NOTES
(1) John Ortberg, If You Want to Walk on Water, You’ve Got to Get Out of the Boat (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2001), p. 130.
(2) Ibid., pp. 124-125.
(3) Ibid., p. 158.
(4) Joyce Meyer, How To Succeed at Being Yourself (Tulsa: Harrison House, 1999), pp. 28-29.
