Scripture: 2 Samuel 21:1-14
Theme: Rizpah
Title: It’s Tough to Be a Mom
Rizpah is the picture of strength, patience, fortitude and courage. She is an amazing woman who helped a nation return to God.
INTRO:
Grace and peace from God the Father, Son and Holy Spirit!
Happy Mother’s Day!
Today is the day that we celebrate motherhood. It’s the day that we give flowers, gifts and candy. It is the day that we may take our mothers out to lunch and remind ourselves of the beauty, the majesty and the God-ordained anointing that these women have on their lives; especially those who we call mother.
It’s the day we honor their sacrifice, their patience, their wisdom and grace. It is the day that we celebrate their strength and their fortitude. It is the day that we celebrate that God’s final creation at least on our earth was the creation of a woman.
And while the world today appears to be confused as to what can be labeled a woman, the LORD GOD ALMIGHTY has never and will never be confused. The Bible plainly states:
“So, God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them.” – Genesis 1:27
We don’t know how long Adam and Eve lived in the Garden of Eden. We don’t know if their time in the Garden stretched over months and years but from what we can gather is that they were there for a long time.
But then came the opportunity for the Devil to destroy Eve. I say Eve because we do not read of an encounter between the Devil and Adam. While we know that Adam sinned as well, the Devil approached Eve. His words were to lead her to her destruction and death.
Was it because she was God’s final and highest creation on earth?
Was it because she would be the one that the LORD would use to bring new life to the Garden of Eden and to the world?
Was it because she was more susceptible?
We really don’t know, nor does it do us any good to speculate.
All we know is that according to the story she was the one that was attacked. Attacked with the goal that she would rebel against God, sin and would die. That she would be removed from the scene and gone forever. That God’s perfect plan would now be a pile of dust.
From that time on, women have been the subject of attack repeatedly. That is true today.
+Attacked for their beauty or lack of beauty.
+Attached for their ability to have children or not have children.
+Attached for their ability to be a good mother or not be a good mother.
+Attached for their ability to do certain things or not do certain things.
I don’t claim this morning to understand all that women and mothers in particular go through. I just don’t. I am not able. I am not a woman or a mother.
However, I can read different things about women, I can listen to the stories of women, and I can sit and learn at their feet. I can relish their wisdom and grace.
The story this morning is not at first a wonderful story.
It is not the story that you would might share around the lunch or dinner table.
It is not the story that you would want to call all your friends together and spend time rejoicing over; that is until you understand it in its entirety.
It is not the story of the Proverbs 31 woman, Sarah, Hannah or even Mary.
It is the story of a woman who for most of her life was the subject of scorn, ridicule, injustice and tragedy.
It is the story of a woman who responded to all that happened to her and her family with bravery, fortitude, patience, love, devotion and strength.
It’s a rather strange story. One that you might not think that you would find in the Bible.
In fact, of all the things that had to have happened in David’s time as King of Judah and Israel it is a rather strange story to have made the final cut.
That in itself; that this story survived and then later was written down and has remained for thousands of years causes us to take the time to see what we are to learn, what we are to understand and what we are to do in response.
Rizpah – You don’t hear of very many people with that name.
In a list of popular names, it ranks 23, 093rd. Rizpah means hot coal or hot stove.
The Rizpah in the Bible that we meet in our story has already had to endure a great deal in her life.
+She was a descendant of Esau and at some point became a concubine of King Saul.
What that means is she had either become his concubine; subordinate wife either by way of her being a gift from a lesser country leader, or King Saul had won her in battle or had bought her as a slave.
However, when she got to King Saul, one thing was clear – her main duties were to be a slave/servant to his primary wife and to physically please King Saul and bear his children. In essence she was to be a slave and a breeder, nothing more and nothing less. Not the position many women choose for themselves in this life.
+She became the center of a political insurrection.
After King Saul’s death the nation of Israel was divided for a time with 11 of the tribes choosing Saul’s son Ish-bosheth as King while the tribe of Judah chose David to be their king. Over the next 6 ½ years the two houses Ish-bosheth and David went to war against one another with each year David and his kingdom of Judah become stronger and stronger.
Ish-bosheth’s main military general was a man named Abner. Abner believed that in a matter of months, if Ish-bosheth was not replaced the nation of Israel would be taken over by King David and Judah.
Abner declared his right to the throne by capturing Rizpah and sleeping with her and making the news public. By doing so he was saying he had the rights to King Saul’s throne. I know it all sounds rather strange and odd but that was one of the ways that people did things in those days.
Rizpah was not loved by Abner. She was just a political way to declare that he could spit in the face of Ish-bosheth, take this woman that had been King Saul’s concubine and use her to declare how brave and how worthy he would be as the new king of Israel.
So, here is this woman who has already had to suffer being a slave, a breeder to the throne only to now be used as a means to take the throne.
But that would not be the end of her suffering and pain.
For as we see in our passage this morning some years have passed.
The two sons that she had with King Saul were now grown men.
Life may have been hard but under King David she had found peace. Her family was intact and her life seemed to be going on without any interference.
That is until the Gibeonites began to complain.
There was a famine going on in the land. It had been going on for three years. Crops were dying, animals were dying and the nation was suffering from the loss of revenue, taxes, employment and prosperity.
People were searching for an answer. Something or someone was causing this famine. Whatever it took to appease the gods had to happen to change things. In this case, they didn’t blame the gods but God – the LORD GOD ALMIGHTY.
And so, the Gibeonites who if you remember had tricked Joshua years ago, were now tricking King David into doing something foolish. Something extremely foolish.
They pointed to King Saul and blamed him for all their troubles and therefore for this famine.
Again, I know it all doesn’t make any common sense but when things are not going well, money is tight, jobs are being lost, the country is going the wrong direction or a pandemic of one kind or the other happens and more than one nation has done something foolish.
+Think of Germany in the 1930’s and 40’s who put all the blame on the Jewish People which lead to the Holocaust.
+Rome who blamed the Early Church for its problems which lead to thousands of Christians being murdered.
+The United States who blamed the Native Americans for this problem and that problem which led to thousands of deaths and alienating Native Americans to live on reservations.
The answer we find in our story this morning is both monstrous and tragic. They were to take seven of King Saul’s family members and hand them over to the Gibeonites. The Gibeonites would try them and put them to death and so by doing so the famine would end.
Again, it all sounds rather strange and foolish, and it is and was foolish and strange. Why in the world would King David believe the Gibeonites who had a history of lying and tricking people is beyond me. He should have just reread the story of Joshua and reject this idea.
But even good people do stupid things.
This is where Rizpah comes back into our story.
She is an older woman. She has lived with the indignity of being a concubine. She has lived with being molested by Abner to get the throne. Now, she is just living in peace.
Only, it is not peace. They come and take her sons and they killed them and leave their bodies hanging either on poles or in a set of trees.
Again, not a great thing to think about; especially on Mother’s Day but then again what happens next is rather amazing.
Rizpah leaves her house and sets up camp. She brings sackcloth and covers the area where her sons are hanging. For the next five months she stays there protecting the bodies of her two boys from the birds of the air and the beasts at night.
She does not have the power or the authority to take them down and give them a proper burial. She is once again a victim of torture, rejection and persecution.
But we see her love, her devotion, her strength and her willingness to do anything to protect her children even if they are now dead.
She will not let them be forgotten. She will not let people forget her. She will not remain silent.
And she will not allow anyone to think that what has happened was what the LORD GOD ALMIGHTY wanted to happen.
Such behavior was what the gods of Molech and Baal might have desired. But in no way would the Good God of Creation, the Lord God Almighty desire the death of these seven innocent young men for something that either King Saul had done or was the lie of the Gibeonites.
I can say that this morning because for all those five months the famine continued.
The rains did not come according to the story until the bodies were taken down and given a decent burial. On top of that King David located the bones of both King Saul and Jonathan and buried them as well in the land of Benjamin.
It’s not a story that warms the heart, but it is one that tells of the courage, the tenacity and the strength of this woman. This woman, this mother who had been mistreated most of her life. This woman who had to endure pain beyond measure. This woman who had been the pawn of King Saul, Abner, the Gibeonites and King David. This woman who could have ended her own life and to tell the truth most people reading this story would have not blamed her if she had chosen that route.
She reminds us this morning of another strong mother, her name is Mamie Till Mobley.
Her son, Emmett Till was murdered back on August 28, 1955. His body had been tortured to the point where most people would have had a closed casket but Mamie chose not to. She wanted the world to see what had happened to her boy.
She knew that the only reason her son had been tortured, shot in the head, hanged and his body ripped apart and thrown into the water was because of the color of his skin and the fact that he had allegedly winked at or whistled at a young white woman in Mississippi.
Mamie could have quietly put her son to rest. But leaving his casket open and making the world see what had been done to her son caused a national conversation to go to a fever pitch over racism. Over 50,000 people attended Emmett’s funeral. Hundreds of thousands saw his mutilated body. It was one of the primary major events that stirred the Civil Rights Movement of the 50’s and 60’s.
Stories that like that cause us to pause. We don’t like reading about them. We don’t like having to remind ourselves of what our world was like back in the time of King David or in our own country just a little over 60 years ago.
However, it takes people of great courage doing rather unusual things to get a nation to change. Rizpah did that for the nation of Israel and Mamie Till did that for the United States.
No one was going to dishonor their children. No one was going to be able to discard them off to the side. Evil had been done to them. They had done nothing to receive such treatment. And no one was going to be able to forget them or their story.
Again, we must remember that it wasn’t until the bodies of King Saul, Jonathan and the others that died were taken down and given a decent burial that the famine came to an end.
Israel learned once again:
+Do not believe the Gibeonites – people that will lie, cheat and steal to get their way in the past may continue to lie, cheat and steal to get their way. Trust but verify. Believe by believe only after you have seen the proof.
+Do not accept the sacrifice of innocent people to get God’s attention – He is not the God of Baal or Molech – He is the Good God of Creation, He is the LORD GOD ALMIGHTY, He is the Great I AM – the God who saves, the God who dies for mankind not mankind for Him.
Today, we must stand up for the Rizpah’s of our world.
+Women/mothers who are being dehumanized – who are being victimized and used as sex slaves.
+Women who are suffering – Rizpah is not the first woman to lose a child – and whether that child is lost by way of murder, accident, war or disease the result is still the same. There is grief, there is a grief that no amount of time will ever completely heal. There is a grief that stays forever and ever.
+Women who are having their personhood taken away – today, amid being politically correct we must be careful as we try to be as accepting as possible that we do not allow the fundamentals of God’s creation to be wiped away. We cannot allow womanhood or motherhood to be diminished. We cannot allow womanhood to be redefined to the point where once again we will be living in a world where women will be so underdefined that they will find themselves under bondage and captivity.
If there ever was a time when the world needs to recognize the need to honor, to support, to uphold God’s plan and place for women and for mothers it is today.
+Women are uniquely created by God. They are God’s Masterpieces.
+Women have been given the privilege by God to be able to bring children into the world.
+Without women there is no future for mankind; physically, emotionally and even spiritually.
+It was by a young woman named Mary that the LORD GOD ALMIGHTY asked to bring for His Only Begotten Son so that the world could be rescued, redeemed and restored into His Own Image.
+Women are to be honored and respected for who God has made them.
One of the things that has happened over the years as a result of this story is that there are all kinds of ministries all over the world that go by the name of Rizpah. They are ministries that reach out to people who have been mistreated, abused and are going through the suffering and tragedies of losing their children. There are ministries that lift up her name and use that name as a means of helping others that have been treated like she was treated.
Not the usual Mother’s Day message.
But then again, not every mother’s story is flowers and sunshine.
Many women, mothers are suffering today. Many of them are suffering in silence.
As the Church we must take a stand that we are there for women and we are there for motherhood. Enough said.
Let us take a moment and pray for our mothers this morning.
Prayer/Blessing –
