February 18, 2024 – 2 Samuel 21

Lesson Date: February 18, 2024

Focal Scripture Passage: 1 Samuel 21:1-14

AIM: To lead students to discover the terrible costs of a single broken promise, and to confess and correct any promises they have broken and make a commitment to God to keep their promises.

Before class: Read the notes on 2 Samuel 21 – 22 found in the Sunday School Teacher Book.  Prepare enough of the index cards or small pieces of paper described in the CONCLUSION step for your anticipated attendance.

INTRODUCTION (Create Learning Readiness): Tell the students the following story:

One bright summer day Dan and Hailey stood before a preacher and nervously repeated their wedding vows.  Dan promised to love, honor, and cherish Hailey until the day he died.  Several years and two children later, however, Dan had grown tired of Hailey.  He met a friendly woman at the local health club, and in time an adulterous affair began.  Dan and Hailey’s marriage eventually broke up, and their kids spent the rest of their childhood and adolescent years being shuttled back and forth between their divorced parents.

Tell the class that Dan broke the promise he made to Hailey.  Stress the fact that broken promises hurt.  Ask: “What were some of the costs of Dan’s broken promise?” (they should name some of the following: he violated his marriage vows, his rejection deeply hurt Hailey, his actions thrust Hailey into the hard life of a single mom, he hurt his children so much that his relationship with them was never again the same, and he caused his children to grow up in two different homes with two different sets of rules).

Tell the students the title of today’s lesson is Costs of a Broken Promise.  Tell them as we continue our study of King David, we will discover some terrible costs of a single broken promise.

HEART OF THE LESSON (Bible Study):

1. Review.
   • Give everyone a copy of the new Sunday School Member Quarterly for our Spring quarter study of the Old Testament books of Jonah and Proverbs.
   • Tell them we are nearing the end of our study of 2 Samuel.
   • Ask: “What was last week’s lesson about?” (Costs of a Father’s Regret; David’s deep regret over the death of Absalom, which hurt many people).
   • Remind the students that David’s army put down Absalom’s rebellion, after which David returned to Jerusalem and tried to bring order to his war-torn and divided nation.
2. A Broken Promise Hurt a Nation.
   • Ask a volunteer to read 2 Samuel 21:1.
   • Ask: “What was the next problem David faced?” (there was a famine in the land).
   • Ask: “What is a famine?” (extreme scarcity of food, possibly caused by lack of rain).
   • Tell the class that we are accustomed to going to the store or ordering the food we need, but these ancient people depended on raising crops and livestock to feed themselves.
   • Ask: “How long did the famine last?” (three years).
   • Ask: “When faced with this serious problem, what did David do?” (he asked the Lord why they were suffering under such a severe famine).
   • Tell the students there is a good lesson for us in this: when faced with problems, we should always go to God for help and guidance.
   • Ask: “How did the Lord answer David?” (He said the famine was because Saul and his bloody family had killed the Gibeonites; locate Gibeon on the Map).
   • Explain the following:
     • The background for this is found in Joshua 9.
     • Ask everyone to turn there.
     • Before the Israelites entered the Promised Land, God warned them not to make peace treaties with any of the local people.
     • The Gibeonites tricked Joshua and the elders of Israel into thinking they were from a faraway land, so Israel made a peace treaty with them.
   • Ask a volunteer to read Joshua 9:19-20.
   • Stress the fact that the Israelites swore by the name of the Lord to protect the Gibeonites.
   • Ask: “What did they say would happen if they harmed the Gibeonites?” (God’s wrath would fall upon them).
   • Ask everyone to turn back to 2 Samuel 21, and then read 2 Samuel 21:2.
   • Explain the following:
     • David summoned the leaders of the surviving Gibeonites.
     • Tell the class Israel’s promise to the Gibeonites was made 400 years before David became king.
     • Saul’s murderous action is not recorded anywhere else in the Bible, but it happened years before David became king.
     • Humans probably forgot or overlooked this broken promise, but God did not.
   • Summarize: King Saul broke a promise made hundreds of years earlier by Joshua and the leaders of Israel. Because of this, God sent a terrible famine upon the entire nation during David’s reign.
3. A Broken Promise Hurt a Family.
   • Read 2 Samuel 21:3-4.
   • Tell the class that David asked the Gibeonites what he could do to make up for Saul’s brutal breaking of their peace treaty.
   • Ask: “According to verse 4, what did the Gibeonites NOT want?” (they didn’t want any of Saul’s money or property and they didn’t want David to execute anyone).
   • Ask a volunteer to read 2 Samuel 21:5-6.
   • Ask: “What did the Gibeonites want?” (they wanted seven of Saul’s male descendants to be delivered over to them so they could execute them; they wanted to do this in Saul’s hometown of Gibeah; locate on the Map).
   • Explain the following to the class:
     • In the minds of these pagan Gibeonites, these seven men would be sacrificed as a sort of appeasement offering to the Lord.
     • The Gibeonites acknowledged that the Lord chose Saul to be king over Israel.
     • David agreed to their harsh and brutal request.
   • Read 2 Samuel 21:7-9.
   • Ask: “According to verse 7, why did David spare Jonathan’s son Mephibosheth?” (because of the promise he had made to Mephibosheth’s father Jonathan; David kept his promise).
   • Tell the class David took two sons of Saul’s concubine Rizpah, along with five of Saul’s grandsons whom David’s estranged wife Michal had raised, and handed them over to the Gibeonites.
   • Ask: “What did the Gibeonites do to the seven men?” (they executed them and hanged their bodies on a hill; they did this at the beginning of the barley harvest in late April).
   • Summarize: Because Saul broke the promise made by Joshua and the leaders of Israel, seven of his descendants died, causing hurt to the rest of his family.
4. A Broken Promise Hurt a Mother.
   • Read 2 Samuel 21:10-11.
   • Ask: “Why did Rizpah stay and watch over the dead bodies of her sons and the other men?” (to keep birds and animals from eating them).
   • Tell the class she maintained her gruesome vigil until the rains came (marking the end of the famine).
   • Ask: “According to verse 11, who heard about Rizpah’s lonely vigil?” (David).
   • Read 2 Samuel 21:12-14.
   • Explain the following:
     • Motivated by Rizpah’s devotion, David retrieved the bones of Saul and Jonathan from Jabesh-gilead (locate on the Map).
     • He then gathered the bones of the seven men executed by the Gibeonites.
     • David gave Saul, Jonathan, and the other seven men respectful burials in their family tomb.
   • Ask: “According to the last sentence of verse 14, what did God do?” (ended the famine).
   • Explain the following:
     • The rest of chapter 21 reveals that David’s army won several more victories over the Philistines.
     • In these battles, David’s loyal soldiers killed the four sons of Goliath, the giant David killed many years before (1 Sam. 17).
     • David then wrote a song of thanksgiving and praise to God for delivering him out of the hand of his enemies.
     • That song is found in chapter 22 and also in Psalm 18.
   • Summarize: Because Saul broke the promise made by Joshua and the leaders of Israel, a bereaved mother spent weeks guarding the decaying bodies of her sons.

PERSONAL APPLICATION: Remind the students that the title of today’s lesson is Costs of a Broken Promise.

Ask: “What were the costs of King Saul breaking Israel’s promise?”  Students should name the following:

• The entire nation endured three terrible years of famine, during which individuals and families grew weak, some undoubtedly died, and Israel’s economy was devastated.
• Saul’s family suffered the loss of seven descendants of Saul, causing grief, hardship, and fear to any other surviving family members.
• Rizpah lost weeks of her life keeping vigil over the decaying bodies of her sons and the other five men.

Stress the fact that King Saul broke the promise, but many other people paid the price.  Tell them this is because broken promises always cause hurt.

Tell the class that we all make promises.  Tell them that some of our promises are relatively insignificant (“I’ll be there at 10:00 a.m.”), some are very weighty (such as marriage vows and mortgage agreements), and many are somewhere in between.  Stress the fact that regardless of how “big” or “little” our promises might be, there will be costs if we break them.

Ask: “Have you broken any promises to another person?”  Tell them if possible, they should go to that person and apologize, and then make restitution if appropriate.

Ask: “Have you broken any promises to God?”  State that they may have promised to read the Bible every day, attend Sunday School and worship faithfully, give tithes and offerings to the Lord through the church, or witness to an unsaved friend.  Tell the students if they have broken any promises to God, they should confess that as sin, asking Him to forgive them and enable them to do what they promised.

Ask everyone to bow their head and close their eyes.  Urge them to make a commitment to keep their promises to God and to others, and to ask Him to help them keep their promises.  Allow a moment for private prayer, and then voice a closing prayer.

CONCLUSION: Give everyone an index card or small piece of paper on which you have written or printed the following question: “Have I kept my promises today?”  Ask them to put it on their bathroom mirror or nightstand so they will see it every night before going to bed.  Encourage everyone to be persons of integrity, doing what they say they will do.  Tell them if they are church members, they have made a promise to attend Sunday School and church faithfully; they should keep that promise.