You may come and come to God not knowing who God really is; the Gibeonites just had a little sliver of knowledge. You may not know much about God’s Word; the get into, but only knew that the God of Israel was powerful and would destroy. You may come to God motivated solely by self-preservation, that’s all you want, just like the Gibeonites, I just want to save my skin.
Well, that’s not where you should end as a Christian, but it may be that that’s where you begin as God hears your cry.
So friends, if you have mixed motives, come. If you’re not sure, come. If there’s lots of things you don’t know, still come. God sent Christ into the world to save the world through His death and resurrection. Don’t we see through the ministry of the Lord Jesus how eager He is. If you come ready to defend yourself, He pushes away, puts a finger in your eye. But if you come with just the smallest sliver of faith, just the smallest even sense of your need and you come to Jesus and you know you’re blind, and you know you’re a harlot and you know you’re in need of forgiveness, Jesus opens wide His arms. Come with your weakness, come with your need, come with your sins.
The Gibeonites did a lot of things wrong but the one thing they got right is they came. And you, too, can live among God’s people, and like the Gibeonites you can draw near to the one true God. He is eager to show you grace. Come to Him for rescue.
This clip is part of the sermon “The Folly of Man and the Mercy of God” delivered by Dr. Kevin DeYoung at Christ Covenant Church in Matthews, NC on October 20, 2024.