Sermons - Mill City Church

Group Guide Use this guide to help your group discussion as you meet this week. TranscriptGood morning, my name is Chet. I'm one of the pastors here. Grab a Bible and go to First Samuel, chapter 25. We are working our way through the book of First Samuel. We left off last week where David had the opportunity to murder Saul. Saul's been chasing David, trying to kill him. David finally has Saul right in his grasp in a cave and he does not kill him. He comes, cuts off a piece of his cloak, follows him out of the cave and says, see this? Do you notice that it used to belong to your cloak? Check out your cloak. I could have killed you and I didn't because I don't want to.Saul and David have this moment where Saul says, I'm wrong, I shouldn't be doing what I'm doing. There's a little bit of a peace. Then it says they head separate ways. We're picking up in chapter 25, and we're going to see this interaction with David and some other people, and we're going to see David actively pursuing sin and how God meets him in that, what happens, how David responds, and how these other people respond. Hopefully, we will learn along with David to appreciate correction.The verse says this:> Now Samuel died, and all Israel assembled and mourned for him and buried him in his house at Ramah.Samuel has passed and his work as the last judge is over. He's the last judge of Israel. He has transitioned under the leadership of God and under the desire of the people to a monarch ruling the land. It hasn't gone well. We've seen how all that's worked out. The last we saw him, David had run to him to try to hide while Saul was chasing him. He is now passed, and it says all Israel gathered to mourn. I think it is likely that that included David and Saul, but if it excluded one of them, it was probably David. The way the text is written seems as if David was there.It also says that Samuel was buried in his house at Ramah, which makes me think people didn't keep living in that house. I don't know; maybe it became a site for the people of Israel, but the text doesn't give us much information about that.Continuing in verse 1, it says:> Then David rose and went down to the wilderness of Paran. And there was a man whose business was in Carmel.The man was very rich. He had 3,000 sheep and a thousand goats. Take a moment and try to picture that. That's a lot of sheep and goats, a lot of people that have to tend to them. The man was shearing his sheep in Carmel. Now, you may have a picture of what shearing sheep is like. You understand that it's removing the excess wool from a sheep. But culturally, when we just say he's shearing his sheep, I don't think we completely capture the festivity.This was festive. In order to shear 3,000 sheep, you need a lot of shearers. They gather, it's like a harvest. You've kept these sheep alive all winter; it's now about to get hot, and it's spring. They gather. It's celebratory. A bunch of people together. The wool means wealth—he can use it, he can sell it. People gather, eat, celebrate, shear sheep, and then eventually they have to spread back out because you can't have that many sheep in one place at one time.So they've been all over the place, gather, shear the sheep, have a festival for however long this takes, a bunch of people together, then spread back out. That's what's happening. Culturally, when they heard "sheep shearing," it's like us hearing it's Christmas time. It's festive in their mind with all it entails.He's shearing his sheep. Verse 3:> Now the name of the man was Nabal, and the name of his wife Abigail.There's another cultural thing missed on us here: the word Nabal means fool or boorish; his name is "fool." If you spoke Hebrew, you'd catch that. Names mean things in their culture. Either it was a rough time in the life of his parents when he was born and they took it out on him, or he was born and his mom said, "You look a lot like your father; we're gonna name you Fool." Some family dynamics we don't want to get into. Or he has earned this name over time and just rolled with it.It'd be like if you introduced him as "my buddy Blockhead," and he'd say, "Sup?" You'd have guesses on what this dude's like. That's what's happening here: his name's Fool.Then it tells us where we are. The woman, Abigail, was discerning and beautiful, but the man was harsh and badly behaved. So he's earned it; he's lived up to it. At least he was a Calebite, meaning he comes from a prominent family inside the tribe of Judah. David is also in the tribe of Judah, so they would have considered each other kin, more especially kin than just being of the people of Israel.David heard in the wilderness that Nabal was shearing his sheep. So David sent ten young men, and David said to the young men:> Go up to Carmel, and go to Nabal, and greet him in my name. And thus you shall greet him:>> Peace be to you, and peace be to your house, and peace be to all that you have.>> I hear that you have shearers.>> Now your shepherds have been with us, and we did them no harm, and they missed nothing all the time they were in Carmel.>> Ask your young men, and they will tell you.>> Therefore, let my young men find favor in your eyes, for we come on a feast day.>> Please give whatever you have at hand to your servants and to your son David.David sends a ten-man delegation to say, "We hear you have shearers, which means it's a feast day. We've been with your shearers and shepherds. We've actually been part of the reason all your sheep are alive. If there's anything you could give us, that'd be great."This can sound a little extortionary to us: "I helped you out, you owe me." Maybe a little of that is there, but they're of the same tribe. This is a normal thing to be hospitable and to expect hospitality. So what David has helped him, he's saying, "I'm part of the reason why this has gone so well for you this year, and we'd like to participate in this feast."The next layer is that we're of the same tribe. They belong to each other. Another layer is you should just say yes to this anyway, no matter who shows up and asks because that's what the people of Israel are supposed to be like: hospitable and welcoming.Well above our cultural pressures to be hospitable and welcoming, this is a normal cultural thing that you would say yes to.It's a little bit like if someone says, "Hey, is there anything you could do? It would be really helpful. You know it is Christmas." Saying "It's Christmas" adds this "You should" kind of thing to it. But they should say yes all the time. At sheep shearing time, it's more festive and more hospitable; there are all kinds of layers to why Nabal should say yes to this. It's expected, it's good, it's what he ought to do.Remember his name, right? Let's see how he acts.Verse 9:> When David's young men came, they said all this to Nabal in the name of David. And then they waited.And Nabal answered:> David's servants, who is David? Who is the son of Jesse? There are many servants these days who are breaking away from their masters. Shall I take my bread and my water and my meat that I have killed for my shearers and give it to the men who come from nowhere, whom I do not know?That would be rude to us. It is wildly, excessively rude to them. You ever watch a Western? You know how there's a moment where one calls the other a liar, and everything gets tense? They stand up because you've called me a liar. Obviously, I have to shoot you now. That's the kind of thing happening.Or in the play Hamilton, they've seen multiple duels in writing letters back and forth. You can tell these are fighting words, working toward a duel. Culturally, we don't have that anymore. We don't do duels anymore; that's probably good for us.Every once in a while you meet someone and think, "I wish someone had hit them upside the head," but in general, culturally it's good that we turn the other cheek, that we're calmer, that we don't overreact or defend our honor in that way.But what Nabal has done is aggressively, intentionally disregarded, dishonored, picked a fight with David in pride. He said, "Who is David? Who's the son of Jesse? You come from no one; you are worth nothing." He says there are many people who have broken away from their masters and are roaming around the woods these days. You want me to feed all of them? Like, no.This is very aggressive.They go back to David. Let's see how David responds.Verse 12:> So David's young men turned away and came back and told him all this.David said to his men:> Every man, strap on his sword.Every man strapped on his sword; David also strapped on his sword. About 400 men went up after David, while 200 remained with the baggage.He leaves 200 and takes 400, saying, "Put your swords on. Let's go talk to Nabal ourselves."Verse 14:> But one of the young men told Abigail, Nabal's wife, "Behold, David sent messengers out of the wilderness to greet our master, and he railed at them. Yet the men were very good to us. We suffered no harm, and we did not miss anything when we were in the fields. As long as we went with them, they were a wall to us both by night and by day. All the while we were with them, keeping the sheep."Now, therefore, know this and consider what you should do, for harm is determined against our master and against all his house. He is such a worthless man that one cannot speak to him.There's a handful of things going on here. Somebody watches this interaction and says, somebody go tell Abigail, somebody get Ma—she'll handle this. That's the assumption.You can actually see the kind of respect and the position that she held in this household by the way they're responding. I don't know if your life has been like mine, but I've been wildly blessed by ladies like this who can handle things, who will sort stuff out, who, when something's going poorly, you say, "Yeah, go get them. Explain this to them. They'll step in, make this better, know what to do." That's the situation she's in: somebody goes to say, "Hey, real quick, Nabal was Nabling, and I need to talk to you about what just happened."They explain it to her.I also want to point out that they say, "You know what he's like. You can't talk to him. He is such a worthless man. No one can speak to him." I just want to tell you that you don't want that to ever be true for you. You don't want people to say, "Well, you know what it's like to talk to them? They don't listen. They're hard to talk to."You want to actively fight that in yourself. When someone says, "Hey, I need to talk to you about something," you want to go, "Okay, this is my chance. Lord, help me. Don't get defensive. Help me listen," because that's a bad spot to be in.They say he was very rude to them, and they've been great. David was great to us. It was great to be with David. We didn't worry about anything. As long as we were with them, there was nothing to worry about. They helped us; they protected us; they defended us.Not only should he probably not respond that way to anybody, but he certainly should be good to these guys because they've been very good to us. That's the situation they're saying to him.Verse 18:> Then Abigail made haste and took 200 loaves and two skins of wine and five sheep already prepared, and five seahs of parched grain, and a hundred clusters of raisins and 200 cakes of figs, and laid them on donkeys.That's a lot of food just ready to go.She starts piling this on donkeys: 200 loaves, five sheep already prepared, 200 cakes of figs. He's very rich.We'll find out later it's not like she went and cleaned out buffets. They don't even notice this stuff is gone. Not only should he have said yes, he actually had the ability to say yes and not even notice it. So he's got all this ready to go at the moment. It's unnoticed.She puts it on donkeys.Verse 19:> She said to her young men, "Go on before me; behold, I come after you." But she did not tell her husband Nabal.As she rode on the donkey and came down under the cover of the mountain, behold, David and his men came down toward her. She met them.David had said:> Surely in vain have I guarded all that this fellow has in the wilderness, so that nothing was missed of all that belonged to him. And he has returned me evil for good.>> God do so to the enemies of David, and more also, if by morning I leave so much as one male of all who belong to him.David's plan as he's traveling is, when we get there, we're going to kill every man. David says to himself that it was a huge waste of time that he defended his sheep.If you lived in a modest home backed up to somebody's massive acreage and could see all the wealth they had, and at some point their fence broke and their little yappy dog got out, you helped catch the dog and fixed the fence. Then later, you go around and say, "Hey, you wouldn't happen to have any eggs?" and they say, "I can't be giving handouts to people who can't afford eggs." What does that look like? Charity? "Get off my lawn before I call the police."You might go back to your house and think, "I'm going to break their fence and steal their dog." Originally, you weren't doing it because you knew one day you were going to need something, but there might be something in you that goes, "That was a waste of time. This guy's such a jerk. He doesn't deserve any good thing I've ever done for him."You might just be losing it in your backyard.That's a little bit of what's happening with David here. He's responded violently and is saying to himself, everything that I did that was good was a waste of time. He's decided he's going to kill everybody.He gives an interesting curse—we've seen several curses in First Samuel. This is one of the better ones because of how he words it. Most curses we've seen have followed a pattern: "May the Lord do so and more also to me if I don't blank to them." But David says:> May the Lord do so and more also to my enemies if I don't kill all of them.A double outward-facing curse. It seems like a better way to word it. If I don't kill them, may the Lord kill them. He just puts it out that way; he doesn't bind himself in a curse.His plan is to go kill everybody.I want you to hear this clearly: David is wrong. Don't read your Bible and think this is one of the good guys. Not everything he does is good. The Lord is good, and what he does is good. You can see what he's doing and say that's good (Jesus is good). The Bible isn't about good people and bad people; it's about bad people and Jesus.You see Jesus at work; you can say, "This must be good," but you can't do that with anybody else.What David is about to do is wrong; he's going to defend his pride through massacre. Nobody talks to David like that; that's where he's at.But who just met him? Abigail.David's coming with 400 men, all with swords strapped on. They don't look pleasant; they're on their way to harm people. She comes to talk to them.What she's about to do is insanely courageous.You know how you have things you're afraid of? Meeting new people, large crowds, public speaking, facing down an army, possibly being murdered, conflict. She's about to do all those, and handle them extremely well.When you look at Proverbs 31, which talks about what a woman should look like—a wife should look like—Abigail is Proverbs 31 on display: using intelligence, ability, wisdom for the good of those around her.She could have avoided this situation. She knew something bad was coming. She could have left; it would have affected her household. But she was involved.She jumps right in the middle for Nabal's sake and for David's sake. She sees two foolish men. She actually knew that something bad was going to happen.As soon as she heard the situation, she said David's on the move. She was right. She said, "I don't think you can talk stuff to David like that without there being a lot of bad things that happen next."She's right.She's going to intercept David and Nabal, jump in the middle of them and this brokenness where pride, arrogance, anger are about to slam into each other.Suddenly there's Abigail on a donkey, about to give the largest speech of any woman in the Old Testament. She's going to share wisdom, clarity, humility, faith.This is what she says.Verse 23:> When Abigail saw David, she hurried and got down from the donkey and fell before David on her face and bowed to the ground.She begins with a very humble posture. She shows up, bows to the ground. It does not tell us if she gets up. It's possible she continues speaking from that posture or maybe stands.Verse 24:> She fell at his feet and said,>> On me alone, my lord, be the guilt.>> Please let your servant speak in your ears and hear the words of your servant.>> Let not, my lord, regard this worthless fellow Nabal, for as his name is, so is he. Nabal is his name, and folly is with him.Quick pause: I don't believe this gives wives license to speak however they want about their husbands, even their foolish husbands. Which I know is a follow-up question.Put your hand down.But if you are negotiating good for his entire household and trying to save his life, I think the rules get looser than when you're at book club with your friends. She doesn't speak in a very honoring way of her husband. He has actively done dumb things. She is trying for the sake of their household to bring good.She's trying to bring blessing to him, even though he's acted like that.But this isn't how I think you're allowed to talk about them all the time.Even if she did, you still shouldn't.She starts off by saying we don't want Nabal representing her house. This is on me.Don't let him lead you into this. That's what she's saying.She continues:> But I, your servant, did not see the young men of my lord whom you sent. Please forgive me. This is on me. If I had seen him, we wouldn't have this problem.Verse 26:> Now then, my lord, as the Lord lives and as your soul lives, because the Lord has restrained you from blood guilt and from saving with your own hand, now then, let your enemies and those who seek to do evil to my lord be as Nabal.She says it's so good the Lord restrained him from blood guilt. She assumes graciously and boldly that he's going to stop. The Lord has intercepted him to keep him from doing something foolish.She doesn't say "foolish," but it's baked in.The fool was about to create folly, and she's thankful the Lord helped stop it.Then:> May the Lord make all of your enemies like Nabal—not dead, but foolish. Let them act foolish, but don't let you act foolish.Verse 27:> And now let this present that your servant has brought to my lord be given to the young men who follow my lord. Please forgive the trespass of your servant, for the Lord will certainly make my lord a sure house, because my lord is fighting the battles of the Lord, and evil shall not be found in you so long as you live.> If men rise up to pursue you and seek your life, the life of my lord shall be bound in the bundle of the living in the care of the Lord your God, and the lives of your enemies shall he sling out as from the hollow of a sling.She's wise in words, uses sling metaphors for David. He gets it immediately.She brings blessing. She shows up in the middle of sin, takes guilt, and brings blessing.She brings physical blessing and then verbally blesses him. She says, “Take this gift,” and then she blesses David, his house, family, future.Verse 30:> When the Lord has done to my lord according to all the good that he has spoken concerning you and has appointed you prince over Israel...It seems known that David has been anointed and that he's going to be king; that has spread at least to the people in Judah.Verse 31:> My lord shall have no cause of grief or pangs of conscience for having shed blood without cause, or for my lord working salvation for himself.> When the Lord has dealt well with my lord, then remember your servant.She says when she shows up, "I'm glad the Lord let me intercept you to keep you from blood guilt." She ends with, when he makes you king, you won't feel bad about this. You won't have pangs of conscience that you tried to save yourself or shed blood without cause.It's wise, clear, corrective, humble.Verse 32:> David said to Abigail,>> "Blessed be the Lord, the God of Israel, who sent you this day to meet me.>> Blessed be your discretion, and blessed be you who have kept me this day from blood guilt and from working salvation with my own hand.>> For as surely as the Lord, the God of Israel lives, who has restrained me from hurting you, unless you had hurried and come to meet me, truly by morning there had not been left in Nabal so much as one male."David erupts in worship:Oh, thank the Lord! Blessed be the Lord! Blessed be your discretion! Blessed be you that you came because I was about to do something so foolish!Y'all, may we respond like David when we're corrected. May we love the people who correct us.Culturally, we celebrate, "I want my friends to match my energy." Like, if I'm amped up, I want you to get amped up with me.I saw a clip from a movie: a guy comes in, looks at his friend, says, "Hey, you can't ask me questions; I need you to come with me. We're going to hurt some people. We can never talk about this again." His friend looks at him and says, "Are you driving, or am I driving?"Culturally, we say, "Yay! Best friends! Secret murders!"That's what we want. We want friends who ride or die. We want you to hop in the car if I say, "Let's go."Reality is, no. You need some calm, patient, wet blanket friends. Some people who say, "Why aren't you mad?"You need people who have wisdom, discretion, who slow you down, love you enough to risk a relationship by correcting you.I'm not talking about argumentative, contrary people. I'm talking about people who love you enough to say, "Hey, we need to talk because what you're doing is unwise, unhelpful, foolish, sinful."We want to learn to be people who say, "Praise Jesus that you listened to the Spirit when I didn't! Thank you, Lord, that you sent them to be around me."You're doing things over your life that are unwise. You're doing things that aren't good. You're sinning.The last time you were corrected is maybe the last time someone showed you genuine love.If you go long seasons without correction, you need to begin to work on how you respond to correction and the type of people you surround yourself with.May we be people like Abigail who love people enough to say something. She jumped in the middle, could have left, but she was involved.Verse 35:> Then David received from her hand what she had brought him.>> He said to her, "Go up in peace to your house. See, I have obeyed your voice and granted your petition."Abigail came to Nabal, and behold, he was holding a feast in his house like the feast of a king.Nabal's heart was merry within him; he was very drunk.She told him nothing at all until morning.Verse 37:> In the morning, when the wine had gone out of Nabal, his wife told him these things.>> His heart died within him, and he became as a stone.>> About ten days later, the Lord struck Nabal, and he died.She went and explained: you said this, I did this, I met David with 400 men coming to kill everybody, the gift I gave him.He locks up; something happens to his heart, his body. He dies ten days later.Verse 39:> When David heard that Nabal was dead,>> He said, "Blessed be the Lord, who has avenged the insult I received at the hand of Nabal and kept back his servant from wrongdoing.>> The Lord has returned the evil of Nabal on his own head."This principle runs throughout Scripture: we aren't meant to get vengeance ourselves. We're to trust the Lord that He will respond, will care for us, and this is not to be taken into our hands.We are to say, "Lord, I will bear insult, trusting you'll bring about good."That's how David responds when he hears that: "Thank you, Lord, for letting his wickedness fall back on him and not on me.""For me not getting involved, me not doing wrongdoing, You kept me back from him."Verse 40:> Then David sent and spoke to Abigail to take her as his wife.When the servants of David came to Abigail at Carmel, they said to her:> David has sent us to you to take you to him as his wife.She rose and bowed with her face to the ground, saying:> "Behold, your handmaid is a servant to wash the feet of the servants of my lord."Abigail hurried, rose, mounted a donkey, and her five young women attended her.She followed the messengers of David and became his wife.First of all, she has little notes: she has the largest lady entourage of anybody in Scripture.She's wealthy and well attended to. She humbly accepts this. She even responds, "I'll just be a servant." I think she knows she's going to get married, but she humbly says, "I'll be a servant." She's gracious.The story begins with David sending men to say, "Hey, Nabal, can we have some food from your feast?"It ends with him going and getting Nabal's wife.It's a wild story.One thing is when David's corrected by Abigail, he loves her for it; he responds.I want to read the last of this chapter before considering a few things:Verse 42:> So she became his wife.David also took Ahinoam of Jezreel, and both of them became his wives.Saul had given Michal, his daughter, David's wife, to Palti, son of Laish, who was of Gallim.Personally, I wish that note was somewhere else, because it feels like you see this interesting little love story play out, and at the end they're getting married, but then there's another lady also, and you're like, "Wait, what?"Historically, men in power had multiple wives.We see David wrongfully, angrily respond to a thing. We see him begin to take multiple wives.He's not handling everything well.One of the things for kings is they wouldn't have too many wives. He's not even a king yet; he's just roaming the woods.He already has two and a half because we're not exactly sure what's going on with Michal. She's married to someone else but also married to him.We'll see how that plays out.That's the situation.Looking back, consider something beautiful in this text.Abigail rides in to intercept in the middle before things go wildly wrong.David loves her for it.He walks under the shadow of the mountain, ready to murder.He leaves praising the Lord.His heart is softened at her correction.Nabal is hardened at her correction. He turns to stone, and it kills him.We have softening and love, and death born out of the same action.This reality is how Jesus comes to us.He intercepts us in our sin.He comes to correct us, call us away from sin, stepping into situations He didn't have to but does because He loves us and wants to rescue and bring blessing.He steps in to take guilt on Himself, saying, "Let the guilt fall on me."All who hear this message will either, like David, soften and love Him or will harden and say, "Who does He think He is? Why do I have to worship Him? Why do I have to follow Him? What does He mean He died for my sin? What is sin? He made the rules. Why would I have to?"You will twist on it.There's a way to respond that brings life, blessing, joy, hope.There's a way that hardens you up.If you belong to Jesus, your heart ought to be very soft to Him and His correction.You ought to see with joy the love He shows when He corrects.You ought to be soft in correction to those around you who say, "I think you're wrong about this."You ought to say, "Thank you for loving me."Try to listen as best you can, understand what they're saying, sort it out, be patient.Praise the Lord for people who will correct you.None of us want to harden ourselves against Jesus or His people so we might work closer to death, locking ourselves into stone so we can't hear His voice or listen.Let's pray.God, may You in Your grace let us be soft and receptive.May we be receptive to Your Spirit when You call us to repentance.May we be receptive to the people in our church family and those around us who know us and love us and love You who correct us.May it be a delight to our soul as David was blessed and continued to bless Your name for turning him away from wrongdoing.Lord, may we love the people in our church and those close to us enough to correct them.I pray in Jesus' name and by Your Spirit's work, for those who have hardened themselves against Your calls to repentance, may You not let them do it.May You not let them harden their heart or turn to stone so they cannot hear Your voice or listen to Your people.May You intercept them by Your grace even now.May they hear and repent.We ask this in Jesus' name. Amen.As a church, we are going to take communion together.I'd like to read from Luke chapter 22.This is Jesus on the night He was betrayed, at the last supper with His disciples.Luke 22:19 says:> And he took bread, and when he had given thanks, he broke it and gave it to them, saying,>> "This is my body, which is given for you. Do this in remembrance of me."When we take communion together, we take a loaf and remember that Jesus' body was broken for us.Our hope is not that we would suffer and die for ourselves, atone for our sin, but that He has.We share in one loaf, and when we do this together, we remind ourselves and each other that our one hope is Jesus and Jesus alone.And then likewise the cup:> "This cup that is poured out for you is the new covenant in my blood."This hope is made sure because it is covenanted with us through the blood of Christ, sealed through His work.If you have trusted Christ, we take communion as a remembrance of this moment and the covenant made with us.We take it in hope of the day coming when all things are restored and made new, forgiven fully and made free.If you have not placed your faith in Jesus, this is not for you.We say Christ is for you. His offer of salvation is for you. Repentance is for you.But we ask you not to take communion until you understand fully what you're celebrating.For those who've placed faith in Jesus, take a moment, listen to the Spirit.If there's somewhere you need to repent, if there's someone you need to talk to, do that, then come joyfully.Remind your soul your sin has been paid for, and your hope is held sure because of Christ's work.If you have a gluten allergy, we have gluten-free back there.

Group Guide Use this guide to help your group discussion as you meet this week. TranscriptGood morning. We'll continue to walk through First Samuel. We're going to be in chapter 23 and 24 today, so you'll walk through those two chapters together.In high school I played baseball and my freshman year we won state. Going into sophomore year, our senior class was kind of a little bit big headed. Before the season started, you had to pass a conditioning test called the country mile. It's about a four and a half mile run. Our seniors decided that because of where our coach was positioned—he parked his truck and the school was out in the country—it just was a run where you're running down that stop sign and back and around the school near the cow field. They realized that he didn't have visibility in every part of the run, so they thought, we're going to take some shortcuts. We're not going to run the full four and a half miles. We're going to shortcut here, here, and here.When you're 15, 16, 17, you're dumb; you're not thinking through things. We thought we were because we thought, here's what we'll do. We'll all bunch up together here and we'll release here. We had a guy on our team who was about 300 pounds, so we didn't think through that he needed to be way back and finish way late. Our coach picked up pretty quickly that we were cheating. He saw the times and said this is very curious that the biggest guy on our team is running a seven and a half minute mile pace.They finally said, all right, you guys have been running so well and doing so good. Like a cross country team, I've got your times, and that's the time you have to pass in order to make it on the baseball field. If you pass it, you go straight to the baseball field, but twice a week you have to make this run and then go to the field. He said, all right, now it's time to do it. Here are your times. We positioned all the coaches at every part of the run to see how good you were.We quickly learned that cutting this race short and taking the shortcuts was a terrible decision. For weeks as we tried to make those times, I was one of the faster guys. It was like 28 minutes. I'm not a cross country runner; I'm not going to make close to six-minute pace for four and a half miles. I'll finish that story later and what happened. But I learned there, and I think we learn in life, that shortcuts are not good. They are short-sighted. We take them because we think that's ultimately what is good, that if we take the quickest route to get what we want, that's what's best. It's our own nature to trust in our own instincts and to actually not trust in the Lord, when oftentimes He lays out the more difficult road, a difficult path filled with suffering and difficult obedience.Today we're in the part of David's story that feels, when you're in chapter 23, that for years he's been on the run for his life and he's been through trials and suffering and betrayal and the threat of death. He's been in it. But when we shift into chapter 24, he's going to have an option, a shortcut to the throne. We're going to see how this plays out and what this means for the Christian life as we consider what it means to have a long life of obedience to our Lord, even when it is difficult.Let me pray, and then we'll walk through this together.Heavenly Father, I pray that You would help us receive Your word as we walk through these chapters to see Your truth. God, I pray that we would not just be hearers of the Word, but doers of the Word, responding in faith and repentance and ultimately delighting in You above all things. We ask this in Jesus' name. Amen.All right, so verse 1:"Now they told David, Behold, the Philistines are fighting against Keilah and are robbing the threshing floors."We pick up where we left off last week, where David and his men are on the run. They just heard about the priest of Nob being slaughtered for proceeding to help them out. They're feeling the threat of death. At this point, they hear of a town called Keilah, a town in Judah on the border between Philistine's land and the people of Judah, and they're being robbed by the Philistines.Verse 2:"Therefore David inquired of the Lord, Shall I go and attack these Philistines? And the Lord said to David, Go and attack the Philistines and save Keilah."David gives us an example here of what it looks like to walk with God. He sees a difficulty. He asks the Lord. The Lord responds, and he's willing to do it. But his men hear this and have questions.Verse 3:"But David's men said to him, Behold, we are afraid here in Judah. How much more then if we go to Keilah against the armies of the Philistines?"Which is a legitimate question, because if they go into Keilah, they expose themselves. They've been hiding in caves throughout the land. To go and help this town, chances are Saul will hear about it and come. It might be a situation where they're fighting the Philistines and Saul's army is coming. This seems risky.So David goes back to the Lord.Verse 4:"Then David inquired of the Lord again, and the Lord answered him, Arise, go down to Keilah, for I will give the Philistines into your hand."David and his men went to Keilah, fought the Philistines, brought away their livestock, and struck them a great blow. David saved the inhabitants of Keilah.Verse 6:"When Abiathar the son of Ahimelech had fled to David at Keilah, he had come down with an ephod in hand."Abiathar was the remaining priest from the priest of Nob story last week. He comes and brings an ephod. Ephods are priestly garments that priests wore, but this is probably the main ephod that the high priest wore. This is important because in it were two stones—the Urim stone and the Thummim stone. We don't know for sure how they were used, but they generally helped answer prayers in a yes or no fashion, like, should we go here or there? The priest did some type of pulling out or casting of stones.Verse 7:"Now, it was told Saul that David had come to Keilah, and Saul said, God has given him into my hand, for he has shut himself in by entering a town that has gates and bars."Saul finally hears about it and says, aha, I've got them. They're in Keilah, a place with gates and bars. We'll stop the men there and finally take David down.Verse 8:"Saul summoned all the people to go to war, to go down to Keilah to besiege David and his men. David knew that Saul was plotting harm against him."He says to Abiathar the priest, bring the ephod here.Verse 9:"Then David said, O Lord, the God of Israel, your servant has surely heard that Saul seeks to come to Keilah to destroy the city on my account. Will the men of Keilah surrender me into his hand? Will Saul come down, as your servant has heard, O Lord, God of Israel, please tell your servant."They seek the Lord, asking if the city will betray them after David's protection.Verse 11:"And the Lord said, He will come down. Then David said, Will the men of Keilah surrender me and my men into the hand of Saul? And the Lord said, They will surrender you."David and his men, about 600 now, arose and departed from Keilah and went wherever they could go. They asked the question, should we trust Keilah? The answer was no, as you see from the Lord's response.When Saul was told that David escaped Keilah, he gave up the expedition. David remained in the strongholds in the wilderness, in the hill country of the wilderness of Ziph. Saul sought him every day, but God did not give him into his hand.David saw that Saul had come to seek his life. David was in the wilderness of Ziph at Horesh. Jonathan, Saul's son, rose and went to David at Horesh and strengthened his hand. He said:"Do not fear for the hand of Saul. My father shall not find you. You shall be king over Israel, and I shall be next to you."Saul, my father, also knows this. The two of them made a covenant before the Lord. David remained at Horesh and Jonathan went home.Jonathan, David's friend, hears about these troubles and encourages him. From Psalm 34, which was written while David was in the cave fearing his life, we know the Lord is near the brokenhearted and saves the crushed in spirit. David, on the run for his life with deep discouragement, has this friend encouraging him.This encounter is significant because Jonathan has hopefulness. He says, one day you'll be king, and I'll be beside you. This foreshadows that Jonathan will never see David be king; he will not live to see him on the throne. This is their final encounter. Jonathan, in his last friendship act, encourages David, telling him not to fear and to trust God's promises.Verse 19:"Then the Ziphites went up to Saul at Gibeah saying, Is not David hiding among us in the strongholds at Horesh, on the hill of Akilah, which is south of Jeshimon? Now come down, O king, according to all your heart's desire to come down, and our part shall be to surrender him into the king's hand."Saul said:"May you be blessed by the Lord for you have had compassion on me. Go make yet more sure. Know and see the place where his foot is and who has seen him there, for he is very cunning. See and take note of all the lurking places where he hides, and come back to me with sure information."They went ahead to Ziph as spies.If you read Psalm 54, David expresses his distress at this betrayal by his own countrymen:"For strangers have risen up against me; ruthless men seek my life; they do not set God before themselves."David is deeply discouraged by continual betrayal, even from people of Judah.David and his men were in the wilderness of Maon, about five miles south of Ziphara in the Arabah. Saul and his men went to seek him. David went down to the rock and lived in the wilderness of Maon. When Saul heard that, he pursued David there. Saul went on one side of the mountain and David and his men on the other side.David was hurrying to get away from Saul, who was closing in to capture them.A messenger then told Saul:"Hurry and come, for the Philistines have made a raid against the land."Saul returned from pursuing David and went against the Philistines. Therefore that place was called the Rock of Escape. David then lived in the strongholds of En Gedi.At the last moment when Saul was about to capture David, God sovereignly intervened. Saul did what a king should do and protected his people, and God preserved David's life again.Chapter 23 gives us more examples of David continually facing the threat of death and betrayal. Think—he escaped death at Nob, at Ziph, at Maon, at Gath, and at Keilah. This is years of hunting, suffering, and fear. Every time trying to go to sleep, hearing a branch break, wondering, is it the day? Years of hardship and trauma under the threat of constant death.This sets up First Samuel 24, where David has the opportunity to end it.Verse 1:"When Saul returned from following the Philistines, he was told, Behold, David is in the wilderness of En Gedi. Then Saul took 3,000 chosen men out of Israel and went to seek David and his men in front of the Wild Goats Rocks."Saul handles the Philistine raid, then he finds that David is near Wild Goats Rocks, basically a rocky hill where wild goats live.The story takes an interesting turn.Verse 3:"He came to the sheepfolds, where there was a cave. Saul went in to relieve himself. David and his men were sitting in the innermost parts of the cave."Saul goes into the cave to use the bathroom, for privacy. David and 600 of his men are hiding inside that cave, which hopefully gives you an idea of how big it was.David's men were very excited because Saul was most vulnerable now, when using the bathroom. This was a moment on a silver platter—David and his men could have ended all the hardship with one swing of the sword.Verse 4:"And the men of David said to him, Here is the day of which the Lord said to you, Behold, I will give your enemy into your hand, and you shall do to him as it shall seem good to you."They urged David to take this opportunity.David rose stealthily and cut off a corner of Saul's robe. He could have ended it all but instead cut a piece of his robe.Verse 5:"And afterward David's heart struck him because he had cut off a corner of Saul's robe. He said to his men, The Lord forbid that I should do this thing to my lord, the Lord's anointed, to put out my hand against him, seeing he is the Lord's anointed."David persuaded his men not to attack Saul.Saul rose and left the cave, going on his way.David knew God's heart and the heart of the king. Saul was the Lord's anointed king, even if evil had been done. David would not decide when Saul's kingship ends. He trusted the Lord and obeyed, not murdering a man while he was vulnerable.His men, who have been under the threat of death for years, followed his example. That shows David's leadership.After Saul left the cave, David boldly confronted him.Verse 8:"David arose and went out of the cave and called after Saul, My lord the king."Saul looked back. David bowed with his face to the earth and paid homage.David said:"Why do you listen to the words of men who say, Behold, David seeks your harm? Behold this day your eyes have seen how the Lord gave you today into my hand in the cave. Some told me to kill you, but I spared you. I said, I will not put out my hand against the Lord, for he is the Lord's anointed."David pleaded:"See, my father, see the corner of your robe in my hand. I cut off the corner and did not kill you. You may know and see that there is no wrong or treason in my hands. I have not sinned against you, though you hunt my life to take it."He called out:"May the Lord judge between me and you. May the Lord avenge me against you, but my hand shall not be against you."He even said:"Out of the wicked comes wickedness, but my hand shall not be against you. After whom has the king of Israel come out? After a dead dog, after a flea? May the Lord therefore be judge and give sentence between me and you, and see to it and plead my cause and deliver me from your hand."David showed that he would not sin to get what God promised. He humbly lowered himself to be insignificant—a dead dog, a flea—and pleaded with Saul to see that he was not the enemy.Verse 16:"As soon as David had finished speaking these words to Saul, Saul said, Is this your voice, my son David? Saul lifted up his voice and wept. He said, You are more righteous than I, for you repaid me good, whereas I have repaid you evil. You have declared this day how you have dealt well with me and that you did not kill me when the Lord put me into your hands."Saul has moments of clarity and contrition. He weeps and realizes David is the better man.There's a cool link to Judah and Tamar back in Genesis 38, a picture of having evidence in hand and declaring righteousness.Saul continued:"Now behold, I know that you shall surely be king, that the kingdom of Israel shall be established in your hands. Swear to me by the Lord that you will not cut off my offspring after me, and that you will not destroy my name out of my father's house."David swore to this.Saul went home; David and his men went up to the stronghold.Saul finally sees it: David will be king. He pleads for the protection of his offspring, as it was common in history for successors to kill rival family members.When you think about chapters 23 and 24 back to back, you see how long David suffered and how many years of hardships he endured. He had the opportunity right then to end all his hardships with one swing of the sword and take the throne. But he did not. He trusted the Lord and was obedient to the will of the Father.This is a beautiful picture of trust in God.It's also a foreshadowing of the more righteous path of Christ.Jesus also would be offered a shortcut to the throne during His temptation in the wilderness.In Matthew 4:"The devil took Him to a very high mountain and showed Him all the kingdoms of the world and their glory. He said to Him, All these I will give You if You will fall down and worship me.Then Jesus said to him, Begone, Satan, for it is written, You shall worship the Lord your God, and him only shall you serve."Jesus was offered the throne but rejected the shortcut because He trusted the will of the Father, even when that road was filled with suffering—the road to the cross.Jesus suffered agony, physical pain, separation from the Father as the full cup of God's wrath bore down on Him.Even when Jesus was suffering, He could have called down angels to end it, but He did not.He endured to the final breath, with redemption in mind for us.When He finished His work on the cross, He ascended to the right hand of God, where He rules over all kingdoms forever.Amen.Going back to 10th grade, when we were running this unreasonable time every day before practice, it was clear we were never going to make our times.Finally, our coach said, all right, I'm going to bump up the time to what it should have been.You smaller guys got 32 minutes, which was a pretty steady pace.I hate running. To this day you won't see me running; I'm not a runner. I don't want to be a runner.Because I hated running so much, I was determined to make the time. I ran faster than I ever had in my life. I was blazing fast.Coming around the final turn, about a quarter of a mile left, my coach said, you're not going to make it.I sprinted, after running four-ish miles, with everything I had.The final few steps before the finish line, I puked. Then I puked walking across the finish line because I was not going to miss this time.He said 29 minutes.I was like, are you kidding me? I could have walked.What we failed to see about this conditioning test was we could only see what was right in front of us—a stupid run we had to do.You may think, why do baseball players have to run? It's because of endurance for the season.When you play 30 games in high school, 60 plus in college, or 162 in pro baseball, you have to get in shape, or your body will break down mid-season.At 15, you don't see what the coach is doing. You don't see that the suffering he puts you through over and over again is for a greater good, so you can make it through the season and not break down.We didn't trust our coaches. We saw what was good in our minds, so we took the shortcut.But that's what we do all the time in life. We see the easier option right in front of us and want to take it.We have wonderful examples from Scripture about what it looks like to be obedient and how good that is.David could have taken a shortcut to the throne, but didn't.Jesus was obedient to the Father, even through suffering, for our redemption.We have wonderful examples of the long road of obedience, even when it's difficult.So the question today: What shortcuts are we tempted to take?In business or work, we know shortcuts: how to cut corners, how to cheat.We see others do it and wonder why we have to do it the right way.But God calls us to integrity and obedience for our good.In relationships, it's common now to simulate marriage without the covenant.Living as if married, moving in together, enjoying pleasures without commitment.It's hard to be obedient in that and honor the Lord.But God has good for us when we trust Him in obedience.We fail to see that when we take shortcuts.Some feel a desire for vengeance when they've been wronged.Shortcut is to take vengeance ourselves.God calls us to trust Him for justice, which is far better.In parenting, there are shortcuts.Moments needing patience, control of emotions.Shortcut is to lose control or discipline wrongly.In marriage, conflict, and other struggles, shortcuts abound.We often coach people to confront, to avoid gossip, to be faithful to God's calls.Some suffer deeply and may see shortcuts like substances, self-harm, or worse.We cannot see the long obedience God calls us to.As you consider today, what shortcut options are you taking when God calls you to obedience?My hope is we consider David's actions and the better David, Jesus Christ, and follow their lead.Matt will come up and lead us in one final song.As he comes, don't shift or move, just listen.The wrong response to the call is to say, "I'm going to do this by my strength," trying to muscle obedience.The response is to look to Jesus.Hebrews 12 says this after chapter 11:"Therefore, since we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses, let us also lay aside every weight, and sin which clings so closely, and let us run with endurance the race set before us,looking to Jesus, the founder and perfecter of our faith, who for the joy set before Him endured the cross, despising the shame, and is seated at the right hand of the throne of God."Our example is to look to Christ, put our hope in Him, who endured the cross and now rules from heaven.May we first look to Christ by grace through faith and be people who trust God every step in obedience.Let me pray.Heavenly Father, I pray that You would help us hear the good news of the Gospel that calls us to trust You, so that we might not take the shortcuts in life that do not bring joy, honor You, or bring good to us or those around us.God, I pray for faithfulness, but that it comes by first trusting in You.We have failed, sinned, and chosen shortcuts.May You cover us in grace, by Your grace, through the blood of Jesus shed for us.May we leave here as a people obedient to You, even when it is hard.In Jesus' name, Amen.

Group Guide Use this guide to help your group discussion as you meet this week. TranscriptGood morning, my name's Chet, I'm one of the pastors here. If you will grab your Bible and go to First Samuel, chapter 21. We're going to be in chapters 21 and 22 today. We're looking through both of those chapters.When I was growing up, probably three to five, I think I watched Mary Poppins 42,000 times. I'm pretty sure that we only had like a handful of VHS that my grandmother had recorded from her television. So I also have a lot of commercials really, really memorized. But I watched that on a regular basis. And there's this scene towards the end of the movie where the children had been in a bank and there was some bank trouble. And I don't want to get into a whole discussion of finance, but they had to run out of the bank and they get lost in London. And thus begins a series of back to back to back to back moments that were utterly terrifying to me.It was like they took all the vulnerabilities of a four year old and just pummeled them. So they're lost in a city. Terrifying. Just not knowing where your parents are for like 12 seconds when you're four and five is scary. They're running through a city. This is, you know, it's awful. Then they come around a corner in an alleyway and an old lady pops out and goes, come with me, children. And it's like, why would she do that? And you don't know if she was intending to be helpful. They run away. She seemed scary. So they take off. Then they come around a corner and a dog jumps out and starts barking aggressively at them. When you're a child, a dog is the size of a bear. Like, I mean, you know. Then they turn and they run and they go down an alleyway and a shadowy figure grabs them. Turns out that that's their friend, but you don't know it at the time.I just remember like this seared in my brain, this series of events. And I remember even as a little kid, like, I'm pretty sure there were times where I just stopped watching the movie before that I was like, well, let's move on. I know they make it at the. And I think there were other times where I just left the room and like waited till I heard the song start back up, you know, because it's a children's movie where things are supposed to be happy. And then I returned, but it was really this interesting peek into things that made me feel very vulnerable and very alone. And this real dive into fears that I had.As we're reading through this text today, we're going to see how Saul, David and a handful of other people deal with fear. What it does to them, where it takes them. There's a reality to fear, that it drives us towards something, towards someone, it exposes us in a way. And so what I hope we see in this text is we're going to see them as they interact with it. They're going to see how they handle it. And what I hope we'll learn together is the scariest place to be and the safest place to be as we study this text together.So let's pray quickly for us and then we'll move into chapter 21 of First Samuel. Lord, we ask for your help. We ask for your Spirit to speak in a way that we can understand, that you would help us to deal with our fears and to see what fear does to us in a way that draws us to you. In Jesus name, amen.So David's on the run. Saul wants to kill him. Saul's the king. David was very close to Saul, was a general, was his bodyguard, was all these different things. And he's now having to flee for his life. And that's what we saw last week as Jonathan, Saul's son, helped David escape.Chapter 21.Then David came to Nob, to Ahimelech the priest. So he goes to Nob, and we're going to find out that Nob is a whole city of priests. It seems as if after everything, after Shiloh was destroyed and the ark was taken, they get the ark back, and it seems like now the center of the priesthood is here. It's unclear whether the ark is also here, but the priests are. And this is where priestly activities will be taking place for the people of Israel, the sacrifices and all that.So he goes there to Ahimelech the priest. And Ahimelech came to meet David, trembling, and said to him,"Why are you alone and no one with you?"So it's odd for David to be by himself. Ahimelech knows David, but David usually has like a whole crew. He's either with the king, he's with his military units that he's overseeing. For David just to show up is what business does he have? Did something terrible happen? What's going on?So he comes out, that's why he's trembling. And he says, what? What's going on? And David said to Ahimelech, the priest,"The king has charged me with a matter and said to me, 'Let no one know anything of the matter about which I send you and with which I have charged you.' And I have made an appointment with the young men for such and such a place. Now then, what do you have on hand? Give me five loaves of bread or whatever is here."So David just says, secret king business. And I've got some people that I'm definitely meeting who are real at a very specific place that you can't know about, and I need bread. None of that is true, except for that David wants bread, but he's on the run and he is just trying to get out of here.And the priest answered, David,"I have no common bread on hand, but there is holy bread if the young men have kept themselves from women,"which just has to do with sexual activity, makes you unclean in the law. So that's what that is. It's not just like women, some mean thing about them. It just has to do with sexual activity.David answered the priest,"Truly, women have been kept from us. As always, when I go on an expedition, the vessels of the young men are holy, even when it is an ordinary journey. How much more today will their vessels be holy?"So the priest gave him the holy bread, for there was no bread there, but the bread of the Presence which is removed from before the Lord to be replaced by hot bread on the day that it is taken away.So the tabernacle seems to be here, the bread of the Presence is here. They would set it out on the Sabbath before the Lord as a picture of the meal, the connection, the communion that we have with the Lord, that they have with the Lord. And then they would rotate it out on the Sabbath. And the old loaves were allowed to be eaten by the priests. And Ahimelech breaks that rule to give to David in a time of need.Jesus references this and says that he did right, that this was correct to do, to break a ceremonial law for the sake of caring for someone. And he says this in this argument with the Pharisees about the Sabbath, saying that some things were built for our good and our blessing, and therefore, if there's opposition, we can bless others in those moments. And that's what he's talking about.So David takes that bread and he now has five loaves of bread that was the bread of the Presence, but the priest is allowing him to have it.Verse 7.Now, a certain man of the servants of Saul was there that day, detained before the Lord. His name was Doeg, the Edomite, the chief of Saul's herdsmen, he's detained before the Lord. It may be a Sabbath if they've just swapped the bread out. So it's possible he wasn't allowed to travel very long. It's also possible he's doing some sort of thing because he's an Edomite to become a follower of God. It's also possible that he has some sort of sickness or skin disease and he's having to be watched because there's all these. These are several of the reasons why you might be detained before the Lord. He could also just be there doing some, basically, some holy days for himself as he worships the Lord.But that's it. That's all it tells us about him. It just in the middle of this story goes, hey, Doeg, the Edomite is here. And it's going to go right back to the story. And that's foreshadowing. So remember him, he'll show up later, but he doesn't do anything here.Verse 8.Then David said to Ahimelech,"Then have you not here a spear or a sword at hand? For I have brought neither my sword nor my weapons with me because the king's business required haste."And the priest said,"The sword of Goliath, the Philistine, whom you struck down in the Valley of Elah. Behold, it is here wrapped in a cloth behind the Ephod, if you will. Take that, take it, for there's none but that here."And David said,"There is none like that. Give it to me."So David says, I was in such a hurry, I don't even have any weapons. Do you have any weapons? He says, you gave us Goliath's sword. It's still here. And David says, great, that sword is awesome. I will take it. And so he has a nice, probably fairly large sword that he leaves with.Verse 10.And David rose and fled that day from Saul and went to Achish, the king of Gath.Okay, David doesn't have any options. That's what this just told us. The plan that he's come up with is, I'm going to show up to Gath with Goliath of Gath's sword and see how that goes. It seems like he's intending to maybe be like a mercenary. He's just going to go there and serve there. He's absolutely on the run from his home, his people, his everything.And the servants of Achish said to him, to Achish,"Is not this David, the king of the land? Did they not sing to one another of him in dances? Saul has struck down his thousands and David his ten thousands."So if David was planning on being undercover, he shows up and they're like, mmm. And they go to the king and they're like, I'm pretty sure they have a song about how good he is at murdering us. I'm pretty sure that's him.And David took those words, these words to heart. So he somehow overheard this. In this situation, was much afraid of Achish, the king of Gath. So he changed his behavior before them, pretended to be insane in their hands and made marks on the doors of the gate and let his spittle run down his beard.So somehow, on his way before the king, he just starts acting insane, drooling, marking up the walls. That's the best disguise he can come up with on the fly, you guys. And it works.Then Achish said to his servants,"Behold, you see, the man is mad. Why then have you brought him to me? Do I lack mad men that you've brought this fellow to behave as a madman in my presence? Shall this fellow come into my house?"So they're like, hey, we've got David. And then he goes, you brought a crazy person here. Thank you so much. Did you think that was what I really needed? I needed those.Some of y'all like to memorize verses for specific situations that you can remind, you know, rehearse yourself or say to other people. Maybe this one for, like, when your family's coming over for vacation or something, or your in-laws are coming and you can just quote to your spouse,"Do we lack mad men in their house? Are we gonna let this fellow in just for y'all?"Bible memorization, you're welcome. Probably won't be one of our monthly verses, but it's a good one.All right, chapter 22.David departed from there and escaped to the cave of Adullam.So David then leaves. He heads back over into Israelite territory and hides in King Achish's. So his plan to go to Gath does not work and he escapes. Now, an interesting thing happens as we get to follow this story and as we have the whole revelation of the Scriptures, because this text doesn't tell us a lot of what's going on with David, what he's thinking. We just hear what he's doing. We hear some of what he says, but we don't get to see what's going on with him.And so far, in the midst of fear, he's just run and he's come up with what arguably is an ill-advised plan to run to Gath. But that's all he comes up with. He ends up in this cave. But in the book of Psalms we have songs and poems and worship that David writes. And there's one that has this inscription above it. It says, this is Psalm 34. It says of David when he changed his behavior before Abimelech, so that he drove him out and he went away.Now this text calls him Achish, which seems to be a title, and Abimelech seems to be his name. So like if you said he was in front of Caesar and then later it says Nero, it's the same guy. So Achish and Abimelech.So we actually get to hear what, how David responds after this moment when he gets to escape. And so it seems like he wrote this while in the cave or on his way to it. He starts off in the first four verses, worshiping, praising. He says,"I sought the Lord, and he answered me and delivered me from all my fears. Those who look to him are radiant, and their faces shall never be ashamed. This poor man cried, and the Lord heard him and saved him out of all his troubles. The angel of the Lord encamps around those who fear him and delivers them."So he says, I had fear and he rescued me. And those who fear the Lord he protects. So David's interaction with fear is shifting here. He's saying, in my fear I began to go to the Lord, and now I fear him. He's the most fearful, so he's been on the run. It doesn't seem like he's handled everything so well so far. But now, as everything slows down, as he's trying to process through this, and he's worshiping the Lord for rescuing him out of Gath, this is what he's writing.Verse 8,"Oh, taste and see that the Lord is good. Blessed is the man who takes refuge in him. Oh, fear the Lord, you his saints, for those who fear him have no lack."He keeps going.Verse 18,"The Lord is near to the brokenhearted and saves the crushed in spirit."In verse 22 he says,"The Lord redeems the life of his servants. None of those who take refuge in him will be condemned."This is how he ends it. So he says, I'm hiding in him. I'm taking refuge in him. My hope is in him. That's David as he deals with this fear.So chapter 22, let's pick back up in the text.David departed from there and escaped to the cave of Adullam. And when his brothers and all his father's house heard it, they went down there to him.David on the run, hiding in a cave, trying to figure out what he's going to do, trying to lay low, writing some songs from his expert hiding place. He looks out one day, keeping a good lookout, and he's like, mom.Because his whole family shows up. They all come to him, which makes sense. And maybe he had to go out for supplies. Maybe word spreads at some point where David is, but his whole family comes to him, which makes sense, because if David's on the run from Saul, they're probably not that safe from Saul. And Saul may go look to them to find David.So they all go to David. Then it says this."And everyone who was in distress and everyone who was in debt and everyone who was bitter in soul gathered to him. And he became commander over them. And there were with him about 400 men."So his mom, his brothers, his dad, they all show up. Then other people just start showing up. And it's like, why are you here? I am stressed beyond belief. Everything out there is terrible. I heard David was in a cave, and I thought, I'm gonna go get in that cave. Somebody else shows up. Why are you here? I owe so many people so much money. Cave started sounding pretty good. Everyone who's bitter in soul, so the most frustrated, angry people who are, they're not going to read, they're not going to vote for Saul when reelection time comes back around like, this hasn't worked for them. That's who's showing up to David. And then it says he becomes commander of them. So they showed up and they were like, everything is awful. And he's like, okay, do some push ups. It's time to start training. I guess y'all are gonna have to listen to what I say if you're hanging out in my cave. And they do. So now he has 400 distressed, bitter in soul people who owe a lot of money to other people. They're all with David now, plus his mom and his brothers and his dad, okay?And David went from there to Mizpah of Moab. So now he leaves again. He takes all these people with him, it seems. And he said to the king of Moab,"Please let my father and my mother stay with you till I know what God will do for me."And he left them with the king of Moab, and they stayed with him all the time that David was in the stronghold.So reading some commentaries on this, there was a couple of different ideas as to why the king of Moab would let him do that. Some of the things they put out were housing fugitives because the Moabites were enemies of the Israelites. So the king to house fugitives that are against Saul seems like maybe that's a good idea.There's also just a general cultural thing of hospitality. So it's possible they're just doing what their culture does, which is show hospitality in these sort of situations.There's a theory that it's possible that one of the reasons they went to Moab was that Jesse is the grandson of Ruth, who was from Moab. So there's some family connection here.And I've come up with my own theory, which is that David showed up with 400 desperate men and said, hey, will you watch my mom? And they were like, sure. You and your friends gonna leave? He's like, we're gonna hang out a little bit, but just keep an eye on them until we figure out what's gonna happen.So any one of those is possible as to why they've said yes to this, but they do say yes to this. David leaves his parents with the king of Moab, and he left them with the king of Moab, and they stayed with him all the time that David was in the stronghold.Then the prophet Gad said to David,"Do not remain in the stronghold. Depart and go into the land of Judah."So he says, we're not going to stay in Moab. The Lord wants you to go back to Judah. And he does. And we're going to see Gad show up periodically through the story of David.So David departed and went to the forest of Heref.Now the story is going to shift to Saul. So we've seen David dealing with fear. We've seen him on the run, and we've seen him as this process is happening, growing in worship and saying, he's going to trust in the Lord.And now we're going to see Saul as he deals with fear.Verse 6.Now, Saul heard that David was discovered and the men who were with him.If you're playing hide and seek and someone finds you, you may not have had the best hiding spot. If your entire family finds you, plus 400 strangers, you don't have a good hiding spot.So David now is discovered. They know he's out. They know kind of where he is. And he's got 400 people traveling around with him. And this news makes it to Saul. So he's no longer incognito. He's known.Saul was sitting at Gibeah under the tamarisk tree on the height with his spear in his hand. And all his servants were standing about him, which first of all, of course he has a spear in his hand. He seems to always be holding a spear. But also what is happening in this text, it says he was sitting at Gibeah under the tamarisk tree on the height with his spear. And all his servants, all of those things are markers of leadership and kingship. That you would sit under an obvious tree, they would hold court there, they would answer questions there, they would judge there that he's on a height, that he's got servants, that he's holding his spear. So in some ways this text says Saul the king was out kinging in a very kingly way. That's kind of what that text is doing. It's building him up as much like he's super kinging. Right now. We got David hiding in a cave, wandering around other places, trying to figure out what he's going to do, hiding in a forest. And now we've got Saul, the kingiest king that ever did king.And Saul said to his servants who stood about him here now,"People of Benjamin."Okay, that's interesting. Benjamin is the tribe that Saul is from. He's been king for a long time. He's been king over all of Israel for a long time. It's possible that he only always has kept just Benjaminites the closest to him. Or as he's grown more and more paranoid and more and more fearful, he's gotten rid of everybody who doesn't belong to his tribe and now has perfectly surrounded himself with Benjaminites. But either way, he's paranoid and fearful.And we're going to hear from his speech how far that goes.But these are only people from his clan. He's suspicious, fearful."Hear now, people of Benjamin, will the son of Jesse give every one of you fields and vineyards? Will he make you all commanders of thousands and commanders of hundreds, that all of you have conspired against me?"So he stands there and says, you just are so certain that David's gonna bless all of you, that he's gonna care for all of you, that you're all gonna be so important when he becomes king, that you've all conspired against me? And that's not true. But he now doubts everyone that's around him.Still, in verse 8, he says,"No one discloses to me when my son makes a covenant with the son of Jesse. None of you is sorry for me or discloses to me that my son has stirred up my servant against me to lie in wait, as at this day."He is correct that Jonathan did make a covenant with David, but it was because they loved one another. It was a covenant of friendship to care for one another. They make a covenant that they're not going to harm each other. And Jonathan goes out of his way to keep his dad from sinning against David.But he is not helping David lie in wait against Saul.David isn't lying in wait against Saul. David's not out to get Saul. Saul's out to get David. Saul is actually not in danger, not from David, but he thinks he is. And he's saying, everyone's against me.And Saul's entire world has shrunk to just him. It's just him. Everybody's an enemy. Everybody's in on it. Everything's a secret. Everything's falling apart.Then answered Doeg, the Edomite, who stood by the servants of Saul,"I saw the son of Jesse coming to Nob to Ahimelech the son of Ahitub, and he inquired of the Lord for him and gave him provisions and gave him the sword of Goliath the Philistine."We actually don't know if he inquired of the Lord from him. Our text doesn't tell us that. But Doeg says he did. But that's something you do before military stuff. He doesn't say he gave him five loaves of bread. He calls it provisions, just militarizing it up a little bit. And he gives him a sword. He basically says, hey, Ahimelech's in on it.Then the king sent to summon Ahimelech the priest, the son of Ahitub and all his father's house. The priests who were at Nob and all of them came to the king. It would have taken a couple miles away, so to go get them to come back. This took a couple hours, but they all come.And Saul said,"Hear now, son of Ahitub?"And he answered,"Here I am, my lord."And Saul said to him,"Why have you conspired against me, you and the son of Jesse, in that you have given him bread and a sword and have inquired of God for him, so that he has risen against me to lie in wait as at this day?"Then Ahimelech answered the king,"And who among all your servants is as faithful as David, who is the king's son-in-law and captain over your bodyguard and honored in your house? Is today the first time that I have inquired of God for him? No. Let not the king impute anything to his servant or to all the house of my father, for your servant has known nothing of this, of all of this. Much or little."So Ahimelech just says, it's David. David, your bodyguard, your son-in-law. I've done this. I do this. I would do this for him anytime he comes. I'm not in on something. I didn't know any of this. Don't add that to me. Don't add that to my family. That's not the case.Aside from those noises, that's what he said. He may have said it really calmly, I don't know, but he just kind of lists out like five things in a row where he's just like, I didn't have anything to do with anything, and this is normal for me to do whatever David asks.Verse 16.And the king said,"You shall surely die, Ahimelech. You and all your father's house."And the king said to the guard who stood about him,"Turn and kill the priests of the Lord, because their hand also is with David. They knew that he fled and did not disclose it to me."But the servants of the king would not put out their hand to strike the priests of the Lord.You got to hear the sentence that Saul said. He looks at his servants and says, that's it. Kill all the priests of the Lord because they're on David's team. Priests of the Lord. They're on David's team.And then I don't know if y'all can see the fear and the frustration. And Saul's face turned purple as all of his soldiers are just like, nope, I'm not.I love his soldiers in this moment because they all know there's going to be a day I stand before the Lord and it won't be Saul. There's a day that I will stand before my king and it isn't Saul. And I'm not going on record as killing a priest, it's not happening. You can kill me. That's fine. Then I'll go stand before the Lord and go, do you see me not kill that priest? Do you see what I just died for? Like, they just don't move.And again, I'm sure this just confirms in Saul that everyone is against him. His whole world has shrunk down to his center of gravity and Doeg.Then the king said to Doeg,"You turn and strike down the priests."And Doeg, the Edomite turned and struck down the priests. And he killed on that day 85 persons who wore the linen ephod. Doeg is an Edomite. He doesn't care.So he kills them, 85 of them. They brought all the males from that household. They kill all of them. And Nob, the city of the priests, he put to the sword both man and woman, child and infant, ox, donkey and sheep. He put to the sword.Saul does to the city of the priests what he was not willing to do to the Amalekites when it was for the Lord and it was holy war, he was unwilling to do it. When it's for him and it's his trying to keep his seat of power, he's willing to.Verse 20.But one of the sons of Ahimelech, the son of Ahitub, named Abiathar, escaped and fled to David.Alright, so something very interesting has happened in this passage.In chapter two, a man of God comes to Eli and says the priesthood is not going to stay with your family because you've dishonored me. He says they're going to be wiped out. There will only be left one who will cry his eyes out. That's what just happened. Abiathar is that one.And eventually it's taken from him. He doesn't get to carry on serving the Lord. So the curse of God is poured out on this family through the wicked choices of Saul.So Saul is very wrong to do what he does. But we also see the hand of God at work in fulfilling his promises. It's a very interesting thing that happens here. But it doesn't mean that Saul's right to do what he does. It just means that when God says something, it happens.And Abiathar told David that Saul had killed the priests of the Lord.And David said to Abiathar,"I knew on that day when Doeg the Edomite was there, that he would surely tell Saul, I have occasioned the death of all the persons of your father's house."David's response is, that's on me. While David was on the run, while David was doing what he did, he said, I knew that. I knew he was going to tell him. And I don't know if David fully understood what was going to come from that. I don't see how he could have. But he just says, yeah, that's. I'm the one to blame for this.Verse 21,"Stay with me. Do not be afraid for he who seeks my life seeks your life with me. You shall be in safekeeping."So that's his response to Abiathar.There's a very interesting call it a social phenomenon that's happening in this text. But everybody who's absolutely desperate is going to David. If everything has fallen apart, if you have no hope of a future, if everything has fallen around your ears, they go to David.And I can't help but see that and see that that's exactly what happens in the New Testament with Jesus. That when Jesus is on earth, the people who flock to him are the poor, the destitute, the sinners, the weak, the small, the outcasts.This actually is one of the things that he and the religious leaders get into arguments over all the time. They're like, you hang out with absolute human garbage. And Jesus is like, right, because the sick need a physician, not the well.And there's this thing where if you really know that you're in need, you start looking for somewhere to go, some bit of hope, someone to run to.And so we see in this story as it plays out that you have fear, legitimate, real, terrible fear, actual bad things.And David, as we follow this out, he runs to the Lord and there's all of these people that run to David. And then there's Saul who tries to handle everything in his own strength.And I told you earlier that we would see. I'm trying to tell you the scariest place to be.The scariest place to be is where you are the biggest person in the world.The scariest place to be is where you are utterly, completely, absolutely self-sufficient.The scariest place to be is where the center of existence has boiled down to your center of gravity, where it's all up to you.That's where Saul is.Trust, no one believes, no one hopes in nothing, just whatever he can tooth and nail and claw and grab, whatever he can get done, all up to him.And I don't know if you know it, but that's what our culture has told you over and over again is what you need to go do.Express yourself, find yourself, succeed, accomplish, win, earn.It's up to you.The most powerful snowflake in the world that you've got to on your own. Be sufficient, be capable, be good.That's what religion shows up and tells you so often is be good, be moral, do it. It's up to you.That's terrifying.The guards around Saul know something that we need to know is that one day you're going to stand before the real Lord, the real King.And on that day you do not want to stand in yourself self-sufficient.You do not want to stand before the King and say, judge me, evaluate me, I am big enough, I am good enough, I am capable.That's terrifying.You don't want to live your life that way.And you certainly don't want to end your life that way.We get to do with Jesus what Abiathar does with David and we get to have the same response.We get to run to him and say, I have no hope anywhere but with you.And what David says to Abiathar is what Jesus says to us.Your life is connected to my life and with me you'll be in safekeeping.That we get to hide ourselves in Christ.That when he died for sins, he died for us.That when he was buried, we were buried.When he rose, we rise.We get to be hidden in Christ and what he has accomplished.And we get to stand before the Lord in Christ and not in ourselves and not in our sufficiency.But we get to say, I have hidden in him.And no one is put to shame who takes refuge in the Lord.David prophetically says it at the end of his psalm."The Lord redeems the life of his servants. None of those who take refuge in him will be condemned."And then we get to live like that in all the fears of life.You get to go to the Lord. You get to do what David did. He's in the, he's in the cave and he's rehearsing.You know how long it takes to write a song? It's possible that this just came out, but I think a lot of it is he's working on, he's rehearsing, he's remembering and he's reminding himself over and over and over and over again.My hope is in you. My trust is in you. I have no good apart from you.Oh, taste and see that the Lord is good.Nobody who is condemned, who places their hope in you.Nobody who runs to you in refuge, oh, let me hide in you.Over and over and over and over again.And then we get to do the same thing that we don't in the middle of fear go, I must act, I've got to do something.But we get to in the middle of the fear go, okay Lord, if you don't help, I'm in trouble. If you don't show up, I'm in trouble.I see so often in my own sin. I'll talk to the Lord and I'll say, Lord, if you aren't merciful, if you don't forgive sinners, I have no hope.But oh thank you that you do. And let me hide in you.Let me. Let the righteousness of Christ be applied to me.Let his life and death and burial apply to me.Let me hide in him.It's one of my favorite songs is Rock of Ages.And just at the end it says,"Let me hide myself in thee, let me hide in you."And let it be about you.And so if you've never seen that you actually are not capable enough, strong enough, good enough, if your whole world is about you and you still think you are strong enough, I would say no, come to the Lord.But if you know you're in debt, in sin, you're destitute, you're distressed, you're bitter, come to the Lord, run to him and say, I need to hide in you.And for the Christians in the room who are struggling with fear, rehearse for yourself what's true about him.Start with Psalm 34.Read it, pray it. Sit. Remind yourself my hope is bound up in you.That's what Colossians 3 says,"Set your minds on things above, not on earthly things. For you have died, and your life is hidden with Christ in God. When Christ who is your life appears, then you also will appear with him in glory."We are hidden with him.His life and our life, our life is bound up in him.And with him we are in safe keeping.Let's pray.Lord, I pray right now in the name of Jesus, for every person in this room who is self-sufficient. For every person in this room who, when it all boils down, it's just them. Just them and their wisdom, just them and their morality, just them and their strength, just them and their ingenuity, that it's just them.Lord, I pray that you would, through your Spirit, help them to see how small and how vulnerable and how scary that is, that they might run to you.Lord, we pray for the person in this room who already sees that, who already feels debt, distress, destitute, desperate, that they would run headlong to you and say, oh, let your life cover me, let your righteousness apply to me. Let me hide myself in you.And Lord, may the Christians in this room rehearse that over and over and over again. That in fear we might fear you more and know that no one is condemned who takes refuge in you.In Jesus' name, Amen.The band's going to come back up. We're going to respond in communion and worship.

Group Guide Use this guide to help your group discussion as you meet this week.

Group Guide Use this guide to help your group discussion as you meet this week. TranscriptGood morning. My name is Mike and I was going to walk out the back door, but Isaac had to mention my name in the prayer, so I decided to go ahead and come on up here today. I am not one of the pastors here, but I am an elder in training. Over the last several years in my life, I've been exercising the calling of God that I feel on my life and in my heart toward pastoral ministry. It's something that I have felt growing for a long time. A few months ago, I was asked to participate in the elder training process. I am working this calling out. I'm not just a pastor when I want to be. I am working this calling out with my friends, with my community group, and under the guidance of our elders here. They've given me this opportunity this morning.I have a day job. I am a physician kind of by training, and that's what I do Monday through Friday throughout the week. Over the last several years, I have had the opportunity to teach in different settings here in our church. I've been able to teach some of your children in the kids city setting. We actually do an assembly similar to this, and we do 60 to 70 minutes of teaching and they don't complain. So no, we do just a couple short minutes of teaching with them and then we break out into classrooms and teach, and I've gotten to share the Scriptures with them there.I had the opportunity to share the Scriptures with some of your teenagers in the student night setting. Just this last semester, I was able to teach alongside Isaac Hill, who heads that up, and we were working through the Gospel of John. We were blessed by that, and we were thankful to be able to share that with the teenagers in that setting.I've also been able to teach some of you next door in the Sunday school setting just last week. I was able to do that. Our brother Scott Hill faithfully teaches that class week after week after week. That meets in our other building at 9:30. It's an excellent opportunity to study the word together, and he's let me teach alongside him and he's given me the opportunity to fill in for him when he steps away.I was asked or I was given the option to pick the text that I wanted to, and I decided to pick something from the New Testament. We've been going through Samuel, right? We've been going through Old Testament narrative, and I was thinking, well, maybe let's step away from that and let's go into the New Testament for a little bit and spend a week here. I thought, what specifically would our congregation want to hear? And I thought, well, maybe something with a lot of imagery, a lot of pictures, a lot of symbolism, something that's got parts of it that are hotly contested and debated. And so, of course, I landed on Revelation. But I decided maybe something a little bit different would be more appropriate for our setting.Today, we are going to be in the Gospel of Luke. We're going to be in the Gospel of Luke, chapter 6, verses 27-36. Before we start, I'm going to pray and ask for the Lord's help.Father, we thank you for the opportunity to study the Scripture this morning. We've really got nothing apart from it. It tells us of you, and it's our privilege to be able to know it, to study it, and to have our lives changed from it. You know that I am a man desperately in need of grace, and I pray that you would meet me with your grace this morning in Jesus' name. Amen.So let's open up our Bibles to Luke chapter 6, verses 27-36. This is on page 53 in the blue Bible. The blue Bibles are under the seats in the rows in front of you and you can grab those, and if you don't have a Bible you can actually keep that. We want you to have a copy of God's word.Like I said, we are stepping out today from the Old Testament narrative in Samuel, narrative of David, of Saul, of the Israelite people, of Samuel himself at that time, and now we're kind of jumping into the New Testament narrative in the Gospel of Luke. This is the story of Jesus Christ.Just briefly for some context, Luke wrote this gospel around 58 to 60 AD. It is a defense of the Christian faith. It tells the story of the Christ on earth and it shows us Jesus's mission which was to bring salvation to people as well as fulfill some of the Old Testament prophecies that were written about him. Luke himself was a physician, so we can infer he was smart. He was probably pretty cool. I'll leave it there. He was a companion to the Apostle Paul, and Luke spent years interviewing eyewitnesses, people who walked alongside Jesus. And he compiled all of that into this gospel account.What we're going to look at today, this section does mirror another section in a different gospel. And that's common for that to happen. But it mirrors some similar teaching more familiar you might have heard called the Sermon on the Mount which is Matthew 5 through 7. This passage in Luke has some similarities to it.So what we're going to study or what we're going to look at is what Jesus has to teach his followers about kindness and compassion. We're going to begin in verse 27.“But I say to you who hear,Love your enemies, do good to those who hate you,bless those who curse you, pray for those who abuse you.To one who strikes you on the cheek, offer the other also,and from one who takes away your cloak do not withhold your tunic either.Give to everyone who begs from you,and from one who takes away your goods do not demand them back.And as you wish that others would do to you, do so to them.”Now, we probably hear all that and think, "Yeah, oh yeah, absolutely. That sounds good. That sounds fine." Especially when we hear that last verse, right? Because we can latch on to that because we've heard it before. That's one of those phrases that sort of has permeated and passed through our culture through generations. And it's something known as the golden rule.Parents teach an aspect of this to their kids, right? When you hit your brother or when you're deciding, should I hit my brother? I want you to think, do you want your brother to hit you? And even at a young age, you can conceptualize that pretty well. I don't want to get hit. I'm not going to hit my brother.Teachers in a classroom setting, right? As kids are going from, especially in younger ages, as they're going from being just at home to now interacting with people from other families, teaching them how to interact with those people, how they would want to be interacted with. And there's even probably some level in our workplaces that we apply this teaching, right? If you are wondering, should I put that in the email to everyone? Should I put that thing about my coworker in there? Maybe think, would you like to read that about you? Right? If you do that, that's probably a fairly safe way to navigate those different interactions.So, we've heard this many times and we usually just agree. When was the last time you saw on CNN, golden rule is being revoked? We're anti-Golden rule, and the golden rule is canceled. Right? You don't see that happening. I actually did this week and Googled, is the golden rule outdated or something to see? I did find an article, but it was on a website I hadn't heard of, so I didn't click on it. I decided that that was probably not something that was being spread through the masses at large, so this would actually still make sense.But if we are really going to understand what Jesus is calling us to do and really understand the weight of these statements, we have to go back and think about who he's commanding us to act this way towards. He says,“Those who hate you, those who curse you, those who abuse you,those who strike you, and those who take from you.”Guys, this is not a call to be nice to your friends. This is not a call to be kind to the person that you sit next to on Sundays at church. This is a call to be kind to the people who absolutely cannot stand you.Now, we have a tendency probably in our minds to think or to wonder, is Jesus overselling this, right? Is he going really far in how he's talking to us? But if you do half of that, it's probably fine. We have a tendency to think maybe this is just for effect. But to help us understand that, let's think about who he was talking to, who was standing in the crowd. That was a mix of Jewish people probably from Jerusalem and from Judea.These are the people whose ancestors we read about when we studied the book of Exodus. These are the people who were enslaved by the Egyptian Pharaoh who never had a day off to rest from work, who made bricks to build up that kingdom, never seeing an ounce of the glory, an ounce of the honor for their own. Even when they were about to escape from Egypt, the Pharaoh in his final act sent his army out to die, trying to retrieve them and bring them back under oppression.After that, they wandered through the wilderness for many years and they went through this cycle of oppression with other nations and judges, and God raised up judges for them. They turned from what God had said to them to do and they went back to their sin, and they're in this constant cycle of oppression.And then right up to where we're studying on Sundays, these kingdoms said, "We want a king. We want a king." And they were given one. God relented, they were given a king. Ultimately that kingdom is fractured, and nothing comes of it, and they end up being dissipated and occupied by other nations, right? The Babylonians, the Persians—throughout history, these really prominent, massive empires occupied and oppressed this people group.And now when Jesus is talking to them, they're under occupation still. They're under occupation from the Roman Empire. So he said all these things to a people that were hated, that were cursed, that were abused, that were struck, and that had every single thing taken from them. Jesus is not overstating or overselling this at all. This would have actually directly applied to the people that he was talking to that day. It would have probably been felt very deeply and viscerally by them. And this thing He was calling them to do would have seemed truly impossible.Now, this teaching calls them into kindness, right? But what does it have to do with us? Two days ago, we celebrated a holiday that exists to show that we are not under another empire, that we are not subject to another regime. One of our pastors spent time giving missiles to people to shoot into the air just so they could show that a British soldier could not come into their house without a warrant and take their stuff and make them cook for them.So we are not exactly under, in our current day and age, the oppression of another outside regime. Why this teaching still brings to bear on our lives is because things like hate, abuse, and stealing have been permeating cultures throughout all of time and they absolutely exist in our culture today. Even if you personally haven't experienced something like that or something that extreme, the point Jesus is getting at is not to minimize what you've walked through in your life actually, but to emphasize just how great the thing that he's calling us into is.So I want us to go back through that text again and think about each one of these directives. Love your enemies. Love is sometimes a wishy-washy word or a phrase that our culture doesn't always know what it exactly means. But we do have some biblical data that tells us patience, kindness, not envying, not boasting, not making yourself out better than someone else. We have some terms for love that we can use.Most commonly in our culture and in the Bible, we think about love in the sense of husbands and wives, spouses. That's a fairly easy example for us to grasp what love probably looks like. So here Jesus says,"Love your enemies."And tags it right up next to doing this. Or he says to love and tags this right up next to doing this to your enemies.This is not like I'm driving down the road and somebody cuts me off in traffic and I say, "You know, I see him later," and I just wave them along. I'm going to be the bigger person. This is saying somebody's flying down the road and sideswipes me and I drive off the road and I hit a tree and I'm severely injured and my car is totally destroyed and I'm in the hospital for months and when I finally recover, I've got nothing left in my name. I barely have a car to drive. I'm going down the road and I see that same guy and his lane's ending and he's in trouble if he doesn't get over and I let him in. That's loving your enemies.Doing good to those who hate you means improving the well-being of the person that actively hates you. When people hate us, we probably do one of two things. We either hate them back. "You're going to get into me. I'm going to get after you," like we're buttheads and have fights over things like that, or we just say, "No, you're not going to bother me. You're going to take the high ground and not say anything." And even we see this play out in kids in middle school and high school. There are either fistfights or people pretend like they don't hear what you say because that way it looks like it didn't bother me, and then at home they deal with the fallout of that.But what doing good to those who hate you is, is when your neighbor comes to you and says, "I'm building a fence on my property and it's going to go five feet into your property line and I don't really care." No matter what you say to him, he's going to do that. One day you come home and it's not five feet on your lawn, it's 10 feet on your lawn. And if you live in a subdivision, that's a lot. So you are seriously out some space. And then when he comes home from work the following day, you're in his front yard. You've cut it perfectly. You're edging right along the driveway. You've got the leaf blower, and you're cleaning it off and you're making it look perfect.That's actually improving the well-being of a person who hates you.Bless those who curse you. Now, we don't have a great frame of reference for this currently. Blessing and cursing. I would wager that most of you who said bless this week meant it in the context of a sneeze. But that is not really what blessing is here. Blessing is I am praying for God's favor to be put on another person.One of the famous examples we have comes from the Old Testament book of Numbers. God says to Moses,"Go pronounce this blessing on your brother."And it's"The Lord bless you and keep you;the Lord make his face to shine upon you and be gracious to you;the Lord lift up his countenance upon you and give you peace."That's an actual blessing—wanting blessing for another person.Cursing is also not the way we use it today or cussing. It's a little bit different than what we use today. Cursing is not foul language, rude gestures, inappropriate conversation, as we have it in our context. Cursing is more like the opposite of blessing in that I want your total ruin and total destruction to be brought down on somebody. We do have some Bible examples of cursing. Even just when sin entered in the world, God cursed the earth. And so you can look at different times in the Bible where we see cursing. But blessing and cursing are paired together.So this is saying that while you are actively praying and asking God, "Will you give him 10 children who each have 10 children? Will you give him everyone in his family who is healthy? Would you make him live to be a hundred and fifteen, and pass away sweetly with his family surrounded by him? All his businesses, tens upon tens upon tens would have success and he would be rich and all the world's goods."While you're asking that for a person, that same person is hoping that you're totally and completely destroyed off of the earth. While you're hoping for his peaceful end with him surrounded by his family, he's hoping your bloodline comes to an end, that you never find a partner, that you never have a child, and that your last name is totally and utterly destroyed.That is blessing the people that curse you.Pray for those who abuse you. This one is probably a little challenging for us to hear. The word abuse sits pretty heavy on our shoulders and even when we hear it, we recoil. Some of you have actually experienced real abuse in awful, awful ways.Jesus here says,"On your knees, intercede before the Father on behalf of the person who inflicted you this pain. Pray for those who abuse you."To the one who strikes you on the cheek, offer the other also. Just sort of by way of explanation, this is not a little essay on pacifism. Should we fight in wars? Should I defend myself in my house? Striking someone on the cheek is really meant to symbolize or show disrespect. That's what it meant in this cultural context.And I think we probably have that translate to our cultural moment today. I don't know if I was at an award show—the Tonys, the Grammys, maybe the Oscars—and somebody got up and said something disrespectful about my wife's hair, I might get up and slap that person, and that would be a sign of disrespect given back to them. And I think everybody would be able to do that. And of course, I would go on to win best actor.This is when the guy at work puts you down, mocks you in front of everyone, and then later the boss comes to you and says, "Hey, you know, so and so, he's actually up for a promotion. What do you think?" And this is you saying, "You know, I think he's pretty good at his time management skills. I think he's got good computer skills," and you start highlighting different things about him that he doesn't deserve to have highlighted about him, but you start highlighting these positive things. Instead of returning disrespect with disrespect, you give respect to him and speak honorably about him.And from the one who takes your cloak, do not withhold your tunic either. Give to everyone who begs from you. And from one who takes away your goods, do not demand them back.So a cloak is like an outer covering like a jacket. A tunic is more underneath. It covers you from the shoulders down to the hips or ankles depending on how homeschooled you were. So this is saying be radically generous to the people who steal from you.So, you're at the beach, you're on vacation, and you're walking down the street, and somebody picks your pocket and takes off, and you take off after them and you call the police and you got this guy. You caught him and the police look at you and say, "Well, he stole from you. Do you want to press charges?" And you say, "No." In fact, I had $100 in my wallet, but I'm going to write you a check. I'm going to write you a check for $200. Because this is what it means that when somebody takes your cloak not to withhold your tunic from them.Also,"Do unto others as you would have them do unto you."This really does summarize all of these directives well, guys. Sometimes we have such a strong desire for justice and it really, really irks us to see these perpetrators get away with things. But I do want to remind you that in the book of Hebrews, we're told,"There is no creature hidden from his sight, but all are naked and exposed to the eyes of him to whom we must give account."God will make these things right. People who commit injustices will be held accountable.What he has not done is asked us in this text to mediate out and give out that justice. He teaches us to love. He teaches us to do good and he teaches us to give not just to the people that like us. Not even just to the people that are kind of indifferent to us or tolerate us, but to the people who absolutely cannot stand us and actively choose to oppose us.Next here in the passage, he's going to talk to us about how the world accomplishes this. We're going to pick up in verse 32."If you love those who love you, what benefit is that to you? For even sinners love those who love them.And if you do good to those who do good to you, what benefit is that to you? For even sinners do the same.And if you lend to those from whom you expect to receive, what credit is that to you? Even sinners lend to sinners and get back the same amount."I think Jesus chooses to give us this explanation here because we sort of gravitate towards this, right? We want to be nice to the people that like us really. Well, if your friend calls you on the phone and they've had a rough day and they're going on and on and you're listening and being empathetic and encouraging them, at the end of the call, they say, "Wow, thank you. You were so kind. Thank you for listening." You might think, "Yeah, you know, I guess in just in the friend group, I'm the kind friend. Yeah, that makes sense."Or if your co-worker, who you actually do get along with, who helps you out, gets a busy project thrown at them and they're going to be there late and you say, "You know what? I'm going to pitch in and help them take some of that workload off them." And then a few weeks later, you hear them talking and they're saying, "Yeah, you know, he pitched in and helped me right when I needed to. He sacrifices himself. He's so kind." You might think, "Yeah, I am the dependable co-worker. I am kind. I do that. Yeah."Or if your friend forgets their wallet when you go out to lunch and you spot him and then you think, "Well, now I've got insurance if I ever forget my wallet and I'm out with him." Or if he asks, "Can I—he's going to buy pizza." I don't have to chip in because I already kicked in and gave it to them. We encounter these kind of circumstances all the time.And this is probably how we think without realizing. We trick ourselves into thinking that we are more kind than we really are. And the reason is because the people we like to be kind to are the people that like us. And so Jesus here very directly is saying that if you're kind to people so that you can just be praised and rewarded, then you are no different than the people who don't follow Christ or don't know Christ because even they are capable of that.Jesus calls us into sacrificial kindness and sacrificial giving. He calls us to do this to our enemies. And he rebukes the kindness that results in our own advancement in our own gain.In World War II, on December 20th of 1943, a German pilot by the name of Franz Stigler was flying in German airspace and he encountered a very badly damaged bomber flown by an American pilot with an American crew. He could see holes from multiple bullets in this plane and he could see the crew looked weak and near the point of death. And he had a moment where he could have gone different ways. He could have shot that plane as an enemy out of the sky, reported it back, and been awarded for what he had done. But that's not what he did.He flew up alongside the wing of this badly damaged American plane and escorted it out of German airspace because he knew that a German anti-aircraft gun would not shoot up at a German plane. He escorted them out to safety and they landed in Switzerland. After that moment finished, the two pilots got out and saluted each other and then the German pilot flew back into Germany. This was never publicized because at the time telling people that an enemy showed kindness isn't good for the war effort.We don't want to think that our enemy is capable of that, right? But interestingly, in the early 2000s, years after, they were actually able to meet and they became friends and they remained friends until they both passed away just a few months apart from each other in the same year. I think this is just in a small way an example of what it means to look like to be kind or to be compassionate to your enemies.Now go back with me if you will to the crowd. The crowd that stands there before Jesus. Imagine being one of those people who has been taught since birth from grandma, grandpa, mom, dad, all the cycles of oppression that have kept that people down. And even as they walk out of town to hear Jesus talk, they pass by Roman soldiers who are an ever-present reminder to them of the inescapable enemy that always lurks where they are.And Jesus says,"Love those people."Some of the people that followed Jesus were even part of zealous religious groups who wanted to commit political violence and wanted to commit assassinations. And they're standing there listening to Jesus."Love your enemies."Even you guys put yourself in that position, right? Imagine standing there and think to yourself, Jesus just said,"Love the guy who put me down so he could get a promotion.Love the girl that used to bully me in school.Love the person that inflicted the most emotional pain and suffering or even physical suffering that I've ever experienced."What would you be thinking? You would be thinking what they were thinking.Why? Why on earth would we ever do it? They're awful. They are horrible. Why would I ever love them? And if I wanted to, how could it be possible that I could be capable of that?And as the tension rises in their minds and as the tension rises in our own minds and these questions develop, Jesus tells us the answer:"But love your enemies and do good and lend, expecting nothing in return, and your reward will be great, and you will be sons of the Most High, for he is kind to the ungrateful and the evil.Be merciful, even as your Father is merciful."Jesus says that in order to be kind to our enemies, we must understand that God himself was kind to us. See, the answer we come up with is, "Oh, when they apologize to me, then I'll be kind." When they start changing their actions and I actually see it, then I'll be kind. But Jesus says,"No, kindness to your enemies can only be achieved one way, and it's by understanding God's kindness to you."Follow this with me. Jesus here teaches,"Be kind to your enemies."He roots that kindness in God's kindness to us. Why does that actually make sense? Romans 8:7-8:"For the mind that is set on the flesh is hostile to God, for it does not submit to God's law; indeed, it cannot.Those who are in the flesh cannot please God."It makes sense because before we knew Jesus Christ, we were God's enemies. And you might not think that's possible or you might think, "No, that's too much." Well, God, the infinite, existing before anything else for all time, spoke a world into existence, put people on that world to worship him. And I'm not even talking about going through the Ten Commandments and you lied. I'm sure you did. No, no, no, no. I'm talking this God is worthy of our worship at all times. And every time we sit and enjoy our house and we enjoy our family and we enjoy our truck and whatever, and we don't roll it up into worship of the almighty God, we have sinned and we are God's enemy.Is it that serious? Absolutely. It's that serious. The only way that we can be kind is to understand that God forgave his enemies. And the people that were standing there that day, they've got no idea what's about to come. That he would go through a total sham of a trial and be convicted of a crime that he did not commit.That he would be physically tortured, beaten, assaulted, that he would be given a purple robe and a crown of thorns, total mockery, so that he might feel shame. And they would make him pick up the cross and walk up the hill, put it up, and they nail him to it and hang him up there in front of everyone to see to execute him.And while he's up there, we have his words recorded for us:"Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do."The beauty of the gospel is that Jesus Christ died for his enemies.Romans 5:9-11, we read it this morning:"Since, therefore, we have now been justified by his blood, much more shall we be saved by him from the wrath of God.For if while we were enemies we were reconciled to God by the death of his Son, much more, now that we are reconciled, shall we be saved by his life.But more than that, we also rejoice in God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have now received reconciliation."The story of the Bible is the story of God's kindness to us. So if you today don't know Christ in that way, that's the type of kindness I'm inviting you into. If you do know Jesus, he really does want you to be kind like this. Let's take time to ask the Spirit to reveal the areas where we overlook this teaching.So, who hates you? Who have you hated? Who curses you? Who have you wanted to see destroyed? Who has abused you? Who has disrespected you? Who has taken from you your time, your money, whatever it is? Is it really important that we be kind to these people? Yes.Romans 2:4-5:"Do you despise the riches of his kindness, forbearance, and patience, not knowing that God's kindness is meant to lead you to repentance?"Kindness is crucial, but we need the help of the Spirit in order to do this. We cannot do it on our own. In our sin, we try to be kind and sometimes it doesn't work. And sometimes we try to be kind and we actually end up being rude and it goes the total opposite direction.This is not how we naturally think about being kind. We think, well, it's genetic. Have you met that family? They're all smiling. That's not my family. We're sarcastic. We don't do that. We think someone is kind because they don't have the stress we do. If you had my job, you'd understand. I'm way too stressed out to just be kind to everybody I meet. I use it all up at work.We think we don't have to be kind. Look at my kids. I spend all my time raising those kids, teaching those kids, and trying to be kind to those kids. I don't have leftover to give to the people outside of that. We think when things get better, then I'll be kind. My retirement account's in good shape. My bank account's in good shape. When my house is the house I want, everything's fixed up. When I'm good, then I'll be kind to other people.This text would suggest otherwise.We're going to have the band go ahead and come back up here as we close. I think that when Jesus says in verse 36,"Be merciful, even as your Father is merciful,"that actually sums all of this up really well.What is mercy? Mercy is having compassion and kindness on someone whom it is within your power to punish. Our prayer today should be that God would help us to know in our minds and feel in our hearts the depths of the mercy he poured out on us in Christ so that we may reflect that mercy to the world around us.Some of you need to consider that you are an enemy of Christ but that he died for you and he is welcoming you into his kindness. Some of you have basked in his kindness for years and not for a second thought about how you might reflect that kindness to other people.If God would go so far as to die on the cross, then you can pray a blessing on a person that's cursed you. You can be kind to the people that make your heart race when we say words like enemy and abuser. The world can't do this. They can be kind to who's kind to them. Only the people of Christ can be kind to their enemies.By God's grace, may we be a people who understand the mercy of God in our lives. And may this translate into us being merciful and kind to the world around us.

Group Guide Use this guide to help your group discussion as you meet this week.

Group Guide Use this guide to help your group discussion as you meet this week.

Group Guide Use this guide to help your group discussion as you meet this week.

Group Guide Use this guide to help your group discussion as you meet this week.

Group Guide Use this guide to help your group discussion as you meet this week.

Group Guide Use this guide to help your group discussion as you meet this week.

Group Guide Use this guide to help your group discussion as you meet this week.

Group Guide Use this guide to help your group discussion as you meet this week. TranscriptGood morning. My name is Chet. I'm one of the pastors here. We are in First Samuel chapter 10, and we're picking up where we left off last week. Last week, we read about Saul being anointed as king. He went looking for some lost donkeys, and eventually, he went to a place where there was a prophet. It turned out that prophet was Samuel. Samuel sees Saul, and God tells Samuel, "That's him. That's the guy I told you was going to be king. I told you you'd see him today." And there he is. He anoints him as king. Saul goes to a dinner where he sits at the head of the table. Then he goes home and tells no one that he has been anointed king.We're going to pick up today where we left off. Spencer told us a little bit about where this ends up with Saul, and that it doesn't go well for him. But we're not there yet in the story, and today we're going to look at how his story begins. It starts off okay. So, we're going to look at verse 17 of 1 Samuel chapter 10. It says this: Now Samuel called the people together to the Lord at Mispa. He said to the people of Israel, "Thus says the Lord, the God of Israel, I've brought up Israel out of Egypt, and I delivered you from the hand of the Egyptians and from the hand of all the kingdoms that were oppressing you. But today you have rejected your God, who saves you from all your calamities and your distresses, and you have said to him, 'Set a king over us.' Now therefore, present yourselves before the Lord by your tribes and by your thousands."They said they want a king. They're bringing together to give them a king. Normally, in these sorts of things, the first person who gets up and talks pumps some ceremony and highlights the importance of the day. Samuel gets up and says, "You used to follow God who saves you from everything. You've rejected him, and today you won't have God. You'll have some guy." Now, line up. It's not the best start, but they're going to line up. They're going to choose a king by lot.By lot just means a system for randomly choosing. We do some things by lot culturally; we don't call it that, but we draw straws, flip a coin, pull a name from a hat, hold a lottery, or a raffle. Paper rock scissors is just competitive lots where you feel like you won something, even though it was still pretty random.A lot of things were done by lot historically and culturally all over the place. It just means they have a random system for choosing. They would use urim and thummim. They had the breastplate of the high priest that they would use for this at times. They also may have used some other different methods. People trusted that God would give them the answer through this.This is not uncommon to them. We see a whole section of this playing out in Joshua chapter 7, where they are trying to find out who sinned against God, and they walk it all the way down to the household of Achan. So they're going to choose by lot. Samuel, verse 20, brings all the tribes of Israel near, and the tribe of Benjamin was taken by lot.Now, God already told Samuel who was going to be king. Samuel already told Saul he was going to be king. They're going to do this now by lot. Samuel is going to see, and Saul's going to see, that God is overseeing the lot. But for everybody else, they're just going to see that this is how God works in choosing, and they may not have known or wouldn't have known already that Saul is the one to be chosen. But Benjamin is the tribe he comes from, that Saul is from.It says the tribe of Benjamin was taken by lot. He brought the tribe of Benjamin near by its clans, and the clan of the Matrites was taken by lot. Saul, the son of Kish, was taken by lot. But when they sought him, he could not be found.So, however they were taking lots and doing this, there was some sort of representative tokens or something used to pick a person because they selected a person who's not there. So the lot falls on Saul, the son of Kish, and he's not there.They looked for him. So they're doing this, and they're like tribe of Benjamin. They move up, and then they do the next process, and they say the clan of the Matrites. Then everybody moves off, and the Matrites come near somehow and then they say Saul, the son of Kish. So is Saul here? Where's Saul? Like, they have to go look for him, and the whole country's here, and now we're looking for Saul. The whole process has stopped to the point that it says, "But when they sought him, he could not be found."Verse 22: So they inquired again of the Lord, "Is there a man still to come?" It slows down so much that they're like, "Let's ask God again." They inquire of the Lord, "Are we waiting for somebody else? Did we do what is happening?" And God says, "Behold, he has hidden himself among the baggage."We know that Saul showed up, but we don't know at what point he hid. Maybe it was right when they said line up. Maybe it was when Benjamin got picked and he thought, "Oh no." Maybe he waited till it was the Matrites, then he was like, "Oh no." But he definitely wasn't there when they said Saul, the son of Kish. The baggage is the luggage that everybody has shown up with; they just piled all their gear up, all their supplies in a certain spot. And Saul goes and hides, which is a real cute look for your new king.So God tells them, "No, I picked the right person. He's hiding." Then it says, "Then they ran and took him from there." I would assume, just trying to picture this, they're excited. They run. I also think that means there's a lot of children involved. They say he's in the supplies, and everybody just takes off. This whole group takes off and finds Saul hiding.I don't know how he hid. The text doesn't tell us. It's possible there was no one near the supplies and he just went there. It's possible he hid. You remember playing hide-and-seek? The better your hiding spot, the more awkward it is to get out of it once you've been caught. We're told that Saul's a big dude. I don't know if he was just tucked behind stuff, and they were like, "God told us you were here," and he came out. Or if he was in stuff, and they had to be like, "Hey man, get up," and he had to crawl out of things. But it's not a good look.They bring him out. Samuel said to all the people, oh sorry, they ran and took him, and when he stood among the people, he was taller than any of the people from his shoulders upward. They bring him out, and he's a head taller than everybody. Samuel said to all the people, "Do you see him whom the Lord has chosen? There is none like him among all the people."There are a couple of ways to understand what he's saying there. He possibly is just saying now that he is king, he stands above everybody else. Here's your king, and no one's like him. It's a from now on kind of thing. It's also possible that all he's saying here is look at him, remember what he looks like, and he looks different than everybody. So later, when you see a guy who's taller than everybody, you can say, "Oh yeah, I remember that. That's our king." It's possible he's just commenting on what he looks like. It's also possible that what he means is now he stands above everybody, not literally but figuratively.All the people shouted, "Long live the king." They've chosen the king. They know who it is, and they all shout, "Long live the king."Samuel told the people the rights and duties of the kingship, wrote them in a book, and laid it before the Lord. We don't know what he wrote. My guess is it included some of the stuff we've read in Deuteronomy about what a king is supposed to be like. It probably included some things Samuel said—that if you get a king, he's going to do all this stuff—but he gives some restrictions, this is what a king is allowed to do, and duties, here's what he's supposed to do, has to do. He declares it all to everybody, like, "Alright, y'all got a king now and here's what a king can and can't do and should do." He writes it all down and puts it before the Lord.Samuel sent all the people away, each to his home. We're going to get more information about how this plays out. I appreciate the detail. They get everybody together; they choose a king. Then they go play hide-and-seek with the king, find him, then Samuel says, "Look at him." He announces, and then he just goes, "Alright, go home."We're told Saul goes home because they've never had a king before. He doesn't have a palace. He's no castle. They just say, "Here's what kings are allowed to do. You got one. Yay. Go home."It says, "Saul also went to his home at Gibeah." He just was like, "Okay, I'm king now. I'm going home." With him went men of valor whose hearts God had touched.God begins to work and sends brave, capable, valiant men with Saul. But some worthless fellows said, "How can this man save us?" They despised him and brought him no present. Other people were apparently prepared to give something to honor the king. But they're like, "We're not doing it. He'll get no present from us. We don't like him."They despised him, brought him no present, but he held his peace. We're told God touches the hearts of valiant men, and these worthless men reject Saul. But I can't help but feel like the worthless men have a point. They're in a time of war. Part of the reason they've picked a king is they want someone to save them. That's part of the reason Samuel's upset with them: God saves them.But they are constantly at war with the people around them. They want someone to go out and fight their battles. They say, "How can this guy save us?" Saul's start isn't a good one.What do we know about Saul at this point? We've read chapters 9 and 10 and were introduced to him in chapter 9. We know his dad is wealthy. If you wanted to talk about that nicely, you'd say he's from a well-off family. If you didn't like Saul, you'd say, "Yeah, daddy's rich." You could spin that one way or the other.We know his family is wealthy. We know Saul is tall and handsome, so if you wanted to date him, these are the categories you'd pick. I told you a couple of weeks ago that they're not the best ones, but tall, handsome, rich—that doesn't make you king.So far, we've seen him unsuccessfully find donkeys, and then hide when they called his name. That's what we know of Saul. He was humble, but he seems humble to the point of not wanting to do this.I don't know if we would like him. Some people would like that he was tall, might like that he was wealthy, and you might appreciate that he's handsome. But I don't know if we'd pick him as king.In our country, Kennedy and Nixon have a debate, and Nixon was sweaty and people were like, "Seems real sweaty. Can't elect that guy." He lost. I can tell you it's a big deal because I know about it.The first election I was able to vote in was Obama, way after Kennedy and Nixon. If Nixon had been hiding in the back under a table, not well, hyperventilating, and they had to start off by saying, "Candidate Nixon is hiding in the back under a table, breathing in a bag, refuses to come out, says that he'd like to speak to his mother," they would have had a tough time. They would ask Senator Kennedy what he thought about that. But Nixon was just sweaty. He glistened too much on TV, and people said, "Can't trust him." People were kind of right.So there you go. This guy hid. They had to go find him. What makes him special? Why is God blessing and sending valiant men with him? And why are these people called worthless? He didn't win a battle. He didn't accomplish anything. He didn't win a tournament. He wasn't the most anything, really—most tall. I want to show you all what it says.Verse 24: Samuel said to all the people, "Do you see him whom the Lord has chosen?" Now we know why he's special—the Lord chose him. Therefore, it's worthless to reject him whom the Lord has chosen, and it's a good thing to do to follow him whom the Lord has chosen because he's chosen.That's what makes him special—God, in his divine choosing, chose him.But everybody goes home. Saul keeps his peace. We're going to chapter 11.Then Nahash the Ammonite went up and besieged Jabesh Gilead. We've been hearing about problems with the Philistines on the west. Israel is in the middle. Jabesh Gilead is over here on the east, and the Ammonites are over here. The Ammonites have now besieged Jabesh Gilead on the other side of the Jordan.Isn't it nice to live where and when we do, where this doesn't happen as often? Historically, this was super common: an army shows up, you're hanging out, suddenly you see people marching, your walled city is surrounded, and they just besiege it. If you have a big enough army, you're ready to go get some stuff.All the men of Jabesh said to Nahash, "Make a treaty with us and we will serve you." That phrasing is actually "cut a treaty with us," which is how they would cut a covenant. They would cut up an animal, mingle the blood, then walk through. It's officially called a suzerain and vassal covenant, where you have one ruling authority over a vassal state that will pay tribute, taxes.So they say, "That's a nice besieging army you have there." They send out an envoy and say, "We'll cut a covenant with you and start sending you money. Deal." Nahash says, "Deal." But Nahash the Ammonite said, "On this condition: I will make a treaty with you that I gouge out all your right eyes and thus bring disgrace on all Israel."They're not going to cut up an animal; they're going to cut up you. Line up. I'll pop out all your right eyes and bring shame on all Israel. That'll be the covenant, then you'll owe me taxes.The elders of Jabesh said, "Give us seven days' respite that we may send messengers through all the territory of Israel. Then if there is no one to save us, we will give ourselves up to you."That's desperation. What else can they do? They said, "Let us go through all Israel and ask." He says yes, which seems crazy culturally—that he would say yes.They basically say, "Give us a chance to see if someone wants to come kill you. If they do, thanks for waiting. If they don't, you can gouge our eyes out." It makes some sense because his goal was to bring shame on all Israel.They said, "Let us go through all Israel and ask." He apparently says yes because next we hear: when the messengers came to Gibeah of Saul, they reported the matter to the people, and all the people wept aloud.They heard the news; they were heartbroken. This is awful. They seem despondent. What are we going to do?The people of Israel have been a loose collection of peoples, tribes, and have never really banded together for some things. That's part of the reason Nahash thinks, "Sure, try to get those people together."Now Saul was coming from the field behind the oxen. He's gone back to work. Saul said, "What is wrong that the people are weeping?" They told him the news about Jabesh.The spirit of God rushed upon Saul when he heard these words, and his anger was greatly kindled. He took a yoke of oxen, cut them in pieces, and sent them throughout all Israel by messengers, saying, "Whoever does not come out after Saul and Samuel, so shall it be done to his oxen."Then the dread of the Lord fell upon the people, and they came out as one man.Imagine someone rides into your town with two-day-old ox pieces, tosses it down, and says, "Hey." Everybody's like, "What are you doing?" He says, "Saul, our king, cut that ox up." He says, "Get your weapons and muster or he's going to cut your oxen."It's an effective message. The dread of the Lord fell on the people, and they come as one man.Verse 8: When Saul mustered them at Bezek, the people of Israel were 300,000, and the men of Judah 30,000. They told the messengers, "Say this to Jabesh Gilead: Tomorrow, by the time the sun is hot, you shall have salvation."Their city's besieged. To get that message in, these people must cross back through. Nahash knows they're going back in; people are returning now with the answer. When the messengers told Jabesh, they were glad.Verse 10: They said to Nahash, "Tomorrow we will give ourselves up to you and you may do to us whatever seems good to you."That phrase is fair translation, or, "We'll come out to you. We'll march out." They intentionally tightrope walk—"We'll come on out; you can do whatever you want to."There's a little eye play on words, too: "We'll let your eyes do what you want to do," which is what they said.Verse 11: The next day Saul put the people in three companies; they came into the midst of the camp in the morning watch, before sunrise, and struck down the Ammonites until the heat of the day. Those who survived were scattered so no two of them were left together.Nahash surrounded a city, very confident, then 330,000 Israelites showed up in the middle of the night, and it went very poorly for Nahash.Verse 12: The people said to Samuel, "Who said Saul shouldn't reign over us? Bring those men so we may put them to death." Those who stood against Saul did it publicly. After Saul showed he can lead, muster, bring rescue, they said, "Who said Saul wasn't going to be in charge? Let's kill them, too."Those guys are there because they all showed up, and they were like, "No, this turned real quick."Saul said, "Not a man shall be put to death today, for today the Lord has worked salvation in Israel."Samuel said to the people, "Come, let us go to Gilgal and renew the kingdom." All the people went to Gilgal; there they made Saul king before the Lord. They sacrificed peace offerings before the Lord, and Saul and the men of Israel rejoiced greatly.So we've seen Saul anointed, chosen, and now solidify as king.We've seen bits and pieces of his character. One thing to keep asking: what makes him special? Why is he special? What's worked here to make this good?Reading the text, God chose him and empowered him. The Spirit of the Lord fell on him, kindled his anger, then Saul acted. The last time we saw him do something good was prophesying when the Spirit fell on him.He's been chosen and empowered by the Spirit. God hasn't just picked out the best guy—he's picked someone and is empowering them.I want to take a moment as a church family, as Christians, those following Jesus, to wrap our heads around what Saul has. We have something even better.What happened for Saul? Something even better has happened for us. So, turn with me to Ephesians 1.Paul writes to Christians about what it means to belong to the Lord. In verse 3, "Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us in Christ with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places."That's wonderful. We are blessed in Christ with every spiritual blessing."He chose us in him before the foundation of the world that we should be holy and blameless before him."What makes us special? He chose us. What made Saul special? He was chosen.In the New Testament, he chooses those whom he blesses. We're blessed because he chose us."He chose us in him before the foundation of the world that we should be holy and blameless before him." If you belong to Jesus, you are holy and blameless because of Jesus, not you. You're blessed because of his choosing, not you.He did this before the foundation of the world. If you're a Christian and wonder why you're special, why did I get to believe this, why me? Because he chose. He did this.When we look at Saul and say, "Why did he choose Saul?" It doesn't tell us why. It tells us some things, but not the reason.Why did he choose me? It says, "In love." It's not in us; it's in his love.We were loved in him, so we love him because he first loved us."He predestined us for adoption to himself as sons through Jesus Christ according to the purpose of his will."He loves us and brings us to himself, which is wonderful. If you belong to Jesus, you don't get in on a technicality like, "Try not to cause problems; you got in because you trusted in Jesus." No."In love, he predestined us for adoption as sons." He wants you and me, the church, to belong to him, to be enjoyed, to be delighted in.Why does he love me? "According to the purpose of his will."Then it says to the praise of his glorious grace, with which he blessed us in the beloved. Grace is unearned favor—unearned, unmerited, undeserved.What gets praised? Not anything you've done or accomplished; it's grace, glorious grace.You say, "I don't feel good enough." It's not about that. He saved you by glorious grace, and he's wonderful.According to the purpose of his will.This is beautiful—that it's by his divine choosing.Imagine being gathered with the people of Israel and the lot falling to you and saying, "What?"But what we've been chosen for is so much more glorious, wonderful, eternal. It's staggering what he, in his divine purpose and glorious grace, has chosen in the blood.It keeps going. Ephesians 1:7, "In him we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of our trespasses, according to the riches of his grace, which he lavished upon us in all wisdom and insight, making known to us the mystery of his will, according to his purpose, which he set forth in Christ as a plan for the fullness of time—to unite all things in him, things in heaven and things on earth."Highlight this: in him we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of our trespasses.If you're keeping score at home, trespasses are what you brought."According to the riches of his grace, which he lavished upon us in all wisdom," making known the mystery of his will, according to his purpose, which he set forth in Christ, not in you.He purposed and accomplished it in Christ as a plan for the fullness of time, to unite all things in him—heaven and earth.This is about Jesus and God's glorious will.If you belong to him, it's because he has made you belong to him.You've been chosen because he's chosen.You brought sin that made the sacrifice necessary, but you didn't earn, achieve, or keep it. It's not about you.If they had gathered the people and said, "Hold on. Let's see if he's good at this. Let's watch him a while."They would all be wrong because God already chose.If you've trusted Jesus, it's in response to his divine choosing.You are kept, held, worked on because of him and what he has done.He has qualified you.It's about him, not you.And if you've met yourself, that's great news.I've had times when I go into a tough conversation prepared, using pep talks, and still fall apart.It's not about your ability to hold it together or keep it.It's not about your ability to earn it.It's about him.Ok, hold on, sorry.Verse 11 repeats, but in him we have attained an inheritance, having been predestined according to the purpose of him who works all things according to the counsel of his will.If chosen, it's because he did this.So we who first hope in Christ might be to the praise of his glory.So he's glorified, praised, exalted.It's not about you.You're involved as the object, the recipient.When you consider your walk with Jesus, you're not the subject or the verb.God is doing the work, Christ is doing the work.You're down here being acted on by a glorious God who divinely chooses, rescues, saves, redeems, and keeps according to the purpose of his will, because of his love, because of his glorious grace, and to the praise of his glory.You shouldn't think, "I must be one of the good ones."God didn't pick you because of something special.You wouldn't conclude you earned or achieved this.You'd conclude you need to praise his glory.Why are you a Christian? Because Jesus is wonderful, good; he redeems, saves, and loves.That would all turn back to praising his glory and grace.But you say, "Saul falls apart. God chooses, Saul loses it."Good point.That's why I said we have something better than Saul.Saul was chosen for a role in an earthly kingdom.He was chosen temporarily as a king in a temporary kingdom.He was empowered by the Spirit for some of what God was going to do, but he ultimately lost it.We in Christ are not chosen by lot.We're chosen by grace.Not chosen by Samuel through lots, but chosen by Jesus through his blood.Chosen for an eternal kingdom.Verse 13: "In him you also, when you heard the word of truth, the gospel of your salvation"—that is, Jesus Christ came, died on the cross, rose again so you might have hope and faith.That's proclaimed in baptism: Jesus was dead and buried, and with him we die and bury our sin.Without Jesus, we don't rise, but because Jesus rose, we rise.We are washed clean, made new, given new life; our sin is dead and buried with Christ, and we rise with him with justification—we're made new and whole.That's what we celebrate.The gospel says when you heard it and believed it, believed in him, you said, "It's not about me; it's about him. I don't believe in me; I believe in him."That's your process, your response.You were sealed with the promised Holy Spirit.Sealed.Saul was empowered; we are too.The New Testament tells us he's empowered us for mission.But we're not just empowered; we're sealed.The promised Spirit is the guarantee of our inheritance until we acquire possession of it.The Spirit will keep you going until you get the full inheritance of all the blessings of Christ.It's guaranteed; a guarantee is as good as the person who makes it.And it's the God of the universe.You're not just empowered; you're sealed, kept, and guaranteed.Jesus says you're put in his Father's hand, and no one takes anything from the Father's hand.If that's true for me and my sons, 10 and 7, it's true for God.If He's holding something, He's not letting go.It's guaranteed.Sealed by the Spirit, and it's working.He says in chapter 4, "Don't grieve the Spirit by whom you were sealed for the Day of Redemption."You say, "But I'm doing bad stuff, grieving the Spirit, causing problems."He says, "Yes, don't do that, but you're sealed for the day of redemption."That's the Spirit you're grieving—who will be with you the entire time until he brings you to the conclusion of the inheritance, till he gets you where he plans to take you by his purpose.He ends, "To the praise of his glory."Oh, that he might be praised, exalted, lifted up.Do you realize you've been chosen in a lottery far better than being the king of Israel?If you belong to Jesus, you've been chosen by his divine choosing and good pleasure, according to the purpose of his will.He lavished grace upon you, made you his forever, sealed you with the Spirit, and will bring you to the end.May we praise him, honor him, follow him, and not grieve the Spirit.At all points, may we know it is by his glorious grace, accomplished in him, brought about by him, and about him.At no point say, "But I haven't done this," or "I haven't done that."Have you trusted in him? Then stop talking about you.Do you believe in him? Or do you believe in yourself?We say, "No, I believe in him."Therefore, we are made free; we are brought to the end.Praise his name.Let's pray

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Use this guide to help your group discussion as you meet this week. TranscriptGood morning. Happy Easter! My name is Chet. I'm one of the pastors here. If you will, grab a Bible and go to Romans chapter 4. We're going to consider just a few verses in the book of Romans this morning. We're going to pick up and look at the text that we looked at on Good Friday if you were with us then. We will be in Romans chapter 4, verses 24 and 25, and then we'll look a little bit at chapter 5.I want to read this: "It will be counted to us who believe in him who raised from the dead Jesus our Lord." We gather on Easter and we're celebrating that Jesus was raised from the dead, that he was dead and then came alive again, that He was crucified, buried, and then resurrected. His disciples, His mother, those who followed Him, the centurion, the religious leaders—they all saw Him die, saw Him buried, and then came back to life.There's a story recounted in Luke chapter 24 where Jesus's disciples are together and Jesus shows up after He had been crucified and buried. When He appears, His disciples are frightened and think He's a ghost. I've always thought that was funny that it's included in the Bible, but it makes a lot of sense. If you watch someone be brutally murdered and then be buried, and then you're gathered with people to be sad about it, and then they show up, your response isn't "oh!" Your response is "ah!" You immediately think something's wrong with you, your mind is broken, or ghosts are real. You don't jump to maybe there's a resurrection, maybe you've conquered death.Jesus shows them His hands and feet and says, "I have hands and feet; spirits don't." He's like, "Ghosts don't have feet, but I do because I'm real." And then He eats food. He verifies that He's been resurrected; He was literally dead and then literally rose back to life. We're going to study a text that helps us understand why that's wonderful because if you don't know much about Christianity, you may know that Jesus died and rose, but we want to know why that's wonderful.There are people in this room who have things they've done or that have happened, and you're like, "It's happened, it's done, it's sealed, it's final, it's official, it's locked in." But if we follow a God who can rise from the grave, then He can undo things that are sealed and locked in. The most final thing we have is death. You don't go see a judge and they're like, "All right, you're going to be executed today and then you better be at work tomorrow." That's not how it works. The most final thing we have is death. If He can undo that, then He can undo the things that we carry with us.We will see why it's wonderful. It says, "It will be counted to us who believe in him who raised from the dead Jesus our Lord, who was delivered up for our trespasses." That's what we looked at on Friday—that He was delivered up for our trespasses, meaning that we have actual debt, actual sin. One pastor says that sin does something; it literally does something in the world, in spiritual reality. He said it's similar to if I came to your house and broke something.Let's say you invited me over to watch something on your television. During our enjoyment, I got very frustrated and threw something at it, breaking it. The party is over; your TV is broken, and I have a debt. I have a guess that you like your TV, since you invited me over specifically to watch it. We have a problem: something is broken, and there are only a few options. I can pay the debt, or you can. Those are our options. I can fix what's broken; the cost can come from me, or the cost can come from you. Even if you said, "Don't worry about it," that doesn't fix your TV. You're just saying you'll pay the debt or incur the cost by never watching TV again or getting a new one.Do you know who can't say "Don't worry about it"? Me. I can't ruin the party and then go, "Wait, don't worry about it, it's not a big deal, let's pretend it never happened." The one person who can't do that is me. I can't bump into you, spill something on your shirt, and go, "Let's just forget this ever happened. Let's move on. It's not a big deal. It's your shirt, it's not mine. Let's just go about our day." I can't do that.Y'all realize we do that sometimes with people. We'll say, "Well, I don't know why it's such a big deal. God just needs to, like, why does He care?" That's us breaking the TV and then saying, "Don't worry about it." We can't do that. There's real debt, real trespass, a real cost.What we're celebrating is that Jesus paid it—that He was delivered up for our trespasses. That's what we talked about on Good Friday, that He paid the debt. Then it says this: that He was delivered up for our trespasses and raised for our justification. Not only did He take our debt, but when He rose, He was raised for our justification.Justification is an intentional legal word. It's very specific, precise, legally precise language. Now if you don't work in law or contracts, you might not see a lot of legally precise language. I think the place we most run into it is on food labels. For example, if you buy Cheese Whiz or something you spray on stuff, it says "processed cheese food" because it can't just say "cheese" since it's not just cheese. It can't say "processed cheese" because then cheese would be a noun. It says "processed cheese food," where "cheese" is an adjective describing the type of food it is. You're like, "What am I eating?" Scientists say, "Food." You're like, "Yeah, but what do you mean?" They're like, "Well, it's a cheese food." So legally precise language.If you buy Pringles, it doesn't say chips, it says crisps. What is a crisp? Legally, it's not a chip. That's about all I know—it's legally precise language.One of the places I appreciated this most was on the show The Biggest Loser. On that show, people try to lose weight. It sounds like they just got them together to make fun of them, but actually they lose weight, and the biggest loser is the winner—it's clever and confusing. My wife and I used to watch it, popcorn and Mountain Dew, and they would do challenges.In these challenges, to win immunity for the week, they'd have to eat a lot of sweets like Pop-Tarts or cupcakes. The trainers would be mad because they were breaking the spirit of the game. But the funny part was: they weren't allowed to say "Pop-Tarts" because they didn't have the rights, so they had to say "sugar-frosted breakfast pastries." It was like a game of Taboo.The reason I mention this is that the word "justified" in this text is intentionally precise, legal language. It's wonderful because "justified" means legally not guilty in court, but actually it means better than not guilty. It means declared righteous, ruled in your favor—that you are made righteous, declared righteous, legally not guilty, and you get to walk out free. It's officially accomplished by God in the highest court.This is beautiful, legally precise language. When He was raised, it was for our justification, meaning that you have been declared righteous, that He took your sin to the cross, and that when He rose, you have been made righteous. The debt has been paid.It's not just that Jesus says, "Hey, if you come to me I'll forgive your sins, and you need to go live a good life." He doesn't just wipe the slate clean; He signs your name at the top and turns it in. That has been applied to your account.Periodically, I'll hear Christians say things like, and they're right in one aspect, "I'm a sinner; I have debt." If you come in and say, "I'm a pretty good person," we want to tell you, "No, you're not." If nobody's been kind enough yet to point out how not wonderful you are, welcome to Mil City Church. No, you're not. We are so thoroughly unimpressed with you. You're a sinner. You have real debt. You have real trespasses. We want you to be aware that you innately sin—that you sin on your own and then, when you know it's sin, you still do it. Once you learn it was wrong, you still do it. You can't just say, "It's okay because you're offended; you caused the offense; you can't declare it's okay."So, you're a sinner, but if you belong to Jesus, you are not. You are justified and made righteous. I hear Christians sometimes say, "I'm the worst, I'm just so terrible, I'm always waiting." And I say, "And then Jesus made you righteous?" If you belong to Christ, no, you're not. You're not guilty—you're made righteous. Paul calls himself the chief of sinners in the context of declaring he's received mercy. He says that so everyone else can know if Paul can be forgiven, so can you.The hope that we have is that He was delivered up for our trespasses and raised for our justification—that we've been made righteous. But there's a way this happens; it applies this way.Go back to the beginning of the sentence: It says, "It will be counted to us." What is "it"? It is what Jesus has done, what Jesus has done will be counted to us, accredited to us, put on our account, granted to us, applied to us. It is what Jesus has done.How will it be counted to us? By belief. That you believe in Christ, believe that God raised Him from the dead, that you believe He paid your debt, that you want it applied to your account. Then it will be applied.There's a movie called My Cousin Vinny. My wife was out of town, and I was bored, so I watched it again. It's about two young guys from New York going to school in Alabama. They're in the wrong place at the wrong time, driving the wrong car, and get accused of murder. Because they're from New York, it's not going well. Then one says, "I'm going to call my cousin Vinny," a lawyer from New York.Vinny shows up. It's not going well. There's tension over whether he'll represent them. The local guy is worse than Vinny. There's a big moment in court where Vinny says to the local guy, "You're fired. I want to represent my cousin."It's a moment where you can look cosmically at God and say, "I want Jesus to represent me. I want Him to go before me. I want Him to take my debt. I want Him to grant His righteousness to me." And it will be counted if you believe. It will be applied to your account by belief. It will be accomplished not by you but by Him. You trust that His death paid your trespasses and His resurrection justified you before the Lord, declared innocent, righteous, holy, and blameless if you'll just believe. If you'll just look and say, "I want Jesus to pay my debt. I want Jesus to cover me. I trust Him. I believe He's good. I do not want to represent myself."That's what it's saying. It will be counted to us who believe.So again: "It will be counted to us who believe in Him who raised from the dead Jesus our Lord, who was delivered up for our trespasses and raised for our justification."Therefore, since we have been justified by faith—we're justified by faith.That's the legal word again: not by works, not by morality, not by intelligence, not by effort—you're justified by faith, by trusting Him, not yourself.And that makes so much sense. What doesn't work before God is for you to sin, fail, then go to Him and say, "Don't worry. I got this. I'm going to be good enough, pay it off, do so well that you can't help but respond singing my praises." That doesn't work.Instead, we come and say, "I trust Jesus. I believe He's good. I believe He's righteous. I believe He paid my debt. I want Him to represent me. I want Him to cover me." And we say, "I trust that He's good."The Bible says there will be nobody who entrusts themselves to Him who is put to shame. Nobody that calls on Him will be put to shame. Nobody who says, "If He doesn't cover it, I'm in trouble," will be put to shame. Everyone who comes to Him for mercy will receive mercy.We are to be justified by faith, so you just believe. You just trust in the finished work of Jesus.Therefore, since we have been justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ.You ever been at odds with someone? You can feel it. You've done something, said something, and you're around them and can feel the tension.It says there is no tension between those who belong to Jesus and the God of the universe.Every once in a while, I'll bust into one of my children's rooms. They're little—wouldn't do this when they're older, but I do it sometimes just to mess with them. I say, "Aha!" Just to mess with them. It's fun because often they just look at you like, "What? I was perfectly innocent. I wasn't doing anything." Other times, the guilt gets to them. They feel like they've been caught.I had a son hide something one time—a toy. He just needed to hide it; it was nothing serious.The idea is God can look at you and you can just be free. Nothing to worry about, no hint of fear. No "Oh wait." If people announced, "I'm going to come tour your house today," you'd be like, "Hold on. Is it clean? How do I…?" But with God, there's peace.We have peace with God through the work of Jesus. We're free.Some people think Christians are always looking over their shoulders like God's ready to get them. No. Jesus paid the debt. God's not mad at you if you belong to Christ, if you've trusted Him. He's not disappointed, upset, or frustrated because the debt has been paid.Jesus was delivered up for your trespasses. He was raised for your justification.You've been declared innocent, free.When I was growing up, my dad was self-employed, and sometimes things went well—but other times, it was tight.My parents would sit my brothers and me down and say, "Money's really tight. If any of you want something, you're going to be in big trouble." They would say, "You're going to eat what we give you and be happy about it."Sometimes, we got to go eat at places with cafeterias. Back then, there was Piccadilly. Let me explain how this works: When you get there, you can see the food, but you can't access it. The food is in what I call "food prison." There are food wardens who put the food on your plate, and every item you get means debt you'll pay later.There were times when we got to go, but beforehand, my dad would say, "Look…" When we got there, he'd tell us what we were allowed. One piece of chicken, two vegetables, some Jell-O. He'd be looking at the cake like, "You know you can't have that."We knew the terms in advance, which was good parenting—pre-threaten your children in the truck, then when they try something, just give them the look. Pre-threatening inflates the meaning.We were supposed to get what we got and be thankful.Then there were buffets, which were very different. There used to be more buffets—Ryan's, Quincy's, Western Sizzler. We had a place called Fire Mountain. Ryan's had a roll as big as your head.At a buffet, you pay first and then you're free. There's no food warden; you hold the scoop. Nobody protects the food from you. At SNS, you were supposed to get a little and be happy. At a buffet, you're free.When my dad took us to buffets, it was so we could hurt ourselves. We were supposed to pile things up, show him, and eat it all—not waste it—try different foods: soft serve, cookies, that weird pink stuff no one liked.Jesus has been raised for our justification.Christianity is not the SNS cafeteria; it's a buffet. I don't mean license to sin but freedom and joy—a feast.The debt has been paid. As Christians, we need to repent of sin, mourn the brokenness in the world. But the default mode of the Christian life is joy because Christ is resurrected.There is no debt; it's all been paid.We walk with our heads held up, hearts full, rejoicing in the freedom and hope Christ has given, to His glory.When I piled food on my plate at a buffet, it brought joy to my dad's heart that I appreciated what he had bought.When we walk as Christians with hope, fellowship, life, joy, and eternity in focus, acknowledging that when we sin, we have propitiation—that Someone stands between us and God—we are not guilty.We go to Him in grace and forgiveness and say, "It's never been about me; it's about You. My trust is in You, the glorious King who saves sinners."That brings joy and delight to His heart because He already paid the cost.We walk in freedom.Galatians says, "It is for freedom that He set us free." I used to read that and wonder, "What does that mean?" It means freedom.I'm not supposed to think, "I can't pile two things on my plate at the buffet." I'm supposed to enjoy it, delight, and walk in joy.That's what we celebrate at Easter.If you've trusted in Him, you are not dirty, broken, covered in sin.He was delivered up for your trespasses and raised for your justification.If He is risen and you've trusted Him, you are free, covered, blameless, and it's already happened.We aren't waiting for the sentence to be dropped. We're not in court waiting to hear our fate. If you've trusted Jesus, the sentence has been passed. He was declared guilty. We have been made righteous.The band's coming back up. We're going to sing.If you're a Christian, I remind you Jesus is risen and you are free and made righteous.If you have not placed your faith in Jesus and plan to represent yourself in court—plan with your own wisdom, morality, goodness, or just declaring, "It's not that big a deal"—I say: Trust Jesus.Place your faith in Him. Go to the Lord and say, "I want Jesus to cover me. I want Jesus to stand in for me. I want Jesus to pay my debt. When He died, pay my sin. When He rose, give me life."And it will be counted for those who believe.Let's pray.Jesus, we are thankful for the hope of the resurrection that holds secure through the finished work of Jesus—that all who call on Your name will be saved.You were delivered up for our sin, raised for our justification, and in You and You alone we have hope.May Your name be glorified. Amen.

Group Guide Use this guide to help your group discussion as you meet this week. Sermon TranscriptMy name is Spencer, I am one of the pastors here. We are taking a break from 1 Samuel to really be in Holy Week this week. We have Palm Sunday today, Good Friday coming up this Friday for our night of worship, and Easter Sunday. So we're going to pause 1 Samuel, and we're actually going to be in John 15 today. If you have a Bible, you can turn there. We'll get there in a moment.One of the things I try to do with my children is I try to look for teaching moments, to really build their life on the right truth, to build their life on the right words and phrases about who our God is and how that shapes them. And I'm looking for those opportunities when they come. A year and a half ago, my son… we're trying out different activities. He started karate and gave that a run. Now, I didn't do mixed martial arts as a kid, but I was like, "Alright, we'll give this a go." So I'm watching him, and there's this one day where he's just kind of halfway going through the motions. I appreciate his instructor because his instructor didn't play around. He told him, "Just sit down. If you're not going to participate, just sit down." He got back up again, just kind of halfway through the motions. And then I was done. We were done with that. I put him in the car, and we're off to community group.I'm looking for just this moment to teach him what I've been trying to teach him for a few weeks at this point. I was just like, "Hey listen, buddy…" What I was trying to teach him is the theology of work: the idea that we work unto the Lord, that everything we do, we do to the glory of God. I wanted him to understand that this may seem small, but it's actually a picture of bigger things. Like, you need to actually listen. You need to work hard. You're there for an hour; do the motions, do all the things. I don't really know what to tell him, but I'm sitting there watching him. You pick it up, do the things that you need to do in order to do this well, because we work unto the Lord. And I'm driving, and I can see in the mirror looking back, his eyes are just kind of glazed over. I'm like, "Are you listening?" And then finally I just said, "Hey buddy, why are you doing karate?" I'd set up the moment where he's just like, "I'm doing it to the glory of God, Dad!" Like, I'm waiting for some smaller version of that, that at least captures what we've been talking about. And he was deep in thought. And then he just said, "To protect women."And I was like… and it dawned on me that when he started karate just a few months before that, that was one of the things that we had talked about. I was like, well, you know, karate, this will give you the opportunity for self-defense and to grow. And I remember that I had said something about… you know, I was trying to teach him that we as men, we're called to protect and take care of women, and that in our household, yeah, you should learn what it takes to, like, if someone's going to come in, to be able to fight them, to be able to put them on the ground. I think I did some version of that. That's what he took away: that karate was to protect women. And I was like, you know what buddy? Honestly, count the W. Like, I mean, just we'll work on the theology of work stuff on other things, but if you have it in your brain that this is how to protect women, like we're getting somewhere. But I said that months ago, I hadn't even thought about it.But that happens. We take words, we take ideas, and we build our lives upon them. He had built karate on top of this idea that "I will fight for my sisters, I will fight for my mother." And I was like, yeah, that's good. But we do that. That's something that happens as we build our lives upon ideas and truth and words. And today as we look at this passage, we're going to focus on this teaching from Jesus that teaches just that: the importance of words and how they shape us.You see, on Palm Sunday, what we just celebrated in the songs that we sang and the liturgy that we read, we celebrate that Jesus came into the city celebrated as Hosanna, the Savior King. And then a whole bunch of things happened between him entering into the city and Good Friday. In fact, when you read the Gospels, they slow down a bunch. The gospels cover the three-year ministry of Jesus, but they really slow down at the end. And a lot of it does cover this final week where we get teaching after teaching of Jesus talking about what it means to be one of his followers, what the kingdom of God is like. And John 15 is one of those teachings. It's actually on the night of Passover when he's teaching his disciples. And we're going to see what he is getting at.Now, we're not going to see it in its entirety. To do this passage justice would take three or four weeks. I mean, there's a lot going on in John 15. We're only going to do 11 verses. And even to do that, it would take some time because there's a lot of really wonderful pictures of God and some good, wonderful theology packed into this. So I'm not going to be able to answer and do all the things. That's actually part of why we have community groups. If you're in our groups this week, you'll be able to discuss this and go a little bit deeper into some of the other areas. But we're really going to focus and zoom in on one idea that comes out of this text. It's the idea of Jesus's word at work in us and how that has profound power to shape us. Because we live in a world that is offering so many different things you can build your life on, so many different phrases and words and ideas that you can build your life upon. But I want us to see so clearly that Jesus has this invitation to build our life on something better, and that matters immensely. So that's just the one thing we're going to pull from this today, and I want us to sit in this and see this so clearly.So let me pray for us that we'd have hearts to receive this, and then we will move into this. Heavenly Father, I pray that you would give us ears to hear. I pray that we would receive your word and not just be hearers of the word, but be doers. And that comes through believing the gospel. That comes through course-correcting our life, moving away from sin and more towards you. And we can't do that without your power at work within us. So we ask that you would do that. In Jesus' name, Amen.Alright. So in John 15, just a little bit of context because we're jumping into the Gospel of John. This is a teaching called, in a series of teachings called, the "I am" teachings. And John, as he's telling the story of Christ – and John's really explicit about how he's written this gospel – it is to explain Christ as God and that you should believe in him. And so he's got seven different teachings he's lined up, these "I am" teachings, that Jesus is telling them who he is. He says, "I am the bread of life. I am the light of the world. I am the door. I am the good shepherd. I am the resurrection and the life. I am the way, the truth, and the life." And then we get to this final "I am" teaching here in chapter 15. So I want to read it all in one clip and then we'll work through this.He says, "‘I am the true vine, and my Father is the vinedresser. Every branch in me that does not bear fruit he takes away, and every branch that does bear fruit he prunes, that it may bear more fruit. Already you are clean because of the word that I have spoken to you. Abide in me, and I in you. As the branch cannot bear fruit by itself, unless it abides in the vine, neither can you, unless you abide in me. I am the vine; you are the branches. Whoever abides in me and I in him, he it is that bears much fruit, for apart from me you can do nothing. If anyone does not abide in me, he is thrown away like a branch and withers; and the branches are gathered, thrown into the fire, and burned. If you abide in me, and my words abide in you, ask whatever you wish, and it will be done for you. By this my Father is glorified, that you bear much fruit and so prove to be my disciples. As the Father has loved me, so have I loved you. Abide in my love. If you keep my commandments, you will abide in my love, just as I have kept my Father's commandments and abide in his love. These things I have spoken to you, that my joy may be in you, and that your joy may be full.'"Man, there's a lot going on there. A lot of wonderful truths. Now, to even begin to understand what he's getting at, we need to understand that he's using a metaphor to teach something greater. He's using the example of a vine to help teach that he is the vine and we are the branches. Now here's the problem: Many of us are not growing vineyards in this area. It's just not happening. And they would have been very familiar with this language, and we are not. So I think it's helpful to actually see what he's talking about. So this is a typical vineyard vine. And what Jesus is getting at here is that he's the main vine that goes across the trellis, and that we are the branches that flow out of this vine. So there's one main vine that's going across, and there's branches flowing out of this.And there's a lot packed into this. But one of the things he's trying to clearly teach is that his people are in him. We are a part of him. This is something that you read throughout the New Testament. This is what Paul is getting at when he's teaching that Jesus is the head of the church and the church is the body. It's all one. This is where we get teachings about Jesus is the cornerstone, the foundation of our faith that the house is built upon. It's these same ideas that we are in Christ, that when you're a Christian, you are connected to him. And it's a helpful visual to explain what he is getting at.Now, there also is quite a bit packed into this passage that we don't have time to get into. There's a whole thing on the Father pruning branches, branches thrown into the fire. There's some things on needing to understand being known by spiritual fruit and the importance of that, the importance of the commandments. There's all types of stuff that is going on here. But again, to be able to do this and do this well… I have one option: I could be here for like 60 minutes, which is frowned upon because Kid City has children that have a ticking time bomb. So I'm not going to do that. And I'm not going to stretch this out for three or four weeks. I do think that you'll find some helpful study in this in groups this week. But I do want to focus on this one main idea here: that Jesus, the Word incarnate, this is our God, and we get to abide in him, and we get to be in him and him in us. And I just want us to see this so clearly.So let's work this going back to the top in verse one when he says, "I am the true vine, and my Father is the vinedresser." Now, Jesus is teaching his disciples, and his disciples are Jewish, and they would have been familiar with this language of the vine. This is not something that's foreign to them, not just because they have lots of vineyards where they were living, but also this is language that flows out of the Old Testament. When you read the Old Testament, you read Psalm 80, Israel is described as a vine taken out of Egypt and planted in the promised land. Isaiah 5 talks about the people of God being described as a vineyard, as a vine. Jeremiah 2 talks about the people of God being called a choice vine. Ezekiel chapter 15 talks about Jerusalem being a vine. We see this over and over again. So much so that in the 100-200 years before Christ, in what's called the intertestamental period between the last book Malachi being written and the gospels happening and Jesus coming, the period of the Maccabees, this period a few hundred years before Christ, they had coins in that time period that had on the back of them a vine from a vineyard, symbolizing Israel. So they were familiar with this. And this was not neutral, that Jesus just took something that they were unfamiliar with that had no loaded language, no loaded meaning in it. He took something that had meaning and also some meaning that we may not see. If you read those Old Testament passages, when it usually talks about Israel as a vine, the people of God as a vine, it speaks negatively. Calls them a wild vine, a useless vine, pictures of disobedience and deserving judgment. So this is not a neutral example that they've been given. But what Jesus is doing is he's taking something that is familiar to them and he's redefining it. He's helping them see this in a different way. And he says, "I am the true vine. I am the vine." And then he says, "My Father is the vinedresser." This is the farmer. This is the gardener, is the one who tends to the vine.And then he continues in verse two. He says, "Every branch in me that does not bear fruit he takes away, and every branch that does bear fruit he prunes, that it may bear more fruit." Verse three: "Already you are clean because of the word that I have spoken to you." So there's a lot that he's… I mean, again, if you read the Gospel of John, you see so many of these themes that are connecting together. But John 1 begins with Jesus being declared as the Word who became flesh, the incarnate Word. This is the idea that as God created the world through the power of his spoken word, this God is the Word who became flesh. And this Jesus, this Word, goes to work in his disciples, bringing them to faith. And then they are called, we'll see this later, to live by his words, by his teachings. So we got both pictures here: Jesus the Word who saves and sets apart his people, and the words that he's given for his people to live by, the teachings of the gospel. So he's telling this to his disciples, and it's to 11 disciples, minus Judas. You see, at this point in the Passover meal, Judas has already left. So it's just the 11 that he's talking to when he looks at them, and this is supposed to be unbelievably encouraging, and he says, "You are clean." He looks at 11 men that he's invested three years of his life in, teaching them the kingdom of God and the gospel, helping them see who he is over and over again. And this is the Word that is going to work in their heart to bring them to faith, to be the people of God that he builds the church through, so the people of God may abide in him. He says, "You are clean." This is the power of the word, the power of the word to save us through faith, to set us apart, to make us clean, and to live out his teachings.But I want us to pause and don't miss this point: That means that the word is powerful. That words in general are powerful. Like, we undersell so often how important it is. We unknowingly build our lives upon words and phrases. We just got done about a month ago with our recovery cycle. Recovery is a 10-week program that we do every year. It's offered for those who are working through any bit of suffering or sin or brokenness. And every year I get to watch, I get a front row seat as a pastor to watch God change people and help them see that they've built their lives upon the wrong words in ways they don't even realize. Because this is what we do. I mean, it's not uncommon in recovery to have someone that remembers a time where their parent years ago said, "Why can't you be as good as this sibling?" And that phrase took root in their heart. And they spent the next 10, 20, 30, 40 years working and striving and proving themselves with an unending work ethic, trying to please others, trying to be the best because years ago they built their life on this idea that they heard so long ago. It's not uncommon in recovery for someone who's been bullied in school growing up or in the workplace to finally make a decision: "That's not going to happen again." That they're no longer going to be in a position where someone overpowers them. They will be in the seat of power. And they build their life upon that idea where everything becomes a power dynamic, and it's beginning to crush their soul. There are positive things we build upon in the wrong ways. It's not uncommon in recovery to hear someone that heard some version of "You're so pretty," "You're so smart," "You're so strong," "You're so dependable" for so long that it went to their head. And instead of that being a place where they turned over thanks to the Lord, it became a place of pride or a place of identity. And the rest of their days has been spent trying to live up to this expectation where "I have to stay the prettiest or the strongest or the smartest or the most dependable." And it's exhausting. And I so love recovery because I get to watch people discover this and then encounter the gospel and a word that is better, that changes them to where they're no longer living under this identity, but they've been given a new one.But that helps us, I hope that helps us see, that is how powerful words are. And the power of the gospel is immense to change our lives and become a foundation that shapes us. 1 Peter 1:23 says, "since you have been born again, not of perishable seed but of imperishable, through the living and abiding word of God." What he is preaching there is that we, through the word of God, are born again. It comes to live in us, and God implants this imperishable seed, this seed that will never die, spoil, or fade. It begins to grow in us, and it changes us through the living and abiding word of God. This is the power of the word, and it's the power of the word at work in us.And that's something that we should have front and center in our souls, that we should remember how powerful the gospel is. And that's what we celebrate this week, y'all. We just sang songs that celebrated "open wide the gates" and that Jesus comes into the city. We celebrate that he, on Good Friday, as we'll sing so much about on Friday, goes to the cross to pay the penalty for our sin and to absorb the wrath of God that we deserve. That as Romans 6 says, "For the wages of sin is death." The good news of the gospel is that we have sinned against a holy and perfect God, but Jesus lovingly goes to the cross to pay that penalty for us. And the next Sunday, we will celebrate that he walks out of the tomb and makes a way for a new life in Christ, for us to be born again through the imperishable seed that gets implanted in us, that brings us to life. And then we celebrate that Jesus ascends to the right hand of God the Father, where he rules and reigns as King and Lord. So that we look at Jesus not just as Savior, not just as conqueror of death, but as the Lord who says "do this," and we do it; "don't do this," and we don't do it; "be obedient here," and we say, "Yes, Lord." This is the gospel that saves us and sets us apart. That's the power of the word at work in his people that saves us.But also, I don't want us to miss this: it's a continual invitation to us as Christians to abide. Because in verse four he says, "Abide in me, and I in you. As the branch cannot bear fruit by itself, unless it abides in the vine, neither can you unless you abide in me. I am the vine; you are the branches. Whoever abides in me and I in him, he it is that bears much fruit, for apart from me you can do nothing." So Jesus looks at his disciples and he tells them, "Abide in me." Which means to remain, to stay. Abide in me. It's an invitation, but also it's an encouragement because what does he say? "Abide in me, and I in you." That it isn't this effort and toil to just try to stay connected to him; He's at work within us. Which, y'all, makes him the main character here. He's the vine. He is the vine. He says, "Apart from me you can do nothing. A branch apart from me cannot bear fruit. It withers and it dies." He says, "I am the vine. I'm the one that gives life to the branches. I'm the one that sustains the branches. I'm the one that gives you the fruit. It is me at work within you." And the disciples need to hear this. And y'all, we so deeply need to hear this as Christians. We so deeply need to believe this.Because so many of us are so deeply trying to be vines when he's called us to be branches. We may not say that, but our actions display this: that we want to be the vine. And my question is, are you tired? If you're honest, are you tired of trying to be the vine? It's not the way it's supposed to be. Matt Freeman, our pastor who oversees worship and other things, he's getting ready to take a sabbatical. He's going to be gone for three months, which I'm excited about for him. I'm excited about for him because this is going to be good for his soul. Um, I got to do a sabbatical last year, and I needed it. Um, I needed the time to rest and and to do some soul work. I'm thankful as a church that we get to do these sabbaticals. I'm thankful that we have the time and space and we have the team that can be able to do this. But I needed this because I've realized that so much of my pastoral ministry and my life as a Christian is this endless attempt to be the vine, and it just shows up over and over again. And that's no way to live. And as a pastor, that's an easy way to burn out. I mean, pastoring is a joy, and I love it, and it's wonderful. I wouldn't want to do anything else. But it is hard. There's a spiritual weight to it. And the burnout rate in pastoral ministry is high. I mean, it's high. There's a whole cottage industry devoted right now to trying to understand all the different factors for why pastors are burning out, why they don't last longer than five years. And it's, you know, there's a lot that's going on there. And like many things, these problems are multifaceted, multifactorial. There's a lot of things going on. And there's also trying to figure out how to inspire people to jump into pastoral ministry because there's fewer people jumping into pastoral ministry. So they're all trying to figure this out. But I know one of the factors good and well of this type of burnout is self-inflicted. It is forgetting that you're not the vine, that you're a branch. And my sabbatical taught me that so much, that so much of my effort is from me. And I had to grow in prayerfulness. There was an immense lack of prayerfulness in my life. And I've had to learn to just, when I'm feeling burdened, to just go outside and just walk down Holland Avenue in the sun and see the invisible attributes of God and his glory of his creation and just talk to God and just pray and cast my cares upon him to sustain me. Like, I need this. Well, you need this. Like, as a Christian, you need this.You need to read the scriptures, not just for the utility of checking a box or doing a thing or completing a task or what, but to actually just gaze upon the beauty of our God and his word. We need this. We need this because we're so trying to be vines, and we're not. We're not capable of it. We're not designed to be the vine. We're not designed to be the source of life, of strength, of identity. No, it comes from him. And there's this invitation to abide in him. And we just miss it, y'all. We miss it. So many of us are trying. So many of us, our Christian faith is like a phone. It's like a phone where it's just going. It's got all... like my wife, when she for a long time she didn't realize that on the iPhone you have to like close out the windows. And then one day I was like, she's like, "My battery keeps dying." I was like, "Let me see it. Have you closed out your windows?" And she's like, "What?" I was like, "You've had a hundred windows going for years! Like, you got to like get rid of these." And so many of us have so many windows open all the time. We're so many things that are happening all the time. And, you know, we'll switch to low power mode and try to stretch the life out of it, and all of a sudden it starts shutting down. And the problem is that it's meant to be connected to the source of power. It's got to be recharged. You can't endlessly use the phone and expect that it's going to function like it's supposed to.And that's us. We just, we miss this, y'all. We try to work jobs and raise children and pay rent and be good friends and family and clean up our house and be good neighbors and stay healthy and pay debt and be a better spouse. We try to do all the things without ever charging the battery. And we wonder why we are anxious and depressed and sleepless and overmedicated and overstimulated and overwhelmed. And it is because we have underwhelmed our souls by trying to be the vine when he's just saying, "Be a branch." Just be a branch. And we reject this offer to abide in the vine. And we as Christians live lives a million miles a minute. And then when we have the time to truly abide, we will doom scroll and we will distract. And there's this invitation from our Savior that's saying, "Would you abide in me? Would you abide in me?" And we wonder why our faith is so bland and God seems so foreign and our worship seems so boring. And it's because we live lives trying to be vines instead of branches. The power to live the life we're called to live flows from him. It does not flow from ourselves. And some of us, myself included, need to be so deeply confronted by that reality this morning.And then Jesus continues in verse six. He says, "If anyone does not abide in me, he is thrown away like a branch and withers; and the branches are gathered, thrown into the fire, and burned. If you abide in me, and my words abide in you, ask whatever you wish, and it will be done for you." So he says, "If you abide in me and my words abide in you, ask whatever you wish, it'll be done for you." Which is a wonderful invitation that has been so deeply hijacked and marred by prosperity preachers in America, who have just tried to actively ruin that passage every chance they can. As if that's some invitation to fill the desires of your heart. As if that's not connected to the immediate context, what Jesus just taught in John 14. In John 14 he says, "Whatever you ask in my name, this I will do, that the Father may be glorified in the Son. If you ask anything in my name, I will do it." So he just taught that, and he's teaching it again. It's this idea of we ask for things in the name of the Lord, in his name, that his will would be done to his glory and not the exaltation of self. And there's a lot of prosperity preachers in America that took that and made that about our own selfish enriched desires, and they've ruined that. And hell is hot, and they're going to see it one day because that is a wicked way to twist this passage. Because what's so beautiful about this passage is to have such a sweet communion with God, to so deeply abide in him and him in you, that he so shaped your desires to be so heavenly and kingdom-motivated, that what flows out of your heart in this deep abiding relationship is things that make much of him, in his name, to his glory, and not our own. And that is a way to live. That is an invitation to a much sweeter, much better life when we live inside the vine.And then he, we'll finish here in verses 8 through 11. Says, "By this my Father is glorified, that you bear much fruit and so prove to be my disciples. As the Father has loved me, so have I loved you. Abide in my love. If you keep my commandments, you will abide in my love, just as I have kept my Father's commandments and abide in his love. These things I have spoken to you, that my joy may be in you, and that your joy may be full." Now goodness, there's a lot in that passage, which again, if you're not part of a group, stop by our connect table today, jump in a group. You could study this this week in your group. So I can't get into all of this. But I do want to end on this idea here, that following the ways of God – and that's keeping his commandments – that following the ways of God is abiding in his love, and that's where joy is found. Like, y'all, we need that so deeply. Our souls need that so deeply. Because our instincts from the flesh, when God says "do this," "don't do this," our instincts say, "Ah, did you say that? Ah, is... I don't know." We don't want to do this. But what he's trying to help us see is that if you're abiding in me, if you're abiding in my love, you'll see this is where joy is found. And maybe against your instincts, but it's better for you because you'll actually discover something that is better.When my wife and I got married, we had a few different interests. I love sports, I still do. She was a musical theater minor. And to this day, she teaches dance and musical theater for a middle school. So she loves musical theater. And I, when we got married, did not like musical theater. I wasn't raised on it. I saw Oklahoma one time as a kid, and I was like, "That's a glimpse of hell." This is like, I don't love this. But she does. And so I had to finally start to see things from her perspective. And the first musical that finally started to make sense to me is I listened to Les Mis and I saw Les Mis, and I went, huh. I love stories. I love good film. I love music. Okay, I see. And I started to… and then my buddy texted me and said, "Hey, have you heard about this Broadway that just hit called Hamilton?" And I just was like, "No." It's like, I went on Spotify and I listened to it. I went, "Oh my goodness." And then we started going to see Broadways together. We started going up to Charlotte and then, you know, Colombia, and just we started seeing these things. It's like, "Oh, okay." Like, I'm starting to get some of this. And there's some that I truly have begun to enjoy. There's some I still don't enjoy, and I say, "You should go see that with your friend." But there are others where I'm just like, "No, this is a wonderful story. I'm captured by it. I'm captured by the music. I see what they're doing in the first act, how they pull this into the second act. I see this. And now I see how good this is." Now, it was against my instincts; would have never thought I'd be a person that would show up to a Broadway and enjoy it. But I see how some of them, there's a lot of joy in this, and there's joy with her and enjoying this together.And it may be against our instincts to see the commands of God that we don't want to follow. But if you in faith will trust the vine and trust what he is saying, that this is where joy is actually found. If you do this, you will experience true joy, not the fleeting happiness of this world. Because the world offers us so many things that we can chase after that we think are good, and those things will never satisfy. We have to believe this. We have to believe this wholeheartedly.A couple days ago, I got to do something that I have so wanted to do for so very long. I got to go to the Masters, which has been a bucket list thing for me to do. Like, I just, I've so badly wanted to go, and I finally got to go. And I got there, and it was awesome. This is probably going to show up in 10 sermon illustrations in the next couple of years because it just was a profound experience for me. But I know some of you don't like golf. It's fine. But stay with me. I was there, and I was enjoying it. I was enjoying all the things that I've wanted to enjoy for years. But I also realized there's a crowd that shows up to the Masters, it's a little different. I thought that, you know, everyone's going to be there and they're going to be enjoying this the whole way to the finish. And by the time we're at 18, the final hole in golf – there's 18 holes – on the final hole, we're there, which is a big deal as you see them finish in the biggest golf tournament in the world, but stay with me. We're there, and there's only like three or four hundred people still left. Like, there just, that's it. I was like, "What in the world? There were thousands of people here earlier, and we're on the final hole of the biggest golf tournament in the world." And what I realized is, is for a lot of people, this is just a social thing. This is a thing. And there's a… I went up to where all the fancy houses are, and I saw all the fancy beautiful people and all the things. And I just had a moment of clarity, not from a position of self-righteousness, but just from a position of just God-given clarity. That's like, there's so many people that want to be in those houses. There's so many people where that's the good life, that that's everything the world offers: money, status, fame, luxuries, riches, all of it. Everything is aimed at that life right there. To be able to do this, it's just a social thing that you do for a minute and go on to the next big thing. And I had such clarity to go, "That's not joyful. That is fleeting worldly happiness. And it's not where joy is found."And we have to examine our souls to realize where true joy is found. It is found in living a life that abides in the vine. It is found in joyously listening to our Savior and living a life that is pleasing in his sight because that's where ultimate joy is found. And y'all, that invitation is so clearly given to us as the people of God. But we have to have the ears to hear it, and we have to have the eyes to see it. And that's my hope. There are some of you that if you're honest, you've been looking for joy in all the wrong places. That so much of your life has been filled with, "If I can just get to this point in life, if I can just get this, if I can just obtain this, I'll finally be happy." And Jesus so clearly is saying that's not where joy is found. But there is an invitation to you, there is, to come and abide in Christ and have him abide in you, and to live a life connected as a branch to the vine. And my hope is this: in this Holy Week, as we walk through this into Good Friday and we celebrate what he did at the cross, as we walk into Easter and celebrate the empty tomb, that you would have your eyes open to what this invitation is. And you take it, and you'd believe.And there are those of us that have truly tasted and seen that the Lord is good, that we actually are Christians, we love Christ. But what you need to hear this morning is that some of you have so strived and worked and labored like a vine. And my hope this morning is that you'd hear the invitation so clearly to abide, that you'd see that you are a wonderful branch that God is pruning and doing stuff with. He's trying to bear fruit in. But things need to shift in your life. My hope is that in a group this week, you begin to see that even more clearly, that things need to shift in your life to be a Christian that actually takes the invitation to abide and remembers that you're a branch and he's the vine. Let me pray.Heavenly Father, I pray that you would help us see this invitation this morning. God, help us see that you are the source of life and hope and joy and fulfillment and identity. It's you. God, I pray that you'd compel our hearts to believe that. There are those here that have never truly believed that. That has not been their story. They've lived life trying to find joy everywhere else. And God, I pray that you pierce through their heart right now to help them see where true actual joy is found. It is found in you. And there are many of us, God, that we've believed that, we've forgotten it. And we've lived lives trying to be branches. And God, may you pierce through our hearts this morning to help us see who we are actually called to be. And that we begin and remember and rediscover what it means to be a branch connected to you, our wonderful vine. In Jesus' name, Amen.

Group Guide Use this guide to help your group discussion as you meet this week.

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Group Guide Use this guide to help your group discussion as you meet this week. Additional Resources

Group Guide Use this guide to help your group discussion as you meet this week.

Group Guide Use this guide to help your group discussion as you meet this week.

Group Guide Use this guide to help your group discussion as you meet this week.

Group Guide Use this guide to help your group discussion as you meet this week.

Group Guide Use this guide to help your group discussion as you meet this week.

Group Guide Use this guide to help your group discussion as you meet this week.

Group Guide Use this guide to help your group discussion as you meet this week.

Group Guide Use this guide to help your group discussion as you meet this week.

Group Guide Use this guide to help your group discussion as you meet this week.

Group Guide Use this guide to help your group discussion as you meet this week.

Group Guide Use this guide to help your group discussion as you meet this week.

Group Guide Use this guide to help your group discussion as you meet this week.

Group Guide Use this guide to help your group discussion as you meet this week.

Group Guide Use this guide to help your group discussion as you meet this week.

Group Guide Use this guide to help your group discussion as you meet this week.

Group Guide Use this guide to help your group discussion as you meet this week.

Group Guide Use this guide to help your group discussion as you meet this week.

Group Guide Use this guide to help your group discussion as you meet this week.

Group Guide Use this guide to help your group discussion as you meet this week.

Group Guide Use this guide to help your group discussion as you meet this week.

Group Guide Use this guide to help your group discussion as you meet this week.

Group Guide Use this guide to help your group discussion as you meet this week.

Group Guide Use this guide to help your group discussion as you meet this week.

Group Guide Use this guide to help your group discussion as you meet this week.

Group Guide Use this guide to help your group discussion as you meet this week.

Group Guide Use this guide to help your group discussion as you meet this week.

Group Guide Use this guide to help your group discussion as you meet this week.

Group Guide Use this guide to help your group discussion as you meet this week.