Through Victory

ReCAST Church of Mattawan

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You're listening to a podcast of Recast Church in Matawan, Michigan. This week, Pastor Don Filsak is preaching from his series,

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The Warrior Poet King, Study of Second Samuel. Let's listen in. Good morning to everybody and welcome to Recast Church.

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As Linda said, I'm Don Filsak. I'm the lead pastor here. And I hope you're excited to hear from God and to hear really about Him through His Word this morning.

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I love the gathering together of His people. A couple of weeks ago, I had the opportunity to sing praises together.

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There were 13 guys from our church that went down to a conference in Louisville.

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There were 10 ,000 people gathered together there, mostly pastors and church leaders.

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It was amazing. Have any of you ever sang in a crowd that large? 10 ,000 people praising

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Jesus. Occasionally, we get a glimpse of the gathering around His throne in heaven and it just gives us a foretaste, just a small sliver of what it must be like there and what it will be like there to praise

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Him in the gathering of all of His people. But I look forward to that eternal kingdom where all the redeemed will rejoice in perfection.

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We will all rejoice together without sin, without death, without boredom, and without sorrow.

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Our text this morning might seem at a glance, as we think about that throne room and that ultimate place that all this is going, we can read through the

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Bible in a year and some passages are going to stand out to us as what I would call the connective tissue of Scripture.

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Yet, I'm committed to teaching all the way through the Word of God. When I take off a book,

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I don't skip chapters. I don't skip verses. What we have here in our text this morning is going to look like merely a military update in the middle of the life of King David, a military update.

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But I want to connect it to that throne room scene of people gathering to sing His praises.

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How are we going to get from where we live today with all of the divisions and all of the wars and all of the strife and all of the struggle and all of the personal broken relationships and animosity and sin, how are we going to get from this place, from this week, to a place of multitude singing around His throne forever and ever and ever with no sin?

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How do we get there, church? How in the world are we going to move? How many of you have had just like, has there been any conflict in anybody's week this past week?

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Anybody just a skosh? Some more, some less, but all of us have faced some level of conflict, even if it's just internal, right?

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All of us. And it may shock you to hear the truth. It might not be what you think it is that's going to actually carry us to that eternal kingdom.

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It's a shocking word when I say it, and you'll have to think it through, and you'll come to the same conclusion as me that it's true and it's biblical, but the word that's going to carry us from this place to that is war.

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It's war. The book of Revelation pulls no punches, church. There will be violent opposition against Jesus from the nations right up until the final moments when he ushers in his kingdom, when he puts down the nations that oppose his rule and ultimately oppose his people.

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As we read the gruesome exploits of David in battle to secure the peace for the Old Testament people of God, we may be tempted to think that war is such an

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Old Testament concept. And I would even suggest to you that many of us love the metaphor of David and Goliath.

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We don't much think about someone's bloody head. Jesus predicted in Matthew 24 a reality about our history, a reality about where we live, and it makes sense, and scripture shows us what life is really like, does it not?

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Ongoing cycles of violence, ongoing cycles of war and natural disaster.

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Jesus himself, while he was here on this planet, peaceful, meek, kind, came to save us and to give himself for us.

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Jesus likened our history, human history, where we live right now, to the waves of contraction that a woman goes through during childbirth.

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Now, many of us in the room have experienced it from one side, and some of you in the room have experienced it from the other side, and those are not the same thing, right?

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Some of you women here have gone through that experience. Some of you men saw it, and you have a deep and abiding respect for your wife as a result of that, right?

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But the reality is, I mean, Jesus didn't shy away from using that, and so I'm only using it because Jesus was okay with it, but otherwise

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I probably wouldn't even go there, but each one of those contractions, Jesus said, in describing history, remember, this is a metaphor for human history, each contraction a bit stronger, each one bringing with it more pain, but each one moving closer and closer to the birth of new life.

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That's why Jesus used that as a metaphor. You see, a woman doesn't know how many contractions she's going to have, but there's going to be a last one, and then there will be a glorious arrival.

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That's our history church, so when you hear of war in Ukraine, or when you read the headlines of natural disasters, or you read the headlines or watch the news about violence in our very streets, in our very cities, let every bad headline remind you that we are one contraction closer to the arrival of our

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King. How does a Christian read the headlines? With hope. With hope, not placed in this world, but a reminder that there is indeed a hope coming.

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David in our text is granted part of the promise that God gave to him back in chapter 7, and it's been a couple of weeks since we were there, but Israel, he was promised that Israel would be brought to a place of increasing peace with the nations around them.

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And God would use the military prowess of King David to carve out an increasing place of safety and stability for that nation.

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And all of this was with one primary focus. Why in the world was God concerned with Israel in the

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Old Testament? Why was he kingdom making with King David? And it was all with the focus of the nation of Israel bringing forth a

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Messiah. The promise to Eve that one born of the woman would crush the head of the serpent.

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The promise to Abraham that one of his line would be a blessing to all nations. And a fulfillment of the promise to David in chapter 7, that one man born of his line would be an eternal king forever and ever and ever.

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So David in our text is going to secure all four compass points. North, south, east, and west.

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Actually he conquers in the order of west, east, north, and south. And the territory of Israel will expand during our text this morning.

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But God is here in this conquest and he is there fulfilling his promise to his people and securing a safe place to bring forth the

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Messiah, Jesus Christ. So let's open your Bibles or your devices or your scripture journals to 2

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Samuel chapter 8. Again this is 2 Samuel chapter 8 and we're going to read the whole chapter together and that's going to be the topic for this morning, the subject of the sermon and really what

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God wants to communicate to us church. So let's take on 2 Samuel chapter 8 before the band comes to lead us.

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After this David defeated the Philistines and subdued them. David took Methagama out of the hands of the

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Philistines. And he defeated Moab and he measured them with a line making them lie down on the ground.

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Two lines he measured to be put to death and one full line to be spared. And the Moabites became servants to David and brought tribute.

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David also defeated Hadadezar, the son of Rehob, king of Zobah. And he went to restore, as he went to restore his power at the river

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Euphrates. And David took from him 1700 horsemen and 20 ,000 foot soldiers. And David hamstrung all the chariot horses but left enough for 100 chariots.

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And when the Syrians of Damascus came to help Hadadezar, king of Zobah, David struck down 22 ,000 men of the

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Syrians. Then David put garrisons in Aram of Damascus and the Syrians became servants to David and brought tribute.

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And the Lord gave victory to David wherever he went. And David took the shields of gold that were carried by the servants of Hadadezar and brought them to Jerusalem.

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And from Betta and from Barathi, cities of Hadadezar, king David took very much bronze.

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When Toi, king of Hamath, heard that David had defeated the whole army of Hadadezar, Toi sent his son

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Joram to king David to ask about his health and to bless him because he had fought against Hadadezar and defeated him.

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For Hadadezar had often been at war with Toi and Joram brought with him articles of silver and gold and bronze.

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These also king David dedicated to the Lord, together with the silver and gold that he dedicated from all the nations he subdued.

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From Edom, Moab, the Ammonites, the Philistines, Amalek, and from the spoil of Hadadezar, the son of Rahab, king of Zobah.

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And David made a name for himself when he returned from striking down 18 ,000 Edomites in the Valley of Salt.

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Then he put garrisons in Edom. Throughout all Edom he put garrisons and all the Edomites became David's servants and the

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Lord gave victory to David wherever he went. So David reigned over all Israel and David administered justice and equity to all his people.

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Joab, the son of Zariah, was over the army and Jehoshaphat, the son of Ehalud, was recorder, and Zadok, the son of Eotub, and Ahimelech, the son of Abiathar, that were priests, and Sariah, was secretary, and Benaiah, the son of Jehoiada, was over the

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Cherethites and the Pelethites, and David's sons were priests. Let's pray.

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Father, we thank you for your word that gives guidance and direction to our hearts. We can read these

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Old Testament passages and say, what are we supposed to do? Conquer Pawpaw and head up north to head up north to Plainwell and we don't really have a hard time applying these things without the understanding of your covenant, the understanding of what you are doing with your

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Old Testament people and how different the covenant is now that we live under of grace where Jesus abundantly and clearly communicated to us that we are to love our enemies and so our heads can spin, sometimes we can give up on understanding some of these passages and hamstringing horses and laying out lines and killing armies and all of this stuff.

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Father, I pray that you would make clear to us what you desire to communicate of your faithfulness to your people to do the things that you promised to do.

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We cling to that as our only hope. Your faithfulness is the only reason we're gathered here together in this place today.

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The only reason and rational cause for our rejoicing and our singing is that you are a

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God who keeps your promises and you've promised to set us free through the cross of your son Jesus Christ. So we're a gathering of people that lean on your promises that depend on you for our everyday hope.

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Father, I pray that you would help us to rejoice and to sing and to take on this message this morning as we're going to dig into that in a few minutes here.

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I pray that you would help us to walk out of here changed because we've come in contact with not just your word, not just some extra information but we've come in contact with you through what you have revealed of yourself to us in your word.

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We ask this in Jesus name. Amen. Yeah, you can go to be seated but just encourage you to get comfortable as comfortable as possible during the message and if at any time during the message you need to get up and get more coffee or donut holes or juice back there if you need to use the restrooms those are out the double doors down the hallway on the left hand side if you're not familiar with the facility here.

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And then I do ask you to please keep your Bibles open to 2 Samuel chapter 8. So if you lost your place in your scripture journal, your device or your

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Bible, jump back into that so that you can see that the things that I'm saying are coming from God's very word.

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We're going to walk through that passage. Now I want to set a little bit of context here. David wanted to build a temple for God back in chapter 7.

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It's been a couple of weeks since we were here because of Easter and then I was out for a conference for a week and so just give you a refresher on this.

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David said, you know, why am I living in a palace and God's presence and his ark is in a tent and so he felt a little guilty about that so he said,

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I'm going to build God a house. And God turned the tables on him and said, no

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David I'm not going to let you build me a house, I don't really want that. Instead I'm going to build you a house and he riffed on the word house and said

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I'm going to create from your line and your descendants a royal dynasty of kings and one of your descendants will sit on the throne of your kingdom forever and ever and ever and of course we know that is

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Jesus Christ our Lord the Messiah. So God also promised in that same promise in chapter 7, he promised

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Israel peace through David and we know from our vantage point that Jesus Christ is the ultimate fulfillment of the promise of peace.

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He is our prince of peace. Peace will indeed belong to the people of God forever but only at the return of Jesus Christ.

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Only when that final king comes into his kingdom. But what we see in our text here is what

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I would liken to a kind of down payment of that promise. God will grant some immediate victories even as the ultimate victory is coming so he grants some immediate foretaste of victory and he does so through David here.

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And just like healing in the here and now is merely just a foretaste of the final healing that we will receive when he returns and just like the singing with 10 ,000 at the

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Kentucky International Convention Center a couple of weeks ago was merely a foretaste of the worship that is to come.

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What he gives to David in this text is not the final and ultimate peace that he promises but a taste of it.

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And our text is structured according to the points of a compass. So if you're taking notes here I'll kind of spell that out to you but we're going to start west of Israel then we're going to go east of Israel then we're going to go north of Israel then we're going to go south of Israel.

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So everything in this text is about expansion and territory and conquest and God blessing his people with abundant victory over their enemies in the immediate vicinity.

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But the victory list begins with the west so that's your first point is the west and we see that right off the bat in verse 1.

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Victory starts out there west of Israel with the Philistine territory and you see that on the map there hopefully you can at least make a little sense of it

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Philistia out there to that little area to the west of Israel.

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And David had already had some success defending against the Philistines but now he goes on the offensive and the text gives us a really weird phrase that probably doesn't matter to you a whole lot but it says

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Methagama and he took that off their hands. Well Methagama is not a place name it's kind of a figure of speech so it can be a little confusing.

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It's kind of like saying took the apple, took their crown jewel from them or took the lead mother is actually a direct translation of those two words in Hebrew.

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So he took their lead mother from them well what does it mean that he took their lead mother out of their hands? Well there's a parallel passage of this very passage in 1

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Chronicles and there in the place of, the very place of Methagama is the word

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Gath. It is their capital city. It's like saying their crown jewel, their lead mother, their head city, their chief, the capital of the

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Philistines. Might be a decent translation of this exact phrase here that we see in Hebrew.

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So David took their principal city. And the author of 2 Samuel, now when you think about the way that this is worded, look at your text, the way that it's worded is pretty understated when you really think.

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He took the capital city of the Philistines, yeah he did. It's basically understated intentionally, yeah he just kind of took their capital off their hands.

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We have no detail given to us in the text of what this battle actually looked like and no other parallel passage that gives us the details of the battle.

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We just know that he in this instance and situation conquered Gath and the Philistines were subdued.

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And how many of you think that there may have been some battle involved in that? To take a capital city from a warring tribe that was more technologically advanced than the

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Israelites, this is no small thing. So the Philistines, a smaller group of people with much more technology and iron and all of that stuff and you can kind of do some research and find out that they were a little bit more advanced technologically than the

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Israelites during this time. And they are now subdued and under David's control. So that's to the west, now we move on to the eastern neighbors in verse 2.

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Moab. To the east was an ancient enemy of Israel but David had some fairly recent ties to Moab that makes his treatment of them seem particularly harsh and particularly strange.

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You see, David's great grandmother, Ruth, was from this country, from this nation, from Moab.

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And Moab had provided sanctuary for David's parents while he was on the run from King Saul. So as long as David was in opposition to the leaders of Israel, Moab was not good.

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Moab was okay with David. But now that he's the king of Israel, Moab doesn't like him at all.

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And so the battle ensues between Moab and Israel and David defeated Moab and he uses an ancient method of subjugation in the text here.

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It might be confusing and seems somewhat gruesome. He kills two -thirds of their military forces. It says that he measured them out in a line.

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Line by line by line into three equal portions and killed two -thirds of their military.

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War crimes, anybody? Does that sound like a war crime to our current minds and to our current culture?

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By ancient standards, I want to point out that this might be gracious. It might be gracious by ancient standards.

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One thing that makes a subtle difference between ancient warfare compared to modern warfare is just simply geography and distance.

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Geography and distance comes to bear in a lot of what was going on in those ancient battles that you read about in the

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Old Testament. The Moabites who were fighting against Israel lived a few miles away from Israelite farms,

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Israelite families, Israelite homesteads. They were not thousands of miles away. They were not across an ocean.

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They were literally next -door neighbors who went to the same fields for harvest. To spare an enemy army was to invite them, hey, why don't you just come back next spring and give it another shot?

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Can you imagine that in that context in that culture? Why don't you build up your strength for the next year and then come back at us?

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We'll see what we do then. So, David, what he does here in sparing one -third of their army is a pretty big deal.

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Now, I'm not justifying this at all and the text doesn't give us any insight as to how God views this. And you need to understand this fundamentally as you're coming to the

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Word of God. Do not make the mistake of assuming that everything that's recorded in Scripture is acceptable to God.

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He records history for us. He describes things sometimes and doesn't prescribe them.

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He tells us what people really did, not what he wanted them to do. And he doesn't always feel like he has to tell us that was wrong.

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So I want to be clear about that. God may very well have been disapproved of this method of subjugation that David employed here.

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We know that David was not perfect and he is not held up as an example of what to do throughout this book.

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We know that in these final days the church is called, of course, to love our enemies, to pray for them.

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And we certainly ought not to hamstring their horses as we're going to see in just a couple of verses. I won't get into the gruesome details about what that is.

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But the result of all of this, the overarching thing that is going on here, the Moabites now serve

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Israel and bring tribute to King David. And to the east, on the eastern front of Israel, it is now secure and the

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Moabites are subdued. Verses 3 -12 is the majority of our text and it takes us north.

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It really is a highlight in this text. So we're not getting equal treatment. Obviously we've got one verse on the western front, one verse on the eastern front, and then several verses on the north and then one verse on the south.

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And so north of Israel was obviously a big point to the person that's recording this. And that's because of who's conquered there.

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David defeated Hadadezar, the king of Zobah. And so you kind of see that up there, way up north of Israel.

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I don't know if that map is super helpful for you or not, but you can kind of see the Dead Sea kind of down there in the middle of the pink and then the

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Sea of Galilee up in the north. So we're way up north. And that river just up at the very top right of the map is the

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Euphrates River. So we're way, way, I mean we're talking substantial distances now from Israel.

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And he conquered. We see this little comment that occurred when

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Hadadezar was on his way that this conquest, David defeats Hadadezar, the king of Zobah, and that happens when

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Hadadezar was on his way to restore his power at the Euphrates River. David intercepts this guy long ways from home.

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And just so you're aware, we see in verse 10 the likely person that Hadadezar was going to attack at the

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Euphrates River is this guy named Toy. If you're reading in ESV, it says two.

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And you might go, why in the world does that matter? Well, it probably mattered to him more than it does to us. Whether it was T -O -I or T -O -U and some of the language can be shifty and how they would have pronounced it or how they would have said it.

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And so we just go with one of those. I like Toy because he becomes David's boy. So, I don't know.

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Threw that out there. Okay, that worked. David intercepted the large force heading north to attack

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Toy's kingdom in Hamath. And he captured 1 ,700 calvary to capture them.

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It's a pretty substantial thing to capture guys on horses. I don't know how you do it but he did it.

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And I don't know much about ancient warfare. I'd be kind of interested to research that and figure out how in the world do you actually get them to surrender 20 ,000 foot soldiers.

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This is a substantial routing of an extremely powerful kingdom. And it's astonishing to the author and to everyone involved.

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And so there's much more words used on the conquest of Zoba than the other areas. And again we see no justification for David's actions here in this text.

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But merely what we're reading here church, hear me carefully, we're reading matter of fact. Because some of these things that we read in the

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Old Testament disturb us. And I don't think it's wrong. I don't think that often our gut level response when you see and kind of go, how could

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David do this? I thought he was righteous. Well maybe your answer maybe you're presuming some wrong things. Maybe David wasn't righteous.

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Maybe he was just like you or me who had sinful days and good days and good moments and bad moments and made poor decisions sometimes.

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Do you get what I'm saying on that? And God's recording the life of a guy who is pursuing him who makes bad decisions at times.

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And so maybe verse four is a verse that God would use for some of us to shake us free. Well maybe verse two and verse four.

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God would use to shake some of us from the silly notion that David is the hero of this text. This is a text that shows us how

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God works in human history. It is not holding David up as this conquering hero that we ought to emulate and we ought to be just like him.

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He put to death two thirds of the prisoners of war from Moab in verse two. And then in verse four he hamstrings all the horses except for one hundred that he keeps for chariots that he has captured.

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This is a particularly brutal thing to do. This is a particularly inhumane thing to do.

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And although it might be it's pretty gruesome to think of him putting to death two thirds of the soldiers. For some people to be quite honest

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I can understand to some degree why. If you understand what hamstringing a horse is it sounds extremely and utterly unreasonable.

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Why in the world would he do this? How many of you have an idea? When I say hamstringing a horse, do you have an idea what he did?

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I don't really want to get into it. It was to put down a horse in an extremely gruesome way. And not pleasant at all.

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So he does this and I'm confident that David had a good reason in his mind to do so.

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He had some logical reason. Some reason that he would do this that isn't revealed to us in the text.

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Why would he put the horses to death in such an inhumane way? Well the text doesn't let us inside his head but it very well could have been a sinful motivation.

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How many of you know that that's available to David? Sinful motivation is available to him. It's possible that he did this surely out of spite.

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And the thing is, we don't understand I understand just enough of ancient warfare to help bring you into what he is probably doing here.

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What's probably his mindset. To kill a calvaryman's horse in front of him would be a clear assertion of dominance and control.

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To do that to a man I mean the man and his horse are now united in battle. They go into battle together.

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They do everything together. He cares for this horse and this horse is his livelihood.

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This horse is kind of his protection. So to do so, are you getting what I'm saying? This is a pretty harsh military action that he's doing here in killing these horses and sparing their sparing the calvaryman in the process.

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You're not going to ride that horse again. Inhumane? Probably many of us are thinking so.

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And I'm guessing that we would all agree to some degree on that. But in this battle against Zoba, Syria jumped into the fray against David and it seems like anyone who opposes

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David gets cut through like butter. David struck down 22 ,000 men of the

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Syrians in this battle. In this battle he basically gets a twofer. He gets Zoba and the Syrians.

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And the nation of Syria began to serve King David and to bring him tribute. And David placed garrisons of his own military in Aram of Damascus that's the capital city of Syria.

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So now he has military power stationed far, far, far to the north of Israel.

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The picture here is that David offered to build God a house. God said, no I'm not going to let you. So that the world doesn't think that I'm blessing you and giving you victory because you gave me something.

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I really believe that that's the motivation in all of this. God said, no hold off on the house building thing because I'm going to bless you and it's not

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I don't want the nations to think oh you go give this God a house go build him a temple and then he gives you nice things.

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Then he gives you victory. This is no, no, no. Before I ever get a temple from you I'm going to bless you. I'm going to make you victorious.

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I'm just going to make a promise to raise up a royal line for me because I'm God and I'm good.

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And in this text he is radically and rapidly but not effortlessly expanding

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David's kingdom. And look at the end of verse 6 as we take a pause in the action here. The Lord the

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Lord gave victory to David wherever he went. It's not the strength of his muscles.

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It's not the sharpness of his sword. It's not the skill and accuracy of his archers. It's not how much he's practiced with a sling.

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It's not his shieldsmen. It's not his battle strategy. Why is David slicing through his enemies like butter?

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What does the text tell us? The Lord was giving him victory wherever he went.

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And there's a paradox I want to point out in this statement that I think probably all of us because most of us in the room are

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Americans and so this settles wrong on our hearts. David and his troops are swinging their swords.

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Their muscles ache. They're the ones with cuts and injuries. David and his commanders are executing battle strategies and practicing and straining their neurons to figure out how to outflank the enemy and how to win the battles.

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And who gets the credit? Who gets the credit for that day in battle? Who does the text say won the day?

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The Lord. Anybody just kind of like hold on just a minute.

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Like just for a second and think that through. Have any of you ever put any hard work into something?

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Ever? And who gets the credit for that? Who gets the credit for that?

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Who are you going to honor? Who are you going to bless? I share the gospel with a family member. He's been kind of hard.

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He's been hard -hearted since I first met him. He's a very kind uncle but he is not a believer.

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When he was 18 years old he went out and he bought a bulldozer with his money. Probably took out a loan actually.

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I think he did. He took out a loan to buy a bulldozer. Built an excavating empire. Owns a lot of property.

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Has sold property to Menards. Has sold property to Appleby's. Has sold property. He's doing very well.

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And I remember when I was younger I was probably somewhere in my late teens or early 20s and I worked for the guy for a while.

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And I remember I shared the gospel with him and I had tried to get him to church for a while and his patent answer was always like, what, you want the place to burn down?

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Because if I step in it's going down. So he's always just kind of like just fire something off. So one day we were riding in the truck to Sturgis to check on one of his storage places and he says,

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I shared the gospel with him and he held out his hand to me and he said, Don do you see those blisters on that hand?

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He had a lot of blisters on his hand. Hard worker. He said, I refuse to worship and serve a

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God that takes credit for the work that these hands have done. You ever heard anybody say that?

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I refuse to take, I refuse to worship a God who takes the credit for my calluses.

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My hands did this work. My hands have built this empire. What's in our hearts church?

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What's in here? What have you done that you take the credit for? What have you done that you take pride in?

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Do you think, anybody in here with a kid that is walking with the Lord, did you do that?

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Can you write the book and get the rest of us there? Do you have the formula?

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God, we ought to be on our face before the Lord for any blessing that we have.

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How many of you live in a nice house? A sufficient house even. Raise your hand if you have a sufficient house.

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On our faces saying thank you Lord. Wow, I worked hard. Wow, I did it.

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I got this going. Some of you by the way are laughing because you didn't raise your hand when you said sufficient house. I don't know. About 50 % of this wasn't in my notes.

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Let's see if we can get back there. The Lord is the one that's giving the victory to David.

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Men are swinging swords. Men are doing all of this effort. Who do we credit with the good in our lives?

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We can think of all kinds of good things that are not best things to give credit to.

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We could credit of course the work of our own hands. We could equally divert the glory of God to His servants.

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We could say, what is the good in our lives? Well Mother Nature has given us a shot here and helped us out.

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Or we could credit masks or a shot or even the prayer life of our brothers and sisters.

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To some degree I want to be careful about that because how many of you love it when somebody's praying for you? And you ought to be praying for one another.

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But do you credit the person praying? Or is it the God to whom they prayed that brought you through?

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You get what I'm saying in that? We can subtly give glory and divert it.

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Glory that only belongs to God to others. Do we recognize that any good we have ever received has only ever come to us from the hand of a good and sovereign

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God. Every victory is His. Every delicious food you've ever eaten. Every little sleeping baby that has ever held his mom and dad's finger.

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Every good grade. Every promotion and raise. Every sunset and every sunrise. All of it ought to come to our hearts with the still small voice of God ringing in our ears.

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You're welcome. That's what your good

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God is saying to you in those good moments. You're welcome. He's smiling with you.

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When you smile at that vista and go wow. Lord thank you for that sunrise.

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Thank you for this child or thank you for this promotion or thank you for this home or thank you for this wife or this husband or whatever it might be.

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You're welcome. The victories of David that usher in the high point of peace for Israel under his son

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Solomon will come from these very victories we're reading about here in chapter 8. So in this comes a significant application.

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First make sure your hope for victory is placed in Jesus Christ. Our strength and power comes from a forgiven life.

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It is possible to fake hear me carefully church. It is possible to fake the Christian life by doing

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Christian things. So I will always encourage you first to make sure that you have acknowledged the death, burial and resurrection of Jesus Christ to deal with your sins.

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And that you've asked him to forgive you and to be your master your king. And if that has been done in truth in your life, then now in the power of his spirit, now from that place of stability now fight sin.

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Fight sin in your hearts and do the things. Like David out doing the things.

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And yet always be quick to acknowledge that all victory, all blessing, all ministry and all usefulness that comes out of your life is only ever victory that the

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Lord God in his mercy has given to you. Well we're still up north and David secures a lot of spoils from these two kingdoms and especially from Zobah.

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There's so much emphasis on Zobah in this text because it was a big deal. Very wealthy. A very wealthy and powerful kingdom.

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And David defeated them when they were at full force going out to battle and he wipes them out and he carries off the gold shields that their military carried and it says very much bronze.

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Didn't even measure it. And I mentioned earlier Toy the king of Hamath. He's way, way up north.

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Like even up north of Zobah. Up by the Euphrates River. And he stands out in the text.

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And I think it's with intention. When you see something, when you see a pattern and David conquered them and took their soldiers David conquered them, took their soldiers.

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David conquered them. And then this guy is totally different in all of chapter 8. He stands out with what

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I believe is significance in our text. He heard about David's defeat of Hadadezar who was likely coming for Hamath.

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And he sent his son Joram as an emissary to King David. He asks about his health.

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He blessed King David. Hadadezar had been a trouble to Toy off and on for years and so he was glad to be rid of him.

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And Toy sends to David through his son Joram. Sent articles of silver, gold, and bronze.

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And David dedicated all of these spoils to the Lord. Much of this was likely eventually utilized in the building of the temple under Solomon, David's king.

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These things stored up for years, melted down and added into the temple. But something interesting stands out with this boy,

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Toy. The name of his son is revealed as Joram.

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Which means in Hebrew, it's a Hebrew name, Joram. There's actually a subsequent king of Israel named

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Joram. It means a surprising thing to hear from a pagan king so far up north on the other side of the

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Euphrates River. It means Yahweh is exalted. Not the generic

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God is exalted, but Yahweh is exalted. That's the meaning of this name. It's likely that this pagan king has now given his son a new name.

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Changed his adult name, which was not uncommon for ancient kings to do. To change the name of their son to commemorate significant events in their kingdom.

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This man names a worshipful to the God that we serve, names his son

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Joram and sends him to Israel. This account serves as an oasis of hope in the middle of a passage about battle and conquest.

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Everyone, hear me carefully church, everyone that you have ever met or will ever meet or will never meet but has lived, everyone will be conquered by the king.

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Everyone will be conquered by King Jesus. It is a question of whether they will be conquered by his love or by his sword of judgment.

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He conquered my heart through love as a young boy who heard the message of his amazing love for me at the cross and I have been serving him since that day that he saved me.

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But there are some, we see them in the text, some will rage against the king and be put down in their rebellion.

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But others, like Toy of Hamath, some will lay down their swords and they will come into peace with God's anointed.

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We of course must come in line with his anointed, King Jesus. He will receive anyone who would lay down their sword and come to him for mercy, and I mean it, anyone.

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The Bible is abundantly clear, anyone. Regardless of what we have done, he will receive anybody who is in rebellion against him.

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He will forgive, cleanse and set free anyone who lays down their sword. Run to Jesus. Verse 12 tells us that David obtained spoils from Edom, Moab, Ammon, Philistia, the

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Amalekites and Zobah, the ones that wouldn't lay down their sword. David's southern victory is found in verse 13 and 14 rounding out the passage and giving us 360 degree increase in Israelite territories.

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He struck down the Edomites down in the south, down by the Dead Sea in the Valley of Salt, likely the location of Sodom and Gomorrah, the ancient cities there.

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And he conquered Edom and he set up garrisons there like he did up north, so now he has an active military presence far, far north of Israel and far, far south of Israel.

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And again we're reminded that we're not here in this passage to be impressed with David, that's not why we, why this passage exists, but rather to be impressed with a

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God who keeps his promises. The Lord gave victory to David wherever he went.

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It's stated a second time in verse 14, just in case we missed it. It's doubled up for emphasis. Verse 6, the

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Lord gave victory to David wherever he went. Verse 14, the Lord gave victory to David wherever he went.

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And further the text tells us David was a good king within his nation, not just merely a good military commander outside and being used by God to expand the kingdom, but he administered justice and righteousness to all the people and I think we need to explain that a little bit because in the

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ESV it says justice and equity. And this translation was made long, long, long before, not long before, but a few decades before the entire

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DEI thing came to bear in our culture. And so, any of you know when I say DEI, does that how many of that register something to?

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At least it should because it's here. The word means righteousness.

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The word equity there means righteousness or fairness and has nothing to do with the very narrow definition that equity has come to mean in our current culture.

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David, it's basically saying in his dealings with his people he was impartial, he was fair, and he sought to honor

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God in the way that he judged and discharged his role as the king of Israel.

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That's what it's trying to communicate. In verses 16 through 18 round out the text with a list of his cabinet.

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Joab led the military, Jehoshaphat was the recorder, Himalak and Zadok were the priests,

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Sariah was the secretary, Benaiah was over the Cherethites and the Pelethites. Not probably, that means a lot to you, right?

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Like you're like, oh wow, he was the dude with the Cherethites. Probably not, probably not getting anything. But what if I said that the

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Cherethites and the Pelethites were David's secret service? They were his bodyguard contingent. So, Benaiah was and he's actually recorded as one of David's 30 mighty men and he was over his bodyguard.

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And lastly, his sons were priests, but the word priest there, there's never anything recorded in the remainder of scripture about the priestly duties or responsibilities of the king's sons.

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There's debate about what role David's sons actually had in his cabinet. I say this because it's just kind of helpful.

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The Hebrew word for priest can be somewhat fluid, it can be also ambassador. It could mean that he was a go -between, that the sons of David were go -betweens like an ambassador much like Joram was an emissary for his father,

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Toy. But I hope nobody here I hope that the result of this like when you read about these war passages

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I don't know what it does in your heart. I doubt that anybody here is like okay, well, let's be warmongers then.

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I hope nobody here is super into large scale crises on the globe. I imagine that there's some here who do not shy away from the concept of just war and I don't want to get into politics here at all.

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But I did grow up as a boy playing war in the woods behind my house with a posse of neighbors right up until the point where I shot one of my friends with a

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BB gun in the back, literally. And that was before paintball so I mean if we had had paintball guns everything would have been solved but that was pretty ugly.

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But what role does war have in human history? It's a worthwhile question, is it not?

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We're talking, you know, in this whisper of World War III and we're going, where in the world does all of this go?

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And it only takes a couple of other nations to jump in and where is history going anyways?

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We talked about that earlier in the introduction. And as I mentioned, history is heading toward a final war.

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It is. We'll have wars and rumors of wars right up until the last moments. In the very end the nations will gather to rage.

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Really, I say one last time, there's literally two times in the book of Revelation still future yet for us.

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Where the nations will gather and will be put down by Jesus and then they will gather again and it's recorded for us.

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And here I just want to point out, this is how Jesus comes a second time. I want to read it to you.

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It's a bit of a larger chunk in the book of Revelation but it's worth identifying and taking on because how did he come to us the first time?

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Somebody tell me just a couple of words that signify his arrival, I think

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Christmas, birth, Bethlehem, peaceful, humble, meek, baby, manger, like animals lowing that night.

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You know, that kind of stuff, right? And this is our Lord and Savior. That same Savior who came to us that way.

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The rider on the white horse. Revelation 19, 11 -16. You can jot that in your notes. Then I saw, this is the

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Apostle John writing, he knew Jesus, he hung out, he ate fish with him, they walked the countryside and then he sees

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Jesus like this. Then I saw heaven open and behold a white horse, the one sitting on it is called faithful and true.

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And in righteousness he judges what? And makes war.

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His eyes are like a flame of fire and on his head are many diadems, crowns. And he has a name written that no one knows but himself.

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He is clothed in a robe, dipped in blood. And the name by which he is called is the word of God.

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And the armies of heaven, arrayed in fine linen, white and pure, were following him on white horses.

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And from his mouth comes a sharp sword with which to strike down the nations.

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And he will rule them with a rod of iron, he will tread the winepress of the fury of the wrath of God the almighty.

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And on his robe and on his thigh he has a name written, King of Kings and Lord of Lords.

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And I'm going to finish there, I'm not going to read it all, but then comes the battle. And then

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Satan is locked up for a thousand years. And then Satan is released and deceives the nations.

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And then comes the final battle in chapter 20 of Revelation. So go ahead and, if you get a little bit of time this afternoon, finish out chapter 19 and go on into 20 and read about this final battle.

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And then the greater son of King David will bring forth an eternal kingdom of peace and justice and perfection.

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That final battle, by the way, it is interesting how that one goes. Do you know how that one ends?

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The nations array against him. He speaks a word, fire comes down and consumes them.

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That's the battle. That's it. It's over. And he ushers in his eternal kingdom.

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And the new Jerusalem comes down out of the sky and we are with him forever and ever and ever.

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Eternity for us begins moments, I mean it begins, it's already begun, but the eternal kingdom begins moments after his victory over the nations.

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Moments after war comes eternity of peace. He who came the first time to be cut down in his, some might argue as his prime, you know, 30 years old seems like a really, 33 seems to be a good age, right?

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He's going to return again the victorious warrior. He will defend his people. That's us, church.

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Anybody glad for that? He will defend us. He will subjugate all who stand in rebellion against him.

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But only after a very, very, very long season, I think more than 2 ,000 years of extending out promise and hope and salvation to the nations.

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And through whom does he extend that hope? How are the nations hearing about his promise?

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How are they getting that message? Through us or no one. Through the church or no one.

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Through the people of God or no one. How does a person know to lay down their sword?

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Everybody's born with one. You sharpen it your whole life. And I think to a person in the room, the way that N .D.

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Wilson says it is really stark and kind of grotesque and kind of shocking, but he says, every person is born with a will to scratch

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God's eyes out if you just had long enough arms. That's how our heart is born.

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We sharpen our sword all life long and the only hope for us is to lay our sword down.

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Talking with our neighbors about God's love for them, that he made a way for them to be reconciled with him, to come out from underneath that judgment.

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Church, we enter communion every week and I fear that right now when you hear those words, you start to put your

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Bibles away, start to close your devices and your mind kind of wanders to like, okay, he might share the gospel for some unbeliever that might be here or something like that.

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But far from that, I hope that this can continue to be something that matters to you.

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I think it's probably the most serious thing that we do in the gathering together on Sunday morning.

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Those of us who belong to Jesus Christ are given a word picture to celebrate together. We take a cracker to remember that his body has not if his body had not been broken for us, we would face an eternal punishment.

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If his blood had not been shed, we would be lost in our sins and remain as rebels against him.

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We would not have set down our swords. So please come to the tables and take communion if you've laid down your sword and accepted him as your

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Lord and Savior. And let's leave here considering that the victory in all things is his.

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Place your hope for your week, your hope for your children, your hope for your jobs, your hope for your finances, your hope in your battle against sin, your hope for your eternity.

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Place that all with him. Any good that will come out of you at all will come from him.

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Let's pray. Father, I thank you for this passage that just keeps pounding in victory after victory after victory that you granted to your servant, the anointed one,

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King David, the one that you selected and chose. We thank you that now in this new covenant we have a greater victor than King David.

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We have the greater Messiah, the greater anointed one,

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Jesus Christ, our Lord. I pray that all of our hope would be wrapped up in him, that you would not allow any of the glory in our lives to squeak out, to go to other things, to find its resting point in some other thing.

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Father, that you would allow us to recognize all good comes from your hand, all blessing comes from your hand, all hope and all purpose is moving toward Jesus Christ.

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Father, if there's anybody here who does not know that message and this is kind of new to them and they're trying to figure things out, I pray that you would give them a boldness to come and speak with me, come and speak with Mark who is the elder on duty, come and speak to Dave who's up here, but I pray that you would give them a boldness to pursue and to look into Jesus, to ask questions about how they can be set free from their sin.

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But Father, for those of us that are here and already acknowledge your son, have already laid down our swords.

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Father, I pray that you would help us to bring this message to others, that you would help us to be bold, especially during this season.

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We don't know how many days we have left. We sang earlier, even so come Lord Jesus. It's our heart's desire that he would return soon.

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We see our culture deteriorating, we see things on the global scale that can make our knees knock.

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So Father, I pray that you would be our stability, you would be our hope, and that we would look forward to the day of your coming, in Jesus' name.