David - the Man With One Priority — Devern Fromke

Lord, we thank you now that we are not as though standing in the arm of the flesh or on the ground of our own strength and sufficiency. We say this in words, but oh may the reality of it grip us in a new way this morning.

Our total helplessness, our utter helplessness. We are but a stone apart from the oil without a supply. Just, just make this to be very real. We shall be sure to give thee praise and glory. We ask it in Jesus' name.

David as a Shadow of the Greater David

Amen. For those who may have slipped in today, let me just say we have been speaking about the man after God's own heart, David. We said, and I think I must reemphasize this again, that as you look at the various lives, the men whom God raised up, you find something of uniqueness expressed in their calling and ministry.

Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, founding fathers. Moses, the deliverer. Of course there are other aspects that are involved, but maybe that delivering aspect out of Egypt stands to overshadow. Joshua, the possessor, the taking of the land and attempting to lead the people on into the fullness.

The Judges period, and then Samuel, the voice of the Lord. We're sort of centering in these days on David. Now I think I've intimated, but we're going to hit strong and hard. On the calling, the focus of David fulfilling the will of God is the unifier of a motley bunch of tribes, a group of people that needed to be unified.

Now I would that I had the power, the strength. I'm keenly aware all the time that when we're speaking of David as the shadow, the one who walks, he's merely a dim representation of the greater David.

I so rejoice when Brother Kong starts and moves along because, and it's true with our Brother Sparks, there's always something that focuses in on the Lord Jesus. You want to pray for me, pray that somehow I always begin and end with the concentration on the exalting, the lifting up of him.

Now I say it's incipient, it's implicit, but I want it to be explicit. You know what I mean? So I want us to keep this in mind, that David in any of the phases we're taking him through as the man after God's heart, is but a dim shadow of the Lord Jesus himself, whom the Father surely looked upon and said, He is the one after my heart.

All together satisfied with him, in him I find great delight. So we've been speaking about him raised up, anointed. Yesterday we saw the failure and then the effectiveness that came as he was finding the priority.

But this morning I want us to go on and pick up that in essence again. What was the priority in David's life? Now I think we have to realize that this is something of the longing, how much he moved into the fullness of this priority, this that became very central.

I do not know, but I tell you his heart sure groaned for it, and that's what I like. What was it? Well, turn with me to a Psalm of David, Psalm 27. And I want to read just the verse that I believe indicates something of this intense desire, this sharpening of focus.

There are so many good things, I would hear David say. There are so many profitable things. There are so many desirable things. But he says, Psalm 27 and verse 4, One thing have I desired of the Lord.

You hear any other man talk like that? I think it's a mark to those who are pressing in, pressing in for fullness, pressing in for the things that count. I hear it in Paul in Philippians when he says, this one thing I do.

I sense it in the spirit of the Lord Jesus when he's counseling with Martha and Mary in the home, you know. He finally says, Mary has chosen this better thing, this one thing. Well, here we are. One thing have I desired of the Lord.

That will I seek after, that I may dwell in the house of the Lord all the days of my life, to behold the beauty of the Lord and to inquire in his temple. You want to hear that same cry again? Turn over to Psalm 84.

Yea, the sparrow hath found in house, and the swallow in nest for herself, for she may lay her young, even thine alters, O Lord of hosts, my King and my God. Blessed are they that dwell in thy house. They will be still praising thee, Selah.

Blessed is the man whose strength is in thee, in whose heart are the ways of them, who passing through the valley of Baca make it a well. The rain also filleth the pool. They go from strength to strength.

Every one of them in time appears before God. O Lord God of hosts, hear my prayer. Give ear, O God of Jacob, Selah. Behold, O God, our shield, and look upon the face of thine anointed. For a day in thy court is better than a thousand.

I had rather be a doorkeeper in the house of my God than to dwell in the tents of wickedness. For the Lord God is the sun and shield. The Lord will give grace and glory. No good thing will he withhold from them that walk uprightly.

O Lord of hosts, blessed is the man that trusteth in thee. All right, we've said one thing then. If there's something of priority in the heart, something of a focus in the life of David, it is to dwell.

To dwell. To dwell in the presence. To dwell in the house of the Lord. We've been using sort of as a progression and a key. You remember in Psalm 52. We read the other day. Turn just for a moment. We picked it up.

Psalm 52 and verse 8. David said, I am like a green olive tree in the house of God. Here he's saying he's there and he makes quite a statement. I am. You remember we've been talking about the olive tree.

But now he says in the house of God. All right, we're agreed on this. But we get down to the question and it is this. How do you dwell? I look out over the Lord's people week after week. And I'm strangely conscious, it seems all the time, of their desire to press in to dwell.

But the question is how do you dwell when there are so many things that hinder the dwelling. That hinder our real dwelling. How do you dwell? How do you keep your mind staid? We read and we quote. Thou wilt keep him in perfect peace whose mind is staid.

How do you dwell? I think I would have to honestly say that the last two years, since we've begun to make this something of a deep, intense priority. There has never, never, and I don't want to give any ground or any opportunity for the enemy.

But I would have to say there has never been a greater bombardment or attack to hinder this dwelling. But for having the key or the secret, who could stand it? Well, let's see if we can get into it in this way this morning.

Wouldn't be right if I didn't scribble something on the board, would it? So here we start. I do believe that central to understanding this thing of dwelling is to know how we are constituted, how we are designed, and how God has made us for his dwelling and for our dwelling.

Because they are both very necessary. The scripture says that man is spirit, soul, and body. Sometimes I'm really pressed when I start to draw the picture of spirit, soul, and body. I'm pressed to draw it the way it is in most religious situations.

I'd like to draw a little shriveled up spirit and a great big overdeveloped soul. Because while so much of the time we think of ourselves as being spiritual, so much, as our brother said last night, that is pawned off.

And we mean well. No one has been more sincere and intense in desire than I think I have. But oh, what an hour it is. What a revelation when one day God pulls down the mirror and says, look, this is this.

This is what you call spirituality. And utter dismay you discover what it is. Well, I won't draw our picture. I'll draw what ought to be. Body, soul, spirit. We know, of course, that in God's unique design in making man, he was wanting a home.

Not just the home of the universe or the home of the throne up there. But God, in being able to express himself and, as it were, fill the universe with himself, has uniquely designed, uniquely made man with a place deep within that he might make home or dwell, that he might dwell.

I think we should stop, and it will come out in our reading in a little bit. I am wanting to emphasize the word dwell because there is a difference between occupying and dwelling. A chair might occupy a place, but a chair can never dwell.

Only living things can dwell. I think maybe we do more occupying than we realize. But God wants us to dwell, to dwell. And, of course, I know no better way than to say that when he made our human spirit, I believe he made it as a vessel that could receive, quite a bit like an empty room, as it were, incomplete, complete and yet quite incomplete in some ways, because it was made for his occupancy, made that he might come and dwell therein.

But I think it's a law of the functioning of God that he does not imprude, especially in the realm of the moral. He does not imprude without invitation. And so man, in the beginning, has an empty room.

He has a spirit waiting to be occupied. And you know the story how, in the garden, Adam's choice, instead of receiving the Lord, receiving the tree of life, receiving the Spirit of God to come within and make a union, he turned to his own way, and by taking of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, he set a course and a pattern, ever after, that there would be the dependence, the sufficiency in the soul itself.

And so the soul has become the dominant, controlling, overshadowing force, the governmental agent, basically, within man. Now, someone says, for the sake of younger folk, and you maybe who have not gone through this realm, let's just see what the soul is.

We think of three primary functioning factors within the soul, the mind, the emotion, and the will. These constituting the activity of the soul realm. We see how man, from that beginning hour, when there has become the sufficiency in himself, if he eat of this tree, he can be as God.

No dependence, no union, no life course, something more or less self-contained and having within it, having within it its sufficiency. All parts. There's the need to reach up and get another apple, occasionally, from the tree, to feed the mind, to excite the emotion, to encourage the will.

But what I'm after this morning is basically this. When people try to dwell, or they set the longing of their inner being toward dwelling, we get confused so often in what is involved in really dwelling.

How often through the years have I attempted to bring my soul realm into the place where I could dwell, stay, keep stay, keep occupied, but the harder I tried to get quiet, the louder the screaming came.

Oh, I don't mean that there was anybody out here screaming, but it was my soul. This awful turmoil, this awful bombardment. I wonder if maybe there are those these days who have been sensing the Lord planting something of the tree within or bringing forth some new activity of the tree in your spirit.

And yet immediately there comes the conflict of concepts that we have known. I'd say you're quite an unusual person if there haven't come some new shafts of light and some new things. And lo and behold, here is the arguing, that which is a renewed area, and yet the old concept stands and all the war that goes on.

Anybody know what I'm talking about? I tell you, I've gone home, I've gone to my room at times feeling as though somebody had had a meat cutter and just slayed and slayed me. And the strangest thing about it, it wasn't the old type of preaching that had ended all of the, but it was done in such gentle, quiet, neat, loving, it gets you.

That's the Spirit of God. And I would say this morning that there will be no dwelling until we learn to recognize that dwelling, the dwelling that David, I believe, is pointing to here, the dwelling that we have to get hold of is not our dwelling in mere mental concepts that we get straightened out.

It is not a dwelling in soul where my emotion, my will, and my mind has come to rest, but the dwelling is to move beyond into the innermost part. It's in spirit. It's in spirit. This is a dwelling. This is a dwelling.

It seems that the very man who cries out the most to say, oh, one thing of my desires, and you turn and read, and every other verse, maybe not quite, but it seems that way, every other verse he's saying, the wicked, even mine enemies and my foes, and yet all of it is the means by which he is being driven to the real dwelling.

I don't think, oh, maybe that's an overstatement, it would seem anyway that we don't learn to dwell apart from literally being driven. I believe Paul is getting at something of this when he says, casting down imagination and every high thing that exalts itself against the knowledge of God.

Here are these strongholds. I don't know, but you look out upon lives as you're ministering or speaking or counseling or fellowshipping, and all of a sudden in the course of your conversation you see something of a flicker.

Uh-oh, there's a stronghold. There's a concept. Collision course. You know what I mean? A stronghold. Something pretty well developed right here in the realm of the soul. And oh, what a day it is when the Spirit of the Lord begins this bringing every thought into captivity to the obedience of Jesus Christ.

The destroying of these strongholds. There are strongholds out in the realm of the body. We'll get into some of that. Out in the outer that literally dominate and hold and control. There are stronghold concepts that have found such deep, deep roots in our minds.

And I think the only way that we can be very sure this morning is that we catch this thing of dwelling is just to say, cheer up, brothers, sisters. You will never get a harmonious marriage of concepts.

You will never get the answers. You will never, as long as you live in the realm of the mentality of the soul, you will never find rest. I don't care how many books you read, especially mine. I don't care how long and diligently you study this book with the mental glasses of harmonizing.

You'll always lay your head on your pillow with a tossing seat. You used to think only the wicked. It says the wicked are like the tossing seat, cannot rest. Lord, there's a lot of wickedness. There's been a lot of wickedness in me.

Oh, I don't mean this unrest out here, but that of the soul. And I'm so mindful of the Lord Jesus. I never used to understand this thing of the salvation of the soul. I hear a man say, as my brother said last night, the word of the cross is the power to them which are, you remember, being saved?

Oh, that would wave a red flag before me. Because I have a strong old certain conception, you see, that when you're saved, you're safe. Well, you are in the spirit. Your spirit has been born. Your life, the union, has taken place.

But it was a wonderful day of unveiling when I began to see that there is the saving process of the soul. You see, the saving process of the soul. Lord, that is quite a process. One thing is to change.

One thing, the realm of the spirit, you see. So, cheer up, brothers. After all this warring that goes on here in the realm of the mental, God, in his own time and way, has a way of renewing, you see, until you begin to see that you're just held apart, unrelated to the whole.

Phases, not in complete blending. And God has a way. So, this morning we're focusing in on the fact that there will always be this warring that goes on in the realm of context as long as they are something merely flowing out here in the natural.

But I do believe that when God teaches us to just dwell, focus in spirit, and begin to say, Dear Lord, I'm shut in. I'm so glad you've not asked me to understand all of this. It's so easy to get ourselves mixed up with God.

That's right. Trying to answer the questions and the problems of a lot of people. Why do you reserve that for yourself? And I think the most blessed words I've learned the last couple of years is, I don't know.

The Lord, thou knowest. Thou knowest. And that used to be awfully hard because I did have everything pretty well organized. Every answer that came along. I'd say the same. What does it mean to dwell? All the blessedness moving out of this realm where the mentality, the soul reigns supreme as to where it rides and the shriveled up spirit needing, needing to know that operation of the mingle and the joining, the work of the Spirit of God within in order that the spirit may begin to take over and use the soul as the hand uses the glove.

The renewing of my mind. The renewing of my emotions. The renewing, the strengthening of the well. And then you have something of a complete change, you see. The character, that is the function of the soul takes on its proper, its proper order and function.

Romans 7 and the Four Governing Laws

Well, let's get into this by turning this morning to the book of Romans, chapter 7. Take up a few of the verses. Let's lay a little more background in getting a hold of how God has designed the function.

We're going to discover that there are several laws mentioned here in this chapter. Before we go to them, let me just list them before us. First of all, we're introduced to the law of God. Then we're introduced to the law of the mind.

Then we're introduced to the law of sin, which is within our members. And then we're going to see the law of the spirit of life. I think we have to understand a little better what this term law really is, what it's meant to reveal to us.

If I understand the use of the term here, it is that the law is the way a thing is made to function. The primary essence which governs or controls its nature or character. Let me see if I can illustrate.

We say, for example, of a dog, that a dog is so constituted, a dog is so made that at certain times, a dog barks. Did you ever see a barking chicken? How many? No. Well, you say, why? Because the law of a chicken is different.

The chicken crows. I guess roosters do anyway. You see? The dog out of the nature that which issues and surrounds it. The law of the dog is to bark. The law of the duck is to quack. The law of the chicken is to...

Now, this may be something of a limitation of the term law, but let us just take this over into the realm of which we're going to consider. The law of the mind is a very wonderful thing. The mind is so constituted as to function in a certain way that the mind is built by God to acknowledge that which is good and right.

That's why we have a moral universe. You never teach children, but there's something that the law of the mind functions. And here, a plate of apples goes down the aisle. Mary, Johnny, Susan, Billah, they all take apples.

But Billy ends up the last in the line and gets the smallest. And he says, that isn't right. You were selfish. Who taught him that? It's something of the law or the function of our mind. It's the way the mind works and operates.

The law, the work, and the function of the mind. It just barks because a dog barks. It quacks because a duck quacks. And your mind, in its function, it has to be moral. Until other invasions will come in that will upset that, it always says, this is right.

Follow this order. So that's the law of the mind. The mind, in its natural functioning, the law of its working is there to look up and say, that's right. That's moral. That's good. And so forth. All right.

By the same token, we say, the law of God is that essence or that quality. It is that which issues out of it and gives us a wonderful awareness of the fact that God is love. You can't conceive of Him in any other way, can you?

Your mind has to acknowledge that. And so, it's the expression of what He is. That which is the outflow of His function, and all that He does. Now, Paul is going to say, as we read the verse in a moment, for the inward man, I delight in the law of God.

Something in my inner being cries out, love, that's right. Peace, that's right. Joy, that's right. You see, all that is in harmony or synonymous with God Himself. Well, we have to go on a little bit and discover that there's another law that he's going to mention, and he calls it the law of sin in my members.

I'd like to have us, as we notice now, remember that there has been an invasion by sin, a power, something of a life force that has come in out here to capture the members and to set up strongholds, to take one into captivity.

And we'll notice now in reading here, beginning in chapter 7, verse 18, verse 17, I think, he says, verse 17, Now then, it is no more I that do it, but sin that dwelleth in me. Well, he uses a strange word regarding sin, doesn't he?

It's something that dwells. I think it's something of a living thing, a spirit of some kind, something that has made an invasion. Sin that dwelleth. It isn't something that's just come in to occupy, but something that has come in as a very living thing.

It's something that's dwelling there. Sin that dwelleth in me. For I know that in me that is in my flesh dwelleth no good thing. For the will is present with me, but how to perform that which is good I find not.

For the good that I would I do not, but the evil which I would not, that I do. Now if I do that I would not, it is no more I that do it, but sin that dwelleth in me. I find then a law that when I would do good, evil is present with me.

For I delight in the law of God, after the inward man. Here is something, the human spirit, I think we can say, there's something of the structure and the acknowledging of the spirit of a man within that reaches out to the light.

Something of God being spirit, here's spirit, there's something of a harmony that would reach out. I think I could even see this in some manifest ways in an unborn again person. And I sometimes wonder if they don't confuse that with this natural function of the spirit.

It's quite dead, often quite insensitive to God, and yet there are some manifestations very often of an inner spirit that's reaching out for its completeness. But I think we do well to remember that the real delighting is God's spirit within our spirit reaching out in harmony towards God, the law of God.

So I delight in the law of God, after the inward man. But I see another law in my members warring against the law of my mind. So you see, that which is the delight of my spirit, and then my mind here takes cooperation with it, joins with my spirit and says, oh, God, I give acknowledgement.

The delight, the acknowledging, according to the law of the mind, it reaches out, but oh, it's got an alien area to go through here before it can reach out to God. This alien area where sin dwelleth, this that has come to create such awful antagonism and struggle.

Now, what is the law of sin? What is that essential feature about sin that we see in its primary character? Well, sin is antagonistic. Sin is a total rebellion. And the law of sin, or that essential feature that always stands out about sin, is it's always saying no.

You see that in your little boy. He doesn't know very much, but somehow, or your little girl, somehow that contrary something, quite a living thing, it just says no. Uh-oh. And it's quite often manifested in big boys and big girls.

Not in the same way, but there it is. No. No. Ever sense it in yourself? Oh, I think I've wept in my bedside so often. Lord, what is this contrary thing in me? I would but, that no. That no. My mind acknowledges, or maybe my inner spirit has its antenna beginning to be sensitive and it says yes.

Yet all of this cloud out here rises up and says no. No. It's a living thing that dwells in the members. So he says, verse 23, but I see another power, another law, another actively functioning thing in my members warring against the law of my mind and bringing me into captivity to the law of sin which is in my members.

So very simply, we have a fellow who's having great difficulty. He wants to dwell. Everything of spirit would say, yes, Lord. And let's, let's say here, here is a mind at least that acknowledges and says, I ought to dwell.

I want to be occupied with you, dear Lord. But the awful war, the awful bombardment that comes in, the stronghold here in the members that are rising up to say, no. No. This is the argument, the struggle, the reasonings that go on.

And I think we get a glimpse of that in David. You read the psalms. Intense desire to dwell. So what do we do? Pressed in by the circumstances? Seem to be controlled by things external? All the time things out here instead of a spirit that is strong, a spirit that is, is sensing the inner health of the Lord.

Well, if the spirit does not know how to draw from the olive tree, if the spirit on its own, or even if in the mind we're trying to keep our mind safe, and the mind independently doing it. I'm going to keep my mind safe.

Mind, you're going to be safe. Now, mind, mind, you're going to be safe. I've met some people who are pretty strong in will. They've been, they get pretty well developed in the power of their will. Religious people, very well developed in emotion.

Soul, Spirit, and the Difference Between Them

So they can make a whole lot of us cry when they do. You see, these things are developed. I used to be, I'll divert a little bit. I used to be quite alarmed that I would move around among the large people.

Occasionally I'd run up, run into a home, a situation where a dear wife would say, and I believe in sincerity, or if I could just get my husband to take his place. But he's so weak, and he doesn't seem to, he doesn't seem to, he doesn't seem to know how.

And I have to keep plotting him to take the lead, you know, and to help him along. And under the Lord, I think maybe we've been able to sit down, help many a dear sister to see that what she may have called spirituality, or what they may have assumed to be spirituality, is a strong, a well developed soul.

I was out in California three or four years ago. I was in ministry, staying in a very precious home with Christian brothers and sisters. He had his mechanic shop just to the side. Worked out there day by day.

I'd go out, sit down and fellowship as he was working. Oh, his spirit, my, there was a blending. There was a crying out for reality. There was a something that, quite an attunement, and then I kept sensing, dear Lord, I enjoy this.

Something of an echo, spiritual spirit. But almost always, we'd end up by his saying, oh, if I could just be what I ought to be. If I could be spiritual like my wife, then I could take my position. And I'd sit down with the precious sister.

She'd move five little ways with the Lord. And she was all the time saying, oh, if I could just get birth. If you'll never know who they are. If I could just get birth. To be the head. To rise up and take.

One day, in the groaning and the concern, I said, well, sister, I'd like to just talk with both of you, if I may. You see, he kept saying all the time, she gets so many answers to prayers, and the Lord speaks to her, and she had a lot of the earmarks to what so often we call spirituality.

But I sat down one afternoon, and surely the Lord helped us. And I'll never forget looking at him and saying, brother, you are using a wrong yardstick for measuring some of the things that we call spirituality.

And my humble evaluation is that God has been working in your life. And there's far, in the strength of character, there was far more of an enlarged fear, if you could tell it when we prayed, that I think if you could see what God sees, you'd be encouraged.

To believe that you are ready more for the headship, the position that you really long for. And then I had to, you know what we say, lower the boom? I didn't do it. I know the Lord did. But I had to look at the sister and say, sister, you've developed a strange, peculiar, kind of a soulish, mystical something, that without realizing it, you keep your husband under, in a peculiar activity.

I think that God has made the woman in her temperament and makeup, naturally speaking, with a temperament, she's naturally more mystical. The man, in his natural makeup, is far more calculating. I'm speaking naturally.

And we get temperament and natural confused with that which is the grace of God. Well, I trust the Lord to help me with that this morning. It was quite something wonderful to that dear sister, and she said, I see that.

What I thought was spiritual was more of the soul. And I've been a victim, sort of overwhelming, and dominating, and overshadowing, spiritually, and in quite a gentle way. Dear old Bert, I'll never forget.

It was just like his shoulders going back and standing circumspectly and saying, Dear Lord, Dear Lord. The man whom God wanted to be king sort of looked more kingly when we got through. The sister whom God wanted to be more queenly looked more queenly in her place.

Now it took several times to reaffirm, and I, we just sort of went back and reminded a couple times. But it's been something of real growth and development. Could you believe what I'm trying to share this morning, dear sister?

It's out of just one desire, and that's to help us. I believe there have been growing many, many of God's children, oh dear Lord, to get the right order. But it hinges right here as something a brother was saying last night, a proper distinction between that which is of the spirit and that which is of the soul.

Beyond that I can go no further. God has to make the ending. But let us, let us, let us learn, let us claim now that God will help us, help us learn what it is to dwell. We're not dwelling when in the soul we get a hold of a principle.

We go home with the principle and try to get the principle to function in our home. Let me show you. You've never read this or heard this verse, but for those of you who haven't, let me just say, did you ever read that verse?

Why? Submit yourself to your husband, you see. And you take that as a principle and you go home and you say, all right Lord, in my soul realm, in my mind out here, I've got a hold of it. And I will go home.

You strengthen your will. I will go home to submit. And you get home with a renewed determination. That's what consecration is to most people, a renewed determination in the will to fulfill the concept you've learned in the mind.

And so you move about the house with that strange and wonderful religious soul being stronger and stronger. I submit. Did you ever live in that kind of a home? Oh, the strain. Oh, the tension. I'm submitting.

Submitting. I'm submitting. And get hidden behind it all the time the worry that you're going to come into a situation in which you can't submit. I mean, because the law of your mind says I can't go out and buy, well I shouldn't anyway, I don't think, go out and buy a bottle of liquor.

You see? Your reasoning can conjure up all of the situations you're going to get into. You've got worry back here. You've got a concept. And I don't wonder that so many unsaved husbands look on and they say, whoa, is that what it does to you to be a Christian?

Is that what it does to you? Deliver me from it. And I don't blame them. Strain. Can I say to you this morning, I know how I've been guilty for years. Instead of bringing people into the glorious liberty of the sons of God, the children of God, I've been so guilty of giving people a joke, a principle, something that's developed in the realm of the soul.

And God wants to take away the strain. You're not dwelling when you're straining. You're in the soul. That is its dominance. But you go home with an olive tree instead of a basket of apples. No more dust.