Waking Up in Ziklag

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Don Filcek; 1 Samuel 30 Waking Up in Ziklag

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listening to the podcast of Recast Church in Matawan, Michigan. This week, Pastor Don Filsack preaches from his series in 1
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Samuel, Timely Prophet, Tragic King. Let's listen in. Good morning.
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Welcome to Recast Church. As Dave said, I'm Don Filsack. I'm the lead pastor here. And a welcome and special welcome to those of you who this maybe is your first time here.
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I encourage you to make yourself comfortable. You can get coffee or juice or donuts. Help yourself to that at any time during the service this morning.
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And I just want to start off, I usually will start off by introducing the text of scripture because I think that that's a good starting place for us.
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A lot of people think that you sing songs to get your heart ready to hear from God's word. But I think that many times we need to hear
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God and what he has to say from his word so that we're reminded who we're singing to. So that's what we're going to do here for just a moment is take a moment to kind of introduce the message.
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But I want to start off by saying, I don't know how many of you knew we had an election in our country this past week. A couple of you knew something about that.
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I just want to just say what a joy and delight it is to gather together as God's people. And despite wherever you stand politically, how many of you are glad that Jesus Christ is the rightful king overall?
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Let me see your hands. Glad, praise God that he is the rightful king. I am so glad that the politics of this age does not define the hope for us as God's people.
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Amen? Are you glad for that? And I love that Recast is a place where we're united not by some
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American political party, but by the heavenly politics of worshiping and obeying our great king.
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And so I hope that that is a good reminder for all of us who can get kind of caught up in the politics, get caught up in the different things that are going on, and maybe even be discouraged about things that you see going on around you from either perspective to remember that Christ is still on the throne.
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Well this morning we're going to be picking up where we left off in the book of 1 Samuel. Actually, next week is going to be our very last sermon in the series.
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I hope that this sermon series has blessed you as much as it has me. I grow as I get an opportunity to study these texts and write these sermons and work through it.
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What we're going to do then for basically the month of December, a little bit of November and on into December, is go through a little bit of the book of Matthew, picking up a series that I've left off on there.
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So we're going to be going through Matthew 16. And then for the new year, we're going to be launching out into a new series in the book of Romans and the
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New Testament. So that's just to kind of let you know where we're heading. But let me remind you as we're introducing this message from 1
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Samuel chapter 30, let me remind you that earlier in this book God has called out
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David to be the next king of Israel. Now he's been wandering around in the wilderness. He's been running from King Saul. He's been taking matters into his own hands.
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God has been faithful to protect him time and time again. But David has been called to be a king, but he's been satisfied to be a raider in this town called
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Ziklag among the sworn enemies of God's people. See, God called David to lead his people, but instead he's been serving
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God's enemy. And God has providentially been protecting David moment by moment, but David has been adding to that his own taking matters into his own hands, resorting to lying and cheating and even slaughtering these raiders to protect himself.
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So I would suggest to you as we kind of go through this message, just thinking in terms of kind of metaphor,
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Ziklag I would suggest to you is the place we go when we want to protect ourselves. When our trust in God is thin and our trust in self grows and our trust in our ability to take care of our own problems and to preserve ourselves because nobody's going to look after me unless I look after numero uno.
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It's the place, think of it this way, it's the place where you're willing to compromise in order to make things more comfortable for yourself.
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And I think many of us, I'm not going to ask you to raise your hand, I think many of us have been to Ziklag. Many of us have been to that place and some of us are maybe living there right now and we're going to see that God is often faithful to wake us up in the ruins of our own
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Ziklags. He does so in order to draw us back into dependence on him and he is faithful to do so and it's not comfortable when it happens, but how many of you would testify that there are times when you've been granted the consequences of your own sinful actions, it's come down on your head and you've actually, looking back on it, seen it as God's grace in your life.
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You've actually been able to, from a vantage point in the future, look back, or from the present, and look back in the past and say, wow, that was really a tough, dark time in my life, but God has been faithful and faithful to bring me through some pretty tough things and even use really harsh things in my life to draw me back to himself.
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Well, David here in our text is at the tail end of a year and a half of self -made rest and he was, at this stage of his life, outside of the will of God, but at least he had the illusion of safety, right, and a lot of times we trade that off.
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A lot of times in our lives we'll make the trade -off for the illusion of safety, a self -made chintzy thin safety in exchange for the robust, solid knowledge of what
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God has revealed to us. So we're going to see in our text this morning that sometimes God has to destroy our plan B in order to bring us back to his original plans that he has for our lives.
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And in our text, David loses everything. You heard that right, in our text, David loses everything, at least at some point, and in order to be brought back into the radical dependence that moved him to slay the giant, that is what
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God has to do. He has to totally crush all of David's personal plans. You see,
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David's wandered away, but for the child of God, our wandering is only ever one big catastrophe away from drawing us back into realizing that putting our trust in anything except for God is like building our lives on shifting sand.
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And so, if you're not already there, let's open to 1 Samuel chapter 30. We're going to read this entire section of scripture together.
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I'd encourage you to navigate in a device, if you've got a phone that has the Bible on it or whatever, navigate over to 1
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Samuel 30. If you don't have a Bible or a means to navigate to it, then grab the Bible that's under the seat in front of you and head over there.
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Recast, this is a privilege that we have to actually hear from God's word, and even though it's a bit of a longer text,
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I just think it's worth the effort and the time to read it together so that God can speak to us through his word this morning.
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So let's dig in and listen up to and follow along to 1 Samuel chapter 30.
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Now when David and his men came to Ziklag on the third day, the
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Amalekites had made a raid against the Negev and against Ziklag. They had overcome Ziklag and burned it with fire and taken captive the women and all who were in it, both small and great.
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They killed no one, but carried them off and went their way. And when David and his men came to the city, they found it burned with fire and their wives and sons and daughters taken captive.
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Then David and the people who were with him raised their voices and wept until they had no more strength to weep.
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David's two wives also had been taken, Aenom of Jezreel and Abigail the widow of Nabal of Carmel.
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And David was greatly distressed for the people spoke of stoning him because all the people were bitter in soul, each for his sons and daughters.
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But David strengthened himself in the Lord his God. And David said to Abiathar the priest, the son of Ahimelech, bring me the ephod.
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So Abiathar brought the ephod to David and David inquired of the Lord, shall I pursue after this band?
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Shall I overtake them? He answered him, pursue for you shall surely overtake and you shall surely rescue.
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So David set out and the 600 men who were with him and they came to the Brook Besor where those who were left behind stayed.
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But David pursued, he and 400 men, 200 stayed behind for they were too exhausted to cross the
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Brook Besor. They found an Egyptian in the open country and brought him to David and they gave him bread and he ate.
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They gave him water to drink and they gave him a piece of a cake of figs and two clusters of raisins.
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And when he had eaten, his spirit revived for he had not eaten bread or drunk water for three days and three nights.
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And David said to him, to whom do you belong and where are you from? And he said, I'm a young man of Egypt, servant to an
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Amalekite and my master left me behind because I fell sick three days ago. We had made a raid against the
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Negev of the Charithites and against that which belongs to Judah and against the Negev of Caleb and we burned Ziklag with fire.
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And David said to him, will you take me down to this band? And he said, swear to me by God that you will not kill me or deliver me into the hands of my master and I will take you down to this band.
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And when he had taken him down, behold, they were spread abroad over all the land, eating and drinking and dancing because of all of the great spoils that they had taken from the land of the
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Philistines and from the land of Judah. And David struck them down from twilight until the evening of the next day and not a man of them escaped except four hundred young men who had mounted camels and fled.
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David recovered all that the Amalekites had taken and David rescued his two wives. Nothing was missing, whether small or great, sons or daughters, spoil or anything that had been taken,
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David brought back all. David also captured all the flocks and herds and the people drove the livestock before him and said, this is
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David's spoil. Then David came to the two hundred men who had been too exhausted to follow
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David and who had been left at the Brook Bay store. And they went out to meet David and to meet the people who were with him.
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And when David came near to the people, he greeted them. Then all the wicked and worthless fellows among the men who had gone with David said, because they did not go with us, we will not give them any of the spoil that we have recovered except that that each man may lead away his wife and children and depart.
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But David said, you shall not do so, my brothers, with what the Lord has given us.
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He has preserved us. He has preserved us and given into our hand the band that came against us.
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Who would listen to you in this matter? For as his share is, who goes down into the battle, so shall his share be who stays by the baggage.
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They shall share alike. And he made it a statute and a rule for Israel from that day forward. When David came to Ziklag, he sent part of the spoils to his friends, the elders of Judah, saying, here is a present for you from the spoil of the enemies of the
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Lord. It was for those in Bethel and in Ramoth of the Negev and Jatr, in Aror, in Sifmoth, in Ashtamoah, in Rakhal, in the cities of the
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Jeromelites and in the cities of the Kenites, in Hormah, in Bor, Ashan, in Athak, in Hebron, for all the places where David and his men had roamed.
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Let's pray. Father, I thank you so much for your word. I thank you for the opportunity that we have to gather together to hear substance from you, content from you.
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Father, what you have desired to reveal of yourself and the way that you worked through the life of David to give him a massive and a very hard wake -up call, a very loud, resounding, terror -filled moment that was nothing less than your faithfulness, nothing less than your call of grace on your servant who had strayed.
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And Father, I just pray that you would help us all to process this in our own thoughts and hearts to think of what needs to wake up in us where we have tried to preserve and protect and distrusted you.
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Father, I pray that you would move in our hearts to bring about trust in every individual who has an opportunity to hear this message this morning and hear these words this morning.
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Father, it's from a place of being awakened to the glory of the cross and Jesus Christ and his sacrifice for us that we now are going to sing some songs to you because we have been set free.
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And so Father, I pray that everybody here who is set free would also be set free in their minds to think right thoughts about you, would be set free in their emotions to feel the things that we're singing.
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And Father, it's not all about feelings and it's not all about thoughts, but it's the combination of those two where they meet in worship.
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Our emotions given to you, our thoughts given to you, and I pray that you would help us to worship you rightly in spirit and in truth right now in Jesus' name.
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Amen. Thanks a lot to the band for leading us this morning. I'd encourage you to keep your
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Bibles open to 1 Samuel chapter 30 if you lost your place. Refine that so you can follow along in the text.
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That's what we're going to walk through. And if at any time during the message you need to get up and use the restrooms, they're out the barn doors down the hall on the left, and then there's more coffee and juice and donuts back there.
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You're not going to distract me if you get up in the middle of the message, so just head at it. Last week, just to kind of set the stage of where we've been, the last chapter rather, chapter 29,
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David was between a rock and a hard place. And that's where we started chapter 29. He was being asked by the
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Philistine King Akish to march out to war against his own people, against Israel.
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You see, for well over a year, David had been living in the city that Akish had given to him, Ziklag, and Akish is one of the leaders of the, one of five kings that is over the
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Philistine city -state nation that was on the eastern end of the Mediterranean Sea, right up against Israel.
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And David has presented himself as a deserter from Israel, as a mercenary who's brought with him 600 soldiers over to the
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Philistines and offered to basically attack and raid the Israelites, which he hasn't done, but he's lied and said that he was.
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And so, David has progressively won the trust of the pagan Philistine King Akish.
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But, so last week, everything came to a head, and David was being asked to go out to battle, and then he was released from that by the four other kings of the
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Philistines who said, why in the world would we let Israelites go march with us against Israel? They're going to be a fifth column, they're going to turn on us in the middle of battle, they're going to take our heads.
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And so, he was released and we left him last week, wandering off with 600 troops into the dawn, left early in the morning from the
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Philistine encampment to head back home to Ziklag, the very village that the Philistine King had given to him, not knowing what the future held, but it was kind of a pleasant thing.
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God had kept him from the conundrum of figuring out whether he was going to fight for the Philistines or fight for Israel.
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And that's where we come into our text this morning. The structure of our text, by the way, just in terms of kind of outlining and thinking through what it looks like, it follows kind of the pattern of a man hearing his alarm and waking up.
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In verses one through six, the spiritual alarm is going to go off and it's going to sound loud and it's going to sound terrifying to David.
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And by the end of verse six, David will wake up spiritually. And as David rapidly comes awake to the reality that all of his plans have failed, all of his desires for self -preservation and self -protection have failed, there are four other things that come awake in David as he begins to reestablish his trust solely in the
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Lord. Now, he's already been a covenant man. God has already anointed him. God has already called him. God has already set him apart for his service.
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But many times in our lives, we can already be saved. We can already have a knowledge of Jesus Christ and we still wander away into faithlessness, into our own trust at things.
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And so many of us maybe are sitting here and we need some things to come awake in us. Well, here are the four things that come awake in this text in David as he has this alarm go off.
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The first is his communication with God wakes up. When he comes to a place where he reestablishes that trust in God, the first thing is communication.
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That's verses seven and eight. David's source of direction is impacted by being spiritually awakened.
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Second, his obedience to God wakes up. It's obedience in verses nine through 20. Who he is responsible to is impacted by this wake -up call.
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The third thing is his leadership wakes up, verses 21 through 25. How he deals with his men is impacted by his trust in God.
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And those around him are impacted for the better because he draws close to God.
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And then the fourth thing is his generosity wakes up, and that's in verses 26 through 31. How he uses his resources is impacted by drawing near to God and trusting him.
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So, let's start off with the alarm going off. It goes off fairly early in the text, as I said, looking at how long this passage is.
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We have the first six verses really being that wake -up call. And as David and his company,
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I remember they've departed. That's where we left them last week. Well, we're picking up right where we left off. They are making the 60 -mile journey from Aphek, where the
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Philistines were mustering, back to Ziklag, about 60 miles. It was two days' travel and some change is what they've done it in.
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And as they crested the hill nearing home, they noticed that something wasn't quite right.
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And there, in their eyes, beheld the smoldering ruins of everything that was their life for the last year and a half.
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Ziklag had been raided. It was decimated by fire. We're unsure whether the ruins were still smoldering when they arrived, but I picture that in my mind, and there is nothing left.
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So the narrator fills us in on details. The Amalekites are the ones responsible.
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Now David may not have known that immediately. Who in the world has attacked? Who in the world has taken everything?
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But we're told the Amalekites had raided the south of Judah, part of the Israel territory, and the Philistine territory, which is where Ziklag is.
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And they did so while the soldiers were out to war. The Amalekites were opportunistic raiders, and the southern villages were soft targets, as of course we know from the story that all the men were mustering to war further north at Aphek and in the
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Jezreel Valley. And so Israel, southern Israel is soft, and so is southern
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Philistia, and so they raid. The fact that nobody was killed in this raid, and that they were able to take all the spoils, indicates that there was little to no resistance.
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It seems as if David had really made a leadership blunder here and left them unprotected, and left all of those families unprotected back at Ziklag.
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His leadership is on the line in this situation, and he has messed up big time. So the first matter of business, if you were in that scenario, you crested the hill, you saw your city in ruins, your area, your house was smoldering, the first matter would be the gruesome task of searching the wreckage for the dead.
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And David and his men would have immediately been able to determine that all the women, the children, the older folks were all taken captive.
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There's no dead in the ruins. So you might just go, oh, phew, like how many of you would just be like, oh yeah, that sounds, you're still missing everybody.
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This is a devastating thing that we're looking at. According to verse 4, the men did what makes sense in this case.
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You just gotta picture these men are soldiers, they are tough, battle -hardened men.
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Not the most savory of characters that David had collected, according to earlier in 1 Samuel. A lot of the guys who were against the king and rebellious and insurrectionists and all of this stuff, and that's the kind of people who
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David had collected during this time, and they're all moved to weep. It says they cried out in grief until the images, their voices went hoarse and their tears failed to come any longer.
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They ran out of juice with tears. Put this in perspective. Think through what
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David, what is this wake -up call? What does this alarm look like that's going off in David's ears right now?
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They have lost everything. This is Job -like devastation multiplied over 600 families.
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This isn't just Job losing his wife and his kids and his house and his flocks and his herds and his possessions.
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This has multiplied 600 people losing everything. They're left with only the clothes on their backs and by implication, of course, the weapons strapped on their belts.
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David has suffered loss by the way in this. You gotta put this all in perspective and think about what David is processing as he goes through this text.
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David has suffered loss just like everyone else. The text goes to the degree of explaining he lost his wives as well in this and lost his family, lost his house, lost his possessions.
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But a reality of leadership is that during tough times, the pain is multiplied beyond the personal loss.
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David has certainly suffered personal loss, but he also has to deal with the accusations of failed leadership as well.
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And here in our text, as the alarms are sounding in David's head, I think the alarms sounding in his head were like, wake up fool.
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You have trusted and put your trust in the wrong things. All that you have trusted is failing.
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All that you've built around you for comfort is broken. And as this alarm continues to sound, his men begin to cast angry, harsh, and even violent glances in his direction.
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Can you imagine? Can you hear the crowd begin to murmur as the reality strikes? This is
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David's fault. This is David's fault. Let's put him to death, says the crowd.
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In their bitterness of soul, they begin to discuss stoning David. One of the greatest leaders of all times.
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One of the most powerful models and examples of humility that we have in scripture.
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A guy who at times just shined out beauty and glory. Do you remember? He's the one with the sling in his hand.
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This story doesn't make it into the children's books. The giant one does. But this one we like to leave out.
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But he's not a perfect man. And here he's up against it and his men are ready to take his life.
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And it's in this context. It's here at rock bottom. Here where David's plans to protect himself and his men have failed.
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Here where leadership has failed him. And here where his lack of obedience has blossomed into tragedy.
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Here where his self -centered lies have led to destruction. It's in this place that David wakes up.
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It's here where he comes awake. The alarm is harsh.
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The alarm is loud. And the alarm, by the way, is set off by the almighty
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God who loves David and is seeking to wake him up. And doing what it takes to bring his servant back in line with the things that are best for his leader.
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Now we can't overstate the importance of the end of verse 6. Really in the overall life of David.
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When all else is stripped away. When all the other crutches and props are pulled out from under the person who is after God's own heart.
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Hear me carefully. He's declared to be a man who loves God. He's had a wayward time here.
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But for the person who has all of those props stripped away. All the things that they've placed their hope in. All those other things. I believe that if they're indeed a person after God's own heart.
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Then that heart will indeed turn back to God when all else fails. You see my hope for me and you is that we don't need a zik leg in order to wake up.
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I'm praying. I've been praying this week that hopefully some of you will wake up because of a sermon. That it won't take a zik leg.
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That it won't take you coming into the ruins of everything in order for you to wake up to the trustworthy
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God who loves you. I hope that it's not waking up in zik leg for us.
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I hope to never go through personally through a season of spiritual lethargy. Through a season of slumber like David did for a year and a half in zik leg.
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But when God woke him up. David got woke. And he strengthened himself in the
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Lord his God. The possessive pronoun matters so much here. You see David comes back to his
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God. Do you see that in the text? The possessive pronoun matters. He came back to his
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God. This is the God that I serve. I've got no other gods. This is the one.
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It's his God. And he turns to him for strength here at this desperate moment.
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He says I've got nothing else. And it took God wiping everything else off the table for him to go.
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I've got nothing else. Because I mean you know as long as zik leg stands. He just keeps trusting in that.
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Keeps trusting in his plans. And what he's able to accomplish. And so God swept all of that away.
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And he turns, David turns to God. He's been turning to his own strength. He's been living on lies.
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He's been leaning on a pagan king for protection and comfort. Not God. And now all else is stripped away and he remembers the only source of true strength.
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He remembers that the only source of real strength and protection comes from the hand of his almighty
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God. And so with his strength firmly back in Yahweh.
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Basically David here admits that if he's going to get out of this alive it's only going to be because of God's strength.
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And he turns to him and he puts his hope and his trust squarely on the shoulders of God. And so the rest of the text shows us what being spiritually woke really looks like.
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Now if you're here and you're genuinely spiritually awake and alert to God. I believe that these four things will be in your life.
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And therefore they serve for some of us as kind of a diagnostic if you will. Ask yourself as we go through this.
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Are these things in my life? Are there things that I still, do I still need to be woke up to these things?
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The first is his communication with God wakes up in verses seven and eight. The first thing that changes about us when we are woke by God is the source of our direction.
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Where do we go? Where do we turn to know what the next steps are? Where do we turn when we don't know what to do?
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You see for the one who is spiritually asleep, we turn to the world for advice. We turn to our own hearts for counsel.
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We lean on our five senses and often in our modern age we just look for things that appear to be able to work.
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Like what works for everybody else around us? We'll run with that. We'll find a hobby, we'll do this, we'll do that.
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Whatever it takes to just kind of numb the pain and move forward. But instead of running off into the desert here, what might you do if you showed up and your house was burned and nobody was there and the whole village was gone and the whole of Matawan was gone, wherever you live, and it's all gone.
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You might just run off into the desert looking, just searching. David doesn't do that.
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Instead when his heart comes alive to God and remembers the hope that is there,
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David's first act after coming back to trust in the Lord is to seek his counsel. What do you want me to do,
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Lord? What do you want me to do next? So he sends in the text for the priest and the ephod that contained the urim and the thummim and the breastplate, this hard kind of sandwich board plate that had these two tiles in it that they would use to determine the
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Lord's will. These are holy lots designated in the old covenant by the Lord for the priest to use.
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So he calls for Abiathar, the priest, and says, can you determine my next steps? He asks, should I pursue them and will
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I overtake them? How many of you think those are two pretty big questions in David's mind right now? The minds of his men, his heart.
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God graciously and abundantly answers David. He even offers more information.
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David asks two questions, God answers the three that were on his heart. God is more than faithful.
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He says, should I pursue them? Will I overtake them? And God goes a step further. First, he gives a one -word command to David, indeed pursue, pursue, exclamation point.
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And he gives two comforting outcomes, you shall surely overtake, and the extra that God, the icing on the cake says, and you shall surely rescue.
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He gives him the hope there at the start of this campaign to say you will indeed conquer, you will indeed rescue your people.
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How many of you know that that's helpful? Is that helpful in this scenario? God is gracious.
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There's no promise, by the way, in this text. That you will be granted whatever you request, that if you ask, he will give you a clear cut, you know, he's going to call you on the phone, he's going to send you a text or something.
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But hear me carefully, I believe this because God is good, he's proven himself good time and time again in scripture, time and time in my life as I've gotten to know him and draw near to him.
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God is indeed a good God who will only withhold, hear me carefully, will only withhold what we perceive to be good.
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How many of you have asked for some good things that you thought were good and you didn't get them? Anybody here? Go ahead and raise your hand if you've had that happen to you.
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You thought it was a good request, I thought, God, I was kind of in line with you, but I didn't receive it. I believe he will only withhold what we perceive to be good if it is not actually good.
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How many of you know that you perceive some things that were good for you that it's a good thing you didn't get it? God's grace sometimes, you know the old saying,
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God's grace sometimes is in unanswered prayers. The things he doesn't give us sometimes are a grace to us.
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But David in our text here, he comes spiritually awake and so he immediately seeks his direction from God.
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The second thing that comes awake in him is his obedience. This is a little bit longer section in this text, but it's 9 through 20 outlining his obedience.
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God gave him the one word command to pursue and so he's going to do it. All of this, by the way, this is a longer chunk of the text, but it all entails his obedience and God's faithfulness, by the way, to make good on his promises.
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You see, our part is to trust God and to obey him and God's part is to make good on his promises and provide for his people.
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And so David immediately goes into action in verse 9 to obey the one word command that God gave to him, pursue.
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And all 600 men without much to do in Ziklag begin a forced march in pursuit of the
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Amalekites who have taken everything. So when the getaway's out in the desert, these 600 men likely stop for water at the
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Brook Bay store. They've got to find a place to ford it and cross it. And there they determine that about 200 of them cannot continue on in the journey.
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They're exhausted. You have to put this in perspective. This is a real life account of real history, what was really going on.
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They had just spent a two and a half day journey, probably hurrying to get home. They had wives and family that they wanted to see and things that they wanted to get back to and flocks to tend to.
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And so they had rushed this three day journey from Afek only to find
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Ziklag in ruins. And then now they've picked up the pace in pursuit of the Amalekites and 200 guys fall off the back and say,
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I can't keep going. So they shed unneeded supplies and leave the exhausted 200 soldiers there to protect those supplies.
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And geography comes to bear on our perception here because many of us, you know, you just don't have a perspective of the wide open spaces in Southern Judea to be able to explain how difficult and how miraculous it would be to find the
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Amalekites. You're going large band of people wandering through the desert in Southern Judea. How hard that, how hard could that be to find, you know?
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But the geography comes to bear here, this vast deserted wasteland of sand dunes and rock fields of Southern Judea that all leads down into the
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Sinai Peninsula, the haunts, the locations where the Amalekites would journey. They would go in and raid and then they would head back out again, nomadic peoples.
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And sand does not preserve footprints very well. You notice that? If you've been over to South Haven, you know that.
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So just for a little while and then they blow away. So tracking the Amalekites in this vast wasteland would be nearly impossible.
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So you're heading out in the desert, God told you to pursue. You don't know how, you know that the outcome is going to be good, but you don't, are we heading in the right direction?
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Like what's going on? And so the God who is faithful to keep his promises has promised that they will overtake them and rescue all of the captives.
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And in his faithfulness, God moves among the Amalekites to leave behind a sick Egyptian servant who can't keep up.
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And in this text we find contrasted, the brutality of the Amalekites contrasted with the kindness of David.
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The Amalekites leaving a sick guy behind to starve to death. David bringing him in before he even knows that he's part of the process and actually feeding him and nursing him back to health.
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Obviously three days without food or water would set any of us back a little bit. So they get him well and talk with him, come to find out he's one of the servants of one of the
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Amalekites. And after assurance that he will not be betrayed into their hands and that David's men will not kill him, he led
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David and his 400 men to the location of this huge Amalekite party. They were eating, they were drinking, they were dancing the night away.
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We know for sure that these were not Baptist Amalekites. You can just see that right there.
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They're drinking, dancing, all that fun stuff. David, sorry any
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Baptists here. I used to be one so I know. But David and his travel weary 400 men took it to this much larger force.
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And I say much larger, the text doesn't tell us how many Amalekites there were there. But it makes mention of only 400 of them made it out alive.
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So just that notion alone lets you know that it's at least a much larger force. How many people is David attacking with? 400.
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And only 400 of them are going to escape. So that tells you that it was a pretty large force.
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God in his grace allows inebriation to help in this situation. I believe that that's actually part and part of the reason.
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Obviously God works miraculously in this situation as well. But you've got a bunch of inebriated
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Amalekites dancing, partying, and taken unawares. And David takes it to them.
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The battle raged by the way for nearly 24 hours. Now these guys are exhausted and I cannot imagine what kind of physical shape you'd have to be in to fight and to wield a sword for 24 hours.
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I mean anybody forearmed just kind of gets sore just thinking about holding a sword for that long.
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That's crazy. And only 400 young Amalekites escaped on camels the text says in verse 17.
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And the fact that 400 of them escape and David's attacking with only 400 shows just the miraculous nature of this victory here.
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This campaign was just as successful as God said it would be. David's obedience, David's communication comes alive.
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His obedience then follows and comes alive. And they had a complete success. They recovered everything that the
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Amalekites had taken and even more. And most importantly they recovered every single member of their families.
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I don't think, I think they would have been satisfied not receiving back any spoils, none of the riches, none of the treasures, just giving back my family.
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And they received so much more. Spiritually woke David, sought God's word, obeyed
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God's word, and received God's promise. The third thing that we see come alive in David here as he draws, begins to draw his strength from God instead of from himself and from his own mind and his own resources is that his leadership wakes up.
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Remember that they were about to stone him, right? His guys were about to kill him. And then we're going to see in verses 21 -25 him bringing from the riches and the depth of the knowledge and the wisdom of God some correction to his men.
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David has strengthened his trust in the Lord and now his leadership wakes up as well. As the troops arrive back at the
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Brook Baysore after victory, hauling all of this loot and all of their families and flocks in tow, they come back to the 200 troops who had been too exhausted to go on.
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And some of the meaner and crueler troops among David's 400 who fought in the battle refused to share the treasures and the spoils of war with those who didn't go out to battle.
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They said, kind of a snarky, funny comment, but you can take your wives.
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You can have your wives as kids though. Wow, thanks. How generous of you.
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But yeah, they're ready. They say, we're not going to share. And David leads the guys into a heart of sharing by reminding the men that it is the
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Lord who has won this day. Lest you give yourselves the credit for the day of battle, it was the
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Lord who gave you this victory. David has, by the way, been so concerned and fearful for his own provisions and protections that he compromised deeply to live a life among the
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Philistines. But now that he has spiritually awakened, he is reminded that all that they have comes from the
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Lord and they should share with one another. You see, a day, he says, basically his logic and rationale to his men is a day may come when you can't go out to battle, and would you like a share of the spoils?
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A little bit of the golden rule here. A little bit of the golden rule. Do to others as you would have them do to you.
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So David and his leadership encourages his men toward a kind of sharing with each other. And I believe that all of this presupposes some kind of system to keep the same people from avoiding battle regularly.
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By the way, we in our minds, did anybody's mind go there? Like, okay, so you could just kind of chill with the baggage for the rest of your life and these other guys are out there risking their lives and in sword play and in battle and you just get a fair share, you get a haul from that as well.
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I think we have a different mindset than they had during this time. There was a lot of nobility and a lot of going out to battle had its rewards and all of that kind of stuff, and so I think that the guys were like, aw shucks,
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I can't go on any further. There was that mindset there. They wanted to serve their ruler, their leader, and they were looking for opportunities to get out there and fight on behalf of their people to go back and win their wives back and their children and their families.
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So David, so David and his leadership encourages his men towards that kind of, that type of sharing with one another.
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But even if I'm wrong a little bit about the way that the system works because honestly our minds turn towards a welfare system and everybody getting equal share towards socialism or whatever because everybody gets a fair share, he's saying, and it's hard to tell exactly what the rule that he made for Israel was in this, what it looked like.
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But whatever that looked like, the main point in this text is that David has restored the leadership as he's reconnected with his
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God. You see, whereas men were ready to stone him earlier, they are now ready to follow his wisdom and counsel into kindness and teamwork.
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And his men have been drawn back to him based on his wise spiritual leadership and the success that God has blessed him with.
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The fourth thing that comes awake in David is his generosity. Now certainly he encouraged his men towards generosity here, but his own personal generosity, as the spoils were going towards the
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Brook Baysore, everybody that is in the thing is shouting, everybody, the 400 troops are shouting,
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David spoils, David spoils, they're celebrating their leader and his victory.
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And so really the mindset was, hey, at the end of the day, David is going to divvy this up, but it's really ultimately his.
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And now that David is spiritually woke, his generosity is brought back to the forefront. You see, think about this in terms of your own life and think about it in terms of where David has been.
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David has been primarily only concerned for himself and his men and their families, caring for numero uno and the things that he cares about the most for about a year and a half.
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When we come to this text, he has been primarily taking care of himself. Nobody else is going to take care of me.
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God has forsaken me. He's not taking care of me. He's not doing the things that I want him to do. And so I'm going to take care of myself, but coming back under God's gracious protection and putting his trust back in his creator.
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The provisions that David brought back, he begins to think outside of his own immediate needs.
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See, God's grace, God's true grace always does that. God's true grace always moves us to think outside of ourselves.
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It moves us from fear and concern for ourselves to care and concern for others.
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Once we come under the protection of God, once the fear and weight of condemnation is off of our shoulders, we are then free to genuinely love one another, to celebrate the victories of others.
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You see, to genuinely, we are able to genuinely assist the hopeless and the hurting if our problems are resolved in Christ.
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We no longer live under fear or desperation instead. When we are woke spiritually, when we are strengthened in our trust in God, when we are moved to a place of generosity,
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I mean we are moved to a place of generosity, when we come alive to God, that generosity flows out of us.
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With our resources, with our time, recognizing that all that we have is at God's disposal.
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In verses 26 -31, David and company comes back to the ruins of Ziklag. They're exhausted, but deeply blessed.
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Not all has been lost, and much, much, much has been restored. There's a rebuilding that would need to happen there, but there's been a lot that's been restored to them.
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And even a lot has been gained. And David sent part of the spoils to the elders of southern
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Judah. There's a list of cities all throughout the area where David had lived while he was fleeing from King Saul, and he rewards them.
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He rewards them for their loyal help by sending them some of these spoils, these treasures from war. And the last city that's mentioned there is pretty significant.
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Again, if you're not a student of the Bible, you wouldn't make this connection, but I love making these connections. The last city that's mentioned in this text is the city of Hebron.
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Hebron is the most worthy of note because this city will end up being the first base of operations for David's kingdom when he's going to come into his kingdom in 2
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Samuel. We're not going to go on into 2 Samuel. As I mentioned, we're going to go into Romans. We'll pick up 2 Samuel eventually and catch back up with the life of David and how he reigns.
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But for seven and a half years before he conquers Jerusalem, which of course is going to end up being the base of operations in the center piece of the central city of the
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Hebrews and Israelites. But Hebron, for seven and a half years, is that place where his throne is.
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And so here we see him forging a relationship with Hebron that's going to end up carrying forward into his kingship.
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But in our text, let's think this through. David had a wake -up call. It was loud, it was terrifying, and it was just what he needed to get back on track.
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And let's all consider this account in the life of David. Have you ever wandered away into Ziklag?
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Are you in a place where God is going to need to sound some serious alarms to get your attention? Let's all take a serious assessment of the things that woke up in David to determine if we are indeed spiritually woke today.
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Are you seeking God's Word for guidance? A major sign that you are on track in your spiritual walk is that you savor
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God's Word. You hunger for it. And God speaks to you through His revelation.
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Is that true of you? The second question I want to ask all of us is, are we obedient to the Lord? Are you obedient to the
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Lord? When He speaks to your personal life situations, do you obey? When He puts a finger on that show you're watching that is building a wall between you and Him, do you just keep watching it faithfully?
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When He reminds you of His call on your life to evangelism, do you ignore Him? When He tells you to get your anger under control in your household, do you take steps to deal with it?
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Are you obeying the things that you know God desires of you? If you're spiritually awakened, then
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I believe your heart will be compelled and moved along in obedience. The third thing, are you leading others in wisdom toward truth?
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Is your leadership awakened? Now, you're not, not all of us are called, none of us really in this room are called to the same level of leadership of David.
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He's going to end up being king of a nation. But you do indeed have a role to play in impacting others around you.
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How would others say that they're impacted by your leadership, by your wisdom, by your understanding? You see,
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David led his men to kindness and generosity with one another. He stopped a conflict among his men and led them towards key elements of camaraderie, community, and service to one another.
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So ask yourself this, are you a force for good and wise resolution to family conflicts, to work conflicts, to neighborhood conflicts, or are you just in there stirring it up?
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Think that through. Or are you a person who's able to dip into a relational knowledge of God to dispense wisdom and grace to others?
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Are you close enough to God that when you speak to situations and to others around you, you're able to bring forth the wisdom of his word?
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Lastly, are you generous with your resources? I think that a generous heart presupposes a satisfied heart.
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You can't have a generous heart without a satisfied heart first. And a satisfied heart is a heart that has its needs met by the only one who can give true peace, joy, hope, and purpose.
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Only the one who knows that God is good and has his future in his hand will be able to part with the resources that we could use for comfort and self -preservation in the present.
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Do you hear what I'm saying? Only if you're set free by the hope and trust in God can you indeed be moved on to a generosity with others.
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And for this reason, I would suggest this to you. Our generosity is an excellent measure of how spiritually woke we truly are.
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Does generosity flow from you? Or are you holding back just in case
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God doesn't come through for you? You haven't played the fool then, right? You've got your resources all, you've got your plan