Talking to Yourself

ReCAST Church of Mattawan

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listening to the podcast of Recast Church in Matawan, Michigan. This week, Pastor Don Filsak preaches from his series in 1

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Samuel, Timely Prophet, Tragic King. Let's listen in. Well, good morning,

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Recast Church. As Dave said, I'm Don Filsak, I'm the lead pastor here. And I just want to point out what a privilege it is to gather together with all of you to worship

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God this morning. I hope that that's why you're here. We gather together to relate to one another and to relate to God by singing to him and by listening from his word.

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And so that's hopefully part of the fundamental reason that you're here, is to hear from God and to get an opportunity to interact with others gathered together in community.

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My hope for each Sunday morning is that everyone who walks through these doors will leave in some way changed by encountering the

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Almighty God, according to the way that he has revealed himself to us. That's one of the reasons that we dig into the word of God, is that's the place that we go to know him and to know what he desires of us.

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And so we're working our way through the life of David, really through the book of 1 Samuel. And our text this morning starts a significant slide in the life of David.

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We're going to see a period of time of darkness in his life. And the slide begins with David having one particular important conversation.

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And the conversation is actually with himself. We're going to see

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David talk to himself, and he's not going to talk to himself well. He's going to talk to himself poorly in this text.

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And some of the most important conversations you will ever have are conversations that you will have inside your own head.

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The way we talk to ourselves is very, very important.

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And David begins, in our text we're going to see that he begins to doubt the plans that God has for him.

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Remember that God has promised to David that he would be the next king over Israel. As a matter of fact, the book is named after the prophet

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Samuel. Samuel showed up to his household, showed up to his family, and anointed David in front of his brothers, and his father, and his mother, and all of his family present there, and anointed him and said, you are going to be the next king over your people.

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The prophet Samuel anointed him. But David has a faithless conversation with himself that will lead ultimately to a faithless period of his life.

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You see, our outward actions, I would suggest to you, more often than not begin with internal monologues.

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The things that we do, and the way that we live, and the things that we're going to go out and do this week often begin with the way that we talk to ourselves.

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We convince ourselves things like, I could never get that job, so why should I even apply? She doesn't even love me anymore, or I really need to cheat to get ahead.

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There's a whole host of lies that we can begin to subtly communicate in our own heads to ourselves.

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Sometimes subtly, sometimes overtly. But David, once again, takes the fall for us. I love the way that scripture serves in that way of showing us case studies, showing us examples, giving us the opportunity to look into and peer into the lives of others so that we can hopefully learn some of these lessons from them.

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How many of you would just acknowledge, though, that you've had to learn a lot on your own mistakes? You've had to make your own mistakes in order to learn some lessons.

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But by God's grace, he gives us his word to kind of say, hey, I want to show you that there are some mistakes out there that I don't want you to make.

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And here, David takes the fall for us by showing us, in his life, what poor self -talk produces.

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And it does not produce things good. Faithless talk that doesn't speak what is true about life will soften us to acting out against that which

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God desires for us and plans for us and what is good for us. And in our text, we see the spiraling of a man who convinces himself that God's promises for him are never coming true.

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And in fear, some of you are facing fear right now.

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In weariness, David's in a state of weariness, in a state of self -confidence where he says, nobody else is going to take care of me, so I've got to take care of myself.

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In that place, David decided to lean on his own understanding and to plot out his own course and to figure out the way that he thought he should go and then head for that.

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And God will use, by the way, in his grace, God is awesome. In his grace, he will use all things to discipline and to bring back his children into his promises.

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And so, even David's spiral can be used by God, even though it is not a good time for him.

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So, if you're not already there, I want you to open your Bibles to 1 Samuel, chapter 27, and we're going to read all of chapter 27 and just the two verses of chapter 28 going over into that.

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And you'll see why it actually goes with this chapter. The guy in the Middle Ages, I thank him, and I'm grateful for him to actually sit down and put out the verses and the chapters, but he didn't always necessarily divide it the way that the paragraphs go.

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So, follow along, recast, navigating your device, turn over in your Bible, grab the Bible under the seat in front of you and get over to 1

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Samuel 27, so that you can follow along as we read this together. And as I say often, this is maybe the most valuable thing that we do together each week is to actually hear from our

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God. And he has been faithful to reveal himself in the lives of real people in history.

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1 Samuel 27, Then David said in his heart, Now I shall perish one day by the hand of Saul. There is nothing better for me than that I should escape to the land of the

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Philistines. Then Saul will despair of seeking me any longer within the borders of Israel, and I shall escape out of his hand.

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So David arose and went over, he and six hundred men who were with him, to Achish, the son of Maok, king of Gath.

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And David lived with Achish at Gath, he and his men, every man with his household, and David with his two wives,

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Aenom of Jezreel and Abigail of Carmel, Nabal's widow. And when it was told Saul that David had fled to Gath, he no longer sought him.

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Then David said to Achish, If I have found favor in your eyes, let a place be given me in one of the country towns, that I may dwell there, for why should your servant dwell in the royal city with you?

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So that day Achish gave him Ziklag. Therefore Ziklag has belonged to the kings of Judah to this day. And the number of the days that David lived in the country of the

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Philistines was a year and four months. Now David and his men went up and made raids against the

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Geshurites, the Gerzites, and the Malachites, for these were the inhabitants of the land from of old, as far as Shur to the land of Egypt.

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And David would strike the land and would leave neither man nor woman alive, but would take away the sheep, the oxen, the donkeys, the camels, and the garments, and come back to Achish.

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When Achish asked, Where have you made a raid today? David would say, Against the Negeb of Judah, or against the Negeb of the

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Jeramilites, or against the Negeb of the Kenites. And David would leave neither man nor woman alive, to bring news to Gath, thinking,

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Lest they should tell about us, and say, So David has done. Such was his custom in all the while he lived in the country of the

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Philistines. And Achish trusted David, thinking, He has made himself an utter stench to his people, Israel. Therefore he shall always be my servant.

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In those days the Philistines gathered their forces for war, to fight against Israel. And Achish said to David, Understand that you and your men are to go out with me in the army.

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David said to Achish, Very well, you shall know what your servant can do. And Achish said to David, Very well,

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I will make you my bodyguard for life. Let's pray. Father, I thank you for your word.

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I thank you for your word that speaks to us, and that we ought to routinely be speaking to ourselves.

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Father, that your word is the source and the place that we go for the knowledge of who you are and how you have dealt with humanity, and how you desire for us to deal with our days, our weeks, our years, and our lives.

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And so, Father, I pray that you would open our eyes to see the importance of speaking truth to ourselves, speaking the truth of what is revealed in your word, the way that you genuinely are faithful to fulfill your promises.

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Father, I pray that you would help us to be those who are increasingly growing in our faith and trust in what you have said you will do.

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And Father, that that would influence the way that we live our lives, the way that we make our decisions, the things that we do. But Father, I thank you most importantly for the greatest gift that you have given to us in Jesus Christ, the place where our sins have been forgiven and we've been set free from the bondage of sin and death.

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And therefore, we have an opportunity to sing songs of praise and lift up our voices before you,

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Father. And I just pray that even as we sing these songs, that you would help us to be filling our minds with what is true of you, that these songs might stick with us throughout the week, that we might be refreshed as we think about and contemplate who you are in these songs.

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And Father, that it would be so much more, as I've often said, so much more than an exercise of our vocal chords, but it would be an exercise of our hearts before you, that you would reveal yourself to us, and that we would be in awe of you this morning, in Jesus' name.

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Amen. Yeah, you can go ahead and be seated, but remember that if any time during the message you need to get up and get more coffee, juice, or donuts, you can take advantage of that back there.

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You're not going to distract me. Restrooms are out the barn doors down the hallway on the left, and so if you need those at any time, too.

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And our focus, hopefully, will be on the word of God for the next half an hour to 45 minutes. First Samuel chapter 27,

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I encourage you to reopen your Bibles to that if you lost your place there, so that you have that in front of you and you can reference it during the remainder of this message.

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And I just want to point out, like at the start here, it's very easy to beat up on people when we read their stories in retrospect, right?

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How many of you have ever even done that to yourself? Like you can look back past you and go, you're a doofus, right? Like I mean, you shouldn't have done that, right?

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And you can, it's very easy to do that with biblical characters, right? Like you read these stories in the Bible and it's like, why would they do that?

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Like that's dumb. You know, I mean, we can look at David's life in this scenario and in this situation and say, you shouldn't have done that,

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David. You should have done this, not that, or that, not this, but how many of you know the phrase hindsight is 20 -20, right?

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Like it's very easy to look in the rear view mirror and go, you know, judge yourself, judge others.

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We see things so much more clearly when we look back on them with a fresh perspective, especially with a perspective of the outcomes, right?

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Like a lot of times we look at the outcomes and we're like, well, that's what made it a dumb decision is it didn't turn out right, it didn't go well.

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But don't forget that David, we got to put ourselves in the character's shoes to really understand what's driving them towards these things so that we can actually relate to them a little bit better according to our own lives.

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You see, David has been chased out of the civic and religious life of his people. He's been chased out of Israel by King Saul, Saul has tried to kill him.

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He has mercilessly hunted David in the wilderness. David helped, remember, so it's not just Saul though that's chasing him because David helped to deliver this town of Calah from the

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Philistines. The Philistines were attacking a group of Israelites. He proceeded to check in with God and say, should

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I help defend them? He goes to defend them and then finds out that they're willing to turn him over to King Saul, like they're willing to betray their deliverer.

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Then the people in the wilderness of Ziph where he's been living most recently, according to the last chapter, they voluntarily go on to Saul twice to notify him about David's whereabouts to try to get on King Saul's good side.

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All that to paint a picture that David has no place to hide. He's on the run and nobody is willing to take him in and care for him.

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So I mean, when you put yourself in that situation, what adjectives might describe your attitude if you were in David's shoes?

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You're out, you're pushed away from everything that you've known and loved. You're on the run, you're trying to care for the needs of all of your soldiers and your family and not to mention out in the wilderness, out in the deserted areas where there's no water.

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I mean, I'm sure that just obtaining water for 600 soldiers was a significant daily undertaking.

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It was probably something that they spent significant amount of the day going to do. And so how would you, what words would describe your attitude when push comes to shove in your life?

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How many of you ever been beset by struggles and pressures? So some of you haven't, is that, or some of you just didn't feel like raising your hand.

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You're like, is this a real question? How about weary? Does that describe those times when you're beset, when you're feeling the pressure, weary, afraid, hungry, thirsty, empty, lonely, burdened for the needs of others?

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You see, he has no consistent place to settle. He's been wandering in the wilderness where food and water are scarce.

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He's leading a band of 600 men and it's only in the middle of our text that we realize that we've totally forgotten to include his wives and the families of his men, the children, the families, all of those that are on the run with him.

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They didn't leave them back in Israel. They're out running the wilderness with these guys. He's also been ostracized from the religious community life of Israel through exile.

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David's tank is running low when we come to verse one. When we come to verse one, he's spent.

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He's exhausted. He's weary. So, that's what we need to understand to make sense of David's internal monologue in verse one.

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And just to be honest, we ought to take just a pause before we're too judgy on him and think about how do we respond when we're in those shoes.

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When we're hungry, when we're angry, when we're spent, when we're lonely, when your spiritual tank is on empty. Only once we grasp where David is at and we're honest about that, then we can apparently judge or really observe

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David's apparently foolish decisions in this text. We should avoid taking cheap shots at biblical characters because, in reality, they often act just like us.

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They often act just like us. So, the text starts with the main point of the message, really, this morning. I'm going to kind of steal the thunder.

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We're going to start right off with a big point, and that's just simply that we ought to be careful to monitor our self -talk.

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We ought to be careful to monitor the way that we talk to ourselves. David in verse one says, in his own heart, he's having a dialogue or a monologue, really, with himself.

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He's talking to himself, and he says, you know what? You're going to die. Saul's going to get you.

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You're going to die. Does that sound like fear to you? It sounds like fear, and it overwhelms him.

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In this moment of desperation, in this moment of being burdened and pressured all around him, what he says is, of course, a bit more nuanced than you're going to die.

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He says to himself, Saul is going to get to you one day unless you take it upon yourself to escape.

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It's all on your shoulders, David. Now, how many times has God delivered David throughout the book of 1 Samuel? Tons. How many times has he been faithful to you?

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Tons. Do you still find yourself doing what David does here and go, oh, no, oh, no, but then this is coming on. This is happening.

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Oh, no, what do I do now? And it's always the issue right in front of us that takes precedence, right? And that's where David is in this text.

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And so he diagnoses his problem and jumps to a quick solution. He says, I'm going to flee to the

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Philistines, and there I will be outside of the grasp of King Saul, and he will give up the chase, and he will leave me for dead, and he won't worry about me anymore as long as I just get out of Israel.

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I'll be out from underneath his chasing me down. So where is

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David's faith at this time in his life? You see, God has protected him time and time again, but here at the end of his rope,

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David tells himself with confidence that Saul will indeed kill him. His lack of trust is what forced him to take matters into his own hands here in this text.

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So now it may seem like a foolish decision for David to return to Gath. We've already had David go to take a chance at going and living among the

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Philistines before. He went there at the end of chapter 21 and was nearly put to death, but he escaped from King Akish by acting insane.

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So why would he consider this an option now? And those of you that have been here for part of this series, you may not have been here for the sermon on that chapter 21, but he's already gone there.

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He's already interacted with King Akish. So why would he assume that it's going to go different? But I would suggest that a lot has changed in David's life since chapter 21.

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David now, he fled to Philistia by himself. Now he has a fighting force 600 strong.

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He can offer help to King Akish of Gath. You see, mercenary fighters cross borders routinely during this era to offer military resources in exchange for material resources.

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I'll fight on your behalf. I will fight your battles. I will be part of your security force for your tribe, for your group, if you will allow me to settle in this area and have pasture land and that type of stuff.

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And so that's what David is doing here. David's following a common custom of his time, and Akish, he definitely has

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Akish's attention more with 600 fighters to offer than just merely himself.

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And so Akish told us before that he has no lack of crazy men, but he seems to be accepting of military men.

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And so that's what we have going on here in the text. And for some short period of time, David and his men and all their households, along with David's two wives,

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Anoam and Abigail, they all lived in Gath in the royal city with King Akish. And David's faithless tactic worked.

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You see that in the text? According to verse four, Saul no longer sought

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David once he heard he had fled to Gath. It worked. And I want to point out something that is fundamental to discernment in the

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Christian life, because how many of you know that it's hard to discern? It's hard to figure out what the next course of action ought to be.

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It's very difficult to do that. And so there's this fundamental thing that we need to understand, and that is that not everything that works out is the right thing to do.

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Not everything that works out, it's not just all the pieces fell into place, so it must have been the right action.

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I mentioned in a previous sermon that we often hold up circumstances as the most important part of decision -making.

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I've heard that from a lot of Christians. Even recently, it's all just seemed to line up, and so it must be the right thing for me to do.

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It all worked out good, so it must be right. But when God told Jonah to go to Nineveh, there just happened to be a boat there at the port bound for Tarshish.

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You see, Christian discernment has no room for a pragmatism that says, do whatever works. God must be behind whatever is smooth and easy.

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Is that the way that we really want to operate in our lives? You see, Christian discernment seeks to know what

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God desires of us through His Word. We are not to be primarily students of circumstances, but we are to be primarily students of His Word that defines the right course of action in our circumstances.

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Do you hear me? You get that? So, we need to be students of His Word and do what is right according to His Word, not according to just what is the easiest path or towards what produces results.

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How many of you know there's some sinful things you could do in your business that could produce some results? There's some sinful things that we could do here at church that could produce results.

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There are sinful things in our families that we could do that might produce some results, at least in the short term, right?

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So, we've got to be students of His Word to know the course of action. See, Saul is now off David's trail.

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It works in that way, but David has accepted a significant compromise to live among the Philistines, and he settles there.

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He settles among them. Not only that, he deceives the king of the Philistines there. Not only that, but he murdered and slaughtered other clans while he lived there.

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He did things that if you were to just take this chapter, and if you were to read this and not tell who was the person doing them, you would think him to be a villain.

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You wouldn't think this is the hero of our story. You would think this is a bad guy for sure.

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Akish resettled him at his request to a small town about 20 miles south of Gath called

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Ziklag. This town was one that had been allotted. Judah was already supposed to possess this town.

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According to the book of Joshua, the city of Ziklag was given to Judah, and he and his clan was supposed to go conquer it and take it for Israel, but they never finished that job.

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Judah got settled in certain villages and towns and said, that's enough. We've got enough for ourselves, and didn't obey the voice of God in taking over that town.

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So, now it comes under Israelite control, not through conquest, but through covert deception of David.

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See, David, don't forget who David is. It's very easy when we get down the road in the story to forget that this is the giant slayer.

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This is the guy who as a young man took that one rock and destroyed the

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Philistine giant, and he's the same one that's going to serve under one of the

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Philistine kings for a year and four months here in our text. And in case you're wondering if this is really such a bad thing, some of you might be thinking, oh, this is just a way that he went about protecting himself and his family and taking care of business.

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Go back and reread 1 Samuel from the beginning with a mind towards the relationship between the

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Philistines and the Israelites to see how clear it was that the Philistines were the sworn enemies of the people of God, and he's there among them for their benefit and blessing.

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So, in the service of King Akish of Gath, David made raids, it says in the text, against certain groups.

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He went and raided the Gesherites, the Gerzites, the Amalekites. These were ancient people groups, tribes, who had an ongoing animosity toward Israel that dated all the way back to the

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Exodus. As a matter of fact, the Amalekites are the first group to attack the Israelites. They're weary, they've come through the

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Red Sea, they're in the desert places wandering in the Amalekites' attack, and it says they picked off the stragglers on the back of the

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Exodus. It's the kind of people that the Amalekites were. And again, living out like Bedouins and raiders out in the wilderness, these were people who would go on raids routinely.

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They were raiding and warring tribes that lived in the southern stretches of the desert between Israel and Egypt, according to the text.

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They often raided Judah, and therefore much of what David would have obtained by raiding them would have been

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Judah -type products, like the things that Judah made were the things that the Amalekites, the Geshurites, these people were actually living off of, because their way of life was to raid

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Israel and then gain from that. And so a lot of the stuff that David would have obtained in these raids would have been

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Hebrew of origin. But none of that can justify, none of that is set forward to justify

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David's raiding methods here. He really is spiraling into wickedness. He would go into an encampment and leave nothing living.

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The dark side was strong with David during this time. And we want so desperately to find good people.

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Have you found that in your own heart? What you desperately want is you want a good person to look up to. You want a good person to follow.

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You want someone of character to be able to honor and to live after. And fortunately, of course, we know

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God has provided us that in Jesus Christ, but the fact of the matter is, we have anesthetized and cleaned up David, we've cleaned up Noah, we've cleaned up these biblical characters, and Scripture doesn't.

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Scripture leaves them in their mess so that we don't elevate them to the level of our Savior Jesus Christ. So that we have a longing.

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When we go throughout the Old Testament, there's a longing for something more. You should finish reading the

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Old Testament with like, is that it? You shouldn't be able to end there, because it only ever produces a desire and a hunger for something more.

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You know at the end of the Old Testament, something else has to come from God to fix this, because it's a mess.

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And that's exactly what we look at in David's life. I mean, David isn't it. I mean, there are moments and glimpses in his life where you're like, oh, maybe this is the guy.

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Maybe this is a guy I could follow. This is a guy I could put my sword behind. This is a guy that I could really follow and just dedicate my life to, and then boom.

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And then he's like living among the Philistines, doing all this slaughtering and stuff.

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We want desperately to find good people. We want Scripture to give us pristine, clean, and pure people as models, and Scripture refuses to fool us that way.

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The dark and the light reside in every chest.

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It's in every one of us. The dark and the light cuts through every human heart.

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That's the fundamental thing that we have to grapple with when we come to reading about the life of real people.

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I mean, no biography. It's not an honest biography if it doesn't include some of their crud. When somebody dies, we give a eulogy.

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It just means good word. But I mean, everybody that's ever died, you could give bad word to, right?

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And we all know it. We just ignore it and pretend that they were saints, right, because that's what you're supposed to do at a funeral.

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But that's a different issue. Now you're not going to want me to do your funeral. You're going to be like, wait, what are you going to say,

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Don? Just going to be honest. Well, that's not, none of that's in the notes here, but I mean, there's a reality to this though.

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And I mean, it's a painful part of life on this planet. It's a reality.

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I encourage you towards joy in relationships. I encourage you towards engagement in relationships. I also encourage you to have a biblical perspective on relationships.

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You have never met a person, you have never met a person that was not capable of betraying you deeply.

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That's reality. That's reality. You have never met a person that when push comes to shove, couldn't crush you.

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Scripture is faithful to show us David in moments of blinding integrity, grasping the cut corner of Saul's robe saying,

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I will not lay my hand against the Lord's anointed. I will not slay him.

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And scripture is faithful also to show us David in moments of deep depravity. In our text, grasping a bloody sword saying, leave none standing so that a

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Kish receives no report of the slaughter. Who is this guy?

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He's a guy just like us. And his custom during this time, that word just is eerie to me the way that it echoes.

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His custom during this time was to raid these pagan tribes and then lie to a

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Kish and tell him that he had raided the southern outskirts of far off Judah so that no one could validate where he had been out on these long raiding forays out into the desert.

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The outback of Judah, he says, I've been in the outback of the Jeramalites, the outback of the

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Kenites, all of these within the borders of Judah, within the borders of Israel, I've been raiding my own people because that's how much

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I hate them now. I'm outcast by them. I'm a Philistine, he says to a

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Kish. I'll even slaughter my own people. The word custom in verse 11 shows a depravity in David's heart that was produced, by the way, don't lose sight of this, all of this depravity produced by one little false internal monologue.

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One conversation he had with himself produced this lifestyle. His custom, his custom over his year in Ziklag became wanton murder and slaughter and lies.

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His faithfulness, his faithlessness has spiraled and it all began with a self -discussion.

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Will God really protect you, David? He says to himself, answer, no.

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Will he really save you from Saul? No. I guess

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I'm on my own. I'll have to go do whatever works to make me happy and to protect my people.

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This is David's talk to himself. And there are many indicators of the depth of his depravity, but maybe the most telling, maybe the most telling in this text, think about this, maybe the most telling about how far he has spiraled is the blessing, the commendation that he received, the approval of the people.

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A pagan king, a Kish. If you receive a commendation from some people, it is not a compliment.

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Not everybody who compliments you, I mean, it's a compliment, right? I mean, there are some people you don't want to be commended by.

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A Kish, it says in the text, just straightforward, a Kish trusted David. What? He ought not to trust

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David. David has become helpful to a Kish, sharing within the spoils of raids in exchange for a place to settle.

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I think it's not too far off the mark to say David has made a proverbial deal with the devil in exchange for provisions, for protection, and a place to lay his head.

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What deals are we willing to strike in moments of being pressed in and stressed at the end of our ropes?

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A Kish bought into the ruse, by the way, about David's raiding practices, and he believed that he's been raiding

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Judah all along, and we have two different people speak to their own hearts. The interesting thing is we're 0 for 2, both speak falsehood to their own hearts, both have a deceived conversation with themselves,

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David about whether or not God's promises will come to pass, a Kish about the trustworthiness of David, and he gets it wrong too.

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He speaks to his own heart and says, David has surely become an enemy to his own people. He is now my loyal servant.

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Well, that's not true either. But if you make a deal with the devil, if you make a deal with the devil, it just is a matter of time until the devil calls to settle accounts, right?

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Probably sooner rather than later. In verses 1 and 2 of chapter 28, our text leaves us with a cliffhanger by telling us that a

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Kish has so completely trusted David that he now wants him, he says, we're going to go out to war, not battle, not a skirmish with Israel, we're going to go out with war in an attempt to really subjugate them, to really put them under our thumb, and David, I want you to march with my army.

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I want you to go to battle with me against your former people because I trust you that much. Wow. How many of you think that that could be an awkward situation for David, right?

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David could not have been so stupid to not see this day coming, by the way. He answers with a general statement of bravado,

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I think general enough to kind of not totally throw all the way in, and he says, I'm good to go.

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You will now get a better chance to see firsthand what your servant is able to do in battle. You're going to get to see this machine in action, says

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David, to a Kish. And a Kish, pleased with David's answer, placed

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David as his personal bodyguard in the text. So now David is in a position of literally serving the king of the

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Philistines as his bodyguard. How many of you know compromises and lies catch up with you?

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Have you learned that in your life? I would guess that everybody in the room has learned it firsthand. You didn't have to watch somebody else.

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You saw it and you've seen it in your own life. You can tell stories of lies and webs that you've woven that end up coming back on you to catch you.

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I think we've all done that. We all know that wicked scheming only pushes off problems for a season.

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I think of it like this. As you stack up lies, think of it like climbing up a mountain, and you're going to jump off that mountain at some point.

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You're going to be pushed right off of it. So why keep climbing higher? Why keep stacking up the lies on top? Why not just kind of hop off before you get there?

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Because that's the way that it goes. It's just builds up and builds up and builds up until it comes crashing down.

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Lying and scheming often only serve to make the fall at the end even worse. There are a couple of lines of application

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I'd like to identify from us as we've walked through this text. The first is quite obvious, quite direct from the text, and that is speak truth to yourself.

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Speak truth to yourself. David's spiral into wrong actions. The way that he got here, the way that he gets to the place where he's serving

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King Akish, the way that he gets there is by speaking falsehood. But let me be careful here to clarify that I do not believe in any kind of hocus pocus pseudo -Christian philosophy that says that you need to speak your blessing into existence.

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You're going to read that in books, you're going to hear that on the TV, you're going to hear that on radio shows, you're going to hear that in other sermons from other people.

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You're going to hear people say that you just need to speak your blessing and it will materialize before you.

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Have any of you heard that message? All you got to do is you just speak it and it'll be there. That's not what

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I'm talking about here. I'm not talking about that kind of speaking something into your heart. Hear me carefully.

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I'm not saying that if you go around saying good things to yourself, then you'll guarantee good things.

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I've heard people even just far out there say, if you talk out loud, the angels can hear and they'll do what you say, so don't ever say anything bad.

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What? Where does this kind of stuff come from? Any of you here outlandish things like that? Am I the only one?

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Maybe it's just a pastor here. Dave hears that stuff too. There's just some weird thought out there. That's not what

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I'm talking about when I'm saying speak the truth to yourself. You see, I think the most likely result of walking around all day saying

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Lamborghini, if you walk around all day saying Lamborghini under your breath, the only thing that's going to produce in your life is disappointment when you get in your

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Chevy Malibu to roll out. It's not going to make a

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Lamborghini appear in your garage. It's going to make you dissatisfied with the thing that is sitting there. So what

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I'm talking about, hear me carefully, is filling your mind with what is true, with what

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God has said is true of himself and of you. Let the word of God dwell in you richly.

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Let his promises flood your mind. Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind.

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David had specific promises given to him by God, and he chose to speak against those promises in his heart.

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He disbelieved those promises, and it resulted in a negative downward spiral in his life.

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He slid into compromise because he did not tell himself what was true.

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And I want you to compare the self -talk in verse one of chapter 27 and the way that David spoke to himself there with the way that another person spoke to themselves, spoke to their own heart in Psalm 42 .5.

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The sons of Korah, the psalm is attributed to them, Psalm 42 .5, it's not a psalm of David, but this is the way that they spoke to their own hearts.

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A person having an internal, by the way, I'm taking for granted that you understand that you're talking to yourself all the time.

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You are, you're having a, how many of you knew that already? Raise your hand up high if you already knew that, and I just want to make sure that I'm not taking that for granted.

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You're always having a conversation with yourself, and somebody once said, talk to yourself, don't listen to yourself.

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Do you hear the difference? Talk to yourself, don't listen to yourself, because listening is a passive thing, talking is an active thing. Make sure that you're intentional about the conversations that are going on in here, because the world is filling your ears with crud and junk.

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So, the way that the psalmist, David, God's promised me I'm going to be king,

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I'm going to die, Saul's going to kill me, I'll never be king, what? But listen to Psalm 42 .5,

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why are you cast down, O my soul? A man who's talking to himself, a woman who's talking to herself, why are you downcast, why are you depressed, why are you in sorrow,

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O my soul? And why are you at turmoil within me? Hope in God.

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Here's a man or woman who's talking to themselves, they're commanding their heart in an emotional depression to hope in God.

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They're saying, there's your hope, he's up there, and he's with you, and he's with you in spirit, he's here, hope in him, for I shall again, and here's what's beautiful, the hope is that even though I'm depressed, even though I'm discouraged, even though I'm down, even though I feel lonely right now,

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I will again praise him, he is my salvation. There's a day coming, no matter how dark the darkness is, there's a day coming when

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I will praise him, and it might be just in the darkest moments of your last breaths, you're not moved to praise him, but you know what?

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The moment you see him, you'll be there. You will again praise the Lord, you will again rejoice, you will again exult, your heart will be overflowing to bursting with praise and glory to God on that day.

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That is the hope that all of us have, hope, talking to yourself, do you hear the difference in the conversations?

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Talking to yourself, saying, soul, you're looking kind of discouraged right now, you're looking kind of thankless right now, you're looking kind of faithless right now, hope in God.

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How do you talk to yourself? David verbally pushed away hope in God, despairing and doubting his promises when things got tough, but the sons of Korah who wrote

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Psalm 42 chose to question the despair of their hearts, chose to question the depression in their hearts, chose to question the lack of joy in their hearts.

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See, they chose to challenge the feelings rather than to challenge God and his word. Do you hear the difference?

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Which is true, which is right? The way I feel about things or the rock solid word of God as he's revealed himself?

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Our wandering hearts will be quick to challenge God, did he really mean it when he said he hates divorce? Surely a little lust won't hurt anything, nobody will know, why can't

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I get the big break? I mean, God must love everybody else more than me because everything

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I touch seems to come to ruin. There's no end to the list and the types of lies our heart will be tempted to say to ourselves.

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There's no end to the voices that we can listen to in our heads.

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So my encouragement to you in talking good to yourself is, talking truth to yourself is take up the sword of the spirit that is able to cut down every lie and falsehood and speak the powerful word of God into your hearts, setting your course toward obedience and toward that which is good and pleasing to our creator.

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The second application, the first being speak truth to yourself, the second application is lean not on your own understanding.

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This is a tricky text, it was tricky studying for it, it was tricky reading commentaries who don't all agree and see eye to eye on what's going on here.

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Was David right or wrong to move to Ziklag? Ask yourself that question and you'll understand kind of some of the muddiness that comes in.

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Most commentaries agree that this was a poor decision that demonstrated a wavering faith, I agree with that.

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And yet, other commentaries identify really heavily with the reality that he had mouths to feed. He had people under him to protect.

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Can I get too hard and down on David for seeking to protect and provide for his own family and his own men, right?

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I don't even know that that's a pretty real and present pressure on David, but I do see a need to remember that we are to place our trust in the

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Lord and lean not on our own understanding. Very difficult words to put into practice.

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See one of the Proverbs written by David's son Solomon, David's going to go on to have a son, his name is

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Solomon, he's going to be the king who reigns after him, and he says this in Proverbs 3, 5, and 6, trust in the

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Lord with all your heart and do not lean on your own understanding. In all your ways acknowledge him and he will make your paths straight.

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Dale Davis in his commentary on 1 Samuel 27 identifies that passage, brought up that proverb and said this, and I quote and it should be up on the screen, note the text doesn't say don't use your understanding, but don't lean on it.

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Lean on the Lord and use your understanding, don't lean on your understanding and use the

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Lord. Hear the difference? He goes on, but there is no instant insight, there is no quick fix, we must learn the craft of wisdom and it helps to remember that our teacher is more merciful and patient than Saul or Akish, end quote.

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You see, Dale Davis is pointing out two things that we need to bring to bear on our decision making day in and day out.

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How many of you have some decisions that you have to make on a routine basis? And then some of us have some really big decisions that are coming up for us, some of you don't even know the big decisions that are just right around the bend, but they're coming.

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Yeah, that's ominous, right? But the first thing that Dale Davis is pointing out here is it's not easy.

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You've got to enter it not expecting it to be a template, a flow chart, an easy graph to figuring out what the right thing to do is at any point.

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As a matter of fact, I think some of the most damage we do to each other in the church is to operate with the assumption that I know what you should do and here is the answer.

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Do you know what I'm talking about? Where we can, how many of you can parent other people's kids better than your own? Are you getting what

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I'm saying? Because you have an observation and you have this objective perspective, but you don't even know what's going on in the household.

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You don't even know. So there's this judgment thing that goes on. It's not easy.

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Discernment and decision making in the Christian life is an art, not a science. Now certainly, we go over to the realm of,

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I can tell you this behavior is sin, this behavior is not sin, and that kind of stuff according to the word of God, but a lot of the stuff that we disagree about is just gray, it's just in the middle.

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So it requires understanding and synthesizing the principles of the word of God and the principles of our lives and that's hard work.

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So we would like to have a pastor who just gets up and tells us what to do. I'm not going to do that for you. I'm going to tell you, you got to live by these principles and it's tough work.

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The second observation though, which sets us, because I mean, you stress about these things and you want to get it right for God, right?

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How many of you? Go ahead and raise your hand. You want to get it right for God. You want to make these decisions and you want to make sure that you don't sell your house when you weren't supposed to.

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You don't jump ship from your job and get a new job when you're not supposed to because you want to please God and that's a good motive.

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But that leads to the second thing that Dale Davis is saying at the end of that quote. He says, and it helps to remember that our teacher, it's capital

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T Teacher, Jesus is more merciful and patient than Saul or Akish.

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Second thing in our decision making, it's not easy to make decisions and God is gracious.

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God is gracious and merciful. Do not forget that as you're parenting, as you're making decisions for life, as you're trying to figure out whether or not to start a new business, whether you're jumping over here or doing that, just know that God is gracious and merciful.

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Too much of our decision making is caught up in the wrong thinking about God, the thinking that says he's going to zap me if I go to the wrong college or if I make the wrong move at the wrong time or I marry the wrong person or I start a job when

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I'm not supposed to or whatever. And that all leads into the final application. Lean not on your own understanding, but the final thing is to trust in the

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Lord. Don't lean on your own understanding, but instead trust him. David shows us where a lack of trust led him.

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He pushed aside God's promises and proceeded to make a mess of his own life. But God is the one who knows how life is meant to function and work.

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He has given us commands. He has given us examples from scripture like David and most importantly, he has given us his grace through his son,

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Jesus Christ. So if you're here and you're kind of frazzled and you're, even just this message is just kind of like,

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I don't know where all this is going and I don't know how to work through all this. There's one thing you can, if there's one thing you can really take from this message, wake up and listen to this.

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It's just simply this. Remind yourself each day, remind yourself each day that your only hope is wrapped up in the promise of salvation through Jesus Christ.

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If you can only take on one thing this morning, if the only thing you're saying, there's only one message that I really need to get.

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Let this be the message that you talk to yourself this week about. The only hope is salvation in Jesus Christ.

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The only solution is salvation that comes through the cross of Jesus Christ. In him is the only true hope.

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In him is the only answer to the healing you're longing for. In him is the answer to the justice that we don't see in this world, but that he is bringing.

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In him is the only true hope for beauty and in him is the only resolution to the curse of sin and death.

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And that's why he went to the cross. For anyone here who believes that Jesus is

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Lord and has asked him to save them, I invite you to come to the tables in the back during this next song to recall the purchase price.

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You were not purchased with gold and silver and precious gems and jewels.

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You were purchased with the very precious blood of the son of God, Jesus Christ our

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Lord. That's the purchase price. So let me end by encouraging you. Talk to yourself as you stand in line.

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Talk to yourself as you take the cracker that symbolizes his body broken for you. Talk to yourself as you take the cup of juice to remember his body broken for you.

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Tell yourself his grace is greater. Tell yourself his love is amazing.

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Tell yourself his forgiveness is undeserved. Tell yourself he is worthy of all praise.

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Tell yourself he is worthy of your obedience. Tell yourself he is worthy of all worship.

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And then go out from this place talking that truth to yourself all week long.

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Let's pray. Father, you have been gracious to give us voices.

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I think if I were you, I would have made us mute. But you have been gracious to give us voices to speak, and we have a choice to speak that which is true or that which is false.

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So Father, I pray that you would move in every heart here to contemplate, to really deeply take this message on to think about how we talk to ourselves and whether or not we're allowing your truth to saturate our hearts and our minds and therefore bleed out into our behavior or whether we are allowing the falsehood and the lies to stack up in our own hearts to produce the crud and the mess of the world around us.

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Father, I pray that you would be with everybody here as we have this moment to get up and go and take the cracker that reminds us of the body of Jesus Christ that was broken for us and take the cup to remember his blood shed for us.

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Father, I pray that this might be a decision -making time where maybe there are some here who aren't all in with Jesus. They have not yet acknowledged him as Lord.

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They have not yet asked him for salvation, and those are the two components that I see in Scripture that brings a person into right relationship with you.

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So Father, if there's anybody here who has not bowed the knee to Jesus as King, as Lord, as Master, and has not asked for his salvation,

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I pray that today even now before we come to these tables that some might say in their hearts,

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I believe, and I accept Jesus as my King. But Father, for those who have done that in the past,

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I pray that this would be a good practice for the remainder of the week that as we get in these lines and we have an opportunity in the quietness to talk to ourselves,

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Father, I pray that you would superintend those conversations to be truth, to be what is right.

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We are not worthy, but we are deeply loved. I pray that that reality would coalesce in our hearts and our minds to speak truth right now in Jesus' name, amen.