(Disclaimer: This transcript is auto-generated and may contain mistakes.)

Verse number 1, the Bible reads that David said in his heart, I shall now perish one day by the hand of Saul. There is nothing better for me than that I should speedily escape into the land of the Philistines, and Saul shall despair of me to seek me anymore on any coast of Israel. So shall I escape out of his hand. Now, so far, we've already seen David escape from Saul many times. God has always protected him. And God delivered Saul into his hand twice. David used this opportunity to show Saul that he did not want to kill him, that he did not have any ill will toward him. But now all of a sudden David is having a lapse in faith here. Because God has protected him every single time. And yet all of a sudden he gets this attitude that says, you know what, someday Saul's going to get me. Someday he's going to catch up to me. Someday I'm going to perish by the hand of Saul. Now look, he ought to know that that's not true. Because God has already anointed him to be the next king of Israel. He already knows that. He's been protected every time. But yet he's beginning to have doubts. He's starting to fade spiritually. Now, keep your finger at 1 Samuel 27. Go to Psalm 27. I always think this is interesting because of the way the numbers work in the Bible sometimes. And 1 Samuel 27 is this story about how David all of a sudden begins to be fearful that Saul's going to kill him. And he begins to lose faith that God's going to protect him. Look what it says in Psalm 37. Keep in mind, this is written by David. The same man who is having a lack of faith in 1 Samuel 27 wrote Psalm 27. Of course, it was God who wrote it through him. But it says in Psalm 27, 1, The Lord is my light and my salvation. Whom shall I fear? The Lord is the strength of my life. Of whom shall I be afraid? When the wicked, even my enemies and my foes, came upon me to eat up my flesh, they stumbled and fell. Though a host shouldn't camp against me, my heart shall not fear. The war should rise against me. In this will I be confident. One thing am I desiring of the Lord, that will I seek after, that I may dwell in the house of the Lord all the days of my life, to behold the beauty of the Lord and to inquire in his temple. For in the time of trouble, he shall hide me in his pavilion. In the secret of his tabernacle shall he hide me, he shall set me upon a rock. And now shall my head be lifted up above my enemies round about me. Therefore while I operate this tabernacle, sacrifice is of joy. I will sing ye, I will sing praises of the Lord. And on and on this chapter goes, and many other psalms like it, where David is talking about the fact that he has nothing to fear because God is with him. Even in Psalm 23, the most famous psalm, he said, Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil, for thou art with me. Over and over again in Psalms, and another place in the scripture, the Bible tells us, fear not. God's going to protect us. God can take care of us. Our enemies will not prevail against us. No weapon that is formed against us shall prosper. And yet David, for some reason, begins to lose faith in them. Now you say, why did he lose faith? Because he's a human being. You know, and the thing is, we sometimes think that we're invincible. And especially, you notice people who haven't really even been in church for that long, haven't really been serving God for that long, and they think that they're immune to getting backslidden, or immune to getting weak in the faith, or starting to fade away spiritually and quitting. But I've seen it over and over and over again. Let him that thinketh he stand and take heed lest he fall. You say, what is the point of this chapter in 1 Samuel 27? Pretty much the whole chapter, everything David does in this chapter is wrong. From start to finish. Everything he does is wrong. And you say, well, what is the point? What can we learn from this chapter? If everything he's doing, we're learning what not to do. And we're learning that a great man, a godly man, can begin to backslide and can begin to lose faith. And when he starts to lose faith and starts to lean upon his own understanding instead of on God's word, you notice how he just goes downhill and does worse and worse things and gets further and further away from where he needs to be spiritually. Now, it's going to be until chapter 30 where David gets right with God and really gets back on track spiritually in chapter 30. But this is where we really see him start to fall away. Now, many, many people before you have come to this church or other churches and gotten really excited about it and they were reading their Bible and they were going soul winning and they're not here anymore. And they're not anywhere anymore. They're not soul winning anymore. They're totally backslidden or they barely come to church at all. And they were coming, you know, Sunday morning, Sunday night, Wednesday night, three to thrive. They were out soul winning. They were zealous. And even when others fell away, they said, wow, I can't believe that that person would quit the church and why would they do that? I can't even understand that. And then it's them. Six months later, a year later. Look, no one is immune to this. That's why every single day, you need to take heed and guard your heart, keep thy heart with all diligence for out of it are the issues of life. David said in his heart, it all started with just a thought in his heart. Look at the first words. David said in his heart, I shall now perish one day by the hand of Saul. That is not true. That is a lie. That is not what God's word had told him. That's what human understanding is telling him. Hey, if this guy keeps hunting after me, everybody's ratting on me everywhere I go. Eventually he's going to get me. But that is not what God told him. That's what man's wisdom would tell him. That's what his own understanding. Now, you may have these kind of thoughts in your heart, and these kind of thoughts are dangerous. You need to be careful and protect your thoughts. Some people have this attitude of just, well, I can, you know, whatever goes on in my head is fine, just as long as I don't act on it. But, you know, sitting around having a bad attitude in your heart. One day I'm going to fail. One day it's all, you know, but, you know, this isn't going to work out. God's not going to bless me. You know, my life is going down the toilet. You know, sitting around having those kind of thoughts can be destructive to even think on those things. You know, the Bible says, what sort of things are true? What sort of things are honest? What sort of things are just? What sort of things are pure? What sort of things are lovely? What sort of things have a good rapport? If there be any virtue and if there be any praise, think on these things. We need to make sure that our mind and our heart is occupied with the right kind of thoughts. And I'm not saying just a positive only thoughts. But, you know, we are on the winning side. I mean, thanks be to God, who always causes us to triumph through Jesus Christ. That's the way we ought to be going through life and we ought to expect to succeed. The Bible says if we meditate on God's word day and night, if we keep the things that are written therein, then he'll make our way to prosper and we will have good success. I'm not preaching a prosperity, health and wealth gospel. Many are the afflictions of the righteous, but the Lord deliver them out of them all. You're going to go through trials and tribulations, but God's going to deliver you. You ought to have an attitude, a triumphant attitude, that says, hey, God is with me. Who can be against me? I'm going to put his word first. I'm going to obey him and let the chips fall where they may. I'm going to make the house of God a priority. And notice how that was tied in in Psalm 27. He said I'm going to dwell in the house of the Lord all the days of my life. I want to be in his tabernacle. I want to be in his house. He's going to protect me. You know, making church a priority, making God's word a priority, making soul a priority. God is going to bless you. And it's easy to sit back and think, oh, what's the use? It's going to fail. That's where David's at right here in this chapter. He's losing faith in the fact that God's going to bless him for doing what's right. Now, look, we all go through times where it doesn't seem like God's blessing us, where it seems like everything's going wrong and, you know, things are, it seems like our life is falling apart or whatever area of our life. But God has promised that he's going to guide us and direct us and that if we trust in the Lord with all our heart and lean not onto our own understanding and in all our ways acknowledge him, then he will direct our path. That's what David has lost sight of in this chapter. And that's where he's going over the Philistines. Now, the Philistines are not God's people. The Philistines are a heathen nation. God clearly instructed David a few chapters back that he needs to stay in the land. He's not supposed to be leaving the land of Israel. He's supposed to stay in that promised land. But because he has lost faith in that, he's decided to leave the promised land and to go outside of the nation of Israel to a land that God did not want him to be. It was not God who was leading him there. And so he gets to the land of the Philistines. And remember, this is the guy who killed Goliath, the champion of the Philistines. Now, he's already tried to go to the Philistines once a long time ago. You remember what happened there? And he got there, and a lot of people were talking, and it started making David nervous, like they were going to arrest him. And so he pretended like he was insane, and he started slobbering on himself and scratching on the walls and doing all this. And they thought he was insane, and they let it go. And so, you know, if you ever get in trouble with the law, just plead insanity. Now, I would do that. I would do that. They'd probably be injecting you with all kinds of drugs or something. Anyway, that's another sermon. You know, so... Anyway, that's probably not a smart thing to do. But anyway, it's sad. But he did it. That's what David did. Last time, he went to the Philistines, which he shouldn't have been doing. But anyway, he's lost faith. He's discouraged. He's down. And, you know, I could sympathize with him. You say, well, you're being kind of argon. Hey, I could sympathize with him. He's living in the wilderness. He's being hunted down. He's in fear of his life every day. But just because you could sympathize with people doesn't make what they're doing right. I mean, you can look at him and say, hey, I see where it's coming from. I could sympathize with him. And, you know, I see a lot of other people who go into sin, and I could sympathize with their plights too. But that doesn't make it right. Right's right. Wrong's wrong. And even though we can sympathize with him, and even though he's a greater man than I am and a greater man than you are, that's just even more of a warning to us that if he could get this attitude, if he could lose faith, we could lose faith too. We better be careful not to. We better stay in God's Word. Faith cometh by hearing and hearing by the Word of God. The more we hear God's Word, the more faith we're going to have. That's not just about salvation. We continue to grow in faith as we read God's Word. And not only that, it doesn't just say read God's Word. It says hear God's Word. You know, and you say, well, how am I going to hear it? Well, come to church and you're hearing it. You know, being preached. And that's a good way to hear God's Word. And also, it's good to read it out loud to yourself and quote it out loud to yourself or even listen to it on a CD. And hear God's Word, you're going to have faith from hearing God's Word. You know, when you read God's Word out loud, many times it can enter into your heart through your ears and be a powerful thing to you. And so David here is losing faith and he's going the wrong path. So we see what happens. He says if I do this, if I go into the land of the Philistines, Saul's going to despair of me to seek me any more in any coast of Israel. Well, that's exactly what happens because look at verse 4. It says it was told Saul that David was fled to Gath and he sought no more again for him. That's what Saul wanted. I mean, so Saul's kind of winning the battle here. He wants him out of the land and that's what happened. He left the land. He goes onto the Philistines. He takes his two wives. That was another place that he failed to do the right thing because he was always supposed to have one wife. It says in verse 5, and David said unto Achish, If I have now found grace in thine eyes, let them give me a place. This is the king of the Philistines. Let them give me a place in some town in the country that I may dwell there. Why should thy servant dwell in the royal city with thee? Then Achish gave him Ziklag that day, wherefore Ziklag pertaineth unto the kings of Judah unto this day, and the time that David dwelt in the country of the Philistines was a full year and four months. So for 16 months, he's totally out of God's will, totally doing the wrong thing. He's leaning on his own understanding. He's gone to the land of the Philistines. Now, he doesn't want to live right there in the city of the Philistines, right there with Achish and Gath. He doesn't just want to be in the total lion's den of the Philistines. So he just says, you know, just give me a place out in the country somewhere where I can have my own place. Because remember, he's got hundreds of men that are following. So the whole group is going to set up a settlement in this place called Ziklag. So it says in verse 8, And David and his men went up and invaded the Gesurites, and the Gezrites, and the Amalekites. For those nations were of old the inhabitants of the land, as thou goest to sure even unto the land of Egypt. So David and his men just go into this even, ungodly, wicked land. And they just go in and just wipe them out, just kill them all and take all their stuff. I guess they just don't really have a trade, you know, to make money or whatever. So they just, I mean, they're just warriors. They're just soldiers. So that's what they do. And by the way, there's something we can learn from this here. This is maybe digressing a little bit from the story. But there's something about standing armies that you can learn from this. You know, when you just have guys that are just full-time soldiers, they need to fight somebody. I mean, think about it. Just stop and think about this. You got this massive army, okay? And this massive army with all the training and all the weapons and everything like that, that's pretty expensive to maintain. You know, and it's like, you can't just maintain this massive army without them fighting anybody. It just doesn't make any sense. And so therefore, usually countries that have a really big military, they're constantly fighting someone. Have you ever noticed that? Countries that have a big military that's a standing army, they are always fighting somewhere on the globe, even if it's nothing to do with their country. I mean, look at like the British Empire, look at the French and so on. They always had some fighting going on somewhere. They're always battling somewhere, you know? Because that's what armies do. That's what soldiers do. And so you say, well, isn't that biblical? Well, no, it's not biblical. Because what was biblical, if you go back to God's original intent, and see, a lot of times, God allows things to go in a way that was not his perfect plan, that was not his original intent. Kind of like the kingdom with Saul being king, that was not his original intent. His original plan, his original intent was the judges, the system of the judges. There was no king. God said, I'm your king. I'm your lawgiver. I'm the one that you need to look to and no one else, and you just need judges to, you know, govern your affairs. That was God's original perfect plan. Just like where people have two wives in the Bible, that was God's original plan. There was always one wife. Even though he has laws in Exodus 21 explaining, well, hey, if you do have two wives, this is the way it's going to be. But still, he never condoned to it. It was always one. Even the temple, although God did condone of them building the temple, that was never God's original plan or God's original intent. His original plan was the tabernacle. That's what he designed. That was the place that they would go to worship him and offer their sacrifices. At the tabernacle, which was a tent, that was God's original plan. Well, God's original plan for the military of the nation of Israel, if you go back to Deuteronomy, was that every man would have a weapon. Every man in the nation, every single one, and they had a weapon, and when there was an enemy to attack, when there was a battle to fight, when there was a war to fight, they would be called upon. They would sound the trumpet. They had certain trumpets that they would sound for this, where they would sound the trumpet, throw out all the land, and all the men of war would be gathered together from 20 years old and upward, the ones who were able to fight, and they would go fight the enemy, and then when they're done, they would disband and go home. Okay. That is biblical. And you say, well, that won't work in modern day. You know what? You're right. None of it will work, right? So why are we even at church? Why don't we go be atheists and go follow some man-made philosophy No. God's Word will always work. Amen. You say, well, how's that going to work? You know, well, you know why it's not going to work? You know why it's not going to work in the United States of America? Because our country is a heathen, wicked country. That's why. So of course it's not going to work. You say, oh, God's laws won't work. You know, the system of the judges won't work, and these rules are up. Well, of course it won't work when everybody's a sodomite and a weirdo and a drunk and a drug addict and an atheist and a pervert. Of course it's not going to work. It's designed for God's people. It's designed for righteous, godly people. And it would work if we would implement all of it. Okay. It's a perfect system. It's a perfect book. It's a fact that armies fight people and kill people all the time. They're always going to be battling someone or else they wouldn't exist as just a huge standing army. And that's why our troops are always fighting someone all the time, all the time, nonstop. And people say, oh, we're at war. Okay, well, we're always at war, though. We're in a war. You know, things are different. Well, when were we not at war? I mean, as long as I can remember we've been at war with somebody. You know, I mean, maybe my memory doesn't go back that far, but that's as long as I can remember. We're always fighting somebody. But anyway, the point is that they shouldn't have done this. I mean, these are heathen, wicked people that they're invading, and that's how they're justifying it, I guess, because they're thinking, oh, these are wicked, ungodly, sinful people. But God didn't tell them to do this. You know, they're just going in and just slaughtering everybody, man and woman, just slaughtering everybody. They were not told to do this. This isn't something that they're supposed to be doing. But that's what they did. So, first of all, David loses faith in God's promises and God's word. He gets out of the will of God. Next thing you know, he's just justifying some warfare. What was the purpose of David's warfare? According to the scripture. What was the purpose? Somebody tell me. What was the purpose of David going and wiping out these towns, according to the scripture? He wanted the goods, the money. They went there and they killed them all and took all the stuff. Now, is that the right reason to go to war and go kill people? Money? But, what does the Bible say in James chapter 4? From whence come wars and fightings among you? Come they not hence even of your lusts, which war in your members, ye lust and desire to have... I'm quoting you wrong. Let's go there and look at it. You need to see this quickly and then we'll come back to 1 Samuel 27. I thought I could quote it, but I'm freezing up in front of everybody here. Go to James chapter 4, end of the New Testament. And you know, I'm not some kind of a pacifist or a peacenik up here or something. But honestly, we need to get a biblical understanding of warfare and a biblical understanding. You know, we can't just be brainwashed into thinking that, you know, if you're against war, you're a long-haired tie-dye wearing hippie or something. You know, a lot of warfare is wrong and it's for people's financial gain. What was the warfare that was taking place in 1 Samuel 27? It was for David and his men's financial gain, okay? Look, if you would, at James chapter 4 and see what God says about warfare. Verse number 1. From whence come wars and fightings among you? Come they not hence even of your lusts, that war in your members? Ye lust and have not, ye kill and desire to have. You see that? People are killing other people to get their stuff. He says, ye kill and desire to have and cannot obtain, ye fight and war, yet ye have not, because ye ask not. Ye ask and receive not, because ye ask amiss, that ye may consume it upon your lust. God is saying that He's able to give us the provisions that we need. He's able to provide us with the finances we need, the food and raiment that we need, but because we lust and desire to have more as human beings in general, that is where wars come from. That's what the Bible used to say. Why are there so many wars going on in the world? That's why, according to the Bible. Why are there all these wars? Because people want other people's stuff. And if you don't understand that or if you don't believe that, you know, you don't understand what the Bible is saying in James 4. And you're going to have a wrong view of the world that we live in. Because you have to understand that the source of warfare from the Bible, why wars are fought, is because someone desires what someone else does. Look at the Bible. When foreign enemies are invading the children of Israel, what are they doing? They're stripping all the gold and silver off the temple. They're taking away the shields and spears. They're taking away their money. They're taking away their grain. That is why war... Now, a lot of times, warfare is justified for other reasons. And people think that they're fighting for a different reason. But according to the Bible, most warfare is fought to, you know, enrich someone. It's because of someone's greed that people are fighting. That's why the only... In 2011 today, the only legitimate warfare that anyone should be involved in is in just a defensive, just a self-defense. And not like, well, that guy might attack me, so I'm going to go attack him first. You know, I think he might have... You know, I mean, try that in your life, just on a personal basis. My neighbor keeps giving me a dirty look. I'm going to just go beat the fire at him. Because you know what? I'd rather fight him on my timing and my terms. I'm going to take it to him. I'm not going to wait for him to attack me. I'm taking it to you, buddy. I'm sick of you. Yeah, let's do it on your yard, okay? Let's do it at your house. And so, it's ridiculous. It's nonsense. You know, well, this guy might attack us. Let's go kill him. Let's go, you know... No, it should be a defensive war only. That's the only war that I am for. A war to protect liberty or a war to protect property or your life in this nation. Not just a war of conquest. Or a war to go liberate some other country in some other part of the world. I mean, that's just not what God has given us. You know, we are on this side of the world here. We're not supposed to run the entire world. And that's a whole other sermon. But we see here this warfare on David's part that's motivated by gain. He wants to get the goods. So, basically, they kill man and woman and they slaughter them all. And you say, why is he doing that? Because he's not right with God. He's out of God's will. He's not where he's supposed to be in the land of Israel. He's out, you know, in the land of the Philistines. And next thing you know, he's just fighting some war that's an unjust war, okay? He kills everybody. I mean, it says they smote the land, verse 9, and left neither man nor woman alive and took away the sheep, the oxes and the asses, and the camels and the apparel, apparel's clothing, and returned and came to Achish. And Achish said, wither have you made a road today? So they come back and Achish perceives, wait a minute, these guys look like they've been fighting. And wait a minute, they've got all this oil, they've got all this stuff. And he's saying, hey, where have you guys been fighting? Who did you fight against? Now they begin to lie. So first David loses faith, he gets out of God's will, next thing you know, he's fighting in an unjust war, and then now he's lying about it. So he's just kind of, you see how when you do wrong, it starts to snowball. Because first thing that he did wrong was leaving the promised land. Well, now that he's out of the promised land, he's got to find a way to support himself. And his 600 followers, his 600 troops and their families, so they've got to find a way to get food and money and to pay for themselves. So now they're forced to go fight in this unjust warfare in order to make money. And then once they make that money, then they've got to lie about it to cover it up. Or else, but just look what it says, let's read it real quickly, it says, Achish said, wither have you made a road today? He said, what does he mean made a road? Well, basically like turning a town into a road. You know what I mean, like basically just raising it to the ground is what he means by that. Just destroying everything in your path, making a road. That's what he means by making a road, just causing destruction in your path. And it says, and David said, against the south of Judah and against the south of the Geromeolites and against the south of the Kenites. And David saved neither man nor woman alive to bring tidings to Gath, saying, lest they should tell on us, saying, so did David, and so will be his manor. All the while, he dwelleth in the country of the Philistines. So that's why he killed everybody, because he really just wanted the stuff. But he had to kill everybody because he had to destroy all the witnesses so that they wouldn't tell Achish what had happened. So he went to some towns that were just out in the middle of nowhere. They were wicked heathen towns. He slaughters them, takes all the goods, and brings them back. Well, he tells Achish that he did his fighting in the south of Judah against the south of the Geromeolites and against the south of the Kenites. Well, the Geromeolites and the Kenites and the south of Judah, these are nations that are allied with the children of Israel. The Kenites were always an ally of the children of Israel. They were not in a hostile country. They were not a heathen country. So he's claiming to Achish that he's fighting against, basically, the allies of Israel. And he's even fighting into the south of Judah. Well, when Achish hears that, and I don't know how Achish is so gullible and stupid to believe that, but he believes that. And he says in verse 12, and Achish believed David, saying, he hath made his people Israel utterly to abhor him. Therefore, he shall be my servant forever. So David's lie works out for him, because now Achish thinks, not only is he not fighting against my allies, he's fighting against the allies of his own people. He's fighting against his own people. They're never going to accept him back. I mean, if he's fighting all these men of Judah, and he's fighting all the Kenites, and there's no way he's ever going to be accepted back in his homeland, he's going to be my servant forever. He's going to be on my side. Because, of course, he had defected over to the Philistines and defected over to the enemy. Now, if you look at verse 11, it says, David saved neither man nor woman alive to bring Titus to Gath, saying, lest they should tell on us, saying, so did David, and so will be his man, or all the while he dwells in the country of the Philistines. So they would have found out what he had really done. They would have thought, oh, man, we can't have this guy with us. He's killing our allies. Now, I don't know if this is the only time David did this or not. Because God doesn't really record any other excursions that David takes. So I'm hoping this is probably the only time that he did this. He just did this one time. Because he was only there for 16 months. So maybe he just went out, took out a couple towns, took back those goods, and they just kind of lived out that for a while. But we see in the downward spiral that sin can take you up, where you just get worse, and you get worse, and you get worse. And honestly, it starts when you get out of church. We obviously don't really have the same thing going on today in the promised land, where they were supposed to be in the promised land. And this is kind of a common theme throughout scripture, where you remember different people like Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, they would get out of the promised land, and things would go bad. They'd go down to Egypt, and things wouldn't really go right. You look at the children of Israel that went down to Egypt when there was a famine in the land in the time of Joseph. When they went down there, God told Jacob, he said, I'm going to bring you down to Egypt. He said, fear not to go to Egypt, because they weren't really supposed to go there normally. But sometimes God would specifically tell them it was OK to go down there. So God specifically tells Israel, or known as Jacob, he tells Israel in the end of Genesis, he says, fear not to go down into Egypt. He says, I'm going to make of thee a great nation there, and everything like that. But he tells them, he says, I'm going to bring thee down, and I'm going to bring thee back up. What happens is they go down into Egypt, and they end up just staying a really long time. Now, the famine was only a seven-year famine. When they get down there, there's only five years left of the famine. Jacob lived many years after the famine was over, but he never left Egypt. And they just kind of stayed in Egypt. And then what happened? Eventually, they get totally enslaved in Egypt, and they get evil and treated for 400 years. They're down there for 430 years. Same thing. Joseph, in the New Testament, the step, not, of course, Jesus' father, but who raised him, basically, his mother's husband. Joseph was told to go down into Egypt when Herod was trying to kill him. But then he was told, hey, now it's time to come back out of Egypt. We don't really have that concept in the New Testament of a promised land where we're supposed to be geographically. Maybe it's Phoenix. No, I'm just kidding. But anyway, where we're supposed to be geographically in a certain promised land, we don't have that in the New Testament. That's an Old Testament concept, where they had a certain land, there was a promised land, and that was kind of a geographical place that they were supposed to be, and they were supposed to stay there, and so forth. But honestly, we could look at it today, I think it would be like being in church would be one way to look at it. Because that's where God's house was, was in the promised land. And the people who lived in the promised land could go to God's house easier, because it was right there. Because the Bible talks about some people it would be too far for them to come to the house of God three times a year, all the males. And so being in proximity to God's house was part of being in the promised land. And obviously, just being around God's people, as opposed to being in the land of the Philistines, where are you at? You're around total heathens. Kind of like when Lot is in Sodom, and he's around a bunch of weirdos in Sodom. So the bottom line is that if we get out of church, if we get away from God's people and start hanging around with a bunch of heathens, that would be kind of the equivalent of what David did here. He gets away from God's people, he gets away from where he's supposed to be, and he gets around a bunch of sinful, ungodly people. And next thing you know, he's doing stuff that you wouldn't expect him to do. And he's making a lot of bad decisions. He was a merciful guy. Remember how merciful he was? He wouldn't even touch Saul. And he's going to show himself merciful in 2 Samuel many times, where he's always showing mercy on people and being kind. This was not a kind thing to do, to just go in and wipe out these towns. But he's totally out of God's will. Don't get to the place where you think you're immune to it, or you're invincible, or you think, hey, I know. I've been going to church a lot. I know everything about God. Why do I need to go to church to hear Pastor Anderson rattle his cage again? I already know what he's going to say. You know, sometimes you just need to hear it again, though. Even if you already know what he's going to say, just hear it again. And I've already read the Bible enough times, I know what it's going to say when I turn the page. But I still need to read it again, and again, and again, and again. There's more there. And so take heed lest you fall. Don't fall into the trap of going down this slow fade, where it starts in your heart. You just think some thoughts. Well, you know, the gas money is too far. And you know, I don't think I need to go to church so much. Or, well, these old friends I used to hang with, they weren't really that bad. You know, maybe we can get together and have a beer or whatever. You know, these are the kind of thoughts that start to enter your mind and into your heart. You are not immune to it. You will go down the wrong path. You will fail unless you take heed to yourself. Lest you fall, stay in God's word every day. Hear God's word. Hear it in your own life. And hear it in the house of God. Be in church. Be faithful to it. And don't let this happen to you. Let's prioritize that word of prayer. Father, we thank you so much for this example of the Bible that could give us a little bit of a warning that even a great man like David, a godly man, a righteous man after your own heart, can just lose faith in your promises. And next thing you know, he's going down a really bad path. He's lying. He's killing. He's doubting you. He's hanging around with the enemy. Help us not to make that mistake. Help us to be sober and be vigilant. And be careful that this would happen to us. In Jesus' name we pray, amen.