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Okay, we are in second Sammy chapter number five this evening And let me just do a little bit of review to get us caught up and bring us up to speed on what's going on here, of course, we already know that Saul's dead his son Jonathan is dead and Essentially because they they passed away. They're gone. Everyone pretty much knows that David is going to take over He's already ruling over Judah But the rest of Israel is not under his rule as of yet And of course we know that Abner who is the captain of Saul's army Sets up ish Pacheth, which is Saul's son to be captain or excuse me to be king over the rest of Israel That doesn't go well. We see that Abner ends up defecting from ish Pacheth and joins David but then Joab executes vengeance upon Abner because Abner kills or had killed his brother and then Eventually is Pacheth is also assassinated. And what we see here is basically the decay of Saul's house. It's just falling apart It's it's it's falling like a deck of cards. And so even though David is the king, you know you have this arduous transition between Saul's house going into David's house and all these bad people coming up and trying to take over and essentially be the king but of course it fails and We see here that David is just kind of sitting back waiting for God to just work and do You know essentially exalt him and prop him up to be the king over all of Israel And so this is where we leave off here ish Pacheth, of course is murdered and he's decapitated They bring the head of ish Pacheth to David thinking that David was going to reward them He doesn't of course David is a man of integrity and he slays the men who killed ish Pacheth And so that's where we're at here. Look at chapter number five We're gonna look at Israel recognizing David as the true king here So it's in verse number one then came all the tribes of Israel to David unto Hebron and spake saying behold we are thy bone and thy flesh and Also in time past when Saul was king over us that was he that let us out That let us down and brought us in Israel and the Lord said to thee thou shall feed my people Israel and thou shall be a captain over Israel So all the elders of Israel came to the king To Hebron and King David made a league with them and Hebron before the Lord and they anointed David king over Israel So what we're looking at here is that pretty much everyone recognizes now Everyone who is it trying to impede David from taking over is basically taken out of the picture So now Israel begins to join and be under the rule of David and essentially recognize them as the true king And we see here in verse number three That the elders come and essentially re-anoint him because of the fact that we know that David was already Anointed when he was about 15 years old years ago. Everyone already knew that he was supposed to take over So this is kind of just confirming that they're re-anointing him now before I get into what's actually taking place here I want to explain who the elders are. Okay, because it says there in verse number three So all the elders of Israel came to King To the king to Hebron and King David made a league with them and of course we see the They anoint him to be king. So who are the elders? Well elders we're familiar with that term because we see it in the New Testament right and often it's it's synonymous with pastor someone who's a shepherd and Pretty much in the Old Testament. It's almost pretty much the exact same thing The difference being is that the elders in the New Testament they judge spiritual matters Okay, the pastors the elders they're responsible for overseeing the house of God and essentially pastoring God's people in a local New Testament Church and judging spiritual matters. Whereas in the Old Testament the elders Basically did that to a certain extent but there are more so responsible for you know Making decisions in the land. Okay for the people and if you remember in Exodus chapter 18, you know Moses was judging the people right? he was judging the people and he was he was essentially fixing their problems and you know fixing their disputes and their conflicts and he was kind of doing it from Sun up to Sun down and You know his father-in-law comes to him and says hey You're gonna wear away by doing this and he essentially advises him and says what you need to do is get Elders, he says you get you need to get men who able men who hate covetousness They are men of truth, they're men who fear God and place such over them He says, you know to be rulers of thousands or rulers of hundreds and rulers of 50s and rulers of tens and he says let them judge the people at all seasons and He tells them, you know the smallest of matters they can deal with and then the really big matters the great matters They can come to you And so these were known as like the 70 elders The people in the the land during the time when the children of Israel were in the wilderness Who essentially just kind of settled disputes taught people what the Word of God said and they were leaders, okay, and So that template kind of carried over into the rest of the history of Israel Especially during this time the difference being is that these elders are Essentially people who are just esteemed men who are esteemed to judge matters for the community Okay, so anytime there was a dispute or anytime people went to you know wanted to know what should we do in this situation? We don't have a king they would go to the elders to kind of figure out what is it that God wanted them to do Okay, so these are basically men of renown these are important guys here and We see that they essentially come to a consensus that David is the true king now I do want to mention this is that this particular story here in first in second Sam excuse me is also found in first Chronicles chapter 12 13 and 14 and The difference being is that first Chronicles chronicles the story here, but with other details Okay Because we see here that the elders are kind of coming together and they they're in agreement that David should take over Whereas in first Chronicles chapter 12 what you have is the soldiers and the captains and the other tribes Essentially coming together and saying hey David. You're the man We want to be under your rule type of a thing And so that is the difference between what we see here and in first Chronicles chapter 12 now he says in verse number 2 He says in time past when Saul was king over us that that was he that led us out and brought us in Israel And the Lord said unto thee thou shalt feed my people Israel and that shall be a captain over Israel So these people obviously recognize, you know what David even when Keith when Saul was king and when he was ruling You're essentially the one who were leading us out You're bringing us in why because David was the guy who was the boots on the ground He was the guy who was you know, fighting the enemies of the Lord fighting the Philistines He was in place and he was you know under the leadership of Saul, of course But this helped them gain a great reputation before Israel You see if he didn't have any interaction with the Israelites then, you know It would be hard for him to become king because they don't really know who he is. You understand? But he had this reputation of just years and years of fighting the Lord's battles and Bringing out the soldiers and bringing them in and leading them in great wars and battles And so they're basically telling them like we know who you are. We know your reputation. We know your manner of life We know your doctrine. We know all about you we know what you're what you're about and so we know that God has selected you to be the King over all of Israel not just over Judah look at verse number four here It says David was 30 years old When he began to rain and he rained 40 years and he brought he rained over Judah seven years in six months and in Jerusalem He rained 30 years and three years over all Israel and Judah now one thing I want to point out from this particular verse here is The fact that he's 30 years old when he's officially raining over all Israel including Judah So he's a young man, amen Amen. I'm just kidding. I Guess no one agrees. Yeah Well, I think he's young. Okay, you know, he's 30 years old when he's raining over the nation and What's the significance of this? Well think about this, you know, he's anointed king when he's a teenager Okay, possibly when he's like about 15 years old. He's anointed king, but he doesn't take over the throne He doesn't necessarily become the king until he's 30 right 15 years later Now one thing that we can learn from this is the fact that David was not an overnight success You understand, you know people who are there during the kingdom or during this time They're probably thinking wow David just kind of took over and he's 30 years old But you know They didn't see the previous 15 years and everything that he went through to get to this point You understand and the lesson that we can learn from this is that there's no such thing as overnight success true success It's not something that just happens overnight It's not just something that just happens from one day to the other it requires preparation and years of suffering tribulation experience battles just Preparing to take that position or to become successful then, you know That's an important point because of the fact that sometimes Christians, you know Newer Christians will look at a mature Christian who kind of has their stuff together and it's just like man How do I get to this point? But what they don't realize is that that mature Christian didn't become a mature Christian overnight you know it took them years to get to that point and It's important that we don't compare ourselves among ourselves because the Bible says that's foolish to do You know when you look at a marriage that's succeeding and you look at a marriage where the husband and wife are getting along And they have a great marriage and she reverences him and he loves her and yeah There's conflict every once in a while, but for the most part they understand their roles and they're doing great as a marriage You know that doesn't happen overnight. It's not like they just came to church and boom There's just perfect right off the bat or something like that You know, it takes years to mold and create a great marriage It requires a lot of battles Okay, a lot of conflicts a lot of conflict resolvent you think of you know When you look at families and you're like man, look at these families. They have godly children They're serving the Lord and you know, they're so successful in their family life. They're so successful in their marriage, you know Here's the thing is that that didn't happen overnight. Okay, it requires Years and years of training years and years of obeying the Bible years and years of just you know, kind of allowing your family to be under the Word of God and under the preaching of God's Word weekend and week out and Walking in the spirit and fighting the little battles here and there and just kind of keeping it together And so it's important for us to note that you know When you're anointed right if you have this vision if you have this vision to to do something great for God Whether that's you know Have a godly marriage or have godly children or you want your business to come off the ground and become super successful Just understand it doesn't happen overnight Okay, you don't want things to happen overnight Because the reason why the 15 years for David was necessary is because he had to go through all that nonsense you know to humble him and to give him experience and To help him to know what it's like to struggle and to fight and you know It's in the battles and the tribulations that we seek after the Lord. What if it was just handed to him, right? What if it was just handed to him kind of like the way it's handed to Solomon? What if it was just handed to him, you know? He would essentially possibly just kind of give over to give himself over to vices or you know You know, obviously he married a bunch of women. I can't say he didn't because obviously we see here that you know, David You're messing on my illustration man. I'm just kidding, you know He probably a lot worse is what I'm saying. You know, the the years are necessary. Okay, they're necessary To in order for us to be successful. You can't just have something overnight. You look at soul winners You know, there's so much that there's just great soul winners, but they don't become great soul winners overnight Okay, it takes years and years of winning souls to Christ and and having that experience you think of You know pastors pastors who've been pastoring for quite some time and they have successful churches, you know that doesn't happen overnight It requires years and years of preparation years of reading God's Word Years of working with people years of walking with God or just being a great Christian just in general You got to recognize it just doesn't happen overnight Okay And don't be one of these Christians where you just think you're just a great Christian overnight or something like that Or it's just like well, I've been coming to first works for like four months, you know been here for about a year I've been here for about you know, you're in a half I think I'm pretty I'm like the cream of the crop in here or something But you're you're not the cream and you're not even in the crop yet. It's like You got years to go because it requires years of experience, okay, and So, you know David beat was great before but he became even greater Later on and it could be that when he was anointed, you know if he would have taken the throne then he would have probably messed it all up because becoming a king and Ruling over a people for the Lord is probably very difficult work. Okay There's a lot of responsibilities that comes with that And so, you know in order for us to succeed in any area of life for your business to succeed For you to succeed as a Christian as a husband as a wife and your child rearing whatever may be In your soul winning in your Bible reading, you know, you got to go through instances where you fail You have to fail and sometimes people are afraid to fail and I can I can see why you know, it's not necessarily the most It's not the best thing, you know, it just doesn't feel good and it's it's grievous and it's humbling But we need to fail and in fact There's no such thing as succeeding without failing because when you fail you learn from your mistakes when you fail God humbles you When you fail you learn to think outside the box You learn to have a mind of witty inventions to do things differently and you learn Persistence you learn endurance you learn that you should just you're not gonna just throw in the towel and quit You just got to hang on and maybe do things a different way And so that's what we see with David, you know this entire time that we've been studying first Samuel up till second Samuel chapter 5 We've just seen David go through a lot of stuff You know a lot of different ways of thinking a lot of you know his disobedience But then we see his obedience his faith in God and all of these experiences that he's had over these last 15 years From the time that he was anointed king Really prepared him for this moment to be the main character so to speak of this moment You understand and so, you know if you're in that little era if you're in that little season, you know, don't quit don't quit Don't get out of the fight don't get out of the race and Just recognize that the sufferings and the tribulations and the experiences that you're getting right now are valuable Okay, and so keep serving God keep at it. Keep at it with your marriage. You're like man We're going through like a really tough time in our marriage. Oh, yeah, but just don't quit Okay, you need to go through a tough time in marriage. There needs to be difficult times in marriage There needs to be you know, our faith needs to be tested, right? We need to go through difficult times as Christians The worst thing that you can do as a Christian is that when the going gets tough you get going You know, it's just like oh man, it's tough. So I'm just gonna take a break from church or whatever You know I'm just gonna do my own thing get my stuff figured out a little bit get my head Redirected and then when I'm ready, I'll come back to church But once you come back to church, you're really behind on your homework. You're really behind on your projects You're really behind spiritually and you have to do a lot of catching up It's better to just stick it out and be in church and do God's service and keep serving God even as you're going through The difficulties in your life because it builds endurance it builds strength etc. Okay So did we see here that David wasn't an overnight success? You know a good thing that we can learn from this is the fact that the Bible also teaches us in Matthew chapter 6 That what we do in secret God will reward us openly and a lot of things that David did were in secret, you know All eyes weren't on him during those 15 years There's a lot of things that happen in private a lot of times when he was praying unto the Lord out of a pit You know in a cave in a difficult situation But we see the culmination of it the rewarding of it is the fact that now he's fully established here as the king Okay, so we see the length of his reign there in verses number four and five look at verse number six and The king and his men went to Jerusalem unto the Jebusites the inhabitants of the land which spake unto David saying Except thou take away the blind and the lame thou shall not come in hither thinking David cannot come in hither So let me explain what's going on here? They go to the Jebusites and the Jebusites reside in Jerusalem also known as Jebus Okay It's referred to as Jebus in first Chronicles chapter 14 because of the fact that it pertains unto The Jebusites right and pretty easy to understand right and the Jebusites are In general, they're Canaanites. Okay, they're part of those seven nations that were greater and mightier than Israel During the beginning stages when they were taking over Canaan land and you know Obviously the Israelites failed to kind of remove them from the land So that's why they're still there in Jerusalem, but David wants to set up his capital You know in Jerusalem, so he's like, all right. Well, let's take over these these Jebusites Let's destroy them just remove them because this is where the capital is going to be But the Jebusites are so prideful and arrogant That they respond with well in order for you to get to us You got to get past the lame and the blind Space is saying you're not even gonna get past the handicapped individuals in our city Let alone get past that and what is this? This is arrogance. This is pride. Okay Now you kind of wonder like hey, do you guys know who David is? You know me of you guys. He's like destroyed. You know how many Cainites he's just you know, subjected and destroyed But you know, they're not taking that into account and they're thinking to themselves Well, this guy's not gonna come over and take over our city and they begin to mock David and say well You know before you could even take over the city. You're gonna get over you're gonna have to defeat the handicapped people first. Okay, and This is very disrespectful you see that they're being arrogant and Here's the thing, you know, it's my personal belief that if they would have just been like, you know what we want peace we don't want any war and You know you take over and you know, we'll abide with you You know, we'll reside in you and you guys can make us tributaries or whatever It may be, you know I'm sure David would have been fine with it because David's not in a mood necessarily to fight He's been fighting this entire time He's just expecting everything to just kind of go smooth hereafter because his greatest enemy Saul has been removed He's not worried about him anymore but they they bring up this just prideful statement and So David doesn't even regard it like to him. It's not a threat. He doesn't see it as I don't know man What's up with these blind people that are they really good at fighting or something or what? Like dang, they're lame and they're really good. Like oh wow, what kind of people are these people? You know, he's not even like worried about it. He's not sweating it and Look at verse number seven. It says nevertheless David took the stronghold of Zion. The same is the city of David He's like nevertheless David just took over You know, he just took it over but I want you to notice verse number eight and David said on that day whosoever getteth up to the gutter and smite at The Jebusites and the lame and the blind that are hated of David's soul He shall be chief and captain wherefore they said the blind and the lame shall not come into the house So the Jebusites basically just screwed it all up for the handicapped people of that city Because he's just like, you know I'm gonna take over and the the handicapped people are also dying And by the way, even here after no lame or blind people are gonna come into the house at all Okay, so, you know they dug their their grave pretty deep and what we see here is that pride gets you nowhere It only makes the punishment worse for you. Okay, you know the Bible talks about destruction coming after You know pride a hot spirit before fall and this is very much the case here in the story But it's true even in our personal lives as well. He that standeth take heed lest he fall. Okay, and Most of the time the most prideful arrogant people are those who are not capable But think that they are Most of the time people who are the most arrogant prideful People who just you know think they're just all that in a bag of chips are often those who are not capable They're not able-bodied They think too highly of themselves because the Jebusites they weren't able they weren't able to put up a fight to David so they're talking all this smack to David and David just kind of just mop the floor with them and along with their you know handicapped people and then he basically said no handicapped people are allowed in this house anymore because that Statement made me mad kind of thing And so, you know what we see here is actually often the most humble people are Actually the ones who can actually do something. Okay? Now, how do we apply this today in 2022? Well often the one who talks the most are those who can't do Anything at all. It's those who are quietly working behind the scenes quietly serving the Lord Quietly winning souls just humble about it. They're not arrogant. These are the people who get the most work done Okay, whereas those who are constantly boasting of their works Boasting of how great they are as a soul winner Boasting how great they are as a Christian how much Bible they read and how much this just mark it down. They don't do any of it Okay, why because this is how prideful arrogant people operate they have to expel this information To try to compensate for the fact that they don't do those things. Okay, don't be a Jebusite. Amen Where you just think so highly of yourself. You're just as this grade-a soul winner that you know You're just just God's gift to this church of a soul winner you know what I mean or it's just like you just got your ducks in order and and you know, you can't be corrected or There's no one who's greater than you as a soul winner as a servant of God be humble and let me just say this is That pride is so disgusting It's such a repellent You know when you talk to when you talk to a prideful person, it just makes you not want to be around that person It's like shut up about yourself You know, I don't want to hear any more of your so-called wisdom or whatever, you know And so let that be a lesson to us as a church That you know Don't be the type of person that you just want to give wisdom and and talk about your works and what you can do and how? Great you are and and don't be a Jebusite because you will be humbled You know God is able to abase those who exalt themselves The reality is this is that deep down within every single one of us We all want to be exalted to a certain extent, right? That's a natural desire of Christians is to be honored and to be exalted But you have to use the right formula my friends The right formula is that you're supposed to abase yourself humble yourself under the mighty hand of God and he shall lift you up You see Joshua was humble and the Bible says that God magnified him before the people he made him big He just exalted him and people recognize what an honorable and great warrior He was and so, you know every couple of months I have to talk about this to just remind our church You know don't boast of a false gift Don't be the type of person where you honor yourself and you boast about yourself You know let another man praise thee and not thine own lips Let someone else honor you and say to your great soul winner Let someone else honor you and talk about how great of a Christian you are how much Bible, you know, how much wisdom you have Let someone else do it. He said well, what if no one does it then it probably means you don't you don't have it then It's probably what it means You ever think about that That's weird because I have all kinds of wisdom and no one's like saying anything like People should just be you know Everyone should be saying it like why isn't I'm gonna have to say it cuz no one else is saying it You know what probably means either number one You have no wisdom Or two even if you had some wisdom You talk about it too much. So why would anybody say anything, you know and People are repelled that they don't want to be around that type of a person that is constantly boasting of how great they are Via their works via the you know, whatever just humbly and quietly serve the Lord Okay, and we're not talking about false humility either. Okay, you know, there's people who have false humility sometimes not in our church But you know that is a potential sometimes danger where Christians have this false humility where they kind of Humbly tell you of their works and they humbly tell you how smart they are and how humbly they you know They like to boast about their gifts in a humble type of a way, you know, but don't be that way Don't be a Jebusite be humble and God resisted the proud I would says God resisted the proud and we give it grace unto the humble Okay, and so we see David setting up his capital the Jebusites obviously weren't able to put up a fight They're too arrogant and prideful to even view or see the fact that they weren't as great as they thought they were look at verse 9 so David dwelt in the Ford and called it the city of David and David built roundabout from Milo and inward and David went On and grew great and the Lord God of hosts was with them. Now that is an important statement right there. Okay Why well because of the fact that the reason David has all the success the reason he is you know so great is because God is with him and If there's anything that you need more than anything in the Christian life is for the Lord to be with you Okay, you need God's presence in your life. You need God's power in your life You don't need your bank account to be full. You don't need to have the most gifts or the most talents You don't you don't need to have the greatest advantages in this world You just need God to be with you because God can prosper you and give you good success. He can favor you He can completely change the situation to favor your life. He can bring you a husband He can bring you a wife. He can cause you to bear children. He can cause you to get the promotions at your job He can cause you to have favor with man as long as he is with you Now, how can we make sure that God is with us? Well, obviously we know in general God will never leave us nor forsake us right we're saved and we can never lose that salvation The Holy Spirit of God dwells within us But when we talk about God being with us, we're referring to the fact that God's face is shining upon us He's favoring us. He looks at us favorably. All right, it's like when he looks down at you He says I favor this person I favored this child, you know, they love me. They love my word They're humbling servant serving me and therefore I want his or her, you know Works to prosper I want them to to be taken care of and so Doesn't matter what happens in this world what happens in your personal life or in your family as long as God is with you as Long as he's leading you you're gonna be just fine Okay, and we know that God was with David throughout this entire ordeal other than that what he did back then a couple chapters ago when he's just kind of like murdering people and stuff, but Other than that, you know, God is just leading David David's walking with him and note this you know, David is The highest power in the land, I mean he's a king right You know, this is like even more than a president. Okay. I mean, this is basically you're the man of the land, okay, and you know not a lot of people can handle that type of power and Sometimes people when they when they become King they can turn out to be like a soul, right? they can turn out to be prideful and arrogant and Allow the power to go to their heads and not really depend on the Lord, but what do we see with David? He continues to inquire of the Lord Whether he should do X Y or Z, what does that show you it shows you that he's humble and then he actually Has a walk with God Okay, and you know if there's anything that I can emphasize to you as a pastor tonight is make sure you have a walk with God, you know if you lack in certain areas if you're if your marriage is defective if your child rearing is defective If you're just a defective type of a person, you know, you just kind of make mistakes all around or whatever Hey, it's okay As long as you're walking with God and this is a great quote that I heard years ago The man who walks with God always reaches his destination And it's true You know as long as you're reading God's Word and you're you're aspiring to love the Lord your God with all your heart so mind And strength you're doing the best you can to read the Bible and to pray commune with the Lord and worship him and serve him The best you possibly can you know, everything is gonna be okay doesn't matter what happens and You'll you'll it's good to walk with God when you have nothing so that when you do have something That discipline is already set in place and you don't forget the Lord your God in your time of prosperity and success Okay, and so if you're not if you're in poverty today if everything's going bad today walk with God Because God can just change everything You know in 15 years, okay He can change everything like he changed for David in 15 years and you don't want you want to make sure That you're still walking with God even after you're successful Even after you get married even after you have children even after the promotion even after the success that you're you're experiencing That you're still inquiring of the Lord. Okay? Because it is a temptation sometimes when all things go well And you're not a disciplined Christian to pray and read the Bible you kind of forsake that the you know Your walk with God goes on the back burner. Okay? It just kind of takes a backseat to everything else and what I mean by walking with God in simplest terms You better just make sure you're reading the Bible on a daily basis and just communing with the Lord praying unto the Lord You know throughout the day at the beginning of your day. I hope that you know our church I don't ask this for anybody or I don't ask anybody what you know, what time they do this but I my desire my hope is that our church reads the Bible in the morning or Sometime throughout the day, but that they read I hope that this is not the first time you're listening to the Word of God audibly or something, you know, I hope that when we like the If I were to ask you so, what did you get? What did you read in your Bible? You're like second Sammy chapter 5 Like oh you're reviewing for this evening or wise like no, this is the only time I've actually read the Bible or something I hope this isn't the only time you're reading the Word of God now, obviously, I know there's mothers in our church You know my wife You know, she she has four children We got another one on the way and it's not as easy for mothers to read the Word of God on a daily basis But you can be creative. You can put the Bible on audio. My wife does this in the morning with the kids You know, they put audio Bible as they're eating breakfast and listening to the Word of God, you know You can do those things. There's always a way to do it Okay But the reason I want to emphasize that is because you know That's a guaranteed way to make sure that God is with you The God is with you at your job that God is with you and your parenting and in your marriage You know that God is with you in all places We want to make sure that God's face is shining upon us and we do that by walking with him And so David became great he The Lord is establishing him. He's with him I mean that those are great words right there the Lord God of hosts at the latter end of verse 10 was with him verse number 11 says and here I'm King of Tyre sent messengers to David and cedar trees and carpenters and masons and they built David a house and David perceived that the Lord had established him King over Israel and that he had exalted his kingdom The simple what it says here for his people Israel's sake So listen to the humility in this statement Okay, because he says there he knows that God exalted him why for his people Israel's sake What does that mean? David understands and has enough discernment to realize that the reason God is causing him to succeed and to prosper is Because God wants him to be fit to lead God's people you understand It's it's the benefit someone else the simplest ways we could simplest way I can explain this is God blesses you So that you can bless someone else God blesses you to situate you so you can be a blessing to someone else It's not so you can just kind of take it in yourself and just enjoy the riches of Everything that God gives you you know, he gives it to you so you can give out You know, he recognizes that You know, he's essentially a funnel of God's blessing and this is the kind of attitude we need to have You know, whenever we prosper we succeed God blesses our finances. He blesses our possessions He blesses our time because sometimes time is far more valuable than money. He blesses us with just different things We need to recognize we need to channel that to someone else What is a way that we can use what God has given me extra in abundance to be a blessing to someone else? Okay, and you know anytime I say that sometimes people think to themselves Well, man, like I don't even have that much though. Like huh? What are we gonna do? But let me just tell you this you can never outgive God You can never I'll give him. Okay If you give to the poor it's like you're lending unto the Lord the Bible says you can never outgive God But we need to recognize that whenever God prospers us He does it for someone else's sake Right, if he comforts us he does it so we can comfort someone else and you can apply this all across the board to anything in the Christian life You know if you're suffering today if you're going through a difficult time He's allowing that so you can learn something from that difficult time because five years down the road Someone else is gonna come with that same situation and you're gonna be able to help that individual Navigate through that storm because you went through it yourself That's why it's important that you don't quit Because if you quit then you kind of mess up the whole thing I mean now now God has to choose someone else to you know to go through that suffering or whatever teach that person I rather just be the person who has to learn the hard lessons So and just kind of endure those things knowing full well that 15 years down the road down the line Someone's gonna come be coming to me with anxiety. They're just like, I don't know what I'm gonna do that my life's falling apart I'm like hey chill man, you know, this is what you got to do. I went through that This is what you got to do the best thing What I like when I get counsel from someone is that when I'm freaking out they don't freak out Here we get counsel for someone and you're just kind of like losing control And then the person you talk to they're just kind of it's like a walk in the park for them It kind of like lowers your anxiety. We're like, oh, maybe it's not that bad, you know, and you know, it's true. And so You say well, how do people respond like that though? Well because of the fact that they didn't quit and They saw the end of the Lord that you know that he is very pitiful they they saw success at the end of that trial that tribulation and Therefore they can impart that wisdom unto individual and give them some comfort like hey, it's gonna be okay. I went through it and Everything's gonna be fine And so David realizes he's being exalted not because he's just some great guy but because God has a purpose for his life He has a plan For David to lead his people look at verse 13 now, you know, this is what I like about the Bible. Okay? It's like man David so awesome so great and so humble verse 13 David took him more concubines and wives out of Jerusalem After he was come from Hebron and there were yet sons and daughters born to David So God just kind of threw that in there like hey just you know He's still sinner and you know, he shouldn't be doing this now do not take this as permission to do this Because I'm telling you just people out there they do You Know like the Andrew Tate's of this world or whatever that tried to justify Just sleeping around and cheating on your wife and you know guys like Andrew Tate will say some stuff like he's all for you know Marriage and having a family, you know, as long as you get your side chicks or whatever, you know and and do all that It's nonsense. It's wicked. It's vile Okay It's completely against what God's Word says and they'll try to pervert the scriptures to try to prove that point The point to people like David who had multiple wives but you know that they seem to leave out the fact that God commanded against it and To how that worked out for him Right. It's not like David had all these concubines and they lived happily ever after Always having all these kids. Yeah, but you might want to read later on what happens to those kids I mean the story does not end well So don't listen to these idiot MGTOW Andrew Tate's, you know this world They try to pervert the ways of the Lord by stating that it's permissible to be to have this behavior folks, you know There's a lot of people who did a lot of wicked things in the Bible and just because it's recorded doesn't mean it's permissible for Us to do as well. Okay The Bible is obviously recording the actions of man Specifically of course in the historical books in which we're studying now, this is simply recording what David did It's not something that God puts in the Bible to make it permissible like oh, okay Well, I'm glad I know that I'm gonna go give me some concubines now, too You know to have a lot of kids or whatever. That's obviously wicked. He's going against what God He's perverting the institution that God has set forth of marriage first and foremost But to he's completely disobeying the command that God gave to Kings not to multiply wives okay, that was something that the heathen would do and obviously the reason he's doing it is because he wants to solidify that he's Gonna have seed after him that could potentially take over but folks We don't operate that we shouldn't operate the way the world operates. You see that is a lack of faith Obviously, you know because God had already promised them. I'm gonna establish your kingdom forever Okay, and if God has led him thus far he should just have enough faith that whatever children God gives him He's gonna give him someone that can take over after him Okay And just have faith and not trying to take matters into his own hands and just have a bunch of concubines have a bunch of Children, I mean, it's crazy. Okay, so this is not permission to you know, this is not a Verse that you can use to say, you know polygamy is okay, you know, I know the Mormons would like to use that But it's it's not biblical. It's wicked look at verse 14 and These be the names of those or so he goes through the names there look at verse 17 He goes through the names of his sons verse 17 But when the Philistines heard that they had anointed David King over Israel and all the Philistines came up to seek David and David heard of it and went down to the hold and the Philistines also came and spread themselves in the valley of Rephaim. So a couple things I want to mention here is That right off the bat as soon as David takes over just stuffs just starts happening. Okay, and One thing that we don't see here that you can read in first Chronicles chapter 13 is That he tries to bring the ark of God back to Jerusalem. Okay. This is the famous story of Uzzah where the ark of God was in the house of Abinadab and they bring the car they bring the ark of God on a cart and You know the car the milch cart starts swaying and Uzzah puts forth his hand to stabilize the ark and God kills him Okay, and it's called, you know that from that day for it's called para Uzzah Okay, because the Lord made a breach and so and you know He's trying to bring this ark over because he said no one sought after the ark in the days of Saul So during Saul's reign no one even inquired of the ark. No one did anything about the ark when David came into office he's like hey, let's make the ark of God important again and Bring that back so we can inquire of it So he does that he sets his capital up in Jerusalem and then of course when you begin to make moves spiritually Or the kingdom, you know an open door great and effectual doors open unto you There are always many adversaries on the other side And what do we see the Philistines here the David's taking over and they're like, oh, let's go fight. I Mean, it's like why? Because it's just they're just wicked. It's like they just want to go to war They want to go to battle and you would think to yourself like haven't you guys learned your lesson Like, you know David is like, you know, that's a specialty is Philistines, you know, I mean he uses you guys for like dowries You know Right, I mean not to be like gruesome here, but he like uses your foreskins for dowries I Mean think about that. It's like they don't learn their lesson. He's like decapitated them He's using their foreskins for I mean, he's not these guys They pale in comparison to who David is, but they still want to fight him They're delusional or so I don't know what's going on with these guys, but they want to fight against him and it could be that you know One of the reasons they want to fight him is because at one point he was willing to join them and he lived among them And so they're just kind of bitter at that for whatever reason and so they want to fight and what we see here look at verse number 19 and David inquired of the Lord saying shall I go up to the Philistines will thou deliver them into mine hand and the Lord sent him To David go up for I will doubtless deliver the Philistines into thine hand now, obviously The right answer is yes go fight them But even then he wanted to make sure He wanted to make sure and the lesson that we can learn from this is that we need to pray about all things Pray about the smallest decisions pray for wisdom throughout the day pray for God to lead you pray to be filled with the Spirit Pray inquire of the Lord and obviously God's not gonna come to us in an audible voice Don't don't and don't give me that testimony either like, you know pastor I know you said that but let me just tell you this one time And I'm only telling you this okay, and of course everyone else on Facebook whatever and you know, but you know God actually came he spoke to me and I heard I saw a shining light or whatever That doesn't happen today. Okay We have a more sure word of prophecy now We pray unto the Lord we inquire of the Lord not to receive an audible answer But just to be led of God so that God would open doors and give us the proper discernment to make right judgment calls Understand and so we need judgment. We need to decide and we don't want to be double-minded So, you know, we need to pray Lord give me wisdom or what decision to make here You know, what should I do in this situation? Lead me give me wisdom and the Bible tells us that you know, if you ask God for wisdom, he won't abrade you He's not gonna get mad at you. He's not gonna chastise you the Bible says that he gives to all men liberally He gives wisdom to all men liberally and a bradeth not you keep asking for wisdom every single day It's not like hey, I'm out for today. You know, you kind of you kind of tapped out on wisdom for today You need to come back tomorrow sold out He's gonna be like, here you go. Here's more wisdom. Here's more wisdom. Here's more wisdom. He's just a wellspring of wisdom Now that sounds great and it is okay however, what people don't realize is that Sometimes God just endows you with wisdom by meditating upon his word or just thinking about what what would the Lord have me do or He puts you in a situation Where you fail or you lose out on money or whatever and what does that do it gives you wisdom and So, you know the wisdom that God gives us is not just always, you know, he just kind of embeds wisdom into your mind Sometimes he just allows a situation in your life and for you to fail miserably and Suffer so that you can learn from that experience Okay, and that's the least favorable way to get wisdom for certain people, but it is a way that God does it You know, he allows you to go through certain pains or difficulties to learn wisdom Another way is just that he allows people to come into your life that have wisdom Okay Now this is an important one Because you're like give me wisdom God and then someone comes into your life and kind of gives you advice and then you know Don't be like Ray of Boem and just reject the counsel of the old men They're just like no, that's not the kind of wisdom. I want I want like different wisdom, you know Someone comes to you and says this is what I think you should do Who has experience and you're just like no, I think there's a better way Then you know at that point God's probably gonna up break you Why because you're rejecting wisdom you're rejecting counsel Okay, when the Bible says in the multitude of counselors their safety It doesn't mean you can just like ask Every single person that you know who has wisdom until you get the right answer or something Until you get the answer that most favors you because that's how people see it like I'm looking for wisdom, but what they're actually saying is I'm looking for someone to agree with what I want to do a Multitude of counselors are referring to the fact that you just have a myriad of individuals that you can go to Who can just give you counsel at any given time for different topics different things in life? Okay, you can go to this person for for marriage counseling go to this person for child room You can go to this person for a job You can you know just different types of counsel and so that's that's a way you can get wisdom is by people advising you okay, and So we he inquires of the Lord He's like you're gonna do it You'll doubtless deliver the you know I will doubtless deliver the Philistines into thine hand verse 20 and David came to Belparaiso And David smote them there and said the Lord hath broken forth upon my enemies before me as the breach of waters Therefore he called the name of the place Belparaiso so he just whoops them verse 21 and there were and there they left their images and I don't want you to notice this and David and his men burned them So they leave, you know, for some reason they're bringing their their their lucky charms or whatever Their rabbit's foot or you know, they're the little idols to kind of help deliver them out of the hand of David But then they get whooped and so what does David do? He does what you should do to all idols, which is burn them You smoke them. Okay, not smoke them litter. I'm talking about you. Just you know, you destroy them is what I meant you just burn them up and You destroy them you decimate them which is exactly what we should do to all idols all icons things that are You know not pleasing unto the Lord now The reason that's important is because in the modern versions of the Bible, it doesn't say they burned them The modern versions actually says they took them Like what? Why would they take them? So the modern versions of the Bible says that when he defeated them then David's men came and they just took them like okay I want this one, you know you get the rabbit's foot I'll take you know, the Virgin Mary or whatever, you know But it doesn't say they took them and in fact that would be contrary to God's Word There'd be no reason why they would take them They're not spoils. Okay They clearly understood that they needed to burn them and that and by the way, you know The modern versions need to be burned too. Amen But they burn them up and that's why we had idle burning Sunday a couple years ago and people say, you know Why don't you have anymore? Well, because we don't have people who are idol worshippers anymore So it's like it'd be a problem if we did, you know, it's like if like every year, you know John just keeps bringing more icons as like John I thought didn't we do this already? Like are you still struggling here? John about to get thrown out John you about to get cast. We're about to burn you John I'm just kidding. You know, John was a former Orthodox and He makes cat he made Catholics look like the Baptist or something. He had so many icons And there's just like these huge icons just made of wood and and and and Mark got a little too, you know, you know just Trigger happy and just threw all the icons in the fire which amen but then it was just like the fire was exceeding large He created like a lake of fire and we almost burned down being burned down the neighborhood and the Ambulance with the fire department came and then we're trying to put it out There's smoke inside the building and we came out the fire department was there and and they're just like is everything all right now We're just like everything's fine And I was just kind of like do you think something's not is there something that's oh You know, it's just kind of like oh that you know Don't worry about that, you know kind of thing But here's the thing if you have idols and icons burn them You know and if you need help with that then you we might do something like that But the reason we don't have it anymore too is because then people just start bringing random stuff just because they want to burn What about this Mickey Mouse toy, you know, this is an idol to someone out there It's just like okay, you know, let's burn bank accounts then because you know covetousness is as idolatry or whatever too So they burned them and they destroyed them look at verse 22 and the Philistines came up yet again And spread themselves in the valley of Rephaim and when David inquired of the Lord He said thou shalt not go up but fetch a compass behind them and come upon them over against the mulberry trees and let it be when thou hearest the sound of a going into the tops of the mulberry trees That then thou shalt be stirred thyself for then shall the Lord go out before thee to smite the host of the Philistines And of course David does it and and he's able to smite them. Now. What's the significance of that? I think the reason He commanded him to do or he instructed him to fight this way It's because he's basically saying look go and then when you see the mulberry trees and you feel like someone's shaking that tree that's essentially your cue to just go out and and fight against them and I think what he's what he's indicating here is that God is going to Give the Philistines into the hand of David as if David is just gleaning them you know because the mulberry trees are trees of berries and you just got to shake it a little bit the berries fall to The ground and you know, then they come and they just glean the berries off the ground They just take them like that. So I think what's what God is basically saying is like I'm putting them in your hand Okay, I'm putting your enemies into your hand. I'm gonna shake that bush. I'm gonna shake that mulberry tree and Essentially you're gonna come and just glean them So just as the previous fight where he just you know, the Bible says there the word the word he used of wording he used here verse number 20 He says the Lord hath broken Forth upon mine enemies before me as the breach of waters He just kind of just kind of went in like a wave and just took him over in like manner He's basically saying David you're just gonna be able to come up and just glean them and I think he's basically telling them Like I'm gonna prosper this battle for you I'm the one who's fighting for you I'm the one who's allowing you to succeed in this war and in this battle all you have to do is go and glean those people off the ground and just do as I say and The lesson that we can learn there is that sometimes God's ways doesn't necessarily make a hundred percent sense But we just got to do it. Okay and have faith that when we obey the Bible Okay That we will prosper and we will succeed and when he tells us the cast in that we cast in that even if it Doesn't make sense when he tells you to love your wife as Christ loved the church and you're just like I don't know what else to do. Just do that And I'm telling you it's gonna work out when it's hard to reverence your husband reverence your husband It'll still work out when the Bible tells you to chastise your children Right to discipline your children's like it's just not working. Just do it. It's gonna work You know, he's gonna shake that tree for you All you got to do is come and glean those graves written at the graves green glean those berries off the ground He's gonna prosper your way as long as you do what he tells you to do And so we finish off this particular chapter with David obeying the Word of the Lord He's just gonna do what God tells him to do because David could easily just said I'll just find him the way I found him before We did this already, you know, I'll just do it the same exact way, but you know, he just obeyed God God came to us that we're gonna do it a different way do it the way I said and Dave David didn't question it He didn't say well, I think I have a better way of doing it God He just did it the way God told him to do it and he won that victory So great start to his kingdom. Amen and let's pray father. We thank you so much for your word we're so thankful for David's example and I pray Lord that you'd help us to glean wisdom from this particular chapter Lord and Help us to be a people that are inquiring of you that you would be with us that your face would shine upon us As we walk with you Lord as we do the best that we can to keep our lives in alignment to the Bible as we keep our lives clean Lord before you as best as we possibly can and Lord may you establish us as Christians here in this world and help us to succeed and prosper and everything that we do. We love you We thank you pray these things in Jesus name. Amen