NOV 3 2019 | Son of Anarchy S1E6 | Running to a Standstill

Sea Change Church · Son of Anarchy · "Running to a Standstill" Pastor Adam Stadtmiller · November 3, 2019
Automated transcript. Not reviewed for accuracy.

Good morning, church. We are the Netherlands, and this is my wife, Deborah, and I'm Garrett, and we're here to deliver the word to you. We're involved with marriage ministry, and Deborah is on the worship's arts team. So here we go. 2 Samuel 15, 13 through 16, 23 through 26, 30 through 31, and 37. A messenger came and told David, The hearts of the people of Israel are with Absalom. Then David said to all his officials who were with him in Jerusalem, Come, we must flee, or none of us will escape from Absalom.

We must leave immediately, or he will move quickly to overtake us and bring ruin on us and put the city to the sword. The king set out with his entire household following him, but he left ten concubines to take care of the palace. The whole countryside wept aloud as all the people passed by. The king also crossed the Kidron Valley, and all the people moved on toward the wilderness. Zadok was there, was there too, and all the Levites were with him, were, the Levites were with him, were carrying the Ark of the Covenant of God.

They set down the Ark of God, and Abiathar offered sacrifices until all the people had finished leaving the city. Then the king said to Zadok, Take the Ark of God back into the city. If I find favor in the Lord's eyes, he will bring me back and let me see it in his dwelling place again. But if he says, I am not pleased with you, then I am ready. Let him do to me whatever seems good to him. But David continued up the Mount of Olives, weeping as he went.

His head was covered, and he was barefoot. All the people with him covered their heads too and were weeping as they went up. Now David had been told, Ahithophel is among the conspirators with Absalom. So David prayed, Lord, turn Ahithophel's counsel into foolishness. So Hushai, David's confidant, arrived at Jerusalem as Absalom was entering the city. The word of the Lord. Thanks be to God. Right on. As I said earlier, you backed off on your mohawk a little bit there.

You want to show him that? Show him that. There you go. It's not quite as solid as that with the fin. I told you, I went to a new barber. He went to a new barber. I wasn't there this week. He wasn't there this week. All right. Yeah, you got to get a little shark fin. My wife absolutely hates it. I'm saying, like, it's not doing its best today, nonetheless. My wife absolutely hates it. But I said to her, the middle school surf team that I coach absolutely loves it.

She goes, they're not your wife. I said, fair enough, fair enough. Just lucky I haven't made it blue yet. I've been toying with going blue. So, right, exactly, Mom. So, platinum blonde over there talking, calling me out. All right. Good to have you here this morning. Let us pray as we get into this final episode of this series. Lord Jesus, we love the word. Word of God is such revelation to our life. You got a lot to say in this portion of scripture, Jesus.

And speak to us, God. Thank you for this series of Absalom and David and how it speaks to us. And we use the Bible as a mirror to reflect how you want us to have our hearts conform to you and to your word. Blessed that the spirit of God ride upon any words that I say. And be with us today as we draw into it. In Jesus' name, amen. Amen. We are in the final week of a six-week series on the study of David and his son Absalom called Son of Anarchy.

Based on the rebellion of his son that really goes back to the act with David and Bathsheba. And this is the consequences because of that act. Now, there's a lot of reasons why that happened. But God said there was going to be consequences. And these, we know through the scripture, are the consequences. David has been forgiven. But just because he's forgiven doesn't mean that there aren't consequences. We'll talk about that in a moment.

And this scripture, actually this story, is one that I think you really, as a believer, want to familiarize yourself with. There's a lot of different stories in the Bible. But the understanding of David in this story with Absalom is really a key story. A lot of characters that are going on. There's a lot more meat on the bone here on this message. Or excuse me, in this portion of scripture. I only made it six weeks. We probably could have gone 12.

But we are moving away from this. I'm going to start talking about Jesus again here next week with the Miracles series on Grace on the Galilee. I really want to encourage you to be a part of that. Before we get into the meat of the notes, I want to give a little bit of background of what's happening here. Hopefully, you've been following along in the series and you're reading along with me. One of the things I really want to do when I preach is make sure that you know where we're going.

We give it out every week. And you have a chance to dive into the scriptures so that it's kind of like we're both learning this together. Granted, I'm speaking. But your questions during the week, the things that we talk about, your own personal study, hopefully makes this a little bit more trimmings, basically, on the scripture as we look into it. But let me just give a little backstory. I want to read through this again.

And I'm talking about some of the things we've talked over the last six weeks. But a little bit as we move into some of the new material for the week. A messenger came and told David, the hearts of the people are with Absalom. Really important because last week we saw that Absalom was a man who was after people's hearts. And David was a man who was after the heart of God, a man after God's own heart. And asking ourselves the question is, where are we putting our emphasis on trying to feel perhaps personal self-worth or the things that we're going after?

David wasn't going after the hearts of people. And Jesus even said that he would not entrust himself to mankind because he understood what was in their hearts. It's one thing to give your heart away, which I think we should do. But we also need to guard our hearts, the scripture says, to give your heart away. But it's another thing to be seeking for other people to give you their hearts. I never really believed that we should be seeking to want people to give their hearts to us.

I think when we determine that we want to give our hearts away, whether it be in benevolent action to the poor or in someone you fall in love with, we hope that you are with someone that wants to do likewise in return. But I think we get in trouble when we start trying to capture people's hearts. And we see a lot of that in songs, if you listen to lyrics. David was a person who gave his heart away from God and gave his heart away to God, was seeking the heart of God, and God responded to David, but he was not looking to procure the hearts of mankind.

In a culture of Instagram influencers and political figures that want to capture the hearts of people, so for one reason or another, whether it be power or self-worth, they're reaching for these things. David was completely opposite. Really key and a great question as the scripture is a mirror for ourselves. What are we going for? Then David says to all of his officials who were with him in Jerusalem, Come, we must flee, or none of us will escape Absalom.

We must leave immediately, or he will move quickly to overtake us, bring ruin on us, and put the city to the sword. Now, we're going to talk in a moment about a strategic retreat. And I think one of the key things for this message is when you are in a familial dispute or a work dispute or someone cuts you off on the road or whenever we have these human conflicts where there's an issue, when is the right time to retreat and when is the right time to de-escalate?

If you are in a relationship where neither parties have the ability to de-escalate, you're going to have some issues. If the conversation becomes an argument and it goes to the next level, to the next level, and no one can back it off, you're going to have some issues. If you're in a relationship where only one person knows how to de-escalate, you're eventually going to have some problems. You don't want to be the person, and it's not healthy to constantly throw yourself under the bus for the safety or for the sake of just having peace in the family.

We've talked about wanting to have a functional family where all of us are working for the betterment of the family or the relationship or the work environment, whatever it is, and where we have the ability to de-escalate and strategically retreat. Now, talk in a moment, one of the things we don't want to ever do is retreat spiritually. I think when you have an issue with, let's say, you and your family member get in a discussion or an argument, sometimes you just got to know when to back off and pull the plug and say, you know what, let's just talk about this at another time, or you know you might be right.

Let me think about that. Can I have some time to think about what you've said? That's a great out, by the way. In a conversation, just saying to people, can I have some time to think about that? We don't always have to deal with everything exactly in the moment. But one of the things we want to do is we want to lean in spiritually using these different tools. And so tools like prayer, tools like faith, the scripture says in Ephesians that after you put on the armor of God in a conflict, it says stand firm.

And once you've done everything to stand, stand firm. And so if you're having a relational issue or you're having a conflict with anybody, and we all have conflicts in our lives, what is your go-to? And do you immediately ramp up or do you ever have the ability to strategically retreat? We're going to talk a little bit more in detail about this in a moment. But where do you go to? And then when you do retreat, do you start pressing in spiritually?

Because when I tend to try to retreat in a conversation, which I've gotten better and better at, rarely do things escalate to a place where I'm incredibly uncomfortable in a conversation. I tend to have the ability these days, which I didn't possess in my 20s, by the way, you can gain this ability, to start de-escalating for the purpose of the greater good. But I tend to now take time to like, okay, I've retreated here on this conversation.

I've retreated in this relationship in a way. And now I want to start building a bulwark of spirituality, of things like prayer, worship, worship, thanksgiving, fasting, to begin to build up so when I re-enter back into the relationship, that we have some tools and some momentum behind us. Now David retreats, and this is the first time ever that I see in Scripture where David asks people to come with him. One of the things you see about David, and one of the things you don't often see at churches, when people get upset at churches many times, they don't just leave on their own.

A lot of times they want to create an issue, and they will leave with a group of people, and you'll have all this. If you've been in church long enough, you'll see that. One of the things that was different about the spirit of David is whenever David left, he left on his own, trusting that if the Lord was with him, that's the only person he needed to take with him. And what you saw is when he left the first time, running away from Saul, basically this band of pirates basically starts following him.

This band of rabble, of these really difficult characters, stragglers, rejects, and they come, and this becomes the group that follows David. He never really put his allegiance into them, but then at the same time, a bunch of mighty people, mighty men began to follow him, one of which was Uriah the Hittite, who he ends up killing, as you know. And so they begin to do this, but he never calls anybody to come with him, but he was the kind of person where people followed him.

Now, this one time, he did ask people to come with him, and this is really interesting. This shows the heart and care for David. Now, we remember that Absalom did not go after the hearts of the people of the city of Jerusalem. Why? Because the city of Jerusalem is called what? City of David, right? So you're not going to go in and get a lot of people following you. That was David's city. But he, remember, he went out to the surrounding areas.

When anybody would come to Jerusalem from a surrounding area, Absalom would win their hearts. He would tell them that, hey, whatever you, you know, I wish I could be the person that would really help you out, and stole the hearts of the nation and Israel, and especially in the northern area. David runs, but this time he takes people for a different reason, because of safety. Because it says that if Absalom would have come back, he would have put his entire family to the sword.

Now, David is much more stealth on his own. Obviously, the smartest thing, if he only cared about himself, to do would be to have left on his own. It's interesting, he takes people. He actually sends one person back, and he says to him, if you read the scripture, that you would be a burden to me. I've got to tell you the truth. All these mules and donkeys and families and kids and this whole deal was a huge responsibility and difficulty for David to take into the wilderness with him.

How he sustains their life. He is a master. That guy could go into the wilderness and hide. But this is the one time where he says, I'm willing to take them with me because I will protect them. And it says later on, when Absalom is getting some counsel, that David is akin to a bear robbed of her cubs when he's in the wilderness. You better watch out for this guy. So he does move, and he leaves. And what you're going to see in a moment, he takes the people with him, but he leaves one key thing behind.

Let me have an idea of that key thing you saw in the scripture that he ended up leaving behind. The Ark of the Covenant, right? Now, we'll talk about it in a moment. Have you seen Raiders of the Lost Ark? Right? Okay, we've all seen that at least. If you haven't read the Bible, hopefully you've seen Raiders of the Lost Ark. Fair enough. I want to say that we all know that if you are going to take something into battle in the Old Testament or in 1943, you want to take the Ark of the Covenant.

Because it shows in scripture, if you have the Ark of the Covenant with you and God's with you, then you are going to win that battle. Really interesting why David leaves it behind. I'm not going to spoil it, but in a moment, if you subscribe now, you're going to have to... No, I'm just kidding. If you listen to the podcast, you know what I'm talking about. We'll talk about why David left that behind and what he was saying.

It says, The king set out with his entire household following him, but he left ten concubines to take care of the palace. Now, this is something that God never condoned. He never condoned having more than one wife. He never condoned having more than one husband. He never condoned having tons of concubines. These are just the ladies that are on the side besides the other wives that he had. God never says this is cool, but it became part of the culture.

And eventually, in the New Testament, you see that it gets rooted out and it no longer exists. David leaves concubines to take care of the palace. But his son Absalom comes back and ends up putting a tent on top of David's house and sleeping with all of his concubines, which basically was this massive insult, disrespect not only to those women, but to David, and basically cut any ties with Absalom. Now, this was prophesied because in the scripture, when David is told what will happen because of what he did in secret, it says with Bathsheba, what you did in secret, I will do to you, but this time it's not going to be in secret.

I'm going to bring it out to light. And God has this incredible ability to bring things out into light when he wants to. Like, there's few things that terrify me in the scripture or probably keep me on the clean road as best I can by knowing that when God wants to bring something out, he can bring it out. And David, in the end, has a great response to this and has a very godly response. But that's what happens and what you saw.

Now, the next thing, this is just so you can understand the Bible a little bit better. David takes a reverse journey, and there's a lot of symbolism here of what happened with Jesus on the weekend he was betrayed and died on the cross. If you put up a picture up there, we have a picture of the Kidron Valley. I think you'll see it. If you look, on the left-hand side right there, you're going to see a little walkway. That's actually a rail and a walkway on the left-hand side.

And that is actually the old city of David there. I just walked on that with Kimberly and a bunch of us that went to Israel. And that overlooks the Kidron Valley. Now, this picture was taken a while ago, but you can walk there. And then right through there, that Kidron Valley is where Jesus comes in. And then he makes a right turn at the bottom right-hand corner. And he comes up this way past that area. And he goes to the Via de la Rosa.

And he goes up into the city of David in Jerusalem. David takes the exact opposite route and goes out. And he is leaving the kingship. Jesus comes in and comes in as king and actually reestablishes what we see David doing. I think it's prophetically. David is showing that the kingdom of mankind is being lost, although David is reestablished at some point. But he goes along. And then he goes up to the Mount of Olives.

The Mount of Olives is there on the top, that mount behind where those houses are on the right. And then to the left of that on the top is the Garden of Gethsemane, which is interesting. And one of the things you're going to see with Ahithophel is Ahithophel is in this story, who's mentioned the counselor that gets left behind. He actually betrays David and ends up killing himself and hanging himself. Who does that sound like?

Like Judas. And David goes weeping and mourning up through the Kidron Valley and up over the Mount of Olives. Jesus comes in pretty much the exact opposite way as king. Just a little bit of interest in the scripture of some things that are happening there. And I wanted to show you some things from our trip when we went. Very cool. And I think we're going again to Israel. We're taking six to seven people. It's not a tourism trip this time.

We're going to go visit our partners. And you can talk to Kimberly Davis about that if you want to go. A little SEAL team we're going to take in there. About six to eight of us. Verse 25. Then the king said to Zadok, Take the ark back into the city. If I find favor in the Lord's eyes, he will bring me back and let me see his dwelling place again. But if he says I'm not pleased with you, then I'm ready to let him do whatever he seems good to him.

We'll get to that in a moment. But David continued up the Mount of Olives, weeping as he went. Now we'll talk in a moment why he was weeping. The question is, at this point, you know, why is he weeping over what happened with Bathsheba? I don't think so. David no longer walked in guilt. David didn't walk in guilt. David didn't walk in shame. David walked in contrition. And there's a big difference between having a life built on shame and guilt and one that is built upon contrition and a broken spirit.

Very different. One will give you directions to a place you want to go. The others will give you directions to a place of death. And so David was leaving and he was weeping. We'll talk about that in a moment. His head was covered and he was barefoot. The people with him covered their heads too, were weeping as they went. Now David had been told Ahithophel, who was his main counselor, is among the conspirators with Absalom.

So David prayed, Lord, turn Ahithophel's counsel into foolishness, which God did. So Hushai, David's confidant, arrived at Jerusalem as Absalom was entering the city. Really powerful portion of scripture. So much meat in there. Let's look at three quick things that'll help you as the scripture becomes a reflection to make your lives better and your relationships better. First of all, David knew when to leave a fight and was a master of strategic retreat.

Retreat is not defeat. There were very few armies. There are very few military stories of people that are, you know, that are well known for, you know, whether it be Napoleon, whoever, who never retreated. Retreat, while you don't want to retreat, is part of, oftentimes, if you've been in the military or as police, is part of waging a victorious campaign. You need to know when to retreat. If you never retreat, you will probably be a martyr soon.

You have to know when to strategically retreat and when to pull back and when to regroup and how to come out with a different strategy. This is not that we're in war in our relationships, but in familial disagreements, in workplace disagreements, when you're on the basketball court, when you're driving, maybe you've seen some road rage recently, road rage. I've seen a whole bunch recently. You know, do you know when to retreat?

And if you are a person that never knows when to retreat, that doesn't realize that retreat actually is sometimes the best way to go to victory, you're oftentimes not going to last very long or the relationships that you're in are not going to last very long. David was a master of strategic retreat and whenever David retreated, he oftentimes either retreated to a place of the Lord's presence, which you'll see in a moment.

He went to Nob, where the presence of the Lord was, or he went to a stronghold. A stronghold is a place where one person can fight like a hundred people because of the place that they are at. Maybe you've seen these movies where they have snipers and they're up in a nest and they can't find the sniper and there's a whole group of people trying to attack the sniper, but this one person is in this really powerful position.

It is a position of strength. Now, obviously, David went to these positions of strength physically. We were just in the Cave of Abdullam. The Cave of Abdullam is the cave through a valley. When we went, it was about 111. It ended up being 115 by the end of the day. Hottest day of my life. And there was this hot, I love saying this word, this hot Scirocco wind that was blowing out of the desert. It was literally the, imagine 115 degrees with like 100 blow dryers in your face.

Like it was blowing, it was so hot. Two people actually passed away at the Dead Sea the day before we were there and the day after we had one person die on each end of that because it was so hot of heat exhaustion. It was just crazy. Well, there was this place, the Cave of Abdullam, you go up and you hike up to the top there. This is where Saul went in and if you remember, David wouldn't kill Saul, but he cut a little bit off the hem of his garment and then he felt, then he repented over that because he had touched the Lord's anointed.

He had gone to this place and I gotta say, if you were up in this place, it would be very difficult to get you out of it. You could get a thousand men coming up through that area. They would be in a very, there's high walls on each side and a small little area where they could just attack this group. David, when he retreated, knew how to retreat to a place of strength. Great question for you. When you retreat, do you retreat to a place of strength or do you retreat to a place that feels good in the moment but actually is a place of weakness?

When we retreat, I often found the place that is the easiest to retreat to, the place that feels the best in the moment to retreat to is oftentimes the weakest place you can retreat to. It's easy to retreat to old habits. It's easy to retreat to in an argument, I'm just gonna retreat to swearing or use a power play here or retreat to the bottle or retreat to escapism of some kind, not that we don't rest, not that we don't sleep.

Sometimes you just need to go take a nap. I'm not saying these healthy ways but the easiest place to retreat to oftentimes can be the place of the weakest strategic value to you. It's very difficult in an argument with somebody or in a disagreement with somebody to stop, take a pause button and then retreat to a place of prayer, retreat to a place of reading the word of God, retreat to a place of thanksgiving. It is very difficult and every time we get to a situation, do you even have, like I said last week, enough defensible space in your personal margins of emotions or spirituality where you actually have a moment before you take that, you hit the red button, you know, that panic button.

Do you have enough defensible space? We talk about the fires right now. Having a defensible space that when you're in a discussion or you come to a place of temptation where you've built up enough defensible space in your life that there's actually another option for you or have we gotten to the place where any match is gonna light your life aflame and there's no defensible space. David had a defensible space and he knew where to go.

Now look at these scriptures because they're really powerful. The first time he goes to Nob. This is where the Ark of the Lord covenant was and it was when he ran away from Saul to Ahimelech the priest. Ahimelech trembled when he met him. This is in 1 Samuel 21. And he asked him, why are you alone? Why is no one with you? When he retreated, he went to the house of the Lord. When you retreat, where do you retreat to? It's really key.

And he also said in 1 Samuel 23, 14, and David stayed in the strongholds in the wilderness and remained in the mountains in the wilderness of Ziph. It was interesting. If you look at David, I actually did a study of all the places he retreated. It seems like he retreated as many times as he moved forward. He was a master of retreat. One time, he went and lived with the Philistines. Now, David was not well liked by the Philistines, but he had killed their champion.

But he actually went and retreated and stayed with the Philistines strategically. Another time, he went to the Moabites because he had some relations to the Moabites. Another time, he went to Nob, as you see here. Over and over again, David was retreating. But every time he retreated, he got stronger. Have you ever thought that perhaps by retreating, you get stronger? Perhaps by taking a moment, perhaps by using tools that don't seem powerful if they were the weapons of this world, but in the heavenly realms make you more powerful than you ever expected.

There's some really powerful scriptures here. And you'll see where it says, where do you retreat when things get tough? Look at Psalm 32.7. This is so powerful. And if you read the Psalms, you're going to see over and over again that David is regularly speaking about hiding places. Now, you know, remember Saul went when he was called to be king and he went and hid in the baggage? David never hid like that. David was like, oh God, you're calling me to do this thing, but I don't think I can do it and I'm not going to do it so I'm going to go hide in the baggage.

Like he would go hide in the luggage. David never hid in the luggage. But David did find a hiding place in God. And over and over again, he was constantly hiding. And in the Psalms, you're going to see it. Here it is in Psalm 32.7. You are what? My hiding place. You will protect me from trouble and surround me with songs of deliverance. Now, once again, using the scripture as a really powerful mirror in our lives. Have you ever thought about God being a hiding place for you?

And what would it take to get to that hiding place? Have you ever asked God to hide in God? And how do we hide in God? What are the doors? If there was a hiding place, like in Narnia, they have that closet that takes you to a whole new world. What is the closet? What is the doorway to these hiding places? Well, prayer, faith, thanksgiving, worship, praise, benevolence, forgiveness. All of these things are the, you know, the wardrobe in Narnia that takes you to a hiding place that is God.

And if you begin to say, when I hide, when I have an issue, when I'm afraid, when I'm terrified, whether it be from depression or whether it be from anger or whether it be whatever the thing is that comes, the giant that comes in the night, to use, to find that wardrobe to say, I'm going to learn how to play hide and seek a little better than I'm doing. Because oftentimes we hide in very dysfunctional places or we end up attacking at a time where we should be going back and letting God fight our battles for us.

Is God, are you using the tool, the ability, the access you have to hide in God? It's something we don't think about often. And it's something that as I read this week, I realized I need to hide in God more often. I need to get into the wardrobe more often to get into a place where I let God fight the battles. Because look what happens. It says, you are my hiding place. You will protect me from trouble. Well, that's great.

And then you will do what? You will surround me with what? Songs of deliverance. Who is singing those songs? You, according to this scripture, are not the ones singing those songs. It doesn't say, I will be your hiding place and then you're going to give me a bunch of songs and I'm going to sing songs about my own deliverance. No. Actually, these songs are coming from the very throne of God. Perhaps God even himself singing songs over you of deliverance.

Have you ever thought about that? To be able to put yourself in such a strategic place where not only are you hiding in God, not only are you protected from your enemies, but God begins to sing songs of deliverance over you. These are powerful. There's scripture, there's psalms called the Psalms of Ascent and as you go into Jerusalem, it's a long way up as you ascend. They used to walk up into Jerusalem. I don't know how many feet it is but I know from the Dead Sea, I think it's the lowest place on earth up in Jerusalem.

It's probably, I'm just guessing, 6,000 feet. I felt like I was going up to Big Bear. 20, 30 degrees cooler when you get up there and they would do the Psalms of Ascent. Google Psalms of Ascent and when you have issues and struggles in your life, begin to sing these songs of deliverance. But this is pointing to the fact that God is somehow orchestrating songs of deliverance over you. I mean, I don't know if we access that enough.

I don't know if we have enough faith to believe it. To believe God, I need you to sing these songs over me. And all you have to do when you hide, there's only one thing you have to do when you hide. Hide. Like, that's it. To go into this place and sit and hide with the Lord. That's a powerful verse. Let's look at the next one. Psalm 91, 4. And he will cover you with his feathers. And under his wings you will find refuge.

And his faithfulness will be your shield and rampart. Now, what I find so powerful here. What becomes your shield? Now, we have a shield of faith, as you read in the scripture, right? Ephesians 6 says you have a shield of faith. And faith will be your shield. That you can have faith. But this isn't talking about your faith. This is talking about God's faith. This is saying that God's faith, not your faith, becomes a shield of protection and a rampart for you.

Now, obviously, by hiding in God, we are orchestrating faith and he is meeting our faith. But he is meeting it with such a bulwark of exponentially, infinitely greater faith than you have where all of a sudden you become protected not by the faith, the Ephesians 6 faith, which is a powerful faith, but it is God's faithfulness that meets your faith that actually protects you. We are saved by faith, but it is, our faith is the beginning that implements the openness to God using his faith and his work.

So, as you hide in God as an act of faith, it is met with the faithfulness of God. Why does your faith matter? Because it activates the faithfulness of God. We have to understand that our faith is awesome and it's powerful, but our faith isn't what we're going for. What we're going for is the faithfulness of God and God's faith. And by implementing a little spark of your faith, the infinitely greater faithfulness of God shows up.

Don't you want to be protected by God's faith and not yours? You know, in the scripture, when people come to Jesus and say, can you give me faith? If you don't have faith, ask for it. The scripture actually says that if you don't have faith, God will give you the faith to have faith so that his faith might meet your faith. Looks like he's in charge of all of that, but I want to have the shield around me of God's faithfulness.

This all comes from hiding. How good are you at hiding? How good are you when something happens in your life to running to a place where God's faithfulness takes over your life? I want to get better at that. When I'm worried, when I'm fearful, when something isn't going the way that I want it to go, to begin to go to a place where God sings songs of deliverance over me and his faith becomes a shield. And that's powerful.

Amen? That's a good piece of scripture right there. I hope you chew on that for a while because that was solid. No one agrees with me? Yeah, there we go. Right on. Miles would hear it. Somebody say amen, you know, and they'd say amen. I need to get little Miles to come stand beside me and give me some amens. There you go. Next thing is trust the Lord with your salvation. And man, then the king said to Zadok, take the ark of God back into the city.

If I find favor in the Lord's eyes, he will bring me back and let me see his dwelling place again. But if he says, I am not pleased with you, then I am ready. Let him do whatever seems good to him. I put that returning the ark to Jerusalem might have been the most dramatic act of faith in David's entire life. Now, why is that? Because what David was doing by saying this, because if you have the ark, you're almost assured a victory.

Like, not always, but almost always assured a victory, especially if you're a man of God, a person of God, the nation of God. You don't send the ark back. It's a foolish thing to do. Unless you believe in the God of the ark more than you believe in the ark of God. Do you believe in the God of the ark more than the ark of God? It's like we have people that worship the Bible. I love the Bible. At the beginning, we prayed how much we love the Bible.

We love his word. I don't worship the Bible. I worship God of the Bible, not the Bible of God. The Bible of God is a powerful tool that he has given us as a rule for our life and the things, but I don't worship the Bible because the Bible is there to tell me about something greater than the Bible, about the God of the Bible. And so what David is saying here is this is a cool thing that you have given us. This ark is amazing, but I am not putting my hope in an ark, no matter how powerful the ark is, and I'm not in any way demeaning the ark.

I am in no way demeaning the word of God. I am in no way putting it down, but I understand that there is something greater that's the person who created the ark, the person who created the scriptures is greater than the scripture. That understanding that we are not seeking the Bible, and a lot of people know the Bible. Heck, it says in the scripture that the devil knows the Bible. Matter of fact, he uses it really, really well when he tempts Jesus, but he doesn't know the Father.

And this is what David was saying. I trust more in God than I trust in this ark. And that ark, that was such a powerful statement. I have to ask myself, and I ask you as well, how much do you trust in God? And if you had something like the ark to take into the desert with you when you were going to go into battle, knowing how many times that had brought victory to you in the past, would you leave it behind? Saying, God, I just throw myself at you.

Now, maybe he didn't feel like he deserved the ark. I don't know. But I know that he could have brought it with him and he didn't. And then he makes this statement about God and he's saying, I trust in the, basically I trust, let me read it again here. He says, he says, if I find favor in the Lord's eyes, he will bring me back and let me see his dwelling place again. You see, David throws himself upon the mercy of God even though he knows that he had guilt.

He wasn't walking in guilt but this was because it had been prophesied to him that this was happening. And let him do to me whatever seems good to him. So powerful as we look at David, willingness to trust in the mercy of God and throw himself upon the mercy of God. Now, the third thing here as we come in for a landing is David walked in contrition and repentance. Now, there is a big difference between walking in guilt and walking in contrition.

Guilt is something like I said earlier that will lead you on a road map to death. If you are constantly trying to fix your life and using guilt as the energy or the fuel to make changes in your life, guilt and shame, unless they lead you to repentance which leads you to reconciliation, you can then leave guilt and shame behind. If you do experience guilt as a believer, you should only experience it for a moment until you repent.

And once you repent, you can leave guilt behind because it no longer has a purpose for you. You do not need guilt. The amount of believers who continue to think that guilt is a part of the Christian life and they need to have it to keep themselves in line is a misunderstanding of what Jesus did on the cross. Jesus died on the cross. He bore all of our guilt and all of our shame so that you would not have to. And that's what we have to understand as believers and continue to walk in contrition as opposed to walking in guilt.

David walked in contrition and brokenness. Let's look at this scripture here. But David continued up the Mount of Olives weeping as he went, his head covered as he was barefoot. Now why was he, what was he upset about? What was he crying about? Here's one thing you know about the Lord, about David. David had the ability to stand in the presence of the Lord. And when he left the city of David where the ark was and where the temple was going to be built but where the tent of meeting was, he knew it was possible that he would never, that would possibly get to a place where he would never again get to experience the presence of God in that same way.

Now let's realize this is before Jesus died on the cross that gives us access to that very same spirit living within us. Now if you go to Jerusalem, you can walk at the Wailing Wall, you can walk inside and there is actually, they've built a synagogue underneath the ark, underneath the dome of the rock which is where the place, where the temple, they're hoping to build the third temple. If you haven't seen it yet, they actually have the menorah, the candle, giant gold ready for when they get the top of the mount back again and they're going to rebuild the temple which it talks about in Revelations.

Well, one of the things that they did is currently the Muslims own it as you know and the Jews can only go there like once a year up to the top but they're not allowed to pray there. So what did the Jews do? They dug holes underneath it and so they have these tunnels now that go under it and actually they have a spot you can go to that there's a giant rock and you're 10 feet away from where the presence of the Lord was where they believe it was where the actual tent was and you can go there and put your hand there.

I did. I'm not a big rock kisser. Like one of the things you go when you go to Israel, it's like full of rock kissers. Like everyone's kissing rocks, you know, the Eastern Orthodox, the Protestants like ourselves, the Catholics, the Jews, everyone's kissing rocks and hugging trees and this whole deal. Like every faith, like all of them, all the Protestant Christians, there's not one that doesn't kiss rocks or hang out and they've rubbed the rocks so raw and touching everything.

I kind of felt like we're the living stones now and the Holy Spirit's within me so I don't really need to kiss a rock but you know, I'm not demeaning their faith, it's just what the Scripture is pretty clear that you are now the Ark of the Covenant basically, that the Spirit of God lives within you and you're not more than that, you're actually the temple of the Holy Spirit that lives there but I did go put my hand on the rock 10 feet away.

I thought it was kind of cool, I thought, you know, 10 feet from here is where that presence was but then I'm like, but he's also right in my heart right now so I should just touch my own chest or something like that. No one's walking around like touching themselves, you know what I mean? Maybe they, you know, that would work but so when I was there, David realized that it's very possible that he's never going to be in the presence of the Lord again.

Now, have you heard that Psalm where it says, if I could just be a doorkeeper in the house of the Lord? Man, imagine going from being the king that had the ability to, you know, obviously to experience God's presence and to go, you know, maybe not where the high priest would go back in the day but as close as he could and then leaving the place and not getting to be in God's presence again. Why do you think he's crying?

That's why he's crying. David's not crying because he's losing the city because of all, he's crying over the presence of God. Now, obviously, there's obviously lamentations and other reasons that he's crying but I believe that the biggest thing is he's no longer going to be in the Lord's presence again. You know what's so interesting? We have the ability to be in the Lord's presence every single day as believers that have been saved through the cross and have asked Christ to come into our hearts and rarely do we go into his hiding, do we long to go into his hiding place.

Imagine how much David, when he was out in that desert now, you know, Absalom is taking control. He might never go to the city again and thinking, this might be as close as I ever get to God's presence again and then just grieving and weeping over that but we have access now, it says, to boldly go before the throne of God. This is really powerful and this is why David is walking in contrition. David is walking in a broken spirit.

He's saying, God, I want more of you. I don't want you enough. I want to long after you more. That is a very healthy place to walk in a broken spirit with a contrite heart. We do not want to walk in guilt. Oh, I'm so lame. Oh, I'm this, I'm that. I'll never be that. Oh, this is the thing I did. I'll never figure this out. That's guilt. What God wants us to do is walk in repentance and contrition to say, God, I want more of you.

My heart breaks that I don't want you more. I want you more but to remove guilt and shame. Jesus died on the cross so that you don't have to. Jesus took all the shame, all of God's anger, all of God's wrath so that you don't have to experience. And I got to say, as a believer, one of the signs of believers' maturity is that you stop experiencing guilt. Now, hear me out because I have believers come to me all the time and they want to argue with me about this because they have embedded guilt into their Christian life thinking it's a sign of maturity.

It is not a sign of maturity. Repentance, conviction, and repentance and reconciliation are part of Christian maturity. Once you get convicted by God, stop doing that. Repent, have complete reconciliation again. You never need to walk into guilt. And people will tell you that guilt is what gets them out of bed in the morning or keeps their relationship moving with God. Part of Christian maturity is you get to a place where you don't experience guilt.

I was having a conversation coming in for a landing, I've gone too long, with somebody after the service and they said, well, I don't know if I want to buy this house because I feel guilty that if I spend too much money. And I'm like, they're like, what do you think about this? And I said, well, I don't want to be rude, but I just don't experience guilt that much so I don't really think about it that way. I kind of think, you know, we went on to different conversation.

It's arrogant when you say that. It's actually, if you want to talk about it scripturally, it's actually completely biblical. A sign of maturity. David did not walk in guilt. You see this over and over again, but he walked in contrition. We want humility. We want to be contrite. We want to walk in the Lord in power. Contrition is not guilt, it's humility. And we move on. I pray that this series has been one that has blessed you, that you continue.

I've noticed by the prayers that come in on the Tuesday that the prayers have started turning towards the things I've been speaking about. The prayer list has gotten twice as long as it normally has. If you have prayers, please put them in and give them to the usher at the back or Sean at the back. We're going to take communion right now. We'll ask our communion team to come forward. And if you would stand, we'll get ready to take communion.