FEB 3 2019 | The Crown: David as King S1E3 | Hold On Loosely

Sea Change Church · The Crown: David as King · "Hold On Loosely" Pastor Adam Stadtmiller · February 3, 2019
Automated transcript. Not reviewed for accuracy.

Good morning. I'm Noelle. I'm an elder here. I'm on the greeting team and I will hopefully be organizing service projects for the high schoolers. So today's reading is 2 Samuel chapter 3 verse 1 and verses 6 through 11. The war between the house of Saul and the house of David lasted a long time. David grew stronger and stronger while the house of Saul grew weaker and weaker. During the war between the house of Saul and the house of David, Abner had been strengthening his own position in the house of Saul.

Now Saul had a concubine named Rizpah, daughter of Aya, and Ish-boseth said to Abner, Why did you sleep with my father's concubine? Abner was very angry because of what Ish-boseth said. So he answered, Am I a dog's head on Judah's side? This very day I am loyal to the house of your father Saul and to his family and friends. I haven't handed you over to David, yet now you accuse me of an offense involving this woman. May God deal with Abner, be it so ever severely, if I do not do for David what the Lord promised him on oath, and transfer the kingdom from the house of Saul and establish David's throne over Israel and Judah, from Dan to Bersheba.

Ish-boseth said, did not dare to say another word to Abner because he was afraid of him. The word of the Lord. Great to see you this morning. It's, um, welcome to La Jolla Christian Fellowship. We are in the middle of the Crown series, and I am personally getting so much out of this series in regard to, um, my own personal walk with God. I love the idea of David's intimacy, uh, with his calling. Uh, we talked a little bit about how this is a archetype or a, uh, a pre-runner of what our relationship is supposed to be like in the New Testament.

David had a very New Testament, uh, kind of Holy Spirit type driven intimacy, uh, with the Father, which is something that really didn't become available on Mass, although God did it, uh, randomly with multiple people in the Old Testament, until the Holy Spirit came after the death of Jesus and the resurrection, and we can have, uh, the Spirit of God living within us, and we become the temple of the Spirit. But we've watched David now go from the first series where it was, um, David, and he was fighting Goliath, and it was our giant series.

We talked about when he was in the wilderness and how he was, um, you know, living as a boy, and he was always underrated, and he was always the runt. He was the Tom Brady of the, you know, uh, you know, of the NFL. Back in the day, if you ever watched him when he first came out, um, that, uh, you know, he just was, no one respected him. They didn't respect the way he ran, his size. He said he had a weak arm. David was that guy.

Uh, five Super Bowls later, or whatever it is, uh, wins, uh, you know, David is in the same place now, but yet he is on the run in the second part of our series, and that was the fugitive, where he was running from Saul. Saul had brought him into his house and become a father-like figure to him, and then he was on the run. And then finally, after being on the run, after having been anointed as king when he was 12 years old or 13 years old, David is finally walking into his calling.

And that calling is to be the king of Israel. But it starts out, as we found out last week, with not becoming fully king, but becoming king of half of the Jewish empire, and that was in Judah. Now, there was still a northern territory, and that was Israel. And David came, and remember, the crown came and was laid at his feet. He didn't ever try to seek the crown. He never even talks about becoming king. In the Psalms that I see, I never, ever see, have seen in the Psalms, or in first, second, or, um, Samuel, or kings, where David is talking about, I've just got to be this thing someday, which is very different than kind of what we see today.

I saw an argument, I mean, an advertisement yesterday, that said, chase your destiny. And I thought, that's the last thing I ever want to do. As you'll see in the notes, there's a verse in Deuteronomy 28, 1 and 2. Actually, I don't think it's in your notes, but you can write it down. It says, And if you faithfully obey the voice of the Lord your God, be careful to do all those commandments that I command you today, then the Lord your God will set you high above all the nations of the earth.

And all of these blessings shall come upon you and overtake you, if you obey the voice of the Lord. And this idea that if you just have relationship with God and obey the voice of the Lord in your life, that all the blessings of God will overtake you. You can't outrun God's blessing. You can't outrun his purpose for your life. And so we find David now in this crossroads and the beginning of a civil war. A civil war between the house of David and the house of Saul.

And we see oftentimes that even as you're moving into your destiny or what God has called you into, it comes in stages. And you will never, I believe, claim your inheritance in God without a fight. Very few things just come and happen. Now, there are moments when the crown has come and laid at your feet, like we saw with David. But David still had to fight against the house of Saul. Actually, he wasn't fighting against the house of Saul, but the house of Saul, there became a civil war between his men.

And if you go through and read these passages, you're gonna see some characters that I can't get completely into, but I have to let you know who they are. One is Abner. Abner is this very loyal servant of Saul. He's an amazing, I believe he's an amazing man of God, but he was on Saul's side and he knew that David was meant to be king. And in this story here, because of his loyalty, he had stayed loyal to king, to David.

Now, David has a man on his side in the same position, a general, and his name is Joab. We can study Joab. And so begin to read, if you will. I hope you're reading with me as we go through this, because I can't preach at all. That you have the general of Saul's army, even after Saul's dead, under Saul's son, Ithbosheth. And then you have David with Joab. And this civil war begins in between these two nations. And you'll see in the story that Ithbosheth comes up to Abner, and for some reason, out of fear, in this story, he comes up and he accuses him of sleeping with Saul's concubines, his father's concubines.

Back then they had wives, and then they had concubines. And so the concubines were for a different purpose than the wives, and if you were to come and sleep with one of a king's concubines, it means that you wanted to have claim to the kingdom. Now, Abner was a very righteous man, and he had never done this, and it really made him angry. And so he said to Ithbosheth that because of this, because you have accused me of this, because I think he knew he was fighting a losing battle, but he was loyal.

He said, I am going to hand over the king of David, this kingdom, your father's kingdom, to David. And he had the ability to do that. He could have become king and fought David, but he didn't, which shows a little bit about Abner's character. So he goes to David, and this is just a summarization, goes down to David and says, this is what has happened. I'm going to turn Israel to you. I'm going to call you up and turn them over to you.

And you can come up and march in. And David receives him. David has a meal with him and sends him on his way. Now, a little bit of the pre-story of this is that Abner and Joab had met once together. Joab, the two generals of the opposite armies, had met together, and they had mighty men with them. And they said, let's have our men all fight against each other. And so they kind of had a UFC cage fight. And I think there was 12, I think they had 12 men.

And they put 12 of Joab's men and 12 of Abner's men. And they put them out, and they said, attack one another. Now, this is really brutal. Because what you have is God's people fighting amongst each other. And you will never face as many casualties in a war as you will in a civil war. Look at the casualties in our own civil war. The importance in different civil wars, because all the losses are from your side. You might have disagreements, but they're all from your side.

And it says, and it shows the equality of these two rival nations. And it said both men, all 12 men grabbed their opponent, I think it was by the hair, and they put a sword or a knife into the other one. And all of them, I think it was 24 of them, if I'm correct, all of them died on the spot. It was a tie. Complete tie. And they went their way. But one of Joab's relatives is murdered in the midst of this. And in the midst of this, Joab has a grudge.

And so David comes, and David takes Abner in, sends him away, and Joab doesn't want anything to do with this. So Joab follows Abner and kills him. And this is totally unrighteous. I want you to go back and read the story and see what's happening. But I had to set it up because I want to talk about this idea of civil war. And if you look at your notes, one of the things that I want to say is, if you're going to walk with God, I think this is on your second page, if you're going to walk with God, then you're going to have to fight an internal civil war where the only path to ultimate victory is total surrender.

I believe it's impossible to follow God without an internal civil war. Because there is the flesh and the spirit. And the scripture says that they rival each other together. There is no way to win a civil war of yourself with God in the mix. And if you are going to walk into what God has called you to, you are going to have to fight a civil war. To fight against the things that you want to do versus the things that you know God is calling you to.

To become the person who can wear the crown as opposed to be the person who seeks the crown. And so today I want to talk about this idea of civil war amongst ourselves and how to face it. How to face it and to actually be honest with it and move to a place of obedience to God where you lay down these things. We're going to do a couple quick lessons. And that was a little history lesson there that I need you to follow up on.

But the lessons from the crown that we've gone so far is never chase your destiny. I believe that if you're following God, your destiny will come and lay at your feet. And if you want to read a great chapter of encouragement, go to Deuteronomy 28 as it talks about the blessings of God. It's all about blessings he wants to give you and reign upon you. First rule, practical rules, never chase your destiny. You don't need to chase it.

Number two, seek the right things. It's all about relationship over purpose. And three, hold on loosely and surrender. To hold on loosely to all things. And this is what we're going to see from David over and over again. That David never clung to the kingship. David never tried to hold on to something even though that thing was his. You've heard over again that if you want something to be free, you need to set it free.

Or hold on. That's found by 38 Special from the 1970s or early 80s. Hold on loosely. Don't let go. If you hold on loosely to things, there's a freedom in the mix. And when we hold on too tightly to things in our lives, it is a sense of control that doesn't allow God to be in the peace, to be the stabilizer in those things that are in your life. And so I would even say that in my marriage, I hold on loosely. Now you could have somebody argue, hold on super tight.

But I have found that, I won't say all women, but my wife in general doesn't like that. My wife doesn't like to be corralled, shepherded, held in, have any kind of thing that would hold her back. She wants to be set free. And to know that she is free. And that if she is with me, I want it to be out of choice. Otherwise, we start moving into manipulation. Whether it be a job at a church like this, or the job that you have, or something that you hold on to tightly.

I would say, you know, from the story Mice and Men, there was the character that had, you know, I think it was the little mouse, and he just loved it so much and squeezed it, and loved it, and squeezed it, and loved it, and squeezed it, until it died. But that's the lesson. David was so good at holding things loosely. And so I guess the thing that I'm asking is, are you holding loosely to all things? Hold on tight to God, perhaps, but loosely on all other things.

There's a civil war, and Plato said this. It's actually, there's a few other people it could have been, but most sources say it's Plato. And I really like this. I don't see it in our society much. But be kind for everyone you meet is fighting a difficult battle, one you know nothing about. And I've been in this business, if you want to call it that, long enough to know I've never met a person who I get to know well that isn't fighting a very intense battle.

I've met people that fake it, you know. Oh, great. We're always great. They're always great. If someone's always great, they're not great. But every single person I know in this church, who I have a solid relationship with, that I've talked, we've had coffee, and we've actually gone beyond the first level layer of relationship, every one of them is fighting a very, very difficult battle. And I think that's one. We need to have empathy when we look at people that would perhaps, you would consider opponents.

Also to know that each one of us has this internal battle going on. And I want to now bring it back home that each of you is fighting a very difficult battle. You have the battles and concerns about your relationships, about your purpose, perhaps regret, perhaps nostalgia, all types of things that can hold us down. And this is the battle that Christ wants to enter into. Because Christ is always on your side. And he wants to partner with you to perhaps crucify that part of you that wants to rise up in civil war against yourself.

And so you know what I'm talking about if I say that there's a civil war with you. Perhaps there's a civil war with lust, or perhaps there's a civil war with addiction, or perhaps there's a civil war with anger, or whatever that thing is, or lack of hospitality, whatever that thing is, there's a civil war in all of us. And to be honest with our civil war, and to face it, so that we don't become the greatest casualty of our lives.

And David knew this. And this is something that David regularly turned over. Because he, if you read the Psalms, David speaks about this civil war within. Fears, worries, concerns, anger, all these things are going on. And he never held on to anything that wasn't his. And he never held on too tightly. Until after he became king. And it was after he became king, and things started getting easy, that David started to reach out and break his own rules.

To take things like Bathsheba that were not his. To hold on to the kingdom, and to take a census, so he could kind of know how many troops there were. And God said, never take a census. Because I don't want you to have to worry, it's not about how many men you have. I saw a bumper sticker the other day, it said, never tell me the odds. I love that. I love it. Never tell me, what's the use of odds? With God, it's zero or 100%.

People say to me, what do you think? What do you think the odds are that this is going to happen in your life? I'm zero or 100%. God wants it, it's happening. If not, it ain't. And so I love that. Never tell me the odds. But David began to want to know what the odds were. And he started breaking his rules. And so we'll see later on in the series, in the second part of the series, sometime in the summer, that David breaks the rule and takes a census of the people because he wants to have control and God ain't about all of that.

Faith never pencils out. If you go to that part in your notes, once again, if you're going to walk with God, you're going to have to fight an internal civil war where the only path to ultimate victory is total surrender. Do you see that? The only path to ultimate victory in a relationship with God is total surrender. Ultimate victory. I'm not saying you can't have some victories, but we all want some little, you know, we all want some little area of our life that is for us.

We all want some little branch of the tree that's ours. C.S. Lewis says, Christ doesn't want a branch here or a branch there or a fruit there. He wants the whole tree down. Matter of fact, he wants to take the roots and all and plant a new tree there. When I see our relationship with God, you know, so often, you know, most of us think that you're either, you know, with God and he's happy with you or you're not. I kind of see relationship oftentimes in my own life as like this bar graph.

Like there's certain areas I'm doing really good in. Feel like I am. And then there's other areas that are like in the negative. You know what I mean? Like, God, we're not, we're not even going to have that conversation. Isn't it funny when you go to God in prayer and you're like, I'm not going to talk about that. Like you can not talk about it with God. Like I know your inner depths, you know what I mean? Like he tells you, he knows even what you don't know about yourself.

But I was in there the other day and I was talking to God and I got a little practical thing for you. I decided I needed to up my prayer lift. So I went and got some tea candles. They burn five to six hours. I'm trying to pray one tea light candle. I got the vanilla one at Ikea. One tea light candle a week. Just light the candle, blow it out when you're done and try to pray through a candle a week. You know, it's just kind of a really practical thing that kind of keeps me sitting there a little bit longer, which is key.

But I kind of feel like there's things that are negative as well. But other things are really good. Rarely do I feel like I'm completely abandoned from God. But there are some areas that perhaps need to be surrendered in our lives. And if you're ever going to have full victory, I mean complete victory, not that we're going to have hard times because whenever you take ground, there is going to be conflict. So if you get sober, there is going to be conflict.

Don't think it comes free. Dave, every time David had a victory, the crown came and laid at his feet. Remember, he didn't seek the crown. The Amalekite came and brought it and laid it at his feet. Right after that, he goes up and then Israel is against him. And he is in a long civil war. He gets the crown that he's always perhaps wanted. Abner says he's always wanted it. Abner speaks that for him, although I've never seen David say it.

But Abner said of him, I'm going to take him the crown that he has always wanted. But those are Abner's words, not David's. And when he got the crown, he never put it on. He never went up to take those things. And it was all surrendered knowing that God could bring him more. And so we're looking into this about this idea of being completely surrendered to God so that those things might come upon you. God is in the business, as you'll see in your notes, of establishing kingdoms to surrendered hearts.

All of you have a dominion. Every single one of you has a dominion. It starts with the first corner of your heart, the dominion of your heart. Christ wants to rule over that. You have dominion over your home, although maybe you've let other things come in and take dominion over your home. I was looking at Netflix yesterday, and we watched the baking channel and everything. I can't open Netflix anymore without getting just slimed.

Like, there is so much filth. I mean, just absolute filth on Netflix. I mean, let's just not even talk about the sexuality. Let's just talk about the murder. The disgusting, like this whole Ted Bundy thing was up there yesterday, whatever. The disgusting stuff that is on Netflix. And I'm just thinking, I just don't really, I don't need entertainment that much that that needs to be in my life. I don't really think I want to give them my $7.99 a month anymore, you know, for whatever it is.

But it's the idea of whatever this thing is in your life, that God wants to establish kingdom and give you dominion. And perhaps, the reason I mentioned Netflix is we can allow things in our homes that take away the dominion of our home. You might have a dominion of your heart, but maybe something else takes away the dominion of your home. And if there is something on, whether it's music, we're always watching my daughter's music and the things she's into.

I don't want to let things in my house that can start taking dominion. That say, I have more control in this house than you do. When I was a kid growing up, we had three wet bars in our house. No, two wet bars, one full bar. Like a full bar, where like a, you know, you could have a bartender there and walk eight to 10 feet in either direction. Let me just tell you what, alcohol, before my parent, my mom got sober, my dad got sober right before he died, had dominion in our home.

I knew who was boss when I was five years old. We had a bar. Who had a bar? Raise your hand if you had a bar in your house, like six, eight feet long. Anybody else? No, that's what I thought. We had a bar. I knew who was boss. We'd have parties. We'd have a bartender work the bar, you know, that smoky glass behind him. I remember it all. God is in the business of establishing kingdoms to surrendered hearts and he will establish and give you more dominion over every area you surrender to him.

So if you give him your heart and you give him your home and you give him your car and you give him your Dre beat headphones of what you're going to listen to and you give him the books you're going to read and you give him the thoughts you're going to think and begin to have discipline in your thoughts and say, I'm not going to think about that thought anymore because it's not helpful for me. I will surrender then God will begin to establish a kingdom in those, a dominion in those places.

Whatever you surrender, God wants to take it over and you are going to have to fight a civil war to beat it because we want our music, we want our smokes, we want our fantasy relationships, we want our perhaps real relationships we shouldn't be in, we want our pride, we want it. And it is standing up and putting a flag in your face and saying, you shall not pass and the question is, are you going to surrender because the only way to win that war is to surrender.

That's it. It's pretty easy. You don't even have to fight. Ephesians 6 is so easy. Ephesians 6, what does it say? It says, when you have done everything to stand, it talks about all this armor of God which is awesome, but it says, when you've done everything to stand, stand. Nice battle, right? Like, what a horrible advice from a general. I'm reading about the Crusades, I'm reading all the history of the Crusades and I just finished World War I history as well and World War II.

And as I look through, I never saw anybody say, just stand there like this with your armor on and don't do anything. Because God wants to win the battles for you and it's a surrender. It's prepared to fight but surrendering to God. Prepare to fight and surrender to God. Do you see the juxtaposition of how God wants to give you dominion? He wants to give you dominion out in the surf. He wants to give you dominion in the kitchen that you work in.

He wants to give you dominion everywhere you go that the fragrance of God just drips on you like honey out of a bee's hive. That's the life God wants to have for you. But you can have little bits of it but too often we settle for less. Coming in for a landing. In verse 8 that you'll see in the notes, it says, Abner was angry because of what Ithbosheth said. So he answered, Am I a dog's head on Judah's side? This day I am loyal to the house of your father Saul and to his family and friends.

I love that loyalty. I don't see a lot of loyalty today. I haven't handed you over. Handed you over. This idea of God's hands. Things being handed back and forth in the hand of God. If you want to do a great verse study this week, go in and do a Google search for verses about hands or hands. Hand or hands in the Bible. What are the verses? You'll see a whole bunch come up. And just look at how the hand of God moves. How things are handed to you.

God, he doesn't want you to fight for stuff. I believe he wants you, I mean, granted, he wants you to fight and you know, say your marriage and these different things but ultimately his version of fighting is surrendering and harnessing weapons in the spiritual realm that says they're not like the weapons of the world. Constantly maneuvering, constantly trying to get the spin doctors going. It's just rank. If you want to succeed, if you want the blessings of Deuteronomy 28, if you want the blessings of Ephesians chapters 1 and 2 and through the book of Ephesians and the eternal kingdom, then you need to fight a war of civil surrender.

Verse 8, he says, I haven't handed it over to David to you. And then, you know, in this idea of hands, David said in Psalm 31, which was about, he wrote that when he became king over all of Israel, he wrote, my life is where? It's in your hands. Your life is in God's hands. You know, you're immortal until God says you're not. You're immortal until God says you're not. Save me from my enemies and those who are chasing me.

Show your kindness to me, your servant. Save me. Why? Why does God save you? Because of your love. Why does God save you? Because he loves you. To get in touch with that. Final thing is, and this is what Isbosheth says. Look at the very end of that verse there in verse 11. Isbosheth did not dare say another word to Abner because why? He was afraid of him. Saul's entire life, kingdom, the culture of his dominion was one of fear.

Afraid of David. Didn't want to hold on to the kingdom. God had said to him, if you just obey me bro, I will establish your kingdom for eternity. But he didn't. And so God said, no eternity. I'm going to go pick somebody else out. And he said, I will establish the kingdom of David for eternity because Jesus would have come through the line of Saul, not David. Do you get that? That the reason David's kingdom is eternal is not because of all the cool stuff David did, but because Jesus came through the line of David.

Now you can see how God can change things in the mix. That there's multiple, you know, it isn't just, you know, this binary, you know, or there's multiple ways God can do things. And he can use you or he cannot and still get his stuff done. And I have to say that if Saul would have been obedient, there'd be a different statue in Florence and Jesus would have come through a different line because he would have established his kingdom through him.

But instead it went through David. And why? Because he was afraid. And I gotta say the one thing I never wanna, the one thing I've fought all my life is I just don't wanna be afraid of anything. I don't wanna be afraid of death. I used to be, until I was like 35, I was afraid of the dark. Like, last time I said everybody laughed. I'm like, come on, some of you are too. I was just afraid of the dark. Now I wanna go out to the wilderness and sleep by myself in a forest.

Like, I just, you can actually change, I know it looks, you look terrified, right? it's just, it's just my face she said. This idea of not living in fear. I remember the first 15 years of my marriage I was terrified my wife was gonna leave me. Just terrified. And the whole marriage was based on trying to make sure she didn't leave me. Because I'm living out of fear. Fear is a position of weakness. You can never, you can never negotiate in God's spirit out of a position of fear.

You have to be in your marriage because it is the right thing to do because you wanna bless, because you wanna live in love, but not because you're afraid she's gonna leave or he's gonna leave or you're gonna lose the job or you're gonna lose followers. You see, the world is so terrified and they live in a place of fear. Final thing it says in your notes here that you'll see by James Baldwin. He was a black writer and activist early on in the early 1900s.

And it says the most dangerous creation of any society is the man who has nothing to lose. And the context might be a little bit different, but I think it's true. We really wanna be spiritually dangerous. I think you become incredibly spiritually dangerous in the world when you have nothing to lose. When you don't care what anyone says about you. Today I look around on social media and stuff and as soon as the whole thing is label somebody something and then they're just destroyed.

But what we rarely see, a lot of people people just kowtow to a label sometimes. But to stand up and not be afraid of being labeled, not be afraid of losing, and this is Saul's thing, constantly afraid. David was never afraid to lose because David never claimed anything as his own. That make sense? It's all God's. And if it's all God's you don't have to hold on to it and cling to it. Final thing I wrote is when you live in a fear when you live in fear you negotiate with life from a position of weakness.

When you live in fear you negotiate with life in a position of weakness. So I want to encourage you to be, as Joshua said, be strong and courageous. Be willing to lose things but never give up. Be willing to have a looser grip on things. Be willing to surrender to live the surrendered life. And as Deuteronomy 28.1 says or 28.1 and 2 says it says and these blessings shall overtake you. Amen?