FEB 4 2018 | David the Fugitive S1E1

Sea Change Church · David the Fugitive S1E1 · Adam Stadtmiller · February 4, 2018
Automated transcript. Not reviewed for accuracy.

Good morning, my name is Tony Gallegos. I am a husband of Drea Gallegos. I was just up here. So I help facilitate the maintenance. So careful with your coffee, guys, please, because I got to be the one that cleans it up. Anyways, today we are going to be reading 1 Samuel. Saul's anger flared up at Jonathan, and he said to him, You son of a perverse and rebellion woman, don't I know that you have sided with the son of Jesse to your own shame and to the shame of your mother who bore you?

As long as the son of Jesse lives on this earth, neither you nor your kingdom will be established. Now send someone to bring to me, for he must die. Why should he be put to death? What has he done? Jonathan asked his father. But Saul hurled his spear at him to kill him. Then Jonathan knew that his father intended to kill David. Jonathan got up from the table in fierce anger.

On the second day of the feast, he did not eat because he was grieved at his father's shameful treatment of David. In the morning, Jonathan went out to the field for his meeting with David. He had a small boy with him, and he said to the boy, Run and find arrows I shoot. As the boy ran, he shot an arrow beyond him. When the boy came to the place where Jonathan's arrow had fallen, Jonathan called out for him.

Isn't the arrow beyond you? Then he shouted, Hurry, go quickly, don't stop. The boy picked up the arrow and returned it to his master. The boy knew nothing. All this only Jonathan and David knew. Then Jonathan gave his weapon to the boy and said, Go, carry them back to town. After the boy had gone, David got up from the south side of the stone and bowed before Jonathan three times with his face to the ground.

Then he kissed each other and wept together. But David wept the most. Jonathan said to David, Go in peace, for we have sworn friendship with each other in the name of the Lord, saying, The Lord is witness between you and me and between your descendants and my descendants forever. Then David left and Jonathan went back to the town. This is the word of the Lord.

Can we give it up for Tony, man? This guy's a rock star. I love this guy. So amazing. We just spent four days in Mexico together. We got up at six o'clock this morning in Mexico with about eight men that we went for a retreat. God moved, didn't he? Yeah, good stuff. Just love it, man. So dudes cry on occasion. So just FYI, just let you know that it was unreal.

Well, we are back to David. And I am so excited to be back into the story of what is happening. The three-part series, which we are now in the middle of, started with David the king. Excuse me, David. It was the giant series. And David is a young boy, anointed as king, who liberates Israel from the Philistines by killing a giant in his life. In this time of his life, David is acting in an unconscious confidence.

There was an unconscious way in which he was living in victory that he really didn't even have to think about. It came normally to him. It just happened. And it was easy for him to live in victory. It was easy for him to attack his giants. And he lived in this incredible confidence with God. What is so interesting is here now, and we're going to be skipping.

If you want to go back to 1 Samuel and begin to read through it. We're skipping from where David goes into Saul's service as a young boy, about 13 years old, to about the time of 18 to 20 years old. He is living in the palace, and Saul begins to develop a hatred and a jealousy and a clutching to the kingdom. One of my favorite characters in the Bible is Jonathan, his son.

He says to Jonathan, as long as David is alive, your kingdom is not secure. The thing I love about Jonathan is that he was willing to give away his kingdom. He didn't hold on to the kingdom like his father. And we know that Jonathan passes later in the story. But David, because of this, this event, this one event that proves that Saul really wants to kill David, this day puts David on the run.

An eight-year movement from place to place, from hill to hill, from desert to desert, from cave to cave, amidst enemies, running, pretending like he's crazy one time, so that he wouldn't be taken by his enemies and put to death, perhaps. He was a threat. And then he begins to get a group of mighty men. But he also gets, as my grandma would call them, some scullywags, scullywags around them.

Anybody know the word scullywag? Yeah, I think it's a pirate word. I don't think my grandma was a pirate. But nonetheless, but she could get the switch on my legs. And I'm telling you, she would just hold me and switch me with that avocado switch. And you know what? It did me good. So it was old school. OG. Grandma was OG. You never know what day will be the day that you're back on the run.

God's not afraid of you being on the run. He's not afraid of moving your cheese, so to speak. Or maybe it wasn't even him. It's life circumstances. But he will be there with you. And there is a day comes, and it is in the 20th chapter of Samuel. And this is the story that we begin with, where David is put on the run. And he didn't know how long that run was going to last.

It ended up being an eight-year period of his life. Really powerful. Eight years. You never know the day that your spouse comes to you and says, I'm no longer, quote, in love with you. You never know the day where your boss comes and says, you know, due to market constraints, we're going to have to let you go. Or the routine checkup becomes a cancer diagnosis.

Or your child has an accident. Or, or, or, or. And you all have your own ors. We all live, perhaps, in fear of that moment. I want to say that I don't believe that God lives in fear of those moments. And looking at the life of David, the part one was the giant series. Part two is the fugitive. And the part three, as we'll go into, we'll take a little break after these 10 weeks and go into some other series.

And then come back to David as David the king. I really believe that David's best years were when he was on the run. Now, he was on the run twice with his life. Twice in his life. And running for his life. Once from Saul. And once from his son Absalom. And it has to do with him just, he was just a really poor father. He was a really poor friend. There was a lot of negative things about David.

But God seemed to really dig this guy. He just really did. And David was one of my favorite characters. I love David. But I don't have the same esteem form that I used to. I really like Jonathan. I really like Joshua. These guys, I really love Uriah the Hittite. Just these guys that had honor that really didn't have major flaws. That you see, at least in the Bible.

We have a term that came from our men's retreat and from the Joshua Project. It's rakasak amatz. And that's a, people know that word, eh? It's a Hebrew word. And it means be strong and courageous. Rakasak amatz. I won't try it again. But I'm not even sure I'm pronouncing it right. Others who are Hebrew scholars can do it for me. David was strong and courageous.

And I believe that his best years were when he was on the run. They were the most faithful. They were the most dependent. They showed the most character. And in the early years of his life, he was in an unconscious competence, is what we'd like to call it. Just a kid, too stupid to know any better. I'm just going to kill that giant. I'm killing lions, killing bears.

He's just doing it. Maybe you have had that. Maybe it's called the teenage years or college. Where all of a sudden, whatever it was, and like, I am unstoppable. I don't know if anybody else had that time in their life. I feel like I had a fair share of that. And then one day, that Saul moment comes where the arrow is shot. And that arrow that Jonathan shot tells you that something has changed.

And all of a sudden, you're not so confident anymore. All of a sudden, you're not so secure anymore. All of a sudden, all the old go-to things that you used in the past to survive don't work anymore. There is a skeleton in the closet. And oftentimes, in marriage counseling, sometimes marriage is going so good. And then there is a revelation of something.

And all of a sudden, it's like there's, you know, you ever had a rat in the attic? It's like all of a sudden, you just notice it's there. And until that thing is gone, you're not comfortable. And sometimes, you just can't find it. And so, that is what has happened. There is a cathartic moment that David didn't even cause. And many of the times when we go on the run, it has nothing to do with you.

Although, often, we cause we're our own worst enemy, as we see with Saul. So, we move into David's fugitive years. David, I think, had some of his best character-proving moments when he was on the run. When he was running from his son, Absalom. In these moments, this great dependence. And so, the first thing I think I want to say is, if you're on the run, you are in the pocket of God's love and mercy.

You might not experience it in the valley of the shadow of death. But God seems to work best when we're on the run. I don't know about you. I do believe we can learn on the mountaintop. You hear people, you know, you only learn through suffering. I don't think that's true. I think that heaven is not going to have suffering, and we're going to learn an awful lot.

I think we can learn the ability to have discipline, to continue to learn while things are going well is difficult. When things are going well, we often don't try to keep pressing in. But here we see David. And so, let's look at this scripture. There's going to be ten chapters we're going through. You have an opportunity to dive into these scriptures, to dive into 1 Samuel, to catch up if you want.

But then chapters 21 through 31 is an eight-year period. One of the things we're going to do is we're going to compare, chronologically, the psalms that were written by David during these years, knowing where he was, what was happening on the inside. Now, if you look at 1 Samuel, you're going to see the outside. But I've got to say, you are not going to understand the heart's cry of what is happening without knowing the psalms.

And thank God we have a record of the psalms. Because the psalms are that onion that has been peeled back. The psalms tell what is happening in the heart of David, the mind of David, as God is staying his hand over and over again. Let me tell you the one thing that makes this interesting. Saul could have killed David on so many occasions. The problem with this enemy is that he knew not to touch God's anointed.

He knew that to touch Saul would be going against the will of God. David was a warrior, but he was defanged by God. He had no ability, and he didn't know. He had to learn on the run how to defeat an enemy that he couldn't attack. That is a very difficult thing for a warrior. I believe on multiple occasions, David, if he wanted to take it into his own hands, or if Jesus, on the cross, wanted to call an army of angels.

You see, we happen to see messianic things happening in the life of David, in the life of Moses. You can see that God is telling us the same story over and over again. Jesus decides not to call the armies of heaven, and David is called to stay his hand and allow God to win the battle. It's a great question I ask on a regular basis. When was the last time you gave margin to God to win a battle?

Or does it always, as soon as there's a moment for you to step in, are you the one that steps in to win that battle? And you know what's awesome about that? You get your victory. You get your victory. But when was the last time you waited, you stayed your hand, you had patience, went to prayer instead of a phone call, went to prayer instead of trying to create or control, and experienced a victory that had God's signature and stamp upon it?

You want the victory of God. You don't want your own victory. You want the victory of God in your life. But I tell you what, that often takes patience. And so we see David on the run. We're not pulling this story particularly. Now, we're going to be getting in the next few weeks, we'll be looking at each passage and pulling the passages apart. But I just wanted to show you this moment where it started.

There's two things that we're going to be looking at under the microscope over the next ten weeks. One is the character of David that was proven in the valley. I think character is also proven on the mountaintop. But character is often proven in the valley. And God watches our character in the valley to see if we are faithful as little to graduate us to much, to a muchness.

I believe God is in the business of wanting to graduate. I believe that he has an eternal amount of blessing that he can give us, an eternal amount of responsibility that he can continue. And God wants us to mature so that he can move us on to give us more kingdom influence in the world. It doesn't really mean more stuff, but more influence to see, God, I'm going to use you to do more.

Wouldn't you want to be to expand your influence? One of the things we pray on our Tuesday afternoon, if you're here at noon on a Tuesday, come join us for prayer. We want to be a church that writes our story through our prayers. And if we look back, and it's that little prayer group on Tuesdays, we look at what God has been doing in our congregation, we can see that all of them were birthed as an idea in prayer, a spontaneous idea.

And one of the things we regularly pray is, God, give us two more feet out from the building. You ever just go on Zillow or whatever, and you can, like, say, you know, or whatever, like a radius of where you want to look for a rental or a house or whatever? We just keep praying every week, God, give us two more feet in all directions. The wider you get on that, the more of his influence, the more of his kingdom influence.

God, bring more peace, lower the divorce rate, lower the crime rate, two more feet, God. Just do your stuff. Give us a victory. We want a victory that we could never do on our own. I'm tired of Adam's results. I want results that I look at where I just know there is no way I could have ever done that. If you're happy with your results and it's working for you, then God love you.

You keep going. But if you want eternal results, look at David. Look at David who stayed his hand over and over again when his men were coming to him and said, we could take his life now. You can have the kingdom now. The kingdom is yours. As a matter of fact, he was already anointed king by Samuel. Samuel came and poured this oil all over his head, and they didn't just, like, give you the little dab of oil back in the day.

They brought a horn of oil. A horn. I need a horn of oil. It's funny, this weekend we anointed guys to experience the love of God. I just made sure my hand was full of oil, right? You know what I mean? They'd come up. I just put it on their head and let it drip down. We went old school, OG with the men this week. Guys, I don't need a conditioner for a month.

Too bad. You're anointed. Anointed as king. And then he was a servant of the king for five years. That makes no sense to me. And then he's on the run for eight years, living in foreign territory, wondering, what's all that crud God about being king? What are you talking about? What a lie. What a lie. God, you told me this. It hasn't happened. I'm not the king.

I'm on the run. I'm never going to be king. My life is in jeopardy. There's no water. I can't drink. I'm so thirsty. His men can go get water from him. All these different things. And he begins to question God. But it was interesting, if you read the Psalms, how he lands almost every Psalm. He lands it. But I trust in you. My hope is in you. My deliverer is in you.

And so the first thing we're going to look at is character. How's your character? How's your character? Do you feel like God has graduated you with spiritual influence? Has your spiritual influence grown at all in the last 15 years? Seriously. But you can answer this question. I can't. Has God given you more influence in your neighborhood? Has he given you more influence in the places you go?

Have you prayed and seen prayers answered? Is God giving you more influence? Or have you been stagnant? Just stagnant. Or maybe even going backwards. Proven character. Showing up. Hope in God is the first thing we're going to look at. We want to encourage you to sharpen your character. All of us can sharpen our character. Second thing we want to look at is God's deliverance.

God is a delivering God. And David's lessons in this eight year was God over and over again showing up and delivering him. We serve a God of deliverance who wins the victory for us. That in Ephesians 6 says, put on all the armor, prepare yourself for battle, and then run out and charge and fight the enemy. Is that what it says? Nay. What am I, in the 15th century?

Nay? I think I'll say it again. Nay. Thank you, Chris. Nay. It's not true. God says, stand there. Stand there. When you've done everything to stand, do what? It's a bad battle plan. It's a ridiculous battle plan. Our youth pastor, Harry, is a UFC fighter. If he does that, he's going to get kicked in the head and knocked down. He doesn't prepare to stand there.

That's God's plan. Because God loves to win your victories. He loves to win the victory in your marriage. He loves to win the victory in your home. He loves to win the victory in your neighborhood. He's a God. Here's the setting. Look at your notes. Young David now has spent, excuse me, seven years, it says, in Saul's palace as a serf of a psychotic king.

And will now spend four years being hunted by Saul. And then another four years in Ziklag. One of my favorite words in the Bible is Ziklag. Until he dies, and that means Saul dies on Mount Gilboa. These eight years can be broken down into two sets of four years. The first he's being hunted and enters into Gath. That's Philistine territory. The second time he lives at Ziklag.

This is the main four years when Saul hunts him. The second four years David lives, and it's repeated there a couple times. Like I said, eight years of misunderstood purpose. Perhaps you misunderstand your purpose. And on this men's retreat, one of the men said to me, you know what I finally understood is, my purpose isn't finding my purpose. My purpose is Jesus Christ and knowing the Father and being a son to the Father.

That's my purpose. And the rest is just stuff. That's true. You know, David doesn't talk much in the, I don't know if I ever have seen it. It probably is, but I haven't memorized the Psalms. But he never really says, I should be king. He doesn't really talk like that. He doesn't talk about the purpose of what he's called to. But he does talk about God's victory, God rescuing him, and who God is.

And I have to say that this man knew God. He would rather know God than know God's purpose, I think, for his life. And once again, I've said over and over again that the Western Christianity has built an altar to your purpose. You know what, if you can just find out your purpose, if you know, like, who you're supposed to marry, what school you're supposed to get into, what job you're supposed to do, what ministry you're supposed to do.

When you get your purpose down, then you'll be happy. You'll have full fulfillment. That is what we hear over and over again. And so we write all these books about how to hear God. But what we want to know is how to know God. I want to say God is your purpose. And if you know God, then you will find fulfillment. And then he'll say, go do this, go be a janitor, go be the president of some company or whatever it is.

And none of it will matter because your purpose is already fulfilled because he is an eternal well of purpose. And we want to drink from that. Oh, wake up. Carol, front row, love you. Welcome back to the second row, Carol, love you. D.R., my YMCA class partner over there, good to see you. Shout outs. I feel like I'm at the Grammys, just shouting out.

Not really at the Grammys, is it? David's character was proven while he was on the run and in the valley. I want to give you a book you can read. It's a tiny little book. And it's kind of like one of these little secret little, you know, black market books that not many people know. It's underground. I guess that's a better term. It's kind of like underground music scene in London in the 1980s.

A lot of people weren't aware of. This book is called The Three Kings by a guy named Gene Miller. Write it down. It talks about the kingship of David versus Solomon versus Saul. And if you read this along with this series, it is a book that has brought so much fruit in my decision making. But I just want to give you that. Once again, this is an opportunity for you.

We are in a dialogue back and forth. I am teaching, but you are learning. And when I teach, hopefully these are things God has already shared with you this week because you have dove into the word of God. It says David's character was proven. And so Three Kings is a book I'm going to throw, show you. David, in regard to his character, honors Saul and acts righteously towards all those around him.

I love Abigail in the Bible. One time he was going to break his covenant of letting God have the victory. And Abigail comes and she's like, hey, you need to hang out. This guy really doesn't, you know, my husband really doesn't mean to insult you. Because David was going to take care of business. And David could take care of some business, trust me.

The next day, that man dies and she becomes David's wife. But I love Abigail, great person in the scripture. We see this, that David honors and acts righteously to all of those around him. Romans 5.3 talks about this process of acting righteously when we're in the valley and in our sufferings. And how the end of suffering in the kingdom of God is always a river of hope.

In Romans 5.3b, it says, we also exalt in our tribulations. Exalt, wow. Counterintuitive. Exalt, knowing that tribulation brings about perseverance. It's one thing that's, if there's anything that our culture needs, probably, it's perseverance. We give up so easy. We give up in prayer. We give up in relationships. We're just quitters. This is perseverance.

How's your perseverance? On a 1 to 10, how well do you persevere? That's a question you can answer. Perseverance. And perseverance gives what? Proven character. And proven character leads to what? Hope. And hope does not disappoint. You know, this Romans 5.3 is the Psalms. It is a New Testament version of the Psalms. God, I'm suffering. God, why are you allowing this?

Oh, God, God, what's happening? But my God is a deliverer. But my God, I put my hope in Him. I put my trust in Him. And you are going to see a roadmap that leads to hope. And I want to say, oftentimes, we suffer without God. We cry out to God. We complain to God. God, why is this happening? But we don't go to God in a way that equips us. We don't go to God in a way that nourishes our soul.

To say, I, you know, I'm going to let go of these things in my life. We want to complain to God, but we want to continue in on our sin. And in regard to our suffering, we don't invite God into it. And so when we invite God, you're going to see at the end of your sufferings, whether they're small or big, you're going to keep finding bus stops of hope along the way.

You will know that when you're suffering that God is in the picture and that you are experiencing God because you're going to continue to see hope. And you'll see that at the end no matter what happens. And so that's what we see in the Psalms, and we see it there in Romans 5.3. God eventually graduates David, and we'll see that. He becomes king.

That will be in our third series. And God wants to graduate you, I believe, and give you more kingdom influence. The journey from suffering to hope is a regular theme, as we said in the Psalms. Turn your notes over. I said it's impossible to understand the journey of David devoid of his writings in the Psalms. These Psalms, especially the Messianic Psalms, give us a glimpse into the life, the joys, and suffering also of Jesus.

Jesus quotes the Psalms over and over again in Scripture. He quotes them on the cross. He calls back. And so there is a parallel, and I believe it's impossible to understand Jesus fully without Isaiah, the prophetic literature, but especially without the Psalms. To understand Jesus, the Psalms give us an understanding. Jesus quotes, and we're going to lay out.

I didn't have time this week to show some of the Psalms that Jesus refers to. But my God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me is just one that he cries out. These Psalms, that's Psalm 22. But in 1018, the final year, and David was on the run from 1028 to 1018. And in these, excuse me, from 10, I always get it backwards. You know what I mean? You're always going backwards the other way.

He was on the run for 10 years, all right? Eight years. And in the final year, he penned Psalm 7, Psalm 59, Psalm 56, Psalm 34, Psalm 52, Psalm 63. Writing to God, the experience of him. And I love knowing that on the final year of the eight years, this is what was going through his soul. Let's look at Psalm 7, 1 and 2. Lord, my God, I take refuge in you.

Save and deliver me from all those who pursue me. Or they will tear me apart like a lion and rip me to pieces with no one to rescue me. Have you ever felt that way? David felt that way. He's a mighty warrior. This is a guy who had an unconscious competence who could walk up to a giant and slay him with the whole army there as a 13-year-old boy.

But yet here he is, saying, Lord, my God, I take refuge in you. Save me and deliver me from all those who pursue me. Those who tear me apart like a lion, rip me to pieces, no one to rescue me. Depression, anxiety, fear were rife in the life of David. And he began to continue to cry out and to use worship and to use trust. Spiritual weapons. What do we arm ourselves with?

Ephesians 6. Hope. The word of God. We have these tools. And in the suffering, David knew how to equip himself so that God could win the victory. Please do not suffer without the tools of God. Please do not suffer without the weapons of God. And please continue to persevere. Don't give up. Continue to have hope. Continue to cry out to God for these things.

Find out what the weapons of God are. And as you're in suffering, never suffer alone. Do not waste a crisis. Never waste a crisis. Never waste suffering. In the midst of suffering, God is your deliverer and he is there. He came to deliver us from suffering. That's his main gig. When we get to heaven, it's going to be about the Father and knowing him and loving him.

And it still is that now. But the main reason Jesus came was to deliver us. And that is, I think he's at his best. God's always at his best. But I'm just saying, God's at his best when we're at our worst or when we're struggling. Don't waste your crisis. If you're in a crisis, gird up with the gifts and the things of God. Psalm 59, he wrote in this final year, not knowing that he would soon be king.

Eight years on the run. You are my strength. I watch for you. What a lesson. Begin to take the lessons of God and circle them in Psalms. You write the Psalms. Circle. That works. Keep a watch. We read in the divorce series where it says, take heed of the spirit. Are you watching? Are you awake? You know, it says that the virgins that were not ready when Christ came, they're asleep.

They're not prepared. On the watch. On the watchtower with the word of God is like a lamp unto my feet. It says, you are what? My fortress. My God, whom I can rely. If you are in the valley, if you are on the run, if you need deliverance, go to these Psalms. This final year of David as he writes in the Psalms. Psalm 34. I sought the Lord and he answered me.

He delivered me from all of my fears. I love it. That's powerful. Imagine. We all have fears, right? Imagine. What would it look like to experience what David experienced? He was singing praise. He delivered me from all of my fears because he knew who his father was. He was a son. David. You know, when you speak about David, it's always about a son. And then we have the son of David.

You know, we have the son of God. It's this idea of this sonship. He knew who his father was. And the one thing I will say about David, I'm getting ahead of my notes a little bit, is homeboy knew how to get home. He knew where home was. You want to know what's terrifying? I have a friend. I met with him this week. And they're Christian. And they run in liberal circles.

They love God. But they tend to run in liberal circles. And they're friends with friends of, like, really high political figures in liberal circles. I just don't want to mention the names. But nonetheless. And she said, one of my friends called me. And she's not a believer. She's an atheist. And she was weeping, saying, I don't know how to live in this world.

I don't know how to live. I don't know. There's no hope. And beginning to be so distraught that there was no hope. You know, the thing is, when you don't know where home is, there's no hope. She doesn't know where home is. I meet Christians all the time that have an equal view of how the world is going from their perspective. But oftentimes they come back to, what?

But God's in charge. I can come home. I tell that to ask you, do you know how to get home? And do you want to get home? So you see, David knew where home was. It was a home of worship. He had built a refuge. He had built a sanctuary. He had built a hiding place. Look at all these places where David speaks about the cleft of the rock. Whatever it is, David speaks.

He knew how to get home. And one of the blessings of knowing God as Father is knowing how to come home. And I would say to some of you, God is saying it's time to come home. Stop suffering on your own. Are you willing to let go of whatever you're holding on to to come home? David, when he was on the run, let nothing get in the way of him coming home.

Now, when he was king, things started getting in the way. We'll get to that. Psalm 34, 4 through 5. I sought the Lord. And he what? He answered me. He delivered me from all my fears. Those who look to him are what? Radiant. Do you have that verse up there, Neva? I don't know if you guys have it. Those that look to him are radiant. Their faces are never what?

Covered with shame. Powerful. No shame. I told someone recently. When you get in touch with Jesus' healing power of the cross and knowing the Father God and that there is no condemnation in Christ, you stop experiencing guilt. There's nowhere in the Bible where it tells you to experience guilt. Guilt is of the curse and Jesus. If there's no condemnation, there's no guilt.

I literally stopped experiencing guilt five or six years ago. I don't experience. And people, Christians, look at me when I tell them, they're like, what? You have to have guilt. No, you don't. Conviction, yes. God convicts you. Repentance, go the right direction. There is no reason to ever experience guilt. Because Jesus died. And if there is no condemnation, then there is no guilt.

What would it look like if you didn't have guilt anymore? People say, you have to have guilt. You can't be a Christian without. That is a lie from the pit of hell. You do not have to have guilt. Guilt is part of the curse and part of sin. And now, you need to have conviction when God speaks to you. But you never have to look back and say, godly sorrow is not guilt, by the way.

Corinthians says you can have godly sorrow. You can weep and say, God, I have sorrow over that. But it's not guilt. Guilt leads to death. What would it look like if you can free yourself from guilt? Try that for a while. It works really good when people try to say things to make you feel guilty to control you. Because then it goes away and you don't have to do that.

So, there's a freebie right there. You're like, no, I have to have guilt. No, you don't. So, the psalms, especially the fugitive years, are a blueprint, a roadmap to facing the challenges of life. Especially the battle for our mind. Lessons as we come in for a landing and get ready for communion. Lessons from David the fugitive. David always knew how to get home.

Psalm 7, I already said, you're my refuge. Psalm 32, you are my hiding place. David allowed, and I've already preached this today. I got way ahead in my notes. David allowed margin for God to win the battle. And then finally, like Psalm 7, David rejoiced in the Lord. I say, maybe it's time to rejoice. Maybe it's time to rejoice. This weekend on the men's trip, we saw men begin to rejoice.

Begin to get rid of all this stuff that they've been carrying. All this baggage. And begin to just rejoice. And to see the face and the freedom. Come on, men. This weekend was so powerful. It's time to rejoice. And so over the next 10 weeks, we're going to go on a journey with David. We're going to go into the wilderness. We're going to go into the caves.

We're going to go into the desert. We're going to go into enemy territory. We're going to be in all these places. And we're going to watch a man develop proven character and the deliverance of God. And we want to see deliverance. You want to see deliverance? Amen. Let's stand. Let's stand.