JUL 2 2017 | The Giant Series S1E9 | 1 Samuel 8

Sea Change Church · The Giant Series S1E9 · "1 Samuel 8" · Adam Stadtmiller · July 2, 2017
1 Samuel 8
Automated transcript. Not reviewed for accuracy.

Amen. Good morning, family. This morning we're going to read from 1 Samuel chapter 8. When Samuel grew old, he appointed his sons as judges over Israel. His firstborn son's name was Joel and his second was Abijah. They were judges in Beersheba. However, his sons did not walk in his ways. They turned toward dishonest gain. They took bribes and they perverted justice.

So all the elders of Israel gathered together and went to Samuel at Ramah and they said to him, look, you are old and your sons do not follow your example. Therefore, appoint a king to judges the same as all the other nations have. When they said, give us a king to judges, Samuel considered their demands sinful. So he prayed to the Lord. But the Lord told him, listen to the people and everything they say to you.

They have not rejected you. They have rejected me as their king. They are doing the same thing to you that they have done to me since the day I brought them out of Egypt until this very day. So Samuel told all the Lord's words to the people who were asking him for a king and he said, these are the rights of the king who will rule over you. He will take your sons and put them to his use in chariots or his horses or running in front of chariots.

He can appoint them for his use as commanders of thousands or commanders of fifties to plow his ground or reap his harvest or to make his weapons of war or the equipment for his chariots. He can take your daughters to become perfumers, cooks, and bakers. He can take your best fields, vineyards, and olive orchards and give them to his servants.

He can take a tenth of your grain and your vineyards and give them to his officials and servants. He can take your male servants, your female servants, your best young men, and your donkeys and use them for his work. When that day comes, you will cry out because of the king you've chosen for yourselves. But the Lord won't answer you on that day.

The people refused to listen to Samuel. No, they said. We must have a king over us. Then we'll be like all the other nations. Our king will judge us, go out before us, and fight our battles. Samuel listened to all the people's words and then repeated them to the Lord. Listen to them, the Lord told Samuel. Appoint a king for them. Then Samuel told the men of Israel, each of you, go back to your city.

Yeah. You didn't know you were going to get Reader's Theater this morning. That's awesome. That has to be some of the best scripture reading in the country. I would say you can go to any church. I always make a joke. You don't get that at megachurch. You won't get that. No. Smallest megachurch in the world. That's us. Good to have you this morning. This amazing 4th of July.

My father was 60 when he had me. He didn't actually have me, but he was part of the process. And 60 years old. And I've all, you know, he was born in 1909. So I was raised by a very different generation than many of my Gen X compadres. And was taught perhaps a different narrative on America. A different narrative on hope. A different narrative on journalism.

A different narrative on many things. And for all the different discussions we can have on the different narratives. I will tell you that he gave me a deep respect for my elders. He gave me a deep respect of historicity. And the things that have come before me. And one of the easiest things for me in coming to the pastor of a 90-year-old church.

With an aging, no offense, congregation. Would you close that door, Eddie? It's a little breezy. With an aging, a little bit of, no offense, aging congregation. One of the easiest things was to relate to that group. And to validate them. And to be a part of it. And to honor them. And actually enjoy what they had created. I love a multi-generational church.

I love a multi-generational country. And I think we have a lot of diversity. And if you look around, we are seeing. That's good enough, Eddie. We're good. Thanks. We have a lot of diversity here in the congregation. And so on this time of our country, one thing I will encourage you to do is to pray. It's easy to think that, you know, a comment on Facebook or one thing or another is going to change all of society.

But what we find is it's prayer that changes things. And I find that people who don't believe in prayer will look around when something happens in their life or in the world. And they'll say, how did that happen? I don't understand how that happened. What's going on? I don't understand how certain things happen. And if you look around, God is in charge.

And it says that he directs our steps. So here's my call on this 4th of July. On the 4th of July, as we go into it, spend some time in prayer. Spend 10 minutes praying for the people that you don't like. Spend 10 minutes praying for unity and peace where a house is divided against itself. What? It will not stand. And so we want to continue to be a people of prayer.

Now moving into our giant series. We are in the book of 1 Samuel. We will be there throughout probably the rest of the summer, a tiny bit into the fall. We're going to be getting to David here pretty soon and Saul. We want to talk about parlaying the book of 1 Samuel with the idea that there are giants in our lives. And there are a lot of giants in the lives of Israel.

And we know that there is a physical giant in the life of King David. And so my first question to you is, what are the giants that you face? Some of those can be emotional. Some of those can be physical. There are all types, mental, spiritual, addictions, attitudes. There are giants in our lives. And these giants defy us. And these giants seek to taunt us and keep us from living in our inheritance and in our promise.

One of the things that's going to be shown in this scripture, and which I will say on a regular basis, is it's harder to live in your inheritance into your promise and into being the full you that you were created to be than it is to sacrifice the blessing and the fullness of inheritance for living as a slave. While we can complain about being a slave, it's much easier to live the existence of a slave.

You don't have to make any decisions on your own. You don't have to take responsibility for anything. And you never have to answer the tough questions. Israel had to make a decision on a regular basis. Do we want to be slaves like we were in Egypt? Or do we want to live as kings, as sons and daughters of the king? What is so interesting about Israel is the amount of times that they said, we just want to be slaves.

They said it to Moses. We want to go back to Egypt. We want to be slaves. And even though they had this incredibly difficult life there, they found it easier to be a slave than to be a king. They found it easier to be a people in bondage than a people to live, as Jesus said, in freedom. Jesus says, I come to give you freedom for freedom's sake. And so we're looking at these passages today.

And as we move into this, Israel is demanding a king. Let's just set this up why they want a king. Because they don't want to have to serve an invisible God in faith. Now, God had shown himself. He had shown himself by pillars of clouds and fire and all these different things. But those days had kind of passed. And now the words were coming through prophets.

And God was less, perhaps, visible than he'd been in the past. And the difficult thing to do is to live by faith. Because faith requires us to believe, as Hebrews 11 says, in something we cannot see. It requires us to harvest a thing like hope. And hope, it says in the scripture, if you were to defragment faith, it says that it is made up. The key core DNA of faith is hope.

It's very hard to live and believe in something you cannot see. But it is faith becoming a substance, actually, that is what saves us. The scripture says that we are saved by faith. And faith, in the end, is what causes us to live eternally. Now, this is interesting. Because faith is something you cannot see. But it's the only thing that will give you actual reality.

That you will live forever with God in your true reality. So this invisible thing becomes actually a substance. It is more real than this church. It is more real than this pew. Because these things, while you can see them at the moment, will pass away. But it says that faith in Christ, in believing what he did on the cross, will cause you to live forever.

So faith, actually, is more of a substance than the things you can physically prove. Now, as we move into this giant series, let me tell you that something that is true for God. And Israel found this out regularly. God has this incredible habit of letting us have what we want. He's really good at it. He'll fight for you. He's jealous for you. He does all these things.

But in the end, God will give you what you want. You know, we are not very good at that as people, are we? If someone is doing something we don't want them to do, if a nation is going in a different direction, we're not very good at just, you know, we want to pray in these different things. But we're never good at saying, you know what? Enough's enough.

Go feast on the foul thing that you want. You know, God does that. He will let you feast on a poisonous dessert. He will let you feast on something that will take you down. He will let you run into that and experience what it looks like to live a life completely away from Him. You know, it's really interesting that God allows us to do that. But it is out of His love because it is His love that allows us, once we hit rock bottom, to see that there's a need.

And while we were yet sinners, the Bible says Christ did what? He died for us. And do you know what leads us to repentance, the Scripture says? Is it God's anger and discipline that leads us to repentance? Anybody know what the word is? It's His kindness, the Scripture says, that leads us to repentance. Think about that. We all think, you know, God is this mad, arbitrary God.

He created a bunch of pleasures that He doesn't want us to enjoy or anything like that. But He actually is not. He is actually, you know, not using a whip to bring us back to repentance. It says that He's using His kindness to bring us back to repentance. Israel gets what they want. Last week, I think Bryce Maurer asked an incredible question. He asked the question, how did we get here?

What a great question. And all of us can answer. And His answer to it was phenomenal. By answering the question in our own lives, who do we want to be king? Do I want it to be me? Do I want it to be God? Or perhaps someone else? I've made a decision as a pastor that I do not want to be your parent. Although there's a lot of pastors that are very paternal.

And there are many people that would rather be parented by a pastor and told what to do and every decision to make. Because it's a lot easier to be a Christian with a paternal pastor. One of the best ways to grow a church is to be an authoritarian pastoral figure. You will grow a church of weak people that just want to follow you and do exactly what you say.

We want to give a little more margin. Like Jesus did to say, if you want to go your own way, go your own way. And give people a chance to have a relationship with God separate of mine. You know, so many people, their entire spiritual life is basically a mirror of the pastor's spiritual life. The only teaching in the word they get is what their pastor says.

The only time they pray is when their pastor prays or one of the elder prays at church. The only time they do worship is when the worship leader leads. And so basically their entire faith is a mirror reflection of someone else's truth. I want to say what we do here on Sunday should be the icing on the cake of what you've done all week on your own.

That you say that I want God enough to be the king of my life. And that is how we get to where our destination is. I want to say none of you know where you're going except to the heart of God's love. God says in the scripture in Proverbs that man makes these decisions, but God determines their steps. The best thing to do is to say, God, I turn myself over to be an obedient son and daughter and a slave to righteousness, God.

And will you lead me? I'm going to make the best decision I can, but will you lead me? And so the question is, how did we get here? Let's look at how Israel got to where it was. It gets to a point here not long after this in the book of 2 Kings where it says, and at that point God began to diminish their territory. Now this is antithetical to what God wants to do.

God wants to expand their territory. He takes them into this land. He says, I want you to go to the, here's your boundaries. Now go take out all the giants that are in the land. Go clear it of all unrighteousness. And I want this to be your land, a land of milk and honey and promise, and you will have it all. I got to say, that calling, that blessing was too much for Israel to handle.

Imagine if God had given you blessing in your life, but because of the cost, because blessing costs, right? Like there's a, there's a two, there's a two letter word that is in the Bible over 1500 times. Anybody know what it is? If, that's right. If you do this, I will do this. If you do this, I will do this. Make no mistake that, that Christian, that following, Christ following is conditional.

The Bible is conditional. It says, if you are willing to do these things, I will give you all of this. But if you're not, then you will get this. It is a conditional faith and God allows you to have what you want. It just seems to be this habit of God to let us have what we want. So how did they get here? Well, let me just talk through a few things and you'll see it in the notes.

First, they were a nation unrestrained, full of weak fathers. A nation unrestrained, full of weak fathers. I will say that God has created man, men, not mankind, men to be fathers. And there is no other creation in the world, whether it be my French bulldog or anyone else, that can be a parent to a human being, a father other than a man. It is something that God has innately given to them.

And whether they step up to the call or not that is uniquely given to them is up to them. And they can do it in a multiplicity of ways. There is no one way to be a father. But I will say one of the ingredients because there is a base of ingredients. Now, you can add different ingredients. Yesterday, I was cooking at my house and, you know, I was making a faux soup, right?

But one of the things you have to have is broth, right? If you're going to make faux, you have to have broth. So there's these basic ingredients. But then from that point on, like I didn't have peanuts, so I added almonds, you know? I'm just like kind of just throwing things in there. I went to my herb garden. I'm throwing stuff in there, you know?

I'm adding my own flavor to the basic mix of what it is. You know, it's hard to make a cake without flour. Well, you have these gluten-free people. But nonetheless, my wife's one of them. But you can't make a good cake without flour, okay? Yeah, amen on that. Let me tell you one of the ingredients for fathers. And I think fathers, and I think mothers can do this as well.

I think fathers are built to do it. And sometimes they don't do it well. But I think that thing's discipline. To restrain children. Not only, you know, fathers oftentimes have the physical ability to restrain children as well, especially as they get older. God has built them to go along with what he has called them to. With what God calls you to, he often gives you, and everything's not perfect in these analogies.

There are exceptions to the rules. But for the most part, man has the ability to back up what they say sometimes because of just their physical build. But we see that one of those things, whether you choose to do that or not, that God has called man, I think, to have discipline as a father. It says, now once again, that's not saying that women don't discipline.

So I don't need an email. Nonetheless, we can just talk about the difference. You can email me. It'll go to the junk file. Just totally kidding. Just totally kidding. I'll read it. I will read it. I promise. Verse 3. However, this is Samuel. His sons did not walk in his ways. Again, we see a father who was not able to restrain his sons. King David, not able to restrain his sons.

Eli the priest, not able to restrain his sons. Samuel, not able to restrain his sons. Men that could lead nations, but not restrain their own children. Men that could lead nations, but not restrain their own children. You know, one of the things I always said is I don't want to have a shiny church in a dull and sullen home. I want to have the church be a representative.

Anything I do in Christ, whether it's a church, whether it's a coffee house, whatever. And one day I will have that coffee house. I promise you. I will have it one day. I will be, you know, the coffee house guy. But no matter what that is, I want it to be a reflection of what goes on in my home. I want what happens in my home to be the base of everything that happens, what I do and in the church.

And I've seen so many examples of amazing churches, amazing business people, amazing business women. But they have no ability to have their home in order. I've got to say that is square one. We have got to start. And if I had a time in my life or my family, it says in the scripture even, that if your family is out of order and you're a pastor, you need to take a break until it gets together.

And I am more than willing to do that because I do not want to sacrifice my children on the altar of a successful church. And so we see one of the ingredients of how did Israel get to where it was. They had fathers. Now, it doesn't implicate the mothers here. We see great mothers in the works of the kings. You see people like Abigail. You see people like Bathsheba.

You see all these people that were able to make a difference. You see Hannah, these incredible women of God. Hey, by the way, thank you, women, because I don't know where the church would be without you. You have such an incredible call to leadership and to help. And thank God for women in the church because thank God the men just aren't in charge, right?

That we have women that speak into that. So I hope that doesn't make you uncomfortable. But we see that if it wasn't for some of the women here, Samuel wouldn't even exist. It was Hannah's prayer before the Lord that birthed Samuel. It was her going in petition and in prayer to make a difference. And so we see that it was a nation that was unrestrained.

And in America today, let me ask you this. Do you see a call to restraint or do you see a call to have whatever you want based on what you want? Secular humanism says a human should have whatever they want whenever they want. Next thing we see is a nation that wanted to be less than they were called to be. Verse 5. Therefore, this is what they're calling because they want a visible king, right?

They don't want to live in faith. They want a visible king. They want something they can touch, something they can look at, something they can applaud. They can go to the big, you know, rallies. But they don't want to live in faith. They want something they can see and touch. So they say this. Therefore, appoint a king to judge over us the same as all the other nations have.

They were called not to be like the other nations. How interesting. You know what? Make us like the other nations. Bring us into our blessing, but let us stay the same. Let us have all the things that you promised, but don't let us ever have to change ourselves. It's like C.S. Lewis said in the Screwtape Letters. Get the patient, speaking to a demon on how to tempt a Christian.

He says get the patient or the Christian to be able to do self-examination for over an hour without experiencing or understanding anything about their own faults that anybody who has spent five minutes with them in the home or the orphan understands completely. Let us be completely, let us have all the blessing, but don't make us change. Make us like everyone else.

You know what I say? We're called to be different. We are called to love in a different way. We are called to care in a different way. We are called to stand apart and be separate. They had a desire to be like the other nations. Deuteronomy 14.2, look in your notes, says this. You have been set apart as what? Holy unto the God. And he has chosen you from all the nations of the earth to be his own special what?

Wow. Wow. Wow. God says, I want, you're my treasure. If you decide you want to be. You are, I want you to be my treasure. But no, we don't want to be God's treasure. We want to be like everyone else. So I put in the notes, we too often trade eternity for a moment and our greatest treasure for trash. Our greatest treasure for trash. You know, God wants, you're his treasure.

You're more than it. You're his, you're his beloved. He wants to bless you. He wants to show you a life like you've never experienced. No matter what, where the road might take you. He wants to give you, he wants to give you consolation. He wants to give you peace. Not that you'll live in eternal bliss here on earth. We're never going to get there.

But he wants to give you victory. I want to say, I have a prayer partner I pray with. And we looked over the last three years of our prayer request. Of the different ups and downs that we've gone through. Huge mountains. Huge hurdles. Huge things that we've gone through. Little things. Little prayers. Everything. And not that every prayer has been answered.

But one thing that we determined in this. In three and a half, four years. Almost four years now we're praying together. Is we haven't lost a battle yet. Literally, we have not lost a battle yet. Everything we've prayed for. It's been touch and go. It's been touch and go. But if you look, some of the biggest things. We have not lost a battle yet. We have seen victory after victory after victory.

And not every prayer has been answered. And not every prayer has been yes. Just because God says no. Woe doesn't mean that you lost. But God has shown over and over to be faithful. And it is exciting to look back. And we just spent a little bit of time. My prayer partner said, you know, let's just pray about. Let's just worship God for that. Let's stop.

And say for three and a half years we have moved forward. We don't want trash. And one of the things we pray about on a regular basis is that we can live as sons. And that we can live as sons and daughters of God. If you spend the rest of your life finding a faith identity. There's a lot of identity politics. And I came up with a thought this week.

What about a faith identity? What about having an identity that is not based on what I think about myself. But on what the scripture of God tells me about myself. And in the book of Revelations, I think it's 2.17, I believe. Where it says that God comes and he gives you a white stone when you get to heaven. And that white stone has your real name on it.

And only you and him will ever know that name. And you will spend eternity. This is my understanding. This last bit. You will spend eternity seeking and understanding who you are in him and who he is. In this beautiful adventure of expansive love. An eternal understanding as he speaks to you. One word from God will blow you out into 2 million years of thinking.

Heaven is not going to be boring. God can look and say, here, I want to show you the rainbow. And let me show you what this means and what each color means. Spend 5 million years on that. I'll be back. And you'll be like, oh, whoa, whoa. Whoa, whoa, whoa. 4 million. 5 million. Then boom. He'll come back and say, okay. Let me just tell you about what your name means.

Boom, boom. 6 million years. Whoa. You're just bam. There was a kid that had a dream. One time. And this is just a dream. But I think the dream makes good sense. It's not biblical. So I'm not saying it is. But he was in heaven. And he said there was these angels flying around the throne of God. And I've told this story once before here. And they were flying around.

And every time they got around to the face of God, one of the, you know, the angels would fly back and hit the wall and hit the ground. And then they'd stagger a little bit. And then they'd start flying. And they'd start flying again in a circle. And the kid goes, why? Why is, what happened? Why is that happening? And he says that God looked at them and said, every time they come to my faith, they realize something new they've never seen before.

And it blows them away. I thought, that's what heaven's going to be like. That's what, you know what? Our life can be like that now. Our life can be like that now. I said, life's hard. Okay? Life is hard. I lose a lot of sleep. Okay? I wake up in the middle of the night. Can't get back to sleep. Worry, fear. That's one of my things. Okay? Just like many of you.

Okay? Normal. I don't live this life of bliss around my house with fairy dust under my feet because I'm the pastor. But I got to say, when I commit to believing in God, there are these moments of consolation that blow me away. Where all of a sudden then I'll get three days of like, hey, this is pretty good. Life's pretty good. God is good. Or I see a victory or I see things that's happening.

And then boom, back into the battle. Back into the battle. How's this going to work out? God, you're going to have to show up. You know, freaking out. And he's like, settle down. Relax. Captain's here. You know? And then I get these moments of consolation. A word of scripture. Or somebody gives me a scripture that someone else had given me. And God begins to speak.

And I see him working. Or I experience him in a flower. Or in a breeze. Or whatever it is. I experience God. And it's so good. We can have it now. You want treasure? Or do you want trash? How did we get here? Verse 9. It's easier to be a slave than to be a king. Listen to them. But you must solemnly warn them. And tell them about the rights of the king will have to rule over them.

I want to say it's easier to be a slave than a king. Israel had always found being a slave easier than being a son. Always found it. It's so easy. Look, it's hard. Like, pick up those rocks. Move them. You know. Do this. Do that. Like, being a slave is hard. Right? It's just hard in a different way. Being a son with responsibility that is called to have your own dominion.

And to live in dominion with God and faith. And make decisions. And move to new levels. And beyond what you ever thought you could be. Living a supernatural life that takes you beyond the limits of what you could actually do in your own abilities. That's what God's called you to. You know that. To be more than, to be fully human is to be able to do more in the supernatural beyond what you can do within your own control.

Because you have emotional limits. You have physical limits. But when we collaborate with God, we move out of control to dominion. And dominion is where God starts going on and saying, hey, I'm going to give you ten times the results you should have had here. Because I'm just going to touch this. Because you've submitted to me. Now we're in the supernatural territory.

This is what God has called us to do. And it's hard to do that. Because we have to give up so much. So much of the trash we want. But just let me, you know, ask you in your own life. The things that you trade your treasure for trash. How hard are they to give up? It's really hard. Think about the things that are in your life that we hold on to. The sins, the attitudes, whatever they are.

They are so hard to give up. So you know what I mean. Because they keep you in bondage. But they also do this when you allow them to rule over you. You give them rights to your life. You give them rights. And one of God's habits is to allow you to reap the results of what you choose. This is what God does so often. The things that you allow to rule over you have rights over you.

And so this king, they wanted to be ruled over. But God said, he's going to take your daughters. He's going to take your donkeys. He's going to take all this stuff from you. So when we give over to addiction, when we give over to fear, when we give over to it. And basically, every time you give over to it, make sure you add a little sentence saying, Not only do I want to give myself over to you right now, I'm going to give you rights to my life.

Because there's a lie that thinks that we can give ourselves over to things, over to sins, and not reap any of the results or lose any of our rights. When you give yourself over to sin, you lose your rights. And if you want to know what that looks like, look at the blessings of the Bible. And God says, if you do this, you will get this blessing.

Now, all you have to do is read it backwards. Say, if you don't do this, then I would get the opposite. You can just read it yourself of what those things are. How many rights are you willing to give away? We all want freedom. Freedom, freedom, freedom, freedom, freedom, freedom. But then we give ourselves over to become slaves. Slaves of the flesh.

And we give our rights over. How free do you want to be? You know it's for freedom that Jesus set you free. You ever think about that verse? Like, is he just being redundant? No, he set you free so you could go out and have freedom. It's like, this is what that verse means. You're in a cell. He comes, he unlocks the cell, and he goes, I've set you free.

Now go have freedom. Let me tell you what so many of us are comfortable doing. Hey, I've set you free. Go have freedom. We walk out and we put chains on ourselves and we walk around. Now we're free. God set us free, but we're in bondage. And we're living in as a result, and we get ruled over, and our rights are lost because of that. And the final point, as we close.

Slaves get a slave's wage while a king receives a kingly reward. You know, I would ask you, do you remember a time when you received a kingly reward? For anything. A kingly reward of emotional consolation. You know, where you just felt like, you know, hey, it's not always like that, but there was a moment where God just touched you, and you felt a peace that you hadn't felt.

A new level of peace. I'm not saying you're euphoric, but it's a new level of peace that you haven't experienced before, and you're like, God, that's pretty good, and thanking God for that. Or when, you know, you, you know, a check comes that you weren't expecting, or some little blessing where you got to receive, you feel like God is blessing me.

This is a blessing. And to celebrate that blessing. My prayer partner is so good at celebrating blessings. When we pray, I'll say, hey, something good happened. Hey, let's stop. Let's stop. Stop. Let's pray. Celebrate. Let's celebrate. You know? On occasion, you know, I'm going to sing a song. Let's celebrate. Let's worship, you know? We'll go on a prayer walk, and he'll stop, and he'll say, you see this flower?

Let's see. We both do this, but he's better at it than I am. Look at that. Isn't that amazing? You hear the birds today? I mean, just celebrating the goodness of life. It is for freedom you've been set free. Quit being a slave. Quit being a slave. Jesus didn't set you free so you could be a slave. But we all want our bondage because it feels so good.

It's so comfortable. Bondage is really, really comfortable. You don't have to make any decisions for yourself. Verse 19, as we close. The people refused to listen to Samuel. No, they said. Now, that wasn't as good as Carol, but it's pretty good. No. We must have a king over us, over you. You know what the original command was? That man would have dominion over the creation.

That you would rule with God over. Not control within or not to have control over you. The original calling is that you would, in collaboration with God, have dominion over all. And it says here that, no, we want to be ruled over. So easy. We want a king over us. Rather than calling for repentance, fasting, and prayer, Israel wanted a no-cost solution.

The no-cost solution. The easy bargain. Earthly solutions give what? Earthly results. You want an earthly solution? God's going to give it to you. You want to fix that issue? Recently, I asked you, you know, when was the last time you experienced having a victory in your life that was purely spiritual? Over the last three weeks, I had a situation in my life, and I decided, are you going to do what you preached about or not?

And me and a couple staff members, we just prayed. And an elder. We just prayed. And we fasted. And we didn't do anything except what we were supposed to do. And that situation resolved itself. A completely spiritual victory. Have you given yourself the ability, have you even given God margin on occasion, just to have a spiritual victory? That you don't have to control it.

You don't have to gather up a bunch of people on the phone to try to get your little power base together. You don't have to do any of that. But you say, God, you know what? I'm going to let you do it. A completely spiritual victory. In 2 Kings, earthly solutions give earthly results. It's 2 Kings, final verse, as the worship team comes forward for communion.

2 Kings 10.32, In those days, the Lord began to reduce the size of Israel. Wow. Reduction of territory. Do you think that's what God wanted? But he gave them what they wanted. Less. It's a lot easier to rule less than it is what you're called to. It's a lot easier to live in a shadow of yourself than it is in the full expansion of who God's created you to be.

Do you want to be a king's child? Or do you want to be a slave? One's really easy. One gives eternal results. Let's stand for communion. Thank you.