JUN 16 2019 | Shame of Thrones: The Story of David & Bathsheba S1E1 | No Other Gods

Sea Change Church · Shame of Thrones: The Story of David & Bathsheba · "No Other Gods" Pastor Adam Stadtmiller · June 16, 2019
Automated transcript. Not reviewed for accuracy.

Good morning church, my name is Tony. Happy Father's Day to all your fathers out there. Happy Father's Day to all the mothers out there. Happy Father's Day to all the men out there. Somewhere out there, somebody's looking at you like a father. We just want to appreciate that. Okay, my name is Tony. I am Drea's ministry. As you guys know, Drea, I do a little bit of everything to help out around here. Today I am going to be reading 2 Samuel 7, 1 through 17.

Oh, thank you. Yeah, it's my birthday too. Yep. Yay. I get to go to SeaWorld for my birthday. Yeah, with the kids. So, yeah. Yeah, I'm taking the kids to SeaWorld, yeah. For my birthday. Yeah. Lots of fun. Yeah. Anyways, where's the wife at? Okay, she's not here. Okay, good. All right, 2 Samuel 7, 1 through 17. Serious. After the king was settled in his place and the Lord has given him rest from all his enemies around him, he said to Nathan the prophet, Here I am, living in a house of cedar, while the ark of God remains in a tent. Nathan replied to the king, Whatever you have in mind, go ahead and do it, for the Lord is with you.

But that night the word of the Lord came to Nathan, saying, Go and tell my servant David, this is what the Lord says. Are you the one to build me a house to dwell in? I have not dwelt in a house from the day I brought the Israelis up out of Egypt to this day. I have been moving from place to place with a tent as my dwelling. Wherever I have moved with all the Israelis, did I ever say to any of the rulers whom I commanded to shepherd my people, Israel, Why have you not built me a house of cedar?

Now then, tell me, my servant David. This is what the Lord Almighty said. I took you from the pasture, from tending the flock, and appointed you ruler over my people, Israel. I have been with you wherever you have gone, and I have cut off all your enemies from before you. Now I will make your name great, like the names of the greatest men on earth. And I will provide a place for my people, Israel, and will plant them, so that they can have a home for their own and no longer be disturbed.

Wicked people will not oppress them anymore, as they did not at the beginning, and have done ever since the time I appointed leaders over my people, Israel. I will also give you rest from all your enemies. The Lord declares to you that the Lord himself will establish a house for you. When your days are over, and you rest with your ancestors, I will raise up your offspring to succeed you, your own flesh and blood, and I will establish his kingdom.

He is the one who will build a house for my name, and I will establish the throne of his kingdom forever. I will be his father, and he will be my son. When he does wrong, I will punish him with a rod wielded by men, and floggings inflicted by human hands. But my love will never be taken away for him, as I took it away from Saul, whom I removed from before you. Your house and your kingdom will endure forever before me.

Your throne will be established forever. For Nathan reported to David all the words of this entire revelation. This is the word of the Lord. Tony, awesome. Tony now works for Delta as a mechanic. I flew Delta this week, so I felt a lot safer. Stock is through the roof since you started working there right here. So amazing. If you're looking for an option to buy, that's the one, because Tony works there now. Hey, good to have you.

We are back from Israel. Had a great time. And Shalom from the Holy Land. Had an amazing time. And we will be going, I believe, back again next year. And if you want to join us, we're going to take 20 to 30 from this church. That's what we're going to do. And head back in 2020. We just had a phenomenal time. We visited one of our partners over there that we support, a local congregation in Jerusalem. And we had a service with them.

And then we went and did about 10 days on the bus going around and seeing different stuff. And it was absolutely amazing. Literally, one of my favorite parts was going, we went near the Syrian border up in the Golan Heights. You could actually see the bombs going off and hear the percussion in the background. And Miss Kim and I took some time and just prayed over Syria. We prayed over the children of Syria because she's a children's minister here.

And it was just, man, just laying eyes on that land and realizing how we're so blessed here. It's like ridiculous. You know, I got a lot of people screaming about how horrible this place is. This place is really good. We're blessed beyond. And so, but it was a phenomenal time. Love to have you come next year. Think about it if you would as we do that. So let me just pray for this sermon and we'll get into it. Lord Jesus, I pray you just bless this sermon, God, as we come together now to hear your word.

Speak, God, through the righteousness of your word and the blessing that comes with hearing it and receiving it in Jesus' name. Amen. We are moving into another series as we continue following the life of David. We've been following the life of David for about two years now and we do it episodically. We have obviously tried to mimic some of the things that are happening in culture. And one of the reasons we do it, you know, I just, by the way, I can't believe shame of thrones.

I kind of liked it. I thought that was good. Jeff did a great job with the throne because David, in this series, you're going to see God's given him rest on all sides. And then he makes some decisions to throw it all away. And God's grace protects him and keeps him. And we're going to see that. But one of the reasons that we've been presenting our sermon series the way we are is the content is obviously for believers and those that are seeking to go deeper with Christ.

But what we're trying to do is mimic some of the things in culture that do work. And one of those things are people listen and they binge listen to different things. So I want to give you a tool that when this series is over, we package them together online in our podcast. And you can just send the whole series to somebody. They can go through the entire life of David. We're almost done now going through this. But it really is a tool.

The next one's going to be called Son of Anarchy, which is about his, I know, right? Which is about his son Absalom and how he runs from Absalom. And that was all a result of what happened with the incident with David and Bathsheba. Now, as we're moving into this series, one of the things that I really want to do, because we really want to strive to be a very practical church. I'm not trying to be the biggest church in the world or have the best of this or that.

But what I do want is people to be able to come here and when they leave, be able to establish the house that God has given them. Be able to establish their life with roots in a very practical way. So that on Wednesday, you're still resourcing. On Friday, you're still resourcing the things that you got as we looked at God's word. And one of the things that this entire, probably that this message is going to be about or this sermon series is about how to establish a home.

How do you establish a life? How do you establish a life that is one of those legacy lives? And we all know people that had those lives, right? You know the people that when you go to the funeral, people aren't getting up and lying about them. And you know, when you're at that funeral as well, I've been to enough where they say a lot of things and they say, because they know they should say those things. But then you go to a different type of memorial and they talk about people that really made a difference.

You know who they are. And they were, they left a legacy. David would leave a legacy. He was a, he was a broken man. He had a lot of issues. We'll talk about that. But he would leave a legacy because he majored on the majors. God gave him grace in a lot of areas when he made a lot of mistakes, but he majored on the things that mattered most. And that was being a man that would have no other gods before him other than, than Yahweh and a man who was after God's own heart.

We'll talk about that in just a second. But those are the two things that he was completely after God's own heart. And God said he would, he would establish a throne with a man who was after his own heart. And actually the, the line of David is remembered for eternity, not because of David, but because Jesus comes through the line of David. And so when David's throne or house is established for eternity, it's not that David's going to be sitting next to God and Jesus.

And he's like a fourth member of the Trinity. You know, now it's a quadrinity. It isn't going to be that it's because that God honored his line by having Jesus come through his family line. But basically because he got two things, right? And the first was that he had no other gods, that there was one way for David and he never bowed the knee. Now it was interesting. When we were in Israel, we went to the city of David, actually stood on the place where he would have seen Bathsheba stood right there and looked down at the city of the old city of David.

Excuse me, the city of David. It's outside of the walls now where the temple Mount is. It's not very far. It's probably from here to La Jolla elementary and maybe halfway back. Maybe about as far as it is, or maybe from here to the ocean and halfway back as how big it is to the end of the wall. Let me just say it wouldn't have been hard to see Bathsheba, even if she was far on far out. It wouldn't have been hard. I actually saw people on their roofs on the other side of the Kidron Valley, which is right at the foot of there that goes to the Mount of Olives.

And I saw people cleaning further away than David would have been. And you could easily see them there up on the roof. Well, David, the one thing that he got right, and what was so interesting as we went to the city of David, is that he had no other gods. Now, this was interesting. They had these pictures of these false idols that we saw. They said that the final group of Israelites that lived in those homes before the entire place was decimated.

They excavated every home in the city of David. This is long after David was gone. And they did not find one house that did not have a household idol in it. Not one. In the entire city. It makes sense why God, when he says, I want no gods before me, said, you know, basically decimated that city. And Israel paid the consequences for it over and over again. You know, when Jesus said that the temple will be destroyed and not one stone will be left on another, we learned on our tour that literally there was not one stone from the original temple wall, the original temple that was left on top of each other.

The Romans made sure that every single stone was knocked off. There was not one stone. Exactly what Jesus had said. Well, God had built a wall around David's life because David had lived a righteous struggle. David, for 23 years, had fought. He had had struggle against his family, against oppressive kings, against Saul. And all through this, he fought the struggle righteously. But now David had been settled into his palace and he would fight an enemy that was probably greater than any he had fought before.

And it was himself. It was his own desires. It was learning how to live in the blessing. And I do believe that living in the blessing presents a completely different set of challenges and temptations. But I actually think it's more difficult than living in the struggle. I read an article this week as I was doing some study that the lowest, and I checked this out multiple times. I'm sorry I didn't leave the footnote on there for you.

I did multiple sources. That the lowest recorded number of suicides and lowest depression and anxiety is actually in the inner city. Where the struggle is the greatest, you have the least amount of people taking their own lives. Because they're in the midst of a struggle. And usually when you're in the struggle and when you're on the run, you have a purpose. You don't have the luxury of modernity to sit and think about yourself as much.

The further you get out into the suburbs, the further you go, the higher these rates climb. And one of the points of the article was that depression and anxiety and some of these things are a luxury that comes with modernity, that comes with freedom of living in a blessing. Because you have more. David finally, God had put walls around him and had protected him so many times. Now David was living in the protection. And it was 12 years now, 12 years since God had established him.

And 12 years later, from this very moment, from this being written right here, within 12 years, David would break three of the Ten Commandments. There's only ten commandments. David broke three of them in a weekend. All three. Why did God let him still stand? Why did God let this man who was supposedly after his own heart still stand? We'll look at that as we go through this. But one of the things we're going to look at mostly, and what I think I really want to talk about, and we're going to talk about, obviously, lust and all these different things that happened, and David in power.

And we're going to look at this David and Bathsheba incident that is super important because it sets a trajectory of his line on a different path. It says, because of this instance, that the sword would never leave his household. And I have to say that many of us understand that we feast upon the buffet of our own, of consequences of our own decisions. That maybe you've done that. You look at these decisions, and all decisions have consequences.

Now, here's the deal. We're after the cross now. This is before the cross. If you've made a mistake, just don't think because God says to David later in this series that you will always have this sword in your lineage. It means that because of your sins, you are going to have that multiple generations in your family. The cross has settled that. It says that God gives peace to a thousand generations, to those that love him.

And so we can turn at any point. This is a story of reconciliation. This is a story of sin and grace and God's love when you mess up. We're going to talk about all of that and how to get back on track. But this first one talks about how God wants to establish a house. How do you establish a house and how do you live in settled peace? We look through. It says David's house has been established. And how does one establish a house?

We'll talk about that. The story continues. For three decades, the notes say, God has used the struggle to fashion a king after his own heart. Now David's kingdom was settled and he had rest on all sides. Pause there for a moment. What would that look like? I mean, most of us just want rest for the rest of the weekend. You know what I'm saying? Like what would it look like to have a life where you had long seasons of rest on all side?

That you had a thing that talks about here of settled rest. It's interesting that we live in a culture that talks about wanting peace a lot, but does everything in its power not to secure it. Peace is very difficult to live in and maintain. And we see here that it is a blessing of God to give this peace and that God has called David through the struggle, through the struggle. He has fashioned him in of a righteous struggle that the result of a righteous struggle was to have settled peace, settled, settled peace.

And God had given it to him on all sides. Now David's kingdom was settled and it rest on all sides. And David would face the greatest challenge of his life, living in the blessing. Within 12 years from this moment, David would break three of the 10 commandments. And yoke his family line to a generational curse of violence. And we see that with his son Absalom. We see it with the rape of his daughter Tamar by his other son Abnon.

Over and over again, all these things happen because of this. God didn't cause those things to happen. But God did allow his protection to be taken away so David could understand the consequences of his sin. A lot of times we have consequences for our sins and we blame God. You know, God has just sometimes said, I'm going to let you experience the consequences of your own decisions. And God doesn't have a problem doing that.

That's what I found out. God allowed me to just feast on all the decisions until I was sick and tired of being sick and tired. The problem was it just took me too long to get sick and tired of being sick and tired because I was really good at sin management. I don't know about you, but here's something about sin management. You ain't the one managing sin. That's the lie of it. It is impossible to manage sin. Sin is managing you.

It is the one that is managing you. And the thing about that we find with David, especially with the first two commandments that we'll talk about is he really drew a line in the sand, especially in the midst of struggle that he would have no unclean thing before him. He was just a man of righteousness. And it was those decisions, the decisions of righteous struggle that created this wall of protection. It took 20 something years to get to it.

Like we don't serve a microwave God on occasion, right? You get the letter in the mail, the phone call, something amazing happens. All your fortunes are changed. It's awesome. You have that moment. Now, I haven't found that that to be the way God works. God, I mean, he's the God of eternity. He doesn't mind taking 20 years to do something in your life. You know what I'm saying? He'll just fashion it over and over, but it's never quite quick enough for us.

Here's the question though. If David broke three of the 10 commandments, then why did God establish his throne of kingdom for all time? Like I said, David honored the greatest commandment. He would have no other gods before God. Now, this is a big deal for God. I got to say, God can deal with a lot of your stuff. He, I don't know about you. I found him to be very patient. I should have been snuffed out a long time ago.

You know what I'm saying? Like I just, God should just be licking his fingers, you know, for the whips, you know, but we find that God is so patient. There's two commandments that are greater than the other eight. Now, people would ask, well, aren't all the commandments the same? No, the commandments are not all the same. Just like all sin is not the same. It's all sin. There are sins. The scripture says that don't lead to death.

There are sins that God says are an abomination. There are sins. There's a different level. It's all sin. It all separates you from God. The same thing is true with the commandments. The, the bottom eight commandments, we find that God, he, you know, even on the third one, don't take, you know, don't take God's name in vain. He seems to have a lot of patience with the bottom eight, but the top two, he even had patience with those because he would allow the Kings to have these high places and these altars, but the top two really matter to him.

The number one matters a lot. And we know that there's a hierarchy because the Pharisees remember come to Jesus. I think it's in Matthew 11. I could be wrong. And they say, what is what? What do they ask him? What's the greatest commandment? And Jesus doesn't say, no, all commandments are the same. There's no, you know, difference between the commandments. He doesn't say that. He says, I'll tell you what the greatest commandment is.

He says, and he gives them two actually, but he says, love the Lord, your God with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength, which is basically the first commandment. And he says, then he kind of adds one and love your neighbor as yourself. On this, what? All the other commandments hang, which means if you get these two right, okay, love God, number one, no other gods before me. We're not, you're not mixing in a little bit of, uh, you know, of this God and all things lead to heaven.

Cause that's one of the major stumbling blocks of Christianity. That's why you get the, you know, it's bigoted and, and, uh, you know, all these different things that you're hearing. It's been like that for, you know, for since Jesus was around, because Jesus says, I am the way, the truth and the life. There's no other way under the father, but through me. It is a monotheistic religion. We believe one God. He says that, and then loving other people.

And by the way, you can't just do number two, love other people and get to heaven. Jesus says you have to have both of those, those two, everything else will deal with it later. I mean, that's kind of how, I mean, look, the Bible didn't say we'll deal with it later, but if you're going to look at the scripture, these commandments, everything hangs on those two. I got to say, David got the first one right all the time.

He never bowed the knee. If you look at the King, you read first and second Kings, you read through, look at his son, Solomon, Solomon doesn't now Solomon marries foreign wives as well. His kingdom is established as well, which is so interesting. If you read the story of Solomon, it basically says, it says it, I don't know the exact verse, but it'll say, um, and Solomon had rest on all sides and God established his kingdom.

And then the next verse says, and he went and took a foreign wife from the Egyptians. Like the very next verse, like immediately, as soon as he was established, he messed it up. One of the ways in which David's kingdom was established is David never bowed his knee. And it says that he did, God said that he didn't remove Solomon because of David, because of that, because he was a man after God's own heart. So that's the first thing.

And the first question to you is when it comes to God, have you really spent time thinking about the God? There's no other way in worshiping the name of Jesus above all names. We sang that song today. I got to say, I spent some time in Israel just worshiping God as the only one God. Uh, and it was amazing and how it kind of put me on track. The second thing we see is this says that David was a man after what? So this is a huge distinction.

There's a lot of people that follow God. I think it's a much narrower road to try to find the heart of God. And I think there's been huge, long, prolonged seasons in my life where I've followed God, but I've not sought for the heart of God. It's a much more difficult journey and it requires a lot more. However, the forgiveness it takes to live a life that is following after the heart of God is much higher than just being a person that follows God.

Today we hear a lot of God following either. God doesn't exist or I follow God or I'm spiritual. But to say that I'm, I'm going after the very heart of God, the beating heart of God is a different destination. Imagine if you, and you're probably looking like me, you want to follow God, but imagine if all of a sudden on the roadmap of your life, all of a sudden you took the final part that says God and you move the destination to God's heart.

How would that change your life? I got to say there's so much more nuance in the heart of God than just being a person that follows God. Let's go to verse one. As we look at this, we see after the King was what settled, settled in his place, in his palace, excuse me. And the Lord had given him rest on all sides from all of his enemies. I want to look at this core idea of settled rest because I think it's something, it is a destination that God wants to give people who follow him.

And I believe that God wants to give us all seasons of settled rest. If you look at this passage, there are nine times where the scripture points to as part of this blessing, you've done all these things and now you will have settled rest. You will have a prolonged season of financial rest in the kingdom. You will have a prolonged season of no enemies, of your family relationships having settled rest. Just imagine what it would look like if you moved into multiple years of settled rest.

And we'll talk a moment because life does happen and things go wrong. But I believe that if we follow God, we make him number one and we follow those two commandments that he will eventually be leading us to a place of settled rest. What I have found is most people don't want settled rest. It's not exciting. I have to say it's settled. There's no, it doesn't give it like you don't sell monster energy drinks with settled rest.

You know what I'm saying? Like it's just not sexy. It's just not fun. You don't want to like it's, there's no, there's no, ah, it doesn't feel like there's any passion to it. But what is so interesting is that this is the thing that God, when you're, when the blessing of God is on your life, you have seasons of settled rest. I believe one of the marks of a person who truly follows God is that they are settled. That you see a settling in their life.

They're not walking around trying to fix everybody's problems all the time. They're not always under siege or creating their own chaos or being a crazy maker. I was so good at crazy making. One of the things that you see with David is David until the, this point, he never made his own crazy. He had to deal with a lot of crazy, but he never made his own crazy. That's one of the things I tell the staff all the time. We love being in the highs and lows of people's life and helping people clean up messes.

But what, you know, we are in the business of the spiritual mess. But what I always tell the staff is just don't make your own mess. So many people have lost their families, have lost everything because they make their own messes because they can't live in a place of settled rest. What does that look like? Let's look at nine different times in this scripture. Verse one, it says after, and I love the conjunctions in scripture after.

What does that after symbolize? That after symbolizes the story of David and Goliath, of running from Saul, of hiding in the cave, of Adullam. You know, all, I was in that desert. Of all those different places that he went, that after, after. I gotta say, God, for many of you, there is an after ahead in your life. That God would say to you, if you want to bow the knee to me and make me number one, and get that, we'll work on these other eight commandments and these other things in my life.

I want to give you settled rest after. And there was a point, imagine, imagine how good that after felt for David. Imagine he's there and he's just like, geez, Goliath isn't trying to kill me. You know, the Philistines aren't up on me. I'm not running from somebody. It's done. It is finished. He could have had that the rest of his life. But 12 years later, it wasn't enough. After. After these things, it says he was settled.

Circle settled. And then you go on. It says he had given him rest. If you go down to verse 10, it says, so that my people can have a home. That's a place of rest. A place to be, it should be. And they will no longer be disturbed. We're talking about living your life in a way that gives you peace on all sides. That that is a, that is a building and a blessing of God. If you go to verse 11, you'll have rest from all your enemies.

Otherwise, the Lord declares to you himself that he will what? Establish. That your name will be established. Your house will be established. We want to live lives. Look, I got to tell you. I made a decision 20 years ago that I wanted to have a house that was established and was not chaotic. My mom broke the cycle of, I've mentioned this many times, of addiction and alcoholism. And from that point on, our house started, it took years, a couple decades.

But our house started turning the corner. Her house started turning the corner. To the point where, like, in our house with my kids, we just don't have that chaos we had. I was with a friend. I was, I played basketball with a girl. She's from Chicago, the inner city. And she's got stories of being shot at and all these things. Her name's Ebby. She's cool. And I was sitting there, lacing up my shoes one day. And she's sitting there, and she's got her nose in a book before the game.

She's reading Think and Grow Rich by Napoleon Hill. I was like, that's one of my dad's favorite books. So I said to her, I said, why are you reading that book? She goes, because I want to break the curse of generational poverty in my life. And I said, whoa, whoa. I didn't expect that answer. I thought, man, I love a fighter. I love somebody that wants to do that. She says, you know, I've been in the inner city. I'm saving up.

She said she's got so much money saved. She wants to buy a house. She wants to get real estate. And she goes, I just don't want to live like this. And I don't want my community to live like this. She says, I live in a community that has no fathers. She says, I live in a community that's stuck on government welfare. And she goes, I want to get out. I don't want a hand-me-out. I want to get out. And I thought, goodness gracious.

If we can just have that same type of attitude. Invited her and her brother over this summer. They're going to come down. She also works for Delta, Tony, on the runway. I looked for her up there in LAX. We invited her down because I want to help her on that journey. I want to help her and her brother on that journey. To bring an established house. If you're going to have an established house, it's going to take a fervent commitment.

A desperate commitment to having no other gods. And not creating your own messes. And being to live a life of righteousness. The question is, do you want it? Because it might take a long time to get there. But the question is, do you want it? He was settled on all sides. You'll see it was established. In verse 15, it uses the word established. I think the word established is used three or four times in this. Over and over again in this passage.

After all these things, God brought rest and he established him. Let's say you can live a life. I believe that this is one of the blessings. Let me just say a caveat to this. Is that there are seasons where stuff happens. Bad things happen to good people. I have a friend. He has a son. And he has an incredible disability. And it's been 25 years of changing diapers on his son. And I mean, you don't see settled rest in that, right?

Life does have twists and turns. And the Bible is not offering a utopian. Heaven is not here on earth at the moment. We are going to have struggles. I had another friend. We had a friend who they got in a car accident and their 13-year-old son died. Another friend of mine I heard last night has brain cancer. Stuff happens. But in the midst of that, I've even met people in the midst of that that find a place of settled rest in the midst of that.

Because there are some verses in the Bible talking about that God, all things will work together for those that love God and are called according to his purpose. And God has a purpose and a place for you. And so we see this on this caveat. Settled rest is one of the core, as you'll see in your notes. Biblical promises and blessings. But it's little valued of our culture. Seasons of rest are an attribute, I wrote this this morning, of the godly home.

God is a God of order and not of chaos. And so I guess the first thing that I wanted to say was a very practical tool. Just that you can make an assessment. Do I feel, have I ever had a season of rest or have you always been on the run? I mean, if you're, look, if you're my age, if you're 49, if you're 52, 36, and you've always been on the run, it might be time to change something. I mean, if you can't look back and say, I've had seasons, three months, six months, a year, two years.

I mean, seasons of settled rest ever. It might be the way you're playing the game. It might be the way, it might have to go to your door where you say, I need to take some responsibility for myself. Because I don't want this anymore. And like my friend, Abby, you say to yourself, I'm sick of this whatever. For her, it was generational poverty. And before we play a game, her nose in a book saying, I'm going to make something of myself.

And I'm going to do something different. I said, do you want that? David did want it. The problem is, is when he got it, he couldn't maintain it. That's one of my biggest fears. I feel like we've worked for, since 19, my mom got sober in 79. And I think we're still continuing that story. So it's been 40 years, I think. 40 years now. And I feel like in the last two years, we kind of hit the after, if that makes sense.

Kind of hit that place. But there's an after going ahead. One of the things I was thinking about in Israel a lot, not that I don't have a lot of fear, but one of the things I would hate to have happen is ever do anything where I can't preach the gospel anymore. I couldn't wait to get back to preach the gospel. I love the Bible. And I love people consuming the Bible and listening and feeling like, that changed my life.

And it can be changed. Can you live in the blessing? This is what we're going to find out from David. David, quickly, as you turn your notes over, and we're coming in for a landing. How did we get here? I want to say David excelled at righteous struggle. I already talked about the second one. He'd have no other gods. We're going to spend a little bit of time on the righteous struggle. He struggled against Saul. He struggled against ungodly kings.

Entire nations wanted to kill David. You might have had a bad day at work. You ever had a nation after you? Like straight up chasing you around the desert? Nations wanted to kill David. Satan himself, you know, wanted to tempt and destroy David. I mean, he was just, he was, he was so broken. He was such a, imagine, he was rejected by his entire family. Have you been rejected by your family? Complete rejection of his family.

They scorned him. They put him out in the field. They didn't even bring him when it was time to find out who the, you know, when Samuel came and said, one of your sons is going to be the king. Scorned by his family. Then brought into the household of Saul, treated like a son by Saul. Until God began to bless David and Saul became jealous. And then he was rejected again. I think Saul was like a father figure to him at first.

Then he was rejected again by him. Rejected by these nations. He ends up being rejected by his own son. Over and over again. Rejected. Scorned. Does it sound like anybody else? Jesus. The archetype of Jesus. We see over and over again that David, though, in this struggle was made by the struggle. I got to tell you. Struggle is going to make you. Struggle is going to break you. And the way you struggle says a lot about who you are as a person.

I got to say. I point. I won't. There's a lot of people in here who have done some righteous struggle. I don't care about celebrity. Literally. There's not a. Maybe you, Jackman. I think he's kind of cool. I kind of want to be you, Jackman. Wolverine. But you can sing. That's a good mix. But just being able to have righteous struggle. I've seen so many. You know what I'm impressed by? People that can struggle righteously.

You know what we tend to do when there's struggle? We go back to our stuff. Our secondary thing. We have our plan B. I say. When there's struggle come, what's the quickest thing you go to? What's your first trigger? What do you immediately jump to? This is what David did. This is what Moses did. When they had an issue, on their knees. They'd go to the house of God over and over again. That takes training. That takes effort.

That takes courage. It takes courage not to go to the bottle. Why did I go to the bottle? Why did I go to meth? Why did I go to all those things? Because I didn't want to face. And so I had, you know, what do they say? You know, where it's postponed adolescence. I remember when I was 22 years old, I was still an adolescent. Still acting like a teenager. 45-year-olds that act like teenagers now. Because they never face their stuff.

David had righteous struggle. And when you have struggle, everyone deals with struggle one way or another. Right? You can deal with it righteously, and it'll make you. Or you can deal with it unrighteously, it's going to break you. Like I said, you think you can manage sin, but you can't. David found that out little by little, 12 years later. Scripture promises that righteous struggle will always lead to victory. I read Romans 8, 28.

But this other one in Romans 5 is an amazing verse. When it talks about the struggle, it says, not only so, but we also glory in our sufferings. Wow. We glory in our sufferings. So powerful. Because we know that suffering produces perseverance. Perseverance, character. And proven character is what it should say. Hope. And hope does not disappoint or put to shame. Hope. I want to say, if you are in the struggle, and you are struggling righteously, let me tell you what your destination is.

It's hope. Righteous struggle leads to hope. Unrighteous struggle leads to death. Guaranteed. There's only two paths of struggle. There's righteous struggle and unrighteous struggle. And I would say, everyone's going to have to have struggle. You have to choose how you want to do it. Finally, though, coming in for a landing, I would say that David drew a line in the sand when it came to struggle. And I want to ask you, how's your struggle going?

How's your struggle? How is it going? And what do you go to? The last thing here now is, and then we're done, is, I thought it was interesting. If you look at the first two commandments, have you ever thought that the second commandment doesn't need to exist? Because the first commandment says, you shall what? Have no other gods before me. The second commandment says, you shall what? Make no graven image of me. Well, if you have no other gods before him, why do you need the second commandment?

Does that make sense? Really interesting. I thought about this a lot. And I want to make sure I don't mess people up, because a couple people came to me after the service. I want to make sure that I say it well and clear. The first commandment has to do with your heart's allegiance. Okay? It has to do with saying there is no other gods. I'm not going to mix in a little bit of this theology, a little bit of that religion.

Right now, we kind of have this, like, you kind of just, you ask people. I love asking. When I have these conversations with people, I tend up, instead of answering all the questions, as Christians, I think we get better at asking questions. Like, we're always answering all the questions. I just ask questions. Like, oh, so how does that work? Well, doesn't that contradict that? And what? So, you know, all these different things.

As we see that, one second, sorry. Oh, as we look at the commandments, that we see that the first commandment is about having no other gods. The second commandment is about safety blankets. And this is what I mean. Because one of the things that they would do is, when you think about creating idols, we found out on our trip, they didn't just make idols of other gods. They made idols of the real God. They made idols of Yahweh.

I had never known that before. So what they would do is say, you know what, I'm kind of not sure if God's going to show up. So I need this little thing that makes me feel better. I need this little talisman. I need this little thing that I can hold on to that makes me feel like everything's going to be all right. So that is why there is a second commandment. Now that ended up leading to all these other idols. The reason I say this is because you will often, am I done?

Is that a hint? I love it. I'm at 33 minutes. I got two more minutes. I'm done. Gotcha. I got a timer. I have no other phones before me. A lot of times we've heard it say that, hey, if you have alcohol in your life, it's an idol. And if you have lust in your life, it's an idol. And I just want to say that this is just to be biblically accurate. It was something that was interesting to me. There is nowhere in scripture that I can find where it equates sins of the flesh with being an idol.

There is nowhere where it says, if you have lust, it is an idol. Now we preach that all the time. You've probably heard that said, that you want to get rid of, TV is an idol. Eating is an idol. This is an idol. It's actually, I understand the metaphor. And I think there's a lot to be said that we have things that we go to that are comforting to us instead of going to God. Because God isn't always super comforting when you show up.

Sometimes I show up and I don't feel anything. But I knew that when I drank, I always felt something. I mean, it always worked. You know, it's sometimes too good. You know what I'm saying? So like, it always worked. I just want to say that if you're going to look biblically, the Bible doesn't say that these other sins of the flesh should be called idols. It actually says enough about drunkenness that you don't need to equate it with the second commandment.

It says enough about it. It says enough about lust on its own situation. This doesn't mean that if anybody says, uses the idol thing, I just wanted you to know biblically as we're looking at the word, I just wanted to teach you that. I didn't see anywhere that is. But what is the lesson we can learn? What's your go-to? I guess that's just the question. Let's not call it an idol because the Bible doesn't call it an idol.

But what's your go-to? I say we all have a go-to. I have been trying desperately for six months, a year now, to have no other go-tos. You know how hard it is? You know how incredibly hard it is not to have a go-to? Everybody has a go-to. Every one of them. I mean, I'd be very surprised if, I mean, maybe Mother Teresa is in the crowd today, but I mean, if one of us, it is so hard. I gotta say, you know, try to live a life with no go-tos other than God and see what happens.

If we can do that, and it's so hard, it takes so much courage, it takes so much self-control, you will begin to build, brick by brick, a life that is established in the righteousness of God. Amen? Let's stand if we would. Amen. Amen. Amen.