Episode Transcript
[00:00:06] Heavenly Father, all praise and glory and honor to you. We praise and bless your name, thankful that we can share a part of it, belong to it, that you have called us your bride, you have given us a new name, you have made us a part of your household. How thankful we are to be Christians.
[00:00:29] Lord, we ask that you would bless us as we meditate on the wonders of your grace, the powers of your mighty hand, and the judgments that you bring on sin.
[00:00:42] First, Lord, in the cross, and then finally in the judgment when Christ returns. We ask, O Lord, that in all these things your name would be glorified and that we would be saved from the righteous wrath that we do deserve, but called into your loving arms.
[00:01:01] We pray for those who do not yet know you, who have not yet experienced your grace, who do not yet have this hope of eternal life. We ask, Lord, that you would open their minds and hearts that they might see and believe in the one true God. We pray these things in Jesus name.
[00:01:21] Amen.
[00:01:25] Let's remain standing and turn to 1 Samuel, chapter 30. 1st Samuel 30.
[00:01:33] I'll be reading verses 1 through 20.
[00:01:44] I'll be preaching on this passage this morning.
[00:01:51] As you listen, whether you've heard this many times or it's your first time, do what you can to pay attention to the details to follow, to follow along, as the Holy Spirit has written this for your benefit and there's much good here.
[00:02:12] So. First Samuel, chapter 30.
[00:02:17] Now, when David and his men came to Ziklag on the third day, the Amalekites had made a raid against the Negeb and against Ziklag.
[00:02:25] They had overcome Ziklag and burned it with fire and taken captive the women and all who were in it, both small and great.
[00:02:33] They killed no one, but carried them off and went their way.
[00:02:37] And when David and his men came to the city, they found it burned with fire and their wives and sons and daughters taken captive. Then David and the people who were with him raised their voices and wept until they had no more strength to weep.
[00:02:52] David's two wives also had been taken captive. Oninoam of Jezreel and Abigail, the widow of Nabal of Carmel.
[00:03:00] And David was greatly distressed, for the people spoke of stoning him, because all the people were bitter in soul, each for his sons and his daughters.
[00:03:10] But David strengthened himself in the Lord, his God.
[00:03:15] Then David said to Abiathar the priest, the son of Ahimelech, bring me the ephod.
[00:03:21] So Abiathar brought the ephod to David. And David inquired of the Lord, shall I pursue after this ban? Shall I overtake them?
[00:03:30] He answered him, pursue, for you shall surely overtake and shall surely rescue.
[00:03:36] So David set out and the 600 men who were with him. And they came to the brook of Bassora where those who were left stayed behind.
[00:03:45] But David pursued. He and 400 men, 200 stayed behind who were too exhausted to cross the brook. Besor.
[00:03:54] They found an Egyptian in the open country and brought him to David. And they gave him bread and he ate. They gave him water to drink, and they gave him a piece of cake of figs and two clusters of raisins.
[00:04:06] And when he had eaten, his spirit revived, for he had not eaten bread or drunk water for three days and three nights.
[00:04:14] And David said to him, to whom do you belong? Where are you from?
[00:04:19] He said, I'm a young man of Egypt, servant to an Amalekite. And my master left me behind because I fell sick. Three days ago.
[00:04:28] We had made a reb against the Negeb of the Cherethites and against that which belongs to Judah and against the Negeb of Caleb. And we burned Ziklag with fire.
[00:04:37] And David said to him, will you take me down to this band? And he said, swear to me by God that you will not kill me or deliver me into the hands of my master and I will take you down to this band.
[00:04:49] And when they had taken him down, behold, they were spread abroad over all the land, eating and drinking and dancing because of all the great spoil they had taken from the land of the Philistines and from the land of Judah. And David struck them down from twilight until the evening of the next day. And not a man of them escaped, except 400 young men who mounted camels and fled.
[00:05:14] David recovered all that the Amalekites had taken, and David rescued his two wives.
[00:05:19] Nothing was missing, whether small or great, sons or daughters, spoil or anything that they had taken.
[00:05:25] David brought back all. David also captured all the flocks and the herds and the people drove the livestock before him and said, this is David's spoil.
[00:05:36] May God bless his word to us. Please be seated.
[00:05:57] So what I'd like to do this morning is begin with some background for this story and then work through it, making sure we understand it and then draw some lessons from it this morning.
[00:06:11] There are some really wonderful things here, important reminders of who God is and the kinds of things that he does, particularly how he uses the attacks of the enemies of God to strengthen his people and to do his mighty works.
[00:06:32] This is a pattern we'll See here and in other scriptures this morning.
[00:06:38] So first, some background. If you haven't been with us, or if this is a new passage for you, it's important to remember some of the beginning things that are here in chapter 30.
[00:06:49] It says now, when David and his men came to Ziklag on the third day, the Amalekites had made a raid against the Negeb and against Ziklag.
[00:06:58] Do you remember? Try to remember from last week, where was David previously?
[00:07:04] Well, you remember that the Philistines had taken David. One king of the Philistines had taken David out to battle with. With him.
[00:07:13] So it's helpful. Maybe I should start here.
[00:07:15] Three groups of people. If you're thinking two, you're going to be endlessly confused. Three, there's three groups of people. You have Israel, you have Judah, or, sorry, Israel, you have the Philistines, and then you have the Amalekites. Three groups of people, the Israelites, the Amalekites and the Philistines.
[00:07:39] David had left Israel, left Judah and gone into Philistia, where he's been living with the Philistines for over a year.
[00:07:50] Not a good move. And we've talked about that in previous, as we've looked at previous passages. He's afraid. He's afraid of being killed by Saul. He's afraid of what's happening. He doesn't know what to do. And we've seen over the past few chapters, David's faith slipping, David's faith struggling.
[00:08:09] David not doing the things that he does here, inquiring of the Lord, seeking the Lord, obeying the Lord. Instead, we see him rationalizing, we see him afraid. We see him making excuses, walking into these gray areas and sometimes straight up sinful areas.
[00:08:30] He is in Philistia now with his people under persecution of Saul, trying to figure out what to do, but not trusting the Lord.
[00:08:39] Then what happens? One of these Philistine lords, out of five lords, takes David and says, we're going to go into battle to attack. Guess who?
[00:08:48] Israel.
[00:08:50] David's in a hard position. What's he going to do? Is he going to attack Israel or is he going to create conflict with the people he's trying to live with?
[00:09:01] Well, as we talked about last time, the Lord saves him out of this predicament by using the Philistines.
[00:09:09] What happened was one of the Philistines or the Philistines, as they're serving the troops, they look out, they see David and they say, what are Hebrews doing with us is we're going to go fight Israel.
[00:09:20] Get him out of here, they say to Achish, and send him back. And Achish does.
[00:09:26] So David doesn't have to go fight. David doesn't have conflict with King Achish, and he's heading back to Ziklag, one of these Philistine cities.
[00:09:39] Meanwhile, other things have been happening while we've been focusing and David's been focusing on these relationships with the Philistines and Israel and all this stuff. Another group of people, the Amalekites, one of the groups David had made a raid against earlier, has been making raids against Philistia and against Israel. This third group, and they've been very successful. They've been taking spoils. They've been taking. And then when they came to Ziklag, they took all the wives, all the children, and a whole bunch of property.
[00:10:16] On top of all that, they burned the city.
[00:10:21] So imagine this.
[00:10:24] Imagine you are in David's army. You're one of these men who are fighting alongside with him.
[00:10:32] You've been protecting him. You've been with him. You are part of his loyal company, watching out for Saul, running from Saul.
[00:10:42] David wants to go into Philistia. Maybe a part of you goes, really, should we? But you go. And now all of a sudden, you find yourself marching out with the armies of your enemies to attack Israel.
[00:10:57] Not good, right? And then you get sent back and you think, okay, maybe things are settling down somehow. And then you come back home and everything's burned and your wife is gone and your kids are gone and your home is gone and your things are gone. And you look over at David and you start wondering, who have I joined?
[00:11:24] What have I aligned myself to?
[00:11:27] Is this the one who is going to be God's anointed? Is this the king of Israel?
[00:11:33] I'm out here running away, away from my home, away from my country.
[00:11:38] And look at things now. They were so mad at him that they were starting to talk about stoning him.
[00:11:47] David has.
[00:11:49] It's not a good moment for David as a leader.
[00:11:53] Not only is he have Philistine lords against him and Amalekites and Saul, but now his own people are starting to come against him.
[00:12:05] And a lot of this, not all of it, but a lot of it, is his own making, his own doing.
[00:12:12] Now, he had no control over Saul and Saul's attacks on him. He had no control over the Amalekites, who have been an enemy of Israel for a long time. We'll get to that in just a moment.
[00:12:23] But he did have these other choices to make.
[00:12:25] And his men are getting upset.
[00:12:32] Before we think about what David does, which is a good thing, let's think about the Amalekites for a moment.
[00:12:40] There's a backstory here that's really important to understand what's happening. And it doesn't just happen in First Samuel.
[00:12:47] What happens is that when God brings forth a new people, gives birth to them is an analogy the scripture uses through the Exodus. When God calls his people out of Egypt so that they could worship him, they leave. There's the great Exodus, the crossing of the sea. God provides for them food. And then one of the very first things that happen is the Amalekites show up and start attacking Israel.
[00:13:18] Israel has not provoked them. Israel is depending literally on bread falling from heaven and quail showing up in the evening times.
[00:13:29] They are hungry, they are needy, they are refugees. They are extremely weak in terms of the eyes from. From the perspective of the eyes of the world. And the Amalekites say, awesome, this is our opportunity. And they go on this body of people that are weak and suffering and have been slaves and abused for a really long time as they're escaping this oppression.
[00:13:54] And they attack, and they attack and they attack and they attack Israel.
[00:14:00] In God's economy and in God's righteousness as he rules over the nations, this is an extremely big, bad thing to do.
[00:14:09] To take not just Israel, but anyone who is weak and helpless and struggling, and then to just attack them and take advantage of them is a great sin.
[00:14:23] And this is what the Amalekites do now, in God's great grace, you remember that he has promised to preserve his people. He will not let them fail. And so then we have this great, great moment, this great moment where Moses goes and stands.
[00:14:40] Stands on a hill and he. Remember, this is that story where he lifts up his hands, and whenever his hands were lifted up in this sign of praise Israel, praise of God, Israel would win the battle. But he got tired, right? You remember? And so they put a stone under him. He sits down, and then he has Aaron and Hur hold up his arms for him. This amazing scene. And God wins the battle that day and declares war on the Amalekites. For every generation, I will wipe the memory off of them, off of the earth for this thing that they did, not only to anyone, but to my beloved son.
[00:15:21] It's much like the picture of the dragon and the woman in Revelation as she's giving birth to this child, the dragon just waiting there to divide, devour that child. And then God sweeps them away, protecting Promising to put the enemy of his people to an end, to destruction.
[00:15:43] It's a mark of God's salvation. It's a story about God's judgment. It's a story about God's protection and his upholding of righteousness.
[00:15:53] He is a righteous God.
[00:15:58] So now we jump forward a few years. Israel is now in the land. And Saul, back in chapter 15, has made some raids against the Amalekites and has done well in that. And the Lord tells him it's time to finish this.
[00:16:13] Destroy the Amalekites, destroy their people. And this is not just to protect yourselves, but this is an act of divine judgment.
[00:16:24] It's an act of divine judgment. This is a work of God judging these people, like Sodom and Gomorrah and other instances in history where he says where he is going to exercise his judgment and he's going to use Saul to do this.
[00:16:39] But Saul, instead of acting in accord with what God wanted done, he acted in accord with worldly standards.
[00:16:48] He said, I don't need to devote them all to destruction. I can just devote the bad stuff to destruction and then take the nice stuff for myself.
[00:17:00] As long as I subdue them, that will be good enough. Especially because who wants to kill a king? And there's a lot of nice animals here. And Saul is evaluating this whole effort not from God's perspective, but from a very earthly, worldly perspective.
[00:17:17] And so he lets Agag.
[00:17:20] He lets Agag, the king of the Amalekites, live. He lets all these sheep and animals, livestock, live.
[00:17:29] Then the prophet of God comes to him, Saul, and says, what's going on?
[00:17:34] I thought you were told to devote the Amalekites to destruction.
[00:17:38] Saul's like I did.
[00:17:42] Why do I hear all this bleating?
[00:17:45] This is anyway, reminds me of a lot of parent, child relationship.
[00:17:50] We've all been in this moment, sometimes, unfortunately, as adults, where we get in trouble and it's so obvious we've said that we try to cover it up and it just makes everything worse. That's what Saul does.
[00:18:02] And it's because of this largely that Saul essentially refuses to obey the will of the Lord and the kingdom begins to transfer from Saul to David.
[00:18:17] So now we're at David, and David is being attacked by the Amalekites.
[00:18:24] What's going to happen?
[00:18:26] You see, this is not just some random group of people.
[00:18:30] This is not just someone who's done a bad thing and taken advantage of women and children. And while an army was away, again doing the things that they have continued to Do. There's another famous Amalekite, by the way, Haman, in the Book of Esther.
[00:18:50] The.
[00:18:53] They burned this city.
[00:18:55] What's going to David going to do?
[00:18:58] Well, before we get to that. I know I've said that two or three times already.
[00:19:02] Before we get to that. Notice what God is doing.
[00:19:06] God's calling back David and he's using the Amalekites to do that. This is an amazing thing.
[00:19:14] The devil, I think it's Luther who says in a provocative way, is the handmaiden of God the devil.
[00:19:24] How could the devil be the handmaiden of God or the tool of God? It's because he's totally under the Lord's control.
[00:19:32] Now. The devil does what he wants to do, but the Lord uses the things that he wants to do to bring salvation to his people, which is a really crazy idea, but the Lord does it. And in this, he demonstrates the complete dependence of any evil person on the Lord and demonstrates his supremacy.
[00:19:58] He demonstrates his power and his judgment in condemning their actions as well as using what they do and turning it for good.
[00:20:07] And he reminds us that he saves his people.
[00:20:10] That's what he does with the Amalekites here, this enemy of God, this enemy of his people, they come, they attack this city, they attack God's people, and God uses it to turn David's heart back.
[00:20:22] Finally, David says the thing we've all been waiting to hear.
[00:20:29] We read this at the end, verse 6. But David strengthened himself in the Lord, his God.
[00:20:35] We think about this in our own lives.
[00:20:38] We look back. You know, a lot of times we'll hit these low points and we'll call out to the Lord and we'll say, lord, save me. And he does. And we say, why didn't I do that sooner?
[00:20:49] If only I had said this three chapters ago or three weeks ago or three months ago or 30 years ago, how things would have been different.
[00:21:00] And those things are good to reflect on so that we might remember, so we might be humble, so that we might remember to look to the Lord in the future.
[00:21:10] But living in our regret is not what the Lord wants. Living in our shame is not what the Lord wants. What does the Lord want?
[00:21:18] He wants to look to him for our strength, for our honor, for our protection, for everything.
[00:21:27] He doesn't want us to live and wallow in our shame and in our regrets. He wants us to abide and thrive in him and his love for us.
[00:21:40] And that's what David does here. Praise be to God.
[00:21:43] He strengthens himself in the Lord. His God. And he calls Abiathar the priest. He says, bring me the Ephod. And he says, what do I do? Shall I overtake this band?
[00:21:56] Shall I go rescue the people?
[00:21:59] Which would seem to be an obvious thing to do. Note that, right? But he pauses and he prays, and he gets this answer, yes. And he goes. And he is wildly successful.
[00:22:14] Notice how successful he is. He. You kind of caught that at the end, probably, if that stuck in your mind, as he brings back all of this spoil, all of this livestock. And the people are proclaiming, kind of like when they proclaimed after he defeated Goliath about David slaying his ten thousands. And these kind of things, like, this is David's spoil.
[00:22:37] It's just a thing you gotta say because it's so amazing.
[00:22:40] And they.
[00:22:43] The greatness of that, you can see. You can also see the greatness of his victory in this detail when it says, when he goes and finds them, they were spread over the land. Spread over the land like butter on toast or something. Eating and drinking and dancing. The picture is just everywhere you look, you just see people everywhere celebrating.
[00:23:07] Maybe imagine, you know, a state fair, but only bigger.
[00:23:13] Everywhere you go, you can hear it coming. You see it coming.
[00:23:17] It's a huge, huge number of people. Here's another way to see the number of people. There's this and the work of the Lord. There's this line or verse, in verse 17, it says, the work that was involved in this, David struck them down. From twilight until evening of the next day.
[00:23:38] Not a man of them escaped, except 400 young men.
[00:23:43] Now, the way I think about things, it's kind of hard to imagine how you could say everyone was destroyed except 400 people.
[00:23:54] Unless that first number was so big that 400 seems minor.
[00:24:01] This was a lot of people.
[00:24:05] The other interesting thing is that 400 number is paralleled earlier when David takes 600 people, but then 200 are tired and he goes in with 400.
[00:24:16] So the barely any that escaped the number 400. The barely any that escaped is the same number that did this work.
[00:24:26] The barely any that escaped matches the barely the number of people that were there to even defeat them. How does this happen?
[00:24:35] How does someone who just got back from traveling with the Philistines gets back to ziklag on the third day, sees this, then starts traveling.
[00:24:49] 200 of his warriors are tired, and then battles for 24 hours.
[00:24:56] How does that happen? It's not humanly possible, right?
[00:25:02] It happens because the Lord is at work.
[00:25:05] The Lord is at work. The Lord is at work. The Lord is at work. The Lord has called David to be his Messiah. And he will not fail at that. The Lord won't fail at that. He will uphold him. And in all of this he is teaching us very important lessons. He's teaching us that there is a pattern here, a pattern here which we must observe. That the pattern is that God calls His people.
[00:25:36] His people are persecuted, but he upholds them in their persecution. They stand strong and God is praised.
[00:25:47] It's a call to us for boldness.
[00:25:51] It's a call to us to. To not be afraid.
[00:25:57] Listen to 1 Peter, chapter 2, verses 9 through 11, 1st Peter 2, 9, 11 speaks in ways that are parallel to Israel coming out of Egypt.
[00:26:16] Peter says of us, he says of you, you are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people for his own possession, that you may proclaim the excellencies of him who called you out of darkness into his marvelous light.
[00:26:37] That's who you are.
[00:26:39] You are this because God has made you this. A people for his own possession, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a. A chosen race. He has done this for you for a reason.
[00:26:51] Just like he made Israel a people for a reason. That they might leave Egypt and praise him, that they might worship God. We have been called out of the darkness into the light that we might proclaim the excellencies of him who called us.
[00:27:08] That's who we are. That's our job. Our work. Our work is to be a rescued person who sings praise to our rescuers, our rescuer.
[00:27:18] Our work in life is to see ourselves as someone who. God, whom God has loved. And out of that love to praise Him. But we have to recognize, and Jesus says this over and over, that that will make people mad.
[00:27:35] And you could say, why in the world would that make anybody mad?
[00:27:39] God saving someone out of darkness, changing them, their hearts into someone that loves. But it happens, and it happens over and over and over again. It happened when Israel first came out of Egypt. It happened when they came into the land of Canaan. It happened with Moses. It's happened with David. It happened with Jesus.
[00:28:02] When Jesus comes and the great Messiah, this greater son of David, the final one that we've all been waiting for, when he comes into the world, he's doing amazing things. He's healing people of diseases. He's curing them of long standing illnesses.
[00:28:21] He's producing limbs, he's giving people sight. He's casting out demons. He's teaching things about loving the poor and honoring parents and amazing. And what do you See, progressively over the Gospels, you see people, the Pharisees and scribes and Herodians and other people.
[00:28:43] First they start out curious, then they feel threatened, then they get mad.
[00:28:49] Then they start plotting, and eventually they kill him.
[00:28:54] And what Jesus says about. He says a lot of things about this, but one of the things he says about this in relationship to you and me is he says, this is what happens when you follow me.
[00:29:05] Follow me. Don't not follow me, follow me, but count the cost.
[00:29:11] Recognize that when you are called out of darkness and in the light, when you are called to live this wonderful way of life, filled with love and mercy and grace and honor and all these wonderful things, people will hate you for it.
[00:29:27] And they will attack you.
[00:29:31] They will malign you.
[00:29:33] They will be surprised. Peter says later, they will be surprised. This is chapter four.
[00:29:41] When you do not join them in the same flood of debauchery, parentheses, out of which you were saved, they will be surprised when you do not join them in the flood of debauchery, and they will malign you.
[00:29:54] And that's going to be hard.
[00:29:57] And so throughout the Bible, you see these calls for boldness. Boldness, boldness. Do not be afraid. Do not be afraid. Stand strong.
[00:30:07] Follow Jesus.
[00:30:09] Don't be led astray by false prophets. Don't be choked out by the cares of this world. Follow Jesus. Because, as Peter goes on to say in 1st Peter 4, 5, they, that is, the persecutors were, will give an account to him who is ready to judge the living and the dead.
[00:30:30] There is real threats. There's real persecution. It's real hard, but it's not going to last.
[00:30:38] The Lord Jesus will come and will destroy the Amalekites.
[00:30:44] He will destroy those who persecute his church.
[00:30:49] Those who do evil deeds.
[00:30:52] He will destroy and cast in the lake of fire Satan and all his demons forever. That's coming.
[00:30:59] That's coming. So hold fast, persevere, be strong. Be courageous. The apostles and the pastors and the shepherds and the teachers tell us, and then they say, and pray for me. Paul says that I might be bold, that I might not be afraid, that I might not give up.
[00:31:22] I'll finish by pointing us to Psalm 110, verses 1 and 2, one of the most quoted passages in the New Testament. I think Psalm 110 is the most quoted section of Scripture.
[00:31:39] And this passage in particular is so valuable for us, particularly as we continue to think about the history of God's work through David.
[00:31:52] Psalm 110 says, the Lord, Yahweh God says to my Lord, sit at my right hand until I make your enemies your footstool.
[00:32:05] So three groups here, three persons we could say different than we were talking about before.
[00:32:12] We have David, who's writing the psalm.
[00:32:17] We have God, Yahweh, and then we have this other one, Lord.
[00:32:24] So God says to David's Lord, David's king. Remember, David is a king. Sit at my right hand until I make your enemies your footstool.
[00:32:40] Well, who is this?
[00:32:41] Who.
[00:32:42] What king of David could be greater or sorry, what king could be greater than David? When it's David's throne that is going to be eternal and it's David's son that will sit on that throne. Which is to say, what son of David would David ever call Lord? Because fathers don't call sons master and Lord.
[00:33:09] Well, Jesus, there's this amazing answer to this question.
[00:33:15] The answer is, and David here prophesies of that, that there is one coming who is greater than David.
[00:33:25] And here's the quote that God says to that Messiah, to this son fulfilling the promises of David, sit at my right hand until I make your enemies your footstool.
[00:33:39] This is the hope in which David lived.
[00:33:43] It's the hope in which we live as we follow the Lord Jesus, knowing that by his grace we are no longer his enemies, but are seated with him at the right hand of the Father.
[00:34:01] It's the hope that we hold onto when we think about the Lord's work for us on the cross and the resurrection of the dead. When we think about that and we say, I will stand firm even unto death because of who God is, because of this promise, because of the Davidic kingdom, because of Jesus Christ, the. The great Messiah, King who is not weak, who never fails, but even now is reigning and subduing the world.
[00:34:35] And amazingly, he is doing that right now through his work of grace.
[00:34:41] He's subduing our hearts. He's taking hearts that say, I don't want to follow you and I want my own way and I want to live in my own sin and stop bothering me.
[00:34:49] And he changes our hearts, that we say, never mind, I don't want any of that. I want to love God and love my neighbor.
[00:35:02] A miracle of the Lord bringing life out of death, bringing salvation out of judgment, bringing resurrection out of a crucifixion and a burial.
[00:35:17] This is the life that we have in Christ. This is what God is doing us. He has secured for us a present where he will continue to work in us even through hard things, as he works through David here, as he promises us a future in Christ and a hope that is eternal.
[00:35:36] And he promises justice that the evils of this world and will be set right and his people will be established in safety and love and justice and righteousness forever.
[00:35:56] As we consider these words, as we reflect on 1st Samuel 30, let's give praise to God.
[00:36:05] Let's remain steadfast in our hopes.
[00:36:08] Let's turn away from our sins and our warring against the Spirit and seek God to strengthen us that we might live for Him.
[00:36:19] Let's pray.
[00:36:21] Our Heavenly Father, we ask that you would forgive us in Jesus name for the sins that we have committed against you, against your people, against your king, against your laws, against your rules, against. Lord, forgive us and cleanse us.
[00:36:40] Lord, we also ask that you would give us clarity about who you are and what you're doing, so that when we are persecuted in mild forms or in major forms, we would be bold, that we would be calm, that we would be honorable to you and to the work that you have done in us.
[00:37:08] Lord, we ask that you would teach us to stand steadfast not only in the hard times, but in all the choices that we make.
[00:37:17] We see David in our own lives and his actions, our temptation to wander, our proclivity to fear, the.
[00:37:28] The struggles to know what to do.
[00:37:31] Lord, we ask that as we reflect on these passages of Scripture and your work today, that you would put fear away from our hearts, that you would put confusion about you away from our hearts, that you would help us in our trials and our tribulations and our stresses to resist the devil, to resist him, that he might flee from us, to look to you for the strength that we need and to believe that you will answer our prayers.
[00:38:06] You tell us over and over again that you answer our prayers when we pray according to your will. And you have expressed your will to us so clearly this morning. So, Lord, we are praying, we are begging that you would give to us faith that we might lay aside every weight of sin that clings so closely and abide in you.
[00:38:31] And as we do that, Lord, we ask that your name would be praised not only by us, but even by those who are perhaps now enemies of you, but soon to be friends as they see the work that you are doing among your people and in our lives and and marvel at it and wonder and ask and say what is the reason for the hope that is in you?
[00:38:58] Give us the boldness and the words to tell them.
[00:39:02] Give them hearts and change their hearts from stones to flesh.
[00:39:08] Lord, we ask that you would bring to us new brothers and sisters in Christ that together we might worship and honor your name forever and ever.
[00:39:20] We pray this in the name of Jesus, our Savior. Amen.