Tag: promises

Published September 6, 2021

The Rock of Escape

For the past several weeks, it feels as if I’ve introduced my messages in the exact same way every Sunday. It seems that every week I tell you, ‘When we last left David, he was hiding out from Saul who was determined to kill him.”

That’s been the running theme for about the last six chapters as we’ve been reading through the book of 1 Samuel.The details of the story change from chapter to chapter, but the basic premise remains the same. “Good and faithful David is running for his life from jealous, selfish King Saul.”

And this morning, nothing has changed. Today we are going to read through the second half of 1 Samuel chapter 23, and that’s the exact plot line again. “Good and faithful David is running for his life from jealous, selfish King Saul.”

And just before we get into today’s message, maybe that’s a question that we should ponder: Why does the author of 1 Samuel put so much emphasis on this time of David’s life? Why is it important that we see this same story play out time and time again? Is it showing us David’s faithful and loyal character? Is it reminding us of God’s goodness and protection? Is it warning us through the life of Saul of the consequences of turning away from God? Or on a grander scale, is this all somehow foreshadowing the life and person of Jesus Christ?

God’s chosen to include all these stories in his divinely inspired Word for a reason, so what do you suppose that reason is?

Well, I’m actually not going to answer that question for you today, but I’d challenge you to think about it and maybe even do a little research on your own. The point of these Sunday morning sermons isn’t just for me to dispense all the answers to you, but for me to challenge and encourage you to get into the Word of God yourself. At the end of the day, you’re the one who is responsible for your relationship with God, and so I’d encourage you to make it your habit to study the Word of God for yourself.

But on that note, we do want to take some time to look at God’s Word together this morning, so let’s jump right into our passage.

So as I mentioned before, “When we last left David, he was hiding out from Saul who was determined to kill him.” Or more specifically, according to verse 14…

14 David now stayed in the strongholds of the wilderness and in the hill country of Ziph. Saul hunted him day after day, but God didn’t let Saul find him.

15 One day near Horesh, David received the news that Saul was on the way to Ziph to search for him and kill him.

1 Samuel 23:14-15

And we’ll pause here just for a moment. I don’t know if you’ve noticed this or not, but it sure seems like David has a good communication network in place. David never seems to get caught by surprise, because he’s always hearing of Saul’s plans before Saul gets a chance to carry them out. That was the case earlier in this chapter when Saul was planning to come and capture David at Keilah. Somehow David got wind that Saul was coming for him, and God confirmed that, and so David took off before Saul had chance to besiege the city and capture him.

Now again, while David is near Horesh, David heard the news that Saul was on his way to search for him and kill him. Now I don’t know if maybe there is someone among Saul’s men that is tipping off David – sending out secret messages to warn David of Saul’s plans. The Bible doesn’t say so specifically, but that certainly wouldn’t be impossible. Jonathan, for example, had previously warned David though a secret code that Saul was determined to kill him. We read about that back in chapter 20. So its quite possible that Jonathan or some other person close with Saul was sneaking out information to David.

Or it could be that David just had lots of loyal supporters throughout the country. Remember, the people of Israel, generally speaking, loved David. He was a national hero! The women sang “Saul has killed his thousands and David his ten thousands!” So perhaps it was the people of Israel who kept David informed of Saul’s movements.

But however David got his information, we can be sure that God had a hand in it somehow. We see from verse 14 that although Saul hunted for David day after day, God did not allow Saul to find him. God was at work, watching over David, protecting him, and keeping him safely out of the hands of Saul.

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Published July 1, 2019

True Identity

Last week was a total game-changer for Joseph. If you’ve been with us for these past few weeks, you’ll recall that up until this point, it just seemed that no matter what Joseph did, something bad always happened to him. Even when things were going good, they quickly turned bad.

Because so far he’s been nearly killed by his brothers, sold into slavery, falsely accused of a crime he didn’t commit, thrown into prison, and then completely forgotten about. And this was all before he was 30 years old. It has been a rough life for Joseph. But then, in just one day, everything changed.

Last week we read about how Pharaoh had a dream – well, two dreams really, and he didn’t know what they meant. These dreams obviously had some significance, but neither Pharaoh or any of his wisemen could figure out the meaning of these two dreams.

Now as it happened, Pharaoh’s chief cup-bearer had been in prison with Joseph some time earlier and Joseph had accurately interpreted a dream that he had had – and so the cupbearer told Pharaoh about this Joseph guy that he had met in prison who could interpret dreams.

Well, with that information, Pharaoh called up Joseph out of prison and asked Joseph if he could interpret his dreams. And this is how Joseph responded:

16 “It is beyond my power to do this,” Joseph replied. “But God can tell you what it means and set you at ease.” Genesis 41:16

Joseph knew that he didn’t have the ability to interpret dreams, but God certainly did. As we mentioned last week, Joseph had God-confidence – not self-confidence.

Well, to make a long story short, Joseph goes on to interpret Pharaoh’s dreams, which in essence, were a warning from God that after 7 years of great prosperity in Egypt, there would be 7 years of terrible famine.

And this is where everything changed for Joseph. Because Joseph was able to interpret Pharaoh’s dreams, Pharaoh determined that no one in Egypt was as wise as Joseph and so he gave Joseph full authority over all of Egypt – so that Joseph could make the necessary preparations for this upcoming famine. No one would be greater than Joseph in all of Egypt except for Pharaoh himself.

In one day, everything changed for Joseph. He went from being a slave in prison, to the second-in-command over all of Egypt. Pharaoh even gave him him a new Egyptian name and an Egyptian wife. What a total life change!

And it’s right at that moment of life-change that we pick it up today – with Joseph now the second-in-command over all of Egypt. The story of Joseph is far from over, so we’re going to find out what happened next. We continue reading in Genesis 41, verse 45.

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Published October 30, 2018

Firepot Promises

Learning to walk is certainly not an easy task. We probably don’t remember our own first steps as we learned to walk for the first time, but many of us have witnessed the great tumbles and falls as we’ve watched our own children try to take their first steps. It can be a bit painful to watch sometimes to see them fail, but at the same time its so exciting when they get it right! There’s always cheers and celebrations as your babies take those first steps. It’s such a milestone in their lives – being able to walk changes everything – life will never be the same again!

I think the same could be said about learning to walk with God. Certainly, we all have our share of stumbles and falls as we try to keep in step with God – learning to trust Him and to walk in his ways. We’ve experienced the bumps and bruises when we fail to trust and to follow God like we should. But most of us have also experienced the thrill of those first successful steps. Certainly, as a church we celebrate when people take those first steps of faith – because their lives will never be the same again! Learning to walk with God changes everything!

And so that’s why, for the past several weeks, every Sunday morning we’ve been learning to walk. Not physically of course, but learning to walk with God. We’ve been taking a look at the example of Abram as he learned to walk with God some 4000 years ago. And it seems that the process of learning to walk with God hasn’t changed all that much over the years.

There is so much in Abram’s life that we can relate to today – and I think that will be all the more evident as we look at our passage this morning.

Today we’re going to pick up our story of Abram in Genesis chapter 15. Now if you missed last week’s message, let me give you a quick recap. Last Sunday Greg told us about this great battle between 9 different kings – which included the King of Sodom. Now of course, Sodom (you’ll remember) was the city where Abram’s nephew Lot lived. Well, long story short – the King of Sodom lost the battle and as a result, all the people and goods of Sodom were carried away – including Lot and his family.

When Abram heard about this, he rallied his allies and chased after the army that had carried Lot away, defeated them, and recovered all that had been taken.

After winning the victory, Abram was on his way back when he was met by this guy named Melchizedek – the King of Salem and a priest of God most High. He shows up and he blesses Abram. And Abram in return, gives Melchizedek one tenth of all he owned.

And this interaction between Abram and Melchizedek is all kinda strange because as far as story goes, Melchizedek wasn’t even involved in any of these battles – this is the first time he’s ever mentioned, so what’s he got to do with any of this this? And why is Abram giving him 10% of his stuff?

And then as a further twist to the story, the King of Sodom – who was directly involved – tries to give Abram all the goods that Abram had recovered, but Abram won’t accept any of it – He doesn’t want to become rich at the hand of the King of Sodom.

So instead of receiving payment or reward for his heroic rescue, Abram instead gives 10% of all his stuff to this guy Melchizedek who doesn’t even seem to be involved… So it’s all a little unusual and mysterious – but the bottom line at the end of the story is that God is pleased with Abram – and Abram is determined to walk with God.

And so that brings us now to chapter 15 – and we’re going to start at verse 1. Let’s read it together:

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Published December 19, 2011

The Fulfillment of Hope

In the month of December, we’ve been looking at the Bible as a History of Hope. Sometimes it difficult to put the whole Bible together – to see how one story connects with the others – to see how the old Testament fits with the new Testament. But over the past couple of weeks, we’ve been trying to do just that and what we’ve discovered is that the whole Bible is really the Christmas story. Everything in the old testament points us ahead to the birth, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ – and everything in the new testament is a result of the birth, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ. Jesus Christ is the central figure of world history. And it’s not just history – it’s HIS STORY – God’s Story.

And so today we’re going to continue looking at God’s story. Two weeks ago we started in the beginning – with God creating the heavens and the earth. And He made the perfect system for a perfect life. That was basically, as long as mankind looked to God as the source of everything they needed in life and as long as they looked to God as their ultimate authority, their relationships with each other and with God would be sweet and life would be awesome.

But of course, we know that Adam and Eve chose to reject God as their authority and as their source – and as a consequence, their relationship with God and with each other was broken. And although the consequences of their sin would effect mankind for the rest of history, God made a promise to Adam & Eve – that one day He would set things right again.

Well, then we fast-forwarded last week to Mount Sinai – where God made a covenant – or an agreement with the Israelites. And the basic gist of that agreement was that as long as the Israelites looked to God as the source of everything they needed in life and as long as they looked to God as their ultimate authority, their relationships with each other and with God would be sweet and life would be awesome. Sounds familiar doesn’t it?

The problem with that agreement was, that because the Israelites were all born with a sinful nature that they inherited from Adam & Eve, (just like the rest of us) it would actually be impossible for the Israelites or anyone else to fully obey God. Man was just too sinful. That rebellious nature in us kept us as slaves to sin. We couldn’t obey God even if we wanted to.

But God knew about that and He offered us another bit of hope. He allowed the Israelites to bring a lamb and offer it as a sacrifice for their sins. In other words, instead of that person being put to death for their sin (as they deserved), a lamb would be put to death in their place. The lamb would take their punishment.

Of course, the blood of those lambs couldn’t take away their sin, but it gave the Israelites hope that one day, the Lamb of God – Jesus Christ – would die in their place and His blood would take their sins completely away.

So that’s where we left it last week. There’s more to this story, so let’s see what happened next.

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