Tag: trust

Published December 20, 2021

Mary – Eagerly Submitting to the Will of God

For the past couple of weeks, we’ve been looking at some of the key characters of the Christmas story. And I’m not talking about Rudolph or Santa Claus – that’s a different story all together! I’m talking about the original Christmas story – the historic events that actually happened some 2000 years ago and are still packed with meaning and significant for us even today.

And I expect that most of us are familiar with the events of that first Christmas – how Jesus was born and laid in a manger – how the angels appeared to the shepherds and how the wisemen brought their gifts of gold, frankincense and myrrh. Those are all the traditional Christmas scenes that we sing about in our Christmas carols or we display in our nativity arrangements.

And of course, if you’re not familiar with those events, I’d invite you to come to our Christmas Eve service this Friday as those events will be the focus of our Christmas celebration.

But for our Sunday morning messages as Christmas approaches, we’ve been taking a deeper look not at the events of Christmas, but rather at the characters of Christmas.

We started by looking at Jesus Himself. Who is this baby who was born and was laid in a manger? And what is so significant about that child that we continue to celebrate his birth even 2000 years later!? To find those answers, we looked in the Gospel of John and saw that Jesus was not just an ordinary baby, but was in fact, the second person of the Godhead – the eternally existing Creator of the world – now born as a human being. He truly is Emmanuel – which means God is with us. And what’s all the more amazing is that He came to be with us so that we could be with Him for eternity.

Then last week we took a closer look at Joseph. We don’t read a lot about Joseph’s life in the Bible – he kinda comes across as a minor player in the pages of Scripture, but as we saw last week, Joseph really was a spiritual giant – truly a model of righteous character and faith in God. He is perhaps one of the best examples for us to follow in how to be a godly father and husband.

Now today we want to look at a third major character in the Christmas story – and that of course, is Mary, the mother of Jesus.

Like Joseph, she too, is a pretty amazing example of someone who displayed an absolute trust in God. When you consider all that she went through – especially considering how young she was at the time – her faith and obedience to God are truly remarkable. But I’m getting ahead of myself.

As I mentioned last week, when Matthew writes his Gospel and records the birth of Jesus, he focuses almost exclusively on Joseph. He begins with Joseph’s family tree, he talks about Joseph’s dilemma when he discovers that Mary was pregnant before they were married, and he records the four different visits that Joseph had from the angel. But he really doesn’t say anything about Mary.

In contrast to that, when Luke writes his Gospel, he hardly mentions Joseph at all. He focuses his attention primarily on Mary. And that’s why it’s so great that we have four different Gospels. Each Gospel tells the true story of Jesus, but they all tell it from a slightly different perspective. That really helps us get a well-rounded understanding of really happened.

And so now, having looked at Joseph through the eyes of Matthew last week, today we’re going to look at Mary through the eyes of Luke. So if you have your Bibles with you, you can turn with me to Luke chapter 1.

However, we’re not going to start at verse 1 because Luke doesn’t begin his Gospel with Mary – he actually begins with Mary’s relatives – specifically, a priest named Zechariah and his wife Elizabeth.

And I don’t want to spend a lot of time going through their story this morning, but let me just quickly summarize it for you so you know what’s going on when we get into Mary’s story.

Zechariah and Elizabeth have been unable to have children and the Bible describes them now as “both being very old.” Obviously too old now, to have any expectation of still being able to have children.

But one day, an angel named Gabriel appears to Zechariah and tells him that his wife, Elizabeth, is going to have a baby and that their baby would be the one to prepare the way for the coming of the Lord. Of course, every Israelite had been waiting for the coming of the Lord for quite some time now. In fact, for the last several hundred years, God had promised through the prophets had that he would send a Messiah – a descendant of King David who would save the Israelites and would rule Israel forever!

So this was pretty huge news for Zechariah and Elizabeth – not only where they finally going to have the baby that they had always wanted, but their baby would prepare the way for the future King of Israel!

Oh and one more thing, their baby was going to be filled with the Holy Spirit from birth – and his name was to be John – we would eventually come to know him as John the Baptist.

So with that as the backdrop, Luke begins to tell the story of Mary in Luke chapter 1, verse 26.

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Published November 15, 2021

Out of the Frying Pan – Into the Fire

We have been hanging in suspense for three weeks now – waiting to see if there is any way that David will get out of the mess that He has created for himself.

If you’re just joining us for the first time this morning, we’ve been working our way through the book of 1 Samuel – examining the lives of Samuel, King Saul, and of course, David.

And at this point in the story, David has fled from King Saul – who has been tying to kill David for the last several chapters – and David has found refuge in a most unexpected place – in the land of his enemies, the Philistines.

King Achish of the Philistines had accepted him as a defector from Israel and had even given David his own Philistine city to live in – the city of Ziklag – where David and his 600 men (along with all their families) had lived for nearly a year and a half.

Now the tricky part in all this is that David had not actually defected from Israel. He was still loyal to his home country, but had been lying to King Achish about… well, just about everything. In fact, during those 16 months that David lived in Ziklag, David had told Achish that he had been raiding the cities of Israel, but in reality, David had been attacking the enemies of Israel – and leaving no survivors to tell Achish what had really happened.

And so Achish was convinced that David had turned against his homeland and would be a loyal Philistine subject for the rest of his life. In fact, Achish trusted David so completely that he made David his own personal bodyguard and insisted that David and his men accompany him into battle against Israel. It says in 1 Samuel 28:1

About that time the Philistines mustered their armies for another war with Israel. King Achish told David, “You and your men will be expected to join me in battle.”

1 Samuel 28:1

And certainly creates quite a pickle for David. On one hand, David has been anointed as the future King of Israel – and he has no intentions of fighting against his own people. It would be unthinkable for David to fight against the armies of Israel – against King Saul and against his best friend Jonathan! But on the other hand, if he refused to join the Philistines in battle, the jig would be up!

Achish would realize that David was still loyal to Israel, and David would effectively be caught in his lies and and he, his men, and all of their families would be at the mercy of the Philistines!

So really, David has no choice but to agree to go to war alongside the Philistines to fight the armies of Israel. And so he responds to King Achish in verse 2.

2 “Very well!” David agreed. “Now you will see for yourself what we can do.”

1 Samuel 28:2

I mean, what else could he say? David was forced to continue his charade – but he was probably desperately trying to figure out, how in the world, he was going to get out of this pickle!

And what makes this all the more interesting, is that the author of 1 Samuel never tells us what David is thinking. He never reveals David’s true motivations or why he does what he does. The author simply states what David says or does, but then he leaves it to our imaginations to try to figure what what’s going on in David’s heart and mind….

So we don’t know what kind of scenarios David had been running through his mind as to how he was going to get out of this situation… But I imagine there was one option that perhaps David considered. Maybe David had planned to turn against King Achish in the heat of the battle. He could flip sides and join the Israelites and hopefully bring about a great victory for Israel.

But that was risky too – because if David turned against the Philistines and Israel still lost, you can be sure that the Philistines would seek their revenge on David by destroying David’s family and the all of the families of his 600 men who were left behind in the Philistine city of Ziklag.

So if David was going to turn on the Philistines, he’d better make sure he wins!

But of course, that’s going to be a problem too, because unbeknownst to David, God had already decreed that Israel was going to lose this battle. We saw last week, as Saul tried to talk to the dead prophet Samuel through a medium, that God’s judgement was about fall upon Saul for his disobedience. God had decreed that both Saul and his sons would be killed in battle the very next day, and the Israelite army would be defeated at the hands of the Philistines.

Now of course, David doesn’t know that – but we, the reader of this story know that – and so we’re really left scratching our heads – HOW in the world is this all going to play out? What kind of miracle is God going to have to do to rescue David from the web of deceit that David has woven for himself?

Well, this morning, we will finally find out!

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Published October 12, 2021

David & Abigail

Last week we looked at just the first half of a story in 1 Samuel chapter 25.

It’s the story of David as he interacted with a sheep farmer named Nabal. Now Nabal, who was known for being crude and mean in all his dealings, was quite a contrast to his wife, Abigail, who was known for being sensible and beautiful! These two characters couldn’t be more different!

And we haven’t seen much of Abigail in this story so far, but we’ve had a quite an introduction to Nabal!

You see, this story all begins at sheep-shearing time – a time of feasting and celebration – very much like our own Thanksgiving celebrations this weekend! David has recently been camped near Nabal’s shepherds around the town of Carmel. And David had been very good to Nabal’s shepherds as they camped near each other. David’s men had kept them safe from the Philistine raiders and nothing was ever stolen from them during their time together…

And so, when David hears that Nabal is sheering his sheep and is having a great celebration, he sends messengers to Nabal asking if Nabal could kindly share whatever provisions he could with his friend David and his men!

Nabal, however – true to his reputation, would do nothing of the sort and responded by heaping insults upon David and sent David’s messengers home empty-handed.

As you might imagine, this did not sit well with David who’s only recorded response was to tell his men “Grab your swords” as he strapped on his own! In a classic case of wild over-reaction, David sets out to murder Nabal in retaliation for his insults! Of course, this is quite out of character for David – a guy who is called “a man after God’s own heart” – a guy who has repeatedly had compassion and mercy on King Saul even while Saul was trying to kill him.

So it seems kinda odd that David would foolishly rush to murder Nabal simply for being rude and selfish! And we talked a little bit last week about why he might have done so, but one thing is for sure: Even the best of us are aways susceptible to sin! We ought not think we’ve matured beyond the point of being able to mess up big time – cuz that’s just what David is about to do.

And that’s about where we left off last week – David and 400 of his men are armed and headed towards Nabal’s house with the intent to murder every man in Nabal’s household.

So this morning, we’re going to see how this all turns out.

We pick up the story now as the scene shifts back to Nabal’s home. It says in 1 Samuel chapter 25, verse 14…

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Published April 26, 2021

David & Goliath

Last Sunday I told you half of the story of David & Goliath – which really ended up being more like the story of Saul and Goliath. Because by all accounts, that’s how the story should have played out!

David never should even been at the battlefield. Saul should have defeated Goliath weeks before David even showed up. As the king of Israel, it was Saul’s responsibility to lead the Israelites into battle. It was his job to courageously face the enemy and lead his men to victory.

But as it happened, Saul did none of that. As the Philistine giant Goliath strutted in front of the Israelite army both day and night for 40 days, boasting and taunting and mocking them, Saul did nothing but offer a reward to anyone who had the courage to do the task that he should have done. It seems both he and all the Israelites were paralyzed with fear.

I was reading in the book of Deuteronomy this week – and in chapter 20, Moses lays out instructions for what to do when the the Israelites went to war and I just want to read a few of those verses for you this morning. This is Deuteronomy 20, verse 1-4

“When you go out to fight your enemies and you face horses and chariots and an army greater than your own, do not be afraid. The Lord your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, is with you! 2 When you prepare for battle, the priest must come forward to speak to the troops. 3 He will say to them, ‘Listen to me, all you men of Israel! Do not be afraid as you go out to fight your enemies today! Do not lose heart or panic or tremble before them. 4 For the Lord your God is going with you! He will fight for you against your enemies, and he will give you victory!’

Deuteronomy 20:1-4

Even before they entered the Promised Land, Moses assured the Israelites that God’s presence and power would be with them as they faced their enemies – even when the enemy armies were far greater and stronger than their own. But It certainly seems like the Israelites had missed this memo from Moses because as Goliath mocked and taunted them, and challenged them to come and fight, it says in 1 Samuel 17:11…

11 When Saul and the Israelites heard this, they were terrified and deeply shaken.

1 Samuel 17:11

Both Saul and all of the army were paralyzed with fear. And interestingly, Deuteronomy 20 addresses that issue as well. If you jump down just a few verses from what we just read, it says:

8 “Then the officers will also say, ‘Is anyone here afraid or worried? If you are, you may go home before you frighten anyone else.’ Deuteronomy 20:8

It seems like Saul missed that memo too! Fear is contagious – and it’s the last thing you want spreading through your troops before a battle! But Saul certain had done nothing to put an end to the fear that was running rampant throughout his camp.

Fortunately, David had not been in the camp very long. He had only just arrived to bring some supplies from his father and to get a report on how everything was going. And as we’re going to see today, David’s courage was just as contagious as Saul’s fear!

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Published March 15, 2021

Obedience Is Better Than Sacrifice

For the past few weeks we’ve been following the career of King Saul – the first King of Israel. And it’s really been a mixed bag of the good, the bad, and the ugly. There are times when Saul does a fantastic job as king. As you read through 1 Samuel, often Saul is presented as the hero of Israel – rescuing the nation from all it’s enemies!

For example, at the end of the chapter we read last week, we find a bit of a summary of Saul’s military success. If you look at 1 Samuel 14, verse 47, it reads like this:

47 Now when Saul had secured his grasp on Israel’s throne, he fought against his enemies in every direction—against Moab, Ammon, Edom, the kings of Zobah, and the Philistines. And wherever he turned, he was victorious. 48 He performed great deeds and conquered the Amalekites, saving Israel from all those who had plundered them.

Then we get a brief summary of Saul’s family tree – which I won’t read right now – and then verse 52 continues…

52 The Israelites fought constantly with the Philistines throughout Saul’s lifetime. So whenever Saul observed a young man who was brave and strong, he drafted him into his army.

1 Samuel 14:47-48, 52

So as you can see, from a military point of view, Saul was a very successful King. It says he saved Israel from all who had plundered them. Where ever he turned, he was victorious! In the eyes of the people of Israel, Saul was exactly the kind of King that they wanted.

However, in the eyes of God, King Saul had not been quite so successful. Two weeks ago, we saw how Saul disobeyed the command of the Lord by offering up a burnt offering to God – instead of waiting for the prophet Samuel – who was the only one God had authorized to make such an offering. Saul over-stepped the bounds of his God-given authority as King, and took the role of priest for himself. And as we’re going to see today, this wasn’t just an isolated incident of sin – It wasn’t a one-time foolish choice in a moment of weakness – this was evidence of a heart that would increasingly become prideful and arrogant.

Although Saul had very humble beginnings, it seems that his position of power and his military success caused him to grow in his esteem of himself and decrease in his esteem of God and his commands.

And so today, as we turn to 1 Samuel chapter 15, we’re going to see this pattern continue – with Saul concluding that his ways and his decisions are just a little bit wiser than God’s ways and God’s decisions. But I should warn you… As we go through this story and see how foolish and arrogant Saul has become, we need to be careful, because we might just see ourselves doing the exact same thing…

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Published March 2, 2021

The Faith of Jonathan

As we’ve been going through the book of 1 Samuel, we’ve spent a lot of time talking about King Saul – the first King of Israel. But last week we were introduced to a new character in the story – Saul’s son Jonathan. And Jonathan will actually play a significant role throughout the rest of the book. As we saw last week, he is a key commander in Saul’s military (commanding a 1/3 of Israel’s standing army) and in the weeks ahead, we will see how he eventually becomes one of David’s closest allies – even at a time when King Saul was trying to kill David.

But that’s getting ahead of our story.

If you were with us last week, you’ll remember that Jonathan had just attacked and defeated the Philistine garrison stationed in Geba. We don’t know if this was by order of King Saul, or if Jonathan simply took it upon himself to make this attack. But either way, Jonathan’s actions triggered an open revolt against the Philistines who had been oppressing the Israelites for some time now.

In response, the Philistines gathered their army – which composed of 3000 chariots, 6000 charioteers, and as many warriors as grains of sand on the seashore – and they set up camp at Micmash. At the same time, Saul gathered his much smaller army at Gilgal and waited for the prophet Samuel to come and make a sacrifice to God before they went into battle.

However, as they waited for Samuel, their fear of the Philistines grew and grew and many of Saul’s men fled from their posts – hiding in fear from the mighty Philistine army. Well, after 7 days of more and more men disappearing from the camp, and with no sign of Samuel, Saul foolishly took it upon himself (in direct disobedience to God) to offer the sacrifice himself.

God had clearly instructed the Israelites that these sacrifices were only to be done by God’s appointed priest – and not by the King or anyone else. So this was an act of blatant disobedience. Well, as it happened, Samuel showed up just as Saul was finishing the sacrifice and as Saul tried to justify his actions, Samuel told him plainly that his disobedience to the Lord would cost him the kingdom! The Lord would choose another king to replace him – one who would seek after the heart of God.

And that’s about as far as we got last week. We’re going to pick it up today in 1 Samuel chapter 13, verse 15.

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