Defeating Times of Great Distress Part 2

Guest (Male): Today on Abounding Grace.
Pastor Ed Taylor: You know, if I did a survey, when do you think the worst time is in your life? When do you think you'll forget the Lord? Was it when you're in really deep discouragement or when you're doing really well? Most people would think, you know, discouragement. Like I'm I'm not feeling right. It's not It's not good. I don't want to talk to anybody. I don't You know, you just get into that. But you know, times of deep discouragement actually aren't the worst time for you and me because it's in times of deep discouragement or whatever it might be that that's really getting you down that God can do his greatest work. It's when you turn to the Lord. It's when you're at rock bottom, when you've come to the end of your rope. The greatest danger for us is when we get it all back. When everything is restored.
Guest (Male): Last time on Abounding Grace, we noticed a time in David's life where he was greatly distressed. And it came on the heels of him making a good and godly decision. Maybe that's where you're at today. You're about to learn the right response to being greatly distressed. Pastor Ed Taylor has noticed four things in 1 Samuel 30. The first is David encouraged himself in the Lord. He then inquired of the Lord, and then he obeyed the Lord. I'll let Pastor Ed take it from there.
Pastor Ed Taylor: In verse 11 it says, then they found an Egyptian in the field and brought him to David, and they gave him bread, and he ate, and they let him drink water. They gave him a piece of cake and figs and two clusters of raisins. So when he had eaten, his strength came back to him, for he'd eaten no bread nor drunk any water for 3 days and 3 nights. Then David, verse 13, said to him, to whom do you belong and where are you from? And he said, I'm a young man from Egypt, a servant of the of an Amalekite, and my master left me behind because 3 days ago I fell sick. We made an invasion of the southern area of the Cherethites in the territory which belongs to Judah and in the southern area of Caleb, and we burned Ziklag with fire. And David said to him, can you take me down to this troop? And he said, swear to me by God that you will neither kill me nor deliver me into the hands of my master, and I will take you down to this troop. So here David is and his men are on the move and and providentially, in the sovereignty of God, they find a guy that was left behind, one a servant of an Amalekite. And after they he's weary and sick, recovering, they feed him some food. He gains a little bit of strength, and he's going to tell them exactly where they are. I mean, that's what happens. You start taking steps of faith. God meets you there. And what do we do? We wait and we wait and we wait. We want it all to be planned out. Tell me what it's going to be like. Tell me how it 's going to be. And what about this? And we sit here waiting for God to explain it all. And God is simply waiting for you to obey. And when you take the step of faith, man, there's an Egyptian. How could you ever meet the Egyptian in the middle of the Sinai desert, man? How You know, he he would you you have to be on the move obeying the Lord. And when you are, God will lead you into great things, verse 16. So when they had brought him down, when there they were spread out all over the land, eating and drinking and dancing because of the great spoil which they had taken from the land of the Philistines and from the land of Judah, which, by the way, is their family and their stuff. This is their stuff. And what are they doing? What does the enemy do when he gets a foothold in our lives? And what does the enemy do when he gets takes advantage of us and we fall prey to it? They eat They They just party over us. The enemy loves to party over us. Man, but man, there's strength from the Lord to stay strong in hard times. So what happens? Verse 17, David attacked them from twilight until the evening of the next day. Not a man of them escaped except 400 young men who rode on camels and fled. So David recovered. Notice verse 18. I have it circled. What does your say? What does your Bible say? So David recovered all that the Amalekites had carried away. And David David rescued his two wives, verse 19, and nothing of theirs was lacking, neither small or great, sons or daughters, spoil or anything they had taken from them. David recovered all. Then David took all the flocks and the herds which they had driven before those other livestock and said, this is David's spoil. Don't miss this. We're kind of reading it along and and reading another man's life and reading how God has worked in another man's life. David, a real man, God, the real one true God, showing himself faithful in this man's life. But I don't want you to miss how quick God can work. He went from greatly distressed to this is David's spoil. Do you think his temperament was different? Do you think his face was different? Do you think his attitude was different? He went from, oh my goodness, everybody wants to kill me to, nope, we got our stuff. Only a few people fled and ran away. This is David's stuff. And he claimed what God had given him, what belonged to him, what was lost while he was backsliding. God led him to recover. And it reminds me of the beautiful promise of that God gives in the Old Testament that he is able to restore the years that have been eaten away by the locust. He's able to give back. Now he's not going to give Don't Don't misunderstand that. If you've wasted 20 years, you're not getting 20 years back. Those 20 years are lost. But what God can do and what we see him do is he'll restore what was lost in fruitfulness of those 20 years. He'll give back to you the fruitfulness that was lost because that was the prophecy to to the nation where the locust came in as a judgment of God and ate up all their crops and God saying, no, I'm going to give back to you what was lost. It's unfortunate. You know, we all want the years that we lost, certainly. I mean, isn't it true? You think about it. If we What does the saying say? If we knew then what we know now, things would be different. It's true. But God's way of that is like, look, I know the years were lost. So many of us live so many of our years for the for the things of this world and and just throw years away. But the promise of God is you can go from greatly distressed to this is David's spoil through encouragement, asking the Lord through prayer, through obeying God. If that's what you want, it's yours for the taking. And while you're on the way, God will lead you and guide you. When he says this is David's spoil, what I think he is saying is enemy of God, you cannot have what is mine. You can't have my kids. You can't have my possessions. Enemy, I do not I do not cave in to your temptations. I do not cave in to your pressure. I don't cave in to your intimidation. I don't cave in even when I failed and you're staking a claim for your family. You're staking a claim which is yours by faith. Now don't misunderstand me. This isn't something where you're you're demanding from God some kind of naming and claiming false teaching. This is just the reality is that what God has given you belongs to you. Hold on to it. Take it. Take it by faith. Remember, we we see that with the nation of Israel. The nation of Israel was given the promised land and they were to go in and what? Take it. It was theirs. It wasn't going to be without a fight. It wasn't going to be without difficulty. It wasn't be The enemy wasn't going to give up so easily. And you know, the enemy's not going to give up on our kids. The enemy's not going to give up on our mind. The enemy's not going to give up on those things that have a difficulty in your life, but you stake a claim and you say, wait a minute. I know I'm bummed out today, but I'm going to encourage myself in the Lord. I'm going to get back into the word. I 'm going to develop my life of prayer. And when God tells me to do something, I'm going to obey it. And it's through those steps that you come to the place where you find the enemy. You You take it. Take the enemy out. However that's going to look, that's going to be different depending on the circumstance. And then you stake a claim on what is yours. And because David turned to the Lord, he was able to recover it all. Not some, not most. I mean, you think about it. If they took a loaf of bread, they didn't even eat a slice before David got it back. I mean, they didn't even share it. It was that quick of a work of God. And it something that could have been so bad if he would have stayed in that place became so good in the Lord. And I believe this is the Lord's will for you and me. He wants us to recover all that's been ripped off by our sin, all that's been ripped off by our flesh, all that's been ripped off by the enemy, all that is currently being ripped off by decisions and situations that you have of which no control over. The Bible says in Isaiah 61 verse 3 that it's God's heart to console those who mourn in Zion, to give them beauty for ashes, the oil of joy for mourning, and the garment of praise for the spirit of heaviness, that they may be called trees of righteousness, the planting of the Lord. Why? The end of that verse, that he may be glorified. Jot that one down. Memorize it. Isaiah 61 verse 3. This is the work of the Lord in our lives. Now notice verse 21. Back in for Samuel. Now David came to the 200 men that had been so weary and they could not follow David, whom they also had made to stay at the Brook Besor. So it wasn't just they weren't going. They were going to take care of what they left behind. They had to stay. So they went out to meet David and to meet the people who were with them. And when David came near the people, he greeted them. Then all the wicked wicked and worthless men of those who went with David answered and said, because they did not go with us, we will not give them any of the spoil that we have recovered, except for every man's wife and children that they may lead them away and depart. So they don't want to The people that went to fight don't want to share in any of the spoils of the people that went behind, the people that were left behind. So the ones that went in and defeated from twilight to the evening, when they come back, the wicked and worthless ones, we're not told how many, they said no way. No way. They You can hear that they know they didn't fight with us. They didn't go with us. That would then Then they don't get anything. They can have their wife and kids, but that's it. We earned it. They didn't. Jesus would share a parable later on. We don't have time to go into it, but Jesus would share a parable about hire different hiring different people at different times of the day, different wages. And And then the the one that was hired first would work all day for the same wage and then the last one would just work for a couple of hours for the same wage. And they were upset about it. And Jesus said, wait a minute. Didn't we make an agreement? Didn't we You said you wanted to work for that. And And he used that as a an example of people, I believe, like we got testimony today. I got an email today um that great, we've been waiting. One of the brothers on the worship team has his family has been waiting and waiting and waiting for his grandmother and grandmother father to be saved. I mean, on and on, they've had a rough life. Uh he shared all the details of the rough life, but just recently through sickness and on their deathbed, both his grandmother and grandfather gave their life to the Lord. See, it doesn't matter if you get saved as a young age. Man, God bless you. But you can get saved in one of your last breaths if you turn to the Lord Jesus Christ right now and turn repent of your sins. God will save you. And so here's another thing where it's not fair. We went and fought and they didn't fight. So we're not sharing with them, but David is very wise, verse 23. And again, don't forget it wasn't too long earlier that these guys wanted to kill David, but he wasn't intimidated. He wasn't fearing man. He's making the right decision. And David said, my brethren, you shall not do so with what the Lord has given us, who has preserved us and delivered into our hand the troop that came against us. For who will heed you in this matter? But as his part is who goes down to battle, so shall his part be who stays by the supplies. They shall share alike. And so it was from that day forward he made it a statute and an ordinance for Israel to this day. Everyone benefits. We're all on a team. 1 Corinthians chapter 12 speaks of us being the body of Jesus Christ. Some people are more prominent in the body and some are less seen, and yet we're all important, the Bible says. You know, sometimes you might look and say, well, you know, you you come to a a church and in this particular church you go, well, you know, Pastor Ed is up there and you see me a lot and you get to see me a lot in the context of our fellowship gatherings here and you might come to the wrong conclusion of well, you know, Pastor Ed's really important here. You might even come to the conclusion that that I'm more important, or you might even come to the conclusion that I'm the most important person here, but that's not true. I I'm not more important than you. We're equally important in the body of Christ. I have a calling upon my life and I am here in obedience to God. The question is this. You have a calling in life. Are you obeying God in your calling? Some of you might be seen. And let me say some of you might not be seen. Now those of you that are not seen those of us that are seen sometimes want to be you that isn't seen because there's a price to pay. There's a price to pay for being seen. Unfortunately, God has made me a mouth, a big one at that. That's just That's how I've been my whole life. I could see how he 's created me and redeemed the mouth that he gave me that was once used against him, blaspheming him. Um just just wickedness would come out of my mouth. But God redeemed that. And in the body of Christ I I I happen to have a place where my mouth is heard maybe more than your mouth, but it doesn't make me more important than you. And Paul, what does he do? He uses the picture of a human body in 1 Corinthians chapter 12 to remind us that we're all important. The body our body is made up of millions of cells interconnected by a common DNA code. The members are different. The parts are different, but some of your most important parts of your body are not seen. All of the internal organs, Paul says. But the common root is the work of Jesus Christ in our life. You see, those that fight and those that stay behind are equally important to the body of Christ. Those that might be up front very busy, very active, very seen are just as important that those that are left behind for a purpose. I think of it in the context of our military here. And so many from our church are deployed and so many of the men and women of our church are on front lines even now. We need to remember to pray for them. They leave their family members behind. And yet their family is just as important in the war as those that are fighting on the front lines. Uh they're a team. They're together. We We are You know, you think of it in the in in the context perhaps as we saw today what a great application to the mission field. There are the missionaries that go and there are missionaries that send and we're all equally important. The The men and women on this trip is as Jim was sharing with us were there by prayerful support, both prayer and financial support. And that enabled them to go. And the Landry family as they had a burden for take their family, it was the faithful support of folks just like you that came alongside of them and said, you know, we 're not able to go to Belize, but we're going to go with you because we're going to invest in you in the mission field. Everyone You go downstairs, all the missionaries that are down on that wall are there by the support of faithful men and women just like you that you have been burdened for an area and while you have a heart for that area, it's impossible in this season for you to go. So you stay back and you send your money ahead and you invest in their lives. It pays their bills. It puts food on their table. It enables them to devote their time to reaching the people of the country that they're in. But listen, friend, there is fruit from their ministry that they are going to enjoy before the presence of the Lord. But you're going to be there right beside them because they are there on the front lines and you are there with them even though you're not there physically. You're just as important. You can serve by sending and you serve by going. And it reminds us that we're a team in the ministry. And if there's anyone that can attest to you of the insignificance of my role in the body of Christ, it's me because in the context of the church here there are literally hundreds, if not over a thousand people that faithfully serve you in this church. And you might say, you know, Pastor Ed, that message really blessed me. And for that, I'm grateful that the Holy Spirit would use me to teach a Bible study that blessed you. But if you could just get a peek of all the work that just happens on a Wednesday afternoon here in this church if you could just get a peek of all the lay leaders that are at work all across the state, all across all everywhere, they're working from early in the morning till late at night and then find themselves to come to be a part of your fellowship family to serve you in a variety of Some are very seen, you know, like those that are teaching your kids. You know, the teachers downstairs teaching your kids which some of you are Sunday school teachers, but especially on Wednesdays they worked all day. And some of them barely got here. Maybe you had to wait in line. You ever get frustrated waiting in line? Where's the teacher? They're getting here. They had to work late. They got a late assignment. They got a flat tire. They tried to grab something to eat and something happened with the burger flipper thing and whatever and And then And then you were in the drive through and And don't you hate when they say, can you just park right over there? You're like, whoa, I don't want to park right over there. I want my food right now. You know, it's like, oh. But you know, it's Hey, I have my role and I I I I I tell you my heart to yours. I I'll I'll serve in my role until my last breath as faithfully as I can. But I'm I'm very small part of what God does here in this church and an even smaller part of what God does in the church around the world. But whatever part I am I want to be the most faithful that I possibly can serving the Lord with all that I have. And I would just ask you to do the same. Maybe the call of God upon your life isn't going to be isn't going to be a mouth, but it makes you no less important. You know, a mouth is nothing without the vocal cords. Have you seen those lately? Vocal cords are pretty important. That's how God use them. And you know, the vocal cords aren't going to be I don't even know all anatomy, so I'm not even going to go through that. You understand. If you don't know anatomy, look it up on Google. Just Google what the heck is Ed talking about. Oh my. So you're waiting for number four, aren't you? Number one, encouraged himself in the Lord. Number two, inquired of the Lord. Number three, he obeyed the Lord. And this last step he honored the Lord with all his possessions. He got it all back and he did the right thing with it. He honored the Lord with all his possessions. You could say that he honored the Lord with all his stuff. He honored the Lord with all of his children. He honored the Lord with any of his grandchildren. Like he lived his life living to please God and glorify him, even taking a stand to all the worthless and wicked people that could have wiped David out in a heartbeat going, no way, you're wrong. This is wrong. We're going to share everything. The people that stayed back are just as important as the people that fought. And it says in verse 26, when David came to Ziklag, he sent some of the spoil to the elders of Judah, to his friends saying, here's a present from you for you from the spoil of the enemies of the Lord. He even took what was his and gave it away. How joyful he's What a change in just one chapter, just a couple days. How fast the Lord can work. He sent it to those that are in Bethel. He sent it to those in Ramoth of the South, to those in Jattir, those who are in Aroer, those who are in Ziphmath, those who are in Eshtemoa, those who are in Racal, verse 29, those who are in the cities of the Jerahmeelites, those who are in the cities of the Kenites, those who are in Hormah, those who are in Zorah, Shan, those who are in Atach, uh those who are in Hebron, and to all the places where David himself and his men were accustomed to roam. They got back more than what was lost. And David honored the Lord with all his possessions. He gave God the glory because I'll tell you the the temptation is when the discouragement passes and you get your equilibrium back and you get a smile back on your face and some kind of normalcy in your life. Those are times when we have a tendency to forget the Lord and take it for granted the goodness of God. You know, we think it would be the worst times and depress, you know, when times of great distress. Don't you think? You know, when would You know, if I did a survey, when do you think the worst time is in your life? When do you think you'll forget the Lord? Was it when you're in really deep discouragement or when you're doing really well? Most people would think, you know, discouragement. Like I'm I'm not feeling right. It's not It's not good. I don't want to talk to anybody. I don't You know, you just get into that. But you know, times of deep discouragement actually aren't the worst time for you and me because it's in times of deep deep discouragement or whatever it might be that that 's really getting you down that God can do his greatest work. It's when you turn to the Lord. It's when you're at rock bottom, when you've come to the end of your rope. The greatest danger for us is when we get it all back, when everything is restored and we start to go back into a place of normalcy and go, oh man, everything's fine. Everything's great. And we might send up a thank you now and then. Oh, thanks God for this. But it's those times when your eyes are walking with the Lord. Your eyes are on the Lord. You make those hard decisions. You're encouraging yourself. You're asking the Lord for wisdom. You're obeying what he says. And then finally you have to follow up with a life of honoring him with all that you have. Or you'll start to cycle all over again and start to backslide. Start to take God for granted. Start to take the stuff of God for granted. You know, right now I know some of you right now you're doing so well in your business. You're doing so well at work. You have more money now than you did the first 10 years when you got married. And that's a tendency to forget the Lord. How do you think you got there? It was my hard work, Ed. I'm sure you did work hard. And it was me, you know, I had school and I I'm sure you went to school and I'm sure you worked hard. I know you had to get the degree, but listen, that's not what the Bible says. The Bible says that every good and perfect gift comes from above, from the Father of Lights. And you keep working hard and you keep being faithful in school. But don't forget to encourage yourself in the Lord. Inquire of the Lord. Don't forget to obey him. And then definitely don't forget to honor him all the way until you meet him face to face because I'll tell you what. God is faithful. And he will meet you in your deepest, darkest time. And he won't just He's not into just encouraging and taking off. It's God's heart to abide. Jesus says he wants to abide with you. If you abide in him, he'll abide in you. And there's an ongoing relationship that's growing with your Savior, not just a religious action to get out of trouble. He doesn't just want to deliver you and then move on to the next person. He wants to deliver you so that you might love him and serve him more and honor him.
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