1 Peter 1:3-9
Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who, according to His abundant mercy, hath begotten us again to a living hope by the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead;
To an inheritance incorruptible, and undefiled, and that fadeth not away, reserved in heaven for you,
Who are kept by the power of God through faith unto salvation ready to be revealed in the last time.
Wherein ye greatly rejoice, though now for a season, if need be, ye are in sorrow through manifold temptations:
That the trial of your faith, being much more precious than gold that perisheth though it be tried with fire, might be found unto praise and honour and glory at the appearance of Jesus Christ:
Whom having not seen, ye love; in Whom, though now ye see Him not, yet believing, ye rejoice with joy unspeakable and full of glory:
Receiving the end of your faith, even the salvation of your souls.
1 Peter 4:12-13
Beloved, think it not strange concerning the fiery trial which is to try you, as though some strange thing were happening unto you:
But rejoice, inasmuch as ye are partakers of Christ’s sufferings; that, when His glory shall be revealed, ye may be glad also with exceeding joy.
Hebrews 4:1-2
Therefore, let us fear, lest, while a promise remains of entering into His rest, any one of you should seem to have come short of it.
For indeed, we have had good news preached to us, just as they also; but the word they heard did not profit them, because it was not mixed with faith in those who heard.
Dear Lord, how we thank You for Your great provision for us. How we thank You for our Lord Jesus Christ.
How we thank You, Lord, for giving us obedient acts that we may do, to come before Your presence and see Him and hear Him: breaking the bread and passing the cup. Oh, Lord, we thank You and we bless You.
And Lord, even now we ask that we might be touched by Your Holy Spirit, by that anointing which He has received as our great High Priest and which runs down to cover even us, the lowest members of His body.
Lord, we believe that You have provision for us to speak and to hear Your Word by Your Holy Spirit. So we submit ourselves to it with the desire, Lord, that Your Word should pierce our hearts and change us forever.
So we ask in the name of the Lord Jesus and for the sake of the Lord Jesus that His inheritance in us might be increased, and that we might come to the end that You intended for us when You created us.
Bless You, Lord, and thank You. Amen.
Dear brothers and sisters, you are in a war. And it is a good thing.
Today, you are on a battlefield, and that is also a good thing. How appropriate that we should talk about this after breaking the bread and sharing the cup that speaks of the finished work of our Lord Jesus.
The end of this war, the victory, is absolutely certain. Our Lord Jesus said, “It is finished.”
You know, He had a cup, a bitter cup He drank: the cup filled with the wrath of God for your sins and for mine. He did not want to drink it. He said, “Father, if it is possible, let it pass from Me.” He prayed that three times, and every time He prayed, “But not My will, but Your will.” There was no other way to save us, brothers and sisters.
But you remember when they came to take Him, Peter cut off Malchus’ ear, the high priest’s servant. The Lord said, “Put away your sword. The cup which My Father gives to Me, shall I not drink it?”
And He submitted. He was obedient unto death, and He said, “It is finished.” What a wonderful word.
He drained that cup. There is nothing left for your salvation or mine. There is nothing left for the victory of God. In finishing the cup, He emptied the wrath of God, but He also brought all the glory to God. And He set before us the sweet cup, the loaf that we just shared.
The victory is Christ—all the victory. The battle is His. The battle is the Lord’s, and He has won it.
There is nothing left to do to secure the end. And yet, brothers and sisters, there is a battle today. There is a war going on, and you and I are in it. There are casualties, difficulties, hardship, pain, and suffering. I am speaking to people who know about this.
It is a good thing. It is in the day of battle, in the time of battle, when you test your weapons. It is in the day of battle, in the time of battle, when you are tested with your weapon.
Now, I want to talk about that today, and I want to speak of three things:
The purpose of this testing, to put it most simply, is that the gold that God has put in you should be refined, and that the dross that is in you should be burned off.
We sing the old hymn, a wonderful hymn, “How Firm a Foundation, Ye Saints of the Lord.” You remember there is a line in it:
The flame shall not hurt thee; I only design
Thy dross to consume, and thy gold to refine.
That gold, of course, speaks of God’s own nature that He puts in us by His Holy Spirit. It is pure and holy in itself, but He gives it to us, and we are a mixture.
So we come to the testing. We come to the trial. The purpose of the testing is not that we should be destroyed. It is not that we should be found unfaithful. It is not that we should be defeated, but that we should come to the end of God, which is that the gold be refined—more pure, more clear.
Oh, brothers and sisters, you see it if you look around you. If you do not see it, then look around you and open your eyes. Brothers and sisters who have been saved give themselves over to the Lord’s hand, and you see changes in them. How could they possibly be the same person they were ten years ago, or even ten months ago, or in some cases ten weeks ago, or maybe even ten days ago?
God is at work in you and me, to will and to do. But He works through this process of refining.
You have come to Jerusalem, to the city of God. But you remember what the Lord says about that: “My fire, My refining, is in Jerusalem.” Let me read it. That would be better.
Isaiah 31:9
And his rock will pass away because of panic,
And his princes will be terrified at the standard,
Declares the Lord, whose fire is in Zion and whose furnace is in Jerusalem.
We have come to Mount Zion. We have come to that fire of which it speaks, to be refined.
This refining process of the Lord is difficult, and it is painful. But the end, we must see, is that He desires to burn off everything which is of this creation and refine everything which goes to the next—to make it even more beautiful than it is.
This refining is done individually in your own lives. It is done corporately in us, because when we come together to this New Jerusalem, to this city of God, to be built together as the house of God, we find that we are in the process together. Actually, we are part of the process for one another.
The purpose of testing is to refine the gold and to burn off the dross. This is the work of God in you that He does patiently, daily, continually, using all things to work together for good.
This is His purpose. He wants to bring you to the place He brought Abraham. You remember Abraham: the father of the faithful, the father of the nation, the father of many nations.
How did he become the father of the faithful? You know, brothers and sisters, Abraham was not always faithful. Ask Sarah how faithful Abraham was when he told Pharaoh that she was his sister and gave her to Pharaoh to be his wife. Or later on, when he did it again to Abimelech.
That was faithless. And yet, brothers and sisters, here is the point I really want to hone in on with you today: that is not the end. That is not the purpose. That is the process. That is something you go through to get where you are going.
You have to be shown who you are. You have to come to the place where you see that you cannot do this, so that you can yield yourself up to God. We do not remember that about Abraham.
What we remember is that he offered Isaac up. God Himself called Abraham His friend. What a wonderful thing.
When they were going to Sodom and Gomorrah, He said, “Shall I not share with My friend what We are about to do, seeing as he is going to be the father of many nations?” He shared with Abraham what He was going to do with our Lord Jesus.
Abraham was one of the companions of God the Father in the suffering of the Lord Jesus when he offered up Isaac. Brothers and sisters, that is where we are to come.
Moses—the great lawgiver, the one who brought the nation out of Egypt, who brought a whole nation forth. You remember when he came down from the mountain, he had received the tablets of the testimony, and his face shone. He had to cover his face with a veil because he had been in the presence of God.
Moses, the lawgiver. Moses, the lawbreaker. Moses murdered a man forty years earlier—an Egyptian overseer. He murdered him and buried him in the sand. The Egyptians sought to kill him because of it, and he ran and escaped.
I am not maligning Moses, brothers and sisters. That is not what we remember about him. He did not stop there. Abraham did not stop there. You and I must not stop there. You see, what we have to learn to do is to bring out of defeat victory.
If there are those in the room who do not know anything about defeat in their lives, I would say to the person next to them, “Please wake them up.” Or bury them.
These men dealt with their defeat differently than we do. We feel bad about it. We come under clouds of condemnation sometimes. Well, you know what we do. I am not going to dwell on that. What I am going to do is point out what I believe we should do.
I want to talk about a man with whom we are all familiar. What a wonderful man David was.
Now, I want you to remember two things. Number one: these people were tested and found wanting in the very things we remember them for—Moses, Abraham, David. And what I also want you to remember is that I am not really talking about David. I am talking about you.
David was anointed to be king. Our Lord Jesus is anointed. David was called to be king. You have come to the King, and to reign and rule with Christ.
God divinely arranged all the circumstances of David’s life. Well, my goodness gracious—“all things work together for good to those who love God and who are called according to His purpose.” We are not really talking about David, brothers and sisters. We are talking about you and me.
I hope today that the Lord will speak to your heart, so that we may come to a different place in our actions and in our lives.
David was a wonderful man. We all know that: a man after God’s own heart. How would you like to have God Himself say that about you?
I have found in the son of Jesse a man after My own heart, who will do all My desire.
And how would you like to hear God say, after you died, to someone else, “This one is not like My servant David, who did everything I desired him to do, who was perfect in all of his ways, except in the matter of Uriah the Hittite”?
He compared all the kings to David, whose throne our Lord Jesus will sit on one of these days. David, the king that God had in His heart for His people to reign and rule for Him; David, upon whom the Lord’s hand was so heavy.
Brothers and sisters, I am not talking about David. I am talking about you.
The Lord tests us in victory, and many of us do not pass that test.
David met a lion and a bear who were trying to steal his sheep. They took a lamb from the flock. You remember when he was telling Saul, Saul said, “You cannot go up against Goliath, for you are but a youth, and he has been a warrior since he was a youth.”
David said, “Now wait a minute. When I was keeping my father’s sheep, a bear came and took one, and I went and got back that sheep. When he resisted me, I grabbed him by the beard and I killed him. A lion also. This uncircumcised Philistine will be as one of them.”
What words. And you remember when he went out to face the enemy. Goliath said, “Am I a dog, that you come at me with sticks?”
David said:
You come at me with sword and javelin and spear.
And I come to you in the name of the God of the heavens and the earth, whose armies you have defied this day, and He will deliver you into my hand.
I will cut off your head and feed the bodies of the armies of the Philistines to the birds of the air.
And the earth will know that there is a God in heaven.
You remember what happened. There was a great victory, and David handled it well—both those great victories.
Then he came into the city with Saul, and there was much adulation, much praise given to him. Some women began to sing and praise the army, and they said this simple little ditty while they were dancing:
Saul hath slain his thousands,
And David his ten thousands.
And Saul, who loved David, had his heart knotted up, and he was suspicious of him from that day forward. He promised David one daughter and gave him another. He gave her to him so that she would be a snare to him.
He put a high dowry of one hundred Philistine foreskins—one hundred of the king’s enemies. He thought David might get killed, and that would be a good thing. David brought back two hundred and said, “Thank you for my wife.”
In all these things David did well. Even after Saul had made him head of the army and the head of his bodyguard, David came in and played his lute when Saul was disturbed by an evil spirit, as he had done years before.
Saul did not remember any of that. He did not care anything about David. “Who is this guy?” And in all these things David did well.
Then one day, the test changed.
Saul said, “I am going to kill him.” Jonathan changed his mind once. Saul said, “I am going to kill him again,” and he sent men to David’s house to watch, to go in and take David and kill him the next day.
His wife Michal, whom Saul had given him, said, “David, if you do not escape tonight, you will not live tomorrow.” So he went down by a rope, escaped, and began to run.
This one who had been anointed to be king by the prophet—this one who had been anointed by Samuel and whom, according to Jewish tradition, knew he was going to be king—was still a humble man. Jewish tradition says that Samuel whispered in his ear as he anointed him that he was to be king.
After he was anointed, he went back with the sheep. He went to the battle, and his brothers disdained him: “What did you come for? Who did you leave those few sheep with? I know your wicked heart. You came here to see the battle.”
Saul, before whom David had played to restore him, said, “Who is this guy?”
Brothers and sisters, David was a humble man. He was disdained by his father, who did not even think he was important enough to bring with the other seven sons when Samuel said, “Cause your sons to pass before me.” You remember his remark: “There is one more, but the youngest; he is with the sheep.”
You remember, I am not really talking about David. I am talking about you, brothers and sisters.
Do you receive that which you should receive in the house of God—the respect you should receive, the place you should have? Do you chafe when you do not?
Maybe you do something and it is not acknowledged. You take a low place and people ignore you. When you do that, people ignore you. That is the whole point. But something bristles inside.
Oh, I do not say that it did not bristle in David, but he controlled it. When they asked him to become the son-in-law of the king, he said, “Is it a small thing to you to become the king’s son-in-law? I am a poor man and from a poor family.”
We trip up on that, brothers and sisters, and we should be careful, because it is ever before you as a snare. A brother once said, and I believe him, “No one can take your place in the house of God, and no one can give you a place that you do not have in the house of God.” That is true.
David was safe, and yet he ran. He went to Jonathan, and Jonathan confirmed that Saul was planning to kill him. Then he left.
David made his way to Nob, where the priests were. David, the man after God’s own heart, came in and spoke to the priest Ahimelech and said, “I am on an errand for Saul, and I had to leave quickly. I am hungry. There are men with me. Give me something to eat.”
It was a lie.
The priest said, “Well, if the men with you are clean, we have no bread except this bread from the showbread, which is only fit for the priests to eat. But if the young men are clean, if they have kept themselves from women, it will be okay.”
And David lied again. He said, “Yes, they are all okay.”
Then he said, “Do you have a weapon? I had to leave in such great haste. It is a secret mission. I even left my weapon.” The priest said, “Well, there is the sword of Goliath. There is none like it. It is wrapped here. If you like it, take it.” And he did.
As he was leaving, he saw the chief of Saul’s shepherds, Doeg the Edomite. You remember him.
Brothers and sisters, remember: I am not talking about David. I am talking about you. Have you ever come to the house of God for comfort, to the priests in the house of God, with trouble on your soul, with lack of faith, unbelieving, and lied to the priest?
Did your lie bear the fruit of David’s? I can tell you, it did not. Because of that, eighty-five priests were killed—not just the priests, but their wives, daughters, sons, babies, sheep, goats, and everything that they had.
One escaped, Abiathar. He came with the ephod, with the Urim and Thummim, and came to David. Later on David said, “I knew when I saw that man, he would tell Saul. I am responsible for the death of your whole household. Come and stay with me. You will be safe with me, because he who seeks your life seeks mine.”
Has your lie brought death into the house of God, brothers and sisters? It is a serious question.
David confessed his sin.
Then David took off and went to Gath. It seems to me to be a silly thing to do. Goliath was, of course, from Gath.
So he went in to the king, Achish, and presented himself for sanctuary. The advisers of the king said, “Wait, is this not the king of the land? Is this not David, of whom, as the maidens danced, they sang, ‘Saul has killed his thousands; David his ten thousands’?”
David’s heart froze within him. He was terrified. He was in an enemy camp, and he had Goliath’s sword on his waist.
How did he get out of that? Do you remember? He acted like a madman. He scrabbled on the door. He let his saliva run down on his beard