Brothers and sisters, can we begin today by reading from 2 Corinthians 1, just the first portion of verse 20?
For as many as may be the promises of God, in Him they are yes.
Then, if we could turn to Hebrews 10, we will read verse 36. First, let us read verse 23, which was from yesterday.
Let us hold fast the confession of our hope without wavering, for He who promised is faithful.
And then, for today, verse 36:
For you have need of endurance, so that when you have done the will of God, you may receive what was promised.
Acts 13:22:
And after He had removed him, He raised up David to be their king, concerning whom He also testified and said, “I have found David, the son of Jesse, a man after My own heart, who will do all My will.”
Then, if we could turn to the Old Testament, please, to Isaiah 40. We will read at the end of the chapter.
Yet those who wait for the Lord will gain new strength.
They will mount up with wings like eagles.
They will run and not get tired.
They will walk and not become weary.
First Samuel 15:22:
And Samuel said, “Has the Lord as much delight in burnt offerings and sacrifices as in obeying the voice of the Lord? Behold, to obey is better than sacrifice.”
Finally, can we turn to Psalm 132? I am trying to choose between so many good verses, which we will get to, but perhaps Psalm 132.
For the sake of David Thy servant,
Do not turn away the face of Thine anointed.
The Lord hath sworn to David,
A truth from which He will not turn back:
“Of the fruit of your body I will set upon your throne.
If your sons will keep My covenant
And My testimony which I will teach them,
Their sons also shall sit upon your throne forever.”
And I am sorry, brothers and sisters—Revelation 22:16, the last book of the Bible:
“I, Jesus, have sent My angel to testify to you these things for the churches. I am the root and the offspring of David, the bright morning star.”
Lord, we thank You this morning that we have the chance to be together before You. Lord, we pray that You might melt and soften all of our hearts, both the speaking and the listening, so that we might be able to hear what You are trying to say.
Lord, we pray that You would protect Your word, the preciousness of it. Lord, we know that You are doing something wonderful that we can hardly imagine. So, Lord, we pray that Your word would have the liberty to do that today under the cover of Your precious Spirit.
So we thank You, Lord. Have all the glory, and we pray in Jesus’ name. Amen.
Brothers and sisters, when I was in sixth grade, I learned a lesson from a classmate whose name was Michelle Kawamoto. We had an English teacher, Mr. Sharp, and we were reading Milton’s Paradise Lost.
I remember Michelle, in the middle of a heated discussion—as heated as sixth graders get about Paradise Lost—asking, “When God gives us something, why doesn’t He just force us to take it? Why does He want us to do something for it?”
Or, to borrow from Kenny’s words yesterday: Why does He want us to respond? Wouldn’t it be easier if, when He had something really great, He just forced it on us and we had no choice but to take it?
I remember vividly the question. She was sitting on the left side of the room, maybe four rows back, and I was sitting on the right side, maybe ten rows back. I remember thinking, What a good question that is.
Through the years, I think we all begin to realize that the second portion of that question—the possessing of what He has promised—contains all the lessons of life: why we do things and how we do things, things that end up influencing not just a moment but an entire lifetime.
How do we respond to the promises? Do we choose in our hearts to take possession?
You will recall, as we shared last time, that in Genesis 15 the Lord brought Abram outside. He told Abram to look up into the sky and see all the stars. Abram, of course, did not have a child of his own at that time.
The Lord told him, “Do you see the stars? If you can count them, that will be the number of your descendants.” Not only that, but the land upon which Abram was standing would be the land the Lord would give him.
Abram believed, the Bible tells us. But it is so interesting: he believed what God said, and then he asked the second question Michelle asked: “How will I possess it?”
It was as if he believed in the promise of God, but in some way did not believe in himself—that it could become real to him. This is so like all of us. At times we have faith that the Lord is good and that He is doing good, but when we see ourselves, we wonder, “Is it in my capacity to possess what He has for me to possess?”
Sometimes, brothers and sisters, it is the opposite, and that also warrants caution. We may not believe God, but we believe in ourselves. We may be so fiery about our own giftings that we think, “Oh, we can always do it.”
Either way, in both cases, we need the Lord. Without Him, we become incapable of possessing what He has for us to possess.
The Lord responded to Abram’s concern by adopting a human ritual. He told Abram to gather offerings and separate them, placing the pieces side by side.
As we read in Jeremiah, when one walks through the offerings, he is basically making a commitment—a promise that this will happen. In His wonderful grace, the Lord came down that evening as a smoking oven and a flaming torch, representing the pillar of smoke and the pillar of fire.
Before Abram’s eyes, He walked between the two portions of the offering to tell him, “Not only am I promising you that your descendants will be like the stars of heaven and that you will occupy this land, but it will be My promise that you might be able to possess it.”
It becomes a dual promise.
Brothers and sisters, scholars have told us that the Bible contains over eight thousand promises. They are of every assortment.
We shared about six promises that the Lord put on my heart—significant, weight-bearing promises:
Brothers and sisters, these are huge promises. They are weight-bearing promises.
But He also made many smaller promises to us. By “small,” I do not mean unimportant. I mean daily promises—promises that allow us, as His followers, to live to fight another day.
Sometimes they may seem like little things, but each of these promises gives us the opportunity to further possess what He has given to us. He carries us on day by day so that we may possess the promises.
How do the promises help us take possession of them? In Hebrews, we read two verses, and each gives us a picture.
The first, in Hebrews 10:23, is that in order to possess the promises, we need to see that the One who promised is faithful. Without Him, we cannot do it. With Him, He guides us along the way so that the moment will come when we can take possession of what He has placed before us.
The second is Hebrews 10:36, which we will talk about today: we need endurance to do the will of God. If we do the will of God, we will be able to possess the promises.
Why, brothers and sisters, are these promises so important?
Often, when we think of God’s promises, we think of them feebly. We align them with our desires or our prosperity. It is true that He knows what is best for us, but that can be only a flicker of the power within the promises.
We can become so careless that we pick only the promises aligned with what we hope to receive. We selectively look, and then we minimize their power in our lives.
One of us may pray for rain, while another prays for sun. We might pray for one job rather than another. We might pray that we receive a job, while inadvertently praying that our brother or sister does not receive it.
We may pray for one political candidate rather than another. We may pray that the Grizzlies win the NBA championship while someone else prays for the Knicks.
You see, that is a limited look at the promises. But brothers and sisters, promises are for us, yet the promises the Lord made are for Him.
In the search for the promises, He draws us to what is in His heart. In order to possess the promises, the very act of seeking them draws us away from ourselves. It has the power to cause us to look at things differently and to see things more deeply.
The promises can only be possessed by going on with Him more deeply, in order to seek what pleases Him.
When we look at the promises of God and read them in the Bible, they are for Him. The heart to possess them will draw us out of all the power of the world and into something far greater.
Today’s application of the promises comes from the second promise we mentioned: the promise made to David that his offspring would always sit on the throne.
Let us look at it together in 2 Samuel 7. Beginning in verse 1:
Now it came about when the king lived in his house, and the Lord had given him rest on every side from all his enemies, that the king said to Nathan the prophet, “See now, I dwell in a house of cedar, but the ark of God dwells within tent curtains.”
Then, in verse 5:
“Go and say to My servant David, ‘Thus says the Lord, “Are you the one who should build Me a house to dwell in? For I have not dwelt in a house since the day I brought up the sons of Israel from Egypt, even to this day; but I have been moving about in a tent, even in a tabernacle.”’”
And verse 16:
“Your house and your kingdom shall endure before Me forever; your throne shall be established forever.”
Then Psalm 132 repeats the promise:
The Lord hath sworn to David,
A truth from which He will not turn back:
“Of the fruit of your body I will set upon your throne.”
Now, brothers and sisters, Hebrews tells us that in order to possess such a promise, the criterion is that we do His will.
In Acts 13:22, we read the testimony concerning David:
“I have found David, the son of Jesse, a man after My heart, who will do all My will.”
What we see here is that the heart to do the will of God is linked to possessing the promises.
Sometimes, if we think about doing His will, we may say, “You know, maybe I do try to do His will.” As I prepared for this message, I thought, if I could quantify the choices I make in my life—the denominator being all my choices, and the numerator the number of times I ask, “Lord, what do You think I ought to do about this?”—I would suggest it is probably not that high.
Maybe before I have to give a message, because of sheer fear, it goes up a little bit. But the truth is that we probably, if we are honest with ourselves, live instinctively toward the survival of ourselves.
Then we begin to realize that this charge—to do His will, which may allow us to possess the promises—is something larger. It is something we ought to learn about.
When David became king, his story had already begun with Samuel coming to Jesse’s house to search for the new king. The Lord had told Samuel, “Go to the house of Jesse to anoint the next king.”
Samuel had been given a hint. He had been told that this one would be a man after God’s own heart.
Samuel came from Ephraim to the tribe of Judah. The Bible gives us the sense that if you looked through the peephole and saw a prophet approaching your house, you might think something bad was coming. Jesse’s family saw Samuel and wondered why he was there.
Samuel told them that he was there at the Lord’s command. They brought out Jesse’s older sons, each of whom looked impressive on the outside. But the Lord did not tell Samuel, “He is the one.”
Finally Samuel asked, “Are these all your boys?” Jesse replied that there was another one, the youngest, out in the field tending sheep. They brought him in, and when Samuel saw him, the Lord made it clear: “He is the one.”
David’s face was reddish and ruddy, and there was a sparkle of life in his eyes. Samuel knew: a man after God’s own heart. He anointed him, and the Bible tells us that from that day the Spirit came powerfully upon him.
This was the beginning of David’s story. But then there was a journey.
When David became king, in 2 Samuel 4 through 7, he immediately sought to do three things:
David knew the preciousness of Mount Zion. He captured Zion first. Then he brought the ark back to Jerusalem.
One day, after sleeping in his fine home with paneled cedar walls, David looked around and said, “I am sleeping in a house of cedar, and the ark of God is resting in a tent.”
Something came into his heart by the Spirit: “I am going to build a house for the Lord.” He told Nathan the prophet his plans.
Nathan went to pray, and the Lord came back with this word: “In all the years, I never gave a commandment that someone ought to build Me a house.”
Here, brothers and sisters, we learn something really wonderful: the will of God is greater than the commandments of God. The will of God is larger, and the commandments of God form a subset of what is in His heart.
If the commandments of God were everything, then we could write it all down and know what to do. But there is a portion that requires searching and connection to know what He is thinking and what He is longing for.
If you imagine the commandments here and the will here, David was resting in that larger portion one day, looking at his house and thinking, “Something ain’t right.”
The Spirit came in and planted something of eternity there. From David’s heart concerning Zion, the ark, and the house, the Lord said, “There will always be a descendant, an offspring of David, on the throne of the kingdom.”
Solomon was born, and then his descendants followed. But because of the drama of sin and the influence of self, calamity came, and the kings were eventually lost to history.
Prophets came and prophets went. Messages came and were lost. Then came Malachi, and after that, four hundred years of silence.
There was quiet. There were no prophets. There were no messages. After so many generations, the thought of a people for God’s own possession seemed long gone. The thought of possessing our possessions was far away.
Religious authority came into the hands of a new group, the Pharisees. Their teaching emphasized an outward lifestyle with a lack of inward life.
The temple became a place of tradition and performative religion. God was so far away from the hearts of His people. Perhaps this is not too different from where we find ourselves today.
The people no longer knew that they belonged to God, and God did not belong to the people.
Into this world, Mary and Joseph brought our Lord Jesus into the temple as a baby. Simeon was there.
Simeon had been given two promises. The first was, “You will not die until you see the second promise,” which was God’s salvation—the Messiah.
In one way or another, Simeon was waiting. Then Mary and Joseph brought the Lord Jesus in as a baby, and Simeon took Him into his arms.
At that moment, we realize that while the people had forgotten the promises, God had not.
This child had been sent forth from the highest glory to recover His people to His own possession and to recover us to our purpose.
For all the promises of God, in Him they are yes.
When we think through each of those weight-bearing promises, we see their fulfillment in Him. Abram was promised a land full of the richness of God and His inheritance. When the Child was born to us, we realized that all the riches of God are now available to us.
David was promised that there would always be a king on the throne, a son of David. In the Lord Jesus, the promises are yes.
He came and took my place, and He was nailed to the cross so that every punishment owed to me would be remembered and ferociously paid for.
He cleaned out a portion of my heart so that the Holy Spirit, hovering and waiting for a place to land, could come down and find a landing spot in my heart.
He promised—and He is still doing it, and will do it—“I will build My church, and the gates of hell will not win.” And He said, “I will return for you.”
Brothers and sisters, in Him the promises are yes.
As people met Him, they were often the ones we would not expect: the blind, the common masses, the Gentiles, the women—the ones whom the high and mighty thought had no enlightenment.
When He came by, they called out to Him, “Son of David,” because they saw that He was the fulfillment of the promises. They heard Him speak and latched on, because there was something about Him so different.
Three and a half years later, when He came into the city He loved so much, the masses—the nobodies—laid palm branches down and said, “Hosanna to the Son of David.”
They saw the King who would be on the throne, the fulfillment of the promise.
Pilate saw Him and asked, “Are You the King?” The soldiers made a crown of thorns, which they impaled upon His head. They gave Him a robe and a mocking scepter, which they eventually took and beat Him on the head with.
Brothers and sisters, He died for us, even as He was mocked.
In the mystery of time, John was in the throne room of heaven. Sitting upon the throne was the King—the Father—and in His hand was a scroll with seven seals.
What we know of this scroll is that if no one could take it and break its seals, there could be no moving forward into the things that God wanted in His heart.
They called out and looked for someone who could take the scroll and do what needed to be done so that His will could move forward. No one was able to do it.
Then someone came to John and told him that there was the Lion of the tribe of Judah, the Son of David, who could take the scroll and break its seals.
John looked, and there He was: the Lion of Judah, a Lamb as if just slain.
Somehow, in the mystery of time, the Lord Jesus, mocked on the cross as the King of the Jews with the placard over His head, is revealed as truly the Son of David. He takes the scroll and breaks its seals.
At the end of all things, when the church—His bride—is made ready, there is the pronouncement of the King, the Bridegroom:
“I am the offspring and the root of David.”
He is the King forever.
What we see in the fulfillment of this promise is that it began because there were those who desired to do the will of God.
The promises can transcend time, but they are linked to a simple heart that seeks His will—to do His will—so that we can possess the promises.
What is the power of a heart seeking His will? It is the power to dive into a place far away from the surface things controlled by our pride.
Just like our theme verses from Obadiah: surrounded by the pride of Edom, the Lord would allow His people to possess their possessions. We would leave behind our own ambitions to search for what is in His heart.
This search, brothers and sisters, is the light of the world. Those who do not know Him will see a people searching for something larger. There will be a residual brightness, a shining of the Son into this world.
In the stories of Samuel and David—Samuel of Ephraim and David of Judah—we would like to see four lessons about what it means to live a life that does His will.
I mentioned the mnemonic, “SUFFR,” and today it will be for the youth. I could not think of an H; the Lord did not give me one. So it is Y-O-U-T—perhaps you can put the H in lowercase.
We will begin with Y: young.
In Isaiah 40, the chapter ends with a wonderful challenge and statement. For those of us who wait on Him—who hope for His word and His direction in our lives—He gives strength.
We know that there are many moments in life when God’s will is not clear to us. We want to know His will, so we seek His will and pray.
There is always a temptation to take matters into our own hands. We remember a time when Saul was chasing David from cave to cave. One day David and his mighty men were in a cave, and Saul came in to relieve himself.
It was a very vulnerable position. David’s men said, “Now is our chance. We no longer want to run from cave to cave. This is our moment.”
But David sought the Lord’s will. The Lord had not given him the timing to act, so he did not do it. He was waiting, seeking the right time.
The temptation was that all the circumstances pointed to this being the moment. But David would not move.
Saul, by contrast, was a man who could not wait. When he saw an opportunity to strike and people were leaving, he was supposed to wait for Samuel to come and make an offering.
Saul decided, “You know what? I am going to lose the moment. I will make the offering myself.”
Saul lived in the instantness of the world. He gave himself the credit to move before God, and it stole something vital from him: the chance to know the deeper things.
The question of learning to wait and learning to pray is put before us.
Many brothers and sisters can speak of moments like this: “Where should I go to college? What job should I take? Should I ask her out? How do I raise my children? Where should I meet in the Lord’s presence on Sundays?”
These are questions that draw us to wait on Him.
It is very easy for us to analyze external circumstances and the power of those influences upon every one of us. But before we can do His will, we must seek His will.
David gives us a hint of his heart in Psalm 40. This testimony is later transferred to the Lord Jesus in Hebrews.
I waited patiently for the Lord;
And He inclined unto me, and heard my cry.
David was waiting. He wanted to know the way to go. In his life, he learned to wait.
Later in the psalm, David says:
Sacrifice and meal offering Thou hast not desired;
Mine ears hast Thou opened:
Burnt offering and sin offering hast Thou not required.
Then said I, “Lo, I am come;
In the roll of the book it is written of me:
I delight to do Thy will, O my God;
Yea, Thy law is within my heart.”
What David is saying is, “I waited for You because, Lord, I want to know what Your will is, because somewhere deep inside I want to do Your will.”
In Hebrews 10, this testimony is applied prophetically to the Lord Jesus:
Sacrifice and offering Thou wouldest not,
But a body didst Thou prepare for Me;
In whole burnt offerings and sacrifices for sin Thou hadst no pleasure.
Then said I, “Lo, I am come
(In the roll of the book it is written of Me)
To do Thy will, O God.”
It was His nature. It was who the Lord was. He always sought to do the will of His Father. He delighted to do His will.
It starts, brothers and sisters, with waiting.
There are times when something is so important—an upcoming decision—and we pray and read, then read and pray. For a moment, we think there is trust, and suddenly we are not so sure.
Then we repeat it: we pray and read and pray, and we still are not quite sure what the Lord wants us to do. We do not want to do the wrong thing. We do not want to disappoint Him.
This struggle to wait and not move until He lets us know can last for a period.
What we do not realize, brothers and sisters, is that the Lord has already won. When we have a heart that wants to know what He wants us to do, He has already won.
Something in us knows that His way is the right way.
Some of us go through this and wonder, “Lord, why are You not just telling us?” We do not realize that He is full of joy, and what is perfect is coming.
When we wait for the Lord, we grow young. We renew our youthful strength. We take up wings so that we can fly into His Spirit and run where He runs.
Brothers and sisters, when we wait for Him, we grow young.
Some of us have been following the Lord for some time, and some of us have a lot of mileage. What can happen over time is decay. In medicine, we call it a terrible name: the disease of senescence—getting old and dying.
That can come into us when our lives are based on what I want, when we try to arrange the world and arrange God’s will so that it feeds what I want.
But when we decide, “Forget about that. Lord, I am going to do what You want. I am going to cast off what the world tells me I ought to do, or what I need to do in order to be whole or great. I am going to follow You, and I am not going to move until I know what You want me to do,” then we begin to grow young.
Samuel knew what it was to grow up young in God’s house. In 1 Samuel 3:3, he was a boy sleeping on the ground in the holiest place in the world, and it was like his home.
In the morning, when the light came up, he would get up and run with his little legs to the doorway of the tent of meeting. He was a doorkeeper. He would run, skid to a stop, open the door, and the light would come in.
The fragrance of the Lord would go out into the world. Everyone nearby would sense, as our brothers have wonderfully shared, the presence of the Shekinah.
Brothers and sisters, Samuel knew what it was to be young in God’s house. That is stolen from us when God’s will is not part of the equation of our lives.
David also grew up young in God’s house. He did not grow up in the tabernacle; he grew up beneath the stars. At night he looked up and saw the stars, and he wrote psalms about the majesty of God.
He was young and dependent on God, and there was nothing wrong with that—nothing. When the lion or bear came, he learned trust.
When David heard Goliath taunting in all his worldly strength, David heard him differently. He said:
“Who is this uncircumcised Philistine, that he should defy the armies of the living God?”
David saw the world differently. He saw it young—dependent. He knew Goliath was not fighting against David when David ran into the valley. Goliath was fighting against God, and he had no chance.
What is it to have a heart young in God’s presence? It is to have a simple heart—pure in reverence, sensing that nothing is impossible, unafraid to learn, and enthusiastic about what the Lord will bring that day.
These things can be lost to us when the will of God is not part of our lives. To seek His will and wait for Him creates in us a dependence, a waiting for what is next.
Samuel and David saw themselves as small in the greatness of God. They allowed themselves to live for what was coming—to be childlike. The Lord Himself said that the kingdom of God belongs to such as these.
Sometimes I think about things that happened to me in high school and college, and I wonder, “What happened to that young man—that childlike heart?” Did I become mature and worldly wise, or did the rigor of life take it away?
But those same experiences, when seen from a different point of view, create and make us young in His house.
The first step toward possessing the promises—to having the strength and, as our brother said, the passion for it—is to wait for the Lord.
The O is obedient.
There is a story in 1 Samuel 15. Samuel asked Saul to fight for the Lord against Amalek.
Amalek was the enemy of God. When the people were walking through the land, Amalek’s tactic was to strike from the rear. They attacked the elderly, the weak, and the children.
It is like the tactic of the devil. He does not fight by rules. It is destruction.
The Lord told Samuel to tell Saul, “Utterly destroy them. Leave nothing.” Saul went to war against them, and you will recall the story: he destroyed ninety-nine percent, but he brought back Agag the king and the best of the flock and oxen as plunder.
When Saul returned, he built a monument—not an altar, but a monument. The monument was built to himself.
Samuel came and confronted him: “Why did you do this? You were told to utterly destroy them.”
In Saul’s mind, he thought, “I did do that.” He saw it through his own eyes. “The only things I brought back were the great things, so I could offer them to God—to your God.”
Samuel said something profoundly important:
“To obey is better than sacrifice.”
Obedience is what the Lord is looking for.
What is the difference, brothers and sisters? There are two ways to look at it.
Sacrifice is to give something to the Lord that I possess in my life, when that was not what He originally wanted. There is an instruction, a command, and we are charged to follow His commandment. When we are not able to, we bring something of ours to make up for it.
I was not able to possess what He wanted me to possess. Instead, I bring Him something that I possess and give it in its place.
Sacrifice throughout the Bible is necessary, of course. It is logical in that way. But the Lord is drawing us to something deeper.
We can live a life full of sacrifice. I will always lay claim to the greatest sacrifice ever—the Lord Jesus dying for me—the power of it and the wonder of it.
But behind that, the Lord Jesus is asking, “Will you obey Me?” It is what He is longing for us to possess: a heart willing to do His will.
There is a second difference. Sometimes we have something we possess, and the Lord asks for it. We may see it as a sacrifice—something that was mine, and now I give it to Him.
My brother Philip brought me this water because he may have been worried that I was going to faint. If I give it to someone because the Lord says, “Give what you have to somebody else,” that is obedience.
But on the other hand, I may hold it as mine and feel that I am doing Him some degree of favor. On the outside, it looks the same, but it is really subtle.
Brothers and sisters, we know our own hearts. There is a small difference there, but it is real. That is the difference between sacrifice and obedience.
To do His will, we need to obey. Let us look at John 8:29 to see how the Lord thought of doing His Father’s will.
“I always do the things that are pleasing to Him.”
That is what it is to do His will. “I always do the things that are pleasing to Him.” Not sometimes. This was the Lord Jesus all the time.
He was One who never needed to offer sacrifice. Why? Because He always did the things that were pleasing to the Father.
We need sacrifice; there is no doubt about that. But in addition to that, if we seek to do His will, we learn what is pleasing to Him and chase that down.
In Luke 22, at His hardest moment, when my sins and your sins were piled upon Him, He said:
“Not My will, but Thine, be done.”
“I always do the things that are pleasing to Him.”
Brothers and sisters, one day we will all stand before the judgment seat, and there we will see our Lord Jesus, the Son of Man, scarred because of His offering for us.
Are we really going to stand there and say, “Do You know what I sacrificed for You? Did You not record all the things that I did for You that were a sacrifice to me?”
Or are we going to see Him there and remember what He gave to us? That is the difference, brothers and sisters: obedience.
It is not recorded that way. It is simply who He was, and who I think we all hope to be.
So, obedience is better than sacrifice. This is a lifelong journey, but if we hope for it, we have a fighting chance that we may possess the promises He has made.
The U is under His Spirit.
Our brothers have already shared much about this. It is really wonderful. The Spirit is essential to doing the will of God.
The areas we discussed earlier—outside the commandments but within the will—are all in the leading of the Spirit.
The marvel is that there is so much growing in that space.
When Saul wanted to kill David, there was a moment in 1 Samuel 19 when David ran to find Samuel again. Samuel was at home in Ramah, and David ran there.
The prophets were all there, and they were prophesying in the Spirit. It was normal. David came in, and because the Spirit had already come powerfully upon him when he was anointed, he could fellowship with them and tell Samuel what was happening.
The Spirit’s presence was part of the environment.
Saul learned David was there, so he sent three groups of servants to capture him. The first came, and the Spirit came upon them. The Bible tells us they fell down and began to prophesy. They could not arrest David.
The second group experienced the same thing, and the third group experienced the same thing. The Spirit overpowered them because they were coming against the will of God.
The work of the Holy Spirit is always toward the achievement of the will of God—the increase of God’s heart. That is what He does.
If someone comes against that, the Spirit becomes something upon them, arresting them from an intention outside God’s will. Thankfully, we know the Spirit has stopped us before as well.
The Holy Spirit is the administrator of His will.
Those servants were not in alignment with God’s will, so the Spirit came upon them to stop them. But for those living according to the will—or at least trying to, as in David’s case—you could walk in and out, and it was normal.
The Holy Spirit cannot counter God’s will. That is impossible. The two are one; they are aligned.
When Saul heard that his three teams of servants could not make it, he decided to come himself. The same thing happened to him.
Saul was a man of flesh, and to come under the Spirit was an arresting of what he wanted to do.
In order to do the will of God, it cannot be done without the Holy Spirit in our lives—without the daily intervening and guidance of the Spirit.
In Galatians, we remember that the Spirit is not merely aligned with the will; the Spirit is set against the flesh.
He protects us, guides us, and brings us in. All that He does is unto the things of the Lord Jesus’ heart and God’s heart.
If the things of the Holy Spirit are fully aligned and driven by the will of God, you can see how the Holy Spirit is building the church. Without Him, we cannot possess the promises.
Kenny shared yesterday from Genesis 24, which is a lovely and wonderful picture. Abraham wanted to find a bride for his son.
There are four characters in the story: Abraham; the son of promise, Isaac; a servant; and a girl, Rebekah.
The servant was the oldest servant in Abraham’s house and was in charge of all that Abraham owned. He was responsible; he was the administrator of Abraham’s will.
Abraham charged the servant, “I want you to go and find a bride for my son. That bride needs to come here to be engaged in all the promises I have promised to him.”
Isaac was the son of promise, the inheritor of the promised land. The bride was to be drawn out of the world so that she could possess all the things Abraham had promised to Isaac.
The old servant—whom I think the Holy Spirit is okay with us referring to in this context—traveled to that outside land. He had a plan: “I have my ten camels with me, and if a woman comes, gives me a drink, and waters my camels, I think she will be the one.”
And she was.
He brought some of the riches of his master’s house: bracelets and a gold ring, and he gave them to her. Then she was given the choice: “Will you leave this world and come to this land of promise, and take possession of it with your groom?”
She said, “I am willing. I will go.”
Brothers and sisters, it is a story of the Holy Spirit. It is the story of all of us and our God, a picture of the things in His heart.
As Rebekah came out and journeyed back, Isaac was at Beer-lahai-roi. They saw him, and she asked, “Who is that?” The servant told her, “That is the one,” and she got down and made herself ready.
It is a wonderful story about possessing our promises and the critical role of the Holy Spirit. It is His work. So we must live under the Spirit.
Lastly, T: together in the church is the will of God.
Let us turn to Hebrews 11, one last reference to David and Samuel, beginning in verse 32:
And what shall I more say? For the time will fail me if I tell of Gideon, Barak, Samson, Jephthah, of David and Samuel and the prophets;
Who through faith subdued kingdoms, wrought righteousness, obtained promises, stopped the mouths of lions,
Quenched the power of fire, escaped the edge of the sword, from weakness were made strong, waxed mighty in war, turned to flight armies of aliens.
Women received their dead by a resurrection: and others were tortured, not accepting their deliverance; that they might obtain a better resurrection:
And others had trial of mockings and scourgings, yea, moreover of bonds and imprisonment:
They were stoned, they were sawn asunder, they were tempted, they were slain with the sword:
They went about in sheepskins, in goatskins; being destitute, afflicted, ill-treated
(of whom the world was not worthy).
Here is a final reference to David and Samuel. They are almost mentioned as an afterthought in this wonderful chapter, but grammatically they are put together as one unit: “David and Samuel and the prophets.”
They are mentioned with a whole list of brothers and sisters who sought to do the will of God together.
This brings us back to something many of us have mentioned this week: there is a togetherness in the church. Without that perspective, the fullness of this topic cannot be appreciated.
The church is nurtured personally by the Lord. He said that He would build her up, save her, present Himself to her, cleanse her with water and the word, and that she would live because of His life.
Because of that life in us, there is the potential for glory. When we are made ready with no spot or wrinkle, that glory—which manifests, reflects, and can engage with the glory of the Son of God—will be released.
The church, as our brother shared, is made up of living stones. That is, rocks like us, where the life of Christ has landed.
If you looked at us, we would just be rubble. In our own lives and in our own ways, we are all shards with no ability, no compatibility, no matching concave and convex sides. We do not fit.
We are all sharp, jutting angles that injure one another when we get close. But by the Spirit, when life comes into us, He begins to chisel. At times He breaks us. He molds us so that we fit together.
In the house of God, perhaps one area of living stones is composed of a saved one from the church of Antioch in the year 50, bordering next to a sister from Germany in the sixteenth century, a martyr from Turkey, and a young man from CFC in 2026.
In bringing together all the different precious parts He has carved and chiseled, we begin to see the preciousness of the house of God.
In Hebrews 11, the church is described through some of our actions. If we asked Jacob, “Have you ever shut the mouths of lions?” Jacob would say, “No, I have not.”
But that is okay, because David shut the mouths of lions.
If we asked David, “Have you ever, from weakness, become strong?” he might say, “There may have been examples, but nothing so obvious.” But that is okay, because Samson did.
Over the years, some were tortured because they would not deny His name. Some escaped the power of fire. Someone may ask you or me, “Did you do these things?”
I would say, “No, I did not on my own. But yes, I did, in the lives of my brothers and sisters.”
Because in the church, we are one. We are fiercely honored to be counted together.
The church has done these things, and He is raising her up so that she may be able and made ready to fully reflect the glory of her Lord.
Never individually—only together as one living organism, built up by her Lord outside time and space, outside language and culture, and outside any other man-made division.
His life flows in every place. The church does not grow because of common interests, common age groups, or similar preferences. In fact, the church defies these things.
She grows in the life of God by doing the will of God, and she will take possession of all the possessions.
So, brothers and sisters, the church is together, and we seek the will of God together so that we together might claim the promises.
Brothers and sisters, the Lord suffered for the youth: to see the Promiser as faithful and to see as He sees; to know the One who promises, who sees the unit of possession as His church.
In order to follow fully, we need to know Him—not just about Him or the rules. We need to seek Him out and know Him.
We need to be bound together, because we may need to say to one another, “Remember what He promised to us.”
The youth: in order to claim the promises, we ought to do His will. We may wait for His will together so that we can grow young and be strengthened for His heart’s desire.
Obedience is greater than sacrifice. We might live under the Spirit, under His headship, and the church together.
Praise the Lord. Let us bow.
Lord, we thank You for all the things that are in Your heart, and that somehow You have made those things accessible to people like us.
Lord, we pray that You would find in us Your house, that we want to follow You wherever You go, and to love with anticipation the things that You have laid before us to possess.
So we thank You, Lord. Glory to You, in Jesus’ name. Amen.