And the study is that of David, the battles of faith, which we've explained to newcomers just in a moment. There's very little said about David in Hebrews chapter eleven, but his name is mentioned in a group or with a group of others. And I think that the mention and the circumstances surrounding that group make it very clear just what is prominent in the group. Thirty-two, What shall I say? And what shall I more say? For the time would fail me to tell of Gideon, and of Barak, and of Samson, and of Jephthah, of David also, and Samuel, and of the prophets, who through faith subdued kingdoms, wrought righteousness, obtained promises, stopped the mouths of lions, quenched the violence of fire, escaped the edge of the swords, out of weakness were made strong, waxed valiant in fight, that is, became progressively more valiant as they fought, turned to flight the armies of the aliens. Women received their dead, raised to life again, and others were tortured, not accepting deliverance, that they might obtain a better resurrection. And others had trial of cruel mocking and scourging, gay moreover of bonds and imprisonments. They were stoned, they were sawn asunder, were tempted, were slain with the sword. They wandered abide in sheepskins and goat skins, being destitute, afflicted, tormented, of whom the world was not worthy. They wandered in deserts and in mountains and in dens and caves of the earth. All these, having obtained a good report, through faith, received not the promise. God, having provided some better thing for us, that they without us should not be made perfect. Now, we're not going to talk about the whole group of men. We're going to talk about David, and as we talk about David, we're going to look at him in the context of the battles of faith. For those with us, possibly for the first time tonight, we just make these up, these different patriarchs up, in a different context. Each one of them, according to the prominence given to some particular theme in their lives. We studied Abraham as an illustration of the obedience of faith. Beginning at the verse, by faith Abraham, when he was called, went out, obeyed God, obeyed God, and went out, not knowing whether he went. And that was a theme of his whole life. Isaac, the patience of faith. The man who didn't do anything very startling, very dramatic, the man who didn't tear down cities or do anything very great in the eyes of men. Indeed, he did something which in the eyes of many men would be considered rather humdrum and not very desirable. He just was patient. He kept plodding on. But that was the key to his life. And, of course, the life of faith is and should be and needs to be. Indeed, must be characterized not only by obedience but by patience. When we come to Jacob, we studied his life as the disciplining of faith, or the discipline of faith if you want. But his life is made up of a whole series of disciplining under the hand of God. No matter where he went, God seemed to zero in on him and press him down. He started off very unpromising material. He started off a rather selfish, arrogant, overriding kind of individual. And he ended up a gracious patriarch. Blessing Pharaoh, one, blessing the two sons of Joseph, blessing the twelve sons of Jacob, and then through them blessing the tribes right down through the ages until the present time. So we saw the discipline of God in a life bringing that life into the kind of form that God wanted it in the first place. And then, of course, we saw in Joseph the sufferings of faith, no matter where he turned to the suffering. Now, it's true suffering is a discipline, but not all his sufferings were sent, especially as disciplined, though every one of them turned into that. Many of them came from the opposition of the world, the opposition of the devil. All hell was working against him. And here we have a man who bowed his head to sevenfold suffering and came up in sevenfold blessings. And then last week we were looking at Moses, a man who was not particularly characterized by suffering, and yet he had lots of it, nor by disciplining, and yet he had many of them, nor yet by patience, and yet he was a patient man, but his life seemed to be characterized. That is in Scripture. God turned the spotlight on words of activity, but words always connected with a choice. By faith Moses, when he would come to years, refused to be called the son of Pharaoh's daughter. Choosing rather to suffer affliction of the people of God. And there you have the beginning of a long series, a long life spent in decision after decision after decision. And all the way through, we looked at that as the decisions of faith. So try to keep them in your mind. The obedience of faith. The patience of faith. The discipline of faith. The sufferings of faith. the decisions of faith and now tonight the battles of faith David was as we have pointed out we're going to be turning over by the way to first Samuel chapter sixteen and the passage David's life stretches from first Samuel sixteen to first Kings chapter one but in your notes you will possibly do well to start off there the verbs in the Hebrews passage indicate that the main theme of this little group, this group of worthies, is that of conflict and victory in the life of faith. If you look at these men, whose names are mentioned here, and we get in the following paragraph even, attention drawn to that, we better stick to our notes. Note the words, subdued kingdoms, wrought righteousness, obtained promises, stopped the miles of lions, quenched quenched, escaped, made strong, scattered, and so on. They are all words of battle and of victory, even though they were weak in themselves, because we see them tormented, living in caves and dens, not well clothed, not in armor, but in sheepskin and goat skin, and there they are. And yet strong men and strong women, by the way, for women are included in this group, as of course women would be in all the groups, but they are specifically included in this one. And some of the triumphs are not the triumphs of the battlefields, that is, of a literal battlefield, but triumphs of the battlefields of our own lives. And that's the context that I want to look at the whole thing in. So this is an encouragement to the Hebrew Christians, of course, and to ourselves. David was, from first to last, a man of conflict. This is true not only when he became a soldier, but is traceable in a spiritual way throughout his whole life. leading, as it did, to genuine development in character. Now, I think if you stop and think of David, this will become very, very apparent from his boyhood days. Here's one who is not so much making decisions, though he made them, of course, but that's not what the Spirit of God is bringing out. He had decisions to make, too, and we see many, many of them. But his life is one of conflict. He's always up against something. He's always wrestling with something. He's always fighting with something. Not fighting in a snarling, raging wrestling match or a battle with swords and spears necessarily. Neither do you and I often have this kind of battle. But does this mean we don't have battles? So we can bring the lives of these men, and particularly the life of David, down onto our own level by way of illustration. And we're going to see that the battles of David did not begin when he fought literally and physically with Goliath. The battles of David began in his boyhood, back on the farm, back herding the sheep. And that's where he learned to battle, first of all, with the ordinary everyday circumstances of life. And learned to battle with himself. Learned to battle with his brothers. We'll see how in a moment or two. learn to battle even with the circumstances and situations of his own home, his father even, were going to refer to. And as he learned to win those battles, he was being prepared for the other big battles of the outside world. And I believe that this is where we all learn to win at the very beginning. And it isn't just in a question of those tremendous fights, for example, against somebody demon-possessed or away in some foreign country, and we're fighting against the very evident and obvious, almost palpable forces of hell. It isn't as though we were fighting against some tremendous personal conflict of illness and so on at the very beginning. But I think that our battles, just as Christians, begin possibly as very, very young people on a very low level, and yet to us a tremendous important level. I may have used the illustration here before. If I do, it's all right. A little fellow in the city I was brought up in, and he had some kind of a phobia about cracked plates. And if anybody gave him a cracked plate, he just went into an absolute fury, something he wouldn't eat off, no matter how. It did something to him, and he had a very nasty little temper. And, of course, the family got to the place where rather than provoke a showdown over a thing like this, they simply didn't give him that. And then one night at the children's meeting, I think he must have been about nine, ten, somewhere around there. Not more than eleven, certainly. At a children's meeting, he accepted the Lord. And of course, he knew enough to know that things had to be different from there on. And so he came home, told his parents, he would say, that's just fine. Of course, now you know, son, everything's going to be new, everything's going to be different. And the next morning I don't know whether it was one of his brothers or sisters I rather suspect that it was I doubt that the father or mother would have done it they put down his bacon and egg or whatever he had on a cracked plate and he just stiffened and stared at the plate just going to fill one of the old tantrums and then he heaved a long sigh and he said I suppose when a fellow saves he has to eat even off a cracked plate Now that's a battle. For that child that was a real battle. He had surmounted a tremendous hurdle in his life. And don't you understand and don't you see and don't you believe that in winning that battle he was really setting things up for winning another battle? Of course he won. Because you see some of the old time Sunday school hymns even, the children's hymns were so full of truth. Fight. manfully onward, dark passions subdued. But if you remember one of the other lines in it, each victory will help you some other to win. And when we fight the little battles of cantankerousness, of stubbornness, of never wanting to be wrong, of never wanting to give in, the things of impatience, the things that are not considered terribly bad things. As a matter of fact, some people boast about them. I wouldn't know why. When we fight on this level and win, we are actually giving ourselves confidence in the Lord to win other battles. Now, we mustn't labor this because it will come out as we go along. This would teach us in paragraph number four, this would teach us that our first and maybe most important battles will be fought on the personal level within ourselves and in a spiritual context. And as we win victories in this private area, we may move forward to more victories in the public field. It is doubtful that we can hope for victory in the big battle of the outside world if we have failed to win in the inward struggle with self in those very first steps, that is. Now I don't think we need really to talk any more about that. It may be an area, however, where we could have some discussion, the pros and cons of what we learn, for example, from defeat. When we don't win, have we got the spiritual gumption to sit down and try to learn not only from our victories by learning and gaining strength, but even from our defeats to learn something too. And to sit down and look it over, you know, have a kind of... I've forgotten what the word is, when you discuss something that you have carried on, not a progress report, because sometimes there is no progress. But just an analysis of things. Where did I go wrong? What happened? Why was I so completely defeated? And so on. Now, there are seven main areas of combat in David's life. You may find nine or ten or twelve or twenty. I don't know. I leave that up to you. To facilitate our study of the life of faith as exemplified in David, we should look at that life as in seven successive stages. Each one is marked by deadly combat and each victory leading into a new area of developmental warfare. I think we have seen this in all these men, haven't we really? Abraham obeyed and he took a first step. Now maybe he thought, Now that is over. That big fight and decision is over. That obedience is over. I'm right up on top. Not at all. By that one step, he had just taken himself out of kindergarten into grade one. And as grade one is harder than kindergarten, so the area that Abraham put himself into was harder than the one he left. And then God confronted him again and gave him another revelation of his person and his character. And Abraham believed him again. And he faced the test, and he went up into grade two. But of course, grade two is harder than grade one. And so his second act of obedience only put him into a place where it was harder still to obey. And the next one harder still and harder still. Each victory gives us confidence for the next conflict. But it also introduces us into a higher level, doesn't it? Just as our different exams, if we're fortunate enough to pass them and win out in them, they lift us up into another area where things usually are a bit tougher. And this is the way it goes. This is the way it was with David. Now looking at the first one, let's turn to first Samuel chapter sixteen. We've got to get back to Samuel sooner or later, so we might as well take the plans now. Perhaps we need to turn, really, first of all, to chapter seventeen, verse thirty-four, because this throws us back into the affairs of chapter sixteen. David is now down at the valley of Elah. He is making preparations to go out to fight the giant. And of course, he's having a rough time with Saul and his brothers and the whole pack of them. And David said unto Saul, Thy servant kept his father's sheep. And there came a lion and a bear. and took a lamb out of a flock. I don't think we need to see this bear and lion marching up the driveway together. I think there are two separate fights, and I don't know which would be the most difficult. I suppose if you were in Northern Ontario, you would think a fight with a bear was more difficult. If you happen to be where you're up against a lion, I rather imagine you would think that was more difficult. But apparently, at different times, a lion and a bear came to take away a lamb out of the flock. and I went out after him and smoked him. It's in the singular each time, and delivered it, the lamb, out of his mouth. And when he arose against me, I caught him by his beard and smote him and slew him. Thy servant slew both the lion and the bear, and this uncircumcised fellow, sign shall be as one of them, seeing he has defied the armies of the living God. Now, whatever connection is there between a man, I've forgotten, was it nine feet and a half or something, he was some monstrous person. with a spear like a weaver's beam, who had all the big men in Israel with their knees clattering together like castanets. What connection is there between this fight in the valley of Elah with men in armor and a man defying the whole armies of the living God and a shepherd boy of seventeen or so years of age back home on the farm fighting with the wild animal to try to save a lamb out of its mouth? What's the connection? Now that's just a connection that I think we need to trace. There was a connection. For David is here telling Saul and the rest of the scholars, I learned something in that fight. And on the basis of what I learned in that fight, I'm not in the slightest afraid of the lion. Not in the slightest. Because it isn't brawn. It isn't muscular strength. I know I'm only a boy. I know I've been referred to as only a stripling. We even think about it today. How long? Nearly three thousand years later, only a lad called David. Only a, what is it, a piece of string or a sling or something. And there we go. Only a lad called David. We're doing exactly the same as his brothers did. He's a stripling. He's a kid. He's a kid brother. But he said, I fought before. This isn't my first time. I fought with the lion. I fought with the bear. And I'm not afraid. Because I had an experience of God's help. in that first battle and now I'm able to go out. Now this is simply backing up what I had tried to say before. Now look at chapter sixteen, if you will, turning backwards. And the Lord said unto Samuel, How long wilt thou mourn for Saul? Seeing I have rejected him from reigning over Israel. Fill thine horn with oil and go. I will send thee to Jesse the Bethlehemite. for I have provided me a king among his sons. Samuel said, how can I go? Saul here, he will kill me. Now, you know this passage, and if you don't, it will be good for you to read it when you go home or sometime over the weekend if you're not going out to relax at the reformatory or whatever you're going to do. But I think you should have read it before, and I'm sure you know the chapter off by heart, don't you? We don't need to read it down, but read the notes and we'll go back over it. Note, that would be from chapter sixteen right through into seventeen, note his battles with the lion and the bear in lonely struggle unseen by others and unhelped by any man. The object of these battles is important. The principle is exactly the same. He was risking his life to defend what had been entrusted to his care and which could not care for itself. Now all that was involved was a lamb. And a lamb and a big herds of sheep, as I take it, they had big herds of sheep. Jesse was a wealthy man. He had sons who were in the palace guard, in the brigade of guards up at the front. They were a big man. Men famous over the whole land. So Jesse must have been a character of some standing. So he was a lot of sheep. So what really does one little lamb mean? How important is it? You see, this is the crux of the fight. And this, I think, is the area where we have most difficulty in our battles. Just how important is it? Does it matter if whatever this is, I let it slip? Does it matter after all? You know, there are seven days in a week and three hundred and sixty-five of them in a year. Is this thing that I'm wrestling with in my own life, this to be or not to be thing, this decision, this obedience, this patience, this suffering, no matter what it is, is it really worth a battle? Now David saw everything clearly. The Lamb was not his in the first place, therefore he was not the judge of how important it was at all. The lamb belonged to his father. The lamb was entrusted to his care. The lamb couldn't defend itself and couldn't free itself. And he's the only one who could because there was nobody else around. And so to David, it wasn't five or six times of lamb chops he was talking about. It was a living little animal who, however worthless in itself, had been entrusted to his care. And he was not going to let it go. Now years and years later we find David rewarding with a field marshalship and a position as governors over his new territory, men, a number of men. And if you note those men, in most instances they were men, those men, his mighty man you remember, they were men who had refused to give up, in some cases a thing which seemed to be relatively unimportant. Three of those men brought nothing more important than a calabash maybe or an earthen gourd full of an earthen vessel full of water very important to them extremely important extremely important for it wasn't the water it was the person who wanted it and it was where that water could only be obtained and so they went with an empty vessel they filled it at the well of Bethlehem they fought their way into the village they fought their way back out of it which must have been much more difficult in order not to fill the water And they brought it to David, and they said, there it is. Well, somebody says, so what? Can't you see a modern businessman sneering? And probably saying that they brought him some water from somewhere else and said it was from Bethlehem, he wouldn't have known the difference. And maybe he wouldn't. Maybe he wouldn't. That's not the point. Those men were promoted because of a tremendous fight to bring David one cup of water, which he very badly wanted. Another man, or a group of men, it says they defended a patch of lentils. Now, when I was a youngster, I got a lot of lentil soup, and I must say I would not have defended any patch of lentils at all. It didn't appeal to me very strongly. But you see, that patch of lentils was part of the heritage of God. It was part of the Holy Land of Israel. And God had said, these people have no right to it. And these men put their feet on that patch of lentils, and they fought the Philistines back, three men to an army, and they fought them back until their hands were so cramped and paralyzed with weariness that they couldn't let go of the handles of their swords. But they held on to the patch of lentils because it belonged to God. Unimportant? Yes, in the modern world, very unimportant. And so was the lamb, so was a cup of water, a patch of lentils, and any number of things you might mention. But listen, friends, in God's things, when He entrusts something to us, it may only be a ten-cent piece, which is relatively unimportant, that ten-cent piece may represent quite a battle in a little person's heart and mind. And if that battle involves uprightness and honor and the right thing and what has been committed to you be it a cup of water a ten cent piece a lamb a patch of lentils it doesn't matter if it belongs to God the man of God will hold on to it and will protect it and will fight for it now it wasn't only that it wasn't only the lion and the bear though that was very important but there he learned Something entrusted to his care had to be defended. His struggles with his brothers. It was another battle he had to put up with. Can you imagine what it must have meant to be at home with a bunch of arrogant people such as these men were, these brothers of his? Very handsome fellows by all the impression we get from the story. Wonderful soldiers, and so it came to a real crunch. And we're told that they were tall, great men. In other words, everything admirable according to men's standards was there. And they simply looked down their nose at David. Now we're told that David was handsome too, but not the same way he was only a kid. He was dark-haired. Well, I suppose most Jewish people would be. But for some reason or other, that's mentioned in connection with David. Perhaps he had particularly nice looking hair. And of course, he was of a ruddy countenance. He was just a youngster, just full of health. That's not the kind of face that people like to see in the oil paintings of the old warriors, the Spanish warriors, you know, those wonderful yidalgos that stare at you with a steel helmet. Man's ideas, you see, are different, absolutely different. And the great men of the big companies that you see on the corporation photograph, you know, in Time Magazine, this kind of thing. They're not ruddy-faced, nice-looking fellows. They're men who want to tell their bosses and everybody around them, I'm tough. Don't get in my way, or you'll be sorry. And that's why they're hired. In many, many cases. And this makes it difficult when a Christian gets caught in this kind of trap. And so these big tough men and here's younger brothers that didn't even think it worth their while to call in. And they gave them a rough time. We'll see some of that ahead. They considered themselves superior. He was inferior. Have you ever fought with that battle? Have you ever wrestled with the business of just doing your own little job with people looking down their noses and thinking you were inferior? If you have. and I take it from the looks on some face at least some people have I certainly have most of my life if you know how bitter that battle can be then you're beginning to get the thread of this whole story for there he fought a battle a battle of being overshadowed a battle of being in the inferior place and he took it and took it and took it and never never kicked back as we'll see a little later on he was younger That can be a battle. They considered themselves superior. And that can be a battle. He was openly treated with contempt. First Samuel, seventeen. He's just a kid. And of course, they sneered at him. And actually, perhaps we better just think about that now. I thought it came up in one of the other points. In chapter seventeen, you remember his brothers said to him when he arrived at the battlefield. And he'd actually come with a presence for them. And when he heard Goliath yelling outside, and everybody was hidden in their tents and their knees clattering together, and he asked about it, and when he was presented finally to Saul, and his brothers heard about it, they said, Hey, how did you come to get up here? Where did you leave those few sheep in the wilderness? Can't you get the lash of that one? You know, why don't you go and... play dominoes or something, what you usually do back at home. What are you doing up here? And then one of them said, we know what you did. You came up to see the battle. And of course the answer to that one is what battle? They weren't fighting and they weren't going to fight. They were sitting with their teeth chattering in the tent every time Goliath bellowed, they run. There was no battle in First Samuel's attitude, that is, God's attitude, psychology. Here we have men and women living in front of us, just as the book of Living Paradigms. Here we have so stripped, right to the very inside, so that you can study them just like a moss pinned on a board, or just like somebody in front of us along a floor itself. You can see everything there is in between the bathrooms, and here they are. What a wonderful book it is. His father didn't even... treat him with the consideration he deserves. And that must have been a battle. From that period of struggle and learning, sorry, from that period of struggle and learning dependence on God, he graduated into the battle with Elias, which even in his own mind, he connected with the previous victory on a more personal scale. I fought with the lion. I fought with the bear. So why couldn't I fight with this? But before that, there was a struggle connected with David as the anointed. The first area of fight and battle, therefore, was as a very young person. Maybe we could take that in our lives. Only a few of us here tonight are really very young. But we can look at it in terms of spiritual age and spiritual maturity. In First Samuel chapter sixteen, verse thirteen, the prophet anointed David to be king of Israel, and some of yet in the slow days. Done in the presence of scoffing and humbled brothers, who showed their antagonism, this selection by God for high spiritual service propelled the shepherd youth into a stage of conflict more advanced and also more intense because it was developed. on a higher level have you ever felt yourself at some stage of your life consciously felt that maybe God had something bigger for you to do that maybe God was driving you to a decision that might even be a costly one for you that he had something for you to do that he had something he was training for And suddenly you put this finger on you and it said, now start moving. And you know that it isn't going to be easy. You know that it's going to lead you into areas of combat and conflict, more intense for any of you to react to. How do you react to this? You've got an example, many examples in Scripture, but you've got one glaring one in the case of Timothy. Remember Timothy when Paul was moving toward the executioner's block and the spotlight was on him. It ended very difficult. Timothy began getting cold feet because he could see that he was just being hemmed in and pressed into a place of leadership. And Paul again and again and again pulled him together. You can almost see that man of God in a prison cell metaphorically shaking Timothy and saying, don't be ashamed. Don't be afraid. Keep your share of the afflictions that go along with the preaching of the gospel. Don't shrink back like a coward. God hasn't given us a spirit of peace. He has given us a spirit of love, of love, and of a sound mind, courage, determination. In other words, Timothy was very sure that great responsibilities or responsibilities were going to to fall upon him. And he was shrinking from it. He didn't like it. And sometimes we're in the same place. We're like David. David is now being taken from this travel area of lions and bears and lambs and slingshots and the antagonisms of his own brothers and perhaps the unsinking despiseness of his own father. And he wrestled with this, but it had developed something in it. He was already a man of God. In some ways only a child. But in other ways, a man of God who could tackle a giant, why did he tackle a giant? Just because he thrilled at the idea of a trap? No. He says, this man has defied the armies of the living God, and that's not right. And God's going to pay them back for it. And he did. He did. So he was learning, and he came. But now he's faced with something greater. And we find him as he moves up into this area... We find David acting wisely, acting more wisely, acting more wisely than they all. And you almost get the picture of someone who realizes this thing is closing in on me. This is a bigger field than I have been before. And it exposes me to a great many more arrows and dark than I've ever been exposed to before. It makes me more vulnerable. It makes me more subject to attack. And so I'm going to have real battles ahead of me. And yet he went on come. and quiet and out into those new battlefields. How do you feel about this kind of thing? Have you ever been to it? Or are you sure that there will be any revelation from that? To just simply make you say any kind of response to those, in case you would make yourself a time, in case it would be a little tougher, a little harder, you would be a little more vulnerable, in case there would be battles harder than the ones you've already thought, I've known people who faced quite a bit of conflict, and then suddenly they've just turned it all off and gone away somewhere else. I think that somebody right now, a person who has said to me on more than one occasion, I had enough. I just don't want anybody to bother me from here on, and I'd rather be happy where I am, if you're way out in the West, I don't want to be bothered even going back and talking to people where I was before. Do I have a subject to a class? No, I do not have a subject to a class. I've got my knuckles wrapped enough for that before. Do I do so and so? No, I do not. I have my fingers well scorched trying to do that where I was before. And so I just came here and turned the whole thing right off. I just don't want any more of that kind of concept. You don't want to be that kind of thing. God is looking for Jesus who will step on him. So he anointed Jesus for a new job. And in anointing him, he pushed him into another battlefield. Now this is something on a much higher level. The setting aside in the middle of that paragraph of the Lordly Warriors who compared with the rejected King they followed. Who compared with the rejected King they followed in favor of a lowly shepherd who may despise. gird up a warfare which would continue almost to the end of his days. It put David in a minority. From that moment, really, until he was finally trying, a way on at the beginning of the book of Kings, David was always going to be a minority. Always. That's a fact. Not only that, but his friends weren't taking leave. They were a group of outlawed men, remember in the cave of Adelm, and he was ridiculed by the ruling of the week of the day. Now, I want to leave that particular one, David of the anointed, because we're going to run into more of that ahead, and we can tie these loose ends all together at number four down the page, which we will look at number three, first of all. There's another interlude in David's life, David of the courtship. After his victory over July in chapter seven, David was brought to the kingdom court. Sudden promotion was put him in a greater and more public turmoil of battle than ever. The battle with and over Jonathan's friendship and Jonathan's final reflection, the hardest blow a man can face for life's purpose. That is someone on whose love and loyalty and strength and companionship is kind. They well should walk out on me. and got in shape, the rough road. That was probably one of the deepest wounds that they would ever suffer. If we look at this, the battle with Saul's jealousy and enmity at court, and he tried to pin him to the wall, you remember, tried to get him killed in battle. The battle over Saul's two daughters was done in eighteen and thirty-one. The battle of the wavering attitudes of the nation of Israel. One day they were all hot for him, and the next day they were all cold. and against him. But let's look at this. As a shepherd, he fought the battles on that level. Then he denoises and he steps up a bit. In between comes, or somewhere around there anyway, comes the anointing. And that brings back because, of course, it's jealousy now injected into the whole thing. Then he's brought up to the court. Now, the higher you get, And the more public your position becomes, the more slippery it will grind onto your feet. The more work you take on for God, the easier time for you to become. For those people who don't especially want to take on the work, but would like to take the practice you to take on. If you don't want any trouble, don't take on any trouble. Just crawl into your hole. at a carpet. If you don't want any bother in life or anybody getting after you, just don't do anything. You go home and sit there and you'll probably get away with it, please. But you've got to think, of course, of the judgment of the Christ and what God is thinking about you and how he's evaluating you as a member of the body of Christ, a functioning member of the body of Christ, how he's thinking of you as an intelligent, rational, members, a family of God with responsibility. But you don't want any body. You don't want any arguments. You don't want any fights. You're used to going to corners, full of blindness. You can do that if you wish. David didn't. As we move, guys, he finds himself now in this higher ground. But this is always a challenge. Always a challenge. Sometimes men have gone on in obscurity for years and years and years. Little are no trouble in the great world of history. And then, as I say, my thing is, public life, some way or other, the real place we can. No matter whether this is in business or in a profession or whatever, you know exactly what I mean. You'll remember, I think it was Sir Walter Raleigh who said to whom the Elizabeth first when she was telling him to take some position or giving him some position under her. be a little bit more ambitious and go far to go after it. And he said, same would I find, but yet I feel at all. And she said, if thy heart fails, do not find at all. And I'm sure she gave me that one of those wonderful smiles of hers. If you're a coward, stop by the way and say how happy you are. The man or the woman who's going on with God is not in Jesus' name, Lord. He is going to say, Lord, pass my sleep on the higher ground. He is going to watch people on and on and on until he or she can say, I have fought you at the right time to finish the cross, I have yet to do it. You can't stop him. You can't turn your off. You've got to do it. And so as he stepped out into this, he didn't welsh, he didn't cringe, he didn't throw in his hand, he just went on. Now, let me get to the course. This isn't that Jonathan came up. We often bump into real battles in the really of our French nation. Maybe this would be one that he just will not present us. What are you saying? This is an area where there's many apostles. This is an area where there's many in ancient times. I think we're an area where there's many a wrestling match was on. And I'm not talking about the, perhaps the intrigue of boyfriend relationships. You can think that one out for yourself. I'm thinking even of David and Jonathan, this whole area of friendships. David and Jonathan's friendship was a beautiful thing, but it did stir up antagonism and jealousy in the private world. And this is something they had to take. of men of God. And they did up to a point. And David trusted and confided in and wanted and needed this man, Jonathan. Jonathan needed him too. There came a point where their paths, unfortunately, went one from another path. Now you can read through, that is chapter eighteen verses one to nine and chapter twenty. at verse forty-two, in the one we have, the friendship growing, strengthening, and deepening, and then suddenly Jonathan decides that this is for him. He would like to be with David, and they wept, just wept, ocean. And I loved him, he was wonderful, passing the love of him, but he still went back to his palace in that place, a highway. going through Josh, through Ronan, through Nicely, David, a fellow, and his own father, hundreds and over a hundred. And Jonathan, all those years in between, were a family of hope. And David was nursing a wound in his heart. Or it wasn't, I don't mean that he was nursing in a grueling way, but the hurt was there on God's day. This was a battle. I have no doubt at all. And then the battle of Saul's own jealousy. Saul was delighted to have him fight the battle with Elias, because of course he couldn't do it himself. He was delighted to have him take the hot chestnut out of the fire, and he was delighted to have Israel delivered. But when he heard the people saying, Saul slaying his father, then David was ten fathers with it, it won't do. After all, I'm the king. I don't know anybody's plugging in on my preserves. I don't want that. I'd like him to do the work, but I certainly don't want to take the glory. And that just won't do. And immediately, bitter jealousy and animosity. That's the fact. That's the fact. And then you hear that. To wrestle quietly. And he was in Saul's territory. He was at the court. And Saul laid plots and plans. trapping and tripping, and David worked his way around him. Saul got him to play the harp, and he was standing, fooling with her, sitting on his own probably ear in a typhoon lake, fooling with some kind of an ornamental spear that she held, and suddenly he was a man of war with Saul, and he was a great big man, and he was told that from his shoulders and uppers, he was taller than everybody else, but ever since he took that in, and suddenly he let fly with his he is. And David stepped out of the way and chimed in and said, you know, hammering the reward on there by writing this thing. Please, please. That was that. Not to pack up, not to go out, not to leave the whole thing, or not to attack at all that he never did. He had opportunities later on if he wanted to do the first song, and possibly the whole nation would have justified him with good enough that he wouldn't do it. If God's going to deal with him, he'll deal with him, not I. I will not put my hand on the Lord's tongue. That's all it is here. The battle over solves three daughters. I wouldn't do four of them. Perhaps we better read First Samuel, Eighteen, just to see what happens, at least these three verses. First Samuel Eighteen, Verse Nineteen, verse, verse seventeen, Saul said to David, behold my elder daughter Mirab. Her will I give thee to wife. Then he gave her father, wife, the Lord's father, and so on. And so Saul agreed to give him Mirab if he would do it. David said to Saul, who am I? I'm just a commoner. I'm just an ordinary person. But he went out and he thought he did the work he was supposed to. that came to pass, the time when Mirab's daughter should have been given to David, that she was given to Adriel, to the Moholybite wife. That's the kind of man who's viewing it. Now, I don't know what it said, Mirab, near any play in it. Quite possibly she had noticed that at all. It was one of those arranged things. But whether her heart was involved or not, and however, she may have been involved, Sol was a chief and a liar. And David and Emilia, where his affections may not be involved, finds himself disappointed, and not only that, but made the laughing stuff that happened, which is how it is going to be. Now he was in a place of mockery. And Michael, Saul's daughter, loved David, and they told Saul, and the things he'd seen, and so on. Now, he says, if you go out, fight these fellow signs, and... do what I told you to do for Mirab, you may have Michael. And of course we know that in verse twenty-two Saul commanded his servants, saying, commune with David secretly and say, the king is delight in me, all the servants love me. Now therefore be the king's son-in-law. He was laying a trap for him. And, of course, Saul sent him out to fight against the Philistines. And in the end, there were all kinds of problems and difficulties about this. Saul saw in you, verse twenty-eight. Saul gave him Michael's daughter to wife, James, verse seven. In verse twenty-eight, Saul saw in you that the Lord was with David, that Michael's daughter loved him. Saul was yet the more afraid of David, and he became David's enemy continually. This is the woman, of course, who laughed at David and he was bringing the argument and mocked that. She was a trouble of she. She was a very faithful woman up to her point. However, all I want to emphasize is in the battlegrounds, in the battlegrounds of David's pride, his feelings, how he was humiliated and how he took We don't believe in them wanting to vindicate himself in any way. Then there was a battle of the wavering attitudes of the nation of Israel. All we need to say about that is that at one time he was a big man. He was the people who led the armies out and led the earth. The man rather who led the army out and left the earth. And at one time they were all foreign, but another time they were all against him. I don't know about you, but how people do this, I feel about this. They don't know anything else. But what I would be doing, of course, would be giving or not with it. God wants me at every turn to keep on fighting for him. Sometimes I don't want to do it. I don't mean to keep on quarreling for him. I mean fighting. Hang in there. Get hold of this thing. Don't give up. Work at it. Work with God. Is it content? Is it forever? No matter what's going on. Wear yourself up to it and move on. Enmity, jealousy, a whole thing, no matter what, in your heart, or in other people's hearts for you, you conquer it. Now, the next thing is, David is a fugitive. This is that for you. You really must speak this thing up with me now. David is a fugitive. From the palace, he plunged to the cave. From popularity to degradation. From the king's son-in-law to a wandering nomenclature. a conflict of being with the minority and knowing all the time that he was right. Numbers, press leads, power are all unsolved by. David is rejected and abandoned, a situation which has overwhelmed many great men. There are men untold in history. Read biographies. If you don't, you should. It's the greatest education in all the world. From a thousand books and titles. There have been great men who have gone on to a certain point and then found themselves so overwhelmed by opposition and so in the minority that they just said no. And they just simply packaged the thing up and threw it away and walked off and discussed or else in broken hearts and shamed not knowing what else to do. David never did. Not so moved. Everywhere this man is real. battle strength, a man who got a sleep in his thing and found out. Just think of the day when he had to run away. He knew now that Saul was going to kill him. Jonathan brought him in there, if you remember, Saul was having a big sleep. And David said, I think your father's got something in his mind, Jonathan. He told him, you know, I've been tired and he's coming in a few years and talking to Jonathan and said, well, I'll go to sleep. And if my father's all upset that you're absent, then I'll know he had something in mind about it. He was going to do something. be next to us. If he takes us casually, well, that means he really wouldn't have done it in his mind, and you should stick around. And I dare to come back to you, or David said it would be dangerous for you to come back to me. So, if I should run, you shoot some arrows and call to the boy who will bring them back. They're way over there beyond you. Keep on running, and that'll be the thing that I'll keep on running. Read these chapters. They're just full of wonderful manners. And, of course, when David was looking at the police that night, they were all coming into an absolutely intense rage. There's such an extent that he turned on his old son, Prince Royal, and he lashed at him, and his mother, and the curse that she had ever borne him, and what a disgrace and a dishonor she was to be. In front of all the courts, he just called his son for everything that was evil, and in this anthem, it's done for you, something wrong. He won't say it very bad. Do you think that this is an easy thing? Did the king's son-in-law trudge out of the place and go and get to be an absolute nobody? Did his grace, the dishonor, the scandal, the humiliation, the mortification of it, eating into his very vitals? What a way he went. And he fought it out with himself and with God, and he did not pretend it ever as far as I can see. He became very disillusioned, and he became very frightened several times. He became very sad and utterly depressed, but these were ordinary, real men, of flesh and bones, just like we were named. And at times he became so depressed that he made mistakes and did things that he never should have done, ran away from the land of the Philistine. He said, I might just as well die. Nothing of the time. He got over it, and he came back fighting all over again. But here it is. he gets to be just a wandering nobody. Then he's in a minority from this moment on for years and years and years, and all the time he knew that the anointing oil of God was on him, that he was right and that they were wrong, and that Saul was leading the nation to absolute ruin, and that God wanted a man who would lead it the other way. And knowing that he was right and everybody else was wrong, he went on with four hundred absolute nobody in a cave in the valley, took them to his heart, made himself cast them over them, and went on. Fighting, fighting, fighting all the way. That is fighting each other. Numbers, press each pile. All on the other side. On the other side. David is rejected and abandoned in a way he goes still for keeping that. Now, note that Saul, though victorious on many fronts, was never so over the Philistines. A picture of the flesh. The Philistines of Scripture are pictures of under the flesh. He could beat anybody, Saul, and did beat most of the nations around the world. I don't think he ever once beat the Philistines. David and the other hand are the people over whom, sorry, the Philistines and the other hand are the people over whom David gained his most constant and outstanding triumph. Seventeen, fifteen, eighteen, twenty-five, nineteen-eight, twenty-three, twenty-four, compared with the thirty-one in the earth. David is the man who beat the Philistines every time. Saul was another man, a Christian. And even when he was in rejection, he kept on whipping the Philistines and protecting the Israelites. Do you remember when he went to Nabal, to Nabal, set the Nabal house and asked for food, and Nabal sent him back that very ill-mannered, foolish response? And David said, surely in vain have I checked this fellow and all that we have. At Nabal's right, Abigail said to the messengers and later said to David, we know that your presence in this country has preserved for us everything that we have. So David was not there. He didn't say, well, all right, then you're wallowing your own disgrace and cooking your own fat. He protected them and preserved them all this time on the riverfront. All the way through, he was looking after them. Not David as a mourner on the death of Saul, who had persecuted him, and Jonathan, who had abandoned him, the struggle of gracious magnanimity against bitterness and revenge. You ever had to live that long, then? When you had an opportunity? to get one back on somebody who's done something to you? Jonathan had abandoned David, broken his far-off friendship room. Saul had broken everything he'd ever promised. And it turned out to be the most powerful country here. The whole truth was probably probably because of the badness of his heart in doing it. And then Saul and Jonathan both died. They died at the same time. They died in dishonor. And they were taken by the Philopines, in which a number that nails were the walls of the temple and a tree as well. David sent men by night to gather up what was left of and bring it away and bury them. And then he composed one of the most eloquent young men in the whole of literature called the Songs of God. Tell it not in doubt. publish it not in the streets of the country. However they were. Beautiful they were in their life and so on. These songs they told me that he would sing were lying flattery, but they weren't. Because David wouldn't lie and David wouldn't lie. But he brought on everything that was commendable in the lives of those who knew that he sang it and sang it with him before him. Now that song is simply saying, I don't want to know that. He could have dragged the naming of those. He could have made them