Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Speaker A: Good morning, church.
[00:00:02] Speaker B: What a joy to be together today. Amen.
[00:00:06] Speaker A: Hey, listen, if you want to be
[00:00:08] Speaker B: a part of the work God is doing in Columbia, you know, a big
[00:00:12] Speaker A: part of our partnership with Jim Donahue
[00:00:15] Speaker B: and Redemption Hills, that they're going to be coordinating those trips twice a year. And so that is, if you've never done a short term mission trip in your life, I would strongly encourage you to consider it is the type of
[00:00:27] Speaker A: experience that should be a part of your Christian story every step of the way.
[00:00:32] Speaker B: From fundraising and gathering with your church and praying over it, every piece of the experience will ground you in the beauty of the gospel and the power of the Kingdom of God in this
[00:00:43] Speaker A: world and the reason for it.
[00:00:45] Speaker B: Carol touched on this, but this is why we do these missional prayers each week.
[00:00:51] Speaker A: You know, it would be easy for our church to just say, hey, we're going to tithe.
[00:00:55] Speaker B: We're going to set aside 10% of our income as a church. We're going to support mission and then just do it.
[00:00:59] Speaker A: Like we could set and forget the way all of us do our tithe. Right. Like we could do that. But when we stop and we pray and we remember these partners, it really does. It does something.
[00:01:10] Speaker B: It reminds us of some fundamental truths of the gospel. And one of the things with Columbia guys that you need to hear is this.
Our missionaries who go on those trips
[00:01:19] Speaker A: praise God for all of you that
[00:01:21] Speaker B: have gone and for all of you that will go.
[00:01:22] Speaker A: And so those of you who need
[00:01:23] Speaker B: to go need to be convicted.
They don't make that trip happen.
There's nothing magical about our faith here
[00:01:31] Speaker A: in the United States.
[00:01:32] Speaker B: There's nothing magical about fundraising and a plane trip that makes the Kingdom of God advance. Do you know what moves that mission forward?
It's faithful local churches in Columbia because we have partnerships with believers who are
[00:01:46] Speaker A: living out their faith genuinely day to day.
[00:01:50] Speaker B: Can Carol touched on this. Those churches are doing the work.
They're the ones identifying communities in desperate need of the kingdom. They're the ones identifying their lost friends and praying for them regularly.
[00:02:02] Speaker A: They're the ones prayer walking those neighborhoods. They're the ones translating for us when
[00:02:06] Speaker B: we go and share our testimony.
[00:02:08] Speaker A: And they're the ones going back and
[00:02:09] Speaker B: building friendship and community and connection in those neighborhoods after we leave.
[00:02:13] Speaker A: It's when local churches step up, up to the call of God to be
[00:02:18] Speaker B: involved in the work of the kingdom, that the kingdom advances.
[00:02:20] Speaker A: You need to know something that is not unique to Colombia.
[00:02:24] Speaker B: That's how, that's how the gospel moves forward. That's how the kingdom advances right here,
[00:02:29] Speaker A: and we pray for them. When we are excited about what God
[00:02:31] Speaker B: is doing in Colombia or in Peru or with any of our missional partners, it reminds us, oh, yeah, that's what we're supposed to do.
Were the missionaries. Were the missionaries here in St. Louis, in West County?
[00:02:47] Speaker A: We're continuing our series today.
[00:02:50] Speaker B: Sorry, that was just bonus. That was extra.
[00:02:53] Speaker A: I didn't. I didn't write any of that down. And that doesn't count toward the sermon
[00:02:56] Speaker B: time, so you can't hold me to that later.
[00:03:00] Speaker A: We're finishing. Yeah. Carol's like, I'll never do it again, guys, seriously. We're finishing out our series, Hard mode. Today.
We. We've been in this short little section of First Samuel where we've been talking about this very specific moment in David's life when he's been anointed to be the next king of Israel, but Saul is still reigning. And there's just this tension. David is kind of working away, laboring away in obscurity, unknown, in difficulty. And we've been talking about how God uses these times of obscurity, these times of trial and difficulty, to sanctify and prepare us for the coal that he's put on our life. Next week, we're going to move to a different section of the story. We're going to start a new series within First Samuel that we're calling exiled. We're going to be exiled like God's path for us in the Badlands. We're going to be talking about the time when David just lived in complete and total exile the rest of his time. From this point in the story until he becomes king, he's an outlaw.
[00:04:02] Speaker B: He.
[00:04:03] Speaker A: He is living his life on the run. And there's a nuanced difference between this season of his life as a young leader being raised up in that season. And the big difference, guys, is how known he is.
We're seeing David rise to prominence and
[00:04:16] Speaker B: rise to notoriety in our part of the text.
[00:04:19] Speaker A: In this next series, it's still really hard. His life is still on hard mode, but now he's this exile living out of his land. And so as. As we finish up to today, I want to remind us of just some of these truths we have seen in David's move after his anointing from obscurity to prominence in the nation of Israel. We've talked a lot about God's provision for us in the midst of difficulty and trial. We've talked about how God sees you even when you Feel unseen. We've talked about how God goes ahead of you into the difficulties and trials of life to prepare a way for you. We've talked about how it is actually God's strength that empowers us to win the battles of this life. We've talked about how it is Christ himself who empowers us to live as men and women of integrity. And today, we land out this section of the story by talking about Friends. And I don't mean the sitcom, I mean the concept. We're talking about Friends. We'll be in 1st Samuel 19 today. If you want to go ahead and turn there. If you don't have a Bible with you today, we have physical copies of God's Word around the room. Just look under the chairs there, around. We really believe in the importance of
[00:05:26] Speaker B: access to God's Word here at Emmanuel Fellowship. Say this every week, but if you don't own a Bible, please take one or talk to us. Let us get you a nicer one. It's really, really beneficial for your faith journey to have access to God's word.
[00:05:38] Speaker A: Okay, First Samuel 19. We're going to be talking about friendship. And my point today, the whole thing we're going to see in this narrative is, is about as simple as the point of a sermon could be. It's just going to be this. You need good friends to survive hard mode.
[00:05:53] Speaker B: You do.
[00:05:54] Speaker A: You just. You need good friends.
[00:05:57] Speaker B: You need good friends.
[00:05:59] Speaker A: Life is difficult. Life is painful. It's really hard. If you're going to survive in this world, you need great friends on your side.
I think that's why on some level, like, we're drawn to these epic, grand stories like Lord of the Rings. It's why we dig in deep on network sitcoms like Friends or New Girl or the Office or whatever. We know that we need a good team around us.
We need a tight circle. We need people we can rely on, right?
And yet, if we're willing to be honest, how's that working out for us?
Right?
How is that actually working out in your life? How often do you specifically beloved, feel
[00:06:50] Speaker B: alone and isolated in this life?
[00:06:53] Speaker A: This is so drastic in our society right now that the cdc, for literally almost a decade, has identified loneliness as
[00:07:03] Speaker B: a mental health epidemic in our society.
[00:07:06] Speaker A: There's actual research on it.
[00:07:08] Speaker B: There's CDC articles on it, because it has real consequences.
[00:07:12] Speaker A: Loneliness raises one's risk for addiction, raises your risk for heart issues, for even stroke. It's wild.
[00:07:19] Speaker B: It's wild how concrete the consequences of continued experiences of isolation and loneliness affect us but it raises a really important question.
Why?
Why do we live in such isolation and loneliness
[00:07:38] Speaker A: in the nation, in the culture, in the age within which we live, the information age, where we have continual access to high speed Internet, right, where you can literally do Star Trek stuff right now, right?
Like you have a magic metal rectangle in your pocket right now that you could pull out and type some random numbers into it and a person on a different continent could pull the magic metal rectangle out of their pocket and hold it up and you could see each other's faces live and right now have a conversation with them with like a split second delay, right? Like that's possible right now. Do you know how we talk to our missional partners around the world? You know how they send us updates?
They text me, like from wherever they are or they go, hey, can you jump on a FaceTime call? And I jump on a FaceTime call with my magic rectangle and talk to missionaries in the rainforest in Peru, right? Because we live in Star Trek times and we can do that kind of stuff. It's really, really crazy and yet it
[00:08:42] Speaker B: doesn't do anything for us.
Research shows that doesn't actually help us feel more connected.
[00:08:50] Speaker A: In fact, one of the key takeaways from the CDC research on loneliness was this.
[00:08:54] Speaker B: Loneliness is about the quality of your relationships, not the quantity or the availability.
[00:09:01] Speaker A: It's why we can feel lonely in
[00:09:03] Speaker B: the middle of a party. It's why you can feel alone, even as your phone and your social media accounts connect you with more people than any individual has had access to in all of human history.
Something misfires today.
And even with all the connection, with
[00:09:21] Speaker A: all the information, with all the access
[00:09:23] Speaker B: we have, loneliness is literally killing people in our society.
It's having dramatic impacts on human flourishing.
Why?
That's what we're going to dig into today.
[00:09:38] Speaker A: And I just want to say this. If that's you today, if you were
[00:09:43] Speaker B: someone who is struggling with connection, even
[00:09:46] Speaker A: right here in our church family, I want to encourage you to jump into this text with us.
Genuinely in my heart of hearts, I believe God wants to speak a word
[00:09:57] Speaker B: of life and healing and hope to you today.
[00:09:59] Speaker A: So let's pray and let's jump into
[00:10:01] Speaker B: this text and see what God has for us.
[00:10:03] Speaker A: Jesus, we need you today.
Holy Spirit, we just, we just need
[00:10:10] Speaker B: you to minister to us through your word, through this gathering. Jesus, you talked about the ministry that your spirit will do for us, and we ask you to do it today to remind us of these truths of the gospel that we've forgotten and the difficulty and busyness of life to challenge us and convict us in the areas of sin and rebellion where we hard hearted and we've put calluses over our need to repent.
[00:10:33] Speaker A: Lord, we ask that you would encourage
[00:10:34] Speaker B: us teaching us new truths of the gospel that draw us to into life.
[00:10:39] Speaker A: Above all, Jesus, we pray that you
[00:10:42] Speaker B: would make yourself known to us in the way that our hearts need today.
Father, you are the only one who can do this work. We can't muster it up on our own. We need your help. So we pray this in your name, Jesus. Amen.
[00:10:58] Speaker A: So remind us of the story we're stepping into. We're stepping in mid narrative here. And essentially what's happened is this. David has been anointed King of Israel, but we have a slight problem, right? Like Saul is still the king and God is using this season of David's anointing but not yet ascension to the throne to train and prepare him for his call and his rise as king. And in that, it all had kind of seemed like it worked. And it was over just a few texts ago because David stepped from his obscurity as a shepherd and functionally an internal into being one of the most well known men in all of Israel. When he stepped up in bravery and faith and met a real and present need for Israel by slaying the giant Goliath through the power of God, right? He did this thing and all of a sudden all the work, all the stuff, like it seemed like it came together and he was finally raised up as this known and powerful leader within Israel. And as you kind of read it, like we know the story, but the story is written in such a way that if you're reading it cold, you just kind of go, okay, cool. Like finally he's, he's breaking out, like it's finally happening. It's finally going to be good for him.
But it doesn't go that way.
Doesn't go that way. Like there's this moment when David moves into the, into the court of the king and he's finally famous. He's been promised a princess for a wife, he's got money and got success. And you just kind of go, everything's finally coming up David. And if that brings you to a
[00:12:27] Speaker B: Simpsons meme, then we are, we are joint spirits. And so I appreciate that if it didn't.
[00:12:33] Speaker A: It's okay, it's fine. I do still love you. But that is where my mind went.
The problem with our story is that everything wasn't coming up Milhouse for David all this attention, all this success because of God's blessing actually drew Saul's jealousy and his anger. He begins with plotting to get David killed. And because he knows David is so popular, he can't just do it outright. So he tries to put together various foreskin related schemes to get David killed by the Philistines. And if you don't get that reference, you just have to go back and listen to last week's sermon because I'm not going to explain it again. We've been down that road and I got enough emails this week. God protects the. God protects David from all these problems and he ends up married to Saul's daughter Michael, who actually loves him. And he ends up best friends with Saul's son Jonathan. But as we step into our text today, we see that Saul is about to up the game. He's going to move from scheming to outright open hostility. We're going to look at three specific scenes in the story today. And in each of these scenes I'm kind of showing you my cards ahead of time. God is going to provide a friend who intervenes for David at the moment he needs it. And then each of these scenes is going to have kind of this awesome like reveal where like here's the help. But it's also going to show some shorting, some shortfall, some failure. And it's all going to kind of culminate in the scene that brings out our main point right at the end. So let's jump into this. We're in 1st Samuel 19. Starting in verse one, we read this.
Saul ordered his son Jonathan and and all his servants to kill David.
But Saul's son Jonathan liked David very much. So he told him, my father Saul intends to kill you.
Be on your guard in the morning and hide in a secret place and stay there. All go out and stand beside my father in the field where you are and talk to him about you. When I see what he says, I'll tell you.
Jonathan spoke well of David to his father Saul. He said to him, the king should not sin against his servant David. He hasn't sinned against you and in fact his actions have been of great advantage to you. He took his life in his hands when he struck down the Philistine. And the Lord brought about a great victory for all Israel. You saw it and rejoiced. So why would you sin against innocent blood by killing David for no reason?
Saul listened to Jonathan's advice and swore an oath. As surely as the Lord lives, David will not be killed. So Jonathan summoned David and told him all these words. Then Jonathan brought David to Saul and he served him. And as he did before, when war broke out again, David went out and fought against the Philistines. He defeated them with such great force that they fled from him.
Okay, so scene one opens right away with our escalation. Saul has gone from plotting against David to just straight up ordering his death. And it's worth pointing out something here. It'll be a subtle theme throughout the rest of our time in Samuel with both King Saul and King David. Ancient Israel was a patriarchal Near Eastern honor, shame, culture, right? Like a very different worldview than how we live in the world. And one of the outcomes of that is that the king's honor.
The king's honor was the social focal point for all relationships around him. And then here's what I mean by that. Whether or not any particular action honored or shamed the king was the primary way all the people around the king would determine whether or not something was right or wrong. That's a weird thing for us as Westerners because we, because of biblical ethics, like to hold the idea that right and wrong are third party right. They sit above the, like the whole thing of our relational network. Something is right because it is right, something is wrong because it is wrong. The people involved don't matter. But that is not the worldview of the people in the stories we're reading right now.
The normal cultural narrative in the ancient near east was that the honor of the most powerful person in the room, that is the king, was the determiner of right and wrong.
[00:16:41] Speaker B: Something that shames or dishonors the king,
[00:16:44] Speaker A: that is morally wrong. Something that honors or builds up the king that is morally right. That's how they understood the world.
And we won't get the text fully if we don't wrap our mind around that.
[00:16:57] Speaker B: That's.
[00:16:57] Speaker A: That's going to be the thing under the hood of a lot of the weird stories as we go through the
[00:17:03] Speaker B: rest of David's life and his reign.
[00:17:05] Speaker A: But what's important for this context is that in this moment, no one would have blinked an eye at the idea of the king ordering David's death.
People wouldn't have sat down and gone, the king is making some evil decisions right now. They just wouldn't have done that.
The norm of the culture would have been to say, yeah, some upstart thinks he's all that, thinks he's going to take over the king. He's embarrassed the king publicly. The king wants him dead. That's how it works.
So when Saul orders David's death, he's playing into the normal cultural understanding of how kings and power operate.
And Jonathan, who is David's friend, who has immense loyalty to David, does something insane here.
Rather than honoring his father, the king, and obeying his father, the king, he goes and tells David what's going on.
He goes straight to him, hey, my dad ordered your death to all the guards. But don't worry, I've got a plan. You go outside and hide. I'll take a walk with my dad. We'll go close to where you are. I'll talk to him about what's going on, and then I'll let you know
[00:18:12] Speaker B: what he said so we can go from there. Jonathan wants to intercede for David.
[00:18:17] Speaker A: Now we have to stop here and
[00:18:18] Speaker B: just acknowledge Jonathan's an amazing friend to David.
This is a wonderful moment.
[00:18:26] Speaker A: Jonathan, more than anyone else, has the most to gain by David's death.
He's the one who, more than anyone else, by worldly standards, by cultural standards, should have been in line with Saul. David is a direct threat to Jonathan's reign as the next king.
And yet Jonathan loves David so that he has loyalty to him. And he intercedes to try and save David.
And he comes up with this plan where he goes, look, you hide. I'll go for a nonchalant walk with my dad near you, and I'll talk to him. We'll see if we can sort this out. And he sets it up so he'll be near to David, so that David can know, I'm not lying to you.
[00:19:06] Speaker B: This is not a trick. You can hear the conversation. I'm going to intercede for you. We'll see if we can fix this.
[00:19:11] Speaker A: And even notice the way that Jonathan
[00:19:14] Speaker B: threads this needle of how he talks to his dad.
[00:19:17] Speaker A: Because ultimately, his challenge to his dad
[00:19:19] Speaker B: is, you are sinning against David for doing this.
[00:19:23] Speaker A: That's ultimately his challenge to him. That is the biblical narrative of right and wrong. That's counter to the cultural narrative of
[00:19:31] Speaker B: honor and shame for the king.
[00:19:32] Speaker A: So he is challenging his dad using
[00:19:35] Speaker B: his theology, using biblical ethics, but he
[00:19:39] Speaker A: still frames it through the honor and
[00:19:42] Speaker B: shame that he knows his dad will understand.
[00:19:44] Speaker A: Hey, David hasn't wronged you. He's actually honored you.
He's. He's done what he was supposed to do as a good servant. He's brought you glory. He's built you up as a king. Why? Why would you that up?
[00:19:58] Speaker B: Why would you shame yourself?
Why would you debase yourself by harming him? Don't do that.
And I think what's interesting here is
[00:20:07] Speaker A: the text reads in such a way to let us know that Saul seems
[00:20:11] Speaker B: to genuinely heed Jonathan's advice here.
He hears him and he goes, you're right, it works.
[00:20:19] Speaker A: He swears an oath.
And again, we can miss this as
[00:20:24] Speaker B: we just kind of read the translation of it.
[00:20:26] Speaker A: But the bent of the text here is that Saul genuinely means this.
[00:20:30] Speaker B: This is a moment of lucidity for him, right?
[00:20:34] Speaker A: Saul is a tortured man who is
[00:20:36] Speaker B: not consistent in the way he sees and engages the world.
[00:20:39] Speaker A: But in this moment, he has clarity.
[00:20:41] Speaker B: He hears his son and he goes, this is wrong. I shouldn't do this. And he swears an oath, I will not have David killed.
[00:20:49] Speaker A: So David hears that Jonathan comes, gives him the report, and he reconciles David and his father and goes, everything can go back to how it was. I fixed it. We're good. David, you come serve. Do all your stuff. But that doesn't last.
And it really shows us the failure, the weak point of Jonathan's ability to help David. There's no doubt as we read this text that Jonathan is an amazing friend
[00:21:18] Speaker B: to David in this moment, but he also fails him.
[00:21:23] Speaker A: His. His help to David falls short because Jonathan's solution is to try and get
[00:21:29] Speaker B: things back to how they were.
[00:21:31] Speaker A: His solution is to try and reconcile David and his father and set David up back in his old position. And that just won't work.
It works for a little while, but as soon as Israel goes back to war, and this is a weird historical note, but because of the way weather worked back then, it was pretty common for nations to have like war season
[00:21:54] Speaker B: and rest season depending on the weather.
[00:21:56] Speaker A: And so once war season comes back around and David gets sent out to do the same stuff he's been doing, and he's wildly successful. Saul's rage and jealousy and anger sparks immediately back up. He's right back in the same place. This is what we're going to see as the story goes on. And the point here is this.
Jonathan was a great friend to David, but his friendship, his help, fell short because the best he could imagine for his friend was to just get him back to where they were.
[00:22:25] Speaker B: And that's no longer an option for David.
[00:22:27] Speaker A: That's not what God is actually calling David to at the end of the day. Jonathan's solution is just too shortsighted.
Read on with me.
[00:22:37] Speaker B: We'll see how the text continues. Verse 9.
[00:22:39] Speaker A: Now, an evil spirit sent from the Lord came on Saul as he was sitting in his palace holding a spear.
[00:22:44] Speaker B: This seems familiar.
[00:22:45] Speaker A: David was playing the lyre, and Saul tried to pin David to the wall with the spear. But as the spear struck the wall, David eluded, Saul, ran away and escaped. That night, Saul sent agents to David's house to watch him and to kill him in the morning. But his wife, Michael, warned David, if you don't escape tonight, you will be dead tomorrow.
So she lowered David from the window.
[00:23:07] Speaker B: He fled and escaped.
[00:23:08] Speaker A: Then Michael took the household idol and put it on the bed and placed some goat hair on its head and covered it with a garment. And when Saul sent agents to seize David, Michael said, he's sick.
So Saul sent the agents back to see David and said, bring him on his bed so I can kill him. When the agents arrived, to their surprise, the household idol was on the bed with some goat hair on its head. Saul asked Michael, why did you deceive me like this? You sent my enemy away, and he has escaped. She answered him, he said to me, let me go. Why should I kill you? Okay, so this all goes about how we kind of expected it would go
[00:23:43] Speaker B: at this point, right?
[00:23:44] Speaker A: Jonathan has. Well, maybe not the goat head idol part, but. But the fact that it blows up for David, right?
We know enough about Saul at this point to know he maybe swore an oath in a moment of lucidity to Jonathan, but he's not going to hold out.
And the minute David actually becomes successful again, and the minute Saul is reminded of why he hates David, he goes right back to the same place. And we get this incredibly familiar scene, right?
They're back in the throne room. The evil spirit, he has a fit, come upon him. He's upset. David goes, I'm gonna try and calm him down. He starts playing his liar. And Saul goes, I'll pin him to the wall floor. Throws his spear by supernatural strength, whatever God intervenes. David dodges it, gets out of the way. But this time he doesn't stick around for a second throw, right?
This is the third time this has happened. And David says, you know what? I think I've learned a lesson here. Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me. Fool me three times, I don't know. Shame on you again. You shouldn't have done that. Right? Like that was bad. So David gets out of dodge and leaves.
He goes back home.
Now, you have to understand, in this day and age, the king's mightiest warriors,
[00:24:58] Speaker B: his most important political officials, their homes
[00:25:01] Speaker A: would have been really near his. They would have built their homes pretty
[00:25:05] Speaker B: much in a circle around his house, right?
[00:25:07] Speaker A: Especially David, who's married to the king's daughter.
We're talking like next door or down the street, very close.
David goes home, but as we see,
[00:25:18] Speaker B: that is no protection for him.
[00:25:19] Speaker A: He's essentially put himself on house arrest. He's home, but he's not actually safe. This is Saul's city, and David is stuck. He sent soldiers to watch over the house, and if he leaves, they're going to kill him.
Michael knows the score, and so she warns David, you can't wait this out. This is not a come home and
[00:25:41] Speaker B: wait for Saul to cool down thing.
[00:25:43] Speaker A: You have to leave.
So she sets up a scheme with him. She lowers him down the window while
[00:25:49] Speaker B: the guards are watching the front door, and David escapes off into the night.
[00:25:53] Speaker A: And then Michael pulls off what I like to call a Ferris Bueller.
You guys know what I'm talking about. You guys, is anyone here old enough to recognize this picture? I put this up earlier today as
[00:26:05] Speaker B: an age check for myself and no one in the room recognized.
Was rough. It was rough. Jeremy recognized that, but that was it.
[00:26:12] Speaker A: We're the only Oldos. This is Ferris Bueller's bedroom from the
[00:26:16] Speaker B: amazing film Ferris Bueller's Day Off. If you haven't seen it, you need to rectify that.
[00:26:20] Speaker A: This week, she sets up a dummy in David's bed, puts a wig on it.
And when the soldiers arrive, and this part I think is so key, when the soldiers arrive to arrest David so they can kill him, she says, he can't come.
[00:26:44] Speaker B: He's sick.
[00:26:46] Speaker A: And they say, okay.
And they leave.
Can you imagine? I mean, okay. Can you imagine the moment in Saul's throne room where the soldiers come back
[00:26:58] Speaker B: in and he's like, where's David?
Sorry, boss, he's sick in bed.
[00:27:04] Speaker A: I sent you to get him so we can kill him. Bring the bed here. We'll kill him in the bed. And so they go back and they find to their dismay that it was goat hair on a statue. Now, listen, there is a little bit of a side note here, and this is one of those things that I just. I just don't have time to go into it. So if you are interested in this, if you want to geek out on
[00:27:25] Speaker B: this over coffee, I will gladly do that.
[00:27:27] Speaker A: But some of you, I'm sure we read this part of the text and you had a thought that went, why
[00:27:32] Speaker B: does David have an idol in his house?
Right?
[00:27:35] Speaker A: Like, doesn't he worship Yahweh? Isn't that a big no? No.
[00:27:37] Speaker B: Isn't that like a 10 commandment level thing, like no idols.
[00:27:41] Speaker A: And there's. There's a really interesting thing there.
[00:27:43] Speaker B: There's.
[00:27:44] Speaker A: There's some interesting debate around this. And the short answer that I can tell you today is we have no
[00:27:49] Speaker B: idea why David had an idol in his house, because the text chooses not to tell us.
[00:27:54] Speaker A: But using some history, extra biblical history, some of the things we've learned from other texts, some of the things the Bible tells us, there are some really
[00:28:01] Speaker B: interesting theories out there.
[00:28:04] Speaker A: None of them have enough, like, biblical
[00:28:06] Speaker B: support to go like, that's the one, but they're interesting.
[00:28:08] Speaker A: And if you want to dig into
[00:28:09] Speaker B: it, I'd love to do it with you.
[00:28:11] Speaker A: But for the purpose of today, I
[00:28:12] Speaker B: do have to share my favorite one with you.
[00:28:14] Speaker A: And it has to do with this. This Hebrew word that gets translated as household idol.
[00:28:19] Speaker B: I'm going to say it incorrectly.
[00:28:22] Speaker A: It is yet to Ba. Yet to Ba.
Anyway, this particular word, it isn't the word we use specifically for a religious
[00:28:32] Speaker B: idol, like in a shrine.
[00:28:34] Speaker A: It's a word that could mean a religious idol, but could also just mean
[00:28:38] Speaker B: statue, like pretty statue, like decoration, household idol.
[00:28:43] Speaker A: And so one of the things, one of the things that is theorized with
[00:28:46] Speaker B: historical reason is that wealthy wives whose husbands had to leave for long periods of time, they're warriors, they're traitors, whatever, would commission statues of their husbands because they're lonely and bored, and they would decorate the house with them so they could think about their husband while they're traveling. And we don't know this is the case. But I just loved the idea that Michal loved David so much. She had a statue made of him, and she thought that statue was so good. Then when he snuck out, she thought, I'll just put the statue in bed. They won't know the difference.
[00:29:18] Speaker A: And I love that because they didn't.
And that's just amazing. I. Everything about this part of the story is the best part of the story to me. Regardless, he gets out of town, it creates enough space for David to get away, and it creates enough confusion that by the time they've got the whole thing figured out, David is gone and saved. And Saul would have almost certainly dramatically punished his daughter here, maybe even with death. But she. She kind of builds a whole thing. Oh, he threatened me. And he buys it, and they all move on and it's fine. But again, I think this part of the story, it just brings us back
[00:29:58] Speaker B: to the main truth of this text.
[00:30:00] Speaker A: Michael is a great friend and a great wife to David. Right?
Like this is a moment where she is proactive in. In trying to protect him. She risks harm to herself to help him escape, by the way. Risks harm to herself by defying not just the king of Israel, not just her king, but her father.
Right?
Like this is great love and great loyalty. Michael's great. We should all hope to have a spouse who genuinely loves us and chooses to form primary allegiance with us and our family and our marriage. Right. Like Michael's loyalty to her husband, not her parents, is a beautiful thing. And by the way, I will go so far as to say, not the main point of the sermon, but some of us in the room probably just need to sit with that truth for a minute, right?
That the Bible tells in marriage to leave and cleave, that you married your spouse, not your parents.
[00:30:59] Speaker B: Right?
[00:31:00] Speaker A: But the point here, the real point
[00:31:02] Speaker B: here is that Michael is great and yet simultaneously, she's not enough.
[00:31:10] Speaker A: Like Jonathan, she. She was God's provision for David in the moment.
But she didn't solve David's real problem.
[00:31:19] Speaker B: His home isn't safe now.
[00:31:21] Speaker A: And even with Michael's help, the best
[00:31:23] Speaker B: he gets is running off into the night by himself.
Look how the story lands out and we'll see what where God brings us today. Verse 18.
[00:31:31] Speaker A: So David fled and escaped and went to Samuel at Ramah and told him everything Saul had done to him. Then he and Samuel left and stayed at Noi. When it was reported to Saul that David was at Noi in Ramah, he sent agents to seize David.
However, when they saw the group of prophets prophesying with Samuel leading them, the Spirit of God came on Saul's agents and they also started prophesying.
When they reported to Saul, he sent other agents and they also began prophesying. So Saul tried again and sent a third group of agents and they began prophesying. Then Saul himself went to Ramah. He came to the large cistern at Seku and asked where Samuel and David? At Noyth and Ramah, someone said. So he went to Noyth and Ramah and the Spirit of God also came on him as he walked along. And he prophesied until he entered Neoth and Ramah. Saul then removed his clothes and also prophesying before Samuel. He collapsed and lay naked all that day and all that night. And that is why they say, is Saul also among the prophets? And this, beloved, is the word of
[00:32:38] Speaker B: the Lord for us today.
[00:32:39] Speaker A: What a.
What a great way to end out the story, right?
Wow, strange end to this particular chunk of text. But let's get There, after being lowered out the window of his own home, David runs straight to Samuel. Samuel is at Ramah. That's. That's like three miles ish away. Like, imagine going from here to my
[00:33:00] Speaker B: house, if you know where my house is, just straight down Manchester, right?
[00:33:03] Speaker A: About three miles away, not. Not very far.
[00:33:06] Speaker B: It's interesting, I think, that David goes to Samuel and not home to his father.
[00:33:11] Speaker A: But I think he just knows at this point, nowhere safe, right? Like, what's my dad going to do
[00:33:17] Speaker B: to stop the king in his army?
[00:33:19] Speaker A: Samuel, at least is the prophet who anointed them both, who has some spiritual authority. So maybe he can do, I don't know, something, right? So David comes to him and at this point, remember, it would take him
[00:33:31] Speaker B: maybe a good hour to get there, even at night.
[00:33:35] Speaker A: And so he comes to Samuel in the middle of the night and says, hey, this is what Saul did. What do I do?
And Samuel takes him to this place called Neoith. That reads like it's a separate place, but really this is meant to be understood as a part of Ramah, just
[00:33:51] Speaker B: not a permanent part of Ramah, a
[00:33:53] Speaker A: place where there's a bunch of tents set up. Maybe it's where traders came and stopped
[00:33:57] Speaker B: before they did stuff.
[00:33:58] Speaker A: Maybe that's just maybe like, close to
[00:34:00] Speaker B: like what we think it was, like a fairground.
[00:34:02] Speaker A: But we get this weird kind of piece here because as the text goes on, we find out that Samuel, for whatever reason, is hosting a whole bunch of prophets or these younger prophets that he had led and trained. Was this some kind of special, like, prophet camp? They were just having a prophet retreat and Samuel's hosting it. Like, we don't know because the text doesn't tell us, but. But Samuel knows, hey, this is a good spot to hide David, because there's lots of tents and it's dark and we can just hide him pretty easy.
[00:34:31] Speaker B: And so David goes and he hides among the prophets.
[00:34:35] Speaker A: And again we see God has provided
[00:34:39] Speaker B: David with a great friend.
Samuel, no questions asked, takes him in and hides him. He's a good prophet, he's a good shepherd, he does what he can.
But immediately we see that Samuel's friendship is not enough.
[00:34:55] Speaker A: Saul finds out quickly that David is
[00:34:58] Speaker B: there where he's hiding, explicitly where he's hiding. And he sends troops after David.
Another picture, guys, for us, of how friendship is necessary.
You need people on your team, you need solid friends. And yet friendship falls short.
Samuel, like Michael, like Jonathan, does what he can, but Saul still finds them out and sends troops to get him. David needed his friends, but he needed something more.
He just needed God's direct intervention in his life. Right? He needed God to show up for him in a supernatural way.
[00:35:39] Speaker A: And that's exactly what he gets.
In what might be the weirdest way possible, the text tells us that God intervenes to save David by making the soldiers sent to arrest him get slain in the spirit. Like, is that. Is that what's happening here? Like, is this. This kind of sounds more like, I don't know, a Benny Hinn or Todd White testimony than something we would read in the Bible. Right? The text says that Samuel and his prophets are out prophesying, and as the soldiers approach, the spirit of God sweeps over them and they begin prophesying as well. This spiritual experience is so powerful that they either couldn't or didn't want to arrest David. So they just go home.
That's wild. Wild.
Swept up in the spirit, they begin prophesying, you know what?
This just isn't worth it. I'm going home. And so they head back to Saul, and they get back, and you can imagine the moment.
[00:36:38] Speaker B: All right, where's David?
[00:36:40] Speaker A: He's still there. We didn't get him.
Why didn't you get him?
[00:36:44] Speaker B: You had to be there, Saul. Oh, my gosh. The spirit was present.
[00:36:47] Speaker A: It was beautiful. We were just worshiping the Lord. Cool. Where's David? Yeah, we left him there.
So Saul has this experience and tries again two more times, just sending all his soldiers to youth group camp to get baptized and, like, get saved on Thursday night, Right? Like, just over and over. All of Saul's guards are slowly converted to real worship of Yahweh. It's amazing.
Three different groups of his soldiers go have the same spiritual experience. They walk. They know exactly where David's hiding. They walk right up to him. Before they can arrest him, they have this insane, powerful spiritual experience, and they just go back.
And so eventually, Saul says, all right, I'm going to do it.
You guys couldn't do it. I'm going to do it. Our text ends with a scene that, by the way, is absolutely layered with meaning. Meaning that we can easily just swipe past and not realize narratively, nothing terribly
[00:37:48] Speaker B: surprising happens at this point.
[00:37:50] Speaker A: Saul approaches Samuel and David, presumably enraged, presumably ready to kill. And sure enough, the spirit of God does the same thing to him that
[00:37:57] Speaker B: he did the three groups before him.
[00:37:58] Speaker A: He gets the Holy Spirit swept over him. And the text says that Saul prophesies, strips naked in front of Samuel, and lies down on the ground and continues prophesying naked For a day and the night. Now, that is getting really Pentecostal. Well, I don't know, maybe some branches
[00:38:17] Speaker B: of Pentecostal, not all of them.
[00:38:19] Speaker A: This event is what actually gives David the time and the clarity to actually get the heck out of dodge and flee. That's where we're going to pick up the text next week. It ends today with Saul laying on
[00:38:32] Speaker B: the ground naked for a day and a night, prophesying.
[00:38:36] Speaker A: And there's two things that we can really easily miss here that I want
[00:38:40] Speaker B: to point out for us, because I
[00:38:41] Speaker A: think they really begin to draw this
[00:38:42] Speaker B: text home for us.
[00:38:45] Speaker A: The first is this figure of speech
[00:38:46] Speaker B: mentioned right at the end of the text. It says the people had a phrase
[00:38:49] Speaker A: that said, is Saul also among the prophets? That may sound familiar to you as I read it. That's because this isn't the first time Saul is prophesied. Way back in 1st Samuel 10, Saul had a really similar experience where he was swept up in the spirit and prophesied alongside prophets of God.
[00:39:04] Speaker B: God.
[00:39:04] Speaker A: Early in Saul's story, this was seen as divine confirmation of Saul's kingship. Right? God had actually anointed him and called him to the work. It's striking, ironic and tragic that Saul's anointing by God is end capped on both ends, front and back, by these
[00:39:26] Speaker B: moments of extreme spiritual experience.
[00:39:28] Speaker A: First with God confused, affirming Saul's call and anointing, and now with God opposing
[00:39:34] Speaker B: Saul and keeping him from harming his actual anointed.
[00:39:39] Speaker A: And there's layers here of deeper meaning
[00:39:42] Speaker B: connected to this phrase.
[00:39:44] Speaker A: And really, again, it just speaks to
[00:39:46] Speaker B: the sorrow, the tragedy of Saul's story and Saul's downfall. You see, in Old Hebrew, this word that we read as prophesy, it actually has two meanings. It means directly to prophesy, to act and behave of a prophet.
[00:40:02] Speaker A: It also means to rave like a madman.
Same word in Hebrew.
[00:40:07] Speaker B: And you use context to understand which one is being used.
[00:40:12] Speaker A: We all have words like that. We have words like that in English
[00:40:14] Speaker B: that have multiple meanings. Use context to know which meaning it is in the moment. In ancient Hebrew, this word prophesy could mean prophesy.
[00:40:21] Speaker A: It could mean raving. In fact, just a chapter before this, what we read last week, when Saul
[00:40:29] Speaker B: starts raving on his throne before he throws a spear at David, it's the exact same word Saul started prophesying.
[00:40:36] Speaker A: But in that moment, you know, from
[00:40:37] Speaker B: context, he's raving like a lunatic.
[00:40:40] Speaker A: What's happening here is the author is
[00:40:42] Speaker B: giving us a wordplay that makes Saul the butt of a tragic joke.
[00:40:48] Speaker A: Because when Saul was following the Lord, he was swept up in the spirit
[00:40:51] Speaker B: and he prophesied and people began to say, wow, wow. Our king is like one of the prophets.
[00:40:57] Speaker A: Wow.
[00:40:57] Speaker B: How cool is that? Even our king, like, he's so spiritual. He's like one of the prophets.
[00:41:03] Speaker A: And later in life, he rejects the
[00:41:05] Speaker B: Lord and is consumed by jealousy and paranoia and violence. And he's swept up in the spirit and raves like a madman and strips naked and lies down in the dirt
[00:41:15] Speaker A: raving for a whole day and a whole night. And people begin to say, wow, is
[00:41:20] Speaker B: our king like a raving lunatic?
The word could mean either, but the context shows what it is. The first is praise. The first is worship of a God who would anoint a king like this.
But the other one is anger and detachment and disturbing behavior.
Right?
[00:41:39] Speaker A: But it works.
[00:41:40] Speaker B: It gets David out of there.
[00:41:43] Speaker A: And it also points us to what
[00:41:45] Speaker B: I think is really the hinge point of this text.
[00:41:48] Speaker A: You see, things worked out for David
[00:41:50] Speaker B: to get him out of these terrifying set of circumstances.
[00:41:52] Speaker A: He should have died, but when he really needed it, his people showed up
[00:41:57] Speaker B: for him and he got out of it.
But notice, I think this nuance is so important.
[00:42:03] Speaker A: Notice that David didn't get out of
[00:42:05] Speaker B: it because of how awesome his friends were.
Jonathan, Michael, Samuel, these are amazing friends. These are the kind of people we all want to have in our corner.
[00:42:13] Speaker A: And I'm sure that David really did feel loved and cared for by each of these people. And yet none of them actually got
[00:42:21] Speaker B: David where he needed to be.
Jonathan naively thought he could patch things up.
[00:42:26] Speaker A: Michael could only get him out of
[00:42:27] Speaker B: their home and get him away. Samuel made space for him, but couldn't keep him hidden. Each step, things fell right back apart. Because ultimately, David needed God's intervention.
He needed the Lord to step in beyond what his earthly friends could do. Because his friendship and his protection is actually enough.
[00:42:50] Speaker A: I want you to catch that.
[00:42:52] Speaker B: David needed friendship beyond his earthly friends.
He needed the Lord to be his friend, to step in for him.
[00:43:00] Speaker A: This may seem like kind of a nitpicky point, but I don't think it is. This is. This is legitimately foundational to how we
[00:43:07] Speaker B: understand the gospel story itself.
[00:43:09] Speaker A: Our God, who made us, who sustains the universe, the Creator, the perfect judge of all of reality, Yahweh, the God of creation, distant and detached.
He doesn't know us as a king, far and separate from us. He is intimately involved with us. He treats us, considers us, loves us. Here, this church as friends.
That is insanity.
That doesn't work with the way our minds think. That someone that above us, that more complex, that more perfect, that more powerful with everything that God has, that he doesn't consider you a peon or a pet, that he has particular affection for, that he considers you as a friend.
It's wild.
And this isn't just me, like being sappy.
Some of the words of Christ Himself. John 15. On the very night he was betrayed and arrested in one of his last conversations with his followers, Jesus said this in John 15. I have told you these things so that my joy may be in you
[00:44:19] Speaker B: and your joy may be complete.
[00:44:21] Speaker A: This is my command. Love one another as I have loved you. And no one has greater love than this to lay down his life for his friends.
[00:44:31] Speaker B: You are my friends if you do what I command you. This verse 15, this is so important.
[00:44:37] Speaker A: I do not call you servants because
[00:44:40] Speaker B: a servant doesn't know what his master is doing.
[00:44:42] Speaker A: I have called you friends because I have made known to you everything I have heard from my Father. You did not choose me. I chose you.
[00:44:54] Speaker B: Beloved of Jesus.
Jesus Christ is the friend of your soul, the lover of your soul.
[00:45:03] Speaker A: I can't say any more plainly than that. Jesus sees and you as a friend.
[00:45:11] Speaker B: Jesus, the creator.
Jesus, who is God. Jesus, who holds the stars, who sees
[00:45:17] Speaker A: all of time and space, also sees
[00:45:21] Speaker B: you,
[00:45:24] Speaker A: sees all of you, every detail
[00:45:27] Speaker B: of your life, beginning to end. All your honor and all your shame. All your strengths and all your weaknesses, all your successes, all your failures. Christ holds you, sees you as you
[00:45:41] Speaker A: really are, and calls you friend.
[00:45:46] Speaker B: Come on, Church.
Come on, Church.
That God even sees you as insane to think of yourself in comparison to him, but much less God doesn't just see you. He knows you. To think that God knows you is insane.
The God of the universe knows all about you, but to think not even that he loves you. The God of the universe doesn't just see you, doesn't just know you. He loves you.
[00:46:11] Speaker A: But beyond that, the God of the
[00:46:14] Speaker B: universe doesn't just see you, doesn't just
[00:46:15] Speaker A: know you, doesn't just love you, loves
[00:46:17] Speaker B: you as a friend, like a best friend.
That's insanity.
That's wild.
[00:46:28] Speaker A: That's. That's beyond comprehension.
[00:46:32] Speaker B: And you need to hear this.
That relationship, that care, that affection that
[00:46:39] Speaker A: Yahweh has for you, that is what motivates his love and his sacrifice on our behalf. Did you see what Christ said? No greater love in this than to give your life for a friend. Beloved, this is what Jesus has done for you upon the cross.
He jumps into our peril. He jumps into our need. He jumps head first into the sinful and broken world so that we can have forgiveness from sins.
Beloved, it was his perfect life, his unjust death, his supernatural resurrection, his spirit powered ascension and his final triumphant return. All the work he has done that, that is what brings you back from death to life, what buys you from sin into redemption.
That you might be known that you might be loved, that you might be redeemed, that you might be brought into a perfect eternity with the lover of your soul. Your best friend. David needed a better friend than his awesome friends and God did exactly that. You, beloved, need a better friend.
You do.
You need Jesus today, the real friend of your heart.
I would be foolish as a pastor to walk past this moment without asking each of us in this room to honestly consider this. Have you experienced the friendship of Christ that protects you from death and saves your soul?
Have you experienced that?
Have you stopped and considered your own sinfulness and the lack of your ability to fix what is broken in you, the need you have and if you considered the love of God that he has for you, that he would do what we just described and he would accomplish that work, not out of some grand like abstract philosophy, as though God is like, has a platonic relationship with us, where he goes, I am the perfect avatar of love and kindness. So I do things that are kind, but I'm completely emotionally detached from it. I just do this because it's right. That is not what the Bible describes.
The scripture describes affection for you, care for you, knowledge of you, passion for you.
That is what drives Christ to the cross.
[00:48:54] Speaker B: That is what moves him to accomplish his work.
[00:48:58] Speaker A: He glorifies God by loving us, his friends.
[00:49:01] Speaker B: Come on, church.
Have you experienced that?
Have you actually, actually giving your heart to the friend of your soul?
Tim Kelly, the pastor, he once brilliantly said this, and I'm going to paraphrase it, but he.
[00:49:16] Speaker A: But he said something to the effect of being loved without being known is
[00:49:20] Speaker B: like, it's like cotton candy. It's just saccharine. It's ultimately meaningless. It's like a greeting card or a children's doll that says I love you. When you squeeze it right, it doesn't mean anything.
But to be truly known and then not loved, like after you're known, that's our greatest fear, right? For someone to actually know us and they go, ah, I just don't love you.
But to be fully known and then to be fully loved, to be known as you actually are.
Behind all the walls you put up,
[00:49:49] Speaker A: behind all the faces, all the masks
[00:49:51] Speaker B: you wear, to be really known as you actually are, good and bad, and then to be loved completely.
Is that not what our souls long for?
Is that not what we seek in this world?
Here's the beautiful thing about this.
That is what God does for you.
That is what God does for you, beloved.
And let me give you an even better piece to this pie. Not even better, but just an extra piece. This is the whipped cream on top of an already great pie.
[00:50:24] Speaker A: You know, the primary way that David
[00:50:26] Speaker B: actually got to experience the love and friendship in our God, in his God, was from the love and friendship of his friends.
[00:50:33] Speaker A: You catch that, like the way. The primary way that God actually intervened in David's life. He. He did these extra moments. He. He showed up and did these things. But the primary thing, the primary way that David experienced the friendship of his God in our text was through the love and friendship of his actual earthly friends.
They. They stepped up for him when he needed it.
As much as they were flawed, as much as they were human, they were windows into God's love.
They were a context through which God worked to display his love for David. Similarly, in Christ, one of our primary ways that we experience the friendship of Jesus is through one another.
When we are friendly, when we love one one another, we display Christ. We create context through which Christ can display his love to those who desperately need it.
And so if you're in this room
[00:51:31] Speaker B: today and you're already in Christ, I
[00:51:32] Speaker A: genuinely, I ask you to consider what needs to happen for you to step
[00:51:39] Speaker B: toward your church, family and friendship.
[00:51:42] Speaker A: If you are in this room and you are saved and you have experienced
[00:51:46] Speaker B: the friendship of Christ, you hear this.
[00:51:50] Speaker A: You are the primary method that God uses to display his friendship to the people in this room.
If you were in Christ, what do
[00:52:02] Speaker B: you need to do to step toward your church family?
[00:52:07] Speaker A: And I know that as I say that many of us immediately hear that, and they go, hey, I'm the lonely one.
I'm the one who needs to be reached out to.
I'm the one sitting here struggling with connection.
Church isn't doing this for me, and you're telling me to go do that for others. I'm starved for this. I'm hurting. I'm struggling with loneliness. And here's the thing.
[00:52:32] Speaker B: I understand that.
I understand that. I empathize with that.
As ironic as it may be to say this, you are not alone in that experience.
That is the norm. That is the default of the world within which we live.
I've got a very simple answer for you.
Because here's the thing that's most of us in the room.
I know it is most of us in the room. Hear me say, hey, look, you're the way that other people are going to experience the friendship of Christ.
And most of us, our gut reaction is some version of well, then how come no one's doing that for me?
How come I don't experience that? Why am I lonely?
As you have to understand something that is true.
I empathize with it. It's common.
It's the standard narrative of our culture.
But that is a tool of Satan to destroy you, to isolate you, to. To harm our church.
If Satan can get us sad and isolated and hurt and hear this resentful that others don't reach out to us and aren't seeking us out so much so that we stop doing that for others, he is hamstrung the greatest superpower in the local church.
There's a plot of the enemy to destroy you, to harm the church.
When we love one another as friends, we are living as the hands and feet of Christ and beloved. That is powerful and it is life changing.
You have to understand something.
All of us are busy.
All of us are tired.
All of us are stressed. All of us are anxious.
All of us, all of us want others to see us and know us and seek us out and reach out to us. And that should happen. It should.
And I'm sorry for the times that you haven't experienced that when you needed it.
I'm sorry for the ways that I, as your pastor, have failed you in that.
I know I have.
We've all done that.
Not noticing when someone misses not returning a text because we're busy or stressed.
Not inviting someone over because honestly, your house is just too messy and you don't want to deal with it even though you know they're not doing too well. All of us have done that. I have done that. You have done that.
I'm sorry for the times you've experienced that. I'm sorry for the times that has hurt you.
But you have to understand something.
The friendship of the church is a mutual experience.
All of us have to do it.
We want others to be the ones who seek us out and they should, but it has to be mutual.
The way you fix that is when we all decide to do it.
You want to fix that lack of experience when we decide to participate in it.
That is what helps heal that.
That is what fights against that cultural Narrative. You know why?
Because when you offer the love of Christ to someone, when you show up for someone when they need it, and you become that window, that context through which they can experience the love and joy of Christ, you become a conduit that fills their tank.
As Christ pours into us, he pours out of us.
When you pour Christ into others, it helps them to be full, helps them to experience life and joy and to have enough abundance that they can join
[00:56:07] Speaker A: with you in the work.
[00:56:09] Speaker B: It has to be mutual.
[00:56:11] Speaker A: We all have to do it. We all have to step into it together. And we have to step into it knowing full well that each and every one of us, that the best friends we have are no better than Jonathan or Michael or Samuel.
The best friends you have, who are full of Christ, who are consistent, who never forget to return a text, who always show up with chicken soup when you're sick, are still sinful, broken humans who will fall short, who will not really meet your needs.
We have to understand that we're all
[00:56:43] Speaker B: bad at this, that we all need
[00:56:45] Speaker A: it, that we're all failing it.
[00:56:47] Speaker B: And when we just jump into the
[00:56:48] Speaker A: jumble of mess that that is the church life is together, do you know what we find?
[00:56:55] Speaker B: We find the Holy Spirit fills in the gaps, that it is Christ himself who works through his church, who works through the steps we can take, and actually brings about life and joy and healing and refreshment.
But it happens when we all choose to do it.
So I would ask, I would ask you this church as we land out today, Band, if you want to come back up, the real question today is what does it look like for you if you were in Christ, to take a step toward your church family?
What does that look like for you today?
[00:57:28] Speaker A: I'm going to give you just a
[00:57:29] Speaker B: couple thoughts, then I'm going to invite us to pray as we close out.
But I'll tell you guys, at the basis level, the answer to this question is, be that needed friend to someone who needs it this week.
[00:57:41] Speaker A: Be that needed friend.
[00:57:43] Speaker B: Show up for someone when that person pops in your mind. Send them a text, shoot them an email, give them a phone call, write them a note.
How about this?
This is maybe for the families of the kids in the room.
Invite them over even though your house is dirty and your dishes aren't done, just invite them over anyway.
[00:58:04] Speaker A: You know why they.
[00:58:06] Speaker B: They very likely only wash their dishes when you're coming over. Also, it's a mutual lie we all tell ourselves that all our dishes stay clean all the time.
Some of you are like, I'm judging you right now. My dishes are all clean all the time. Fine. You're a better person than me. That's okay.
[00:58:25] Speaker A: Invite them over anyway.
Be tired and exhausted together.
[00:58:31] Speaker B: You don't have to cook an amazing homemade meal. Order some dominoes. It's okay. It'll be all right.
Just sit there and be worn out together.
It's part of how we find life with one another.
[00:58:44] Speaker A: One of the ways you can do
[00:58:45] Speaker B: this is to serve.
Show up, show up, have a part.
Jump in with our greater team, with our kids ministry team.
Be the person who gets here an hour early to make the coffee so you can shake hands, so you can tell people they're loved, they're seen, they're invited in.
One of the ways you can do this literally right now is to pick someone in this room and invite them to lunch after church is over, literally today.
[00:59:11] Speaker A: Hey, what are you doing after church?
[00:59:12] Speaker B: Let's go to lunch.
[00:59:14] Speaker A: You don't even have to see my dirty dishes.
[00:59:15] Speaker B: We can just go to Chipotle,
[00:59:19] Speaker A: can
[00:59:19] Speaker B: pray for one another.
You know, a church like ours is actually a really approachable size for this.
You know, you could pray over every single person in our church by name multiple times a year.
Even just praying for one person or one family a day.
You pray for every single person in our church by name multiple times a year.
And this is my last one.
And this is the one that maybe hurts the most.
If you want to do this, if you go, I need connection, I need friends. I want to be a part of what God is doing in his church family. I want to be that context through which people can experience Christ.
[01:00:00] Speaker A: You will have to change your schedule.
[01:00:04] Speaker B: You will, because everyone's busy and everyone's stressed and everyone's tired.
If you want to connect with your brothers and sisters, then you have to move your schedule around it and to choose to not do certain things.
Choose to make yourself available even when you don't want to, even when you're tired.
[01:00:25] Speaker A: And if you have kids and a job, it's worse.
[01:00:29] Speaker B: You're going to connect to one another through Christ.
It's going to be because you said no to certain things so you could do that.
Beloved of Christ. Loneliness is literally killing people in our world.
[01:00:42] Speaker A: The narrative of our day is that
[01:00:44] Speaker B: this isn't changing, but it's inevitable, that we're stuck, that life stinks, that everything
[01:00:50] Speaker A: is expensive, that everyone's too busy, that social media is a toxic waste dump and everyone will die alone while doom scrolling.
[01:00:58] Speaker B: But The Gospel of Jesus invites you into a better story.
It invites you back to a reality where you can be known and you can be loved, where you are safe and you are seen, where you can belong.
[01:01:11] Speaker A: Here and now.
[01:01:12] Speaker B: In this gospel family, we are not perfect. We screw it up at least as often as we get it right.
But this is a context within which you can be known and you can know Christ.
And through Christ, you can do this for others.
