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Well, good morning, Willow Ridge.
Hey.
That's actually pretty energetic for a church that had come in in the rain this morning.
I appreciate that.
A little bit of energy is good.
Want to thank the choir.
Y'all did make David Allen look good.
That's sharp.
I appreciate that.
That's great.
All right.
Hey, it's good to be back with you once again.
I'm Steve Rorlak, work for the South Carolina Baptist convention.
David did a much better job introducing me than I introduced myself.
Trying to explain what I do when your title is a strong team leader, it just gets real confusing real quick.
Am I the strong team leader?
So anyway, the whole discipleship strategy thing works out really, really well.
So it's good to be back with you.
And I will tell you that being here this time is a whole lot easier than it was last time.
Last time I was here, Bo was in a series through James, and he assigned a passage of scripture to me.
He wanted me to continue in the series, and it felt an awful lot like a seminary class because I will tell you, it was not the most attractive passage to go ahead and preach.
I understood why he was gone that Sunday.
So today I actually get to pick.
I actually get to pick the passage that I'm going to preach, and hopefully it'll connect as well as it did.
Y'all were a great audience last time, so hopefully it'll connect just as well this time.
I want you to go ahead and make your way over to first Samuel, chapter 30.
And as you do that, I am probably going to convince you that I am not the smartest guy that has ever spoken on this stage before.
All right, what I want to do is kind of take you back to my preteen years and then an event that happened in my latter teen years.
So we're going to begin by visiting Steve at about twelve years old, maybe eleven years old.
I was in middle school.
And let me go ahead and say up front, I did not grow up in South Carolina.
I've been here a very long time, but Florida is home for me.
About 45 minutes for the beach.
I am a water rat.
I love the water.
Growing up in Florida, it was perfect for that.
All right, so 1112 year old Steve loves the water.
And one of his middle school buddies comes to him, says, hey, you want to buy a surfboard?
And I thought, yeah, that'd be a lot of fun.
I think I do want to go buy a surfboard.
And he begins to tell me about this surfboard.
He had two older brothers that surfed, and they took a great big, long board and they cut it in half, and they made two surfboards out of it.
And I gave him my lunch money for two straight weeks, and I bought the top half of this surfboard.
Now, for everybody in this room, if you were to see that surfboard, it was the raggediest looking thing you could ever imagine in your life.
And there's no way you would get in the water to paddle that thing around.
But for me, I loved it.
And I developed very quickly this amazing passion for surfing.
I just absolutely loved it.
I got into it, and over the course of a couple of years, I actually got pretty good at it.
And there was a crisis in my life where I thought maybe I wanted to surf as a living.
This is a couple years before I found Christ to be my savior.
So the beach was holding an unusual and perhaps uncomfortable attraction to me.
And I did have that decision.
I had been surfing on some teams.
Do I want to surf for a living or do I want to eat?
Because if you're going to surf for a living, you're probably not going to eat.
Very, very few people do that.
So I'm 19 years old.
I now have a real job.
Dabbling in school just a little bit.
Hadn't figured out what I want to do with that.
And we get the word that there is a hurricane coming.
This is where I start to prove to you I may not be the brightest human being that ever spoke on this stage.
All right, now, if you surf in a hurricane, you're nuts.
If you surf a day or two before the hurricane, you're committed.
I'm committed.
Had the day off.
I was fit.
I had the skills.
I thought, this is perfect.
I'm going to go to the beach, me and a couple of buddies, and we're going to ride some of the biggest waves we had ever ridden before.
Now, the wave, Florida, there's describing the land and the beach and all that sort of thing.
When the hurricane comes, the waves do get pretty big, but they break very much offshore.
So about a mile offshore, normally, you're about a half mile here.
I'm at least a mile offshore.
I had paddled out.
I had surfed a little bit.
I was having some fun.
Now, folks, I want you to understand the hurricane is coming, but this is a bright clear, sunny day.
The weather of the hurricane did not come, but it was pushing the waves.
So the water was rough, but we were having a good time.
We were surfing.
And I'm guessing that most everybody in the room has seen some videos of somebody surfing before.
And as a wave is coming and they're paddling back out, you just simply grab your board, you dive under the wave, and you pop up and you keep going.
If you don't do that, the waves going to wash you back.
Well, it was a very rough day, as you can imagine, with a hurricane coming.
And I see the wave I had ridden was paddling back out.
I go to dive under.
Well, my board slipped out from under my arm.
Not a problem, because just like the boogie boards that you take to Myrtle beach, there's a leash that's attached to the ankle of the surfer and then to the end of the surfboard, if you happen to get away from your surfboard, the leash will grab, it'll stretch a little bit, and it'll come back.
So wasn't that concerned about it.
Board slipped.
I dove under the wave, felt a tug on my leg, and then all of a sudden, something felt different.
It wasn't like what I would normally feel.
It was a whole lot less pressure.
I come up and I turn and look, and what's happening is my surfboard is rolling on its side in a barrel roll up off the water.
My leash had broken.
Now, this is not the point where I thought, uh oh, I'm in trouble.
I had done some open water swimming before.
I knew that I was about a mile off shore, and the next 45 minutes or so was going to be kind of long and kind of rough.
But I knew how to body surf.
I honestly was more concerned about how banged up my surfboard was going to get while it was flopping around on the way back because I knew there was no way I was going to catch it.
So I start my swim in, and again, I'm probably three quarters of a mile or a mile out, and you body surf a little bit.
And the waves, it's like a washing machine as you get closer to the shore.
So I'm swimming in, and I misjudged a wave, and it took me under, not a problem.
Popped back up.
But before I had a chance to catch my breath, another wave broke, and it pushed me much farther underwater.
Now, that's a problem.
I had no air, and as it pushed me down, I also lost my bearings as to which way was up and which way was down.
Now, I had been surfing long enough to know, and I've been going to the beach long enough to know, that if you just lay still, your body is buoyant, you have air in your lungs, and eventually it will slowly bring you to the top.
My problem was I didn't really have a full lung full of air when I went under.
So now my head and my lungs are having a conversation about my head saying, just relax, you'll float to the top.
And my lungs are saying, no, no, you got to do something.
Floating's not doing something.
I don't have any air.
Managed to figure it out and get to the top, manage to catch a little bit of breath, manage to swim on in.
Now I'm about 2 miles from where my car is parked.
Y'all have been to the ocean.
You know how it kind of moves you down and you're a long way?
Well, when it's rough and when the weather's coming in, it's really going to wash you down.
So here I am with this broken leash in my hand about this long, and I'm carrying it, and I walk and I walk and I walk.
And I've finally come up to where my surfboard is.
Only it's not just my surfboard.
A crowd of people have gathered around my surfboard.
And as I'm walking up, you know, the beach is flat, and you can see it for a long way.
And I'm watching these people, and they're looking down at the surfboard, and they're looking out at the ocean, and they're looking down at the surfboard and looking down at the ocean.
And it takes a while to walk to where I'm going.
So for 15 or 20 minutes, I'm watching this scene, and I walk up, and nobody really says anything.
They just kind of look at me like, is this yours?
So I reach down and I grab it.
One of the guys actually said, hey, is that your surfboard?
And I've got the broken leash in one hand and the busted part of the lease attached to the surfboard on the other hand.
I'm just kind of looking at him like, really?
Really?
Yes.
This is my surfboard.
All of that is not what I remember most about the story.
What I remember most, and again, folks, I'm 19 years old.
19 year olds don't normally have this feeling.
All I wanted to do was go home.
I wasn't smart enough or old enough to recognize what I had done was fairly dangerous and probably not the brightest thing in the world, all right?
But all I can remember is all I wanted to do was go home.
Had about a 50 minutes drive to get from the beach where I lived at that time, still living with my parents.
All I wanted to do was go home.
I'm going to guess that in this room, there are an awful lot of people that have had that same emotion.
It's probably not because you tried to surf in a hurricane, but for whatever reason, the hurricane of life just caused a few waves to crash on your head, and all you wanted to do is go home.
Everybody in this room can connect to that emotion, and that's what I want you to hang on to, and I want you to bring into the passage that we're about to read.
All right, now, I need to give you a little bit of background so you know where we are.
We're in first Samuel, chapter 30.
A ton of stuff has happened in David's life leading up to one Samuel, chapter 30.
I need to give you a little bit of this background.
All right.
David's had a lot of waves crashed on his head, figuratively, not literally, all right?
But there's been an awful lot of waves that have crashed.
He is in the most difficult circumstance in his life.
Now, as I tell the story of David, I want you to keep in the back of your mind that this is the season when many of the leaders of these nations would go to war.
And it was coming to an ultimately, there's going to be a huge battle in north.
All of the skirmishes were going to end up in this major battle in the north of the kingdom.
This is all building in the background, and David goes all through these other things that I'm about to tell you about now.
David, at this point, was not the king.
David was one of the leaders of the soldiers for the king.
He was an excellent commander.
He was an excellent soldier.
He was an excellent leader of soldiers.
And he had gotten to the point where he was so successful in the battle, God had been with him in all of these battles, to the point where now the people are not celebrating the king for the victories, they're celebrating David for his victories.
And that becomes an incredible challenge for David, because Saul, who happened to be king at this time, was an incredibly jealous man.
He was also an incredibly unstable man.
He is so consumed with the jealousy for David being a better leader than him that he orders his best general to be killed.
And his son, who happens to be the best friend of David, says, dad, what are you doing?
He is our greatest general.
And Saul is so upset with his son for questioning him that he actually throws his spear and his son tries to put his son to death.
That's how unstable we find the king who is chasing David.
King bribes troops to hunt down David.
David's a great leader and the other troops know it.
So he's got to bribe them to hunt him down.
There is no protection right now for anybody that disagrees with the king.
And let me tell you, you do not want to be a priest right now because they're communicating God's word and is absolutely opposed to the king's word.
He doesn't like it a bit, so he's going to take care of the priests.
You do not want to be a priest at this time.
David is on the run.
There's part of this story as we lead up to chapter 30 where the king actually gets very close to capturing David.
But God causes a skirmish at home to divert Saul's attention so that David is protected.
Move on just a little bit farther and we find there are 3000 men that are now hunting for David.
There's two different stories in this section of one, Samuel, where David could have taken care of the king.
He could have put the king to death, but he chose not to because he knew that Saul was God's anointed and he would not go against the wishes of God.
It finally gets to the point where the king is just so upset with all this and he's so disgusted with David.
The final injury that he can press on David is he takes back the daughter he had given to David in marriage and he gives her to somebody else.
This is how upset or so upset the king is with David.
This is what David has been living with.
And the chapter is leading up to one Samuel.
Chapter 30.
Even as this major battle is coming in the north, David and his men can't find anybody that will accept them to fight with them.
There had been some other nations that he had actually helped and they won't allow David to fight with him anymore.
David has been completely cast off by his nation and by his friends.
So finally rejected and persecuted and pursued, lied about abandon.
All David can do is go home.
And that's really all right with David at this point because really all he wanted to do was go home.
That same emotion that I brought into that story of me surfing is the emotion I tried to connect you with and the emotion that David has.
All he wants to do is go home.
And as we get up to chapter 30, what we find is home is about 60 miles away.
It's about a three day march for David and the 400 men that are with him.
And if there was ever a man that needed a homecoming, it was David.
Now, that's an awful lot of introduction, and I recognize that, but it gives me the opportunity to ask a couple of questions.
Why are you here this morning?
I'm going to make a bold prediction.
There's not a single person in this room who woke up and said, hey, we need to get to church.
Steve Rahrlak is preaching this morning.
Now.
I'm okay.
I'm comfortable with that.
There's only a handful of folks in this room that really know me.
We're good with that.
I'm the guest preacher.
Not many of y'all probably didn't even know that Beau was going to be gone this Sunday.
So what brought you here?
I'm going to guess, for many of you, Willow Ridge feels like home.
There's an emotional connection that you have to this place.
There's some things that have happened here that give you a great sense of peace, a great sense of comfort.
My guess is, for many of y'all, there are some people here that are just a great part of your lives.
They're an important part of who you are, maybe who you become as a believer.
There may be some folks in this room that shared Christ with you, help lead you to understand that Jesus is away.
The truth and the life.
There may be some people in here that are just absolutely an important part of your life.
Maybe the place, maybe the people, maybe it's the proof of what God is doing in this fellowship.
My contention would be for an awful lot of folks that are gathering in churches on Sunday morning today, that we ask them why church feels like home, and their number one answer is going to be the place.
And they're really kind of focused on the facility, and there's some emotional connection with that, and that's okay.
Number two would probably be the answer of people.
There are some folks that have played an important part in their lives, and they're connecting with the people.
And then a distant third is going to be the proof of how God accomplished something special, either in their lives or used the church to be that hub of activity where God is proving that he really is active and alive in the community.
My contention would be, is the order is not the place, and then the people.
And then the proof, the order should be the proof of how God used his people to bring about something incredible, and the place just happened to be the church.
So here's what I'm going to do to you this morning.
I'm going to ask you to use your imagination for the next couple of minutes.
Now, this is imagination.
This is not prophecy.
Okay, I want to be clear on that.
I'm about to mess with you just a little bit.
I'm using your imagination.
This is not prophecy.
Suppose this place was gone.
Maybe a little unusual to think about on a rainy morning.
But suppose, as you were driving to church, you saw the lights and you may have heard the siren, and you see the fire trucks, and the place that you were intending to come to this morning was gone.
Fire had completely destroyed the facility at Willow Ridge.
We're going to give just a minute for the emotion to pass away.
But how would coming to church change if the facility wasn't here?
Get your attention, doesn't it?
If we were worshiping at First Baptist cow pens this morning, we would be about 18 months into their brand new sanctuary, where fire completely destroyed the old sanctuary.
Now they're in a new sanctuary.
They didn't understand what God was doing.
You ask them now, and they would tell you it was an incredibly tough time in the church's life, but they came out very well on the other side.
Church is about twice as large now, twice the number of people are attending.
We can go over to Trinity over in Casey.
They're about six months into their facility, having been refurbished because of a fire.
We could go to Haygood in Barnwell county.
They're in the midst of dealing with lightning, having destroyed their church as it burned.
Suppose you drove up this morning, even though it's a rainy morning, and all you saw were the sirens and the smoke and the rubble, and there was no more place.
How would that affect your relationship with God?
Being able to prove himself in the fellowship?
Even then, there's no place that he could use as a central hub, at least for the short term.
How would that change things for you?
Gonna read to you a couple of verses in one Samuel, chapter 30.
Now, I have burned down your church.
I've almost drowned myself in a hurricane surfing.
All right, I'm gonna go ahead and tell you.
What I'm about to read is not exactly sunshine and rainbows.
Okay?
I'm gonna go ahead and give you a spoiler alert.
At the end of the story, things turn out very, very well.
But we're not going to hear that in the first six verses that I'm about to read to you, okay?
So I've given you the spoiler alert.
There's a happy ending, but we're not going to hear it.
What I'm about to read first Samuel, chapter 31st, six verses.
David and his men arrived at Ziklag on the third day.
The Amalekites had raided the Negev and attacked and burned Ziklag.
30 seconds of understanding here.
Ziklag is the hometown of David and his men.
The Negev is kind of a region.
All right, so picture the Midlands, and then we've got west Columbia or Lexington.
I'm not sure exactly what town we're in, but you get the idea.
Okay, so the negeg would be the Midlands.
Ziklag would be the town.
The church is in.
The Amalekites, they're just a roving band of land pirates.
They're just opportunists understanding that an awful lot of the fighting men are going to be away, moving towards the north for that big battle that we've been talking about.
So David and his men arrived at Ziklag, their hometown, on the third day.
The Amalekites had raided the negam and attacked and burned Ziklag.
They also had kidnapped the women and everyone in it, from the youngest to the oldest.
They had killed no one, but had carried them off as they went on their way.
When David and his men arrived at the town, they found it burned.
Their wives, sons, and daughters had been kidnapped.
David and the troops with him wept loudly until they had no strength left to weep.
David's two wives, Ahinaham, the Jezreelite, and Abigail, the widow of Nabal the Carmelite, had also been kidnapped.
David was in an extremely difficult position because the troops talked about stoning him, for they were all very bitter over the loss of their sons and daughters.
If you are underlining in your Bible, please underline those last few words.
In verse six, it says, but David found strength in the Lord his God.
I gave you all the background of David, just an incredibly difficult season in his life.
But in that season, for David and those 400 men that were fighting with him, they were continual illustrations of God proving his faithfulness to them in protecting them in victories, in battle, and then and also keeping Saul from actually creating a great deal of physical havoc in their life.
Yes, it was difficult when the king was hunting them down, but in all of that, God protected them.
There was a great deal of proof.
And yet they come up to their hometown, and it is completely burned, and their families are gone.
This roving band of land pirates again, the Amalekites, they recognize that all the fighting men are moving towards the north, and it gave them a perfect opportunity to go through all those small towns and villages take the people, take the animals, take the possessions and gather it all up for themselves and just raid city after city after city.
They knew the fighting men were going to be gone.
But we've gotten to the point where David's men lost the proof and they were exhausted.
And those they were looking forward to seeing, most were no longer there.
And, folks, I want you to see the contrast in the two responses between David and his men, because it's an incredible illustration of godly leadership on the part of David.
There's an incredibly difficult response between the two groups in the emotion of the moment.
David's men wanted two things.
They wanted action, and they wanted accountability.
The group that had that little bit of physical strength left actually was talking about stoning.
David.
I want to make sure everybody in the room understands what we're talking about when we say stoning.
Every boy in this room over the age of five has been in a rock fight.
We've all picked up rocks and thrown rocks as guys, girls.
I don't know if y'all do that as much as guys do, but if you're a boy, you've thrown a rock at somebody in anger, or at least in fun.
All right?
That is not what we're talking about here.
Traditionally, in the Old Testament, we're talking about stoning.
We're going to take somebody that's going to be stoned.
They're going to be put on a very high place, some sort of a cliff or a height, and they're going to be pushed off where the fall would probably disable them.
That's the goal of that drop, is to disable them.
And then those that are going to participate in the stoning would pick up boulders.
I'm not talking about rocks you throw.
I'm talking about boulders that you drop, and they would be dropped on the individual.
This is not a rock fight.
This is the intention of putting somebody to death with rocks.
It's an incredibly gruesome way to die.
And that's what's being talked about in scripture.
That's how upset David's men are at him because of the town being burned.
But David, having never lost the understanding of the proof of God's protection, responds incredibly differently.
Verse six says, but David found strength in the Lord.
His strength of faith ultimately is going to lead to a physical strength that is actually pretty incredible.
A little farther down in the story, the care because of God's proof becomes strength and courage.
That's going to lead him to do some amazing things in leadership.
As we go through the rest of this story now, in this section of one Samuel, chapter 30, it also lets me know that there are a couple of Baptists in the Old Testament.
As you read through the story, what you find is David's men, they want a business meeting, but David, David wants a prayer meeting.
David only wants to do business with God, whereas his men want to do things in an incredibly different way.
What I'm saying to you is, just like us, David's men lost the correct order of things.
As a matter of fact, as you read through this story, we talk about the place.
The place is destroyed.
It's gone.
There's nothing there but rubble and burn.
The people, they're in all kinds of turmoil.
David's men are all upset, and the families are gone.
And in the midst of all of this, David's men lost the proof.
But David found strength in the Lord.
And because of that strength, there is an amazing series of events where God proves he actually is with David and with his men.
Number one, what we're going to find is the proof of clarity.
David said a point.
He doesn't know what to do.
He's got to go to the priest and say, guys, I don't know what to do here.
I know that God is faithful.
What do I do?
Do I go find the families?
Do we go get the families back?
And there's a clarity in those passages that absolutely.
God says, david, go get your families.
Now, there's also some clarity.
And, oh, by the way, David, I need you to go that way.
Because David had no idea where his family had been taken.
He had no idea where the other families had been taken.
But God provides the clarity.
Go get your families back and go that way to pursue them.
Number two, God gets the right people involved.
This is one of the fascinating parts of this story.
David's got 400 fighting men.
This is the seal team, six of the army.
These guys are incredibly good as warriors, but 200 of them are to a point where they are exhausted and they can go no further.
And in verses nine and ten of this story, what we find is the army arrives at a place called Wadi Bezor.
You'll see the word wadi in scripture all the time.
Essentially, what that means is a wide spot in the river.
During the rainy seasons, the water would come and it would expand the rivers, and sometimes they're very difficult to cross.
There's quite a rapid current.
It's just got very large.
It's deep and muddy.
It's just a difficult thing to do.
200 of David's men had gotten to the point where they just don't have the energy to move on any farther.
And that's okay because God gets the right people involved.
He takes 200 of those mighty warriors and his warriors and he sets them aside, and he introduces to the group one sick slave.
There's a man that's been outcast by the Amalekites, that raiding party.
He had been left for dead.
They thought he was dying, so they left him behind.
And David finds him and they give him some food and they give him some water and they nourish him, kind of help him back to health.
And he said, hey, can you help us find our families?
God says, absolutely, under two conditions.
Number one, you don't kill me.
Now, that seems pretty fair to me.
I'm going to help you if you don't kill me.
And then number two, don't give me back to my master.
That also seems like a fair request for somebody that's about to help David.
And David says, absolutely, we will not kill you.
We will not give you back to the master.
You help us find our families.
There's another proof in this story.
It's a little hard to find if you don't recognize it.
It's the proof of distraction.
Those amalekites that we've been talking about, they're not worried about what's going on.
Remember, all those fighting men have been moving to the north.
There's this big battle that's going to occur, and anybody of fighting age is kind of moving towards that sea.
The Malachites are staying behind.
They're raiding all these cities.
They're keeping everything they want for themselves.
They knew they were saved, so they decided, hey, while everybody else is gone, we need to throw a party.
We need to celebrate all of these people and all of these things and all of this wealth that we have accumulated as we've gone from town to town to town.
The clarity of distraction placed in the lives of the Amalekites was part of God proving his love for David and his men.
Because what the Amalekites didn't know is that David had been sent home.
And we get the one final proof in this story.
It's the proof of an incredible God sized victory.
It's in verses 18 through 22.
Now, I'm going to go ahead and spare everybody the gory details if you want to go through and read it that you can.
But what you're going to find is there was 24 hours of a battle.
Now, remember, a couple of passages ago, these guys were too tired to do anything but weep.
They were just absolutely exhausted.
And they develop enough strength, and they.
They can start out in these 200 guys.
They make it over the water, that wadi bazor.
And now they find the Amalekites and they see their families and their strength is renewed.
And for 24 hours, there is this incredible battle.
And what we find at the end of this battle is not only do they get their families back, not only do they get their possessions back, but they also get all that has been collected by the Amalekites from those other cities.
So they've got their stuff, plus a whole bunch of other people's stuff.
They've made a profit on this whole deal.
And I want to say that in a positive way.
Not that they're benefiting from the suffering of others, but what I want you to recognize is all that the Amalekites have have now come in the possession of David and his men.
Remember that spoiler alert I told you about as we read those first six verses?
Well, here's where you get to it.
Because what started out as an incredibly difficult circumstance, where their place had been destroyed and the people were gone, and God's proof couldn't be found in their lives anywhere.
Now, what we've got is it's a parade.
And you read those passages scripture, and you hear about David and his men and those families and the flock, they're making their way back in this great procession of victory, having gotten everything that they owned in all of their family plus all of those other possessions.
Have you ever noticed that there are some people that are just really good at ruining a parade?
There are those folks that are naturally gifted at drawing victory from the jaw, or, excuse me, drawing defeat from the jaws of victory.
David had a couple of those knuckleheads in his army.
See, what happens is they're enjoying this parade and they're marching back.
And they get to the point where they had left the 200 guys behind and many of those that fought in the battle to regain all of those possessions and regain those families, saying, hey, they can have their families, but they get nothing else, and we're going to let them go.
And this is where the godly leadership of David really does begin to kick in.
The man David, who we're told in verse six, found strength in the Lord.
He goes to his men, said, guys, we cannot do this.
We cannot act this way.
Now, I have to confess, if it was me and I had a group of my men that were acting like that, I would rant, I would rave I would scream.
I would point.
I know that I would just be in their face telling them what a really ridiculous thing that they're doing.
David doesn't act that way at all.
He says, my brothers, we cannot do this thing.
With love and care and compassion.
He says, my brothers, we cannot do this thing.
This is what God has done to us.
Instead of ranting and raving and screaming, he looks into the faces of those men, and he reminds them that this is God's proof of his hand being with them.
And he maintains the relationship of those guys that are in his fighting force.
And then we get to, for me, is the funniest part of this whole story.
I'm going to talk to the wives for just a second here.
Now I've told you the story.
200 guys are left behind.
The other 200 go, there's a battle with those 200 guys that fought for 24 hours, and they get all the families back.
Ladies, imagine with me for a moment if at the end of that battle, when the families are reunited, your husband wasn't there.
Your husband was one of the 200 guys that was left behind at the river.
Now, if this was a movie, this is about the time I would be able to feel my wife's stare kind of drilling through my head as she would look at me, and I'd know, sheepishly look over and said, you better be there to fight for me.
Hey, hey, I didn't do anything.
It's a movie.
It's a story.
It wasn't me.
Ladies, imagine with me for a moment if your husband was not there.
In David's incredible leadership, he protects 200 families.
It's fair for the wives to have a question.
David makes it clear we left these guys behind.
Yes, they were tired.
Yes, they were exhausted.
But we also gave them the responsibility of looking after what little possessions we had left.
So not only does David rally his guys around, the proof of God also protects 200 families.
And, oh, by the way, as he was those 400 guys marching those 60 miles, going through different communities, and when you march 400 guys through different communities, you're gonna leave some rubble in your wake.
He sends some of that extra that they had collected, and he provides it to those towns as a way of saying, thank you for letting us march through.
And then he also takes some of the extra and he begins to give it to some of the other nations that didn't have any part in his men walking through, but he's using it to build relationships.
And some of those relationships with those other nations lasted throughout the entirety of David's reign as king, the incredible leadership of a godly man in the foresight to make sure that he was providing for his nation.
This is all incredibly important because in two chapters later, David becomes king.
And in three chapters later, David's men who would have lived in Ziklag are now going to the palace.
So that town that had been burned down, they were going to leave it anyway because they were going to serve the king.
Where the throne is the proof of God throughout the entirety of this story is incredible.
So why tell the story?
Why tell the story from one Samuel to a New Testament church?
Well, folks, it's supposed to do two things, really.
It's supposed to be a reminder, and it's also supposed to be a challenge.
It's supposed to be a reminder of what the correct order really should be.
As you drive into this parking lot on Sunday morning, as you think about the fellowship that you're a part of, what's most important?
What should be most important is God's proof of how he's using his people.
And the place just happens to be the hub of activity.
What's most important about God's fellowship is his proof in the lives of his people.
So leaders of the church is the legacy of Willow Ridge one of the proof of God's activity in your fellowship?
Those of you that are leading your homes is the proof of your home being committed to Christ.
His activity in your home, David leaves an incredible legacy of proof.
All of what I told you was going on in his life leading up to chapter 30 is an incredible proof.
Protected from the former king, protected by the son of the former king, the distractions of other armies leading the king away, David expressing his loyalty to God's anointed twice.
All that is in that story is an incredible proof of David's faithfulness to God.
So that leaves us with the challenge we find at the end.
Is your home going to be a home that's led like David's, where you find strength in the Lord?
Those of you that are leaders in this fellowship, are you committed to Willow Ridge being a church where collectively the church finds its strength in the Lord?
Are you committed to there being ongoing proof of God's action in the lives of the people?
We're not simply a gathering of a group of people on a Sunday morning.
We are the active body of Christ.
And the goal is for this place to simply be a hub of activity where God can prove he is using his people in the lives, in this fellowship, in this community, and ultimately on the other side.
Of the earth, as your pastor happens to be today.
Is there a proof of God's activity in this fellowship that is a place worth coming home to?
One final thing, and I'll close.
As I've talked about God proving himself, some of y'all may be struggling just a little bit with that.
You can connect to the place.
You can connect with some people, but there's a lack of proof in your life.
You may have lived with constant waves crashing over your head.
You related to that illustration I told at the beginning, because you feel like your life is a constant set of waves, and sometimes it's holding you down.
My question for you is, are you trying to live your life alone?
Are you trying to live your life through the lives of other believers?
Or have you responded to Christ?
In order for Christ to prove he's real, you first have to accept him into your life and into your heart.
Heart.
In just a few moments, we're going to go into a time of invitation.
There'll be some folks off to the side if you would acknowledge I am one of those people that the waves are breaking hard, and I've tried everything but Christ as my savior to fight those waves.
And it's time to close my eyes and open my hearts and give my life over to my lord and savior, Jesus Christ.
Pray with me and we'll close this morning.
Father, what we find in one Samuel, chapter 30 is a great story of how a man in an incredible difficult circumstance chose not to focus on the surroundings, but to focus on the love that you had for him.
He recognized that there were many, many times in a most difficult time of his life where you are proving your love, your care, and your protection.
Yes, there were difficult circumstances, but beyond that, father, what we find is your hand was on David and his men and what looked like an incredibly difficult circumstance where a home being gone is actually you completely restoring them in a way where they built relationships that lasted for generations.
Father, my hope is if there is someone in this room that is relating more to the burn and the rubble than to the proof of your son being active in their lives, they will give up their effort and respond to your effort today.
May the spirit move in their hearts so they may exchange the rubble for a forever relationship and proof of your son being active in who they are and what they are.
Father, we thank you for a time where we can celebrate your love in this place, where we can celebrate the fact that Willow Ridge really is a hub of activity, where you continue to prove your love in the people in the community and ultimately on the other side of the world.
Father, may we celebrate you today as we bring this time to a close.
And we offer it in the wonderful name of your son, Jesus Christ.
Amen.
Thanks again for listening, and be sure to check back next week for another episode.
In the meantime, you can visit us@willowridgechurch.org or by searching for Willow Ridge Church on Facebook, Instagram and Twitter.