Abounding Grace

Guest (Male): Are you under a lot of stress right now? Pastor Ed with some advice.

Pastor Ed Taylor: When you're under great stress and pressure, don't make big decisions. Profound, but true. Don't make big decisions under pressure and stress. Wait for the Lord to give you direction.

Guest (Male): That could be the pressure or stress you put on yourself. It could be everybody in your life saying, "You've got to do this and you've got to do it right now." I don't know how to do anything but obey the Lord.

Imagine having someone hot on your heels trying to kill you, and they have a great deal of power and backing too. Well, that's the place we find David, the future king of Israel, today on Abounding Grace. Talk about a stressful situation.

And though our situations in life might not reach that level, we still experience pressure and stress. Pastor Ed Taylor has some words of wisdom from 1st Samuel chapter 20 to share with us today that we can apply to those stressful periods of life.

Pastor Ed Taylor: Take your Bibles open them to 1st Samuel chapter 20. This is where we are together in 1st Samuel chapter 20, studying through verse by verse. Some of my most favorite section of the scripture after studying the direct life of Jesus is studying the life of David.

I remember the very first time I studied through 1st and 2nd Samuel with Pastor Chuck. As we've all studied through the Bible all the way through from Genesis to Revelation with Pastor Chuck Smith of Calvary Chapel Costa Mesa. It's part of our training, part of our development over the years, and I still listen almost weekly to Pastor Chuck. I get this sense of a grandfather speaking forth the Word of God into my life, and it brings back many fond memories.

We have those MP3s, by the way, downstairs. They're available in the bookstore, and I'd encourage you, if that's all the time you have, is just to go through the Bible with Pastor Chuck. It's a very powerful time. I remember the first time I began studying. I remember thinking, "Is this really in the Bible?" I hadn't read the Bible straight through before as a new believer.

Even as I was reading through the Bible, I wasn't pausing enough to let the Bible soak in. Then I started. Back then, we had the tape lending library at the church that I attended, Calvary Chapel Downey, and we were able to get five tapes and we could borrow five tapes for a week. Then we had to bring them back and say, "Here are my five tapes. Can I get five more?" and I was just soaking in verse by verse the Word of God.

I remember, and I still have some of the original notes from those times. It's just a sweet thing as David becomes that type of Christ in so many ways. In other ways, he's not a type of Christ. I would say in this season of his life, we see a lot of things that we didn't see in Jesus. We see the humanity of David. I think you would agree that life on the run isn't easy. Even if you've never had a life on the run, life on the run is not easy.

Many today are living life running away: running away from God, running away from their problems, running away from their past, some running away from the church, running away from leadership, running away from submission, running away from commitment. It's not God's intention for you to live life on the run or, I should say, running away from God. That's not His heart for you.

He doesn't desire for us to spend all of our energy and effort trying to avoid what God's desire is for our lives. I would say that it is God's desire for us to run in the right direction. You can jot these down. Let me read them to you, some of the verses I found when it relates to running.

For example, in Psalm 119:32, it says, "I will run in the course of Your commandments, for You shall enlarge my heart." Or in Isaiah chapter 40:31, "Those that wait on the Lord shall renew their strength; they shall mount up with wings like eagles, they shall run and not be weary." Or in 1st Corinthians chapter 9:24, it says, "Do you not know that those who run in a race all run, but one receives the prize? Run in such a way that you may obtain it."

Run in the ways of the Lord. Run in the commandments of the Lord. Run in the strength of the Lord, so that one day we'll be able to say, like Paul did to young Timothy in 2nd Timothy chapter 4:7, "I have fought the good fight, I have finished the race. I've finished well. I've kept the faith." We're following David now on the run, running away from King Saul, not from God. Although along the way as he's running away, he makes some mistakes.

Pick up with me now in verse 1 of chapter 20: "Then David fled from Naioth in Ramah and went and said to Jonathan, 'What have I done? What is my iniquity? What is my sin before your father that he seeks my life?' So Jonathan said to him, 'By no means! You shall not die! Indeed, my father will do nothing either great or small without first telling me. And why should my father hide this thing from me? Is it not so?'

Then David took an oath again and said, 'Your father certainly knows that I have found favor in your eyes, and he has said, 'Do not let Jonathan know this, lest he be grieved.' But truly, as the Lord lives and as your soul lives, there is but a step between me and death.' So Jonathan said to David, 'Whatever you yourself desire, I will do it for you.'" In fleeing from the city of Naioth, David meets up with Jonathan seeking answers for the increasing craziness of Jonathan's dad.

"Oh David," Jonathan said, "it's not that bad because I know my dad, and my dad would tell me if he was going to do anything." And yet David speaks with wisdom and says, "No, you either don't see it, Jonathan, or you don't want to see it, that things are far worse than they seem." It was so bad that David had this sense of the presence of death in his life.

He says, and I don't think he's being dramatic where he says in verse 3, "There is but a step between me and death." He recognizes how serious it is. He lived with the reality that death was near. He felt it. It was close, just a step away. Most of us, most of the time, don't live with a true consciousness that the life and death are in the hands of the Lord, that it's His timing for your life and it's His timing for your death and mine.

We don't always have a sensitivity to the consciousness that we all live just a step away from death. This is true in a sense for all of us listening in today, that our life is in the hands of God. Instead, we generally live with the thought that there'll always be tomorrow. We even get a sense, especially those of you that are a little younger, that we're immortal, like nothing can touch us.

There's a little bit more risk and a little bit more stepping out in craziness when you're younger. When you get older, not only do you hurt more, but you're just like, "No, I don't think so. That challenge doesn't..." I just sense that. You could call it fear, you could call it wisdom. I call it just wisdom. I don't think I want to get involved in those things anymore. The truth is we just have today.

The truth is there's an urgency in this world. The truth is that whatever we do, we need to learn how to do it unto the Lord. The truth is as James tells us, "Whereas you don't know what will happen tomorrow. You don't know what will happen tomorrow. For what is your life? It's even just a vapor that appears for a little time and then vanishes away. Instead, you ought to say, if the Lord wills, we shall live and do this or that."

I think it's important for us to live with a consciousness of life and death, to recognize that our days are in the hands of the Lord, that He has determined our days and the preappointed times and the boundaries of our habitation, Paul would write and tell us in the book of Acts. As we live according to the Psalmist, the days have been fashioned for us, and we're not guaranteed tomorrow.

Yet, the real motivation for serving the Lord isn't fear-based. So you don't take this knowledge and go, "Well, if I'm not going to be here tomorrow, then I better start serving the Lord because I don't know when I'm going to die." No, the real motivation for serving the Lord isn't a fear of dying. It's the joy of eternal life. It's the joy of living. It's the joy of God giving us life today.

It's His love that moves us. It's the love of God and His redeeming power, His tremendous, overwhelming abundance of grace in our life that presses me and moves me and stirs me to serve Him today. We're not looking to die. We're looking for the soon return of Jesus Christ. We're looking to be translated, to be taken up in the twinkling of an eye. I don't know when that's going to happen, and neither do I know the day of my death.

But I'll tell you this, I do know that I'm alive today and God deserves my best today, right now. He deserves my all. It's the realization that He could come at any moment that keeps us growing in grace and serving in God. The Bible says in 1st John chapter 3:3 that everyone who has this hope purifies himself, this hope of His return, just as He is pure. How exciting.

Jesus is coming again. I don't know when. It could be tonight. There's one person that wants it to be tonight. It could be tonight. I hope it could be tonight. It could be even before we finish this Bible study. Now I know I'll get an amen on that. The coming of the Lord is at hand, but the world wants to rock you to sleep. The circumstances of life want to get our eyes off Him. We'll always have tomorrow.

One day, you won't have tomorrow. I don't know what day that is, but one day tomorrows will be gone. While you've been waiting for tomorrow, so will all your todays. Guys, I know that David really does see the reality of life and death in his life in a very dramatic, strong way. While he himself is not being dramatic, he recognizes the reality of the circumstance. He sees death very closely ahead, just a step, he says.

And we learn from that it's a wise way to live with eternity in mind. It's a wise way to live for the coming of the Lord. Jesus said in Luke chapter 19:13 that He called ten of His servants, delivered to them ten minas, and He said to them, "Do business till I come." And David, recognizing the fragility of life, is living with eternity in mind.

And he tells Jonathan in verse 4, Jonathan tells David, "Whatever you yourself desire, I will do it for you." And David said to Jonathan, "Indeed, tomorrow is the New Moon, and I should not fail to sit with the king to eat. But let me go that I may hide in the field until the third day at evening. If your father misses me at all, then say, 'David earnestly asked permission of me that he might run over to Bethlehem, his city, for there is a yearly sacrifice there for all the family.' If he says thus, 'It is well,' your servant will be safe. But if he is angry, then he'll be sure evil is determined by him."

Now, as a member of King Saul's court, it makes sense that David would be expected to be at the feast of the New Moon. But David isn't going. And if Saul's response to this will reveal a lot, it will really... David's pretty confident. He knows what the response will be. And it's not so much for David as it is for Jonathan, the recognition of, the confirmation of what David already knows to be true.

Verse 8: "Therefore you shall deal kindly with your servant, for you have brought your servant into a covenant of the Lord with you. Nevertheless, if there's iniquity in me, kill me yourself. For why should you bring me to your father?" Jonathan said, "Far be it from you! For if I knew certainly that evil was determined by my father to come upon you, then would I not tell you?" Then David said to Jonathan, "Who will tell me? And what if your father answers you roughly?"

And Jonathan said to David, "Come and let us go out into the field." So both of them went out into the field. As this scenario continues, the pressure and the stress and the difficulties begin to grow upon David. And while he is a man after God's own heart, he's still just a man. You can see a little tension in his friendship because when there's stress and pressure, the first people to feel it are the people that are closest to you, the people that you spend the most time with.

And even in this difficult situation, they're speaking honesty with one another, but you're going to find a rise and an increase of the pressure and stress upon a man. Might I just say that it's important that you not put too much pressure on yourself when you find that you're under stress. I would say that you and I need to be very careful to remember you're just a man and you're just a woman. You're just a normal person. You have emotions.

You guys have emotions? Some of you have different primary emotions, but we're emotional. We're fragile. We have issues at times with our ego and with what people think about us, with where we think we are in life, where we think we should be. Don't be too hard on yourself over your weakness and your failures. Obviously, if there are sin issues, you don't need to be hard on yourself with sin issues either. Just repent. Be broken before the Lord.

Don't define it as, "Well, I'm struggling and I'll never get out of it." No, surrender it to the Lord and God will deliver you. We're going to learn very quickly Jesus is going to say words of intense freedom when He says, "When the Son makes you free, you will be free indeed." We're not there yet. We will be soon. You can read ahead in the Gospel of John if you'd like. Life-giving words, speaking life into very death-filled situations.

You don't have to define yourself by your struggles. You can define yourself by the God who overcame your struggles, who died for the forgiveness of your sins. But you know how it is. Some of you are really good at beating yourself up. You don't need anybody beating you up. You're really good at it yourself. You and I, being human, are beset by weaknesses.

If you have a weakness in your life, I would like to welcome you to the club, the club of normalcy. And our failures can often lead... Pride is a nasty thing because on one end... Most of the time when I mention pride to you, you automatically think of the most common form of pride, and that is thinking too highly of yourself. But the pendulum swings of pride. That sin of pride swings all the way to the other end and there's also another type of pride: thinking too lowly of yourself.

The Bible describes it as false humility. You and I, we want to find ourselves not in the pride of thinking too much of ourselves or in the pride of thinking too less of ourselves, but instead of that simple humility before the Lord, of thinking of us exactly like God thinks about us, how He defines us. He recognizes, according to Psalm 103, that we're just dust. That's not a statement putting you down. That's not a statement putting you in your place. It's simply a statement of fact.

We're but dust. We're in the process of growing. God is doing a work in our lives. He is working in us to make us into the image of Jesus Christ, and none of us have arrived. Jesus didn't come to condemn you. So don't condemn yourself. As a matter of fact, in Romans chapter 8:1, it says there is therefore now no condemnation for those that are in Christ. That's good news. That's great news for us because the battle gets so heavy.

The spiritual war is difficult, and there comes with our besetting failures and weaknesses guilt and shame, which can easily turn into the heaviness of condemnation. But the Bible says there is no condemnation. There is no condemnation for you and me. Your past sins are forgiven. Your present sins are forgiven. Your future sins are forgiven. The Bible teaches us that there is no condemnation.

If you were to look that word up in the Greek, it means no, zero, zippo, whatever you want to say. Salvation is a whole package. All of you is saved. You are kept by the power of God. Your identity is by the finished work of Jesus Christ. You're going to have weakness. You're going to be human. Too many of you are living under the sense of condemnation, which leads to a false pride, a false humility, which is a form of pride.

You know you've done something wrong, and instead of taking the right path, just humbling yourself and repenting before the Lord in godly sorrow, you take the burden of yourself and then you begin to beat yourself up. The world goes, "You won't be able to forgive anyone before you forgive yourself." That's all backward.

You won't be able to extend forgiveness until you receive the forgiveness of Jesus Christ. Receiving the forgiveness of Jesus Christ, you will then release yourself from the debts that Jesus Christ paid to forgive in your life. It's not about you forgiving yourself. It's about you submitting to the one that forgave you. He will do the work in your life.

David's human here. You're going to see a lot of humanity in him. You go, "But did God use him?" Yeah. Yeah, God used him even with all of his weaknesses. The thing that I believe that God is pulling out for us is the ugliness of pressure and stress. I'm not going to ask for a raise of hands, but I know that the flags would start waving in here when I ask this question: How many of you experienced a stress-filled, pressure-filled day today?

Of course. And some of you are under intense pressure right now. It hasn't let up. It's not letting up right now. Some of you are in the mode, and I'm with you, man. I understand this, where you're just like, "When is it going to end? I can't even believe this is happening." It's almost like you're like Job. You're like thinking God forgot you. God didn't forget about you.

But just because pressure is increasing doesn't mean God has abandoned you. It doesn't mean God is using that pressure to draw you to Himself. Don't you wish that life was without pressure? But it's not. Stress will eat you up on the inside, but it also mess with your head. Stress will lead to suspicion. Pressure will lead often to paranoia.

There's a lot of focus on how King Saul's getting paranoid, but David has his paranoid moments too. If you had somebody chasing you that was crazy with spears, you'd feel the same way. Running through the wilderness of the southern part of Israel, it's not easy. When you're under deep stress and pressure, be careful with the reality of your own emotions. Be honest. Commit them to the Lord.

The Bible says to be careful with vain imaginations. Don't entertain them. Admit that you're an emotional wreck. Everybody else admits it, why don't you? You say, "Man, that brother needs some prayer." Well, pray. "That sister's really going over..." Yes, I know. It's hard. Their life is hard. Pray for them. They don't need you to point their finger. They know they're messed up. They know they're hurting. They know they're fearful. I mean, there's probably things in their life that you don't even know about. You just see the outward. Pray. Seek God.