Real Life Radio

Jack Hibbs: Because as the gospel goes out, Jesus Christ Himself said, "My sheep hear my voice, they follow me." And how do they do that? By the preaching of the Word of God, the going forth of the Bible.

David J: Welcome to Real Life Radio with Pastor Jack Hibbs. I'm David J, thanking you for joining us today as we listen, learn, and are challenged by God's Word, the Bible.

Guest (Male): Your week is packed. You're running on empty, and sometimes Sunday already feels like a distant memory by Wednesday. That's exactly why Real Life Devotions exist. Each week, Pastor Jack Hibbs brings you a short but powerful moment in God's Word designed to encourage, equip, and refocus your heart.

It's not another podcast or a long sermon. It's a few meaningful minutes that meet you right where you are. Whether you're on a commute, going for a walk, or you just need a reset in the middle of your day, Real Life Devotions are ready when you are. Fresh encouragement straight from the Scripture, and it's all just one click away. Check out the newest devotion now at jackhibbs.com. That's jackhibbs.com. Your place for real faith, real encouragement, and real life. That's Real Life Devotions at jackhibbs.com.

David J: On today's edition of Real Life Radio, Pastor Jack now continues his series called First Samuel with the message titled "David: A Lapse of Faith." Now, Samuel of the Old Testament was the last judge of Israel and the first of her prophets. So, here in chapter 29, we'll consider how David's fear-based choice led to a lapse of trust in God for protection and provision.

David made the decision to live with Israel's enemy, the Philistines, but God steps in and David is sent back to Ziklag, preventing him from having to fight against his own people. So, today Pastor Jack teaches us that David's situation shows us how even a man after God's own heart can make poor strategic and spiritual decisions when under pressure. But despite David's misstep, God intervenes. And now with his message called "David: A Lapse of Faith," here is Pastor and Bible teacher Jack Hibbs.

Jack Hibbs: Thank You, Lord, for this time together. Lord, as we now set our hearts to this study in the life of Saul, it's been a study in the life of Samuel, it's certainly been a study in the life of David. But Lord, let us not forget or be negligent of the fact of all those people who trafficked around these men. For for each of them, they have created disciples.

For Samuel, godly men, prophets, lovers of the Word. For David, not only warriors, but thieves, robbers, bums, and homeless mean guys who were transformed into men of valor and men of honor. Mighty men, giant killers, because their leader believed in You, stepped out in faith against insurmountable odds, and took on a giant.

Lord, we thank You that those who chose to follow David in life, their names are written down in the Bible, having also killed giants. But then Lord, there's the tragedy of this man Saul. Never killed a giant, none of his men ever did. And he too made disciples.

So, Lord, as we come tonight to consider the character, the life, the quality that can be transmitted through those, Lord, that we look to as examples in the faith, we pray, Lord, that as we consider this passage and this chapter, that we would come away tonight different people. For we ask it, Lord, in Jesus' name. And all God's people said, amen.

God is in every situation. There is no doubt about it. We mentioned last time in our study that whatever comes into the life of the believer is Father-filtered. Father-filtered, the Scripture shows us. We know this from the book of Job, we know this in the New Testament, throughout the Old, that whatever happens in the life of the believer, it must first pass through the filtration, the concentration, and the sovereignty of God's will.

Now hear me out. God is absolutely sovereign. There's no doubt about it. But this is where a lot of people stumble because they try to reduce God down to a big human. That if God is sovereign and He knows all, He sees all, then He is also involved in such a point in the dealings of men that there's nothing that man can do that will either thwart the plan of God or somehow bring upon themselves ramifications regarding their own conduct.

God has not made humans small. Now, we may be small in stature, but He has not made us small in our own sovereignty. What I mean by sovereignty is this, that God has built within us, and He told us in the early chapters of Genesis, that He made us after His own image.

It does not mean that passage in Genesis does not mean that God is somewhere between 5'11" and 6'3". I know you've heard that on a certain television broadcast. It's crazy. This guy's trying to tell us that God wears a suit like he does, that His hand is the same span as his hand, and that maybe His hair is really cool, just like this particular televangelist. That's not what the Word means.

When the Bible says that God made man in His own image, it means that God made man with the ability to have and to function as a free moral agent. That is, God does not tell you tomorrow morning what to eat, what to wear, and what thoughts to think. He lays things out before us. We are responsible for our own choices, and those choices either A, will lead us into the presence of God and ultimate heaven, where we will stand there and say, "Thank You, God, for saving me. Thank You, Lord, for dying on the cross and paving the way that I might experience eternal life through Jesus Christ."

God has given us the ability to choose. But we will not arrive in heaven saying, "Well God, thank You very much. I'm so glad though that I made all the right decisions that led me here." That's not what we'll be saying. We will be grateful to God for what He has done in our lives. We will be grateful to God for having saved us.

In the like manner, the Bible clearly teaches that those who wind up in hell, those who wind up alienated in eternity from God, they didn't want God in life. They may have embraced religion, they may have embraced morality. Those things are nice, but Jesus said without being born again, you'll never see the kingdom of heaven.

You can go to church all your life and never experience the work of the Holy Spirit whereby you are transformed by both the Word of God and the Spirit of God and you're made a new creation in Christ. And if you don't experience that, the Bible says that each man, each woman will wind up in hell, having no one to blame but themselves.

No one will be in heaven shaking their fist and saying, "God, why did You do this to me? How could You have done this to me?" It's apparent from Scripture that those who are in hell, even at this moment, are cursing themselves for having made the wrong decisions and resisting what is called by the old Puritans, it's a great old word, the wooing of the Holy Spirit. We would say today in a modern word, they resisted and rejected the flirtation of the Holy Spirit to come to Christ.

That being true, evangelism is what we've been called to do as a church, to preach the gospel in season and out of season, all around the world. Why? Because as the gospel goes out, Jesus Christ Himself said, "My sheep hear my voice, they follow me."

And how do they do that? By the preaching of the Word of God, the going forth of the Bible. We don't have to strong-arm people into accepting Christ. You don't have to tackle them. You don't have to give them the Bible and then, a lot of people do this, they witness to somebody and then in desperation, they'll say, "Now you need to accept Christ." "Well, I don't know."

And then they want so much to put another notch in their spiritual belt, kind of like an old-time ace fighter pilot would put one more mark on their airplane. "Oh, I got to get one more mark of a convert in my Bible." And so, they'll start to depart from the poignancy of the gospel and the directness of the gospel that you must be saved to flee the destruction that's upon every man without Christ.

"Well, I don't know. I'll think about it." "Well, listen, all you have to do is pray." Have you ever heard that? "All you have to do is just pray." That's not it. "Well, you know, all you have to do is just pray. In fact, listen, it kind of goes like this. The prayer kind of goes like this. Can you say that prayer, can't you? So, come on, why don't you say it with me?"

I've seen people actually just bow their head and pray just to get a person off their back. I've physically, literally seen that happen. You don't need to do that. The gospel goes out. Jesus, He's the one that the Holy Spirit, the Bible says, exalts. God confirms the preaching to someone's heart, and He begins to reel them in.

Does that person have a choice? The Bible says yes. But in eternity, does God know what that person's decision will be? Yes. The Bible says based upon the foreknowledge of God. And so, that's a very important thing to keep in mind. Because as we look to this chapter, chapter 29 of 1st Samuel, we come as we've been coming, I know it's taken a long time to come to this point. I know we're near the end of the book, but we don't know how long it'll take us to get to the end. We're just near the end.

An interesting thing starts to happen here. Remember 1st Samuel chapter 29, before we dive into verse one, remember where David's at. He is in a panic. David is thinking Saul is going to kill him, defeat him. He has forgotten that God told him earlier. Church, listen, has God told you something in yesteryear or yestermonth or a while back and you've forgotten?

God told David, "I'm going to give you the throne." He told him that so many years earlier. David's now forgetting. The pressures of life are taking away the promises of God. Isn't that the way it always is? The pressures of life will steal away the promises of God.

And then right in the midst of that pressure, right when we're getting crushed by some pressure of life, some precious, beloved brother or sister will come to us and give us a piece of the Bible. "Trust in the Lord with all of your heart." "Yeah, yeah, I know that verse. I know that verse." We almost get insulted by their encouragement.

David is in that place, and maybe you and I have been there. Well, I know you and I have been there. I've been there. Have you been there? Two of us, three of us, two of us have been there. It's pretty tough. It's really tough when just three of us have been there, but it happens.

When you just feel like giving up. David, remember chapter 28, he's in the state of giving up. He's fled to the camp of the Philistines, the arch-enemies of Israel. He's seeking shelter with the enemy. He's not walking in the will of God, though God's got a perfect plan for his life. Christian, you may not be walking in the perfect will of God right now. Maybe you're wandering away or maybe you're off the track a little bit. Listen, God will bring you back onto that path. He will not give up. You may, like David, be feeling, "I'm going to give up. I'm going to quit." God will stay on you, God will work on you, and God will draw you back.

Listen, He may speak to you in a Bible study, He may speak to you on a radio broadcast, He may speak to you through a verse or through a sunset. I don't know. He'll speak to you. It's His prerogative of how He speaks to you. And you begin to think, "You know, I need to get right with the Lord." Simple things can get us right with God.

David J: You're listening to Real Life Radio with Pastor Jack Hibbs. To learn more about this ministry or to catch up on some previous episodes, go to jackhibbs.com. That's jackhibbs.com. And now, let's get back to today's message. Once again, here's Pastor Jack.

Jack Hibbs: I went to a church last Sunday. I was not here last Sunday, kind of on a 24th wedding anniversary slash vacation thing. So, we said goodbye to you on Wednesday night and then ran over to Hawaii and had a wonderful time. And you know what? We're sitting there, and it was just, you know, we're listening to Christian radio as I said earlier, and there was a little song playing. It was the cutest thing. It was a Hawaiian praise song on the radio.

The song said, "Jesus, we know that You're not coming back for a long time." And right there I stopped. "Wait a minute. Wait a minute." And then I realized, wait a minute, I know why that little Hawaiian Christian guy, who I don't know, wrote that song. We were driving down H1 right past Waikiki while the sun was setting into the Pacific Ocean and the palm trees were blowing in the breeze, and it's absolute paradise. No wonder why the guy said, "We know that You're not coming back for a long time."

That's a tough thing to be living in Hawaii and be thinking, "Lord, please come today." It's like, what for? It's all there. But you see the sunset. And a brother before service said, "Isn't it awesome when you see the stars or the sunset?" Or we were at this one beach this week, in fact, it was yesterday. We were laying down on this beach, and there's all these rocks out in the water.

And then the rocks started to move. And they weren't rocks at all. They were giant sea turtles. And they came up. They were bumping into our legs. They crawled up onto the shore, and we just laid down next to them and took pictures with these things. And I don't know about you, if you're an evolutionist, listen, please hang on to your seats, but you've got to be nuts. You've got to be nuts.

This turtle comes out of the water, he's just sitting there, he's in the sunshine and he falls asleep and the thing is just breathing heavy. He's sound asleep. And then there's a sign. It says, "Don't touch the turtle." And it says it's basking in the sun. That's what it said, basking in the sun. And I thought, you know what, look at that turtle. I'm sitting there on this beach in paradise. I've got my cell phone. Somebody could call, something could be going on. I'm supposed to be laying next to the turtle.

I'm wondering, I wonder if everything's okay back home. Wonder how the building construction's going. And the turtle, what do you think he's thinking about? The turtle, according to the book of Romans, that turtle worships the Lord. Nature worships God. That turtle's probably saying, "Lord, oh thank You that I was not born in LA. Oh Lord, this is great."

It was a perfect picture of peace, right there resting. And you look at that and you see the grandeur of God. How can you look at these things and say, "Well, you know, it just evolved. That thing was a little kind of a worm thing. It thought about growing a shell, got a shell, got some flippers, and at some point in time it reached the place where it said, 'You know what? This is about it. I'm moving to Hawaii, I'm going to lay on the beach.'" That's what this thing's thinking? It's just God.

He is sovereign, yet He will not bend your arm. God is sovereign, and yet He will not bend the heart of Saul, the wayward king of Israel. And so David's in exile, hiding with the enemy, in his lapse of faith rather than looking at the things that God has blessed him with. He's forgotten.

Verse one says, "Then the Philistines gathered together all their armies at Aphek, and the Israelites encamped by a fountain which is in Jezreel." They're getting ready for battle, and church, listen, God is in it. I know some of you pacifists don't want to hear this, but God is in it. He's bringing two nations together for war, and there's a reason.

Verse two, "And the lords of the Philistines passed in review by hundreds and by thousands." You know what that means, some of you who are in the service, they are as we would see in earlier days, Red Square, or maybe in Beijing where they bring the army through and all the rockets and all this stuff. They're passing their military might by and they're bolstering themselves for war.

They're going to go to war against Israel. So they're all going by, but look what the Bible says in verse two, "But David and his men passed in review at the rear with Achish." Remember this, David's seeking shelter with the camp of the enemy, and he's agreed, this is how much this poor man has gotten away and yet God hasn't given up on David.

David is going to fight with the enemies of Israel. He's with the camp of the Philistines. He's under the covering of Achish, the leader. And David's passing in the rear, him and his guys, the Hebrew guys. And apparently they stick out like sore thumbs. I mean, I don't think milk cartons, you know, David had been missing for 10 years. I don't think there was a milk carton with his face on it, but they knew they were Hebrews.

Plus, David, according to the Scripture, was light-colored in skin and reddish-colored hair. That's kind of an interesting-looking guy, huh? So, look what happens. "Then the princes of the Philistines said, 'What are these Hebrews doing here?' Achish said to the princes of the Philistines, 'Is this not David, the servant of Saul king of Israel, who has been with me these days,' remember David had been with them, been no problem, in fact, he'd been a blessing to them, 'or these years? And to this day I have found no fault in him since he defected to me, or frankly, defected to our side.'"

"But the princes or the rulers, the leaders, how about generals, of the Philistines were angry with him. So the princes of the Philistines said to him, 'Make this fellow return, that he may go back to the place which you have appointed for him, and do not let him go down with us to battle.'" Here's the reason why, smart thinking, "Lest in the battle he become our adversary."

I could understand that. "For with what could he reconcile for himself to his master if not with the heads of these men? Is this not David, of whom they sang to one another in dances saying, 'Saul has slain his thousands, and David his ten thousands'?" Remember that song? We've been hearing it for a long time. Boy, that little single CD release got out everywhere, didn't it? I mean, the whole Middle East knew that song.

Look at verse six, "Then Achish called David and said to him, 'Surely as the Lord lives, you have been upright.'" So Achish is going to speak to David. "David, listen, these guys aren't going for it. I'm sorry about it. Surely as the Lord lives, you have been upright and your going out and your coming in with me in the army is good in my sight, for to this day I have not found evil in you since the day of your coming to me. Nevertheless, or I'm sorry, but the lords do not favor you. Therefore, return now and go in peace that you may not displease the lords of the Philistines."

So, this man's watching out for him, though he be an enemy. Stop right there before we go on. David is not walking in the will of God. Church, listen, is David one of God's children? Absolutely. Does God have a plan for David's life? Absolutely. Is God positioning two nations for battle? Yes.

The outcome, as we shall see, will be certainly on the perimeter for many, many countless reasons, but one of them, in fact if not the most preeminent reason, will be to establish David as king. And are you willing to believe God that much in your life? That He will move, listen, this is a challenge to my faith. God will move nations to bring about one man's life closer to the throne of God. And I don't know if we believe that. This book challenges our faith. It's all about David and his ascendance to the throne. Why? God's got a long-term plan.

David J: Pastor and Bible teacher Jack Hibbs, here on Real Life Radio, and his message called "David: A Lapse of Faith." You know, this message is part of Pastor Jack's series called First Samuel, a series highlighting the Prophet Samuel, who was called by God during one of Israel's darkest times to bring the people back to a heart of true worship. And we'll continue on the next edition of Real Life Radio.

Guest (Female): Fear does not have to control your life, not when Christ is at the center of it. This month, we're featuring a powerful and deeply personal book, *Living Fearless in Christ* by Hedia Mirahmadi. Once a devout follower of Islam and a high-level attorney in Washington, Hedia had everything except peace until she encountered the living Jesus.

Choosing to follow Him cost her everything: her career, her status, and her place in the world she once knew. But what she gained was far greater: freedom, identity, and a fearless faith that cannot be shaken. Her story will challenge you, encourage you, and remind you of the power of the gospel to transform lives.

*Living Fearless in Christ* is more than a testimony. It's a call to bold surrender. Available for the month of February for a gift of any amount at jackhibbs.com. That's jackhibbs.com, where real stories point you to real truth and real life in Christ.

Jack Hibbs: Hey Christian, I'm speaking to you. Listen to this. You and I are not allowed to give up. I have to confess many times in my life I've thought about giving up, but God has put people around me in life that wouldn't let me do that. And I'm here to tell you, you're not allowed to give up either. God's not done with your story. He's still writing it. He loves you and He's going to complete it.

Father God, in Jesus' name, may we not get in the way of what You're wanting to do. If we wiggle, if we try to jump, Lord, hold us tight because You and You alone have the words of eternal life. In Jesus' name, amen.

David J: Hey, thank you again so much for listening. And if you'd like to hear or see more of what we do here, you can always go to jackhibbs.com for all the latest on what's going on with this ministry. And please, if you're ever in the Southern California area, come see us at Calvary Chapel Chino Hills. We'd love to see you there in person. It has been so good to be with you today, and I pray you find yourself in the grace and mercy of our Lord Jesus Christ. See you on the next episode here on Real Life Radio.

This program is made possible by the generous contributions of you, our listeners. Visit us at jackhibbs.com. That's jackhibbs.com. Until next time, Pastor Jack Hibbs and all of us here at Real Life Radio wish for you solid and steady growth in Christ and in His Word. We'll see you next time here on Real Life Radio.