Real Life Radio

Jack Hibbs: He's going to bring a guy who's a giant killer to the throne. But before that happens, God is going to prepare this man in the wilderness. Why? Because God often leads us into the wilderness of life, so to speak, to prepare us for some wonderful thing in life.

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.

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David J: On today's edition of Real Life Radio, Pastor Jack continues now with his series called *First Samuel* and a message titled "When the Lord Is in the Lead, Part 1." Samuel of the Old Testament was the last judge of Israel and the first of her prophets. So here in chapter 23, we'll consider how David, with his band of misfits, let God lead them onward.

You see, even though God had great plans for David, he still had to overcome the battles in his life. And though David is not yet king, he acts under God's direction to rescue a city under threat, all while still on the run from King Saul's betrayal. So today, Pastor Jack teaches us that sometimes God calls us to do something even when it doesn't make any sense. But when we rely upon God's guidance, we can trust His wisdom. Now, with his message called "When the Lord Is in the Lead, Part 1," here's pastor and Bible teacher, Jack Hibbs.

Jack Hibbs: Father, this evening there would be a special touch of Your Holy Spirit upon us, Lord. It's been a long day, a lot of stuff's gone on, our minds are easily cluttered. And so, Father, we pray that You'd free us up. Lord, there are needs also represented here tonight. Needs, Lord, some that could be expressed, some that would never fall verbally from a lip.

But Lord, You know all things, and You love each and every person that's here tonight, no matter what their story might be. It frankly doesn't impress You at all because Your love and grace is bigger. And so, Father, if there's anybody in here tonight that somehow sees themselves beyond Your amazing grace and Your tremendous reach, Lord, we pray that You would just prove them wrong and God, that You would just squeeze them, in Jesus' name. Amen.

Grab your Bibles tonight and turn, if you would, to 1 Samuel 23, as we continue our study in the book of 1 Samuel, chapter 23. The title of the message tonight is "When the Lord Is in the Lead." I want to be able to say that the Lord is always in the lead in my life, but that's not the case. I think sometimes Him and I trade off first place from second place from time to time in the race.

But we're learning, aren't we, to slow down and let God be in control? In 1 Samuel 23, you know that David had come off that wilderness experience in one way where he was alone. In chapter 22, we learned that God was bringing his family and his brothers to him. If that wasn't enough, God began to bring to David, who, if you remember, had been already anointed king as a young man, but Saul was occupying the throne, so to speak, in his rebellion against God.

Saul is pursuing David to destroy him out of jealousy and envy. And so David is in the stronghold; he's hiding. And God brings to David 400 motley men. Remember, men who were absolutely the down-and-outs of life. Men who could not find any comfort or any reason or hope in Saul's kingdom, and found solace and comfort and rest in David's kingdom, though David was not yet officially occupying the throne. God had a plan.

God began to do a great work in David's life and in the lives of those men around him. And so this evening we come to the study of when the Lord is in the lead and what it means because God is going to be teaching David some things and teaching us some things that when we are oftentimes perceived in ourselves to be ostracized, cut off, desperate, in need, lonely, abandoned, somehow to some degree ripped off by the world or those around us, it's at those times when God often gets our attention.

Many of us are Christians tonight because we had, as the old song goes, to get knocked flat on our back before we could look up. And so, though David was a man of God, God had great plans for David's life. And so there were still things of David's life that needed to be molded and shaped and preparing him for the kingship of Israel because this king will go on to be the greatest king that Israel has ever known.

Well, we're going to see him forming a battle, galvanized group of men together. I'm thinking right now, as David, we're going to learn a lot about warfare tonight and how to deal with the things of life and how they are a battle. Life is a battle. And so I want you to put your thinking cap on but open the doors of your heart wide that the Lord might minister to all of us because we're going to be hearing some things tonight about God's divine counsel and His guidance and hearing the voice of God in our lives.

Isn't that one of your big passions, is hearing the voice of God in your life? Man, if God would just speak. Hey, listen, I'm convinced that God is always speaking; I'm not always listening. There's times when God gets going or is allowed to get going in my life where, in my opinion, He's talking too much. Lord, I can't write this down fast enough. Lord, wait, pause for a moment.

And I just love that, and I don't know how you view the Lord, but sometimes I believe that God can get so excited in our lives that He just starts going. And it's times like that when, quite frankly, I just want to just fall. Remember, those of us who are really old, remember the commercial when we were kids, the Nestea plunge? That guy's just sweating and he just falls into the pool and he's just covered by the water.

Refreshed but strengthened and encouraged. I would like to get some men together and say, "Listen, before we go into battle, I want to show you something what God does when people will lean and be dependent upon Him." And so I think that's a powerful thing as we look to our study tonight.

It says here in 1 Samuel, chapter 23, beginning at verse 1: "Then the Lord told David, saying, 'Look, the Philistines are fighting against Keilah, and they are robbing the threshing floors.' Therefore David inquired of the Lord, saying, 'Shall I go and attack these Philistines?' And the Lord said to David, 'Go and attack the Philistines and save Keilah.' And David's men said to him, 'Look, we are afraid here in Judah. How much more then if we go to Keilah against the armies of the Philistines?' Then David inquired of the Lord once again. And the Lord answered him and said, 'Arise, go down to Keilah, for I will deliver the Philistines into your hand.' And David and his men went to Keilah and fought the Philistines, struck them with a mighty blow, and took away their livestock. So David saved the inhabitants of Keilah. Now it happened, when Abiathar the son of Ahimelech fled to David at Keilah, that he went down with an ephod in his hand. And Saul was told that David had gone to Keilah. So Saul said, 'God has delivered him into my hand, for he has shut himself in by entering a town that has gates and bars.' Then Saul called all the people together for war, to go down to Keilah to besiege David and his men."

Verses 1 through 8, jot it down if you would: When the Lord is in the lead, or when He's leading us, we know this. Number one: The Lord prepares us for war. The Lord prepares us for war. And I want to just take the time—if it takes us all night or many messages—it's important that we lay the truth down to this. Regarding the Lord preparing us for war, in putting this together, I want to make it extremely clear as we begin to see a battle unfold before us, you've got to understand something.

God is working, establishing a king, and God does not tolerate enemies against His people Israel. He will not tolerate it. And when someone attacks Israel, God will go on the defense. And I want you to mark that because God never sends His nation or nations out into the world just to create a war. He doesn't do that. That's not God's way.

And you can read Old Testament accounts; He doesn't do that. There's always a reason of either judgment or of some sort of retribution that God will bring about the enemies of Israel because of something they've done. Keep that in your mind, especially in light of the days and age in which you and I live in because of the way people are talking and thinking about Islam and some other things regarding the violence of it all. Very important.

So know this, that when the Lord is leading, in verses 1 through 8, we learn that the Lord prepares us for war. And for most of us, it is in the spiritual context of war. But we'll look at the street, really, on both sides. Note this, if you would, verse 1 we learn this: that there must be battles in life. That's always the case. There will be battles in life.

And when you begin to think this evening, "Yeah, that's always true. Yeah, Jack, right, always battles." Wait a minute. It says in verse 1, "Then they told David, saying, 'Look, the Philistines are fighting against Keilah, and they are robbing the threshing floors.'" What's so big about that? Number one, David's not the king. Who's the king? Saul. Why doesn't Saul go fight these guys?

Well, quite frankly, Jesus said regarding Satan and his realm that a house divided against itself cannot stand. And you will rarely ever see Satan's realm warring against itself because they have, it has, a unified enemy. Who is that enemy? God. And what's interesting is Saul is supposed to be the defending king of the nation and the Philistines have invaded the nation, the people, the kingdom of Israel.

Rather than Saul going after the Philistines, word comes to David, who has not yet been installed as king, and they're saying, "You know what? We're being attacked, you've got to help us." Don't you find that interesting? Why didn't they go to Saul? I think you know the answer. Saul would not have fought the enemy. We have learned over and over again that Saul's a coward. He's in love with himself. He's a legend in his own mind.

He's Saul, head and shoulders above all the people, but a coward, afraid. He wants all the glory of kingdom life but no battles. And yet the people said, "God, give us a king like all of the other nations that he may go in and out before us and that he might fight our battles." And so God, not wanting an earthly king to be presiding over Israel, yet the people demanding, God gave them their request. God gave them the king that they wanted.

David is the king that God wanted. But God has His way of installing His people, installing His kings. And it's interesting to me that they didn't go seek Saul; they went and sought David. These men saw that David would be their defender because Saul, quite frankly, had failed to protect the nation on numerous occasions. So they come to him and they say, "Hey, help us out."

Now you're going to hear a lot of little innuendos in here tonight, and they're intentionally built in. David is on the rise. Saul had been in power. Saul was to deal with the enemies; he did not. And so another one has to be raised up to take care of the enemies of Israel. Do you understand that? It's called 1 Samuel, 1 and 2 Samuel.

There was a previous administration—I just read it this week—that was to deal and made pledges and promises that when a Muslim militant group attacked the World Trade Centers in 1993, it was stated, "These people will be hunted down and destroyed." And then the Khobar Towers were attacked and blown up and people died, and the statement was made from the White House, "These people will be hunted down and destroyed."

And then there was the explosion of the embassies in Kenya and people were killed, and it was said from the White House, "These people will be hunted down and destroyed." I read it in quotes this week. There were eight events: "These people will be hunted down and destroyed." And then someone's done the homework to find out how much money was spent under another king, so to speak, to hunt down the enemies of America.

And that amount of money spent to hunt down the enemies of America under a previous kingship like Saul's, so to speak, was one-quarter of the amount of money spent in trying to destroy Bill Gates and Microsoft by that same administration. Isn't that interesting? Then God puts another man in office. I don't care how you voted, it didn't matter, did it? God installed a certain guy to be king or president over these nations right now, over these states I should say, for this nation.

And all of the stuff that's going on in the way of violence and the way of war and terror is something that's been inherited. It's just that Saul didn't want to deal with it. And so someone else has got to deal with this. Think about it. It's a fact. You like it or not, it's a fact. It's exactly what happened with David. The Philistines kept coming into Israel and killing people and pillaging villages, raping women, and taking out the eyes of the men and using them for slaves.

And it went on and on and on under the kingship of Saul. God is going to turn that around. He's going to bring a guy who's a giant killer to the throne. But before that happens, God is going to prepare this man in the wilderness. Why? Because God often leads us into the wilderness of life, so to speak, to prepare us for some wonderful thing in life.

We don't like to hear that, but it's true. You look at the people who've had great hardships in life, people who have been very successful, and you hear their story, and it's amazing. See, we want their money, we want their power, we want their position, but when they tell the story that they were abandoned on a doorstep, they went from foster home to foster home, they barely ever made ends meet, they started working when they were eight years old on the streets of Chicago, they put everything together and they wound up creating things like *The New York Times* or great corporations because, you know what? They could not be stopped.

They learned in the difficult places to persevere. And it builds guts. It builds a heart. He prepares us as Christians, certainly in spiritual battle. He prepares us for war, yes, and there's battles in life. See, people in this age of ours, they don't want to talk about war because they think that no good can come out of war. First of all, war is horrible and it's a byproduct of a fallen world. We all agree on that.

But God is going to be calling David to war. How do you handle that? Did you know that the Bible, because men's hearts are evil, God sanctions war in the Bible? He doesn't want war, but He knows that men's hearts are wicked and they'll go to war. So what does God do? God takes that which the enemy has meant for evil, Satan, and He turns it around and makes it for good. And there is not one nation on the face of the earth, including the United States, that has ever been born without what? War.

The Bible says that God takes down nations and raises them up and creates them, and He does that, if we look through history, by war. It's weird. See, we need to get our thinking in line with what God says about human conduct and the world as revealed in Scripture. There is battles. And David is a perfect example of us as the believer. He's got physical battles to fight and he's got spiritual battles to fight. He's in it for the long haul, so to speak.

Ecclesiastes 3:8 says that there's a time to love and a time to hate, there's a time for war and there's a time for peace. We're living in the days, I personally believe, like 1 John 4:3 says, that every spirit that does not confess that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh—that is God revealed in the flesh—is not of God. And this is the spirit of antichrist, which you have heard was coming and even now is already in the world.

And if you know prophecy, we can't go that way tonight, but the Bible says toward the last days of human existence as we know it, that there will be a great cry for peace and it will be one that the Antichrist, a man that will arise to govern the world, he'll ride that wave of a cry for peace. And isn't that the biggest cry that we have? Yes, everybody wants peace, but nobody wants the Prince of Peace, Jesus Christ. There will be no peace until Jesus returns.

But the Bible explains and teaches us that there'll be wars, and even names some of those countries. God says that there's a time for war and He's prepared His soldier. Physical war, yes. Spiritual war, always. I personally believe, as the book of Daniel teaches, that there are spiritual powers, invisible powers, that are driving the physical realm. And so we know that there's always going to be battles. There must be battles.

Ephesians chapter 6, verse 12 says we, as Christians, do not wrestle against flesh and blood. Sometimes that's easier to wrestle against flesh and blood. But against principalities, against powers, and against rulers in the dark age. Those are demonic powers, invisible to our eyes. Spiritual host of wickedness that reside in heavenly or angelic places. Therefore, take up the whole armor of God, that you may be able to withstand in the evil day, and having done all to stand, stand therefore, having girded your waist with truth. You get that from the Bible.

Putting the breastplate of righteousness on. You get that from the Bible. Having shod your feet with the preparation of the gospel of peace. Above all, take the shield of faith, with which you will be able to quench all the fiery darts of the wicked one. That is a reference to Satan. And take the helmet of salvation and the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God, praying always with all prayer.

That's the Christian soldier. I told you many times before, I can never read that verse in Ephesians without getting a mental picture in my mind of the bride of Christ. She is amazing. The church is called the bride of Christ, but then you read Ephesians and she's a soldier. She's so cute. She really is. The bride of Christ, the church, the Bible refers to. But she's a soldier. She's got a veil on, but she's got a helmet. She's got a veil on, then she puts her helmet on.

She's got a gown, she wears a gown, but man, on her hips, she's got a belt of truth. And she's got a bouquet in one hand and she's got a sword in the other. She's quite a chick. She's the bride of Christ, it all depends on how you look at her. Jesus looks at her and He says, "Man, with an everlasting love I've loved you." And if the enemy were to look at her, she is absolutely suited for warfare. The church. It's an amazing thing.

Guest (Male): Pastor and Bible teacher Jack Hibbs, here on Real Life Radio, with his message called "When the Lord Is in the Lead, Part 1." Thanks for being with us today. You know, this message is part of Pastor Jack's series called *First Samuel*, a series that highlights 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.

Pastor Jack, we heard from Gunia and Robert. They're in Sweden. She says, "Hello, we live in Sweden, one of the most atheistic and secularized countries in the world." She said it's been very difficult to be a Christian here in such a woke culture with all the woke churches. "We want to express our gratitude as we listen to Jack on the internet, and we pray that he'll continue his very important work." She says, "Regards from Gunia and Robert in Sweden." Want to say hi to those folks?

Jack Hibbs: I do want to say hi to both of you. My goodness. But here, you know, isn't it amazing though? I'm sorry. I'm sorry for your country. I'm becoming sorry for my country. My country, America, is not as close to God as it used to be. But that's said, we've got the word of God. We've got the foundation of God. And here's what's amazing to the two of you.

God has provided the technologies by which in these last days we can connect around His truth through the technologies that He has redeemed for the advancement of His gospel. Think about that. It's these microphones and cameras and speakers and wires and the cloud, all of these things for what? Ultimately, of course, so that we can connect by spirit around the word of God, even though we are many thousands of miles apart.

And you know, to the two of you, I'm reminded right now of Colossians chapter 2, verse 5. It says that though we be separated in flesh, yet we are united in spirit as I rejoice in beholding your steadfast faith. So to the two of you, keep the faith, trust Christ, and we'll see you soon in heaven above.

Guest (Male): Hey, you know, if you'd like to drop a note of encouragement to Pastor Jack, that'd be awesome. He'd really love to see what you have to say about him and how his ministry's affected your life. So please do that. Go to the connect tab at jackhibbs.com. That's the tab labeled "Connect" at jackhibbs.com.

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 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.