Real Life Radio

Jack Hibbs: This church will flourish. This church will be a stream in the desert as it were. This church will cause things to happen for God if we keep our eye on the cloud of God's glory. He'll do everything else. If we follow Him, He'll do the rest.

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 his series called First Samuel and a message titled "What Happens When We Fight Our Own Battles." Samuel of the Old Testament was the last judge of Israel and the first of her prophets.

So here in chapter 31, we'll consider how Saul fought his own battles and ends up defeated and destroyed. King Saul relied upon himself, so God had to let him go in his own strength and resources, and he lost everything. Saul's repeated disobedience led to devastating results, including his life and the life of his son Jonathan. Today, Pastor Jack teaches us that David trusted God while Saul went full steam ahead without God, and his entire army paid the price. In moments of crisis, if we don't follow God, the results can be tragic. Now with his message called "What Happens When We Fight Our Own Battles," here's Pastor and Bible teacher Jack Hibbs.

Jack Hibbs: You know what I love about this book? It seems to me that the book of Samuel is so much—maybe should be called the book of David. Am I crazy to think that?

Guest (Male): No, in fact, I get it. The book of Samuel, the Kingmaker, Samuel the judge, Samuel the prophet of Israel. But very much so, it's about the rise of this young man, David. Of course, when we read the Bible, it's very healthy for us to read ourselves into the narrative, by no means replacing it—that would be ridiculous. When Samuel is dealing with David or with Saul, or when Saul is dealing with David or David with Saul, back and forth, we ought to insert ourselves into that and ask ourselves what can we be getting out of this?

Jack Hibbs: You look at the man Samuel, who doesn't get, in my opinion, enough screen time in our day and age because there was no one like him, especially anointed by God to establish the dynasties of Israel, beginning with King Saul. Saul, very much in his conduct, lost sight of God. Saul started out great, but lost sight of God.

It's a remarkable account because David's life—a factual, authentic, real, historical life lived—in many ways, we can draw so much strength from the drama and the pressure and the intensity of David's life. It could be the book of David. It could be the book of David, or the book of Jack, or the book of John. In your life, what is God writing? It's full of dynamic, and our God is so dynamic.

Guest (Male): You and I were actually in Israel. We were in that cave where David—

Jack Hibbs: We were. It's in the valley called the Valley of the Goats, out in the Judean wilderness, in En Gedi. It's the only cave like it, geologically and archaeologically. It is the spot where David cut the hem of Saul's garment.

Guest (Male): He was saying, "I could have killed you and I didn't." That speaks tremendous character of David. Let's get into it.

Jack Hibbs: Yeah. Father, we pray now that as we look to these things that we see here in Scripture, Father, that we might learn well the lesson that is before us. Father, we just thank You now and we pray it, Lord, in Jesus' name, and all God's people said, "Amen."

Grab your Bibles for the final time tonight, First Samuel chapter 31. Again, if you're visiting Calvary for the first time tonight, we want to welcome you in the name of the Lord. We're glad that you're here, and we hope to see you back. We are in First Samuel, concluding the book. I believe if my count is right, this is our 49th study in the book of Samuel. If not, I'm real close, somewhere around 45 to 49 studies. 31 chapters. Yes, we go slow.

First Samuel chapter 31. The title of the message tonight is "What Happens When We Fight Our Own Battles." Mark that down. What happens when we fight our own battles? It's not a question; it's just a statement. Fill in the blank. We're going to do that tonight. What do I mean, "What happens when I fight my own battles?" My dad taught me to roll up my sleeves and fight my own battles.

Yes, that's good, and I understand that part when it comes to growing up in the schoolyard or whatever the situation might be and you're having to defend yourself for your life. Maybe there is a moment where this opportunity for your sister's sake or whoever you're defending—I understand that. But in the world of God's realm and God's kingdom, there is a whole different truth. There's a whole different power and operation.

God has promised to be our defense. What happens when you and I begin to defend ourselves, which is a natural thing? We grow up like that in the world. We grow up defending ourselves. Then as Christians, we read in the Bible that God is our defense, but what does that really mean? We have this mentality that shouldn't we take the world by the tail, bring it down under our control, and harness it to our use? That is the worldly way of doing things, but it's not God's way of doing things.

Tonight we see the tragic conclusion of Saul's life, King Saul. He's a man whose life has been lived, whose life will terminate in our study tonight. He will enter eternity, and what can we do about it? Only this, but this is important: we can learn how not to live like Saul because he was a man who was committed to defending himself.

David, on the other hand, is a man who leaned upon God to be his defense. The Psalms David wrote, Psalm 62, verse 1 says, "My soul finds rest in God alone; my salvation comes from Him. He alone is my rock and my salvation; He is my fortress, I will never be shaken." Keep that in mind.

What happens when we fight our own battles? We fall into the trap with those who have little faith in God, and that's the story of Saul's life. Do you remember this in First Samuel chapter 8, verse 4? The Bible there says, "Then all the elders of Israel gathered together and came to Samuel at Ramah, and they said to Samuel, 'Look, you are old, and your sons do not walk in the ways of God. Now make us a king to judge us like all the other nations.'"

But the thing displeased Samuel when they said, "Give us a king that he may judge us." So Samuel prayed to the Lord, and the Lord said to Samuel, "Heed the voice of all the people in what they say to you; for they have not rejected you, Samuel, but they have rejected Me, that I should reign over them."

A people who will refuse to have God reign over them is a people, and perhaps as a person, who must and will fight their own battles because that's the way they want it. They said, "Samuel, give us a king that can go out and fight our battles and we can watch him come in and go out, and we can do it on the human plane. We can wage the war of being God's people on the earthly level." That's impossible to do.

Tonight, we're just going to look at two key points in our study this evening. The first one is in verses one through six. What happens when we fight our own battles? Well, first of all, the Lord leaves us to our own resources. When we decide to fight our own battles, God will leave us to our own resources.

It says in verse 1, "So the Philistines fought against Israel, and the men of Israel fled from before the Philistines and fell slain on Mount Gilboa. Then the Philistines followed hard after Saul and his sons, and the Philistines killed Jonathan, Abinadab, and Malchishua, Saul's sons. Now the battle became intense against Saul, and the archers hit him, or struck him, or actually found a space in his armor, and he was severely wounded by the archers."

"Then Saul said to his armorbearer, 'Draw your sword and thrust me through with it, lest these uncircumcised men come and thrust me through and abuse me.' But his armorbearer would not, for he was greatly afraid. Therefore Saul took a sword and fell on it. And when his armorbearer saw that Saul was dead, he also fell on his sword and died with him. So Saul, his three sons, his armorbearer, and all his men died together that same day."

When God is left out of our battle plan, when God is left out of our strategy, He will leave us to our own resources, and that's what we see in Saul's life. The first thing that we notice in verses one and two is this: when we're left to our own resources, He will let us go in our own strength. That's the scary thing.

Jim, I think I remember sharing this with you in my office one time how we talked about a vision that the Lord had given. I had shared this with you and the Lord later on gave you the interpretation of this. What I mean by that is this: I had talked to Jim one afternoon. I had had a dream, and it was about this church. It was the Mojave Desert. You've all seen the Mojave Desert. It's stark, it's drastic, it's actually wonderful in some ways; it's so beautiful.

Yet it's barren. In my dream—and I couldn't remember if I was sleeping or awake; it was one of those weird places—but in Technicolor, there was the Mojave Desert. Coming from the distance, coming out of the west technically, was this old steam locomotive. You've all seen them in movies with the big plume of steam coming out of the stack. It didn't have anything behind it. It didn't even have a coal car. It just had a flatbed car on it.

In the middle of that flatbed car was a big, big bucket. That train was going across the desert, and there was a little cloud just ahead of the train. That little cloud was raining down rain. The rain was falling into the bucket behind that great steam engine. As that was going across the desert, here's the cool thing: the track where it was was left intact, but there was no train track in front of the train.

You couldn't tell if it was going to the left or to the right. You couldn't tell where it was going to go next. The only thing you could discern, but you really didn't have the time, was that the cloud was just ahead of the train. As the cloud was moving across the desert and that rain lagging behind, it would fall perfectly—not into the stack, not onto the locomotive—it would fall perfectly into the bucket of that big flat car.

As that bucket filled up, the train would make a turn following the cloud, and the bucket would spill into the desert, and a tremendous oasis would bloom in the desert. Then it would go, and the track right before the train would get to the edge of the track, another piece of track like a train set would appear, one piece at a time, following the cloud. It was an amazing thing.

I was so excited, and I told Jim, and it was wonderful because he went and prayed about it, and the Lord began to speak to him. The Lord began to say, "This is this church. These are your lives. This is the heart of God for this church, to go by faith, to follow the cloud wherever it goes, and let the Lord fill the bucket. Let the Lord pour out from it what He would. Let the Lord cause the increase."

The little train's responsibility was to stay on the track, and the only way that it could stay on the track, because there was no track in front of it until it arrived at that edge, was to keep its eye on the cloud. This church will flourish. This church will be a stream in the desert as it were. This church will cause things to happen for God if we keep our eye on the cloud of God's glory. He'll do everything else. If we follow Him, He'll do the rest.

Saul wouldn't have anything to do with that. Saul wanted to have control over all that. He wanted to be able to manipulate everything. He was a very strong man in that he had human strength. The Bible told us at the beginning of this great book that he was very tall in stature. Remember? He was good-looking, very tall, head and shoulders above all the people.

If you and I would look at him, we would say, "You know what? That must be a corporate CEO." I don't know why they grow CEOs so big, but most of them are big. He's somebody. Look how tall and look how handsome. That's the weakness of our human heart; we judge according to appearance. "Oh, look at him, look at her, they must be something."

Yet on the inside, their little life, if you were to turn on that X-ray machine like Bugs Bunny does when Daffy's standing there behind the screen, there's like a little peanut for a brain in there and a little spring and a hammer for a heart going up and down. You'd see this great person, King Saul, big man. Then when you would see him with X-ray vision, so to speak, you'd see this little pea-brain and a little, little peanut of a heart because he didn't have much faith in God at all.

He had a lot of his own human strength. Tragically, listen as we go through these six verses right here how tragic it is that we do not hear or see anything about God. "Now the Philistines fought against Israel, and the men of Israel fled from before the Philistines." This is tragic. This would be equal for us today to say that the United States Marine Corps fled from the army or the forces of Belize, the poorest country in the world.

You say that would never happen. Well, that's what should never be happening, that the great Israeli forces are fleeing from the Philistines. When you go out on your own strength, you may say, "We can do this and we can do that," and we begin to formulate this huge plan. Yet if it's done in the arm of the flesh, you're going to fail.

You know, you can take a big great locomotive up to speed, and I've read this is true. You can cut the power on those great engines on flat ground carrying 300, 400, 500 railroad cars. Do you know what will happen? It will go for tens of miles from inertia. If you're sitting down and if you're occupied, like you're reading a book or something like that, you will physically not notice its deceleration because it slows down ever so slow.

The flesh is like that. You can get the flesh going so strong, so much, so big, or you can be involved in the work of the Holy Spirit and it's going so strong, so much, so big. But then God's Spirit is removed. Remember how long it's been now since God's Spirit removed Himself from Saul? He's still the king. They're still going to war. There are still battles to be fought.

But for years now, Saul has been going like a locomotive when there's no more power. Inertia keeps him going. While it looks good, and people who are not discerning and not careful, the steam is running out. The power is lagging behind and it begins to slowly, slowly slow down. This is a tragic moment. Now the train is so slow that it cannot even contend with the enemies around it.

Israel has faltered because they've been led into disarray, they've been led into weakness because the administration of Saul's government was so terrible that now the Philistines are chasing the Israelites. Unbelievable event. And fell, that is the Israelites, fell slain on Mount Gilboa. Then the Philistines followed after Saul and his sons. And the Philistines killed his three boys.

Israel was under attack, and the Philistines were fighting. There's no sign, there's no word, there's no leading from God here. The silence is deafening. It's pathetic. These are God's people, but they're on the run. It shouldn't be happening. There's no consultation as we saw in chapter 30. Remember when David began to seek the Lord, what did he call for? He called for the ephod. He called for a priest.

He consulted God. He looked to the Word of God. He wanted to hear, "God, what do You want me to do? In this moment of crisis, what do You want me to do? These people want to kill me. God, what would You have me to do?" He consulted God. There's none of that here. The tragic end of Saul's life: he's engaged in a battle, they're losing, and he doesn't call for a priest as David did.

There's no prophet to speak to, there's no ephod, that is there's no discerning of God and His prophets and His priests before the people. None of that. It's tragic. In Hosea chapter 4, verse 6, it says, "My people are destroyed for a lack of knowledge. Because you have rejected My knowledge, so I also will reject you." We need to mark that verse down. Hosea 4:6. For a lack of knowledge, My people are perishing.

And because you do not pursue My knowledge, God says, "I will reject you." The Bible says he who is often rebuked—that means a person who is stubborn and will not follow God and resists God and pushes God away—he who is often rebuked will harden his heart, and the Bible says he will be taken away by God and that without remedy.

Rebellion and stubbornness. That's exactly who Saul was. We know that that's his nature. We see here in verse 1 that it says, "And the men of Israel fled from before the Philistines and fell slain on Mount Gilboa." Mount Gilboa is beautiful to behold. It arises out of the Jezreel Plain about 1,696 feet high. You say, "Jack, that's a joke, 1,600 feet."

Chino Hills State Park has some hills that are kind of near that. Well, in Israel, it's very mountainous, but you've got to remember something: Israel goes very much below sea level as well, also back and forth. Keep that in mind. But Mount Gilboa is a beautiful place as you can see. This is where the battle is taking place. You can visit that place and those spots today on any one of our tours.

Anyway, it's located in the Jezreel Valley. It's spectacularly beautiful and fruitful. It's north and west of Jerusalem and it's something to behold. This is where the battle's taking place. By the way, not far from there at all is a little intersection. It literally has a stop sign and it's in the middle of nowhere. It's a roadway going east and west and a roadway going north and south.

We always want to stop there or make comment, and we do, when we go by there, that when you stop the bus or if we get out at that point and stand at that intersection, we are standing at literally, according to human history, an intersection that has seen more war than any other place on planet Earth. It is the place where the Battle of Armageddon will be held.

It's an intersection where all the nations in world wars, in crusades and campaigns, in the Egyptian, the Assyrian, the Babylonian, the Medo-Persian, and the Roman Empires had to cross to conquer any of the regions of the Middle East. It's absolutely spectacular and it's just an intersection in the valley there in the Megiddo Plain. You would never know that it's such a historic point. You would never know that the Bible says that in the last days that the blood of the warriors in the Battle of Armageddon, the blood will flow at the height of a horse's bridle and bit. That's about five feet or so high. The most fought-over piece of land on the planet.

David J: Pastor and Bible teacher Jack Hibbs, here on Real Life Radio and his message called "What Happens When We Fight Our Own Battles." Thanks for being here today with us. You know this message is part of Pastor Jack's series called First Samuel. It's 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.

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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 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. 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.