Tonight you have a friend of mine who's going to be speaking. I love Dan, I've known each other like Renee last week for a lot of years. So let's welcome Dan as he comes. Good evening.
We are continuing our series on Chase the Lion. We're going to read out a second Samuel. This has been a continual theme throughout this study with his book, Second Samuel the 23rd chapter. I'm going to start tonight with the 13th verse.
It says, during harvest time, three of the three chief lawyers came down to David at the cave of Adulam, while a band of Philistines was in camp in the belly of Rafa'im. At that time, David was in a stronghold in the Philistine garrison was at Bethlehem. Think about that. The Philistines were at Bethlehem.
That's right outside of Jerusalem. These were dark times. These were very dark times. David longed for water.
And he said, oh, that someone would get me a drink of water from the well near the gate of Bethlehem. So the three mighty warriors broke through the Philistine lines, drew water from the well near the gate of Bethlehem, and carried it back to David. But he refused to drink it. Instead he poured it out before the Lord.
Far bit from me, Lord, to do this. Is it not the blood of men who went at the risk of their lives? And David would not drink it. Such were the exploits of the three mighty warriors.
That's right. Father tonight we want to hear your word, Lord. We don't need to hear Dan's opinion about anything. And quite frankly, we don't need to hear Mark Batterson's opinion, Lord.
God, we want to hear from you. And we know that your word is alive. It's living. And that your word changes us, God.
And speaks to us in a molds our lives and molds our hearts. And in a molds our minds. And we ask that that would happen tonight. Let us have the message.
We see the message that you have for us in Jesus name. Amen. Yeah, please be seated if you could. So, 2 Samuel 23.
This chapter starts off with the last words of David before he died. And then it goes into the rest of the chapter describing David's mighty men. And then this book, Chase the Lion, pretty much takes its name for the entire book from this scripture. In fact, Chase the Lion, now I'm saying this from the case some of you maybe have just been here the last couple weeks and maybe you don't know what this is all about.
But Mark Batterson wrote a book several years ago called In the Pit with a Lion on a Snowy Day. And it talked about a Beniah. And it says Beniah in the scripture, the same passage in the 23rd chapter, says on a Snowy Day he chased a lion down into a pit and killed it. Mark Batterson wrote a book on that.
And now several years later he's come out with his follow-up. And that's what we've been studying the last few weeks called Chase the Lion. And the verses that we just read tonight are providing the setting for our teaching as we focus on chapters 9 and 10 as I said. The cave of Adulam or the stronghold as it is also called in scripture was a fortified cave where David stayed on and off during those years when Saul was pursuing him trying to kill him.
You know at this point David was the king's son-in-law. He was the king's son-in-law and yes Saul was so paranoid and jealous of it that he was trying to kill him. And David during this time was traveling through the desert, the wilderness, south of Jerusalem, west of Jerusalem. And that's the setting that we have here.
Before we start I want us to watch a really short kind of video. This is a child's book, a children's book. It's called Zoom. Has anyone ever read that?
Can you never read that to your kids? I say that because there are no words in Zoom. It's just images. I want you to watch this and then we're going to talk about it.
Isn't that cool? You know the very first picture you see this kind of red blob with little squiggles on it and dots and they go, I have no idea what that is. You know and then you see it's a rooster and you keep thinking you understand the picture and it zooms out more and zooms out more and zooms out more and there's layer upon layer upon layer upon layer. This is often how we look at situations we find ourselves in.
Sort of a can't see the forest for the trees thing, right? We live our lives often with our faces just kind of smushed up against the situations that we're in and we can't step back and see the bigger picture. And not only that but if we could, I'm not sure that God would reveal the bigger picture to us at one point in time. See every decision and every indecision we make have ripple effects.
Every cause has an effect and the effect then has a cumulative effect. It also has 100, listen to this, unintended consequences. Yeah those are the ones that I T R T. That set off a thousand chain reactions.
I don't know if you're familiar with chaos theory but there's a theory within chaos theory it's called the butterfly effect. You may have heard that term and it came several years ago from a scientist who was studying weather patterns, weather is considered the chaos system because any kind of little tweak can just throw everything off. And the notion was that a butterfly could be flapping its wings in North America and in South America several weeks later there could be a hurricane that's touched off by the chain of events. And it's kind of like that is what we're talking about.
See David when he was in the cave of a dolem made decisions and did actions that would affect his life, the rest of his life and would affect his rule or the nation of Israel eventually. The cave of a dolem was turned out to be a proving ground for David. As I said earlier David was being chased by Saul. Well when he was a teenager David was anointed to be king over Israel.
We've heard that story right. The prophet Samuel comes to Jesse his dad and is looking for his son who's supposed to be anointed the king of Israel and eventually they got around to fetch him David from the field and yeah he was the one they know him. David was about 15 years old at that time. The thing is though there wasn't exactly a job opening at that time.
You know what I mean? They had a king right? Saul was the king and while Saul had lost God's blessing he was still the king and he still sat on the throne. So it was about 15 years before David finally assumed the throne.
He was about 30 years old. He was 30 years old when he finally became king of Israel. And part of those 15 years were spent in the cave of a dolem. The hardest part of a dream journey.
The hardest part of a dream journey is the holding pattern. That's where David found himself. He was in the holding pattern. We know what that term is.
Rides from aviation. You know an airplane needs to land in their port. The runway's not clear. It's circles.
Sometimes miles out from the airport because the airspace is just congested. And what are you doing? You're going around. We've all been there riding that airplane.
Hey we're going to be flying around a bit until we can land and it's a very boring place to be. It's a tedious place to be. And that's what the cave of a dolem was to David. Now I want you to think about this notion of the holding pattern.
There were 25 years between God's promise to Abraham that he would be a great nation and the birth of Isaac his son. 25 years he waited for that promise. There were 13 years between Joseph's dream that someday his brothers would worship before him and he'd be in a place of authority. 13 years between that dream and the time that he interpreted Pharaoh's dream.
And if you remember the time in between he was sold in slavery, became a house servant and went to prison for something he didn't do. All those things happened in those 13 years until God lifted him up and put him in a place of authority. There were 40 years between Moses's dream of setting the children of Israel free and the Exodus taking place. 40 years.
That's a long holding pattern. That's a long holding pattern. I've got another one for you. Some of you can relate to this because we've been on this journey several of us have together.
There were 13 years from the purchase of this land that this building is sitting on to the day we had our first service here last November 2015. 13 years that was our holding pattern. In that time we had multiple master plans developed for the property. You know we bought this land and the land north and the land east of 2nd Street.
We had multiple master plans that we had gone through. Multiple potential buyers and developers that were able to buy some of the property round and develop things. And we had three buildings actually designed. This is the third building that was designed.
We had three groups who were going to put a sports complex on this spot. Those of you who are old Springfield people remember this was the old Xanadu sports complex that was going to go here and that fell apart. You know the things in the news. We had three groups that were going to resurrect that and put a youth in sports complex.
So we know what it's like at Calvary Church to be in a holding pattern. We know what it's like while David was in this holding pattern and he was you know been chased through the desert and the wilderness. At one point Saul wandered into a cave where David was hiding and David could have killed him but he didn't. In fact he actually got so close to Saul that he cut off part of his robe.
And then he felt bad about that because he cut off his robe. You know this was the man that was trying to kill him. On another occasion David walked with some of his men right into Saul's camp at night and everyone was asleep got it and put a deep sleep on him. Walked right up to Saul could have killed him.
His spear was stuck in the ground there. David didn't do it. He took his spear, took a jug of water by Saul's head and left. Now his men, his mighty men that were with him, they probably got pretty ticked off at this right because here these guys are, they're running around and being chased all over creation by this man and David refused to kill them.
But I think they probably ended up respecting him more in the long run because David was committed and he was not going to touch God's anointed. Again, even Saul had lost God's blessing. He was still the anointed king of Israel and David would not buy it like that. You see in David's life killing Goliath, think about this, was an epic act of courage, of bravery, wasn't it?
And none of Israelites would do that except this little shepherd boy, epic. In the same vein, not killing Saul was an epic act of integrity. See an opportunity is not an opportunity if you have to compromise your integrity. Okay?
And I don't know if you've heard this, I'm sure you have a lot of people who have described integrity as doing the right thing when nobody's watching. David's years in the cave of a duelum were difficult years, but you get a testimony by passing a test. In fact, think about it, you can't even spell testimony without test, right? Yeah?
No test, no testimony. See, when you're in that holding pattern, there were things that you can and should do, one you should grow when you're in that holding pattern. And David grew. David grew a long way from being that 15-year-old that was anointed king.
You learn to trust when you're in that holding pattern and you learn to prove your integrity. It's a proving ground. When you are in that holding pattern, when you're pursuing your dream, let that be a proving ground. Make the most of it.
It's lived in seasons, right? There are seasons to life. Each season presents unique challenges, unique opportunities. And when you're in that cave of a duelum and you feel like you're just waiting and you're waiting and you're trading water, that's just a season.
It was four years from Moses, it was 25 years from Abraham, it was 15 years from David. I don't know what it could be for you. It was 13 years from Calvary Church, right? Here's a couple of lessons that I learned from this holding pattern that we went in.
We went through, Calvary Church went through a couple of lessons. And these are things that I already knew and I'm going to say to them and you're going to say, well, yeah, I know that too. But I guess what I want to say is these things really became cemented, cemented into who I am and what I believe during this holding pattern of our dream journey here at Calvary. First, if you continue to see God as well, he will keep you from making the wrong decision.
Okay? I just told you about some of the things we went through in the 13 years here, you know, working with different developers and following this idea and this idea and this idea. But you know what God is so faithful. If you pursue the wrong idea and you're really genuinely seeking and he will close that door.
Isn't that great? Listen, I'm capable of really messing things up. I really am. And the fact that God closes doors like that and sometimes just prevents us from making terrible decisions is a really freeing thing.
And I want to tell you, there are two verses in scripture and I don't know if I can say I really have a life verse. I've heard people say they have life verses and I don't know that I really do, but I do know that as I go through stages in life, God gives me verses that really connect with me. And here is one that's connected with me for many, many years. And it says, the steps of the good man are ordered by the Lord.
And he delights in his way. Though he fall, he shall not be utterly cast down for the Lord upholds him with his hand. Wow. Isn't that a beautiful promise?
Sometimes we get so paralyzed trying to make the right decision. God, I don't know what I do. Why should I do this? I do that.
And God is saying, I direct your paths. You try and live right to sleep. You try and live for me. Just do something and let me direct your paths.
And he says, even if you make a mistake, if you screw up, he says, even if he houses sense of how in this translation, though he fall, he will not be utterly cast down. So even if you make a mistake, God holds you with his strong right hand. Wow. That's amazing.
That's a lesson learned from our holding pattern here at Calvary through our dream journey. And the other one is, the other lesson I want to mention is, when God closes an opportunity, it's because he has a better one. Where we are today, right now, is better than what I could have imagined. And if we had done what we wanted to do 12 years ago, we would be sitting right here in this building right now.
We wouldn't. Things were totally different. And I think the first time I really grasped this was as a young married couple, Glenn and I, you know, the married year looking for our first house and, you know, some of you know, that's why I cried. And, you know, you think you find one right away.
Yeah, that's when we went, boom, somebody's it's gone. And I really grabbed onto the fact really early that if God closes that door, then he's got one that's more suited for us. It's going to be a better fit. It's going to be perfect.
You know what? He did. He's always done that. When God closes an opportunity, he's going to open up a better one for you.
I guarantee it. David had quite a resume as a warrior king, right? He, you know, as a warrior king, David won so many amazing victories. The book of Samuel talks about it, the chronicles talk about it.
And it was very impressive. But despite all that, his military successes, his successes, his successes as a great one, as a ruler, probably his most enduring legacy when you think about David, his as a singer-songwriter. Right? Most of the Psalms, not all of them, but the majority of the Psalms were written by David.
It is centuries and centuries later, and we still sing them, don't we? There are three Psalms that Mark Baderson in the book refers to as the cave sessions, kind of an e-term. There's Psalm 34, 57, and 142. And these three Psalms were written during this very difficult time in David's life when he was running about through the desert in the wilderness trying to stay alive basically.
And he had taken up residence at the cave of Adulam. These are similar, kind of, to Paul's prison letters, right? I mean, I think many of us are familiar with the letters that Paul wrote in prison, Philippians, Ephesians, Colossians 5, and the tone of those letters. And even Second Timothy, you think of the last one that Paul wrote.
You know that tone of that letter when he knows he's going to die? Well, these Psalms have a tone to them, but it's not what you might think for someone who is running about for his life, because you read these Psalms, these Psalms, they express not only praise to God, and they do that, they praise him, but they talk about hope in God. They talk about God's ability to say and to redeem and to throw aside his enemies. And it's an amazing thing to read those three Psalms in light of where David was in his life.
See, David made it through the time and the cave of Adulam by praising God. He gave God the sacrifice of praise. And not only that, he also made it through this time because of the help of his mighty men back to what we started with tonight, Second Sanfah 23, talking about his mighty men. So, if you read Second Sanfah, about the 30, you know, the calls of the 30 to 30 mighty men, you need to understand that that was a title because then it goes and lists their names and there were 37 of them.
So, they weren't literally 30, but that's what they called themselves. They called themselves the 30, and I'm sure throughout those years some games I'm with, but because of the help he had from his mighty men, David made it through this time. Think about the same. Misery loves what?
Company. I want you to think about this. We can bear just about anything if you don't have to bear it alone. Yeah?
If you're in misery, it's good to have people around you. It is. Good to have a good spouse by your side when you're going through trials. Good to have a family that rallies around you.
You could have friends who are there when you're going through trials. Good to have a church. People that love you when you're going through times. Moses and Aaron, or Moses had Aaron and her when they were fighting the Amalekites and when Moses would have his arms up, they'd be winning the battle and he got tired and they'd start losing the battle.
They'd set Moses down on a rock and Aaron and her held his arms up until they had victory or the Amalekites. David had his mighty men to fight for him and to fight with him. And we need the same thing. We need the same thing when we're in these dark times and sippetal times.
And here's what I want to tell you. Let people share the struggle. Okay? This is hard.
It sounds pretty plain simple, but this is hard. It's easy for us to share in the blessings. We're always good about doing the praise, testimonies and telling people the good stuff, but what we tend to do when we are in the struggle is what? Circle the wagons, keep it closed in, keep it to ourselves.
I don't know if we think it's like airing out our dirty laundry or maybe it's embarrassing because hey, I'm a Christian and I shouldn't have struggles. But folks, we need to share in the struggle. And we don't need to just do that as individuals, but I'm telling you, Calvary Church needs to do that as well. When there are hard times, if the finances are hard this month, we need to share and struggle.
We're dealing with this. You're trying to get water from the city for this property and it's going to take pain. It really has. We need to share and struggle.
We don't have you guys all praying with us and supporting us and banging through this thing. See, when you do that, people have skin in the game and that helps. If you're the only woman's skin in the game, kind of feel lonely out there. But if you've got your mighty men around you, then you've got other people with skin in the game.
And the other thing that that does when you have your mighty ones around you, that's how you build a band of brothers and a band of sisters. That's how you do it. It's through that adversity. It's fighting together.
It's taking up arms together. It's seeing the victory of the Lord together. That's how you build that. Now, when you find yourself in difficult situations, it gives God a chance to do a miracle, doesn't it?
Because we were going through our holding pattern here, waiting to start this church. I'm going to start the building, the physical building. And you know we're waiting to sell property. And I just got this sense that we kind of quit waiting for something else to happen first.
We need to do something now and let God do a miracle. And one of the reasons is I read stuff by this guy, Mark Batterson. I read his stories about starting the church in Washington, D.C. and all the struggles they have and how God did this miracle and provided something for them.
I got to the point where I thought, I'm tired of reading about other people's miracles. I want to see God do a miracle for us. Let's do this thing. And you know what?
We did this thing. And here we are. Look what God has done. It's not finished yet.
It's not finished yet. But when God does a miracle, here's what I want to encourage you to do. Believe him for a bigger miracle the next time. Once you get that first miracle, believe him that it's going to be bigger next time.
Learn how to steward your miracles. Don't let them go to waste. Steward them. Build on them.
Build your expectations on top of those. Keep leapfrogging those miracles by faith. Until, you're going to look back and you're hardly going to be able to believe what God has done. Let those miracles set you on fire.
That's why I believe. If I'm going to go to the Lord in prayer for some needs, I've got some petitions I need to ask God, you know, and ask him for things. The first thing I do is to start thanking him for what he's already done. Do this when you pray for needs.
Because if you start with that, your faith starts building and you have a little revival service inside yourself before you can ask him for anything. But you start thinking about what he's done and those miracles and those answers to prayer and you steward those things, right? Steward. There was a man named J.W.
Tucker. Here's his story. His hands are tied behind his back and he is beaten to death with broken bottles and clubs. And then he and 60 other Europeans and Americans are taken to a river.
The name of it, the Beaumelkondae River and they're thrown in the river to be eaten by the crocodiles. Now, this was not the result of ISIS. It was not Al-Qaeda. It was not Boko Haram.
This was 1964 and it was in the Congo. These are Congolese rebels that did this. You know, since the Congo had received independence from Belgium, honestly, even to this day, there's been unrest in that nation ever since. This man was a missionary.
He was an assimilationist of God missionary and he had been in the Congo for years. He had made several trips to the Congo, come back on furlough and went right back there again. Come back on furlough and right back there again. This was his calling.
This was his field. So we think about him and he had a wife and he had three children and we think this is horrible and it is. Please, it is. This is horrible.
I want you to think about something. Life cannot be cut short if it lasts for eternity. Who can cut short the life of the saints? Nobody.
Now there's tremendous heartbreak, tremendous heartbreak with his family. I think if it were possible to covet in heaven, okay, now it's one of the big 10, right? So you can't covet in heaven. But if you could, you would covet the martyr's reward.
Think about the reward of this man. He stands before his Savior that he gave his life for. God doesn't promise us happily ever after. But listen, God promises us happily forever after.
Yeah? That's what this man found. That's what J.W. Tucker found.
Now he had a friend who was also a missionary and before they made this last trip, you know, they had been unrest in the Congo and they knew what was going on and things were happening there. And his friend said, don't go. He said, I'm not talking about his friend. He didn't go back.
And he tried to talk to J. Tucker out of not going. And he told him, if you go in, you won't come out. This is what Tucker said.
God didn't tell me I had to come out. He only told me I had to go in. You know, the man that this whole book is about, Beniah, who went into that pit on a snowy day, going in after that lion? I bet he'd say the same thing.
I didn't tell him to go. I told him to go in. He went in and did his business, right? We live in a culture that idolizes success and demonizes failure.
Don't we? You really do. But see, that's not God's culture. In God's culture, success is not an issue of winning or losing.
In God's culture, success is obeying. If you do what God told you to do, where you obedient, it's about praising God. Open your mouth. Give him praise.
He's worthy of it. David gave the sacrifice of praise in those 15 years of the Cape of the Duum. It's about giving God glory. And I'm not repeating myself here.
Praise is a very specific thing. Praise is something. I'm going to praise Paul. I'm going to tell him how great he is.
He's a great preacher. He's a great preacher. That's praise. What gives glory to God is a transcendence.
I can give glory to God in praise for just the way I live my life. I do this in the name of the Lord. I give a cup of water in the name of the Lord. I maintain my integrity in front of workers, the people I work with.
It gives glory to God. Do that and that makes you successful. Stewardship is how we define success in God's kingdom. Do the best with what you got.
I play basketball when I was in junior high. Look how tall I am. I'm 5'9". How many 5'9 basketball players do you know?
I'm not too many. I knew I got in high school. I didn't have talent to be a basketball player. But you know what I can still go out there and play and do the best I could with what I had.
Am I going to be Mr. basketball in Illinois? No. Surprise.
You're trying to remember. Let me say back. I'm just damn. But God's giving you stuff.
Do the best you can with what you have and God calls success whether the world sees that as a success or not. In this last one, I love this. When those who know you best respect you the most, that success. Think about the people that you are around all the time.
Think about your coworkers. I can think about mine. I can think of myself as success if I think Jenny Phelps respects me. Nathan respects me.
Rich Stimpy respects me. The people that I work with, they see me in any mood, in any circumstances, right? Your success if they respect you. At the end of the day I want to be famous in my own home.
Yeah, how about that? How do your family members see you? Do they see you as a success? Do they respect you?
Do you maintain your integrity in front of your family members? Because the people you are around all the time. If you succeeded the wrong thing, you failed. Yeah?
If you failed at the right thing and you succeeded. Here's something else. We've always said that, I for this a lot, the courage is not the absence of fear. Have you ever heard like a hero say that?
Someone's getting a medal who did something brave and they say, I was scared to death, right? I mean, it's not the fact that if you're brave that you don't have fear, it's just that you ignore it and you overcome it, right? Success is not the absence of failure. You're going to fail, but you can still be successful.
You're going to fail, it's going to happen. In your career you're going to have those projects you take on that you're going to fail at and how are you going to respond? You're going to fail forward, right? You're going to fall forward and grow from it?
Success is not the absence of failure. Success is determined by these things. How do you handle adversity? Things aren't always going to go right, are they?
In fact, guaranteed things are going to go wrong a lot of times. How do you handle adversity when things are pushing back? How do you handle disappointment? People are going to disappoint you?
Situations are going to disappoint you. You're going to disappoint yourself. I've disappointed myself a lot. How do you handle that?
How do you handle mistakes? I mean, sometimes when you're trying to be successful, you just make mistakes. You mess up. You do.
How do you handle those? Do you learn from them? Do you go forward? Do you let them get you down?
Do you be overrun with guilt? Shake it off. Good night. Though he falls, he shall not be able to cast down for the Lord of Holzom with his wrong right hand, right?
I promise. And how do you handle an offense? People offend you. People are offensive.
They just are. You will get offended if you ever step out of your door. You'll get offended. If you ever leave your home, you're going to get offended.
Actually, if you ever turn your TV on, you're probably going to get offended. And probably if you ever speak to your spouse, you're going to get offended occasionally. It just happens, right? It just happens.
How are you going to deal with it? All these things can make you bitter or they can make you better. The difference is one letter, isn't it? It sounds so similar, but it's a big difference.
It makes you bitter or make you better. And you make that choice because even if something isn't your fault, you can take response, ability. Sorry. It's a bad pun, isn't it?
That is a bad pun. I didn't make it up so I can make fun of it. You have the choice. You have the ability to respond how you want to respond.
Not to react. Not to say, I could stop myself. You have the ability to respond how you want to. That is your response, ability.
Take it. Grab it and take it. Don't let things like this steal your joy. But let them feel your fire.
Let them get you revved up. Easiest example of this is from history. 1836, the Alamo. We all know what happened.
It was Texans' battle for independence. And everyone was killed at the Alamo in San Antonio. A horrible, horrible, horrible defeat. But it became a rallying cry, didn't it?
What they say, remember the Alamo? And it was a rallying cry. That war didn't last much longer after that. It's remarkable.
Let these things not steal your joy. Let them fuel your fire. And remember, the goal isn't winning. It's not.
The goal is giving God the glory. In Joshua the third chapter and the fifth verse says this. Joshua told the people, consecrate yourselves for tomorrow the Lord will do amazing things among you. We all want to do amazing things for God, don't we?
We do. We want to do amazing things. But this scripture turns that around. It says consecrate yourself and then God's going to do the amazing things.
Let God do the amazing things. To consecrate yourself means to sanctify yourself apart for God's purpose. Set yourself apart from sin, apart from the things of the world and consecrate yourself to the Lord. And when you do that, God will do amazing things.
Let him do what he wants to do for you. Do you understand God wants to do amazing things for you? He does. Let him do that.
And I want to give you an example. The story in the Old Testament about King Jehoshaphat, I think it's 7 Chronicles 20. And the Amorites and the Mobites and the men from Mount Seer were coming up against Judah. They were about the number of armies of Judah.
And Jehoshaphat went to the Lord and to seek the Lord. So what is going on here? These people are coming and they're going to destroy God. What are you going to do about it?
And God said, okay, you know, you just go out there and send the singers out in front of the army. Praise me. This isn't your battle. This is mine.
And just see what I'm going to do. And you know, a lot of times I've heard people tell this story. I've heard worship leaders tell the story and they talk about the fact that, yeah, we go in the battle. Our praise is doing battle.
We battle with our praise. You know, that's how we do spiritual battle through praise. And that's not what that story says. And they didn't do any battling.
Understand? They didn't do any battling. They got out there and they praised God and God did the battling. God did the fight.
They come up over the hill and all those armies were dead. They'd kill each other. It took them three days to pick up all the spoils from that army. Three days.
They didn't do any fighting. God did an amazing thing and they praised him for it. Let God do amazing things. Consecrate yourself and let him do amazing things.
It's the hardest thing is to trust God and not ourselves. To give up that control, right? To give God controls. The hardest thing.
Finally, I want to wrap this up. I want to read a couple of passages from Hebrews, the 11th chapter. And you're familiar with the 11th chapter on faith and it talks about men of faith in Old Testament times. Let's read the first segment of it.
This is from verse 32. And what more shall I say? I do not have time to tell about Gideon, Barack, Samson, Jetha, David, and Samuel and the prophets who through faith conquered kingdoms, administered justice, gained what was promised, who shut the mouths of lions, quenched the fury of the flames, escaped the edge of the sword, whose weakness was turned to strength, who became powerful in battle and routed foreign armies. Women received back their dead, raised to life again.
Wow. He says, I don't even have time to tell you all these stories, but this is what happened. I want you to hear the next part. This is verse 35.
There were others who were tortured, refusing to be released so that they might gain an even better resurrection. Some faced jeers and flogging and even chains and imprisonment. They were put to death by stoning. They were sought into.
They were killed by the sword. They went about in sheep skins and goat skins, destitute, persecuted and mistreated. The world was not worthy of them. They wandered in deserts, mountains, living in caves and in holes in the ground.
So this is what I want to ask you tonight. We're only half of these heroes. The first half. We're only they in the will of God.
The other ones were victorious, right? What about the other half? The other half. We're sawn into that that wandered about destitute.
What about them, right? The will of God is not an insurance plan, being in the will of God. The will of God is a dangerous plan. The will of God might get you killed.
But if God gets the glory, mission accomplished. Yeah. Let's remember this. The eternal reward infinitely outweighs the temporal sacrifice.
And all these men and women knew it. I just read they all knew that. They'd do it again. So now the rest of the story is back to J.W.
Tucker. Two days after he was killed, you know, that these rebels had rounded up all the men and taken them to a Dominican mission. And that's where they murdered them. The next day his wife hadn't heard anything.
She called the mission into Mother Superior and answered the phone. She said, where's Tucker? Where's Jay? Where's Jay Tucker?
And she said, these words, he is in heaven. Next day the Belgian army got them out. They were flying her back now in the United States. And as she was on the plane, she wrote out this prayer.
Her name was Angelina. She wrote out this prayer. She said, oh, Father, we do thank thee for that goodness and love and many blessings. We love thee and praise thee for that care.
And through these many difficult days thou has watched over us and kept us. And now thou has truly delivered us out of the lion's den. We praise thee and thank thee for it. And we ask that you take Jay's life, which has been laid down and use it in death for thine honor and glory.
A few years later, there was again civil unrest in the Congo. And there's this tribe that lived around this river, the Mankbetu tribe. And the Mankbetu king asked the government to send help because of the unrest that was around him. And the government sent this police chief to that tribe.
He was a man that J.W. Tucker had led to the Lord before he was murdered. And he was a Christian man now. And when he got there, he tried to witness to the Mankbetu people and he was having no luck whatsoever.
And then he heard a tribal tradition. This tribal tradition said, if the blood of any man flows into the Bomokandhi River, you must listen to him. So, okay. So he told him there was a man.
His blood flowed into the Bomokandhi River. And this is what he wants you to hear. Listen to him. And he told the story of Christ.
In that day, several members of that tribe accepted Christ. And today there are thousands, thousands of Christ followers in that area, thousands. There are dozens of churches. What did this wife pray?
She prayed, take J's life, which has been laid down and used it in death for the Imglorian honor. God did it. I have to be glorified. This is what I want to tell you.
It's not for naught. What you may be going through, it's not for naught. It never is. You may be in a holding pattern.
You may be in the cave of Adulum. You may be going through trials and temptations and wondering when is my dream going to come to fruition? It's not for naught. It never is.
Every prayer will be answered. Every sacrifice will be honored. Every good deed will be rewarded. And every seat of faith will bear fruit.
And here's the ultimate end. Let me read this. This is the ultimate end. Then I saw a new heaven in the new earth.
For the first heaven, the first earth had passed away. And there was no longer any sea. I saw the holy city, Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride, beautifully dressed for her husband. And I heard a loud voice from the throne saying, look, God's dwelling place is now among the people.
He will dwell with them. They will be His people and God Himself will be with them and be their God. He will wipe every tear from their eyes. There will be no more death or mourning or crying or pain for the older order of things has passed away.
Yeah. I saw the book again, folks. I want to repeat this one more time. The eternal reward infinitely outweighs the temporal sacrifice.
No matter what you're going through today, hang in there. Take to the dream God has given you. Don't let go of it. Learn from the season of your life and let God do miracle.
Let's pray. Father, I pray for my friends tonight, Lord, and I pray for you. All the situations that the different ones of us find ourselves in, Lord, and I pray that we will learn tonight to be patient and wait on you. I pray that we will let you do the work in us in this time of our lives that you want to do.
For those in this place who have already been through, maybe a period like that, come out the other side. Let them share their victories, Lord, and encourage others and pray for others, Lord. For those that find themselves there, Lord, let them continue to call on you and give you glory and everything they do. Help us always to learn from the circumstances you put us in.
Help us to make the best of the seasons that you put us in. And help us to continue to pursue passionately, passionately the dreams that you have put in our hearts, Lord. We do this, Lord, that you would be glorified and praised and lifted up. Offer your glory, God.
And we thank you that the trials we go through are never for nothing. They're never for not that you see everyone and you are a Redeemer. Thank you. In Jesus name, pray.
Amen. God bless you. Good night.