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God has a
very high interest in the Kingdom of Heaven.
Jesus told us to seek first the kingdom of God and
His
righteousness. Later, He taught us to
pray, “Thy kingdom come, thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven.” If God is interested in the Kingdom … we
should be interested too … don’t you think?
The Bible promises that those who follow Christ are
to be “kings and
priest” in the Kingdom of God.
I would
like to compare the life of David as he met the challenge of becoming a
King in
his kingdom … to the challenge we have in becoming kings and priest in
the
kingdom of God.
First,
there is the anointing!
1 Sam 16:12-13
12 And the LORD
said,
"Arise, anoint him; for this is the one!"
13 Then Samuel took
the horn of oil and anointed him in the midst of his brothers; and the
Spirit
of the LORD came upon David from that day forward.
I want you
to know that those who have responded to Christ to follow Him are the
one that
God has chosen to anoint! You have been
called of God to be a king and a priest in God’s kingdom!
We are called to kingly duty and priestly
ministry. We are the ones God has
chosen!
Last
Wednesday evening I spoke about the anointing of David.
Samuel had met all the other brothers … the
first three brothers are named in the Hebrew: ‘Pride,’ ‘Gifted,’ and
‘Hurt;’
and God didn’t choose to anoint any of them!
He chose David, whose name means ‘Lover.’ It’s a love relationship with God that begins
our journey toward becoming a king in God’s kingdom!
Although
David was anointed to become the king, as you read the context of the
verse, he
continued to be a shepherd in his
father’s household until God directed otherwise. Sometimes
in our excitement about being
anointed we forget that we still need to keep the sheep and be
submitted in our
fathers at household! David did his
chores like he always did and obeyed his father!
Perhaps it was during this time that he
killed the lion and the bear? I’m
not sure, but I know it was the anointing
of God that enabled him to do mighty exploits on his journey to become
a king!
Along with
the lion and the bear there was a giant along the way!
The Philistines had come to do battle with
Israel and they had a champion by the name of Goliath.
They were in a standoff and David was sent by
his father to the battleground with some food for his brothers and
David heard
Goliath’s challenge!
1 Sam 17:8-9
Choose a man for
yourselves, and let him come down to me. If he is able to fight with me
and
kill me, then we will be your servants. But if I prevail against him
and kill
him, then you shall be our servants and serve us.
This
challenge had been given daily for several days in a row and King Saul
and all
of Israel was terrified! But David
wasn’t! But he not only heard the
challenge of the giant, but he heard the offer of the king!
1 Sam 17:25-26
25 So the men
of
Israel said, "Have you seen this man who has come up? Surely he has
come
up to defy Israel; and it shall be that the man who kills him the king
will
enrich with great riches, will give him his daughter, and give his
father's
house exemption from taxes in Israel."
26 Then David
spoke
to the men who stood by him, saying, "What shall be done for the man
who
kills this Philistine and takes away the reproach from Israel?
Did you
hear the offer? The man who killed
Goliath would be enriched, he would get to marry the king’s daughter,
and his
family would be free from taxation!
David’s ears perked up and he asked someone to
verify that the king had
made this offer! It was confirmed and
David
volunteered to do the job: riches, a wife, and recognition!
But
wait. The offer made by God was for
David to become the King. The offer made
by a man, King Saul, is that David would become a part of the Kings
household. Notice!
There is a difference between what God offers and
what a man may
offer. Too often on our way to the
kingdom there are opportunities to become side tracked.
This has be the ruin of a many a Christian …
it’s more inviting to partake in the things that impress men instead of
the
things that impress God. Be
careful!
David kept
his head, but his response to the offer became a snare to him later on
his
journey! (We’ll talk about that in a
moment!) When David was presented to the
king, his response was, “You are but a
youth and Goliath is a man of war!”
David responded:
1 Sam 17:34-37
34 … "Your
servant used to keep his father's sheep, and when a lion or a bear came
and
took a lamb out of the flock,
35 I went out after
it and struck it, and delivered the lamb from its mouth; and when it
arose
against me, I caught it by its beard, and struck and killed it.
36 Your servant has
killed both lion and bear; and this uncircumcised Philistine will be
like one
of them, seeing he has defied the armies of the living God."
37 Moreover David
said, "The LORD, who delivered me from the paw of the lion and from the
paw of the bear, He will deliver me from the hand of this Philistine."
David knew
where his strength came from! It was the
anointing of the Lord that had enabled him to defeat the lion and the
bear and
he was ready for the challenge of Goliath!
The
difficulty of our journey to the kingdom is to remember that our
strength comes
from the anointing! It is God’s presence
in our lives that causes us to have victories … not our strength! We have all met some lions and some bears and
have seen what God can do with them and we need to remember those
victories as
we press toward the kingdom!
Not only did
Saul have an offer for David’s abilities … he also has a solution
David’s
problem. Saul dressed David in his armor
in preparation for the battle!
1 Sam 17:38-39
38 So Saul
clothed
David with his armor, and he put a bronze helmet on his head; he also
clothed
him with a coat of mail.
39 David fastened his
sword to his armor and tried to walk, for he had not tested them. And
David
said to Saul, "I cannot walk with these, for I have not tested them."
So David took them off.
I want you
to know that the solutions offered by the world to our problems will
not fit
right! Thankfully David knew enough to
refuse the offer of Saul’s armor.
Regretfully there are a number of Christians running
around the world
attempting to conquer Satan while wearing someone else’s armor! God called you to be you!
You can’t fight the Goliath’s in your life by
using someone else’s words, someone else’s prayers, someone else’s
methods, or
someone else’s anointing! God anointed
you to be a king and priest in His Kingdom.
Use His Anointing!
After
rejecting Saul’s armor, David prepared for battle with the weapon he
was most
familiar with … his slingshot. He picked
up five smooth stones and advanced toward the enemy!
It’s not the stones that killed Goliath … it
was the words of David!
1 Sam 17:45-46
45 Then David
said to
the Philistine, "You come to me with a sword, with a spear, and with a
javelin. But I come to you in the name of the LORD of hosts, the God of
the
armies of Israel, whom you have defied.
46 This day the LORD
will deliver you into my hand, and I will strike you and take your head
from
you.
And he
did! The battle was won but this was
only the beginning of David’s story as he began his journey to becoming
the
King of his kingdom! David was
invited
to live in the king’s home and to become one of the warriors in Saul’s
kingdom! He was advancing!
But do you
remember David’s interest in getting rich and marrying the kings
daughter? When we involve ourselves in
man’s methods,
we often get man’s reward. Saul was
jealous of David’s successes and decided to lay a trap for him!
1 Sam 18:20-21
20 Now Michal,
Saul's
daughter, loved David. And they told Saul, and the thing pleased him.
21 So
Saul said, "I will give her to him, that she may be a snare to him, and
that the hand of the Philistines may be against him."
1 Sam 18:29
…Saul
became David's enemy continually.
David won
the prize. Not God’s prize … but King
Saul’s prize … a snare! David’s interest
in winning the gold, the daughter in marriage, and the position of no
taxation
may have been the tool Satan attempted to use for his undoing. On his
way to becoming king he was almost snared!
Satan has snares for you and for me as well! We must be careful that we trust ourselves to
the anointing of the Holy Spirit and not to the devices of man. Man’s ways are always an avenue of a snare.
Saul
attempted to take David’s life but the anointing of God upon David’s
life was
what saved him. David eventually had to
flee the house of King Saul. You
can’t become king when you are living
in man’s domain.
1 Sam 22
1 David therefore
departed from there and escaped to the cave of Adullam.
1 Sam 23
14 Saul sought him
every day, but God did not deliver him into his hand.
The road to
becoming all that God wants you to become may not look like its taking
you in
the right direction, but if you trust God and live in the anointing of
the Holy
Spirit, there is a place in God’s kingdom that He wants you to acquire!
There was
finally a day when God’s plan was completed in David’s life for him to
become
the king of Israel
2 Sam 5:2-4
3 Therefore all
the
elders of Israel came to the king at Hebron, and King David made a
covenant
with them at Hebron before the LORD. And they anointed David king over
Israel.
4 David was thirty
years old when he began to reign, and he reigned forty years.
For forty
years he led the nation of Israel. There
were battles to be fought, buildings to be built, a place of worship to
be
established, and people to be governed.
The anointing which he needed in becoming King was
the same anointing he
needed to govern properly. He wasn’t
perfect in living … every time he ignored the anointing he got in
trouble! Satan always has a snare prepared
for us when
the anointing is ignored!
But we can
learn from David. God has a anointed us
as kings and priest in his Kingdom and he is preparing to have
authority to
minister to others and see His kingdom established!
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