Burned But Not Broken

Good morning, everybody. Grab a seat. Glad you're here. Man, aren't you? Aren't you absolutely blessed and thankful for air conditioning? I mean, it's been so hot the last few days, right? It's been crazy hot. Mankind's greatest invention was air conditioning. So, thanks for that. Hey, we're glad you're here. And I want to take a moment to just pray for us. Ask God to meet us in our point of need, whatever we've had going on. Again, sometimes I think we make the assumption that whatever's happening in my life is actually what's happening in everybody else's life. And that's not true, right? Some of you have had a phenomenal week, and some of you have had a tough week. And we just want to take a moment, pray, ask God to meet us at our point of need. Would you join me, please?

Father, thank you for the opportunity we have to gather to worship. And Lord, we're just grateful for the privilege of that, and and and the reminder of of hope and grace and love that comes, uh, through Jesus. And and so, Father, as we gather in this place, help us to set aside the things that are distracting, things I'm anxious about today, things that are are grabbing my attention. And and Lord, uh, allow you to speak into my heart and life. And and Father, I pray that whatever's happening that right now, um, is creating a lot of stress for us, that you would meet us in the middle of those things. Father, you invite us to cast our cares on you. And so, we are grateful that we can do that today. And Lord, we thank you for Jesus, and we just ask that he would be honored and lifted up. We pray in his name. Amen.

Uh, I'm a baseball fan, and I try to catch games when I can. And I saw this clip not long ago. Uh, the San Francisco Giant Stadium. Um, well, let's just watch it.

>> Give McCubby go Dave all that time.

>> Yeah, he's just too good.

>> I think the woman just gave him the New York City Cab salute.

>> I think I think he deserved it.

>> He gave it back.

>> Yeah, there you go.

>> Ain't that awesome?

I mean, there she is, sitting out in McCovby Cove, and there's a home run ball hit there, and she goes swooping over to get it, and it's right there. It's right, it's right there. And Dave, I don't know who Dave is, but swoops in and steals it. You ever felt like that's happened to you? You've been right on the edge of something you want, something you need, something you think of value, and bam, it's not safe to get back in the water for us. Like, like there it is in our grasp, and now it's gone. Now, a silly baseball is not that big a deal, but what happens when some stuff that matters to us gets taken? Things that we really are counting on, hoping for, things that that we we are leaning into. For some, that loss comes in a lot of ways. Maybe, maybe we lose a job. Maybe for us, we we've lost a loved one. Those are those are difficult, painful things. Maybe a relationship has been broken. We've lost that. Maybe an opportunity we're leaning into, looking forward to, doesn't happen the way we think that that there it is. It's right there. And then somehow Dave sweeps in and grabs it.

And we've been in this series on David for a bit. Uh, David, you remember the Old Testament king, the uh, the young boy who defeated Goliath, and God blesses him and anoints him, and and um, and David is is this fascinating, uh, character we find in in the Old Testament. And so much of of what we see about David has moments of great victory and then moments of heartache and pain. We're going to be in the Old Testament, the book of 1st Samuel, which chronicles a bit of David's life. Uh, 1st Samuel chapter 30. Now, let me give you kind of the scene of what's going on. And you've been hearing for the last several weeks that Saul, the king, who both loved David almost as a son and despised David because he saw David as a threat to his power and rule. And so he would embrace him, bring him into the kingdom, uh, into the palace, and then he would he would uh, threaten to put him to death. What a crazy scenario, uh, for David. And now David is running from Saul. And for almost two years now, David has been living in the land of the Philistines. Now, remember, Israelites and Philistines didn't like each other. They were at war all the time. In fact, David had been at war with the Philistines a number of times. But he made peace with a king there. There were five regions of Philistine, and and uh, each one ruled by a king, and one of the kings took favor on David. Kind of almost hired him as a mercenary. Him and his 600 soldiers, maybe a thousand soldiers and their families. In fact, he gave them a little town, a city called Ziklag. And he said, "You and your families, your people can have this ground, can have this city." And there they spent their time, had children there, raise their flocks there, uh, did commerce there. And David would event, uh, once in a while go out and do battle. Now, the king, uh, thought it was the Philistine king, thought that David was actually attacking Israelite towns on his behalf. And he was actually attacking Amalekite towns and bringing the plunder back. And then the Philistines as a whole decided they were going to attack Israel. And so this king who liked David said, "Come on with us and help. We could use your strength in battle. I trust you." But the other kings, like, said, "Whoa, no way." Like, he's an Israelite. He's going to he's going to turn on us in the battle. And eventually, they just decided to send him home, which for David was a reprieve because how was he going to go and and and be in a position where he was going to be, uh, uh, fighting against his own kinsmen?

They get to Ziklag, and here's what they find. 1st Samuel chapter 30, I'm going to start in verse one. "David and his men reached Ziklag on the third day. Now the Amalekites had raided the Negev and Ziklag. They attacked Ziklag and they burned it, and they had taken captive the women and everyone else in it, both young and old. They killed none of them but carried them off as they went on their way. When David and his men reached Ziklag, they found it destroyed by fire and their wives and sons and daughters taken captive. So David and his men wept aloud until they had no strength left to weep. David's two wives had been captured. David was greatly distressed because the men were talking about stoning him. Each one was bitter in spirit because of his sons and daughters."

So here's the scene. On the one hand, he gets a reprieve and he's thankful, and him and all of his soldiers are coming back to home, and they get there, and their entire city had been burned to the ground, their flocks, their cattle, their sheep all gone, their crops, uh, destroyed, and worse, their family members taken captive. And you can see these soldiers are not happy. David's distressed. In fact, uh, the language we get here is David's actually depressed, and the men are angry and bitter. When bad stuff happens to us, when there's great loss, and we are left in a hole, the magnitude of their grief and anger and frustration and disappointment was unbelievable. When something we want, something we need, something we value is stolen from us, taken from us, you can imagine their angst. And when bad stuff happens, we got questions, don't we? I've been doing the people thing for a long time. And when bad stuff happens to us, when something that we don't want, don't like, don't expect happens, we get some questions. The first is, why is this happening to me? Like, why me? How come me? That's the most common question we get.

Some of you have been, uh, praying for my grandson Cooper, who has leukemia. Got diagnosed in December. And I am so grateful. Our family is really grateful for your prayers. And, uh, Cooper is, uh, he's a nine-year-old. He's just such a great kid. He's resilient. He's pretty thoughtful. And so about a month ago, he was saying to his mom and dad, "Hey, doesn't God make you the way he wants you to be?" And they were saying, "Yeah, but he does." And then he said this, "Well, if God makes you the way you want to be, how come he made me get cancer?" That's a tough question, isn't it? Why me? They had a great response for him about, uh, the brokenness of the world and God didn't pick that for him, and, and, uh, and I've watched Cooper process. We've chatted through it a couple of times, and I love his spirit. He's so resilient. The other night I was over, um, and he's in a tough round of chemo right now, and, um, and so I'd been saving a gift I'd gotten for him, um, this coin. And I was waiting for a day when I knew he wasn't feeling great. So, I'm over at his house the night before, and he's not feeling super, and I'm saying to him, "Hey, buddy, I got this gift. I'm going to bring it over tomorrow." And, and he said, "No, you got to tell me tonight, Bob. Give me some clues." So, I'm giving him clues. He's not guessing it. And he says, "You got to tell me." I said, "Buddy, I'm not telling you. I'm going to bring it tomorrow." "No, Papa, you got to tell me." I said, "Buddy, I'm seriously not bringing." Here's how I, I love his spirit. He looked at me and he said, "Well, Papa, in fact, here's a picture of him when I gave him this coin. Papa, you know, I got cancer." Yeah. And actually, to be honest, I laughed. I love that because I love the fact that he's embracing where he is. But here's the reality. When stuff happens to us that we don't like, how come me? Why this happen to me?

And why does bad stuff happen to us? Well, sometimes it happens because we make stupid choices. Like we do dumb things. And as a result of those dumb things, we get dumb results. I don't know if you were catching all the media stuff this week at the Coldplay concert where the CEO of the company is HR person, and, yeah, you play stupid games, you win stupid prizes. That's what happens. And if I keep hitting myself in the head with a hammer, maybe I should stop. Sometimes bad stuff happens, and we, we did it ourselves. Sometimes bad stuff happens because of somebody else's choices. They were at a Christmas party. Neither one of them had a driver's license. They'd been taken from them for several drunk driving offenses. They had too much to drink. Their friends had to actually get them in the truck and help them start the truck. And as they're driving down the road, they end up veering left into the car my sister was driving, senior in high school, and she was killed in that accident. Wasn't her choice. It was the result of somebody else's poor choices.

Sometimes bad stuff happens to us because we live in a broken-down world. The Bible actually tells us that bad stuff is going to happen. That this is not the world God intended. It's not the way it happened. And sometimes bad stuff happens, and it happens to us, and we ask, why? Why me?

But here's a second question that I get a lot. Where was God? Like, like couldn't God have stopped some of this from happening? If there's a merciful and loving God that we talk about in the Bible, that we just sang about, that does things for us, cares for us, if he's a parent to us. We had only been Christians a few years when my sister was in that accident. And I got to tell you, I stood in the cemetery, and we were asking, why? And God, couldn't you have stopped it? Two more seconds, she would have been by that spot. The guy stayed at the party longer. Maybe they choose not to drive. May, lots of ways that God could have stopped that from happening. So, how come he didn't?

And I want to avoid two extremes here that as believers, sometimes we get trapped in. One of those extremes is that there are there are many believers who say, "Well, God predestines everything." So that everything that happens, God actually predestined, even down to the clothes you're wearing today and the parking space you pulled into, which lands in the camp of going, "See, well, it's really not my fault. Well, I mean, God's just making everything happen anyway, so the stuff I do is not actually my fault." Kind of sweeps it around on him. But here's the problem with that. It reduces us to puppets where we don't have any choice. We don't have any ability. God is just pulling the strings. It makes God the author of evil and leaves us without any hope or answers in this life. So, one extreme is that God causes everything, which doesn't actually line up with scripture at all.

Or the second extreme is this one, that God just kind of spun things up, got the clock started, you know, turn, turn the watch on, and now he's sitting back, kind of powerless to do anything. And the problem with that, it mocks the power of God. It leaves us as orphans without hope or help. Neither one of those extremes. You see, there's a balance in the Bible between God's sovereignty, his lordship, and the ability he gives us to choose. God is sovereign. I love what the Apostle Paul said in the New Testament. "The Son is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn over all creation. For in him all things were created, things in heaven and earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or powers or rulers or authorities, all things have been created through him and for him. He is before all things, and in him all things hold together." God is sovereign. He is over all, and we also get free will. Paul goes on to say, "Once you were alienated from God and you were enemies in your minds because of your choices, your evil behavior, but now he has reconciled you."

Could God prevent bad things from happening? Could my grandson Cooper have skated through without the diagnosis? Could my sister have been spared that accident? Could God have stopped it? Yeah. Or he's not God. But we live in a busted world, and bad stuff happens, and our choices contribute to that. And mankind's choices have created the brokenness we see in the world. And so our greatest blessing, which is free will, I get to choose, is also our sometimes greatest curse because we choose. I can't love someone unless I have the choice to choose to love them. And what God wants is for us to love him, to choose. That doesn't make you a puppet, an Ottoman, hasn't put your life on a spin cycle where you have no choice. And our choices have created so much chaos and mess in the world. And we live in that brokenness.

And now David and his men come home, partly because of their choices. They'd been invading that Amalekite villages, and now they're getting their due. David shouldn't have probably been living in Philistine to begin with. And now here they are, and the entire city is gone, and everything they have. And David's in a tough spot. Look what happens though. He's upset. He's angry. He's grief-stricken. But he does the one thing that he knows to do. In verse six, it says, "But David strengthened himself in the Lord his God." He could have gotten swallowed up in his grief. It would have been normal and justified. Sorrow looks back, right, at the what we've lost. Grief, it has that journey we go through where we get angry, and we lost, and we're confused. It's, and we look back. Or David could have spent his time worrying, worrying about all that was going on, how he was going to fix this, what his guys were going to do to him, were they going to ever find their their families again? He could have spent a lot because worry looks around, doesn't it? And worry is a thief. It steals our peace. It steals our joy. It steals our moments. Like right now, we're we're like, and we're great at worrying. Do you know, 43.5% of uh, US adults said they're worrying more anxious this year than they were in the previous year. And that number keeps going up every year. And COVID accelerated all of that for us. Do you know that 43 million adults and, uh, 20%, one in five adolescents report anxiety or depression disorders today? It is a growing mental health crisis for us. We worry about a lot of stuff. We get anxious. We, we get nervous. We start looking around, and things don't look right for us. It would be David's son who wrote the book of Proverbs, who says these words, "An anxious heart weighs a person down." And here's what I know about me and you, that sometimes you and I get weighted down worrying about stuff. What might happen? What could happen? What didn't happen? What, what, what's going on? What, what's going to work for me? Jesus had these words to say, "Don't worry about tomorrow, because tomorrow's going to worry about itself. Each day's got enough trouble of its own." That's true, isn't it? And Jesus is saying to you, "Hey, quit, quit trying to live ahead."

I love it. A a guy walked into work one morning, and man, he was skipping and smiling and just like in a great mood. And his friend said to him, "Dude, what happened to you over the?" And he said, "Hey, over the weekend, I decided that worrying was eating my lunch. So I hired a guy on the weekend to worry for me." He said, "Every Monday, every Monday, I give him a list of stuff to worry about, and then he does all the worrying." And he said, he said, "Dude, I mean, that sounds awesome. How much are you paying the guy?" He said, "I pay him $2,500 a week." And his friend said, "$2,500 a week? How in the world can you afford that?" He said, "It's not my worry, it's his." You know, that that worry is a thing that eats our lunch, doesn't it?

And David went to the one place he could go, the one place he knew, the one place where that he he had banked on so many times. He went back to that anchor point of God being with him. And David strengthened himself in the Lord his God. Do you know the book of Psalms in the Old Testament? In fact, easy way to find Psalms sometimes, just just stick your thumb in the middle of your Bible and open it up, and you're going to be in Psalms or near Psalms. And the book of Psalms are actually prayers that have been written, and over half of them were written by David. And we don't know if David wrote this psalm before Ziklag or during Ziklag experience or after Ziklag, but Psalm, uh, 13, hear his words. "How long, Lord, will you forget me forever? How long will you hide your face from me? How long do I wrestle with my thoughts and day after day, and have sorrow in my heart? Do you hear? How, how long am I going to be anxious about this? How long am I going to be depressed in this? How come you're not paying attention?" And then David goes on and says, "How, how long will my enemy triumph over me? Look on me and answer, Lord. Give light to my eyes, or I will sleep in death, and my enemy will say to me, 'I have overcome him,' and my foes will rejoice when I fall."

But I, but I, David ends the psalm in these words, "But I trust in your unfailing love, and my heart rejoices in your salvation, and I will sing your praise, for you have been good to me." In the midst of his sorrow, in the midst of his grief, in the midst of where is God and why me, David goes back to the one thing he can trust. He anchors in. Sorrow looks backwards, doesn't it? Worry looks around. Faith looks ahead. And David started looking ahead.

In fact, what he does now, in the midst of his grief and anxiety, is he starts taking some very positive steps. I, I love, I love, uh, the proverb that that says this, "The mind of man plans his ways, but God directs his steps." In other words, God's given me the ability to think and dream and scheme and counsel and strategize, and he's inviting me to pray that he would direct my steps. And that's kind of how I see the sovereignty of God and free will of God working hand in hand. There have been plenty of times when I've said, "God, I don't know what to do." And I go up in the mountains in Colorado and sit on a rock and wait for God to send me a postcard, and it doesn't come. And then there have been more times, more times when I'm like, "Hey, God, I know you're busy. I kind of got this figured out. I know what I'm going to do next." And what God's inviting me to do is to plan my ways, to counsel, to strategize, to seek advice, to step in, and to, and to invite him to direct my steps. I, I see it like a, a car. It's hard to turn the direction of a parked car, isn't it? I mean, we did that one time. Some friends and I, uh, we were all young couples. We'd gone to this restaurant that opened up in Fort Myers. It was its opening night. It was, we couldn't wait to go there. It was the first Mexican restaurant we'd gotten in Fort Myers. And we were all excited about that. And we get there, and one guy in one of those nice little sports cars, you know, like, like little Spitfire cars, had parked right on the white line of a parking place. Well, my friends were bigger, he heftier guys than me. And so we actually picked the car up and turned it sideways in that parking place. Was an awesome moment. I wish we'd have been there when the dude came out to get his car. A parked car is hard to move. But when I get moving in a car, I, I can break or speed up. I can yield. I can go around a detour. I think that's how God wants me to live in his sovereignty, trusting him, counting on him, looking for him, and paying attention to getting going. And that's what David does here.

Look, look what he does. He, he found strength in the Lord his God. And then David said to Abiathar the priest, the son of Ahimelech, "Bring me the ephod." Ephod was a a robe that the priests would wear when they were seeking an answer from God. And the priest brought it to him, and David inquired of the Lord, "Shall I pursue this raiding party? Will I overtake them?" And the answer he got back was, "Pursue them. You will certainly overtake them and succeed in the rescue." So, in the midst of his grief and an anxiety, the one thing he does is he connects back with God.

I was in Cincinnati. I was a, a sophomore in college. Uh, this was December 16th, uh, a week before Christmas, when I got a call in my dorm room, um, that my sister had been in this accident and been killed. And, uh, so I'm, uh, hustling to get home the next morning. I fly back into, uh, upstate New York into Syracuse, and I, I, uh, a friend picks me up, and you know the family, you know, all the grief and confusion of that, and, and, uh, I get to my house, and my dad's not there. My mom is there. A lot of pe people are there, but my dad's not there. And a little while later, he came in, and he'd been at church that morning. And I said, "Dad, I, I, like, I'm just surprised you went this morning." And he said, "Where else would I go in this moment? Where else would I go?" And that's what David did. He connected with God. And then he gathered his men to go find his family. If you like the Taken movies, Liam Neeson's got nothing on David here. They're about to head in and get their families back.

"David and the 600 men with him came to the Besor Valley, where some stayed behind. 200 of them were too exhausted." The language there actually might mean that they were actually too depressed to cross the valley. But David and the other 400 continued the pursuit, and they found an Egyptian in a field, and they brought him to David, and they gave him water to drink and food to eat, and part of a cake of pressed figs and two cakes of raisins, and he ate, and he was revived, for he had not eaten any food or drunk any water for three days and three nights. That was David. And then David said to him, "Who do you belong to? Where are you from?" And he said, "I'm an Egyptian, and my master abandoned me when I became sick three days ago, and we raided the Negev of the Kerites and some territory belonging to Judah and Caleb, and then we burned Ziklag." And David said, "Can you lead me down to this raiding party?" And he answered, "Swear to me before God that you won't kill me or hand me over to my master, and I will take you down to them." And he led David down. And there they were, scattered over the countryside, eating, drinking, and reveling because of the great amount of plunder they had taken from the land of the Philistines and from Judah. And David fought them from dusk until the evening of the next day. And none of them got away except 400 young men who rode off on camels. And David recovered everything that had been taken. Nothing was missing, young or old, boy or girl, plunder or anything else they had taken. And David brought everything back. He took all the flocks and herds, and his men drove them ahead of the other livestock, saying, "This is David's plunder."

So he and his men go and do what he knows to do. He finds his strength in God, and then he takes some positive steps, and then he was generous with what what he'd been given. Then David came to the 200 men who had been too exhausted to follow him, and they were left behind, and they came out to meet David and the men with him. And as David and his men approached, he asked how they were. But the troublemakers in David's crowd said, "They didn't go with us. So don't give them anything." And David said, "No, my brothers, you must not do that. What the Lord has given us. He has protected us and delivered us into their hands, the raiding party that came against us. Who will listen to what you say? The share, uh, of the men, and they got all their supplies." And so they were given everything they wanted, and all shared alike. And David made this a statute and ordinance for Israel from that day forward. And as you watch him go on when he becomes king, that's how he lived.

So here he is in Ziklag, comes back thinking he'd been given a reprieve, burned out, having to go do battle with the Israelites, only to find everything was gone. When bad stuff happens, when bad stuff happens, we get in a hole. And from that hole, David turned and reached with whatever strength he could back to God with all his questions, all his doubt, with his depression, his anxiety, his grief, his heartache, his hurt, with his men wanting to overthrow him as leader, as a leader. And then he goes and gets what was his.

You know, God hasn't promised you a pain-free life. He's never said to you, "There won't be problems or issues or challenges." He's never said to you that that you become a Christ follower and, man, your life is going to be like a cakewalk. You know, I, I, you've heard me say this before. I did not grow up in the church, and I'm a bit of a skeptic even today about a lot of stuff. And sometimes when I would see those big-haired guys on TV saying to me, "Man, if you just follow Jesus, you're going to be healthy and wealthy and wise, and everything's going to go your way." And it's like, man, that never made sense. And it didn't square with the reality of my own experience in life. What does square are these words from Jesus, "I've told you these things so that in me, you, you might have peace. Because in the world, you're going to have trouble. You're going to have trouble, but take heart. Jesus says, 'I've overcome the world.'" Not everything is going to be all right in this life.

I was, uh, doing a missions class, and the professor, Professor Fisher, said that the Bible tells us that when God comes back, he's going to come with a shout. What do you think he's going to shout? Because it doesn't say what he's going to shout. One of my friends said, "I'll be back." You know, what's he going to shout? And there were lots of answers. And then our professor said this, "I think he's going to shout, 'Enough!'" Enough heartache, enough pain, enough weeping, enough disappointment, enough loss, enough disease, enough. And in that moment, you and I will see clearly how God led even in our heartache.

Familiar words, one of those psalms of David. "The Lord is my shepherd; I shall not want. He makes me lie down in green pastures. He leads me beside still waters. He restores my soul. He guides me in paths of righteousness for his name's sake. And even though, even though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil, for you are with me; your rod and your staff, they comfort me. You prepare a table before me in the presence of my enemies; you anoint my head with oil; my cup, my cup overflows. And surely goodness and mercy will follow me all the days of my life, and I will dwell in the house of the Lord forever." I love that promise that comes from David, the hope that comes from him and through him in being connected to God, the grace we get, the hope we find, and the peace that comes in the middle of our heartache and loss right now. Right now, some of you are coming through a terribly disappointing season. Bad news about health, a relationship coming apart, financial challenges, loss of loved ones, heartache. And God hasn't promised you it would be easy. But what he has promised is that he would go with us through the storm.

Let's pray together. Father, thank you for your goodness and your grace. Thank you for the hope that comes from you and through you. And Lord, we are so thankful that you, you are with us even through the valley of the shadow of death. And so, Lord, whatever we got going on, whatever grief, whatever disappointment, whatever is depressing or making us anxious, Lord, help us to see you because, Lord, we just simply want to rest in you. We pray in Jesus.