I've been talking about missions a lot and I I remember my time
in Thailand and probably the more stressful part was trying
to get a taxi on my own But but they have something kind of like
Uber but I just didn't know how to make the count.
It's called Grab and you know, taxes are hard because language
barrier and they try to RIP you off and you got to always
negotiate and grab. It's like Uber, you have an app
and then you kind of book it right.
And I understand why they named it Grab because Grab is easy
like like Grab a bite is Grab a taxi Grab is easy.
But someone told me kind of the the irony of, of naming the
service Grab, because originally up until maybe 100 years ago,
Grab meant to take something forcibly.
To take something that's not yours was the meaning of grab
until maybe 20th century. I think the original meaning of
grab, it fits perfectly with what we're tempted in in our
life. Maybe, you know, not money, but
with control. There are moments where
something is right in front of you and you're tempted to just
take it. Maybe it's an opportunity.
Maybe it's a shortcut, a way to get what you want right now.
Something. That opportunity just kind of
presents itself and the question is, will you trust God with it
or will you grab it, forcibly take it?
In today's passage, David has a chance to grab what's not his or
not his yet anyway. And we learned how he responded
to the opportunity. So that's the question we want
to answer today. How should we respond when we
have the opportunity to take control?
To take control, You know, instead of trusting God #1 we
must refuse to take what God has not given to us yet.
We must refuse to take what God has been given.
If you have every Bibles, please turn to First Samuel 24 and I'll
be reading the first 7 verses. We've skipped a few chapters
since our last sermon, and during this time, mainly to set
up the story, is Saul still chasing after David more and
more as a parent. David is the king, the next
anointed king. Saul is insecure because of that
and now he he's really trying to capture David first one.
When Saul returned from pursuing the Philistines, he was told
David is in the wilderness near and Getty.
So Saul took 3000 of Israel's fit young men and went to look
for David and his men in front of the rocks of the wild goats.
When Saul came to the sheep pens along the road, a cave was there
and he went in to relieve himself.
David and his men were staying in the recesses of The Cave.
So they said to him, Look, this is the day the Lord told you
about our hand, your enemy over to you, so that you can do to
him whatever you desire. Then David got up and secretly
cut off the corner of Saul's robe.
Afterward, David's conscience bothered him because he had cut
off the corner of Saul's robe. He said to his men, As the Lord
is my witness, I will never do such a thing to my Lord.
The Lord's anointed. I will never lift my hand
against him, since he's the Lord's anointed.
With these words, David persuaded his men, and he did
not let him rise the buck in Saul.
Then Saul left The Cave and went on his way.
We go back to the slide before this.
God has already promised to David that he'll be the next
king. That promise is already there.
And, and David's job was to just trust God with it.
I actually had to research, did God ever tell David that it was
going to take like almost 20 years before he became the king?
And apparently God never did tell him that.
God wanted to, you know, all the, the times he's in the
wilderness running away, you know, God wanted to train him up
and, and, and so David could trust, learn how to trust in
God. So David didn't know the time
frame, but it says here that, hey, Saul's the Lord's anointed.
OK, He may be an evil king, but still God anointed him to be the
king for now, so I have to trust him.
So David knew that, So he knew that he's king someday.
And then the current king is still God's anointed.
So I, I start to respect the authority.
So he knows all of that. And this happens, David is
hiding out in The Cave and Saul is just right there.
And Saul comes into the actual cave where David was and his men
were, and he is using the restroom.
Saul enters The Cave to use the restroom.
And for everyone else, this is God's will.
Verse 4, This is the day the Lord told you about.
This is what God has promised you.
The opportunities here, take it, grab it, But not every
opportunity. It's God's will.
And clearly this is not God opening the door for David to
become king. But oftentimes when something
like this happens to us, we trick ourselves to think it is,
it is God, it is for me to take. And often times we grab it.
We take something God hasn't given us yet, and we justify
this grabbing in just several different ways.
One of the main ways that we justify taking something God has
not given us yet is using spiritual language to justify it
as we see here. Hey, David's men that don't say,
hey, this is our chance. We don't have to run away
anymore. We could, we could live in the
palace. David, let's do this.
They don't say that. They say, ah, this is the day
the Lord has promised you. We use spiritual language, we
say to our ourselves and to others, oh, God opened the door.
If God didn't want me to take this, why did he open the the
store? He must have opened it so I
could take it. We must be careful.
Circumstances do not always mean God's will.
Another way we justify grabbing is using the majority opinion.
You know in verse 4, David's men say this.
You know this spiritual oh, the day of the Lord has told you
about came and immediately David moves to action.
Even David, he has hindered. He's moved by this for a bit
now. He only ends up cutting the
rope, the robe, and I don't think he was close to killing
Saul, but at least he knew that he had evil intentions at least
a little bit. Because later on we see him that
he he feels bad for it. Majority opinion is powerful.
His men are like, Hey, this is the time something an
opportunity comes and we say, hey, everyone else thinks I
should do it. Hey, this is what's considered
normal. This is considered right by
everyone else. I maybe I should do it.
But this majority opinion, it's kind of usually flows with what
people in the culture believe that the rules of culture not
always align with the rules of God.
The rules of culture tell us to get even and that would be the
advice that you'll get. You have a chance to get even.
Doesn't get even. Take your chance if it means
advancement of your goals. If it means obtaining your
goals, don't do it. Look out for yourself 1st and
then you could worry about later.
These don't always align with what God thinks.
And one more thing I'll mention is to justify the way we justify
grabbing things God hasn't yet given us is that we ignore our
conscience. We say it must be OK because you
know what? I don't feel that bad about it.
Well, sometimes we don't feel bad about it because we've been
ignoring our conscious for a while.
You know, if you're a Christian, the Holy Spirit lives inside
you, and the Holy Spirit will give you a nudge when you're
doing something that's not right.
Holy Spirit does guide you, but many of us have learned to
ignore that nudging. So we say, well, I feel OK about
it. It's probably OK.
Maybe if God promised it. You don't have to force it.
You don't have to grab it. You don't have to force God's
promise. You don't have to speed up his
timeline. David could have easily harmed
Saul here and could have justified it, and everyone would
have been OK with it. They would have even been happy
with it. Saul was evil.
Of course. You should have done that,
David. Hey, God already promised you
the throne, of course, but David's conscience bothered him.
In the 23 years that I've been a pastor and I see kind of the
ways people have been doing, I kind of noticed patterns and one
of them is they rush the timeline when it comes to
romantic relationships. God does promise you that he
loves you and you are his beloved and, and, and that God
is all you ever need for everlasting joy.
He doesn't quite promise you that you will have a girlfriend
or a husband or wife at this time, at this age.
And sometimes the opportunity to find love is right there and
then we take it. Even if that person is the wrong
person for you, sometimes it's the right person for you, but
you grab the benefits of marriage too early.
While you're dating, God has promised things.
There are things that are promised for married couples.
God has promised you that you will be His beloved, that He is
all you need to feel loved. Sometimes you just have to trust
Him and wait. Of course, another area where
people tend to grab is pretty much everything.
Money, you know, finance related, your work, your
investments, you know, moving or buying homes and everything
money related. Of course, God doesn't promise
you that you'll be rich, but Jesus taught us very clearly,
Hey, do not worry, I'll take care of you.
God takes care of the birds, the flowers, wouldn't he?
How much more would he take care of you?
But we want more sometimes We want advancement.
We want a better position, we want better pay.
And an opportunity comes, and perhaps it requires you to
compromise your integrity. Maybe you have to cut corners.
Maybe to get that opportunity you have to step on somebody you
might think and justify to yourself, hey, nobody I know
would turn this opportunity down.
Sometimes you have to consider, is this something that God wants
me to have? A lot of us dream of having a
home, a nice home. Even if you have a home, you
know, it's maybe not your your dream or maybe it's your
temporary home. Maybe it's your five year old
home and you're driving around and you we all have that, right?
Like, oh man, that house, if that house ever came on sale, I
mean, I don't buy you that. I have some of those houses
drive around. Oh man, that's a perfect house.
And I start with a flat, you know, like the parking area has
to be flat so kids could play basketball.
You miss a shot. You don't have to run to the
down the street to grab. You have to be flat, right?
Can you play basketball? And is there a big backyard?
And just because your dream home is on is up for sale, it doesn't
mean you have to get it. You have to consider, can I
afford it? Am I going to be house support
for the next 30 years? What?
Yeah. What am I sacrificing just
because there's a better job? You don't have to take it.
We're almost conditioned to take it.
Take it and figure out everything else.
How about pastors? People put pastors on a
different like measuring scale. What if this week I got a job
offer that pays me a lot of money My my dreams to have my
own office. OK, SPMCI have not even a six
foot the the four foot folding table.
And then when there's an event, some people take it and it's not
even there, right? I got a job offer, right?
A lot of money. I got a big old desk that no
one's going to take during events and an office.
And I say I took it. I was off for that Monday and
Tuesday I took it and Tuesday night I sent a message on the
app. I'm saying bye guys.
Thank you. Most of you guys, some of you
guys will be like, yes, finally God asked my first, but most of
you guys will be like what you just one day, that's it.
You guys will be very upset, really not very upset.
Some of you guys will be like you just make that decision like
that. You would say Pastor Tim, I'm
I'm known pastor, but shouldn't you like pray about it for like
the day week, I don't know, months?
Shouldn't you consider it more carefully?
I mean, I mean, like, is money in a big office, is that worth
just just throwing away? You know, the past 13 years,
some of you guys would ask me those questions.
Now, my thing is, you, you guys should.
But why don't you ask yourself those questions?
Oh, I got a better job offer. Bye.
It's two hours away. Bye, everyone.
Yeah, we're going to find the friends, you know, family, my
kids. Ready.
We're going to. Yeah.
We're going to make new ones over there.
It's fine. How come you guys don't ask
yourself those questions? Over generalizing?
Of course. The same way you expect me to
carefully consider a new job opportunity.
We should all have the same mentality.
For the record, I do not get any job offers ever.
So don't worry about it. Our other pastors do all the
time. Not me.
Just because you can't take it, just because it's there, it does
not mean God has given it. Sometimes it is.
Sometimes you do take it. But to figure that out, you need
prayer. It takes counsel from wise
people that God has put in your life.
It's involving other people in your decision process and also
to see if do I have any sinful desires that that's going to
make me want to take that maybe we have a simple desire of of I
don't want to trust God. I want to be so comfortable.
I don't have to rely on God for security.
You got to ask yourself, and am I forcing outcomes?
Am I speeding up God's timelines?
David, instead of grabbing what God hasn't given, he does the
opposite. And that's number two.
What he does is he leaves the results up to God.
Hey, I'm going to be king someday.
I don't know how I'm running for my life, but I I'll leave that
up to God. You leave the results up to God
first, 8 to 15. Actually, I'm going to be 8 to
12. OK, so let's find out how David
leaves the outcome in God's hands.
After that, David got up, excuse me, went out of The Cave and
called to Saul, my Lord the king, and Saul looked behind
him. David knelt low with his face to
the ground and paid homage. David said to Saul, Why do you
listen to the words of people who say, look, David intends to
harm you? You can see with your own eyes
that the Lord handed you over to me today in The Cave.
Someone actually advised me to kill you, but I took pity on you
and said I won't lift my hand against my Lord since he's the
Lord's anointed. Look, my father, look at the
corner of your robe in my hand, for I cut it off.
But I didn't kill you. Recognize that I've committed no
crime or rebellion. I haven't sinned against you
even though you are hunting me down to take my life.
May the Lord judge between me and you and may the Lord take
vengeance on you for me, but my hand will never be against you.
God may do something, but I'm not going to force that.
That's what David is saying and for him to get to that
conclusion. Really, You see a a posture in
verse 8. He says, my king, this is a guy
that's trying to kill him. This is a this is an insane man.
But he says my king. And then he kneels before him
face to the ground. This is humility.
This is a humble posture. In verse 9 to 11, pretty much
David is saying I could have killed you, but I didn't.
David is showing self-control. He's saying I'm willing to wait.
Why? Because may the Lord judge
between me and you. My hand will never be not my
hand. God's hand may do something.
If I'm king, it's because God did something, not because I did
something. Instead of trying to control the
outcome, which he could have easily done, David chooses to
trust to surrender. And to have patience to wait for
the Lord to act. And after this day, David still
won't be king for another 10 years.
In about 5 years, he'll be king of a of a ruler of area.
Actually it will be this area, Judah.
And then it won't be another 10 years where he's actual king of
Israel. How does he wait that long?
Because he had humility, he was willing to wait and he was
willing to say God will take care of the outcome.
And what David done has done is really, actually really hard for
us. We don't like to wait.
We don't like slow. We like fast.
We don't like slow service. Soon as your phone slows down
even a little bit, you guys will get new phones.
A lot of us, the Apple owners were so mad their phones were
getting too slow and they all soothed Apple and y'all one good
job. But God is asking us to go slow
at times. Slow so you could seek God's
will. God was asking David to go slow
because he was teaching him those 20 years.
He needed God or David to learn something slow.
Sometimes we we need to go slow in our parenting.
Let's say our child, your child is struggling.
Whatever behavior, attitude, grades, whatever the struggle,
what do we want to do? We want to fix our kids
immediately. We use pressure, fear, anger,
threats, whatever to get results.
When they're younger, I'm going to take away your iPad.
When they're older, I'm going to take, I'm not paying for your
wedding, whatever. I'm going to give the down
payment of your house, I'm going to give it to your, your, you
know, sister or brother. We want immediate fixes.
Last thing we want to do as a parent is to wait a lot of the
things that our children go through.
It's a heart issue. You can't force that, it takes
time. This is why we see so many
harmful parenting styles. When I was younger the only
thing I've heard was tiger mom right usually Asian parents and
and basically they were the over demanding parents needed to get
straight A's. But now there are so many types
of harmful parenting. I found a long list.
The only ones I've heard about is helicopter parents, right?
Helicopter hovering over their child and soon as their child
gets into any kind of conflict, any problem, they land the
helicopter, solve their problem and then gets on the helicopter
again, right. And I mentioned this before,
it's and this is a new type that I've heard recently, lot more
parents. That one is worse.
I think this one you clear the way, you remove all possible
issues so the child could go problem free in life.
You preemptively remove conflict.
It's all based on controlling a child's heart takes time, takes
prayer. It takes a reliance on God.
God, this is what I could do. The rest of it I leave it up to
you of control behavior results. But teaching God's ways is not
immediate. Sometimes parenting is that
wilderness period. It's five years, 10 years longer
waiting on God instead of a controlling we are to wait on
God and waiting means don't control what you cannot control.
If you think about it, there's so little that we control.
Even the parents who think they're doing a good job, like
oh, my kids behavior is all set. If it's forced, if it's like
threats to make them behave well, oh, soon as they go to
college, see what happens. Waiting on God means don't
control what you can't control and and waiting on God doesn't
mean do nothing. It means stop trying to control
things. Meanwhile, be faithful to the
things that God has already asked you to do.
So if it means in parenting, hey, what are the things that
you already know you're to do? Show them the gospel to your
marriage, right? Show them what forgiveness is.
You and your husband, you and your wife, you fight, that's
fine, that happens. But see how you guys apologize
to each other, forgive each other, teach them the word of
God, pray for them. Just do the things that you're
already supposed to do. Of course, these two things that
what I just mentioned applies to all areas of our life, your
business, your jobs, your dating.
You cannot control most things in life.
Instead of worrying and having anxiety, just be faithful to the
things that God already asked you to do.
I know we want to do more. I see your problem.
I see everywhere I'm that gives me anxiety.
We want to do more. I want to do more so I could
figure it out more to solve it. You want to do more, love God
more, spend time in the Word more, pray more, serve more, be
faithful in your current season. Don't do more to control
something. Do more where you could see
God's love and plan for you so you could rest, so you could
have peace. Jesus faced this moment as well
that David faced where he could have taken control and he could
have got him out of a pretty big jam on the cross.
He was humiliated on the cross with two other criminals.
Everyone's yelling, including the guy next to him.
If you are the Christ, save yourself.
And Jesus actually had the power to save himself.
But he trusted the Father. He knew there had to be a
process. In this story we see how David
spares his enemy. Bad, insane King David spares
him. Jesus did more than just spare.
He died for his enemies and gave us the rights to become children
of God. Jesus didn't grab the crown.
He didn't use his God powers to grab the crown.
He went through the cross to get his crown.
I know trusting God is scary just every stage of our life,
it's never gets better. It's scary every, every aspect.
I thought at a certain age I'll be like, like, finally things
will be settled down. And then you start worrying
about whole new set of things. Oh, parents are getting older.
Oh, my retirement is not big enough.
It's whole new things to worry about, whole new things you
can't control and living life to control.
These worries seem like the easy thing to do and the right thing
to do. But God is calling you.
Trust Him. Wait.
Surrender to His plan. Main point.
When we have the opportunity to grab control, we must surrender
the outcome to God. Let's take time to pray.