"House of David/House of Saul"
The kind of war I dread is when you have to fight against your brethren.
Download or email this sermon (~310k) The House of David
But the house of David grows stronger and stronger. How does it begin? “David’s” are shepherd boys.
He who is faithful in a very little thing is faithful also in much (Lk. 16:10).
Christians who are already faithfully taking care of those God has already given them – good husbands, good fathers, good pastors, good house group leaders – are the kinds of people God is going to use to take care of the whole flock.
God trains people for the extraordinary in the ordinary. The last thing Goliath would have expected was a teenage boy who was a dead aim with a slingshot – the one thing that could have stopped him. The kinds of people God is going to raise up will be people that Islam, New Age, Rome, homosexuals and Free masons will never expect. These are going to be people God has been training for a long time. Dead shots with a sling. And then God will begin to build his house.
One gets stronger while one gets weaker. He takes his calling from the house of Saul, but it runs on inertia. It has lost the anointing, but God leaves it to run on for a time until the house of David is built.
When you see the present spiritual seduction taking place, you can be sure of three things:
- God will raise up prophetic voices against it. They might not be listened to, but they will be heard, the same as with Samuel.
- There will be a faithful remnant. The remnant will hear, they will listen and
- God will build a new house.
The Outcasts of Israel
And everyone who was in distress, and everyone who was in debt, and everyone who was discontented, gathered to him; and he became captain over them. Now there were about four hundred men with him. (1 Sam. 22:2)
The outcasts of Israel gathered to David.
I do not expect the pastors of the bigger churches or the members of Executives to join the house of David. Very few of them will join. At best, they will be Jonathans. It will be people like us – losers, outcasts, nobodies, the unfashionable. We are nothings now, but what were we before? We have nothing that is not the result of Jesus having saved us.
The Mighty Men of David
These are the names of the mighty men whom David had: Joshebbasshebeth a Tahchemonite, chief of the captains, he was called Adino the Eznite; because of eight hundred slain by him at one time; and after him was Eleazar the son of Dodo the Ahohite, one of the three mighty men with David when they defied the Philistines who were gathered there to battle and the men of Israel had withdrawn. He arose and struck the Philistines until his hand was weary and clung to the sword, and the Lord bought about a great victory that day; and the people returned after him only to strip the slain.
Now after him was Shammah, the son of Agee the Hararite. And the Philistines were gathered into a troop, where there was a plot of ground full of lentils, and the people fled from the Philistines. But he took his stand in the midst of the plot, defended it and struck the Philistines; and the Lord brought about a great victory (1 Sam.23:8-12).
So the three mighty men broke through the camp of the Philistines, and drew water from the well of Bethlehem which is by the gate, and took it and brought it to David (1 Sam. 23:16).
The so-called mighty men of Israel today, the great Christian leaders, run away from homosexuals, run away from New Age, run away from Roman Catholicism; they run away from everything. They do not have the necessary courage to fight. God is going to raise up little boys with slingshots. God is going to gather the mighty men.
But who are these mighty men of David; who are these commanders? They are the same ones mentioned in 1 Samuel 22:2 – those who were in distress, who were in debt, who were discontent, the nothings and the nobodies. God takes the losers and makes them winners. He takes the nobodies and makes them commanders.
Where did He do it? Where did He teach them how to become the great men? Where did they learn how to become generals.
In the Wilderness
Now David became aware that Saul had come out to seek his life while David was in the wilderness of Ziph, at Horesh (1 Sam.23:15).
There are two kinds of trials in the Bible: the valley and the wilderness. The valley is a short trial, but the wilderness is a long series of trials, like the Jews wandering in the wilderness for forty years. The wilderness, by nature, is a place of death. That is why the second generation entered the holy land. The first generation died in the wilderness.
Only the new creation could go to heaven and to the promised land, not the old one. God uses the wilderness to destroy the flesh, to burn off the old creation. It was a long war, David became stronger, Saul became weaker. But God did not remove the house of Saul altogether, until David was ready.
Those who are to be made into the mighty ones of Israel, whom God will use to rebuild the Body of Christ in this country, are already going through a long sojourn in the wilderness.
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Scripture taken from the New American Standard Bible Copyright © 1960, 1962, 1963, 1968, 1971, 1972, 1973, 1975, 1977, 1995 by The Lockman Foundation.