Victory or Survival - Part 2

And every church goes through this thing. I know this church has gone through it. Yeah, somebody comes and preaches on it.

People sitting in the back, well, I don't know. I've been here a long time seen evangelists teachers come and go and have some meetings for like, well, like I don't, I don't believe anything's gonna happen because I'll send my wife just in case. You know, something happens I can say, oh, yes, I was there.

I was in it. If not, I'd be able to say, I told you so. And then we have 1st Samuel 13, 7. Some went over to the other side.

They crossed over Jordan. They split right out of the town. Everything I've ever joined these guys, they were fight, fight, fight all the time.

I just fight all the time. I'm just going somewhere else. I always feel good in his services.

People are waiting. You want to join the Christian church? They do two things. Jesus said, the cost of becoming a Christian is like a man.

First, he's building a tower. He's got to count, see whether he's got enough to finish the task. Otherwise, when he starts, people are saying, this man began to build and was not able to finish.

Or if you're going to go and join the Christian church, Jesus said, the cost is like a man coming against another, and he better find out whether he can beat him with the army he's got when they come against him with a larger army. And the point of those two illustrations is that they are two things. One is building, and one is battling.

And it's not a retirement center that's being built. It is a tower, a military installation, from which long distance looks at the enemy can be seen, and from which things can be launched against the enemy. It is a place in which the soldiers are trained and equipped, and given their weapons and sent out, and then the fight keeps shifting and moving.

You come back to the battle zones there, you come back to the tower, you stoke up, and you send them out again. And then when you've taken that new ground, you build another tower, and you launch from there. It's building and battling, and battling and building, and that's the way the church has always progressed down through history.

If you don't want to get into those two things, then don't get saved. Be something else. Be a New Ager and meditate on Shirley MacLaine's navel.

And then we have the final group, 1 Samuel 13, 7. We have the rest of the people. What has happened to the rest? As for Saul, he was yet in Gilgal, and all the people followed him trembling. So that's the last group.

They followed trembling. They are there. They're not hiding.

They're just, I'll praise God, we're here. In a survival mode. I just hope nothing awful happens.

Now, into the middle of this mass, as they're all sitting around, we have another wonderful thing. Now, you have to understand, Israel hasn't got any anything to fight with, even. The Philistines have taken all their weapons long ago.

They've just got to fight. They've got baseball bats, a fork or two, that kind of stuff. Hat pins.

In verse 19, there was no smith found through the whole land of Israel. The Philistines said, lest the Hebrews make them swords or spears. Their men had to even go down to sharpen his axe, or he had to go to the Philistines and let them sharpen it for him.

Verse 22, it came to pass in the day of battle, there was neither sword nor spear found in the hand of any of the people that were with Saul and Jonathan. The only people who had a sword and a spear was Jonathan's son and his armor bearer. That's it.

Imagine having a battle. Hey, pass me the spear. I got three over here.

Now, I love this last, this, now the chapter 14. I love this section. This is the last bit.

We've had two bits. We've had rage, we've had resolve, which leads and triggers off all kinds of escalating confrontations. And now we come to another thing, and that's very important.

Revelation. Following these two things, God can give you a revelation because you're now in a place where you have to trust God. Before that, you didn't need to, did you? It was very safe, very nice.

Everything is beautiful in its own way. You spoke about faith is trusting God, but you had nothing to trust him for. Now you do.

And that is where revelation comes. That's where the gifts of the Holy Spirit begin to operate. They are not given for people who are not in war.

You don't give loaded ammunition and guns and all this high-tech weaponry to people who would like to hang it on their wall.