Good morning. If you could all
find our seats, we're going to open with hymn number 125 in
your hardbacked hymnal. 125, Jesus paid it all. Let's all stand together. Number
125. ? I hear the Savior say ? Thy strength
indeed is small ? Child of weakness, watch and pray ? Find in me thine
all in all ? Jesus paid it all All to Him I owe. Sin had left a crimson stain,
He washed it white as snow. Lord, now indeed I find thy power
and thine alone can change the leper's spots and melt the heart
of stone. Jesus paid it all, all to Him
I owe. Sin had left a crimson stain,
He washed it white as snow. For nothing good have I whereby
thy grace to claim, but wash my garments white in the blood
of Calvary's Lamb. Jesus paid it all, all to Him
I owe. Sin had left a crimson stain,
He washed it white as snow. And when before the throne I
stand in Him complete, Jesus died my soul to save, my lips
shall still repeat, Jesus paid it all, All to him I owe. Sin had left a crimson stain. He washed it white as snow. Please be seated. Good morning. What a blessing
to be able to sing that hymn with some understanding. Let's go to the Lord in prayer
and ask His blessings. Our Heavenly Father, we come into Thy holy presence looking in faith to Thy dear
Son for all the hope of our acceptance, for all our righteousness, and
all our justification before thee. We thank you, Lord, for the work
of grace that has opened the eyes of our understanding and
given us faith in Christ. Lord, we pray this morning for
anyone that might remain a stranger to your grace or to your lost
sheep It would be under the sound of the gospel and ask Lord that
that this would be the day that you would make them willing and
call them and draw them to Christ. Lord, we. We thank you for. Recovering for your bride and
for your children. Our. Our death and our. our separation from thee in sin. We ask, Lord, that you'd bless
now your word. Enable us to set our affections
on things above where the Lord Jesus is seated victorious at
thy right hand. We ask it in his name. Amen. I'll ask you to open your Bibles
with me to 1 Samuel chapter 30. 1 Samuel chapter 30. And I've titled this message,
David Recovered All. We know this is not about David. We know that God has written
his word so that it's all about Christ and his work of redemption
on behalf of his people and fulfilling and accomplishing the work that
the Father sent him to do. And I'm reminded of when the
disciples asked the Lord, Lord, why do you speak to them in parables? And the Lord said, because for
you, it's to be known the mystery of the kingdom of God, but for
them, it's not. It's not to be known. And there
is a very real sense in which these Old Testament stories are
parables. They're physical pictures of
a spiritual truth. And so I pray the Lord will enable
us to look beyond the physical historical events that took place
here in the life of David and enable us to see the Lord Jesus
Christ as the son of David, who accomplished for his people the
recovery that they need to be delivered from sin and from death. And that's what this story's
about. So you have your Bibles open
to 1 Samuel chapter 30, in verse one, and it came to pass when
David and his men were come to Ziklag on the third day, that
the Amalekites had invaded the south and Ziklag and had smitten
Ziklag and burned it with fire, and had taken the women captive,
and they that were therein, they slew not any, either great or
small, but carried them away and went on their way. So David
and his men came to the city and behold it was burned with
fire and their wives and their sons and their daughters were
taken captive. Now David and his 600 men were
out on a military campaign and when they come home to their
family they find that they've all been taken captive and the
city of Ziklag has been burned. In verse four, and David and
the people that were there with him lifted up their voice and
wept until they had no more power to weep. Now they would not have
known at this point that their wives and children had not been
killed. And David's two wives were taken
captives, Ahinoam, the Jezreelite, and Abigail, the wife of Nabal,
the Carmelite, and David was greatly distressed for the people
spake of stoning him because the soul of all the people were
grieved, every man for his sons and his daughters, but David
encouraged himself in the Lord his God." Lord willing, we'll
be looking at that phrase next Sunday and how in our distresses and in our
troubles and in our sin, how we encourage ourselves in the
name of the Lord our God. Where else do we have to go to
find hope and comfort? We'll reserve that for Another
day, verse seven, and David said to Abiathar the priest, Ahimelech
son, I pray thee bring me hither the ephod and Abiathar brought
thither the ephod to David. That was the priest garment through
which they discerned the will of God. And David inquired at
the Lord saying, shall I pursue after this troop? Shall I overtake
them? And he answered him, pursue,
for thou shalt surely overtake them and without fail recover
all. Turn with me. We'll, we'll, we'll,
skip over the verses following and go to verse
17. Now David has encountered the
Amalekites in verse 17. And David smote them from twilight
even to evening of the next day. And there escaped not a man of
them, say four hundred young men, which rode upon camels and
fled. And David recovered all that
the Amalekites had carried away, and David rescued his two wives,
and there was nothing lacking to them, neither small nor great,
neither sons nor daughters, neither spoil nor anything that had been
taken to them. David recovered all." Three times
in this passage, David, recovered all." What a glorious type, what
a picture, what a parable we see in this story of what the
Lord Jesus accomplished at Calvary's cross, what he continues to accomplish
through the preaching of the gospel and the presence of his
spirit and what he shall accomplish when the Amalekites are brought
to their ultimate end. This word recovered means to
return or to bring back. And that's what David did. He
brought back the wives and the children. The
church of the Lord Jesus Christ is referred to in scriptures
as the bride of Christ. We have fallen in our father
Adam and we were in need of being brought back, of being recovered. The church is also referred to
as the children of God. Not everyone is a child of God.
to as many as received him, to them gave he the power to become
the children of God. God is the creator of all men,
but he's not the father of all men. He's the father of his children. And so here's a picture of the
Lord Jesus Christ bringing back, returning back into fellowship
with God, his wives and his children. we've been taken captive by the
Amalekites. They say, well, who are these
Amalekites? Turn with me to Exodus chapter
17, Exodus chapter 17. You remember, What's happening here, the children
of Israel being led by Moses in the wilderness from the very
beginning of those 40 years were being attacked by the Amalekites. And the scripture says that they
were picking off the young and the weak from the stragglers
in the back of the crowd. And the Lord tells Moses to gather
about an army and to go against the Amalekites. And so Moses
appoints Joshua, another glorious picture of Christ, to lead in
the battle. And Moses up on the mountain
with Aaron and Hur, you remember that when Moses' hands were raised
up, then Joshua was able to defeat the Amalekites and when his hands
became tired and they were lowered, the Amalekites would get the
advantage over the children of Israel. And it's a picture of
our dependence on the Lord to deliver us from these Amalekites. And I want you to see what the
Lord says here in verses 14 and 16, 14 through 16 in chapter
17 of Exodus, and the Lord said
unto Moses, write this for a memorial in a book and rehearse it in
the ears of Joshua for I will utterly destroy out of the remembrance
of Amalekite from under heaven. So here's the promise of God.
I'm going to destroy this nation. In verse 15, and Moses built
an altar and called the name Jehovah Nissi. The Lord is our
banner. He is the one who leads us into
battle against this spiritual enemy, the Amalekites. For he said, because the Lord
has sworn that the Lord will have war with Amalek from generation
to generation. Now the Amalekites were a perpetual
enemy of Israel. They were never fully destroyed. Turn with me now, if you will,
to Numbers chapter 24. God is putting into the mouth
of a false prophet by the name of Balaam another prophecy concerning
Amalek. And in Numbers chapter 24 at
verse 20, and when he looked on Amalek, he took up this parable
and said, Amalek was the first of the nations, but his latter
end shall be that he perish forever. So, Who is Amalek? Who are the Amalekites? Well,
Amalek was the grandson of Esau. Esau, a picture of our old man,
the flesh. And the Lord's promise here is
that from generation to generation there will be a conflict between
Israel, the prince, and Amalek, the child, the first nation,
how did we come into this world? We came into this world as descendants,
if you will, in the flesh of Esau. We had but one nature.
When we're born, we're born into this world with one nature, that
old man, that nature of the Amalekites. And then in the new birth, We're
given a new nature. And that new nature is the person
and work of the Lord Jesus Christ in our hearts. Does the old man
ever go away? No. No. But beginning at the
time of our new birth, there is a perpetual battle between
Israel and Amalek. And it's not until the end that
that enemy will be ultimately defeated. The name Amalek means
dwellers in the valley and in the Bible we see a stark contrast
between valleys and mountaintops and how the flesh is drawn to
the to the comfort of the valley. Lot, you remember, when given
a choice by Abraham to choose the fertile ground of the valley
or to live in the higher regions of the mountains, chose the valley. And we know where he ended up
in Sodom. and that valley ultimately was
destroyed. So the Amalekites by definition
are dwellers of the valley. The scripture speaks of us right
now living in the shadow of the valley of death in Psalm 23. We live in this world and our
old man is dead and dying. And we live in this valley and
the flesh is always attracted to that which is comfortable,
which is easy. And that That flesh nature, that Amalekite
nature is in conflict with the new man who lives on the mountain. Mountains in the Bible are, you
know, the mountains to the flesh are hard to climb. The flesh
resists the efforts of climbing a mountain. We're attempting
right now to climb a mountain. to get into those higher regions
where the Lord is pleased to reveal more of His glory, much
like He did on Mount Carmel when the fire of God fell on that
sacrifice and the prophets of Baal were destroyed. and Elijah
glorified Christ in that experience. We're reminded of the Mount of
Transfiguration where the veil of our Lord's humanity was taken
away long enough for those disciples, Peter, James, and John, to see
something of his glory. And we're reminded especially
of Mount Calvary where the Lord Jesus Christ hung on a tree between
heaven and earth, the only one able to touch God and not be
defiled. and not be destroyed and touch
man and not be defiled. He's the mediator, the one man
through whom we have access into the very presence of God. And
yet, even as we're attempting now to scale that mountain, I
believe I can speak for myself and for you that there's something
in us There's something in your flesh that resists that climb. There's a slumbering. There's
a weakness in the flesh. And is there any a time when
we fight the battle between the spirit and the flesh more than
when we come together in public worship? I know there's no more
time for me. then when I have the responsibility
to stand up here and try to speak to you about the things of God,
there's no more time when I struggle with my flesh more than here. And I suspect for you that it's
easier in some senses for you to give your full concentration
to a movie or to a sporting event than it is to give your concentration
to worship. Is that not true? Is there not
something that's prone to wander in our Amalekite nature? Particularly when we are attempting
to do something spiritual and get into those high grounds where
God is pleased to show forth his glory. You see, this is the
battle. This is the battle. And it's
a battle with the flesh. It's the battle with the descendants
of Esau. And it's a battle that is perpetual. It never goes away. Our sin is continual. Our weakness
of the flesh, it remains here in this life. A couple of more references to
a valley. The scripture says we pass through
the valley of Baca. And that word Baca means weeping. And so there's a weeping that
we experience. We weep over our flesh. We mourn over our sin. We long to be able to worship
God and to be able to know him as we ought and yet there's an
Amalekite nature that's holding us down and holding us back.
And the Lord said, David recovered all. David recovered all. Another valley that we read of
in the Bible is in Ezekiel chapter 37, when the prophet looked out
and saw that valley of dry bones. What is that a picture of? Well,
the Lord tells us in that chapter, he says, this is the whole house
of Israel. These are those who have been
slain by their rebellion because of their rebellion against God.
They have raised their fist in rebellion against God to heaven. And the Lord has slain them and
their bones are dried in a valley. Can these bones live? Can these
bones live? That's what the Lord asked the
prophet. And what did Ezekiel say? Lord, thou knowest. Translated,
that means, Lord, if they're gonna live, you're gonna have
to make them live. They have no power in themselves.
They've been dried in the heat of the sun. There's not enough
marrow left in these bones to get a DNA test. I mean, they
are dead. Lord, if you're gonna bring the
bones together, you're gonna have to be the one to do it.
And that's what David did. David recovered all. I love it when the scripture
says that when Moses brought the children of Israel out of
Egypt, another picture of our salvation, not a hoof was left
behind. Every single Israelite was brought
out safely, and not even an animal that belonged to the Israelites
were left behind. Why? Because the Lord Jesus Christ,
pictured here by David, the king, the shepherd of his people, the
sweet psalmist of Israel, the man after God's own heart, that's
Christ, recovered all. He recovered all. He didn't leave
a hoof behind. He was successful in what he
came to do. He said, I'll not lose one of
my sheep. There are sheep and there are goats in this world.
And among the sheep, there are found sheep and there are lost
sheep. And the Lord will leave the 99 found sheep and go out
into the wilderness and find that one wandering lost sheep
and bring them in. Not one will be lost. Christ
recovered all, all, and he did it all by himself. Oh, how glorious
and how successful he is. Here we are, carried off by the
Amalekites. Here we are, the wives and the
children of the Lord Jesus Christ. Our city's been burned with fire
and we've been carried off into captivity of our own sin. And the Lord Jesus goes to his
father. Father, shall I fetch him? Shall I bring them back? Shall
I recover them? Go, go and you will not fail. And David recovered all. Oh, what a, what a glorious type. What a beautiful picture. of
what our Lord accomplished. You remember in Acts chapter
27 when Paul, the apostle, was on a ship and there were, the
scripture tells us there were 276 souls on that ship. And the ship is in a storm and
it's falling, it's breaking to pieces and it's falling apart.
And some of the men wanted to leave the ship. And the apostle Paul told The
captain of the ship, don't let any of these men leave. For if
any of them leave, you cannot be saved. Now the picture there
is, and none of the 276 left, and the scripture says that all
276 souls were saved. If there's one person for whom
the Lord Jesus Christ died on Calvary's cross that's not saved,
then there's no hope for any of us. What the Lord accomplished on
the cross was the full salvation, the full satisfaction of his
father, the full justification and righteousness of his elect.
When he bowed his mighty head and said, it is finished, he
recovered all. He recovered all. He recovered
all at the cross. Adam plunged the entire human
race into rebellion against God. The scripture says, and Adam
all died. Now Adam is not only our federal
head, that means that he represents all mankind, which is why the
Lord Jesus Christ had to be born of a virgin. He could not be
born of the seed of Adam as you and I were. But not only is Adam
our federal head and that he's our representative, he's our
seminal head. We were actually in Adam when
Adam sinned. Every single one of us were in
his DNA. And God credited Adam's fall
to all of humanity. And that's what happened. When
we were born into this world, we were born spiritually dead
and separated from God. And when the Lord Jesus Christ
bowed his head on Calvary's cross and he said, it is finished,
he recovered all those whom he came to save. He recovered his elect. As a result of what the Lord
Jesus accomplished on Calvary's cross, there is now therefore
no condemnation to them that are in Christ Jesus. The law's
been satisfied. God's been justified. And all
for whom Christ died were actually successfully redeemed at the
cross so that Christ recovered all. So his recovery for his
church is a past tense event, but it's also a current, a present
tense reality for the believer. In regeneration, in regeneration,
the Holy Spirit makes us willing in the day of his power. The
Holy Spirit gives us faith in Christ. And in regeneration,
in the new birth, the Lord Jesus recovers all. He doesn't leave
any behind. All for whom he died will be
brought to faith in Christ. And for the first time, for the
first time in the believer's life, he comes to see. that that which is of the flesh
is flesh and that the flesh profiteth nothing. Prior to your regeneration,
you are going about in the power of your own flesh trying to establish
your own righteousness before God. That's just the natural
way. That's what we think by nature. That's our fallen state. We think
that we can somehow recommend ourselves to God and find some
hope of our salvation in what we do and in what we don't do. And in the new birth, the Lord
kills that Amalekite nature. He puts it to death. Paul said,
that which I thought was gain, I now know was loss. And I count
all things but loss for the excellency of the knowledge of Christ Jesus,
my Lord. And so in regeneration, the Lord
Jesus Christ recovers all. He exposes that old man for what
he is in rebellion against God and spiritually dead. And he
recovers to himself through faith so that we are able to say and
believe for the first time All my righteousnesses are as filthy
rags. I have no righteousness whatsoever
outside of the Lord Jesus Christ. He recovered all in redemption
at Calvary's cross. He recovers all in regeneration
in the new birth. And he recovers all in sanctification
in sanctification. Now, child of God, you know that
that old man rears its ugly head often. And here's our hope. When we are not faithful, he
remaineth faithful, for he cannot deny himself. He keeps us from
falling. He presents us faultless. He
works in us, causing us to will and to do after God's good pleasure. He causes us to want to come
back to Christ and to this old amalek nature. Paul said, I died
daily. I died daily. How do I die daily? That's the work of grace. That's
the Holy Spirit. slaying us and how we have to
be put to death. These Amalek, this Amalekite
nature has to continually be put to death so that our self-righteousness
and our pride can be exposed for what it is and we can find
all of the hope of our salvation in the person and work of our
glorious Savior, Jesus Christ. Here's David recovering all. And the Lord told Moses, he said,
the Amalekites are gonna be your enemy from generation to generation. But then he said, in the end,
in the end, they're going to be destroyed. Oh, child of God,
is that not our hope? Is that not our hope? in faith to the Lord Jesus Christ,
never satisfied right now. David said this, he said, I will
behold thy face in righteousness and then I shall be satisfied
when I awake in thy likeness. The final destruction of Malachi
comes when we draw our fleeting breath in this world and that
old man dies and the corruptible is made incorruptible and the
mortal is made immortal and we see him as he is and then and
only then shall we be made like him in the fullness of our experience,
no more sin, no more malachites, David recovered all. Our Heavenly Father, thank you for the successful work of thy
dear son. Lord, we pray that you would strive with us, keep us, Slay
that old man again and again. Lord, give us hope in knowing
that one day Amalek will be destroyed from the face of the earth. We
ask it in Christ's name. Amen.