Go ahead and turn with me to 1 Samuel chapter 30 if you would please. 1 Samuel chapter 30. The Bible is full of practical teachings along with spiritual lessons. The Word of God contains both. The verses before us tonight are no exception. And as we discussed In our last study, David's at rock bottom. You ever been there?

Zigglag is burned. His family is gone. He and his men are broken. They're weakened and they're weeping. And then it gets worse. David's men are upset, so upset that they want to stone him. Can you imagine how David must have felt? It would have been enough that the strongest of men would have given up.

Yet look at the last phrase in verse 6. We spend a lot of time on that. But David encouraged himself in the Lord his God. That's the only encouragement there is. This passage of Scripture shows us how a man of God who's lost everything recovers spiritual clarity in the midst of a negative world and a hopeless environment. That's exactly where you and I are, naturally speaking.

We live in a world that's without God, without Christ, and without hope. Job said, my days are swifter than a weaver's shuttle and are spent without hope. Outside of Christ, We're without hope. Isn't that what Paul said in Ephesians 2, verse 12? He said that at that time, you were without Christ before God saved us by His mercy and grace and being aliens from the commonwealth of Israel and strangers from the covenants of promise, having no hope and without God in this world. Those who are without God have no hope. But if you have God, you've got great hope. Separation from Christ is to be without His guidance and without His fellowship.

That's why I mentioned in the prayer beforehand, Lord, send your Spirit. We need His presence. We need it all the time. All the time. To be without Christ is to be excluded from God's promises, is to have no access to the spiritual blessings that God has promised us in the Lord Jesus. All spiritual blessings and heavenly places are where? In Christ.

Ephesians 1.3. To be without Christ is to be without God. And apart from Christ, there's no communion. or fellowship with God, and what a hopeless thing that would be. I've often said, can you imagine living in this world without God? Hope is competent expectation. We've talked about that many times. What are we hopefully expecting of? Several things.

Redemption. Forgiveness. Defeat of sin. How about perfect righteousness? That's what we got to have to be accepted of God. Justice. Restoration. We're in desperate need of face-to-face communion with God. To be without Christ is to be spiritually lost. Disconnected from God. What a hopeless place to be. I think about those that I know that are yet without Christ, and I think just how hopeless that must be. You and I are not without trouble. You and I are not without conflict. You and I are not without sin.

But we got hope, because we have Christ. But to have Christ, to be His and for Him to be ours, there's a great hope for us if we ask God to enable us to encourage ourselves in Him. That's what David did. It took him a while to get there. It takes us a while to get there. And it's only by God's grace that we do. We come to the end of ourselves. We've talked about that.

Being in Christ is the only place where true encouragement can be found. So the first lesson and act of faith when in trouble is to find encouragement in the Lord. The next time that you're going through a rough spot, and it won't be long if you're not now. Find encouragement in the Lord.

David here doesn't strategize. He doesn't give himself a pep talk. He doesn't convince himself that he has this. That's what I used to do. You got this. You got this now. We don't have anything. David doesn't rally his troops. He doesn't defend himself with excuses. I'm sure his men at some point thought to themselves, what are we doing here in the land of the Philistines under this Philistine king. David's been anointed king and we're running and fleeing for our lives. What are we doing here? David doesn't defend himself with excuses. He starts the only place he can, with God. To whom else would we go? That's what Peter said. The Lord said, you're going to leave me also? Many did. He said, where else would we go without haste of words to eternal life? Where are we going to go, friends? To whom else can we go?

He starts with God. He encouraged himself in the Lord. Not in his experience, not in his anointing, not in his reputation. Not in the loyalty of his men. Because at this point, all those things are gone. And immediately after that, David calls for the ephod. Ephod represents mediated access to God. David knows that he cannot seek God on his own terms.

Neither can you and I. Only one way we can seek God, and that's through a mediator. And there's only one mediator between God and man, the man, Christ Jesus. No other hope apart from Him. You and Jesus, you and God don't have a good thing going, not without the Lord Jesus Christ. And if you have a good thing going with God, it's because of Him. Sin has made access to God not difficult, but impossible, apart from Christ. We've got to have a mediator.

Look at verse 7. And David said to Abathar, the priest, Ahimelech's son, he said, I pray thee, bring me hither the ephod. And Abathar brought thither the ephod, to David, and David inquired at the Lord, or of the Lord, saying, shall I pursue after this troop? Shall I overtake them? And he, God answered him, pursue, for thou shalt surely overtake them, and without fail recover all.

David asked God's will, not for his endorsement, You know, many times when we pray, and I'm talking about me, I don't figure there's much difference between us. But many times when I pray, I'm not really, I don't think seeking God's will, I sometimes convince myself that I am, but I'm basically a lot of times seeking His rubber stamp of approval. We're not seeking God's purpose, we're endeavoring to sell Him on ours.

We come to God with our decision already made. We just want His sign off. You ever done that? I certainly have. We got the plan all drawn up and we just want God to sign off on it. And then what happens when it don't work out, we blame Him for it. That's not submission, that's arrogance. Our Lord prayed. Not my will, but Thine be done. And you consider what he was facing when he prayed that. More than you and I will ever experience. All the sin of all the elect throughout all time was being put on him. And he sweat there in Gethsemane's garden, as it were, great drops of blood.

And he said, Father, if it be possible, let this cup pass from me, nevertheless, not my will. but Thine be done. Oh, that's a good prayer. That's a good prayer. When we're in trouble, when we're hurting, when we need help, Lord, I sure would like for You to deliver me from this. I'd sure like for You to work this out. I sure would like for You to make this go away. Nevertheless, Your will be done. How can we say that? Because we know that He's working all things together for our good.

We just don't like the pain and the suffering that goes along with it, but it's to teach us, isn't it? Not my will, but Thine be done. And that wasn't just a safe, comfortable, convenient prayer. The Lord wasn't just endeavoring to pacify God. It was costly obedience. When we pray seeking approval, We talk more than we listen.

And we get frustrated when God delays, and we get annoyed when God says no. But when we truly pray for God's will, we come undecided and open-handed. Lord, I don't know what You're doing, but I know You're doing it for my good. Help me to bow. Help me to submit. Help me to accept Your will. We're bound to His will. We obey even when it hurts. And most of the time, it hurts our pride along with our plans.

Now, I'll be the first to tell you, I don't know much about prayer. And I'll tell you something else. I don't know much about how to pray. But by God's grace, I'm learning this much. Rear prayer is not God aligning His will with ours. It's being brought into alignment with God's will. Not my will. The second lesson we should learn from this is that God must be the source of our guidance.

David asked the right question the right way. He doesn't presume or assume. He doesn't demand an answer. He just asks the Lord, shall I pursue after this truth? After these fellows that have burned our city and taken our families? Should I? Should I go after them? Shall I overtake them? You know, sometimes we make prayer a lot more difficult than it really is. Just ask God what's on your heart. Shall I go after them, Lord? And if I do, are you going to be with me? Will I overtake them?

And God answers clearly. He said, Pursue, for thou shalt overtake them, and without fail, recover all. David doesn't act on impulse. God assures David of success. In Christ, believers have the ultimate promise, which is victory over sin and death through Christ. Just as David trusted God, friends, we've got to do the same. We've got to trust Him to recover all that's been lost.

And we've lost a lot. We lost a lot in Adam, and we've lost a lot because of our own selves. When David asked, shall I pursue them, he's admitting that he cannot rescue them on his own. Lord, if you don't go with me, I don't want to go. I don't want to go. He's admitting he cannot rescue, he cannot do anything without the Lord's help. Men and women are helpless to save themselves.

We know that. Just as David needed God's guidance, you and I need Christ, the ultimate rescue. That's what this is about. This is showing us something about the ultimate rescuer, the Lord Jesus Christ. He's our divine guide, and we need His direction. God replies, pursue them. You'll certainly overtake them. Without fail, recover all. God promises full success and restoration. And in Christ, all that was lost. Our souls. Our souls were lost. Our fellowship with God, lost. But all is recovered through His death and resurrection. And just as David was assured of victory, believers are assured of eternal life and eternal forgiveness.

No wonder Paul said, nay, in all these things we're more than conquerors. Not just conquerors, we're more than conquerors. Through Him, through Christ that loved us. We're more than conquerors. We don't do a thing. He does it for us. Nothing shall be able to separate us from the love of God. Where is that? He tells us, which is in Christ Jesus. In Christ, all is recovered that was lost. Not by what we do, but by what He did. That's why we brag so much on His finished work. What He did for us. Can't do anything for ourselves.

Verse nine, so David went, he and the 600 men that were with him, and came to the brook Bezor, where those that were left behind stayed. Now here we're given another glimpse of God's sovereignty and our man's weakness. We're weak. We're weak. We're without strength. That's a picture of you and me. We cannot of our own We'll keep up. We're like the 200. We see here the 200 stayed behind. They weren't being rebellious. They were just weak. Sadly, we're both. We're rebellious and weak.

And sin's the cause of our rebellion and also the cause of our weakness. Sin's the culprit of all our problems. All of them. You can trace all your problems back to that one little three-letter word, sin. Every one of them. Thank God that His purposes are not stalled or hindered by our human limitations. The Lord delivers us and saves us in spite of us. That's good news. That is such good news. I'm going to tell you something.

If I was God, I wouldn't do it for me. I wouldn't. I said, that scoundrel doesn't deserve mercy and help. None of us do. But God, who is rich in mercy, loves us and sent his son to do for us what we couldn't do. Salvation doesn't depend on the strength of the army. It doesn't depend on the stamina of the warriors. It doesn't depend on the numbers behind the leader. Here, 400 men are going out to face the Amalekites to recover all. What does it depend on then?

It depends on the Word of the Lord as seen in verse 8. Christ accomplished redemption alone. We say that all the time. Salvations of the Lord, period. And when the disciples fled and when Peter denied, And when human strength failed, Christ pressed on to Calvary's cross. Grace never waits for us to catch our breath.

David's pursuit illustrates our Lord's active work. David must act. He pursues the raiders, but the success depends on God's command. And God's already told him, pursue, you'll have success, you'll recover all. God tells us the same thing. Where does He tell us that? Right here. Right here in this book. Yet often we're apprehensive, and we're weak in faith. Salvation's a gift, but it comes through Christ's active work on our behalf. Someone asked me one time, knowing what I believed, and they asked me, they said, so you don't believe in works? I said, oh yeah, I do. I believe in works.

What He's done for me, Christ pursued us when we were lost in sin. For the Son of Man has come to seek and to save that which was lost. Aren't you glad? Aren't you thankful that He wasn't waiting for us to straighten up and fly right and get all our ducks in a row? How many times have I heard people say that? Well, you know, I'd like to start coming to church, but I, and I'd like to, I'm interested in the Bible, but I've got some things I gotta get in order for you. You'll never come. Never, never, ever come. Because you'll never get things straight. Just won't. We can't, it's impossible.

And just as David obeyed God's command, we must trust and follow Christ. He accomplished redemption for us. Verse 10, but David pursued he and 400 men. For 200 men abode behind, which were so faint that they could not go over the brook Bezor. Weak, what a picture of us. The third lesson we have is that our weakness does not cancel God's purpose. 600 men began the pursuit, but 200 cannot go. They were too weak and faint, it says.

Now, David doesn't shame them. That's probably what I would have done. Well, you just stay here by the brook then. But not the Lord Jesus. He doesn't do that. Aren't you glad? My, my. David doesn't shame them. He doesn't abandon them. What does he do? He leaves them behind with provisions.

Oh, these are valuable, valuable lessons. Lord, help us to learn them. God never requires strength that we don't have, but He requires obedience with what we do have. Moreover, it is required in Stuart's that a man be found faithful. Ain't much we can do, but we can be faithful by His grace. We can encourage ourselves in the Lord.

Those who stayed behind had to trust that David, while following God's guidance, would return successfully. Listen, they had lost their possessions and families too. You don't think they wanted to go? You better believe they wanted to go. Like I said, it wasn't rebellion. It was out of weakness. It was out of inability. They trusted David would restore what they also had lost. And what do we do? We trust that Christ is going to restore everything that we lost. And again, we see how David pictures the Lord Jesus.

Sometimes obedience and faith just simply means waiting on God to act. And the victory's not going to come from numbers. We've already said that. It's going to come from the Lord. And sometimes we just have to wait and see. We want to see results right now. That's just the way we are by nature. We want it. We want it right now.

Brother Maurice used to call it the popcorn religion, your microwave popcorn. You know, we want to stick it in, put it on two or three minutes and it pop up and didn't work that way. Very seldom does it ever work that way. Sometimes we just got to wait and see. That's what the Lord said, be still and see the salvation of the Lord. That's what He told Israel there at the Red Sea. What are we going to do? What are we going to do? Here comes Pharaoh's army and here's this big body of water in front of us. What are we going to do? Stand still. Don't do anything. And you'll see the salvation of the Lord. But we've got to trust as we wait.

Human weakness is real. We know that. Sin, loss, sorrow, spiritual weariness can wear God's people down. It does. This world will wear you down. It'll wear you out. This world will wear you out. The cares of this world. You know, I have children that are very successful, and this world is eating them alive. It breaks my heart. And if I'm not careful, it'll eat me alive too. It leaves you alive.

Weakness is real. But the story here in 1 Samuel 30 is a story about God's rescue. It's a story about God doing for us what we can't do. The fourth thing we need to learn is that God uses unexpected means to accomplish His will. We've all seen it. Verse 11, and they found an Egyptian in the field. That just comes out of nowhere, doesn't it? Verse 11.

And they found an Egyptian in the field and brought him to David and gave him bread and he did eat. And they made him drink water and they gave him a piece of a cake of figs and two clusters of raisins. And when he had eaten, his spirit came again to him for he had eaten no bread nor drunk any water three days and three nights.

This man is just near death. David and his men discovered this weak, forgotten, exhausted, and sick Egyptian. And on the surface, that just seems useless and insignificant. But God put him there. God put him there that he might be a channel of God's provision. No accidents, no happenstances, no mistakes with God. Everything happens for a reason. Everybody says that in this world. Well, everything happens for a reason. And I'm thinking, yes, you're right, but you don't know why.

God put him there. And he became a key to information that would lead to David's victory in recovery. He was an unexpected means of God's grace. And sometimes, God's guidance comes through the most unlikely people. What appears weak and broken or insignificant in this world may prove to be the very channel of God's grace. May we never dismiss people or things that seem unimportant or insignificant. May we never ignore the things that seem No value. God often uses them to restore us. We also see from these verses that compassion restores life.

They gave this poor, sick man who was a slave. Boy, who does that picture? And he did eat. That's talking about the believer. We're poor, we're sick, dead in trespasses and sin. And God gives us the bread of life, the Lord Jesus Christ. He gives Him to us in Spirit and He gives Him to us in this Word. He is the Word. And our spirit comes again unto us.

Born again. Made new creatures in the Lord Jesus Christ. Life is restored. Now listen, life's got to be restored before usefulness. That's grace. Before He uses us, He feeds us. That's mercy. They show this man kindness and care. They show him compassion. He's restored to strength. And then God uses him to fulfill His purpose.

Isn't that a beautiful picture? Right here, we read over it and never even see it. What a picture of salvation and regeneration. Dead sinners are not recruited, friends. They're revived. You know, men convince themselves that they're Christian soldiers, onward Christian soldiers. I can remember singing that one, can't you? Onward Christian soldiers, marching as to war. You're gonna lose. Gonna lose. Christ's gone before us. Christ achieved the victory. We received the spoils. Kindness and care are spiritual tools given to us. By helping others, God can use them to help others. Verse 13, and David said unto him, speaking to the Egyptian, he said, to whom belongest thou? And whence art thou? And he said, I'm a young man of Egypt, servant to an Amalekite. Servant to this world. That's who the Amalekites picture.

And he said, and my master left me. That's what the world will do. He'll leave you. He'll chew you up and spit you out and leave you to die. He said, my master left me because three days ago I fell sick. He didn't do anything to help me. He just left me because I was sick. And we made an invasion upon the south of the Cherithites and upon the coast which belonged to Judah and upon the south of Caleb, and we burned Ziglag with fire.

What a lesson here in never acting in haste. I've done this so many times that I regret. David asked questions to understand the situation before he ever goes. We need to think about things before we jump into them. The Lord Jesus once asked, what king going to war against another king sitteth not down first and consulteth whether he's able? Can that king with 10,000 meet him that come up against him with 20,000? You better think about it. You better think about what you're doing before you jump.

The Egyptian, through his questions and his answers, provides specific information about the Amalekites and what happened at Ziglag. And the Lord enabled David to count the cost. May God teach us in times of trouble to pause, to seek his counsel, to study his word, to gather insight before we move forward. We just get in a hurry. We get in too big a hurry.

Verse 15, and David said to him, canst thou bring me down to this company? And he said, swearing to me by God that thou will neither kill me nor deliver me into the hands of my master. Don't send me back to him. Don't kill me. Don't send me back to him and I'll bring me down to this company. And God gives David a promise of safe guidance and then David gives this man a promise of safe living. You know, I'm not going to kill you and I'm not going to give you back to your master. That's what Christ does for us. He saves us from death and He becomes our master.

Obedience combined with trust is always best. Always best. Obedience and trust. Trust and obey. Trust and obey. God provides guidance when we ask Him. Sometimes His silence is the guidance. But success and victory and restoration requires action. Faith without works is what? Dead, being alone. Faith without works leads nowhere. No matter how burned, how broken, how lost our lives seem, God has placed guidance along the paths of every believing child of God.

May God cause us to see it, receive it, and obey it. God can restore our losses. He's the only one who can. Yep, there's a lot of practical and yet spiritual lessons in these verses, but the gospel lesson, the teaching of God's good news is that God promised David that he would recover all. We go back to that. That's what we need to hear. That's our encouragement.

Christ recovered it all for us. Everything. We lost them all. As we'll see, nothing was lost. Nothing was missing. Nothing was beyond recovery. Not with God. In Christ, what sin destroyed, grace restores. What Satan stole, Christ reclaims. What death claimed, Christ overcomes. The gospel encouragement is not try harder.

That's what I heard in religion for years. Well, just try harder. Be more faithful. Come to church more. You know, give to the poor. Do this, do that, do this, do that. Try harder. The gospel encouragement is to seek the Lord through the appointed mediator. The Lord Jesus Christ. It's to trust in God's Word. The Gospel encouragement is to trust Christ alone to recover all.

What an amazing thing that is when you consider that we lost everything just as David did. He lost everything. Christ recovers our standing before God. Let me give you a few and I'll quit. In Adam, we lost righteousness. And what did we gain? Guilt. Christ obeyed where Adam failed. We lost justification and Christ restored peace with God. Secondly, Christ recovered our relationship with the Father. Isaiah said, your sin has separated you from God. Your iniquity has separated you from God.

We lost sonship. We became rebels, not children. We were children of disobedience. Not children of God the Father. We were children of disobedience. Our conversation was in the fulfilling of our lust and the desires of our flesh and mind. We were by nature what? Children of wrath. I'm a child, yes, you're a child of wrath without Christ. You're a child of disobedience.

But to the believer, God says, but God. Paul wrote, but God, who is rich in mercy for his great love wherewith he loved us, even when we were dead in trespasses and sin, even when we were a sick Egyptian in a field that hadn't eaten near death, he's quickened us together with Christ and by grace we're saved. That's good news. That's the message.

Thirdly, Christ came to recover our kingdom citizenship. We were aliens from the Commonwealth of Israel. We didn't belong, we didn't have any citizenship. Adam was meant to rule under God's authority and he forfeited it. He just gave it away. He said, I'll be my own God. I'll do my things my own way.

The Lord Jesus came and regains rightful dominion. Because of His finished work, He restores our citizenship and future reign with the Lord Jesus. Fourthly, Christ came to restore our holiness. We don't just do bad things, friends. We became corrupt. Christ doesn't merely pardon sin. He breaks its power over us. We lost purity. Christ restores and gives us new hearts.

We're made new creatures. Old things pass away. Behold, all things have become new. Everything's good. And fifthly, Christ restores our hope of glory. You know, death is never natural. You know, I hear men say it all the time. So-and-so died a natural death. No, he did not. No such thing. Death is the penalty of sin.

Romans 6.23 tells us that the wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life through Jesus Christ. Christ entered death, defeated death, and came out alive, and if we're in Him, so are we. We lost to immortality. Christ restores resurrection and the glory that goes with it. How good you gotta be to get to heaven? As good as God. How are you going to do it? You're not. You're not. You can't.

Christ does it for us. But now is Christ risen from the dead and become the firstfruits of them that slept. For since by man came death, by man came also the resurrection of the dead. For as in Adam all die, even so in Christ shall all, all his people, all that he chose before the foundation of the world, be made alive.

And lastly, Christ recovers what seemed to be permanently stolen. I wonder, out of those 600 men, how many of them thought, we're never going to get our families back. We're never going to get our possessions back. But just 400 of us, going after a whole nation, is permanently gone. And as we'll see in our next study, Lord Will and David pursues the enemy and he overtakes them, as God promised, and He recovers all that was lost, as God promised, and that's what our Lord Jesus did on the cross.

To many, the cross looks like defeat, but it's there that our Lord recovered all that we lost. Nothing essential is missing in Christ, listen. Nothing. There's a lot of things in this life that we don't need, but Christ is not one of them. Everything, everything we need is found in Him.

Salvation, forgiveness, righteousness, power over sin, access to God, eternal life. Everybody wants to go to heaven and nobody wants to die, but we've got to die to self to ever go to heaven. And we've got to die and we've got to lay down this flesh before God gives us a new body without sin.

And how is that accomplished? One way. One answer. You know what it is? In Christ. We have all these things in Christ. In, by, through Jesus Christ. That's our message. That's what we preach. Christ provides every essential thing for us that God requires from us. And Him, nothing we need will ever go missing again. We're not going to ever lose it. It's ours forever. Can I be lost? Not if God saved you, not if Christ died for you. Isn't that good news? Good news from 1 Samuel chapter 30.