SPEAKER_01: Welcome to the Fourth Link John Alliance Sermon Podcast.
SPEAKER_01: I'm Nick Perry, the youth pastor here at the church.
SPEAKER_01: We're so glad you've joined us today.
SPEAKER_01: Our desire as a church is to become a community of people who practice the way of Jesus together, and through the empowering of the Holy Spirit, we live on a mission to meet the social and spiritual needs of the world around us.
SPEAKER_01: Each week we gather as a community to worship and learn from God's Word and to be encouraged in our walk with Christ.
SPEAKER_01: In this podcast, you'll hear the latest message from our Sunday service.
SPEAKER_01: Whether you're listening from right here in Fort St.
SPEAKER_01: John or from afar, our prayer is that God will speak to your heart and strengthen your faith.
SPEAKER_01: And let's lean in together as we hear today's sermon.
SPEAKER_02: Thank you.
SPEAKER_02: For those of you that weren't aware this weekend, this is the wrap-up this morning to the soul care conference.
SPEAKER_02: And uh I've been privileged to be there for the whole thing from Thursday night right to Saturday night.
SPEAKER_02: And uh it was awesome.
SPEAKER_02: And I'm on behalf of the board, would just like to thank everyone who worked so hard.
SPEAKER_02: Uh from the ladies that cooked for us all weekend, the worship team that put in so much time over the course of the weekend, the intercessory prayer team that put in so much time and preparation so they were prepared to deal with us and to support us.
SPEAKER_02: And uh to Jeremy and Carmen for coming up and being willing to share their life's work and dedication to the Holy Spirit and to Jesus and just to be able to share that with us.
SPEAKER_02: And most of all, I just as a board, we just want to thank the staff.
SPEAKER_02: They worked so hard to prepare for this.
SPEAKER_02: And they created an environment that was unbelievable.
SPEAKER_02: It was so focused and so just it was amazing how they created an environment that we could get away from the distractions of all that's going on outside these walls and uh and in our lives and just focus on on Jesus and what he had for us.
SPEAKER_02: So thank you so much to the staff.
SPEAKER_02: Um it was incredible how hard they worked and how they knew just what buttons to push uh to make this impactful.
SPEAKER_02: And then I was up here last week giving you an update on the building project.
SPEAKER_02: And uh a lot of what the board really feels about this project has nothing to do with the physical building.
SPEAKER_02: And it's to do with us, you guys, this church, and where Jesus is taking us as a group and each of us individually as we move towards the blessing that he feel we feel he has for us in a new building eventually.
SPEAKER_02: And uh after being a part of Soulcare this weekend and and many other members of the board, we just would like to encourage you that we feel strongly that one of the steps in the in the journey going forward for you is something like soul care or a Holy Spirit conference like we had last spring.
SPEAKER_02: It doesn't need to be here within these walls, it can be uh part of another church or whatever, but this weekend was so impactful.
SPEAKER_02: The imagery that I have stuck in my mind that that Jeremy taught on uh is viewing our like our soul as a garden, um kind of like the the Garden of Eden.
SPEAKER_02: And just maybe it was a little shocking to me how many weeds are growing in my garden.
SPEAKER_02: And Jesus doesn't want to just uh to pluck those weeds on our own, he wants to reach out and grab on because let's be honest, some of us it's not a weed anymore, it's a tree.
SPEAKER_02: And it seems like it's impossible to pull out.
SPEAKER_02: And he wants to reach onto that and rip it out.
SPEAKER_02: But he doesn't want to just pull the weeds that are in our garden like we would our own garden and then just allow what's there to have less competition and grow better.
SPEAKER_02: He wants to plant something new and beautiful in that spot.
SPEAKER_02: Um and just an event like this, if you would consider sacrificing your time to go through it in in the years to come, I know everyone who is a part of it will be impacted in some way, in a positive way.
SPEAKER_02: It's so hard not to go uh closer to Jesus after something like that.
SPEAKER_02: If you notice, I didn't tell you it was gonna be easy.
SPEAKER_02: It's hard.
SPEAKER_02: You gotta be ready to humble yourself.
SPEAKER_02: Uh so I'll call up Jeremy now.
SPEAKER_02: Jeremy is gonna wrap up the uh the weekend.
SPEAKER_02: I guess I'm just assuming that this uh sermon has something to do with the last two and a half days.
SPEAKER_02: I shouldn't do that, but um anyhow.
SPEAKER_02: That's right.
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, we good?
SPEAKER_00: There we go.
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, it does now uh have to line up with that, so let's go.
SPEAKER_00: Thank you, Mike.
SPEAKER_02: Yeah, well, thank you guys for uh just sharing your dedication and life's work to to this staff to us.
SPEAKER_02: It was great.
SPEAKER_02: So I appreciate it.
SPEAKER_02: Thank you.
SPEAKER_02: Let's pray.
SPEAKER_02: Heavenly Father, we just thank you so much for this church and how much you love us.
SPEAKER_02: And Lord, I just thank you.
SPEAKER_02: Thank you for how much you were moving this weekend in soul care.
SPEAKER_02: But I just thank I just thank you for this morning, the opportunity to meet together and Holy Spirit, come this morning and use Jeremy's message to impact our lives and just bless your children in this room.
SPEAKER_02: Amen.
SPEAKER_00: Amen.
SPEAKER_00: Wow, thank you, Mike.
SPEAKER_00: Um, so that was a really good recap of that exercise, Mike.
SPEAKER_00: Thank you.
SPEAKER_00: Um, I think sometimes we we have these little moments in the uh the soul care adventure or in some of the different events that we do, and we walk away and we have a version of it, and then we tell somebody about it, and they're like, that sounds weird, and you're like, oh no, it wasn't that weird.
SPEAKER_00: Uh well, it was a bit weird.
SPEAKER_00: Uh okay.
SPEAKER_00: And then we get quiet about it.
SPEAKER_00: And one of the things I told everybody at the uh the event is you need to first turn around to somebody at the event and tell them an experience or something you had with Jesus over the course of the weekend.
SPEAKER_00: I said, if you do that, there's a really good chance you'll share with somebody else.
SPEAKER_00: But if you don't, it might just kind of drift on you.
SPEAKER_00: So, Mike, you win because you just told a lot of people.
SPEAKER_00: So uh who's next?
SPEAKER_00: Um, we can keep going here.
SPEAKER_00: Um yeah, this weekend, uh, I had intended originally to talk about um how we can sing songs to Jesus, but now I guess we'll change to this topic.
SPEAKER_00: Uh King David, a life of prayer and the healthy soul.
SPEAKER_00: No, that's what I intended the whole way along.
SPEAKER_00: Um, the reason why we intended that was we wanted to end off the soul care adventure with uh a teaching that is uh in line with where we've been, but not something completely foreign to where we've been, um, but also something that's not completely new to where we meant to go.
SPEAKER_00: So people that were at the event, if they couldn't come to this, they're not gonna miss out.
SPEAKER_00: But people who weren't at the event, if you were here today at church, you would get enough out of this that you might have a holy curiosity to want to have more.
SPEAKER_00: Uh the big thing we need to understand in the life of Christ is that we will only go after the more that we know is available.
SPEAKER_00: Okay, if you don't think there's more for you, you'll just exist with what you have and go, oh, this is nice.
SPEAKER_00: I've got what I've got.
SPEAKER_00: This is Christian faith.
SPEAKER_00: But there's so much more, friends.
SPEAKER_00: And so this morning, uh even as I talked with Pastor Dan in advance and Aaron in advance, I talked to them and I just said, Where do you want this to go?
SPEAKER_00: And one of the things I love about Dan is he has this tremendous faith in God.
SPEAKER_00: And then the people he brings in to say, you know, go where you feel like Jesus is leading you.
SPEAKER_00: What is Jesus telling you?
SPEAKER_00: And I was like, could you just tell me what to say?
SPEAKER_00: I've done 10 talks, like 10 in the last couple days, and he just said, Go where Jesus leads you.
SPEAKER_00: And so this is where we're gonna go today.
SPEAKER_00: Now, if you've heard me preach before some of the times I've been here over the last eight years or so, I have incorporated one passage of scripture here before, which you're gonna see today, uh, which is Psalm 139, 23 and 24.
SPEAKER_00: It's a part of this story, and so that's why it's in here today.
SPEAKER_00: So don't be like, oh, I've heard this message.
SPEAKER_00: Please don't do that.
SPEAKER_00: It's not that message, but there's parts of it that will connect to it.
SPEAKER_00: Um, one of the things that we're gonna look at today is how to live with a healthy soul and how King David, for him, his life of prayer was integral to seeing this happen.
SPEAKER_00: And his connection with God was important where he would pray, he would seek the Lord, but he would also open his heart to the Lord and say, look, God, if there's anything here between you and me, I need you to deal with it.
SPEAKER_00: Because I can't deal with it on my own, and if I don't deal with it, I'm gonna have trouble.
SPEAKER_00: And so, if you know the life of King David, you know the highs and lows of his journey, get ready for a good adventure here.
SPEAKER_00: We're gonna we're gonna go on this.
SPEAKER_00: If you've never heard this, this is a good story.
SPEAKER_00: And one of the things I love about the Bible is that God doesn't keep the struggles of his people from us to see.
SPEAKER_00: This is really important.
SPEAKER_00: He doesn't just give the like perfect whitewashed version of King David's story here and go, He's a man after my own heart, which is what King David is referred to by God as.
SPEAKER_00: But we get to see him at his lowest moments too.
SPEAKER_00: Because you need to know, and I need to know, friends, that God sees you at your best and loves you there.
SPEAKER_00: God sees you at your worst and loves you there, and God doesn't just leave you there, but he looks at you and says, I still have a plan for you.
SPEAKER_00: If you'll open your heart to me, we can make this right and we can get there.
SPEAKER_00: The whole way along in King David's story, we see a man who sought God's heart.
SPEAKER_00: And when he was living well with the Lord, we get to see a really great thing.
SPEAKER_00: I'm gonna open in prayer here and I'm gonna say a couple lines about prayer after that, and then we'll jump in.
SPEAKER_00: So, Jesus, even as we open your word today, I ask, Lord God, that you would help us to find ourselves in the story.
SPEAKER_00: We're a little bit like David.
SPEAKER_00: We're a little bit like Bathsheba, we're a little bit like different people in this story, and yet you loved every single one.
SPEAKER_00: Today, Lord God, would you settle our hearts to hear from you only?
SPEAKER_00: If there's anything that's on my lips or on my heart that isn't from you, I ask, Lord God, right now you'd take it away.
SPEAKER_00: If there's anything that would be distracting or disruptive today, Lord God, I ask you'd silence it.
SPEAKER_00: And if there's something that you want to do uniquely in the hearts and lives of your people today, would it come to pass for your glory and their joy?
SPEAKER_00: And we love you, and everybody said together, Amen.
SPEAKER_00: So, one of the things Carmen and I love to do, my wife Carmen's right there.
SPEAKER_00: Some of you are wondering, now you know she's here, she is actually present, so that's good.
SPEAKER_00: Uh, she came in a couple days later than I did.
SPEAKER_00: I got here on Wednesday and uh had the opportunity to spend some really great time here.
SPEAKER_00: Uh, two weeks ago I was in Mexico.
SPEAKER_00: That was great, White Sand Beach.
SPEAKER_00: Uh then I came up here, also White Sand Beach, very similar friends.
SPEAKER_00: So if you're thinking I should go to Mexico, just think I'm all ready there.
SPEAKER_00: It's all inclusive at your house.
SPEAKER_00: You can eat what's there anytime you want.
SPEAKER_00: Like it's really great.
SPEAKER_00: So we've both been on a great trip lately, is what I'm saying.
SPEAKER_00: Um, went to Mexico, uh, came back, was in Vernon for a couple days where we live, and then came up here.
SPEAKER_00: And uh I had the opportunity to spend the time with this really great group of people and uh and spend time together going on an adventure looking at these topics.
SPEAKER_00: But one of the things we love to do is equip people in churches who are seeking to develop a life of deeper intimacy with God in prayer, in uh some of the fullness of what he has for them, and the more of the deeper life.
SPEAKER_00: And so that's where we like to be.
SPEAKER_00: That's our like sweet space that we we like to occupy.
SPEAKER_00: And then also we have an organization called Threshold Initiatives.
SPEAKER_00: If you want to learn more about it, you can just QR it, or you can go on to Threshold Initiatives.com.
SPEAKER_00: We also have a little church.
SPEAKER_00: Uh so uh a little shout out to the Forge Church community uh who let us come up here for the weekend to do this.
SPEAKER_00: We have a little church that we've started with the denomination, a new venture.
SPEAKER_00: And uh and so it's a great, great place to connect with people and to investigate Jesus and discover him together.
SPEAKER_00: So as we do this, though, one of the things we've discovered is that prayer is so important.
SPEAKER_00: A key to the deeper life of Christ is prayer.
SPEAKER_00: And not just to be people who know how to pray or do pray sometimes, but actually be a people of prayer.
SPEAKER_00: Prayer is not just about set times, prescribed words, energies, or thoughts, though that's a part of it, but prayer in and of itself serves to shift our attentions and our affections, our focus off of our situation and on to the Lord.
SPEAKER_00: Wherever you put your prayers, if it's not Jesus, friends, people do this all over the world, it's where you put your focus to.
SPEAKER_00: Okay?
SPEAKER_00: In the Christian faith, we literally are reaching out to Jesus by the power of the Holy Spirit, seeking the Father's work in our lives.
SPEAKER_00: Okay, so what we're doing is we're entrusting ourselves to Him and taking it off of ourselves.
SPEAKER_00: I think we put a lot on ourselves hoping to make things work, but Jesus has invited us to come to Him.
SPEAKER_00: Prayer has the ability to unlock something in our hearts at times that's locked up.
SPEAKER_00: And it gives God access as we reach out to him to work in our hearts and lives to change us a little bit and make us more like Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: If we're willing to pray and be used by God and have our lives surrendered to him and do our best to try to live well with him, it's amazing what he can do through people like that.
SPEAKER_00: A great quote from A.W.
SPEAKER_00: Tozer, very simple but great quote, says there is no limit to what God can do through us if we are a yielded and purified people.
SPEAKER_00: A yielded meaning we surrender our lives to him and come before him as not just our Savior but also our Lord.
SPEAKER_00: And purified meaning we're doing the best we can to live well in our soul, with as little junk between us and God.
SPEAKER_00: Okay, we all know the junk that hang out there, don't we?
SPEAKER_00: We know when we're not living well, but we also know when our hearts are just out of order.
SPEAKER_00: It's the stuff that has the capacity and the ability to take us off the path that God has for us at times.
SPEAKER_00: We all know what that's looked like, but what it looks like, but today we're gonna look at the life of King David and his life of both prayer and intimacy, but also when he got distant from God, to get a sense of what that's like for us and to hopefully get a couple tools in the belt of our soul to be able to figure out how to live well with God and with each other.
SPEAKER_00: So, King David, if you spent any time in the Christian faith or you spent any time in the Bible, you're gonna see that he's referenced quite a bit in the story.
SPEAKER_00: He tried his best from a very young age to walk well with God.
SPEAKER_00: Even as a young boy, the youngest of a family, he was sent out to be a shepherd in the field with the sheep of his father.
SPEAKER_00: And he looked after them from a very young age.
SPEAKER_00: But even out there, all alone, he tended to his own soul by being in prayer, in worship.
SPEAKER_00: He would sing songs and he started to write those songs and record those songs.
SPEAKER_00: From a very young age, he wrote about his experiences, his struggles, his highs and lows with God, his best moments and his most terrified moments.
SPEAKER_00: The moments where he felt so incredibly close to God, and then the moments where he felt, where are you, Lord?
SPEAKER_00: Can you find yourself somewhere between those kind of paradigm spaces there?
SPEAKER_00: Of I'm right here with you, Lord, and where are you, Lord?
SPEAKER_00: Every one of us finds ourselves in there at some point.
SPEAKER_00: King David starts out as just a young shepherd boy.
SPEAKER_00: He didn't even have in his heart or in his mind that one day he could become a king.
SPEAKER_00: But God was watching him from a very young age and identified him even as a person who was already after his heart.
SPEAKER_00: Not later just in life, but there.
SPEAKER_00: A key component to David's spiritual life was that he kept his heart and soul tendered towards the Lord in prayer and lived with a spiritual receptivity, meaning he tried to keep his life in line with God.
SPEAKER_00: It was like he was almost following him with his body.
SPEAKER_00: Where are you at, Lord?
SPEAKER_00: I want to follow you.
SPEAKER_00: I want my heart to be aligned with you.
SPEAKER_00: And whenever he got out of alignment with God, he would try his best to get back into alignment with him.
SPEAKER_00: Repentance is all about alignment.
SPEAKER_00: So when you get out of order in your heart and you know you're living off the path, Jesus just says, Come back, return to me, come into alignment with me.
SPEAKER_00: Um, you know when your trucks' tires are out of alignment.
SPEAKER_00: You know, you hit that curb or somebody in your family hit that curb, it was never you, right?
SPEAKER_00: Um but you hit that curb, and then all of a sudden you're driving down the highway, you take your hand off the wheel, where normally you'd just be able to go straight and it starts to pull, and you drift, and you're going, oh, that's the ditch.
SPEAKER_00: Um you don't want that.
SPEAKER_00: It's it's like that in our soul.
SPEAKER_00: When we get a little bit out of order, we start to drift.
SPEAKER_00: We can find ourselves away.
SPEAKER_00: King David did his best to try to keep his heart, his soul, his interior world aligned with God.
SPEAKER_00: And from a very young age, this was an important factor for him as he tried to live well with God.
SPEAKER_00: For many years, David found the Lord, as he was a shepherd to sheep, to be that for him.
SPEAKER_00: In Psalm 23, he describes God as his shepherd, the one who restores his soul and who also is able to keep him in the path.
SPEAKER_00: His affections and attentions were so focused on God that his eyes watched for God.
SPEAKER_00: He wanted to be right in the path of what God had for him.
SPEAKER_00: So if you have a Bible, you can take a look with me at 2 Samuel chapter 11.
SPEAKER_00: 2 Samuel chapter 11.
SPEAKER_00: When we read 2 Samuel chapter 11, it's a bit of whiplash right away.
SPEAKER_00: This is so out of alignment with David's heart and his character to this point in the story.
SPEAKER_00: Something shifted.
SPEAKER_00: He had been a man after God's heart, who sought God's heart, who was one of those people who had the spiritual receptivity and followed him around.
SPEAKER_00: And yet something happens, and maybe it was a quick thing or maybe it was a slow fade.
SPEAKER_00: But his alignment got off and he drifted.
SPEAKER_00: We sometimes think it was just this like, oh, she seems nice moment.
SPEAKER_00: But I want to contend here there was more to the story.
SPEAKER_00: So in 2 Samuel 11, we read about King David and his adulterous relationship with the married woman Bathsheba.
SPEAKER_00: It feels so incredibly out of character.
SPEAKER_00: David saw her, it says.
SPEAKER_00: From the roof he saw a woman bathing.
SPEAKER_00: The woman was very beautiful, and David sent someone to find out about her.
SPEAKER_00: The man said, Isn't this Bathsheba, the daughter of Eliam, the wife of Uriah the Hittite?
SPEAKER_00: Then David sent messengers to go get her.
SPEAKER_00: She came to him, he slept with her.
SPEAKER_00: She had purified herself from her uncleanliness, then she went back home.
SPEAKER_00: The woman conceived and sent word to David saying, I am pregnant.
SPEAKER_00: Man after God's own heart.
SPEAKER_00: David did something here that shifted his whole story.
SPEAKER_00: Remember that David is somebody that already knows God at this point.
SPEAKER_00: And from a very young age, he has had this tender, intimate relationship with God.
SPEAKER_00: 1 Samuel 13, 14, when King Saul falls in his sin, he's displaced by God spiritually.
SPEAKER_00: And uh Samuel says that God has already identified somebody who is a man after his heart.
SPEAKER_00: This is even before David is anointed, he's referred to that, friends.
SPEAKER_00: And yet, somewhere along the line, he became blind to the fallen nature of his soul and the slow fate effect of allowing his heart to drift.
SPEAKER_00: At some point, he lost his intimacy with God, his fellowship, that tight place between him and God, and he sought intimacy elsewhere.
SPEAKER_00: He stopped listening to God on the issue of his own heart.
SPEAKER_00: And was not living in the renewal that he spoke about, the shepherd who would renew his soul.
SPEAKER_00: It was at this time that David allowed his heart and mind to drift and his affections and attentions to look elsewhere.
SPEAKER_00: He became comfortable with his role.
SPEAKER_00: And a man who had at least four wives, if you read the story, that's tricky, eh?
SPEAKER_00: Already four, at this point decides he needs more.
SPEAKER_00: Here's how bad it got.
SPEAKER_00: David had made a decision, first and foremost, not to go to war.
SPEAKER_00: Kings always went to war with their nation.
SPEAKER_00: It was a symbol of the power of the nation to go to war.
SPEAKER_00: He sent his men out disempowered to war.
SPEAKER_00: And he stayed back.
SPEAKER_00: Here's where it gets really tough.
SPEAKER_00: He went without, or they went without him, meaning all of his mighty men, every one of his closest associates, between 30 and 39 men who had been with him from the time that he'd left Jerusalem originally when Saul started chasing him, who had fought every battle by his side, who were his closest guys, who were his men's Bible study group, who were also the guys he took hunting, fishing, everything with him.
SPEAKER_00: They knew everything about him, every single thing.
SPEAKER_00: There was no secrets with these guys.
SPEAKER_00: They fought back to back, they trusted each other intimately.
SPEAKER_00: And David sent them to war.
SPEAKER_00: And he stayed home.
SPEAKER_00: David was at home by himself when all of his closest guys went to war.
SPEAKER_00: He did not just choose to fall into sin, but he did choose to sin along the way.
SPEAKER_00: Watch this.
SPEAKER_00: The king goes looking for something other now than what he had with his wives.
SPEAKER_00: Upon seeing this woman on the rooftop, he sends for her.
SPEAKER_00: But can we talk about who Bathsheba is for a moment?
SPEAKER_00: Do you remember she was already identified in that reading?
SPEAKER_00: Joab says, wait a minute, isn't that Bathsheba, Uriah the Hittite's wife?
SPEAKER_00: David?
SPEAKER_00: You know her.
SPEAKER_00: Hold on.
SPEAKER_00: This is the part of the story where most of us in church go, wait, what?
SPEAKER_00: This wasn't just some woman who was hitting on him?
SPEAKER_00: Some woman who was probably the loose woman in town.
SPEAKER_00: This story isn't about how bad Bathsheba is.
SPEAKER_00: She gets a bad rap here.
SPEAKER_00: Bathsheba has always been the bad guy to many people here.
SPEAKER_00: She's not the issue.
SPEAKER_00: In fact, she's doing literally nothing wrong by cultural standards of the day.
SPEAKER_00: We don't have any indication in the story here that states that she was seeking David out, that she was wooing him, that she was making unwanted advances, flirting, or trying to get something to happen with David.
SPEAKER_00: She is the wife of Uriah the Hittite, and she was a person who lived in the nation under the covering and protection of the king, the shepherd of the nation.
SPEAKER_00: He should have been looking out for her, not looking for her.
SPEAKER_00: He should have been covering her.
SPEAKER_00: 2 Samuel 23, 39, Uriah the Hittite, this is not just a soldier with a pretty wife, friends.
SPEAKER_00: Uriah the Hittite is one of the 30 to 39.
SPEAKER_00: This is somebody that David knew for years.
SPEAKER_00: Meaning this.
SPEAKER_00: Meaning, next step, this.
SPEAKER_00: He knew Bathsheba.
SPEAKER_00: He'd probably watched her.
SPEAKER_00: He watched her grow up, even probably.
SPEAKER_00: For years, she had been the wife of Uriah the Hittite.
SPEAKER_00: He knew then where Uriah lived, right?
SPEAKER_00: I know where my friends live.
SPEAKER_00: I've been to their house.
SPEAKER_00: David knew where he was looking when he went up on the roof.
SPEAKER_00: Something in his heart had already begun to connect with her, to long for her, to want intimacy and connection with her.
SPEAKER_00: David became so blind to the state of his own heart that he allowed himself to long for something that wasn't his because he no longer had the intimacy with God that he had just before.
SPEAKER_00: David wasn't just going after some pretty woman.
SPEAKER_00: David was defiling a friend's wife.
SPEAKER_00: So when we look at this moment here, let's recap.
SPEAKER_00: David does not go to war like he's meant to.
SPEAKER_00: He goes looking for something outside of his marriage bed.
SPEAKER_00: He takes another man's wife and sleeps with it.
SPEAKER_00: Then he conspires, is the next step to trick the man.
SPEAKER_00: So he says, wait a minute, you're pregnant.
SPEAKER_00: This wasn't the plan.
SPEAKER_00: Can you guys go get Uriah, please, from the war?
SPEAKER_00: Take him out of the one thing he's supposed to do, which is fight with the other 30 to 39 men back to back, and the 100,000 or so other soldiers, but they're the frontline guys, they're the best fighters in the nation.
SPEAKER_00: Bring him back.
SPEAKER_00: So he tells him to come back.
SPEAKER_00: He comes back and he goes, Hey, have a nice weekend with your wife.
SPEAKER_00: She already knows she's pregnant.
SPEAKER_00: Now she's having to do something like lying to her husband on another level.
SPEAKER_00: Uriah says, How could I possibly do this against God and these men?
SPEAKER_00: These men don't get to do this.
SPEAKER_00: I will not.
SPEAKER_00: So he sleeps outside his front door.
SPEAKER_00: David now is stuck.
SPEAKER_00: So David says, Okay, I'm gonna send you back to war and I'm gonna put you right at the front lines.
SPEAKER_00: Sounds good.
SPEAKER_00: I'm in, I'm one of the mighty men, I'll do it.
SPEAKER_00: Whatever you say, King.
SPEAKER_00: He trusts David.
SPEAKER_00: David sends him there, but also sends him with a note for the other mighty men.
SPEAKER_00: When the battle intensifies, back up.
SPEAKER_00: Leave him alone and let him die.
SPEAKER_00: No longer is it just about David and his sin.
SPEAKER_00: Now he actually gets to the point where his soul is so corrupted in this moment by his sin and by his long disobedience in this direction that he's in a position now where he's actually making other men who are his friends sin against this man and God.
SPEAKER_00: Can you see where this is going?
SPEAKER_00: His story's unraveling, friends.
SPEAKER_00: A man after God's own heart.
SPEAKER_00: So he's unraveling and he becomes so blind that he can't even see how bad this has gotten.
SPEAKER_00: Uriah dies.
SPEAKER_00: He brings Bathsheba into his house, makes her a wife.
SPEAKER_00: The Lord finally says, That's enough.
SPEAKER_00: And he sends the prophet Nathan.
SPEAKER_00: Nathan comes in and says, Oh king, I've seen such a bad thing.
SPEAKER_00: A man took something that wasn't his own, he had everything he needed, and yet he took the one sheep of this man who only had one.
SPEAKER_00: What would I do with this person?
SPEAKER_00: And David says, Oh, you should kill that man.
SPEAKER_00: He does not deserve to live.
SPEAKER_00: And Samuel says, You are that man.
SPEAKER_00: In that moment, David is confronted with his own sin and recognizes he's the man who had all the sheep in the land.
SPEAKER_00: He was the shepherd.
SPEAKER_00: And he took the one sheep of the one man.
SPEAKER_00: And he comes before the Lord, a broken and desperate man.
SPEAKER_00: But the key here, and I want to say this before we go any further, is this that he then comes before the presence of the Lord as a desperate and broken man.
SPEAKER_00: He doesn't just run in his sin when confronted by it.
SPEAKER_00: His disposition of his heart was still there, it was just out of alignment.
SPEAKER_00: Nathan comes to him, brings him back, and says, Look at the Lord.
SPEAKER_00: Come to him.
SPEAKER_00: Let him deal with this.
SPEAKER_00: You need to let him have access to your heart.
SPEAKER_00: And so David writes this in Psalm 51.
SPEAKER_00: Create in me a pure heart, O God.
SPEAKER_00: Renew a steadfast spirit within me.
SPEAKER_00: Do not cast me from your presence or take your Holy Spirit from me.
SPEAKER_00: Restore to me the joy of salvation and grant me a willing spirit to sustain me.
SPEAKER_00: If you look in your Bible at the heading on this passage of Scripture, for all of time, you have it in your Bible today.
SPEAKER_00: David made sure that we didn't just think this was a pretty song.
SPEAKER_00: David says, Here's why I wrote this.
SPEAKER_00: It says, This, for the director of music, a psalm of David, when the prophet Nathan came to him and came to David after he had committed adultery with Bathsheba.
SPEAKER_00: David spoke accurately and he spoke honestly about his sin.
SPEAKER_00: And the reason why is because he did not want to ever go back there again.
SPEAKER_00: But he also wanted people to know where he had been and where God was bringing him to.
SPEAKER_00: It's from this place that we have this psalm, Create in Me, a pure heart, which always sounds so beautiful, doesn't it?
SPEAKER_00: But David knew what it was like to have a dirty heart that was out of order, that was not steadfast.
SPEAKER_00: He had lived outside of the presence of God for a while, and he longed to be drawn back in and to again have joy in his salvation and his relationship with God.
SPEAKER_00: He didn't have that for a season and he longed for it back.
SPEAKER_00: Even after his sin, David knew that God loved him and could restore him, so he went back.
SPEAKER_00: This is a key marker in the life of David, friends.
SPEAKER_00: If you are feeling like you have had your own David moment, where you have walked away, where you are struggling deeply, where your spiritual receptivity is out of alignment, where you're in a place where if anybody knew what was going on in here, they would be so terrified.
SPEAKER_00: Friends, you're not alone.
SPEAKER_00: David was in the same spot.
SPEAKER_00: And yet David had someone in his life who could say to him, come back.
SPEAKER_00: Today I say to you, if you're in that place, come back.
SPEAKER_00: Turn your heart back towards the Lord today, because today, like every day, the Lord is longing to have relational connection back in order with you again, and he's the only one who can bring it back into order.
SPEAKER_00: He's the only one.
SPEAKER_00: David needed to do some work with God, though.
SPEAKER_00: He knew that he needed to have a clean heart to have that made back into order and restored again because where he was was not helping him out.
SPEAKER_00: So David goes to a place of spiritual hygiene in his life.
SPEAKER_00: A place where he does the hard work of the soul.
SPEAKER_00: And we benefit from it in Scripture.
SPEAKER_00: We benefit from it because we get to learn about some things of how to tend to the soul when it's come out of order.
SPEAKER_00: He does three key things, which I've talked about here before, so I'm going to be brief on them.
SPEAKER_00: Three key things.
SPEAKER_00: He lives in confession, repentance, and forgiveness.
SPEAKER_00: He comes before the Lord and he confesses his sin, which is accurate and honest, not partial confession, which leads only to partial freedom.
SPEAKER_00: Accurate and honest.
SPEAKER_00: He's very clear with the Lord, this is what I've done.
SPEAKER_00: He repents and says, Where I'm out of alignment, bring me back in.
SPEAKER_00: And he says, Lord, would you forgive me for this and take away the effects of it?
SPEAKER_00: So I can live right with you again.
SPEAKER_00: David does this work with the Lord and he seeks him.
SPEAKER_00: And at first it's hard to know what to do.
SPEAKER_00: Maybe you're in a position where you don't even know how to start that or where to start that or what has gotten you out of order.
SPEAKER_00: King David gives us this scripture in Psalm 139.
SPEAKER_00: Psalm 139, 23 and 24 says this.
SPEAKER_00: And this is David going, I don't want to go back to that place again.
SPEAKER_00: So this is his tool, I believe, he used to keep himself clean.
SPEAKER_00: Search me, God, know my heart, test me, know my anxious thoughts, see if there's any offensive way in me, and lead me in the way everlasting.
SPEAKER_00: What you don't know inside of you is slowly killing you.
SPEAKER_00: If there's garbage hidden away in the soul, it is eating away at the soul.
SPEAKER_00: So David says this Lord, I'm open before you.
SPEAKER_00: Nothing hidden.
SPEAKER_00: Search me.
SPEAKER_00: If there's anything that's out of alignment with you, if my heart has anything that's not good, take it out.
SPEAKER_00: Test it.
SPEAKER_00: If I've got anxious thoughts, my anxious thoughts often lead me to sin.
SPEAKER_00: They make me run from you.
SPEAKER_00: They make me hide from you.
SPEAKER_00: If there's anything like that, take it.
SPEAKER_00: If there's any offensive ways in me, I don't know when I'm being offensive at times.
SPEAKER_00: We're so blind to ourselves, right?
SPEAKER_00: And then, God, once you've dealt with that, I know your goal is always to lead me in the way everlasting.
SPEAKER_00: He knows what happens if he doesn't tend his soul.
SPEAKER_00: And it always starts with one simple choice, and then another, and then another.
SPEAKER_00: David made the decision to stay at home and not go to war when the king was supposed to go to war.
SPEAKER_00: I don't know if that was the first decision or if it was a decision in a pathway of decisions he made to come out of alignment with God.
SPEAKER_00: But as he did, it led him to a place that he did not ever want to go again.
SPEAKER_00: For the rest of his life, we see David working hard to tend to his soul.
SPEAKER_00: And having given God access, he lives very differently as a result.
SPEAKER_00: Psalm 139, verses 1 and 2.
SPEAKER_00: Jump to that.
SPEAKER_00: The first couple verses, or 1 to 4, says this.
SPEAKER_00: Remember, the last verses are search me.
SPEAKER_00: But the reason why he can write this is because it's not a new pathway for him.
SPEAKER_00: This isn't the first time he wrote this.
SPEAKER_00: This is his probably journaling activity.
SPEAKER_00: It's the song he plays at the side of the building while he's just hanging out in the sun.
SPEAKER_00: He says, You have searched me, Lord, and you know me.
SPEAKER_00: You know when I sit and when I rise, you perceive my thoughts from afar, you discern my going out and my lying down.
SPEAKER_00: You are familiar with all my ways.
SPEAKER_00: Search me, O God.
SPEAKER_00: He's wide open to the Lord.
SPEAKER_00: Before a word on my tongue is even there, Lord, you know it completely.
SPEAKER_00: David chose to live with an open access to the Lord, so the Lord could work on him and keep him right with him.
SPEAKER_00: What we have in the soul will always affect how we will live our lives.
SPEAKER_00: Our traumas, our trophies, our best of us, our worst of us, the issues that we allow to creep in, the stuff that we give access to us, the lies, the lines that we hear from people, all of them have a capacity and ability, if we let them sit in the soul, to start to affect us.
SPEAKER_00: Also, the truth, the good things, the community, the fellowship, the positive stuff we allow ourselves to be a part of with Jesus, it has an effect on our soul.
SPEAKER_00: My question for you as we wrap up this morning as we come into land is this friends, what's going on in your soul right now?
SPEAKER_00: Are you experiencing a slow drift?
SPEAKER_00: Are you choosing to posture yourself and position yourself in spiritual receptivity before the Lord and saying, search me, Lord?
SPEAKER_00: One of the practices at soul care this week was search me.
SPEAKER_00: I'm wide open to you, Lord.
SPEAKER_00: Full access.
SPEAKER_00: A great place to start today.
SPEAKER_00: I'm gonna invite the band to come up.
SPEAKER_00: A great place to start for us today is to take a moment.
SPEAKER_00: You can do this anywhere, you can do this in your truck as it's warming up, letting your diesel get ready to go in the morning, whatever it is.
SPEAKER_00: You could sit in your driveway, you could sit in your special place, you read your Bible, or you could sit in jobs between work.
SPEAKER_00: Drop off your kids, take a moment.
SPEAKER_00: Search me, O God.
SPEAKER_00: Just give him access to your heart.
SPEAKER_00: If you don't know what's there, ask him, Jesus, what's there that I need your help with?
SPEAKER_00: He is your shepherd.
SPEAKER_00: David referred to God as the shepherd of his soul.
SPEAKER_00: Jesus is referred to the good or the referred to as the good or the great shepherd.
SPEAKER_00: He knows you.
SPEAKER_00: And regardless where you find yourself today, friends, he invites you to come.
SPEAKER_00: To meet with him, to sit with him, and to allow him to restore your soul because his goal is always the way everlasting.
SPEAKER_00: Let's pray together.
SPEAKER_00: So, Jesus, this morning, as we are landing these moments together, I know that this isn't a landing zone for some, it's a beginning of a conversation with you.
SPEAKER_00: So, Lord, I ask even right now, if there's something you want to bring to somebody's attention from a place of a good, loving Father, a good shepherd of the soul, would you bring it forward to them?
SPEAKER_00: Would you say, What about this?
SPEAKER_00: Could we deal with this today?
SPEAKER_00: And not so I can make you feel bad, but so I can lead you to the way everlasting.
SPEAKER_00: Can we deal with this?
SPEAKER_00: So even as we sit together, Lord God, would you bring those to attention for us?
SPEAKER_00: Friends, if you find something like that today in your soul that God's brought to your attention, just come before him, confess it to him.
SPEAKER_00: Repent of it, just I want to be back in line with you, God.
SPEAKER_00: It's not hard work.
SPEAKER_00: And then ask him to forgive you, God.
SPEAKER_00: I don't want to live like that anymore.
SPEAKER_00: Transform my heart, make it new it's yours.
SPEAKER_00: So, Jesus, would you do this work in us?
SPEAKER_00: Because you love us, and also you really love this community, and you have wonderful plans for it.
SPEAKER_00: For the sake of the king and the kingdom, would you do these things, Lord?
SPEAKER_00: And we bless you, we thank you for what you've been doing, and we ask for more, Lord.
SPEAKER_00: Continue your good work in this place.
SPEAKER_00: Amen.
SPEAKER_00: Bless you, friends.
SPEAKER_00: Let's sing together.