SPEAKER_01: You're listening to the road with Pastor Teacher Steve Holt.
SPEAKER_00: For men and women, we need a covenant relationship, and sometimes it comes through brokenness.
SPEAKER_00: And sometimes, and maybe oftentimes it comes through struggles in our life.
SPEAKER_00: I rarely see guys that are up, cloud nine, everything's going well in their lives who want to have blood-slayed allies.
SPEAKER_00: It's usually at those dark places in the valleys of the shadow of death that we start to look for shepherds.
SPEAKER_00: People.
SPEAKER_00: People in life.
SPEAKER_01: At The Road, our vision is to raise up wholehearted disciples of Jesus Christ.
SPEAKER_01: For more information on The Road, visit theroad.org.
SPEAKER_01: We hope you are encouraged by today's message from Pastor Teacher Steve Holt.
SPEAKER_00: We are in 1 Samuel 18, and this is the last message I'm going to do on the series Worshiper Warrior on the Life of David.
SPEAKER_00: As you know from my book, You That Have Bought the Book, 21 Chapters, I could go on and on and on.
SPEAKER_00: But I believe God's leading us now to move into a Kingdom of God revolution starting next week.
SPEAKER_00: But the situation with David, and I felt like this was a good place for us to close it up as far as this series on David, is he has defeated Goliath.
SPEAKER_00: We looked at that last week.
SPEAKER_00: The last two weeks we've talked about David and Goliath and having a God-saturated imagination.
SPEAKER_00: Well, now he's in Saul's court, and all kinds of things are about to happen in his life, and he's going to need what I believe is one of the most important things in your life, and most Christians don't have it, and that's what we call around here blood-stained allies.
SPEAKER_00: Blood-stained allies.
SPEAKER_00: He's going to need a friend.
SPEAKER_00: He's going to need some people in his life to disciple him, to covenant with him, to stand before him as his ally against a mad, crazy, demonized king named Saul.
SPEAKER_00: So we're going to pick it up at 1 Samuel 18, verse 1.
SPEAKER_00: And I want to look at kind of four aspects of this.
SPEAKER_00: I mean, there's 20.
SPEAKER_00: There's 25 aspects of blood-stained allies, but I'm just going to hit on a few this morning for our time together.
SPEAKER_00: Now, when he had finished speaking to Saul, so Saul has brought him in to his court, into his home, and into the palace, if you would call it really a palace back then.
SPEAKER_00: The soul of Jonathan, now that's Saul's son, was knit to the soul of David, and Jonathan loved him as his own soul.
SPEAKER_00: Here's the first point about bloodstained allies.
SPEAKER_00: Here's the first point of having deep level relationships.
SPEAKER_00: And this is really, really, this is the most important point, and this is it.
SPEAKER_00: Number one, hearts knit together with the same cause.
SPEAKER_00: Men, you need some men, women, you need some women in your life.
SPEAKER_00: And I don't think it needs to be more than two or three, where your hearts are knit together with the same cause.
SPEAKER_00: Not just friendships, not beer drinking buddies, hunting and fishing buddies.
SPEAKER_00: By the way, you can have those and be bloodstained allies, but you can have those and not be bloodstained allies.
SPEAKER_00: How many of you know that?
SPEAKER_00: You know, most of the fellowship in the church at large is very, very superficial.
SPEAKER_00: You know, in some ways it needs to be, and here's what I mean by that, is that you don't want to open up your heart to just anybody.
SPEAKER_00: So I expect when I'm out in the lobby and I'm meeting someone for the first time, how are you doing?
SPEAKER_00: They say, Oh, I'm just doing, I haven't had a great weekend, and yet I'm finding out they're going through a divorce or something.
SPEAKER_00: Well, they don't trust me, I don't trust them.
SPEAKER_00: But we need some people.
SPEAKER_00: And it starts with your spouse, I believe.
SPEAKER_00: That's the first blood-stained ally, is your spouse.
SPEAKER_00: And that takes a lot of work, right, men, right, women?
SPEAKER_00: I mean, it's hard to have your spouse be your blood-stained ally.
SPEAKER_00: But it starts there and it's knit together, and this is so crucial, with the same cause, the same mission.
SPEAKER_00: My wife and I are about as different as night and day.
SPEAKER_00: If I say right on almost everything, she says left.
SPEAKER_00: If I say red, she says black.
SPEAKER_00: This is Georgia Colors, of course she would say that.
SPEAKER_00: But we are we are just total opposites.
SPEAKER_00: She thinks differently than me, and we figured out somewhere along the way, because of our mission being the same, and our commitment from the beginning of the cause being the same, over all of our bumps and all of our struggles, we actually had our hearts get knit together over the years.
SPEAKER_00: We really passionately love each other.
SPEAKER_00: And we love hanging out with each other.
SPEAKER_00: Um last week, Valentine, when we did Valentine's Day, um, I spoke at Men with a Purpose at the Pinery, which was really exciting and fun, and then we went to the Broadmoor.
SPEAKER_00: And I got this really great deal at the Broadmoor, so we stayed there, and it was just so much fun to be together.
SPEAKER_00: Our hearts are knit together, but it's taken a lot of work, it's taken a lot of hard effort to get there.
SPEAKER_00: But then, but then I'll share later some things that have happened in my life that knit me together with some men here in this fellowship through some really tough times.
SPEAKER_00: Men, you need some men.
SPEAKER_00: So the reason I say this is because I'm not talking about necessarily the people you go to work with or have a cubicle next to you, and you have a lot of things in common.
SPEAKER_00: I'm talking about the same cause, same mission, same vision.
SPEAKER_00: I can't tell you how many times in counseling with people who are going through a divorce or going through a struggle or something, they say, Well, well, Susan said, I said, Who's Susan?
SPEAKER_00: Oh, well, she's this lady at work, and she's had three divorces, and it's like, so you're getting her advice about staying together in marriage with her track record.
SPEAKER_00: And it's like, uh, hello, bump, bump, bump, anybody home?
SPEAKER_00: And and and I say that, and I'm sorry if some of you fall into that category, but the reality is you need some blood-stained allies, same cause, same mission, glory of God on the face of the earth, passion for mission to see see Christ's name exalted in your own heart.
SPEAKER_00: A kingdom of God revolution begins in our own heart.
SPEAKER_00: And so when we start having friends like that, they say, Well, how are you doing with the Lord?
SPEAKER_00: It seems like from what you told me that you exaggerated the truth here.
SPEAKER_00: I think you need to repent.
SPEAKER_00: But it's it's blood-stained allies.
SPEAKER_00: That means it's reciprocal.
SPEAKER_00: How many would say you struggle with sin sometimes?
SPEAKER_00: What I love about the road is you guys are all pretty honest most of the time.
SPEAKER_00: Elijah had Elisha, even Jesus had Peter, James, and John.
SPEAKER_00: Paul had Barnabas, Silas, and Timothy.
SPEAKER_00: Men and women, I'll share with you a couple stories at the end of my message today.
SPEAKER_00: All great men and women who've done great things for the kingdom had bloodstained allies.
SPEAKER_00: Matter of fact, I'd be willing to wager this that it's almost impossible to live the Christian life successfully, year after year after year, without blood-stained allies.
SPEAKER_00: And whenever I see someone falling away, and we see it all the time, people who are once walking with God, who decide to go their own way, they usually don't have anybody in their life who's a blood-stained ally.
SPEAKER_00: Now they did.
SPEAKER_00: Sometimes they did, but one of the first things they start to do is they cut off those people that used to speak into their life, right?
SPEAKER_00: And they're a loner.
SPEAKER_00: Loners are dangerous.
SPEAKER_00: You're so set up as a loner to be taken out by the enemy because of self-deception.
SPEAKER_00: Every one of us have the capacity of self-deception.
SPEAKER_00: Where you run through your mind all your own alibis about your particular situation of this or that.
SPEAKER_00: And if someone else who also isn't on that same journey with you for the kingdom of God and seeking the kingdom of God, who can say, Um, Steve, I don't see it that way.
SPEAKER_00: Liz does this all the time, and it makes me so mad.
SPEAKER_00: She did it this morning.
SPEAKER_00: I said, honey, I've got to speak on bloodstained allies.
SPEAKER_00: I don't need any living examples right now.
SPEAKER_00: No, she did.
SPEAKER_00: She came up to my office and that woman.
SPEAKER_00: She's down there teaching your children right now.
SPEAKER_00: She's a godly, beautiful woman, but anyway.
SPEAKER_00: Right?
SPEAKER_00: You guys know what I'm talking about?
SPEAKER_00: If you don't know what I'm talking about, you don't have any blood-stained allies.
SPEAKER_00: If somebody, several people can't say to you, I don't see it that way, without you receiving it's not a blood-stained ally.
SPEAKER_00: And I don't know how many times it's 33 years of marriage, Liz has said stuff, and I'm mad when I leave, and then I go, she's the reason I'm mad is because she's right.
SPEAKER_00: Because I know she's got my back.
SPEAKER_00: Right?
SPEAKER_00: Verse 2.
SPEAKER_00: Saul took him that day, meaning David, and would not let him go home to his father's house anymore.
SPEAKER_00: Then Jonathan and David made a covenant because he loved him as his own soul.
SPEAKER_00: And Jonathan took off the robe that was on him and gave it to David with his armor, even to his sword and his bow and his belt.
SPEAKER_00: So you're kind of looking into a medieval practice of covenant, of giving, giving his armor to his friend was a covenant commitment.
SPEAKER_00: It was a visible way, not of taking an animal in this case and cutting it in half, which is what a covenant was in Old Testament times.
SPEAKER_00: He's actually giving him his armor to him to show that you're my blood brother.
SPEAKER_00: You're my bloodstained ally.
SPEAKER_00: I'm making a covenant with you.
SPEAKER_00: So that's my second point.
SPEAKER_00: That a bloodstained ally is a covenant relationship.
SPEAKER_00: It's a covenant relationship.
SPEAKER_00: It's saying it's unconditional, that we're gonna stay in this relationship.
SPEAKER_00: It doesn't mean we can't say the hard things.
SPEAKER_00: It doesn't mean that we can't say that you shouldn't be doing that, or you can't do that, or I'm not gonna go anymore to do that with you, but I still love you.
SPEAKER_00: I'm still committed to your heart.
SPEAKER_00: I have a covenant for you.
SPEAKER_00: You know why?
SPEAKER_00: Because your number one blood-stained ally is Jesus Christ.
SPEAKER_00: And he made a covenant with you.
SPEAKER_00: And men and women, only we can make a covenant with blood-stained allies, a true covenant of the same cause of blood-stained allies, because we have Jesus Christ who came and unconditionally loved us, and he's our blood-stained ally.
SPEAKER_00: So Eugene Peterson says it this way: friendship, and I would say bloodstained allies, is a much underestimated aspect of spirituality.
SPEAKER_00: It's every bit as significant as prayer and fasting.
SPEAKER_00: Like the sacramental use of water and bread and wine and communion, friendship takes what's common in human experience and turns it into something holy.
SPEAKER_00: Many of you in this room know my story, and so I'll make it short because you've heard it before.
SPEAKER_00: But when I left Mountain Springs Church, feeling broken, feeling hurt, feeling betrayed.
SPEAKER_00: Something like Forrest Gump when Jenny left.
SPEAKER_00: And he in the next picture, if you watch the movie, he's got his Nikes on and his gump shrimp hat on, and he's sitting there on the porch, and he says, I just, for no real reason, I just started running.
SPEAKER_00: And I ran down the driveway and I just kept on going.
SPEAKER_00: And I ran through the town, I kept on going, I ran through Alabama and I kept on going.
SPEAKER_00: I just kept on running until there was no other place to go.
SPEAKER_00: And it shows him at what appears to be Santa Monica Pier in California.
SPEAKER_00: He turns around, he runs back, and he runs back.
SPEAKER_00: Well, one day, I just started walking.
SPEAKER_00: For no apparent reason, I just got up one morning and I put on my shoes and I just started walking.
SPEAKER_00: And for four years, almost every day, I walked for miles and miles and miles and hours and hours and hours, and I would come back to my fire pit, and inevitably on those particular days, there'd be two or three guys there.
SPEAKER_00: And we'd sit at the fire pit and we share our hearts together.
SPEAKER_00: And those men are in this room.
SPEAKER_00: And as I opened up my heart of the sense of betrayal that I felt, they began to share betrayals in their own life.
SPEAKER_00: As I began to share mistakes that I'd made and how I wanted to grow to be a better leader, they shared how they wanted to grow as a better leader.
SPEAKER_00: And I got born again again.
SPEAKER_00: See, I got born again at the University of Georgia with Jesus over 30 years ago.
SPEAKER_00: But five years ago I got born again by a man named David.
SPEAKER_00: And began to open up the scriptures and read about David and Jonathan, began to read about David in the cave of Abdulon, began to read the Psalms in a fresh, new way.
SPEAKER_00: Of course I'd read all that before, but it came alive, it jumped off the page, and we began to coin a term, bloodstained allies.
SPEAKER_00: And we developed a covenant relationship.
SPEAKER_00: So many women, we need a covenant relationship, and sometimes it comes through brokenness.
SPEAKER_00: And sometimes, and maybe oftentimes it comes through struggles in our life.
SPEAKER_00: I rarely see guys that are up on cloud nine, everything's going well in their life, who want to have blood-stained allies.
SPEAKER_00: It's usually at those dark places in the valleys of the shadow of death that we start to look for shepherd through Jesus, who's got flesh on.
SPEAKER_00: People.
SPEAKER_00: So secondly, covenant relationships.
SPEAKER_00: Thirdly, defending the reputation of the other.
SPEAKER_00: Look at chapter 19.
SPEAKER_00: What happens in 18, men and women, you don't need to read it, but you can read it later if you'd like.
SPEAKER_00: As David begins to do the bidding of Saul, which is to fight the Philistines, he's hugely successful.
SPEAKER_00: As he's successful, on one particular campaign, he comes back, and the women of Jerusalem pour out into the streets and say, Saul has killed his thousands, but David his ten thousands.
SPEAKER_00: And jealousy begins to rise up in Saul and he starts to try to figure out a way to kill David.
SPEAKER_00: And Jonathan, as you'll see in a moment, is key in saving his life.
SPEAKER_00: How many of you know that if you're successful at anything, you're gonna have two problems?
SPEAKER_00: Actually, you're gonna have three.
SPEAKER_00: The first one is pride in your own life.
SPEAKER_00: I would say the more anointed you are in something, the more you will struggle with arrogance and pride.
SPEAKER_00: Secondly, somebody always wants your job.
SPEAKER_00: If nobody wants your job, you're not successful yet.
SPEAKER_00: But as soon as you start getting successful, get ready, because jealousy is going to be in somebody.
SPEAKER_00: It usually starts in your own family.
SPEAKER_00: It's really interesting.
SPEAKER_00: You know, uh the idea of a prophet not being welcome in his own hometown or in his own family.
SPEAKER_00: But then the third is the IRS always wants their part too.
SPEAKER_00: So that's the third one.
SPEAKER_00: Look at chapter 19, verse 1.
SPEAKER_00: Now Saul spoke to Jonathan, his son, and to all his servants that they should kill David.
SPEAKER_00: But Jonathan, Saul's son, delighted greatly in David.
SPEAKER_00: So Jonathan told David, saying, My father Saul seeks to kill you.
SPEAKER_00: Therefore, please be on your guard until morning and stay in a secret place and hide.
SPEAKER_00: And I will go out and stand beside my father in the field where you are, and I will speak with my father about you.
SPEAKER_00: Then what I observe I will tell you.
SPEAKER_00: Now let me just say this.
SPEAKER_00: When we talk about guarding the reputation of another, it's about speaking truth.
SPEAKER_00: He's speaking truth about David.
SPEAKER_00: Now, if David's embezzling money, if David's got a gal on the side, if David can't keep his zipper up, if David is using power to try to take the throne from Saul, then this can't happen.
SPEAKER_00: So this is truth.
SPEAKER_00: Jonathan's speaking truth to his dad.
SPEAKER_00: Verse 4.
SPEAKER_00: Thus Jonathan spoke well of David to Saul, his father, and said to him, Let not the king sin against a servant and against David, because he has not sinned against you, and because his works have been very good toward you.
SPEAKER_00: In other words, David has always been submitted to leadership.
SPEAKER_00: That's one of the things that you notice about David in the Valley of Elah.
SPEAKER_00: He submitted to Jesse.
SPEAKER_00: This is what's great about submitting to leadership is that it sets you up to be where God can do amazing things that you might try to do on your own.
SPEAKER_00: So remember, David is just submitting to Jesse and bringing cheese and crackers to his brothers on the battlefield.
SPEAKER_00: We looked at last week, and that's how it got set up for him to hear what Goliath said, so that something within David rose up and said, That's not right.
SPEAKER_00: That's not kingdom, that's not the glory of God.
SPEAKER_00: And suddenly David, who just naturally aspires to be a warrior because he had developed a warrior's heart, not in the valley of Elah, but on the hills of Bethlehem, could pick up five smooth stones, knew how to use that sling.
SPEAKER_00: Do you guys realize they've done the ballistics on that sling on slingers?
SPEAKER_00: Same velocity, up to 300 yards of a 38-caliber bullet with a slinger.
SPEAKER_00: Boom, nails him in the head, and suddenly he's thrust into fame and fortune.
SPEAKER_00: Was David seeking it?
SPEAKER_00: No, he wasn't.
SPEAKER_00: But he he was set up because he was submitted to his dad.
SPEAKER_00: Now he's been submitted to Saul and he just keeps killing Philistines.
SPEAKER_00: We won't go into the details of all of that, but man, Saul gets more and more upset for him.
SPEAKER_00: And Jonathan says, verse 5, for he took his life in his own hands and he killed the Philistine.
SPEAKER_00: And the Lord brought about a great deliverance for all of Israel.
SPEAKER_00: You saw it and you rejoiced.
SPEAKER_00: Why then will you sin against innocent blood to kill David without a cause?
SPEAKER_00: So Saul heeded the voice of Jonathan, and Saul swore, as the Lord lives, he shall not be killed.
SPEAKER_00: Now it didn't last very long, but my point here today is that defending the reputation of the other is what Jonathan did, and it's the key to a bloodstained ally.
SPEAKER_00: It's thinking the best.
SPEAKER_00: It's covering their back and being there for them.
SPEAKER_00: And then fourthly, lastly, look at chapter 22.
SPEAKER_00: The rest of the story is a battle of.
SPEAKER_00: David on the run and constantly, constantly trying to figure out what to do next because he's faithful to what Saul does.
SPEAKER_00: Saul's contrition right here doesn't last very long.
SPEAKER_00: Jonathan's loyalty to David only grows stronger.
SPEAKER_00: David's on the run, and we come to chapter 22, one of the great chapters of the Bible.
SPEAKER_00: David therefore departed from there and he escaped to the cave of Adulum.
SPEAKER_00: So when his brothers and all his father's house heard it, they went down there to him.
SPEAKER_00: And everyone who was in distress, everyone who was in debt, everyone who was discontented gathered to him.
SPEAKER_00: So he became captain over them.
SPEAKER_00: And there were about 400 men with him.
SPEAKER_00: You may know the rest of the story that these 400 become his 400 mighty men.
SPEAKER_00: Fourthly, blood stained.
SPEAKER_00: These are men and women who identify and suffer with each other's pain and shame.
SPEAKER_00: How many of you know that Proverbs 28-21 is really true?
SPEAKER_00: Men will transgress for a loaf of bread.
SPEAKER_00: How many of you would say that at some case in your life, either a job or a marriage or a situation, you've been betrayed by people you thought you could trust?
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
SPEAKER_00: Usually whoever pays the best wins their heart.
SPEAKER_00: Isn't this interesting?
SPEAKER_00: These guys that come to David.
SPEAKER_00: You guys that are in this room that were a part of the fireside chats, my blood-stained allies by the fellowship of the ring.
SPEAKER_00: How many times I told you you're just the malcontents of the Cave of Abdulum type people?
SPEAKER_00: And they all went, yeah, that's us.
SPEAKER_00: We all had our story.
SPEAKER_00: Let me quote from my book, the way I explain it here.
SPEAKER_00: What is it that draws these men to David?
SPEAKER_00: Why do they come?
SPEAKER_00: Samuel writes to emphasize their desperate state.
SPEAKER_00: They were malcontents, failures, the desperate.
SPEAKER_00: What's curious is that they are men who can identify with David.
SPEAKER_00: The allies of Abdulam are men just like David.
SPEAKER_00: They get it, they understand the plight of David.
SPEAKER_00: Just days before, they would have never identified with anything about David.
SPEAKER_00: This blessed son of Jesse, this rock star, this MMA, Goliath slaying world champion, son-in-law of the king of Israel.
SPEAKER_00: There's nothing about David that these bankrupt, indebted thieves could have related to.
SPEAKER_00: But now David suddenly become one of them.
SPEAKER_00: David is one of them.
SPEAKER_00: He has nothing.
SPEAKER_00: He's lost everything.
SPEAKER_00: He's in distress.
SPEAKER_00: He's in debt.
SPEAKER_00: He's discontented.
SPEAKER_00: David is the captain of all their problems and all that they've lost.
SPEAKER_00: But now his life is their life.
SPEAKER_00: That's what allies are.
SPEAKER_00: Allies are men who are vulnerable and broken together.
SPEAKER_00: Allies are a group of ragamuffin men and women who love each other.
SPEAKER_00: The allies at Azalum were a gang of beat-up men who know they had nothing to bring to the table except themselves.
SPEAKER_00: They have nothing, and anyone looking in would say they are nothing.
SPEAKER_00: Do you realize when you say you're nothing?
SPEAKER_00: Let me say this.
SPEAKER_00: When you say you have nothing, it's true.
SPEAKER_00: But when you say you are nothing, that's shame.
SPEAKER_00: That's not true.
SPEAKER_00: But they have everything.
SPEAKER_00: Allies are men and women who are mutually desperate for God, for a captain, for a cause, and for a purpose.
SPEAKER_00: The allies of Abdulum know that David has what they need.
SPEAKER_00: There's something about David that they all long for.
SPEAKER_00: They want David because David wants God.
SPEAKER_00: That's what we all need.
SPEAKER_00: We all need allies of Abdulum.
SPEAKER_00: We desperately need men and women who rally to the love of God as brothers and sisters.
SPEAKER_00: We were made for relationship.
SPEAKER_00: We men and women have spent our lives running from such people.
SPEAKER_00: We've been told all our lives that being a man's man or a woman's woman is to be independent, self-made, lone rangers that can handle any problem on our own.
SPEAKER_00: What a lie! It doesn't work, and it's never worked.
SPEAKER_00: Dietrich Bonhoeffer was a Lutheran pastor at the time of Hitler.
SPEAKER_00: As Hitler rose in power, the Lutheran Church of Germany capitulated to the demands of Adolf Hitler in the Third Reich.
SPEAKER_00: As success after success hit the nation of Germany and the economy began to grow again after World War I and the Treaty of Versailles, people began to believe in Hitler.
SPEAKER_00: Dietrich Bonhoeffer, on the other hand, is a gospel-believing, Bible-believing Christian, evangelical, who saw what was happening to the Jews, who saw what was happening to homosexuals, he saw what was happening to the gypsies, he saw what was happening to those that were mentally and physically challenged, being whisked away to concentration camps, took his stand.
SPEAKER_00: And he started a group, an underground group called the Confessing Church.
SPEAKER_00: And he became a part of the hit list of the German SS.
SPEAKER_00: Bonhoffer writes Christianity means community through Jesus Christ and in Jesus Christ.
SPEAKER_00: No Christian community is more or less than this.
SPEAKER_00: Whether it be brief or the daily fellowship of years, Christian community is this.
SPEAKER_00: We belong to one another and only through and in Jesus Christ.
SPEAKER_00: What does this mean?
SPEAKER_00: It means first that a Christian needs others because of Jesus Christ.
SPEAKER_00: It means second that a Christian comes to others only through Jesus Christ.
SPEAKER_00: It means third that in Jesus Christ we've been chosen from eternity, accepted in time, and united for eternity.
SPEAKER_00: That's a bloodstained ally.
SPEAKER_00: William Wilberforce is most famous for his tireless work through British Parliament and the abolishment of the slave trade.
SPEAKER_00: He was a bundle of visionary energy.
SPEAKER_00: As he made it his passion, two great passions of William Wilberforce's life were the abolition of the slave trade and the reformation of British manners.
SPEAKER_00: And what he meant by that was the morals of British society.
SPEAKER_00: In addition to his abolition work, he was consistently involved in church work that included the Church Missionary Society, the sending of missionaries to India and Africa, the British and Foreign Bible Society, the Proclamation Society against Vice and Immorality, the School Society, the Sunday School Society, the Bettering Society, the Vice Society, and about 25 others that are on this list.
SPEAKER_00: How in the world did he do that?
SPEAKER_00: Very few understand or even can comprehend this group of bloodstained allies that began to hang out with William Wilberforce called the Clampton Group.
SPEAKER_00: It was named after a section, which still exists in London, and they were called the Clampton Seven.
SPEAKER_00: They were sometimes called the Clampt.
SPEAKER_00: Hannah Moore was one of his closest friends, and she was key in telling him to write a manifesto.
SPEAKER_00: And in this manifesto, he spoke of the essentials.
SPEAKER_00: Listen to this.
SPEAKER_00: How do you like this for a book title?
SPEAKER_00: How would you like to find this one on Amazon.com?
SPEAKER_00: This was the book he wrote, his manifesto.
SPEAKER_00: A practical view of the prevailing religious system of professed Christians in the higher and middle classes in the country contrasted with real Christianity.
SPEAKER_00: That was the title.
SPEAKER_00: It was an immediate bestseller.
SPEAKER_00: And in 1807, he saw the abolition of the slave trade.
SPEAKER_00: But with the defeat the first time of the abolition in 1789, Wilbur Force and his closest friend Henry Thornton called together a group that became known as the Clampton sect, and they began to apply their Christianity to all aspects of culture.
SPEAKER_00: Talk about a kingdom revolution.
SPEAKER_00: This was a kingdom revolution.
SPEAKER_00: The Clamton group believed that they were representative of God's kingdom on earth and the faithful stewards of all that God had given them.
SPEAKER_00: Together, this Clamton Fellowship sought to make the British Empire an instrument of social and moral welfare of all people.
SPEAKER_00: Throughout their time together, they remained remarkably committed to these goals.
SPEAKER_00: And they had some interesting characters in their group.
SPEAKER_00: Clean and unclean animals all hanging out together.
SPEAKER_00: Men and women, as God gives you a personal kingdom revolution, as you begin to develop those bloodstained allies in your own life, He's going to use you.
SPEAKER_00: He's going to use you in a mighty way.
SPEAKER_00: As we begin to trust God with these areas of our life, watch out.
SPEAKER_00: Watch out.
SPEAKER_00: Because God's going to just so move empower through you.
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SPEAKER_01: Thanks again for tuning in today, and be sure to listen to the next edition of The Road with Pastor Teacher Steve Holt.