-I don’t know whether y’all played any organized or disorganized sports growing up
-Did any of y’all play any team sports either interscholastically, in intramurals or on the playground?
-Obviously, it is a lot more fun playing sports when your team wins
-Playing a game is a lot more fun when you have the best player on your team
-I’m sure the Cleveland Cavaliers are very thankful that LeBron James is on their team after he hit an amazing three point shot to win the game as time expired the other night
-Have you ever noticed how great players seem to raise their game when the game is on the line {PAUSE}
-I have been part of some pretty good teams in high school and college athletics
-Our teams were pretty tough to beat from top to bottom but knowing that you had the best person on the field or the court was comforting
-When the game is on the line, you know that if you have the best player on your team, they are going to make a play to win the game more than likely
-When I was a junior in high school, we had a great football team
-We were playing our major rivals in the second to last game of the season
-We were both undefeated so this was going to be a big game
-It ended up being televised on one of the local stations
-It came down to the last play of the game
-We were driving the ball. We had it down to their ten yard line with only a few seconds left on the clock. It was 4th down and we were down by six. Our quarterback got the ball, was chased out of the pocket. As he was running toward the sideline, he was quickly running out of room. He threw the ball up in the end zone. One of my classmates, a very talented receiver jumps up and reaches with his long arms to bring the ball down and get his feet in just inside the back line of the end zone.
-If that wasn’t enough, our kicker got hurt earlier in the game during a long runback by the other team and our backup kicker was one of our offensive lineman who had never attempted a kick in a game.
-He kicked with the old, straight ahead style and knocked it through the uprights. It was one of my school’s biggest wins. Everyone flooded onto the field to celebrate the amazing victory.
-The best players always have a way of raising their game to another level when the game is on the line {PAUSE}
-Have you ever been at the end of your rope?
-Have you ever thought that everyone was against you?
-Have you ever been at the place in your life when you had nowhere else to turn but God?
-That is what this message is about today {PAUSE}
-This past week in our Monday bible study, we looked at the life and rule of King David
-Talk about a guy who had his life’s ups and downs
-He started out as a lowly shepherd boy but then was selected by God for the priest Samuel to anoint as the new king
-Although he was already anointed to be king, he had to wait years to actually take the throne
-While he was waiting, the current king Saul was trying to kill him on a regular basis
-On top of that, he then had to fight off all of Israel’s enemies to finally enjoy the spoils
-On the other hand, he was held in high esteem for killing Goliath and for his military prowess
-As soon as he had the opportunity to rest from his labors a bit, he realized that he able then to enjoy life but God was still being carried about in the ark of the covenant in a makeshift tent
-There is a great story in 2 Samuel 7 where David asks the prophet Nathan if he can build a house for God
-Initially, Nathan says yes but then God speaks to Nathan to change that course of action
-God says to Nathan, " ’The LORD declares to you that the LORD himself will establish a house for you: When your days are over and you rest with your fathers, I will raise up your offspring to succeed you, who will come from your own body, and I will establish his kingdom. He is the one who will build a house for my Name, and I will establish the throne of his kingdom forever.”
-As great a promise as that was, it wasn’t enough for David.
-There is something to the old adage, “idle hands are the devil’s handiwork”
-Not having much to do anymore, David gets himself into trouble with the White House intern, Bathsheba
-And because of this transgression, he ends up living in turmoil for the next few years as he loses two of his sons very quickly
-A third rebels against him, tries to take over the kingdom and is eventually killed by David’s commander of the army
-Finally, David was able to coalesce his support again
-Through all of that turmoil, David realized one thing – when he had nowhere else to turn, when he couldn’t depend on anyone else, he could depend on one person – God
-That’s why he can say in our Psalm, “The LORD is my light and my salvation — whom shall I fear? The LORD is the stronghold of my life — of whom shall I be afraid? {PAUSE}
-I went to the Daedalians luncheon last week
-I sat by a WWII era bomber pilot from Brooklyn, New York
-I told him this story about how my friends and I went down to New York City when we were at West Point
-Somebody told us about this cool club in Greenwich Village
-We got on the subway and got down there, ate some dinner at this very cool café with street performers all around
-It was getting dark so we headed for the club
-A thirty something man from the village was walking along with us as we told him where we were headed
-He told us how to get there, as we turned to go down the street to get there, he said, “I wouldn’t go down there if I were you.”
-When someone from the community tells you that, you shouldn’t go
-We take a few steps down the street and we realized why he said that
-All the street lights had been shot out
-There was a gang on one side of the street, shooting pistols into a garbage dumpster for entertainment
-All you could here was “boom”, “boom”, “boom”
-It was the longest and fastest block I ever walked
-The next block was a biker gang
-We decided not to test God’s goodness too much so we turned down the side street
-Somebody tried to sell us some drugs so we decided Greenwich Village was not for us
-We got back on the Subway and went back to our hotel
-God has seemed to always protect me when I’ve gotten myself into the biggest of messes {PAUSE}
-I think we’ve probably all seen how God has protected our lives and our livelihoods from the evil that others might bring
-But God is even more interested in our eternal security
-That is why God sent His son Jesus for us
-God allowed Jesus to be overwhelmed by His foes so that it might not happen to us
-Even though He was the best player on the planet, He was made the scapegoat so that we might win, not the game but eternal life
-Because of our sins, we were at the end of our spiritual rope
-Jesus truly is our light and our salvation, the stronghold of our lives – we don’t have anything of which to be afraid
-That has made this statement true – “I am still confident of this: I will see the goodness of the LORD in the land of the living.”
-By Jesus’ resurrection from the dead, we will all return to life in these bodies again
-But those bodies won’t hurt or ache, wear out, get old, feel pain or cry any longer
-We will live on this earth, then new and improved, again like the Garden of Eden, for all eternity
-You know, it is nice knowing that Jesus is the best player in the universe and it is great being a member of His team
-We are assured of victory because Jesus raised His game to another level when the game was on the line
