Note: Based in part on a message by Pastor Brian Atwood
1. Introduction
a. Today I would like to start by honoring each of our military veterans. So I would like for each of you to stand, tell us your branch of service, how long you served, and when you served.
b. Next I would like to honor our public service veterans and I would like for each of them to do the same thing.
c. It is my guess that each of you were in at least one “hairy” situation that caused you be afraid. We know that bravery and fear are mutually exclusive. Just because you are afraid doesn’t mean that you aren’t brave.
d. As a Christian, have you found yourself in situations where you were afraid in what were clearly circumstances of spiritual warfare?
e. We can harvest some invaluable lessons learned from One of God’s greatest warriors, David, on how to engage the enemy and how to overcome our fear.
2. First—Focus on God, not your fear (vv. 1 – 3).
a. Read vv. 1 – 3.
b. Note that David’s first order of business is to praise God. Having done that, when compared to God, what could his enemies possible do to him?
(1) When he seemed to be surrounded by darkness, God was His light—his salvation and his deliverer from earthly enemies.
(2) When circumstances were beyond his control and the world seemed to be crumbling at his feet, he turned to God, the stronghold of His life. With that sort of protection, He didn’t have to be afraid of anyone or anything!
c. While I have never actually been in a combat situation, my guess is that one of the greatest hurdles to overcome in battle is fear.
d. I can recall as a young sailor stationed on the USS Sam Houston, a fleet ballistic missile submarine capable of deploying Polaris A3 missiles, a situation in which I was really scared. The fact that this was the height of the cold war made the situation all the more intense.
(1) We routinely ran missile launching drills. They always began with an exact, specifically formatted announcement over the ship’s general announcing system, “Man Battle Stations Missile for WRST (weapons system readiness test). Spin up all missiles. Set condition 1SQ.” PLAY SOUND BYTE. Had it been the real thing, the announcement would have changed to “Man battle stations missile tactical launch.”
(2) On this particular occasion, battle stations missile was called away and the announcement made over the ship’s announcing system was, “Man Battle Stations Missile. Spin up all missiles. Set condition 1SQ.” We waited what seemed like an eternity to hear the most important part of that announcement, WSRT, not knowing if conditions in the real world had gone to pot or not.
(3) Finally after about 20 minutes of sheer torture, the CO completed the announcement informing us that this was a WSRT and a drill.”
(4) During the course of that 20 agonizing minutes, we were truly scared. Were we about to unleash death and destruction on the world?
e. While David did not face circumstances like that, he did face circumstances that would have been equally frightening to him, if not more so. Take Goliath, for example. Despite that, David did not let fear take the song out of his life.
f. Illustration:
Author Max Lucado shares the story of a parakeet named Chippie who had a very bad day. It began when the bird’s owner decided to clean his cage with a vacuum cleaner. She was almost finished when the phone rang, so she turned around to answer it. Before she knew it, Chippie was gone.
In a panic she ripped open the vacuum bag. There was Chippie, covered in dirt and gasping for air. She carried him to the bathroom and rinsed him off under the faucet. Then, realizing that Chippie was cold and wet, she reached for the hair dryer! Chippie never knew what hit him.
His owner was asked a few days later how he was recovering. "Well", she replied, "Chippie doesn’t sing much anymore. He just sits and stares."
Have you ever felt like that? One minute you’re whistling through life, and the next you’re caught up in a whirlwind of stress. Life sucks you up into its vortex and just when you think you’ve recovered from one trouble another wind of adversity blows in your direction.
Don’t be like Chippie the parakeet. Don’t let the song go out of your life.
g. Earthly warfare requires that you be confident—confident in yourself, confident in your fellow fighters, and confident in your weapons. Spiritual warfare requires confidence too.
(1) It would, however, be foolishness on our part to put our confidence exclusively in our strength and abilities. If that is all we are relying on for success, we are justified in being afraid.
(2) Just as psychological warfare plays a huge role in earthly battles, it has the same effect in spiritual warfare.
(3) Our faith and our confidence in God is what challenges the enemy. Satan sees our confidence and, in turn, becomes the one experiencing fear.
h. David, up front, lays the groundwork for a winning strategy—focus on God and not on yourself or your fear.
i. Another lesson learned from David is to…
3. Keep the lines of communication open (vv. 4 – 10).
a. Read vv. 4 – 10.
b. David not only kept his focus God, but he was also a “one thing” kind of person.
c. There is something resolute about "one-thing" people. They know what they want and they are determined to get it. Nothing can stand in their way.
d. David’s one thing was to “dwell in the house of the LORD” all the days of his life so that he might gaze upon the beauty of the LORD.
(1) I submit to you that it is rather difficult to fight battles from inside the temple or inside the church short of physically bringing the battles inside those locations.
(2) So what was David speaking of? He was speaking of being continually in God’s presence, in constant communion with Him, having never ending dialogue with Him. In other words, David kept a direct line of communication open with God and he used it frequently—in good times and in bad; not just when the world appeared to be collapsing about his feet.
e. So why wasn’t He worried during times of trouble? Because he was prepared long before trouble ever got to him. He was prepared because he had been dwelling in God’s house "all the days" of his life.
f. Here is a major lessons learned — Waiting until you are in the midst of the battle to begin training for it is too late!
(1) That is why you see our military always training. They train so they will be prepared in the event they are sent into battle. That is why we ran missile drills as frequently as we did.
(2) I’m not saying that training in the midst of battle is ineffective and wasted. You learn hard valuable lessons that way. It’s more commonly known as the school of hard knocks.
(3) But, you neither learn as well nor fight as well because your attention is divided—trying to learn and to fight simultaneously. Lessons from the school of hard knocks are not available to us until the next time a similar situation arises.
g. Look again at vv. 4 – 6.
(1) Note in vv. 4 and 5 that David asks that he might spend the rest of his days in the house of God, gazing on the beauty of God (i.e., in God’s presence), and studying God’s word (i.e., inquire in His temple).
(2) Now I want you to note the outcome in the end of v. 5 and beginning of v. 6.
(3) First he says that God will lift him high upon a rock. Two things are happening there — one, he is being elevated above his problems; and two, he is being placed on a solid, stable foundation so that he is able to deal with those problems and fight whatever battles may be necessary without having to worry about the ground shifting beneath his feet.
h. David was a great warrior of God because he was always in God’s presence and he continuously studied God’s word and he always gave God credit for his successes.
i. In other words, he was faithful to the house of God. That is something we seem to have forgotten in this day and age.
(1) Thursday night as I was driving in to the college, I was listening to Adrian Rogers and he shared a story that supported this.
(2) He recalled Operation Desert Storm back in the early 90s when we sent our young men and women into harm’s way after a despot by the name of Saddam Hussein.
(3) He recounted how as a nation we watched with fear as Iraq lobbed SCUD missiles toward Israel, fear that Israel would retaliate with nuclear weapons.
(4) I specifically recall Linda and I doing the exact same thing, almost being late for work numerous mornings because our eyes were glued to CNN and this because our son was in the leading edge of that battle.
(5) He recalled how during that operation church attendance was up nationwide as Americans cried out to God to protect us and make us successful at seeking out and taking down Saddam.
(6) And the tag line of that story was that when God answered our prayers, when we were successful, we did not praise God for His help and support. Rather we sang the praises of GEN Norman Schwartzkopf and what a great general and what a great leader he was; and GEN Colin Powell and what a great strategist he was; and this wonderful weapon we had developed called the Patriot Missile and how effective it was at taking out the SCUD missiles.
(7) This is not to downplay the two general’s contribution, because it was significant and necessary. Nor is it to downplay the effectiveness of the missile.
(a) But, those men were who and what they were and were where they were when they were through the providence of God and not through any actions of man and man failed to give God credit for his protection.
(b) That missile existed and functioned as it did only because God in His infinite vision had given man the knowledge and skills necessary to design and build this weapon to function as it did.
j. So how do we recover? Read vv. 7 – 10.
(1) God says to seek His face?
(2) When you seek someone’s face, or literally get in their face, you are seeking intimacy. You don’t get into a person’s face with whom you are not close.
(3) I would not walk up to a total stranger and get within 2 or 3 inches of their face and say, “Hi! Permit me to introduce myself. My name is Bobby. What’s yours?”
(4) Yet that is exactly what God wants us to do. He wants us to be that close, that intimate. He wants us to be able to feel His breath on our cheek. He wants us to be able to hear Him when He whispers messages meant just for us in our ears.
k. David goes on to proclaim a sad fact in v. 10, but counteracts that with a promise that should just make our hearts burst with joy.
(1) Sadly, even our parents may abandon us, but God never will.
(2) He will never forsake us.
l. So here’s the summation of these verses.
(1) Victory in spiritual battle is achieved through continuous, intimate, interaction with God.
(2) Not only that, but we also need to strive for consistent praise and worship — not only here in His house, but also, and even more importantly, the rest of the week when you are not here in His house. Because, when you get down to brass tacks, His house is you and not this building!
m. In our passage this morning, David gives one final piece of advice.
4. Live an upright life (vv. 11 – 14).
a. Sadly, we know longer hear about the value of a morally good life, not even from the majority of America’s pulpits.
b. As a nation we have succumbed to a politically correct ideology; and it is not politically correct to even say that one way of life is "good" and another is not, or that one action is "moral" and another is not.
c. Traditional values in society have been replaced with fairness and tolerance.
d. If you are not prepared, and you hear untruths often enough, you will begin to subscribe to those untruths.
(1) Satan sees a weakness in your armor and that is what he aims for. If you continuously attack a weak point in a structure, the entire structure will eventually fail.
(2) This never-ending message of tolerance and acceptance, of our faith being outdated and bigoted has led to our being weak on the spiritual battlefield.
e. To regain what we have lost, to retake what we have willing given away, we should pray like David did in v. 12, “Give me not up to the will of my adversaries; for false witnesses have risen against me, and they breathe out violence.”
f. Will it be easy? No. Will people lash out at you, call you horrible names, attack your faith, call you a hypocrite? You better believe they will.
g. But there is such a thing as goodness. More importantly, the goodness of God is still in the land if you will just look for it. Re-read v. 13.
h. There is a "good" and "right" way to live and there is a "wrong" way to live. Moral relativists may attempt to erase the lines, but we all know there is a difference between right and wrong.
i. The only way we can overcome society’s impulses to compromise is to follow David’s advice in v. 14, “Wait for the LORD; be strong, and let your heart take courage; wait for the LORD!”
j. We must look to God, not to society around us, for guidelines on what is right and wrong.
5. Closing and Invitation
a. Let me recount David’s lessons for us.
(1) Focus on God and not on yourself or your fear.
(2) Victory in spiritual battle is achieved through continuous, intimate, interaction with God.
(3) Look to God, not ourselves, for guidelines on what is right and wrong.
b. Have you been successful in your spiritual warfare in the past? Are you confident you would be in the future?
c. Do you know the adversary’s profile? His strengths? His weaknesses? His capabilities? Paul describes him this way in Ephesians 6:12, “For we do not wrestle against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the cosmic powers over this present darkness, against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly places.”
d. Would you like to have the master planner on your side? The master strategist? The person who has fought this same adversary multiple times over and bested him each and every time?
e. If you do, then I invite you to invite Him into your heart this morning.
