September 26

2 Samuel 22 When the Lord had delivered David from all his enemies, David spoke to the Lord this psalm. The opening line is a summary of David’s life, “The LORD is my rock and my fortress and my deliverer.” The rest of the Psalm is an unfolding of that theme. When my life comes to an end, what will my song be to the Lord? Will it be centered upon His great protection and provision, or will it be centered upon my great selfishness and greed? Will it be upon how He has protected me, or will it be upon how I have conquered and brought others to bow at my feet? The three word pictures rock, fortress and deliverer are related in thought and reality. In the ancient world, cities were built in places that had a defensible crest. A large rock upon which a fortress could be built was desirable for protection. David saw the Lord as His protection. I have never been in physical battle, but many times I have known the protection of the Lord. A couple of times I have faced a robber or an assailant. The Lord has protected me then! He has always heard my cry. Who is a Rock except our God. This view is looking out from the northern palace of Herod the Great on top of Masada. Can you imagine what a defense this rock would have been against an army? The Dead Sea is to the east (right). No wave can touch you on this rock. Living in tornado alley, I have experienced many tornado warnings and watches. They have been up close and personal. I’ve seen the awesome power of the dark waters and clouds. The power of His voice rumbles through the thunders of the storms. The lightning flashes the brilliance of His glory. David talked about the waves of life overflowing Him. Had he ever, like the disciples, been out on the Sea of Galilee when a sudden storm came up and almost drowned? Had he been to the Mediterranean Sea and experienced the irresistible pull of a rip tide? Had the Lord come walking to him on the water? Maybe not literally but metaphorically, his life had often been that way, and the Lord delivered Him every time. As He thought about the Lord, it caused him to cry out, “For who is God, except the LORD? And who is a rock, except our God? The enemy of our souls constantly seeks to kill, steal and destroy us. The Lord is our Rock. We can hide in Him as our fortress. The enemy seeks to drown us with the cares and the deceitfulness of the riches of this world. The Lord sets us on a rock where the waves cannot touch us. Indeed we serve a glorious King. Speak His glory to someone today! --Pastor john

September 19

2 Samuel 15 Sabotage! David stole a man’s wife and then killed the man. David’s son steals the people’s hearts and now seeks to kill David. Absalom goes to Hebron to have himself declared king. It was the very place where Judah first declared David to be king. David is once again fleeing for his life. Before it was from King Saul, but now it is from his own son, whom he loved. If there is any glory of the Lord in this it must be seen in David’s statement: Carry the ark of God back into the city. If I find favor in the eyes of the LORD, He will bring me back and show me both it and His dwelling place. But if He says thus: ‘I have no delight in you,’ here I am, let Him do to me as seems good to Him. He is a broken man, yet he could be in no better position. He casts Himself upon the mercy of the Lord. He sends the priests back into the city where they belong. In casting Himself upon the mercy of the Lord, he saves himself, for through the help of Hushai and the sons of the priests, David was able to escape Absalom in order to regroup his army and fight at another time. The glory of the Lord is like that. He continually ushers us to the point where we are totally dependent upon Him and Him alone, and at the last moment He breaks through! So where is the glory in this tragic story? God is with David, and He walks with Him through this trouble and delivers him from it. See Psalm 3 for how David addressed God in this tragic time. Indeed we serve a glorious King. Speak His glory to someone today! --Pastor john

September 18

2 Samuel 14 Some years ago while attending district conference my wife and I stayed with a young lady who housed us while at conference. As we came to know her, she shared with us some of her struggles with God because her little brother had been murdered. It was an emotionally heart and spirit wrenching thing for her. She was working through it and learning to forgive, but it was still a struggle. From a human perspective of all the sins which we commit, with the exception of adultery, probably none is so unforgiveable as murder. Why is it so unforgiveable? From a human perspective, death is irremediable. When the person is gone we have been robbed of a relationship that cannot be restored upon this earth. Yet Jesus forgives all sin, and He calls us to do the same. Absalom had committed murder because David was reluctant to distribute justice for his sister. That Law would have required the death of Amnon for the rape of Tamar. David was reluctant to carry out justice because it was his own son and because of his own sin. Absalom took matters into his own hands. The Law would have required the death of Absalom because he murdered Amnon. When Absalom fled to Geshur, it further complicated matters. For David to demand justice, it would require him to demand that his father-in-law, the king of Geshur, turn over Absalom. That wasn’t going to happen without war. David was certainly capable of defeating Geshur, but he made no demands probably partly because the king of Geshur was his father-in-law and ally and partly because Absalom was his son. Can you imagine the political embarrassment that this whole ordeal brought upon David? His heart yearned for a renewed relationship with Absalom, yet he could not renew it because Absalom murdered Amnon. Not only David but the country reeled in the consequences of the sin. As blood thirsty as Joab was, he at times showed great wisdom. He concocts this whole story to make a point with David. Life is more important than justice. David is a type of Jesus, except Jesus is perfect and can raise us from the dead. When we had committed fornication, rape, murder, lying etc. the great love of the Father asked the Son to love Him and us by becoming one of us and dying in our place so that justice could be satisfied and a door re-opened to life, and we would be raised from the dead. Death is no longer irremediable. Because it is no longer irremediable, we can and ought to forgive! Now that is the glory of our Lord! Indeed we serve a glorious King. Speak His glory to someone today! --Pastor john

September 12

2 Samuel 7 I have lived in many different types of houses. The house in which I spent most of my grade school years was built in the early 1900’s. I had 3 bedrooms, one bath and I would guess about 1200 sq.ft. of space. In Jr. high we moved into Stillwater. The house my parents owned when I moved out and married would be considered a palace in David’s time. It is average according to American standards. The first home that Laura and I owned was a 14 X 70 mobile home—980 sq.ft. After that we bought a 1200 sq.ft. home for $16,000.00. It wasn’t a palace, but it was ours (well really the bank’s), and it felt nice. The Lord called us to seminary, which meant selling the house. We did not own a home again till after seminary. This time it was about 1500 sq.ft. not a palace, but it was comfortable. Then we briefly owned a house that was about 1800 sq.ft. on 8.5 acres of land. We got it for a real bargain only $80,000.00. In addition to the house it had a separate garage with many small rooms built on to it, another concrete block horse barn with electric and water, and a large chicken shelter. We felt like land barons. But we only lived there briefly before the Lord called us to North Carolina. There we lived in a 1800 sq.ft. house on a little more than half an acre of land, no out buildings. The Lord burned us out of that house, and we moved back to Oklahoma where we now live in a 2900 sq.ft. house. The upstairs is pine paneled walls. It feels like a palace, but it is in the middle of town and has little land. I do not think that I am attached to this house. If the Lord directed, I think that I would gladly sell it, even as I did the house on the acreage. David had been king for at least 7.5 years. He has built for himself a cedar paneled palace. He has learned how to live in a cave and how to live in a palace. As he reflected upon his own house, he realized that the ark of the covenant, the visible presence of the glory of God was housed in a tent. He felt badly that he lived in a fine house while the ark was housed in a tent. He determined to build a fine house for God. On the one hand God is pleased that David should want God’s glory to be greater than David’s, on the other hand He is not pleased that glory should be confined to a physical building. He asks David a rhetorical question, “Would you build a house for Me to dwell in?” The God who created everything that is does not need to be housed by His creation! To build Him a house might cause us to think too little of Him. We might begin to think that He can be confined to something created. What a repugnant thought! I have been to some of the great cathedrals of Europe and Mexico. There is indeed something awe inspiring in their architectures. They make you look up and feel like you are small before a great and awesome God. Yet at the same time the human heart is such that it can begin to equate God’s presence with that of a building which we make with our hands. That is idolatry. It is interesting to me that God postpones the building of a house, yet He promises to David that He will build him a house. But wait a minute! David already has a house, a palace. God promised a house that He wanted David to focus upon, a spiritual house, a relational house. 12 “When your days are fulfilled and you rest with your fathers, I will set up your seed after you, who will come from your body, and I will establish his kingdom. 13 He shall build a house for My name, and I will establish the throne of his kingdom forever. 14 I will be his Father, and he shall be My son. If he commits iniquity, I will chasten him with the rod of men and with the blows of the sons of men. 15 But My mercy shall not depart from him, as I took it from Saul, whom I removed from before you. 16 And your house and your kingdom shall be established forever before you. Your throne shall be established forever.” This covenant, often called the Davidic Covenant, promised that David would have a descendant whose throne would last forever. Is there a visible, traceable lineage to David that could fulfill this promise? With the destruction of Jerusalem in 70AD, the Jewish people lost the ability to trace that lineage and claim an heir to David. However, there is one descendant of David whose both mother and father can trace their lineage back to different sons of David. Jesus is that One descendant. In Jesus, this covenant is fulfilled. God has built a spiritual relational house and set Jesus as the King of that house. Today He is building that house with spiritual stones (1 Peter 2:4-11). You and I, who believe in the Lord Jesus Christ are those stones. One day Jesus will return and fulfill the physical promises of being seated upon the throne of David. However, the people who will populate that Kingdom will be those who believe in Him. It will be a relational Kingdom first and foremost for God is love. The glory of that house/kingdom will far exceed any physical building that could ever be built. The amazing thing is that you and I have the privilege of building it with Him. Wow! It is building relationships with others that are connected with Him. It is building a house that is focused on Him and His love. That is true glory, not that which is made with human hands. It makes me willing to give up my physical family, house and land, for I am going to lose it anyway. I will exchange it for that which lasts forever, a house built out of love. Indeed we serve a glorious King. Speak His glory to someone today! --Pastor john In May 2005 Archeologist Eilat Mizar uncovered the remains of this large building known as the Large Stone Structure. She says that it was built in the early 10th century BCE during the reign of King David. In her opinion it can be identified with the royal “House of Cedar,” King David’s Palace. Other scholars debate this. If not this location, it was somewhere near here where David received the Davidic Covenant through Nathan the prophet

September 9

2 Samuel 6 How many men should it have taken to move the ark a mere 8 miles? David calls in 30,000 choice men. Obviously so many are needed only to make the event more glorious. But David failed to review the Scripture to see how the ark should be transported. After all, the Philistines a few decades earlier had transported ark using a cart. Why would the Israelites have to do any differently? Uzzah instinctively reached out to steady the ark when the oxen stumbled. God killed him instantly. The Geneva Bible has this footnote for verse 7, “Here we see what danger it is to follow good intentions, or to do anything in God’s service without his express word.” The “express word” at a minimum in this case would have been for the Levites to carry the ark on their shoulders using the poles provided.(Ex. 25:13,14 & Num. 4:5,6) God was reminding David at this point that the unholy cannot come in contact with the Holy without penalty. The ark, more than any other physical thing, represents death for sin and mercy for those who are found in Jesus. David was angry and left the ark with Obed-Edom, the Gittite. A Gittite is a resident of Gath, the Philistine city from which came Goliath and to which David had attached himself for the last 1.5 years when he was running from Saul. For whatever reason Obed was now living close to where Uzzah was killed. One can almost hear the thinking in David’s mind, “Well if God is going to kill people for just touching his ark, I’ll just leave it in the house of this Philistine. I let him be the one who gets killed or plagued.” Apparently Obed had some respect for the ark. God dramatically blessed the household of Obed-Edom. The blessing was great enough that everyone else recognized it. Hmm. . . . When David learns of the blessing, he chooses to bring the ark into the City of David. This time he gets it right. And for good measure, he takes of his kingly robes and puts on priestly robes. He leads the people in joyful celebration and dancing in the procession. Michal, a king’s daughter, is incensed. Notice that she did not even bother to be part of the joyful procession. She observed it through a window. There she saw her husband, dressed in priest’s clothing whirling around and dancing for joy! How could he ever trade the glory of a king for a mere priest! She meets him at home with scathing sarcasm, “How glorious was the king of Israel today, uncovering himself today in the eyes of the maids of his servants, as one of the base fellows shamelessly uncovers himself!” According to the King James Bible Wordbook, “Base is an adjective, used in the archaic sense of low in rank or position, lowly, humble.” Like her father Saul, she had a greater concern for the glory of the role of King than for the glory of the Lord. David is unabashed. “I will be much more undignified than this!” Michal lost the blessing of enjoying the glory of God. She also lost the blessing of having children. I wonder how many times I have lost out on the blessing of God because I/we was/were more concerned with my/our own glory than the glory of God. Hmmm. . . Lord, help me to always be unabashedly undignified in seeking Your glory. It really is the only thing of value! Indeed we serve a glorious King. Speak His glory to someone today! --Pastor john

September 6

1 Sam 31 Where’s the glory? What a sad chapter. The enemies of the Lord are rejoicing. The people of God are in retreat. The king of Israel is dead. The price of disobedience is quite high. It always involves death, sometimes even for God’s people. But when persistent disobedience is displayed, God’s justice is challenged. The Lord will not tolerate persistent disobedience especially in those who tasted of His heavenly gift. So where is the glory? It is seen in the consistency of God’s justice. After decades of persistent disobedience in Saul, God vindicates His justice. Israel’s first king, picked for his masculine appearance, lies dead and disgraced because he would not truly repent. The Lord had warned him many times. But he would not turn. This is our God. He is just. He will not always put up with our foolishness. That is glory to consider. There is one glimmer of honor in this passage. The men of Jabesh Gilead put their lives on the line to steal the bodies of Saul and his sons. It wasn’t right that the enemies of the Lord should gloat over death and destruction wreaked upon Saul, his family and Israel. It wasn’t right that Saul should have an honorable burial. Jabesh Gilead was one of Saul’s ancestral homes. Jabesh Gilead had typically remained aloof from battles. Saul’s first act as king was to save Jabesh Gilead from a tyrant. They would not forget his intervention to save them. They travelled all night to steal the bodies off of the wall. They cremated the bodies. This is the only record of the people of Israel cremating someone they wished to honor. It is indicative of an emergency. Then they buried the bones in their own city. Why? Mixed reasons. He was their hero. He was their kinsman. He was the Lord’s anointed. Any one reason was sufficient. I’d like to think it was the last reason. I’d like to think it was because they saw a little of the Glory of God, and for that sole reason they put their lives on the line. Indeed we serve a glorious King. Speak His glory to someone today! --Pastor john

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September 5

1 Samuel 29-30 We were numb. Our house had burned down. We had lost most of our worldly possessions. Our two adult dogs and three puppies died of smoke inhalation in the fire. You walk into the devastation of the fire and you don’t know where to start cleaning up. Most of the stuff was covered with soot and water, and it wasn’t worth trying to restore. Large sections of walls and roof walls were gone. The furniture and electronics were ruined. Even some of the pots and pans were warped by the high heat. It hardly seemed worth sorting through the junk to see what was salvageable. We felt like the strength was sucked out of us, but fortunately no human life was lost or threatened. If there was ever a time for strength, we needed it now. “But David strengthened himself in the Lord his God.” How do you do that? I am convinced that that is what we are doing right now. We are not just mindlessly reading the Scripture as some sort of daily ritual. It is looking intently into the sacred word until we see something of Him, of His glory. We stay there until we see something and know what we are going to do because of what we see. David had been tremendously injured. He had been rejected by the Philistines. His wives and children had been kidnapped. Everyone in his army had their wives and children kidnapped. There was talk among the men of perhaps stoning David because he had led them in joining the Philistines to attack Israel. It was during that time away that their families were kidnapped. For more than ten years David had been on the run from Saul. He was extremely weary. Now he had lost his family and was about to lose his army. But he strengthened himself in the Lord. Aphek was more than 55 miles from Ziklag. On the third day they came to Ziklag. That means that they had covered more than 17 miles per day, for the last three days. Only to find their homes burned and looted and their families kidnapped. David enquires of the Lord on whether to pursue the captors. The Lord said pursue. They immediately took off in pursuit. The Brook of Besor is at least another 15 miles from Ziklag. Arriving there, one third were too exhausted to go any farther. They found a straggler who was able to lead them to the main camp. The Amalekites were partying and probably drank themselves to sleep. David set up his 400 for attack at twilight dawn. His army was successful. They attacked until evening. Apparently not everyone was drunk and asleep, or it wouldn’t have taken so long. But nevertheless, it was a relatively easy victory. They recouped everything because of the strength of the Lord. That is what meditating on His glory does. It gives me strength when I have lost everything and have none to continue on. I felt it in the fire. I feel it now. Indeed we serve a glorious King. Speak His glory to someone today! --Pastor john

September 4

1 Samuel 28 “Ever danced with the devil in the pale moonlight?” You may recognize that line from the Joker in the 1989 movie Batman. Although I have only seen the movie a couple of times, it is a line that reverberates through my mind like a bad dream from which I cannot awake, and no one can rescue me. Saul’s tortured reign has come to an end. Samuel is dead. God won’t talk to him. His back is once again against the wall as he faces the Philistines. He knows there is only One who can rescue him, but his life of half-hearted obedience has led him down the path of bondage and despair. He knows the glory of the Lord, but he desired the ways of this world. His desire for riches and power choked out the peaceful fruit of righteousness and now the devil has come for the last dance. It is time to pay the piper. Like Saul, many have mixed the glory of the Lord with the knowledge of evil. We can fall in the same trap. In so doing, we snare our souls and dance with demons. Is it the glory of the Lord to remain silent when we have steadfastly rejected his instruction. The law clearly opposed seeking spiritual knowledge by any method other than seeking God. Saul was aware of that, and he had even dispensed legislation to support it. His desperation to hang on to what was not his has led to this final act of disobedience. There is now no remedy. It had to be terrifying. It was the natural result of seeking his own glory over God’s. Lord help me to never be like Saul. May my meditations on your glory always lead me to let go of what you do not intend to be mine and to only hang on to you! Indeed we serve a glorious King. Speak His glory to someone today! --Pastor john This is taken from the top of Mt. Tabor looking south. The large hill/mountain in the valley floor is the Hill of Moreh. Shunem where the Philistines camped was on the opposite side of Moreh. The mountains of Gilboa may vaguely be made out in the haze in the distance to the left of Moreh. En Dor where Saul met the medium was on the valley floor in the foreground near the slopes of the Hill of Moreh to the left of it.