Last time I spoke it was on the subject of the temptations of Jesus by Satan. The temptations we looked at were: turn these stones into bread, the offer of all the kingdoms of the world in exchange for worship and jump off the pinnacle of the temple and God will rescue you.
As we saw, Jesus overcame Satan, not by arguing with him, but by quoting Scripture to him. And eventually Satan left him. But Satan lies in wait to take the unwary by surprise. And - guess what? – he concentrates on those areas in which we are vulnerable, where he has detected a weakness which he can exploit. In this, Satan has no mercy and he is always willing to play dirty.
Let’s look at a case in which King David fell victim to Satan, and how and why God was displeased.Read 1 Chron 21:1-13. As a result of David’s actions, God sends the prophet Gad to get David to choose among 3 disagreeable disciplinary alternatives (vs11)
3 years of famine
3 months at the mercy of Israel’s enemies
3 days of the sword of the Lord (pestilence and other destruction)
David chooses Option #3, and as a result pestilence 70,000 men died.
There are a number of questions we can ask at this point: What’s the deal here? Why all this fuss over the census? Isn’t God overreacting? There must be something that displeased God. What is it? If we look at this passage, we will see that David is trying to measure the human, tangible basis for his security.
This is something he hadn’t done until now. He always had relied on the Lord for his security. When he was a young man about to face Goliath (1Sam 17), he refused to wear King Saul’s armour, and said to Goliath when they met for battle: “You come to me with sword, spear and javelin, but I come to you in the name of the Lord…it is his battle, not ours. The Lord will give you to us!” David had started well.
David continued to do well, as he waited to become king of Israel. Following his anointing, he was hunted by a jealous King Saul. David had several opportunities to kill Saul, but he refused to trust his own hand to force God’s plan. When the time came to take the throne, David continued to honour God as he solidified his kingdom, often expressing his confidence in God.
Then came the Bathsheba episode. All that God had given him was not enough for David, and he began to seek to fulfill his felt needs elsewhere other than going to God. That was a disaster that brought a number of consequences to him and to his family and to others.
It appears that while David was climbing the path of spiritual progress set out for him, he kept his eyes on the top, on the Lord. He fought every battle, military or otherwise, confident that it was the Lord’s battle. But once he got to the top, all he did was look down: down at his own successes, down at his own desires, and down at his own securities. He looked down instead of looking up to the next summit that God had prepared for him. The result was disastrous!
There’s a warning here for us. We need to know how to go forward in spite of success. We are in danger of moving backward spiritually as we move upward in the world. Those who have known the Lord a long time have to be beware of losing their spiritual vitality:
“Oh, I’ve been to prayer meetings before. I don’t need to go to this next prayer vigil” You may be drifting
“I’ve been in worship all my life. I don’t need to go any more on a regular basis.” You may be drifting
“I used to teach Sunday School, but I’m tired and I want to rest now.” You may be drifting
“Oh, I don’t need to be so diligent about tithing any more.” You may be drifting
Ironically, we may reach a place where God’s blessing lulls us into complacency, and we become targets of Satan’s scheme. Satan wants us to take God for granted. We don’t pray as we used to, like we did when our finances were rocky, when our children seemed to be going off the rails or
when there was sickness in the family. But when those things are over, we slack off, and we begin to take God for granted.
When we are most secure in the worldly sense, we are most vulnerable in the spiritual sense. That is when Satan comes along and says: “So, now that you have arrived, why don’t you count it?” Satan urges us to turn from counting on God to counting what we have. Satan asks us to trust what we can see, to put our trust in things we can count. David fell into the trap of, “If I can see it, I can count it. If I can count it, I can count on it.”
David was taking a census to assess his military power. He counted his soldiers to know what he could count on. In the past God had helped David in every battle. Nontheless, urged on by Satan, David wanted to count. Even his chief of staff, Joab, warned him not to do it! David fell into what could be called the security trap of power (there is also the security trap of possessions, or the security trap of pleasure, etc) Ironically, David himself wrote Ps 20, which says in vs 7, "Some trust in chariots and some in horses, but we trust in the name of the Lord our God."
Ps 33:16-19 says a king is not saved by a mighty army, a warrior is not delivered by his great strength, a horse is a false hope for victory…Behold, the eye of the Lord is on those who fearHim or on those who hope for his lovingkindness to deliver their soul from death and to keep them alive in famine. What is our security trap of power? How many of us rely on the equivalent of mighty armies, or horses, or chariots, for our security?
The Bible teaches us that we need to look only to the Lord for our security. He is the only One who can provide it for us unfailingly, if we look to Him in trust for this basic need. Worldly power can actually make you powerless! We are vulnerable when we say to ourselves: “I have a secure place, a place I can count on.” We are also vulnerable when we say to ourselves, “I’m secure. I have a position of power and respect.” Zechariah the prophet said it several hundred years ago:
Zech 4:6: Not by might nor by power, but by My Spirit, says the Lord Almighty.
People used to say this about their jobs. But have you noticed how many people who supposedly had a secure position all of a sudden are out on the street? Many years ago I went to insure the house of a retired pilot from Pan Am. He had bought a house here in Costa Rica because he wanted to live in a mild climate. But his wife told me that one of their requirements when they chose their country of residence was that it had to be a Pan Am destination. “We feel secure knowing Pan Am is here every day”, she said. Well, we all know that Pan Am no longer flies here, or anywhere else. Pan Am went bankrupt, and no longer exists.
And what happens to the self-image or self-respect of those whose self worth was is a worldly system? Look at the possible trap of your job, your neighbourhood, your service organization, or even your national citizenship. But worldly systems can change. Country systems can change (look at what’s happening in Venezuela). Companies can be taken over and jobs are lost, neighbours come and go, investments can be lost, real estate values change and close friends can betray us in the eternal scramble to reach the top.
Let's look at the security trap of possessions. We may say, “I am secure because I have possessions that give me self-respect and money to take care of any unforeseen contingencies”
The trouble with money is that it makes us more of what we already are: If we are generous, we can be generous big-time, if we are misers, we become misers big-time, If we are spendthrifts, we become spendthrifts big-time.
We forget how limited money is. Has it ever protected you from gossip or an accident? has it protected you from a quarrel? Has it ever brought a person back to life or restored a relationship? If our security is based on externals, we are subject to volatile forces beyond our control. Only God makes us free. Think how wonderful it is to value yourself for who you are, not for what position or possessions you have. There is great joy when you don’t feel you have to guard it or protect it or control it.
Let's look at the security trap of pleasure. If we find ourselves saying“I am secure because I can do things that make me feel good.” or "This makes me happy so I am safe", we need to realize that our society seeks security in pleasure. There is a long list of actors, actresses and performers who literally pleased themselves to death. But the list is even longer of people who have access to every pleasure this world can supply, and they still find no security or happiness.
A very rich gentleman once wrote the following: “I said to myself, ‘Come now, let’s give pleasure a try. Let’s look for the good things in life.’ But I found that this too was meaningless. It is silly to be laughing all the time, I said, what good does it do to seek only pleasure?” This gentleman was the richest man in the land, and he had numerous wives and concubines. His name was King Solomon, and this paragraph comes from Ecclesiastes 2: 1-2.
The downfall of David began with the story of Bathsheba. His desire for pleasure overrode his integrity. The result of this was trouble and strife in his house from then on (2 Sam 12:10)
King David lost the battle, not when he was young, but later when he was a successful ruler.
Where should we place our security? We have seen that power, possessions, pleasure, etc fail. Our only security is in Christ. God wants us to trust in things that are unseen. Heb 11:1: Now faith is being sure of what we hope for, and certain of what we do not see. Satan wanted David to count what he could see so that he would count on what he could see. God wants us to base our security on Christ, who has spiritual resources that we cannot see.
How do we anchor our security in the Lord? It may begin with a costly wake-up call, such as what happened to David. God judged David after he’d counted his troops. God gave him 3 alternatives and David chose # 3 because he preferred falling under the hand of the Lord than under the forces of nature or under the hand of other human beings.
Whatever you trust in may be taken away from you so that you will trust in the One who will never forsake you. Sometimes God takes away our false security crutches so that we put our trust in Him and save ourselves many worse troubles. Ask yourself what you are looking to for security. Be ready to turn away from those false securities. Remember how God has rescued you and provided for you in countless ways. Remember the battles you have fought against Goliath and won.
Many times we forget God’s goodness in the past, and we end up going backwards spiritually
Remember your stories of God providing for you, guiding you, answering your prayers, protecting you. What is your holy history? Be ready to let God show you the truth about where you have put your trust. Are you caught up in the trap of power, possessions, or popularity or position or pleasure? If you are, remember these principles:
Worldly power can make you powerless.
Positions can make you captive and may be quickly lost.
People are limited.
Possessions possess you.
Only the Lord, not momentary pleasure, can satisfy your deepest hunger.
Learn to say to yourself, “If I have God, I have enough.”
As we saw, Jesus overcame Satan, not by arguing with him, but by quoting Scripture to him. And eventually Satan left him. But Satan lies in wait to take the unwary by surprise. And - guess what? – he concentrates on those areas in which we are vulnerable, where he has detected a weakness which he can exploit. In this, Satan has no mercy and he is always willing to play dirty.
Let’s look at a case in which King David fell victim to Satan, and how and why God was displeased.Read 1 Chron 21:1-13. As a result of David’s actions, God sends the prophet Gad to get David to choose among 3 disagreeable disciplinary alternatives (vs11)
3 years of famine
3 months at the mercy of Israel’s enemies
3 days of the sword of the Lord (pestilence and other destruction)
David chooses Option #3, and as a result pestilence 70,000 men died.
There are a number of questions we can ask at this point: What’s the deal here? Why all this fuss over the census? Isn’t God overreacting? There must be something that displeased God. What is it? If we look at this passage, we will see that David is trying to measure the human, tangible basis for his security.
This is something he hadn’t done until now. He always had relied on the Lord for his security. When he was a young man about to face Goliath (1Sam 17), he refused to wear King Saul’s armour, and said to Goliath when they met for battle: “You come to me with sword, spear and javelin, but I come to you in the name of the Lord…it is his battle, not ours. The Lord will give you to us!” David had started well.
David continued to do well, as he waited to become king of Israel. Following his anointing, he was hunted by a jealous King Saul. David had several opportunities to kill Saul, but he refused to trust his own hand to force God’s plan. When the time came to take the throne, David continued to honour God as he solidified his kingdom, often expressing his confidence in God.
Then came the Bathsheba episode. All that God had given him was not enough for David, and he began to seek to fulfill his felt needs elsewhere other than going to God. That was a disaster that brought a number of consequences to him and to his family and to others.
It appears that while David was climbing the path of spiritual progress set out for him, he kept his eyes on the top, on the Lord. He fought every battle, military or otherwise, confident that it was the Lord’s battle. But once he got to the top, all he did was look down: down at his own successes, down at his own desires, and down at his own securities. He looked down instead of looking up to the next summit that God had prepared for him. The result was disastrous!
There’s a warning here for us. We need to know how to go forward in spite of success. We are in danger of moving backward spiritually as we move upward in the world. Those who have known the Lord a long time have to be beware of losing their spiritual vitality:
“Oh, I’ve been to prayer meetings before. I don’t need to go to this next prayer vigil” You may be drifting
“I’ve been in worship all my life. I don’t need to go any more on a regular basis.” You may be drifting
“I used to teach Sunday School, but I’m tired and I want to rest now.” You may be drifting
“Oh, I don’t need to be so diligent about tithing any more.” You may be drifting
Ironically, we may reach a place where God’s blessing lulls us into complacency, and we become targets of Satan’s scheme. Satan wants us to take God for granted. We don’t pray as we used to, like we did when our finances were rocky, when our children seemed to be going off the rails or
when there was sickness in the family. But when those things are over, we slack off, and we begin to take God for granted.
When we are most secure in the worldly sense, we are most vulnerable in the spiritual sense. That is when Satan comes along and says: “So, now that you have arrived, why don’t you count it?” Satan urges us to turn from counting on God to counting what we have. Satan asks us to trust what we can see, to put our trust in things we can count. David fell into the trap of, “If I can see it, I can count it. If I can count it, I can count on it.”
David was taking a census to assess his military power. He counted his soldiers to know what he could count on. In the past God had helped David in every battle. Nontheless, urged on by Satan, David wanted to count. Even his chief of staff, Joab, warned him not to do it! David fell into what could be called the security trap of power (there is also the security trap of possessions, or the security trap of pleasure, etc) Ironically, David himself wrote Ps 20, which says in vs 7, "Some trust in chariots and some in horses, but we trust in the name of the Lord our God."
Ps 33:16-19 says a king is not saved by a mighty army, a warrior is not delivered by his great strength, a horse is a false hope for victory…Behold, the eye of the Lord is on those who fearHim or on those who hope for his lovingkindness to deliver their soul from death and to keep them alive in famine. What is our security trap of power? How many of us rely on the equivalent of mighty armies, or horses, or chariots, for our security?
The Bible teaches us that we need to look only to the Lord for our security. He is the only One who can provide it for us unfailingly, if we look to Him in trust for this basic need. Worldly power can actually make you powerless! We are vulnerable when we say to ourselves: “I have a secure place, a place I can count on.” We are also vulnerable when we say to ourselves, “I’m secure. I have a position of power and respect.” Zechariah the prophet said it several hundred years ago:
Zech 4:6: Not by might nor by power, but by My Spirit, says the Lord Almighty.
People used to say this about their jobs. But have you noticed how many people who supposedly had a secure position all of a sudden are out on the street? Many years ago I went to insure the house of a retired pilot from Pan Am. He had bought a house here in Costa Rica because he wanted to live in a mild climate. But his wife told me that one of their requirements when they chose their country of residence was that it had to be a Pan Am destination. “We feel secure knowing Pan Am is here every day”, she said. Well, we all know that Pan Am no longer flies here, or anywhere else. Pan Am went bankrupt, and no longer exists.
And what happens to the self-image or self-respect of those whose self worth was is a worldly system? Look at the possible trap of your job, your neighbourhood, your service organization, or even your national citizenship. But worldly systems can change. Country systems can change (look at what’s happening in Venezuela). Companies can be taken over and jobs are lost, neighbours come and go, investments can be lost, real estate values change and close friends can betray us in the eternal scramble to reach the top.
Let's look at the security trap of possessions. We may say, “I am secure because I have possessions that give me self-respect and money to take care of any unforeseen contingencies”
The trouble with money is that it makes us more of what we already are: If we are generous, we can be generous big-time, if we are misers, we become misers big-time, If we are spendthrifts, we become spendthrifts big-time.
We forget how limited money is. Has it ever protected you from gossip or an accident? has it protected you from a quarrel? Has it ever brought a person back to life or restored a relationship? If our security is based on externals, we are subject to volatile forces beyond our control. Only God makes us free. Think how wonderful it is to value yourself for who you are, not for what position or possessions you have. There is great joy when you don’t feel you have to guard it or protect it or control it.
Let's look at the security trap of pleasure. If we find ourselves saying“I am secure because I can do things that make me feel good.” or "This makes me happy so I am safe", we need to realize that our society seeks security in pleasure. There is a long list of actors, actresses and performers who literally pleased themselves to death. But the list is even longer of people who have access to every pleasure this world can supply, and they still find no security or happiness.
A very rich gentleman once wrote the following: “I said to myself, ‘Come now, let’s give pleasure a try. Let’s look for the good things in life.’ But I found that this too was meaningless. It is silly to be laughing all the time, I said, what good does it do to seek only pleasure?” This gentleman was the richest man in the land, and he had numerous wives and concubines. His name was King Solomon, and this paragraph comes from Ecclesiastes 2: 1-2.
The downfall of David began with the story of Bathsheba. His desire for pleasure overrode his integrity. The result of this was trouble and strife in his house from then on (2 Sam 12:10)
King David lost the battle, not when he was young, but later when he was a successful ruler.
Where should we place our security? We have seen that power, possessions, pleasure, etc fail. Our only security is in Christ. God wants us to trust in things that are unseen. Heb 11:1: Now faith is being sure of what we hope for, and certain of what we do not see. Satan wanted David to count what he could see so that he would count on what he could see. God wants us to base our security on Christ, who has spiritual resources that we cannot see.
How do we anchor our security in the Lord? It may begin with a costly wake-up call, such as what happened to David. God judged David after he’d counted his troops. God gave him 3 alternatives and David chose # 3 because he preferred falling under the hand of the Lord than under the forces of nature or under the hand of other human beings.
Whatever you trust in may be taken away from you so that you will trust in the One who will never forsake you. Sometimes God takes away our false security crutches so that we put our trust in Him and save ourselves many worse troubles. Ask yourself what you are looking to for security. Be ready to turn away from those false securities. Remember how God has rescued you and provided for you in countless ways. Remember the battles you have fought against Goliath and won.
Many times we forget God’s goodness in the past, and we end up going backwards spiritually
Remember your stories of God providing for you, guiding you, answering your prayers, protecting you. What is your holy history? Be ready to let God show you the truth about where you have put your trust. Are you caught up in the trap of power, possessions, or popularity or position or pleasure? If you are, remember these principles:
Worldly power can make you powerless.
Positions can make you captive and may be quickly lost.
People are limited.
Possessions possess you.
Only the Lord, not momentary pleasure, can satisfy your deepest hunger.
Learn to say to yourself, “If I have God, I have enough.”
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