Rick Warren - How God Lifts Me Up When I’m Worn Down—Part One

Hello, everybody.

This is Pastor Rick's Daily Hope with Rick Warren. I'm

really glad you're here. Today we're continuing our series from

Psalm twenty three called Living in the Goodness of God.

It's all about how God's goodness meets you right where

you are and brings hope even in difficult seasons. Today

we're diving into part one of a message called how

God Lifts Me Up When I'm worn down.

You take out your message notes.

Life can really wear you down so that you've got

nothing left to give. And I'm sure that every one

of you, at some point in your life could identify

with this anonymous prayer request that came in. I feel

like I'm in a war zone. It's just one battle

after another. I argue with my wife, I clash with

my kids over everything. I fight to keep my job,

I struggle with our growing debt, and I'm losing the

battle with my weight. And then there's the conflicts inside me.

I fight my own fears, when I battle with my

anxieties and my temper, and I'm always fighting off depression.

Sometimes I'm just fighting to keep my head above water,

and I'm just so tired. How does the goodness of God.

Help you when you feel like that, when you're in

the battle and you're all beat up.

How does God lift you up.

When you're worn down? Not after the battle's over. I'm

talking about in the middle of the battle. Where do

you find the goodness of God? Now we've been in

this series for now. This is our eighth week on

living in the Goodness of God, and we're looking at

Psalm twenty three, the most famous chapter in the entire Bible.

It's only six verses, but it gives us twelve pictures,

twelve expressions, twelve identifying factors of God's goodness in your life.

How God is good to you, whether you're resting in

green pastures and by still waters, or whether you're in

the valley of the Shadow of death, or this week,

when you're facing an enemy, wherein you're in a battle,

a financial battle, a health battle, a relational battle, a

battle for your own sanity. How does God show his

goodness in that kind of situation. Well, today we're in

verse five, and in verse five there are three more

pictures of how God is good to you. We're only

going to look at one of them for the next

three weeks. We're gonna look, this is such a deep

passage and the metaphors are so full that we're taking

literally one phrase, not even one verse at a time,

one phrase at a time. And so we're gonna look

at the first phrase in Psalm five. It's at the

top of your excuse me, verse five, at the top

of your outline, and it says this, you prepare a

banquet for me in front of my enemies. Pretty simple statement.

You prepare a banquet for me in front of my enemies.

What in the world does that mean? I mean, this

was written over three thousand years ago, so how can

it help.

You in the battles you have against your enemies this year?

Well, we're going to tear it apart first, word by word,

and to understand this metaphor, uh, you need to ask

four questions. We're going to ask what kind of banquet

is it? We're going to ask who are the enemies?

And then we need to ask what does this banquet symbolize?

And then we need to ask what's on the menu.

So let's get right into it. First, what kind of

banquet is this? Well, again, let's just take it apart

word by word. He starts off by saying you prepare

a banquet for me in front of my enemies. You

the word you means God. He's talking about God. So

write this down. Five things we know. God is the host.

God is the host of this banquet. So whatever we're

going to look at today, it's God's idea.

He is the host.

And can you imagine the honor of getting imitation in

the mail where God says I'm inviting you to my banquet.

You'd be on an a list. You probably wouldn't even

go to bed tonight.

You'd stay up, taking a couple of showers, getting a haircut,

whatever you can do, find new clothes, so you'd be

ready for a banquet that God has invited.

You too, because he's the host.

Then it says you prepare, And what that means is

this is well prepared. This is well planned. Write that down.

This is not a spontaneous banquet. It's not off the cuff.

It's not like, hey, let's go down to the beach

right now. God has put forethought into us. This is planned,

it is prepared. It's not of the spur of the

moment decision. Now, I want to tell you that the

word banquet in a lot of translations is actually in

Hebrew the word table, and King James version says, you

prepare a table for me. But it's not just any table.

The Hebrew word here's the word shu khan, and shul

kan literally means the king's table. When he says I

prepare a table for you a banquet, he's not talking

about a TV dinner tray. He's not talking about a

for mica dinette in your kitchen. He's not talking about

a folding table a judas. This is one of those

really long tables you see in a castle, in a

medieval castle that's long holds, you know, fifty one hundred people.

It's the king's table, it's the queen's table. This word

in the Bible is used almost always referred to a

king's table, or it is referred to the table of showbred.

In the temple. So it's a special.

It's a sacred table that you're being invited to, and

it is well planned, it's all laid out, it's big, heavy,

and it's got the king's feast on it. He says,

you prepare a banquet. The next phrase is for me.

Here's what you need to write down. You're the guest

of honor. So write this down. I am the guest

of honor. This is not a banquet for somebody else

that you're being invited to attend. This is a banquet

that is really just for you. It's you and the king.

You're the guest of honor. You're the big cheese, You're

the big deal.

And so it is for you. You.

I am the guest of honor. You prepare a banquet

for me, And it says in front of here's the

next phrase. It's a public banquet, not private. People are

gonna watch you eat with a king. People are gonna

watch it is public, it's not in secret. God wants

to see you honored, and God wants everybody to see

you being honored. So this banquet we're gonna look at

today is for you, and it's to be in public.

It's not a secret event. It's in front of. And

then the last phrase, which is the catch in front

of my enemies. Oh no, that's a twist. I might say,

thank God to say I'm gonna prepare a banquet for

you and your friends. Now he says, I'm gonna pare

a banquet just for you, but all of your enemies

are gonna watch us eat together. What in the world

does that mean. It means that it's on a battlefield.

Write this down.

The banquet is on a battlefield. This is a.

Banquet not just when good times are going in your life.

It's when you're under attack.

The king says, during the battle, I'm gonna come and

throw a banquet for you, and all of your enemies

are gonna watch me, honor you, bless you, and have

peace with you.

So that's what the banquet is. Now.

The second question is who's the enemy? And I could

go into this, This could be a whole sermon. We've

talked about it before. I'm just gonna give you the

fill ins. I've written some verses there. I'm not gonna

even teach on these because I don't want to spend

most of the time on it. But the Bible says

you have three enemies. They are the world, the flesh,

and the devil. You might write these down. The first

enemy you have is the world around me. The world

around me, and I've given you some Bible verses there

to look.

The world is in.

Opposition to God because it worships itself, not God. And

the world around you, is always coming after you, always,

you know, criticizing you, always not understanding you. If you've

ever been picked on, if you've ever been put down,

if you've ever had injustice or bias or racialism or

prejudice or overlooked because of your gender. That's the world

around you. The second enemy you have is Satan is

against me. The world is around me, and the second

is Satan is against me. And again I don't have

time to go into all of this, but God says

that Satan is real and that he wants to defeat you.

God loves you and has a wonderful plan for your life.

Satan hates you and has a terrible plan for your life.

And the Bible says that God Satan wants to kill you.

Satan wants to destroy you. Satan wants to defeat you. Why, well,

he didn't even care about you. The only reason Satan

hates you is because God loves you. That's why you're

the enemy of Satan. Because God loves you, and Satan

hates anything and anyone God loves. Because God loves you greatly,

Satan hates you. Satan wants to hurt you and destroy

you because he thinks that will hurt God. If you

wanted to get at me, get my children and my grandchildren,

you would hurt me the most that way. So you've

got the world around you, You've got Satan against you.

But then the third enemy, and this is the biggest

one of all, is my old nature inside me. That's

your third enemy, your old nature inside you. And the

older you get, the more you're gonna learn that your

biggest enemy is you. And you don't always do the

right things that you intend to do. You have good intentions.

Paul wrote an entire chapter about this in Roman seven.

He says, the things I want to do, I end

up not doing, and the things that I know are

bad for me, I end up doing. I'm in this

battle constantly, and that's the third enemy against you. Now,

he says, in the presence of my enemies, I do

a banquet. What does this banquet symbolize, Well, it symbolizes

two things. In the Bible, a banquet almost always represents

two things.

Write these down.

First, God wants and welcomes fellowship with me. That's the

first thing that this banquet says. That God wants to

hang out with you. He wants and he welcomes.

Fellowship with you.

This is one of the most amazing truths in the

universe that God, who created the whole thing, wants to

know me, wants to know you. God wants to be

your friend. God wants you to be his friend. God

wants to fellowship. He wants to eat together. Let's go

get something to eat. That is an amazing truth that

in the Bible, a banquet almost always represents fellowship. You

know that when you want a fellowship with so many days,

say let's go get some to eat. You have somebody

over to your house. That's fellowship. When God throws a

banquet for you, he's saying I want to hang out

with you. I want you to understand how much I

love you. And he wants to show how you are

welcomed by him, how you are wanted by him, and

he wants to do it. Listen, when you're under attack,

to encourage you in the presence of your enemies, when

everybody else is coming against you, God says, I want

to throw a party for you. I want to have

a banquet for you. Psalm Verse chapter five, verse eleven

says this you welcome us with open arms talking about God.

When we run to for cover to you.

In other words, you're in a battle and you need

a little protection, and you run to God. God says,

I welcome you with open arms. I love this in

the message paraphrase some five eleven, you welcome us with

open arms when we run for cover to you. Let

the party last all night. Stand guard over our celebration.

God says, I know you're in the heat of the

battle right now. You're fighting for your job. You're fighting

for your health, you're fighting for your sanity, you're fighting

for your dignity while the.

Battle's going on.

Hang on, I want to throw a banquet for you,

just a little encouragement here. Now it's a party in

a combat zone. It's a banquet in a battlefield.

Now. I want you to use your imaginations to imagine

this scene. Go back to like.

Robinhood, days of knights and vassals and kings and courts,

and imagine a giant medieval battle and there's two mountains

and this team a over here, and team be over here.

You're on the good side, and this is the bad side.

These are the evil people.

And that the enemies have come out and the soldiers

have come out to fight this battle, And just imagine

that you are a soldier on the front line in

a medieval battle and you're out there and you're fighting hard,

and you're working hard, and the enemy's coming against you.

It's a heated battle, and you're tired, and you're sweaty,

you probably got some blood on you, and you're scared,

and you're hungry, and all of a sudden, word comes

up without explanation, and a superior officer pulls you off

the front line. You're going, I don't know what's going on,

but I'm glad to get off the front line because

this is a hot and heavy battle. And the superior

officer pulls you out of the battle and you start

walking back, and then about one thousand yards back off

the front of the battle, you see this giant banquet

tent has been erected with all the turrets and the flags,

and it looks like a circus tent, a big tent,

and you go, what's going on? And as you start

walking toward that banquet tent, you realize and there's a

full feast there. You realize that the king has showed up.

The King of the Empire has shown up. And when

you walk into that tent. There is the King's table,

and it's seventy five feet or fifty feet long, and

it's heavy in what is somehow they figured out a

way to get it out of a castle and transport

it directly to the battlefield.

And this is the king's table.

Only the fancy people, the nobleman, get to eat at

this table. And you walk in there and the table

is decked out with all your favorite foods, comfort food. Now,

when you're in the middle of a battle, nothing tastes

as good as coming home to some comfort food. And

you walk in there and this table it's covered, and

it's just you and the king, just the two of you.

That's it.

And all this food and around the tent have been

stationed about five hundred maybe seven hundred guards, so there's

no way the enemy's getting in here. But the tent

flaps her up and everybody can see what's going on.

It's not hidden, it's public. Everybody sees that the king

has called you out of battle, brought you back to

this giant banqueting tent, put on the feast of your

favorite food, and it's just you and the king, and

everybody sees it and then the King says to you

in a loving voice, this.

Is all for you.

I made this for you, I planned it for you,

and I just wanted to hang out with you. I

love you, I miss you, and I want to affirm

you publicly in front of both of these armies. And

I want you to eat all you want. And you're unhurried, unworried,

protected here. There's no way the enemy can get to you,

and I just want to affirm you and have some

fellowship with you. You think you're in a dream world. You know,

how does the king even know me? I'm just I'm

just a servant. I'm just I'm just a soldier. And

then so everybody knows what's going on, the King orders

erected a giant banner outside with your name on it,

and the banner says this I love and it has

your name and sign the king, so everybody knows what's

going on. This is a personal recognition, a personal act

of love. I love you your name, and I am

proud of them. What I just described you is exactly

what God is talking about doing for you. You prepare a

banquet for me in the presence of my enemies. I'm

the guest of honor. You're the guest of honor. It's

not for anybody else. It's not like you get to

look on it's not like you're a wedding crasher and

you just came in to get some food. No, this

banquet is in your honor, and the banner clearly says,

because it's got your name on it, this is what

God wants to do for you in the battle of

your life. Look at this verse up here on the screen.

Song of Solomon says this. He brings me to his

banquet table, and his banner over me is love. You

may have never thought that God was proud of you,

But if you're a child of God, your heavenly Father

is proud of you, and he loves you, and he

brings you to his banqueting table, and his banner over

you his love. He wants your whole enemies to know

how much He, the King.

Loves you.

Now go back to this picture. The enemy are fighting

and they see this going on, and all of a

sudden they just stop the battle. And both sides are

looking at this event taking place up here on the hill.

Because it's public, it's not secret, and the enemy is

absolutely dumb struck by the scene. They all stop fighting

and they just stare and they go, are you kidding me?

The King picked that one guy and brought him out,

and they just stare.

You know. I have learned personally.

That when God wants to bless your life, there is

nothing the critics can do about it. When God wants

to bless your life. They may spite you, they may

slamm to you, they may ignore you, they may ridicule you,

they may libel you, they may say all kinds of

mean things about you, but they can't stop God's blessing.

On your life. They just can't do it.

And that person at work who wants your job and

it's trying to push you aside. If God wants you

to have a job, doesn't matter what they want to do.

And if they are having a tough time with you

getting over here in this area and they're trying to

stop you, stop you. When God's blessing is on your

life and God's banner over you is love, it doesn't matter.

They cannot stop what God wants to do in your life.

They are powerless against the King, and your enemies are dumbfounded.

God loves to show the blessing of his people in

front of the enemy. Now today, let's talk about you

in your battle. In the middle of your battle, God

is inviting you to a banquet. I gonna explain it

in just a minute what that banquet is. But he's

inviting you to a banquet. Job Chapter thirty six, verse

sixteen says this God is gently calling you from the

jaws of distress. What a picturesque phrase, from the jaws

of distress, to an open place of freedom where he

has set your.

Table full of the best food.

The same metaphor, Job's saying the exact same thing, David says,

saw Him twenty three says God. While you're in the

middle of the battles you're in right now, God is saying.

Hey, come over here, come over here. I've got a

banquet for you. He is.

He is gently calling, He's wooing you like a lover.

He's coaxing you. This is all done in love. Right now,

God is tenderly calling you to his banquet. I highly

recommend you accept the invitation once you understand what it means.

And he says, God is calling you from the jaws

of distress. Everybody remember the movie jaws duneto duntu dun too,

don too. Yeah, I love this the jaws of distress.

Let me ask you, what's chewing on you right now?

What's eating you up right now? What is it that's

got you worried, anxious, fearful, and it's just gnawing, gnawing, gnawing.

You're you're stressed out about it. You are in the

jaws of distress. God said, hey, come on, you deserve

a break today. Come over, I got a banquet for you.

God is gently calling you from the jaws of distress

to an open place of freedom where He has set

your table with the best food. And others may criticize you,

attack you to mean you dismiss you, disregard you. The

God wants to hang out with you. That's the first

thing this metaphor, I prepare a banquet for you means

God wants to fellowship with you. And God wants to

feed you, to give you some new strength so you

can get it back in that battle. You're tired and

you're about to fall over, and you need God's strength,

and you need sustenance, and you need nourishment, and you

need refreshment. He says, it's all there. It's all laid

out on the King's table, and I transported it right

here to the battlefield for you. He says, I put

a lot of preparation in planning this, and I want

to honor you.

What a great and timely message.

Today.

Let's end our show with a closing thought from Pastor Rick.

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