Stop Fighting Needless Wars | September 21, 2025 PM

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message from God's Word will be a blessing to you.

Second Samuel chapter #10 In the Word of God this evening we'll

just start right from the beginning.

How about that? Because I don't know where that

came from. Ecclesiastes chapter #3 says

this to everything. There is a season and a time to

every purpose under heaven, and actually says in verse #8 a time

to love and a time to hate, A time of war and a time of peace.

And the Bible makes clear that there is a time for warfare, but

yet there's also a time for peace as well.

I am afraid though. However, this evening I am

concerned that there are some Christians especially, who live

in a constant state of warfare. Now listen, I understand.

Is there spiritual warfare raging all around us at any

given time? The answer is absolutely.

And if you don't believe that's the case, then you've been

lulled the street, friend. Because the fact of the matter

is, is that there is spiritual wickedness in high places.

Satan certainly is conspiring against believers and he can't

take your soul. Praise God, because we are safe

within the Father's hand. We have security of our

salvation in Jesus Christ, the hand of Christ, which is in the

hand of the Father. That's what we find in the

Gospels. However, Satan can't take that,

but he'll try to take everything else from you as possible.

He'll try to take your joy. He'll try to take your

effectiveness. He'll try to take your

testimony. He'll try to take your good

name. He'll try to take your ability

to witness to others, and on and on and on and on.

Listen, he wants you to be like Job, who's just sitting on a

pile of ashes, scratching himself with a piece of pottery

and just saying I got nothing left.

That's what Satan wants for you. And so I'm not discounting the

fact tonight that spiritual warfare is a very real thing,

because spiritual warfare is a real thing.

We wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against

principalities and powers and rulers of the darkness of this

world, against spiritual wickedness in high places.

Ephesians chapter 6, verse 12. But what I'm talking about this

Ephesians 6:12

evening is not necessarily the recognition of spiritual

warfare, but I'm talking about the Christian has a hair trigger

and is ready to fight someone at the drop of a hat.

Now, I'm not talking about necessarily a fist fight because

I think most Christians would have the understanding that, you

know, it's probably not best for us to have fist fights after

church. You know, probably not.

You know, could you imagine just like a ring of people out after

church, fight, fight, fight, fight, you know, two people in

the middle just kind of duking it out and they'd say, what's

going on over this? Oh, it's all right.

It's church service. You know, it's that crazy in the

bed of Baptist Church. They're just having a fight out

there. No, no, I'm not talking about

that. We would understand that's not

the case. However, I would say that while

physically that might not take place, that spirit very well

could invade the soul. The spirit of a believer, yes,

even a believer. The idea of fighting these

needless wars. These people aren't happy

warriors that are simply looking to do the will of God from the

heart. No, no, these are the people who

wrap a thin layer of God, godliness over a heaping helping

of pride and arrogance and haughtiness.

Now let's be honest, it's easy to do in our flesh if we're not

careful. Well, tonight in the Word of

God, we had the example of a man, an Ammonite, Certainly not

a believer in the sense that we would look at ourselves this

evening. But I believe if we're not

careful, the spirit of the Ammonite can be found in us as

believers if we're not careful, picking fights where we ought

not to be, picking fights and having wars when it's not time

for war. So why don't you stand, if you

could, please, for the reading God's Word?

We're in second Samuel chapter #10 and we'll read the first 5

verses to begin. The Bible says this.

And it came to pass after this that the king of the children of

Ammon died, and Hannon his son reigned in his stead.

Then said David, I will show kindness unto Hannah the son of

Nahash, as his father showed kindness unto me.

David sent to comfort him by the hand of his servants for his

father. And David's servants came into

the land of the children of Ammon.

Isn't that nice of David to be able to do that?

That's certainly the case. But you ever heard the saying,

No good deed goes all right? And the Princess of the children

of Ammon said unto hand, And their Lord, Think us thou that

David doth honor thy father, that he has sent comforters unto

thee. Hasn't David rather sent his

servants unto thee to search the city, and to spy it out and

overthrow it? Wherefore Hannon took David's

servants, and shaved off the 1/2 of their beards, and cut off

their garments in the middle, even to their buttocks, and sent

them away. When they told it to David, he

sent to meet them, because they were greatly ashamed.

And the king said, Terry at Jericho, until your beards be

grown and then return. Now, if you've never read this

passage before, when we got to the end of verse number two, you

probably weren't guessing the next step, that these servants

that were just trying to show kindness come back with half

their beard shaved and their garments cut down to their rear

ends. But that's exactly what we see

here. A man who really was just being

shown kindness by the king decided to pick a fight where he

ought not to pick a fight. And I'll tell you, there were

some devastating consequences from it.

And that's what we're going to look at tonight.

So why don't you be seated as we pray together?

Heavenly Father, do you pray to be with me this evening as I

present your word? And certainly the spirit of the

Ammonite could be within us to be able to find fights where

there should not be fights, to find warfare where there ought

not to be warfare, to be able to fight at a drop of a hat.

I pray that You help us as believers to have the right

spirit, the right countenance, to know when we need to stand,

to know where we need to be seated, to know we need to speak

out, to know when we need to keep our hands over our mouth.

Lord help us to be able to have the Holy Spirit discernment to

know these issues and to have the discernment for them.

And we ask it in Jesus name, Amen.

At first glance, Rolf Klassen, a Gray haired Swede who hobbles

around on his Walker, looked like an easy target.

At least that's what 2 would be, robbers thought as they accosted

him at an ATM in Iceland back in 2011.

One of the thugs waved a knife while the other thug told

Classen to turn over his wallet. What they didn't know was that

their victim was also the former European light middle weight

boxing champion. Classen warned them.

This isn't going to go well. When the men scoffed his

warning, he knocked one of them out to the floor with a sharp

right hook for laying the other out with a left jab.

Yes, thank you, Ralph. So where those Amens are coming

from? By the way, I looked this up

this week because that's one of those sermon illustrations.

Like, that's a great story, but it can't be true.

It absolutely was true. This took place in Iceland 2011.

But what caps it off is the police officer who at the end of

the story says this. At the end, they came after the

wrong guy. They thought they had an easy

mark and they didn't. They came after the wrong guy.

Clearly in Second Samuel Chapter 10, Hannon came after the wrong

2 Samuel 10 · chapter mention

guy. David, in the integrity of his

heart, says, you know what? Hannon's father was a blessing

to me. Hanning's father, Hannon's

father was a man who had been some level of encouragement to

me in my life. And so he decides very early on

in the text that he has Hannon is grieving his father's death.

He says, you know what, I want to send some men that are going

to come and bring comfort to him as I have received comfort from

his father in the past. And again, we we saw just a few

chapters ago that what is David doing?

He he wants to, he's looking out, if you could put it this

way, he's looking out for the interests of the Lord.

He says, why am I dwelling in a House of Cedars?

And the Lord dwells in a House of curtains.

And so he was looking out for the needs of the Lord.

Of course we know the Lord has no needs, but in David's heart I

want to do something for God. And so his heart was, I want to

do something for God. In the last chapter we saw that

he want to do something for Mephibosheth, which technically

could have been one of his enemies because he was from the

household of soul. And so David says I want to do

something that's good for Mephibosheth and he did.

And so here we see him tonight once again, what is he doing?

His kindness continues. Once again he is showing his

graciousness and his love to this man named Hannon because of

the kindness it says in verse #2 that his father had shown unto

him. And so he sends some of his

servants, He sends some of his counselors to the land of the

Ammonites. Now the Ammonites were close to

the people of Israel. If you go to the South and

Israel, if you were looking at a map and you see where Jerusalem

and you see where the tribe of Judah is, if you go directly to

the South, you think of where Beersheba is.

And sometimes in the Word of God, you see from Dan, even

under Beersheba, you see that phrase really means from the

north to the South of the place of Israel, the nation of Israel.

If you were to go South of Beersheba, you would find the

land of the Ammonites. So they were very close to one

another in proximity. And So what does David do?

He sends these counselors and he sends them over and says,

listen, you go show the kindness that I was shown by Hannon's

father. But Hannon receives these men,

but he also receives his own counselors as well.

And so he asked his counselors, what do you think's the deal

with these guys? Why do you think they're here?

Why do you think David sent them over here?

And instead of just coming to the conclusion that maybe, well,

David was a godly man, instead of coming to the conclusion

that, well, you know, David just is trying to be a nice guy.

No, no, what happens? Well, it says in verse #3 it

says, think of thou that David doth honor thy father, that he

has sent comforters unto thee. Has not David rather sent his

servants unto thee to search the city and to spy it out and to

overthrow it? He says, you really think, are

you so naive, Hannon, that these men are here just to be able to

say, wow, we're really sorry for you?

David could have sent you a greeting card if that's what he

wanted to do. No, what he did was he said

there are no greeting cards back then, just to be sure you're

paying attention. All right?

But he says, no, no, they sent these men because they're spies.

And what they're doing is they're trying to find our

weaknesses. They're trying to see where we

are LAX. And he's going to go back and

report to David. And before you know it, we're

going to be no war. David's a warrior.

You're a fool to accept these men.

You're a fool to allow them into your presence.

You need to send them away. You know, no, you don't need to

just send them away. You need to absolutely humiliate

them. You need to send a message not

just to these men. You send a message to David that

we, the people of Ammon, are not to be trifled with.

So instead of just saying, you know, thanks for coming by, but

the king is really busy. He's got a lot of people to see.

And so maybe you could come back another day.

They said, hey, hey, come here. We want to talk to you for a

second. And they get close and they

arrest them. They, they, they, I don't know

how necessarily you would find it, but somehow they have

captured them to the point of taking their beards and shaving

them. They're not shaving their

beards, just shaving half of their beard, say pastor.

What's the big deal about that? Well, one commentator said of

the shaving of the beard. Except for the performance of

certain religious rituals or to express profound emotional

distress, Israelite men always wore beards.

To remove an Israelite male's beard forcibly was to show

contempt for him personally. The idea was this.

We're going to shave your beard to show you how much contempt we

find you. And we're not even going to

shave your beard. We're going to shave half of it

because we want you to be absolutely humiliated.

If that humiliation wasn't enough, what do they do?

They took their outer garments and they split the garments, and

the Bible says yes. It says all the way down to

their buttocks. Meaning what?

They wanted to expose them and to make them look like fools.

Now, if you and I have an issue where our clothing may RIP or

has some sort of problem, what do we do?

Well, we go to the store and we buy a new piece of clothes,

right? Well, if you're in the land of

Ammon and you got to go home, do you think there's a Kmart on the

way? No, you're walking all the way

home with your beard cut in half.

You're walking all the way home with your clothes rent and your

body exposed in a way that is humiliating.

And again, the issue wasn't even necessarily what was physically

done to them with the beard and what was done to them with the

clothes. The clothing.

The issue was really this. They were shown complete and

utter contempt by a man that was supposed to have been helped,

but instead he takes it completely wrong.

And what happens? Well, he insults these men and

sends them right back to David. Now David again is a man of

kindness. He hears of this and he says in

verse #5 when they told it unto David, he sent to meet them,

because the men were greatly ashamed.

And the king said, tarry unto Jericho until your beards be

grown and then return. He says, listen, don't even

return to society, don't even return to your family, don't

return to your friends until your beards can be grown back

again. David cares for them as men.

David cares for their souls. You, you can just feel David's

care for them here. But I'll tell you this, if we've

learned anything thus far from David's life, David's thought a

man to be trifled with. David tried to be nice.

David tried to play it nicely. But what happens?

He realizes that, well, there's probably going to have to be

some consequences. But before any consequences,

come look at what it says in verse 6.

And when the children of Ammon saw that they stank before

David. Yeah, I'd say that's probably a

problem, isn't it? The children of Ammon sent and

hired the Syrians of Beth. Rob Beth, a hub and the Syrians

of Zoba, 20,000 footmen, and then of the king Mecca 1000 men,

and of Ishtab 12,000 men. And if you were to go to First

Chronicles 1917, you'll have to turn there right now, but you'll

find a parallel passage text in First Chronicles 19.

You'll find there were also 32,000 Chariots that were in the

mix as well. So the Ammonites realized,

whoops, maybe we should have done this.

Wow, it sounds like David's mad about this.

But what do we do? Well, instead of trying to make

it right, what they immediately do is say, you know what we need

to do? We just need to wipe David off

the face of the earth. We just need to take over

Israel. We need to go to battle against

him. And it says that they hire the

Syrians. Now, this is interesting because

if, again, if you were to look to a map, the Ammonites are

going to be to the South, but if you were looked at the Syrians,

the Syrians would be almost directly to the north.

Meaning this that basically by hiring other groups of soldiers

to be able to come in confederacy with them, which was

not unusual during that time, you had a lot of smaller nations

that would try to ban their resources together to come in

power against a larger nation. But basically what happens is

you have a nation to the South and their army and a nation to

the north and their army, and they've got Israel in a vice.

What's Israel going to do? Well, if you go down to verse

#7, it says. And when David heard of it, he

sent Joab and all the host of the mighty men.

By the way, this is the first mention of David's mighty men.

We're get to know a lot about them as we continue to look

through. But this is the very first

mention where they are called mighty men.

And the children of Ammon came out and put the battle in a ray

at the entering end of the gate of the Syrians of Zoba and of

Rahab, and of Ishtab and of Mecca, when were by themselves

and were by themselves in the field, when Joab saw that the

front of the battle was against him before and behind.

So what is it saying again? He's in that vice.

He's got men to the north, men to the South.

What are we going to do? How are we going to fight our

way out of this? It says this.

He chose of all the choice men of Israel and put them in a ray

against the Syrians and the rest of the people.

He delivered into the hand of Abishai his brother, that he

might put them in a ray against the children of Israel.

And he said, If the Syrians be too strong for me, and thou

shalt help me, but the children of AM and be too strong for

thee, then I will come and help thee.

Be of good courage. Let us play the men for our

people and for the cities of our God, and the Lord do that which

seemeth good before Him. So what is the end result of

what takes place? Well, I think you could imagine

what the end result is. Even though Israel's backs are

against the wall, God once again provides.

Israel wins, they don't just win against the Ammonites, they also

win against the Syrians and also some others who try to get

involved in this battle as well. And every single one who gets

involved, listen, is totally at a loss against David as men.

And I love the end verse #19 it says that when all the kings

that were servants that had a riser who also became part of

the battle, we met him last in chapter #8 saw that the people

were smitten before Israel. They made peace with Israel and

serve them. Listen.

So the Syrians feared to help the children of Ammon no more

anymore. They realize, you know what,

Hey, we probably shouldn't have got involved with this.

I don't care how much money they gave us to try to help protect

him. But maybe we shouldn't have

gotten involved in this whole thing in the 1st place.

Because what David had just started as as a very kind

hearted, what David had just started something that was very

tender hearted on his part. I just want to be a blessing to

this man. Turned out to be an absolute

disaster, not because of anything David did, but because

he was dealing with a man who was ready to fight.

He was dealing with a man the spirit of the Ammonite was,

listen, I don't know what your intentions are here, but I'm

going to automatically think the worst.

And hey, why don't we escalate this from a scale from a one to

10? How about we escalate this to an

11? And before you know it, the

Ammonites and the Syrians and a bunch of other city states are

involved in a war with David that never should have happened

in the 1st place because the guy just wanted to fight.

The bottom line here is this. What we just saw was a needless

war and one that didn't need to be fought.

There was nothing righteous about what we see here.

Hannon was a fool at a very base level.

A fool to take a man who was trying to help him and not just

push him away, but to embarrass him, to mock him to, to do what

he did to his counselors, to his men.

And he ended up paying the price, not just with his own

condition being put at the worst in battle, but also ending up

having a very bad reputation with the other nations to the

point the Syrian say, hey, Amon, if the phone rings from you

guys, we're not answering. We don't want to get involved

with you people anyway. Look what you've done to us.

A needless war. The problem with what we're

looking at here tonight is that you and I, if we're not careful,

we can also get ourselves involved in some needless wars

as well. It can be as small as escalating

an issue on the road. Any of you here driven in

Massachusetts before anybody? OK.

I think it's some people's purpose in life to antagonize me

while they're driving. I feel like they're looking out

for me. It's like there's a bulletin

that goes out, hey, when you see.

And what really hurts is when they do it to me and I'm in the

church van and I get really upset, but I'm in the church van

that says Liberty Baptist Church.

And I don't want to be bad testimony, but it's easy to

escalate when someone gets on your nerves when you're driving.

It could be as innocent as someone who said something that

maybe just kind of rubbed you the wrong way.

It could be as foolish as turning a slide at work into a

grudge. It could be a senseless arguing

with someone online because of a post that they made that didn't

hit you the right way. It could be resentment over an

invite that should have been made or that you thought should

have been made but that ended up getting lost in the mail.

It could be bickering with family over holiday plans.

It could be letting a rude comment ruin a friendship.

It could be people in a church that just end up rubbing each

other the wrong way. It can always start with

something so small, something that you could never have

imagined. It could have turned into

something big, But it turns into something big.

Why? Because someone has decided it's

time to go to war when it wasn't time to go to war, and we as

Christians are held to a higher standard.

I'm going to say that again, we as Christians are held to a

higher standard. You say, well, the world always

wants to fight. That's because they're in the

world. That's because they don't have

the peace of Jesus Christ inside of you say, well, pastor, are

you saying there's not a time to fight?

There is a time, Ecclesiastes chapter 3, we're to earnestly

Ecclesiastes 3 · chapter mention

contend for the faith. Absolutely we are.

But a lot of times our righteous anger quote, UN quote is really

just unrighteous anger that's just wrapped up with gift

wrapping that looks righteous. But again, it's nothing more

than pride and arrogance and really just getting our feelings

hurt. So what can we learn from this

text that can help us to not fight these needless wars in our

life? I think there's three principles

that we find here quickly this evening.

And the first is this. Be careful of assigning motive

when it comes to issues with other people.

Be very careful when you assign motive.

Look, there was no good reason for the Ammonites to act the way

they acted. There was none.

What was the evidence that David was doing what they accused him

of doing? Well, the evidence was none.

In fact, David had shown kindness to the father and vice

versa. There had been no war between

the Israelites and the Ammonites for probably over 40 years.

You find the last time there was even a skirmish between the

Ammonites and the Israelites was very early in Saul's reign.

There was no evidence that the men were even doing the things

of which they were accused of doing.

And why was there no evidence? Because it was obvious they

weren't doing it. But what did they do?

They assigned motive to these men.

Well, if they're here, it must be because XYZ.

And that immediately got them down the road to the place of

saying, well, if they are here and this is their motive, than

they are doing wrong. And they got it all worked up in

their mind. But everything they got worked

up on their mind was absolutely wrong.

You know what I've seen happen before at church?

I'm sure you've never seen anything like this before, but

I've seen it here and there. People get upset at 1, you know,

people get upset at church once in a while.

You ever did, you know that? OK, Only my wife laughed at

that, OK. Everyone else is uncomfortable.

All right? People can get upset at church

once in a while. Well, that person didn't talk to

me. Or I said something to them and

they didn't answer. And I've heard even people say

something like this. I know they don't like me.

Why? Because I said something to them

and they didn't answer me. What is that?

Well, that's immediately assigning intent.

Do you know that for sure? Oh, you could just tell How?

No, I mean, just listen. If I got to explain it to you,

pastor, then you don't know. What?

What could it be? That possibly, you know, they

didn't see you. Oh, no, they saw me, Pastor.

They looked. They looked right at me.

Well, I mean, haven't you ever looked at someone before?

And maybe you didn't even realize they were there.

You were kind of looking at them, but you were really

looking right through them. Well, I mean, yeah, sure, I've

done that before, Pastor. But that's not exact.

That's not what happened. They had to have heard me.

They had to have seen me. You don't know.

Well, maybe it could be. Well, you could have been maybe

distracted. Well, I mean, I called him by

name. Of course, they had to have

known that I was there. What could it have been that

perhaps maybe they had a lot on their mind.

They mean they just maybe barely made it into church.

They were just glad to be able to make it to church.

Could it have been they had a bad day?

Could it have been that they're hard of hearing?

Could it have been that all of these other things that it could

have been? But oftentimes, what's the first

thing that we do when we feel disrespected, when we feel

slighted, What's the first thing we do?

We immediately in our flesh assigned the very worst to the

person. And you don't know what they're

thinking. Don't tell me that you do

because you don't know for sure. Now, can there be a body of work

overtime? OK, you said their name once and

they didn't respond. OK, you said their name. 3

church services in a row and they walked past you.

OK, we're getting somewhere. So what do we do?

Oh, pastor, this is the this is the part I'm looking for.

It's time for war. What be time for Matthew 18?

Say, what's that? Is that war, pastor?

That's the war passage, right? No.

Why are you? Why are you so worried about

war? Hey, Hannah, calm down, all

right? You know what the Matthew 18

part is? You go to a brother and say,

hey, is there a problem? Have I done something to offend

you? Have I hurt you?

Have I done something? No, not accusing them, but even

looking within yourself, have I done something that you can tell

me about? And you say, well, what happens

if they don't listen? Well, Jesus already thought of

that because he said the next step was to bring a witness to

bring a brother with you or or a sister laid bring someone else

and you say, Hey, we want to get this right with you.

We want to talk to you about this.

It seems like this could be the case, but I don't want to assign

the motive. The Bible talks about casting

down imagination. So I just want to make sure if

I've built something up in my mind that's not true, I want to

let's knock it down right now because I don't want to think

badly of your brother. I don't want to think badly of

your sister. And so let's get this take, man.

I don't want to be at war with you.

We're brothers in Christ. What does it say we be,

brethren, the Bible, Bible says, no, I want to get this right

with you. No, I don't want to go to war

with you. I want to make peace.

Say, well, that's weak and soft. Well, if you call being a

Christian weak and soft and go for it.

But to me that sounds like conflict resolution of the

biblical sense. No, not sticking our head in the

sand, not pretending that the issue isn't there, but first of

all, not assigning intent. The very first time or two

something happens. But then just to say after that,

well, maybe there is something here, but I don't know for sure.

So I'm going to go to him. I'm going to talk to him like a

brother and sister in Christ. The world doesn't get this.

The world solves things like this.

The world solves things like this.

And sure, a church may not have a circle of people like a high

school out in the parking lot and two guys duking it out.

I hope a church never has that. But I'll tell you this, there

are churches that have done everything but that, and they

get to the place where they might as well do it because

that's the way they're acting, like juveniles and like the

ungodly. Listen, they assigned intent,

and the intent that they assigned was absolutely and

factually incorrect. But what does the Bible say?

First Corinthians 13, four and five, Charity suffereth long,

and it's kind. Charity envieth not charity,

vaunteth not itself, is not puffed up, does not behave

itself unseemly, seeketh not her own, is not easily provoked,

thinketh no evil. What do we do?

We treat one another like brothers and sisters in Christ.

And if there's something wrong, listen.

And you are the offender and someone comes to you, don't

blast them out of the water for coming to you.

Listen in humility. And if both people are humble

and both people want to honor the Lord, why can't something be

worked out? No, we don't need endless wars.

True Christian charity thinks the best of others until

compelled by the truth to recognize an undeniable reality.

I'm going to say that again. True Christian charity thinks

the best of others until compelled by the truth to

recognize an undeniable reality. I'm going to think the best of

you until we get to the place where there is no question that

what the bad thing is, is actually what it is.

But even then we get there. You know what I want to do?

I want to see if we can make it right.

You know, we don't need to be doing cutting guys beards off.

You know we ought not to be doing cutting people's clothes,

humiliating people, acting the fool.

No, be careful in assigning motive #2 I see this from our

Texas W. Well, be careful who you listen

to. You know what Hannon's greatest

mistake was here. He had some counselors of his

own who said you don't want to do this, you don't want to do

this. He said, you know what, you're

right. You want to make sure that you

are not fighting needless wars in your own life.

You be careful who you listen to.

Some of the saddest situations in the Bible came from people

who listen to counselors they ought not have ever listened to.

I said this a few weeks ago. One of the saddest verses in the

Bible is this. And Amnon had a friend because

that friend named Jonah Dab encouraged him to force himself

upon his half sister. And it started with this.

And Amnon had a friend that was no friend.

Amnon shouldn't have listened to Jonadab.

We're going to see in a little while, David will have a son

named Solomon. Solomon will have a son named

Rhea Boem. And Rhea Boem is going to have

some trouble early in his reign to try to figure out how should

I, how should I handle these people?

They want me to lower their taxes.

And the older counselor said this.

You know what? You want to, you want to really

get their heart lower their taxes.

By the way, hello, That still works today.

Amen. All right, lower some taxes.

You know what I'm saying? You got our hearts all right.

But his younger brethren, his younger friends, rather as

counselors said this. Listen, you tell those

ungrateful people that if they thought Solomon's taxes were

hard, yours will be even harder. And his foolish friends and Raya

Boehm listening to his foolish friends ended up tearing the

Kingdom apart. Saul just a few chapters ago, he

needed direction in a very difficult time of his life.

And he says, I can't hear from the Lord.

And he had servants who said, you know what, you want to go

see a witch. He had the wrong counselors.

Maybe he should have said, hey, get right with God and all of a

sudden things would have changed.

So what, It's all due. OK, I guess I'll go see the

witch. The next day he's dead.

And his sons. David in our next chapter is

going to have some bad counselors.

He's out on the portico at night and he looks over the city and

he sees a woman. And he says, who is that?

And his servants knew exactly who she was and knew exactly how

to get her into the King's palace.

And not a one of them, said David, you ought not to do that.

God wouldn't be happy with this. That woman is the wife of Uriah,

one of your mighty men. And even if she wasn't, it's not

pleasing to God. And you know it, David.

But what happened? Nobody said a word.

Listen, be careful who you listen to.

Be careful who you make your closest counselors.

They could end up telling you to go right off a Cliff and they'll

be cheering you on while you go off the Cliff.

Psalm or Proverbs 27 six says this faithful are the wounds of

a friend, but the kisses of an enemy are deceitful.

Do you know what a real friend will tell you?

They'll tell you when you're wrong.

A real friend will tell you when you're not right with the Lord.

You know, as a pastor, oftentimes when I sit down with

people and counsel with them, you know what I want to do?

I just want to make them feel happy.

Hey. Oh, I know.

I agree with you. I agree with you.

Yeah, I know. Isn't that crazy, right?

I want to. I agree with you.

I want to agree with you know why?

Because I want them to leave happy.

But if I want to be the biblical type of pastor I'm called to be,

there are times I have to wound them.

No, no. Out of that.

A vengeance or spite. Not to be able to yell at them

or to be able to say what's the matter with you or you, are you

crazy? But to be able to love, to say,

brother, I love you and This is why I'm telling you this.

But you're going the wrong way. Listen with God's help, and

he'll get you through it. And if I can help you, I will.

But I want you to know you're making some bad decisions.

See, those are the kind of friends you need to have.

Those are kind of counselors you need to have.

Not this one. I can tell you what you want to

hear, but it's going to tell you what's biblical.

By the way, to have those kind of counselors, you have to have

men and women in your life that know what the Bible says in the

1st place. You know, just follow your

heart. Well, how else do you want my

life to explode? Your heart's evil and

desperately wicked. Who can know it?

Do you follow your heart? What kind of advice is that?

Come on, Hannon. You know what'd be funny?

Hey, cut off their. No, no, no.

Cut off half their beards. No, no, no, that's not it.

Don't just do that. Get the clothes.

Yeah. You don't want you to do the

clothes. Hey, cut it.

Cut it halfway down into the buttocks.

Man, that would that be fun. They're going to be walking all

the way back to Jericho. They're going to look like

fools. But we're going to show.

We're going to show them right in hand.

And all of a sudden, Yeah. You know what?

That is pretty funny. That's a pretty good idea.

Until his Kingdom is in ruins because he listened to the wrong

people say pastor, well, you think you're talking to

teenagers. We're older people here.

And certainly I'm looking at at folks who are are of all

different ages. And I will say that dealing with

having the right crowd in your life is something you struggle

with more when you're younger than when you're older.

But I will say this, oftentimes we're careful who we allow into

our friend and peer group when we're older, but we're not often

as discerning about who we allow to speak in our ear when we're

older. Meaning this, be careful what

podcasts you listen to. Be careful whose sermons you

listen to. You say, well, pastor, this is a

Christian pastor. So I just saw it's a Christian

on it. So I went ahead and listened to

it. That doesn't mean it's something

that will help you be discerning who you listen to.

Be discerning about the media. You know, listen, the media's

job is to have people to fight all the time so they can get

ratings. And I'm not saying there's not

good media out there, but what I'm telling you is this, that

the media is not the gospel, only the gospel is the gospel.

Be careful what you take in. Be careful that you put

everything you hear through the filter of God's Word, your

entertainment, your music, the books you read, the websites you

frequent. Listen, is it giving me good

biblical counsel? And I know not everything is

biblical in the sense that everything has to do with the

Bible. But even then, when you read

these things, when you take these things in, are they

helping you draw closer to God or farther from God?

Are they making you want to fight more or they're making you

want to be biblical and how you handle things?

And these are things you have to discern for yourself.

Well, pastor, just give me a list and I'll follow that list.

You know, the Holy Spirit will tell you, if you listen as you

pray on it, that He will make known the things that you need

to internalize and the things that you probably should not

have as part of your life. Be careful who you listen to.

And I'll say this number 3, not just #1 be careful assigning

motive #2 be careful who you listen to, but #3 be careful

with actions you can't take back.

You know, once you shave 1/2 a beard, there's no going back.

Once you cut someone's garment down to the buttocks, there

ain't any going back. What Hannan did, there was no

going back. As Christians, there are times,

and I want to be, boy, I want to be careful how I say this.

As Christians, there are times that we feel like the most

reasonable thing for us to do is to cut certain people out of our

lives. And I want to say this, be very,

very careful with who you cut out of your life.

Be carry very careful with the bridges that you burn.

Now, are there times that trust has been violated and that

boundaries must be had? There are.

There absolutely is. But be very careful in saying in

a trigger happy, I don't want to be around this person anymore.

Listen, you start doing that with people in your church and

what happens? They're not going to be many

people you're able to talk to in church.

If you start doing that with people that you meet with,

you're going to start to feel very alone.

Boundaries are good. They can be necessary, but be

careful. The phrase don't burn bridges

may not be in the Bible, but I think there's some biblical

foundation to it. Ecclesiastes 10, verse 12 says

Ecclesiastes 10:12

the words of a wise man. The words of a wise man's mouth

are gracious, but the lips of a fool will swallow up himself.

You know, I one of the saddest things that I have found has

been there are people been people who have left our church

over the years. And some of them have even said

to me in such a phrase or the way they put it to me,

basically, that they felt they left in such a way that Pastor,

I can never come back. And I'll say something like this

to them. Well, you may feel that way, but

I don't feel that way because if repentance is real, then someone

should be able to come back into the fellowship of the church,

even if they've left under poor circumstances.

Well, pastor, do you really mean that?

There's a reason we call this the comeback Church.

There's a reason why I can start pointing out people over and

over and over again who have left and then sometimes years

later have returned. Why?

Well, because we don't want to have a fighting spirit, you

know, other times that restoration needs to be made.

Forgiveness has to be offered. Absolutely, there is time for

that. But if that's the case, then why

can't, under normal circumstances, there be a

restoration of fellowship again? And we want that to be the case

again. And sometimes you might be

thinking of some of the very most extreme cases, and we're

not talking about those. I want to talk about really

where 99% of all of these things live, the things that we deal

with every day. You know, I seem to think that

Jesus said somewhere along the lines in Matthew chapter 5,

Matthew 5 · chapter mention

blessed are the warmongers. No, you guys are new.

You didn't get that right. OK, blessed are the peacemakers,

isn't that right? But see The thing is, we all

know that. And again, there is time for us

to say thus saith the Lord. There is time when things have

to get tough. But even then, what do we do?

We speak the truth in love. Jesus never diminished the truth

just so he could be lovey dovey. He was loving and truthful and

never did his love diminish and never did his truth diminish.

And the same should be said of us.

I think maybe the best way for us to look at that at at this

text tonight is is found in Romans 12/18.

I'll, I'll just I'll quote it for you.

It says if it be possible, as much as lieth in you live

peaceably with all men because there is sometimes that is much

lieth in you. You still can't find peace with

somebody because they just want to fight no matter what.

But listen, let that not be said of us as believers, for us, as

much as we can within us live peaceably of all men.

Perhaps the worst part of all of this is this.

And if you took one thing from the message tonight, perhaps it

would be this. Foolish fighters bear the scars

of battles they were never supposed to have fought.

Foolish fighters bear the scars of fights they never should have

fought. You ever see guys compare scars

with each other? It's a guy thing, isn't it?

To compare scars? I don't.

Yeah, I type a lot. I don't have a lot of scars.

You know, I might have carpal tunnel syndrome here in the next

few years from all the typing. I don't really have a lot of

scars, but I do have a scar on my elbow from when I was playing

basketball when I was about 12 years old, when the guy fouled

me on a cement asphalt court. And he pushed me on a fast

break. And I kind of did one of those

Superman kind of things. And the next thing I knew, I

slid across the asphalt and my skin slid across the asphalt.

Literally, my skin was sliding across the asphalt and it wasn't

on my body. I still have a little bit of a

scar right there. It's actually really, really

small. It's almost microscopic.

But I like to think it makes me feel really tough that it's

still there, you know? And listen, you get scars.

You remember, Hey, I was riding a bike and I broke my leg when I

was a kid. I got.

Hey, listen, I got a scar across my neck from that knife fight I

was in years ago. Actually, No, I I had surgery is

what it was. But do you know, you know,

really it's not. Yeah.

Joanne said no. Yeah.

No, my scars aren't interesting, Joanne.

All right, basketball when I was 13 and a non cancerous tumor in

my jaw, right? That's what I got.

Don't mock me, all right? This is what I got is what I'm

working with. But you know, there's one thing

to say. Hey, I've lived a life.

I've lived a full life. And here's some of the scars

from living life. There's another thing to bear

the scars of your foolishness and of battles you never should

have fought. And sometimes you might look at

those scars in your body and think this, I shouldn't have

been doing that. I shouldn't have been doing

that. I shouldn't have been doing

that. Foolish fighters bear the scars

of battles. They never should have been

involved. The Ammonites, the Syrians, all

of them ended up being put to the worst because of one man who

wanted to fight. Not only was it sad, it was

unnecessary, was the Proverbs say.

It says in Proverbs 1722. A merry heart doeth good like a

medicine, but a broken spirit drieth the bones.

And the worst part about all this was who paid the price?

Who paid the price? Was it Hannon?

It seems like he was pretty insulated from the whole event,

wasn't he? Everybody else was the ones who

paid for it. I can think of several occasions

here at Liberty Baptist Church where there was a situation that

went wrong. And I want to be careful in how

I say this, but often times, usually there's one spouse that

gets upset and what happens, the other doesn't want to leave.

Fact. The other regrets leaving, but

one has made the decision we're not going back.

And I'll tell you, as a pastor, it's one of the things that

breaks my heart more than anything.

I've sat in a conference room in our glass room before with a man

who was defending a situation that his wife had made that was

not defensible. And he knew it wasn't

defensible, but he was trying to defend it because he felt like

he had to, because it was his wife.

And it was sad. It was awful.

I pleaded with him to let's get this right, let's figure this

out. Let's sit at this table and

let's not get up until until we get this right.

And there's always someone else that shouldn't get hurt that

gets hurt. And we're the ones that fight

wars. We off not to fight.

You say are are you saying we're not supposed to be tough?

I think the Bible talks a lot about us being spiritually

tough, if you will. In fact, it said here in our

text that Joab says, listen, we need to to quit ourselves like

men and be strong here today. And the Bible tells us to do

that. What I'm saying is there is a

difference between biblical spiritual toughness and being

someone that always wants to get in a fight.

And God has very little that he can do.

When we're in the situation where we're always offended,

where we're always wounded, where we're always hurt, where

we're always looking for a fight, God has no use for that

person functionally until they can get that taken care of.

Stan Makita, an eventual Hockey Hall of Famer, He was generally

regarded as the best center of the 1960s, used to get into a

lot of fights during games. He stopped.

He stopped though, when his 8 year old daughter asked him a

very grown up question. Daddy, how can you score goals

when you're always in the penalty box?

There's a lot of Christians that can't score the goals that God

wants them to score because they're sitting too often in

God's penalty box. Why?

Because they can't play nice with others.

Well, you don't know what they did.

I may not know, but we handle our issues like believers, not

with the spirit of an Ammonite. Thank you for listening to the

sermon from the pulpit of Liberty Baptist Church.

If this message was a blessing to you, or if there's any way we

can serve you, please let us know by contacting us at

[email protected]. Or you can visit us this Sunday

at 800 Washington St. in Easton, MA.

May the Lord bless you as you grow in His Word.