Don't Take What God Hasn't Given (1 Samuel 24:1-22)

I've been talking about missions a lot and I I remember my time

in Thailand and probably the more stressful part was trying

to get a taxi on my own But but they have something kind of like

Uber but I just didn't know how to make the count.

It's called Grab and you know, taxes are hard because language

barrier and they try to RIP you off and you got to always

negotiate and grab. It's like Uber, you have an app

and then you kind of book it right.

And I understand why they named it Grab because Grab is easy

like like Grab a bite is Grab a taxi Grab is easy.

But someone told me kind of the the irony of, of naming the

service Grab, because originally up until maybe 100 years ago,

Grab meant to take something forcibly.

To take something that's not yours was the meaning of grab

until maybe 20th century. I think the original meaning of

grab, it fits perfectly with what we're tempted in in our

life. Maybe, you know, not money, but

with control. There are moments where

something is right in front of you and you're tempted to just

take it. Maybe it's an opportunity.

Maybe it's a shortcut, a way to get what you want right now.

Something. That opportunity just kind of

presents itself and the question is, will you trust God with it

or will you grab it, forcibly take it?

In today's passage, David has a chance to grab what's not his or

not his yet anyway. And we learned how he responded

to the opportunity. So that's the question we want

to answer today. How should we respond when we

have the opportunity to take control?

To take control, You know, instead of trusting God #1 we

must refuse to take what God has not given to us yet.

We must refuse to take what God has been given.

If you have every Bibles, please turn to First Samuel 24 and I'll

be reading the first 7 verses. We've skipped a few chapters

since our last sermon, and during this time, mainly to set

up the story, is Saul still chasing after David more and

more as a parent. David is the king, the next

anointed king. Saul is insecure because of that

and now he he's really trying to capture David first one.

When Saul returned from pursuing the Philistines, he was told

David is in the wilderness near and Getty.

So Saul took 3000 of Israel's fit young men and went to look

for David and his men in front of the rocks of the wild goats.

When Saul came to the sheep pens along the road, a cave was there

and he went in to relieve himself.

David and his men were staying in the recesses of The Cave.

So they said to him, Look, this is the day the Lord told you

about our hand, your enemy over to you, so that you can do to

him whatever you desire. Then David got up and secretly

cut off the corner of Saul's robe.

Afterward, David's conscience bothered him because he had cut

off the corner of Saul's robe. He said to his men, As the Lord

is my witness, I will never do such a thing to my Lord.

The Lord's anointed. I will never lift my hand

against him, since he's the Lord's anointed.

With these words, David persuaded his men, and he did

not let him rise the buck in Saul.

Then Saul left The Cave and went on his way.

We go back to the slide before this.

God has already promised to David that he'll be the next

king. That promise is already there.

And, and David's job was to just trust God with it.

I actually had to research, did God ever tell David that it was

going to take like almost 20 years before he became the king?

And apparently God never did tell him that.

God wanted to, you know, all the, the times he's in the

wilderness running away, you know, God wanted to train him up

and, and, and so David could trust, learn how to trust in

God. So David didn't know the time

frame, but it says here that, hey, Saul's the Lord's anointed.

OK, He may be an evil king, but still God anointed him to be the

king for now, so I have to trust him.

So David knew that, So he knew that he's king someday.

And then the current king is still God's anointed.

So I, I start to respect the authority.

So he knows all of that. And this happens, David is

hiding out in The Cave and Saul is just right there.

And Saul comes into the actual cave where David was and his men

were, and he is using the restroom.

Saul enters The Cave to use the restroom.

And for everyone else, this is God's will.

Verse 4, This is the day the Lord told you about.

This is what God has promised you.

The opportunities here, take it, grab it, But not every

opportunity. It's God's will.

And clearly this is not God opening the door for David to

become king. But oftentimes when something

like this happens to us, we trick ourselves to think it is,

it is God, it is for me to take. And often times we grab it.

We take something God hasn't given us yet, and we justify

this grabbing in just several different ways.

One of the main ways that we justify taking something God has

not given us yet is using spiritual language to justify it

as we see here. Hey, David's men that don't say,

hey, this is our chance. We don't have to run away

anymore. We could, we could live in the

palace. David, let's do this.

They don't say that. They say, ah, this is the day

the Lord has promised you. We use spiritual language, we

say to our ourselves and to others, oh, God opened the door.

If God didn't want me to take this, why did he open the the

store? He must have opened it so I

could take it. We must be careful.

Circumstances do not always mean God's will.

Another way we justify grabbing is using the majority opinion.

You know in verse 4, David's men say this.

You know this spiritual oh, the day of the Lord has told you

about came and immediately David moves to action.

Even David, he has hindered. He's moved by this for a bit

now. He only ends up cutting the

rope, the robe, and I don't think he was close to killing

Saul, but at least he knew that he had evil intentions at least

a little bit. Because later on we see him that

he he feels bad for it. Majority opinion is powerful.

His men are like, Hey, this is the time something an

opportunity comes and we say, hey, everyone else thinks I

should do it. Hey, this is what's considered

normal. This is considered right by

everyone else. I maybe I should do it.

But this majority opinion, it's kind of usually flows with what

people in the culture believe that the rules of culture not

always align with the rules of God.

The rules of culture tell us to get even and that would be the

advice that you'll get. You have a chance to get even.

Doesn't get even. Take your chance if it means

advancement of your goals. If it means obtaining your

goals, don't do it. Look out for yourself 1st and

then you could worry about later.

These don't always align with what God thinks.

And one more thing I'll mention is to justify the way we justify

grabbing things God hasn't yet given us is that we ignore our

conscience. We say it must be OK because you

know what? I don't feel that bad about it.

Well, sometimes we don't feel bad about it because we've been

ignoring our conscious for a while.

You know, if you're a Christian, the Holy Spirit lives inside

you, and the Holy Spirit will give you a nudge when you're

doing something that's not right.

Holy Spirit does guide you, but many of us have learned to

ignore that nudging. So we say, well, I feel OK about

it. It's probably OK.

Maybe if God promised it. You don't have to force it.

You don't have to grab it. You don't have to force God's

promise. You don't have to speed up his

timeline. David could have easily harmed

Saul here and could have justified it, and everyone would

have been OK with it. They would have even been happy

with it. Saul was evil.

Of course. You should have done that,

David. Hey, God already promised you

the throne, of course, but David's conscience bothered him.

In the 23 years that I've been a pastor and I see kind of the

ways people have been doing, I kind of noticed patterns and one

of them is they rush the timeline when it comes to

romantic relationships. God does promise you that he

loves you and you are his beloved and, and, and that God

is all you ever need for everlasting joy.

He doesn't quite promise you that you will have a girlfriend

or a husband or wife at this time, at this age.

And sometimes the opportunity to find love is right there and

then we take it. Even if that person is the wrong

person for you, sometimes it's the right person for you, but

you grab the benefits of marriage too early.

While you're dating, God has promised things.

There are things that are promised for married couples.

God has promised you that you will be His beloved, that He is

all you need to feel loved. Sometimes you just have to trust

Him and wait. Of course, another area where

people tend to grab is pretty much everything.

Money, you know, finance related, your work, your

investments, you know, moving or buying homes and everything

money related. Of course, God doesn't promise

you that you'll be rich, but Jesus taught us very clearly,

Hey, do not worry, I'll take care of you.

God takes care of the birds, the flowers, wouldn't he?

How much more would he take care of you?

But we want more sometimes We want advancement.

We want a better position, we want better pay.

And an opportunity comes, and perhaps it requires you to

compromise your integrity. Maybe you have to cut corners.

Maybe to get that opportunity you have to step on somebody you

might think and justify to yourself, hey, nobody I know

would turn this opportunity down.

Sometimes you have to consider, is this something that God wants

me to have? A lot of us dream of having a

home, a nice home. Even if you have a home, you

know, it's maybe not your your dream or maybe it's your

temporary home. Maybe it's your five year old

home and you're driving around and you we all have that, right?

Like, oh man, that house, if that house ever came on sale, I

mean, I don't buy you that. I have some of those houses

drive around. Oh man, that's a perfect house.

And I start with a flat, you know, like the parking area has

to be flat so kids could play basketball.

You miss a shot. You don't have to run to the

down the street to grab. You have to be flat, right?

Can you play basketball? And is there a big backyard?

And just because your dream home is on is up for sale, it doesn't

mean you have to get it. You have to consider, can I

afford it? Am I going to be house support

for the next 30 years? What?

Yeah. What am I sacrificing just

because there's a better job? You don't have to take it.

We're almost conditioned to take it.

Take it and figure out everything else.

How about pastors? People put pastors on a

different like measuring scale. What if this week I got a job

offer that pays me a lot of money My my dreams to have my

own office. OK, SPMCI have not even a six

foot the the four foot folding table.

And then when there's an event, some people take it and it's not

even there, right? I got a job offer, right?

A lot of money. I got a big old desk that no

one's going to take during events and an office.

And I say I took it. I was off for that Monday and

Tuesday I took it and Tuesday night I sent a message on the

app. I'm saying bye guys.

Thank you. Most of you guys, some of you

guys will be like, yes, finally God asked my first, but most of

you guys will be like what you just one day, that's it.

You guys will be very upset, really not very upset.

Some of you guys will be like you just make that decision like

that. You would say Pastor Tim, I'm

I'm known pastor, but shouldn't you like pray about it for like

the day week, I don't know, months?

Shouldn't you consider it more carefully?

I mean, I mean, like, is money in a big office, is that worth

just just throwing away? You know, the past 13 years,

some of you guys would ask me those questions.

Now, my thing is, you, you guys should.

But why don't you ask yourself those questions?

Oh, I got a better job offer. Bye.

It's two hours away. Bye, everyone.

Yeah, we're going to find the friends, you know, family, my

kids. Ready.

We're going to. Yeah.

We're going to make new ones over there.

It's fine. How come you guys don't ask

yourself those questions? Over generalizing?

Of course. The same way you expect me to

carefully consider a new job opportunity.

We should all have the same mentality.

For the record, I do not get any job offers ever.

So don't worry about it. Our other pastors do all the

time. Not me.

Just because you can't take it, just because it's there, it does

not mean God has given it. Sometimes it is.

Sometimes you do take it. But to figure that out, you need

prayer. It takes counsel from wise

people that God has put in your life.

It's involving other people in your decision process and also

to see if do I have any sinful desires that that's going to

make me want to take that maybe we have a simple desire of of I

don't want to trust God. I want to be so comfortable.

I don't have to rely on God for security.

You got to ask yourself, and am I forcing outcomes?

Am I speeding up God's timelines?

David, instead of grabbing what God hasn't given, he does the

opposite. And that's number two.

What he does is he leaves the results up to God.

Hey, I'm going to be king someday.

I don't know how I'm running for my life, but I I'll leave that

up to God. You leave the results up to God

first, 8 to 15. Actually, I'm going to be 8 to

12. OK, so let's find out how David

leaves the outcome in God's hands.

After that, David got up, excuse me, went out of The Cave and

called to Saul, my Lord the king, and Saul looked behind

him. David knelt low with his face to

the ground and paid homage. David said to Saul, Why do you

listen to the words of people who say, look, David intends to

harm you? You can see with your own eyes

that the Lord handed you over to me today in The Cave.

Someone actually advised me to kill you, but I took pity on you

and said I won't lift my hand against my Lord since he's the

Lord's anointed. Look, my father, look at the

corner of your robe in my hand, for I cut it off.

But I didn't kill you. Recognize that I've committed no

crime or rebellion. I haven't sinned against you

even though you are hunting me down to take my life.

May the Lord judge between me and you and may the Lord take

vengeance on you for me, but my hand will never be against you.

God may do something, but I'm not going to force that.

That's what David is saying and for him to get to that

conclusion. Really, You see a a posture in

verse 8. He says, my king, this is a guy

that's trying to kill him. This is a this is an insane man.

But he says my king. And then he kneels before him

face to the ground. This is humility.

This is a humble posture. In verse 9 to 11, pretty much

David is saying I could have killed you, but I didn't.

David is showing self-control. He's saying I'm willing to wait.

Why? Because may the Lord judge

between me and you. My hand will never be not my

hand. God's hand may do something.

If I'm king, it's because God did something, not because I did

something. Instead of trying to control the

outcome, which he could have easily done, David chooses to

trust to surrender. And to have patience to wait for

the Lord to act. And after this day, David still

won't be king for another 10 years.

In about 5 years, he'll be king of a of a ruler of area.

Actually it will be this area, Judah.

And then it won't be another 10 years where he's actual king of

Israel. How does he wait that long?

Because he had humility, he was willing to wait and he was

willing to say God will take care of the outcome.

And what David done has done is really, actually really hard for

us. We don't like to wait.

We don't like slow. We like fast.

We don't like slow service. Soon as your phone slows down

even a little bit, you guys will get new phones.

A lot of us, the Apple owners were so mad their phones were

getting too slow and they all soothed Apple and y'all one good

job. But God is asking us to go slow

at times. Slow so you could seek God's

will. God was asking David to go slow

because he was teaching him those 20 years.

He needed God or David to learn something slow.

Sometimes we we need to go slow in our parenting.

Let's say our child, your child is struggling.

Whatever behavior, attitude, grades, whatever the struggle,

what do we want to do? We want to fix our kids

immediately. We use pressure, fear, anger,

threats, whatever to get results.

When they're younger, I'm going to take away your iPad.

When they're older, I'm going to take, I'm not paying for your

wedding, whatever. I'm going to give the down

payment of your house, I'm going to give it to your, your, you

know, sister or brother. We want immediate fixes.

Last thing we want to do as a parent is to wait a lot of the

things that our children go through.

It's a heart issue. You can't force that, it takes

time. This is why we see so many

harmful parenting styles. When I was younger the only

thing I've heard was tiger mom right usually Asian parents and

and basically they were the over demanding parents needed to get

straight A's. But now there are so many types

of harmful parenting. I found a long list.

The only ones I've heard about is helicopter parents, right?

Helicopter hovering over their child and soon as their child

gets into any kind of conflict, any problem, they land the

helicopter, solve their problem and then gets on the helicopter

again, right. And I mentioned this before,

it's and this is a new type that I've heard recently, lot more

parents. That one is worse.

I think this one you clear the way, you remove all possible

issues so the child could go problem free in life.

You preemptively remove conflict.

It's all based on controlling a child's heart takes time, takes

prayer. It takes a reliance on God.

God, this is what I could do. The rest of it I leave it up to

you of control behavior results. But teaching God's ways is not

immediate. Sometimes parenting is that

wilderness period. It's five years, 10 years longer

waiting on God instead of a controlling we are to wait on

God and waiting means don't control what you cannot control.

If you think about it, there's so little that we control.

Even the parents who think they're doing a good job, like

oh, my kids behavior is all set. If it's forced, if it's like

threats to make them behave well, oh, soon as they go to

college, see what happens. Waiting on God means don't

control what you can't control and and waiting on God doesn't

mean do nothing. It means stop trying to control

things. Meanwhile, be faithful to the

things that God has already asked you to do.

So if it means in parenting, hey, what are the things that

you already know you're to do? Show them the gospel to your

marriage, right? Show them what forgiveness is.

You and your husband, you and your wife, you fight, that's

fine, that happens. But see how you guys apologize

to each other, forgive each other, teach them the word of

God, pray for them. Just do the things that you're

already supposed to do. Of course, these two things that

what I just mentioned applies to all areas of our life, your

business, your jobs, your dating.

You cannot control most things in life.

Instead of worrying and having anxiety, just be faithful to the

things that God already asked you to do.

I know we want to do more. I see your problem.

I see everywhere I'm that gives me anxiety.

We want to do more. I want to do more so I could

figure it out more to solve it. You want to do more, love God

more, spend time in the Word more, pray more, serve more, be

faithful in your current season. Don't do more to control

something. Do more where you could see

God's love and plan for you so you could rest, so you could

have peace. Jesus faced this moment as well

that David faced where he could have taken control and he could

have got him out of a pretty big jam on the cross.

He was humiliated on the cross with two other criminals.

Everyone's yelling, including the guy next to him.

If you are the Christ, save yourself.

And Jesus actually had the power to save himself.

But he trusted the Father. He knew there had to be a

process. In this story we see how David

spares his enemy. Bad, insane King David spares

him. Jesus did more than just spare.

He died for his enemies and gave us the rights to become children

of God. Jesus didn't grab the crown.

He didn't use his God powers to grab the crown.

He went through the cross to get his crown.

I know trusting God is scary just every stage of our life,

it's never gets better. It's scary every, every aspect.

I thought at a certain age I'll be like, like, finally things

will be settled down. And then you start worrying

about whole new set of things. Oh, parents are getting older.

Oh, my retirement is not big enough.

It's whole new things to worry about, whole new things you

can't control and living life to control.

These worries seem like the easy thing to do and the right thing

to do. But God is calling you.

Trust Him. Wait.

Surrender to His plan. Main point.

When we have the opportunity to grab control, we must surrender

the outcome to God. Let's take time to pray.