Rick Warren - Walking Through Dark Times with God Will Bring Blessings

Life can wear you down. Everybody agree with that? Yeah,

it really can. So that you got nothing left to give.

And I'm sure that many of you will relate to

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. Then there's the conflict inside of me. And

I fight with my own fears. And I battle my

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

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

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

God have to do in that kind of a situation?

When I'm feeling that way, when you feel that way,

when somebody else feels that way, where is the goodness

of God when you're worn out? How does God lift

you up when you're worn down? Psalm 23, verse five,

he says, you prepare a table or a banquet before

me in front of my enemies. Now, what in the

world does that mean? And how can it relate to my...

This was written, friends, 3,000 years ago. How could it

possibly have any relevance for your life today? Well, when

you understand it, it's as accurate and as relevant as

the news you read or listen to every morning. It's

another metaphor that needs explaining and really to unpack this

for you in this message, we need to ask four

questions and here they are. What kind of banquet is this?

That's the first question. Second question is who are the enemies?

Who are the enemies? Number three, what does this banquet symbolize?

And number four, what's on the menu? And we're gonna

look at all four of those, and when you see

the answers to these, you're gonna realize how important this

passage is to your life, how God lifts you up

when you're worn down. Let's get right into it. First question,

what kind of banquet is this? Well, let's just take

the sentence apart word by word, okay? Now the first

word is you. You, who's that talking about? It's talking

about God. So I want you to write this down.

In this banquet, God is the host. He's the host

of the banquet. You're not a host, no human being

is host. God is the host of this banquet. Not

your typical party. Imagine the honor of being invited by God.

If God invited you to a banquet, what would you wear?

You'd probably go get your hair done. Even if you're bald,

you'd go get your hair done. You'd take two or

three baths. You'd stay up all night, you know, cleaning

your fingernails and, well, women don't do that. You just

paint them, but... I imagine they're clean under that, right?

Never thought about that, you know? Guys, maybe if we

painted ours, we wouldn't have to clean them. That would

be very, okay. So anyway, you, God, is the host.

Number two, he says you prepare. Second thing we learn

about this banquet is it's well-planned. It's prepared, it's not spontaneous,

it's not off the cuff, it's not a I just

thought about it now, it's something that was prepared. Any

of you who've had to prepare a wedding know that

the banquet is probably the biggest part. It's amazing to

me how little preparation actually gets spent on the most

important part of a wedding. You know what it is?

The vows. The vows are the most important part of

a wedding. If you cut out the vows, you don't

have a wedding. You have all the music, all the procession,

all the refreshments and everything else, but if you don't

have the vows, you don't have a wedding. And yet

I can't tell you how many people who spent months

and months and maybe up to a year planning the

reception when it comes to vows said, whatever you think, Rick.

If people spent as much emphasis on preparing their marriage

as they do preparing their wedding reception, they'd have a

lot more stable marriages. But he says you prepare this banquet.

So it's not spur of the moment. Now, by the way,

the word banquet here in the Hebrew is actually the

word table. But it's not just any table. The Hebrew

word here for banquet or table is shulkan. Shulkan means

the king's table. It's not banquet. A portable table that

you just kind of set up. It's not some Formica

dinette in your kitchen. It's certainly not a TV tray.

This is a giant, big, long table that a king

or queen would have. It's a big, serious table. This

word is used mostly in the Bible related to king's tables,

and sometimes it's used to refer to the table of

showbread in the Bible. in the tabernacle. So this is

a table that's special, significant, and sacred. You, God's the host, prepare,

it's well planned. He says, you prepare a banquet for me.

Now that means, number three, write this down, I am

the guest of honor. In this banquet, you are the

guest of honor. The whole banquet is prepared for you,

not for somebody else, and you just get to come,

This banquet is in your honor, it's for you. It

is all about you in this particular situation. Then he says,

you prepare a banquet for me in front of. Next

thing we learn about it is it's a public, not

secret event. What God's gonna do here, he's planning a party,

he's planning a party for you, it's specifically for you,

and it is in public. He does it intentionally in

front of people. It's not secret. God wants everyone to

see how he's going to honor you. And then he says,

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

Now that's a little catch. You weren't expecting that. You'd say,

prepare a banquet for me and my friends. Prepare a

banquet for me and the dignitaries you want advice. He says, no,

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

So here's the last thing I want you to write

it down. It's on a battlefield. This is a banquet

on a battlefield. We're gonna come back and talk about

that and see the reasons in just a minute. But

the kind of banquet it is, God's the host, it's

well planned, it's thought out, you're the guest of honor,

it's in public, God wants to honor you not secretly

but publicly, and it's actually on a battlefield. And your

enemies are there watching this. Now the second question we

ask is, well, what are the enemies? Who are the enemies?

You say, well, I don't have any enemies. You ever

felt picked on by anybody? You ever felt put down?

You ever felt rejected? You ever felt criticized? Who are

the enemies or what are the forces that oppose you?

Let me put it this way. What are the forces

that oppose God's best in your life? Well, the Bible

says that you have three fundamental enemies. And you need

to know them. Sun Tzu said in The Art of War,

he said the first law of winning a battle is

know your enemy. Know your enemy. Paul says in 2

Corinthians chapter two, he says, we're not ignorant of the

way Satan works and his tactics. He says, and I

don't want you to be ignorant. You need to know

who your enemy is. Can you name your three enemies? Well,

let's look at them. Here's what the Bible says. Number one,

the first enemy is the world around me. The Bible

has a lot to say about this. The world around me,

no matter what you think, no matter what you say,

no matter what you do, somebody's going to oppose it.

Have you figured that one out? Well, if I could

just be perfect and everybody would like me, Jesus was

perfect and they nailed him to a cross. Even if

you were perfect, somebody's not going to like you. And

it's impossible, no matter what you think, people gonna oppose you.

And if evil doesn't fight you, it means you're not

doing good. Hate to tell you that. If evil does

not oppose you, you feel no opposition from evil, it

means you're heading the same direction. That's not a good sign.

Jesus said it like this, beware when all men speak

well of you. You tell what a person's like, not

just by their friends. You can tell a lot about

a person's character, but who's their enemy? And that'll tell

you a lot about the kind of person they are,

who their friends are, but also who their enemies are.

So you've got opposition everywhere. You can have opposition, of course,

at work, people who don't like you, people who are

gunning for your job, people who are trying to get

you demoted or they don't like because you're a believer

or whatever. Maybe they just think you dress funny. But

their enemies are, you'll see opposition at work. Do you

remember the opposition you used to have at school, how

people would pick on you? And that wasn't any fun.

You can have opposition in the neighborhood, you can have

opposition from relatives. Now don't look at them, but you

know who I'm talking about. By the way, did you

know what the first prayer in the Bible is? The

first recorded prayer in the Bible. It's Genesis chapter 32,

Genesis 32 · chapter mention

and it is a prayer for protection against an angry

family member. Genesis 32 verse 11, look here on the screen.

Genesis 32:11

Jacob prays to God, save me from my brother Esau,

I'm afraid he'll attack me. Now, Jacob had cheated his

brother out of his birthright and he'd run off and

years later he's coming back and he knows he's gonna

run into his brother and he says in the rest

of the verse, I'm afraid my brother's gonna kill me,

my family, my kids, my wife. The very first prayer

in the Bible is a guy praying about protection from

his own family. I don't wanna get into this, but

I wanna just pause here and say, some of you

have been abused by family members. I'm sorry. I'm sorry.

Physically abused, verbally abused, sexually abused, I'm sorry. Read the statistics.

It's not that uncommon. A lot of people get abused

growing up by family members. Look at the next verse,

what the Bible says. Jesus said, in this world, you

will have tribulation. Circle will have. You'll have tribulation. Not

you might have, you're gonna have it. Count on it.

You're gonna have tribulation and trials. You're gonna have distress

and frustration, but take heart because I have overcome the world.

He says, don't be shocked. Don't be shocked when people

oppose you in the world. Don't be shocked when you

have troubles and tribulations and trials and people test you,

people poke you, people prod you. Don't be surprised by this.

It's gonna happen in life. Why? You ever thought about it?

Why is life such a battle? Why is life so hard?

And the answer is because the world's value system is anti-God.

And anything that stands up for God is gonna get

challenged one way or the other. You see, this world

worships itself. The world worships creation and all the things

God created and does not worship the creator. And whenever

you have that, you're gonna have abuse, you're gonna have misuse,

you're gonna have perversion, all kinds of things. Look at

the next verse, 1 John chapter two. Talks about this

first enemy in your life, That is the world. Now,

it says, do not love the world. Stop right there.

You say, wait a minute, isn't this a contradiction? Because

the Bible says, God so loved the what? World. Okay,

so which is it? Here we're clearly told, do not

love the world, and yet the Bible says, God so

loved the world that he gave his son. The difference

is in the meaning of the word world. We are

to love the people of the world and hate the

world's value system. When the Bible says God so loved

the world, he didn't love the sin in it. He

didn't love the abuse in it. He didn't love the

misuse of his gifts in it. God so loved the world,

he loved the people. We are to love the people

and hate the world's value system. You know what the

problem is? We do the exact opposite. We hate the

people and we love the value system. We love materialism.

We love hedonism. We love secularism. We love I gotta

be me. I'm gonna do it my way. It's all

about me. Look at the rest of the verse. Do

not love the world or all the things, that's materialism,

in the world. If you love what the world offers,

it shows the Father's love, the word love's missing there,

the Father's love is not in you. For everything the

world values, and here's the list of the world's values.

There are three big ones. Doing anything that feels good

and indulging every lust. That's called the lust of the flesh.

Being driven by greed to always want more. That's called

the lust of the eyes. And the prideful pretending to

impress others. That's called the pride of life. These things,

they do not come from God. The world and all

the things people think are important are actually passing away.

But the person who does what God says will live forever.

So he says your first enemy is actually the world's

value system. What everybody thinks is so important they're given

statues to, you shouldn't care about. Because that's not what

life is all about. It's not about having more, you know,

looking good, feeling good, and having the goods. He says

all these things, and so what they're natural, natural does

not necessarily mean moral. Natural doesn't necessarily mean moral. I mean,

it's natural if somebody hurts you, you wanna hurt them back.

That's the most natural thing in the world. Is it right? No.

Do you punch me in the face? My natural reaction

is to punch you back. And sometimes I might wanna

feel naturally to punch you first. Though it's natural doesn't

mean it's moral. Lying's natural. I was watching a show

the other day, it said kids learn to start lying

through their eyes and things as early as two years old,

that by five years old, 50% of kids know how

to lie habitually, and by seven years old, 100% of

kids know how to lie habitually. Lying's very, very natural.

Is it right? No. So it's not moral. Sex is natural.

Sex with everyone. Well, the animals do sex with everybody.

Is it moral? No. Natural doesn't necessarily mean moral. Natural

can sometimes be toxic. Arsenic's a natural subject. You can

drink it and it'll kill you. You can see a

mushroom out in the garden and say, wow, natural food,

and you eat it and die. Just because something natural

doesn't mean it won't harm you, it won't kill you.

What am I saying? Is it because of the world's

value system when a gift from God, a good gift

from God, And everything in life was a gift from God.

It all comes from God. When a gift becomes a God,

it becomes destructive. Water is a gift from God. Too

much water will drown you. Fire is a gift from God.

Fire in the fireplace, in the right place, will warm

your house. Fire out of control will burn down a

city and even hundreds of thousands of acres. Sex is

a gift from God. Out of control, not used in

God's parameters, it becomes destructive. And any time we take

God's gift and we abuse it and we misuse it

or we pervert it, then it becomes destructive. Sex is

not dirty, it's holy. It's holy. And that's why God

says there are parameters for it. So the first enemy

is the world around you. And you live with it

all the time, but here's the point. Just as God

can take a fish and put him in the ocean

and that ocean is filled with salt water, it's briny.

When you catch a sea bass or a ling cod

or a rock cod or any kind of fish out

of the ocean, and you bring them in and you

skin them and then you cook them, when you cook them,

the first thing you have to do is put salt

on them. Why in the world do you have to

do that? They've lived in salt their entire life. Shouldn't

they be briny? But saltwater fish don't have salt in them. Why?

They're not isolated from their culture. They're not imitating their culture.

They're insulated in their culture. And if God can take

a fish and keep him in a briny ocean his

entire life, and then you have to put fish salt

on him to eat him, God can keep you in

a world with the wrong value system without him infecting you.

Does that make sense? If you trust him. So that's

your first enemy, the world. Second enemy, first is the

world around you. The second is Satan is against me.

The world is around me and the second is Satan

is against me. The Bible calls Satan your adversary, your accuser.

He calls the liar the father of lies, your foe,

your enemy. In fact, the Bible says that Satan would

like to kill you. Very clear. The Bible says the

thief comes to kill and to steal and to destroy.

Satan wants to kill you, steal your identity and destroy

your life. Why? Why? Well, he doesn't care anything about you.

But the reason he wants to kill you and destroy

you is because God loves you. And because God loves you,

Satan wants to hurt God. The easiest way to hurt

me would be hurt my children or my grandchildren. And

so Satan doesn't care anything about you. You're nothing to him.

You mean nothing to him. But because God loves you,

he wants to destroy you. He wants to mess you up.

He wants to try to hurt God that way. Now

the Bible says in 1 Peter 5, 7, be careful,

watch out for attacks from the devil who is your

great enemy. And the Bible says you should be aware

of his tactics. So I'm going to give them to

you right now. Somewhere on the outline, I didn't provide

a place for this. Let me give you the tactics

that Satan uses. Number one, the number one way Satan

uses in your life is this, deception and suggestion. Deception

and suggestion. Deception and suggestion. He tells you lies. He's

suggesting them to you all the time. And he puts

thoughts in your mind. When God puts a thought in

your mind, it's inspiration. When the devil puts a thought

in your mind, it's called temptation. Satan works in your

life through the power of suggestion. And from the very beginning,

he will question God's word. Did God really say don't

do this? Deception and suggestion. The second tool he uses

is is distraction and division. And if Satan can't get

you to believe one of his lies, he'll just get

you busy and he'll get you distracted from the main

things in life. It's so easy, we have good forgetters

that the stuff you know to do that's right and

good and healthy and affirming in your life and affirming

in the lives of other people, he'll just get you distracted.

And if he can't get you distracted, he'll get you divided.

With divided loyalties here and there, The number one tool

Satan uses in churches is division in the church, and

this group of people gets mad at that group of people.

So there's deception and suggestion. There's distraction and division. And

the third main tool he uses is discouragement and persecution.

He just wants to get you down. So he'll have

people say mean things to you. And Satan can use anybody.

He can use me. He can use you. If he

puts a thought in your mind and you fall for it,

you just got used. You were a tool. You were

a tool. And you could say the wrong thing and

you didn't even think about it, but it was thought,

thought came through your mind and it just came out

your mouth. And he uses discouragement and persecution. More Christians

are dying today for their faith than in any other

time in history. You may not know that. Last year,

there are, I think, 25 million people martyred for their

faith around the world. We don't, the society and news

media pays very little attention to it, except they have

some in the Middle East. But that's just one place

where it happens. It happens, Hindu violence against Christians in

India and Buddhist violence against Christians in Asia and many,

many other places. When you have people attacking you, you

need to realize it's not really them. Look at the

next verse, Ephesians 6, 12. Our fight is not really

against people on earth, but against the forces of evil

in the spiritual world. So we have the world around

us and we have Satan against us. That's the big

two enemies. But you got one more and this one's

your biggest enemy of all. And it's not the world

around me or Satan against me, it's my old nature

inside me. My old nature inside me is my biggest enemy.

And your old nature inside you is your biggest enemy.

I mean, do you always do the right thing that

you intend to do? I'll say that again. You don't

have to answer. Do you always do the right thing

that you intend to do? Of course not. I don't.

You don't. Who caused that? The world? No. The devil? No.

The devil doesn't have to bother with most of us

most of the time. because we're so caught up in

our old nature. Paul says it like this in Romans 7.

He wrote an entire chapter in the Bible about the

battle in your mind, the battle against your old ways,

your old habits, your old patterns. After you become a believer,

you get a new heart, you get a new identity,

but then you still have that battle. And Paul says

in Romans 7 23, inside me, my old nature is

at war with my new mind. which wants to do

what's right. Says, you know, I wanna do the right thing.

You wanna do the right thing. You're obviously here at

church this weekend. You want to do the right thing.

Inside me, my old nature is at war with my

new mind. I get a new mind when I become

a believer, which wants to do what's right. But my

old self fights back and keeps me struggling with my

old patterns and sins. There's a very famous story of

a well-known Navajo chief who became a Christian leader on

the Navajo reservation and he was explaining to his people

one day about this battle between your old nature and

new nature and he says, in my life, he said,

it's like two dogs arguing over a piece of meat,

the red dog and the black dog arguing and they're

fighting and there's this battle going on inside my mind

and one of the young men asked him, he said, well, chief,

which dog wins? He says, the one I feed the most.

It's the one you give expression to in your life.

The longer I live, the more I realize that I

am my biggest enemy. Now let's go back to this Psalm.

Everything I just said is all set up for the

meaning of this verse. You prepare a banquet for me

in front of my enemies. You prepare for me. A

banquet for me in the presence of my enemies. Now

what does that mean? Well let's talk about for just

a minute what is the meaning of the banquet. In

the Bible, a banquet almost always represents one of two things,

either fellowship or approval. And I wanna teach you two

very true statements about your life that when you're going

through times when you feel like I'm getting beat up

right now, I got a lot of enemies. I got

a lot of forces coming against me, financial forces, I'm

in a financial battle, I'm in a health battle, I'm

in a marriage battle, I'm in a relationship battle, I'm

in a business battle. You need to hold on to

these two things because it's in the battle, the Bible says,

that God prepares the banquet for you. And what does

that banquet represent? Number one, write this down. First, the

banquet teaches us that God wants and welcomes fellowship with me.

God wants and welcomes fellowship with me. He prepares this

banquet for you when you are under attack. Psalm chapter five,

verse five, or chapter five, verse 11, says this. You

welcome us with open arms when we run for cover

This is talking about when you're in a battle. You

welcome us with open arms when we run for cover

to you. Let the party last all night. Stand guard

over our celebration. I love that in the Message translation.

He says, okay, you're gonna have a party in the

middle of a battle, and you're gonna have somebody stand guard,

and when we run to you for cover, I'm being

beat up right now. I need you to lift me

up when I'm worn down, Lord. He's talking about a

party in a combat zone, a banquet on a battlefield. Now,

those of you who've been in the service know that

in combat, there aren't any banquets on the battlefield. There

are no tables on the battlefield. A soldier who's in

a combat zone is gonna eat MREs, meals ready to eat.

They're cold, they're vacuum packed, and they're tasteless. And when

you're in the battle, when you're in the heat of

the battle, they're not calling you into the mess hall

to eat. When you're in the heat of the battle,

you have no table, you have no banquet. It's a

quick bite of a meal ready to eat, and then

you're back into the battle. That's the way the world operates.

But with God, it's different. I want you to imagine

a scene. Let's imagine that you are a soldier, let's

just say in the Middle Ages, serving some king, the

most powerful king in Europe, and you're in a battle,

maybe it's one of the Crusades or something like that,

and you're in a heated battle and you're tired and

you're sweaty and you're scared and you're hungry. And all

of a sudden, without any explanation, the captain of your

division comes in and pulls you off the front line.

You have no idea why you're being pulled off the

front line in the heat of battle. And so you

began to walk back and 500 yards back from the

front line, the king has arrived. And the king has

arrived and they have set up a huge banquet tent.

I mean, you know, like one of those things with

the turrets and everything that's just so pretty in the

Middle Ages. And they've set up this huge banquet tent

with a full feast and they have transported the king's

table to the battlefield. Somehow they got it out of

the castle and they put it on a wagon and

they brought it hundreds, maybe a thousand miles to this battlefield.

And the king's actual table is there and they lay

out this huge feast with your favorite foods. And you

look on that table, there's all your favorite foods, all

that home cooking. And the king has stationed, let's say

500 guards around that table to protect you. And then

the king explains to you this, he says, see all

this food, this banquet, this is for you and me,

nobody else. It's a banquet in the middle of a battlefield.

You've been pulled off the line and they've done all

this great expense, and the king says, this banquet, it's

your favorite food. I did a little research. I looked

it all up, and I want you to eat with

all you want because I just did it for you.

I wanted to hang out with you. The king says

this to you. I wanted to hang out with you.

So go ahead and eat all you want. You're unhurried,

you're unworried, you're protected. There's no way the enemy's gonna

get in here. They're out there on the battlefield. You

can hear them, but they're that far away. And when

you're beat up and you're away from home, there's nothing

like a home-cooked meal. And there's comfort in that comfort food.

And then just in case, everybody doesn't know what's going on,

the king wants everybody to know what he's doing for you.

You are the guest, this is your banquet, it's for you.

And the king raises a banner. And this banner says,

it's so big that everybody on the battlefield can see it.

It says, I love, and it has your name. I

love your name. And put your name up there. And

I am proud of them. You realize that's exactly what

this verse is saying God does for you when you

are under attack. Look at this verse on the screen.

Songs of Solomon 2, 4. He brings me to his

banquet table and his banner over me is love. That's

how much God loves you. Even if nobody else had

lived on this planet, Jesus Christ still would have come

and died for you because he loves you that much.

This banquet is not for anybody else. It's for you

and the king only. because he wants fellowship with you.

He wants to hang out with you. The single most amazing, unbelievable,

hard to believe truth in the universe is this, that

God would wanna spend time with me. That God would

wanna spend time with you, but he does. If I

told you that tomorrow morning at 5 a.m. you could

meet with the top 10 leaders of the world, the

Prime Minister of England, the President of the United States,

the President, Chairman of China and on and on and on.

And they wanted to meet with you. You wouldn't even

go to bed tonight. You'd stay up all night getting

ready and picking out the best clothes and you'd get

so ready because they wanted to meet with you? Yeah.

I'm telling you, God wants to do that with you

every day of your life. and you don't have to

get dressed. It's called the quiet time where you spend

time alone with him. God says, I just wanna hang

out with you. God wants fellowship with you. If God

hadn't wanted fellowship with you, he wouldn't have sent Jesus

Christ to die on the cross. The whole reason Jesus

came to die on the cross is so that you

could have fellowship with God. If God didn't want fellowship

with you, he wasted Jesus' death because he's the bridge.

that paid for all your sins and made that kind

of fellowship with you. God wants and he welcomes fellowship

with me. You know what that's called? Okay, now we're

talking about this the other day. It's hospitality. It's one

of the top values of Saddleback Church. We want people

to feel welcomed and wanted at Saddleback Church. That's called hospitality.

When you welcome people and you want people That's called hospitality.

And over in the Romans chapter 15, it says, warmly

Romans 15 · chapter mention

welcome others into the church just as Christ warmly welcomed you.

That's hospitality. But God is saying this first with you.

I'm warmly welcoming you into this banqueting tent and I've

gone to all his expense and I brought the feast

to you here on the banqueting table on the field

of battle. And he raises this sign and he brings

me to the banqueting table and he says, this banner

over me is love. That's how much God loves you.

Now imagine if you're the enemy. They see all this

going on. They see you pulled off the front line.

They see you walk up to the king. The king

embraces you. The king's got a giant banquet tent. He's

got a feast laid out. The flaps are up. Everybody

can see all that food there. They're hungry and sweaty

and tired too. And the enemy is so dumbstruck by

this scene that they all just stop fighting and stare.

They just stop fighting and stare at you. You know,

one of the things I've learned is that When God

wants to bless your life, all the critics in the

world can't stop it. You prepare a table before me

in the presence of my enemies and they can't do squat.

They may want to criticize you, they may want to

bait you, debate you, debase you, reject you, lie about you,

slander you, but you can't stop it when you have

the favor of the king on your life. You prepare

a table before me in the presence of mine enemies

and they are dumbfounded and they just watch you get

blessed and blessed and blessed and blessed because his banner

over me is love. It's all because of his love.

Nothing I deserve, nothing you deserve. They can't stop it,

you can't stop it. Today, right now in your life,

in the middle of all your battles, God is inviting

you to a banquet. Look at this verse. The Bible

says in Job 36, verse 16, God is gently calling

Job 36:16

you from the jaws of distress. What a beautiful picture.

From the jaws of distress to an open place of

freedom where he has set your table full of the

best food. Job's saying the exact same thing David says

in Psalm 23. He says, God is gently calling you.

He's wooing you. He is coaxing you. He's saying, come on,

I want to have fellowship with you. How could you

not love a God like that? I want to get

to know you. I want you to get to know me.

I want to have fellowship with you. I want to

eat together. He's calling you. And where is he calling

you from? From the battle you're in, from the jaws

of Remember the movie Jaws? What's chewing on you right now?

What's eating you up? God is wooing you, calling you

out of the jaws of distress. I don't know what's

chewing on you right now, but that battle, he's saying,

come off the front line and come to the party.

The kingdom of God all through the New Testament is

portrayed as a banquet. God says, Come to the party.

Come to the party. It's all about what I'm doing

for you. And others may criticize you, attack you, demean you,

dismiss you, whatever. But God wants to hang out with you.

And he's put an awful lot of prep in honoring you.

He prepared this table. He prepared this banquet. He went

to great expense to make possible fellowship with him. That's

the first truth we learned. The second thing the banquet

symbolizes is this, and I love this one too. God

wants to bless me to show the world his goodness.

That's what this verse teaches. God wants to bless me

in order to show the world his goodness. That's why

it's not in secret. That's why it's in front of people,

in front of even my enemies. I am a trophy

of God's grace. You are a trophy of God's grace.

I am exhibit A of the goodness of God. God's

goodness on display that he used flawed, frail people with

all kinds of faults and flaws and flubs and motivations

and things we don't even understand. God only used perfect people.

You've heard me say it a thousand times. Nothing would

get done. He only uses. He only uses imperfect people.

He only blesses imperfect people because it's based on his grace.

And he says, not only do I want to hang

out with you, he says, I want to use you.

To show my goodness to the world. And I want

to bless you. And I want you to be a

trophy of my grace. And I want to show the world, yeah,

even your enemies, how good I am. Psalm 31 verse 19.

Psalms 31:19

Your goodness is so great. You have stored up great

blessing for those who honor you. You have done so

much for those who come to you for protection when

you're in the battle. blessing them before the watching world.

Now that verse is packed with a lot of good material,

but notice this. First, you might circle the phrase stored up.

He says, God, your goodness is great, and you have

stored up great blessings for those who honor you. Did

you know that God has stored up great blessings for you?

If you're honoring him, he's stored up great blessings for you. Now,

the word stored up, that clearly indicates advanced planning. You

can't store up at the last second. You have to

store up in advance. So God had some advanced planning

going on before he has the banquet for your battleground.

It's pre-thought. It's already been considered. So let's just get

real clear. You're gonna love this. You know that battle

you're fighting right now? It's intense. You may be fighting

it with yourself. You may be fighting it in the world.

You may be fighting it with an addiction. You may

be fighting against the devil. You may be fighting against

your thought life. You may be fighting against a habit.

It's a white knuckle, bare bones battle, mano a mano.

You are tired. and you're worn out because you've been

fighting this battle a long time, that battle that you're

fighting right now, before it even started, God was planning

your victory banquet. He was storing up. He can see

the end. Being confident of this thing, that he who

began a good work in you, will continue it into

the day of completion in Jesus Christ. God does not

sponsor flops. Ultimately, he wins. I've read the last chapter,

and you know if he wins, that means his kids win.

In that battle you're fighting right now, God has already

planned the victory party in advance. God loves to throw

victory celebrations for his children. Look at this verse on

the screen. The Bible says, how great is the Lord?

He is pleased with the success of his servant. God

is pleased with the success of his servant. God is

pleased with your success. When you're trying to honor him,

you don't always do it right. When you're trying to

honor him, you have a tender heart, an open heart,

an authentic heart. God is pleased with the success of

his servant. He wants to bless you to show the

world his goodness. So those are the two reasons we

have this banquet metaphor. God says, I want to fellowship

with you and I want to publicly approve you in

front of everybody else. I want to bless you so

much that even your enemies, their mouths drop. Whoa, look

at that. And we can't even stop that. We don't

even like her but God's hand is on her life.

And watch what God is doing. So last question, what's

on the menu of God's banquet? Remember this banquet's in

your honor. It's for you alone. It's not for anybody else.

He prepares for me a banquet in the presence of

my enemies. What's on the menu of God's banquet? Write

this down. Everything that God has promised in his word,

that's the menu. Every single thing that God has promised

in his word is on the banquet menu. There are,

by many different counts, one major account says that there

are 5,500 promises in this book. Every promise is a

menu item. That God says, yeah, you can order that

one You can order it a la carte or you

can order it with five other promises too. They're all there. 5,500,

some say 6,000. What am I saying? I'm saying this. Listen,

don't get anything else. Get this. Your banquet is in

your Bible. This is the menu. The banquet is in

your Bible. All of the promises that God has given

you about your money, all the promises God has given

you about your relationships, all the promises God has given

you about your past, your present, your future, your salvation,

your heaven, you're saved from hell, all the promises about

God's giftedness in your life, usability, all of the 5,500 promises,

that's a bigger menu than any restaurant you've ever been to.

The banquet is in the Bible. And this Bible is

full of fruit and bread and milk and meat and

all kinds of sweets and tons and tons of desserts.

They're all in here. And the Bible itself is called

the bread of life. And the Bible is called the

meat of the word. And the Bible is called like

honey in the honeycomb. And the Bible is called fruit

that tastes good. And the Bible is, the metaphors of

the Bible being called food, this is your soul food.

Food for your soul. All these tons and tons of desserts.

And what I'm telling you is this. You can have

a feast whenever you got one of these. All you

have to do is open it. Where do you think

you're gonna get your strength from the Bible? Watching YouTube things? No.

Watching television? No. Reading the paper, newspaper? No. Where are

you gonna get your strength for your battle? When you're

worn down, who's gonna lift you up? The word of God.

This is the truth. So if all of the menu

on the banquet of God for your life, all that

good food is in this book, why in the world

would you ever eat an internal or an internet granola bar?

When you've got all this, I mean, you got sirloin

steak in here, your Chateaubriand, we got baked Alaska, you know,

we got Cinnabon, I mean, we got, I mean, whoa,

it's just every page, it's dripping with food. Psalm 119, 103,

look on the screen. The promises of your word taste

sweet to me. And they taste sweet. The taste is

sweeter than honey in my mouth. You don't have a

sweet taste in your mouth, you're not spending enough time

in this book. So let me ask a real quick question.

How much time are you spending in God's word? A

little bit every now and then? Not good enough. That'd

be like eating one meal a week and fasting the

rest of the week. Are you fasting instead of feasting

on the word of God? That's why you're sick, that's

why you're weak, that's why you don't have any, why

you're a pushover for the devil. He can just whip

you around. You give in to all kinds of things.

You don't even see him coming, because they're camouflaged. Enemies

don't just come out and say, hey, I'm the enemy.

But you're malnourished while your banquet sits on the shelf.

It's sitting there, ready to feed you. This is where

you get your strength for the battle. The Bible is

the banquet and all of the promises of God that

he put in it. So you need to go get

a modern translation. If you don't have one, get rid

of the these and nows kind and get one that

can actually read. There's lots of good translations. Look at

this next verse, Psalm 34, verse eight. Learn to savor

how good the Lord is. Isn't that a beautiful verse?

Circle that word savor. Learn to savor how good the

Lord is. The Lord is. You know, what you think

of the Bible, your view of the Bible, what you

think it really represents will determine whether you enjoy it

or not. If you think this book, the Bible, is

a textbook, does anybody enjoy reading a textbook? Very few people.

enjoy reading a textbook. So if you think that this

is a textbook, you're not gonna wanna go be in

it on a daily basis. If you think it's a

history book, it's got a lot of history about Israel

and how God did things in the past and Jesus.

If you think it's a history book, it's not gonna

give you a whole lot Okay, if you think it's

an insurance policy, fire insurance policy to stay out of hell.

Have you ever read an insurance policy through? No. They're

as dry as they can all get out, you'd be bored.

If you thought this was your life insurance policy for

heaven or your fire insurance policy to keep you out

of hell, you would not read it. Let me tell

you what this is. This is God's love letter to you.

This is God's love letter to you. And if you

realize that, you can't wait to go read it. When

Kay and I got engaged, we did the dumb thing

of moving to the opposite side of the world from

each other. She moved to Birmingham, Alabama to work in

an inner city church and I moved to Nagasaki, Japan

to plant a church. And there were no cell phones

in those days. And the other kind of phone was

so expensive, seven, 10, $ 15 a minute. We didn't use that.

So every day we wrote letters to each other that

whole time. And I'd get three or four letters from

her before she'd get the one that I had sent

or two, three I'd sent and she'd get two or

three from me and not responding to the one she had.

It was always out of sync. But as a young

man in love with a young woman and a letter

would come in, you think I'd lay it on the

counter and say, well, I'll read that in a couple days. Man,

I tore that thing apart as fast as I could.

I would read it. I would reread it. I would

try to read between the lines. I would want to

underline and memorize parts of it because that represents her

love for me This is God's love letter to you.

Learn to savor how good the Lord is. If you're

not in this book, you are forgetting every day how

much God loves you. And boy, is that easy to forget.

You forget how much the creator who made you loves you.

He does this whole thing, the banquets, because he loves you.

Look at this next verse, Psalm 36, verse seven to nine.

How precious, O God, is your constant love. We find

protection under the shadow of your wings. We feast, there's

that word again, we feast on the abundant food you provide.

You let us drink from the river of your goodness.

You are the source of all life. And because of

your light, we see the light. God's love for you

is the reason for the feast. It's the reason for

the banquet. Now this statement, and it's just one of

three in this sentence, you prepare a table, you prepare

a banquet, the king's table, for me in the presence

of my enemies. This has a now and future application

to it. It's one of these promises that you get

to use now in the word of God, But there

is going to be a literal, real banquet, the banquet

to end all banquets of all time that start the

new age of eternity, marriage supper of the Lamb. One

day is going to be the greatest banquet of all time.

And who's going to be invited? The people who've put

their faith in Christ, God's children, the people who've trusted

him for salvation. And here's how it's going to happen.

Isaiah 25, the greatest banquet of all, History is moving

toward this climax one day in heaven. The Lord Almighty

will prepare a feast. You know, in the Bible, feasts

are commanded by God. What a God. Not just fasting,

but feasting is commanded too. The Lord Almighty will prepare

a feast of the finest foods for all peoples. I mean,

it doesn't matter what your background is, what your race was,

what your religion was. If you trusted Christ, a banquet

of the best of meats and the finest wines, and

on that mountain, God will destroy the shroud that enfolds

all peoples and the sheath that covers all nations. What's

he talking about there? Well, a shroud, I'll explain this

to you. A shroud is the covering of death. You

put it over a dead body. And a shroud is

the covering of death. It means the gloom that hangs

over people because we all know we're going to die.

And it says God's going to get rid of that one.

The Bible says the last enemy, I mentioned three, but

you have a fourth one. The fourth enemy in your

life is death, and you can't stop that one. The

Bible says one day God is gonna destroy death. The

final enemy will be destroyed. And he says, I'm the

shroud of the covering of death. That's the gloom that

hangs over us because of death. And the sheet, what's that?

The sheet that covers all nations. That's the cloud of

grief that we're all under because we know we're getting older.

We know we're gonna die. We know we're not perfect.

That's the cloud of grief. And God is gonna, in

his goodness, eliminate the last enemy. Look at the rest

of the verse. He will swallow up death forever. The

sovereign Lord will wipe away the tears from all faces

and he will remove the disgrace of his people from

the earth. That means all the mean things said to

you when you tried to stand for Christ, when you

tried to stand for truth, when you said, that's not right.

I can't do that. I can't cheat on that, that's

not right, that's immoral. And all of the put downs

you've had because you tried to stand for truth, you

stand for truth, evil's gonna come against you. He will

remove the disgrace of his people, all the persecution that

have been to those who followed him from the earth.

And in that day, they will say, surely this is

our God. We trusted in him and he saved us, yes.

This is the Lord. We trusted in him. So let

us rejoice and be glad in his salvation. Let's bow

our heads. That's the ultimate banquet one day. Who's invited?

All who've invited Jesus into their lives. Have you met

Jesus yet? Have you accepted his salvation? Are you still

trying to fight all your battles on your own power?

Why don't you pray this simple prayer? I invite you

to pray it once again, just in reaffirmation or maybe

for the first time. God, thank you that you love

me this much. that you host a banquet to honor me,

that you set up the king's table and you fill

it with all the stuff I like to eat and

I'm the guest of honor and it's in public and

it's not in secret and even when I'm in the

middle of a battle like I'm in right now, you

come to the battlefield Lord, on my own power, I

cannot defeat the enemies of the world and all its

pressure to conform. And I cannot defeat Satan and I

can't even defeat my own old nature. But I know

if I spend time with you, you'll give me that power.

Oh God, that you would want and welcome fellowship with

me is too hard to believe. You know everything about

me and you still want to have fellowship with me,

eat with me, hang out with me. Lord, you've said

in your word that you are gently calling from the

jaws of distress to an open place of freedom where

you have set a table full of the best food

for me. You've said that you welcome me with open

arms when I run to cover for you. Your goodness

is so great. God, it is amazing that you've already

stored up the great blessings for those who honor you.

I want to be one of those people. You've already

planned the victory party for the battle that I'm in

the heat of right now. Thank you that you want

to bless me to show the whole world your goodness.

What a God you are God, forgive me for not

reading the menu. Forgive me for not knowing the 5,500

promises that you've made to me. I know that's insulting

and I'm sorry. And I want to commit to learning

to savor how good the Lord is. To spending time

with you every day. Every day. to feast on the

abundant food of your word and to drink from the

river of goodness in the Bible. Lord, your love is

too hard to understand, but as much as I know how,

I ask you to accept me into your family. I

wanna be one of your children. I wanna put my

faith in Christ. I wanna follow him the rest of

my life. I wanna not listen to what the world says.

And I want to do what you say because you

say those who do the will of the Lord will

live forever. And thank you, Lord, that one day there

will be a great feast. And at that feast, you're

going to end all death and sorrow and suffering and

sadness and take away all the tears. I commit my

life to you. I repent to you because of your

goodness to me. And I pray this humbly in Jesus' name. Amen.