Men's Luncheon - Pastor Greg Addison - April 14, 2026

Okay, how's everybody doing today?

Good to see you guys.

Man, y'all ate all the cherry pie and didn't even leave me any.

That's terrible.

Like, what's a brother for?

Come on.

Good to see y'all today.

Glad everybody's here.

And uh let's pray.

We'll get rolling.

Lord, thank you for today.

Thank you for a chance to be together.

What an encouragement it is for us to come together as brothers and spend time together, fellowshipping and encouraging one another.

And then we get a chance to let you speak to us from your word.

So I pray, Father, today that you will be our teacher, that you're putty all the cracks of the stuff I mess up, and that we will all surrender ourselves to the Holy Spirit to speak to us through the living and powerful Word of God.

We thank you most of all for the incredible gift of salvation and what that means to us in our lives today.

In Jesus' name we pray, and everybody said, Amen.

All right.

Hey, I forgot to bless the food, so I'm sure y'all did that.

Uh it's good.

Hey, we're we're plowing through the chronological Bible, uh, reading, chronological reading of the Bible, I should say.

And uh it's been great.

People have been sharing and asking questions and what they've been reading.

It's been really fun uh to do that.

Uh folks were even super gracious when I preached uh uh from the book of Judges on Easter Sunday, which was kind of fun, right?

Uh and so now we've entered into the book of Samuel, and so we've we are we're plowing through Samuel.

Uh man, we're taking ground.

So we've been doing it for a little over a hundred days, and I think this is our tenth book we're about to uh plow through.

So thank all you guys that are doing that.

And of course, we spend some of these lunches uh catching up and walking through that journey as well.

So here's where we are today.

1 Samuel 18.

Where we find ourselves is uh David has been anointed king, right?

Following David and Goliath, he's been anointed king, but he's not on the throne yet.

Saul is still on the throne.

Uh God has already pronounced judgment on Saul and his kingship for a number of things that he has done that were just arrogant and sinful and disobedient.

And so he's messed up several times.

David, in essence, is serving in the army and in Saul's court.

David has become close friends with Jonathan, who is uh Saul's son, and by rights should be the heir to the throne.

But Jonathan is a spiritual man, wise man, he understands David.

He is, he he loves David.

They are like brothers.

And uh Saul is, I mean, uh Jonathan is older than David, so he's also become a mentor to David and is mentoring him and all of that.

And um and he and Jonathan realizes that Saul is off track, that he has walked away from the Lord, that it is a problem, it is a mess.

And so that's the setting we have here as we pick up this passage of scripture.

And this is a fairly uh prominent story in the life of David, if you've ever studied David.

But here we go.

Um we're gonna talk about spiritual warfare because I don't think we talk about that enough in church life.

It is a reality that happens that we all face.

And there are times and places in Scripture like this where you get a very clear picture of what that looks like.

So let's look at what we got here.

Verse 3 uh Then Jonathan and David made a covenant because he loved him.

Jonathan loved David as his own soul.

In other words, they're brothers from another mother.

They are knit together.

In one scripture it says, their hearts are knit together as brothers.

Jonathan stripped himself of the robe that was upon him, and he gave it to David and his garments, even to his sword and to his bow and to his girdle.

And David went out whithersoever Saul sent him.

He's in the army, he's serving as a commander, and he behaved himself wisely.

That's a great path, that's a great phrase right there, if you haven't seen that.

And Saul set David over the men of war, and he was accepted in the sight of all the people, and also in the sight of Saul's servants.

It's pretty fascinating.

It doesn't say that Saul accepted him, it just says that the servants did.

And it came to pass when David was returned from the slaughter of the Philistines, that the women came out of all the cities of Israel, singing and dancing, to meet King Saul with tablets and joy and uh instruments of music and all of that.

Their worshiping is a big victory celebration.

And the women answered one another, and as they played, and they said, Saul has slain his thousands, and David his ten thousands.

Now, as you can imagine, the king is furious.

In fact, the Bible says Saul was very wroth, and the saying displeased him.

And he said, They have ascribed unto David ten thousands, and to me they have ascribed but thousands.

What can he have more but the kingdom?

And from that day forward Saul eyed David with jealousy.

Verse 10 And it came to pass on the morrow that the evil spirit from God came upon Saul, and he prophesied in the midst of the house.

And David played with his hand, he's playing a harp, and the Bible in another place says it would soothe Saul's troubled spirit when he would play.

And he played his harp with his hand, as at other times.

And there was a javelin in Saul's hand.

And Saul cast the javelin, for he said, I will smite David and pierce him to the wall.

And David avoided out of his presence twice.

And Saul was afraid of David because the Lord was with him and was departed from Saul.

Trying to make sure I keep you all up here on the screen.

And uh and the Bible says, uh, therefore Saul removed him from him and made him captain over uh uh made him captain over a thousand, and he went out and came in before the people.

And David behaved himself wisely in all his ways.

The second time we've seen that phrase, and the Lord was with him.

Uh, whenever uh Saul saw that he had behaved very himself very wisely, he was afraid of him.

So here's the deal.

People that work for you, you think, man, I'm really proud of you.

You're being wise.

Saul gets more afraid of David when he acts wisely.

But all of Israel and Judah love David because he went out and came in before them.

So here's the big idea I want you to get.

When you are walking with Jesus and you're serving Jesus, Satan will work to keep you from serving him.

David is in a path where he knows that he has been anointed as king.

He knows that God has a plan for him.

He doesn't know all what it is yet, but he knows that's what it is.

He sees all this tension around him, and what happens?

David acts wisely.

He follows the Lord.

He is faithful to his calling, he is faithful to be who he's supposed to be.

He is trying to do things as he wants, as he knows God wants him to do them.

He's walking by faith, and because of that, Satan wants to derail the work of God.

Anytime that he can stop the advance of the kingdom of God, he's going to do that with anything at his power.

And so here what you see is Satan active in this time, spiritual warfare and spiritual opposition to David's journey in fulfilling what God has called him to do.

And so the big idea here is anytime you're walking with Jesus and you are serving him, there will be obstacles in your way.

And many times those obstacles come from spiritual opposition.

Now, if you're just doing your thing and you're not impacting the kingdom, you're not advancing the kingdom of God, you're just doing your thing and you're happy and living high, wide, and handsome, doing whatever, and you're not a threat to Satan's agenda and work, he's not going to bother with you.

Satan is not omnipotent, he's not omniscient, he's not omnipresent, he has a set number of minions, demons who serve him, and so he can't waste resources on people that are not a threat to him.

It was interesting, I was studying Jonah and going to preach Jonah one time as a young preacher, and one of my mentor pastors said, Greg, you've talked to me about what you're doing and your messages are good and all that.

He said, But have you not noticed Satan never shows up in the book of Jonah anywhere.

And so all that nonsense that Jonah goes through, that was his choice.

Like he was running off away from the Lord.

Why would Satan oppose him?

You want to make sure he gets a ticket to the plane going in the other, I mean, uh a ticket in the ship going the other direction, right?

I mean, you're not, you let him go.

You don't want to, you don't want to harass him.

You don't want to stay on your path.

He gets in the way of people who are serving the Lord, and God is advancing his kingdom through them.

We have seen that through scripture in the narrative scripture so far up to this point.

Stories like Job and places like that, where there is spiritual opposition against the work of God.

And that's what's happening here in the life of David.

Now, Saul happens to be a part of that or a tool in that.

So the first truth I want you to see in this is that spiritual warfare, spiritual opposition is real.

It is real.

It is happening here because the Lord is with David, it says repeatedly.

And then we've commented and shown how many times it says that he acted wisely.

He was being obedient to the Lord, he was following the Lord, he was in the path of God's work, and so because of that, there's going to be opposition.

Uh uh I worked when I worked at the Arkansas Baptist Convention, our executive director at that time was Dr.

Sonny Tucker.

And he used to tell us all the time when we were serving churches and consulting with churches and all, he'd tell us all the time the most dangerous thing you can do in a church is grow.

Because you put yourselves in the crosshairs of spiritual opposition.

If you're not growing, if you're not doing anything, you're not a threat.

But when you're sharing Jesus and you're serving the community, and people are getting saved and you're impacting lives, and people are coming back to the Lord, and all those things are happening, well, now you're in opposition to the enemy, and he is going to stand in your way.

And you see that throughout David's life as we start inserting psalms into our reading through this process.

So many of those that David wrote, how many of them can you remember off the top of your head where he talks about God protected him from the enemy and God, you know, eliminated the enemy, or it's a prayer type psalm, and he's crying out, protect me from my enemies, defend me in front of my enemies.

And there is great spiritual opposition when you're serving the Lord.

There is opposition to everything he does.

Every time he turns around, it's not good enough.

There's opposition in his married life with Saul's daughter, and even Saul setting that up to create problems for David.

He is putting David in places where he'll get killed, where he thinks he's going to get killed.

And that doesn't happen.

David actually has great victories.

Um, all of this stuff is happening, and everywhere David turns, there is opposition to what he's doing.

Like you think at some point you go, look, I don't want this king deal anymore.

Like I don't want people throwing like javelins at me, trying to pin me to the wall and stuff.

This is ridiculous.

I'm out of here.

I mean, everything he's doing, why?

Because God is at work in that.

And Satan understands, he may not be omniscient, he may not understand, but he can tell when God shows up and there's some major thing going on here, and he goes, I don't know what God's gonna do, but I got to go stand in opposition to this.

And I got to push back because whatever it is is not good for me, and I hate that God is getting this glory.

Now let's talk for a minute about the evil spirit.

The Bible says here that um God sent or allowed an evil spirit, we would use that word demon, to harass Saul and all of that.

So there's a great question there.

What's God doing sending demons to Saul?

Well, God is not actually the operating force in this.

The language in the original language is a little bit fuzzy.

There's some question here, like, is God allowing that to happen, that sort of thing.

But God is not, scripture says clearly, he is not one to tempt evil.

So if you put in this context, this looks a lot like Job, right?

If you'll remember, Satan was walking around on the earth, and Job was a spiritual man, and the and the demon comes, you know, the devil and whatever minions come to Lord and say, Have you seen Job down there?

You know, and God says, Look at my servant, he's doing great.

And the Satan says, Well, the only reason he's doing great is because you protected him.

Like, if he's not rich anymore and his kids aren't awesome anymore, and life isn't easy anymore, he's not gonna serve you anymore, he's gonna curse your name.

And God says, Okay, you can do this, but you can't do that.

You go do your whatever, do that, but you can't touch him, you can't hurt him, you know, and he and he goes off and tempts him, and Job continues to stay godly in that journey.

That's a lot what's happening here.

Also remember that Saul has already been judged.

The judgment has already been pronounced on Saul at this point.

Saul is not going to repent.

He is, he, you see that all through here.

He is in opposition to the Lord.

He is an obstinate, voluntary rebellion to the Lord.

And his judgment has already been pronounced.

And so what you have here is someone who is not walking with the Lord, he is walking in opposition to the Lord, and so he becomes a tool or a part of this spiritual warfare.

But in this process, what you get here, this is not a euphemism, this is a real demon, right?

And so, in essence, what this demon is doing is he's using Saul as a tool, and Saul, in his obstinence and rebellion, is allowing himself to be used in that fashion as a part of the opposition to the person of David.

And so Scripture doesn't back away from spiritual warfare as a part of opposition, right?

And people can be stirred up and used in this way to oppose the work of God.

If you think about what Scripture says, uh in Ephesians chapter 4, one of the verses we talk about a lot here at church, the Bible says that pastors and teachers and others are given to the church to equip the saints for the work of ministry to build the body of Christ.

Ephesians 4 · chapter mention

In other words, we're discipling and teaching and equipping people, and the church goes and does this ministry.

So my job is not to do the ministry, it is to be a part of the ministry and equip everyone to do the ministry together alongside this.

And so people are doing that ministry.

Why is it important that people serve?

Why is it important that they are involved in ministry?

Because if you're going to be transformed like Jesus, then you've got to look like Jesus.

And that's what Jesus did.

Jesus served.

Jesus presented the gospel, he preached, he led people to Christ, he ministered to people who were broken.

That's what Jesus did.

And if you're going to be like Jesus, you've got to go serve like Jesus did.

And so we're equipping people to serve.

It's also how we become spiritually mature.

If you're just sitting around and you're not serving and you're not engaged, you're not growing.

And so the Bible says that we equip the saints for the work of the ministry to build the body of Christ until we all have become the full measure of the stature of Christ.

And then the next verse says, the opposite of that, we are serving to grow to be mature, but we are also growing out of immaturity.

So the next verse says, so that we're no longer tossed about by cunning, trickery, or the false doctrines of men.

And so where do those false doctrines come from?

Where does that trickery come from?

Where does that philosophy of thought and the culture happen?

Some of it, evil minds, lost people come up with what they do, but a lot of it is Satan working and manipulating people who are not serving the Lord, who are not following the Lord, who are not followers of Christ, whatever.

And he uses them to establish and advance that culture that pushes against the work of God and against the work of the church.

It says in Ephesians chapter 6, two chapters over, put on the whole armor of God that you may be able to stand against the schemes of the devil.

Ephesians 6 · chapter mention

That's what he does.

And so all of this spiritual warfare is real.

There is a reason that we pray over things in church.

Why?

Because there is spiritual opposition to the work of ministry, right?

And so here's a great picture of that.

So what do we do?

We first then have to recognize what is the what is happening.

The enemy's goal is to stop us any way he can.

So he is trying to short circuit David's ministry.

And whatever God is going to do in David's life, the enemy wants to short circuit or stop that.

And there are different ways that you see here happening.

First of all, he just prompts Saul to try to kill him.

I mean, literally, that's what he says.

He takes a spear and he throws it at him and he's trying to pin him to the wall.

I mean, he's trying to kill him.

He's threatened by him, he's jealous of him, he just hates him because everybody's getting celebrated.

But as you read through these passages of scriptures, it's very clear and it's inherent some in here that Saul recognizes God is with David and he is not with Saul.

And Saul knows he's already been judged for what he's done wrong, and he has refused to be repentant of it.

So he is sitting in opposition to God, refusing to repent, and he sees God's hand on David, and so this demon uses that jealousy and that rebellion to whisper in his ear and all of that, and he throws this deal and tries to kill him.

Listen, spiritual opposition is serious.

Why do you think that there are martyrs all over the world today?

I mean, again, we just saw one in Easter where they're in a country, and it's a country that has a lot of spiritual warfare, and there's a lot of uh demon possession and stuff like that there.

And uh Satan invests a lot of resources there, and they're killing the Christians.

Why?

Because there's a revival breaking out and people are getting saved, and the enemy is trying to sort short circuit that in that place before it becomes a real movement of God that sustains itself and has power and pushes back the darkness.

And so he will kill if he can, he will flat out do that.

There have been martyrs since Stephen was first martyred, and there have been martyrs since then.

I mean, it is it is a real part of life, and it's something that in the American church, many times we're so weak, we're bordering on the book of Jonah.

Satan doesn't have to waste a lot of stuff.

He can spend a few demons, go spin the culture, and he doesn't have to spend a lot of them attacking every single church everywhere, right?

And so we just fall into that.

Other places he's trying to shut it down before it grows and becomes a thing.

But he will literally kill people as he tries to kill David.

He will try to distract David from serving the Lord.

How easy would it be for David to say, Man, I'm done with this.

Like I don't need part of this, I'm out.

I was doing fine.

God was blessing, he was taking care of us.

Like, I'm out.

I'm not I'm not facing all this.

This is too hard.

And it continues to get worse.

He, you know, the next chapters, he's running for his life and all that kind of stuff.

He's like, why am I doing this?

There's no reason to do this.

And he'll just get us to quit.

And perseverance as a Christian is a major problem.

We have people that start and stop.

We have people that don't finish, they don't serve, they don't keep plowing, they don't stay in the trenches.

Um it's amazing.

You have Sunday school teachers that teach for a year and then they don't teach.

Or they teach for 18 months and they need a break.

Like, why do you need a break?

Like if you're a Sunday school teacher, teach the Bible.

You hadn't covered it all yet.

Like, keep going.

Keep teaching, right?

Keep going.

Uh the faithfulness to have your quiet time and keep walking with God and be in the battle and listen to the Lord and step into points of ministry.

We plow, we keep moving, we stay involved in that.

There's way too much Christianity that is not committed to stay in the trenches.

It's just too easy to give up when we get distracted or we get frustrated.

It's incredible how many, how many pastors, how many deacons, how many leaders, they just bail because it gets frustrating.

Well, I get frustrated too, right?

I mean, I'm frustrated all the time.

If you want me to vent, let's go get a milkshake and I'll Vent with you and tell you all the things I'm frustrated by.

Right?

I mean, it's ridiculous.

I mean, seriously?

Dr.

Rogers, where I grew up, used to say all the time, you know, they'd say, you know, well, Pastor, you just say this and people will do it.

And he said, listen, if people did what I said, everybody would tithe and we'd have church on Sunday nights.

But I have people come up now and they ask me, hey, Pastor, why can't we have church on Sunday night?

And I say, because if we have church on Sunday night, it's going to be the custodians and the staff and five people, and that's going to be all that's be here.

And we'll cramp up all because they're not going to come.

They're not going to come.

You live in NFL cities, and they skip church for a home game.

I mean, just I mean, give me a break.

I mean, seriously, can I rant just for y'all give me 30 seconds to rant?

Like, really?

It rains and we can't come to church?

I mean, I can show you in the four years I've been here, every time it rains or threatens rain, we go down 20%.

Like, give me a break.

Really?

I mean, seriously.

We're gonna go down because it rains.

I mean, give me a break.

Tithing goes like this.

January is horrible because everybody's paying for Christmas.

Ministry didn't stop in January, and Satan didn't stop attacking in January.

But we know that.

So we carry around this ugly red number all year because we everybody tithes in December because we're trying to get the tax refund.

And so when you're a pastor, you can't manage the money.

You have to take January and carry the red number and pay it off in December, and you got to manage through the year to try to keep it small enough that you can pay it off in December.

Like, really?

That's not what God called me to do.

So we go through the spring and then you get the summer, and when we send out mission trips and we do camps and we do mission impacts, and we're doing all that kind of stuff, the tithing goes like this.

And then after September, it starts to climb back up.

Like, why do we stop giving in the summer?

What happened in the summer that we quit giving in the summer?

Satan didn't stop attacking in the summer.

Like, it's awesome that you have a lake house or you have a boat or whatever.

That's cool.

Come back Saturday night.

Like, seriously?

We we that is spiritual opposition in our culture.

If you think that's stretching a point, what were we doing during COVID?

When all of a sudden we're locked down and everybody's stressed out and there's not church the way we normally know it, and everybody reaches out, we want church again, and we go online and we do all that kind of stuff, and then everything you read and every discussion was life is too busy.

This is proving to us we're too busy, we're doing too many things, we're distracted from too many things.

This is so awesome being out in the neighborhood, grilling with the neighbors to get contact, and we're having family dinners and we're having family all this time, and within three years, our culture was busier than it was before COVID.

And it wasn't because people thought, oh, well, we don't need to have any more family dinners.

We spent COVID talking about how great it was that we're in family dinners, and in an incredibly short period of time, we go load up more stuff.

Okay, that's a spiritual issue.

That's a spiritual cultural battle and push, and it's exactly right here to recognize the enemy wants us out there having fun doing those other things.

He does not want us serving Jesus.

And so God gets the leftovers and everything.

He also tempts David to react sinfully.

If it was Greg, I would have taken the javelin out of the wall and I would have pinned Saul to the throne.

Now I should get an amen right there.

That's like this is a group of men right here.

That's what we do, right?

You're gonna throw that spear at me, like you're gonna get it right back at you, big boy.

I mean, here we go.

I mean, I'm not afraid of you at all.

You're an old man, you're frustrated, I'm out here winning battles.

Forget you, we're gonna be done with this deal, and I'm gonna get mad, and I'm just gonna pin him to the throne.

Is that not what would happen?

You can react in anger, you can pursue revenge, you're mad at people that are mad at you.

Anything that's an opposition in front of you, you're like you're gonna run over it.

I mean, it's you know, I had to learn early on as a pastor things like this.

Somebody'd come up to me and they'd complain about something in church, and I was still more lawyer than pastor, and my response would go something like this.

You know, that's that's really dumb what you just said there, and it's not very thoughtful.

And so I'm not really gonna listen because if you're not any more thoughtful than that, you got nothing to say that I need to listen to.

There's a far more pastoral way of saying that.

Now, that's a perfectly appropriate guy way to say that, right?

But you you you have you can't just do that way, and we point out that David reacts wisely, he does not react sinfully under spiritual opposition.

And that's a man of faith, that's a man who's following God, he's surrendered in what he's doing.

And finally, truth number three in times of opposition, who we listen to is vital.

The voices in your head that you listen to that are around you, it is so critically important.

And it's even more important in today's culture where you can get all kinds of opinions online and everything else.

And it's fascinating.

I've talked before about all the podcasts I listen to and all that.

I mean, it's all, but listen, you you have to be incredibly careful who's in your ear.

And you see here in this story, Jonathan is a trusted friend because Jonathan is a man of faith.

Not because he took David's side, but because he's a man of faith and integrity.

Jonathan rebukes Saul, his father, multiple times.

He challenges Saul because what Saul is doing is wrong, because Jonathan is a man of integrity, and Jonathan is trying to work from a place of integrity and truth.

He is also a man of faith, so he bonds with David because he sees what other people are seeing.

The hand of God is on David.

And David has enough sense to understand Saul is wrong.

I'm not going to go try to kiss up to that or change my behavior or not get him mad at me anymore or whatever.

He bonds with Jonathan.

He seeks advice from Jonathan.

He has conversations with Jonathan.

He listens to Jonathan.

David doesn't listen to the crowds.

He doesn't get all arrogant and throw Saul off the throne and be the king, and all these people love him.

They celebrate him every time he comes in from a victory.

No, that's not who he listens to.

He listens to the people who are godly who are close to him.

And in our lives, that bond should be with followers of Christ.

We should be building biblical relationships.

It's good to have relationships outside the church.

How are you ever going to invite invite church if you don't know people who are lost, right?

If you're not engaged in all those things.

But when it comes to advice, when it comes to finances and family and how it's all going, you have a group of men that you have built spiritual bonds with in the illustration of how Jonathan and David have built spiritual bonds.

Scripture takes time in multiple places to teach us what this relationship looks like.

And David trusts and rests on that.

He recognizes Jonathan as a man of God and he builds a bond with him and he becomes his growth guy.

And so there are two layers of where we bring that growth from.

We have godly friends and we have our church people.

Now I love that we have outside of church, and that's why I say there are two circles.

It's great to have friends in other churches.

We have great relationships with other churches in town.

We should.

We're in the same battle together.

And so you build those relationships.

You work with people who are involved in their church and you can trust them and you know they walk with Jesus, and that's awesome.

But there should also be an investment in the body of Christ where you're also creating those relationships within your own church, within your body of Christ.

There is no way to be a Christian outside of the body of Christ.

There is no ground or teaching left for that anywhere in God's Word.

Anywhere.

There is no such thing as a Lone Ranger Christian.

And one of the things that we do when we're getting people involved in all of that, when new members join, I spend time with them talking about getting involved.

You got to get involved.

This has got to be your place.

You've got to have relationships, you've got to serve alongside people because we need each other.

God's only given us three things to get through this life with.

He's given us the Word of God.

He's given us each other.

And you remove a third of your spiritual strength when you take out being invested in the body of Christ.

And so we've got to be involved and build those relationships.

That's where we get the Jonathan's in our life, in brothers in Christ that we know, and in the relationships that we invest in our church.

And that's how we stand against spiritual warfare.

Let me pray for us.

Lord, thank you for today, chance to be together.

I thank you for these men who come and they are building those relationships just like David and Jonathan.

I pray you'll continue to build and blossom those relationships that we have with each other.

Lord, I pray you'll carry these men, protect them, guide them as they go about the rest of the day and the rest of the week.

We again thank you, most of all, for Jesus who died for us.

In his name we pray, and everybody said.

Amen.