Dealing with Haters

Music Playing That is Pastor Paul Shepherd, and this is Destined for Victory. Well, if you're a believer in Christ, and if you've made a decision to pursue His will at any cost, it won't be long before your enemies show up. Today, Pastor Paul Shepherd takes us to the conflict between David and King Saul to show us how to respond to our enemies. As David's favor with God continued to grow, so did Saul's jealousy to the point that he put a contract out on David's life.

Stay with us now to see how David handled this delicate situation. Or visit pastorpaul.net to listen anytime on demand. That's pastorpaul.net.

You can also subscribe to the podcast at Apple Podcasts, at Spotify, or wherever you get yours. Now, here's Pastor Paul with today's Destined for Victory message, Dealing with Haters. Music Playing 1 Samuel chapter 18, beginning with verse 5. Whatever Saul sent him to do, David did it so successfully that Saul gave him a high rank in the army. This pleased all the people, and Saul's officers as well. When the men were returning home after David had killed the Philistine, the women came out from all the towns of Israel to meet King Saul.

With singing and dancing, with joyful songs, and with tambourines and lutes. As they danced, they sang, Saul has slain his thousands, and David his tens of thousands. Saul was very angry, this refrain galled him. They have credited David with tens of thousands, he thought, and me with only thousands. What more can he get but the kingdom?

And from that time on, Saul kept a jealous eye on David. As we continue to learn lessons from the life of this significant hero in the pages of scripture named David. We come now to the season in his life where he is on the threshold of becoming a fugitive.

Not because of anything he has done, but he's a fugitive because he is blessed of the Lord. I want to let you know that being in the will of God doesn't always guarantee smooth sailing. And I'm bringing this message because somebody listening to it right now, and I use the term somebody knowing full well that there are thousands of somebodies. Who are going to need this word for either what you're going through right now, or what is coming as the Lord continues to keep his hand on your life.

And I stopped by on my way to heaven to tell somebody that when you're blessed, you're blessed. But not everybody is going to be blessed that you're blessed. Not everyone will like it. Not everyone will appreciate it. Not everyone will celebrate it. And there are some people who rather than being congratulators, they are what the young folk call haters.

And I want to talk to you about how to deal with your haters. Because as sure as you do the will of God in your life, you're going to discover that there are some people who don't like it. Now look at the context here and we've been kind of walking through the pages here in this season in David's life. So if you've been tracking with us, you know that God has raised up this young man. And before he was even in the army, able to become a great warrior and ascend to greatness in the eyes of the people. God already knew what he had in store for him. And as a young shepherd boy, he anointed him as the next king of Israel. Well the problem is Saul is still on the throne. And Saul has been rejected by God. He knows this by the mouth of the prophet Samuel.

But he has not accepted the fact that God has rejected him. And he's still on the throne. So David has just been waiting his time and waiting on God to do what he promised to do. Now in chapter 17 we saw that David fought and killed a great Philistine warrior named Goliath. And although David wasn't even in the army, he was but a young lad, too young to be enlisted in the army.

God used him to slay this giant. And the Bible goes on to say that after this he entered into Saul's service so that David now is no longer his daddy's shepherd boy. He is now a young man who has entered into the service of the king. He now lives there on the palace grounds.

He is now in service to the king. And the Bible says here in chapter 18 that the Lord is beginning to bless David with success. He is so successful until he gets a promotion from Saul. Now before I move past that point, those words, I want to make sure we all understand a biblical definition of success. Because we live in a day when a lot of people call success a lot of different things. And I need to remind you of truth as you live your life in this world where we get messages all the time that are not according to truth.

The word of God, the Bible is your owner's manual for living and it is your definition of truth. And so I've got to constantly remind you so that you are in this world but not of this world. Success is not how large a house you live in. Success is not how much money you make. Success is not what you drive.

Success is not the size and the value of your portfolio. Success is not being married or being single. Success is not being a parent or having no children. Success has nothing to do with your circumstances. Success has to do with the fact that you have found peace with God.

And you are in His will. Success, pure and simple, is being in the will of God. If you are in the will of God, you are successful.

You say, how is that success? Because when it's all said and done, the only thing that matters is whether or not you and I are in the will of God. That's all that matters.

When it's said and done, it doesn't matter what your trappings are, your circumstances are. It doesn't matter what your reputation was. It doesn't matter what your rank in your profession was.

It doesn't matter if you were listed in somebody's who's who. It only matters if you are in the will of God. Jesus said on one occasion, what does it profit a man if he gained the whole world and lose his soul? Please understand, success is not climbing the ladder that you see folks out here clamoring to get on top of. They don't even know what building it's leaning on. And yet they are trying desperately to climb the quote unquote ladder of success. Many of them only finding when they arrive that there's got to be more than this.

So we must be reminded of that. So when the Bible talks about success, even if in the process of describing an individual success, it talks about what the Lord has blessed them with. The operative term is whatever they receive, they receive from the hand of the Lord and he gave it to them because he knew they could handle it.

Some of us can't have what we want anyway because we're not prepared to handle it. Some of you if you got more blessings immediately, you would not be able to keep your perspective. So God has to grow you and God has to build you and build an infrastructure of character and of seeking first the kingdom before he blesses you even circumstantially.

And so some of us, you might not want to hear this, but some of you really need to see that the season you're in now is preparation and only when you get your kingdom first perspective will God begin to bring other things that he has planned for you into your life. And so we must understand success is not about the bottom line. Success is not about what people think. Success has to do with being in the will of God. And David was in the center of God's will as a shepherd boy, as the slayer of Goliath and now in the king's army and in the king's service. He is in the center of God's will and as a result of living his life in the will of God, the Bible says he is successful, so successful until he gets a promotion from the king. A high rank in the army and the people were pleased and Saul's officers were pleased and of course Saul was pleased. He's the one who gave him the promotion.

But look with me at what happens. The Bible says when they come home from this victory and the giant has been slain, the women came out of the towns to meet the king, but he didn't like the little song that they sang. Because while they honored him for being a slayer of thousands, they said of this new young warrior that he has slain tens of thousands. And the Bible tells us here that when Saul heard this refrain it galled him. You ever been galled? You ever had something get so deep under your skin until you can't shake it? That's where Saul was.

He was good and upset, thoroughly upset and the Bible says he became very angry and he expressed what he was angry about. Thank God he wasn't in denial. See, have you ever seen folk who are jealous but they're in denial? Envious but in denial.

Not you, not you. I'm talking about people you know. Envious but they're in denial. But they give themselves away. They'll say things like, I don't have a problem with him. Well why is your voice all high?

Give themselves away. Well Saul's not in denial. He said these folk are singing about David, they're crediting him with tens of thousands and they're only crediting me with thousands.

If you want to live a life of joy and peace, you got to get out of the comparison business. You're listening to Destined for Victory with Pastor Paul Shepherd, Senior Pastor of Destiny Christian Fellowship in Fremont, California. He'll be right back with the second half of today's message. Just a reminder that you can always listen right in the palm of your hand by downloading our free mobile app. The app allows you to take notes on the day's message, order books and CDs, you can even make a safe and secure donation.

Search Destined for Victory in the app store and download it today absolutely free. Well as David's popularity began to rise, so did Saul's jealousy. He tried to hurt David in three ways which is what the haters in your life will try to do.

Here's Pastor Paul with the rest of today's Destined for Victory message, Dealing with Haters. If you want to possess your soul, if you want to be a person who is comfortable in your own skin, you have got to stop comparing yourself with other people and here's why. Because God made them who they are and God made you who you are and if he wanted you to be like them, he'd have made you them. And we always get in trouble in our lives when we compare ourselves among ourselves. There's a scripture that says that is not wise.

It's not wise to spend your life comparing yourself to other people. That is not the plan of God for you. God's will for you is to discover his purpose, discover who he has made you to be, discover the assignments he has given to you in this world and for you to fulfill them. Here is the goal for you to one day hear the Lord say, well done good and faithful servant.

Those are the words you ought to be living for. Don't live for folk to tell you well done because how many know some of the same folk who tell you well done this month. I dare you to push some button in their life. I dare you to get under their skin.

You don't even have to do it on purpose. But one slip up, one thing, here Saul went straight from promoting him to persecuting him and there are people in your life who are just that fickle. You can't live for people. As soon as you please them on one hand, you will displease them on another. You've got to live in that sense of balance. You can't get a big head when people sing your praises.

You've got to stay centered. You've got to know that to God be the glory for anything good in my life. I'm glad you're happy with me but I'm not living to please you. Oh, some of you got to get out of the pleasing people business.

It's the best business to resign from, I promise you. It will bless your life when you get free from the need for everybody to be happy with you. Some of you are depressed because you just found out some folk are unhappy with you. First of all, let me tell you, they've been unhappy with you.

You just discovered it. Let me tell you something else. There's some other folk you don't know yet. They're unhappy with you too. That's just the way it goes in this world. And especially when you are out to do the will of God, there are going to be some folk who just line up in your life waiting to be displeased with you.

It's just the nature of the beast. Whatever you're doing, you can't do it. You seek to have a good attitude toward people, bless them as much as the Lord enables you to bless them. But here's the way you live your life successfully. If success is doing the will of God, what you do is stay centered on pleasing God and then see whoever else is happy.

That's the way you do it. I'm pleasing God and then if you're happy while God is happy, great. But if I'm pleasing God and you're unhappy, oh well. So David has done nothing but be blessed and yet the king now is very angry and he, from that time on we're told, kept a jealous eye on David.

Here's what I want to talk to you about before I let you go. Three things you need to be aware of that the jealous people, the envious people or as I'm calling it, the haters will try to do in your life. Number one, he sought to harm David. Number two, he sought to humiliate David. And number three, he sought to hand David over to his enemies.

I want to just walk you briefly through each of those points and I'll be done. Because when the haters show up in your life and some of you, they're already there. You just slipped out to church long enough to get free from them. But they're already there.

Are you listening to a broadcast or a CD? You just are taking a little break but the haters are waiting on you. And let me give you, the Bible says we shouldn't be ignorant concerning our enemies' devices. And let me let you know, you can expect that haters in your life are going to in some cases seek to harm you, in some cases seek to humiliate you and in some cases seek to hand you over to your enemies.

How then do you deal with haters? Number one, when they seek to harm you, do what David did. He avoided Saul whenever possible. The Bible says, I want you to look with the passage at me because the Bible goes on to tell us the specifics of what happened. The Bible says, verse 10 of 1 Samuel 18, The next day, this day after this refrain and after Saul copped the attitude, the next day an evil spirit from God came forcibly upon Saul.

Now what is that? That simply means after the Lord rejected Saul, he allowed him to begin to suffer the consequence of his own sin and disobedience. Remember now, sin and disobedience has consequence.

We are not sovereign people. You can't live outside of the will of God without consequence. Sometimes the consequences are visited on you in this life and short term. Sometimes they're visited on you down the road in this life.

Don't think you've gotten by just because you may get away for a little while. Because all of us are going to run smack into God. The Bible says in Hebrews 9 27, it is appointed once for every person to die and after death, the judgment. And my brother, my sister, one day, every one of us will give an account of him or herself to the Lord. And so we're all going to run into God. And so when you see judgment exacted in scripture, you say, man, God is cold.

Not at all. Everybody who's in disobedience is living under a sentence. And whether you are executing that sentence right now is not the issue. You have been found guilty by the divine court of God's justice. And so in this case, Saul just begins to serve his sentence for his unrighteousness. And what does the Lord do? The Lord allows an evil spirit to come upon him from time to time.

An evil spirit that torments him, a demonic spirit that causes him to get into a crazy and outrageous frame of thinking and behavior. And the Bible says that's what happens on this occasion. Verse 10, he was prophesying in his house. That doesn't mean he was certainly talking about the things of God. That word simply means that he was declaring, he was speaking forth a number of things. But because he was under the influence of this evil spirit, you can only imagine that he was speaking all kinds of hateful and crazy and profane things.

You ever run into a mean drunk? Well, that's probably the kind of behavior that Saul was exhibiting here. When some folk, when you get them full of alcohol, you hear all kinds of craziness.

And so here is this man under the influence of an evil spirit speaking all kinds of ridiculous things. They're calling it here prophesying in his house while David was playing the harp. David's job was to soothe him, to help him, to comfort him. And God used his harp. On many occasions, we saw earlier in our study, God used that harp to be a blessing. But on this occasion, Saul is so irritated until while David is playing his harp, Saul had a spear in his hand and he hurled it saying to himself, I'll pin David to the wall. But here's the verse I want you to see.

But David eluded him twice. Listen, if somebody hates you, believe them. When someone proves that they don't like you, take them at face value. I say that because a lot of Christians, bless our hearts, a lot of Christians are weird. Some of us get mixed up.

We don't know when it's time to grin and when it's time to run. Some of us practice sloppy agape. And you think the answer to everybody who hates you is just to love them and hug them and all that?

No, no. There are people who aren't plotting your demise and so you can be actively, openly loving toward them. And David started out that way. He's playing his harp to help the man. But when somebody raises a javelin in your direction, I got a word from God for you.

Run. If you have haters in your life today, if you feel powerless to overcome them, we want you to know that our ministry team is always happy to pray for you. Stop by pastorpaul.net and use the contact us feature to share your request. That's pastorpaul.net. While you're there, be sure to ask for your free copy of Pastor Paul's monthly letter of encouragement, which comes at no cost or obligation. Well, our ministry here destined for victory is a simple one. To lead people to faith in Christ and to help them grow in that faith. And because we know you share that desire, Pastor Paul invites you to help by sending the generous gift today.

When you do, we have a gift of our own to share with you as our thank you. It's Pastor Paul Shepherd's booklet, Finding Strength in Tough Times. Based on Pastor Paul's upcoming messages, When Destiny Seems Delayed and Finding Strength in God, this great resource will help you learn to deal with the time period between God's promise and its fulfillment. As you follow along, you'll discover three lessons from David's years as a fugitive that will help you handle your season of waiting in a way that prepares you for the promise God has ready for you. That's Finding Strength in Tough Times, our gift to you today by request for your generous gift to Destined for Victory. Call us at 855-339-5500 or visit pastorpaul.net to make a safe and secure donation online. And you can also mail your gift to Destined for Victory, Post Office Box 1767, Fremont, CA 94538.

Again, the address is Destined for Victory, Box 1767, Fremont, CA 94538. What do you do when your haters try to humiliate you? You've got to exhibit stronger character and not give in. Don't allow people to humiliate you. Instead, you practice humility. You cannot humiliate me if I walk in humility. That's tomorrow when Pastor Paul Shepherd shares his message dealing with haters. But until then remember, he who began a good work in you will bring it to completion. In Christ, you are Destined for Victory.