Pastor, author, and Bible teacher, Alan Wright. See, the profound thing about being a Christian is that no matter what we go through, because of the witness of the Holy Spirit to our spirit that we're children of God, we know that heaven is for real and heaven is for certain.
We can say without it being a cliché, without it being something we're just, you know, somehow excusing and becoming an opiate to us about the difficulties we face in life, we can say the message yet to come. And this is what the Holy Spirit wants you to know. That's Pastor Alan Wright. Welcome to another message of good news that will help you see your life in a whole new light. I'm Daniel Britt, excited for you to hear the teaching today in the series Son of David as presented at Rinaldin Church in North Carolina. If you're not able to stay with us throughout the entire program today, I want to make sure you know how to get our special resource right now. It can be yours for your donation this month to Alan Wright Ministries. As you listen to today's message, go deeper as we send you today's special offer. Contact us at pastoralan.org.
That's pastoralan.org or call 877-544-4860. Now more on this later in the program, but now let's get started with today's teaching. Here is Alan Wright. We are into March Madness, our term for all the basketball fans as we go into the NCAA playoffs, all the different championships, and then the big dance, we call it, coming up. So I'd like to, in light of the Carolina Duke game last night, turn our attention backwards a little bit to some prior weeks. But actually, in February, there was some taste of the madness of March for the two teams that I'm pulling for. Of course, Carolina Tar Heels.
Did I ever mention them before? I went to Carolina. And also, I got a son at Baylor now. So I got two teams I'm pulling for, and Baylor had started the year out great, and they got up as high as eighth in the nation in the rankings, and then they just went into a skid, lost five straight conference games, and then they were just trying to claw their way back into making it to the NCAA tournament.
And so they've been really having to fight hard and started doing better. But the key game, back in February, they were playing Oklahoma State, and it got to one of those, you know, seesaw games, and against all odds, you know, then Baylor, it looks like they're going to win the thing. Because what happened was that with about 20 seconds left in the game, Baylor is up by three points, and Oklahoma State has the ball. They come down, and with just a few seconds left on the clock, they shoot a three pointer, misses, ricochets off the rim pretty hard so it goes out of bounds. And nobody rebounded out of bounds, Baylor ball out of bounds under their own basket. Three point lead and one and a half seconds left in the game.
And it's your ball. Now, if you don't know much about basketball, let me just make this part clear. If you've got a three point lead, and you have the ball, and there's only one and a half seconds left, you can't lose.
Because now you think about it this way. The only way that you could have that game go into overtime would be if you made a sloppy pass out beyond the three point line so that it could get intercepted beyond the three point line and be a shot immediately, it'd have to be pretty close to the vicinity of where the shot was going to go up, and then they'd have to make that shot with no time on the clock. I mean, because you think about this, you could just take the ball and throw it in bounds under your own basket and let them take a shot and be a two pointer and you'd still win the game. So it would have to be against, you know, you'd almost have to try to let that game go to overtime. So imagine my dismay when with one and a half seconds left, they're having a hard time getting the ball inbounded, and so finally in a panicky way, he throws the ball out beyond the three point line, it bounces, and Oklahoma State grabs it, throws up a three pointer, and in it goes as time runs out, overtime.
Overtime. This is, let me just show you, here's the Baylor players, and anybody else pulling for Baylor, you know, it goes like, got five more minutes on the clock. This game, we've already been thinking about, you know, about the ESPN highlights that night, thinking about adding one more win, thinking about celebrating with your teammates. I mean, this game's in the bag.
This is in the bag. And then the next week, the next week, Tar Heels playing the Wolfpack, and that was an amazing game, it's amazing actually that Carolina came back in that game, and basically what happened at the end was, it got down to a point where Carolina's up by two, and there's one and a half seconds left in the game, and the State ball out of bounds, but they're on their own side of the court, so they got to get the ball up, inbounds it, get it up past half court, and get a shot off, one and a half seconds. I mean, that's the only way they could tie the thing. I mean, again, game's as good as done, right?
I mean, game's good as done. Except there's one other thing that could happen. Leslie McDonald could foul one of the State players, in fact, their star player, TJ Warren, on the inbounds play, with no time going off the clock to put him on the free throw line with 1.6 seconds left in the game, or less than that at this point, so that he can shoot the free throws and tie the game, and so all of a sudden, overtime. I mean, my teams, they've got them one, and then all of a sudden, overtime again. That's what I want to talk to you about today, overtime. You know what I'm talking about in life, where it's like, I should be finished with this now.
I already had this in the bag. You mean you're going to put more time on the clock and I got to go back out there and play some more? What I'm talking about is where you think you finished the race and all of a sudden you realize, I got five more laps. This is where you feel like the dream has come to pass, and all of a sudden you realize, there's more to do. See, life's like that, isn't it? Life's like that. I've been thinking about, I've been thinking about, talk to a number of people in this position, the marriage has been reconciled, and it's against all odds that the marriage was, you're back together, and so it's like, we did it, we're back together. And then, all of a sudden you're in a conversation, it's not going so well, and you realize, man, we've still got work to do. That's a unique feeling, right?
Or any business owner knows this. You work, you work, you work, you finally land the big contract, and you've got the great client, and then no sooner have you done it, then all of a sudden there's the competitors breathing down your neck, and your eyes, man, we've got work to do to keep this contract. It's like parenting. Any parent ever thinks that you reach a finish line? You don't.
You don't. It doesn't matter what stage you're in. You go to these stages and say, if I could just get my kids, just survive being a toddler, and get them to where they're going to school, and it's like, okay.
And then, you're kidding me? Every parent's experience, their child gets married, even has kids of their own, and you're like, okay, we did it, you know? We did it, and then that grandchild has a problem, and you're back on your knees, you're faced before God once again, because it's so much of life, you feel like you're there, and then you're not totally there.
There is a promise that has been made, and you know it to be true, a dream that is real but has not been totally realized, and so much of life is lived in that framework. And that's the story I want to look at in David's life. We are in our ninth or tenth week or such in the story of David that is helping us to see something about who Jesus was, because Jesus was called the son of David. He came from David's lineage, and David prefigures, he foreshadows, he shows ahead of time in little pictures things about who Jesus is, and once again we see that in today's story. Now let me just set this up, that what's happened is that David, as we've been learning, he was called to be a king when he was still a youth, and he was anointed, and the Holy Spirit was with David, and he defeated Goliath, and he became famous. But because of his fame, and because the people initially loved David so much, King Saul, the reigning king of Israel, became insanely jealous, and he tried to murder David on numerous occasions, and David had to live on the run and in hiding, and this is an era of his life that is reflected in a number of the Psalms that we call Psalms of Lament. He's very honest to God about how painful this time was. This is not a time that you could gloss over and say, well, yeah, but he had that great promise of being king, and he was anointed, and, you know, he just flew right through that stuff.
No, he one time was so desperate that he pretended to be out of his mind and let his own spittle drool down on his face just to look like he was insane. He walked through the valley of the shadow of death, and he walked through it for years. In other words, David was told he was going to be king, and then the first thing that happened was he spent years and years of just fighting, having no throne at all. And then after all of this struggle, the news comes that the insane king, Saul, has been slain. He was the lone Israelite brave enough to decapitate Goliath and the sole warrior adept enough to cut off the scourge of the Philistines.
He was the stately king who established peace, expanded the borders, and reigned in prosperity for 40 years. Who else could be a gentle shepherd, a glorious hero, and a noble king? Would there ever be another leader like David? Yes, the son of David. His name is Jesus, and he is a better David than David could ever be. He came to be your shepherd, your hero, and your king. In a 12-message audio series, Alan Wright takes you on a thrilling adventure with David in order to point you to the answer for your every need, the son of David.
Discover how Christ enables you to face your biggest obstacles, deal with your fiercest persecution, and live as an heir of grace. It's an audio series from Alan Wright. As our thanks for your donation, we'll be delighted to send you Pastor Alan's audio messages in either a digital download or a CD album format.
Son of David, shepherd, hero, king. The gospel is shared when you give to Alan Wright Ministries. This broadcast is only possible because of listener financial support. When you give today, we will send you today's special offer. We are happy to send this to you as our thanks from Alan Wright Ministries. Call us at 877-544-4860. That's 877-544-4860. Or come to our website, PastorAlan.org.
Today's teaching now continues. Here once again is Alan Wright. David is so gracious that he doesn't even rejoice over the news of Saul's death, but it does change everything now that Saul has died. And because Saul has died, it becomes apparent that this is the time for David to move onto the throne. And so what we're going to see in 2 Samuel chapter 2 is David's going to ask the Lord, you know, what do I do now to take the throne?
That's basically what this is about. It's finally come his time. The dream has come true. All that he's been waiting on.
Now's the time. 2 Samuel 2 verse 1. After this, David inquired to the Lord, Shall I go up into any of the cities of Judah? And the Lord said to him, Go up. And David said, To which shall I go up?
And he said, To Hebron. So David went up there, his two wives also, Ahinoam of Jezreel and Abigail the widow of Nabal of Carmel. And David brought up his men who were with him, everyone with his household, and they lived in the towns of Hebron. And the men of Judah came and there they anointed David king over the house of Judah. Look at verse 7. Let your hands be strong and be valiant, for Saul your Lord is dead, and the house of Judah has anointed me king over them.
Verse 8. But Abner, the son of Ner, the commander of Saul's army, took Ish-bosheth, the son of Saul, and brought him over to Mahanaim. And he made him king over Gilead and Asherites and Jezreel and Ephraim and Benjamin and all Israel. Ish-bosheth, Saul's son, was 40 years old when he began to reign over Israel, and he reigned two years. But the house of Judah followed David, and the time that David was king in Hebron over the house of Judah was seven years and six months.
And just let that sink in. The time that David was king in Hebron over the house of Judah, seven years and six months. Seven and a half years on a partial throne. In other words, what happened was that David had been promised to be king over all the people of God, over all of Israel. But at this phase, instead of being given the whole throne, of given the whole kingship, he sets up a throne, he's anointed, and he is acknowledged as king in Judah, the southern provinces.
But all of the northern provinces that are called Israel, the northern parts called Israel, the southern part called Judah, all of this whole big northern area that has Jerusalem right as it's at the southern border of what would be considered Israel, all of that is under one of Saul's ancestors still, one of Saul's people. Now, this moment in life where you're in David's position, and you have been given by God great and precious promise, and you've been living your life in anticipation of making it through this difficult time so that then the time will come that you're no longer have a murderous, jealous, tyrant breathing down your neck, and finally you'll be acknowledged king. But David comes this moment, and instead of the Lord saying, yeah, I want you to go to Jerusalem, and you're going to be king over all of Israel, he said, just go to Hebron.
If you're looking at the map, you'd see that David had been in the southern areas, down around the caves of Adullam, and then he moves up to Hebron, and just north of Hebron is Bethlehem, and then just north of that is Jerusalem, and he has to stop at Hebron. And it is like the Lord says, you know, you look like that this thing was a done deal, but I'm just telling you, you've got some more fighting to do. You've got seven and a half more years before you're going to take the whole throne. That's a tough thing. That's a tough thing. I'm talking about the times in which you feel like you should have been finished with this thing.
You had a vision of what it was going to be when it finally came to pass, and all of a sudden you realize, you know, somebody put more time on the clock, and you've got to get back out there. Seven and a half years. He'd spent years on the run, and now he's got seven and a half more years before he becomes king of Israel.
What do you do? What do you do in those seasons of life? There's so much that's beautiful and noble about who David is, and there's so many things we can talk about in this text. I mean, I think it's beautiful the way he's so childlike, the way he talked to the Lord, just inquire the Lord like a child would just speak to his daddy. You know, where would you like for me to go?
What do you want me to do now? And he just had that kind of relationship with God. It's also a beautiful thing to watch that David just maintained. He had such love even as he grieved for Saul and Jonathan.
What you saw was just his love, and you just see so many beautiful things here that are going to prefigure something about who Jesus really was. But I just think it's important to note that when you get into this particular kind of moment, that whatever kind of victory that you think you've just won and all should be done and then there's more to do, there are some particular temptations that we face at this juncture. And I think it's just good sometimes to highlight what those temptations are.
And I'm just going to put them into three broad categories of the kind of snare that we can fall into, kind of different traps. And the first tendency that we might have when you get to Hebron instead of Jerusalem, when you get only partway there, is what I would just call despair. And despair is, in a word, is hopelessness. See, what keeps us moving forward in life is the hope of something that's going to get better, the hope of something else that is to come. See, the profound thing about being a Christian is that no matter what we go through, because of the witness of the Holy Spirit to our spirit that we're children of God, we know that heaven is for real and heaven is for certain.
We can say, without it being a cliché, without it being something we're just, you know, somehow excusing and becoming an opiate to us about the difficulties we face in life, we can say the best is yet to come. And this is what the Holy Spirit wants you to know. This is why it's so profoundly important that we focus our hearts on the gospel of Jesus Christ, because in the gospel, what we gain is an assurance, a guarantee of our inheritance.
That's what the scripture calls the work of the Holy Spirit as a deposit guaranteeing our inheritance. So I get so frustrated with anybody that proclaims a gospel in a way that wants to cast doubt upon our salvation, because the fuel for the Christian life is hope. We are moved by that hope. See, people think that if we don't dangle in front of them a little bit of possibility that you could lose all of the security you have in Christ, then if we don't dangle that, then people will get a little lazy, you know, and they'll send more.
Well, we're just actually the opposite of that. What happens is that we're at our worst when we begin to despair. It's hope. It's hope that keeps us, it keeps us moving, right?
It's hope. And so the first temptation that we can face when we get into a situation like being in Hebron, the overtime moments of life, is despair. Because the tendency is to think that I had imagined that it was going to be this, but now it's this. And so that gap is a perceived loss.
And we tend to focus on the perceived loss rather than on the ground that we've actually gained. Now, this is not just a biblical principle. This is just a general psychological principle.
You know, all truth is God's truth. And this is just what we tend to do in life. Psychologists have understood this, that when we go through current adversity, if it becomes severe enough for us, this is a way often the depressive cycle works, is that we tend to reinterpret our past in order to make sense of our present pain. So if you're going through something painful now, there's some part, rational part of you that wants to make sense of that. And so you've got to look back and say, why am I going through this? And this is what people do.
I see it all the time. They'll look back at their past and say, well, the reason I'm going through this painful time now is because I messed up so bad and because God's mad at me. And they may not put it exactly that way, but in one way or another, it looks like I've messed up.
And so this is why I'm going through this. Or they'll look back at their past and say, the reason I'm going through such bad things now is that things just don't go well for me. And what happens is we end up interpreting our past from a perspective that doesn't see God in the midst of it. This is why God made it such an important point when the people came through the Red Sea and they had come into the land of promise would be in front of them. And God knew, the only way people that were going to move forward is that they're going to remember what God had done for them. Because when they got up against tough battles in life, he wanted them to have the Passover festival and said, remember, remember, remember, remember what God's done for you. It's one of the most important principles of the upbuilding of our faith is just recounting our blessings and just remembering what God's done for us. So one of the greatest secrets to the upbuilding of our faith is just very simple. And that's just telling your testimony, just thinking about what God's done for you. Just every day, just thinking about the way in which that you are blessed. So in a very literal sense, David could get to Hebron and he could focus in one or two directions.
He could focus on, I thought it was going to be the whole of Israel. Instead, I've just got the little bit of Southern. I've just got these people. Where is all that I was promised? Alan Wright.
And today's teaching Overtime. When you think you've won and find out the game's not over. It's in our series right now, Son of David. And Alan's back with us in the studio as he shares his parting good news thought for the day.
Stick with us. Would there ever be another leader like David? Yes, the son of David. His name is Jesus and he is a better David than David could ever be. He came to be your shepherd, your hero and your king. In a 12 message audio series, Alan Wright takes you on a thrilling adventure with David in order to point you to the answer for your every need, the son of David.
Discover how Christ enables you to face your biggest obstacles, deal with your fiercest persecution and live as an heir of grace. It's an audio series from Alan Wright. As our thanks for your donation, we'll be delighted to send you Pastor Alan's audio messages in either a digital download or a CD album format.
Son of David, shepherd, hero, king. The gospel is shared when you give to Alan Wright Ministries. This broadcast is only possible because of listener financial support.
When you give today, we will send you today's special offer. We are happy to send this to you as our thanks from Alan Wright Ministries. Call us at 877-544-4860. That's 877-544-4860.
Or come to our website, PastorAlan.org. Back now here in the studio to share Alan's parting good news thought for the day and I want to emphasize good news because the title of today's teaching doesn't sound overly good when you think you've won and find out the game's not over. That's not good news, Alan. Well, it's not. It's just a reality that we're going to face in fitting for basketball season where you watch your team and you think that they've won and then all of a sudden somebody has a buzzer beater and the game's tied and they got to start the clock and you play five more minutes.
And boy, it was a long time before David actually took the throne in Jerusalem. And a lot of times in life you might think, okay, I have crossed the finish line and then you get some sort of news that says no, you've got further to go. And I think the good news for us is that God's right there with you in the midst of that. So there's no need for impatience. There's no need for despair because He really is going to sustain you. And sometimes you have to take a deep breath and like a basketball team, they huddle up and they say, okay, now it is what it is and we're going to start right now. And that's the way we live. Each moment in God's grace for that moment, say God's with us now. Today's good news message is a listener supported production of Allen Wright Ministries.
