We should have several passions in our faith. And when you feel them leaving, Recognize that and make the choice what you're going to do about that. Maybe you don't feel like singing.
Okay, so you take a hiatus, but you understand, you gotta get that back at some point because it's been given to us because we need it. God did not give the church gifts because He had extra wrapping paper. You need this. And this is why he dispatched the gifts that we have. There's much to talk about with the gifts.
I'm not sure if I can do it. This is Cross-Reference Radio with our pastor and teacher, Rick Gaston. Rick is the pastor of Calvary Chapel, Mechanicsville. Pastor Rick is currently teaching through the book of 2 Samuel. Please stay with us after today's message to hear more information about Cross-Reference Radio.
specifically how you can get a free copy of this teaching. Of this edition of Cross-Reference Radio, Pastor Rick will be teaching in 2 Samuel 5. Chapter 5 now. Verse one. Then all the tribes of Israel came to David at Hebron and spoke, saying, Indeed, we are your bone and your flesh.
So, okay, Ishbosheth is dead. They have no king. They have no candidate to replace David. And so they they surrendered.
Okay, now's the time to make David the king. And they start by reminding David, hey, we're family. And the bonds that are supposed to exist. David is very gracious because he could really go off on these guys. He does not, he leaves that for us to do.
To say, are you kidding me? What people?
Well, I'm people too, and I'm a sinner too, and I goof up also.
So I don't feel too hard against these guys, but the fact remains, it's kind of lame what's going on here. Verse 2. Also, in time past, when Saul was king over us, they're speaking to David, the tribal leaders, you were the one who led Israel out. and brought them in. And Yahweh said to you, You shall shepherd my people Israel and be ruler over Israel.
Well, of course, this is recorded in 1 Samuel 18, the part about David leading everybody out and coming back in. We'll take one. It's in 19, too. We have four times it's stated, but we'll just take one from 1 Samuel 18, verse 16. But all Israel and Judah loved David because he went out and came in before them.
Well, Saul messed all that up. And these guys were accomplices to that. We have read nothing about them lifting a finger. To Comfort or help David.
Now, granted, they could have been afraid the way Saul terrorized the nation. But they still had Seven and a half years after Saul's death, to act on this, and they did not. And Yahweh said to you, You shall shepherd my people Israel, and be ruler over Israel.
Well, if you knew that, if you knew God said that, why did you not honor it? Why did you not do something to bring it about? And, well, of course, these questions weren't asked. There's no point in asking them. It would have been humiliating.
David, of course, being on the right side, they on the wrong. But they admit that they knew what God's will was and that they did not participate in bringing his will about. We have again Professed Christians who do the same thing. They know what they're supposed to do with church, for example, and they don't. It's a difference between struggling with something and just opting out.
Now they have nowhere else to go. Matthew chapter 2, verse 6. But you, Bethlehem, in the land of Judah, are not the least among the rulers of Judah, for out of you shall come a ruler who will shepherd my people.
Now, the purpose of me reading that verse is to point out. That God intended his leaders to be pastors. Latin for shepherd is pastor. And this metaphor is applied in scripture often. The rulers under God, over God's people, and the people are the sheep.
All of us are the sheep of his pastor in a larger sense, but there is this structure to hold everything together without which it would be disastrous. Jeremiah three, verse fifteen, God says through the prophet, And I will give you shepherds according to my heart, who will feed you with knowledge and understanding. And Satan stands up and says, we'll see about that. Because I'm going to take those shepherds and I'm going to get them to line up with my heart. Rotten as it is.
And so we have, of course, some foul ones out there who are heretics, who tell you that God's Word is second to love. We have a notable one-time Calvary pastor out there telling people that, you know, love is more important than the scripture. This is heresy. This is Satan's work. And there are people that lap it up.
Because they've entrusted themselves to this The false shepherd now has his other things he's done too, and it's unfortunate to see apostasy in action. It's not cute, it's very terrible. Anyway, Acts 20 verse 28. Paul He's Heading to Jerusalem. He believes the prophecies concerning the trouble that awaits him, and so he's trying to prepare the leaders.
He has called the leadership meeting, not at Ephesus in the city, but. Miletus, because he doesn't want to get caught up, he wants to make it to Jerusalem by the Passover. He says, therefore. To the elders, Paul speaking, take heed to yourselves.
Now, that's the first step for a pastor. You know? Watch yourself. before you tend the flock. And then he says, Watch yourselves.
Take heed to yourselves and to the flock.
Solomon writes in Proverbs: Know the state of your flock. Where there are no oxen, the trough is empty, but much increase comes through their labor, which essentially means in a church, like on a farm, you're going to step in stuff from time to time that you'd rather not. But, It's worth it. Much increase comes by this collective effort. It is God ordained, and all of us have our part to do.
The highest calling a Christian can have is the calling God has called them to do. For me, it's pastoring, but for you, an equally high calling can be whatever God has called you to do for Him. If you are in the kids' ministry, that is every bit. equal a calling As the pastor.
Now, there are some twists and turns, of course.
Somebody in the kids' ministry can say the wrong thing and it gets kind of shrugged off or dealt with. But a pastor, a weapon of mass destruction in Satan's hands, if Satan can pull it off. Anyway, therefore, take heed to yourselves and to the flock among which the Holy Spirit has made you overseers. But Paul is like in their face with these facts. This is how the church is, he's saying.
You have to watch yourself, you have to watch the flock, and this is a work of the Holy Spirit. He's called you to oversee. And then he says, to shepherd the church of God. which he purchased with his blood. I mean it's one sentence.
And he just lays it out. And it is one of the great verses of the Bible. And it's so passed by. It's heartbreaking to know that there are so many that really don't care about the value of this verse. And anyway, my point.
Is the Lord said to you, You shall shepherd my people Israel and be ruler. over Israel. This is not tyranny. This is given by God. Paul three times in Hebrews 17 says to the flock that the pastors rule over you.
They're not dictators. Nor are they to be micromanagers, but they are to rule over the flock, or else things break down. Anyhow, I'm not saying these things because I'm a pastor, I'm saying these things because I'm a Christian and I find them in the Bible, and I don't find a way to excuse them, get rid of them, edit them, or trivialize them. Verse 3. Therefore all the elders of Israel came to the king at Hebron, and And King David made a covenant with them at Hebron.
Before Yahweh. And they anointed David king over Israel. And rightfully so. If something does not have a head, it's it's a problem. And if it's still alive, while it doesn't have a head, it's a monster.
And now the nation is united. We read about this in 1 Chronicles 12. It's one of the great Old Testament passages of how these troops are lining up behind their king. And there's something very attractive about righteous loyalty, especially when you see it in large numbers, as you do in 1 Chronicles 12, which again belongs to this section. And they're going to stay, this united kingdom, united through David's reign, through Solomon's reign, but Solomon's going to mess it up and Rehoboam is going to finish it off, Solomon's son.
And that will happen 900 years before the coming of Christ.
So, this is the third anointed by Samuel. to be king God's choice anointed a king over Hebron. And then seven and a half years later, over the entire kingdom. Verse 4, David was 30 years old when he began to reign, and he reigned 40 years. That's when he began to reign in Hebron.
In Hebron, he reigned over Judah seven years and six months. And in Jerusalem, he reigned 33 years over all Israel and Judah. And so he's about 37, 38 years old now. And it is about a thousand, just over a thousand years before Christ will come. David will be, according to these numbers, about 70, 71 years old when he dies, and that is in 1 Kings chapter 2, the account of his going home.
Verse 6. Then the king. And his men went to Jerusalem against the Jebusites. and the inhabitants of the land. Who spoke to David, saying, You shall not come in here, but the blind and the lame will repel you, thinking David cannot come in here.
That was a big mistake on their part. Yeah. David's first recorded act as king over all Israel is to take Jerusalem, which incidentally was allotted to the tribe of Benjamin. Saul's tribe, Benjamin, I mean, Saul could care less. David, David, of course, linked Jerusalem way back.
His passion for Jerusalem is linked to Genesis chapter 22 and more. And we're going to open a little bit of that up. Jerusalem would become the site of the temple and the place where Jesus died and rose again. Psalm one thirty seven, verse five If I forget you, O Jerusalem, let my right hand forget its skill. Let me starve to death, lose my job.
I mean, the psalmist is saying Jerusalem is special because God has made it so. Melchizedek met Abraham there, and decades later, God dispatched Abraham to offer up Isaac on Mount Moriah, where the temple would go.
Now, the Jebusites. They were Canaanite inhabitants, linked to the Canaanites. They were. According to Joshua twelve, they were conquered. The Jews conquered everybody when under Joshua But Evidently, they did not hold the city.
They conquered it. Chase the people out. Killed whoever didn't escape and went on to the next conquest. And when they went to the next conquest, the Jebusites came back to the city. And what did they do?
They fortified the city. And then the Jews couldn't get them out. And we read about that at the end of Joshua and at the beginning of Judges, that Judah could not again dislodge them. They really could if they put their minds to it. But that part of Scripture tells us that the war against the flesh is every bit as difficult.
Anyway, The inhabitants of the land, it says here in verse 6. The inhabitants of the land who spoke to David, saying, Now there's a grudge between these two. The first place we can track it is to when David slew Goliath and he takes the head. To Jabos, which wasn't a Jewish-controlled city. Why would he do that?
Why would it be specified in the scripture? It doesn't say, you know, he took it to, you know. Beersheba or Hebron. No, he takes it to Jerusalem, the head. Because David is saying This is our land.
And this is what's going to happen. We're going to conquer you like I conquered this giant. And that's why he went there and brandished the head. Maybe he tossed it there. Keep it, because I'll be back.
So from his youth, because he was a youth when he slew Goliath. From his youth, he had this passion for Jerusalem. You know, g Jerusalem is a metropolis now. It's a city built up, but so much history has happened under that sky. It's just too much to take in.
It's even hard to figure out where you are in Jerusalem. It's just such a complicated place. Hadrian just leveled the city completely and rebuilt and put Jupiter's temple there and. Engineers over the centuries have really Done so much to the landscape.
Well, anyway, where did this passion come from in David? Again, Genesis twenty two verse two. Then he said, God speaking to Abraham, Take now your son, your only son, Isaac. whom you love, and go to the land of Moriah. And offer him there as a burnt offering on one of the mountains of which I shall tell you.
It's a long trek for Abraham. It was not five or six miles. It was oh, I don't know if I remember fifty miles or so. Even if it was five miles, it would have been long. Anyway, Second Chronicles 3.
Now Solomon began to build the house of Yahweh at Jerusalem on Mount Moriah. There's the connection. where Yahweh had appeared to his father David. At the place that David had prepared on the threshing floor of Ornan the Jebusite. David would be good to the Jebusites after he conquered them, incidentally, a lot better than they would have been to him.
So, the point I'm trying to establish for us as those who worship is this passion for something in our faith. And we should have several passions in our faith. And when you feel them leaving, Recognize that and make the choice what you're going to do about that. But maybe you don't feel like singing.
Okay, so you take a hiatus, but you understand you got to get that back at some point because it's been given to us because we need it. God did not give the church gifts because he had extra wrapping paper. You need this, and this is why he dispatched the gifts that we have. There's much to talk about with the gifts. I do believe they are still in existence, but I don't believe that they are to be abused, and that's just a whole story.
Anyhow. It was on David's to-do list. To conquer Jerusalem. Mujebus now. It's not yet named Jerusalem, that comes later.
It goes back, though, to Melchizedek, the city of peace. It's believed the link of the word. And so he's going to settle this. But they are, of course, defying him with insults. Not only are they saying, We're going to fight you.
But they're saying We're going to use the least of our citizens. And you can't even beat them. Our handicap.
Now, of course, it's hyperbole. They're not going to actually do this, but the insult has been. has been thrown down. declaring their weakest citizens Are stronger than David and his men. And let's look at back at verse 6 again, because it's a very...
attractive phrase, that first sentence. And the king and his men went to Jerusalem. Knowing the history of it all is very attractive, and knowing that when they said this to David, his men were with him, and these were not the guys to say something like this to. David, he's now in the role as a leader. He's not trying to prove himself.
So when they say, you shall not come in here, but the blind and the lame will repel you, thinking David cannot come in here.
Well, of course they were wrong. And Goliath mocked David. And look what happened. Goliath. and so taunting him, By claiming that he was inferior, and he and his men.
You'll never meet a Jebusite. Unless he's lying to you. You're not a Jebel site. You're from the Bronx or something like that. Only the Jews could survive for so long without a homeland.
And that's one of the reasons when you come across these names of these ancient people that are gone, the Philistines, the Jebusites. They had no homeland. What they left their homeland, they were assimilated into other peoples.
Well, the Jews left their homeland. They were pushed out 135, 136 years after the birth of Christ. After the temple fell, the Jews stayed in that area in Israel. And then the Bokakba rebellion. The Romans just had it, and they just pushed them out of the land.
And out of the land they were for over 1,900 years, but they retained their ethnicity and their heritage and their religion and their language. And then they were put back in their land as never happened before. And we need to be reminded of this because the main thrust that God will say, you see my promises in the New Testament about moving mountains and stuff like that. And you find you can't do all those things. There are prayers you send up to me that are noble prayers, and I do not grant them for reasons I'm not going to tell you.
But you, the obedient servant, you keep following me anyway in defiance to Satan because of truth. And as a bonus, I'm going to remind you of something that other generations have not had. Look at Jerusalem. Look at Israel. Who's back in that land now?
Who called it? The scriptures call it, and God is saying, just trust me. I know you're suffering. I know you're getting beatdowns. It ain't going to last forever, maybe forever in this life.
But it won't be forever in your existence. And by faith, we're up and going after that.
So this is Very meaningful to we, the New Testament church, David and his men. As Christ will come back with his people. His army. Verse seven: Nevertheless, David took the stronghold of Zion. That is the city of David.
Very Very laconic statement. He took a city. I'm not giving any details, and thousands were killed. Yeah, he took it. You can't come in here.
And he's in.
Well he warned them With the head. And he treated again them very humanely.
Solomon will make forced laborers out of them, but even Solomon will be kind. He's going to force them to work, but he's going to he's not going to treat them as slaves. He gives them time off and things like that. That's in First Kings 9. Here it says Of Zion.
This is the first time we come across Zion in the scripture. The name grew to apply to not only the Temple Mount, where the temple would be built. to all of Jerusalem To the Jewish people today, to the city of David. There were two mountains, the prominent mountains in Jerusalem. Not just two, but One was Mount Moriah, where the temple would go, and the other was another Mount Zion.
Just south of it, where David's city would go, and his palace would be built, where he looks out after Hiram sends him all sorts of nice things for his house, cedar, because most of the houses were stone and mud, and and that David all of a sudden has a cedar house, and everybody in the neighborhood wanted one. But anyway, they It becomes David's city, and it is worth seeing. Many things are open about it to tour. to this day. The city of David.
Bethlehem will also be called a city of David. You have to understand the context of how the writers are using these things, and that's in Luke's Gospel, chapter 2.
So anyway, the city of David I don't think there's anything else I have to add to that. Verse five, but there's more here.
Now David said on that day, whoever climbs up by the way of the water shaft and defeats the Jebusites, the lame and the blind, who are hated by David's soul, he shall be chief and captain. It says there's some humor in there, right? Therefore they say, the blind and the lame shall not come into the house. And so they didn't let that go.
So Davis lawyer? Hey, whoever can go up and defeat the lame and the blind gets to be commander. And then it became this.
Sort of an idiomatic proverb amongst the people. Yeah, well, you know, the blind and the lame can't come in here, which meant that. Yeah, they can once conquered.
So He says there's a shaft there to this day. Many of these water shafts and canals underground and above, but this one was subterrain. like a chimney, a shaft coming out with a water table down below. And the tunnels, the water wasn't always up to the top. You could wade through it up to your knees or your waist.
And to this day, you go to Hezekiah's tunnel, you just wade through the water. It gets boring after about The first 20 minutes, like, oh, look, more water and rock in the dark. But at very pla, I would recommend it. I really would. Anyway, Joab is the guy.
1 Chronicles 11. We're not told here, but. 1 Chronicles gives us a parallel account.
Now, David said, Whoever attacks the Jebusites first shall be chief and captain. And Joab, the son of Zariah, went up first and became chief.
So, Joab, out of my way, because he wants to be the commander. And everybody moved out of his way because he stabbed them. How does he get up that chimney? Did he have like a folding ladder?
However, he did it, it was impressive. He gets up. Climbs up, the others are following, I'm sure. They open the gate for the larger force to come in, and the Jebusites were just shocked and defeated. The blind and the lame.
Again, referring to their citizens became an epitaph mocking them. It backfired. Verse 9, then David went in the stronghold, and called it the City of David. And David built all around The millow And inward, and that's Believed to have been Fortifications, Solomon and Hezekiah will build them up. Hezekiah will repair them, Solomon will build them up even more.
Verse 10.
So David went on and became great. And Yahweh God of hosts was with him. Yeah. And so you like that, right? David went on and became great.
And he did. Yahweh, God of hosts, that means he's the commander of the armies. His armies on earth and in the spiritual realm. Or you would we would say in in heaven and on earth. Verse eleven Then Hiram, king of Tyra, sent messages to David, and cedar trees, and carpenters, and masons, and they built David a house, So David knew that Yahweh had established him as king over Israel and that he had exalted his kingdom for the sake of his people Israel.
Boy, there's a lot there. Hiram is believed to have been a new king, also. And he wants a friendship with David, and he gets one. He retains the friendship with Solomon. Let me kill.
This has been the latest edition of Cross Reference Radio. Pastor Rick Gaston is teaching through the book of 2 Samuel, which details the reign of David as king of Israel. There are so many life lessons to be learned during these years of David's life. We're glad you've tuned in to hear more from God's Word. This radio ministry comes to you from Calvary Chapel, Mechanicsville, in Mechanicsville, Virginia.
If you're interested in accessing more messages just like this one, you can listen online or download these messages at crossreferenceradio.com. You can also subscribe to our podcast by going to your favorite podcast app. We can't wait for you to step into the next teaching that Pastor Rick has for us.
So come back next time for Cross Reference Radio.
