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Michael Youssef. The consequences of Disobedience. You can do all the good work you want to do. You can be as sincere as you can be. You can be as diligent as you possibly can.
But if you are not living in obedience to the Word of God, if you're not living in obedience to the voice of God, all of your good work will amount to nothing.
Now you don't want to hear that. I know that. I don't want to hear that either. That's the word of God. Thank you for taking time out of your day for Dr.
Michael Youssef and leading the way. passionately proclaiming uncompromising truth for more than thirty-five years. It's been said that good intentions don't always bring good consequences. And today a look at King David and how he found good intentions sometimes have a high cost. This is a lesson in walking in obedience.
Here now is Dr. Michael Youssef to begin today's Leading the Way. While the Queen of England was visiting Canada, A seemingly insignificant incident had taken place. And yet it reverberated around the world. A man who was standing there as the queen coming out of her carriage.
And seeing that the Queen is about to step in a muddy section. He valiantly took off his raincoat. and laid it on the ground on the mud. for the queen to step on.
Now, the queen looked at the young man and gave a grateful smile of recognition, but she decided to take a slight detour to avoid the spot. that he has graciously covered with his raincoat.
Now the press had decided somehow or for some reason to take notice of the incident. And they blazed the young man's name on so many of the front pages of many newspapers around the globe. And when I reflected on this, I thought, well, this is not really the greatest of deeds. Indeed, it's not even the highest of honor that the queen has ever received. And it has not been the greatest of gesture that she has ever received.
I began to think of the significance of this, and the significance is not the gesture or the honor or whatever. It was to the one for whom the act was offered. That made it significant, that made it noteworthy for the newspapers around the globe to report it. And in honoring of God, listen carefully. It is not the greatness of our service.
That matters. It is not. The volume of our activities for God that matters. It is not even the magnitude of our involvement in the work of God that really matters. But what really matters is the desire and the willingness to honor God in whatever way He wants us to honor Him.
In this portrait of a champion we're going to see today How David honors God in victory. I want to bring you up to date very quickly when we left David. Saul, King Saul, died in the battlefield. And with him his own son, Prince Jonathan, he also died in the battlefield. And after David mourned both of them, his friend Jonathan and even Saul who was hunting him down, after he mourned their loss.
God Who promised David some 15 years earlier to be a king over Israel? He's bringing his promises to fruition. And David becomes anointed king. And the moment he becomes an anointed king, think about what is his first thought about his administration. As the chief executive of the nation, what was the foremost in his mind?
It was not politics. It was not his re-election campaign. But first and foremost in the mind of that new chief executive of the nation of Israel, the first thing that he wanted to accomplish for his kingdom was to honor the King of Kings and the Lord of Lords. The first thing that David wanted was the presence of the God squarely in the midst of his people. When God is at the center, when God is in the midst of his people, you don't have to worry about the economy, you don't have to worry about national security, because God will do it all.
The first thing that David wanted to do above all else. To secure and ensure that God was at the very center of the nation, He was at the very center of the nation's life, at the very center of His own life and the life of His people. Let me ask you. Is God at the center of your business making, decision-making process? Is God at the very center of your family life?
Is God at the very center of your pocketbook? Is God at the very center of your ministry? You say, wait a minute, what I mean ministry, how can God not be in the center? I want to tell you with those two eyes, I have seen ministries that are done in the name of God, and God is not squarely in the center of these ministries. With those eyes, I have seen ordained ministers who claim to be ministering in the name of God, and yet God is not the center in their life.
And that is why I'm asking, is he at the center? of your ministry. David wanted to bring the ark back. The Ark of the Covenant, he wanted to bring it back to be in the midst of his people. I want to tell you just a few things about the Ark.
The Ark of the Covenant, you remember, That God commanded Moses to make. It's a box. In it was going to be the table of the law. The mercy seat above it overshadowed with the cherubim. And God said to his people in Exodus chapter 25 and verse 22, that this ark is going to be the symbol of my presence in your midst.
This is going to be the symbol of my blessing of you as a unique and special and peculiar people on the face of the earth. And in Exodus 25, 22, he said, I will meet with you and I will commune with you right there around the ark. For 70 years the ark had been missing from its rightful place. Yeah. The Philistine captured it.
They saw God giving Israel some victory, so they said, Must be that's the secret. Let's take the ark.
So they thought they're going to hijack the God of Israel. And the Philistines took it. And what happened? Overnight, the huge god of the Philistine Dagon, the huge statue was falling on its face. They were panic stricken, so they wanted to return it back.
Saul wasn't very interested in receiving it.
So they parked it. They parked it somewhere. As they were packing that ark somewhere. They did something. and it's very significant.
They built a cart. Over which the ark will rest.
Now, I want you to remember something. Remember that word? Cart? That is the message of today. The cart.
The Philistines wanted to stop this God from cursing them.
Well, the curse falling on them, he was not cursing them, so they built a nice cart. They wanted to lobby God, you know. They wanted to gain his favor, so they built him a nice cart over which they put the ark. As soon as David became king, He wanted to bring the ark back to be at the center of his people. That's a wonderful thing.
Listen carefully, there's a very important lesson here that the Word of God is going to teach us. The Word of God doesn't skip any uncomfortable details. Certainly this is one of them. What David was doing was right. What David was doing was proper.
What David was doing was needed. What David was doing was absolutely great. You cannot fault it in any way. And you may ask them, what is the problem then? What is the problem?
Well The problem was David's Achilles heel. which is yours and mine. And you see him. get caught in this problem again and again. He sought the counsel of the leaders of the nation.
He sought the counsel of the wise men in the nation. And he sought the counsel of everybody, but he failed to inquire of the Lord. Again. And David was doing the right thing. the wrong way.
He wanted to honor God. He wanted God to be at the center of the nation's life. He wanted God to be at the center of his life. He wanted God's presence to be in the midst of his people. And he was doing great and wonderful thing.
Okay. Yet. He has never taken the time to inquire of the Lord. He never has taken the time to seek his face. He's never taken the time to seek his direction.
Had he done that? he would have avoided disaster. Where is the disaster? If you have your Bible, turn to 2 Samuel 6, verse 3. And they carried the ark of God upon the new cart.
Here you get it. Upon the new card, And they brought it out of the house of Abinadab which was on the hill. Mistake number one. Big mistake. Huge mistake.
In the book of Numbers, both chapters 4 and chapter 7, and then repeated in Deuteronomy. God gave them clear instruction. That the ark must never be carried on anything else except the shoulders of the Levite priests. God is very clear, couldn't be clearer. It's repeated many times in the scripture.
So as they were driving That card. The miserable cart, And the arc on it? Instead of carrying it on their shoulder as God has instructed in His word, You always get off. balance when you get off the blueprints. The ox got stumbled on the road.
And as the ox got stumbled in the road, one of the men tried to steady the ox, but it's about to fall. I'm sure some of you are saying, well, wait a minute, preacher, wait a minute, this man was doing a good deed. Wasn't he? Yes. This man was doing the right thing, was he not?
Yes, he was. This man was fulfilling a need. Yes, he was. Well, how come? I want to tell you how come you will miss the entire point.
You will miss the whole message. If you think that the man dropped dead because he was trying to steady the ark. You'll miss it. You will miss it completely. That was not the point.
Bringing the ark Out of the land of the Philistines to be at the center of God's people, that's God's work. And that is wonderful. And God was pleased. Putting it on wheels. It was not God's way.
And consequently, it does not receive God's blessings. And when God would hold his hand of blessing, remember. Anything goes. When the Holy Spirit of God was withdrawn from Saul's life, you know what the natural consequence was? An evil spirit came upon him.
That's what happened. When God's hand of blessing is taken away from your home, is taken away from your business, is taken away from your life, please, you're not big enough to withstand. the consequences of that. And there are so many people who are going around doing God's work, charitable work, good work, helpful work. But they are not doing it God's way.
and they often miss out on God's blessing. Are we doing it God's way? Don't ever stop asking that question. David should have known the words of the prophet Samuel when he said to his predecessor King Saul in 1 Samuel 15, 22, when he said to him, has the Lord as great delight in burnt offerings and sacrifice as in obeying the voice of the Lord? Behold, to obey is better than sacrifice and to hearken than the fat of rams.
You can do all the good work you want to do. You can be as sincere as you can be. You can be as diligent as you possibly can. But if you are not living in obedience to the Word of God, if you're not living in obedience to the voice of God, all of your good work will amount to nothing.
Now you don't want to hear that. I know that. I don't want to hear that either. But that's the Word of God. And here we see Right beginning, wrong ending.
Good beginning, bad ending. Because of the departure from the Divine Prescription. Many Christians begin right, end wrong. Why? Because instead of the following the straight line, they follow the wrong direction of the secular culture.
They follow good opinions, they follow good ideas, they follow this and they follow that, instead of the follow the straight line of the Word of God. There are so many Christians who begin with zeal. But their zeal is misdirected. Their zeal is misinformed. And they end up in the wrong territory.
I have seen it and I'm sure many of you have. Paul said in Romans 10:2 that there are some people who have zeal for God, but Not according to knowledge.
Sometimes, in their fervor and in their zeal for God, many times they end up. Doing God's work, but not God's way, and therefore they miss out on God's blessings. And when this happened, The Bible said David became angry.
Now it's very hard to read in the passage, even in the Hebrew language, whether David was really angry with God or is angry with himself over allowing this instruction of the Lord to go by the wayside. But verse 9 is the key. that explained this. Verse 9 he said, David was afraid. When David became afraid, he decided to park the ark.
at the custodian's house. I want to stop here just for a minute. Because that's the question I get asked a lot. And it comes right here in verse 9. I want to tell you that there are two types of fear.
There is a healthy fear which leads to spiritual excellence. But then there is an unhealthy fear that is unbiblical and leads to discouragement. The first type of fear is accompanied by terror. The second type of fear is accompanied by holy reverence. The first type of fear is fear of wrath, just like Adam and Eve in the garden were afraid of the wrath of God, just like Satan, James, tells us he fears and trembles at the name of Jesus.
But then the second type of fear Is a fear of taking God's love for granted. The first type of fear drives people away from God. The second type of fear draws them to God. The first type of fear leads him to despair. The second type of fear leads to godliness.
The first type of fear is a product of a guilty conscience. The second is the fruit of an enlightened understanding of who God is. The first stop of fear is dread. because of his power. But the second type of fear is a delight because of the sovereignty of God.
One engenders bondage And the other. is conducive to worship. Listen to what the Apostle John said in 1 John 4, 18. Perfect love casts out the first type of fear. That doesn't say that in the scripture, but I'm trying to explain it to you.
2 Corinthians 7, appropriating the promises of God, appropriating God's promises leads to growth into the latter type of fear. And I believe with all my heart it was the second type of fear, the fear of the Lord, reverence, that David was experiencing at this point in his life. The fear that he has offended God. that he didn't listen carefully to what the Word of God said. and obeyed it.
Just as he said it. And for a period of three months, David Let the ark stay in the house of Obed Edom.
Now, Abed Edom was a God-fearing Philistine. He was not a Jew. But he was worshiping the God of Israel. But listen to what the Bible said, verse 11. Verse 11 said, that God blessed Obed-Edom and all of his household implied because of the ark was at his house.
Is that a surprise? No, it shouldn't be. Because God always blesses the non-believers by the presence of the believers. God said, I will honor those who honor me. And even if an unbeliever honors God, follow the principles of God, he or she is going to be blessed.
Because these principles God has printed in the universe. And the Bible is clear, tells us again and again how the non-believer can be blessed by the presence of the believer. Laban. was blessed by Jacob's presence. Pagan Potiphar in Egypt was blessed because of Joseph's presence.
The widow of Zarephath was blessed because of the presence of God's prophet. Godly people can be a source of blessings to others. Just by their very presence. I'll never take that for granted. Your unbelieving neighbors, your unbelieving friends, your unbelieving family members, they're watching you.
And deep down, know that they're being blessed by their association with you, and somehow, in God's economy, He's going to draw them to Himself. Whether it's a colleague at work, whether it's a neighbor or a friend or a relative.
So after a period of repentance, about three months, Yeah. David hears that Obed-Edom was blessed by having the ark in his house. Man, I want to tell you something. When you want the blessing, You repent in a hurry too. He said, I want to bring the ark here.
I don't mind all but eat them being blessed, but I want to get the blessing for my people. At this time, You notice. The scripture said that the Levites had the ark on their shoulders. No more cards. Threw that sucker out.
Never use it again. Not only that. The Bible said David humbled himself so much that he took off his royal robe. And he began to dance before the Lord. Listen carefully.
This is not the kind of thing that royal kings do. But he wanted to be so Humiliated in the eyes of God. He couldn't care less what people think. His first wife, Michael, was miffed, but that didn't matter. His Main purpose in life was to please God.
And that's what mattered the most. And that is why David could say in Psalm 132 verses 3, 4 and 5, he said, surely I will not come into the tabernacle of my house, nor go up into my bed. I will not give sleep to mine eyes nor slumber to my eyelids until I find a place for the Lord, a habitation for the mighty God of Jacob. David's desire. was for the presence of the Lord.
It had such intensity. And he could not rest until he found the prime spot. the best place in his life. Forgot. Have you ever longed for the presence of God?
What a difference it make. When you do God's work, God's way. Thank you for being a part of Leading the Way with Dr. Michael Yusuf. You can enjoy more challenging content on the radio.
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