Ziklag

Series Intro: So for the month of title we were pretty proud of the series title. Colton and I discussed about 20 different titles involving the words weird, strange, spooky, mysterious, and couldn’t come up with anything so we just made a question mark… pretty impressive huh. Anyhow we found a few stories from the Bible that don’t get preached to often, but have some great lessons that we can learn that surrounded somewhat lesser known stories or people. So we hope you will enjoy. This week I’m going with Ziklag.

Is it a person place or thing? Could it be a verb. Could you ziklag someone else? Would it hurt? I hope I don’t find any ziklags in my basement? And I certainly hope I don’t run over a ziklag on my way home from church today. If we had a fourth child, and it was a girl, we were going to name her Ziklag. Ridiculous enough yet?

Ziklag was a geographical location in the Old Testament

The not yet King David, who was on the run from King Saul with 600 men, had become weary of being constantly on the move within the land of Israel. He decided to take his men to the Philistine city of Gath, seeking refuge with the Philistine King. The Philistine king actually befriended David, seeing in him a fellow “enemy” of Israel (or, at least, an enemy of the Saul regime). In other words the Philistine King said the enemy of my enemy is my friend… And he gave him a remarkable gift:

In 1 Samuel 27:5–6 we read… “Then David said to Achish, “If I have found favor in your eyes, let a place be assigned to me in one of the country towns, that I may live there. Why should your servant live in the royal city with you?” So on that day Achish gave him Ziklag, and it has belonged to the kings of Judah ever since.”

As such, Ziklag became a sort of “first city” for the already-anointed King David, before he was more widely recognized as Israel’s king following Saul’s death. David would go on to live at Ziklag until Saul’s demise, for a total of 16 months.

More on the story of Ziklag in just a moment…

Don’t burn down the house while I’m gone. Every year Allison goes away in November, when it was 3 babies, not going to lie. Between watching them and still preaching that Sunday it was about the longest weekend of my year. Now that the boys are older. I either send them away the same weekend or we eat pizza and wings for 3 days…

Luke towel age 7. note, money, microwave snow.

Bottomline when we go away to do something that we should enjoy or is even a responsibility, no one wants to come home to tragedy. We don’t deserve that right?

But that’s exactly where David finds himself in our story today.

Let’s look at 1 Samuel 30 together

1 Samuel 30:1–8 “David and his men reached Ziklag on the third day. Now the Amalekites had raided the Negev and Ziklag. They had attacked Ziklag and burned it, and had taken captive the women and everyone else in it, both young and old. They killed none of them, but carried them off as they went on their way. When David and his men reached Ziklag, they found it destroyed by fire and their wives and sons and daughters taken captive. So David and his men wept aloud until they had no strength left to weep. David’s two wives had been captured—Ahinoam of Jezreel and Abigail, the widow of Nabal of Carmel. David was greatly distressed because the men were talking of stoning him; each one was bitter in spirit because of his sons and daughters. But David found strength in the Lord his God. Then David said to Abiathar the priest, the son of Ahimelek, “Bring me the ephod.” Abiathar brought it to him, and David inquired of the Lord, “Shall I pursue this raiding party? Will I overtake them?” “Pursue them,” he answered. “You will certainly overtake them and succeed in the rescue.””

Summarize story: Where they had been, their return, weeping, blaming, David hurting, ephod equals prayer closet, God says go get em.

4 ideas in the progression of this story that I want us to see as lessons that will help us keep moving when we come home and find the proverbial houses in our life actually have been burnt down. The first is that we must learn to…

Embrace Vulnerability (vv1-5) In this life hardships, injustices, and loss are inevitable. Our response will always be what impacts the days ahead. Can i talk to them Men for a minute, women you can listen in, but I think we men especially need to hear this. We need to learn to mourn, to weep, to grieve. If we don’t process loss in our lives, which again we all have to agree is inevitable, the loss will dictate our decision making, and override our outlook on the future. When we don’t embrace vulnerability, by default we will embrace our loss mentality, which quite gently I might offer will make us feel and live like losers. We live in a culture that is telling us to be defined by our hardship rather than defined by our ability to overcome them. Did you know you can be anxious for a moment but don’t have to be plagued by anxiety? Did you know you can be depressed for a season without having a depression disorder. I think many of us avoid embracing emotions that we experience for fear of being labeled. In this life I’ve been anxious, I’ve been depressed, I’ve been angry, I’ve been happy, I’ve probably been a little double minded. But rather than embracing any of these as my identity, I’ve learned that admitting those realities, and being vulnerable before God about them, that I don’t have to stay in those states. I’ve prayed through anxiety, I’ve worshipped through depression, I’ve apologized for becoming angry, I’ve confessed my hypocrisy. All of those came as a result of doing what we should always do in our place of weakness and that is our second thought today. David sought strength in God.

Seek Strength in God v6 When an organization or community is suffering, we must remember that the leader is probably grieving more than anyone. One of the greatest challenges of being a leader is when everyone is hurting they may have to put on a strong front. Or even worse many might be blaming the leader for the very pain that she is experiencing herself. Before David could seek strength He had to mourn as well. In a time when having two wives was more acceptable, both of his wives had been kidnapped, and they people wanted to stone him.

The scripture today said, David and his men wept aloud until they had no strength left to weep. They had to flush out the loss in order to get to a place to seek strength. This is not how most of us operate. I believe that most of us defer our pain, and our weeping as quickly as we can figure out how to get back to a basic level of function and then we fake strength until we run out of energy again. Our text today invites us to lay all of our tears out before God so that He can transform them into rivers of refreshing strength from Him. It was only when David got this point that He could call for the Ephod. The ephod was a vest or garment worn by the High Priest for special occasions for seeking a Word from the Lord. While we don’t need to put on a fancy robe today there is something to be said about posturing ourselves in a way before God that says Here I am, waiting to hear for you.

God loves to fill an empty container that is open for Him to pour into.

We weep, we seek, and then we make moves. David and his men had to move from despair to determination…

From Despair to Determination vv7-8 You ever whining to someone and they offer you a solution? Anyone hate that? I get it, sometimes we do need to wallow in it, but good leaders are going to have a hard remaining empathetic to people that don’t want to move forward. And when things have been difficult, there is a time to mourn, there is a time to embrace vulnerability, but sooner or later the narrative has to change. We have to move forward with God, believing that He can bring victory. Remember last week we said, Persistence means pushing until your position changes. Then we posed the question, If you are not where you want to be, why do you keep choosing to stay where you are? So if you keep getting agitated with friends or leaders who are urging you and encouraging you to move forward, don’t worry, soon you won’t have to hear from them at all, because soon they will move on to encouraging someone else. I know this will sound crazy but people that like to encourage others like to see others encouraged. They aren’t there to give you a quick hit to get you out of a hole every time you start doom scrolling or continue to sit on the couch. God wants you to transform the energy that you are wasting on despair and worry, into determination and worship. He has let you hit rock bottom in that area of your life so that it can be the bedrock for your climb back to the top.

Busy day yesterday beat some of you yelling at tv, heard someone in foyer couple weeks ago fire that coach blood boiling about kingdom.

I know we talk alot about this generation and that generation, we use phrases like back in my day or these kids today, but whatever generation you are today, I’m here to tell you that God is looking for some people to do something with determination.

That means moving forward in hard times, it means hearing from God and refusing to remain in a spirit of despair when He is calling for a determined mindset that wants to see new things come to pass. We struggle to move forward believing we will have victory when our current state is one of defeat. Others tell us we are allowed to keep mourning, when God says to get moving. I’m here to tell you today, you aren’t going to get back to where you were, or even better get to where God wants you to go if you insist on continuing to embrace all your losses and hardships. Your mindset has to change to one of receiving what God wants to give, but that means letting go of what you have lost.

Every good sermon should end in hope and that’s where our story takes us. David and his men were…

Restored and Rewarded

In response to David’s question, “Shall I pursue this raiding party? Will I overtake them?” “Pursue them,” he answered. “You will certainly overtake them and succeed in the rescue.””

David and his men went down and defeated those who had destroyed Ziklag, they recovered all that they had lost, and they gained all the flocks and herds of the men they had defeated.

Time and time again in scripture we see the comeback being greater than the setback…

Joseph was sold into slavery and separated his family only to become the Vice President of the known world and save it from famine.

After Job’s faith was tested by the enemy God restored all of his possessions and then doubled them again.

And of course what greater story of comeback could we celebrate than the greatest story ever told. That the son of God Jesus Christ suffered the ultimately loss only to comeback with victory over sin and death for billions of people.

Beyond this we have promises from scripture we can stand on…

In Jeremiah 30, the Lord says He will restore our health and heal our wounds.

In Isaiah 61 the Lord says He will give us beauty for ashes, and joy for our mourning, He says our garments of heaviness will be replaced with garments of praise

Finally Peter said after you have suffered a while that the grace of God will restore you, establish you, strengthen and settle you.

RESPOSNE - INVITE TEAM

As the team comes today, I thought that if perhaps there was something that didn’t quite land with you, we might look at our ultimate model in the Bible, Jesus Christ. This is a good time to remind you that the whole Bible is about Jesus.

Maybe you struggle today to embrace vulnerability believing it somehow gives off a vibe of weakness or failure, guess what Jesus embraced vulnerability. He was gentle with children, mourned the loss of a friend, and He wept of the waywardness of His people.

Maybe your pride or lack of trust keeps you from truly seeking what God has for you or you want to keep control or need to use your own rationale to determine what’s best for your life. Jesus sought strength from the Father, and in a place of being able to take control over His own demise and suffering, He instead prayed not my will but yours be done.

Jesus had every right to be so frustrated that he threw in the towel. The disciples essentially questioned His power and sovereignty almost immediately after He gave them every sign and wonder they could have imagined. But Jesus told a roman governer that He was born to bear witness to the truth, and Jesus didn’t let any despair, frustration, or roadblock get in His way of accomplishing that purpose.

Ultimately Jesus was not only restored and rewarded Himself, but His willingness to move forward with determination meant that we all can be restored and rewarded with Him.

STAND

Bring it to him today. Stop resisting the weeping, pour it before Him. The loss will always be part of your past, but it doesn’t define you or your future.

Come and kneel today, put on a proverbial ephod by kneeling at this altar and tell Him you mean business and want to hear from Him.

Stop sitting in your row when God’s calling you to something greater. It’s a cliche for a reaon, whether you say you can or you can’t you’re right. Let me take that to the next level and tell you that whether you say God can or can’t, you’re right. He won’t work beyond your belief that He is able. He heals the broken hearted and He sets the captive free, he made the lame to walk again, and He caused the blind to see. But it takes us fully trusting and believing in Him. James said God gives liberally to all who ask, but we must ask in faith with no wavering. If you can’t get to that point today, then you need to come and ask Him to increase your faith.

Finally, the scriptures tell us in Hebrews 11 that without faith and trust in Him you can’t please God, it goes on to say that God loves to reward those that diligently seek HIm. So if you are a Christian here today and you want to see God reward you, then come and seek Him with great dilligence. If you haven’t made that step of becoming a Christian, He is here for you today. When you come and seek him and say you want Him to be in your life, He rewards you by doing just that. He trades beauty for ashes, joy for mourning, and death for new life in Him. Let’s make a move today.

PRAY

POST RESPONSE

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