Faith: Abraham's Covenant, David and Goliath, and Jesus in the Wilderness

Welcome to episode 338. In this episode, we're going to talk about the covenant God gave Abraham and how David used that and how Jesus used that to defeat the enemy. But before we get started, grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. Well, I want to pick right up where we left off in that last episode, and we talked about the Abrahamic covenant where God said that he would bless those that blessed you and he would curse those that cursed you. But we're going to look at Genesis 12:1-3, and then we're going to push it over to David and Goliath, and then we're going to look at Jesus in the wilderness. Genesis 12:1-3. Now the Lord had said to Abram, get out of your country, from your family, and from your father's house to a land I will show you. I will make you a great nation. I will bless you and make your name great, and you shall be a blessing. I will bless those who bless you, and I will curse him who curses you, and in you all the families of the earth shall be blessed. Now, I talked about in a previous episode that we need to understand what is written in the book. I use the insurance policy. If you've got an insurance policy out there and you don't know what's in your policy, how are you going to know what to activate when you have an accident? Same thing with life. And I know it's maybe a weak comparison, But if you have a problem in life and you don't know what's in the book, you're going to have a hard time overcoming that issue. We overcome him by the blood of the Lamb and by the word of our testimony, and we did not love our lives to the death. That's Revelation 12:11. You know I love that scripture, but God has told his disciples in John 17:17— this is the prayer, this is just part of it where Jesus was talking to the Father in a prayer to sanctify them by your truth. Your word is truth. And again, in John, he said, and you shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free. That's in John 8:31 and 32. Then Jesus said to those Jews who believed him, if you abide in my word, you are my disciples indeed, and you shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free. The word is truth. At the beginning of John, John said, in the beginning was the word, and the word was with God, And the Word was God, and the Word became flesh and dwelt among us. So the Word is so important, and I know I've got soapbox moments all through this, but we have got to be in the Word of God if we are going to fight Satan. We have got to come against him with the Word of God. And we're going to look at what David said, because the Word of God came to Abram, who then became Abraham, and he made a covenant. And a covenant is so much more than a promise, and it's so much more than a contract. It's the closest thing you're ever going to have to a guarantee. If you take the word of God and apply it to your life with the knowledge that what God says is going to come to pass— now, it may not come to pass tomorrow, and it may not come to pass next Thursday, but you can be sure that God's word will come to pass. We're coming up on 2023, New Year's. We have got to make a commitment to anchor in this word and allow this word to be our anchor. And when everything gets kind of squirrely the next year, we anchor on the word of God, and then we use the word of God against what's going on, and we are going to have a victory. I guarantee you it is going to be better if you use the word of God. I want to encourage you to find a word from God in this upcoming year. Find your word and stay with it. If you remember way back in the day, My word was relentless, and that is the word that I just stayed on. And just because you get a new word doesn't mean the old word has to go away. I can be relentless, but I can look for the new word for 2023, and that's what I'm praying for. And I think I've got it, and it may have been 2022 as well, and it's fearless. I, I don't know that I did a great job with fearless last year. I still had way too much fear in my life. Fear, I think, has held me back. I think it's the fear of man, and I want to encourage you, if you're afraid of something, or if you're just worried about what somebody thinks, that's got to go. And that's gonna go away with me. I'm tired of hearing in my head, and I know it's just the punk, look, you're no good, no one's gonna listen to you, you don't have anything to offer. All of those things go on and on, and I know you probably got the same punk in your head telling you similar stuff. It's all negative, and it's all a bunch of can'ts, and it's all a bunch of discouragement. I just want to encourage you to that I'm taking the chains off, I'm taking the limits off of God. I am just going to open up myself to him and to you, and we're going to do this thing all next year. I know you're fired up if you're a fanatic. I'm fired up. I think God's got all kinds of cool things for us next year. But I want to get into what David said in 1 Samuel 17:34-36. This is where he's talking to King Saul. He's already said, I'm gonna go kill this giant. And we're not going to go back to that story. You know I love this story. This is a great story. If you're looking for something to pick you up for 2023, I want to encourage you to read 1 Samuel 16, 17, and 18. That's King David when he come on the scene. But let's go to 1 Samuel 17:34-36. But David said to Saul, your servant used to keep his father's sheep. And when a lion or a bear came and took a lamb out of the flock, I went out and struck it. And delivered the lamb from its mouth. And when it rose against me, I caught it by its beard and struck and killed it. Your servant has killed both lion and bear, and this uncircumcised Philistine will be like one of them, seeing he has defied the armies of the living God. And I'm gonna stop right there. I want you to see what David said. David understood that he was under covenant with God. He was circumcised that was in— I think it's in Genesis 16 or 17 when God gave Abraham the sign of circumcision. And that is such a personal thing. I'm sure you know what circumcision is, so I'm not going to explain that to you. It is between you and God. It is a physical manifestation of a spiritual truth. And you do not have to be circumcised. I think baptism is the circumcision of the New Testament. When you have died to self, when you become a new creature, when you've accepted Jesus Christ as your Lord, that old man is dead. You've got some dead skin hanging around. When you go underwater and then you come back up, it is a spiritual— in my opinion, I've got to see everything— but this is a spiritual cutting away of the old man. That old man that was hanging around. If you've never been baptized, I want to encourage you to get baptized. I do not believe that you must get baptized to get to heaven. But I think it's an important step to take the next step of faith. And that's what we're talking about, is to learn to walk by faith and not by sight. And the Bible is clear. Jesus was baptized. We are to imitate Christ. I believe that we need to be baptized. And I don't know who was supposed to hear that. Whoever's supposed to hear that, go get yourself baptized. Let that old man be cut away and let the new man come to life. He's already alive, but let him break free. David knew he was under the covenant. If you can think of an umbrella, and if you're walking and there's a pouring down rainstorm and you got this big old umbrella over top of you, if you're doing it right, you're not going to get wet. You can be in a rainstorm and never get wet. You are under the covering, you are under the protection of the umbrella. And it— again, these are not great illustrations, but I just need to picture it. If you can picture yourself under this covenant promise, and when you're walking under the covenant or in the covenant, nothing can get you. Nothing can get to you. You abide in the vine. Jesus says, "Apart from me you can do nothing." That's John 15. He says that he is the vine and we are the branches. The only way we can bear fruit is if we are in the vine. David declared with his mouth, "Hey, I am under the covenant. I am protected and blessed by God. I am in this promise." He was anointed previously by Samuel, and he's not just going out in faith and just, "Oh, I hope this happens." No, while he was praising and worshiping, I believe life came at David while he was a shepherd boy. And here comes a bear, and David's thinking, "Oh no, I've got a job to do. I'm a shepherd. That's dad's sheep. I need to get this bear." And so he hits the bear, the bear drops the sheep and turns after David. David grabs him, kills him. Same thing happened with a lion. So David knew how to kill these big old beasts that were outside of God's promise, and Goliath was no different. Goliath was outside the promise. I've talked about this multiple times, but David never called Goliath by his name. If you read 1 Samuel 17, you will never see David speaking Goliath's name. And because of that, with the spoken word has power, and if he would have said Goliath, that name had significance in that day. Everybody knew who Goliath was. He was the champion of the Philistines. All of Israel was shaken. David says, this uncircumcised Philistine. He cut him down to size, and he knew it was God's fight. He knew it was God's battle, and he was God's man. And that's what I want to encourage you. You are God's man or woman. If you are listening to this episode, you have what it takes to be a child of the King. You are a king. Jesus is the King of Kings. And I want to encourage you just to get in the battle, get off of the pew, and let's get in this fight. We need to quit sitting around. I heard somebody say— I can't remember, I think it was Kirk Cameron— he said we need to quit as a church sitting around crying in our Chick-fil-A soup, and we need to get out and get into battle. We need to get out and quit worrying about this second coming of Jesus. He is coming, but we don't know when. We don't need you to be sitting around on our butts waiting for the rapture and waiting for everything to go to hell. Jesus told us to do business until he returns. So we're not to stop and wait for him to return. We are to do business. We are to take on Satan until he returns. In another important scripture that we've talked about, where Jesus asked his disciples, when the Son of Man returns, will he find faith on the earth? And when I read that, I'm like, oh heck yeah, you're gonna see it from me. I'm gonna walk in faith. I don't do a great job, and you know that. You know that I am messing up all the time, but I'm here and I'm trying. And I want to encourage you to keep trying, even though we're going to fall. We just need to pick ourselves back up and we need to get after it. And we're going to see how Jesus fought. We're going to go to Matthew 4. Now this is a lot of scripture. It's in Matthew 4 and it's 1 through 10. Then Jesus was led up of the Spirit into the wilderness to be tempted of the devil. And when he had fasted 40 days and 40 nights, he was hungry. Now when the tempter came to him, he said, if you are the Son of God, command these stones become bread. But he answered and said, it is written Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceeds from the mouth of God. Then the devil took him into the holy city, set him on the pinnacle of the temple, and said to him, If thou be the Son of God, throw thyself down: for it is written, He shall give his angels charge over thee, and in their hands they shall bear thee up, lest thou dash thy foot against a stone. Jesus said to him, It is written again, You shall not tempt the Lord your God. Again, the devil took him up on an exceeding high mountain and showed him all the kingdoms of the world and their glory. And he said to him, All these things I will give you if you will fall down and worship me. Then Jesus said to him, Away with you, Satan! For it is written, You shall worship the Lord your God and him only shall you serve. Now I'm going to stop there. I know that's a lot of scripture, but this is a Bible study, so you're going to be okay. Faith comes by hearing and hearing by the word of God. We have got to know what's in this book, and we've got to fight like Jesus fought. Jesus used the word of God, and you cannot say, "It is written," to Satan if you don't know it's written. So we can't fight him unless we know what's in here. That's why I'm here. But we submit ourselves to God, we resist the devil, and he will flee. Jesus was submitted to God. And resisting the devil, that's not saying, oh dear devil, oh, you're gonna have to leave me alone, I'm, I'm a child of the King. No, resisting the devil is getting in his face, kicking his teeth out with the word of God. We kick Satan's teeth out with the word of God. We fight just like Jesus fought. We say, it is written. David said, this uncircumcised Philistine. God told Abram, I will bless him who blesses you. I will curse him who curses you. All the nations of the earth will be blessed by you. It is a wonderful thing to be in this word of God. It's a wonderful thing coming up on this new year. I want to encourage you, just get into the word of God. Let's make a commitment to make 2023 the year of the word, and we get into that word, allow the word to get into us, and let's start taking some of this territory back that Satan has stole. I'm so sick of him, he's such a punk. But let's pray. God, I thank you so much for this listener. I thank you that you will never leave us nor forsake us. I thank you that you've given us your word and you have elevated your word above your name. God, help us to see how powerful your word is and how we can use your word to fight the enemy and fight everything that's going on. Lord, we thank you. We love you. We ask it all in Jesus' name. Amen. Well, thank you for being a part of this, and I look forward to visiting with you in the next episode. Thanks for listening to the No Doubt, No Fear, Only Believe podcast at www.nodoubtonlybelieve.com.