I've had many people over the years that have impacted my life.
My youth pastor, Miles, you'd like to know this, was a guy named Joel Johns.
And Joel is, he had the typical youth pastor car.
We just hoped we could make it back from visitation whenever we go with him.
It was a Volkswagen Skoroco.
Does anybody have any idea what that is?
Which I think is like German for fox or something like that.
So anyway, it was a horrible car.
And it had no air conditioning, but we went and saw people for Jesus.
And it was fun.
He poured a lot into me.
We've all been impacted by people, haven't we?
Have you been impacted by anybody?
Has God used you?
I went to a church that had, Darren Canton had the Christian Hall of Fame.
And what did that kind of amounted to?
And it's really a neat thing.
There's paintings up and down the hallways.
I don't know if you've ever been there.
If you get a chance, if you're ever in Cannes, it's worth going and looking at and reading
about.
But when you're walking through the hallways, there are paintings everywhere of people,
Christians, famous Christians who have gone before.
Many of them historical names you would know.
Like guys like Spurgeon.
Is anybody heard of C.H.
Spurgeon?
D.L.
Moody.
And people like that you've heard of.
Great Christians.
Even as far back, even further back.
In fact, you can go to Christian Hall of Fame.
You can Google it.
There's a website.
And all the paintings are on the website.
With the, you know, every painting has a description of their lifeless short biography.
And you can find that out.
There are some people that were impactful, that are in the Hall of Fame that you probably
never heard of.
In fact, some of you may have heard of them.
Some of you haven't.
There's a guy named Baskham Ray Lankin, or another way of saying his name is B.R.
Lankin.
Has anybody heard of that name?
Okay.
There's a couple who has never heard of that name before.
Okay.
That's the vast majority of the people in here.
B.R.
Lankin was, I'm going to read what the title says on the painting.
Okay.
The B.R. Lankin was born on a farm near Forest, Fort Gay, West Virginia.
I'm going to go on to his ministry.
He says, after attending Moody Bible Institute and pastoring several churches, he was called
to assist E. Howard Cato at the Cato Tabernacle in Indianapolis, Indiana.
Upon Cato's death, Lagan became the pastor during the next 14 years, became the pastor
and the next 14 years, the ministry grew until he was preaching to 10,000 people each Sunday
in addition to broadcasting to services nationwide.
He was given honorary doctorates from Bob Jennings University and Clesing College.
In the early 1950s, Dr. Lankin began a 30-year itinerant ministry that included the largest
churches in America.
He traveled 50,000 miles annually and preached to an average of 4,000 people a week.
He witnessed more than 100,000 conversions to Christ.
That's pretty cool, isn't it?
His sermons were a combination of sanctified wit, good Bible teaching, and a strong appeal
for people to, quote, come to Christ.
After more than 65 years of preaching, Dr. Lankin hung his sword on the summary walls
of the city of God, end quote, and went to be with the Lord on March 15, 1984.
His funeral was conducted at the Thomas Road Baptist Church in Lynchburg, Virginia, and
was attended by more than 5,000 people.
I was talking to my dad because I'd heard him say, B.R.
Lankin's name year after year, and I was talking to my dad about him.
He was a member of Temple Baptist Church in Titusville, Florida, which was my parents'
home church, and where I was, the church I was, I wasn't born in the church.
But it kind of felt like it.
I think I was born on Sunday, and Sunday night I was in church.
That's how that works.
I've been in church a long time.
Brother Lankin, actually, the last few years of his life was a member of that church in
Pastor Wendell Carell with his pastor.
My dad said he just knew Pastor Lankin's nephew lived in Titusville, Florida, and went to their
church.
In fact, he was very good friends with my dad.
My dad said I just thought B.R. Lankin was a guy that wore pajamas most of the day and
watched St. Louis Cardinal baseball games.
That's what I thought he was.
He was amazed to find out the kind of impact that this particular guy had had.
In fact, he started out in an era where he was, in terms of being an itinerant preacher,
was literally on a mule going from place to place preaching at different towns.
That's how he started, was basically being a still a horseback, muleback, whatever you
want to call a preacher all those different years.
I say it like to say, where in the 1930s and 40s he may have been in large part because
of his broadcast and because of that large church that he was at, a household name, many
of you, some of you have heard of him, but many of you had not.
You've had people that had been more impactful on your life than a guy who has led 100,000
people to Christ.
What I'm trying to say is, Dr. Lankin or people like him, D.O. Moody, all the names we could
bring up, even guys today who are impactful in our lives, the fact that God uses us at
all is just amazing.
You don't have to preach to thousands every week and win 100,000 people to Jesus to be
used by God or to be valuable to God.
In fact, God doesn't love a guy like that anymore than he loves you.
We find ourselves in this David series.
We're talking about King David and the life of David.
David is not yet a king, although he's been anointed in the first week of the series.
He studied how David was anointed by God to be the next king.
It's not something he had on his calendar.
He was out being faithful and to shepherd the sheep.
God directed Samuel to show up and to anoint him to be king.
In that particular message, we emphasize what the text seems to emphasize, that God taught
Samuel and God is teaching us that man looks on the face, on the outward appearance, but
God looks at the heart.
That's right.
It's amazing that God uses people.
It's amazing that he uses us.
I think about Moses.
Moses spent 40 years, this is D.M.
Moody said this, Moses spent 40 years thinking he was somebody when he was a prince.
He spent 40 years learning he was a nobody that was in the backside of the desert.
Somebody spent 40 years discovering what God can do with a nobody.
Give your life to God.
He can do more with it than you can, D.O.
Moody said.
What we saw in that first week is that God was working on David when he was in obscurity,
when he was on the backside of the desert, when he was out there shepherding sheep.
What we found last week was that God began to use David in a crucial moment.
Pastor Miles did a great job helping us remember the story of David and Goliath and how David
trusted God and was used by God.
Today we're going to look at 1 Samuel, chapter number 18, and we're going to see what happens
after David starts to be used by God.
David was kind of minding his own business, didn't ask to be used by God in a prominent
way, but God did that.
He started to use him in this incredible way.
David is later called a man after God's own heart.
David is used to kill this giant, to save the children of Israel.
It's a pretty amazing thing.
Then he goes back to working with his sheep and with his dad.
He begins to start being used by God.
We see that in the Goliath story.
Now we're going to see in 1 Samuel, chapter 18 how God starts to use David and how that
impacts his relationships.
We must understand how God's using us can impact our relationships by seeing four responses
his using us can bring.
We talked about how there are people in your life that God used to impact you.
You have people in your life that God's used to impact you.
Sometimes God starts using somebody and impacts their relationships.
We see four different responses that his using us can bring.
The first one is this.
When God uses us, it can bring friendship.
It can bring friendship.
Look at 1 Samuel, chapter 18, verse number one.
Here's what it says.
It came to pass when he had made an end of speaking unto Saul that the soul of Jonathan
was knit with the soul of David.
Now there's a few things I want to talk to you about with this particular friendship.
Jonathan was Saul's son.
Jonathan being Saul's son was the next rightful heir as prince.
He's the next rightful heir of the first king of Israel.
I believe certainly as we know that they got to be pretty close that Jonathan would have
known that David had been anointed.
That may have been something that had come up at some point in their relationship.
Here you see where it says literally there's a connection in the soul.
There's this friendship that has begun with this unlikely person.
It says that the soul of Jonathan was knit with the soul of David.
They were connected.
They were close.
I believe that it's important for us to realize that there is, God wants us to have deep relationships.
You know you can't have equally deep relationships with everybody who understands that.
You're limited.
We are finite creatures.
We only have so much time, so much energy, so much ability to do that.
Here there's this connection and some have made it into something that it's not.
Here I believe so clearly that they just have this connection.
It wasn't just a surface connection.
This was a connection that was born out of them both I believe loving the Lord and loving
each other.
In fact you see not just a connection in the soul, you see compassion that's sincere.
It says about this idea that it was knit with the soul of David.
Jonathan loved him as his own soul.
Isn't that interesting?
He loved David as much as he loved himself.
I think that's really an interesting thing.
Saul took him that day talking about David and would let him no more go home to his father's
house.
As of this point Saul's connection with David is, hey now you work for me, you live with
me, you're part of the king's court.
Now David has gone from the sheep and being a shepherd, being one of the kids in his dad's
home.
Now he's around the king, around the king's son.
You'll find out later in verse 5 down into verse 6 that he's around the men of war.
We're going to see that in a minute.
So he has this close connection.
It says in verse 3 we also see not only did he have a connection and compassion, we also
see that there's a covenant that's made here.
Verse 3, then Jonathan and David made a covenant because he loved him as his own soul.
That's the second time that's said.
And now we see a contribution.
Verse 4, and Jonathan stripped himself of the robe that was upon him and gave it to David
and his garments even to his sword and to his bow and to his, what does it say, girdle,
right?
Here we see a contribution that's selfless.
When Jonathan gives David his robe, that robe would have been some kind of an indication
of his royal status.
This is Jonathan recognizing God is doing something, God is choosing something, and I'm going
to have a connection and a friendship and a love and make a promise to my friend David
so much so that even if it means that I'm not going to be the king, there's this connection
that's there.
And he's willing to follow, he sees what God's doing in David's life.
He gives, it says also, those are the three things, his sword, his bow, and his girdle.
These are in those days really important, right?
They are not toys to play with.
These are tools to work with.
These are military people in a military position, and now he's giving him essentially his protection.
He's saying, I'm here to protect you, I'm here to be here for you, and he's making this
covenant with David.
Now when we're used by God, one of the greatest things that can happen when you get in ministry
and when you begin to be used by the Lord is that sometimes God brings you friendship.
God brings you friendship.
Have you guys ever become close to people that you're serving with at church?
Yeah.
Some of the closest relationships I have are people that I were in ministry with.
You guys remember, who here remembers Eric Hiltabittle?
Yeah.
Eric Hiltabittle was the worship pastor here, and I knew Eric back when we were in school
together, and then we worked together at the church, and Eric was there, there was a guy
named Robert Hagee that was across the hall from me, and sometimes when you do ministry
like this, you get to be really, really close.
You get to spend, you're basically living with each other as you do ministry together
full time.
That's how I feel what happens.
I told Corey today, actually, Sundays aren't for friendship.
We don't talk on Sundays.
He's doing his thing, and I'm doing my thing, and we get to be friends during the week.
But my point being is we spend a lot of time together, and you can build these relationships.
That's how church ought to be, who agrees?
We're a family, and we ought to love each other and care about each other.
There is a trend in churches that the churches are meeting less and less and less, and I
think that that's, I'm just here to say, I'm not saying that we will never cut anything,
we'll never stop doing some things, but I think we need to spend more time together,
not less.
I think we ought to have some deep relationships and deep friendships.
That's why I think I love missions trips.
I want us to take missions trips, so we can go somewhere and minister together and see
what God's doing around the world and spend time doing that together.
Sometimes God can bring friendship, and when He does, it's so important that we don't just
have things in common that are temporary, that are, oh, I like the, I like, I don't
like Michigan.
And I can still be friends with the berries, right?
I can not like Michigan, but yet I can still be friends with the berries.
You know why?
Because who cares about college football?
A million years from now, college what?
What's a college?
We all know, who knows?
And eternity we may know, who knows?
But my point is, what is, what we're connected in is so much more important than college
football.
Are you with me?
We are supposed to be connected in a spiritual way.
So God using us and doing ministry together and God beginning to use people can bring
us friendship.
Here's another one.
Here's the second one.
God using us can bring fandom.
I try hard to stick with my alliteration.
Friendship and fandom, what do I mean?
Well look at what happens.
Verse five, and David went out with or so ever saw sent him.
Now this is, this is cool, right?
David has been called, God divinely worked all this out, sovereignly worked all this
out so that David would be there in the king's court.
And David starts to be used by Saul to do whatever Saul told him to do.
And it says in verse five, and behaved himself what?
Wisely.
David realized that God anointed him to be king.
And here's what I know to be true.
If you want people to follow you when you're a leader, you need to follow people when you're
not.
You need to be faithful when you're not the leader so that you can, this is called the
law of sowing and reaping.
And David, I love this, he's behaving himself wisely.
It says in Saul sent him over the men of war.
So David was valuable to Saul.
David was accepted here by his peers, it says at the end of verse five, and he was accepted
in the sight of all the people and also in the sight of Saul's servants.
So David continues to act wisely.
He's being used by God and people can just see his heart in the way that he's living
and what he's doing.
But look at what happened.
Verse six, here David was celebrated by the people.
It came to pass as they came when David was returned from the slaughter of the Philistine
that the women came out of all the cities of Israel singing and dancing to meet King
Saul with tab rays with joy and with instruments and music.
And the women answered one another as they played.
So you have this, now there's a new popular song being played on the radio, right?
It's a hit song.
There's no radio, I get it.
Go with me.
Okay.
And they're coming and here comes King Saul and now they're playing with joy, instruments
and music and the women answered one another so that you have this antiphonal, like almost
like the song going back and forth.
They are saying it, then they're saying it, then they're saying it, then they're saying
it.
It's call and response.
And said, Saul has slain his thousands.
And then they, I imagine the song to go like this.
You guys be Saul has slain his thousands.
Ready?
Right.
So, this is a hit song, man.
I can tell you, that's pretty good.
So they're going back and forth and so do you get the idea?
He's gone from being a friend, he's got these new friendships, now he's also getting some
people noticing him, some fans, right?
People start saying things about him that aren't, well, let me ask you a question.
Is this true?
How many people had David killed?
Tens of thousands?
No, not at this point.
We know he killed one.
And the guy was tall, right?
He was a big giant, right?
So this is just like, this is the kind of song they're singing and it's not even necessarily
true.
Now here's some principles I want you to hear.
We have to remind ourselves that when God uses us, just of a few things.
Number one, when we're used by God, it's His grace.
And it should be for His glory, right?
Luke 17.7 says this, write this down, go look at it later.
Here's what it says.
This is Jesus talking into His disciples.
But which of you having a servant plowing or feeding cattle will say to Him, by and by,
when He's come up from the field, go and sit down to meet.
And will not rather say to Him, make ready whether I may sup and gird thyself and serve
me till I have eaten and drunk and afterwards I shall eat and drink.
He's saying, which thing happens more often?
The person who's in charge saying, okay, the time for work is done, go and sit down and
I'll make you dinner or I'm going to sit down and you're going to fix me dinner, which is
more likely.
Typically I'm going to sit down and you fix me dinner.
That's what He's saying.
Verse nine, doth He thank that servant because He did the things that were commanded Him?
I try not.
So likewise ye, here's the point, verse 10.
So likewise ye, when you have done all those things which are commanded you say, we are
unprofitable servants, we have done that which was our duty to do.
You know what Jesus is saying?
When God uses you, when God chooses to use you as His servant, don't say, man, look at
me.
I'm lucky to have me.
Look at all these things happening.
I'm the man.
Is that the right answer?
No.
You simply say, I'm just doing what God's called me to do.
And if something good happens, it's not all on me.
It's on the Lord, right?
So you have David here and he's starting to get a public opinion.
And his public opinion is that he's just really a great guy.
And here's another principle that I want to tell you and this is something that I've been
taught and I try to remember, this is so important.
You're never as good as some people think you are.
You're never as bad as some people think you are.
My dad taught me this.
I've had other pastors that have taught me this.
Be careful of praise.
Be careful of praise because it can get to here pretty quick.
But also be careful of criticism because it can get to here pretty quick.
Are you with me?
We got to be careful about that.
Our identity is not in what other people think of us.
Our identity is in who?
It's in Christ.
We are what Christ says we are.
And so the goal is to think of Christ more than to think of ourselves.
David's being used by God and certainly that can bring friendship but it also can bring
people who start to have opinions about us.
We need to be careful about how we interact with those.
Here's the third thing.
Ready?
Number three.
God using us can bring friction.
Can bring friction.
The first thing was David and Jonathan.
The second relation was David and the people.
Now we see David and Saul.
What do you think Saul thinks about this new hit song?
Saul has slain his thousands and David his tens of thousands.
It says in verse eight.
And Saul was very wroth and the saying displeased him.
He said they have ascribed to David tens of thousands and to me they have ascribed thousands.
And what can he have more but the kingdom?
You know what he's saying?
I'm worried he's about to be the next king.
That's what's going to happen, right?
And Saul eyed David from that day forward.
God was using David.
People were noticing David.
And now David is being eyed by Saul.
Now he's got, hey, I got to watch this guy.
He came to pass on the moral of the evil spirit from God came upon Saul and he prophesied
in the midst of the house and David played with his hand as at other times and there
was a javelin in Saul's hand.
And Saul cast the javelin for he said I will smite David even to the wall with it.
Who likes violence?
It's pretty fun.
Okay.
Verse 11.
And Saul cast the javelin for he said I will smite David to the wall with it and David
avoided out of his presence twice.
And Saul was afraid of David.
Now that's interesting.
Saul was, who was afraid of who?
After I read something about, after you read something about somebody throwing a javelin
at somebody you would think they would say and David was afraid of Saul.
But the guy throwing the javelin was the one afraid, wasn't he?
He says, and Saul was afraid of David, why?
Because the Lord was with him.
Now that's an interesting thing.
Saul was rejected as king.
Do you remember that?
He said in the first week that the reason why God decided to go with David, at least
as you saw that, remember Samuel was dealing with all that, was that Saul kept making these
wrong choices, these wrong mistakes.
Saul was doing things that were disobedient to the Lord.
So God says I'm done with Saul.
I'm moving on to David.
Saul was not being obedient to God.
Saul was not a man after God's own heart.
But it was a man after God's own heart and it was very, very clear that God was with
him.
And so sometimes when you align yourself with the Lord, it's condemning to those who don't
do that.
You see where this morning in Hebrews chapter 11, it said something interesting about Noah.
Do you guys remember what it said?
It said that when Noah obeyed God, I'll read it, by faith Noah being warned of God if things
not seen as yet, move with fear, prepare an ark to the saving of his house, by the which
he what?
Condemned the world.
How did he condemn the world?
Because he's being obedient.
They have the possibility of being obedient.
God made the ark big enough to house a whole lot more people than it did and none of them
came on board.
So when Noah was being obedient to God and everybody else was, it was a condemnation
to them.
Here with Saul, David is doing the right thing.
He's just being obedient where God places him.
He's trying to bloom where he's planted.
And it's very obvious to people that are there that God was using David.
Because David had aligned himself with the Lord, he was aligning himself against Saul.
Did David ask for that?
David, he's just doing what he's told.
David's just a shepherd boy who God brings a prophet along to anoint and then now Saul,
now he's got an opportunity to see what we saw last week where he's killed Goliath and
now he's being used to being in the king's court and he's doing all the right things.
He didn't write the hit song.
They wrote the hit song.
They're the ones singing it.
And it caused Saul to be scared of David.
To the point that his fear led him to try to kill him.
And you'll see that over the next few chapters.
Therefore Saul removed him from him and made him captain over a thousand and he went out
and came in before the people.
Saul was so angry that he promoted him.
He promoted him out of the, or demoted him, whatever it was.
He got him out of the court and he was being used that way.
You know when we decide that we're going to serve the Lord, when we align ourselves with
God sometimes that means we get an enemy.
Right?
Every Christian has three enemies, the world, the flesh and the devil.
And when you are being used by the Lord sometimes that comes at a cost.
It can bring friction.
Here's the last one.
God using us can bring favor.
Now we see David's relationship with the Lord.
It says in verse 12, what does it say about David?
It says that the Lord was what?
You see that in verse 12?
It's always afraid of David.
Why?
Because the Lord was with him.
David was developing his relationship with God.
Verse 14, and David behaved himself wisely in all his ways and the Lord was with David.
Who wants the Lord to be with him?
I want that.
And I know you do too.
God chooses at times to use us.
And when he does some great things can happen.
It can bring friendships.
Who has some friendships here at our church?
God being using us and together that's so important.
Sometimes God brings, sometimes when we serve God it brings recognition.
Recognition isn't always bad.
In fact, that's something we want to get better at at our church.
We want people who are being faithful and used to the Lord to know that they are recognized
and appreciated and loved.
I'm so grateful for you folks, so many people.
Even right now there are people serving so that we can enjoy what we're enjoying here.
I'm so grateful for that.
But we got to remember to serve the Lord even if that fanfare doesn't come.
Sometimes when we serve the Lord it can bring friction.
Sometimes when we are trying to be faithful, man, it brings about problems.
When you set your allegiance towards the Lord sometimes it brings a situation where you
become an enemy of those who don't love him.
But when you're used to God, man, it can help grow your relationship with him.
And I think it's so important for us to understand that it doesn't matter really at the end of
the day.
It is not more important what people think of us.
The one who is the most important for us to think about or what's most important is what
God thinks of us.
How does that look?
Well, it looks like behaving ourselves wisely in all our ways and recognizing that the Lord,
we need the Lord's presence in our life.
John 15 says, tells us where our success can come from.
We want a fruitful ministry.
We want to be really used by God.
We studied this.
We tried to memorize this.
Abide in me and I in you as the branch cannot bear fruit of itself except it abides in the
vine.
No more can ye accept ye abiding me.
I am the vine.
You are the branches.
He that abideth in me and I in him.
The same bringeth forth much fruit for without me you can do what?
Nothing, nothing.
Would you bear had to close your eyes on me?