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Weimar University

Don Mackintosh

Dealing With Discouragement

Well, let's pray together and then we'll open the Word.

Father in heaven, thank you today for a place to come and worship here in the midst of the snow.

And we ask that your presence could be with us as we open your word to be able to understand it.

Dealing with discouragement is the title of our message today, and our text that we just heard.

But David strengthened himself in the Lord.

And when you're studying the Bible, of course, you want to ask 3 basic questions of every text that you open up.

And I've been teaching this to some people this week.

What is the problem that the text is talking about?

In this text we just read that David was betrayed by his friends and supposed people that were to support him.

Have you ever had your friends turn on you, betray you?

And they were so upset with him that they were ready to kill him.

I mean, when you think about that, and if you've ever read the story of David, none of these people would have been alive at all without David.

You could say he started their company, and he paid all their benefits.

And now they're turning on him, and they're saying, you know, it's your fault, and we think we might kill you.

How many think that might be a very discouraging day?

And then the text had a solution what was the solution the solution was the Lord that's always a good solution how many think turning to the Lord might be a good solution So Jesus is not all you need until sometimes Jesus is all you have.

The Lord is not all you need until He's the only thing you have, and many times people don't think of that first, they think of it last.

But it really should be the first thing we think of in terms of the solution, right?

So number 1, the problem was betrayal and threats.

It says, but David strengthened himself in the Lord.

So that process is what I want to talk about a little bit today.

It's not just evidence by saying that, you know, how do you do that?

Well first of all probably you have to be in the Lord to be strengthened in the Lord.

Come to the Lord and say, help, I want to be in you, I need help.

Now, you know, this was written, of course, this text for Samuel over in Israel.

I just was there this last week, and there's many exciting sites.

This is the site of Masada, where all the inductees from the military go, even now, the Air Force and the Army, and they go and reminded of what happened there in Masada, which was destroyed in 70 AD by the Romans, and the remaining Jews that were there, about 1, 000 of them were killed, or actually they committed suicide rather than be killed by the Romans.

And so they take their military there every year and they say never again, never again will this happen, we never want this to happen, this is why we have a strong military.

Now, I might point out to you that there were Jews who accepted the Messiah and there were Jews that rejected the Messiah.

And some would say it was not the Messiah, I'm not gonna get into that debate, but there were those that accepted Jesus as the Messiah and those who said he was not the Messiah.

Everybody that accepted Jesus as the Messiah was a Jew.

So the majority of people that accepted Jesus Christ as the Messiah were Jews.

And when they accepted him, he said to them, you're gonna see Jerusalem surrounded by the Romans.

It was the ones who did not listen who stayed, and they were destroyed.

The ones who strengthened themselves in the Lord never even went to Masada and never were destroyed.

Another place is Qumran, where the Dead Sea Scrolls are.

And the Dead Sea Scrolls are interesting because they predate any manuscripts that we have of the Old Testament.

And they discovered that whatever had been said a thousand years before was being said the same way in these now more recent manuscripts.

And 1 of the most fascinating 1 that gripped my attention was that 8 Daniel scrolls were discovered there.

And there were no disagreements in those scrolls against the Masoretic text.

So the Book of Daniel, some of us have been studying this week, but especially the prophecies of the Book of Daniel, there was no disagreements whatsoever from those manuscripts that were 1, 000 years earlier to the ones that we now have.

Which means that the Bible can be trusted.

The Bible is a book that has stood the test of time.

And then another place to visit there was the lowest place on Earth.

And maybe you thought you were at the lowest place on Earth in your life, but no.

And the Dead Sea is the lowest place on Earth.

All the things down there, this is the lowest restaurant on Earth.

But that also is interesting because near there they have discovered the ancient cities of Sodom and Gomorrah as well, which were destroyed by fire, as the Bible said they would be and the Lord said they would be.

And you can actually find sulfur there that still, if you light it up, it will flame up.

And then you see people floating there in the Dead Sea.

And by the way, it's best to float face up in the Dead Sea, or any sea for that matter.

But 1 guy that went with me on 1 tour decided that he would dive into the Dead Sea.

And the salt content is so high in the Dead Sea that it's caustic.

And he was screaming, had to go to the emergency room and have his eyes lavaged.

And you do not feel refreshed at all when you get out of the Dead Sea.

You don't just go, man, I'd just love to go back in there again.

No, I didn't go in this time because I'd been in, you know, once.

So, now in the midst of that parched desert area of that wilderness area, where you don't think there's anything for miles that you could find that could sustain you, because the sea, the Dead Sea, if you try and drink that water, you're not going to live very long drinking that.

So in that parched area, there's a little valley called En Gedi.

And the Bible mentions En Gedi a number of times.

And when David was trying to strengthen himself in the Lord, this is where he would go.

And I want to suggest today that if you're wanting to strengthen yourself in the Lord, you need to have a place you go to strengthen yourself.

And I wanna suggest that the Sabbath is that time of En Gedi that's set aside for strengthening, and I wanna suggest later on that maybe even a church like this is a place where you come to draw strength and be strengthened in the Lord.

But in Getty, in terms of its physical location, mentioned a number of times, and it had been given to the tribe of Judah, which is what David's family line came from, and also Messiah came from.

It would come from the tribe of Judah, and this was 1 of the cities that was given to Judah, and there in the middle of the wilderness is this beautiful, well what does it mean literally, fountain of the goat or of the kid, fountain of the goat.

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Dealing With Discouragement

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