When Life Hits Hard: Ziglag and Spiritual Warfare

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Greetings, friends and new listeners. Welcome to the Archie Hardy Ministries program. I’m Sharon Knotts, thanking you for joining us today because we know that faith comes by hearing and hearing by the Word of God. And I’m really excited today to bring you a tremendous tool to use when you are facing intense attacks against your life on many fronts. It’s entitled Ziglag, 10 Ways to React When Satan Attacks. Hallelujah. There’s nobody like Jesus. Oh, he’s a mighty God. Hallelujah. He’s able in every situation in your life that you face now or ever will. God has already provided the victory. And he’s already given you the blueprint for success and victory in your life. And he’s given you the manual that you need to fight the enemy and to fight a good fight and have the victory. Amen? I’m going to be teaching you this morning a little bit out of the life of David. And my message this morning is basically 10 ways to react when Satan attacks. You know, to me, the gospel is summed up in John 10.10. Jesus said, Satan is a thief. And he said, the thief cometh not but to kill and to destroy, to steal and destroy men’s lives. But Jesus said, but I am come that you might have life. And you might have it more abundantly. Now clearly laid out there is Satan’s agenda. And so we’re not ignorant in any way of what he set out to do. He’s a thief and he wants to steal from you and me. It began in the Garden of Eden when he stole away… …as it were the dominion that God had given to Adam and Eve… …to have over all the earth… …and to be able to eat every day from the tree of life… but he stole that away from them and ever since then his agenda has not changed we should never be surprised by anything Satan does we should never be blown over no matter how he comes against us We may not always expect certain things to come in our life. But when they do come and we try to sit there and figure them out and try to understand them and we get into natural reasoning, all we do is end up defeating ourselves. Because the bottom line is the devil doesn’t like you. The bottom line, he hates you. And if he could not keep you from coming to Jesus, if he could not keep you from coming to the knowledge of the truth, if he could not keep you from coming to the place that you surrendered your life to the Lord and said, I belong to the Lord and I’m going to serve you and walk with you the rest of my life. If the devil failed there, he will not give up. He will seek then just to vex you, harass you, discourage you, try to hinder you and deter you from fulfilling the work that God has given you to do. If he cannot get you to go back into the world, then he’s going to try to make it so you’re not that effective in your Christian life. And have us always playing catch up. I don’t want to always be playing catch up. Amen. There may be some times in my life, yeah, I got knocked down a few times. But thank God the scripture says we’re cast down but we’re not destroyed. Amen. Somebody said we fall down but we get back up. And I don’t mean we fall down in sin. I’m talking about sometimes the devil gets a blow in because Paul said in 2 Corinthians 4, he said we are struck down, but he said we get back up. Amen. And so today we’re going to look at the life of David and we’re going to find 10 ways that we can react when we come under satanic attack. And I love the life of David so much because let me tell you something, how much comfort… Have you received in your life as a Christian from reading David’s words? How many times when there was nothing you could say to somebody, you wrote out a psalm to them? How many times have you visited a sick person, a discouraged person, or even went to a wake for someone who lost a dear loved one, and words failed you what to say? Anything would have been so trite. It just would not have fit the situation. So what do you do? You open up the book of Psalms. And you find that David said, my tongue is the pen of a ready writer. He was ready to write words because he wrote what he lived. And he lived what he wrote. Amen? Because out of all of the many traumas and trials of David’s life, he found that God is a rock. He found that God never fails. He found God to be his everlasting portion of strength. He found God could comfort him when no human being could speak a word of comfort to his heart. He found out when he felt utterly alone and felt that the enemy was too strong for him. He found that God was there. And you can read many of David’s Psalms that begin rather pitiful. And he’s crying the blues and he’s discouraged and he’s downcast. But before you get to the last verse, you’ll find that he is exalting in God. He’s already encouraged himself. He’s already said, bless the Lord, oh my soul. And all that is within me, I’ll bless his holy name. I’ll not forget his benefits. And when he didn’t know what else to do, he revisited the places of victory in his life. And he found out they gave him strength for that battle and that test. And so we’re going to read in the book of 1 Samuel. We’ll read a little bit out of chapter 27. I really want to spend our time in chapter 30. So I will just paraphrase some things for the sake of time. Because I know that most everyone here already is well familiar with David’s life. And so it’s not necessary really to read every point. But let’s turn to 1 Samuel and chapter 27. And we will read a few verses just to set the scene. That’s 1 Samuel 27 and beginning with verse 1. And David said in his heart, I shall now perish one day by the hand of Saul. And there is nothing better for me that I should speedily escape into the land of the Philistines. And Saul shall despair of me to seek me anymore in any of the coast of Israel. So I’ll escape out of his hand. And so David arose, and he passed over with six hundred men that were with him unto Achish the son of Maok, the king of Gath. And David dwelt with Achish at Gath, he and his men, every man with his household, even David with his two wives, Ahinoam and Abigail. And it was told Saul that David was fled to Gath, and he sought no more again for him. And David said unto Achish, Now if I have found grace in thine eyes, let them give me a place somewhere in town in the country that I may dwell there. For why should thy servant dwell in the royal city with thee? And then Achish gave him Ziglag that day. Wherefore Ziglag pertaineth unto the kings of Judah unto this day. And the time that David dwelt in the country of the Philistines was a full year and four months. So we find what is happening here is most of you already know that Saul was insanely jealous of David. After David killed Goliath and people began to praise David and sing his praises… Saul was the king and David was so loyal to Saul. He loved him. David looked up at him like his father. He wanted to do no more than please Saul. And yet because David had now this fame and everybody was singing his praises, that old demon of jealousy got Saul’s heart until he wanted to kill David. And he tried no less than 21 times to murder David. It just didn’t make any sense. Even his own son Jonathan would try to reason with him and say, What is wrong with you, Dad? David loves you. David would never betray you. He’s not seeking any glory for himself. He’s a true warrior. And of course, nobody else would go out there and face Goliath. You didn’t see Saul going out there, did you? No, Saul said, here, David, put on my armor and go for it, if that’s what you want to do. Nobody, all the great warriors, no one would go. But you see, David was just a teenager, and all he had was his slingshot and his five little stones. But he knew the Lord is God. Because God had already delivered him when he had to deliver the lamb out of the mouth of the lion, out of the mouth of the bear, and the mouth of the wolf. David knew his God. To him, Goliath was no more than a wolf or a lion or a bear. It would be all the same to God. And so David, we know, went out there and he slew Goliath. And after that, his fame just catapulted. But you know, whenever God elevates you and promotes you, people will be jealous. Amen. People will always be jealous. There’s people that will seek ways then to try to assassinate your character or try to pull you down or find something negative to say about you. Amen? Because the devil does not like it when he sees God’s people blessed. david was weary of playing this cat and mouse game with saul and he was just tired of running for his life one time he said to saul he said so why are you hunting me down like an animal what what is what is it what have i done to you and then saul then would get repentant he’d say i’m so sorry david i didn’t mean it you’re right and you know and things would be okay for a very short span of time and that demon of jealousy would come again that spirit would get on because it’s a spirit And that spirit of jealousy would come and it would happen over again. So finally David said, I’ve just got to get away altogether. Because as long as I’m in the borders of Israel, Saul will never cease to hunt me down. Now it’s incredible to me that David would decide the only way to get away from Saul was to go to the land of the Philistines. And not only that, he went to Achish the king of… Gath. Gath was Goliath’s hometown. So here David was going to the stronghold of his enemy and he appealed to Achish to let him stay there. Now you know God had to be in this because why would Achish agree to let David be there? But the Bible says that the heart of the king is in the hand of God. And he turns the heart of the king as he turns the rivers of waters. God can make a wicked king to be good to you. And so David was there and he had 600 men with him. Now I don’t have time to read it, but if you read other places, you’ll find out that these 600 men were the guys that would be like motorcycle guys today or something. They were the guys that nobody else wanted around. They were sort of a bunch of rag-tag men that were down on their luck. And nobody really cared for them. But David took those men because he knew that if nothing else, they had strength. They had perseverance. They had a backbone. And so he took those men and he made them mighty warriors. And so they looked up to David. And here he was in this area. And they settled there. And finally David said to the king, he says, look… We don’t need to be here in the royal city with you. Can’t you give us a place somewhere to ourselves where we can stay? I can imagine that David was walking on this tightrope because he knew that the Philistines were Israel’s enemies and David had never, ever betrayed Israel. So he wanted, it was just too close for comfort. So they gave him a place. And there in Ziglag, David and his family, his wives and all of the 600 men and their wives, they had quite a community in Ziglag. And everything went well for 16 months. David was free of Saul hounding him. He was far enough away from Achish that he wasn’t looking over his shoulder seeing what he was doing. And during that time, if we would read on, we would find out that David and his 600 men began to invade areas of the Canaanites who were Israel’s enemies. Not the Philistines, but other nations. And little by little, David and his men began to go into these areas and they would destroy the people and take the goods. Because remember, what had God told Moses and Joshua when they went into the city? into the land he said i want you to possess the land and i want you to slay all these people but they had not been obedient to god and they had a lot a lot of them live and he says if you don’t do what i tell you they will end up being thorns in your side and pricks in your eyes and i don’t know about you but i think that sounds pretty painful to me amen If you don’t get rid of all the devil out of your life, you’re always going to have a prick in your eye and a thorn in your side. And so David was actually finishing up the work that they should have done a long time before. And so as they were destroying these nations, he was free from Saul. He really didn’t have Achish looking at him. And at the same time, he was doing a work for God. Now, I tell you, that speaks a lot to me. You can be in the hardest test in your life. You can be in a situation where the devil says, here, look where I got you. I got you in a place where you don’t even have the blessing, the liberty that you should have. Look at you. You’re running from Saul. You can’t even go home anymore. You had to run and flee for your life. Here you’re on the devil’s territory. Look where I got you now. But even in the midst of that, David went out there and began to slay the enemy and push back the enemy and take the spoils. And little by little, they were getting richer and richer because they had all of these spoils. And the Bible says that they did not let any person live… …lest that they should get back to Achish and tell him what David was doing. How many know they didn’t have CNN back then? Amen. They didn’t know what David was doing. And he made sure nobody lived to tell about it. And so this was the way it was for 16 months and everything was fine. Everything was going along just wonderful under the circumstances. Amen. Until finally, and I’m going to paraphrase, this is chapter 29… Until finally, because it was bound to happen… It was bound to happen that Israel was going to have to go back to war with the Philistines. How many know the Philistines were always giving them a headache? And some people might believe they’re still over there giving them a headache today. Amen? It was bound to happen that sooner or later… War would stir up again between Israel and the Philistines. And what was going to happen? Achish came to David and said… David, you’re such a great friend and a great warrior, and we want you to go to battle with us against Israel. Can you imagine the predicament that put David in? And so they had all the armies pass through. You know, they had all their uniforms on. They were all ready to go to battle. And one after the other, all the armies passed through before the king’s And at the very end, here came David and his 600 men. And those other kings looked at Achish and said, What, are you crazy? You think we’re going to let these Hebrews go to war with us against their own people? Achish said, You don’t have to worry about David. He’s in our camp. He’s on our side. He’s all these months. David’s a good guy. Oh, you know… Saul’s his enemy too. Saul’s been trying to kill him. He’s not going to join up with Saul. That’s his enemy. Oh, you don’t have to worry about him. I trust him with my life. I feel good about David going with us. And the other one said, well, you may feel good about it. But we remember… we remember goliath you may feel good about it but we don’t and we don’t have any guarantee that in the middle of the war he may turn the tables and join up with saul said no way he is not going with us and i’m sure david tried to look very disappointed i’m sure he tried to look very upset about the whole thing And Achish was apologizing and saying, I’m so very sorry, David. If it were up to me, you deserve to go. I want you to go. But the rest of the kings have outvoted me. And they say, no, there’s no way they’re going to let you go along. I’m sorry, David, but you can’t go. And David and his men said, well, okay. I guess we’ll just go back to Ziglag and wait for you all to get home. And that’s what they did. Now, they had been away from Ziglag for three days. And because they had planned on going to war, all the men, all the soldiers had left the city unprotected, left the women and the children there alone. And now let’s turn to chapter 30 and we’ll read a few verses at a time. And it came to pass when David and his men were come to Ziglag on the third day, that the Amalekites had invaded the south and the Ziglag and smitten Ziglag and burned it with fire. They had taken the women captives that were therein. Now they slew not any, either great or small, but they carried them away and went on their way. So David and his men came to the city and behold, it was burned with fire. and their wives and their sons and their daughters were taken captive this had to be one of the bleakest days of david’s entire life and i’m sure to that point the worst day of his life when they were returning home even before they got to the city far off they saw the plumes of smoke coming out of the city and when they got to the city it was utterly burned and destroyed and there was no one there Now they had no way of knowing what had happened to their wives and to their children. And so when they looked, they came home, it was an utter shock. But thank God, because God is a God of mercy. And because ultimately, God is in control. And you always have to remember that. that even though God had allowed this to happen and allowed the enemy to come in, he did not let one of their wives or sons or daughters be slain. Amen? Sometimes your husband, your wife, Your children, someone dear to you in your family may come under satanic attack. And you don’t understand it and you surely don’t like it. And you go to God and say, Lord, what is up with this? I don’t understand what’s going on here. But don’t spend a lot of time there. Don’t spend time wasted there. Realize that God is in control. Amen. And the devil can’t go any further than God allows him to go. Amen. And when you believe and trust in God, when you look to God and say, God, I believe in you, I trust in you. I know it’s not just some Bible verse I’ve got marked with red or yellow highlighter. All things God works together for good to them that love him and are called according to his purpose. But I believe that. You’ve got to trust the Lord. They found the city was burned. They found that their loved ones were gone. And let’s look at verse 4. Then David and the people that were with him lifted up their voice and they wept until they had no more power to weep. And David’s two wives were taken captives, Ahinoam and Abigail. And David was greatly distressed for the people. Now listen to this. For the people spake of strife. Stoning him because the soul of all the people was grieved. Every man for his sons and for his daughters. But David encouraged himself in the Lord his God. And now we’re going to see the ten steps that you take when you come under attack. When something in your family, your loved ones, your marriage, your kids, your finances… When things come under severe attack. What are you going to do? How are you going to react when Satan attacks you? Because you can determine how long the attack will last. And you can determine how severe the attack will be. And you can determine how great the victory will be. How great the spoils will be. By how you respond right then in the beginning. Amen. So what is the first thing that you do when something hits you hard? You’re a human being. You’ve got emotions. You can’t help it. It’s okay to cry. It’s okay to weep. The Bible says there’s a time to cry. There is a time to weep. But there’s a time to get up and dry off your tears and move on. It’s not going to do you any good to stay there in a pity party and just cry and cry and cry. Cry and get it out. The Bible says that these were grown men. They were warriors. These were hard, tough men. They weren’t accustomed to showing their emotions. They weren’t accustomed to having soft spots. But when they came and everything was gone, the Bible says they wept until they could cry no more, until there were no more tears. Have you ever been there? Have you ever cried until you were cried out? Amen? I remember when I first came under the severe attack with my back and it just seemed like the bottom fell out of everything. It was a ripple effect that just affected everything in my life. Every relationship, everything in my life was severely affected by that. And I spent I don’t know how long just crying. Day in and day out, I’d cry myself to sleep every night. I’d cry all during the day. All I did was cry. I think I cried for a couple years because I was under such an attack. And I saw I didn’t see a way out. I was under that thing. But one day I came to the place that I realized, where is this getting me? What is this accomplishing? Absolutely nothing. Amen? There comes a time that you’ve got to… Get up and dry your tears and say, all right, we cried, we got that out, but now it’s time to be strong in the Lord. Amen. So the first thing you do is you weep, but you move on. You don’t park there. You don’t stay there. The Bible says weeping may endure for a night. But thank God joy comes in the morning. Amen. And then you don’t allow yourself to become bitter. Because that’s what was happening to David’s men. They were so overtaken with grief. Everyone for their loss. That they finally they begin to become angry and bitter. Because when you get in that place you’ve got to find someone to blame. You want to find someone to lash out at. Amen? Because it’s just too much for you. You want to say, what if you hadn’t done that? And if you hadn’t said this? And if that hadn’t happened? Oh my, I spent a long time in that boat too. And let me tell you, it goes down just like the other one. They’re all sinking ships. You can revisit that what if all day long, but it’s not going to change anything. Amen. Hindsight is the perfect science. You can look back and see all the places where you missed it. All the places where you should have, you could have, but you didn’t. But you know what? That’s not going to help you now. It’s no point in sitting there and having a pity party and letting the devil sow bitterness in your heart. The Bible says, take heed and beware of a root of bitterness that springs up quickly. I don’t think anything grows any quicker than a root of bitterness. That thing can grow overnight. You can go to bed upset. You’re genuinely upset. But you can wake up the next morning bitter, angry. How many know that? Something happened overnight. Instead of you letting the Lord take that thing, you munched on it and you let the devil talk to you. And then you get up the next day and it’s worse. Can you imagine that these men now spoke of stoning David? What good would that have done? What would that have accomplished if they would have stoned David? He was their leader. These people did not have leadership capabilities. Or they wouldn’t have been scattered all over the place and nobody wanted them to be around. They needed David’s leadership. Now with David at the helm, he was able to make soldiers out of these men. but they didn’t have that ability what would have been accomplished if they would have stoned david they would have lost their leadership how many say amen and sometimes when things go wrong the devil tries to get you pitted against somebody else if something happens in your home or in your marriage then the devil tries to put a wedge between husband and wife or parents and children and then tries to drive that wedge in there and then that thing grows and gets worse When in fact you two need to come together. Amen. Because two will put ten thousand to flight. And when there’s disunity. All the devil does is have a field day. He just comes on in and takes more and takes more. That’s the trick of the enemy. Amen. That’s why Peter told us. He said make sure that you don’t allow bitterness to come in. He said because when you do. And you are fighting with one another. Your prayers are hindered. And how many know when you’re under attack, you don’t need your prayers hindered? Amen. You need to come together in unity. So the first thing is weep, but move on. The second thing is don’t allow yourself to become bitter. Amen. What a powerful word of encouragement. Ziglag, 10 ways to react when Satan attacks. You know, we all love David, the shepherd, the warrior, the king, and especially the psalmist, because no matter what was going on in his life, he found a way to climb out of the pit, evade the enemy, deliver God’s people, and to give God the praise. Many of his psalms start out in despair, but they usually always end in an anthem of praise and expectation of good. But the experience of Ziklag may have been the lowest point of his life. Forced to flee the jealous and murderous King Saul, he found himself taking refuge of all places amongst the Philistines, Israel’s avowed enemy, and the home of Goliath, whom he had slain as a boy with his slingshot. Amazingly, King Achish befriended David and his 600 ragtag men and gave them the city of Ziglag to live in. But to keep up the farce, they had to go to battle with the Philistines against other nations. It was all going fine until the day the Philistines went to war with Israel again. But mercifully, the Philistine generals did not trust David to go against his own people, and David and his men did not have to blow their cover. Then things got worse. When they returned to Ziglag, they found it on fire, and their wives and children kidnapped. And adding to this atrocity, David’s men, mourning their losses, wanted to stone David. This was rock bottom. He had lost his family too, and now his men had turned on him. But when there was no other source of encouragement, David encouraged himself in the Lord. Then he did 10 things that reversed the disaster and brought one of their greatest victories. Don’t miss one of these 10 strategies. Order 10 Ways to React When Satan Attacks, Zig Lag, on CD for a love gift of $10 or more. Request offer SK139. Mail to R.G. Hardy Ministries, P.O. Box 1744, Baltimore, Maryland, 21203. Or go online to rghardy.org. Once again, the offer for Ziglag is SK139. Send to P.O. Box 1744, Baltimore, Maryland, 21203. Until next time, this is Sharon Otzain, Maranatha.