Join us in this episode of Real Life Radio as Pastor Jack Hibbs explores the contrasting kingdoms of Saul and David. In a thought-provoking discussion, Pastor Jack delves into the notion that our lives can be crushed by anxiety and distress. Yet, he argues, it is in these times of disconnect that God builds His kingdom within us. Learn how the turmoil of King Saul’s reign contrasts with the God-ordained future of David and how a seemingly ill-fated group of 400 men found destiny through faith.
The Bible tells us in 1 John that we, before we came to Christ, and it’s a temptation after we’ve come to Christ, is we love things like power. It’s in the human heart. So Satan offers people power.
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This is Real Life. Welcome to Real Life Radio with Pastor Jack Hibbs. I’m David Jay, thanking you for joining us today as we listen, learn, and are challenged by God’s Word, the Bible. What if 2026 wasn’t about doing more, but about knowing God more? This January, we’re featuring one of the most powerful and timeless books on Christian faith, Knowing God, written by J.I. Packer. Now, this classic has helped millions of believers move from knowing about God to actually knowing God personally. With deep biblical insight and heart-centered focus, Packer invites you to explore God’s character, his love, and what it really means to walk with him. It’s not a quick read, it’s a life-changing one. Start your year with truth that will reshape your mind, strengthen your heart, and deepen your faith.
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That’s Knowing God by J.I. Packer. Get your copy for a gift of any amount at jackhibbs.com. On today’s edition of Real Life Radio, Pastor Jack continues now with his series called First Samuel and a message titled The Two Kingdoms. Samuel of the Old Testament was the last judge of Israel and the first of her prophets. So here in Chapter 22, we’ll consider how King Saul is growing increasingly paranoid and violent, causing David to find refuge in a cave. You see, King Saul and David, they’re like two contrasting kingdoms. Saul with his worldly kingdom versus David’s God-ordained kingdom. Saul is the king, but ruled by fear, jealousy, and spiritual darkness. David is not yet king, but he’s gathered a kingdom of misfits, not defined by political power, but by faith, purpose, and a divine calling. So today, Pastor Jack teaches that life can deliver some crushing blows, anxiety and distress. It can make us feel dejected, even lonely. But in our disconnect, if we choose to trust in God, it will build confidence, knowing that he is building his kingdom inside of us, starting with our hearts. Now, with his message called The Two Kingdoms, here’s pastor and Bible teacher Jack Hibbs.
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Our desire is to exalt the Lord Jesus Christ. Our desire is to have people experience the forgiveness, the joy, and the love that we’ve come to know. We don’t mean harm upon anybody. But when somebody comes in here who’s had a rough go at life, we kind of hide our smile or our grin because we know that they’ve come to the right place. Not the building. And frankly, not you or I, but they’ve come seeking Jesus Christ. And with that, we kind of have a smile because we love to watch what’s gonna happen in their lives. They’re gonna go from one kingdom to a new kingdom. They’re gonna be converted from a Saul type of kingdom to a Jesus, to a David type of kingdom. It’s an amazing thing. The calling that God placed upon these two men David was anointed, ordered by God through the prophet. But remember, even though that same prophet came to Saul and anointed Saul, the contrast is that Saul was the king of the people, so to speak, rather than the king of God. And so there’s a contrasting king with a contrasting kingdom. And both are at play, both are at war, both are energized, one by demonic powers, one by God’s powers. And you would think that God’s kingdom, that God’s realm would be so much more successful, so much more polished, so much more perfect to the naked eye. That’s not the case. Not at all. Saul’s doing everything he can to impress the world. Note this. In our story, in the text before us, what promise, listen, what promise does David say to 400 of this motley crew men to get these guys to follow him? Does he say anything to get them to follow? Not a word. He only speaks to the one young man as the priest had been slain. Well, Saul’s out to kill you. Stick with us. Stick with me. You’ll be safe. But to the 400 men, what promise did he make? Did he say, you know what? You guys in debt, are you? Ah, if you just tear off a little portion of your robe and give it to me, and actually you keep the torn off portion and give me your robe, and you put the torn off portion of your robe in an envelope, in 30 days you’ll have a gold-plated robe. Sound familiar? If you just call in and pledge that money, you’ll be rich. Well, anybody could tell you that just doesn’t work like that. David makes no promises. You’re in debt. The guys show up. David, apparently, according to the narrative that’s before us, David doesn’t even ask them. It sounds like they volunteer it. Hey, we’re in debt. A lot of us guys, we’re in debt. Out of us 400, a bunch of us are in debt. Well, excuse me, we don’t happen to be in debt, but some of us are really discontent. Well, what about the rest of you? We’re in distress. Well, they’re going to be following David soon. And all of those Ds, the debt, the discontent and distress, is going to be changed around to destiny, man. God’s going to do an awesome thing. This is a great, great chapter of conversion and of new life. In debt, distress, discontent. First of all, the word distress… The word in Hebrew means to be brought into a passageway or into a hallway that’s smaller than your physical size. It’s to be brought into a place that you can’t squeeze through. I was on an airplane today. In fact, I just did this just now, and I just realized how sore I am from that flight today. I felt like I flapped outside the plane with my hands, with my arms. Why? Because I was sitting next to a guy whose shoulders were like this wide and I was pressed against the window for two hours and 20 minutes. I’m sitting like this, trying to be a nice guy. And it was miserable. And then as soon as the plane landed, I said, stand up, stand up, stand up. Get out, get in the aisle, stand up. And I stood up and I went, oh, oh, oh. I was crushed into a little spot. That’s what this word means. And life, have you ever been involved in life? When you feel like you’ve been just crunched into a spot and that spot, that channel or that roadway or that hallway or that thing is just too small for your life. We say maybe the walls are caving in on me. I can’t take it anymore. I’m crushed. Could be a message. It could be a relationship. It could be whatever it’s pressuring. Can you think tonight of something that has brought you into that place of just crushing in on you? The pressure is too much. Listen, we all know what that’s like. It’s sad, I think. I think we all know what that’s like, where the pressure’s so tense. that we’ve been brought into a narrow place? Have you ever been under such pressure, emotional or spiritual or mental pressures, that it affects you physically? and you find yourself maybe over hours or over days waking up and realizing that you’ve been taking really shallow breaths. Have you ever been in that place? And then you realize, what am I doing? And you actually take a big breath to fill up your lungs because you’re almost panting like a deer or an animal in the wilderness. You’re just such under pressure that it’s caving in on you. There’s nothing physically on you, but you feel you’re being crushed. That’s that word. You’re being crushed. These guys are being crushed by the situations of life. What’s interesting is they have come from a kingdom that Saul ruled over. And what is implied here is that that kingdom under Saul’s rule brought them, some of them anyway, to a place where they felt like they were being crushed. That the life was being extracted right out of them because of life’s circumstances upon them. And so… Some of them are in distress. What can you do with a bunch of guys in distress? In the flesh, nothing. And if you’ve ever been there, you can’t even take a nap. I mean, you can take a nap. It doesn’t do any good. Then you go to sleep at night. It doesn’t do any good. You toss and turn. You wake up. You just wasted time. These guys are probably worthless. Well, some of the guys, they were in debt. The word here in the Hebrew, you know what it means? It’s great. It means to owe more than you are personally worth. And the Hebrew word means both figuratively and factually. That’s sad. You know what it means? Listen. Actually, it means that you owe more money out than if you liquidated all that you had and you could not pay the bill. You couldn’t come close. You owe more money. They owed more money than if they sold all their donkeys and all of their wagons and all of their whatever they had. And by the time they sold all their lands and everything they had, they were still in debt. They were bankrupt. And so they come to David. They flee one kingdom and they go to another kingdom, which in the eyes of the flesh is not even a kingdom. What does David have? He’s hiding in a cave. Hi, we’re here to, we’re here to, well, we’re here to, you’re gonna be our king, I guess. And can you imagine they’re looking around? Where are we? What are you hiding in here for? What kind of a deal is that? Hey, everybody, if you guys are in distress, discontent, and you’re in debt, come on over. I’m going to introduce you to this guy. You’re going to meet this guy. He’s really cool. And he’s going to just lead us out of all this stuff. Great, where does he live? Oh, he doesn’t have a house. He’s going to lead me out of debt? He doesn’t have a house? He’s going to take away all my troubles? Yeah, he’s a king. Oh, he’s a king. Where’s his palace? Oh, down near the Negev, just off the Dead Sea, up some canyon of the goats. where you gotta climb up there and this is a hole, you crawl in this hole and that’s his palace. Well, really. Does he have a crown? No, but he’s got some really cool curly hair. His name’s David. Well, what’s his experience? His experience, he plays a mean harp. Really good harp player. He can get down on that harp. And sheep, he’s a good shepherd. Legend has it that he killed a giant with the giant’s own sword after hitting him in the head with a rock. But I don’t know. But come on, he’ll take care of us. That’s nuts. Who would make that decision? Who would do that? This sounds crazy. Unless life has so squeezed you I wish I had a little doll right now to illustrate this. You squeeze it in the middle and the eyes get real big. You know? Like that. Eyes get big. When the pressures of life squeeze you, it’s a good thing spiritually that your eyes open up. Because they were squeezed out of one kingdom right into another one. But that kingdom was just being born.
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You’re listening to Real Life with Pastor Jack Hibbs. To learn more about this ministry or to catch up on some previous episodes, go to JackHibbs.com. That’s JackHibbs.com. And now let’s get back to today’s message. Once again, here’s Pastor Jack.
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And so these guys that are in debt, they owe more than what they’re worth factually than figuratively. That’s very sad. They owe more factually where in a symbolic sense, their life, if given, couldn’t pay their debt either. You know, somebody would say, well, you know, we’re in debt, but here we go. We just paid that off. We gave everything I have, but at least we have one another. Or at least we have our lives. The word means here, give me everything you got and then give me your blood. I’ll take your head and your hands and your feet and your legs. And when I’m all done cutting you up and selling your pieces around town, I still won’t get the money you owe me. That’s how broke these guys are. Who in the world would not only… Go to a king who’s got no apparent kingdom, but what kind of a king, even an apparent king like David, in the eyes of the world would accept these losers? Makes no sense. Well, there’s a lot of typology going on here. The Bible says that Jesus is the son of David. Genetically, bloodline, it’s true. Jesus didn’t have a place. Jesus sometimes had to hide outside of Jerusalem in the hill country of Judea because he was being pursued. Who was pursuing King David? Saul, the king of another realm. Who does the Bible say that there is a king of another realm spiritually, a dark king, a king that resides over this fallen world? Satan. Satan. And the people who work or the people who are bound in his kingdom, what are the things that take place? Watch this. I find this extremely exciting. What does Saul say to his subjects? Will the son of Jesse give you vineyards and give you wealth and give you things? Sound familiar? What did Satan say to Jesus? Just bow down and worship me and I’ll give you the kingdoms of the world. Hey man, that’s how Satan peddles his goods. Can you imagine if he showed up on the scene? I am Satan, follow me. People would say, oh yuck, get out of here. He doesn’t do that. He’s too smart for that. He’s got time too, you know. He’s got time. He works in people’s lives and he drops thoughts in there. And if you don’t know Jesus and the Holy Spirit’s not dwelling in you, your thought tank’s wide open with no lid on it. And he just kind of throws stuff over there. Puts all kinds of things in there. And it lands in there and you start thinking, hmm. I think I’m going to do this. I don’t think I’m going to do that. And you know what? He will prosper you in that way. You know that? Satan will protect, keep people blind just long enough to get them hooked on things that Satan knows that people love. The Bible tells us in 1 John that we, before we came to Christ, and it’s a temptation after we’ve come to Christ, is we love things like power. It’s in the human heart. So Satan offers people power. Listen, power blinds you. Power is dangerous. And if a person begins to see power as they’re the reason why they’re powerful, man, now you got a lunatic on your hand. In fact, it’s called megalomania or a megalomaniac. I am power. You know, you got Saddam Hussein over there. I am going to conquer the Middle East. I am going to blow up the world. And he prints up currency with his own name on it in his face. That’s a nut. And there’s highways you see on the news where they’re driving down the highway and they got billboards, signs. Whose picture’s on there? Saddam, he’s like this. I don’t know what that means, but it doesn’t look friendly. He’s always going like this to people. Have you seen the news? What is that? Why don’t you wave like this? His whole realm is on him. It’s all about him. Bizarre. Power. Power’s intoxicating, freaks people out. People can’t handle it. Money. Paul says that the love of money and the pursuit of money and those who seek after it pierce themselves through with many sorrows. Have you honestly, come on, have you ever really met a very rich person who’s really happy? It’s rare. And the ones that are trying to be happy or even kind of close, you see them nervous because they’re constantly being sued by people who don’t have any money. And they worry about everything. Oh, but I got money. Satan blinds people with money. And then just that thing of influence that comes from beauty or whatever Madison Avenue’s pumping up this week It’s a tremendous thing, and it’s of that kingdom. It’s of that realm. It manifests itself from the heart of Satan into the lives of men and women in the world. And we were all there. God’s delivered us from it, but the temptation still pursues even the most devoted Christian. Why? Because we once belonged to a kingdom. And that ruler was the prince of the power of the air of this world, says the Bible. He was a king, so to speak. Now, I’m going to share something with you that I read by the wonderful godly man who’s now with Jesus, Alan Redpath. And Alan Redpath talks about this very thing. And he says that… Satan, Lucifer at the time, who was one of God’s, of course, the most anointed cherubs is the scripture. And Ezekiel 28 and Isaiah 14 talks about him and his attributes. That when Satan fell in his sin, that prior to that he was to be in some sort of dominion over the earth. But in his fall, he lost all that, and God created man. And in Psalm 8 and in Genesis, you hear how God gave dominion to Adam over this planet and to till it and to take care of it and to nurture it and all that kind of stuff. And Redpath points out in his book when he’s talking about this that there has got to be an extreme hatred that Satan has for mere human beings. And it is interesting to think because, first of all, we can be redeemed. Angels cannot. If they’re fallen, they cannot be saved. They can’t be brought back. It’s only for mankind to be brought back, humankind. The scripture teaches that. That God loves us with a special love. And what’s funny is we have never seen God. Angels do. Satan sees God. We’ve never seen him, but we love God. And to get more into that, you can read a commentary on that thought. It’s called the book of Job. Job loved God. Drove Satan nuts. And you read the book of Job, and it’s a tremendous witness of a man’s love for his God who he has never seen before. and an insult to a fallen angel by the name of Lucifer who stood in the presence of God and disobeyed him to his face. What kingdom are we in? His kingdom or God’s kingdom? You say, well, I’m in God’s kingdom. Good. Then take your distress and your debt and your discontent and bring it to the Lord. The word discontent here, discontent means discontent. These men became bitter over prolonged disappointments. They became bitter. Well, what’s amazing about these 400 men In the book of Chronicles, you’ll find out that these 400 men became David’s mighty men of valor. They became, listen, the most, to this day, the most famous. And even in Israel, they look up to these men who are long gone. It was the greatest military force that Israel had that came through these men. You want to know why? David poured his life into these 400 guys and they turned around and poured their lives into the Israeli army and they became the greatest force on the planet at that time. And it all came from a bunch of losers. Men discontent, in debt, in distress. And in this we see a picture, a snapshot of the redemptive work of Jesus Christ.
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pastor and Bible teacher, Jack Hibbs, here on Real Life Radio and his message called The Two Kingdoms. Thanks for spending some time with us today. You know, this message is part of Pastor Jack’s series called First Samuel. It’s a series that highlights the prophet Samuel, who was called by God during one of Israel’s darkest times to bring the people back to a heart of true worship. And we’ll continue on the next edition of Real Life Radio. You ever felt like something’s missing in your life? Maybe you’ve been searching for answers for peace or a sense of purpose. You know, the truth is those longings are there because you were created to know God. At JackHibbs.com, there’s a tab called Know God. It’s designed to help you discover what it truly means to have a relationship with God. This isn’t about religion. It’s about understanding who God is and why he loves you and how you can find hope and forgiveness through Jesus Christ. The page breaks it down in a simple, clear way, answering common questions and guiding you through the steps of faith. It’s a great place to explore and reflect whether you’re just curious or you’re ready to make that next step. So don’t miss out on the most important relationship you’ll ever have. Visit that tab called KnowGod at JackHibbs.com and start your journey today. That’s JackHibbs.com because knowing God changes everything in your life for the better. Take that next step. Explore and reflect at the KnowGod section at JackHibbs.com. This program is made possible by the generous contributions of you, our listeners. Visit us at jackhibbs.com. That’s jackhibbs.com. Until next time, Pastor Jack Hibbs and all of us here at Real Life Radio wish for you solid and steady growth in Christ and in His Word. We’ll see you next time here on Real Life Radio.
