Lessons From Benaiah On Faith

Dallas “Gar” Bozeman : Be Strong : 2 Samuel 23:20-23 : March 18, 2018

Benaiah serves as a biblical picture for godly holiness and an example for us of boldly fighting temptation. Our flesh is weak, but Jesus Christ came to conquer what we could not. Like Benaiah, we must take initiative, engage our flesh, boldly speak the truth, and lead our families in righteousness. Additional passages: Numbers 11:4-6.

Transcript – Lessons From Benaiah On Faith

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Good morning. Has it been a good weekend? That’s awesome, man. Everybody watching on Livestream now, this is session four, our final session of the weekend. We want to welcome you guys. Man, it has been incredible to see 300 men come together like this. And to hear 300 men in a place like this, in this tight space, praising Jesus, man. That’s pretty powerful. That’s awesome. We were listening to Brody speak earlier this week and he was telling the story about the three that went to the well at Bethlehem to retrieve the water. And while I’m sitting there, I thought, it’s like, man, there’s a guy in the audience named Rob and Rob was the best officer I ever worked under. I love that guy to death. But if Rob said to me one day, sitting on a rooftop in Iraq, oh, that I could have an aquafina from the gates of Sodder City, I’d have been like, I’d have been like, guess what, bud? I got some iodine tabs and I know a real good irrigation ditch right over there. We’ll shake that stuff up, it’ll be all right. Those guys are gutsy, man. I want to read something to you guys.

I want to read a letter. And you guys will know who it is shortly, shortly after. But this is how this letter goes. For decades, Saddam Hussein has tortured, imprisoned, raped, and murdered the Iraqi people, invading neighboring countries without provocation, and threatened the world with weapons of mass destruction. The time has come to end this reign of terror. On your young shoulders rest the hopes of mankind. When I give you the word, together we will cross the line of departure, close with those forces that choose to fight, and destroy them. Our fight is not with the Iraqi people, nor is it with the members of the Iraqi army who choose to surrender. While we will move swiftly and aggressively aggressively against those who resist, we will treat all others with decency, demonstrating chivalry and soldierly compassion for people who have endured a lifetime of oppression under Saddam’s oppression. Chemical attack, treachery, and use of the innocent as human shields can be expected, as can other unethical tactics. Take it all in stride. Be the hunter, not the hunted. Never allow your unit to be caught with its guard down. Use good judgment and act in the best interest of our nation.

You’re a part of the world’s most feared and trusted force. Engage your brain before you engage your weapon. Share your courage with each other as we enter the uncertain terrain north of the line of departure. Keep faith in your comrades on your left and your right in the Marine air overhead. Fight with a happy heart and a strong spirit. For the mission’s sake, our country’s sake. And the sake of the men who carried the division’s colors in past battles, who fought for life and never lost their nerve, carry out our mission and keep your honor clean. Demonstrate to the world there is no better friend and no worse enemy than a U.S. Marine. Signed, J.N. Mattis, Major General, United States Marine Corps. That’s right. You know all the Marines said? Yeah, yeah. Man, I can’t even read that without it shaking me, right? Because I know what this means. Like, this is a man who knows that he’s about to send young men into battle, but he’s speaking to their hearts. I mean, look at the words he uses here, right? Soldierly compassion. Share your courage. Keep faith in your comrades. Fight with a happy heart for the sake of your legacy, right?

Like this man knows what’s at the heart of men. Like we’ve been designed with a spirit to fight battles. And our battles may not be physical, but ingrained in us, this speaks to us as men for a reason. The Lord has designed us to be compassionate, but at the same time have the ability to protect and defend and to wage war. So today, this morning, I want to read the story of Benaiah. And Benaiah is one of those guys who had this priestly role, but at the same time he understood that the Lord called some men to fight and actually called all men to fight in one way or another and Benaiah embraced that. So let’s turn to 2 Samuel 23. So I’ll give you a little history on Benaiah, right? Benaiah comes from this village, this South Judean village called Kabzeel and it says in Chronicles that he is the grandson of a valiant warrior and the son of a priest. So, you know, if you think about the way Judah was at the time and being on the south, like being on a border town, you’re open to these guys trying to cross and to fight all the time.

So for his grandfather to be a valiant warrior, that probably says something. That says a lot. That means that his grandfather was probably one of the ones that established this and fought to keep this space for the land of Israel. Now, Benaiah, Benaiah, I’ll say it 10 different times while we’re here, all right, he was a priest. He came from the line of Aaron, like he was a Levi. So he came from a history of priests. If we look at the way things work out and the way they typically go, like a priest should be a priest, some of them like Ezekiel and Jeremiah, they became prophets. Benaiah is the only one, the only priest to ever become a soldier. That’s because he saw in himself and he knew that he had an ability that the others didn’t. He had an ability to fight. The Lord had gifted him to wield a sword and to make war. And he said, that’s the best way I can serve the king and I can serve my God. So that’s what I’m going to do. So he became a soldier instead. Ben-Ai was also the captain of the guard.

So what David did is, you know, David had the three and then there’s Ben-Ai. So to be the captain of the guard, what it meant is Ben-Ai was captain of David’s bodyguard. Like these are the guys that are really close to him. And particularly the guys he’s over, they’re called Cherethites and Pelathites. And what this is, these are kind of spin-offs of the word from the Philistines. So what happened, if you guys remember, when Brody talked about that Saul was pursuing David and David fled, when David fled, he fled and became basically a mercenary in Philistia. And while he was there, he used his influence to start kind of picking off these smaller opponents of Israel while the Philistines thought that they were kind of, he was doing their bidding and he was going against the nation of Israel. But he was always using it to advance the nation because he knew that he was the king that was going to inherit this. So what happened though, even though David had killed Goliath and had slayed the Philistines and they’re kind of trying to use him in this picture, strong men, strong men like Mattis and great generals and great leaders, they attract people to themselves.

So while David’s down in Philistia working as a mercenary and leading men in combat, these men get attached to him. So these Cherethites and these Pelathites, these are the Philistines that are still loyal to David even after he’s leaving. He’s going back to Israel to claim the throne and they’re like, I’m gonna go with David. If you think about being a king, man, what a great place that is to be where you’ve got a bodyguard that’s loyal to no one but you. Like these Cherethites and Pelathites and the guard, David and David alone. They’re not Israelites, no allegiance to the army, no allegiance to the nation, just allegiance to David, that’s it. And these are some bad dudes. I mean, these are the guys who have proven themselves in battle time and time again. Some people will say, well, this is kind of like the Secret Service to David. It’s not like, this is more like, have you guys ever heard of the CAT team? Right, the Secret Service has a CAT team. It’s a combat arms team. And what these guys do, they are the counter-attack, right? Secret Service, they coordinate everything. Somebody comes after the president, they scoop him up, they get him in a vehicle, and they go on.

They don’t really fight back. The CAT team, these are the guys that roll around in the Suburbans with the mini guns, bifold hatch opens up, they come out and they’ll start buzzing everybody, alright? These guys are bad, they train hard, they train real hard. These guys are tier one for what they do. This is more of like Benea’s guard here. This is the kind of guys he has around him, guys that are ready and willing to counterattack at a moment’s notice. He also entrusts them with like these special tasks. You know, later on whenever we get to Solomon, and, you know, David passes away, passes the throne onto his son. There’s still people in opposition of the throne and what God is putting together. And they, Solomon says, Benai, I need to go take care of it. He goes and he starts killing some bad generals, some dudes that have proven themselves. Benai goes and hunts them down and kills them. Like, these are some solid guys that he’s got around him. So let’s look at 2 Samuel and hear about what Benai did. 2nd Samuel 23:20 and Benaiah the son of Jehoiada was a valiant man of Kabzeel, a doer of great deeds.

He struck down two ariels of Moab. No, listen, we don’t really know what ariel means. It’s kind of like one of these lost words. The King James Version, what they did is they said, well, it sounds like the Hebrew word for lion. So they think this is like lion-like men is what he’s saying, but we’re not really where the Ariel men are. We just know that these are some bad guys. All right, two Ariel of Moab. He also went down and struck down a line in a pit on a day when snow had fallen. That’s kind of a big deal. I mean, a line in a pit on a snowy day, kind of a big deal. All right, next. And he struck down an Egyptian, a handsome man. The Egyptian had a spear in his hand, but Benaiah went down to him with a staff and snatched the spear out of the Egyptian’s hand and killed him with his own spear. These things did Benaiah the son of Jehoiada, and won a name beside the three mighty men. Now 23, I like 23. He was renowned among the 30, but he did not attain to the three.

And David set him over his bodyguard. All right, he didn’t attain to the three. That makes me like him more because that means he’s an NCO. I like that, right? He’s a non-commissioned, he’s an enlisted guy. He didn’t attain to the three. So this is a guy, right? He could have lived an easy life. Binea was in the lineage of a priest. He could have done priestly duties. He could have stayed there. But the Lord had gifted him to wield a sword and he feared the Lord more than he feared battle or anything else and he went in headlong and said, I’m going to use whatever giftings I’ve got to serve the Lord faithfully. So let’s look at the first one with the MOABs, all right? So he struck down two aerials of MOABs. Two. Not just one, two. Now we don’t know the context. We don’t know if this is in a battle or if he’s met these two guys alone or how it’s playing out, but if we’re saying that these guys are aerials or these are lion-like men, this isn’t some B team rolling in where he’s just got two random, you know, guys on the field that are kind of typical that he struck down.

That wouldn’t be noteworthy in scripture. He has killed two mighty men of Moab in this battle. And what’s good to know about Moab is putting this in context, right? So the Moabites, the Moabites are always associated with Israel, but they’re kind of always at war with Israel too. These are the descendants of Lot. If you remember David’s great-grandmother Ruth, also a Moabite. But these are not just the descendants of Lot, these are the descendants of Lot’s incestuous relationship with his daughter. So Israel and Moab have always kind of butted heads because of this fallen out. Moab has always represented flesh out of control. This is the result of a man under the authority of God who lets his flesh get the best of him and he falls into sin and temptation. So this is what these men represent. Now if we look at it, right, the people of Moab dissented a lot. The battle for your holiness is a daily battle against the flesh. The picture here that we have of him striking down the Moabites is a picture of how we’re called to battle our flesh on a daily basis. Listen guys, if you know that your flesh is causing you to sin, you have to battle it, right?

We fight but we fight smartly. If I know, like if I’m my guy and I know if I get alone at night, And I’m in an affair, I’m seeking out other women, right? I need to lose that phone number. If I know that if I go in my room after 10 o’clock at night and I get in front of a computer and more than likely I’m going to look at pornographic images, then I don’t put myself in that situation. If we go back to General Mattis’ letter, what did he say? He said, Engage your brain before you engage your rifle. When you fight spiritually, engage your brain before you engage anything else. You have to fight intelligently. Don’t put yourself in bad situations and expect that you’re going to be able to overcome the flesh. The flesh is weak. It is proven weak time and time again. If the flesh was strong, then there would have been no need for Jesus Christ. He came to accomplish what the flesh could not. Next, we have this account of Benaiah where he strikes down this Egyptian. Now this Egyptian, this Egyptian was seven feet tall and they said he had a giant spear.

Someone described this giant spear like being nine feet long with a, like a 600 shekel spear tip on the end. I don’t know what that weighs, but it’s supposed to be like 12 pounds. So imagine this guy with a nine foot pole and a kettlebell on the other end and he’s lunging people with it. This is a giant man but it said that Benaiah descended on him and went down with a staff like a shepherd’s staff and took the spear out of his hand, wrenched it out of his hand and killed him with it. He killed him with his own spear. That’s a big dude. Now I kind of see, I’m starting to see why David is buying into Benaiah, right? He’s going, all right, guy killed a lion, killed a giant, I killed a lion and a giant. We can probably get along. I mean, he speaks to the heart of David already because of this. So if the Moabites represented flesh out of control, then if we look at the Egyptians, the Egyptians, they represented sin and like this oppression. For 400 years Israel had been under the control of Egypt. The Israelite people had suffered underneath them.

But if you read in Jude 5, Jude reminds us, he said, have you not forgotten that Jesus led the people out of Israel? Right? Jesus and Yahweh are the same. He came and delivered His people out of Egypt and He took them through the wilderness into the Promised Land. Alright, what happens? Let’s look at Numbers 11:4-6. Now the rabble that was among them had a strong craving and the people of Israel also wept again and said, oh that we had meat to eat. We remember the fish we ate in Egypt that cost nothing, the cucumbers, the melons, the leeks, the onions and the garlic. Man he’s like they’re describing this giant feast or something. Like do you really think that these slaves were getting fed that good? It wasn’t that good. But now our strength is dried up and there is nothing at all but this manna that we look at. Are you serious? It’s easy for us to kind of cast judgment. We have to see these own tendencies in our own life. They’ve just been delivered from 400 years of slavery and they’ve been brought into the wilderness and the Lord is giving them manna and quail from heaven that they can eat and months down the road they’re going, I’m so sick of quail.

So tired of this manna. I wish I was back in slavery where I could have cucumbers and melons and fish. But we do this. We do this as men. The Lord delivers us out of sin and slavery and we start walking in our faith and then after a season we hit these peaks and valleys, you know, where we’re always supposed to be kind of progressing upwards but we can hit some really deep dark valleys where we look around and we go, Man, why has that guy got it all? I wish I had his job. I wish I had his life. Why don’t I have his success? Lord, you love me. Why don’t you bless me the way you bless them? We start becoming like the Israelites. Israelites’ sin isn’t that they’re hungry. Their sin is that they’re questioning the goodness of God. The same Lord who’s just led them out of 400 years of slavery. But they want to question how good He is. And we get in these deep, dark valleys where we have this oppression and we’re feeling, you know, we’re trying to pray and we just don’t feel like God’s answering us or He just doesn’t hear us and we’re kind of bound up in ourselves.

We start feeling sorry for ourselves. We become like the Israelites and we’re going, oh, God, I remember the old days. I remember when I can sin and I didn’t feel convicted about it. I remember when I didn’t feel obligated to have to go to church every Sunday. I remember when I’d get up in the mornings and drink my coffee and watch Sports Center, I didn’t feel compelled to read the Word. Man, I hate that. We do. We find distractions. We find things that keep us away from pursuing Christ and pursuing the Lord. And we get disgruntled when our lives don’t look like the rest of the world. Since when is our life supposed to look like the rest of the world? How does that set us apart? We’re supposed to be different. We’re supposed to have spiritual discipline. If you teach a man the discipline to get up and make his bed in the morning, that’s supposed to make him a better husband and father later in life. Then we have to assume that if we get up in the morning and we dive into the Word and we seek Christ’s will and we teach it to our children that we’re going to build stronger families, stronger homes, and best in our wives, pour into our wives, pour into our kids.

But instead we choose to come like the Israelites. You know, Brody was talking about Peter and that Peter, Peter was so zealous that he was never going to deny Christ. And Robb had given a great sermon on this a few weeks ago and made this beautiful picture of what happened in that moment. But Jesus looked at Peter and he said, Peter, Satan has asked to sift you like wheat. If you guys know anything about how they sifted wheat, they would take the wheat out onto the threshing floor and they would gather it up together and they would beat it on the threshing floor and beat it and beat it. And then once it had been beaten to a pulp, they’d throw it in the air and the chaff would fly away with the wind and the grain would fall. And this is how Satan wants to sift Peter. He wants to beat Peter and pummel Peter against the threshing floor. And he wants to throw him up in the air and watch his salvation and his faith in Christ fly away. But Christ said, Satan desires to sift you like wheat. And when you’ve returned, encourage your brothers.

So he’s saying, this is going to happen, but whenever you return, I want you to encourage your brothers and move forward. Peter, the name Peter literally means the rock. The foundation, the rock that the church was built on. What the Lord intended to do to what Satan intended to do to Peter was to beat him on that threshing floor and toss him up in the air and whenever the wind blew there was going to go his salvation, his faith in Christ and he was going to be just this miserable, depressed, wretched man. But the Lord said, I’ll use that. And he was sifted, he was beaten against the threshing floor. And whenever he’s thrown in the air, the chap that blew away was Peter’s arrogance, Peter’s self-reliance, Peter’s belief that he could do it on his own, his belief that he was one of the greatest, and Peter was humbled. And he was humble to the point that all that was left, the only good seed that was left, was the gospel and nothing else. There’s things that’s going on in your life where you’re being sifted. The enemy is pounding you and pounding you on the threshing floor right now, and he thinks that he’s gonna throw you up in the air and everything that’s gonna blow away is your faith and your salvation and your wife and your children, and it’s all gonna be gone.

But the reality is, is that if you submit under Christ and allow him to take control of it, the enemy may be beating you, but when it all shakes out, the only thing that’s going to remain is what’s necessary for you to have faith in the gospel and Christ alone, and that’s it. Lastly, it said the Bnei Yisrael descended into a pit on a snowy day and killed a lion. That’s huge, all right? I was like, I think about a lion, but I’ve only ever seen them in the zoo and usually they’re pretty kind of docile, right? They’re just kind of moping around, right? But you take a killer out of its environment and you put it in a cage, It’s naturally going to be a little bit more docile. I think about guys, especially Marines. Marines are the best. But you put them on a battlefield and those guys are headlong. I mean, the best guys you’ll ever fight with. Ever may be a strong word, all right? But they’re pretty good. No, no. They’re awesome on the battlefield. Incredible at what they do. You bring them back in garrison and put them on a home base, they get silly real fast, all right?

They can find trouble to get into. But you take a line out of its environment and you cage it, that’s what happens. It kind of just kind of just conforms and shrinks away. But listen to this, all right, the average line, 420 pounds. Average. The average paw of a lion is 8 to 12 inches wide. Imagine a paw like this. His head is wider than a man’s shoulders, so I think about a head, I got a head this wide, and the bite force of the average lion is 1,000 pounds per square inch. That’s pretty phenomenal. If I’m walking by a pit on a snowy day where I know I’m not going to have good traction or footing, take that back. If I walk by a line in a pit on a snowy day, I’m going to keep walking. All right, it doesn’t matter what it looks like. But imagine this picture. You have this 420 pound line with paws the size of a ruler, with a head as wide as your shoulders, and you know that thing can bite at a thousand pounds per square inch. And Benaiah goes into the pit with it. And there’s some speculation, right?

The story doesn’t give us any really good idea of why he would do this. But kind of one of the things that sticks out and what they think is like this was an act of protection. Right? In these desert environments what people would do is they would dig cisterns to collect water so that they would have a place to go for their cattle to go, for their livestock, for them themselves to go and collect water to drink. And some believe this pit is like a cistern, like this line has fallen into a cistern. And what Benaiah is doing here is Benaiah is going down to kill a lion so the next person that comes along, the next child that comes to retrieve water doesn’t have to face this lion. Man, what if we did that in our families? What if I had the discernment, like the guys who went to the well? What if I had the discernment of what was coming and I could see it coming at my wife and I could see it coming at my kids and I could say, I’m going to get ahead of that. I’m going to go meet that line before my kids have to face it.

I’m going to go meet it before my wife has to face it. If I see my kids starting to move with the wrong crowd or saying the wrong things or he’s doing things on social media or his phone instead of letting that thing culminate, I’m going to go meet that line head on. I’m going to fight it. Because as men, that’s what we’re called to do. The Lord’s put His Spirit in us to fight and protect and defend. So Benaiah goes into this pit on a snowy day. F.W. Boreham, he wrote this about Benaiah. He said he met the worst of enemies in the worst of places under the worst of conditions and he won. Why? Because as much as you might fear that lion, Benaiah feared the Lord. He said, I fear the Lord more than I fear that lion. The same way his captain, David, feared the Lord more than he feared Goliath. As far as a lion in a pit on a snowy day, we can count on the fact the lion Satan will always find us at the worst place, at the worst time, in the worst conditions. And that’s when he’s gonna attack.

He likes to get us in times of complacency, where things have been going good for a while and we feel really good, like man, like I’m really getting this Christian thing. I’m settled in. Man, I’m getting in the Word, feeling good, my wife’s doing good, my kids are doing good, then bam, we get t-boned. He prowls like a lion. Look at 1 Peter 5. 1 Peter 5:6-10 It says, Humble yourselves therefore under the mighty hand of God, so that at the proper time he may exalt you, casting all your anxieties on him, because he cares for you. Be sober-minded, be watchful. Your adversary, the devil, prowls around like a roaring lion, seeking someone to devour. Resist him, firm in your faith, knowing that the same kinds of suffering are being experienced by your brotherhood throughout the world. And after you have suffered a little while, the God of all grace, who has called you to his eternal glory in Christ, will himself restore, confirm, strengthen, and establish you. Establish you. I recently had the opportunity a few weeks back to go to India and meet with some brothers there. Out of a hundred thousand people in that region, 10 believers in the past three years.

These guys are the first, the first. And they’re enduring suffering. They’re being persecuted. And I go and I see how they live their lives and how they faith in teaching them the scripture And it broke my heart for the way that as the American church we handle the Word at times. Like some of these guys, right? They’re coming out of homes where their fathers have grown up in Islam and they’ve had multiple wives and they’ve kind of neglected their sons. So they don’t even really know what a good father looks like. So I’m trying to teach them about the Heavenly Father who loves them and they’re like, man, this is just kind of hard to grasp because we’ve never seen a good father. We don’t really know what that looks like. I think about how we lead our families and I look around and I see our communities and I go, there are young men out there that can’t grasp the concept of who Christ is and what He did because they don’t have good fathers to look at. As men, we need to understand that Ark’s children, they look at the horizontal before the vertical.

All right, they’re gonna look at their heavenly Father through their earthly father’s eyes. We are the connection between the two. They’re gonna look through us to get a glimpse of what the heavenly Father does. So if we’re not shaped by him and him alone, they’re gonna get a distorted view of what a father looks like. And if we’re not good intentional fathers on this earth, if you can’t trust the father you can see, how can you trust the father you can’t see? That’s hard for their minds to wrap around. But what I loved about these guys is when we went through Scripture and they were pressed on hard issues, I said, you guys understand that? Like, is that hard? They said, yeah, that’s hard. But that’s what Scripture says, so that’s what it is. That’s what we do. That we, as the church here, would go into Scripture and go, whatever you say, that’s what I’m going to do. We should never get to a point like if I come and I said, hey man, will you do me a favor? A lot of you are going to go, sure, what is it? That makes sense because I’m a man, I’m a fallible man.

But if the Lord gives us his word and says, I need you to do something for me, we don’t go to the Lord and go, okay, what is it? We just say, yes Lord, whatever it is that you’ll have me to do, that’s what I’m going to lean in and do. Because that’s what you called me to do. This battle with Benaiah, this lion, this battle is a physical battle, but this is just a physical manifestation of a spiritual battle that he’s winning right now. Choosing fear of the Lord over fear of the lion. So as we leave this weekend, I want you guys to understand these pictures that we have in the Old Testament, when you read the Old Testament, Read it and know that everything that you’re reading is pointing forward to the cross. And everything you read in the New Testament is pointing to Jesus and back to the cross. So if we read the Old Testament and we’re reading the story of Benaiah, we know that it’s here for a reason and we have to look at Scripture and go, how is this pointing me to Jesus in the cross? The beauty of the gospel is that of all the mighty men of David to walk the earth and all the mighty men since, They all pale in comparison to the mightiest man to ever walk the face of this earth, Jesus Christ.

The mightiest of men. And look at Romans 8. So like any good preacher, I’m going to give you three takeaways, right? Three takeaways. They’re in every sermon. Alright, number one. Beneath defeated the representation of flesh in the Moabites, but Jesus literally took on flesh and killed it, tempted in every way but without sin. Romans 8:3-4, For God has done what the law, weakened by the flesh, could not do—by sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh and for sin. For sin means as a sacrifice. He condemned sin in the flesh. In order that the righteous requirement of the law might be fulfilled in us who walk not according to the flesh, but according to the Spirit. For those who live according to the flesh set their minds on the things of the flesh, but those who live according to the Spirit set their minds on the things of the Spirit. The flesh was weak. That’s why the law didn’t stand. It doesn’t matter how many books the Lord gave us, our flesh was going to fail because it’s weak. So if we go back to Jeremiah, Jeremiah prophesied about Christ to come and he said, there’s gonna be a day when I’m gonna write my words and my laws on their heart and I’ll put my Spirit within them and they’ll be my people and I’ll remember their transgressions no more.

There was pointing to Jesus because we can by the flesh, we can’t do it. So the only way was for Jesus to take our sin and put it in the flesh and nail it to the cross and kill it. That was the only way. So what do we do in light of this? Move down to verse 12. It says, so then, brothers, we are debtors, not to the flesh, to live according to the flesh, for if you live according to the flesh, you will die, but if by the Spirit you put to death the deeds of the body, you will live. For all who are led by the Spirit of God are sons of God. For you did not receive the Spirit of slavery to fall back into fear, but you received the Spirit of adoption as sons by whom we cry, Abba, Father. The Spirit himself bears witness with our spirit that we are children of God, and if children, then heirs, heirs of God and fellow heirs with Christ, providing we suffer with him in order that we may also be glorified with him. What does he say? He says, Kill the flesh, cry to the Father, but without fear, fight and suffer for him.

Billy Graham just passed away at 99 years old. The Lord says fight and suffer for 99 years for all of eternity. That’s a pretty good deal. If we look at all of eternity, we have this little sliver of life. It’s about this wide. It’s just a moment. The writer in Ecclesiastes, he said that all this life is just a vapor, like it’s just breath. It just passes. Without Christ it’s meaningless. What Paul’s saying here is lean in, do the hard work, suffer. There is no prosperity gospel in the Bible. We are called to suffer with Christ and do the hard work so that one day we will be glorified with Him. But in doing that to that point we glorify Him by living righteous lives, practical righteousness, Where we day by day are sanctified, which this is like a big word to become more like Christ. We daily attain to be more like Christ and it says that he will take us from one degree to another until the day that we’re in his presence and we’re fully glorified and made like him. That’s beautiful. Second thing, the Israelites doubted the goodness of the Lord but Jesus Christ climbed the cross and put his goodness on display.

We can’t doubt that. Titus 3. He says, For we ourselves are once foolish, disobedient, led astray, slaves to various passions and pleasures, passing our days in malice and envy, hated by others and hating one another. But when the goodness and loving kindness of God our Savior appeared, He saved us, not because of works done by us in righteousness, but according to His own mercy, by the washing of regeneration and renewal of the Holy Spirit whom He poured out onto us richly through Jesus Christ our Savior so that being justified by His grace we might become heirs according to the hope of eternal life. You want to know the goodness of God? Last night two men, Thursday two men got on a plane from Texas Flew to North Carolina, spent the weekend with us, and then last night said, I want to submit to Christ. I want to give my life to Him. So in the freezing cold, about 11 o’clock last night, we went down in that creek and got in that cold water and we baptized two men. And just like that, death to life. How good is that? We want to question the goodness of God?

Death to life in an instance just by submission. Not because of any righteous works that we’ve done like the scripture says, but because of his abundant mercy and grace. In Ephesians 2 he says that he shows his abundant mercy and grace so in the future he will be glorified because of it. We don’t come to him because of our righteous acts. We don’t work our way to salvation. He gives us abundance of mercy and grace and through that alone do we even come to faith in Christ. Right, we have this picture, right, if we think about, excuse me, we think about how life works and how our bodies work, right, we think of something like our spirit, our spirit well something up, we think of something and our thoughts create these emotions, right, if you have emotions without thoughts first you should probably go get checked out. There’s an imbalance there somewhere, all right? But we think, and that creates emotions, and then out of these emotions, create actions. We start acting on them, and those actions become habits. And that ultimately becomes who we are. And that was what defines us, right? If I feel sad, I will act depressed.

If I feel angry, I will act angry. If I feel lustful, I will act lustful. It’s all depends. It starts with the way I think about myself and how I view my God. But we have this idea that we’re going to get cleaned up first and we’re going to clean up these habits and these actions and then we’re going to work our way back and that’s going to change how I feel about it and that’s going to change my thinking. If you guys have been down in the river down here or anywhere, you know that current pushes hard. If you’re rafting down there and you get thrown out of the boat and you try to stand up and go back upstream, you’re not going to make any progress. At best, you’ll probably stay right where you are. And you’ll never make it upstream any further. You’re swimming upstream. We don’t change our relationship with Christ by changing our habits. What we do is we invite Christ, we submit under Him and then He changes our heart and our desire and He writes His laws on our heart and puts His Spirit within us and that’s going to change the way we think about our wives and our kids.

It’s going to change the way we feel about them and then that’s going to change how we lead them and eventually it’s going to shape the men that we become. We’ve got to stop trying to fight upstream and start going with the way that God has designed us to submit under Him and let Him make the changes in our lives. Last point, point three. Jesus took on the lion, but as a lion Himself. In the worst of places, in the worst of conditions, hanging on a cross, betrayed and humiliated, He died and descended into the pit to kill the lion. And on three days later he walked out victorious. There is no greater enemy than Satan and sin and death. He said that our enemy prowls around like a roaring lion looking for someone to devour. But we have the line of Judah in this case. It took a to kill a big lion, it took a bigger lion. And he went into the pit and he killed sin and death in the grave on our behalf. Wrap up with Romans 8, one more time. Romans 8:31 is how I want you guys to leave this weekend, alright?

What then shall we say to these things? If God is for us, who can be against us? He who did not spare His own Son, but gave Him up for us all, how will He not also with Him graciously give us all things? Who shall bring any charge against God’s elect? It is God who justifies. Who is to condemn? Christ Jesus is the one who died, more than that, who was raised, who is at the right hand of God, who indeed is interceding on our behalf. Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or danger, or sword? As it is written, For your sake we are being killed all the day long. We are regarded as sheep to be slaughtered. No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through Him who loved us. For I am sure that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor rulers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, height, nor depth, nor anything else in all of creation will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord. Amen?

That’s it. A lot of us are going to leave here today kind of on this spiritual high. We’ve been fed into, we’ve been poured into. But there’s those peaks and valleys. You’re going to go back into life and you’re going to have to deal with work and you’re going to have to deal with relationship issues and your children and temptation in the flesh and the world’s going to distract you and point you at all the things you don’t have or all the things you think you should have. But we understand that in these peaks and these valleys that in those times of depression when we get low and we feel like we’re not hearing from God. The Scripture clearly says that there is nothing in this world that can separate us from the love of God for those who are in Christ Jesus. We have a missionary. I just thought of this. We have a missionary who’s associated here with Snowbird. And a rough character covered in tattoos. But on his knuckles, if you look at his knuckles, across his knuckles he has tattooed, Hold Fast. If you think about it, that’s pretty powerful. Because as a missionary or somebody who goes and sees oppression and is being oppressed and sees the persecution of the church and is striving to take the gospel to the nations, there’s times where it gets really dark and it gets really low.

You wonder where God is. He says, Hold fast. You guys go home this week, hold fast. And know that no matter what it is that you’re coming up against, Jesus Christ has already descended in the pit, killed the lion, and He walked out victorious. And because of that, the battle’s been won. We submit to Him and we trust Him to lead us. We put our hope in the gospel. And that alone is what saves us as men. Trust Him to teach you how to lead your family. Trust Him to teach you how to lead your children. Get into His Word, read His Scripture. These are the things that are going to make mighty men. The mighty men of this generation aren’t the ones who wield the swords, they’re the ones who wield the sword of Scripture in their homes and teach it to their wives and teach it to their kids. Right, out of the whole armor of God, He gave us one offensive weapon and that was the Word of God. Take that scripture into battle. Wage war against what’s happening in your homes. Take back your families, take back your wife, take charge of your home.

Be men, be courageous. All right? I’m gonna pray, guys. Father, we thank you so much for what you’ve done here. Incredible weekend. I have 300 men in this room. And Father, we’re so thankful for a God, for Christ who didn’t see equality with the Father as something to be grasped, but instead He laid it down and put on flesh and came and killed sin. Came and hung on a cross for us. So that men this weekend could be here and could accept Him and accept what He did for us. And that no baptism of water brings us salvation, but baptism of your Spirit, Lord, that you actually come and you live inside of us and you change the desires of our heart. And we desire to be your people. Father, pray that as these men go home that you’ll embolden them and you’ll encourage them and you’ll build them up. They’ll be challenged to be the mighty men in their homes. They’ll be the spiritual leaders. That they’ll wash their wives with the Word and pour over them. They’ll pour over their kids. And this will be the generation that steps forward. Father, I pray that you continue to encourage them.

Those that are going home that are trying to repair marriages and trying to kick addiction, Lord, that they know that you’re with them. And as long as they’re leaning into youo that they’re not alone. Lord, they forget the heavy burden that they’ve lived under and they’d take on youn easy and light burden. They would take on youn yoke and submit under youo, Lord. Father, we praise youe for who youo are. We thank youk that yout came, put on flesh, and died for us. In Jesus’ name, amen.