David's Mighty Men

SERMON: 2016-01-31--s1516--david-s-mighty-men SOURCE DURATION: 00:59:10.000 PROPOSED CUTS: 1 CONFIDENCE: 0.95 APPROVED: false REASON: The material from segment [0] through [451] constitutes continuous sermon exposition, covering biblical study, pastoral application, and theological discussion, despite shifts in topic. ACOUSTIC EVIDENCE: available ACOUSTIC MUSIC INTERVALS: none ACOUSTIC SPEECH OVERLAP: no ACOUSTIC BOUNDARIES APPLIED: none Inline CUT markers identify each proposed audio boundary after the relevant word. --- ORIGINAL TRANSCRIPT WITH PROPOSED CUTS MARKED --- One of the lesser known features of the story of David as it's recorded in scripture, I think, is what is known as David's List of Mighty Men. That list occurs in two places in the Old Testament. It occurs in 2 Samuel chapter 23, the verses 8 through 39. We're going to be looking at that in a few moments, and you get Bibles as you came in, so feel free to turn to that. The second place is 1 Chronicles chapter 11 from verse 10 on. The two passages are essentially duplicates of each other, though the Chronicles passage adds an additional 60 names to the list that we find in 2 Samuel chapter 23. In either case, the List of Mighty Men lists for us famous warriors who came over to David's side and who fought with him to help establish the kingdom of God in Israel as God had promised to David through the prophet Samuel. Each list is subdivided into three sections. The first section is what is known as the Three. As I said, if you've got your Bibles there, come with me to 2 Samuel 23, and I'm just going to point out a couple of things to you. You'll notice the heading there reads, "David's Mighty Men," and it's introduced with these words, "These are the names of David's mighty men." The first one is an unpronounceable name, Joseph Bathshebeth, who is a Tekebanite, and he's chief of the Three. And he is famous because he raised his spear, if you can picture this, against 800 men whom he killed in one encounter. Now that, I tell you, is a dude who knows how to fight. The second one of the Three is Eliezer son of Dodai, the Ahohite. He's one of the three mighty men, and he was with David when they taunted the Philistines gathered at Pas D'Amin for battle. And the story goes on to say, "All of Israel retreated in the fight, but Eliezer stood his ground against the Philistines until his hand grew tired and froze to his sword." And so he defeated single-handedly the Philistine army, and Israel had a mighty victory. And then down to verse 11, "Next to him was Shammah son of Agge, the Herarite." And the story goes on to tell us that, "When the Philistines banded together at a place where there was a field full of lentils, Israel's troops fled from them. But Shammah took a stand in the middle of the field. He defended it and struck the Philistines down, and again the Lord brought about a great victory." These are the three top men that are listed in the group of mighty men. Now skip down a number of verses down to verse 18. The second division of these mighty men is a group of two. The first is Abishai, who is the brother of Joab, the son of Zariah, and he was not one of the three, but he was chief of the three. And he raised his spear against 300 men whom he killed, and he became as famous as the three. He was not held in greater honor. Was he not held in greater honor than the three? He became their commander, even though he was not included among them. So this is the second category. The second name in that category then of two is Baniah, who was the son of Jehoiada, and he was a valiant fighter who performed great exploits. And then the passage lists for us three things that he did. He struck down two of Moab's best men, and then he also went down into a pit on a snowy day and killed a lion. That's a really interesting little tidbit that's repeated in the Book of Chronicles. Snow had fallen, a lion had taken refuge in probably a cistern or a well, and Baniah killed the lion. And then he struck down a huge Egyptian, and although the Egyptian had a spear in his hand, Baniah went against him with a club, and he snatched the spear from the Egyptian's hand and killed him with his own spear. And so he is famous as one of the second batch of two, because he was also a good fighter. And then if you go down to verse 24, from there on to the end of the chapter, you have what is known as the 30. It's called the 30, even though it's actually 32, depending on how you count the names. No exploits of these are given, but we are told that they also are mighty fighters. So you add them all together, you have the three, you have the two, and you have the 32, and so that passage ends in verse 29, "There were 37 in all." These were David's mighty men, and the reason they are called his mighty men is that they were qualified therefore to become chiefs of his army. And here is how the passage is introduced in the book of Chronicles, the 11th chapter. The writer to the Chronicles says, "These were the chiefs of David's mighty men. They, together with all Israel, gave his kingship strong support to extend it over the Holy Land, as the Lord had promised. This is the list of David's mighty men." And then the list repeats in 1 Chronicles 11 with some interesting challenges spelling-wise, because names are very difficult to pass on by writers without making mistakes or without having alternate spellings, but essentially the lists are the same except in Chronicles written much later, additional names are added. So there you have the list of David's mighty men, warriors who stood with him as he sought to fulfill God's purposes for his people in the land of Israel. And of course the reason that I refer to that tonight is that it leads to some very practical lessons that you and I can learn from that, and in the time that remains, I want to try to walk you through some of those. I would say the first lesson that we learn from this list of mighty men is that no one can accomplish the purposes of God for his people single-handedly. Think back with me, why did God call David to become king of Israel from tending the sheep? Well, it was because God's destiny for him was that he should shepherd God's people, and I love the way Psalm 78 puts it. It says, "Concerning the Lord, he chose David his servant and took him from the sheep pens. From tending the sheep, he brought him to be the shepherd of his people, Jacob, of Israel, his inheritance." David was a man after God's own heart, you will remember, because he understood what God was after. God was after building himself a people who would love him above all, who would obey him above all, and who would keep the testimony and the witness of God alive among the nations of the world. And David was called to tend the sheep, to look after God's people, to extend the kingdom of God, to make sure they could dwell in safety, to make sure that they could experience the blessings of the covenant, and to make sure that through the nation of Israel, the blessings of God would one day pass on to the nations of the world. And David did that with supreme excellency. Psalm 78 ends with these words, "And David shepherded them with integrity of heart, with skillful hands he led them." David's job was to build a people of power and a people of honor before God. But David could not do it alone. He needed people with him to make that happen. And the history of how that came to be is rather fascinating, because if you think back to the history of David when he and Saul first got alienated, David was a persona non grata in the land, and he was strictly on his own. There was nobody with him. In fact, he so feared for his life, and you might recall this back earlier in 1 Samuel chapter 21 and 22, David is so afraid of Saul that he flees for his life. And who remembers where he goes? He goes to Gath, a ghast one ought to be when you think about that, because this is the land of the Philistines. Well, the Philistines see him come, and you know, Akish, the king, he can handle it okay, but his people say, "Look, this is the dude who keeps on killing us. We don't want him here." And if you remember the story, David has to pretend he is insane to avoid being captured. It was not his finest moment. And so then he leaves Gath, and who remembers where he goes? He goes to the cave of Adalum, and he now is like a hunted animal fleeing again for his life. But that's where it becomes interesting because this is where people begin to gather to him. Chapter 22, when Samuel, David left Gath and escaped to the cave of Adalum, when his brothers and his father's household heard about it, they went down to him there. All those who were in distress or in debt or discontented gathered around him, and he became their leader. About 400 men were with him. This becomes the nucleus of David's fighting men, people who were described as being in distress or in debt or discontented. And there's a couple of principles there that are really important for us to lay hold of. The first of these is this. When God calls you to do a new thing in the kingdom, he will bring other people to join you in that battle. And it's a very important principle to understand because God's people always function in New Testament language as a people who are a body. And if you think of how your body works, then and we've talked about this in detail in the past, you know, you've got yourselves and you've got your tissues and you've got your organs and you've got your, the whole thing gathers together. But you have all these different parts of the body who not only make up the part of a body, but who together make up the whole body. And so what happens in the kingdom of God is that when God works in people's lives and he distributes his gifts, he puts a variety of different gifts in people's lives as you know. And when you hear somebody casting vision about what it is that God is going to do or wants to do, depending on what your gifting is, you will identify with that person. And so if you're a person with a prophetic gifting and you hear somebody proclaim prophetically what it is that God is going to do, you're going to be drawn to that person and you're going to be drawn to that cause. And if you're the kind of person who has the gift of mercy and you hear somebody cast a vision, give a presentation of what God wants to do in terms of helping people or healing people, there will be something in your heart that burns and that resonates with that vision. Other things might leave you cold and you might sometimes even feel guilty because there are all these good things as a Christian that you ought to be involved and you think, "But it's not you." Well, the reason for that is that you're drawn to where your calling lies and when you hear that calling put into words, you get drawn to it and that's how God builds teams who move forward in the purposes of God. A little while ago, Willow Creek celebrated its 40th anniversary and one of the characteristics of the 40th anniversary was that there are four people who were at the founding of that church 40 years ago and they brought them up on stage to recognize them and I was especially impressed by one man who for 40 years now has headed up their wilderness camp in northern Michigan and the way this came to be was he had come back from the war, I believe, somewhere, had come back to Kalamazoo, Michigan, a total wreck, didn't know what to do with his life and met up with Heibos who had been one of his schoolmates and they talked about life and Heibos made the observation, "Well listen, you know, why don't you come to Chicago, spend time with my wife and me and I want to tell you about Jesus and what Jesus can do in your life." Well, Heibos forgot to tell his wife about this, rolled the clock forward, doorbell rings and here is this dude standing at his door taking him up in his offer. Had to do a little talking with his wife to settle that issue but brought him into the house, led him to faith and that man's heart caught fire with the overall vision for that church community but particularly for tending to the youth in this camp which was donated, I believe, by Bill's father a whole bunch of acres up in northern Michigan. My point is this, nobody can do the work of God alone but whatever your gifting is or whatever your calling is, you hear somebody articulate it and it will resonate with you and you will form bonds together as a team and as a team you're able to accomplish things that you could never ever do on your own. And sometimes people feel guilty for being drawn to people as if somehow there's something wrong with that but there isn't. It's how God works in the body and identifying who you are and what you're called to is hugely important. And many of us are part of this community because we share to some degree the vision and the passion of what God wants to do in us and through us in terms of making His redemptive purposes known to the ends of the earth. You with me here? There's a second spiritual principle that flows out of this and that is in order to embrace something new there has to be a measure of discontent with the old. In order to go for something new you have to be discontent with the old. Now think back to these four hundred men who came and joined David and I'd love to be able to tell you tonight that they joined David because they were full of the Holy Spirit and fire and they shared David's vision and passion for building the people of God and maybe they did to some degree or another but that's not what the text tells us. Instead they were in distress, in debt, or discontented. And what that illustrates is that new movements are almost always built on the basis of those who are no longer satisfied with the status quo. And sometimes that's because people are distressed, sometimes that's because people are in debt, sometimes it's just they have a holy discontent because they know there is more than what they ought to be experiencing. Think of migrants who risked their lives crossing the ocean this past week, what another, 38 or somebody drowned. Terrible. Think back to the days when some of us immigrated from one country to another. Why do you take the risk of leaving the familiar for the new? Because you know that you've gone as far as you can go where you are. There is a holy discontent and you need to move forward into the purposes of God. The whole point of that is that when God begins to move in your life or when God begins to move in the life of a church, there comes a place of holy discontent. There is a place that says there's more than what I am experiencing, I don't know how to get there, but God is going to show me the way. That is why the rich, by the way, are sent away empty and why the kingdom belongs to the last and the lost and the least. The more you have invested in the present world order, the more you have invested in the present period, the less likely you are to abandon that for something that is new. That's why revolutions turn a whole social structure upside down so that people are moved from where they are to where they need to go. Often that is bloody, often that comes at an incredibly high cost, and often the pain is huge. But God wants to move us from where we are to where we need to be. So when he makes us discontent, that is his preparation for something else that he has in mind for us. Those are some of the first principles that come out of this story. Nobody can do the work of God alone. We all need other people around us to resonate with that vision and to put our shoulders to the wheel because it takes a collective assembly of different giftings to make the kingdom of God happen. David could have never become king over Israel without these men coming to join him. Second lesson that flows out of this is that in the kingdom of God, for the kingdom of God to move forward, what matters, and I say this very advisedly, what matters is military prowess. I think that's how you say it. Military strength. I've talked about this before, but let me talk about it again because it contains a number of principles that are really important. Nancy, if we can move that next slide up. This is known as, I've called this the three C's of the kingdom, you can call it the three C's of the church, you can call it the three C's of an organization. The reality is that any organization consists of three overlapping circles, one that we call community, one that we call cause, and one that we call corporation. Now the metaphor for community is the word family. In family, the core values are love, loyalty, and mutual support. The gifts that are needed to make family function are gifts of shepherding, gifts of encouragement, gifts of mercy, and gifts of help. Community is what we do when we get together. We visit each other, we encourage each other, we eat together, we weep with those who weep, we rejoice with those who rejoice. It's what most churches spend most of their time doing, building community. The next aspect though is that a church is not just a community, but a church is also a cause. That is to say, it has a job to do, and that job, biblically speaking, is to go out and make disciples of all nations. So the metaphor for cause is mission. There's a job we have to do, and the core values of that are things like outreach, it's loving strangers, it's furthering the cause, it is engaging society, it is praying for society, it is bearing witness to society, it is helping people to come to faith in the Lord Jesus, it is the biblical concept, as I said, of making disciples of all nations. There's still a third function, and that is corporation, and the defining word of corporation is administration or organization. Core values are things like effectiveness and efficiency, and the gifts that are needed are gifts like administration and the gifts of giving, the gifts of leadership. In other words, this aspect of life in community gives structure, and it enables the organization to move forward. Later on, we're going to see what an excellent administrator David was and how much of his energy went into organizing the kingdom. The larger a community becomes, the more important it is to have an organizational structure and the people who manage to organize that and to run it. Now, here's the thing that I want to mention about this, because that's why this is so important. In each of these circles who is the most valuable person? It's a very important discussion to have. In community, who gets most of the attention? The weak, the baby in your family, who do you get up for at night? It's the baby, it's the weakest, it's the person who's sick, it's the person who is most in need of encouragement and support. That goes without saying. And how healthy a community is is a function of how well we do that, how well we weep with those who weep and we rejoice with those who rejoice. Now, in the corporation, the defining word of which is organizational structure, who's your most important person? It's your most organized or your most efficient person. You're not going to put a spendthrift in charge of your finances. If you've ever been part of a movement led by somebody who doesn't know how to organize, you know how incredibly frustrating it is. If you've ever been to a meeting that was not well led, then you know that a recipe for disaster is for people who just go with the flow and who don't know where they're going. So in terms of corporation, what really matters is the gift of leadership and to be able to say, this is how we're structuring our finances, this is how we're structuring our people, this is how we're doing life together. I mean, I've got to tell you, you know, and some of you have heard me tell this story, but years ago, I mean today in terms of music department and so on, we have cue sheets and we have lists of who does what and whatever else. Well, that developed organically as time went on because in the early days, it was small enough that it just went by word of mouth and everything worked pretty well until we had two people sliding behind the organ at the same time and we had chaos on our hands because neither was too prepared to let go for the other one. You know, godly people can be very attached to their instruments. Okay, so big question then, and you won't have our time guessing what I'm talking about here is who is the most important person in cause? Well, it is your strongest person. It is your best fighter. It is your best warrior. And that's why we have this list of mighty men in scripture. Remember it was David's job. It was David's job to build the kingdom. Territory had to be wrestled away from the Philistines. Territory had to be wrestled away from King Saul who was not about to lie down and give up his kingdom. And so for David to succeed, he didn't just need nice pastoral kind of people who are kind to everybody. He needed warriors. And that's why in this particular list, we have such a category of mighty men whose exploits are recorded for us on the pages of scripture. Understand that these were probably not people that you're going to sit down with and spill your guts to because they aren't going to have an awful lot of sympathy about your sore toe. These are soldiers who intend to stand for what is right and who oppose the enemy. So again, a couple of principles here that are really important, I think, for us to understand, and that is this. If you want an organization to move forward, get beyond the status call, who do you look for? Well, you look for warriors. That is to say, you look for people of faith and courage. People who are prepared to stand for what is right and who will occupy the ground even when the temptation is to give in because fighting is too difficult or too hard. Over the years, we've had, you know, criticism sometimes in the nomination process in this church of who gets to be nominated for elders. And a lot of people don't know how the process works and sometimes they think it's all manipulated, which it is not. But we've never apologized for setting the bar high. For people to be nominated, they need to share the vision and the mission of the church. They have to know what they believe and they have to be prepared to stand for what is right. Because if you don't have people who know how to stand for what is right, when the battle begins to rage, everything falls down. And God is looking for men of courage, women of courage, who know their calling and who aren't afraid to say no to sin, no to unrighteousness, and yes to the things of God. Second spiritual principle that flows out of this is that in the Kingdom of God, advancement is based on a proven track record. Earlier I quoted the verse from 1 Chronicles chapter 11 telling us that these lists, this list is given to us to show that these are the chiefs of David's army. If you read through it very carefully, 12 out of that whole group end up becoming, I don't know what the word is, captains, or they're in charge of a whole division of his soldiers. And the principle there of course is this, you can't lead people where you have not gone before. And what's needed then is a demonstrated track record of what you can do so that you can be entrusted with more responsibility. Years ago there was a book that became very popular called Peter Principle. And the argument that the author of Peter Principle made was that in corporate life in North America, people got promoted to the level of their incompetence. Very interesting theory because his argument was that when people were functioning well for an organization and they were holding forth the values of the organization and they were contributing to the organization, well those are the people who get promoted. So people get promoted and they get promoted and they get promoted until they get to the place where they're no longer functioning at their highest ideal. Now nobody wants to promote them anymore. So now they're stuck at their highest level of incompetence as opposed to the level where they want to be functioning. And one of the jobs in the Christian community is to identify the gifts of God's people and to allow those gifts to flourish and to allow people to rise to the level that God has ordained for them because of their calling. And I always say to people, you know this is true for kids going out and getting a job and this is true for employees in your company or just a general principle of how life works. You want to advance then you demonstrate that you're worthy of advance. You want to be in a leadership position then demonstrate that you're worthy of leadership. Demonstrate that you have the ability to do what needs to be done in order to accomplish the purposes of God. Let's put up that other slide for a moment Nance. I've talked about this before too but it also bears repeating because it has an incredible pile of wisdom in it. Craig Hill as you may remember heads up the family foundations international institute or whatever. Valerie and Mart went to it back last fall and he does a teaching in leadership that I've touched on with you before but I think is really profound and it came out of his experience of trying to expand his ministry among nations of the world. They have a healing ministry very similar to what we emphasize here and he trains people and builds teams in different countries so that they can have conferences that people can come to and get prayed for and things can really happen. But his model is really quite fascinating because he talks about E's and S's and B's and I's. E stands for an employee, S stands for a self-employed person, B stands for business person and I stands for an investor. And he says if you want to see what people are able to do in ministry then look at how they make their living. Because he says an employee is a person who works typically fixed hours for fixed pay and is perfectly satisfied in that area of his job or her job. Nothing wrong with that. The world needs a lot of employees. A self-employed person is a person who looks at the employee and says why should my boss get paid $45 and I get paid $15 or $20, I'd be better off working for myself because then I can get that extra money. And so he leaves his boss and he starts his own company. And how many people in our own church haven't left their construction boss over the years for example and started their own business with that kind of thinking. Now a businessman, he is the kind of guy who says well if I'm an employee and I stop working or take a day off my pay gets docked. And if I'm self-employed then the onus is on me to keep my business going and if I stop working I lose out on my pay. So he says the smart thing for me to do is to get other people to work for me, organize them, and equip them so that they can do the work and now I can go away on vacation and I can trust the work to carry on. Make good sense, right? Now the investor then is a person who isn't content to do this just in one area of his life or business. He's got enough energy and skill and he can run multiple businesses that way. And you know the big rich people in today's society, the CEOs that get paid these incredible piles of money get paid incredible piles of money because they have the skills to make that happen. They can head up multiple corporations and make money in the process of doing that. Now here is what he discovered as a very important key that took him quite a while to figure out. He says it's relatively easy to go from an E to an S because all you have to do is learn some new skills in terms of managing your business. It's not difficult, he says, to go from a B to an I if you have the gifting in order to accomplish that. It's virtually impossible, he says, to move across, across from an E to a B or from an S to a B because it requires a whole different mindset of how to run the show. And you know without spending too much time on elaborating upon that, it's not hard to figure that out because you require a whole other set of skills now to create systems that people can operate in and the kind of structure and the kind of equipping that is needed in order to help people to move forward. And so it takes a particular skill set to be able to move people into their area of responsibility. And he tells stories about how he, in the early days, he would find an employee who really resonated with his mission and he would put him in charge of a particular country and he said, "Okay, you know, here's what you need to do." And he'd go on to the next country and he'd come back however much later and he would ask the question, "Well, what have you accomplished?" Well, he hadn't accomplished anything because you see, if only the boss were here more often to show me how to do it, then I would be able to do it because the employee is accustomed to being told how to do the work, he isn't paid to try to figure it out on his own because if he did, he'd be self-employed or he'd be a businessman. And so he discovered that he had to find people who knew how to recruit people and instill training in people and empower people to make it happen. And David, David was successful because he was an incredibly gifted leader. And that's another sort of lesson that flows out of this and that is you have to leave room for people to grow. Because remember now, what did David start off with? Pretty raw material, not, you know, not resumes that you'd want to hire for your business or for your church. And yet out of this group comes the mighty men that help him advance the purposes of God. We won't take the time tonight to read it, but there's this very moving story in this particular passage about the three men who break through the Philistine lines to get water out of a well in Bethlehem. You can read the story on your own, you might remember it. David is having a moment of nostalgia and he says, Oh, that I could have water from Bethlehem. And these three men profoundly loved him, took their lives in their own hands, broke through the Philistine lines, went all the way to Bethlehem, came back with a jug of water. And they said, here's the water that you were looking for. And if you know the story, you will recall that David was so astonished at the price they were prepared to pay to get that water. He said, I can't possibly drink it. And he poured it out on the ground as a thank offering to God. But it shows you what kind of loyalty these men had in their relationship with David. So how did he take this whole motley crew and make something out of them? Well, he was a leader par excellence. He knew how to identify what their gifts and what their abilities were. He knew how to inspire them in the purposes of God. He knew how to help them move forward. And out of this motley crew comes chiefs of the people who ultimately end up being able to dispossess all out of his kingdom, get rid of the enemies, and establish the kingdom of God in the land of Israel. You can't do it alone. You need people with you. But what matters is being able to identify the warrior spirit among God's people and to say, I'm going to empower you to step into these battles. You show me what you can do. And I'll let you rise to the top rank of my army to build God's kingdom. Each of us needs to reflect sometimes. What has God gifted us with? What has God done in our lives? What can we be entrusted with? Have we proven ourselves faithful? Many of us have. To whom much is given. Or he that is faithful and little. Of course, God will place over much. One more lesson before we wind this up. And that's this. Your strong supporters can also be a huge liability. Did you know that? Sometimes your best friends give you the most trouble. If you've ever read the list of David's mighty men, you may have noticed there is one very prominent military man whose name is missing in the list. Anybody guess which name that is? Joab. What do you remember about Joab? Well, Joab was one of three sons of Zariah. The other sons are Abishai. And his name is mentioned in this passage. And the other is Zahal. And Joab ended up becoming commander of all of David's armies. And much of David's military success was the result of Joab's fighting ability. But Joab had issues. And Joab on two occasions turned out to be extremely treacherous. One was in connection with the murder of Abner. You may remember that Abner had been the commander of the northern tribes, the tribes of Israel. And after David was crowned king over Judah, there was war between Judah and the northern tribes for seven years. And there were some very, very nasty battles because the northern tribes were loyal to the House of Saul and they wanted nothing to do with David. Well, eventually Abner entered into a peace treaty with David. And they agreed that he was going to come over to David's side. Joab had a bone to pick with Abner because earlier Abner had killed his brother, Asael. Not because he had wanted to kill him, but because Asael was pursuing him. He had repeatedly been told by Abner, don't come after me, wouldn't listen because he was a very fast runner, caught up with him and in the resulting conflict Asael died. And Joab never forgot. So under false pretenses, after David had entered into a treaty with Abner and the northern tribes, under false pretenses, Joab invites Abner to have a meeting with him and then when his guard is down, he stabs him in the gut and Abner dies. Terrible problem for David because he has to distantiate himself from that action because if the northern tribes think that David has been part of that, his credibility is totally shot. So this is a huge issue and David has to go through a lot of hoops in order to persuade Israel that this was Joab's doing and it was not his own doing. Same thing happened again later with a military commander called Amasa. He was appointed by Absalom in Absalom's rebellion to lead the armies of Judah and here again in a very treacherous fashion Joab got him aside and stabbed him and shed innocent blood. See it's one thing to fight in battle and to kill somebody in battle. It's quite something else to kill somebody under false pretenses when you're pretending to be good friends. So Joab was a real liability to David but was too powerful for David to do anything with and so 2 Samuel 3 39 gives voice to David's lament when he says, "And today though I am the anointed king, I am weak and the sons of Zariah are too strong for me. May the Lord repay the evildoer according to his evil deeds." And we know from the rest of the story that that happened during the reign of King Solomon. David before he died took Solomon aside and he said, "Don't let Joab go to his grave in peace." He couldn't carry out, he couldn't handle him himself but he passed it on to his son. And the end of Joab happens as the story goes on in the battle for succession after King David. Joab sides with one of the other sons called Adoniah and Solomon finds out about that and make a long story short, he ends up executing or having Joab executed by the hand of Baniah who was one of the names that appears in this chapter and who then becomes the commander of Israel's armies. So principle here, not infrequently leaders are at the mercy of the strong people who have helped them lead, think back to the Harper government and the Duffy trial or the Nigel Wright situation. Think of how many people in business have an employee who causes chaos and who produces relational difficulties but nobody dares say anything or do anything because this person is deemed to be so valuable to the organization that nobody dares fire them and yet produces chaos wherever it goes. And think of church situations where particular people who have been maybe at the very foundation of building a church who are unapproachable and who have their heels dug in and who lack the character of Christ but nobody can call them to account because they're too strong. You see what I'm saying? If you've ever worked with that kind of a person or in that kind of a situation you will know that just because you occupy the title of head honcho doesn't really mean you are the boss. Sometimes the people that rise into positions of power in organizations are people like Joab who have a lot of characteristics and qualifications that make them successful in what they do but who lack the kind of spiritual maturity or the relational ability that they need to be able to function properly in an organization. And so what's the antidote to that? Well, the antidote to that is to make sure that you have a balance of, let me put it this way, if you're going to hire somebody or if you're going to give authority to somebody in an organization or in a leadership position, there are four things that you've got to look for and I'll wind up with this. Character, competency, chemistry and culture. In that order. Character is, is this person yielded to the authority of Jesus? Is this person relationally gifted? Can this person be corrected? Can you talk with that person, feel like you are getting somewhere? Does this person care for the bigger cause as opposed to just his own issues? See, Joab had one over on David because Joab was instrumental in the murder of Uriah at David's command so you can see where David didn't have any room to maneuver with Joab because Joab knew the secret and Uriah is listed in this list as one of David's mighty men and you know how his story ended over David's affair with Bathsheba. Character trumps competency any time. Character is much harder to come by than giftedness but character is essential if you're going to build the kingdom of God. Competency, it's great to have character but if you're going to do a job, you also have to have the ability to do it so competence is not insignificant. Chemistry, does this person fit with the people that you're working with? And culture, does this person understand the culture of the organization? You know business wise, what is the biggest stumbling block when major companies merge? You know how often people will say well if we can take this company and this company and put the two together, we'll have that much greater power and ability to engage the market, you know you hear this all the time, right? They bring these companies together and what happens? They can't get along with each other, why? Because they have their own cultural values which are often unspoken and when you start trying to work together, you discover that you have an entirely different set of values and you have an entirely different way of approaching a given situation and if you've ever been in a situation where you're working with people whether in a team at church or in a team at work and you constantly feel the grinding of the gears, then one of those four characteristics that you're talking about has not been addressed and so I leave you with this, whatever God calls you to or whatever God equips you for, understand that character and competence and chemistry and culture are of incredible importance and understand too that what God is looking for in the church today is a people who will stand up and who will be counted, a people who are not afraid to say this is right and this is wrong, not because they are cantankerous or because they're crazy right wingers or because nobody, you know, they're critical of everything that happens in the world but because they understand that if you're going to stand with God, you have to stand for what God stands for and you have to stand against what he stands against and I don't know if you read the news story and I'll end with this, an amazing thing happened in the Anglican church a couple of weeks ago, the Anglican church has been fighting for years and years about issues of homosexuality, ordination of homosexual clerics and the battle has raged between the African contingent of the Anglican church and the North American Episcopalians in the United States and for years now they have been wrestling with how do we keep this together because unity is more important than anything else in the world including truth. Well two or three weeks ago they cut the Gordian knot and to everybody's surprise they placed the Episcopal wing of the Anglican church under discipline because they said it is more important for us as an Anglican community, communion to stand for truth than it is to pretend that we're all on the same page when we're not on the same page. That's almost unheard of in today's church world but critical if we're going to be like David, men and women after God's own heart. [CUT] [PROPOSED CUT 1 START at 00:59:03.500; remove through 00:59:10.000] [ [CUT]BLANK_AUDIO] [PROPOSED CUT 1 END at 00:59:10.000; resume after this marked segment]