All right, open your Bibles this evening. Let's go back to 1 Samuel. Do something I don't do very often. I'm gonna show you my outline tonight. And did that to tell you how the Lord works. I pulled in the parking lot. I do take notes, Brother Caesar. I have lots of notes here ready to go in different colors. But sometimes the Lord taps you on the shoulder and says, we're going to go another direction. Sometimes you tend to get angry at the Lord because I think what's in here is a whole lot better than what I jotted down here. But as Dr. Caesar was teaching, it was amazing how it just fits together. I'm going to teach you how to do what he just talked about and move up in those categories. As a Christian, if you listen to that, and maybe you're far better than I am, I think, boy, I'm in that 99.1 percent of the Christians that probably are not where we ought to be. I'd sure love to move up, but sometimes how to accomplish that, I find not. And so I want to give you something tonight out of the book of Samuel. The Lord, I believe, sitting right here in the parking lot gave me this, and so we're going to go at it anyway. 1 Samuel chapter 23. I want to read the first verse, and then I want to get over to my text. And I just want to put this in the context. And these are 2 Samuel. Did I say 1 Samuel? I started to say, boy, I wrote it down wrong. 2 Samuel. I'll be a whole lot better off if we get over there. I'll have to throw this outline away. if we don't get into the right place. Amen. 2 Samuel 23, verse 1 says, Now these be the last words of David. So in the context, this is David is, he's at the end of all flesh. He's about to leave this world and ship out for what is beyond this life for the believer. And it's interesting, the same story I'm going to give you is also told in 1 Chronicles 11, verse 17. And in that context, we have David coming to the throne. And David comes to the throne, he is anointed or crowned king and becomes king of Israel. And then immediately we move into this same line of story that deals with the mighty men of David. And I think that when we look at David, we obviously see a great hero in the sense of the scriptures. And sometimes we have a tendency to forget the mighty men. Every time you see a hero, there's a mighty man somewhere nearby. somebody that's been a help, a blessing, an influence, an encouragement. Sometimes somebody has taken a bullet for someone else. In the context here, the last words of David, you look at it as an old retired warrior and a king, a songwriter, a lover of the Lord, and now he's about to leave, he's just starting to reminisce. Did you ever get around an old guy and just listen to them and all at once they're not there? They actually have gone back to wherever it is they're talking about. One of my hobbies for probably the last 30 years has been veterans and dealing with veterans from our wars, trying to win them to Christ. I had the privilege in the last three years to baptize a 92-year-old World War II veteran, and then just here within the last few months, baptize an 80-year-old Korean sniper who just won the Medal of Freedom not long ago. For his work in Korea. I want to reach veterans because they paid such a great price for our country And I realize everybody needs a chance to get saved and I understand that but sometimes the Lord gives you a burden For people outside the norm you say well, that's kind of prejudicial and maybe it is but missionaries go to certain countries They deal with certain cultures and I think in this country God can give you a burden for a particular group or for particular vocation of individuals that you have a heart for, and veterans have been those for me. And I see David here sitting around perhaps and thinking about these things that occurred long, long ago in a faraway place, but he never really forgot them. There are stories that soldiers tell. that you and I, if we have the talent or the ability to unlock those stories, we'll hear stories we will never, ever forget. In my office, I have two prints, and those prints are from the 100th Heavy Bombardment Group during World War II. They took the highest amount of casualties of any air unit. 85% of the young men that flew with the 100th Airborne died in combat. And I had the privilege to meet a bolt turret gunner about 20 years ago. He became a good friend. He bought those for me and actually had the crews sign those paintings, those pictures before they died. They're all dead now. Even the friend that I had is gone. But I have their signatures there. It doesn't mean a lot to anybody else, but it means a lot to me. I have a signed picture that was signed by Captain Robert Morgan, who was the pilot of the Memphis Belle. He signed lithograph of the Memphis Bell, met him years ago. And again, doesn't mean much to anybody else, but if you study history, those are the names of the people that made the history that we commemorate and celebrate today. That's really good, I appreciate you doing that. I was gonna put my sunglasses on, but I don't have them. David, he's thinking about this stuff. My daughter-in-law years ago got to, my son's footlocker came home from Iraq just before he, came back to the States on one of his deployments, and she opened that footlocker. It was a little plastic bin, is what it was. And she began to go through it, and there just was an immensity of sand and silt and dust and dirt. And you could tell it had been halfway around the world. And then she started picking up little bits and pieces of stuff, and none of it had great meaning or significance to us. But she reached down in there and she pulled out a lever, that comes off the top of a grenade. And the pin was still in. You have to pull the pin before you throw the grenade. That's the idea, at least the way it's supposed to work in real life. And she pulled out that lever. The pin was still in. It had never been pulled. And yet there was nothing there. But the lever mechanism itself, the grenade was gone and the handle was twisted and bent at an unusual angle. And she said, what in the world is this? I said, there's a story there. Just put it aside and one day you'll get the story. And he came home, I didn't get the story. It was probably three, four, five years after he came home. I just asked him one day, I said, what was the deal with the lever from the grenade? And he just smiled. And he said, that's an interesting story. I still didn't think he was going to tell it to me, but he... I pried it out and he worked with a group of special forces, Green Beret, that blew up the bad guys who were building IEDs that killed our soldiers. That was their specialty. They hit them and destroyed them. He said, we had a call one night that a unit had discovered a factory where they were producing some of these things and we, as a mechanized unit, would hit these places when they were least expecting it, kill the bad guys and blow it up. And he said, we called the detachment of Marines and told them there was a 12-foot fence chain link around this place. We wanted to be able to get through it with our Humvees. So we called and said, cut the chain on the fence. And they did. And he said, we're racing there. He said, I was on a 50-cal in the lead. vehicle which means he's up inside the turret there looking out with a long-barreled .50 caliber machine gun and he said we were probably no more than 15-10 yards away from the fence when I realized the Marines had only cut it up about six foot high. They thought we were going to walk through instead of drive through and he said just he said it was a matter of split seconds I saw the fence I knew there's no way the turret which is 7-8 feet up in the air is going to get through this So he said, I dropped down through the turret. It caught the barrel of the machine gun, spun me around. But he said, here's the story. He said, I always, when I was on the turret, carried a frag grenade and a flash bang. He said, the frag grenade is to kill everybody around. The flash bang is to blind and deafen the people when you go in. And he said, I always carry them hooked right on the edge of the turret. That was just my method of operating. And he said, for some reason, just as we headed up that road toward that place, something tapped me on the shoulder and said, put the frag grenade back on your vest. And he said, I took the frag grenade. and hooked it back in its place on my vest. And I thought and reached for the flashbang and then hesitated and didn't do it. He said, when we hit that fence, it dropped that frag grenade and it tore that top out of it, dropped the frag, or the, excuse me, the flashbang down inside the turret and it exploded, blinding everybody for a matter of four or five minutes inside there. He said, but if it had been the frag grenade, it would kill everybody in the vehicle. He said, that's the lever off the flashbang. just to remind me that people were praying and that God cares for people. That's a story. That's a story. If you talk to soldiers long enough, you'll get some of the most wonderful stories and some of the most dangerous stories you'll ever hear in all your life. I've just collected them for years and years and years. And all this is is a collection of stories. Now I want you to drop down over here to chapter 13. And chapter 13 picks up the story in the process because I want to focus on just this one little event. The Bible says in verse 13, and three of the 30 chief went down and where are we at? You're by there? Verse 13, yes, verse 13. I don't know what I said, but that's where it was. And three of the 30 chief went down. It's the other verse if you're not at this one. And came to David in the harvest time under the cave of Adullam. And the troop of the Philistines pitched in the valley of Rephiam. And David was then in an hold. And the garrison of the Philistines was then in Bethlehem. And David longed. He said, oh, that one would give me drink of the water of the well of Bethlehem, which is by the gate. And the three mighty men break through the host of the Philistines, and drew water out of the well of Bethlehem that was by the gate, and took it, and brought it to David. Nevertheless, he would not drink thereof, but poured it out unto the Lord. And he said, Be it far from me, O Lord, that I should do this, is not this the blood of the men that went in jeopardy of their lives? Therefore he would not drink it. These things did these three mighty men. End of story. There's a lot of the story that's left lacking there. In David's mind, I'm sure every detail is clear as he thinks about this. And whenever he remembers it, he remembers every detail. You and I are given this short little two, three, four verses that God's chosen to give us. But he doesn't care that we have the whole story, but that we get what's here to be gleaned from this passage, whatever this event was, gave these three of these mighty men chief status among the 30. They were David's top-notch troops and they responded, acted like that. But in this story, I wanna talk to you tonight in conjunction with what Dr. Caesar has just said to us about how to take the average and turn it into the priceless. How to take the average and turn it into the priceless because that's exactly what this story is all about. We are encamped here upon a rise, I can see it in my mind's eye, and having studied too many war stories and read too many history books, I can almost envision this cave of Adullam. Tucked away somewhere in the ravine, the rocks are there for protection so that the enemy can't get through, but it is not a nice, convenient place. It is not a Hilton. It has a foul smell. It has creatures running hither and yon. It's dank and it's just not the place you would want to be. But it is there where David and his troops have taken refuge from the Philistines that now have him cut off from the city. They are between him and the city. Interestingly enough, the city that he sees is the place where he grew up as a boy. It's his hometown. He was born in Bethlehem. And so David sits there at the entrance of that cave, I'm sure, and looks over there at that place that for years and years of his life he knew the ins and the outs, the nooks and the crannies. He knew everything there was to know about that town. He thinks about the mischief that he got into. He thinks about the trouble he got into. He thinks about the fun that he had as a boy. He thinks about all of those things, just like any of us would do if we went back to our hometown or to the place where we were raised. even to our high school or our grade school, we would reminisce in detail. And David is reminiscing and as he does, his thoughts spill out of his mouth. I don't think David was really looking for volunteers. I think David's just thinking and then he's thinking out loud. And in the midst of that process, he said, I'd sure love to have a drink of the water out of that well. And that sets in motion a series of events that takes what is just common, what is ordinary, and brings it to the level of being absolutely priceless. I think that as a believer, we struggle just to maintain that lower echelon. But within us, there is oftentimes a desire to be more, to do more. to be successful, if I can use a word that nobody likes and yet it is what we really want, I want to be successful as a Christian. I remember the old spiritual that said, Lord, I want to be a Christian in my heart. And what that means is with all of me, everything that there is, I want to do something for the Lord. I mentioned last night, have you got anything in your life that's changed someone else's course of events? Or are you regulated to the great majority that he spoke about tonight as he gave us those numbers and facts? How do you get there though? I find with Paul very often commenting on my own existence, O wretched man that I am, who shall deliver me? I would. When I would, I find it sins with me. It's a struggle. But I want us to look just for a few minutes at these events as they took place and see how just everyday ordinary water becomes absolutely priceless. And recognize that those same things need to happen in the life of the believer. Now I'm not sure what it was that sparks these guys. I would think soldiers are soldiers and they're always looking for a battle. And David's over here and he's just kind of staring off down at the city there and he's looking and he's watching and then they see his lips begin to move and he's gone somewhere far, far away and he's thinking about it. And then all at once he says, boy, I'd sure love to have a drink of that water in that way. He's not saying it to them. He's saying it to that little boy that's still down there somewhere running around. But these three guys hear that and immediately they respond. Now, I don't know what you think about that. You say, well, that's the way soldiers are, but that's just kind of a cliched term. Nobody just jumps up and runs into battle like that. There's no amount of training that can make. They had to put some thought into what was involved here. but they immediately come to a conclusion that they're going to do something about what we just heard David say. The worth of the water. I don't know. I'm sure that David had canteens or something that held water up there where he was in the cave. I don't think his men were ill-equipped. I think they probably had water to drink and probably food to eat. I don't think it was a matter of dying of thirst or starving to death. It wasn't just, boy, I'd like to have a drink of water. It's that water means something to me that no other water means. And I'd sure like to have a drink of that. Well, in a sense, he could probably have been saying, boy, I'd sure love to go back and be a boy again. I'd sure love to go back and change some things in my life. I'd sure love to do some things differently than I've done. And I think probably all of us can identify with that water in that sense. We'd all like to have a chance to go back maybe and be a boy or a girl or a child or a young adult one more time. You say, well, I wouldn't change a thing. Well, yeah, you probably would. Because maybe if you went back, you'd have some brains. And nobody that wouldn't go back and change some things if they could. I'm not saying they're all devastating and tragic and horrible and sinful and wicked, but I'd like to go back and invest in Apple and IBM. You know, if I had a choice, that would be a good thing to do. All of us would like to change something. David's looking and he says, boy, I just love to have some water. The three guys sitting around a campfire, I don't know, maybe they're making s'mores. I doubt that, they're soldiers. But they hear, they perk up. One looks at the other, the other one returns it. They don't say anything but they're communicating with each other. One reaches into the hilt of his small sword and pulls it and begins to sharpen that blade and then the others follow suit. They're getting ready to do something about David's request. Why? Well, I don't know. It was an act of love, no doubt. Because chances are great that they will not survive. Chances are high they will not return or at least not all three of them. One may make it back but it's highly probable that one or more of them are gonna die in this conflict because the only thing between them and the water that David wants is the entire garrison of the Philistines, aka Goliath's pals. And so they began to look. It was an act of love because they had to realize it's going to cost them probably a great amount. There's going to be some bloodshed here. Maybe it was David's legacy that they cared for. David had killed a giant. He was a great man of war and he had cared for them and led them. Maybe it was the legacy of a leader, finally a leader after all the days of Saul and the weakness that was there. Now we had some strength. Maybe they loved him because he was a great leader. I don't know. Maybe it was the fact that he loved them, cared for them. Soldiers care for each other. My son's been out of the military now for almost 10 years and talks to the guys he fought in combat with almost every day for four or five tours, talks to them at least once every two, three weeks. Probably will till the day he dies. There's something there. Something there. He said, you put yourselves back to back when there's incoming fire from four or five places and you sit down and you begin to return fire and you know that there's a guy behind me got my back and two guys on the sides and we're either gonna get out of here or we're gonna die together. You don't just check out and let that go. These guys now, maybe they realize David loved them and cared for them. Whatever it was, something brings them to the place where they're going to take an act of great risk. And they know at the onset their life is going to change. How do you move to this place where God and man can be pleased with the life that we live? Where we honor Him in the way that we're that upper edge. How do you get there? Well, you better think about it because it's going to cost you something. It's going to be a great risk you'll have to take with the life that you so much want to live for yourself if you're like most of us. David longed for that water. I find he only longed for two or three other things in the scripture. He used that word when he talked about the Lord in Psalm 63 verse 1. He said, I longed for thee in a dry land. Boy, do you ever have a disaster hit your life and realize how much more deeply you long for the Lord to be present than other times we don't even think about Him? There are times we can go half the day probably, maybe a whole day, and not even think about the Lord being there, but boy, you let a disaster take place. Police officers very often tell you that most people in the first few seconds of any disaster will all say about the same thing, and it's, oh my God. Even an atheist gets right in a split second and says, oh my God. It's an amazing thing when you get to a dry land, when you get to that place where there's no sustenance, where things are not well at all, that your mind is turned to the Lord. And David said, I long for thee in a dry land. In Psalm 84 verse 2, he said he longed for the courts of the Lord, the place of worship. Every once in a while, your life will go through some of those stubborn moments. Do you ever find yourself sitting in a church service? I know I have. I found myself preaching sometimes and saying, Lord, wait a minute. This is not what this is about. I want to worship. I want to enjoy you today. I want your presence here. I don't want to just sing some songs and listen to a sermon and a couple of things that the preacher has to say and then check out and go eat. That's not why I came today. Sometimes I find myself longing for the courts of the Lord when I'm in the church wanting to see something go on. And then David said in Psalm 119 verse 174, I long for thy salvation. So that's a pretty strong term. When David said, I long for that water, I've got a longing for that, it was a strong desire that he had. Do you realize that that desire that he had, was the first step to making that common priceless. said anything about that water, if he had not begun to reminisce about that water, if he had not thought back to the days, I'm sure David could probably see his band of merry men with their wooden swords and their bows made out of string and sticks as they ran through the streets of Bethlehem delivering it from the Philistines, but that was a long time ago and they were imaginary enemies and now they're very real. And the swords aren't made out of wood and the bows aren't made out of sticks and string any longer. But as David sat there and looked at that, maybe he remembered those boys running and chasing the bad guys, imaginary though they were, they could run, fleet of foot, and they chased them up and down the streets until they were just worn out. And then someone would say, let's run over to the well and get a drink of water. They'd run over to the well, and they'd lay down their wooden swords, and they'd lay aside their small bows, and they'd reach down in that well, and they'd draw up some of that cool water he talked about just a few minutes ago. And they'd cup those little boyish hands, and they'd pull that water to their mouths, and they'd drink, and it was the best thing David had ever tasted. And now he sits many years down the road looking at a real enemy, but the well is still there. And something says, boy, I'd love to have that more than anything in the world. You say, preacher, there are things that are a lot more valuable. There probably are, but at that moment, there was nothing more valuable in this world to David than that water that was down there in that well. and somewhere in his mind he let the word slip and they found their way out of his mouth and three big old husky guys hear it and all at once they hadn't even thought anything about water. Water didn't mean anything to them. They got a canteen full. They're not worried about the well. We're going to kill everybody. We're going to let the Philistines' blood flow into those wells tomorrow. We're going to wreak havoc on... That's probably their mindset. But when David said, boy, I'd sure love to have a drink of that water, that water's value went from nothing to something. Something for which they were about to risk their lives. You realize the water didn't change? The place where it was found didn't change? I don't know how it tasted. Maybe it was a rusty taste. Maybe it had a mineral taste. I don't know. Maybe it wasn't even good water. It was maybe all they had to drink in Bethlehem. It didn't matter. Because the first thing that made that water important was the desire of a great man. Why did he desire it? I don't know. I don't think he was thirsty. I think it was his memories that jogged his mind. Do you realize there was a day when you meant absolutely nothing to this universe in which you reside? If you had just ceased to exist and right out of existence, nobody would have noticed it. We think ourselves so important. I don't know how many funerals I've preached in 35 years in the ministry, but I know this. I just want to drop the bomb on you gently. How's that? I know your family's going to always have special times and they're going to cry and they're going to miss you. They're going to get together at holidays and they're going to say, you know, their lips will quiver and there'll be a tear. But I just want to be honest with you. They're not going to miss you too terribly much after about two weeks. We have a great resilience. And human beings go on and life goes on. Now, some of you, you know, some of you wives, and you think, oh, my husband will remember me forever. He'll remember you until he finds a new wife. Some of you guys think, oh, my wife, she'll remember me. She'll find, she'll remember you until she finds a guy with some money this time. I'm not saying they'll forget about you entirely, and I'm not saying that their hearts will not always long to see you again, but you're not going to be in their thoughts 24 hours a day, seven days a week. It's not going to happen. You realize that there was a time when we meant absolutely nothing to the universe in which we reside, and then there was a God in heaven who had a desire for His creation. I said last night, if it had been me, Genesis 1, Genesis 2, Genesis 3, the end. Over with, done, we're out. Why? I gave them a chance, they messed up, don't need them. He didn't need us. He doesn't need us still. But he chose us. And he wants us. And he desires us. And all at once, something that is absolutely worthless with just the desire of the Lord, we became something of great value. so much so that he would use terms like pearl of great price, the pearl hidden in the field, the treasure hidden in the field, those things to describe the worthless us. Well, don't walk around, put your thumbs in your lapel and say, well, you know, I'm worth a lot. I'm worth, I'm really special. No, you're not. You're still, if you just out of existence, nobody would miss you. but he cares. And his desire makes you infinitely more valuable. What do you say? Listen, do you know if you want to be the kind of Christian that Dr. Caesar spoke about this evening? If you want to be that one that gets the attention of a holy God and says, hast thou considered my servant? If you want to be at that level, can I tell you where it begins? It begins with a desire. There's got to be that desire. They that sow in tears reap in joy. They that wait upon the Lord. There's that longing that needs to come. You need to find yourself in the scripture again and again. You need to surround yourself and isolate yourself for a season perhaps and come to the real truth that all I want is to be what God wants me to be. It all begins with that desire. But it didn't stay with just a desire because all at once these guys jump up and I don't think they'd tell David where they're going because he'd have stopped them. They sneak out of camp and it gets quiet and the crickets are chirping and the night sky is filled with stars and the campfire is crackling and there's that dank smell coming from that cave and critters scurrying but it's pretty much a normal night. And then two, three hundred yards down into the ravine, at the quietest possible moment of the night, you hear... and there's a clanging and a clash of steel and bodies flying everywhere and the Philistines are they don't even know what hit them they think it's a full invasion and they're jumping to man the guns and the cowards are running and it's just three guys but boy they can make a lot of noise when they have the element of surprise and they're fighting and they're hacking. And boy, as soon as the Philistines get their wits about them, they begin to close around and they keep fighting and their bodies falling. And you gotta believe that there are some cuts and gashes on these three guys before they get through this group. But miraculously, they make it through the trained troops of the Philistine army. And behind them lay the trail of the dead. The blood streams and they grin, a couple of them missing some teeth. But that's a soldier's way of saying, we won the battle. Now let's get the water. They walk over to the well and they, I don't know, whether they had one canteen or whether they had two or three, but I know this, they're going to get this water for David. And boy, they reach down there and they pick that water up and the blood's still streaming everywhere and the cuts are gaping and the teeth are spitting them out and the whole deal. And then they smile again and they say, we got to go back. that was just round one and now they know we're coming we don't have the element of surprise anymore so they turn and they face their enemy and this time instead of sneaking up on them they stand on top of that ridge with Bethlehem in the background and then you hear them and here they go again right back into the now much wiser Philistine army The Philistines very quickly pulled together in their formations designed to keep out anything, but for some reason it doesn't work. These guys are like weed whackers with swords. They just come and they're cutting and hacking and tearing and all at once they're through to the other side. And they walk up to their commander-in-chief, couple of fingers gone now, rest of the teeth all gone. An ear missing, but I don't know exactly where it went. And literally hundreds of bodies strewn in the valley. And David says, what in the world are you three idiots doing? And they hold up, say, water from the well of Bethlehem. Do you realize that When David desired the water, it became more valuable. And now then, somebody's taken great risk to obtain it. And it has achieved even greater value. For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son. You know how important you are? You realize if all of us tonight just blew up, it wouldn't affect the universe at all? We are not necessary for the continuation of the universe. The sun is not going to dim. The moon will not refuse to rise if 10,000 people died tonight. There could be a tsunami tonight that can wipe out an island full of people and the sun will still come up in the morning just as it always has. It'll still set tomorrow night. Nothing will change in this universe. We like to think we're really important. That's why we're saving the whales and the seals and saving the Antarctic ice shelf. And boy, we just, we've got all these noble ideas to make us feel like we are as important as we already know we are. Until the boat gets stuck in the ice shelf. And the people who went to save the ice shelf have to be saved from the ice shelf. We're something, aren't we? We say, just look at us. Armstrong says, that's one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind. I wonder how often he rehearsed that. I wonder how he thought it through. Maybe somebody in a college professor gave him those words. This is going to make history, Neil. You got to say it this way. I've always thought it would have been funny if he had tripped on the bottom rung and said something that We wouldn't want to have had into, but it didn't happen that way. But that would have shown us really how important we are. We're not really that important. But God loved us, and he sent his son to die for us. You realize when God loved us, we obtained some value, and then when Jesus died on the cross, we became even with greater value. The water became of great value when there was a desire for it. It became of an even greater value when there was a decision and a deed put forth. But then there was this third event, and this one is the one that seems somewhat preposterous if you don't understand the relationship you have with the Lord Jesus Christ. David took that water. And he looked at the blood on those men that had risked their lives to go get it. And he took that water and he looked up to heaven. And he said, God, this is what I want. And he said, fellas, I can't drink this. because of the price you've paid, I'm going to use this as a means of worshiping God. I'm gonna use what you've supplied me with as a means to draw near to my God. And he poured it out on the ground. Now the average Baptist would have quit the church. Can't believe, can't believe we love this guy. We did all this for him and boy, he didn't even notice what we did for him. When David poured that water out unto the Lord, it became priceless. You say, why? Because if David had offered an inappropriate sacrifice, what would have happened? What happens when you burn strange fire? What happens when you offer the wrong sacrifice? But God didn't kill anybody. Can I tell you what that means? That sacrifice honored God. and God accepted it as a sacrifice. That's priceless. That's priceless. Just a few cups of water out of a well, nobody even knew it existed. The Philistines were in possession of the town and they didn't even bother to drink any of the water. But David wanted it and then it became even more important. Some men took a great risk to obtain it and it became even more important. It was offered in worship to God and it became absolutely priceless. And what are you telling me? Well, I'm telling you how to get to that upper echelon. You see, God loved the world, He gave His Son, and when we put our belief and our faith in His Son, we become eternal. That's priceless. Same progression. Watch this. You say, Preacher, I just got saved. I don't know much about this stuff, and it doesn't make a lot of sense to me, but I really want to please the Lord. And maybe you'd say, I've been saved 30 years, Preacher, and I'm not doing such a good job on this, but I'd really love to please God in a way. I want to hear Him say, well done, thou good and faithful servant. Well then, let the desire grow. Think on that, meditate on that, because just as sure as you're sitting in this pew tonight, you're going to stand before your King David one day, who had a desire to see something in your life. He longed for something in your life. But it's not just the desire. There's the taking a risk. You say, what does that mean? It means this, before you can ever be what He wants you to be, you have to let go of what you are. I've known young men and young ladies as well over the course of my ministry that loved the Lord, but they loved themselves a little more. So when it came time for God to say, this is the way I would like for you to go, they said, Lord, I really love you. but I've got my own plans and I'll do it my way. I've told the story 35 years ago as a 23-year-old young man just out of Bible school with everything within him wanting to go to Florida. See, I wasn't nuts. I wanted to go to Florida to pastor. That's where all the old preachers go. They don't come to snowy regions of the north. I had a call from a church in Quincy, Florida that said, we voted tonight 100% for you to come and be our pastor. I had stopped there one night just driving back from a visit and they didn't have a preacher. They asked me to preach. First love offering I ever got for preaching. They called me on the phone. They said, we voted tonight. We want you and your wife to come 100%. And I said, I just talked to some people in Toledo. And they asked me to come up and hold a Bible study for several weeks. And I don't believe duties conflict. And I already, you could have seen the tears running down my face. I said, I don't believe that would be the will of God. God may give you a choice, but he never makes you make a bad promise. So I hung up the phone and I said to my wife, we could have gone to Florida. And over the next two or three years, I said that thousands of times, I still say it occasionally, I could have gone to Florida. And I remember driving up that first Sunday years ago, February the 19th, 1979, and it was not where I wanted to be. Not by any stretch of the imagination. I liked where I was. better than where I was going. And I didn't want to stay where I was. But when I got there, I realized that God's will for me, as bad as I hated the thought, was to leave Ohio. You say, well, God changed your heart. No. No. Still kind of a scuzzy city. You see, at some point, you have to be able to deny yourself. One of the marks of Christian growth is the ability to say no to self and yes to the Lord. You know, the Lord had to learn that in His human form. He learned obedience through the things that He suffered. Do you think the Garden of Gethsemane was difficult when He said not? My will, but Thine. Knowing full well what the Lord's will was. At some point in your life, if you want to move to that upper echelon, that one leper that was cleansed, that becomes an extraordinary individual, at some point you're going to have to desire it more than you desire living. And at some point you're going to have to learn to deny yourself and say, I'm smart enough for that. It's been offered. It's something I could have. It's got a lot of perks. It's got a lot of nice things. But no. There's an interesting story of George Beverly Shea who sang for the Billy Graham Crusades for years and years and years. He had a phenomenal voice. Still, even to this day, I think he's still alive. You hear him sing. I don't know, somebody going like this and somebody going like that. Maybe he's half dead. But they came to him with a very lucrative contract. One of the Hollywood studios wanted to put him on records. And he sat down and talked with them throughout the course of a day and finally said this to them, I have made a promise to the Billy Graham Crusades that I will sing in their services. And they said, but you can get out of that promise. He said, but I've made a promise to God that that's what I would do with my life. And that night he went and stood at that stadium where thousands of people were there and he said, I'd rather have Jesus than anything this world affords, than to be the king of a vast domain and be held in sin's dread sway. I'd rather have Jesus. You know, if you're going to move to that upper echelon, you're going to have to come to a place where you've learned to say no to self. You say, that's got to be the hardest thing that anybody ever has to do. Well, it's the hardest thing until you get to the next thing. But you see, when they risked their lives, they probably thought that was the hardest thing that ever had to be done. But the hardest thing was yet to be done. Because David took that water and poured it out to the Lord. I'm saying at some point you're going to have to learn to deny yourself. But at another point, in a very real point in your life, you're going to have to come to the place in your life where you take your hands completely off and say, Lord, I have no desires, I have no wishes whatsoever in this life. I belong to you. You remember what the Lord said over in the book of Mark? Actually, He said it several places. He said, if any man will follow me, let him first deny himself see there's that denial but that's not the hard part after that comes the taking up the cross and then you can follow the cross speaks of death It's not just denying self, but then it's death to self. All my dreams, all my ambitions, whatever I wanted in life doesn't matter anymore. You say, oh, what a terrible sacrifice. No, no, no. See, if you ever come to that place, you'll realize the great wisdom and the great joy of coming to just such a place. I wanted to be a marine biologist. That was my goal in life. That's what I wanted to do. I love the ocean. I wanted to be a member of Jacques Cousteau. Boy, he was my hero. And there came a place in my life where I said, not my will, but thine be done. And then when we get done with this religious thing, then I can, but it never happened. At some point I had to say, Lord, you know what? It doesn't matter anymore. and I had to take my hands completely off and say, it's not my life, it's not my will, it's all yours, everything. You say, was it a sad day? It was the greatest day of my life. It was the greatest day of my life. I've experienced things and seen things and been places and I just can't, I can't, I could spend all night long talking to you about the wonder of living a life that doesn't belong to me. Paul said it this way, I am crucified with Christ. Nevertheless, I live, yet not I, Christ liveth in me. And the life that I now live, which isn't mine, I live by the faith of the Son of God who loved me, loved me. How do you know that? Look at the life I'm living. And gave himself for me. You know how you climb that upper echelon? You let that desire grow. You foster that desire that said, I would be like Jesus. I long to see Him. I long to be what He wants me to be. I want to please Him. You begin to pray. You begin to beg God to put that in your heart. And then you'll come to a place one day where flesh will say, well, wait a minute, I'm not going to go that far. And you're going to have to say, yes, I am. No to self, yes to Him. And then you'll come to that hurdle that says, how about given? He said, I beseech you, therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God, you present your bodies a living sacrifice. That's where you crawl on the altar and you have nothing left. Boy, that sounds terrible. Oh, it really does. It's just horrible. It's a horrible way to live your life. It's depressing. Oh, no, I'm sorry, it's not, not at all. I'll promise you that my joy has outweighed my sad, tragic moments by a thousand to one in the days I've served Jesus Christ. I'm not saying there haven't been some rain showers and some storms. Not saying there haven't been some days when you're depressed. But I just want you to know they are so few and far between. I can't remember the last time I was depressed. I depress other people. God has been good. Are you willing to go that far? Do you want to go that far? Or do you want to just stay in the nominal crown? Amy Carmichael said it this way, Hast thou no scar, no hidden scar on foot or side or hand? I hear thee sung as mighty in the land, I hear them hail thy bright ascendant star. Hast thou no scar? Hast thou no wound? Yet I was wounded by the archers, spent, lean me against a tree to die, and rent by ravening bees that come past me. I swooned. Hast thou no wound? No wound, no scar, yet as the master shall the servants be, and pierced are the feet that follow me. but thine are whole can he have followed far who has no wound and has no scar. You say that's not a very good place to be tonight. That's what I'm inviting you for. I'm inviting you to a wound and a scar. Those both symbolize taking my hands and my control off of self and saying it all belongs to you God. And only then will you ever see what the God who spoke and light came into existence. The God who hung the earth on nothing and put the stars in the heavens with the flick of His finger. The God who spoke again and again and things flourished and grew from the dead ground. The God who spoke in the seas. Only then will you see the majesty and the greatness of that God when He takes the cross that you're on and uses it as a means to make the universe exist. And your life then will have counted. Let's bow our heads tonight just for a minute.