And of course, it takes faith to believe that God really is alive, that He is on the throne when things are not going well for us. And we do have tests of our faith. We're going to be looking at some of those in 2 Samuel 15. In our verse-by-verse exposition through this book, we're up to verse 13. 2 Samuel 15, verse 13. Now a messenger came to David saying, the hearts of the men of Israel are with Absalom. So David said to all his servants who were with him at Jerusalem, arise, let us flee, or we shall not escape from Absalom. Make haste to depart lest he overtake us suddenly and bring disaster upon us and strike the city with the edge of the sword. And the king's servants said to the king, we are your servants ready to do whatever my Lord, the king commands. Then the king went out with all his household after him, but the king left 10 women concubines to keep the house. And the king went out with all the people after him and stopped at the outskirts. Then all his servants passed before him and all the Cherithites, all the Pellethites and all the Gittites, 600 men who had followed him from Gath passed before the king. When the king said to Ittai, the Gittite, why are you also going with us? Return and remain with the king, for you are a foreigner and also an exile from your own place. In fact, you came only yesterday. Should I make you wander up and down with us today? Since I go, I know not where. Return and take your brethren back. Mercy and truth be with you. But Ittai answered the king and said, as the Lord lives and as my Lord the king lives, surely in whatever place my Lord the king shall be, whether in death or life, even there also your servant will be. So David said to Ittai, go and cross over. The Nittite, the Gittite, and all his men, and all the little ones who were with him, crossed over. And all the country wept with a loud voice, and all the people crossed over. The king himself also crossed over the brook Kidron, and all the people crossed over toward the way of the wilderness. Father, we thank you for this scripture, and we pray as we dig into it that the responses of our heart would be pleasing and acceptable in your sight. Do anoint this time, we pray in Jesus' name. Amen. Some time ago, BBC did a story on a man in China who died at the age of 68. And it's pretty rare, any time I traveled throughout China, rare to see pet dogs, but he had a pet dog and that dog kept vigil at his grave. and would not leave. I don't think he's left to this day. They're feeding him there. But people have tried to coax him away, maybe to eat the dog, I don't know. But they've tried to coax the dog away and that dog will not leave that grave. Right around the same time, I saw a news report of a dog in California. A man had fallen off of a 200 foot cliff and his daughter was looking for him for eight days and finally discovered that their dog Roxy had been guarding the body for those eight days without any food or any water. Incredible faithfulness on the part of that dog and it took quite a bit for her to get that dog to leave. Now, why is it that when we think of loyalty and faithfulness, the first thing that pops into my mind anyway, maybe not yours, is some dog story. There's just dozens and dozens of dog stories like that of Lady and Dorado and Hichiko and other dogs that have been incredibly faithful. Now, you might say, the reason you don't think of a human first, dogs are dumb. That's why they're faithful. They don't know any better. But back in chapter 2, I gave an introduction to the subject of loyalty, and we saw back then that every Christian is called, commanded to have covenant loyalty, covenant loyalty, and because it is something that is in the covenant, there's two covenant words that are used, chesed, which means faithfulness, steadfast love, steadfast mercy, steadfast loyalty, and then there's hemeth, which is a word that also means faithfulness and steadfastness, but at the core of both of those words is this concept of covenant loyalty. Now, because it's at the heart of the covenant, what we're going to be seeing is the only place that you can get this loyalty is from the throne of God. It's a product of God's grace. It's not something that we can stir up in ourselves. And because it is a covenant concept, it must be defined by the scripture and limited by the scripture. And we saw that when it is not, it's very easy for that loyalty to become idolatry. So we're not imitating dogs when we talk about loyalty and say that you just have to have blind loyalty to so-and-so. No, we're talking about understanding what the scriptures call us to in terms of loyalty and what are the limits of that loyalty. And so the sermon previously, I wasn't so much looking at putting off idolatrous loyalty. We did look at that to some degree, but it was primarily a call for each one of us to examine ourselves and to put on loyalty in all of the areas of our covenant relationship that God calls us to do. So I'm not going to repeat what we talked about last time. Instead, I'm going to build on that. In Proverbs 19, verse 22, God says that which is desired in a man is loyalty. God desires, for example, husbands and wives to be loyal to each other, not just to put up with each other, but to have this deep chesed, this deep commitment, loyalty, covenant mercy for each other, a steadfast love for each other. And yet, That loyalty is going to be tested from time to time. And during those times of testing, it will reveal to us whether the loyalty is something that's just been concocted within our own hearts or whether we have received it by God's grace. And in the book of Acts, we see testings of loyalty. And we see that the loyalty of the disciples to each other got tested by persecution and the trials that they went through. It doesn't matter which area of loyalty you're talking about, there's going to be testings. Even God's loyalty to us gets tested. He has promised to be loyal to his covenant promises to us throughout time, but every time we sin, every time we are not loyal to God, God continues to be faithful as Gary mentioned in the introduction. Even though we're not faithful, God remains faithful because He cannot deny Himself. And there's one amazing verse, Psalm 103, verse 17 says, the chesed, that's the loyalty, the steadfast faithfulness of the Lord is from everlasting to everlasting on those who fear Him. So that's the ultimate expression of loyalty that has been tested and that has been proved. And that's the subject we're going to look at this morning. It is the testing of loyalty. God's tests that He brings. Now, the rest of chapter 15, verses 13 through the rest of the chapter and the first 19 verses of chapter 16 deal with the tests that God brings in life to really reveal our hearts. Do we have a divine loyalty or is this a humanistic counterfeit that's within our hearts? So loyalty to David, loyalty to God, loyalty to a cause. And I've isolated at least 18 tests in these two chapters. We're only gonna look at the first 10 today. First test of loyalty in your outlines is when popularity is waning. Will your pledged covenant loyalty stand up when people criticize you for it? when they try to pull you away from it. Will your loyalty stand up when you are a minority that's getting shouted down, when you're a lone voice standing for some cause? If you take a look at verse 13, It says, Now a messenger came to David, saying, The hearts of the men of Israel are with Absalom. Now this messenger obviously was planning to be loyal to David. He may have been one of the people in verse 11, the 200 men who went along innocently not knowing anything. But however he got there, he was witnessing all of these Israelites pledging their loyalty to Absalom, and he runs as fast as he can to tell David about this, despite the fact that there was peer pressure of the crowds around him, despite the fact he was now siding with a minority, despite the fact that it looked like he might be siding with a losing cause, he told David, and if he had not done so, David would no doubt have been dead. True loyalty does not care what the multitude thinks. It stays steadfast. Why? Because scripture calls us to be steadfast. And you might think that it'd be very easy for you to be that messenger. It is tougher than you think when you get into the middle of the situation to stand up against such peer pressure. It takes loyalty to truth to stand up in city council and to tell them that what they're planning to do is wrong, especially if you know that the media is going to paint you really badly. It takes loyalty to truth, loyalty to the Constitution, loyalty to country, to go to the unicameral and testify against an ungodly homosexual bill. And know that you're going to get savaged and humiliated by Ernie Chambers. He does it. Every time you oppose one of his bills, man, he comes after you like crazy. And I've seen him savage others. He savaged me. When we go and testify at the unicameral, But it is something that we sometimes are called by God to do to stand loyal despite the fact that people are going to boo you. They're going to shout you down. They're going to treat you like you are an idiot. And so this is the first test I want you to evaluate yourselves by the unpopularity test. On the other hand, if you give in to peer pressure rather easily, one of the things I can tell you is that you're gonna be tempted so easily to fail when the crowd comes and they pressure you. They pressure you with their opinions. One of the scriptures that has become a life verse for me because this is an area that I failed the test on many times when I was growing up. I caved in to what other people would think, but it's Galatians 1 verse 10. And it says, if I still sought to please man, I would not be a servant of Christ. And I've mentioned to you a number of times before a book that gives a lot of great principles. It's Welch's book, When People are Big and God is Small. And you could just imagine from that title, you know, that the people are big because it's just overwhelming what they think. Not so much what God thinks. He's not. High in your mind, but it's a great book to help you to overcome this and this is an area that so many Christians stumble on and It's obvious why we want to be liked we don't like being hated, but there are times when we are going to have to be loyal to God and not be liked and this messenger obviously had friends who had invited him to this this group he was leaving those friends behind maybe offending them a perfect permanently and But he did what was right. The second test of loyalty is the inconvenience and discomfort test. Take a look at verses 14 through 15. So David said to all his servants who were with him at Jerusalem, arise and let us flee or we shall not escape from Absalom. Make haste to depart lest he overtake us suddenly and bring disaster upon us and strike the city with the edge of the sword. Absalom was not too far away. And if they were going to escape, they didn't have time to pack their bags and get all of their stuff pulled out of the castle. They were going to have to make an immediate decision. Am I following David or am I gonna stay here? and do the easier thing and stick with Absalom. 15. And the king's servants said to the king, We are your servants, ready to do whatever my lord the king commands. They were in effect saying, Whatever comes, we are going to be loyal. Now, we fully understand that we're going to be leaving behind the comforts of life. We understand very well how difficult it is to be living out there in the fields. Maybe they didn't even have time to bring their tents with them. We're not really told. But they knew there was going to be inconvenience. They might even have to leave the country. OK, we're willing to leave it all in order to be loyal to you, is what they were saying. So it's a willingness to face discomfort and inconvenience. Now, some husbands and wives are willing to be loyal to each other so long as everything's hunky-dory. But as soon as it becomes obvious that Christ is expecting them to pick up their cross and follow after Christ, ooh, it gets a little bit tougher. If God is calling them to be cheerful in the face of not so cheerful circumstances, They wonder, and this becomes a test, is their loyalty a man-made loyalty? A man-defined loyalty? Or is it a supernatural loyalty that is defined by the scriptures? How many wives bail because their husbands don't live up to the expectations of every book that they have read on how their man needs to be more perfect than he really is? You women, I really encourage you, stop reading those books about men. You don't need to know about that. You need to be focusing on what God's call on you is. And I think sometimes reading those books and knowing so much about how unperfect their husband is, has poisoned their wives. That's not what the Bible does. You know what the Bible does? It presents all kinds of imperfect men that were models for what these wives should be submitting to. You look at 1 Peter 3, and what do you see in 1 Peter 3? It's not, here's a perfect man, here's a perfect woman. No. She is called to faithful loyalty to a husband who is an unbeliever. He's unreasonable. He will not obey the word of God. He's difficult to live with. In other words, it's calling for steadfast loyalty in the worst case scenario. And he does exactly the same thing to the man. The likewise implies, yes, you men have to dwell with your wives with understanding, even though your wife is imperfect, even if she is an unbeliever, even if she is difficult to live with. You know, in the book of Proverbs, it talks about how much better it seems to dwell in a wilderness all by yourself than to dwell with a contentious woman. But it doesn't give you that option, does it? Boy, it'd be tempting to leave. But no, he says, you must dwell with them, even if they are difficult to dwell with, and dwell with them with understanding. He is calling us to have a supernatural loyalty to each other that you really cannot explain in terms of what unbelievers might do. Now, many of us men, we think we can face any kind of hardship. We're real men, you know? We're good military men. In fact, I think I could be a Navy SEAL. Yeah, right. You're not even a Navy SEAL with your wife and with your family and with the hardships out there. What kind of a person are you? You're not ready to take the hardships of life. That's, in effect, what is happening. In the movie Catch Me If You Can, which, by the way, was based on a real-life story, the young man is absolutely devastated by his mom's unfaithfulness. What had happened is that the husband was financially troubled and they had to move into a smaller house. And she was realizing little by little that she was not going to be able to experience the nice life that she used to have. There were going to be hardships. And those hardships were a test of her loyalty. Well, she was not loyal. She went and married, divorced her husband, married another man. but it was inconvenience that tested her loyalty. When you young people fight against the incredible fleshly desires that you probably have much more strongly than some of us older people, you need to ask yourselves, Lord, am I loyal to you? Am I loyal to my parents? Am I loyal to the covenant pledges of purity and honor that I have made in the church? And by the way, I sometimes see some of you young people undermining your parents' desires as you relate to each other. You're not modeling faithfulness. What about you young men when it comes to pornography? Does your loyalty to God's standard for purity make you resist sin even when it's tough, even when it's painful, it's discouraging? Hebrews 12 verse 4 says this, in your struggle against sin, you have not yet resisted the point of shedding your blood. He's not telling you to commit suicide. That's the easy way out. That's exactly the opposite of what he is saying. He is likening you to a soldier in a battle against sin. And he is saying, what kind of a soldier are you guys anyway? As soon as the enemy even appears, you don't draw your sword. You don't even face them. You run. You hightail it. Where is the wounds? Where is the evidence you've ever been fighting against sin? Where is the evidence of the skin knuckles? I don't see a boxing match going on here. I see as soon as sin asks you to surrender, okay, you surrender. He said that's what he's talking about. You have not taken discomfort in your fight against sin. And so, What kind of a spiritual soldier are you? These men passed the test. They said, whatever comes, we know full well we're gonna be facing some majorly discomforting things in the next few days, but we are going to be loyal. You may remember the 1989 earthquake in Armenia that flattened the nation. Incredible, it was on the news everywhere. 30,000 people died, and back then I saw a story that that very heartwarming story, but I think illustrates this loyalty so, so well. Moments after the earthquake stopped, the father raced to the elementary school and he saw the building completely flattened, flattened to the ground. And he remembered a promise that he had made to his son, no matter what happens, I'll always be there for you. And driven by that promise, he quickly found the area where his son's classroom, he knew his son's classroom was, and he started pulling away the rubble. Other parents arrived and they began sobbing for their children. One man told him, it's too late. You know, they are dead. You can't help. Even a police officer tried to force him to leave and say, there's nothing you can do here. But he refused for 38 straight hours without sleep, without eating food. He feverishly pulled back the rubble. And finally, when he moved one piece of concrete, he thought he heard his son's voice. And he cried out, Arman, Arman. And his son said, Dad, it's me. And then the boy added these priceless words. I told the other kids not to worry. I told them that if you were alive, you'd save me. And when you saved me, they'd be saved too. Because you promised, no matter what, I'll always be there for you. Now that's loyalty and love that pushed him through that. So I want to challenge you. Do you keep your promises no matter how inconvenient it is to keep those promises? And if not, I would urge you to say, Lord, I'm not the loyal man I want to be. All I've got is human loyalty. I need loyalty from your throne. Help me to evaluate every area of my life. I want to walk in the realm of the supernatural. The third test of loyalty is absence, verses 16 through 17. Then the king went out with all his household after him, but the king left 10 women, concubines, to keep the house. And the king went out with all the people after him and stopped at the outskirts. Now David probably thought that his concubines were safe at home. And by the way, concubines were a kind of wife. They were married by contract, not by covenant. Another difference between a concubine and a regular wife was they didn't have the rights of inheritance. They didn't have a dowry. But they were married. Do not think of concubines as mistresses. Quite, quite different. Now, even though marrying concubines and having multiple wives was a sin, it was not illegal. Having a mistress was both a sin and illegal. Okay, so they're quite different things. So anyway, David being married to these concubines, he probably thought that they were quite safe, you know, honor and and women and children first and all that stuff, he probably thought that they would be quite safe left at home. And so, there was a certain degree of trust that was there. Well, Absalom completely blew over that. I think David had no idea that Absalom would have sex with his children. He was following a pagan concept that you sleep with the wives of the previous king to declare yourself to be a king. And that's a later chapter. That's a pagan claim of succession. But David didn't know he was going to be that low. So here were 10 concubine wives that would experience absence from David. And loyalty is often tested when there is no one else around. Loyalty is tested by computer porn because there's nobody there to see you. You're all alone in the room. Nobody can tell that you're watching that computer porn. Loyalty is tested when you're on trips. is tested so frequently by absence that there is a phrase that I don't think is always an accurate phrase that absence makes the heart grow fonder, but it can make the heart to wander as well. I know many times it does make the heart grow fonder, but I don't think it's an absolutely accurate statement. But in such circumstances, only you can know if you are truly loyal. J.C. Jones visited the violinist, Benno Rubinoff, and had a great conversation with him. And during the course of the conversation, Benno said that he practiced eight hours a day on his violin. And that was when he was not on the road on his tours. But when he was on the road, he always practiced in between his concerts. And the guy said, well, you're all practiced up. You're ready for the concert. And every concert you're doing on this tour is a kind of practice. Why do you feel like you have to practice every day? And Rubinov very patiently replied, well, I strive for perfection. I doubt if my audience would know the difference if I lightened up on rehearsals, but I would. Music is my life. Music is in my heart. I must always give my best. And I thought that one sentence was very, very significant. I doubt if my audience would know the difference if I lightened up on rehearsals, but I would. And I would add, so would God. God would know. Now if you have that kind of an attitude of loyalty with regard to your calling, you're going to be loyal even when everybody is absent. When I was working as a janitor in the hospital, I would have to clean rooms that had not been used since the day before when I had mopped and cleaned those rooms. And a lot of my fellow employees told me, just skip the room. It's perfectly clean. But my contract called me to mop those floors every day. It's actually, it was a sterilizing solution in the hospital that we used. And so I would mop the floors. But when I was in that room, I was thinking to myself, man, I'm behind schedule. I'll just mop around the furniture. But my contract called for moving the furniture, moving those garbage cans. And I was thinking, OK, I will move these things. It doesn't seem like it's even needed, but that's what the contract calls for. And sure enough, one day I saw a little piece of torn paper underneath one of the garbage cans that I moved. My boss had put it there to test my loyalty and because I passed the test, I rose through the ranks very quickly and was given more responsibilities at that hospital. So I put that third point before you. How do you do when your loyalty is tested by absence? Do you act exactly the same way when people see you as when they don't see you? OK, that's what supernatural loyalty would do. By the way, the only place you can get that loyalty is from Jesus. OK, it's a product of God's grace and it's free for the asking. It takes blood, sweat and tears to implement it, but it's free for the asking. And then as you ask God to work through you. He does through your blood, sweat, and tears. Okay, fourth, loyalty can also be tested by things like ethnic differences. First part of verse 18 says, then all his servants passed before him and all the Cherethites, all the Pelethites, and all the Gittites. Now the Bible mentions the Cherethites in a number of places as being either a tribe of the Philistines or in some way very, very closely connected with the Philistines. Most scholars believe they were Philistines. Pelethites, most scholars believe those were Philistines. And for sure, the Gittites were Philistines as well. They were inhabitants of the city of Gath. So these were converts to God during the time that David was in Ziklag. And they became very devout followers of God. They were very loyal to David. And I find it very interesting that first-generation Christians, new converts to Christ, are sometimes more zealous for the cause of Christ than people who have grown up their whole lives, just like Absalom, grown up their whole lives within the faith. It doesn't have to be that way, but I often find that it is that way. And I think one of the reasons it is that way is because parents assume too much. And children assume too much. They're not being challenged with this heart faithfulness, this heart loyalty. You can't just deal with the outward, because the outward is what any pagan can have. But it's this heart looking to Christ, asking Christ, Lord strengthen me, help me to step into the supernatural, not just what I can do in my flesh. Now there's another application of this point, and that is prejudices and Christian conflict with humanistic loyalties. With David's annihilation of the Philistines decades before, it really is surprising that any Philistines would have wanted to join his ranks. You know, it's surprising to me that they would not be embittered that they would be so loyal to David when he had killed off all of their countrymen. So the only thing I can guess is that they must have assumed that they were guilty before God and they were worthy of this destruction, but they had repented, asked for God's mercy, and when they put their faith in Christ, David was just as loyal to them as they were to David. Obviously, that decision of loyalty had been made decades before. But it does bring up the whole issue of how racial tensions can prejudice us against God's mandate of loyalty. When I made some of my trips to India, I was very, very troubled by the fact that many of the high caste, it's a big caste system with all kinds. It's not just high caste, middle class, low class. They got a bazillion castes and everybody knows their place. They, the church, especially amongst the higher class churches, they had just adopted the humanistic caste system right into their church and if a low class Dalit had ever dared to enter the church of a high caste a Brahmin or something like that, he'd be kicked out right away. And it really grieved me to see how this caste system had trumped loyalty to Christ. Now, I began thinking about it and realizing, you know, we in America are just as bad. There's all kinds of things that trump loyalty to Christ that aren't from the Scripture. They're from culture itself. But back to India. The exceptions to that rule are so striking that when Christians from the high classes worship and hug and work together with Christians from the Dalit low castes, it is one of the most remarkable testimonies of loyalty to Christ that I have seen anywhere in the world. It's a tremendous testimony to God's grace. But it is sad how frequently humanistic barriers continue to be barriers within the church. And it doesn't have to be racial barriers. It could be political party barriers. I've been in churches where you would not be welcome if you were not a member of the Republican Party, okay? And I've been in some black churches where, wow, you felt very unwelcome if you weren't a member of the Democratic Party, okay? And that's allowing something defined by the world to trump our loyalties to each other. We need to embrace all whom Christ embraces. And we can have this tribalism within the church where we just won't have anything to do with another denomination because they're not quite toeing the line with us. So there's a lot of applications that we can make. The racial animosity in the African country of Rwanda with Tutsis butchering, I mean, Tutsis being butchered by the Hutus. They were the main victims because the Hutus were the biggest tribe. But there were Hutus being killed by the Tutsis as well. But that sparked the same hatred for each other within the church as you saw going on in the world. And so you had Christians killing other Christians. Now there were Remarkable exceptions to that. Any of you guys see the movie on Rwanda a few years back? Beautiful movie, incredible movie. Unfortunately, that hotel manager, they don't really show the Christian foundations for what he was doing there. There's just a tiny hint in that where you see a necklace on his wife's neck. But it was Christianity. There were Christians on both sides who protected Christians from both sides because their loyalty to Christ trumped their loyalty to race. And I think that movie illustrated that so well. But racial tensions in a country can often be a test. Any number of illustrations could be given from the American war between the states, black and white prejudice here in America, kinism in modern reform church. Loyalty to party. Loyalty to government schools. There's all kinds of things. And this verse stands as a rebuke to all such prejudices. It's false loyalty. And I think David's love for these three Philistine groups, their love and loyalty for him illustrates at least one facet of Christ's Good Samaritan story. Second half of verse 18 gives another test of loyalty. Does it stand the test of time? It says, 600 men who had followed him from Gath passed before the king. That's 29 years ago. That's a long time to be devoted to each other. But loyalty that flows from God's throne is not diminished by time or by circumstances. It is a faithfulness, it's a steadfastness in duty, which the Hebrew word emeth focuses on, and it's a steadfast loyalty and love, as the Hebrew word chesed denotes. And so here's the question. How steadfast are you over time? How faithful? And you might think, well, I'm pretty faithful, but I would like you to compare yourself to other areas where you really expect faithfulness to exist. If your car only starts, you know, one out of four times, is it a faithful car? We wouldn't probably think it was too faithful. If you skip work once a week, are you a reliable employee? Or let's just say that you deliberately skip work only once a month, pretend to be sick or whatever. Are you a reliable employee? If your fridge, for the most part, works, but every month or two it'll shut down for two days and your food spoils, is it a reliable fridge? You're not gonna say, well, for the most part, I'm pretty faithful. We need to compare ourselves by our expectations that we have of other things that are all around us and be constantly pressing for faithfulness in our marriage, in our devotions, in every area that God has called us to loyal faithfulness. And if we have that God-given loyalty, over time, our marriages are going to become deeper and deeper, our relationships at church are going to mature, and our satisfaction with work will increase, not diminish. The sixth test of loyalty comes when someone gives us permission to not be loyal. In other words, they say, oh, I can understand, your life is so rough, I can understand it if you give up. Okay, take a look at verses 19 through 20. Then the king said to Ittai the Gittite, why are you also going with us? Return and remain with the king, for you are a foreigner and also an exile from your own place. In fact, you came only yesterday. Should I make you wander up and down with us today since I go, I know not where. Return and take your brethren back. Mercy and truth be with you. So David is giving him permission to go and be with Absalom. It's very generous on the part of David. In effect, he is saying, You don't owe me any loyalty, okay? You don't owe allegiance to me. Now, those people who switched sides and they went with Absalom, they do owe me, but you really don't owe me any allegiance, and yet Ittai remarkably chooses to stay loyal to David. And so here is yet another Philistine who has newly joined forces with David, and he's not doing it for fame, for advancement, for victory. He's doing it because he's convinced this is what God wants him to do. William Wilberforce was given permission to quit his fight against slavery many, many times. And these were well-wishers who said, Wilberforce, you have, you are turning down so many opportunities for advancement and you're not going to win this battle anyway. Why are you engaged in this? But he stayed loyal to the calling that God had put upon his life. And he did see slavery ended before he died. It's much easier to break loyalty to your marriage when your partner wants out as well. And they say, yeah, go ahead and get a divorce. See if I care. Or maybe it's a threat. you know, of divorce. But the D word should never be on the lips of Christians. Using the D word as a threat should be akin to blasphemy. And actually, any unfaithfulness to our marriage vows, whether it's in terms of submission or sacrificial love, whatever, Paul himself calls blasphemy. He says the word of God is blasphemed. lest the word of God be blasphemed is the exact way it's worded. But it certainly violates the heart of the covenant. It's easier for a child to break loyalty to his parents when he knows his parents are tired of saying no and their tiredness makes them passive. Some of you young people, I think you sometimes push the limits because you know your parents are just tired of saying no. Well, they don't have to say no for the third and fourth time for you know exactly what their wishes are. Their passivity is a test of your heart loyalty. And the rest of you young people, I think it'd be a good idea for you to take note of other young people. How do they relate to their parents? What is their attitudes and submission? Both guys and gals, by the way. Guys, if they don't know how to submit to their parents, they don't know how to lead you gals. So, look around you, and you're seeing somebody who's beautiful, but you see a person who does not evidence loyalty, cross them off your list. They've got growing up to do. They've got maturing that they need to do. Now, we could apply this to discouragement over a good task. When you really want to quit, it becomes easier to quit when others give you permission. In other words, they say, I understand, perfectly understand why you'd want to commit, or I perfectly understand why you'd want to get a divorce. I think you ought to. They give you permission. President Andrew Jackson was not that way. All his life, people encouraged him to give in. He refused in his younger life, and he refused in the presidency. The devotional, Our Daily Bread, recorded one such story. It says one of Jackson's friends said, why, Jim Brown, who lived right down the pike from Jackson, was not only smarter, but he could throw Andy three times out of four in a wrestling match. But look where Andy is now. Another friend responded, huh, how did there happen to be a fourth time? Didn't they usually say three times and out? Sure. They were supposed to, but not Andy. He'd never admit he was beat. He would never stay throwed. Jim Brown would get tired, and on the fourth try, Andrew Jackson would throw him and be the winner. Picking up on that idea, someone has said, the thing that counts is not how many times you are throwed, but whether you were willing to stay throwed. We may face setbacks, but we must take courage and go forward in faith. Then, through the Holy Spirit's power, We can be the eventual victor over sin and the world. The battle is the Lord's, so there is no excuse for us to stay throwed." And when I read that I thought, yes, that's exactly right. Don't give up simply because people expect you to give up. They say, of course, I'd give up. You have permission to give up yourself. If you are discouraged, if you are tempted to give up on some person or something that God has called you to be loyal to, ask God to give you a fierce loyalty. Get angry with yourself when you're tempted to get down, say, I'm not going to give in on that. Lord, give me a fierce loyalty to a cause, to a person, to a spouse, to your church vows, to your marriage vows, to a family member. It's precisely during those times when all your friends say, I perfectly understand if you want to quit. That you, that you, your loyalty is being tested. But Ittai's loyalty was not just tested by David's permission, it was tested by the statement that David said he could not promise any benefits. He couldn't promise there was gonna get anything good out of joining with him. Verse 20 again. In fact, you only came yesterday. Should I make you wander up and down with us today since I go, I know not where. Return and take your brethren back. Mercy and truth be with you. We all want tangible blessings for our hard sacrifices that we engage in, but there are times when loyalty to God dictates losses. For example, Psalm 15 verse 4 pronounces special blessings upon the one who, quote, swears to his own hurt and does not change. In other words, he makes a promise. And he fulfills that promise, even though it's going to cost him dearly to fulfill that promise. Now, any pagan can be loyal to a promise when there's something he's going to get out of it. That doesn't make you special whatsoever. Any pagan can do that. We're talking about the supernatural here. True test of Hamath faithfulness and chesed loyalty is keeping your word when there are zero tangible benefits to doing so. Blessing your wife and being faithful to her when she gives you nothing in return and vice versa No one likes tests, but when we pass them we receive God's well-done Thou good and faithful servant." That's what I want at the end of my life. God saying, yes, Phil, you did well. You failed me here and there, but you did well overall. You had a loyal heart. The 18th test, 18th, 8th test. I really skipped ahead, didn't I? The 8th test is when loyalty is given with no strings attached. Look at the amazing promise in verse 21. But Ittai answered the king and said, as the Lord lives, notice that's all capital letters Lord, that means Yahweh, so he's a believer in Yahweh. As Yahweh lives and as my Lord the king lives, surely in whatever place my Lord the king shall be, whether in death or life, even there also your servant will be. Now husbands and wives give that kind of an unreserved commitment of loyalty to each other when they get married. The answer I do to the following pledge, do you promise to love and cherish her or him in sickness and in health, for richer, for poorer, for better, for worse, and forsaking all others, keep yourself only unto her or him for as long as you both shall live. It's not I'll cherish her. so long as she is nice to me, right? It's not, I will submit to and honor him if he acts honorably. It's to have and to hold. It's not, yeah, I'll have him, but I'm sure not going to hold him if he's going to be acting like that. No, to have and to hold. That's the promise. That's the pledge. that we have made. And the other is the world's way of thinking. The hemeth and the chesed that flow from God's throne lift us out of the realm of the possible into the realm of the supernatural by having Christ live His life through us. Now, do we do it perfectly? Of course we don't. And that's why the scripture describes our entire life as being a life of renewed repentance and of renewed faith. And the point is, if we never renew our repentance, if we never renew our faith, we're giving evidence we're not regenerate. We don't have the Holy Spirit within because that Holy Spirit is constantly pressing us toward hesed. Constantly pressing us toward that steadfast mercy, steadfast love, steadfast faithfulness, steadfast loyalty. That's the drive that the Holy Spirit works within us. And it's not just in marriage, it's in our calling. There were many people who tried to talk John G. Payton out of becoming a missionary to the New Hebrides Islands. One old Christian gentleman told Payton, the cannibals, you'll be eaten by the cannibals. To which Payton replied, Mr. Dixon, You are advanced in years now when your own prospect is soon to be laid in the grave there to be eaten by worms. I confess to you that if I can but live and die serving and honoring the Lord Jesus, it will make no difference to me whether I am eaten by cannibals or by worms. And in the great day, my resurrection body will arise as fair as yours in the likeness of our risen Redeemer. So there's loyalty to Christ with no conditions. And by the way, God does not call just missionaries to be like that. He calls every one of us to be like that. No strings attached. Loyalty, whatever happens. But Ittai's loyalty was tested even more in verse 22. So David said to Ittai, go and cross over. Then Ittai the Gittite and all his men and all the little ones who were with him crossed over. He had family with him. He had little ones with him. What's with that? Is it really right to endanger your family like that? Like Ittai did? Yeah. That's what every missionary does. Actually, it's what every elder does. A lot of people don't realize it. I've never mentioned this before, but they don't realize how tough it is for the kids and the wives of elders and deacons to be in that position because they're in a glass box. Everybody looks at them. They don't give them any slack, you know. They have to do far more hospitality. They've got to do far more work and this and that. But when they're raised right, the wife and the children, they've got the same loyalty. They've got the same commitment on that. And what we men need to be able to say is not simply, as for me, I will serve the Lord, but we need to be able to say, as for me and my house, we will serve the Lord. We're committing our families to be loyal to God, okay? And so I think this too applies to us completely. P. Ittai made that loyalty commitment knowing full well the implications it had for his entire family. Okay, the last test of loyalty we're going to look at today is in verse 23. And all the country, and literally it's a countryside as opposed to city. So all the countryside, and that was around Jerusalem, all the countryside wept with a loud voice and all the people crossed over. The king himself also crossed over the brook Kidron, and all the people crossed over toward the way of the wilderness. Why did they cry? Well, they're sad for David. They're also sad for themselves. There is no denying the fact that when we are faithful to God, God's still going to allow it to be painful on occasion. There's going to be tears. We're not denying that this is a difficult thing. You're going to experience pain. So they were giving up their homes in the countryside to join David. And I've summarized this test in your outlines as being willing to join what is perceived as the losing cause, giving up all and following David. And in a similar fashion, Christ calls all believers to give up all, to die to self, and to follow Him. In fact, He claims you can't even be His disciple if you are not willing to do this. There's a lot of scriptures that say that, but let me just read you one. Luke 9, 23 through 26. Then He said to them all, and notice it's all. Then He said to them all, if anyone desires to come after Me, let him deny himself, take up his cross daily, and follow Me. For whoever desires to save his life will lose it. But whoever loses his life for My sake will save it. For what profit is it to a man if he gains the whole world and is himself destroyed or lost? For whoever is ashamed of Me and My words, of him the Son of Man will be ashamed when he comes in his own glory and in his father's and of the holy angels. He is saying that the true test of whether you are regenerate or not is whether you have any of God's loyalty transferred into you, because we're being conformed into His image if we're genuinely regenerate. So there's gonna be some likeness, however faint it might be, there's gonna be some likeness of the Father's image in us, which includes that loyalty. Jesus will be loyal throughout all of eternity to His sheep, but He says His sheep hear His voice, and they follow Him. They obey Him. They follow after Him. They're loyal to Him. This is what separates the sheep from the goats, the wheat from the tares. Do they persevere? Do they persevere? And persevere is one of the translations of hemeph, faithfulness, perseverance, steadfastness. In 112 A.D. Pliny the Roman governor of Bithynia Pontus, which is a region now in the area of Turkey. He wrote a letter to the Emperor Trajan asking advice for how to deal with Christians. And he said, now I've been killing them. I know it's a crime. So he was persecuting the Christians. But he was asking for some advice. He said, this is what I'm doing to ferret out who is a true Christian and who is not a true Christian. He says, I give them opportunity to offer up incense and wine to the Roman gods and to curse Christ. And even this Persecutor of Christians says, it is impossible to force those who are real Christians to do so. In other words, to offer up wine and incense and to curse Christ. It's impossible, he said, to do so. So he thought, this is a pretty good test. And I think it's a pretty good test too. Christians were willing to give up all and even die. to remain loyal to Christ. Now we're going to stop with that 10th test this morning. But if you have found your life lacking on one or more of these tests this morning, cry out to God, who was the giver of Hemeth, who was the giver of Chesed, and ask Him, Lord, give me this covenant loyalty. Psalm 32, verse 10 promises that when we approach Him in faith, He will surround us with Chesed. It'll characterize us. In a moment we're going to be singing, Great is Thy Faithfulness. And God's faithfulness is so great that even when we fail Him, 2 Timothy 2.13 says, He remains faithful. He cannot deny Himself. So pray that you may receive a God-given loyalty that is not diminished by unpopularity, by discomforts, by knowing that you could get away with it, by cultural prejudices, by time, by the loose expectations of others, by lack of benefits, by the impact that your loyalty might have on your future, on your family, or losing everything for Christ. It is my prayer every one of you would stand fast when these tests come and that it would not kill your loyalty. May it be so, Lord Jesus. Amen. Father, we thank You for the examples that we have in Scripture that sinners like us, weak people like us, can, by the power of Your Holy Spirit, stand fast and be loyal. Father, we've blown it many, many times in our weakness, and yet we thank You for Your promise that our weakness is the very thing that enables You to be glorified as your power works through us. And so we open up our hearts, we open up our lives to you, asking you not only to cleanse us from past sins, but to give us a fierce loyalty, a fierce determination to press forward, to get up when we stumble, and to continue to press forward. Help us, Lord, to be a faithful people. In Jesus' name we pray, amen.