We're looking in 2 Samuel chapter 15, and have gotten up to verse 24. David is fleeing from Jerusalem, in danger of his life, and verse 24 says, There was Zadok also, and all the Levites with him, bearing the ark of the covenant of God. And they set down the ark of God, and Abiathar went up until all the people had finished crossing over from the city. Then the king said to Zadok, Carry the ark of God back into the city. If I find favor in the eyes of the Lord, he will bring me back and show me both it and his dwelling place. But if he says thus, I have no delight in you. Here I am. Let him do to me as seems good to him. The king also said to Zadok the priest, are you not a seer? Return to the city in peace and your two sons with you, Ahimaz, your son, and Jonathan, the son of Abiathar. See, I will wait in the plains of the wilderness until word comes from you to inform me. Therefore, Zadok and Abiathar carried the ark of God back to Jerusalem, and they remained there. So David went up by the ascent of the Mount of Olives and wept as he went. And he had his head covered and went barefoot. And all the people who were with him covered their heads and went up, weeping as they went up. Then someone told David, saying, Ahithophel is among the conspirators with Absalom. And David said, O Lord, I pray, turn the counsel of Ahithophel into foolishness. Now what happened when David had come to the top of the mountain where he worshiped God, There was Hushai, the archite, coming to meet him with his robe torn and dust on his head. David said to him, If you go on with me, then you will become a burden to me. But if you return to the city and say to Absalom, I will be your servant, O king, as I was your father's servant previously, so I will now also be your servant, then you may defeat the council of Ahithophel for me. Do you not have Zadok and Abiathar, the priests with you there? Therefore it will be that whatever you hear from the king's house, you shall tell to Zadok and Abiathar the priests. Indeed, they have there with them their two sons, Ahimaz, Zadok's son, and Jonathan, Abiathar's son. And by them you shall send me everything you hear. So Hushai, David's friend, went into the city, and Absalom came into Jerusalem. Amen. Father, we thank you for this, your word, and we pray as we study it. We apply our hearts to it that you would sanctify us by your word. We love you. We commit this continuing time of worship to you in Jesus name. Amen. I had a mongrel dog in Ethiopia that wasn't much to look at, but we loved that dog. In fact, when I was a little kid, we were driving to our station in the car and we saw a man with a bag of something moving. And we asked him what it was, and he said, oh, I'm going to drown these pups, newborn pups. And we begged our parents to let us have one of those pups. And so they, of course, the guy was just going to get rid of them. But when he saw that we were interested, he suddenly wanted to charge money for it. And we told our parents, you know, we'll take care of this dog. We'll feed it and everything. Of course, it was my mom who did most of the bottle feeding at night, because we were just dead to the world. We loved that dog. That dog was unbelievably faithful to us. I remember one time my two brothers, John and Stan, and I were outside the compound. We were going for a walk and we were surrounded by a group of very aggressive dogs that looked like they were going to attack us. Maybe they were just going to attack our dog, I don't know. And my brother Stan was kind of nervous and he threw a stick at these dogs to try to chase them away. That was all the permission our dog needed. He lit into that pack of dogs. It must have been a dozen of them or so. And it was a tangle of bodies and it was quite a long fight, but our dog chased those other dogs off. And I still to this day stand amazed at the the fact that this dog was willing to do that kind of a thing protect us against such odds. Dogs frequently will have a blind loyalty to their masters, even grouchy owners, to such a degree that it's no wonder that they are called man's best friend. We've already seen that God does not call us to have the blind loyalty of a dog. He calls us to something a lot more difficult than that. It doesn't really take much thought to be blindly loyal to a person or blindly loyal to a cause, but to be able to juggle the covenant loyalty relationships that the scripture calls us to the way God intends us to do. It takes thought, it takes the wisdom of the Holy Spirit, it takes supernatural grace for us to do so effectively. And so we saw that God calls us to evaluate every loyalty by the cross of Jesus Christ and by the blueprints of Scripture. Now so far we have seen that God does indeed call us to be loyal in all of our covenant relationships. And so frequently we fail in that area of loyalty. And then we saw that to avoid idolatrous loyalty, that loyalty has got to be defined by scripture, it's got to be limited by scripture, otherwise we get ourselves into trouble. And then last week we looked at some of the tests that distinguish man-made versus God-given loyalty. Quite different things. The first is a counterfeit. We saw that God-given loyalty is not diminished by unpopularity. In fact, it will enable you to stand strong for the truth even when the whole crowd is against you. We saw as well that God-given loyalty is not diminished by discomfort or knowing that you could get away with lack of faithfulness or cultural prejudices or by time or by the loose expectations of others or by lack of benefits. or by the impact that your loyalty could have on your future, or your family, or losing everything for Christ. It was some pretty convicting stuff that we were looking at last week. I think all of us were feeling like our toes were somewhat stepped on. I think those 10 principles we looked at last week are probably the most convicting of all of the principles that are going to be in these chapters. And we've come up to verse 24, as I mentioned earlier. And so let's go through these verses and apply them. There was Zadok also and all the Levites with him bearing the ark of the covenant of God. And they set down the ark of God and Abiathar went up until all the people had finished crossing over from the city. Now David had previously taken a strong stand in support of the church leaders, and these church leaders are now taking a strong stand in support of him, but it was not a situation of mutual backscratching. This was a principled stand against the rebellion and the ungodliness of Absalom, and I don't think we should think that they're trying to protect this ark. There is no way that Absalom would have attacked that ark. This is clearly a deliberate testimony against Absalom's illegitimacy. They recognize that what Absalom was doing was unbiblical, so they're engaging in a little bit of interposition. Now the text says all the Levites left the city. All of them. David Payne in his commentary says there wasn't a priest or a Levite left in the city who sided with Absalom, and that meant that the tabernacle was completely abandoned and there would be no one to perform any sacrifices or help with the temple worship. Now, if all the Levites are leaving, they are declaring Absalom's rule to be illegitimate, and if they're carrying the Ark of the Covenant, which is God's throne room, what they are in effect saying is that Absalom is in rebellion against the throne of God. In effect, they were excommunicating anyone who sided with Absalom. This was an incredibly bold move on the part of these Levites. They could end up dead. They could end up banished from the country. And so even though David questions their wisdom in doing this, he does not question their boldness or their loyalty to God. And in this, I think these Levites stand as an incredible rebuke against the modern church that refuses to do anything against the absolums in Washington, D.C. or in our state capital or in city governments all across this nation, even though these people are engaged in all kinds of things. I mean, think about it. When was the last time you ever saw a political figure excommunicated by a church for voting for abortion, or government theft, or whatever it might be, perjuring themselves? I mean, they routinely perjure themselves. When was the last time you even saw a church rebuking a political official who was within their ranks? It does not happen very frequently, and when it does, it's for so few infractions of God's law that it makes you realize the church is not composed of the kind of Levites with principle and backbone that these men had. In 2006, there was an official survey And it found that 10%, it was around 10% of the Senate and the Congress was unaffiliated with any church. And that 10% was comprised of Jews, Mormons, and other non-Christians. But 90% of the Congress and the Senate claimed to be part, a member, active member of a church. Now they may have been lying, but that's what they claimed. 28.8% of them were part of the Roman Catholic Church, 1% in the Eastern Orthodox Church. That leaves about 60% of Congress and Senate claiming to be longed to churches from one of 20 different denominations, including the Baptists, 14%, Presbyterians, 10%, Lutheran, 4%, and then it lists lower numbers for Assemblies of God, Christian Reformed Church, Evangelical, Free, Nazarene and others. Now if you go to adherence.com you will see the list of exactly which churches each of these congressmen and senators claimed to be members of. Now when I looked at that list I was astonished that some of these men and women had not been excommunicated from the church because these are people who have voted in favor of abortion, in favor of homosexuality. numerous forms of government theft. And when you see the kind of ungodly, unconstitutional, nation-destroying things that these men and women have stood for, you have to ask, why have none of them been excommunicated? It's just astonishing to me. And you begin to realize that their churches are not taking a stand against such evil. They go with the flow. They go with the flow. It would have been a whole lot easier for Zadok, Abiathar, and all of his fellow Levites to just go with the flow and to become neutral when it comes to politics. But they could not be faithful to Scripture and do so. Impossible to do so. One pastor told me that to preach the way I was encouraging him to preach, it might threaten their church's tax-exempt status. And you can imagine the chewing out that I gave him for being more loyal to the wishes of the IRS than he was being loyal to what God commands pastors to do, and that is to preach the whole Council of God. These Levites could have maintained their comfy lifestyle, but loyalty to God and Scripture made them think they had to take a stand against Absalom. With that many Levites leaving Jerusalem, there was a lot of witnesses. There were a lot of people out there that knew exactly what they were doing. They were not hiding their light under a bushel. They were taking a strong stand publicly. Now, with such a courageous move, it may seem somewhat disconcerting that David would send these Levites back to Jerusalem. They've taken a huge risk on behalf of David. David sends them back. But I am convinced that they were just as loyal to God as these Levites were. And if you read the commentaries, you'll see most commentators believe that as well. In fact, he's asking them actually to be bolder. He's asking them to oppose Absalom while they are still present in Jerusalem. And the fact they were willing to do so I think is an incredible testimony to their loyalty. Now let me quickly explain why I worded point 12 the way I did. And if you're a visitor here, it's number 12 because we looked at 10 tests of loyalty last week. This point says, The loyalty of David is tested. Will he misuse the loyalty of others? David accepted their support, but he did not accept their absence from the temple or their carrying of the ark of God into exile. Take a look at verse 25. Then the king said to Zadok, carry the ark of God. I want you to notice it belongs to God, it does not belong to David. Carry the ark of God back into the city. If I find favor in the eyes of the Lord, He will bring me back and show me both it and His dwelling place." Now, why did David send the ark and the Levites back? It was not because he did not value their loyalty. He very much did. In fact, he's going to be using them as spies later on quite effectively. But there are five reasons why David did not feel that this was appropriate. I've already hinted at the first one. the Ark did not belong to him, it belonged to God. And it would have been inappropriate, wrong, to leverage their support and to leverage this Ark for his own kingship. Politicians blaspheme God when they use Christianity as a tool for self-advancement. And even though it would have been tempting, David refused. God had already said that His dwelling place and the place where His name was going to reside was going to be in Jerusalem. Deuteronomy 12.5, 1 Kings 8.29, 2 Kings 23.27, there's a number of scriptures. All the way back in chapter 12, we saw that God had revealed this was to be His permanent dwelling place. and the place where his throne of mercy would reside. And so he speaks in this verse of Jerusalem as his dwelling place. Now that meant that for David to take this ark anywhere else without divine revelation would be a bit presumptuous. It would be to make David's throne more important than God's throne. Now you go to some churches and you will see two flags behind the pulpit. You'll see an American flag and a Christian flag. And many times you will see the American flag standing higher than the Christian flag. You know, in America, there's not supposed to be any flag above the American flag, right? Wrong. There shouldn't even be an American flag in the churches because I think it confuses jurisdiction. But if you're going to have it, the flag of Christ must stand above it because He is King of Kings. He is the Lord over all. Third, David recognized that this was a fulfillment of God's prophesied discipline against him in the Bathsheba event. And he wanted to show submission to God rather than resistance to God. He is not going to use these Levites to try to avoid that discipline. Fourth, David did not want all Israel excommunicated for his convenience. Absalom, yes. but not all of Israel. You see, David knew that there were many in Israel who had been deceived in this matter. If you look at verse 11, There were 200 men who had been invited. They didn't know any different. They had no idea that this was something that would be wrong. And you might wonder, well, how could anybody think that that was wrong? But you'll remember from last week that Psalms 39 through 41, David was sick at this point and Ahithophel spread the false rumor that David was about to die from the sickness. And so these people probably figured, okay, that makes sense. David's about to die. He's having Absalom take over the throne for him. So there could have been a lot of people who were deceived on this. But back to our point, without Ark and Levites, the worship of God's people would be limited to the non-sacramental. And he didn't want the nation punished for his convenience. He refused to take advantage of church loyalty to him for his own personal ends. And the fifth reason is not in the text, actually, but the author implies it, according to some commentators, by you see parallels that are being hinted at between this passage and the passage in 1 Samuel 4 where Hophni and Phinehas, the two sons of Levi, take the Ark of the Covenant for political purposes. And they lose big time, okay? The ark ends up being taken into exile in Philistia and so the implication of those parallels is that David did not want to risk that happening and did not think it appropriate for him to take the ark into exile with him. Now with Hophni and Phinehas it was clear that they were treating the ark as a magic talisman and this text says David is walking by faith, not by such manipulative means. And so I believe this really is a test of David's loyalty. Leaders can sometimes do things just for their own benefit, not really for the benefit of the church, not for the benefit of the, if they're political leaders, for the benefit of the nation as a whole. But David is looking at the broader picture. He is willing to be disadvantaged to sacrifice his own interests for the good of the people that he is leading. And so this too is a rebuke to church leaders all across our nation who are enriching themselves at the expense of fleecing their people. And this brings up the 13th test of loyalty. Trusting God's providence. doing things his way, even if it means that David will be disadvantaged. And we'll begin at the second sentence in verse 25. If I find favor in the eyes of the Lord, he will bring me back and show me both it and his dwelling place. But if he says thus, I have no delight in you. Here I am. Let him do to me as seems good to him. He submits to God. Now, this should not be confused with passivity. David's going to fight for his throne. He's going to plan, he's going to strategize. So submission does not mean passivity, but it does mean that he sees God as the sovereign and he is the disciplined child. It does mean he's not going to bend the rules to get his way. Now think about this. If he had allowed the Levites to come with him, everybody would have been in effect barred from communion. there would have been enormous pressure upon Absalom from the entire kingdom saying, look, we cannot tolerate this any longer. And David could have used this to leverage an agreement with Absalom where he would come back on the throne, but it probably would have been something along these lines. Okay, Absalom, you will be the successor. So it would have been at the expense of Solomon that that would have happened. But if he had used and abused the loyalty of the Levites in that way, Absalom would not have been dealt with, Ahithophel would not have been dealt with, and it would have caused enormous harm to the kingdom in the future. Solomon would for sure not have gotten on the throne. God would use instead this banishment and David following his word, his principles, to purge the kingdom of some evils. And so even though it looked like it was a bad move on David's part, it turned out in the final analysis that doing things God's way actually worked. Now, I think of the famous missionary to the Samoan Islands, John Williams. He longed to take the gospel to Samoa. He strongly believed that God had called him to be a missionary there, but his wife adamantly refused to go. Now she was submissive to him in most areas of life, but this was crossing the line. She was not going to be involved in this at all. And obviously she feared being eaten by the cannibals. It was a place that was just full of cannibals. But her attitudes toward her husband were wrong. She was not trusting God in this situation. So John Williams sought to wash his wife with the water of the word, but it was all to no avail. He felt like his inability to lead his wife on this issue disqualified him anyway. So he sought to be the best husband that he could be, and he left the situation in God's hands. Three years passed, and we're going to be seeing those three years were critical in God's timing. So three years passed, and he was wondering why God would burden his heart for these islands and yet disqualify him with a disobedient wife. He didn't harp and complain, he just committed it to God without saying anything more about this, at least as far as we know. Well, at the end of the three years, God brought her under a protracted and severe illness without John even saying much of anything more about the Samoan Islands, but she was convicted that this was God's discipline upon her. He didn't bring this into her mind. She was convicted. This was God's discipline upon her. She repented, gave herself unreservedly to follow her husband into missions if that's where God was leading him. Well, he promptly dropped everything and traveled there. Now, in the meantime, during this three-year delay, the chief of the Samoan Islands traveled abroad, got converted, and wanted to come back to Samoa. The evidence seems to indicate that if John had gone to Samoa three years earlier, it's almost certain he would have been martyred, he would have been killed. Now back to the story, the newly converted chief of Samoa was on the island of Pongatabu waiting for a ship. John Williams, on a whim, of course everything is governed by God's providence, isn't it? But on a whim, he decided to stop on the island of Tonga Batu, and immediately this chief presented himself to John Williams as the chief of Samoa, and saying, hey, can I catch a ride to the islands of Samoa? And he's thinking, well, that is weird, that is really strange. So he did a little investigation to see if it was true, and sure enough, this is the chief. And when the chief found out that he wanted to be a missionary to the Samoan Islands, he said, I will do everything in my power to make sure that you get a good reception when you get there. So that three year delay was critical for John to meet up with this chief after he had gotten converted. Now on the way there, the chief informed Williams that they could expect formidable opposition from the witch doctor. Tama Fyinga was his name. He guaranteed Tama Fyinga would do everything in his power to kill him, and if he couldn't kill him, to make sure that no one would believe in the gospel. So there was a real danger if this high priest was not dealt with by God. So they committed it to prayer. The ship had been making good progress, but just before they got to the island, this terrific storm came. drove them way off course, delayed them by weeks. When they finally arrived at their destination, Tamafainga was dead. If it had not been for that storm, Tamafai Inga probably would have killed them, but for sure there would have been resistance to the gospel. If he had been delayed any more, the replacement for Tamafai Inga would have come, and he probably would have been motivated to resist these missionaries as well. So John Williams arrived at the most opportune time possible. Thousands came to Christ. Like David, John Williams used God's authority and not manipulative authority with his wife, and he trusted God with the results. Even though his wife was resisting, he refused to follow the spirit of Ahab. He was loyal to doing things in God's way and in God's timing, and because of that submission, he was prospered. The 14th test of loyalty was David's call to the Levites to not flee the system when they could do more good for Christ within the system than leaving it. Now, since there had already obviously been a lot of witnesses to the fact that these Levites had left the city and taken the ark with them, this is an incredibly dangerous task to take on because they were declaring Absalom to be an enemy unworthy of the Lord's table. Going back, they might have to face some music. So look at verses 27 through 29. The king also said to Zadok the priest, are you not a seer? By the way, the word seer is just a synonym for prophet. He sees things in the heavenlies. So David is in effect asking Zadok to confirm what he himself, you know, is seeing from God. It's a confirmation of asking, you know, you're a seer, check it out with God. Are you not a seer? Return to the city in peace, and your two sons with you, Ahimaz your son and Jonathan the son of Abiathar. See, I will wait in the plains of the wilderness until word comes from you to inform me." Therefore, Zadok and Abiathar carried the ark of God back to Jerusalem, and they remained there. Fleeing is sometimes easier than staying. And this chapter illustrates how there is a place for both strategies. In 1 Samuel we saw that Jonathan supported David from within the system, and there were hundreds who supported David from outside the system. Another example, 1 Kings 18 verse 3 says that Obadiah was a man who feared Yahweh greatly and was a godly man, but he served God in Ahab's court. What's with that? You know, a lot of people probably were judging him, thinking this guy is a compromiser. He can't possibly be a godly person if he's serving in Ahab's court. And yet the scripture is quite clear that he was loyal to God when he was in that court. In fact, he rescued and saved 100 prophets, hid them in two caves, fed them water and food during that whole famine. And I bring it up because the Lord does lead some people to work within the corrupt American financial system, tax system, political system, and God has led some people to work completely outside that corrupt system. They refuse to use the banks, they're tax protesters, they completely avoid the Republican and the Democratic parties. Unfortunately, people from both sides tend to judge each other, and I think we ought not God sometimes calls us to work in the system, sometimes outside the system. And David, as a prophet, suggested this. Zadok, as a prophet, confirmed it by going back. So it is possible to be loyal even within the system. And as we'll be seeing in the next chapter, Zadok and Abiathar proved to be absolutely indispensable to David's success, even though their sons almost get killed in the process. Very, very dangerous what they were doing. Did you know that in Nazi Germany there was a whole network of Nazi magistrates and judges and military people and others who were not actually Nazis. They were working with the underground resistance. They gave the resistance supplies and intelligence and arms and they were on occasion even personally involved in seeking to overthrow Hitler. So even though many people thought that they were the enemy, thought that they were being loyal, to Hitler, it was actually the opposite. And this just highlights the fact that apart from the wisdom and the leading of the Holy Spirit, we don't always know exactly where we should stand and still be loyal to Him. Now verse 30 shows how loyalty tests the nature of our tears. Anyone can shed tears of pity, but when pity is accompanied by loyalty, it becomes compassion. Verse 30. So David went up by the ascent of the Mount of Olives and wept as he went up and he had his head covered and went barefoot and all the people who were with him covered their heads and went up weeping as they went up. Now keep in mind some of these people are mentioned in verse 23 as being people throughout the countryside there who didn't actually have to leave with David They could have stayed in their homes, they could have wept and felt pity for him, and I don't think David would have judged them for not leaving their homes, and they probably would not have been in any danger personally. But they left. Anyone can shed tears of pity, and even unbelievers can have a tender heart that feels sorry for you. But when pity is accompanied by the kind of supernatural loyalty that we looked at last week, It is transformed into compassion that ministers to the heart. There is a phrase in one of Janet Curtis O'Leary's poems that I think captures the difference between the two. It says, pity weeps and runs away. Compassion comes to help and stay. Pity weeps and runs away. Compassion comes to help and stay. And it's really the presence of loyalty that tests our tears as to whether they're simply human pity or whether they show deep compassion. Compassion involves us in each other's lives. It's willing to share in each other's pain. And in the same way, these people wept with David, they left their homes, they identified with his sufferings, and they were willing to share in his banishment. It was a compassion that was fully involved, just as the compassion of Christ caused him to leave heaven's glories and to become one with us. One of the most powerful verses in the Bible is also the shortest verse in the Bible. John 11 verse 35 says, Jesus wept. And the context shows it wasn't just pity. No, it was compassion that drove him to identify with Lazarus and to take action on behalf of Lazarus. And you can see this throughout the Gospels, where it says being moved with compassion, he ministered to the multitudes. OK, compassion is quite different from pity. So it's good when we show pity and concern. But supernatural loyalty takes it a notch higher and transforms pity by God's grace. Oswald Chambers once wrote, Laughter and weeping are the two most intense forms of human emotion, and these profound wells of human emotion are to be consecrated to God. So are your emotions consecrated to God? If they are, what you're going to see starting to happen, you're going to see all of God's other graces, including loyalty and faithfulness, beginning to characterize your emotions. Don't ever think of emotions as neutral. The 16th point is friendship tested by loyalty. Verse 31, Then someone told David, saying, Ahithophel is among the conspirators with Absalom, And David said, O Lord, I pray, turn the counsel of Ahithophel into foolishness. Now, there are two men who are described in the scripture as being close friends of David, and the first one is Hushai. Four times in the scripture he is called David's friend, and he passed this friendship test of loyalty with flying colors. He was a friend who stuck closer than a brother, and in this case, closer than David's son, obviously. The other man that is called David's friend is Ahithophel. In Psalm 41, David says, even my own familiar friend in whom I trusted, who ate my bread, has lifted up his heel against me. So David was betrayed by a friend whom no one would have suspected, and in that he became a type of the Lord Jesus Christ who was betrayed by Judas, a friend whom no one would have suspected. When Jesus said, one of you will betray me, They're not all looking at Judas and thinking, oh yeah, I know who that's going to be. They're all hoping, oh man, I hope it's not me. Okay, so people didn't realize Judas, he seemed like he was a great friend of Christ. And the point is that even good friendships can really be friendships that aren't founded on grace and aren't sustained by God's grace. Every product of God's grace can be counterfeited. Every product of God's grace can be counterfeited, but when a friendship is made in heaven, it will stand the test of time, just like Jonathan and David, and David and Hushai stood the test of time. All of our covenant relationships should be examined in light of the definitions and the limits of loyalty. We should ask that God's law and His grace define our friendships. is that loyalty can be tested by a willingness to worship God even when God has hurt you. Now when you read Psalms 39-41, you realize that David was devastated by the events and by this betrayal. He felt kicked in the stomach. He had the wind taken out of his sails, but he did not allow this betrayal to make him bitter, and for sure, he did not allow it to in any way diminish his loyalty to God. Instead, verse 32 says, Now it happened when David had come to the top of the mountain, where he worshipped God. That's the key phrase here, where he worshipped God. He did not allow the tyranny of the urgent, the need to escape, to preclude worship. He did not allow the hurt feelings, the betrayal, the threat of death, the inconvenience, anything else to preclude worship. Even in the Psalms where David is crying out in bewildered sorrow, wondering why he has to go through this pain, he has faith in God and he worships God. And in this, he stands in a long tradition of faithful, loyal men like Job. Now, it may be a poor comparison, and I hope you don't get upset with me for even making this comparison, because we shouldn't ever, you know, be abusive to dogs. Scripture is quite clear of that. But just as a dog remains faithful and loving to its master, even after the master has, you know, kicked it and scolded that dog, Job remained steadfast and faithful to God even though he felt like he had been kicked down the stairs by God. In Job chapter 1, after God allowed Satan to kill Job's servants and his family, to rob him of his cattle and all of his wealth, the text says, then Job arose, tore his robe, shaved his head, and he fell to the ground. So there is the whimpering dog. There is the sorrow and the anguish that David too was experiencing. But the next phrase says, and he worshipped. So there is the whimpering dog putting his head, wanting to put his head onto the lap of the master, right? He loves the master. And he doesn't want anything to come between him. And he said, naked I came from my mother's womb, and naked shall I return there. The Lord gave, and the Lord has taken away. Blessed be the name of the Lord. In all this, Job did not sin, nor charge God with wrong. That's loyalty. When supernatural loyalty undergirds our worship, we're no longer going to worship only for what we can get out of it. We're no longer going to worship only when we feel like worshiping. That loyalty will transform our worship and enable us to keep pressing into the heart of the very God whose providence has been beating up on us. Why? Because when our heart is steadfast in God's grace, we trust Him, we love Him, we're not going to allow anything, even providences, that come between Him and us. In fact, that loyalty will convince us that God is still good and everything He's done to us is for our good and for His glory. Now, if instead providential circumstances make you angry at God, make you bite the hand of God, and make you unwilling to worship, thank, and praise Him, it's a test that may be revealing that much of what you are doing is man-made. It's not supernaturally wrought by the Holy Spirit. We saw last week that true biblical loyalty can only be engendered by the Holy Spirit. Well, we're going to finish up the chapter with one more test. Loyalty tested by a risky challenge given to Hushai. And begin reading at the See here, the second phrase of verse 32. There was Hushai the archite coming to meet him with his robe torn and dust on his head. David said to him, if you go on with me, then you will become a burden to me. The reason he said he's going to be a burden is because he was an aged man by this time. He couldn't run. He couldn't fight. He'd be kind of like a dependent. It would have been very, very difficult for him to handle the hardships. David goes on to say, But if you return to the city and say to Absalom, I will be your servant, O king, as I was your father's servant previously, so I will now also be your servant, then you may defeat the council of Ahithophel for me. Do you not have Zadok and Abiathar the priests with you there? Therefore it will be that whatever you hear from the king's house, you shall tell to Zadok and Abiathar the priests. Indeed, they have there with them their two sons, Ahimaz, Zadok's son, and Jonathan, Abiathar's son. And by them you shall send me everything you hear.' So Hushai, David's friend, went into the city, and Absalom came into Jerusalem." Now there was a man who was willing to face the hardships of exile even in his old age. And when David asked him to return, he was willing to face even greater hardships of being a spy. Spies get killed, right, if they get caught. But his loyalty to his friend and his calling made him face that risk, and he proved to be a key factor in getting David back on the throne. Now, he didn't know it was all going to turn out okay. He came weeping because he knew how bad things looked for David, but he didn't care. He didn't care. He would stick with David through thick and through thin. St. Columba was a 6th century missionary who traveled from Ireland to Scotland to try to win the Picts for Christ. P-I-C-T-S. Incredibly fierce, vicious a tribe. In fact, there were so many people who had been killed by the Picts. This was a very scary calling that God had laid upon his heart. But when he arrived, On landing, first thing he did was burn his ship. And the evidence seems to be he didn't trust himself. He thought, if I have a seaworthy ship, I might flee in a weak moment. So I'm burning the ship. But it was also a statement, I am going to be loyal to my calling, even if it means my death. Total commitment to his calling was used to bring Scotland to Christ. Now, we're going to end with that verse. But as I pointed out last week, The central theme of loyalty tested continues on into the first 19 verses of the next chapter. And actually, that's where it gets really confusing. We talked last week, some of the people, about, you know, it's confusing on understanding exactly where loyalties lie. Well, that deals with nothing but confusing. It starts off with Mephibosheth, who seems like he is being disloyal to David, and Ziba, who seems like he's an incredibly loyal guy, when in reality it's Ziba who is selfishly driven, and it's Mephibosheth who is the loyal guy. And then you've got Shimei. David treats Shimei's curses in a totally different light than than Abishai and Joab do. Abishai and Joab, man, they take such offense on behalf of David, they want to go and whack his head off. And you say, wow, those guys are loyal to David. No, the text says it was sinful pride, and David recognizes it as sinful pride. And then you've got Ahithophel's disloyalty being called loyalty to Absalom. It wasn't loyalty, it was self-interest. And then you've got Hushai being accused, what is wrong with you that you're not loyal to your friend David? And so there's all kinds of confusing things that are going to be seen in the next chapter. And I bring that up to point out that you will sometimes be confused as to what God wants you to do. This subject of loyalty is not an easy one to navigate. Like most graces, unless we're walking in the power of the Holy Spirit, we're going to blow it. We're going to step into the ditch of idolatrous loyalty sometimes, and then we're going to overreact and go over to the other side and be totally disloyal to our covenant relationships. And so it makes us cry out to God for wisdom and grace. Now in a moment we're going to be singing yet another psalm that David wrote during this period, Psalm 62. And this psalm indicates that if our focus in all of our human covenant relationships is to please God, it'll help us to be more clear in our thinking of what we should do in our relationships. In fact, it's going to benefit all of our human relationships. For example, when our spouse is in the wrong, we will not fiercely defend him or her in the name of loyalty. I mean, that's what some spouses do. Now, they may criticize their spouse for the very things that you are criticizing their spouse for, but boy, you do it, they're going to come all over you in the name of loyalty. And I think that smacks more of an idolatrous loyalty than it does loyalty to Scripture. What would God have us to do? Well, if you're the husband, and your wife is in sin, you're not going to get your hackles up because her sin has been exposed. Instead, your fierce loyalty to God is going to cause you to lovingly, gently wash her in the water of the Word and seek to sanctify her. If you're the wife and your husband is the one who is in sin, your fierce loyalty to God is going to cause you to lovingly pray for him and to put on the characteristics that 1 Peter 3 talks about. which is a great passage on what to do when your husband does not obey the Word of God. When God calls us to missions, calls us to move, or do some other difficult task, your relatives might criticize you as being unloyal. But Jesus says, he who loves father or mother more than me is not worthy of me, and he who loves son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me. So every loyalty in life must be defined by and limited by the cross of Christ and the scriptures of Christ. And when we do that, wow, we're going to find our covenant human relationships to be so improved. And I bring this up because last time after the words, some people asked me, OK, how do you balance loyalties when they come into conflict? My answer is pray to the Holy Spirit to give you wisdom, you know, as you go to the scriptures. In the 1800s, when James Chalmers answered God's call to be a missionary to an area infested by cannibals, he received a lot of criticisms. How can a man endanger his family in such a foolish way? Where is your loyalty to your family? How can you endanger your own life? And what kind of loyalty do you have to your church that you're leaving behind? and to your relatives that you were leaving behind to go into missions. It didn't seem like loyalty to many people. But he understood the call of God so strongly in his life that he knew the difference between idolatrous loyalty and godly loyalty, and he risked it all out of love for Christ. And he eventually did get martyred and eaten by cannibals. But long before that happened, he wrote, recall the 21 years, that's 21 years of service in missions that he had already done. Give me back all its experiences. Give me its shipwrecks. Give me its standings in the face of death. Give me back my surroundings of savages with spears and clubs. Give me back again the spears flying about me, with the club knocking me down to the ground. Give it all back to me, and I will still be your missionary. Brethren and sisters, that is loyalty to Christ. It is seeing every relationship that you have through the cross of Christ. And you can be that clear-sighted as well if you will make your vision Christ. In fact, we probably should have sung that as a hymn, Be Thou My Vision. You know, where you say, Lord, my passion in life is to know you. To know the power of your resurrection and the fellowship of your sufferings. When you know Christ in that way, it's going to positively impact all of your relationships. May it be so, Lord Jesus. Amen. Father, we thank you for your word and the challenge that it is to our lives, and we pray that we would realign, week by week, our lives any places where it is out of accord with your word, and help us to keep pressing into the high calling that you have given to us in Christ Jesus. We know, apart from your Holy Spirit, your grace, we cannot do this. And yet we thank you that we can say with Paul, I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me. Do strengthen this, your people. To that end, we pray in Christ's name. Amen.