(Disclaimer: This transcript is auto-generated and may contain mistakes.)

Man, 1 Chronicles 11, the Bible reads in verse 1, Then all Israel gathered themselves to David and to Hebron, saying, Behold, we are thy bone and thy flesh, and moreover in time past, even when Saul was king, thou wast he that lettest out and broadest in Israel. And the Lord thy God said unto thee, Thou shalt feed my people Israel, and thou shalt be ruler over my people Israel. Therefore came all the elders of Israel, watch what it says here, to the king to Hebron, and David made a covenant with them in Hebron before the Lord, and they anointed David king over Israel, according to the word of the Lord by Samuel. Now why did they come to the king to anoint him king? Because David has already been king now for seven and a half years in Hebron when they come to him, but he was only ruling over the tribe of Judah. So in the book of 1 Chronicles, this part of the story is completely skipped, but you can read about it in 2 Samuel. You see, chapter 10 of 1 Chronicles deals with the death of Saul, and then in chapter 11, we just start out with David becoming king over the whole nation of Israel. But there's actually a seven and a half year period in between where David only ruled over the tribe of Judah, and his capital city was Hebron. And during that time, various relatives of Saul were ruling over the rest of the nation, and they were very weak, and Abner was making himself strong for the house of Saul, and there was a battle kind of going on between the people that wanted David to be king and the people who wanted the house of Saul or Abner or those kind of people to be in charge. So after seven and a half years, they get to a point where everybody's ready to rally around David. That's where we pick up the story, and the reason that 1 Chronicles leaves out that seven and a half year period is because the subject of the book of 1 Chronicles is David's kingdom over the whole nation. So that part is just not relevant to the story. So they come to him, and they say, you know, hey, even when Saul was king, God was using you mightily. Obviously they remember the story where he slew Goliath and where he, you know, slayed his ten thousands, and Saul had slain his thousands in the Proverbs that they gave. So it says in verse 4, and David and all Israel went to Jerusalem, which is Jebus, where the Jebusites were the inhabitants of the land. And the inhabitants of Jebus said to David, thou shalt not come hither. Nevertheless, David took the castle of Zion, which is the city of David. Now why is it that he moves his capital city? Because David's ruling from Hebron for seven and a half years over one tribe, but then everybody else comes to him and says, hey, we want you to be king over the whole nation. We're sick of these descendants of Saul. They're not working for us. We want you to be the king over us. Well the problem is that Hebron is deep into the territory of the tribe of Judah, whereas Jerusalem is actually located right on the border of Judah and Benjamin. So this is kind of like a neutral capital. So David, by moving the capital from Hebron to Jerusalem, is basically signaling that he wants this to be a united kingdom. It's not going to be Judah ruling over the other tribes or something. He wants to show that he's going to represent everybody. He's going to be the king over all the tribes. So he chooses this neutral location. It's very similar to the way Washington, D.C. was chosen as a capital for the United States of America. Because in the early days of our nation, of course, the Continental Congress was meeting in places like Philadelphia. Important events and meetings took place even as far north as Boston. But places like New York, Philadelphia, and Boston, they were so deep into the north, you know, that would make the southern states uncomfortable if all of the power is in the north. Because there's a huge cultural difference, economic difference, between what? The northern states and the southern states when our country was founded. And of course, eventually that blew up into the Civil War. And so the reason that Washington, D.C. was chosen is because it's right on the border. Right between the north and the south. It's right there between Virginia and Maryland. So that's basically what David is doing here. That's why he ends up moving the capital to this place, Jerusalem. So it says in verse 3, therefore came all the elders of Israel to the king to Hebron, and David made a covenant with them in Hebron before the Lord, and they anointed David king over Israel according to the word of the Lord by Samuel, and David and all Israel went to Jerusalem. So the first thing he does is, all right, we've got to move the capital to Jerusalem. But the thing about Jerusalem is, at that time it was called Jebus. This is before it has become known as Jerusalem. And in this place, Jebus, there are still Canaanite inhabitants there, the Jebusites, that had not been defeated yet. Because remember, when the children of Israel inherited the Promised Land, they didn't defeat all the Canaanites like they were supposed to. They were supposed to wipe all those people out and inherit the land. This was one of those pockets of resistance that had never been mopped up, because it's described as what? The castle of Zion. So this is a city that's easy to defend. So that's one of the reasons why it hadn't been defeated. Well, David takes on this difficult challenge, and of course, they claim that he's not going to be able to do it. But he goes in there, and he wins, and he dwells there. And it becomes known as Zion, or the City of David, or Jerusalem. And it says in verse 6, and David said, whosoever smiteth the Jebusites first shall be chief and captain. So Joab, the son of Zeruiah, went first up and was chief. So this is something that takes a lot of guts. People are afraid to be in the front lines. So he said, hey, whoever's in the front lines is going to be the chief. And that guy ends up being in the front lines, and he ends up being the chief. And it says in verse 7, David dwelt in the castle, therefore they called it the City of David. And he built the city roundabout, even from Millo, roundabout, and Joab repaired the rest of the city. So David waxed greater and greater, for the Lord of hosts was with him. So by the way, this is the best way to become the chief, is by achieving something, right? You know, a lot of people just want to be the boss, they want to be the chief, they want to have a position, they want to have a title, they want to have honor and rank. But the way that you get that is by achieving something. You get on the front lines, you fight the battle, you do great exploits, and then other people will elevate you to positions of power, positions of authority. That's not just going to be handed to you, right? And it definitely shouldn't be handed to you just because you're the son of so and so, or the brother of so and so, or whatever, right? It should be achievement based. Now the city of Jerusalem up until this point has had no spiritual significance for the Israelites. They don't even own it, right? The Canaanites are still living there, the Jebusites specifically, and this is where it even becomes a thing. Before that, they had other places like Hebron, places like Shiloh, and other places that were sacred for them, especially Bethel, right? Bethel is not the same place as Jerusalem. Bethel is in the northern kingdom, and that was where Jacob had his stone for a pillow, and he saw the ladder with the angels of God ascending and descending. And he named it House of God. Bethel means House of God. But ultimately, that's not where the House of God ended up being permanently located. It ended up being located in Jerusalem. Now all throughout the Mosaic law, it talks about how they're to bring their sacrifices unto the place which the Lord shall choose. It doesn't give a specific place. It just says bring it to the place that the Lord chooses. Okay, well, here's the thing. This became a dispute later because we know from the Bible that God did choose Jerusalem, and there are many places where God puts his stamp of approval on David personally and on the city of David, but there were a lot of people who disputed this. And when the kingdom ends up splitting into north and south, a lot of people say, hey, show me in the Bible where it says Jerusalem, because in the Mosaic law, there's no mention of Jerusalem. It just says the place which God shall choose. There is a mention of Bethel. So a lot of people said, no, we're going to worship in Bethel. And so they set up a false religion in Bethel where they're worshiping the golden calf, et cetera. But we, of course, know that God did love David. God did choose David. It was by the word of the Lord by Samuel at the end of verse 3 that David became king, and this city, it was God's will that it become the headquarters of the nation and the center of their spiritual lives as well where the temple is eventually going to be built. Now the only significant events that had happened in this place up to this point were that Isaac was offered by Abraham on a mountain in the land of Moriah. And God said it would happen on a mountain that he would show to Abraham. So there was a specific mountain that God picked in the land of Moriah. Well, Jerusalem is in the land of Moriah. So basically, there are a couple of options here. It's possible that Abraham offered Isaac his son upon the altar at Mount Golgotha, right, where Jesus Christ would be crucified, that that's the mountain where Abraham brought his son up there. And I would agree with that. That's what I would believe it would be, even though the Bible doesn't say specifically. Because we know that that mountain was right outside Jerusalem, right? Because just outside Jerusalem, that's where Jesus was crucified. So that's still the land of Moriah. And then the other idea would be that he was offered on the future temple site where animal sacrifices would be offered. The temple mount, right? So those are the two different theories that people have. Either one of those is a valid theory. So the Bible says, as we continue here, in verse 9, so David waxed greater and greater, for the Lord of hosts was with him. These also are the chief of the mighty men whom David had, who strengthened themselves with him in his kingdom and with all Israel to make him king according to the word of the Lord concerning Israel. This is the number of the mighty men whom David had, and then it begins to go into the mighty men. But I like verse 10, how it says, they strengthened themselves with him in his kingdom to make him king according to the word of the Lord concerning Israel. So if God has already said David's going to be king, God has already anointed him, that doesn't mean that they're supposed to just sit on their backside and just let it happen. God still expects them to strengthen themselves to fulfill the word of the Lord, right? So God has a plan, God has a will, God has even prophesied that certain things are going to happen. You know, for example, God said, this gospel of the kingdom shall be preached in all the world and then shall the end come. So do we just sit back and say, well, somebody's going to do it in the end times. I mean, the Bible said that, you know, the gospel is going to go all over the globe. No, no, we need to strengthen ourselves and go do that work, and we need to get behind David, which David represents the Lord Jesus Christ. We need to serve David. We need to strengthen ourselves for his kingdom, and we need to go out and fulfill the word of the Lord by preaching the gospel to every creature, by winning people of the Lord and evangelizing this entire world, and then it begins to go into the mighty men whom David had. Just show, be him on Hackman night, verse 11, the chief of the captains. He lifted up his spear against 300 slain by him at one time. Now as we go through David's mighty men in this chapter, we're going to see that one of the things that these mighty men were known for is for slaying hundreds of people. You know, that's kind of how their might was measured. You know, this guy slew this many enemy warriors. This guy killed this many people in battle. Now obviously we know that in the New Testament, we don't fight a physical battle. The Bible says we wrestle not against flesh and blood. The weapons of our warfare are not carnal, the Bible says. The weapons of our warfare are spiritual, but we're still in a battle. You know, we wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this world, against spiritual wickedness in high places. So we are in a battle. We do want to emulate these mighty men, not by physically going out and killing people, because Jesus Christ said that the Son of Man was not come to destroy men's lives, but to save them. These guys are destroying some Philistine lives. You know, they're destroying some enemy lives by literally destroying their lives. I mean by wiping them out, by slaying them. The New Testament equivalent of being a mighty man would be to go out and win 300 people to Christ, right? If you're going to be a mighty soul winner, you'd be one that goes out and gets 300 people saved, or 800 people saved, or whatever. That would be the equivalent of this in the New Testament. Now the Bible tells us that if we are a godly Christian, that some of us would bring forth 30, some would bring forth 60, and some would bring forth 100. And I believe that's talking about a yearly basis, because trees bring forth fruit every year. And if you think about it, if you go out soul winning faithfully every week for a couple hours, you're very likely to get 30 people saved in a year's time if you go to a fairly receptive area. And if you do some extra soul winning beyond that, you could get up to 60 salvations in one year. And if you're really dedicated, you're putting in four hours a week of soul winning, maybe a missions trip here or there, you could easily get to 100 salvations if you put in hundreds of hours of soul winning per year. You're going several hours a week, you hit up some missions trips to some receptive places, you could win 100 people to the Lord in a year's time. Now what you have to understand is that the armies of David, as we're going to see in subsequent chapters, consists of tens of thousands of warriors. These are just 37 men that are the mightiest. And in fact, these giant exploits were done by the top three guys. Because there's the top three, you know, then there are the 30 some mighty men, and then there's just everybody else. Now everybody else is getting praised as well. You know, they're being listed as all these tens of thousands of men from the tribe of Judah and these guys are from the tribe Issachar. And God says, hey, these are valiant men, these are mighty men, these are courageous men, these are great warriors. So what we have to understand is that we're all in the Lord's army, but not everybody's going to be a superstar, right? I mean, is everybody going to be one of these mighty men? No. I mean, out of tens of thousands, out of hundreds of thousands, there are only 30. So these are sort of the superstars, the outstanding outliers. Now you don't have to be a superstar in order for God to be pleased with you. You don't have to be a superstar to be in the Lord's army. You don't have to be one of his top three mighty men to be a great man or woman of God. You know, there are going to be people like that. And look, we should all strive to be the best that we can possibly be. And there are going to be some people who do achieve that 37 mighty men status or that top three status. But you know what? That's not something for us to worry about. What we're to worry about is just being faithful, being in the Lord's army, being mighty, strengthening ourselves and just doing the best that we can. And you don't have to worry about it and get down and depressed like I didn't make the top 30. It's not like the rest of his troops are just down and depressed because they're not in this elite group, okay? Not everybody is going to be that superstar, and that's okay. You don't have to be. You know what you need to be is just faithful. And if you can win 30 people to the Lord, 60 people to the Lord, 100 people to the Lord, you are a great Christian, period. And don't let anybody tell you that you're not. You know, we don't want to get this culture where unless you're just a superstar, unless you're just out soul winning, just mad amounts and just going on every mission strip and you're just out there just redlining it all the time and driving it to the U.S. You know, don't let people pressure you and make you feel like you have to do that to be a good Christian. That is not true. Because my Bible says that if you win 30 people to the Lord in a year's time, you are considered good ground. You're not considered unfruitful. Jesus has no rebuke for you. Hey, if you win 30 people to the Lord every year, Christ is not rebuking you. He's congratulating you and telling you that you're the good ground. And if you are winning 60 people to the Lord, I mean, even better, that's great. And if you are winning 100 people to the Lord, you're in the top tier right there. Now you've got the low end, the mid range, and the top tier, but these people are all right with God. They're all serving God. They're all good ground. They're all good Christians. They're all godly people. What you have beyond that are the mighties, you know, the outliers that are going to even win more than 100 people to the Lord in a year's time. You know, you're going to have some people that are soul winning superstars and mighty men that are going to do even more than that. And that's great. We don't want to slow those people down. We don't want to discourage them or pour cold water on them. But we just want to make sure that we don't have this culture of, well, if you're not one of the mighties and you're not much, because that's a bad attitude. And you know, nothing makes me matter than when I hear about missions trips, and it's not always our church. It can be other churches and things. Whenever I hear about missions trips or soul winning marathons where the holier than thou's start talking down to people like, oh, you didn't go soul winning long enough or whatever. You know, look, first of all, if somebody paid their own way to go on a missions trip, I don't care if they go soul winning for 60 minutes and call it a day. They paid their own way. And you know, they did more than the guy who stayed home. Now, obviously, when the church pays for people's hotels and stuff, you know, we expect people to put in a decent day's work. But you know, around here, what we consider when we pay for these missions trips and we go somewhere and when we evangelize, what we consider a good day's work of soul winning is five hours of soul winning. That's the standard that we have. And the reason why is that if you're in a receptive place and you're soul winning for five hours, that's exhausting. That's a lot. Now, if you're in an unreceptive place, yeah, you can go for a lot longer than that because you're not even really, you know, when you're not even talking to people and you're just knocking doors and being turned down, then, you know, I've gone for much longer than that. But when I'm in a receptive place, after five hours, I'm done. Does that make me a bad Christian? Does it make me a horrible person? Does it make me a lazy soul winner that after five hours in a receptive place where I'm just preaching the gospel nonstop or we're just talking to people one after the other, I'm done. I've had it after five hours. Well, you know what's funny is that this month is my 20 year anniversary of soul winning. I have gone soul winning consistently for the last 20 years. So for over a thousand weeks, right? Is my math correct? Somebody help me out. For over a thousand weeks, I have gone out there and done soul winning, okay? But then, you know, I guess I'm a bad soul winner because I quit after five hours of intense soul winning. Look, this is the kind of holier than thou garbage. People need to shove that. And you know what? If anybody gives you that kind of garbage, you have my permission to mouth off to them and tell them what a holier than thou self-righteous hypocrite they are because there are people who do all their works to be seen of men. So they do a lot of showboating and, hey, look, what's the matter, are you done already? Here's the thing, it's great if the group is doing five hours of soul winning and then some other people say, hey, let's go out and do another round. You know what? There have been times where I was that guy. I remember when we were in Chicago and we were soul winning on the south side of Chicago and me and my buddy before a big day, you know, we went home, we had dinner, we spent some time with our families and then we said, hey, let's go back for a couple hours of night soul winning, you know, just to people that are walking around because, you know, when you're in the ghetto, people are just walking around at night and everything. But you know what we didn't do? We didn't call up anybody else and say, what's the matter, are you not coming with us? We didn't go around showboating and trying to tell everybody, what's the matter, you know, you're done already? You know, that's just stupid. You know, if you want to do extra soul winning, go do it. Go do it. But you don't push other people to do it because that just makes you a self-righteous type that's trying to show off, hey, everybody, look at me. Look what I'm doing. You know what? There are also some people that might have physical issues where they're not that physically fit or maybe they're pregnant or they're a mother or they've got kids or maybe they're just not feeling well, they're tired, maybe they're just exhausted. You know what I mean? Just give people a break. I mean, if people go soul winning for three hours and they're ready to call it a day, call it a day. You know, if people are exhausted, let them rest. You know, and you know what I've noticed, a lot of these people that are the biggest show offs and everything, they end up being the phonies. They end up being the failures. They end up being the people that quit the church, the people with the biggest mouths. And the people who humbly go about their business end up being the ones that are still there five years later, 10 years later, you know, or 20 years later, amen? You know, I'm in it for the long haul. I'm not in it for one wild weekend. I'm in it for the long haul, week in, week out, month in, month out, soul winning. And so, you know, we need to be careful that we don't peer pressure people or be rude to people or talk down to people because everybody's not going to be a mighty man. And listen, you know, I don't want to pour cold water on the mighties. You know, we do have some people in our church that do a ton of soul winning and they do go way above and beyond the norm. And I don't want to slow you down. I don't want to, you know, pour water on you. I just want to make sure that you stay humble and don't expect other people to be like you. I promise you one thing. These 30 guys, they didn't walk around talking trash to the rest of David's men. Oh yeah, that's right. You're not one of the mighties. Never mind. I forgot. You think they were like that? There's no way. These guys were humble men who achieved greatness not with their mouth but with their deeds. And so we need to stay humble and not put pressure on people and be rude to people. I don't ever want to hear about that from any of our missions trips or any of our soul winning trips. You know, whenever I go on these soul winning trips, it just simply doesn't happen, you know, because as soon as I even began to see it, I would nip that in the bud so fast, that kind of junk because it's terrible to chastise people for doing something good. People are on a mission trip. They're on a soul winning marathon and it's like, oh, what's the matter, you're done after four hours? We're going six. It's like, come on, chill out. So these mighty men are an elite group. They're an elite bunch. You know, not everybody's going to achieve those heights. If you're one of the mighty men, then go out and be that mighty man. But not everybody's going to be that mighty man and you don't have to feel like you have to be in order to be godly. You can just be a godly member of the Lord's army, whatever stage you are in life and whatever level of might you have. So these mighty men, they, you know, they went beyond just the 30, 60, 100. I mean, these guys are winning huge amounts of people to the Lord, right? They're, you know, of course they're killing people but we're likening that to a New Testament application of a spiritual battle where we don't kill people, we actually win people to Christ. I'm glad I live in the New Testament because I'd much rather win somebody to the Lord than to slay some Philistine, right? So anyway, the Bible says in verse number 12, and after him was Eleazar the son of Dodo, the Ahohite, who was one of the three mighties. He was with David at past Dammim and there the Philistines were gathered together to battle where was a parcel of ground full of barley and the people fled from before the Philistines and they set themselves in the midst of that parcel and delivered it and slew the Philistines and the Lord saved them by great deliverance. So what else do we see about the mighty men? Number one, we saw that they slew large numbers in battle but number two, they stood their ground. When everybody else is backing up and giving ground, they stood their ground. They wouldn't move. They wouldn't budge. That's how we're going to be mighty in 2018 is by standing our ground, not letting the world pressure us, not letting the media pressure us, not letting the government pressure us but saying, hey, we're not backing up. We're going to stand on the word of God and we're not going to let the Philistines gain any ground. And if we do that, the Lord's going to give us the victory and other people that are running away scared, maybe they'll get their courage back and come side by side and regain that parcel of ground with us and not give up any ground. The Bible says in verse 15, now three of the 30 captains went down to the rock to David into the cave of Adullam and the host of the Philistines encamped in the valley of Rephaim and David was then in the hold and the Philistines garrison was then at Bethlehem. And David longed and said, oh, that one would give me drink of the water of the well of Bethlehem that is at the gate. Now he's not serious. He's just talking out loud, you know, like, man, I wish somebody would get me some of that water from the well of Bethlehem. You know how your home water always tastes the best to you? I remember when we would go hiking back when I was a teenager and we'd bring like a little water purifier or we'd boil the water of the river or whatever to drink. But you know, the water from home was a precious commodity. And I remember going hiking with my brother and him saying to me, hey, this is the last of the Roseville water, you know, because we lived in Roseville, California, it's like last of the Roseville water. And it was like, oh, it tastes so good, you know. We even like that better than the fresh stream or whatever because it's our home water. It's what you're used to so you like the way it tastes, right? Except if you live in Tempe, don't drink the water. The Tempe water is rough. We live in a desert, okay? So make sure you get a purified water or something because if you drink the water straight out of the tap in Tempe, it's pretty rough. It smells like a swimming pool and it's probably not good to drink unfiltered. Thankfully most restaurants you go to have some kind of a filter. Most people have something at home, some kind of a basic filter at least, right? You know, please get a filter. Don't go dying on me, all right? So anyway, you know, he wants his home water but he doesn't really mean that he wants someone to go get it for him. He's just saying that. He's just reminiscing about the Roseville water, okay? So then it says in verse 18, the three break through the host of the Philistines. I mean they go behind enemy lines, just three guys. They just fight their way through the ranks of the Philistines, drew water out of the well of Bethlehem that was by the gate and took it and brought it to David. I mean think about this. They just go in there and they're just fighting and battling and risking their lives just on this whim of I want to taste that home water. They're just like, your wish is our command, let's do it. But it says, but David would not drink of it but poured it out to the Lord and said, my God forbid at me that I should do this thing, verse 19, shall I drink the blood of these men that have put their lives in jeopardy for with the jeopardy of their lives they brought it, therefore he would not drink it. These things did these three mightiest. Now that part always bothered me when I was a kid reading this, how he dumped it out because I'm thinking to myself, if those guys worked that hard to get it to you, you better be drinking it and you better like it. You know, it always kind of bothered me that he poured it out. But then again, you know, another way that you could look at this though is he's pouring it out to the Lord as a drink offering. So he's even giving it more value. Like this is so good. I don't want to drink it. I'm going to offer it to the Lord. So you could look at it as a compliment that he offers it to the Lord. And of course the story is immortalized. I mean, this is what these guys were known for this amazing feat of going behind enemy lines and getting the water for him. Now, what did these guys have that made them such great men is they had courage. I mean, that's the common denominator. They had boldness, right? They had valor. They were willing to stand their ground. They were willing to be on the front lines. Hey, who's going to be the first one to smite Jeebus? You know, Joab's right there in the front. That's why he's one of the mighty men. They held their ground. They're willing to go behind enemy lines to get that drink of water. If that's what the boss wants, you know, if that's what David wants, we'll do it. And you know what? We need to have these attributes if we're going to be mighty in 2018. We need courage. Don't be fearful. The Bible says God has not given us the spirit of fear, but of power and of love and of a sound mind. We have too many scared Christians. In fact, if there's one thing I could change about Christians, I would just remove the fear. If I could just, if every pastor in America, if I could just make one change, I wouldn't change his view on the end times. I wouldn't change his view on Israel. I wouldn't even change his view on the Sodomites. I wouldn't even change his view on any of that. I would just remove the fear. If I could just snap my fingers and one thing would change about Baptist pastors in America, it would be that they would have boldness and not be afraid because you know what? If they weren't afraid, they'd preach what the Bible says about end times anyway. They'd preach what the Bible says about Israel anyway. They'd preach hard against the Sodomites anyway because the real problem is that they're scared. The fear is the problem. There's so much fear today. Now what I love about our church is that there's not a bunch of fear here and you know what? Fear is infectious. Fear spreads. That's why when the children of Israel went to battle, anyone who was fearful was told to go home because they said, look, if you're fearful, you're going to make the people around you fearful. And Gideon, he actually exercised this when the Lord told him to and 22,000 people went home out of 32,000. So two-thirds of the people, okay, if you're scared, go home. Two-thirds of the people are like, bye, see you later. Now wouldn't it be sad, think about this now, wouldn't it be sad if our church went through a major battle and two-thirds of people got scared and quit the church? Imagine like Brother Jimenez a couple of years ago when his church went through a major battle. Can you imagine if just two-thirds of his church would have quit on him? Two-thirds of the church left and there's only one-third left. What do you think that would do for the morale of the church, his morale? And probably a lot of people, if they saw two-thirds of the people leave, they'd start questioning should we even be following Pastor Jimenez, is God even with him? You know what I mean? That would be devastating, right? Because not only did Brother Jimenez have like 500 protesters on that one Sunday morning, a lot of people don't realize that they had protesters coming back every service for the next two or three months. And there were only about six or seven protesters that kept coming back, but they were the most obnoxious and they would yell at and cuss out the members on their way to church every week. You know, because I have relatives that went there and they would tell me every single time we go to church, Sunday morning, Sunday night, Wednesday night, on our way from the car to the door, we're getting cussed out. We're getting called every name under the sun. These people are getting in our faces. They're saying perverted things to us, the sodomites that are protesting. And the landlord would not back up the church, that it was their property and for them to keep the people off the property. The landlord hated them, so the landlord just said, no, they can be there. So they were just being ridiculed and attacked. Well, you know, a lot of people can't handle that. So you know, Brother Jimenez did lose a lot of church members over that. But thankfully, the vast majority of his church members stayed because he has strong church. But you're going to have to have a strong church when that kind of thing is going out in the parking lot. Because the weak Christians, they're not going to want to do that. They're going to do that a couple of times and be like, I'm out of here. I don't have to put up with this. I'm going to go to church somewhere else. And they're going to flee the battle. You see what I'm saying? You know, our church has been through a bunch of battles of our own. And when we go through these battles, we always lose very few people. You know, it's just a little handful of people that we lose. And the vast majority of people stay. You know why? Because our church is not filled with cowards. Now, if somebody leaves our church and they say, you know, Pastor Anderson, I just can't handle all the fighting. I just can't handle the battle. I just can't handle all the negativity. You know, it's just too much, too much drama. I'm just going to leave and go somewhere else. You know what? I'm going to leave myself good. Because the last thing I want is somebody like you when the tribulation hits. Or when other bad things happen. You know what I mean? I mean, look, do you want to go through the tribulation side by side with a bunch of cowards and weaklings and people that are ready to sell you out? Because they'll sell you out because they're just so scared. They're just wetting themselves at every little thing. You know what I mean? Like, I don't want to be like that. Look, if our church has got a bunch of protesters out there, a bunch of sodomites out there, if we're being attacked by false doctrine, heresy, if we're being attacked by the sodomites, if the government's after it, whatever, you know what? I want people that are going to have the guts to stand their ground and back us up and have some boldness to stand on the Word of God and not care what the devil does about it. We're going to stand. And people are just like, oh, I'm not comfortable with that. Well, I'm not comfortable having a church filled with people like you, so maybe you're just happier somewhere else. Now, here's the thing. I do want to have weak people in our church. I want to have weak people in our church. Why? Because today's weak people are tomorrow's strong people, right? Amen? I mean, we've got some weak people in the church, great. Let's strengthen them. Let's preach to them. Let's spend time with them so that our boldness can rub off on them and they can learn about soul-winning. They can read their Bibles. They can hear the preaching, and they can become a stronger Christian. But here's what I don't want. I don't want the majority of the church to be weaklings and cowards. So it's like there's only a certain quota of weaklings and cowards that we can have around as they're getting strengthened and becoming tomorrow's mighty men. But what we don't want to do is just have a church filled with people like that. Because when the battle comes, we don't want 22,000 people going home, right? When the battle comes, if a few people get scared and turn tail and run and quit and go down to sweetness and light Baptist, that's okay. But we don't want some mass exodus, right? I mean, wouldn't it hurt our morale if we had like a mass exodus? Now look, if half the church quit during a battle, you know, I'm not going to change. I'm staying here. But you know what? It would hurt a lot of people's morale. It's not going to hurt my morale. But it would hurt a lot of people's morale. So we've got to be careful that we don't get too worried about just filling our church with weaklings. That's what a lot of people want to do. Just how many bodies can we get in here? You know, and look, I want to get bodies in here too. But I want to make sure that as a whole, our church has a culture of what? Of standing up for the Lord, of being strong in the Lord and the power of his might. You know, we always want that to be the majority around here. So that's why we're not just falling all over ourselves to just bring in a million babes in Christ or whatever. You know, look, I want to bring in babes in Christ. I want to bring them in, but I don't want them to stay a baby because this is not a spiritual kindergarten here. I don't want to just be some spiritual babysitter. Like I'm just some spiritual daycare for the rest of my life or something. Like just this nursery of just all these thumb-sucking baby Christians. That's not what we want. You know, a healthy church has Christians of all ages. And I'm not talking about just physically, although physically that's good too, amen? You know, a healthy church has the gray hairs, the middle age, they got the young, the families, the teenagers, the children. And you know, we have that here. We got the babies, the children, the teens, the adults. We don't have any old people, but you know, we got one old man here. We put him right in the front so everybody can see him, you know, make sure everybody knows that we do have an old guy. No, I'm just kidding. Oh, we got a few old. There's a few old people out there, you know, but anyway, you know, I don't consider any of you old, only him. No, I'm just kidding. So, you know, a lot of churches, a lot of churches are just only gray heads. Well, that's scary because that church is going to die. Where's the next generation? Literally, amen? You know, there, there's no next generation, but here's the thing. Just like physically we want to have all ages, we want to have all ages spiritually too. So if we could put on spiritual glasses and see where people are at spiritually, it'd be different than physically because there could be older guys in here that are a babe in Christ. There could be young children that are already very mature spiritually, so they'd look much older than their age, you know, if we put on the spiritual glasses, right? So if I put on my spiritual glasses, it would be good if I could see all ages. You know, we got some new believers. We got some people that have been saved for a little while. We got mature believers. But here's the thing. What if I just put on the glasses and everybody's a baby? We're going to have a real bad time when the tribulation happens. We're going to have a real bad time when the battle comes. We're going to have a real... That's what I mean. Does everybody understand what I mean? I don't want to just fill up the church with all the weaklings, fill up the church with all the babies, just, yep, let's just get all the bodies in here. No, because, you know, we need to have some, some, some backbone around here. You know, if we're going to have a healthy body of Christ here, we can't just be made up of stem cells, you know, we, or not, is that what they call those things? What are those things they're always trying to steal from aborted fetuses? Yeah. We don't want a body made up of only stem cells. We don't want to just be this like giant spiritual fetus or something, you know. We want to be an actual body of Christ here. So we need some muscle on the bone, amen? We need somebody to be, you know, the biceps and we need the triceps and we need the quads and we need those back muscles and we need to have a healthy body of Christ that's going to be able to stand up for what's right and stand our ground. So if you can't take the heat, then get out of the kitchen. Because you know what? You either need to be a, a mighty person, a strong person. I'm not saying you got to be one of the 30, but you got to be in the, in the fight, amen? Or if you say, well, I'm, I'm weak, I'm a babe in Christ, I'm newly saved. Well, great, as long as you don't plan on staying that way for the rest of your life. Plan on growing, plan on learning something, plan on standing for something and sacrificing something. You know, these guys are willing to give their lives. For who? For David. But that represents Jesus Christ, we're supposed to be willing to give our lives for Christ. They were mighty, we're supposed to be strong in the Lord and in the power of his might. So we need to be ready to stand in the evil day, the Bible says. Put on the whole armor of God. Why? So that you can stand in the evil day. So that you can withstand in the evil day. And having done all to be able to stand, my friend, what's the point of putting on the whole armor of God if you're going to run away when the battle comes? I'm going to have Christians all over America today putting on the helmet of salvation, putting on the breastplate of righteousness, guarding their loins with truth, putting on the preparation of the gospel of peace, and of tribulation or persecution, retreat. They got all this armor on, they won't even fight. You know that's true. You know there are churches filled with people with the helmet of salvation on. They got the breastplate of righteousness on. They got their loins burned about with truth and they have no interest in fighting anyone for any reason. True or false? True. It's out there. What's the point of the whole armor of God? Just to withstand in the evil day and having done all to stand, stand therefore having your loins burned about with truth. Putting on a bunch of armor. You're playing dress up is what you're doing. You're like a little kid putting on an army man outfit. You're not even a real soldier. He says in verse 20, and Abishai the brother of Joab, he was chief of the three for lifting up his spear against 300. He slew them and had a name among the three. Of the three he was more honorable than the two for he was their captain. Howbeit he attained not to the first three. Benaiah, the son of Jehoiada, the son of a valiant man of Kabziel, who had done many acts, he slew two lion-like men of Moab. Also he went down and slew a lion in a pit on a snowy day. Now another point we can get here from verse 22 is in order to be a mighty man, here are some other attributes. Number one is that you go after the hard cases. Again if we use our illustration of soul winning, instead of going out and destroying men's lives we're out to what? To save men's lives. Think about this. What would slaying those two lion-like men represent? It would be winning the hard cases to the Lord. We shouldn't be afraid to give the gospel to anybody. Sometimes I've been out soul winning and just looked at someone and thought to myself there's no way this person is going to listen to the gospel. Who's ever had that thought enter your mind? You know you see just somebody who's just some burly biker dude all tatted up or whatever. That's kind of the proverbial, you know, this guy's probably not going to be receptive. Or they just look like a total libtard. You know what I mean? You're just thinking like this guy's not going to want to listen. But how many times has that person got saved? So many times. Right? So when you see that lion-like, you know, person, that's not the libtard by the way. But anyway, you know, when you see that one that you think is the hard case, don't be afraid to give that person the gospel. And you know what? Let's say you've got a friend or you've got family and they say, oh, I'd love for so and so to get saved. Don't even bother giving him the gospel though. He won't listen. I've been out soul winning and had somebody say, oh, don't even bother going next door. They won't listen to you. Who's ever had somebody say that to you out soul winning? Don't go to that house. Don't go there. And people, oh, don't talk to my dad. Don't talk to my mom. Don't talk to my grandpa. You know, don't be afraid to go in there and say, you know, I'm going to give it a shot with him. Now, I don't cram the gospel down people's throats. If people aren't interested, I walk away. But you know what? At least give it a shot. At least get in there and try to give them the gospel. Try to preach because sometimes the least likely people end up getting saved. And then the people that you thought for sure would listen wouldn't. You don't know. You got to just talk to everybody. Amen. And just preach the gospel and let the chips fall where they may. So he slew two lion-like men of Moab. You know, I always like to hear about how my grandpa was a great soul winner. I didn't really know him that well because he died when I was 11 years old. But you know, one of the things that people told me about him that knew him when I would go to his old church or talk to his old pastor, they said, you know what? He was a great soul winner and he got some of the hard cases saved. You know, when there was somebody in the church and her husband wasn't saved and nobody could get through to him, he would go and win them to Christ. Isn't that a great testimony? He won the hard cases to Christ. I was like, man, I like that testimony. You know, it made me proud of my grandpa that he was one that won the hard cases to the Lord. Amen to that. You know, they're not just getting the low hanging fruit. We should get that too. Amen. But you know what? They're willing to give the gospel to the atheist. They're willing to give the gospel to the Hindu. They're willing to give the gospel to the Muslim. They're willing to give the gospel to the libtard or whatever. They'll give the gospel to anyone who will listen and at least give it a shot. So they'll go after the hard cases. But not only that, it said that he also slew a lion in a pit on a snowy day. You know, this is the guy who goes to church even when it's snowing. He goes soul winning even when it's snowing. He's not a guy who says, oh, I can't fight today because of the weather. So for us, we don't have to deal with snow, do we? So for us, this is the guy who's out soul winning in July. This is the guy who's still soul winning in August. You know, the snowy day for us is the sunny day, you know, the really hot day. This guy is still out there doing it, right? He's a mighty man. He slew an Egyptian, verse 23, a man of great stature, five cubits high. And in the Egyptian's hand was a spear like a weaver's beam. And he went down to him with a staff. I mean, this guy doesn't even have a proper weapon. This guy's got a spear like a weaver's beam. He's got a staff in his hand. He goes down there with the staff, plucked the spear out of the Egyptian's hand, and slew him with his own spear. That's quite a feat. These things did Benaiah, the son of Jehoiada, and had the name among the three mighties. Behold, he was honorable among the 30, but attained not to the first three, and David set him over his guard. Now you notice this thing that comes up a few times, and this always kind of bothered me a little bit too, is this thing of, well, he was awesome. But he wasn't really as great as the original three. He didn't really measure up to the original three. The thing that bothers me about this is I don't like this attitude of always acting like the old days were better. You know what I'm talking about? I'm not telling you what the Bible's saying. I'm going to get to that in a moment. But first, I'm just giving you my human reaction, right or wrong. And did anybody else kind of feel the same way when you read this, kind of annoyed you a little bit, like, why do you got to bring that up? This guy's awesome. Why do you have to bring up, well, but he wasn't as good as ... I'm just being honest about my human reaction when I would read this, because it's always bothered me, this attitude of the old days were better. Because it's so easy to talk about the old days and glorify how cool they were while you're doing nothing now, right, all the has-beens of yesterday, you know, tell you how cool it was back then. Or they talk about some great preaching revivals in the 1800s or something, right? You know, it's so funny when you tell the Calvinists that they don't go soul winning. They're like, well, there have been great Calvinist preachers and missionaries. Oh, really, who? And they go back to like the 1700s. Jonathan Edwards is like, well, that's funny. You got to dig up some guy from 200 some years ago. He'll show you the soul winning we did this week. So this part always kind of bothered me, but I think that maybe the reason why it bothered me and maybe the reason why I was wrong, and you know, see me after the service if you have a better explanation of this, the way I look at it is that God's just stating this as a matter of fact because you know what, it's not a contest. To God, because God isn't just into all this vainglory, maybe to God saying, well, he wasn't as good as the original three doesn't matter because it's not a contest. He's not in competition with those original three. Maybe God's just telling us he just wasn't as good as those original three guys. I mean, he was mighty, but he just wasn't as great as the original guy. And maybe to God, that's not an insult. So that's all I got. That part kind of perplexed me a little bit, but I do have scriptural support for my philosophy because the fact that in Ecclesiastes it says, and I don't have this in my notes that I don't have because I don't have any notes, but anyway, you know, I know in Ecclesiastes I'm paraphrasing, but it says that, you know, we shouldn't inquire why the former days were better than these days because you're not inquiring wisely. So the Bible does rebuke this attitude of, well, why did it used to be so much better? I personally would not want to live in any other time than right now. I love living in 2018 and I don't want to live in any other time. I would hate to live in any other time. This is the best time to be alive. So I, you know, and, and I hope that, you know, we can be the mightiest that have ever been amen. And not, not, not have to live in some glorified past of 20 years ago, 30 years. And I hope 40 years from now, we're not talking about 2018. You know, I hope 40 years from now we're talking about the stuff we're doing right then and not living in the past. So I don't think that God's downgrading these guys. I think he's just stating a fact that the original three were the greatest. So he's just kind of giving them some additional honor says in verse 26. Also the valiant men of the armies were as a held a brother of Joab, Elhanan, the son of Dodo, the Bethlehemite, and they just list all the rest of the guys. And so these guys are also great men. They're valiant men. We just don't know their specific attributes. One interesting person on the list is of course, Uriah the Hittite, who's of the famous story of David and Bathsheba. So tonight let's seek to be mighty men for the Lord. You say, I think I'm going to go join the U S military. You know, I don't recommend that. I recommend that you join the Lord's army and get in a spiritual battle, not a physical battle, get in the spiritual fight. And you know what? It seems to take a lot more guts to fight the spiritual battle than to join the U S army because it seems like really the few, the proud are people that actually stand up for the things of God in 2018 it seems like in 2018 it takes a lot of boldness to stand up for the word of God, which is why fewer and fewer people are doing it. So be a mighty man, how get a lot of people saved, how stand your ground on biblical doctrine, how be out there rain or shine, go down into the pit on the snowy day, how go after the hard cases, slay those lion like men of Moab. Let's bow our heads and have a word of prayer. Father, we thank you so much for this great chapter. We thank you for David and his mighty men and all the things that we could learn from this passage. Lord help us to be great men and women for the cause of Jesus Christ and Lord, I pray that those that are here that are, that are not the mighties and never will be the mighties Lord. I just pray that they would be a faithful soldier in your army and not feel that everything is a contest and not let the hypocrites and holier than thou's get to them and, and try to try to make them feel like less than, than what you see them as Lord. Help us all to just be faithful, humble servants of yours. Lord, we don't know who the mighties are this side of heaven. You'll have to tell us that when we get there Lord at the judgment seat of Christ, we'll see, and we know that many that are first will be last and many that are last will be first Lord. So help us to just focus on being faithful and never to be in competition or, or a vain glorious with our brothers and sisters in Christ.