Uncharted | Deadly Detours

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hey my name is tony i'm one of the
pastors here i'm just so thrilled to be
with you let me ask you a question
before we get started um how many of you
enjoy traffic
that's what i thought
so somebody celebrates uh so my wife is
from southern california when i moved
out of this where i met her was out
there for a couple years for seminary um
look i'm a country boy from indiana
and you go to the metropolis of los
angeles and surrounding towns and you
sit in traffic and you wonder why in the
world does anyone do this and there are
a number of times i just wanted to get
out of traffic and just walk home
because i thought it was going to be
faster because if you're like me one of
the things you do is you try to find a
detour how many try to find a detour
when you're stuck in traffic yeah
absolutely
i also do it when i'm on the trails like
when i'm hiking i always just find these
detours
years ago by my first year in ministry
i was out hiking these trails that i had
hiked a number of times and it was a
saturday afternoon and i'm hiking along
this same trail i've been on numerous
times and i come across a fork in the
trail right that passed this a number of
times and i thought hey it's probably a
shortcut if i take this trail
it was not
i i hiked and i hiked and i i'm not sure
like how far i went down this trail
before i realized um i'm lost i have no
idea where i am and i looked at my watch
and realized i was about an hour or 45
minutes away from officiating a wedding
and i was lost on the trail somewhere
so we end up hiking through the woods
toward a road i end up finding my way
back just in time uh to do the wedding
but i found myself on this detour that i
took that i thought was gonna be a
shortcut
but it absolutely wasn't sometimes we
find ourselves in this type of uncharted
territory and the detours that we think
are shortcuts are not actually shortcuts
at all
and today we're going to talk about a
sort of detour that we see in king
david's life so if you have your bibles
first corinthians chapter 21 go ahead
and flip there you can find it on your
bible app as well but we're going to
discover
how david took a deadly detour and we're
just going to go ahead and throw the
word out there
right
it's pride
we're going to talk about pride in our
lives
and how it shows up what it does to us
and most importantly god's recipe for
getting beyond pride but would you pray
with me as we get started
lord thank you
that we are not alone in this room
that before we ever opened our eyes this
morning holy spirit you are with us
and you are with us now
so lord we invite you
to not just be with us but be in us
to indwell in us and to do the thing
that you want to do here today
regardless of what my plans are or
anyone else's plans our lord may your
plans for our lives
happen
so lord we open ourselves up to you
to just simply receive you
to experience you and to know you
it's in christ's name that we pray amen
so before we jump into this this passage
of first corinthians chapter 21 i want
to i want to kind of rewind in david's
life a little bit and kind of understand
a little bit of kind of the origin story
if you will
we find ourselves in david's early days
he's just kind of a shepherd boy but he
finds himself in this situation where
he's going to go up against goliath many
of you know the story the david versus
goliath story and we begin to get this
sense of who david is and how he speaks
to
goliath and this is what he says
david said to the philistine you come
against me with sword and spear and
javelin but i come against you in the
name of the lord almighty the god of the
armies of israel whom you have defied
this day the lord will deliver you
into my hands
and i'll strike you down i'll cut off
your head this very day i'll give the
carcasses of the philistine army to the
birds and the wild animals and the whole
world will know that there is a god in
israel
it's graphic
right i mean it's a bold move i mean if
we think about this story this is the
classic way that we talk about the
underdog story it's the david versus
goliath story you can watch sports and
talk about david versus goliath when
they're referring to to the underdog
this is the guy with the longest odds in
vegas the one that nobody's going to bet
on
but it's also kind of why we like david
because we see in david someone who is
hungry
someone who is humble
and someone who is radically dependent
upon god
and i think we look at this underdog
story of david and we say this is this
is what we like about him this is
like it's a good demeanor to have it's a
good personality trait it's a good
follower of god but then
then we get to this story
in first corinthians and we realize that
something's off something has changed
because i think up to this point david
has been wildly successful
he's the king of israel everything he's
touching seems to be working out great
like
just imagine yourself in his shoes or as
sandals and just imagine
that you are wildly successful beyond
your dreams like 100 times more
successful than you imagine you plan to
retire at 65 but you made so much money
you retire when you're 30.
you started this new business simply
because it was it was the thing you
loved to do and you just wanted to put
enough food on the table to make it buy
and and you became so successful someone
paid you millions of dollars for your
business
or imagine you had a five-year plan and
you were so radically successful that
you accomplished your entire five-year
plan in one year
i mean imagine we all want to be that
successful in life right
the problem is oftentimes with that
success
comes pride
and i think what we begin to see in
david's stories is on the heels of all
this success in his life
we get to chapter 21 we begin to see
that the pride has began to seep into
his life much like it does ours
that when we experience success
pride begins to build up
and when pride builds up there's a
there's a very noticeable change let's
see how the story goes chapter 21 verse
1
satan rose up against israel and incited
david now let's just pause for a moment
if your story ever includes the words
satan incited you
it's a bad thing just so you're aware
satan rose up against israel and incited
david to take a census of israel so
david said that joab and the commanders
of the troops go and count the
israelites from beersheba to dan then
report back to me so that i may know how
many there are
but joab replied may the lord multiply
his troops a hundred times over
my lord the king
are they not all my lord's subjects why
does my lord want to do this why should
he bring guilt on israel
the king's word however overruled joab
so joab left and went throughout israel
and then came back to jerusalem
joab reported the number of the fighting
men to david in all israel there were 1
million 100 000 men who could handle a
sword including
470 000
in judah
so what's the big difference here that
we see with david well i think if we go
back in time and remember his his
encounter with goliath we see a man who
is radically dependent upon god
who has surrendered his life to god's
plans
and then we get to first corinthians
chapter 21 and we see that satan has
incited him
that something else is something else
has grabbed control of david's life that
he's been given over to something else
now it's not abnormal for us to take
these detours right it's not abnormal
for you and i to find detours in our
lives and
and allow pride to to kind of build up
right
we find this happen in our life time and
time again
and i think what we're going to discover
today is there's three things that pride
does as we look at david's life the
pride in our lives does three different
things and the first thing that pride
does is it makes us spiritually
blind
the pride makes us spiritually blind you
see during a time of david to take a
census did was really for two purposes
uh the first thing that doing a census
would do would um would recruit troops
it was kind of like a draft you figure
out who that's why they talk about who
can handle the sword and it builds your
military strength
the second thing it does is it's a way
of levying taxes upon the people so it's
a way of accumulating wealth and
and riches if you will now you may be
saying well tony that's not really a big
deal like that happens all the time i
don't see why it's important well it's
important because the book of
deuteronomy is really clear that the
human kingship of the people of israel
of god's people
should be noticeably different than the
rest of the kings of the other nations
it should be noticeably different
because those kings the kings of israel
should be radically dependent upon god
and the taking of a census the building
up of your own troops the the
accumulation of the wealth is is really
a sign that the dependence on god is
beginning to wane and we're not unlike
other countries we're not unlike other
nations
and again you might be thinking tony
again i just don't think it's that big
of a deal
verse 7
this command was also evil in the sight
of god
so he punished israel
then david said to god i have sinned
greatly by doing this
i beg you take away the guilt of your
servant i have done a very foolish thing
now maybe one thing to hear the words in
your story that satan incited it's also
a bad thing to hear the words that god
was displeased with you
and this is what david's hearing
the god was displeased with this
decision
and he responds by striking
israel
and maybe maybe this is how you've seen
pride play out in your life
then maybe there have been people in
your life that has just been prideful
maybe you had a father who had a
gambling problem
but instead of seeking help he kind of
threw away your family's wealth and and
he damaged you and he damaged
your other parent and he
caused a lot of harm
or maybe it was alcohol or or something
else but the pride began to get the best
of them or maybe maybe it was you
maybe this is the area of your life that
you've allowed pride to seep in and
you've watched as it has hurt your loved
ones
and the ones around you
you see it's normal for us to take
detours but there's a difference between
a god ordained detour
and our own self-selected detours
you see david was originally a shepherd
boy part of his family and that's how he
thought life was going to work out and
then god gives him a detour he's going
to become king of israel
we just celebrated the fact that brad is
going to go plant a church and and he
this was not part of the path that he
thought his life was on but god came in
and gave him a detour that's one type of
detour the deadly detours the
destructive detours are the ones we
picked for ourselves
the ones that we self-select and take us
on a road that that isn't where god
wants us and here's the reality we don't
even see it because we become
spiritually blind because our pride
makes us blind
you see david should have saw the fact
the way he was doing was not what god
desired he knew what god desired for the
nation of israel he was on the wrong
path and he just didn't see it
but not only was he spiritually blind
the second thing that pride causes us to
be is spiritually deaf
pride makes us spiritually blind and it
makes us spiritually deaf let's go back
to verse three
but joab replied may the lord multiply
his troops a hundred times over my lord
the king are they not all my lord
subjects
why does my lord want to do this why
should he bring guilt upon israel so
here's job desperately trying to help
david
like speaking truth into david's life
saying hey david look you're on the
wrong path you're on the wrong journey
but dave is not listening to it
like he won't hear it
he just wants to continue doing what he
wants to do
because he won't hear what's being
spoken to when i was in high school i
was the uh
radio station manager for a high school
radio station very prestigious
and that's where i got my radio dj name
of tj cool breeze if you ever wondered
about that
we did a fundraiser every single year of
a lip sync contest and i do want you to
know
that my junior year in high school uh i
placed second in the lip sync contest to
the bee gees staying alive
i only lost to a group of guys who
dressed like women and did baby got back
but
neither here nor there so my senior year
our radio teacher had back surgery and
he was out for a few months and because
he was out
i received the responsibility and the
privilege to plan the entire thing
so i did and we did the the advertising
marketing the sign ups the preparation
was awesome it was amazing i was really
like invested in it it was really fun
and part of my role was to pick like
who's going to host
this thing over the past three years we
had these two guys from
the drama
club that would host and they were
phenomenal they were hilarious they were
just really good kind of off the cuff
and and hosting and everyone told me
like yeah you should have them
just again so obviously i did what
anyone else would do and i picked myself
to host
and i will tell you right now
in my 42 years of life it was by far the
most embarrassing thing i have ever done
i bombed bad
and the fact that i'm on a stage in
front of a crowd is a miracle right now
to be honest with you because it was it
was awful my radio teacher actually came
back
from back surgery in time
for
the lip sync contest and when i walked
off stage the last time the guy
wouldn't even look me in the eye it was
that bad
it was a tragedy
but if i look back i realized that
people were speaking truth hey you
should have these other two guys host
like like they should be your host but
because of my pride
i picked me
i picked myself
sometimes in in our spiritual lives we
have the the issue that that our pride
not only blinds us but makes us unable
to hear the truth that other people are
speaking into our lives that's why here
at 242 we think that coaching is a
really important part of your journey
and coaching is
inviting someone to speak truth into
your life in a powerful way
let me be very clear we're talking about
inviting someone in
so a couple things you need to know if
someone just comes up to you and says
hey i would like to be your spiritual
coach run
because it's probably a dangerous thing
you need to find someone that you trust
someone that you believe in someone who
you look at and you say i love their
spiritual maturity and i love their
heart and i want them to hold me
accountable to be a good follower of
jesus and actually make the invitation
like the name of mine is tim he's a
pastor in indiana that that i have about
a year and a half ago i say tim i want
you to be my spiritual mentor i want you
to speak truth into my life tim knows
next to my wife more about me than
anybody else does
and he has the freedom and the ability
and the charge to call me on my stuff
when i need to be called on my stuff
that would never happen if i didn't make
the invitation
you see some of us find ourselves
spiritually deaf because we've never
invited people to speak into our
lives we've never invited someone to
call us on our stuff to hold us
accountable to
to invest in us in that way and maybe
maybe for you that's what you need in
life you you're looking at yourself and
you're saying yeah i do have a lot of
pride in my life and i don't know how to
how to get over it well one way is
accountability
is inviting someone to say hey i wrestle
with this thing could you could you
speak truth into my life in this area
and invite them in to that space
and maybe for you that's your step
that's your next step
is to to battle against being
spiritually deaf by inviting someone to
speak into your life in the areas that
you have become not only deaf but blind
and just don't see for yourself
so we know that in from david's life we
see that pride makes us spiritually
blind
it makes us spiritually deaf
but it also makes us selfish
if you're notetaker write those down
spiritually blind spiritually deaf
and selfish
if you've been around someone who's
prideful who wrestles with pride a lot
you know that they are usually focused
on themselves and don't worry all that
much about other people let's jump back
to verse three again
but joab replied
may the lord multiply his troops a
hundred times over my lord the king are
they not all my lord's subjects why does
my lord want to do this why should he
bring guilt on israel and the king's
word however overruled
joab
i think prideful people just look out
for their own interest
so here david had an idea and he's not
listening to others he's just going to
do his thing because that's what he's
worried about he's concerned about
himself he's concerned about growing his
kingdom if you will through the census
and
and maybe that's what it's about
maybe when you wrestle with pride in
your life it's because you stop focusing
on growing god's kingdom and you're
focused on growing your own
and that could be a painful thing to
think about
is that the reason that we're prideful
is because we're focused on growing our
own kingdom
if you will
see the humble david of
of the goliath story was one who was
focused on god's kingdom and the story
here in first corinthians 21 begins to
paint a picture of someone who's focused
on
well maybe growing his own
so much so that 70 000 people lost their
lives because of this
so here's how the story goes uh we know
that god was displeased
so he comes to dave and says hey david
here's the punishment like you get to
pick one of these three doors
door number one three years of famine
sounds exciting
door number two is you gonna be
subjected to destruction from your
enemies for three months
door number three
is you get to
face the wrath of my sword for three
days
now look
i don't know what you would pick
i would never select the wrath of god
and the sword of god that just it
doesn't sound like something that i want
my life maybe it was the three days over
the three months or the three years but
that's ultimately what david picked
and it involved pestilence
and it involved the
the angel of the lord coming with the
sword to destroy
that's where those three days were going
to be
70 000 people died
now there's a leadership lesson involved
here that if you are in leadership you
must understand that your actions have
consequences and they're not always on
your shoulders
that your actions affect other people
and while david may not lost his life 70
000 people lost theirs
because pride
makes us selfish
and pride hurts
other people
you've seen it in your life you've seen
it in others
you've seen that these detours
don't just cost us time and money
some of them are deadly and they're
destructive
but here's the amazing thing
that we don't have to live there
like the good news of the gospel is that
the brokenness in our lives doesn't have
to be our story
like our story can change our story can
be different and this is where we learn
the real lesson from david's life
this is where we will learn the real
lesson from david's story
seventy 000 people have just died
and this is the the scene that that
david gets to witness is the the angel
of the lord comes with the sword to
destroy jerusalem and i'm telling you
what
that would be terrifying just to watch
and just as he's getting ready to strike
with the sword god says stop wait hold
on
and david in this this moment of what
must have been utter fear
says lord please and he cries out to god
and he says don't lay the sword on these
people
don't harm them those people have done
nothing i'm the one that messed up
strike me
and i think for the first moment
for the first time
we see david acknowledging his pride
we see david acknowledging his
brokenness and the hurt that has caused
on others he sees how he's been on a
deadly and a destructive journey
that he's taken a detour that he
shouldn't have taken
and he cries out to god to relent
unfortunately for david it took
suffering to get there
it took the loss of 70 000 people it
took him standing there watching the
angel ready to destroy jerusalem for him
to finally step back and say no no no
god i've been prideful
i've been hurtful
i can see it for myself now
my eyes have been opened unfortunately
sometimes god uses suffering as the tool
to get our attention and maybe that's
where you're at
maybe it's been painful
maybe it's been difficult
maybe it's been hard
because your pride
has caused you to be blind his cause you
be deaf has caused you to be selfish
and maybe the suffering in your life is
a tool not that god is necessarily cause
but he's using it to try to get your
attention to say your pride has gotten
in the way that you're focused on your
own kingdom and not mine anymore
unfortunately for david that's what it
took
but again it doesn't have to be our
story verse 26
david built an altar to the lord there
sacrifice burnt offerings and fellowship
offerings he called on the lord and the
lord answered him with fire from heaven
on the altar of burnt offering
then the lord spoke to the angel and he
put the sword
back in its sheath
so the previous owner wanted to just
give the land and everything to david
the other he saw this happening too so
he was probably freaked out and david
was the king so just give it all to him
right
david said no
i have to pay for it
because the sacrifice isn't a sacrifice
if it doesn't cost me anything
so david bought the land and he bought
the wood for the altar and he bought the
animals and the grain for the sacrifices
he bought all of it so it would cost him
something why because he wanted to show
god he was serious about what we call in
the church his repentance
not just saying i'm sorry but but
actually repenting
turning away from this life to the life
that god has for us they turning away
from the dangerous and destructive
detroit that we're on to get back on the
the road that god has called us to
repentance is more than just saying i'm
sorry
repentance is an actual
turning away
and a turning back
to god
and in our prideful lives how we move
from from a life of pride to
a life of humility we saw early on in
david's story
is to repent
and you might you may find yourself
way down that journey
you've been traveling this this
dangerous and destructive detour for
quite some time and you're like there's
no way back like there's no way to get
back on the path but what you'll
discover is when you repent when we when
we turn back to god what we find is we
find our father standing with arms wide
open ready to welcome us back to the
journey you've been called to
when my uh
when i was a kid my aunt and their
family
went to cedar point now let me
hopefully you understand geography
enough to understand i lived in indiana
she lived in indiana
cedar point's in ohio
after they left
because of traffic she decided to take a
short detour
she did not realize she was going the
wrong direction until she hit the state
line of pennsylvania
think about that for a second
that was a long way not only that you
have to go through cleveland right i
don't know what kind of detour takes you
through cleveland and you don't register
oh maybe i'm not headed toward indiana
right now
but the reality was there were signs
friends
there there were ways for her to know
she was on the wrong path but she didn't
see them for some of us we've been
looking at signs in our lives time and
time again that you're on the wrong path
that you're on the wrong journey but
we've ignored them
for some of you right now you're
crossing the state line into
pennsylvania and you've realized well
i'm way off course there's a way back
and it's through repentance
it's through not just saying lord i am
sorry for my pride it's saying lord i'm
sorry for my pride and i want to live in
humility i want to live a different life
it's moving from the david of first
corinthians 21 to the david of for
samuel 17.
it's surrendering our lives back to god
it's
it's us saying lord i'm i'm prideful and
i don't want to be prideful anymore
so so where's the area in your life that
just pride seems to bubble up
and it seems to get the best of you and
if you're honest if you're really honest
with yourself
in your life you would say that part of
your story
you hear the words
god was displeased
with me
where is that for you
where is it that you just need to
to repent and turn back
to god
where is it you need to acknowledge that
you have taken
a dangerous and a destructive journey
of pride
are you prideful
repent
are you spiritually blind repent are you
spiritually deaf repent are you selfish
repent
and it sounds like a huge scary word but
the reality is here's what at the very
core here's what repentance is a
repentance is turning away from the
journey we're not supposed to be on
to the journey that god desires us to be
on and discovering that there's a loving
father right there ready to grab a hold
of you
not to punish you not to condemn you but
to forgive you to embrace you and
welcome you back to the journey you're
meant to be on
so maybe today you're on a dangerous and
a destructive detour
maybe you look around your life and you
realize the hurt that you've caused
other people because of your own pride
maybe people have been trying to speak
truth in your life and you've been
unwilling to hear it or maybe you're
just unwilling to see it
friends today
today you can turn back
and today the father stands
and he's ready to embrace you and bring
you back to the journey you're meant to
be on
and no longer live your life on a
dangerous and destructive detour
let's pray
lord we know
that you have a journey for us
we know that you have a a plan and a
path for our lives but
but god for some of us we have
found ourselves
on a dangerous
and a destructive detour
a deadly detour
so lord today i just pray that that any
of us here today
or any of those watching online that
that have an area of their life that
pride has grabbed a hold of them and and
repentance is needed lord
i pray that they have the strength and
boldness from your holy spirit to turn
away
to repent
and when they do lord i know
i know that the first thing they will
see is you
ready to embrace them
amen