King David Part 5. "Leadership"

Good morning. Thank you for coming. This is the next one in the David series, David as a leader. Let me go ahead and teach you the message I want you to learn today. Leadership from God's standpoint is all about serving, not being served. To serve and not be served. Say it with me, to serve and not be served. That's what leadership is all about. Now, if you're influencing anybody as a mom or a grandmom, granddad, whatever, in your office place, if someone is being influenced by you, you're a leader. And your call, therefore, as a leader is to serve and not be served from God's standpoint. That was a lesson God wanted to teach David. Now, the text today is 2 Samuel 23, verses 13 through 17. If you have your Bibles, please open them up to that, iPods, iPads. I don't care. Use current technology. Just follow along with God's word. But in order to understand a text, you need to understand its context. So, let me give you the context of 2 Samuel 23. David is now the king over all of Israel. He is crowned in Hebron. He is unifying the nation. It's a powerful moment in Israel's history. But the Philistines, who are Israel's mortal enemies surrounding them, don't like this unified nation at all. It keeps them from marauding, especially the villages on the fringe of the borders. So, the Philistines come up with a scheme. They take an army and basically divide Israel, march right into the middle of Israel and divide it. They set up a garrison in Bethlehem, David's hometown. Now, when this happened, David with his 600 soldiers are terribly outnumbered, so they flee. They go back into the caves of Adullam, which I talked about a couple of weeks ago, that if you are a totally devoted follower of Jesus, He will drive you into the caves. Warning, and during those cave experience, God teaches you some of your most valuable lessons, especially this one. No test, no testimony. No mess, no message. God allows there to be difficult times in our lives to teach us very valuable lessons. And I'd love to tell you, you only get driven by God one time into the caves to learn a lesson. It's just not true. That if you love God, you're going to be driven into the caves continually so He can continue to teach you valuable lessons. So, David is driven a second time into the caves of Adullam with his 600 followers, the Philistines on the edge looking for them, ready to do combat. And in the caves of Adullam, God teaches David a very, very important leadership lesson. That leadership is all about serving, not being served. To serve and not be served, that's the lesson David wanted, God wanted David and all of us to learn today. So, let's look at the text itself, 2 Samuel 23, verses 13 through 17. Out of reverence for the reading of the scripture, if you're able, would you please stand? Most of you know, I believe unabashedly that this is the word of God. And three of the 30 chief men went down and came about harvest time to David at the cave of Adullam. When a band of Philistines was encamped in the valley of Rephaim, David was then in the stronghold and the garrison of the Philistines was then at Bethlehem. And David said longingly, oh, that someone would give me water to drink from the well of Bethlehem that is by the gate. Then the three mighty men broke through the camp of the Philistines and drew water out of the well of Bethlehem that was by the gate and carried and brought it to David. But he would not drink of it. He poured it out to the Lord and said, far be it from me, oh, Lord, that I should do this. Shall I drink the blood of the men who went at the risk of their lives? Therefore, he would not drink it. The word of the Lord, you may be sealed. So, I mentioned to you that David had 600 men with him in the caves of Adullam, these caves were rocks and crevices, multitudinous in number throughout this particular part of Israel. And among these 600, there were 37 who were called David's mighty men. They were his closest military companions. They did extraordinary works. Some of them would defeat Philistine garrisons by themselves. My guess is they learned from David's courageous encounter with Goliath, which had occurred 14 years before this encounter, and they learned courage from him. And among those 37 mighty men, there were three who were especially close to David. And while he's in the cave, he remembers something very important in his childhood. You see, it was during the harvest time, our text tells us, which means it was hot. And in the caves, in these humid caves, David not only was hot, but he became very thirsty. And as he became thirsty, he remembered those childhood days in Bethlehem. When he would be overseeing his father's flock and become thirsty, he would go down to the brook and drink of the clear, crystal, pure water of Bethlehem. Now, here in the caves, as he was thinking about that, being thirsty, he longed for a drink of that cold water. Now, water tastes differently from place to place, doesn't it? Doesn't Charlotte water taste different from beach water? And when you're at the beach, you go, oh, I long for that Charlotte water, and it doesn't have all this fluoride and other stuff in it. Well, David longed for a special kind of water from the brook of Bethlehem. Now, he did something as a leader that I do all the time, and it always gets me in trouble. So, let me see if any of you ever do this. I process verbally. As I'm trying to think through something, I process verbally. Anybody else do that? And often, as a leader, I'll simply be thinking about something verbally, not meaning for anything to be done, but those people who work with me and love me and are loyal to me oftentimes think my verbal processing is a command. And they'll start doing something about what I've stated, and I'll have to go to them and go, why are you doing this? They say, well, we clearly heard you say that's what you wanted to happen. I went, no, I was just verbally processing. I didn't mean you to do anything with what I was saying. That's what happened with David. He verbally processed, oh, I would love to have some of that pure crystal water from the brook in Bethlehem. And the three mightiest of his 37 mighty soldiers heard him verbally process, and they said, your wish is our command. And unknowns to David, they slipped out, traveled 12 miles from the cave of Adalim to Bethlehem, broke through the Philistine lines at that garrison, got to the brook, got David some water, broke back through the lines, and walked another 12 miles back to David. And then they gave him the water. We love you. We want to serve you. Here's the water. And David took it in his hands, and he poured it out. And the text tells us he poured it out to the Lord. Probably remembering the times when the priests would take offerings of liquid and pour them out as a gift to the Lord. And he poured it out to the Lord and said, far be it from me, O Lord, that I should do this. Shall I drink the blood of the men who went at the risk of their lives? Here's the leadership test God was giving David. God was asking him, David, do you think leadership is all about you? Do you think leadership is about using people for your glory, or do you know that I want leadership to be you serving people for their glory? And that was the test. David was tempted to drink the water. And with doing that, he would have said, your job, men, especially you three who are closest to me, is to serve me. Your job is to bring me this water. And therefore, this water enriches my appetites. Even though it might cost you your life, your job is to serve me. But that's not the lesson God wanted David to learn. As an effective leader who would oversee the nation, through whom Jesus would come into the world and die for the sins of the whole world, it was very important that God got this message through to David. Your job, God was saying to David, as a leader is to serve and not be served. Say it with me, to serve and not be served. One more time, to serve and not be served. That was the lesson God wanted David to learn. And he was deeply moved by their act of compassion. He poured the water out and said, I will dare not drink this water that cost you, potentially, your lives to bring it to me. My job is to serve you, not to use you to serve me. This message is throughout the scripture, folks. If you're influencing anybody, this is a message for you today. It is throughout the Bible. In James 3, verse 16, if you're taking notes, write down this verse, go look it up. James 3, 16, easy to remember, John 3, 16, but in the book of James, it reads, where there is selfish ambition, there is every evil thing. Where there is selfish ambition, there's every evil thing. Whenever a leader sees other people's job to serve them and their own selfish ambitions to be met through others, it invites every evil thing into an organization. Why? Because everybody else tries to get theirs. They see the organization existing only for their own benefit. The job of the leader is to serve, not be served. Jesus tried to get that message across on several different occasions. In Mark, the ninth chapter, his disciples start arguing among themselves regarding which one is the greatest. And Jesus puts a child in their midst and he says, this is how I want you to live, like a child, in dependence upon me, believing I'll supply your every need. Because if you're a child in dependence upon the Lord, you can't seek selfish ambition, you can't desire to be the greatest. Well, then one chapter later in Mark 10, James and John, a part of Jesus' inner circle of three, just like David had three mighty men, so did Jesus, Peter, James, and John. Well, James and John were brothers, came to Jesus and said, we know you're going to Jerusalem, and there you will most certainly establish your kingdom. Hey, when you establish your kingdom in Jerusalem, favor, would you give us the second position of power? We get the idea that you get the first position, but how about giving us the second best positions of power? And Jesus looked at them and said, you don't know what you're asking. Great leadership sacrifices for other people. Are you willing to sacrifice in leadership? They naively said, oh, of course, we'll sacrifice, and Jesus just shook his head. Then the other 10 got the idea, James and John were trying to move in and get their positions of power before they had the chance to do so. The text tells us they became indignant or jealous, and Jesus sits down and finally says to all of them, look, guys, you don't get this. You're behaving like pagans do, like Gentiles do. They look at leadership as power and control and having people serve them. It should not be so among you who are my followers. If you say you're a follower of Jesus, that kind of power and control should not be your desire. Jesus said, here is what I want you to understand about leadership. Mark 10.45, and any of you who exercise at the Harris Y know this verse is plastered on the wall, ready to be read and memorized every single day. Jesus said to his followers, for the Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve and to give his life as a ransom for many. There it is again. The call of the follower of Jesus, especially a leader, is to serve and not be served. The night before Jesus went to the cross while serving the Passover meal to his disciples, Luke 22 tells us, for a third time, they began to argue among themselves regarding which one was the greatest. Now, when we get to heaven, people have asked me, how will you know it's Jesus? And I think he's going to be the one with the flat forehead with no hair on his head. Why? Dealing with these guys who kept wanting to be the greatest and them not getting the message, his flat forehead is going to be from his continual, and his baldness is going to be from him pulling his hair out. You guys just don't get it. So what did he do after Luke 22 in response to them arguing among themselves regarding which one is the greatest? John 13 tells us that he took a towel and a basin, and he knelt and went from disciples' feet to disciples' feet to disciples' feet, and he washed their feet, trying to tell them that leadership is about foot washing, is about serving, is about giving, not being the greatest. That's the message that God wanted David to learn. It was his leadership test. It's not about me. David finally learned, and he passed it. Leadership is about serving, not being served. David learned it and passed the test. David was a servant leader. That's God's desire for all of us who are influencing anyone else. Let me give you several examples of servant leadership I've thought of. I'm old enough to have been in Charlotte during the PTL scandal. Some of you may remember those days. A PTL grew exponentially, amazingly fast. They had a television program every single day. We had some of their people who started coming here, and I became friends with someone who was on their board. And one day, he came to me, confided in me during the zenith of all of PTL success, saying, I'm very concerned with what's going on there. I said, why? He said, it's just unbelievable to me, not only the leadership at PTL, but all the people they bring in, all the people who come and sing on the program, all the people who come and speak there practically, we ask them if there's anything we can do for you. And here's generally the request we receive. First of all, they want to be picked up at the airport in a limousine. Then they want to be brought to the studio directly without having to intersect with anybody. And in their rooms, they want special fruit that is made just for them and not just water, but Perrier water. And after their performance or their speaking engagement, they want the limousine immediately to pick them up and take them back to the airport so they can get out of town as quickly as possible. And he said, for me, that doesn't express the servant heart of Jesus. I just fear for a fall. Within a couple of years, the news spread like wildfire that Jim Baker had had an affair with Jessica Hahn and his marriage went kaput and the ministry fell. And I think it was largely because people there didn't get this idea that ministry is about serving, not being served. Many of you may know I had the privilege of playing basketball at the University of North Carolina under Dean Smith. Now, I understand y'all. Let's give a little honor to March Madness here, okay? I understand that many of you are ABCers, anybody but Carolina. I get that, okay? And that if North Carolina played the Taliban, you would root for the Taliban. I get that, okay? I understand that. Nevertheless, Dean Smith got this principle. He understood this, that his job was to serve and not be served, and every one of us who played for him knew that, and that's why we loved playing for him so much. Let me give you a story that exemplifies Coach Smith's understanding of serving, not being served. In the mid-1980s, North Carolina was playing one of those games of the year against the University of Maryland. The winner of it would receive the top seat in the Eastern Regional. That would always mean you stay close to home and give you an advantage to try to reach the Final Four. Maryland had a great team, North Carolina had a great team. The week before the game, King Rice, the starting point guard on North Carolina's team, got into a campus altercation, was thrown into jail. He didn't call Coach Smith, even though Coach Smith told us always, if you're ever in trouble, I don't care, after you've even graduated, call me, I'll always be there for you. Coach Smith had to go find him and assured him, I'm here to help you, King, always. Well, that week in the press, there was a furious debate over whether Coach Smith should start King Rice or not. You know, he shouldn't, he's in jail, he shouldn't have that privilege, but Coach Smith steadfastly stood behind his player and said, he's innocent until proven guilty. So, he started them in the game and he played horribly, awful, especially in the last five minutes. He threw the ball out of bounds, kicked the ball, turned it over, the normally magnanimous North Carolina crowd toward light blue, started yelling, cascading boos down upon King Rice and Coach Smith, take him out, take him out, this game's too important, take him out. Coach Smith won and North Carolina lost the game. In the locker room after the game was Richard Venrud. Richard's the former mayor of the city of Charlotte. Richard's about my height, 6'7", and he and Coach Smith are very, very close friends. In fact, in the mid-'60s, Richard went to Vietnam to serve our country and Coach Smith would send him every week a cassette tape of each one of the games. Remember cassette tapes? And Richard and Coach Smith had like a surrogate father-son relationship. But after that game, Richard was ticked. Like so many Carolina fans, he felt like Coach Smith had really blown it. So, he said to him, Coach Smith, I just don't understand why you did that. You know I love you, I care for you, but you really made a bad decision today. You should have taken King Rice out of that game. A backup point guard would have been better than how horribly he was playing. And Richard told me the story. Coach Smith came up to him, and Coach Smith's about 5'10", and stuck his finger up close to Richard's nose. Said, I'll tell you something, Richard Venrud. He said, King Rice's sense of self-worth for the rest of his life is far more important to me than winning a stupid Atlantic Coast Conference basketball game. Coach Smith gets it. The purpose of the leader is to serve and not be served. People ask me all the time, why were you guys so willing to run through brick walls for that man? That's the reason. It's an eternal, spiritual truth. Forest Hill does a lot of work around the globe. In fact, this past week, we had almost 40 of our people in different missions, endeavors all over the world. Encourage all of you to go at some point. It will change your life forever. We had a group in Columbia, South America, not South Carolina, okay? Doing some great work. Another group in the Caribbean, on the island of Hispaniola, part in the Dominican Republic, part in Haiti, which is the closest thing to third world Africa I've ever seen here. We also had a group in Burundi, a small nation in South Central Africa that Forest Hill has adopted, mostly because it's the second poorest nation on the face of the earth. We also adopted it because its president, Pierre Nkurunziza, is a very committed Christian, and he's trying to bring Christian values to that nation. Couple of years ago, Forest Hill partnered with Manny Ahome, who is the leader of Samaritan's Feet here in town. It's a ministry trying to put shoes on the feet of millions of poor children worldwide. Manny has come to understand that the major reason children contract diseases worldwide is primarily through their feet. So he wants to put shoes upon their feet. So we went with Manny over to Burundi in order to help put shoes on their feet. President Nkurunziza does something quite amazing as a leader. He has demanded by law that on Saturday, all businesses are closed between 8 and 12, and every citizen of the nation of Burundi must go serve somewhere in the city and the nation. So one particular Saturday, Marilyn and I and some others from Forest Hill went out to a very poor rural village to put shoes on the feet of poor children. Washing their feet, putting socks on, and then putting shoes on them. In fact, I think we have a picture of Marilyn and me doing this some years ago. While we were doing this, someone tapped me on the shoulder and said, guess who's three people down from you? And I said, I don't have a clue. And I looked down, and there in the middle is Manny Ahome from Charlotte. To his left and your right is the president of the nation of Burundi, President Pierre Nkurunziza. On this Saturday, he left the splendor of his palace and entered into the squalor of his people, and he was washing the feet and putting shoes on the feet of poor children in his nation. President Pierre gets it. The purpose of power and leadership is to serve, not be served. Now, let me take a moment and give you a parenthesis because I think I need to tell you this. You can be very successful as a leader publicly in your office, but if you're not a leader at home, you fail. David is a perfect example of this. First of all, let's look at how a husband is supposed to relate to his wife biblically in marriage. And you'll see this profound principle of serving, not being served, continuing. Turn to somebody next to you and guess, what is the best biblical marriage? What is the best evidence of a really solid, good biblical marriage? Turn to somebody next to you and tell that person who you think has the best biblical marriage possible, okay? Just take a second, all right? One, two, three, go. And there's silence in the room because most of you don't know, okay? Any biblical marriage. Well, in case you don't know any biblical marriages, let me give you a few examples. Adam and Eve had their honeymoon in paradise and everything went downhill from there. Abraham lied two times to Pharaoh saying that his wife, Sarah, was his sister so that he would avoid some kind of punishment. Wise, bold, courageous guy, right? Can you imagine what the conversation with them was that night? And then he impregnated Sarah's servant girl, Hagar. Isaac and Rebecca spent their marriage quibbling over their two sons. Isaac favored his manly outdoor son, Esau. His wife favored mama's boy, Jacob. Jacob had kids by two wives and also the two servant girls of his wife. Twelve kids in all were born to them. And as you look at their quibbling and problems, you say, now that's really a dysfunctional family. All we have about Moses and his wife, Zipporah, is they had a huge argument over the circumcising of their son and she called Moses a bridegroom of blood. She's a real encourager, isn't she? Job went through all kinds of trials and troubles and at some point near the end, his wife finally said to him, why don't you just curse God and die? Thank you very much, Mrs. Job. Online, someone said the best marriage in the Bible was between Noah and Joan of Arc. In case you're biblically illiterate, Joan of Arc's not in the Bible, okay? And certainly wasn't married to Noah. Back to David, he had 10 wives, 10. And people ask me all the time, how do you justify polygamy in the Bible? Well, it was never God's original intent. God made it clear in Genesis 2, 24 what he wanted marriage to be between a man and a woman forever. But God allows the hardness of human heart, like with divorce, that was never God's intent. He wanted us to learn how to love each other and be together forever. Nor did he intend polygamy, but he made provisions for it because he knew how evil our hearts were. But David had 10 wives and many children, and each one was a disaster. Here's this man after God's own heart, and he couldn't even love his wife, which reminds me of Ephesians 5, verse 25. Guys, are you ready to get your feet stamped on just a bit? Husbands, love your wives as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her. Now, if marriage is very important to God, which it is, and if everything rises and falls on leadership in the world, which it does, maybe successful, godly, Christ-centered marriages begins with the leader of the home, the husbands, granted that privilege by God, who are called, like Jesus did with the church, to be willing to die for their wives. And I don't know a woman alive who wouldn't gladly follow a man who's willing to die for her. And look, I'll say it again. David Chadwick can be successful in this community, have all kinds of followers, all kinds of acclaim, but if I fail with Marilyn, I fail. Period. And David, as a father, he had many children by these different wives, but there's one story that sticks out to me. Amnon, one of his sons, had a real crush on one of his half-sisters named Tamar. She evidently was a babe. So he forced himself upon her. Absalom, another son of David, was ticked off, and he killed Amnon. Well, David was ticked off, then, at Absalom for killing Amnon, and he relegated him out of the kingdom. He stayed there for three years until finally someone came to David and said, invite Absalom back. Your heart's breaking. You need to have contact with your son. So David invited him back, but then for two years, didn't speak to him. During those two years, Absalom became so angry at his father that he developed a strategy for building relationships with all the powerful people in the kingdom and overthrew his father's throne. He basically came into Jerusalem, kicked his dad out, and wanted his dad dead. Why? I would suggest to you it's because David, as a dad, was a failure. He was a man after God's own heart, but he missed it with marriage, and he missed it with his kids. I've said this so often, how do kids spell love, folks? How? T-I-M-E. And David failed to spend any time with Absalom. My daddy was such a powerful influence on my life. I don't remember a whole lot about what he ever taught me. I just remember him modeling faith in Christ. And my faith from my dad was largely caught, not taught. Hey, men, and you women too, you can be successful in the world, but you only get these kids once. You don't ever get them again. And if your primary energy is going to be successful and your kids grow up not to follow Jesus and to rebel, you fail. Now, I know some kids are going to rebel no matter what. You can't feel that guilt. But during these years when you have them, during these formative years, give your lives. So David was a great leader, publicly failed at home. Is there a way to bring them together? There is, folks, if you make your primary calling in the workplace and at home to serve and not be served. That is the example of Jesus that Paul gives to us in Philippians 2, verses 5-11. Let me ask you as we conclude this message, would you stand and read with me on the screen these verses of the model of the servant heart of the one, we who follow Jesus, call him Lord and Savior. Read it with me, please. Have this mind among yourselves, which is yours in Christ Jesus, who though he was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied himself by taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men and being found in human form, he humbled himself and becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross. Therefore, God has highly exalted him and bestowed on him the name that is above every name, so that at the name of Jesus, every knee should bow in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.