Shoulda Coulda Woulda... But God!

Summary

Summary prepared by Acts 2:38 Life from the transcript below — the preacher’s words follow in full.

Jacob Phillips preaches a Sunday-morning revival sermon at Christian Life Church from Psalm 37:23-25, the aged David's testimony that the steps of a good man are ordered by the LORD, that though he fall he will not be utterly cast down, and that in a whole lifetime David had never seen the righteous forsaken or their children begging bread. Phillips frames the psalm as an old shepherd-king looking back: David's counsel is not to fixate on the wicked, whose money and houses cannot fill the void inside them, but to delight in the LORD, commit one's way to Him, and rest and wait as sheep rest in a shepherd. The greater testimony of David's life, Phillips argues, is not what he saw — lions, bears, Goliath, battles won — but what he never saw: God forsaking His own. Everything that should have, could have, and would have destroyed David never did, because God got involved.

The middle movement traces why David survived his failures: it matters how a person is anointed. Saul was anointed from a man-made vial; David was anointed from a horn of oil, something God-made and battle-tested, and that anointing did not fail when David did. Phillips presses the congregation to walk in their own anointing rather than imitating someone else's calling. David, made Saul's armor-bearer, refused to stay in Saul's shadow — and when Saul died, the armor-bearer who died with him was the man standing in the place that should have been David's. Walking with God, the sermon insists, is why weapons formed against a believer do not prosper, even a sword, like Ishbi-benob's, with the believer's name effectively on it. Who, then, are "the righteous" who are never forsaken? Working from Romans 1:16-17, Phillips answers: the just who live by faith. Faith, not a clean record, is the ground of the promise.

The close works two pictures. From Acts 28, Paul shakes the viper into the fire and the watching barbarians keep waiting for the swelling and sudden death that never come — onlookers are still watching God's people for the collapse that God will not allow. From Psalm 30:5, weeping is only a "may," a possibility for a night, while joy — a word Phillips expounds as shouting — is the certainty of the morning. The altar appeal calls people who have been grieving over a "maybe" to shout over the absolute instead, and invites anyone without the Holy Ghost to repent and be filled with the Spirit as the service moves into prayer.

Scripture index: Psalm 37:23-25; Psalm 37:1; Psalm 37:4-5; Psalm 37:7; Psalm 23; 1 Samuel 16; Romans 1:16-17; Acts 28:3-6; Psalm 30:1; Psalm 30:5.