ARME 7: Waialua, HI - Nov 2011

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ARME Bible Camp

Doug Batchelor

A Loyal Soldier

Someone asked me a minute ago, so when was your first time to Hawaii?

And I had to say, I really don't remember, because my parents brought me when I was really young, and I don't remember how old I was.

But we're very happy to be here, and I say we because I'm here with the lovely Mrs.

And they gave us these very pretty leis, and mine match my shirt and hers matches hers, but I have hay fever, so I gave mine to her.

And you get more mileage out of your flowers that way.

But it's been wonderful to be here, and I will make no apologies by telling you, we came a couple days early, and I shared with the Bible Army group, I said I'd be delighted to come but I'm bringing my wife and I'm taking a couple of days off.

And so we've done that and it's just been wonderful and so it's, but it's great to be here with you as the Sabbath begins and to be able to open God's Word.

You know I think that the focus of Army is really a great catalyst for revival and the theme of really being soldiers in God's army and the Bible being our ammunition that's really what it's all about and so I wonder if we could just, if you don't mind, join me for just a moment in bowing your heads and let's ask for God's presence to be here.

Dear Father, we'd like to add an additional prayer and in this next segment where we direct our attention to your word and as the Sabbath approaches in this beautiful place, we pray that you will stir our hearts with your spirit I ask Lord that you will be present in this place that through the Holy Spirit you'll do what only you can do and speak to each heart individually Help us to glorify You and to be transformed by Your Word, we pray in Christ's name, amen.

Now there was a little rumor that maybe what I'd be doing right now is sharing my testimony And I hope you'll forgive me if I don't do that.

And, you know, I've done that so many times.

And my poor wife's here, and she's going, Oh, I don't know.

But really, the Lord laid something else on my heart.

Actually, we have been listening to the programs because you're streaming.

And so back at our room, we've got the internet and I've been listening to some of the various speakers.

We turned it up in the room, we've been listening and it's been wonderful that you're doing that.

And so we appreciate Brad and the work that he's doing, part of our Amazing Facts team.

There's a story in God's word I'd like to direct your attention to and if I were to title this message today it would be a loyal soldier and it comes to us from the second book of Samuel second Samuel I'm going to start with the first verse.

And some of it you're going to sense is familiar, but some is not.

Now just for the sake of being practical right now, what is my quitting time?

Don't say anything like as long as you want because I want to eat too.

And so it's 5.30, okay, thank you, Melody.

And sometimes I think we believe that the a musician is commended because he plays long rather than well and I think that the Holy Spirit can do a lot in 5 minutes if that's what he has to work with.

This is the story of David's infamous sin with Bathsheba.

And there has been no shortage of messages that talk about David's sin and typically it's used as an excuse for bad behavior and I can't count how many times I've heard somebody say, well we all sin and look at David.

Of course, Usually those people don't spend 7 days on their face repenting like David did.

But we often like to cite, well, after all, you know, look how David fell.

And it is true, we are all human and we all sin.

But I think in looking at this story, typically we miss the real hero in the story.

We're so preoccupied and distracted with the despicable behavior of this great, 1 of the greatest characters in the Bible, a type of Christ, David, that we miss who the real hero is.

Verse 1, 2 Samuel 11, It came to pass in the spring of the year, the time at which kings go out to battle, That David sent Joab and his servants with him.

It says this is the time when kings are supposed to go out to battle, but What did the king do?

David had reached the zenith of his power at this point.

You look at the history of David, and even though he had his ups and downs being chased by Saul, he basically went from victory to victory, success to success.

He was winning things politically, he was winning things spiritually, he was winning things in military perspective, and God was with him everywhere he went.

And it's just all kinds of problems follow after this.

And it all begins with the time when kings go out to battle, it says David stayed home.

Now I figured it's probably appropriate in an army meeting to talk about military issues.

You know, 1 of the most common questions that we get at our Bible Answer Program is regarding Christians serving in the military.

And I'm not even going to delve into that right now, because it's such a volatile subject, that there's a whole branch of Seventh-day Adventists, called Seventh-day Adventist Reform, that broke away from the main Seventh-day Adventist church back during World War I over the issue of involvement in the military.

And of course, that was accentuated during World War II.

And Well, I'll just get into it a little bit.

I'll tell you, I can get so preoccupied with listening to myself that I lose track of time and I don't ever get to my subject.

I'm interested in what I have to say, and so I get distracted.

But, you know, there's a great tension, and Christians have to be careful, Seventh-day Adventists have to be careful of taking sort of a hypocritical position.

I think we ought to be grateful, thankful, praise God that we have a military.

Because the freedoms we enjoy as a country, the freedoms we enjoy to circulate and to propagate the gospel are because those freedoms are defended at great sacrifice.

But having said that, we all have different gifts and it becomes often a real conflict when practicing Seventh-day Adventist Christians enlist in the military service without understanding what they're getting into.

Now, having said that, I went to military school the first time I was 5 years old.

As far as I know, you can look it up on the internet, not me, but Black Fox, spelled F-O-X-E, Military School, It's closed now, but it was the military school for the movie stars' kids in Los Angeles for about 50 years, 60 years.

Parents divorced at 3, and so eventually they said, how do we get Dougie and Falcon out of the way so we can get on with our lives?

And so they sent me to a boarding school.

Went back to military school at New York Military Academy, which is still open.

Well, he's quite a bit ahead of me, actually.

He was a senior, I think, when I was in elementary school.

If you hear a bias, I just want you to know where it's coming from.

Hopefully, I'm giving you the truth, but just in case I'm biased, and sometimes I am.

When you enter the military, someone else is going to make your decisions for you.

I think 1 of the biggest jokes in the world is when someone says, I'm gonna join the military to get away from mom and dad's discipline.

I just know from military school, we had a rule for everything.

And then our son going to marine boot camp and we were there when he graduated.

But you don't have the freedom to practice all your convictions in a situation like that.

Some are drafted and of course you know about Terry Johnson and Desmond Doss, both friends, and that God can, God has his people there.

So the Bible has an awful lot to say about soldiers in the military, And of course we're not under a theocracy now, but I think we need to praise God for the military.

God doesn't like war, but God sometimes sends people to war.

And if we are his soldiers, we need to be aware there is a war.

Have you read the book, The Great Controversy?

If you say it in Spanish, it's El Gran Conflicto.

And David, They had the kingdom of Ammon.

They'd taken the kingdom, the capital was surrounded, and a siege could take a long time.

And so David said, look, Joab, I haven't got time.

You know, we're just starting to build the kingdom, and there's a lot of management to go on here, he said, you guys go and finish off Rabba, which is the capital of Ammon.

A Loyal Soldier

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