Please stand as we recite The Shema together.
Hear O Israel!
The Lord is our God – the Lord Alone.
Love the Lord your God
With all your heart,
With all your soul,
And with all your might,
And love your neighbor as yourself. Amen.
Thank You Lord for Your Word. Please be seated.

1 Sam 30:6, Moreover David was greatly distressed because the people spoke of stoning him, for all the people were embittered, each one because of his sons and his daughters. But David strengthened himself in the Lord his God.
	Even though I had intended to move on, we find ourselves once more deep in consideration of this passage. I am having a great deal of difficulty leaving it because it holds such tremendous reality for us in the manifest loving kindness and patience and encouragement in the work of Our Lord even when everything is going so against us. 
This is especially the case when our loved ones and close friends are fuming and raging at some action or another that is perceived as our fault! Even when spears and arrows of anger, frustration, and unforgiveness are aimed directly at our hearts, we have this truth to hold us firmly in the place of perfect peace before God. We need to learn, to practice, to have embedded into our innermost being, the reality that we can strengthen ourselves in the Lord.
	I say this with the absolute caveat that it is the Holy Spirit within us Who brings this into place. We are utterly incapable of doing anything on our own. Whenever we try to do something through our meager and limited human ability, we only foul it up. We make a mess of it. We fail miserably, and we suffer the misery of that fiasco that we have created. 
	What we need to learn, in the every muscle and nerve center of our hearts and minds, is that God is Our All! He is the One Who makes it possible for us to strengthen ourselves in Him. 
He is The One Who proves Himself faithful and true over and over and over again! He never fails and never, ever will! He is so very awesome in His loving care of all His people. That care sees us through every difficulty with all His grace and His mercy and His love in action. It is as we turn our hearts and thoughts and fears and troubles over to Him and ask Him to deal effectively with it all, that we find the strength to go forward, step by step, moment by moment, day by day. 
	The greatest encouragement we can receive, to be strengthened in the Lord, is from Our Lord Jesus Christ, Himself. He recounted to His listeners the truth of our morning’s passage in terms that were very much their walk on this earth. He was not giving them theological treatises nor was He merely offering them doctrinal dogma nor philosophical rhetoric. He was making the truth of the knowledge and assurance of the loving kindness and the provision of God His very concrete promise in every time of need and distress. 
The examples Jesus used were those very elements that were consuming their minds and their reasoning abilities. Jesus made know the fact that God would provide their every need as they would look to Him and seek Him above all else. This is especially in those times of deepest distress and persecution, when there is no other earthly hope or stay.
	Please open in your Bibles to Matt 6:25-34. We want to relish the encouragement that is to fill our minds and our thoughts in the midst of every moment by moment dilemma and situation. It is in God, Alone, that we will be given the strength to face the day. This will be in the joy of knowing that He is proving Himself Our Provider, Our Sustainer, Our Protector, and Our Hope.
	Matt 6:25-34, "For this reason I say to you, do not be anxious for your life, as to what you shall eat, or what you shall drink; nor for your body, as to what you shall put on. Is not life more than food, and the body than clothing? "Look at the birds of the air, that they do not sow, neither do they reap, nor gather into barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not worth much more than they? "And which of you by being anxious can add a single cubit to his life's span? "And why are you anxious about clothing? Observe how the lilies of the field grow; they do not toil nor do they spin, yet I say to you that even Solomon in all his glory did not clothe himself like one of these. "But if God so arrays the grass of the field, which is alive today and tomorrow is thrown into the furnace, will He not much more do so for you, O men of little faith? "Do not be anxious then, saying, 'What shall we eat?' or 'What shall we drink?' or 'With what shall we clothe ourselves?' "For all these things the Gentiles eagerly seek; for your heavenly Father knows that you need all these things. "But seek first His kingdom and His righteousness; and all these things shall be added to you. "Therefore do not be anxious for tomorrow; for tomorrow will care for itself. Each day has enough trouble of its own. 
	Very many of us get caught up in the mental anguish of that worry about what is going to happen tomorrow. I am not at all saying that we should live as if there will be no next day, foolishly squandering our savings. That is not at all what is at hand in this encouragement of Our Lord Jesus Christ. 
He is telling us not to be consumed with the what if’s and the worries and the frustrations and the mentally consuming stress of dealing with tomorrow. Let us deal with the day at hand. Let us go forward today in obedience and honor unto the Lord as to what He brings to us today, rather than missing the joy of what is here right now. 
	So often we lose our rejoicing in this day in Christ for the all-consuming anxiety about what tomorrow might bring. We fume and we fuss and we stress and we fumble about, thinking that we will be better prepared for what tomorrow brings, all the while missing the leading and the joy of what is His blessing today! If we learn to live each day as unto The Lord, obeying Him, putting everything before Him in terms of what we have and how it is to be allocated according to His plan and His purpose, then each day will proceed in full accordance with that which will bring Him the glory and the praise. 
	In nowise does that mean that we will have no issues. Rather, we may find that each day is filled with those glory to glory moments when everything is tested as to where we put our trust and our faith and our obedience! As we learn to strengthen ourselves in Him, the daily happenings, whether large or small, all serve to give us greater opportunities to be taught the fuller measure of what it means to find our strength for every day in Him and in Him, Alone.
	Then, we move forward with the reality that Jesus knew what His disciples, including all those who believe in Him and desire to have that living relationship with Him, would face. This is in the manifested testimony that we are called to live on this earth. He set us right into the midst of those who would seek to kill the true witness of the resurrected and glorified Son of Man. This is the same pressure and threat of this morning’s situation faced by David as his own men and friends were actually seeking to destroy him. 
	Please move forward in Matthew to Chapter 10, and we will read together verses 16-20. We do so not out of fear, but out of thankfulness to God that He knows what we need when we need it. We are not just sent forth to die, but to show the faithfulness and the peace and the joy of the Lord no matter what is arrayed against us in this realm which so mercilessly hates Him with a passion, and thereby hates any expression of Him. Yet, we are not to worry or have any anxiety about what they may do to us. We are to trust and obey Our Lord and Our Master. He has us well in hand and will provide all that is needed in each situation and persecution of this age.
	Matt 10:16-20, "Behold, I send you out as sheep in the midst of wolves; therefore be shrewd as serpents, and innocent as doves. "But beware of men; for they will deliver you up to the courts, and scourge you in their synagogues; and you shall even be brought before governors and kings for My sake, as a testimony to them and to the Gentiles. "But when they deliver you up, do not become anxious about how or what you will speak; for it shall be given you in that hour what you are to speak. "For it is not you who speak, but it is the Spirit of your Father who speaks in you. 
	Next, we hear from one unto whom the full measure of what Jesus spoke was in evidence, that of the Apostle Paul. He faced everything that this world intended for destruction, enduring both physical abuse as well as constant mental haranguing by those Judaizers. They relentlessly followed him, stirring up the wrath of community after community. 
As a result, Paul was finally brought before Caesar, himself, to be martyred for the name of Jesus. In all of it, Paul strengthened himself in The Lord, going forward with the knowledge that whatever came his way; God was the One Who had him well in hand. 
Consider what he wrote to the church at Rome, in Rom 8:31-39. This was his encouragement in Christ, after detailing all that could be leveled at us through the deceived powers of our imaginations, this age, or any other accusatory effort. When we consider the sources of the rage aimed at our hearts and our minds, we will find our complete refuge in the truth of Who God is and all that He has done to make us partakers of His eternal life. 
Rom 8:31-39, What then shall we say to these things? If God is for us, who is against us? He who did not spare His own Son, but delivered Him up for us all, how will He not also with Him freely give us all things? Who will bring a charge against God's elect? God is the one who justifies; who is the one who condemns? Christ Jesus is He who died, yes, rather who was raised, who is at the right hand of God, who also intercedes for us. Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword? Just as it is written, "For Thy sake we are being put to death all day long; We were considered as sheep to be slaughtered." But in all these things we overwhelmingly conquer through Him who loved us. For I am convinced that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor any other created thing, shall be able to separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord. 
	Next, let us consider what was written to the Corinthian church in 2 Cor 1:6-10. Paul outlined how we are in all of this together in Jesus Christ. We are to stand together and to encourage that continual strengthening in God. He is our goal and He is our Salvation, not anything of this world!
	2 Cor 1:6-10, But if we are afflicted, it is for your comfort and salvation; or if we are comforted, it is for your comfort, which is effective in the patient enduring of the same sufferings which we also suffer; and our hope for you is firmly grounded, knowing that as you are sharers of our sufferings, so also you are sharers of our comfort. For we do not want you to be unaware, brethren, of our affliction which came to us in Asia, that we were burdened excessively, beyond our strength, so that we despaired even of life; indeed, we had the sentence of death within ourselves in order that we should not trust in ourselves, but in God who raises the dead; who delivered us from so great a peril of death, and will deliver us, He on whom we have set our hope. And He will yet deliver us, 
	The Apostle Paul again puts this encouragement to strengthen ourselves in the absolute provision of God for us in Phil 4:6+7, with the reiteration of that which Jesus continually taught. There is never a time for us to be anxious about anything that this age will do or try to do to us. No matter what, no matter the trial, no matter the tribulation, no matter the crises, we have our assurance in Him against all powers and beings and specters of our minds.
	Phil 4:6+7, Be anxious for nothing, but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known to God. And the peace of God, which surpasses all comprehension, shall guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus. 
The Writer to the Hebrews is our next encourager of the fact that we can count on The Lord, no matter what this world throws at us. This is especially true with all the financial aspects of wealth and success that are used to try to entice those whose gods are not the One True Living Lord God Almighty, Yahweh. 
Money and success can wilily build that craving for more of the things of this age than for the truth of God. Therefore, as recounted in Heb 13:5+6, we must be on guard against the other deceits of this world. When it cannot succeed in threat and terror, it may well try to ply our hearts away from The Lord with wealth and fortune.
	Heb 13:5+6, Let your character be free from the love of money, being content with what you have; for He Himself has said, "I will never desert you, nor will I ever forsake you," so that we confidently say, "The Lord is my helper, I will not be afraid. What shall man do to me?" 
	 We close with the wonderful, additional encouragement of Peter in 1 Peter 5:6+7. This apostle, along with all those who knew Jesus and learned from Him about how to face the onslaught of the powers of this realm, puts forth the confident reality that God has all His children well in His hands. Despite all that would attempt to eliminate the testimony and the truth of Who Jesus is and What He has done, we have that bedrock foundation of Jesus, upon Whom our feet are always to be planted. 
	1 Peter 5:6+7, Humble yourselves, therefore, under the mighty hand of God, that He may exalt you at the proper time, casting all your anxiety upon Him, because He cares for you.
	He cares for us. He provides our every need. He protects us. He saves us. He knows us. He loves us. He is our refuge and our rock. He is Our Provider, Our Peace, Our Comfort, Our Hope, Our Righteousness, and on and on and on. He is Our Everything against all fear and stress and animosity and anguish and strife. It is Christ in Whom we need to continually strengthen ourselves in our living relationship with Him, now and evermore. So be it!
Moreover David was greatly distressed because the people spoke of stoning him, for all the people were embittered, each one because of his sons and his daughters. But David strengthened himself in the Lord his God. Amen.

This morning’s benediction is Eph 4:31+32. Let all bitterness and wrath and anger and clamor and slander be put away from you, along with all malice. And be kind to one another, tender-hearted, forgiving each other, just as God in Christ also has forgiven you. Amen.