What's God Looking For?
I.
2 Chronicles 16:9-What is
God looking for?
A. God is eager about
finding someone who is after his heart
1.
Run to and fro-To go eagerly or quickly
to and fro
B. Throughout the whole
earth-You can’t hide honor from God, you
honor God and he’s going to find it and honor you
1.
You may feel like you’re
in a place he wouldn’t find it, but God’s going to find honor, He will sniff it
out
2.
Malachi
1:13, Acts 13:46-God’s going to find somebody who honors him
C. God is looking for
somebody who He has all of (Everything, Anything, Anywhere, Anytime)
1.
If something is valuable
enough to you, you’ll give all of yourself to it (Perfect-Complete,
Whole, Full)
a. EXB-For people who have given themselves completely to Him,
He wants to strengthen them
b. ICB-Who have given themselves
completely to Him. He wants to make
them strong
c. MSG-God is always alert, constantly on the look out for
people who are totally committed to Him
2.
Is God really looking for
this?
D. If God showed himself strong
on your behalf that’s him honoring you (We see the 1 Samuel 2:30 principle in
play)
1.
Strong-Display strength,
Sustain, Support, Use one’s strength
2.
ESV-To give strong
support; VOICE-To strongly support; TLB-So that He can show His great power in
helping them
3.
God
is only looking to do this for a particular group of people (anybody can join
the group at anytime)
E. God values honor and
honor is what’s important to him and we can see that because it’s what he is in
search of; we can see what a person values and honors by looking at what they
seek after
1.
If God is really looking
for this, then this perfect heart ought to become your great quest
2.
This is huge that God has
revealed to us what he’s looking for
II.
Acts 13:22-God said he
was looking for a man after His heart
A. When it comes to
promotion and positions of great responsibility in the Kingdom God doesn’t look
for the most qualified, he doesn’t look for the perfect person who has never
made a mistake, but rather He looks for a person who is after (in pursuit of) what’s important to Him
1.
God’s
looking from a person to be king and he didn’t pick the most talented or the
most perfect, He picked one who honored him the most, who God and His stuff
meant the most to
a. God doesn’t promote based
on talent, he can add talent to you, he promotes based on honor
2.
Honor is paramount in
being used of God
a. 2 Timothy 2:11,19-21-If
you’ll separate yourself unto the Lord you’ll be a vessel of honor and you’ll
be set apart, fit and ready for God to used you – How set apart you are
determines how used you are
B. I have found a man after
my own heart – God was looking
1.
Found-To come upon after
searching, to find a thing sought, to find by enquiry, examination, scrutiny,
observation
C. This man was after what
was important to the Lord because if you are after God’s heart you are after
His treasure/what He values/what’s important to Him (Where God’s heart is there
is treasure his also); David was after what was important to the Lord-Mathew
6:21
1.
CEB-A man who shares my
desires
2.
EXB-A man whose heart is
like mine
3.
MSG-Whose heart beats to
my heart
4.
When what’s important to
the Lord becomes the most important thing to you, THEN you’ll be honoring Him
and you’ll be a man after His own heart
5.
This
man after God’s heart will do fully what the Lord wants because what the Lord
wants is the most important thing to Him
D. 1 Samuel 13:14-The Lord
has sought him a man after his own heart
1.
Sought-To seek to find, Desire,
Require
2.
God not only seeks this
and desires this, He requires it if He’s going to honor a man with precious
things
III.
Three examples of why
David was chosen; This right here showed that David was a man of honor, a man
after God’s own heart, and this had so much to do with why David was picked to
be the next king and why God used him the way he did
A. 1 Samuel 24:10-By
treating God’s choice with honor and respect, David treated God that way
1.
5-His
heart smote him because his heart was right
2.
David
said about Saul, “He is the Lord’s anointed,” and David wouldn’t touch him
a. Dishonor would say oh it
doesn’t matter, he’s jut a man and after all he’s going nuts and doing the
wrong stuff
3.
God
delivered David and made him the King – David honored the Lord and the
Lord honored him
B. 1 Chronicles 17:1, 22:5-David
had a heart to give God the best he could
1.
MSG-Look at this: Here I
am comfortable in a luxurious palace of cedar and the Chest of the Covenant
sits under a tent.”
a. You can here it in
David’s tone, that in his heart the Lord deserves better than this and that
this tent isn’t good enough for the Lord and David has it in is heart to build
something nicer for the Lord
b. David said it’s not right
that I live in a house of cedars and God lives in a tent; We’re going to build
him something and it’s got to be exceedingly magnificent
c. He looked at that tent
and said that’s not good enough for the Lord
2.
5-6-God
didn’t ask David for a house and all these years nobody ever thought to build
God a house, but David did
3.
10-God
told David I’m going to build you a house
4.
16-David
said, “Who am I that you would do all of this for me?”
5.
17-18-God
honored David
6.
David
just had it in his heart to do this for the Lord and it blessed the Lord so
much that it got this great response from Him
C. 2 Samuel 24:24-David
wouldn’t give something to the Lord that cost him nothing; Dishonor wants it to
cost nothing; Honor doesn’t care if it costs everything
1.
18-To
build an altar unto the Lord is going to cost David money
a. He has to buy the
threshing floor, he has to buy the materials to build the altar, he has to
offer a burnt offering
2.
22-Araunah
was a man of honor: He gave David everything he needed for this altar and
offering
a. He literally told David
to take whatever He wanted
3.
24-David
did not want to offer something to the Lord that costs him nothing
a. Versions
1)
CEV-I can’t offer the
Lord My God a sacrifice that I got for nothing
2)
TLB-I don’t want to offer
to the Lord my God burnt offerings that have cost me nothing
3)
MSG-No. I’ve got to buy
it from you for a good price; I’m not going to offer God, my God, sacrifices
that are no sacrifice
4)
VOICE-No, I will buy
these things from you. Name your price.
I will not make an offering to the Eternal One, my True God,
that has cost me nothing.
b. David wanted it to cost
him something; It was important to him that what he gave to the Lord cost him
something
4.
Don’t
cower away from the thing that cost you something; Seek the thing that cost you
something
a. For some, the moment it
cost something you lose them, the moment it gets uncomfortable, the moment they
are a little inconvenienced they are gone and in search of the thing that cost
them nothing
b. Some believers don’t want
it to cost anything and they don’t want to pay any price
c. Beware of wanting it to
cost you nothing, because that means to you it means nothing
d. When you want it to be
convenient, when you want it to be casual, when you want it to be light you
want it to cost you nothing
e. Paying a great price
reveals great honor and if there was no cost at all then there was no honor
IV.
Our attitude ought to be
there may be some more talented, more gifted, more experienced, but there won’t
be one who honors God more, who God and his things mean more to
A. Proverbs 20:6-People who
honor the Lord are not as common as you might think
1.
There’s no shortage of
people who say they honor the Lord, but there is a shortage of people who
actually do
2.
Faithful-Trusty, can be relied on
B. Our attitude ought to be
there may be some more talented, more gifted, more experienced, but there won’t
be one who honors God more, who God and his things mean more to
1.
1
Samuel 16:7-In David’s day there were many more qualified, more gifted, with
more experience
a. Gods look on the heart
and by doing so he finds out what you value and what means the most to you
because where your treasure is there is your heart also
2.
When God looks at your
heart he sees your treasure and what you value the most and that’s why God
looks on the heart because the most important thing to him is to find out
what’s most important to you
a. God is very interested in
finding out what’s most important to you
b. God’s not looking for
perfect conduct, he’s not looking for one who finishes their Christian
checklist, he’s just looking for someone who his stuff means something to
C. Judges 6-Why did God
choose Gideon?
1.
6-Greatly
Impoverished-Exceedingly, abundantly
2.
10-Dishonor
has them in this position
3.
11,15-He’s
not that impressive naturally
4.
18,19-In
a time of great, exceeding, abundant poverty he gives an offering the Lord
a. In a time where they were greatly impoverished and his hiding
threshing wheat in a winepress just how valuable is goat and approximately 40
liters/10 gallons of flour? In a time of famine this had to be precious to him
and yet he gives it to the lord-Prov3:9
b. This was more than about
money and stuff this revealed his heart and his honor for God
5.
24-This
meant enough to him that he built and altar to the Lord
a. It didn’t say God told him to build one he just built one;
God’s things mean something to him
b. Altars where places where
people would worship God by making sacrifices and they were memorials for his
goodness
6.
27-This
is why he got picked because the Lord’s words mean something to him
a. Gideon knows he’s going
to catch trouble because of this, but this is so important to him he does it
anyway
7.
7:1-Dishonor
deserts, but honor sticks with the Lord when it doesn’t understand
a. 1-7-He doesn’t understand
this, but honor doesn’t have to understand
8.
There
might have been people more gifted, more talented, but there was no one who
honored God more
a. He didn’t get picked because he had perfect conduct and
didn’t have any faults; he judged himself worthy to have this because God’s
things meant something to him
D. You can initiate more of
God’s honor in your life
1.
God
does not honor everybody with the same amount of blessing, grace, revelation,
His presence, greater assignments, greater anointings so then to whom does God
choose to give these precious things? Can you initiate Him honoring you more
and experiencing these precious things more? Could you deem yourself worthy and
fit to have and handle and experience these things?
2.
Why does God use whom He
does? Why does He choose whom he does? Why does he anoint he does? Why does He
manifest himself to whom He does? Why does give some greater assignment and
greater responsibility? God looks on the heart, He looks for people who Him and
His things are important to