So the Bible says many things. In there it says that, there be lovers of pleasure, in other words hedonistic, or just seeking to get something that makes me feel good, so if I can get what I want, and my desire, I'll feel good. Get the idea? I'm getting on to where I'm going shortly. Now I just was thinking about this the other day, and the Lord just began to drop into my heart the names of a whole number of people in the Bible who had desires, and their desire totally blew it in their life. Let me just give you a few, I'm not going to look them all up, but I'll give you a few of them. Eve had a desire. She desired the fruit on the tree. Oh boy, that's good, that'll get me ahead. Yeah, right! See, it violated what God had for her, and in doing so, that desire to get ahead, that desire to fulfil herself, that desire to make her way in life without reference to God, actually is the core of the human problem. That's what led to the problems we have in society. Now you start to follow it through. What about the problems in the Middle East right now? Where did they all come from? Well they came from one man, who had a desire to have a son. He thought it would be a good idea with have sex with his wife's maid. So he desired her, and he desired a son. Now get this; God had promised a son, so he can kind of frame it up, well God's got a plan for me and it's not working out here. I'll try this. Of course now we have all this conflict - wild man.
What about Israel? Israel desired a king like everyone else, so what did they get? The ended up with Saul, they got the king they desired, and had years of sorrow and conflict and pain and problems in their nation - but they desired, that's what they wanted. They desired that. It's just, their desire wasn't so bad to have a king, but it's just outside the order what God had planned. They settled for less than what God planned, because they followed their own thinking, and their own desire. Here's another one; Isaiah desired the priesthood. He thought man, I'm a king but boy, to be a priest, that'd be fantastic, great offer of sacrifice - so he desired to be a priest. What happened to him, he ended up his life in leprosy, in defeat, trying to - he desired something that was not what God intended for him.
Now we can go through, there's heaps of them there. What about Josiah? Josiah wanted to go down and get involved in a fight. Josiah's a good man, he brought revival into the nation, had victory after victory, but he wanted to get involved in the fight, and the king said it's not your fight, stay out of it. But he desired to go to the battle. He went. You know what happened to him? He had a premature death, because of his desire. He just missed what God was saying to him, because his desire just was not tempered by finding what God wanted. I'll give you another one there; what about Jehoshaphat? Jehoshaphat desired to strengthen his relationship with King Ahab, and King Ahab wanted to go down the battle, talked him into going to battle, then they got a prophet, and the prophet said no, no, there's going to be a big defeat if you go there. But did he go? Yeah, he went anyway. So even though he'd had prophetic word, even though there was indications from God this wasn't the right thing, because of his desire for this relationship, and this affinity between the two nations, he went to the battle. He nearly lost his life.
These are written in the Bible. There's heaps of them. They just go on and on. What about Ghazi? Well, he desired that his ministry be rewarded. He thought well, I'm serving Alias, I should get something out of this you know, there should be something in this for me. So when the Syrian got healed, he thought man, I should get a bit of dough out of this, so he followed him after and said listen, we need a bit of money for our ministry, how about you give us some? He got some money, but then he got leprosy as well. His desire brought leprosy and shame, not only on him, on his whole family. Isn't that interesting?