In 1 Samuel, 17:28, David's brothers put him down. David come down because his dad said, take some food down. Now get this; his dad said go down to the battle, take some food to your brothers, so he goes down there and Elijah rides up - who do you think you are? What are you doing down here? I know you're naughty. You came here just because you want to see a battle. He could have said some battle, no one's fighting, but understand it was a put down, and David turned away from it. He turned away from put downs. He would not allow himself to be put down, he wouldn't allow himself to be devalued. You have to do something about put downs, see? So some cultures are just absolutely full of it. Now inevitably, at the core of put downs, are attempts to control people. At the core of a put down, is an attempt to control you, so if you have a vision and a dream and aspire to greatness, you're going to meet a world of put downs, and the attempt is to actually control you, and suppress your destiny, and the dream inside you.
Notice Joseph was hated for two reasons; one, because his father loved him, and two, because he's had these prophetic dreams, which described the destiny God had for him, and that initiated the put downs of him, because of envy. Why did the brothers put him down? Because he was daddy's little favourite. Well, we'll show daddy's little favourite. That's what they did, gave him a hard time, gave him a very hard time, and then betrayed him, so put downs - it's a terrible thing.
Here's a second one. Now this one here is one I had to really repent of one time, and I've got to watch it all the time, and that is bitter humour, bitter or dark humour, and I'll just describe what it is. The first thing to see is that joy is a feature of the kingdom of heaven, saw it in a meeting, God moves, people laugh, people are happy. Joy is about the kingdom of God, and it's a wonderful thing to be joyful. Humour is the ability to see the funny side of things, so I love funny movies. I love humorous movies, and I like to see the funny side of things. It keeps perspective in life. Some people are too intense and too serious. They do need to laugh a lot more, and the manifestation of joy is laughter and being able to see the funny side of things is very healthy. If you don't take yourself too seriously, and you can enjoy life with all the funny things that happen, and the unusual interesting things that come into your life, you've got to be able to laugh at that. I've survived many things because of an ability to laugh.
However there's another side to humour. Humour can be misused as a way of putting down, and humour can be used to ridicule people by laughing at them. That's the misuse of humour. It ridicules them. Now let me just define that word ridicule. Man, I've just really felt God showing me some things. Ridicule means to make fun of a person with the intention of humiliating them, see? Intention is there to humiliate them. It's a mocking humour. It's got a bitter edge, and you hear the laugh, but you feel put down. There's something in it, and I had an issue one time, I was in a Pastor's Conference and man, we did a lot of laughing there to get rid of stress and stuff and we were all standing around. A group was there and someone was there and he's a funny guy. Man, he's a funny guy, a friend of mine and boy, did he just joke all the time. So he's joking all the way there, and we're just standing around laughing away and just enjoying ourselves, and in the middle of it, I heard the Lord say, step back. So I just stepped away from the crowd that were laughing, and then He said to me, I want you to listen, and I started to listen. As I listened, I realised that this guy was telling jokes, and all of the jokes had one thing in common; they were putting himself down.
We were all laughing and getting involved in the humour, but if you analysed it, the humour was all about him being put down, and the Lord said he's got a spirit of rejection, and he's manifesting it through humour, and you're all being defiled by it, and you're joining in and carrying on putting him down. I was shocked. I went away and repented, then I went to him and I asked forgiveness, and he cried when I spoke to him. He hadn't even realised he was doing it, then he told me he'd been kicked out of home by his dad. There was a deep root of rejection in his life, and the way it manifested was by this dark humour. He was laughing at himself and putting himself down, so some humour puts people down. There's two examples; one of them is found in Nehemiah, Chapter 2, and it says when they had a vision to build the house, and build the house for God, and build a great thing for God, it says their enemies came and mocked and laughed and ridiculed them, but they used laughter as a put down. There's another example in Luke, Chapter 8, where Jesus came in, and there's a girl, and she's lying there dead. He said she's not dead, she's just sleeping, and they laughed and ridiculed Him. This is what He did. See, this is what Nehemiah did. You cannot remain in the presence of a mocking, laughing, belittling, putting down person. You've got to do something, so what Nehemiah did, he says you've got no portion with us. No way you're having anything to do with - in other words he created a separation, said we're going about God's business.